VERY FEW OF US REALLY UNDERSTAND or witness the full consequences of our ‘pranks’. This was particularly true of Dermot and Buster. For instance, sitting in a café, Dermot would pour the contents of the salt cellar into the sugar and leave. He would not know that the elderly woman who would use their table next would be violently sick following her first mouthful of salted coffee. Or that this sickness would have an adverse effect on the reputation of the café and its owner, who struggled every day to make the business pay. To Dermot and Buster it was just a giggle. But sometimes, consequences do catch up with us, and they did for Dermot Browne and Buster Brady on the night of 17 September 1981.
Dermot had never seen Mary Carter look so ill. When they were sitting in the bar of Foley’s pub her co-ordination was so bad that she couldn’t even pick up her glass. She was loud and boisterous, and Dermot was getting embarrassed at being the focal point of all the other customers in the bar. Mr Foley’s insistence to Dermot that he get her out of there only just pre-empted Dermot’s own thoughts on the matter. He half-walked, half-carried her back to her flat, where he left her asleep on the couch before returning to Foley’s. He now sat beside Buster and was very quiet.
‘She just overdone it a bit, Dermo,’ Buster offered by way of consolation.
‘Yeh, sure, Buster.’
‘She’ll be all right in the morning.’
‘Yeh, sure she will, Buster.’
The two young men were sitting on the high stools at the bar. This was more comfortable for Buster, who, since his testicular surgery, had difficulty in sitting on a low seat and bending his midriff. There was something nagging at Dermot. While he was taking Mary Carter back to her flat, she was ranting and raving and coming out with all kinds of gobbledegook, most of which Dermot didn’t understand. But when they reached her flat and he was laying her on the couch, there could be no mistaking what she said. She spoke in a flat tone but it was quite clear. ‘Easy, Dermo, don’t hurt the baby.’
The words swam in his head. He didn’t mention anything to Buster. Instead, with a wave of his hand, he ordered two more pints from Mr Foley, who was only delighted to be serving Dermot and Buster on their own. The next round would be accompanied by two small Irish whiskeys. The two young men proceeded to drink themselves into oblivion.
By half-past midnight the two of them were standing outside Shakers nightclub. Dermot stood away from the door, leaning against the lamp post, using the lamp post as most Irish men use history – for support rather than illumination. Meanwhile, Buster was talking to the doormen and trying to convince them that he and Dermot were two overseas salesmen just out for the evening. The doormen were very experienced, although they didn’t need to be too experienced to know that not too many overseas salesmen had Manchester United tattooed on their right arm and spoke with strong Dublin accents. The doorman tried the tactful way at first, telling Buster that only a certain kind of person in a certain kind of dress was allowed into the club. Buster’s reply to this was, ‘Is that why they make you two gorillas stand outside?’
The doormen then resorted to the standard doorman’s farewell. ‘You’re not getting in, pal, so fuck off.’
They stumbled along up the east side of Parnell Square, Buster telling Dermot how lucky the bouncers were that Buster happened to be in a good humour, otherwise he would have killed them. By the time they had reached Frederick Street they had attempted to wave down at least twenty taxi cabs. Some of the cabs were already occupied and those that weren’t had drivers experienced enough to know drunks when they saw them. When they reached Mountjoy Square they scrambled through a gap in the railings surrounding the park in an effort to get into the bushes and relieve themselves. Buster finished first and as Dermot was completing his shakes he could hear Buster in the distance calling to him.
‘Hey, Dermo, push me, come on, push me!’
Dermot followed the voice and came out of the bushes to see Buster sitting on one of the swings in the children’s playground. He began to laugh aloud and ran to Buster and began pushing him. Buster went higher and higher with each push until at the apex of one of the swings Buster threw up and on the downward swing it looked like he was breathing fire.
‘Ah, stop me, Dermo, stop me, please,’ was now the cry.
Dermot tried to put his hands in front of him to stop the swing but the power of Buster’s return went straight past his hands and the swing seat caught him above the eye, knocking him straight off his feet onto his back. Buster, in an effort to turn in the swing to see what had happened to Dermot, shot straight off the seat and landed twenty feet away from where Dermot lay. The two men groaned for a while and then, raising themselves onto their elbows, looked across at each other. The burst of laughter was spontaneous. Buster’s face was grazed all down the left side and Dermot had a bump on the top of his forehead the length and width of a good Havana cigar. They got to their feet and made their way out of the park laughing. They leaned against the park railings until the laughter subsided. Then Dermot had the idea. He raised his left arm and pointed. ‘Buster, d’you see what I see?’
Buster’s gaze followed Dermot’s finger. ‘What?’ Buster asked.
‘The bus depot!’
‘So?’
‘Where there’s a bus depot there’s buses.’ Dermot’s voice was now slurred, and the word buses sounded like ‘bushes’, but still Buster understood what he meant. Still, he repeated his question. ‘So?’
‘So, let’s go and get ourselves a bus!’ And Dermot headed off into the night.
Buster stood for a moment with a frown on his face and then it dawned on him. He gathered himself and tottered after Dermot.
‘That’s a great idea, Dermo. I want to be the conductor.’
Although it was the early hours of the morning a few of the walkers tried to stop the bus as it wove its way along the Glasnevin Road. Dermot had had a bit of difficulty in hot-wiring the bus, but once he had it up and running he found it as easy to drive as a truck, and even more fun. Buster was upstairs with a handful of coins walking up and down the seats clicking the coins and talking to imaginary passengers. Every now and then he would ring the bus bell and roar down the stairs, ‘Plenty of room on top,’ sending Dermot into fits of laughter.
Dermot had driven big trucks before, but he had never driven anything with power-steering. He tended to over-compensate on the turns and this caused the bus to weave. At the bottom of Glasnevin Hill they were really moving. The road took a sharp right as it went over the Tolka river bridge and up the hill onto the Finglas Road. As he rounded the bend, Dermot over-compensated and the bus swung to the left. He pulled the wheel sharply to the left in an effort to straighten the swing. He pulled the wheel too much. The bus went into a spin and skidded sideways. Buster toppled head-over-heels and got wedged between two seats, which probably saved his life. Smoke billowed from the wheels which were now locked, with Dermot’s foot firmly on the brake. The rear wheels mounted the kerb first, which made the front spin around faster. The front wheels hopped up on the kerb. It seemed like the bus was never going to stop, but it did. It all felt like slow motion to Dermot – he saw the block wall come towards him and the bus crashed into it at an angle right at the driver’s seat. Five of the upstairs windows had shattered when the bus mounted the kerb, all but two of the remaining windows in the bus went into smithereens as soon as it crashed into the wall. Then there was silence.
First of all there was darkness, then in the distance Dermot heard the ding-ding of a bell. Then he could hear Buster’s voice, but couldn’t make out what the voice was saying. He had a sharp pain in his right leg. He shook his head as if to clear it and it worked – he could hear Buster’s voice much more clearly now. Buster was still upstairs in the bus, talking to his imaginary passengers.
‘This is as far as we go, folks. Everybody off here,’ Buster was crying out loud as he made his way unsteadily down the stairs. ‘Dermo, Dermo, are you all right, Dermo?’
Dermot was wondering the same thing himself. He felt around his body, and nothing seemed to be broken. There was blood on his face from the tiny cuts that the shattering glass had made. But other than that there seemed to be nothing serious. His right leg was wedged in the buckled metal just above the peddles. It wouldn’t move. Within seconds Buster was by his side.
‘I’m stuck, Buster,’ Dermot said.
‘Where?’ Buster asked.
Dermot pointed downwards to the bottom of his right leg. Buster half-lay down, manoeuvring his foot in behind Dermot’s leg to where the buckled metal was. With a grunt, he pushed as hard as he could on the metal, held it for as long as he could, and then relaxed.
‘Any good?’
‘Yeh, I think it will work, try again.’ Dermot was in more than a little pain.
Buster tried again, this time putting all of the weight that he could onto the metal. With a jerk, Dermot’s foot came free, but without the shoe. They climbed off the bus. There was still total silence all around them.
‘Let’s get the fuck out of here, Buster, the law will be here any minute. Over there across the field,’ Dermot was pointing to a gap in a ditch.
The two men made their way to the gap, negotiated the ditch and found themselves in a field that ran behind a dairy. Slowly they made their way home. It could have been nerves, but after about twenty minutes walking the two of them started to giggle.
‘There’s no doubt about it, Buster, when we do it we do it in style.’ The two men laughed.
‘Janey, Dermot, when the manager of that bus depot comes in in the morning he won’t be too happy.’
The fact was, in the morning there would be very few people happy, for Mark Browne’s prediction about his brother’s pranks was about to come true.
* * *
John Cullen had been a barman for fifty-one years. He had started when he was just fourteen years old in Miley’s pub in Galvaston, his home village just outside Mullingar. In the half-century his career had spanned, he had worked in bars in virtually every county in Ireland, before his current position as assistant bar manager in The Widow’s public house in Main Street, Finglas. For his sixty-five years, he was a fit man. He attributed his fitness to the fact that he drank little, smoked only pipe tobacco, and cycled to and from work every day. John Cullen had a full driving licence although he never thought he would use it now. He was wrong. The owners of The Widow’s public house, and its long-standing customers, had had a fund-raising drive and had raised enough money for a ‘new’ second-hand car to present to John on his retirement in two weeks’ time. Cycling, John would tell anyone who would listen, had its advantages. There were no traffic problems to contend with. It was good for your health, and, he would add with a laugh, if you were caught short all you had to do was park your bike somewhere and find a bush or a wall to relieve yourself behind. This is exactly what he had done on that night coming home from The Widow’s. He was standing behind the block wall, one arm up against it, with his head down to ensure that he wasn’t soiling his shoes when he heard the tyre screeches across the road. This was followed by two bangs and the sound of breaking glass.
‘What the hell is that?’ were the last words that came from the lips of John Cullen as the bus crashed through the wall, which disintegrated on top of him. His death, his widow was later told, was immediate.