Lilac Bus by Maeve Binchy Page A

all this other stuff will sort itself out.’
    ‘Do you know about him?’ She was genuinely surprised.
    ‘This is Ireland, child. I’m a doctor, he’s a doctor, well a sort of one – when they get to that level it’s hard to know.’
    ‘How did you hear?’
    ‘Somebody saw you and thought I should know, I think, a long time ago.’
    ‘It’s over now.’
    ‘It may be for a while . . .’
    ‘Oh no it is, tonight.’
    ‘Why so suddenly?’
    ‘He’s a liar and nothing else; he lied to her and to me – why do people do that?’
    ‘Because they see themselves as having lost out and they want some of everything, and society doesn’t let us have that so we have to tell lies. And in a funny way the secrecy keeps it all going and makes it more exciting at the start.’
    ‘You know what it’s like all right; I don’t know how you could.’
    ‘Oh, the same way as your fellow does.’
    ‘DADDY. No, not you. I don’t believe it.’
    ‘Oh years and years ago. You were only a toddler.’
    ‘Did Mummy know?’
    ‘I don’t think so. I hope not. But she never said anyway.’
    ‘And what happened to the girl?’
    ‘Oh she’s fine; she hated me for a bit, that was the worst part – if she had been just a little bit understanding. Just a small bit.’
    ‘But why should she?’ Dee was indignant.
    ‘Why, because she was young and lovely like you are and she had the world before her, and I had made my way and it was nice but a bit, you know . . . a bit samey.’
    ‘She should have shook your hand like a chap and said, “No hard feelings, Johnny Burke, you’ll be a treasured memory”,’ Dee was scathing.
    ‘Something like that,’ her father laughed.
    ‘Maybe she should have.’ Dee linked her father companionably. ‘Because you’re a much nicer man than Sam Barry will ever be. I think he deserves a bit of roasting, actually.’
    ‘Ah well, roast away,’ her father said good-naturedly. ‘You’ve never listened to me up to now – there’s no reason why you should now.’
    Dee sat in her room and looked down at the town. She thought she saw Nancy Morris sitting on the wall near the chip shop, but decided that it couldn’t be. Nancy . . . pay for a whole portion of chips . . . ridiculous.

MIKEY
    Mikey always said that you couldn’t come across a nicer crowd of girls than the ones who worked in the bank. The men were grand fellows too but they were often busy with their careers and they wouldn’t have all that time to talk. And one of the men, a young buck who’d be some kind of a high manager before he was thirty had taken it upon himself to say to Mikey that it would be appreciated if he watched his sense of humour since the bank ladies had found it rather coarse on occasions. Mikey had been very embarrassed and had said nothing all day. So silent was he that the nice Anna Kelly who was pure gold asked him if he felt all right. He had told her what the young buck said, and Anna Kelly had said that banks were stuffy old places and maybe the buck had a point: jokes were fine with friends, but God the bank, it wouldn’t know how to laugh if you were tickling its funny bone for a year.
    So he understood now and he never uttered apleasantry within the bank walls again. If he met them on the street that was different; he could pass a remark or make a joke like anyone then because they were all on neutral ground. And he used to tell the girls about his family in Rathdoon, well, about the family that Billy and Mary had really. The twins with the red hairs and the freckles and then Gretta with the pigtails and the baby, a big roll of butter with a laugh you could hear half a mile away. He told Anna Kelly that sometimes on the summer evenings when it would be very bright the twins wouldn’t have gone to bed, and they’d be sitting at their window waiting till the Lilac Bus turned into the street and Uncle Mikey would get off. They collected stamps and badges, any kind of badges, and he had them all on the