Lilac Bus Read Online Free Page B

Lilac Bus
Book: Lilac Bus Read Online Free
Author: Maeve Binchy
Tags: Fiction
Pages:
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    It was chilly and the last chip was gone. She walked back to Ryan’s and thought she would go in the side entrance and visit the Ladies’ on the way. She nearly fell over Mrs Ryan who was sitting on the step.
    ‘Oh, it’s
Miss
Morris,’ the woman said with a very snide little laugh.
    ‘Goodnight, Mrs Ryan,’ said Nancy a bit nervously.
    ‘Oh Miss Morris, Miss Mean Morris. Mean as all get out, they say about you.’
    She didn’t sound drunk. Her voice was steady and cold.
    ‘Who says that about me?’ Nancy was equally cold.
    ‘Everyone. Every single person who ever speaks your name. Poor Biddy Brady’s crowd of girls, just to mention a few. You sat down and took a couple of spirits off them and walked off. That’s class, Miss Morris, strong men have wanted to be able to do that and they’re not.’
    ‘Why do you call me Miss Morris?’
    ‘Because that’s what you call yourself, that’s whatyou think you are. And by God that’s the way you’re going to stay. No man would take you on, Miss Morris, a mean woman is worse than a nag and a slut put together . . .’
    ‘I’ll be off, I think, Mrs Ryan.’
    ‘Oh I would, Miss Morris; those little girls in there have had a few drinks now and if you haven’t come back to put a couple of fivers into their kitty, I think you’d be far better to be off.’
    ‘Put
what
into their kitty?’ Nancy was stunned.
    ‘Oh, be off, Miss Morris, I beg of you.’
    But her blood was up now. She pushed past the woman and went into the smoke and heat.
    ‘Sorry Biddy,’ she said loudly, ‘I went home for change. I hadn’t my money with me. Can I put this into the kitty and I’m having a gin and orange when the round comes.’
    They looked at her in disbelief and with some guilt. Those who had been loudest against her were abashed.
    ‘A large gin and orange for Nancy,’ they called and Celia who was working alone with only Bart Kennedy to help her raised her eyebrows. Nancy Morris ordering large ones.
    ‘They cost a fair whack nowadays, Nancy,’ she said.
    ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, will you give me a drink not a sermon,’ Nancy said and the others all laughed.

    They were singing ‘By The River of Babylon, where I sat down,’ but Nancy was only mouthing the words.
    Mean, Mean, Mean
. That was what Mairead thought, what she told her mother and her aunt, why she wanted her out of the flat; that’s what Mrs Casey thought, that’s what her mother had felt tonight, that’s what the Kennedys’ father had been jeering at in the shop. That’s what Celia meant now, talking about the price of a drink. That is what Mrs Ryan, who must have gone stone mad tonight, meant, sitting on the floor of her own public house in the side entrance.
    Mean
.
    But she wasn’t mean: she was careful, she was sensible, she was not going to throw away her money. She was going to spend it on what she wanted. Which was . . . which was . . . Well, she didn’t know yet. It certainly wasn’t clothes, or a holiday or a car. And it wasn’t on dear things to furnish rented accommodation, and it wasn’t on going to dances or discos or to hotels with fancy prices. And it wasn’t on smart hairdressers or Italian shoes or fillet steaks or a stereo radio with headphones.
    They had linked arms now and they were singing ‘Sailing’ and swaying from side to side. Mrs Ryan had come back and was singing with the best; in fact she was standing up in the middle of the circle and playing the Rod Stewart role with somebody’s golf club as a microphone.
    Celia was pulling pints still; she looked at her mother with neither embarrassment nor pride – it was just as if she were another customer. Tom Fitzgerald was talking to her over the bar. They were very thick, those two. Tears came down Nancy’s face at Mrs Ryan’s words. A mean woman. She wasn’t at all mean. But if people
thought
she was, then she must be. Mustn’t she?
    Deirdre had once said she was a bit tight with money, but she had
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