Emerald Germs of Ireland

by Patrick McCabe

  Long before I met you

  I caught a spark from her eyes of forgotten desire

  With a word or a touch, Lord,

  I could have rekindled that fire.

  Pat’s eyes twinkled as he tilted the yellow meniscus and discerned within the shimmering depths of that viscous liquid a myriad of swirling memories. “Why yes,” he mused quietly, “according to them, I didn’t seem to have spent a single night at home in over three years! First, it was the Widow McGinn’s mattresses! Oh yes—Pat McNab did it! Pat McNab, certainly—who else!”

  It was so absurd Pat almost flung his drink—glass and all!—at the wall. It had even made the local papers—a photograph of the widow staring white-faced in her nightdress trying to explain how she had left some mattresses outside in the yard for airing and was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of their crackling and burning. Swearing, to boot, that she had caught sight of a “small black-faced figure” making good its escape into the night.

  Pat sighed as he refilled his glass. Eschewing the Bols Advocaat this time for some fine Glenfiddich whiskey. His eyes twinkled as the amber liquid made its warm journey through the sinuous tunnel of his esophagus. “Then there was the doctor’s car!” he chortled softly. “The famous doctor’s precious car! And it only a wreck!”

  Which wasn’t exactly how it was perceived in those very same famous local papers, of course. “Oh no!” laughed Pat. “Why, it was a forty-thousand-dollar BMW! Of course it was!”

  It was time for him to sit down again, thought Pat. He placed his glass on the arm of his chair and laced his fingers. “Yes—I did that, Hektor!” he said, with a smile. “Of course I did! I mean—I wasn’t at home doing my homework! How could I be? I was out setting fire to the doctor’s fine upholstery and beautiful bodywork! Just like I was supposed to have burned McGlinchey’s cat!”

  The discovery of the smoking corpse had caused an uproar. McGlinchey’s cat was well known and loved in the area.

  “Which is what you are accused of if you happen to be unlucky enough to live in Town of Liars, Hektor!” explained Pat. “Because, you see, if you live in a normal town, people have more to do with their time. They have more to do than go around blaming the wrong people. Not that they don’t have their reasons! Why, of course they do! O, if they don’t like you—if the inhabitants of Town of Liars don’t happen to like you—why, they’ll make up the most atrocious lies about you, won’t they?”

  Something which they learned early on, thought Pat, as he sipped his Glenfiddich (very tasty!)—at their mother’s knee, in fact. In an instant, he found himself transported back to a small schoolroom round about the year 1965. There was an ink cupboard and a giant wooden compass and, of course, the turnip-shaped figure of Master Butty Halpin with his feet up on the desk. Pat’s young eyes burned with resentment as the boy beside him stood poker-stiff and made his brazen declaration: “Sir—it was Pat McNab burned Mrs. McGinn’s mattresses. He told me, so he did. And I think it might have been him set fire to Artie McCrann’s haystack!”

  It was more than the nine-year-old Pat could bear.

  “Sir!” he cried aloud, his hand shooting sharply into the air. “Sir, he’s making that up! He’s making it up because he hates me!”

  The schoolmaster’s response was unyielding in its brevity.

  “McNab! Out!”

  It would be hard for Pat McNab ever to forget the punishment inflicted on him in the moments which followed. Or the fist-obfuscated sniggers of his “classmates.” “McNab!” the teacher had barked. “Get out into that yard and cut a good big switch. Then trot back in here till we see what we can do with it!” As he passed the playground alone, what he seemed to possess at the end of his arms (sunk into the pockets of his short trousers in a pitiful attempt at pain amelioration) were not hands but two pounds of raw bloody steak. There was no mistaking, muted as they might have been, the words which passed Pat’s lips as he leaned against the wall of the dog-dirt-spotted handball alley, observing his laughing, cavorting classmates. “One day they’ll pay. And so will Halpin. Most of all, Halpin! I’ll burn him, so I will!”

  It was some nights later Butty Halpin was in his study preparing some work for Irish grammar and some mental arithmetic problems, when he heard his wife’s voice cry out into the night (she had gone to the back door to throw out some tea bags), “Butty! Butty! Come quick! The chickens are on fire!”

  The sight which met his eyes as he appeared in his own backyard pulling on his dressing gown—of hopping, squawking—literally, balls of living flame—does not bear describing.

  Pat stared at his reflection in the glass of Glenfiddich. “Oops!” he remarked. “I seem a litde woozy.” He tilted the glass to see how far he could permit it to go without spilling it. Then he sniggered a litde bit. “He—Butty Halpin—tried to make me say I did it—but I wouldn’t!”

  Pat lit a cigarette and puffed out some smoke. “No! I wouldn’t. Not in a million years!” he said. “No matter how many times he battered me!”

  And batter him Butty Halpin certainly did. Shaking him, indeed, to within an inch of his life, and, on one occasion, actually slamming his head directly against the blackboard, crying, “Can’t you admit it, can’t you! We all know you did it! Do you hear me?”

  No conclusion was reached on that occasion, with the master eventually collapsing from exhaustion, still pleading, “Why can’t you admit you burned the chickens, McNab?” and Pat’s eyes for all the world like stones inside in his head.

  The record had long since finished. Pat rose from his chair and replaced the stylus at the beginning of his “favorite song.” He smiled as its waltzing melody consumed the night once more. Angling his elbow, he leaned against the mantelpiece and said, “Yes, Hektor, that is the way it is, unfortunately. You believe the people of Liar Town and soon you are convinced that Pat McNab had nothing to do with his time only be out every night burning things. Burning things, Hektor! Burning, burning, burning!”

  A thought struck Pat: “You know—I think I wouldn’t mind some ice!” He repaired to the kitchen and popped a pair of ice cubes into his glass—which he then replenished—except this time with some fine old Hennessy brandy (VSOP brand). As he sipped anew, he continued, “Although I did burn some things. I’m not about to deny that. But only things that deserved to be burned.”

  He paused for a moment as the life-enhancing liquid settled itself deep within him.

  “But,” he continued then as he puffed on his Major cigarette, “all the things they said I did? Why, Hektor, there would have been a million Pat McNabs running around the town if even a quarter of the things were to have taken place! But then I guess—that’s what liars do, in the place called Town of Liars!”

  A thin serpent of smoke wound its way out of Pat’s left nostril as he continued, “What I find most amusing about liars, of course, is that they’re so busy lying they get all the other things wrong! Like poor old Bat McGaw! Dear oh dear! What a dreary old idiot!”

  It was late now so Pat turned on his tilley lamp, which sent out its big large shadows across the room like people of the night. It was time for a glass of wine, Pat thought, as he opened his book and donned his reading glasses. A nice Bulgarian, perhaps, he thought. The Towering Inferno, announced the book’s title in letters of fire. Beneath a flaming building, tiny figures, including ant-sized firemen clutching a hose that seemed alive, recoiled in terror. Pat sipped his wine and, as if addressing Hektor over the top of his novel, remarked, “What’s funny, of course, is that poor old McGaw wasn’t actually from Town of Liars! If perhaps he had been, there might have been a chance he’d have had more sense!”

  It now appeared as if Pat was addressing the small mound of ash piling up in the center of the ashtray.

  “Isn’t that right? Isn’t that right, Bat? Oh indeed and it is surely!”

  He tapped the book’s glossy cover and continued:

  “Oh, Bat, you silly old canoodle you! If only you’d had more sense
than coming about the place!”

  The wine in Pat’s glass seemed so clear and fresh it furnished the illusion of that very first day with Bat McGaw coming to revisit him right there in that very room between the chairs and the table and the mantelpiece. How best to describe Bat McGaw? An agrarian soul of distressing amplitude, perhaps, perennially attired in turned-down Wellingtons (gum boots) and an inordinately cigarette-holed waistcoat.

  “Oh, there you are, Pat!” had been his opening greeting to Pat. “I was just looking for you! You don’t know me—I’m Bat McGaw! My brother has the family place above on the hill!”

  “Oh, aye—Ernie McGaw!” replied Pat.

  “Aye, Ernie, that’d be the brother—God rest him. Well, you see, I’ve just moved into the area and I don’t know whether Ernie was telling you or not but we were thinking of going into sheep.”

  “Going into sheep?” replied Pat.

  “Aye,” Bat nodded, “we were thinking of going into sheep, so you see we’d be needing this bit of land round about here where the house is.”

  Pat frowned and folded his arms.

  “Round about where the house is?” he queried, tentatively.

  Bat nodded and spat, narrowly missing the toe of his Wellington.

  “Aye,” he said.

  Pat scratched the back of his head.

  “What house?” he asked.

  Bat McGaw’s features displayed puzzlement.

  “What house?” he replied, somewhat incredulously. “Ah, come on now, Pat. There’s only one house—that house there looking at you!”

  Pat—still with his arms folded—turned to gaze upon the large Victorian building directly behind him.

  “But that’s my house!” he said. “That’s Mammy’s house!”

  Bat McGaw stripped his teeth in a grin.

  “Mammy’s house! Do you hear you, Pat! And you a grown man! But don’t worry—I’d be giving you a fair price! The McGaws were never known for anything only giving a man a fair shake!”

  Pat looked away and gave his attention to the horizon.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McGaw. It’s not for sale.”

  Bat McGaw frowned. Pat perceived him moving a litde closer to him.

  “How’s that, Pat?” he said, lowering his voice.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McGaw,” repeated Pat, impassively, “it’s not for sale. The house—it’s not for sale, I’m afraid.”

  Now it was Bat McGaw’s turn to lower his head and scratch the back of it.

  “I’m sorry, Pat, but you don’t seem to understand,” he continued, grinning. “You see—I own the rights to this land. And your mother—she doesn’t own the house at all!”

  “What?” Pat heard himself say. His saliva thickened.

  “C’mere!” Bat McGaw continued. “Come over here till I show you.”

  Seemingly oblivious of the manure and mud stains which were a prominent feature of his paraffin-colored dungarees, Bat McGaw produced from his back pocket an expansive ordnance survey map which he proceeded to unfold on the ground before him. He might have been a professor illuminating the labyrinthine intricacies of biochemistry or advanced physics.

  “You see,” he began, “all this here is McGaws’ land. And, back in 1942—during the war, Pat, when your father was away—or so they tell me—not that I’d know for I’m not from about here—your mother sold my brother this bit and this bit and this bit here. She was strapped for cash, you follow. And he allowed her to keep the house—to hold on to it until such time as—?”

  Bat McGaw broke off and Pat felt a cold patch forming somewhere in the region of the base of his spine.

  “Such time as …?” he said, hesitantly.

  “Such time as we wanted to go intill the sheep or whatever. Do you follow?”

  Pat’s brow knitted and he began to pick the sleeve of his jumper with the fingers of his right hand.

  “No. I don’t follow,” he said, without emotion.

  Bat McGaw fixed him with a piercing gaze.

  “You what, Pat?” he said.

  A nerve jerked—imperceptibly—in Pat’s right cheek. He smiled caustically.

  “It’s a pretty good lie, Bat,” he said, “even if you’re not from the Town of Liars, I have to grant you—it’s still a pretty good lie.”

  Bat hitched up his trousers and sighed.

  “I suppose it would be, Pat,” he said, “I suppose it would be—if it was. Which it isn’t. So what do you say to ten big ones?”

  Pat was taken by surprise.

  “What?” was his reply.

  “Ten big ones,” continued Bat, “in the paw. Right here and now. On account of you being out by Saturday.”

  Pat smiled and looked down. From the tan water of the puddle hole, his smiling reflection stared back at him.

  “Out by Saturday?” he said. “But you don’t understand. I can’t leave here! This is Mammy’s house! All my memories are here!”

  There was a pause. Then Bat said: “All your what?”

  His grin broadened and he placed his large left hand on Pat’s shoulder.

  “Pat—you’re a gas, man!” he went on. “I heard a few yarns regarding your good self. I heard them say—I heard plenty!—but you’ve caught me up short with that, I have to say! Bucking memories, he says!”

  Pat flushed—ever so slightly.

  “Do you not have memories?” he said to Bat McGaw.

  Bat shook his head—as if he could not for the life of him credit the words he was hearing.

  “The only memories I have is of the last eejit I put one over on, Pat! That’s the only memories worth having in this world!”

  Pat’s response was slow and grave and measured.

  “Get out of my garden!” he said, his eyes locking with those of Bat McGaw.

  Now it was the turn of Bat’s cheek to jerk a litde.

  “How’s that, Pat?” he said.

  Pat’s tone was now, however cautiously, a touch more strident in nature.

  “Get out of my garden!” he snapped, placing his hand on the garden fence railings as if to emphasize ownership. But his proprietorial stance was simply lost on Bat McGaw, who did litde more than smile and rake thick fingers through accordion-pleated hair.

  “Ah come on now, Pat,” he said, “I’ve been here long enough. Come on and we’ll close the deal, and we’re right, we can set the wheels in motion. What do you say to that?”

  Pat’s unambiguous, considered words issued from lips so taut they were seemed barely visible at all. It was as though he possessed a length of carpet for a mouth.

  “Get out of my garden or I’ll stick this in you!”

  The garden fork appeared to jump into his hands. Bat McGaw glared darkly at the unremarkable tool.

  “So that’s it!” he sneered sourly. “That’s the way of it, is it? Well, by cripes I heard plenty about you, McNab, but I never thought you were this stupid! Would you go away out of that, you lug you, and put that thing down! I’m going! But one thing I’ll say to you—lug!—one thing I’ll say to you is: “You’ve had it!’”

  There can be litde doubt but that it was a happy, if not indeed triumphant Pat McNab who closed the door of Sullivan’s behind him later that same night, declaiming “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” to the bushes and brambles that lined the road upon which he made his way toward home. “When the swallows come back to Capistrano,” he sang aloud, his cheeks aglow with pride. As indeed why wouldn’t they be? Had he not shown Mr. Bat McGaw where to get off? He certainly had! He sure had shown him that you can’t come about a person’s home calling them “lugs” and expecting to get away with it! No sir! The very sentiments he was exchanging with the enormous silhouette of a sycamore tree not one hundred yards from his house when, suddenly, he was surprised to hear his name being unexpectedly called from somewhere out of the darkness. “Hey, McNab!” the voice cried, followed by yet another, just as Pat was acclimatizing himself to the first. Lower in tone, but less attenuated. “Yeah! You big lu
g you!” it continued confrontationally. Pat swallowed and was about to make a response. But it was already too late. A large stick thudded against his head and he fell to his knees, raising his forearms to protect himself as best he could from the savage blows which had begun to rain down upon him. He fancied he perceived something bursting—a vein, perhaps.

  “Maybe that will put a bit of manners on you! Maybe now you’ll see sense!” he heard in the distance.

  As Pat swooned toward the arms of unconsciousness, paradoxically he found himself wordlessly proclaiming his gratitude that his torment was at an end. But it was not to be. Another blow fell across his right eyebrow and he cried out in agony. “You’d do good to remember what he said, McNab!” were the final words which reached his ears before the redemptive twins of Ladies Numbness and Despair came at last to bear him away.

  Norman Kidwell, of Kidwell and McCart, solicitors, tapped his thumbs and considered the heavily bandaged client who was seated directly across from him. “I see,” he continued, inexplicably moving a pink blotter pad in front of him, “so you want to sell everything to Mr. McGaw, then? Everything? Lock, stock, and barrel?”

  Pat flicked the tip of his tongue against the back of his front teeth.

  “Yes, Mr. Kidwell,” he replied.

  Norman Kidwell took a pen from his pocket and steadied it for a moment between two index fingers, closing one eye and examining it as if endeavoring to determine once and for all its precise nature. Then, he cradled his chin in his hand and leaned across the desk.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea now, Pat? Do you think you’ve thought it over enough?”

  Pat placed his open palms flat on his thighs and nodded.

  “Yes, Mr. Kidwell,” he replied. “I’ve been thinking long and hard this past few weeks. I’ve been thinking—it’s not good me being up there in that house on my own now that Mammy’s gone. There are too many memories.”

  It was as though the solicitor was satisfied at last as regards the writing instrument’s “pen-ness.” He replaced the biro on the desk beside the blotter pad. “I know, Pat,” he said. “I know what you mean.” He paused and checked a piece of nail on the top of his index finger, continuing, “By the way—where is she? Your mother?”