Lilac Bus (15 page)

Red’s girl was coming the very next day it turned out, so they all had to do a spring clean on the back room. There were to be cups instead of mugs, a clean cloth was spread and bread was cut on a tray and then put onto a plate to avoid all the crumbs. They took ham and tomatoes from the shop, a bottle of salad cream and Red hardboiled three eggs.

‘This is a feast, she’ll marry you immediately,’ Bart said when he saw Red looking speculatively at some of the frozen cakes in the cold food section.

‘Quit laughing and keep looking round the room to see what it would look like to a new eye.’ Red had it bad this time. Her name was Majella and she was an only child, she was used to much greater style than the three Kennedy brothers and their father could provide even if they had been trying seriously. But none of them except Red was making much of an effort: their father wanted to be in his shop, Bart wanted to get over to Judy Hickey and Kev wanted to go off down by the river where he felt nice and quiet and miles from all that was happening at this very moment to microwave ovens in a warehouse in Dublin.

Majella was arriving at five o’clock: her father would give her a lift, but he wouldn’t call in, it was much too early for that yet. They did a deal, the brothers. Bart and Kev agreed to wear proper ties and jackets and have polished shoes. Red agreed to go over to Judy Hickey’s and put in two hours because
she needed it this weekend particularly and because it would keep him calm. There would be no bad language, eating with fingers and picking of teeth, but in return Red would not embarrass them by giving moon faced sick calf impersonations, not would he ask them to delight Majella with stories of their exotic lives. When the bell rang to say that somebody had come into the shop they would go in order of seniority. Da first, then Bart, then Kev, then Da and so on. Red was not to abandon them to talk to Majella on their own.

She was a lovely big girl with no nonsense in her and by the time they had sat her down she was like part of the family. She said they must be great fellows altogether to have the butter on the plate and the milk not in a bottle but in a jug. Whenever she went over to her cousin’s place they were all putting their dirty knives into the butter at once, they needed a woman to civilise them. Red began to look like a sick calf when she talked of the civilising influence of a woman and he had to be kicked until he dropped it again. Majella said she was going to do the washing up and they could all dry, and seeing out of the corner of her eye that the dishcloths were not all they might be she called to Red to bring a packet of J-cloths out of the shop.

‘Isn’t it paradise to be here!’ she said with a big smile at them all. ‘Who could want anything better than a shop right off your own living room?’

They had dried up in no time; the big room looked better somehow than it had done for years. Majella said that maybe she and Red might go for a bit of a tour round Rathdoon now and get out of everyone’s way. By half past six she had a blushing delighted Red firmly by the arm and was linking him on her own little lap of honour around the community she had decided to join.

‘Oh there’s no escape there, that knot will be tied, poor Red.’ Bart laughed good-naturedly about the fate that could well be happening to his brother.

‘Will you stop that nonsense: poor Red, my hat! Wouldn’t a girl have to be half mad or have the courage of a lion to marry any one of the three of you.’ He sounded very pessimistic indeed.

‘Would you say she IS mad?’ Kev asked interestedly. ‘She was a very nice class of a girl I thought.’

‘Of course she’s nice, she’s far too good for him: the thing is will she realise it in time?’ Bart and Kev exchanged glances. Their father seemed to be torn between the delight of having the lovely laughing Majella around the place and the strictly honest course of action which was to warn the girl that his son was a bad bargain.

‘Let her work it out for herself maybe?’ Bart suggested and his father looked relieved.

Bart had a lot of sense, Kev realised, suddenly. He wasn’t just a do-gooder and a big innocent. But he was the other side of the tracks now, he wasn’t in the
Underworld like Kev was, there could be no talking to him about the problem.

‘Would you fancy an early pint down in Ryan’s before the mob gets in there?’ Bart said to him. Kev was pleased.

‘That’d be the way to do it,’ he said sagely. Their father had gone back to the shop and was twiddling the dial for the news.

They walked down the road. It was quiet – most people were in at their tea; the sound of the half past six news that their father was listening to back in the shop came from several windows. Down past Billy Burns’ chip shop. Billy wasn’t there today, Mikey and that bright little Treasa who worked there, no sign of the new girl Eileen, well she had always looked too good to spend her day lifting pieces of cod or wings of chicken out of a deep fryer in Rathdoon. They came to the bridge. Bart leaned over and looked at the river. They used to race sticks under the bridge here when they were kids, and there were always so many arguments about whose stick had won Bart invented a system of tying different coloured threads on to each one. It seemed very long ago.

‘What’s eating you?’ Bart asked.

‘I don’t know what you mean?’

‘I’m not the world’s brainiest man but I’m not blind either. Tell me, Kev. Can’t you? It can’t be any worse when you’ve told me. It might even be a bit
better. Like I’m not going to be saying aren’t you an eejit or blame you or anything, but there’s something terrible wrong up in Dublin, isn’t there?’

‘Yes,’ Kev said.

‘Before Red fell so much in love that he can’t think of anything else, he and I were going to go up there one day on the excursion and try and sort it out, whatever it was.’

Kev gulped with gratitude at the thought of his two brothers taking on a heavy gang like Daff, the Pelican, Crutch Casey and their team.

‘What did YOU think the problems might be?’ he asked nervously, fishing to see had Bart any notion of how bad things were or was he still in a world like the playground of the infants’ school.

‘I thought it might be a girl you got into trouble, but it’s going on too long for that. I thought it might be a debt – you know, poker or the horses – but you don’t seem to have any interest in either.’

Bart’s big innocent face looked puzzled. Kev drew a long breath. Well it seemed that Bart could take on that much anyway. What about the next step, could Bart listen to the story that had begun on his twenty-first birthday a year and a half ago, or would he run for the guards. Kev didn’t know. Bart was shaping a stick and tying a bit of string round it.

‘Here,’ he said to Kev. ‘Let this be yours: I’ll beat you any day with my one.’ They threw the sticks over the
side and rushed across to see them coming through. Kev’s stick was in front.

‘Would you beat that?’ Bart seemed surprised. ‘I’ve been up here practising and I thought I had the shape of stick that ran best with the flow.’

Kev began to tell him, in fact once started it tumbled out of him: a mixture of names and commodities, Crutch Caseys and microwaves, Daffs and cut glass, Pelicans and Axminster carpet. Kev had no starring role the way he told it, his only stroke of genius had been to go home every weekend on the Lilac Bus to avoid even more major crime in the city at weekends. He was in now and there was no getting out. Bart must know that, they’d all seen the films, they knew the plot. If Kev said to Daff that he’d had enough, thank you, he couldn’t answer for the consequences but he knew it’d be awful. He didn’t think they’d beat him up: they never used violence, he said almost pleadingly to Bart. But they would punish him. They’d send the guards round to his house or to work, or they’d send a note to Mr Daly accusing Kev of giving the tip-off about the cloakroom fittings that time. It was a nightmare: he was in it for ever.

He hardly dared to look at Bart during some of the confession, and once or twice he gave the odd glance and got the feeling that Bart was half smiling. Maybe he didn’t understand the hugeness of it all. Once he was almost certain he got a smile and Bart had hastily put his hand over his face.

‘So now, you see I’m caught entirely,’ he ended.

‘I don’t think so,’ Bart said slowly.

‘But it’s not LIKE here, Bart; you don’t know, they’re different to us. They’re not our type of people.’

‘But they must have thought you were their kind of person otherwise they wouldn’t have pulled you in,’ Bart said.

‘But I TOLD you how that happened. I’m not a thief by nature, I’m fairly happy to work for my wages. Not very, but fairly. I’m not any good as a criminal.’

‘No I don’t mean their type as a thief, you’re secretive like they are. That’s what they liked about you – you’re not a blabber about who you know, what you do: that’ll make them think you won’t blab about them.’

‘Well I don’t – haven’t until now, that is.’

‘So that’s how you get out if you want to. Tell them you’re in with another lot now. No hard feelings, handshakes, pints all round, and that’s it.’

‘Bart, you haven’t any idea . . .’

‘But you see, you keep up this hard man image with them except once or twice when you’ve had a fit of the shivers. You never try to talk them out of it, or discuss what they do with the stuff. They probably think you’re a silent pro and someone has made you a better offer.’

‘They wouldn’t have such a high regard for me as that.’

‘They must have a very high regard for you if they let you in on all their jobs. No, leave them as you joined them, with no chat, no explanations except the one they are owed. That you’ve got a new scene.’

Bart talking about scenes, Bart saying that these gangsters are owed an explanation – it was like the end of the world.

‘I don’t think I’d be able to go through with it.’

‘You were able to join them, that was harder.’

‘And should I give them back the money?’ ‘Give them WHAT?’

‘My share, I mean, if I’m not staying on like?’

‘Your share. You have it still?’

‘Of course I do, I didn’t spend any of it, in case . . . you know . . . the guards and everything and a court case and I’d have to give it all back.’

‘Where is it?’

‘It’s upstairs in the room.’

‘In Dublin?’

‘No here, back at the house. Under the bed.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘But what else would I do with it, Bart? I carry it with me home and back each weekend in a parcel with my clothes.’

‘And how much is it at all? Your share?’

‘I’m afraid it’s about four thousand, two hundred pounds,’ Kev said with his eyes cast down.

Eventually he raised his glance and Bart was smiling at him with pride.

‘Isn’t that the direct intervention of God?’ Bart said to him. Kev would never have seen it like that; however confused his relationship with God was and however non-personal it had become, he couldn’t imagine that the Almighty was delighted with such a sum of stolen money arriving under a bed in Rathdoon.

‘This solves all our problems,’ Bart said. ‘When Romeo back there went courting Majella the only fly in the ointment was would we have enough to build on a bit at the back. We were afraid it would get a bit crowded with us all on top of each other, and we saw the very thing we wanted, a kind of ready-made extension that they dig foundations for and then sort of plant on top of. Do you follow?’

Kev nodded nervously.

‘But Red and I were afraid you were in some kind of financial trouble and we’d better not get ourselves too far into a loan. But here you are, a millionaire. Now we can go ahead, and if you’d like to contribute a bit . . .’

‘Yes, well of course I would but don’t you think if I’m getting out of their gang I should
offer
them the share back?’

‘What kind of criminal are you at all?’ roared Bart. ‘Won’t they know immediately you’re a ninny if you start a caper like that. You’ve got to consider that your wages, your share of the deal, now you’re meant to be going on to a bigger one, you eejit:
you’re not meant to be giving them conscience money.’

‘No.’

‘And there’s no way you can give it to the carpet people or the lavatory makers or the microwave people . . .’

‘I wasn’t in on the microwave – that’s this weekend.’

‘See?’ Bart felt this proved some point. ‘So what are you going to do with it, wouldn’t building up the family home be as good as anything?’

Kev was astonished. No blame, no lecture, no accusation. Sheer hard practical advice, as if he knew the kind of people that Daff and the Pelican were. Because when you thought of it that was EXACTLY the way to go about it. And then he need never see them again.

‘I’ll give it all to you tonight, Bart,’ he said eagerly. ‘Where will we say we got it? Like if anyone asks?’

‘You’ll keep some of it, put it in the post office, but we’ll say nothing to anyone, like you’ve been doing all your life. We’ll get in touch with those people about the extension on Monday. What could be more natural than that country eejits like us would have money in a paper bag under the bed, they’ll only be delighted – no VAT, nothing.’

Kev was stunned. Saint Bart, in the black economy.