Lilac Bus Read Online Free PDF Page B

they were going to wait until Candy Barry settled into Irish life they were building up more and more trouble for themselves. Why didn’t they settle her back into Canadian life, she wanted to know? Before she had become isolated from her roots there. Why? Because of the children of course, the two little Barrys, small clones of their father, five and seven. He wasn’t going to let those go four and a half thousand miles away and see them once a year on a visit.
    But what about the children that he and Dee would have together? That would be different. Wonderful but different. You didn’t parcel away your two lovely sons because you were going to have a new family with somebody else. No indeed. Dee was immature to suggest it.
    Sam used that word as a great insult. He said it had nothing to do with age. People younger than Dee could be mature and people much older than both of them would never achieve it. She didn’t like the word, it seemed to mean whatever he wanted it to mean. Like when you’re playing poker and the two is wild, the two can be any card you want it to be.
    She didn’t know why she asked Nancy about his work. She never learned anything new, but it was like seeing a photograph of some scene that you knew well; it was always interesting to see it again from another angle. The only bit she shouldn’t have asked was about their wives ringing up. That had made her uneasy now.
    Sam said that Candy never called him at work and yet Nancy Morris said she did. Nancy probably wanted to show off about how well she knew them all. Boasting. She was in the middle of some complicated diatribe about the telephone system now. Dee felt her eyes closing. She slept and dreamed that she was getting her parchment from the Chief Justice and Sam was there congratulating her, and a photographer from the
Evening Press
had the three of them lined up and was writing their names down in his notebook.
    Dee often dreamed that Sam was part of her life: she felt that this must signify that she was not guilty about him and that everything they had together was above board and out in the open. Not too much out in the open of course, but not hole-in-the-corner either. For example, her flat-mate Aideen knew all about Sam, and met him when he called. And Sam’s friend Tom knew too: he used to go out to meals with them sometimes. So it wasn’t as furtive as you might think. Sam had wanted to know why her parents didn’t cop on, but Dee had said it would never crosstheir minds, and anyway she was softening them up for the future by insisting she had no romantic interests yet but would certainly fall for somebody highly unsuitable when the time came. Dee had pealed with laughter over this, and Sam had looked sad. She had stopped laughing suddenly and he had been very quiet.
    ‘The future mightn’t be perfect,’ he said. ‘Not for us: you shouldn’t hope too much, you know.’
    ‘The future’s not going to be perfect for most people,’ she had said cheerfully. ‘But they have to keep hoping, otherwise what’s the point of anything?’
    That had seemed to cheer him a little, but he had been quieter than usual.
    Dee wasn’t sure why she came home so often now. Aideen couldn’t understand it either.
    ‘Sure if you’re down there, he’ll never see you. Can’t he ring you here, if he has a free minute?’
    True. But he was having less and less free minutes. Candy’s parents were over from Toronto. They had to be shown round. One of the little blond boys had fallen off a bicycle and opened his forehead; he had to be visited in hospital, and looked after when he got home.
    There was the family holiday on the Shannon, on the cruiser, and the hurried phone calls from coinboxes when he was meant to be buying drinks or going to the Gents’.
    And recently there were times that weren’texplained at all, but they were times that seemed to have no minutes in them all the same. It was easier in Rathdoon, he
couldn’t
ring her there, even