Emerald Germs of Ireland (21 page)

“Pat!” grinned Bud, placing his large hand on Pat’s shoulder. “I’d like you to meet Lee. She’s a big fan!”

Pat McNab watched his hand as it seemed to take forever to extend, as though in the slowest motion possible. The only words which would come into his mind were, “If every bit of her doesn’t look like Eve, the very first woman born, well all I can say is that whatever bit is missing ain’t worth a whole lotta hollering about!”

The words at the back of Pat’s throat seemed to form themselves slowly and individually, like the smallest and tiniest of seeds.

“You’re a very beautiful lady, Lee—” his voice seemed lighter than he had intended it to be—”has anyone ever told you that?”

The slightest touch of pink that came into Lee’s cheeks as she lowered her head had the effect of turning Pat’s legs to strings of spaghetti. A fact which ought to have troubled him. Why then did he feel more exhilarated than he ever had in his whole life?

Pat clicked his fingers as his reflection moved about the vast glass dome that overlooked the packed nightclub. Outside, the temperature was 150 degrees. Beyond the glass, planets and stars gleamed and glowed like so many thousand million marbles.

“I’d like to dedicate this one to the woman who’s gonna be my wife,” clicked Pat. “Miss Lee Stravoni!”

Miss Lee Stravoni who looked away shyly as the strings of the orchestra swept away the inevitable cries of heartbreak and hopelessly youthful envy. “And they say we got no atmosphere? Come on, guys!” clicked Pat as he caressed the microphone like a child long loved.

The careers of pop and cabaret musicians are littered with the burned-out ash of bad decisions, mistaken choices, and the consequences of hubris. But such was not going to happen to Pat McNab, who three weeks later married the most beautiful woman he had ever in his life encountered. And who now, in her forget-me-not patterned nightdress, lay back in his arms and gazed into his eyes. Barely a month together, he thought, and already it seemed like they’d come a million miles.

“A million light-years,” he repeated, fingering her long copper tresses as he reflected just how right the pope had been.

“He was right all along,” he whispered to his wife, “he was number one dude all along, babe.”

Lee nodded and snuggled in toward his shoulder.

There had never been a crowd like it in the Paradise Bar. Outside,
hordes of disappointed punters wept uncontrollably. Bud O’Kane took the mike.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Here comes the moment you’ve all been waiting for! I know how many of you have traveled a long way to be here tonight—so without further ado, let me introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen—Mr. Pat McNab!”

There can be no word employed here to adequately describe the performance delivered by Pat that night in his sequinned leisure suit and gold medallion. The encore of “Fly Me to the Moon” was not deemed sufficient by the distraught, emotional crowd.

There has been a lot written about time and space and alternative universes and the notion of perception vis-à-vis the incalculable vastness of the cosmos, but litde of it was of any interest to Pat. All he knew now was that he woke up each and every morning to see the world in a way which he had never done before. The way, perhaps it could be argued, most people had, since time began, perceived it to be. But not Pat McNab. And when he cast his eyes across it now, all that he wished to do was stride uncompromisingly in the direction of his telephone and place a call to the Vatican, directly to the head of the one true Church himself. He smiled as he thought of the words he would use. “Pope,” he would say, “you were right. All the time, you were right. They
are
like Adam and Eve. She is the palest, purest creature ever created from a mere handful of clay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Pope.”

Pat’s space-age house was second to none; the video screen which you pulled down like a calendar on the south-facing wall would take the sight from your eyes. The cube-shaped chairs, fashioned from a rare alloy found only on Mars, had the effect of rendering visitors utterly slack-jawed. The “living Delft,” which rearranged itself randomly to supply whatever dish might be required at any particular time, rendered the dreariest of domestic routines as a glorious carnival. The family pet—Argo, the lizard-dog—was a constant heartwarming companion. Pat and Lee’s children, Anco and Zok, loved him. Happiness itself almost seemed to take human form within their silver-domed abode, located close by the Sea of Tranquility.

“Pat,” Lee said one day, playing with one of the hairs on her jumper (it was one thousand years old), “you know what I sometimes think?”

Pat left down his handheld news console and smiled. “What’s that, honey?” he said.

His wife came and sat on his knee, raking her long, slender fingers through his hair. There was no mistaking the transparent, guileless generosity in those eyes. “I think we’re in Paradise,” she said. Argo gurgle-barked and the children chuckled shyly. Outside, Saturn basked, neck-laced with gaseous rings. Pat squeezed his wife’s hand.

Thus the days went by, with Pat in his shirtsleeves at the white and shiny grand piano (there were crotchets and quavers all over it), frowning and scratching his head as he chewed on his pencil and made corrections on his music sheets.

“Come on, honey!” Lee would cry as she appeared in the doorway with an appetizing tray of nibbles. “Give yourself a break! You deserve it!”

And indeed, that was something Pat could not deny as each night he flopped down exhausted beside the woman he adored, constellations of ill-matched notes swirling before his tired eyes, the faces of his adoring fans melding into an adulatory blur. But who could deny that it was worth it, all of it, as each day upon the hour, the video screen shimmered with dry-mouthed newscasters who excitedly spoke of the “singing sensation Pat McNab” whose success “continued apace” and was astounding even the most experienced hands in the music industry as his sellout concerts persisted in “wowing” the universe. As one “talking head” eagerly put it, “Pat’s rendition of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ is hotly tipped to scoop the much-coveted top award at this season’s Sea of joy Bash in September!”

Clearly Bud O’Kane was delighted most of all! Indeed, his career—after a series of scandals involving his previous protégé, Ned “Mr. Moog” McGeery—had been on the verge of virtual collapse until the fortuitous appearance. “Pat,” Bud said brightly, placing his hand on the shoulder of the universally acclaimed songsmith, “you are one mother-freaking star—and I mean it!”

Their mutual good fortune showed no signs of abating. Hordes of weeping teenage girls continued to congregate at airports, talk-show hosts tossed back their heads and marveled at Pat’s off-the-cuff witticisms, middle-aged women flung themselves prostrate in front of the stage as he Pat stroked his microphone and crooned, “Let me know
what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars!” The Day-Glo nomenclature upon a thousand video screens proclaimed ecstatically, “McNab no. I again!”

The home front, too, was as some magnetic field of good fortune. His children had been described by the teacher as “the brightest planets in the firmament” and it was hard for Pat to hold back a tear of pride when his ten-year-old daughter presented him with a report card which read, “1st in Class.” Was it any wonder that late at night he might find himself reflecting that he had been blessed with almost too much happiness, more being bestowed upon him than a man could feasibly be expected to bear? Consequently experiencing the slightest frisson of fear and trepidation that it might all be taken away from him?

But Pat need not have worried. For, just as he was considering the incipient disappearance of his myriad good fortunes and almost unbearable happinesses, the forces ranged about him were preparing to confer further honors upon him.

Or so it seemed.

Pat was drying himself off with his monogrammed towel after another fabulous encore when a knock came to his dressing-room door. Humming, Pat turned the doorknob to reveal Bud, standing beaming in the doorway in his rectangular-patterned sportscoat and yellow tie. “Hi buddy, my old pal!” chirped his manager. “Someone here to see you, I do believe! Permission to send ‘em up, sir?”

Pat smiled and nodded his head. “Of course, Bud!” he replied as he continued drying himself and went back inside, whistling. It was quite a few moments later that he heard the door opening and looked up to see the reflection of his mother in the mirror. At first, the truth is, that it didn’t seem like her at all, and out of his mouth the ejaculation, “Ha! That’s not Mammy! No way! Sure what would she be doing here?” would not have seemed inappropriate in the slightest. Admittedly, it was perhaps a more sophisticated, urbane version of the woman who had borne him, but there could be no denying—it was the woman who had borne him, all right. As soon as Pat had accepted this admission, however invisibly, the effect was instantaneous. His lower lip began to tremble and he burst into copious tears. The woman in the doorway seemed to glide soundlessly across the floor, stroking her son’s hair gently
and cradling his head upon her shoulder. There can be no adequate description of Pat’s sobs now other than “huge” and his entire body, from head to toe, shuddered violently.

“It’s just that I didn’t expect to see you!” he stammered. “I didn’t expect to see you, Mammy!”

His mother’s voice seemed to him a mixture of velvet and honey.

“It’s all right, Pat,” she said, “it’s all right. I’m here now. Mammy’s here.”

In the days and weeks that followed, Pat was well aware that there would be people who would say, “Well well! How do you like that! Auld McNab turning up out of the blue like that! Letting on she wanted to look after her grandkiddies! Her that couldn’t hold on to her husband or rear her only son without putting him mad in the head!”

Pat knew that this weis what would be said and, even as he thought it—
was
! He could hear the voices plain as day as if they were speaking directly to him, right there in his living room. But he also knew what rubbish it was! Complete, total, utterly unadulterated rubbish that should be put out that very night for the refuse men! For not only was his mother willing and able to look after the grandkiddies—she was a genius at it, for heaven’s sake!

“Do it again, Gran!” the children would yelp as she bounced them on her knee, a little tear forming in her eye because she had been reunited with her son, something she had been dreaming of for so long.

“Give us a litde gooser!” she would exhort, exultantly rejoicing as their moist lips smacked against her cheek.

It was a very happy grandmother (and mother!), consequently, who lay in bed in the small hours of the night now as the door opened softly and a thin shaft of light slanted inward at a perfect forty-five-degree angle.

“Mammy?” Pat whispered, fingering the cord of his pajamas. “Psst! Mammy?”

“Pat?” he heard her reply. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Mammy,” he answered, continuing. “Can I come in and talk to you?”

“Of course, son,” he heard her say, “but of course. Of course, love.”

Outside, the whole universe seemed asleep. As he sat on the bed,
Pat twined his fingers and affirmed, shyly, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry, Mammy. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

He felt her fingers curling around a lock of his hair as she said, “Pat?”

“Mm?” he said, choked.

“Pat, love? Can I say something to you?”

“What, Ma?” was Pat’s reply.

“So am I, son. So am I.”

With those words, it was as though the synthetic curtains became somehow swept apart and a ludicrously orange sunburst filled the entire room with its light. As though a cymbal had crashed and Pat had, mysteriously—magically!—magnificently!—donned his suit of velvet plum with the dashing waistcoat as he triumphantly pulverized the air, his sophisticated yet ample and comforting parent clapping her hands and crying, “You haven’t changed! You haven’t changed a bit, our Pat!”

To which her red-cheeked son replied, with a delight that almost approached falsetto, “And neither have you, Mammy! Neither have you!”

As, employing the suspension of the bedsprings to the full, the woman who had carried him for nine months sailed buoyantly through the air, crying, “Give me that wee hand of yours this very minute, you litde divil you!”

What can one say of what seems two tiny figures such as might be glimpsed on a wedding cake as they waltz in time, framed against the sloping black velvet backdrop that is infinite space? That they seem the very essence of tranquility—a veritable ocean of it, indeed—as galactically they tumble, ringed around by stars and planets. Together forever, singing:

As Pat lowered his head and murmured, “I love you, Mammy!”

To which his elated mother replied, “And I love you too, wee Pat McSkilly McNab! Sure we don’t need her, that Lee one! She’s not even from Gullytown!”

Pat’s muffled laughter into his hands was as a spear through the heart of Lee Stravoni as alone she lay in the master bedroom, for her the beam of the moon’s “benevolent” light as a javelin bisecting her ventricles.

How far can such a
danse célèbre
be from the prone figure of Pat McNab as he lies bruised and battered in his long black tattered coat by the briars and whinbushes of the Gullytown district? Any number of light-years and, at that, a very conservative estimate indeed. And growing ever the further distant as, at last, his left leg begins to stir and his hand begins its first tentative journey toward the environs of his right eye above which a pain which can be adequately described as “intense” is adding to his general sense of dislocation and lack of equanimity. From nowhere, a tidal wave of melancholy seems to sweep over him and the empurpled bruises upon his forearm make themselves startlingly, uncompromisingly clear. The memory of the “assault stick” with which he was brutalized is so vivid it is as if he is at that moment enduring a reenactment. But, as he raises himself up to find himself bathed from head to toe in a familiar milky light, realizing that this is not the case, shaking his head at the idiocy of the thought, for his assailants have long since fled, now crying, “Of course they’re gone! They’re hardly going to attack the universally acclaimed Pat McNab! Ha ha!” An assertion which he is about to repeat before being loudly interrupted by a series of what in Shakespeare are often referred to as “alarums and excursions” some degrees south of the large sycamore tree near Brennan’s field. To wit, cries of, “There he is! We’ve found him at last!” Dazed though he might be, Pat at once recognized Timmy Sullivan’s voice. Within seconds, they were upon him and Pat could see that his companion was none other than Sergeant Foley, who laid a comforting hand on his shoulder and said, sympathetically, “Jesus Mary and Joseph! So this is what they did to you, Pat? Did you know them, Timmy? Did you get a good look at their faces?”