Catherine Kay - Issue 34

Catherine Kay lives in Inishowen,  Donegal. Her writing was performed in the Waterside Theatre and at Ten x 9. She was highly commended in the Frances Browne Festival 2023.  Her poetry  has been published in the Storms Journal Anthology 4, Caught Alight: An Anthology (publisher: Impspired) and Dark Winter Press.

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Missing the 212

The door of the bright, welcoming Mona cafe swished shut behind Molly as she carried her coffee into the weak light of that dull Saturday. Making it as far as this waiting area, out in the open, that was a success of sorts at least, she felt. But this was her second vanilla latte and her third 212 of the day to miss. Leaving Derry was proving harder than she had realised. 

Molly smoothed her sensible skirt round her and sat down gingerly on the pocked metal seat opposite the bus parking bay. Looking around her she saw all of life on the concrete concourse. A girl in sprayed on jeans and a backless top shouted in exasperation into her phone that she was

  ‘GRAND!’

It  was clear by the tapping of her conversed foot on the shiny timetable plinth she was anything but grand. The old man two seats over from Molly had a tremor and coughed with gusto each time he checked his watch.

Tiny twins in identical outfits defied their mother, leaping over a painted warning. 

‘Please stand behind the yellow line’ the message was firm and futile. Their mother, dressed in an elephant grey hoodie, hovered like a chinook, ready to zoom in and scoop either child up at a moment's notice when harm came too close.

The wheeze and clunk of a bus coming to a stand still brought Molly back to her own troubles. Her husband, stoic and silent most of the time, had told her in no uncertain terms that morning, that he wouldn’t be visiting his older brother in Altnagalvin hospital. 

  ‘He has made his Derry bed, Molly. He can fecking well lie in it.’ 

He had also made it clear he would not be driving her up the new dual carriageway in their metallic red Corolla either. 

‘If you choose to go, and sure there’s no way I can stop ya, you can go by bloody bus’ Trevor had snarled with impotence, watching her retrieve her good coat from the wardrobe. 

The bus journey had only taken 90 minutes but had seemed like a lifetime. 

‘Two  lifetimes’ she mused ‘ that A6-a chasm between alternate realities. All those things that could have been.’

Molly sipped her too hot coffee and watched a fat pidgeon peck at discarded chewing gum on the mottled pavement in front of her bench. Streaks of something unpleasant stained the grey tarmac. Putting her head back she closed her eyes and sighed. It had been a long day.

Her brother- in-law, Leo, had looked frail and vulnerable in that hospital bed. With all the tubes and monitors, the body she had writhed with and pleasured all those years ago had seemed long gone. Something in the blueness of his eyes though had held memories of their passion. Something in the way he kissed her crinkled hand had softened and broken her worn down heart. She had walked back into the city in a daze.

Eyes closed now she tuned in and out of the cacophony of Derry that she heard around her. The squeals of Belsonic babes as they boarded a bus. Belfast bound, their shouts let the whole concourse know they were on a mission for a ‘pure lured’ day out. 

Next to her the sharp, messy accents of American tourists discussing ‘Troubles Overload’ crashed her confusion. She hadn’t expected to make life altering decisions when she’d woken up her stale, matrimonial bed this morning. 

The sound of the Guildhall bell tolling three brought her back to her senses. Just.

Opening her eyes she saw the latest 212’s slow steady retreat. The staccato beeps pulsed as it reversed from the parking bay. She thought of Trevor, seething as he realised he’d have to lash up his own dinner. She doubted his bitterness and bile from this morning had subsided in the slightest. 

When he had found out about the affair near on three decades ago now, he had accepted it with flat resignation. It was as if she were just one more possession his older brother could steal from him. She had felt like nothing more than a subuteo table or a chopper bike. Trevor had made her feel like that everyday since. 

  ‘Not Leo though, Leo never made me feel like a thing.’ She felt a warmth now, just remembering the blueness in his morphine-dulled eyes.

Looking up now she saw the hanging baskets tumbling with purple petunias in bloom. They decorated the utility area with splashes of joy. Across the river, where the hospital stood proud at the height of the Waterside, she glimpsed the weak June sun making its attempt to begin summer. The windows of the wards glinted and winked in the watered down rays.

An automated voice from the Belfast bus advised caution.

‘Stand clear of the doors. Mind your head’.

‘Yes, indeed!’ Molly stood up.Tossing her empty cup in the bin she walked through the red brick arch, emerging into Foyle Street. It was only a few steps through, but it seemed brighter on the other side. Maybe she would try leaving Derry again tomorrow.