Emerald Germs of Ireland

by Patrick McCabe

  Pat’s grin—for he was grinning now—broadened.

  “Oh she would!” he cried. “Her and Timmy the barman! Sure they don’t get on at all!”

  Mrs. Tubridy pulled at one of the fingers of her glove.

  “I know,” she said. “Didn’t she tell me all about it. How is she, anyway, Pat? I don’t remark her at the bingo this past couple of months.”

  Pat looked away momentarily. There was a sheep eating a leaf not far from the five-barred gate which was direcctly behind Mrs. Tubridy.

  “No,” he said. “She says it’s a waste of money.”

  Mrs. Tubridy frowned for a second. Then she looked at Pat and said, “What? And her after scooping all before her only last Christmas?”

  “Pshaw! Do you hear me!” interjected Pat. “No, Mrs. Tubridy! She’ll be there next week. It’s that bloody phlebitis. It’s started to play up again.”

  “Oh I declare to God!” exclaimed Mrs. Tubridy. “Why didn’t you say so, Pat! Sure I have the liniment in my handbag! I’ll go up this very second and give her a rub down! God love the poor craythur and her up there all on her own! I had it myself, you know! Look! Do you see these veins? Swollen up the size of that, Pat!”

  Mrs. Tubridy balled her fist, then continued, “Only for Dr. Horan’s liniment, I was finished! Wait till you see! You won’t know your mother tomorrow when you see her! Good luck now, Pat—I’m away off to administer my own private medicine to her!”

  Pat’s voice appeared to ring off a nearby milk churn, partly obscured in the ditch by some whitethorn bushes.

  “No!” he cried, his hand curling about Mrs. Tubridy’s arm.

  “Pat!” she declared, endeavoring to move backward a little.

  Pat, she noted, had turned quite pale.

  “You can’t do that!” he cried aloud. ‘You can’t go up there, Mrs. Tubridy! Wasn’t she asleep in the bed when I left and not so much as a peep out of her! You can’t go ringing bells and waking her out of her sound sleep! Not now, Mrs. Tubridy!”

  Mrs. Tubridy chucked her sleeve—quite firmly—extricating it from Pat’s grasp.

  “Jesus Mary and Joseph!” she curtly responded. “You didn’t have to take the face off me! Amn’t I only saying that I’ll go up and show her the medicine, medicine she’ll thank me for, you can be sure of—”

  At an angle, Pat’s voice recoiled off the polished metal of the obscured churn. There was a painted number on it. It was number 22.

  “Can’t you give it to her another time? Can’t you give it to her some other day? Why can’t you do that?”

  “Of course I can, Pat,” went on Mrs. Tubridy, lowering her head ever so slightly, “Sure I can give it to her any time you like. You don’t have to act like the Antichrist to tell me that!”

  Pat’s response was as a dart thudding into the bark of a nearby sycamore tree.

  “I have to go to Sullivan’s!” he snapped.

  The flesh above the bridge of Mrs. Tubridy’s nose gathered itself into the shape of a small arrowhead.

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to Sullivan’s?” she enquired quizzically.

  Pat coughed and said, “I’m not!”

  Mrs. Tubridy’s expression darkened and a whiteness appeared upon the knuckles of the fingers which clasped themselves about the handle of her bag.

  “What goes on in the dim corners of that place you would be hard-pressed to witness in the back alleys of hell!” she said.

  Pat raised his voice and replied, “I said—I’m not going to it, Mrs. Tubridy!”

  Mrs. Tubridy shook her head.

  “I know you’re not, Pat,” she went on, “for your mother has you better reared. She knows better than to let you go gallivanting about the streets of Gullytown. Myself and her know the likes of Timmy Sullivan and those people! Your mother told you all about him, didn’t she, Pat? Sullivan, I mean?”

  Now it was Pat’s turn to lower his head.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy,” he said.

  “Alcoholics!” she cried suddenly. “Alcoholics, whoremasters, and fornicators! That’s all you’ll find about that place! And Timmy Sullivan raking it in hand over fist! Isn’t that right, Pat?”

  Pat frowned and, abstractedly picking at a corner of his front tooth, replied, “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy.”

  Mrs. Tubridy nodded. A new sense of equanimity emanated from her.

  “A young fellow like yourself—you have far more sense. For your mother’s made sure of it. I’ll be on my way so, Pat. Tell your mother I’ll be up to see her in a few days now, won’t you?”

  Pat nodded and said, “I will to be sure now, Mrs. Tubridy! Good luck now!”

  It was this conversation, or selected parts of it, which was now providing Pat with a source of great amusement as he sat at the counter of Sullivan’s Select Bar some hours later with a bewildering array of colored drinks floating before him like some delightful carnival jamboree of alcohol. As all the while he continued to repeat to himself, “I will shurely, Misshish Tubridy! Haw haw! Gluck now!” with one eye closed, attracting the attention of Timmy the barman, as he added insistently, “The big mishtake they made wash—they hadn’t reckoned on Pat McNab, Timmy Shull!”

  Timmy smiled and wiped the counter in front of his enthusiastic customer as he placed another bottle of Bols Advocaat—for Pat was not in the slightest particular as to the type or brand of alcohol which was consumed by him—directly in front of his customer, and went off whistling the tune to The Dukes of Hazzard before his eyes met those of another patron and he gave himself once more to pint-pouring.

  The gravel of the laneway crunched beneath Mrs. Tubridy’s slippers. She was quite surprised to find the back door off the latch. But she wasn’t complaining, as she crept onward into the maw of the gloom of the scullery.

  It was well past twelve when Pat arrived home, humming away repeatedly to himself as he searched for his keys deep in the pocket of his long black coat, which occasionally served as a duvet or bedspread, the words, ‘Yeah! They shure hadn’t, buddy, my friend!” gliding from his lips as he entered his house and prepared to help himself to “a little drinkie,” in this case a large measure of Cointreau in a pint glass.

  It is quite difficult to determine exactly how long Pat had been sipping and smiling to himself while drumming his fingers on the side of his glass before he realized Mrs. Tubridy was sitting in the chair but without a doubt it was quite a considerable amount of time. What was probably most embarrassing for Pat was that when he did, he was actually continuing in a rotating movement about the floor, intermittently exclaiming “ha ha!” and utilizing the liqueur-filled receptacle as some form of impromptu microphone. It came as a severe shock when at last the barely audible sentence “Dear God in heaven!” reached his ears. Even as it was uttered by him, he realized just how inappropriate and unsatisfactory his response was. “Misshish Tubridy!” he ejaculated. Her rejoinder was tenebrous and uncompromising. “Put that drink down!” she said. “And get up them stairs. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  Pat smiled ever so slightly, a moist film of perspiration appearing on the side of the glass beneath his fingers. “What?” he laughed, adding, “Ha ha.”

  Mrs. Tubridy’s eyes became hooded. “You’d be as well to do what I say,” she hissed, “after all the lies you’ve told me, mister!”

  Pat raised his right eyebrow and for no particular reason gazed into the aquamarine depths of his beverage. “After all the lies I told you!” he replied curtly, a wave of courage sweeping through him from some unnamed place. “Mrs. Tubridy—who do you think you are? My mother? You can’t tell me what to do! I can do what I like! Look!”

  With bewildering alacrity, a considerable amount of the green-tinted drink went swooshing down his mouth, an array of wet beads forming on his lower lip. With renewed vigor, he cleared his throat and continued: “Ha ha! Lies! Lies, is it, Mrs. Tubridy? Sure I can tell you all the lies I like! No—I wasn’t in Sullivan’s! I was in Barney Nelly’s, actually! Why, as a
matter of fact I wasn’t—I was in Sullivan’s!”

  Pat shook his head and repaired to the sideboard to replenish his drink. For some reason he felt warm as toast.

  “Misshish Tubridy,” he said, “would you like a drink? Have a drink! Go on there, you girl you! You must want one! Ah sure what harm! I’ll have one with you, won’t I? Give us a song there, Mrs. Tubridy, you auld housebreaker you! Do you know one? Och, you do surely! Yourself and meself, Mrs. Tubridy!”

  It might well have been the happiest day of Pat McNab’s life as his hand in a wide arc cleaved the air and in a rich brown voice he launched himself into song. “He sits on the corner of Beggar’s Bush!” he intoned beautifully,

  Astride of an old packing case.

  And the dolls on the end of the plank go dancing

  As he croons with a smile on his face.

  Oo-oo-oo-oo come day go day

  Wishing my heart it was Sunday

  Drinking buttermilk all the week

  Whiskey on a Sunday.

  Quite how he became entangled in the large velvet drapes which adorned the high windows of the room was not quite clear but was perhaps attributable to a combination of his preoccupation with accuracy in the delivery of the song’s lyrics and his continued consumption of alcohol. There was something inevitable about his eventual collapse and the connection of his head with the side of the Victorian chaise longue which his father had purchased many years before in a London market in a bout of uncharacteristic largesse. The pain of the blow—albeit glancing—proved to be quite unbearable. His cries attained an almost shrill note as he remained prostrate upon the floor. “Oh Jesus!” he groaned. “Jesus Mary and Joseph! I’ve hurt my head! Oh God, Mrs. Tubridy—help me! Please help me!”

  There was something quite unexpected about the figure of Mrs. Tubridy as it made its way toward him through an undoubtedly bleary, fogged-up haze. For a moment Pat could not ascertain exactly what the nature of this “unexpectedness” was but then—it came to him. His mother’s friend was smiling in a most uncharacteristic fashion and undulating the lower portions of her body. Pat was quite taken aback. “Oh!” he groaned anew as he felt her soft fingers on his forehead and her gentle hands easing his head ever so slowly in the direction of her lap. It was some moments before the damp cloth began to soothe the pain about his temples. “Mrs. Tubridy! It’s so sore!” cried Pat, precariously close to all-out weeping. As she spoke, Mrs. Tubridy’s voice seemed to have the very consistency of silk itself.

  “Is that better, Pat?” she huskily intoned as Pat replied, “Oh, Mrs. Tubridy! I’m a disgrace. I’ve gone and made a complete fool of myself!”

  Mrs. Tubridy squeezed his temple gently between her thumb and forefinger.

  “I told you not to go in there, Pat,” she said. “I told you not to go there, didn’t I?”

  An almost imperceptible moistness appeared in the corner of Pat’s left eye. “It’s that Timmy Sullivan, Mrs. Tubridy!” he cried aloud. “He never says no! He never says no Pat that’s enough now! He keeps on giving you drink!”

  Mrs. Tubridy nodded and moved the cloth a little bit.

  “Lift your head a little bit, Pat,” she said, adding, “That’s it. Is that better?”

  Pat nodded and said, “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy. It is.”

  He was heartened to see a smile appearing on Mrs. Tubridy’s face. Her eyes glittered as she said, “Is that how your mammy does it?”

  For a fraction of a second, Pat was taken aback. There was a slight tautness to the rear of his throat as he said, “What, Mrs. Tubridy?”

  Mrs. Tubridy smiled again and said, “Your mammy—is that how she does it?”

  Pat flushed ever so slightly—simply because he was a little confused.

  “Mrs. Tubridy—what?” he asked her.

  “If you fell,” Mrs. Tubridy explained. “Is that how she’d do it—to ease your pain, I mean?”

  There was something about Mrs. Tubridy’s voice that made Pat feel uneasy.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy. Mrs. Tubridy, I think you’d better go,” he said.

  In the succeeding moments, the moon seemed exceptionally, unaccountably large. And there was a quality to the darkness he hadn’t noticed before. It seemed a long time before Mrs. Tubridy made any reply. And when she did, it was as follows: “Go, Pat?” in a faintly aggressive, noncompliant tone.

  The crimson shade of Pat’s cheeks was now quite pronounced.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy. In case the neighbors might be talking.”

  Pat expected the pressure exerted by Mrs. Tubridy’s fingers to become somewhat relieved at this—but this did not happen. In fact, if anything, it could be said to have increased.

  “Talking, Pat?” Mrs. Tubridy replied. “But sure, Pat—I’m an old woman.”

  A flushed, discomfiting confusion began to gather within Pat’s mind. Words appeared to elude him, and it was only with supreme effort he succeeded in making the reply, “I know that, Mrs. Tubridy. But you know what they’re like. They imagine things. They make things up.”

  Pat felt the cloth being relocated to a spot directly above his eye.

  “Does it hurt here?” Mrs. Tubridy said softly. “Will I rub it just a littler more?”

  What exactly happened in the intervening seconds is unclear. What is apparent is that somehow Pat broke free and found himself standing above the older woman, clearly in a state of tremulous anxiety now.

  “Mrs. Tubridy!” he cried, his voice quivering like a lost leaf in a countryside-denuding storm, “I’m afraid you’ll have to go!”

  There followed a silence and then Mrs. Tubridy lowered her head and said softly, yieldingly, “Very well—I’ll just go get my umbrella.”

  A wave of remorse—infinitely larger than the one which had conveniently provided him with courage earlier on—crashed through Pat.

  “Mrs. Tubridy!” he groaned. “It’s just that—”

  “Yes, Pat—I know,” came the reply.

  As she was going past the hat stand in the hallway, Pat picked at his fingernail and said, “Good night then, Mrs. Tubridy.” The older woman adjusted her coat and said, “Good night, Pat.”

  It was only as she was opening the front door to venture out into the quiet night of the sleeping town and its surrounding countryside that she turned and said tenderly, “You know, Pat—you know your mother’s a very lucky woman. Drunk or no, you could be one of the nicest young fellows in the town. You always were. You know that, don’t you, Pat?”

  A twinge of uncertainty nagged at Pat as she spoke. But nonetheless he managed a reply.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy.”

  “She loved you, Pat,” continued Mrs. Tubridy. “I know—because she told me. ‘I love Pat,’ she said, ‘my son Pat.’”

  Pat found himself choking a little.

  “Mrs. Tubridy …” he began.

  Mrs. Tubridy’s voice was soft as downy feathers now.

  “‘He’s the nicest little fellow ever I carried in my stomach,’” she said,” ‘ I don’t care who makes a laugh of him.’”

  “Please, Mrs. Tubridy …,” said Pat, a trifle dizzy now.

  It was some moments before he realized at all that Mrs. Tubridy’s fingers were in his hair, running through it ever so gently. Her lips soft and warm close to his ear as she said, “Why did you do it, Pat? Did you have an argument with her?”

  An imaginary icy hand placed its hand flat on Pat’s back.

  “Do what, Mrs. Tubridy?” he replied, endeavoring to be noncommittal.

  Mrs. Tubridy lowered her head as if disappointed.

  “Oh, Pat, Pat,” she said, adding with disorienting swiftness. “Was she upsetting you?”

  A fully formed tear shone in Pat’s right eye as he replied, “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy. She was. She wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  The older woman moved exceptionally close to him and said, “I wouldn’t upset you, Pat. As long as you did what I said. As long as you were my nice litde boy. Would you be that, Pat? Would you? And th
en I wouldn’t have to tell them all the litde things I know about you. I wouldn’t have to tell them not to whisper a word about it. Not so much as a word about it all. Wouldn’t that be lovely, Pat?”

  Already some of the tear was drying on Pat’s cheek. His right one.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy,” he said.

  “And you’d never touch that horrible old stuff again?”

  “No, Mrs. Tubridy.”

  “Never go near Sullivan’s as long as you live.”

  “No, Mrs. Tubridy.”

  “Does your head hurt, Pat?”

  Mrs. Tubridy pressed a soft spot which was located directly above his left eye.

  “Horrible ugly drink!” she said, and squeezed it again.

  It was some days later and Pat was busier than ever, cleaning out cupboards and trying to get everything done before dinner. Mrs. Tubridy’s voice came ringing clear and uncompromising from the scullery. “And don’t forget that other one! I see one hidden away in at the back there! Do you hear me, Pat McNab?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy,” replied Pat, as his fingers closed around the last remaining whiskey bottle located in the nether darkness at the rear of the cupboard. He added it to the contents of his Dumpster and pushed the glittering container of redundant glass out into the backyard, where it would be collected the following day by the garbage-men. He remained resolutely silent as Mrs. Tubridy stood over him ensuring that each receptacle was added to the mound of glass whose peak was now level with the top of the gate. When she was satisfied, she smiled contentedly and said, “Well, Pat! That’s the last we’ll see of them!”

  Pat nodded compliantly and rubbed his hands on his apron.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy,” he said.

  Mrs. Tubridy smiled and placed her smooth, moistened hand on his cheek. She used Pond’s Cold Cream.

  “More than your mother was able to do, Pat, at the end of the day!”

  Two things happened in between Mrs. Tubridy making this statement and Pat making a reply. A small bird landed on a twig above Mrs. Tubridy’s head and a blue Fiat went by on the road. They had distracted Pat for a moment. Then he heard himself saying, “What?” to be greeted with the short, not quite peremptory but certainly cursory response: “Oh—and would you clear out the coal house too when you’re finished, Pat—I meant to say that to you.”