Emerald Germs of Ireland (24 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” stammered the countryman as Celia held him up against the wall of the dairy, a piece of paper fluttering in front of his face. It was a coat receipt from Harry Carney’s. “I’ve never had this coat cleaned in my life!” he croaked.

“Mother-yummy, fuggin’ hen-ball!” snapped Celia and flung the hapless pig-breeder to the ground. The polished dashboard received another uncompromising blow as the vehicle took off toward the horizon.

It was the Ajax Dry Cleaner’s counter assistant’s worst nightmare. The day had started off quite unremarkably, as usual, with him sorting out the various items to be sent to the steam-press room and now his head was down the toilet, being remorselessly pulled up again by Celia’s polished black hand as he bellowed, “Don’t nowhere me, you country bush! I’m through with mealymouth and this and that and no I wasn’t there, you dig?”

“I’m telling you the truth!” the assistant moaned. “I gave it away years ago! It’s the God’s honest truth!”

The horrible sound of hissing and gurgling filled the counter assistant’s ears.

The scarecrow stood dark and rigid in the center of the field, exuding, despite its turnip head, a certain kind of nobility. Which the single blast from a Winchester pump-action shotgun ended in a fraction of a second, pieces of the vegetable scattered for miles, a scorch hole burned right through the lapel of its long black coat.

“Hopping comedown! Blast in heaven!” shouted Celia, now turning
his attention to the car’s new tires, down upon which he rained unremitting blows. His frustration was such that he might have cried out to the open sky.

The discotheque was in full swing as Celia sat slumped at the bar. The deejay was playing one of his favorite tunes, “Oops Upside Your Head,” but he didn’t care. The barman wiped the counter in front of him. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough, mister?”

There was a vulnerability in Celia’s eyes now.

“You don’t know what Mary’s like,” he explained, “he—”

Before he could finish, the barman tossed back his head and snorted, “Not half I don’t! My own Cissie is the very same! If I was you, I’d go home, mister! I’ll tell you this—that’s one hell of a fine fur coat!”

“Huh?”

Celia was momentarily distracted, but he reflected on the barman’s words of advice. He climbed down off his stool and said, “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

It was just when Celia was approaching the exit and the deejay was introducing his new disc, which was “The Bump” by Kenny, that he saw what he saw and felt the blood drain from his face to such an extent that he feared he must be turning white, such was the effect that the sight had upon him. He was forced to steady himself against one of the corner banquettes. For just at that moment, Pat McNab, resplendent in his wraparound shades and long black coat, had entered the building with Winnie McAdam on his arm, displaying the demeanor of someone who might be under the impression that he is some sort of “visiting dignitary.”

The barman could not believe the transformation in his formerly remorseful, if not fragile, customer as found himself sliding across his own counter on the end of his tie.

“Honky in the shades!” snapped Celia into his face. “Who is he? I said—who is he?”

The barman gulped. He was genuinely frightened.

“P-P-P-P-Pat McNab!” he stammered. “C-C-C-Can’t you see you’re choking me?”

“Tell me about him! Talk! Fast!”

“I don’t know nothing about him only that his mother is mad and lately he seems to have come into a pile of money.”

“What did you say?” rasped Celia.

“His mother. She’s nuts. And he’s not much better, I hear.”

“No! About the money!”

“He won it, maybe. I don’t know! I swear to God! All I know is he spends it like there’s no tomorrow!”

“Spends it, huh?”

“Aye! Firing it round him like a millionaire this past while!”

A broad grin began to spread across Celia’s face, the mirror ball reflected in his golden tooth.

“Well, is that a fact?” he said slowly and contentedly as he discarded the barman and bunched his fist inside his leopardskin pocket, moving toward the dance floor as Quincy Jones belted out a “waka-waka”-style song from the stacked speakers.

The dance performed by Pat in the center of the floor could be described as a perfect example of what is known in America as the “white man’s overbite” or perhaps more locally as the “social worker shuffle.” There appeared, it seemed, to be no pattern or coordination whatsoever to the manner in which he was wildly flailing both his arms and legs, mouthing words along with the tune which was in fact an instrumental hit. But he didn’t mind—nor, indeed, did Winnie. They were having the time of their lives. At least until a large black hand settled on Pat’s right shoulder.

“Mary wants to talk,” boomed Celia, ominously narrowing his eyes.

It seems incredible that Pat McNab should display such presence of mind as he did on this occasion. That within the space of a nanosecond he would succeed in evaluating the situation perfectly and, having realized the gravity of it, not waste a moment in translating his analysis into affirmative action. Celia reeled backward as Pat’s first blow caught him full square in the abdomen.

“Go, Winnie! Go!” cried Pat.

Winnie—shocked, perhaps—stared stupidly at him.

“Go where, Pat?”

“Don’t ask questions!” he cried. “Just go! I’ll follow you!”

Another blow felled Celia and Pat followed his partner as they raced out into the night.

The hissing cymbals and staccato wah-wah of the guitars persisted inside the discotheque as Pat McNab and Winnie considered their limited options. All along the deserted street there were no Zodiacs or Zephyrs or any other high-powered vehicles which might have provided them with a triumphant, effortless getaway. The sole available vehicle, indeed, presented as a red and white Massey Ferguson tractor double-parked outside Donie Halligan’s shoe shop. Pat pushed Winnie in the back and cried, “Go!”

The tractor roared around the corner on two wheels. Winnie’s hair was flying in the breeze. “Pat,” she begged shakily, “will you please tell me what’s going on?”

“There’s no time for that now, Winnie!” explained Pat, just as—

“Jesus!” he cried, white-faced.

The tractor had stuttered to an emphatic halt. For a second, the entire town, road, and trees seemed blurred. But Pat rapidly steadied himself. “Get out, Winnie!” he yelled. “Don’t even think about it!”

There were two figures in the wide open landscape that was Larry O’Halloran’s field. Two frightened, hunted figures holding hands beneath a sky that to them was filled with helicopters searching for them. Two people alone but for each other, and their names were Pat McNab and Winnie McAdam.

Pat sat on the algae-mottled trough, his head slumped in his hands. Winnie touched him gently on the shoulder.

“But why didn’t you tell me, Pat?” she said, compassionately, understandingly. “Why didn’t you say?”

Pat looked into her eyes. Such pain she had never before seen. “What have I got you into, Winnie?” he said. “What are we going to do?”

Winnie squeezed his hand.

“It’s going to be okay, Pat. We’ve just got to think,” she said.

Pat nodded vigorously.

“You’re right,” he said. “Think!”

He frowned.

“Think!” he repeated.

The pink ball glided silently across the flat expanse of green baize and was gratefully swallowed by the top left-hand pocket. Mary grinned and chalked his cue as he said, “So the big fluffpops found his zigzag
no-show man, huh? Well, ain’t he a lucky hoo hoo, huh? Ain’t he the jim jam go go!”

The hoodlum by the secret, leather-paneled door shifted nervously from foot to foot, fearful that any inappropriate gesture would result in many of his teeth being lost as a result of contact with a propelled pool ball.

It had all seemed so simple when Pat sat by the window working it out. Winnie standing by the poolside as he lay across a lounger in his costume, the burning sun reflected in his wraparounds. “Would you like some martini, dear?” she had said.

“No, hon,” he had replied. “Matter of fact I think I’ll take me another swim!”

The blue of the swimming pool had been so real he could almost feel it right there all around him. “I guess that was my problem,” he would often reflect years later. “I didn’t see that it was all too easy.”

They had arranged that they would check in separately, in different queues. As she approached the desk, Winnie gave him a distant, affectionate wave. Pat instinctively looked away. She looked beautiful, he thought. More beautiful than ever. Especially now that she was wearing Polaroids. A warm feeling swept over Pat. A warm feeling that said that in six hours he would be free. Free forever and together. He smiled as he heard her say again, “Would you like some martini?”

“Good morning, sir,” said the attractive desk assistant as she opened Pat’s ticket wallet.

“It is indeed,” Pat heard himself reply as he drummed his fingers on the desk, “it is indeed.”

But that was but fantasy, the Paradise-on-earth that was Barbados was some distance away yet, the “waka waka” sound still ringing in Pat’s ears as his eyes darted all about the field from his vantage point behind the bush. The moon was fat and full in the sky. “Go!” cried Winnie, giving him an encouraging litde push in the small of his back. “Go now, Pat!” In a split second he was gone, a silhouette shooting across the nighttime fields. What is tragic is that neither of them heard the screech of wheels or the crunch of gravel in a laneway not two fields away.

“Open up! Open damn you!” gasped Pat breathlessly as he tore at the backdoor bolt which continued to resist him fiercely. He might have had
twenty-five fingers. At last the heavy oaken door swung open before him. The portrait of his mother smiled at him as he removed it and revealed the safe. Now it was as though he had acquired ten more fingers! “Open! Damn you, open!” he cried shakily. “Can’t you open for me!” The safe door complied and at last the black briefcase was in his hands. Feverishly, he began to stuff the green notes into his coat—no pocket being left unfilled. How long Celia had been standing there—with his arms folded—grinning!—it is impossible to say. At first Pat thought it was his imagination again. “The mushies, maybe. Making me hear things! Like the way I could feel the blue of the swimming pool! So real!” he thought.

But it had nothing to do with mushies, or swimming pools, as he soon realized when Celia took one step forward and, stroking his chin in a mischievous but all-powerful fashion, said, “Why, mano hooch, if it ain’t the perfumed smell of green!”

A cascade of notes snowstormed all around Pat.

“No! I can explain!” cried Pat.

“It’s nothing personal, puppy,” explained Celia as he shot Pat dead.

It was many days later when Mary and Celia—closer friends now than they’d ever been in their lives—were sharing a bottle of bourbon and laughing and joshing over some “spook” down in Washington, DC. Celia was puffing on a Cuban cigar and tossing back his head grinning over the finer details of this particular heist and so taken aback all of a sudden that the cigar remained steady on his lip with no visible means of support. “Yeah? And then?” barked Mary. “Don’t stop! You struck dumb or what?”

In the ensuing seconds, there was no sound to be heard emanating from Celia’s throat. The only sound in the room was that of Pat McNab’s voice saying, “Well, hello, fluffy bunnies! It’s checking-in time!”

It was a pale Pat McNab, his face bearing the grim, gray featurelessness of a concrete slab. But him nonetheless.

“What the—” snapped Mary, reaching for the drawer.

“Waka waka, micky moko!” barked Pat as the Winchester pumpaction out of nowhere appeared in his hands and Celia went flying through the window in a carnival of shattered glass.

“Wait, please!” begged Mary pitifully. “You don’t understand!”

“I want my money!” Pat stonily intoned.

“But—you’re dead!”

“I want my money. I said I want my—”

“Your money? Sure! Here—take all of it! It’s your green! We want you to have it!”

He pushed the briefcase across the desk, momentarily deflecting Pat’s attention in order to grab a pool ball to propel rapidly toward him. Within seconds his hand was on the door buzzer.

“Don’t open it!” warned Pat, the pool ball having narrowly missed him. But it was already too late, the secret door having swiveled halfway open.

“Ha ha!” cried Mary, triumphant until two shotgun blasts caught him in the stomach. Within seconds, Pat McNab had hoods and goons and lackeys on top of him like other people got dandruff. Which was why, a minute later, Mary’s famous back room was akin to what an independent observer might have described as “a slaughterhouse.” Pat shook his head—not now without a tinge of sadness—breaking his pump-action as a last pink ball rolled poignantly into a pocket.

There was something magical about the couple who stood together, brandishing their tickets and—in the same queue!—holding hands and gazing into one another’s eyes. As there was about the bronzed, black-sunglassed figure in the pink floppy (Celia’s) hat draped elegantly across the lounger by the pool, eyes twinkling as he sipped a piña colada. Which spilled all over his chest as the blood drained from his face, spasming as he felt the cold steel of a revolver pressed against the back of his neck.

“Waka waka!” he heard Winnie chuckle as she leaped up and down.

“Jesus Mary and Joseph, fluffpops! You put the heart crossways in me!”

It is a most beautiful scene, perhaps as beautiful as a scene could ever be. The sky so blue you can almost feel it, touch it. And a long, long way from a cold gray house, a house of stone where breathes not a single soul, the only sound that of a broken shutter rattling and the footsteps of the flies as they take their first tentative steps across the corpse of Pat McNab. Where now he lies, a single talon of blood congealed on his cheek, blue fingers stiffly fanning out as he dreams of vengeance. Which, departed from this earth as now he is, like his love for Winnie, is fated never to be.

W
hat can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? Loved Mozart and Bach? And the Kilfenora Ceilidh Band? That she should never have married Patsy Traynor?

That she should never have gone near the effing bastard, for that’s all he was. Such were the thoughts running through Pat McNab’s mind as he sat in the front pew of St. Bartholomew’s Church trying to hold back the tears as the lid was screwed down on the pine coffin within which reclined the body of the girl he had loved for almost the entirety of his adult life. She was attired in a knitted woollen cap, a tartan kilt, and black tights and her complexion had that alabaster quality he always remembered her for. It was difficult to look as the six-foot box began its interminable journey toward the coal-black curtains. And even more difficult for him when they began to part. In his hands his hat was crushed to an almost unrecognizable mass of twisted felt.

Outside, as might have been expected, the rain had begun to fall. Pat felt a large, spadelike hand resting upon his shoulder. “Poor Bridie,” said Big Jim Thompson, with eyes downcast. “May God have mercy on her lovely young soul.”

There wasn’t much of a crowd in Sullivan’s Select Bar, apart from a few bank girls venomously discussing their superior, as Pat sat morosely on the counter thinking over the events of the day and sipping at the contents of his sixth pint. “Ah well, Pat,” remarked Timmy
Sullivan brusquely, as he ran a cloth across the wet marble top of the counter, “that’s Bridie gone anyhow.”

The reaction from Pat was instantaneous as he slapped his flat open palm down on the counter, splashing some beer onto the floor. “Leave me alone!” he cried. “Why can’t you all leave me alone!”

Timmy Sullivan felt his jaw drop.

“Jesus, Pat!” he cried. “There’s no need to start a carry-on the like of that now!”

But Pat was already gone.

Sitting, in fact, by the dead fire back in his house surrounded by shadows and thinking about Patsy Traynor. And of how he had always had to get the upper hand, no matter what the cost to anyone else. If you had something he wanted, then he had to have it. Anything at all, if Patsy Traynor wanted it then Patsy Traynor had to have it. Those were the rules abiding in “Patsy Land,” as it might have been called. And always had been. Right from their very first days together in St. Cashie’s School.

Pat shivered as he thought of those days, all seeming now so long ago. He poked at a dead ember with his toe and shuddered slightly, but not without a wry smile, as in his mind’s eye he saw himself once again coming strolling down the street, happily humming to himself a tune that had been popular in the charts at the time—”Do Wah Diddy Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do!” by Manfred Mann and his band. Until suddenly, would hear a voice calling, “Oi! McNab! Get over here!”

Reluctantly, Pat would make his way over to McGurk’s Corner where Patsy Traynor loitered with a few of his associates. He saw it again now plain as day.

“Well, McGush!” sneered Traynor. “What do you think of this fellow, then?”

Henry McGush rubbed his hands together (“paws” might have been a more accurate description) and tossed back his head.

“Oh now, he’s some baby!” replied McGush. “He’s some baby now, Patsy! That’s all you can say about him!”

Patsy nodded, his eyes twinkling delightedly.

“Do you see the wee tie he has on him?” he continued. “I say—she has the de on you again today, Pat. What has she?”

His meaty hand became a sort of crude trumpet as he placed it over his right ear, as if padently awaiting Pat’s reply.

Pat lowered his head.

“She has the tie on me again today,” he shamefully replied.

Now it was Patsy Traynor’s turn to rub his hands together.

“She has the tie on me again today,” he repeated. He fixed Pat with a fierce gaze.

“She has the tie on me again today—Your Majesty!” he emphasized.

The crude trumpet was once more brought to bear on the situation. As an eyebrow was promptly arched.

“She has the tie on me again today, Your Majesty.”

Patsy nodded with satisfaction.

“That’s better!” he declared. “All must be heard to address King Patsy as His Majesty. Isn’t that right, McGush?”

“Oh, indeed it is surely, Your Majesty! Haw haw!” replied Henry McGush, as though his colleague had only just shared with him the most hysterical joke in the history of the world.

Patsy coughed with counterfeit politeness.

“And now, young Pat—would you please be so kind as to step forward in order that we might have our rightful twang?” He paused. “Mr. McGush,” he intoned, “what is it we require?”

“Our rightful twang of tie!” came the reply, with a seemingly instinctive, almost military, clicking of heels.

“Step forward, please!” snapped Traynor.

The waves of shame, beneath which Pat, within subsequent minutes, found himself sinking, can only be described as truly incalculable. His cheeks appeared to burn with generations of humiliation. As to the sound of shrill cries of delight, hands thunderclapped once again.

“Well, my my! What a twanging there is on here today, McGush! This is the best twanging day yet!”

Patsy shook his head.

“You have to hand it to her!” he said. “I say—you have to hand it to yon haybag McNab! She never lets us down, McGush!”

Henry McGush nodded appreciatively.

“Never lets us down, he says!”

“Mad and all as she might be!” cried Patsy Traynor, plum-sized eyes craving affirmation. Readily supplied by Henry McGush who, in a high pitch, croaked, “Mad and all as she fecking is! Haw haw! Ho ho!”

Patsy chorded and drew a small circle in the gravel with the toe of his boot.

“Haw haw ho ho is right!” he said. “And I’ll bet she’s given this litde gosson a few bright shillings for his lunch—would you say that’d be the case now, McGush?”

Henry McGush knitted his brow and stroked his chin slowly and contemplatively.

“I’d say she’s looked after him well in that department, Patsy, now that’s what I’d say!”

“Mm,” said Patsy, “and which he is now about to hand over to help the Patsy Traynor/Henry McGush Fund. Isn’t that right, young Pat McNab? Would I be right in saying that?”

Pat’s cheeks were florid as those of a fever victim.

“It’s all I have,” he answered in plaintive, fragile tones.

“And c’mere—how much do you think we want?” countered Patsy, lowering his voice in a significant manner. “Sure what you have is all we want! McGush—he thinks we want more! What does he think we are—greedy guts?”

Henry McGush feigned astonishment.

“Ah now, Pat,” he said, “don’t be like that! Don’t be thinking bad things about us!”

“Come on now, Pat,” went on Patsy Traynor, “fork it out there like a good lad!”

Pat inserted his right hand into the pocket of his gray serge trousers and from it removed the coins therein. Two silver shillings gleamed in his palm. Patsy Traynor’s eyes lit up like matches flaring inside his sockets.

“Ah the blessings of God and his Holy Mother on you, Pat, from your old friends Patsy and young McGush! Money for the boys for drink! And plenty of it!”

“Plenty of money for Double Diamond, Smithwick’s Ale and—”

“Phoenix, the best of all!”

“Phoenix—the bright beer!”

“The best available in the world of beer for Patsy and his old pal Henry McGush! Well—good luck now, Pat McNab. We’ve to be off now about our business! Say good-bye to us now till we quench our thirst, now there’s a lad!”

Pat’s mouth was dry as a well long forgotten in the vastest, most arid of deserts.

“Good-bye,” he choked, his voice only just audible.

An eyebrow was slowly elevated as Patsy smiled wryly and in tones of feigned hopefulness, enquired, “And maybe, do you think—one last wee twang?”

Pat swallowed and fancied his face as a bush aflame.

“Please,” he pleaded.

“Ah go on,” said Patsy, “don’t be such an auld spoilsport, Pat! Here, McGush! Give it a twang there!”

It was as though Pat’s entire body was being modulated toward a state of almost total elasticity, Henry McGush moving backward and forward on his heels, his face contorted with wickedness, the moments before he released the thin, knotted piece of cotton material which he clutched in his right hand seeming to Pat as though infinity itself.

“Pitchaow!
cried McGush aloud as he released his grip and, in a blur, the wine-colored knot thudded against Pat’s Adam’s apple like a small missile careering through space. In that instant, he experienced a sense of total disorientation, a sickening, almost unbearable galactic solitude. He leaned backward against the frontage of Linencare Dry Cleaners, their departing voices as smudges, tiny specks revolving beneath him.

“Well, Pat! Must be off now! See you then!” called back the loathed Traynor.

“Double Diamond works wonders! Works wonders! Double Diamond works wonders! Works wonders it does!” chuckled Henry McGush.

“Ha ha ha!” laughed Patsy Traynor.

There was something undeniably, perhaps hopelessly, abject about Pat’s efforts to adjust his tie as his two adversaries were swallowed up by the thick warm darkness of Sullivan’s Select Bar, which was situated
directly across the street. It was as though someone else had succeeded in inhabidng his body as he light-headedly began to negotiate his way homeward, knowing full well the reception which would be awaiting him when he arrived. “But why did you let them do it?” his mother would say. “Are you going to stand there all your life and let the likes of Traynor walk all over you? Well, you won’t, for I’ll go down this very minute and let him and the whole cheeky tribe of them know what I think of them! Traynors! Tramps and tinkers and twopence-halfpenny chancers!”

His pleas, he knew so well, would be in vain.

“No—please, Mammy! I beg you—don’t!” he would cry, but she would already be pulling on her coat.

“Oh yes! I’ll talk turkey to them for what they’ve done to my son! Not that it’s any wonder, mind you! With that father of his lying on top of the melodeon outside Sullivan’s every night God sends! As for the mother, if you could call her that! Up every Sunday with the hat on her and the nose stuck in the air. When the whole country knows Jemmy McQuaid had her fixed before she was married. I wonder what they’ll have to say when they hear a few home truths like that, them and their thieving sons!”

“Please, Mammy!” Pat would beg anew as she shook the life out of him in front of the fireplace, insisting that a repeat performance was never to be permitted.

“Pat McNab,” she’d cry, shivering, “you’ll have to learn to stand up for yourself! For if he’s taking shillings off you now, what will it be later on? For God’s sake, ask yourself! What will it be later on?”

His mother’s trembling lip returned to Pat now as he sat facing the fire’s dying embers, in his hands the gilt frame which contained the oval photo of the only girl he had ever loved. The inscription beneath read: Bridie Cunningham, March 1972. He swallowed painfully as he traced a line from the top of her head to the point of her chin and thoughtjust how right his mother had been. “Just as she always was,” he reflected. For Traynor indeed didn’t call a halt after he’d extorted a few shillings. He had never had any intention of doing so.

Pat stared at Bridie in her knitted woollen cap and black polo neck. Sometimes she wore a gold chain with it. He got up and stood staring
out the window, thinking of those times (dead now) when he would wait across the street from the convent until she and her colleagues emerged through the gates in an explosion of navy blue serge. He smiled. In some strange way, he knew that it had all been inevitable. For once Patsy Traynor realized the intensity of his love for her, it had soon become clear that it was only a matter of time before he would endeavor with all his might to attend to that litde matter too, not ceasing until he had succeeded in taking away from him the only woman—apart from his mother, of course—that Pat McNab had ever had the good fortune to love.

It was the autumn of 1971 and Bridie was going past the vegetable shop in her day clothes—a bright orange and red tank top with jeans covered in newspaper headlines.

“Hello, Pat,” she said.

“Hello, Bridie,” was Pat’s reply.

“That’s a nice day, Pat,” Bridie elaborated.

“Bridie,” Pat began in a dry, sort of choking voice, “I was wondering if you were going to the dance on Friday?”

“You bet I am, Pat!” cried Bridie excitedly. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world! They’re my favorite band!”

“Are they?” cried Pat excitedly. “They’re mine too! Who are they?”

“What, Pat? Why, the Square Pennies! Ha ha!”

“I might see you there, then!”

“Yes! I’ll look forward to that!”

“Good-bye, Bridie!”

“Good-bye, Pat!”

Nineteen seventy-one—Oct. 16, 12:35
A.M. NOW
that the dance was over, with the musicians packing all the gear into the van (the Square Pennies! Ireland’s Newest Sensation!) and people streaming out into the humming, lit-up car park, as Pat stood with Bridie out among the cars he began to realize that what he was experiencing could possibly be the most beautiful and exciting night of his entire life. He found himself once more staring at Bridie’s hands. He couldn’t get over them. They were the smallest hands he had ever seen! His excitement overwhelmed him to the extent that he feared he would fall directly into the puddle in front of him.