Read Online Lilac Bus by Maeve Binchy - Free Book Online Page A

Do you think I paid for it? Dublin Health Authority would like you to have it as a little gift.’ They laughed. She was very nice.
    What a pity he hadn’t found a grand girl like Celia when he was young and promising looking. After all, he had a grand well-paid job now, he’d be able to make a home for anyone. The reason he didn’t really have one wasn’t money, it was lack of interest. He couldn’t be buying a place and furnishing it and getting tables and chairs in it all for himself. The room he rented was grand and comfortable and he denied himself nothing. He had a grand big telly and he had bought a mirror himself to fix to the front of the wardrobe the way he’d go out properly dressed. He had a lovely radio beside the bed which was a lamp and a clock and an alarm all in one. When he went out to people’s houses, and the Dublin fellows often invited him up to their places, he was always able to bring a big box of chocolates, a fancy one with ribbonon it. He was able to give a good account of himself.
    But when he’d been a young lad, who were they except the sons of poor Joey Burns and his mother had taken in washing and cleaned people’s floors? It hadn’t held Billy back: Billy strutted round Rathdoon as if he owned it, as if he were as good as any other citizen of the place. And wasn’t he right? Look where he was now, he had all kinds of business interests, he employed five people in Rathdoon. He had the take away shop; nobody believed there was a need for it until it appeared. Half the families in the place ate Billy’s chicken and chips on a Saturday night, and they had fried fish too, and hamburgers. And they sold cans of lemonade, and stayed open late to get the crowds going home from Ryan’s, and Billy had put up two huge mesh litter bins at his own expense and everyone was delighted with him.
    And he had an insurance business as well. Not a big one but anyone who wanted cover went through him – it could all be filled in quickly in the house. And he had some kind of a connection with a fellow who came to do tarmacadaming. If you wanted the front of a place all smartened up then Billy would get other people with their places facing the same way to agree and the man with the machine and the tar would come and it was cheaper for everyone, and the place looked a king to what it looked before. A whole section of the main street looked really smart now, and Billy had got a tree planted in a tub and it waslike something you’d see in a film. Billy had the brains and Billy never ran away the way Mikey ran off up to Dublin after his mother had died. Billy had stayed to marry Mary Moran who was way beyond anyone they’d ever have thought about. Or that Mikey would have thought about.
    He was looking forward to being home tonight. He had a computer game for the twins’ birthday. It was several cuts above the Space Invaders they had tried out once, and it could be plugged into any kind of television; he had been playing it on his own television all week but the shop assistant said it would work as well on a smaller set. The twins had their birthday on Monday and he was going to give them the game on Sunday afternoon. He would set up the room with the curtains pulled and pretend they were going to watch something on the television, and then would come the surprise. He had got a smart red girl’s handbag for Gretta, even though it wasn’t her birthday, because he didn’t want her to be left out, and a yellow rabbit for the baby in case it might have feelings of discontent in its pram.
    Mary would never let him near his father on the Friday night, she’d have a supper warm for him, or if it had been a busy day she’d run across the road to the family take away and get him fish and chips as soon as she saw the Lilac Bus pull up. She used to thank him so much for coming back to help with his father, and she’d tell him funny things about the children and what theyhad done during the week. They were back