Lilac Bus (23 page)

Mrs Fitzgerald made her point of view absolutely clear. There would be no talk about Phil whatsoever. This was final. Phil had recovered from her burst appendix, she had been convalescing, she had been visiting friends, she would come back shortly. Meanwhile they would get a temporary girl for the office. Mrs Fitzgerald would go to Dublin once a month to give this support that the hospital said it needed, Tom would go to see her as often as he could, and that was it. It would not be discussed; they had quite enough problems already without adding this one. And what would it do to Phil’s chances of getting a husband if it was widely known she had been in a mental institution? No more arguments.

Tom was sure that this was not what the doctors meant by family support: hushing it all up, making it into a greater shame than Phil already felt it was. He was certain that his mother’s monthly visits – full of assurances that nobody knew, no one suspected, people had been fooled and hoodwinked, cover
stories had been invented – were all the worst thing for his sister who would listen with stricken face and apologise for all the trouble she had caused. Sometimes his mother would reach out awkwardly and take Phil’s hand.

‘We love you . . . um . . . very much. You are much loved, Phil.’ Then she would draw her hand back, embarrassed. She had been told by the psychiatrist that this was a good line to emphasise, but she recited it as if it were learned by heart. They were not a demonstrative family, they had never hugged or kissed each other. It was hard for his mother to reach out and say that to Phil. And bewildering for Phil to hear it, just before her mother gathered her gloves and handbag and started to leave.

He went to see Phil every day, every single day and he telephoned her on each Saturday and Sunday. His mother said that she would telephone except that there was nothing to say, but Tom found things. After all he knew her much better: they had been meeting each other constantly, and he was able to pick from a variety of things to say. He never felt as if he were talking to someone who wasn’t well. He didn’t talk down to her, he would never apologise profusely if he hadn’t been able to ring or visit, just briefly. He wouldn’t let on that he thought his presence was essential to her. He treated her as if she were as sane as he was.

They talked about childhood a lot. Tom
remembered his as happy enough, too much talk about the business, a bit too much of covering over and not letting the neighbours know this or that, and keeping our business to ourselves. Phil remembered it quite differently. She remembered that they were always laughing, and that they had all been sitting round the table together talking to each other, though Tom said they couldn’t have been. There would have to have been either their mother or their father in the shop. Phil remembered them going on great outings to the sea and picnics; Tom said he honestly could only remember one. Phil said they used to play games like I Spy and the Minister’s Cat, and Sardines, where one person had to hide and when you found them you squeezed in like a sardine beside them. Tom said that was only at parties. But they didn’t fight over the memories; they talked them over like an old film that you’d seen years ago and everyone could remember bits of, but nobody could remember all of.

They talked about boyfriends and girlfriends and sex. Tom wasn’t surprised to hear that she was a virgin, and she wasn’t surprised to hear that he was not. They talked easily and without guilt, sometimes for hours in the day room or in the garden, sometimes just for short times because Phil was silent and withdrawn, or because Tom had to work. He was working in an auction showroom these days, helping to carry furniture in and out, put lot numbers on
things and write them up in a catalogue. He had been thinking of moving on, but the hours suited him and it was near the hospital so that he could come and go easily. One of the other patients asked if Tom was her boyfriend. She had laughed uneasily and said she never had a boyfriend. The other girl had shrugged and said she was probably as well off: they were a barrel full of trouble that’s all they were. She hadn’t assumed for a moment that Phil COULDN’T have a boyfriend. It made Phil feel a lot more cheerful. She asked Tom what kind of girls he liked, and he said unusual ones, not people who talked about houses and engagement rings and the Future. He had a very nice girlfriend once but unfortunately she met a really dull guy and he offered her all this other business – security, respectability – and she came and told Tom straight out she was going to take it. Phil had been very sympathetic.

‘You never told us any of this,’ she said.

‘True, but you never told us that you half fancied Billy Burns, even though he was a married man,’ he said laughing.

‘You dragged that out of me,’ she laughed too. He thought it was all too slow, she MUST be better now.

He said this more than once to the psychiatrist and was depressed to hear that Phil was still not happy, still not at ease with herself and sure of her place in
the world. They all thanked Tom for coming and said he was invaluable. Not only in his own visits but in the lifeline he offered back to Rathdoon. She never minded his going back home at weekends. In fact she liked it because it brought her closer to the family and because he always brought back news of them all and, better still, a cheerful letter from her mother.

Every Saturday morning he forced his mother to write her a letter. He literally sat there while she wrote. He wouldn’t accept that she had nothing to write about, and he refused to let her wriggle out of it.

‘Do you think I’d be doing this, do you think I’d sit here every Saturday morning unless it was important?’ he had shouted. ‘She is desperate to know that we are fond of her, and that her place is here; she won’t be ABLE to come back unless she knows this.’

‘But of course it’s here, naturally we want her back. For heaven’s sake, Tom, you’re making a big drama out of it all.’

‘It is a big drama. Phil is in a psychiatric hospital and mainly because we can’t let her know that she is important here.’

‘Your father and I think that’s all mumbo jumbo. She was never made to feel anything but important; we treated her with great respect, people loved having her in the office. She was always so cheerful, and she
knew everyone’s names: wasn’t she the life and soul of that place?’

‘Write it. Write it down on paper,’ he would order.

‘I’d feel stupid saying that to Phil. It’s silly, it’s treating her as if she’s not all there. She’ll know I’m only acting.’

‘But you said you meant it, a minute ago.’

‘Yes, of course I mean it, but it’s not something you say, not something you write down.’

‘Since you’re not there to say it, you have to write it. Since you won’t let her come home and be treated in the town where you’d only be seventeen miles away, where you could see her every day, then you’re going to have to write it. Otherwise how is she to know, how in God’s earth can she KNOW that she’s important here?’

‘It’s not that I won’t let her come back here. It’s for her own good, to keep things quiet, to keep our business to ourselves.’ He had heard it so often, maybe he would hear it for ever. Perhaps Phil would never get better.

He was in the middle of yet another Saturday confrontation when Celia Ryan came in. He was surprised to see her, and in a way relieved. His mother had been very hard to pin down today. She had escaped him in the morning by saying she was needed in the shop, and it was only when he brought her a cup of coffee and a writing pad that he could get her to listen. She had been going through one of her Phil-must-pull-herself-together
phases. Tom felt a mad urge to ask Celia to sit down and explain to his mother her own first-hand knowledge of anorexia and bulimia, mentioning casually that Phil was in a psychiatric ward with the latter. His mother would probably fall senseless to the ground if he were to tell the family disgrace to Mrs Ryan’s daughter. The temptation had only been a flicker.

Celia wanted a loan of his tape recorder, of all things, and a blank cassette. She wanted to record something. She seemed flustered. She didn’t tell him what she wanted it for, but then he rarely told people anything, whether they asked him or not, so he couldn’t fault her there. She said she’d give it to him on the bus.

‘Terrible time she has with that mother of hers,’ Mrs Fitzgerald said.

Tom nodded. He thought he didn’t have a great time with his own mother but it was not in him to say it; he just wanted the letter to give to Phil on Monday.

‘She’ll probably marry Bart Kennedy, and they can keep an eye on the place that way,’ Tom said.

‘Bart Kennedy? Not at all. Sure nobody will marry Bart Kennedy, he’s not the type that marries.’ Mrs Fitzgerald was positive.

‘Bart, a fairy? Go on out of that.’

‘No, I don’t mean that or anything like it. He’s just not the kind of man who marries, you must see that.
Maybe men don’t notice these things: women do. Red Kennedy now, he’ll be married within the year I’d say, I hear he’s courting. But Bart – not at all.’

‘I thought that’s what she came home for,’ Tom said.

‘She comes home to stop that place going down the drain, that’s all.’

‘Really?’ Tom felt pleased. He didn’t know why but he felt a sense of relief.

He went into the pub that night and discovered why she had wanted the tape recorder. It seemed a bit sneaky somehow. Like taking advantage of the poor woman who was slobbering and messing around behind her own bar. Even more humiliating was the thought that Mrs Ryan’s daughter was recording the tuneless singing.

‘She doesn’t know, she really doesn’t know,’ Celia said as an explanation when he had asked her was it fair. He imagined Celia trying to tell her mother about the excesses of the night before and Mrs Ryan brushing it away with that business-like cheerful manner she had when sober. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone else would say to her so she would be bound to believe that Celia was making it up at worst or at the very least exaggerating it.

‘I’ll come round tomorrow and pick up the pieces,’ he said. She smiled back at him, a warm grateful smile. He looked at Bart Kennedy. Bart was pulling
pints and laughing with the lads – he and Celia didn’t have eyes for each other at all. Tom must have been mad to have thought it in the first place.

There were no pieces to pick up next day. Celia’s mother had taken it very well. She was sitting in the back room while Celia and Bart dealt with the Sunday lunchtime trade.

‘She’s coming to Dublin. I thought it would be easier. I’d be able to get to see her.’

‘
When?
’

‘Tomorrow. I won’t come back on the bus tonight. I’ll wait and go with her. I’ve a great friend, a nurse in Dublin – she’ll work for me tomorrow even though it’s meant to be her day off.’

‘Does she live in your harem of nurses?’

‘Emer? Not at all: she’s a respectable married woman with a family.’

‘Would you work if you were married?’

‘Bloody sure I would. Catch me giving up a job to cook meals and clean a house for a man. Anyway everyone has to nowadays. How would you have any life at all if you didn’t? And nursing’s fine, I’d hate to lose it.’

‘How long will it be . . .’ he nodded towards the back room where Mrs Ryan sat waiting in a chair.

‘I don’t know. It depends on her – you know, if she wants to.’

‘Doesn’t it depend on her family too, and support?’

‘Well there’s only me; she can’t have the beauties in
Australia and Detroit and England, so she’ll have to make do with me.’

‘My sister Phil isn’t well, she’s got the same problem,’ he said suddenly.

‘I never knew Phil had a drink problem.’ She said it without censure or shock.

‘No, not that, I meant she has the same problem: she only has me in Dublin. She’s got an anorexic thing, you know, but she does eat and makes herself vomit.’

‘She’s a better chance with that; so many of the anorexics die, it’s desperate to see them, little wizened monkeys, and they think that this is the best way to be. But bulimia is very stressful, poor Phil. Isn’t that very bad luck.’

He looked at her gratefully. ‘Will they be any help, the ones who’ve gone away?’

‘I shouldn’t think so, will yours?’

‘No. I’m beginning to realise it now. I kept thinking I could change them, but it’s all head in the sand, pretend it isn’t happening, don’t tell anyone.’

‘In time, in their time maybe. Not yours.’ She was very gentle.

‘Well they’ll have to make do with us then,’ he said, ‘your half mad Ma and my half mad sister.’

‘Aren’t they lucky they’ve got us,’ said Celia Ryan and laughed like a peal of bells.

‘I’ll miss you going back on the bus tonight,’ he said.

‘Well maybe you might come and console me when
I’ve got my mother in. And if it would be any help I could come and see Phil with you, if you’d like it, that is?’

‘I’d like it a lot,’ said Tom Fitzgerald.

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