Emerald Germs of Ireland

by Patrick McCabe

  Outside on the step, Tommy Noble the postman was reaching in his sack and removing a letter as he whistled a tune.

  “There you are, Pat,” he said brightly. “Grand morning now, thank God. I have a letter for you here.”

  Pat endeavored as best he could to hide from view the lengthy, wing-shaped, already drying mark of regurgitated sick that stained his lapel, preparing to engage Tommy in good-humored badinage as best he could when the startlingly bright colors of the hexagonal stamp that shone across the white expanse of the letter first of all startled then disoriented him, displaying as it did a bird bearing truly stunning, decorative plumage. “A bird of paradise!” gasped Pat, feeling a bead of sweat form (as large as a gooseberry) in the region of the base of his spine.

  “What’s that, Pat?” he heard the postman say, from what might have been a distance of thousands of miles across the sea.

  “Come a long way has it, then, Pat? From your mother, Pat, is it? I knew she was away on holidays, all right! Whereabouts, Pat, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  But there was to be no answer from Pat, a diminutive representation of the smiling postman reflected in his eyes as glassy-eyed he remained upon the step, already an assembly of starlings beginning to gather upon the telegraph wires, valiantly trying to reach him with a song he’d never hear.

  For What It’s Worth Stop! Hey what’s that (Sound?)

  There’s something happening here

  What it is ain’t exactly clear

  There’s a man with a gun over there

  Telling me I got to beware

  I think it’s time, hey, what’s that sound

  Everybody look what’s going ‘round!

  There’s battle lines being drawn

  Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

  Young people speaking their minds

  Getting so much resistance from behind.

  I think it’s time, hey, what’s that sound

  Everybody look what’s going ‘round.

  Paranoia strikes deep

  Into your life it will creep

  Starts when you’re always afraid

  Step outta line the man come and take you away

  I think it’s time, hey, what’s that sound

  Everybody look what’s going ‘round.

  It was many months later that Pat found himself once more seated at the counter in Sullivan’s (ironically, sipping a lemonade—he had consumed twenty-three and a half glasses of Macardles Ale the previous evening), looking up to see a world-weary Timmy approaching him, settling his elbows on the counter, and saying, “Ah, I don’t know anymore, Pat. I give up.” Pat, a litde concerned, raised himself up on the high stool and, scratching an elevated eyebrow, replied, “What’s that, Timmy?” Timmy produced a newspaper from his back pocket, unrolled it, and placed it flat down on the counter in front of his customer. His tone was one of utter exasperation, “Take a look at that,” he said, “Pat, I mean—for the love of God.”

  Pat shook his head wearily as he stared at the words displayed before him in large bold type. They read: HUGE DRUG RAID—BIGGEST YET.

  “Now I ask you,” said Timmy Sullivan.

  “Dublin’s gone mad, Timmy,” said Pat, his fingers doing a litde dance along the edge of the paper. Which was the Daily Mirror.

  “A young one standing out on the ledge in her pelt, Pat! Tweet—tweet—I’m a bird. For the love and honor of Christ!”

  Pat’s expression turned suddenly grim.

  “What if she fell?” he offered.

  Timmy frowned. His tone was reasonable now—generous. As that of an experienced, understanding parent.

  “I’m not saying they can’t have a bit of fun,” he went on, “but turn a blind eye and where does it all end?”

  “You have to nip it in the bud,” affirmed Pat.

  Timmy agreed wholeheartedly. His bunched fist came down softly on the marble-topped counter.

  “You do! Exactly the same as was done here!”

  “That’s what has to be done!” agreed Pat. “There’s no other way!”

  “Sergeant Foley knew what to do. Straight in—no prisoners!”

  “You have to know what you’re doing!”

  Pat gingerly sipped his lemonade as he spoke.

  “Of course you do!” cried Timmy, quite animated now. “And no hanging back! Cocaine, opium, Dexedrine, Benzedrine, uppers, downers—they all get the same treatment. Go in full throttle! With six-guns blazing, Pat! Otherwise you’re just wasting your time.”

  Pat nodded vigorously.

  “You might as well not bother going in at all,” he said.

  A nostalgic smile appeared then on Timmy Sullivan’s face.

  “Ah, but Sergeant Foley was a good one,” he said, “and the abuse he got! They used to call him such names! He could hardly walk up the street without them shouting after him.”

  “Shouting? Would they? What would they shout after him?”

  “Oh, come on now, Pat,” continued Timmy, “don’t be at that old tricking about now. You know very well what they were calling him. For unless my memory is mistaken, you could be a dab hand at it yourself from time to time. Would I be right there, Pat, do you think?”

  Pat straightened as he felt the color draining from his face.

  “Me?” he retorted stiffly, directing his index finger chestwards. “I’m afraid I think you have a very good imagination, maybe a bit too good sometimes, Timmy.”

  Timmy lowered his head and looked at his shoes.

  “Ha ha, well maybe so, Pat,” he went on, “but unless someone has put a few of them drugs in my tea when I didn’t happen to be looking, it seems to me that I distinctly remember Sergeant Foley walking down the street and someone not a million miles from the other side of this counter shouting after him. Something which sounded very much like ‘pig’ unless my memory is deceiving me!”

  Hesitancy or forbearance played no part in the reaction of Pat McNab. He slapped his hand on the counter.

  “Take that back!” he snapped.

  A broad grin unwound itself between the barman’s ears, as though a skipping rope of flesh.

  “Ah, would you go on out of that, Pat—sure I’m only joking! Weren’t you only a bit of a gossoon! What harm were you doing?”

  There was a slight unge of redness in Pat’s cheeks.

  “It was all a bit of clean, innocent fun!” he asserted. “That’s all it was!”

  “Of course it was!” agreed Timmy, describing an arc on the marble with his tea cloth. “God bless us, Pat, would you take it easy!”

  “You know me, Timmy,” insisted Pat—was there a slight quiver in his voice?—”I’m not the sort who goes around calling people pigs. Until they came around, I never called anybody anything!”

  “Sure don’t I know that, Pat,” murmured Timmy in a conciliatory tone.

  “It was them did it. They should have stayed away!”

  Timmy nodded and pressed his lips together.

  “They should have stayed in England, Pat.”

  “And then no one would have gone bad or called the sergeant ‘Pig.’#x201D;

  “Or anything else,” said Timmy.

  “Think they can come around here acting like they’re in London, acting like they own the place, hey man it’s the sixties! Drrng! Drrng!”

  Timmy was quite taken aback as Pat pretended he had an old-fashioned sixties guitar and played some electric notes on it. When the echo of the imaginary melody had abated, Timmy sighed and said, “They could be a right lippy crowd, some of them—there’s no mistaking it!”

  “My mother and Sergeant Foley were good friends,” went on Pat. “I never meant to call him that.”

  Timmy tossed back his head dismissively.

  “I know that only too well, Pat,” he said. “Nobody knows it better than me.”

  Pat frowned and clenched his fist on the counter as he said, “They should have stayed where they were!”

  He paused for a moment and sa
id, “Especially—Am!”

  Timmy sucked his teeth.

  “He used to come in here and look at me. He’d stare at you up and down like you were a pile of dung you’d see dumped on that road.”

  “Peace and love!” blurted Pat unexpectedly. “Ha ha! I gave him peace and love!”

  A chill wind appeared to course through the bar at that precise moment. There was a darkness in Timmy’s tone now.

  “What’s that, Pat?” he said.

  “I said—the town’s better off without him.”

  Timmy lifted a glass and began to clean it thoughtfully.

  “Mm. You know—I often wondered what became of him. He used to drive around with the Beatles! He drove around with no Beatles! He was a liar!” cried Pat.

  Timmy Sullivan visibly paled as he held the glittering glass in hand.

  “Japers, Pat, will you take it easy!” he said. “There’s no need to get so excited! Sure what do I care what he did!”

  Pat inhaled and steadied himself against the counter with his fingers.

  “Yeah—well, why does everyone believe him and not believe me!” he demanded. “Why couldn’t he mind his own business and leave people’s girlfriends alone?”

  Timmy paused.

  “What, Pat? How’s that? You had a girlfriend, did you?”

  “No, I did not!” Pat exclaimed. “What—Pat McNab have a girlfriend? Yes—and pigs fly airplanes! No, I didn’t! No, I didn’t, Mr. Timmy Sullivan! Of course not! But Scott Buglass did! Oh yes! Mr. Big Scott Buglass all the way from England! ‘Ello, dahlin’!”

  Timmy scratched the back of his ear absentmindedly.

  “Ah, come on now, Pat,” he pleaded reasonably, “stop it. Have a pint of something there and forget all about it like a good fellow, will you?”

  Pat’s reply squeezed itself through a sturdy fencing of firmly clenched teeth.

  “Oh yes! Have a pint of something and forget all about it! Forget that it ever happened! Forget that Mr. Big-Time Scott Buglass ever came walking down the street in his stupid hipsters and Beatle boots—get out of my way! Well, I won’t, you see, Timmy! Just because you thought he was all it! And I know you did—don’t deny it, Timmy!! Just like the rest of them around here—oh look, he’s from England! Ha ha—well I showed him! I showed him! Why, all of a sudden Mr. Smart Alec London Town didn’t seem to be top of the pops anymore!”

  Timmy rubbed his eye directly above his left eyebrow. His expression seemed pained.

  “Pat—would you not have that pint? I’ll pull you a fresh one. That’s what I’ll do, pull you a fresh one right here and now. You and your lemonades!”

  “A pint! What would you do that for? What would you want to go and do a thing like that for? After all, Timmy—I’m the big-time major criminal! Public Enemy number one who called Sergeant Foley—the fuzz! Woo, like I mean—wow! How about giving me the electric chair!”

  “The fuzz?” gasped Timmy, paling again. “Sure you never called him that in your life, Pat. Pat—where are you going? Come back here out of that and have this pint, for the love of God! Who cares what happened back in the sixties! That’s all over and done with, Pat!”

  Timmy shook his head exasperatedly. “Pat!” he called.

  But it was too late. All Timmy heard as he settled the pint on the counter were the uncompromising, icy words, “Good night, barman.” To which the only response he could think of making as he sighed wearily was, “Ah! I just don’t get it! Sometimes I feel like giving up and that’s a fact!”

  It was a Pat McNab in a supreme state of agitation who found himself rooting about in various drawers some hours later in the library, repeating hotly to himself, “Oh yes! People come to your town! They come all the way from London and say, ‘Sorry! From now on this is our town! Good-bye now! Have a good time!’#x201D;

  It was at that moment the photograph he had been searching for magically appeared in his hand. It depicted a group of mop-haired youths arrayed in paisley shirts and assorted necklaces, thumbs arrogantly hooked in the waistbands of flared trousers. A single Figure, the sight of which had the effect of making Pat tremble violently, attained prominence in the foreground, as if by sheer force of will. The entire town seemed to be reflected in the lenses of this person’s sunglasses. Pat found himself hissing with a bitterness he would scarcely have believed possible.

  “No! London isn’t good enough for some people!” he bawled. “They want you to give them your town as well! Isn’t that right, Mr. Buglass? Right, Mr. Scott? O but of course it is—after all, you’re top of the pops! You’re the six-five special! You always were! Mr. C-C-C-Carnaby Street—yeah! Yeah!”

  Pat’s voice was very loud as he snapped the framed photograph across his knee. But there was no mistaking the sorrowful tremor in it as he cried, “Why couldn’t you stay in London? If you had stayed in London, everything would have been all right!”

  The torn fragments of the photo seemed to magically piece themselves together now before him as the pain in his head beat like a hammer on an anvil. “Ha ha!” he found himself laughing as he wiped his moist eyes with his sleeve. “Ha ha, Mr. Buglass Clicky Clicky Big Club King!” And it was as though, right there in the modest surroundings of his own kitchen, he found himself magically transported to the psychedelic shack (the town youth club in reality) where the Scott Buglass Four had just taken the stage in glorious living Technicolor! “It’s absurd!” he laughed, adding, “But then it always has been!”

  What a load of rubbish Buglass the idiot was blathering along with clanging guitar! (It was a red one.) It went something like:

  If you said to me

  That you’d rather be free

  If you had stayed all night

  And not gone outta sight

  Darlin ‘ what it would have meant to me-ee-ee! To me! Oo—ee!

  Pat felt like throwing himself to the floor and pounding the lino with his fists, howling uncontrollably with laughter. But he couldn’t, could he, no, because it was the sixties, wasn’t it, and he was there dressed up in his clodhopper country trousers and Scott was sporting his candy-striped Brian Jones-style jacket. “Oo excuse me!” Pat felt like shouting. But if he had, of course, Scott wouldn’t have heard him. How could he? He was much too busy nodding and filling five—five!—stupid women with lies and more lies about London and all the clubs he had played in there. Which was why Pat slunk off home. Not that it made any difference what he did, for what might be called “The Scott Buglass Saga” was only beginning.

  A lot of people might say—indeed did—that Pat McNab had wanted to be Scott Buglass all along, and that this explained why he spent long hours outside the Genoa Café staring in at the English visitor who amused himself by drawing deep on a striped straw and animatedly relating a story to yet another assembly of female admirers. Some even went further to suggest that he was “in love” with him. And at that time, if he had overheard or otherwise become aware of such assertions, it would not have bothered Pat, not in the slightest would it have bothered him, for he knew in his heart the absurdity of such a claim. He would just lie back on the bed—a gaily colored silk scarf knotted about his head and in his hands a beautifully sculpted Fender Stratocaster completely fashioned from air. Its feedback howling as the young aspirant guitar player from Gullytown squealed, “If you had said to me that you wanted to be free …”

  A stanza which rarely reached completion, the bedroom door, as a rule, bursting open and his mother—literally trembling with fury—standing before him.

  “I thought I heard something!” she would snap. “What in the name of all that’s Christian do you think you’re doing? And is that my scarf?”

  In an instant it would be torn from his head.

  “Standing in front of the mirror like you did jobbies in your trousers! Did you? I hope you didn’t!”

  “No, Mammy!” would be Pat’s weak reply.

  “For it’s time that quit! You’re old enough now for me not to be running after you with the likes of
that! Now go on out of there and get your compositions done!”

  But Pat, despite his best intentions, completed no compositions on such occasions. All he succeeded in doing on those beautiful summer’s evenings as the golden light came spilling onto his blue-lined jotter was inscribing the name Scott Buglass close on eight hundred times into his jotter. And thinking to himself how his mother, despite being the most beautiful mother in the world, just didn’t understand. Not in the way Scott Buglass’s mother would have, he thought, and at once was ashamed. But could not prevent himself visualizing the scene, Scott working out a tune at the piano in the fragrant parlor, his mummy standing in the doorway whispering mischievously: “Scotty! I hope you haven’t done jobbies in your trousers!” as they both chuckled and chortled more like two old friends than son and mother. A black cloud of melancholy settled on Pat that night after he thought that thought.

  As it did the afternoon he stood, on the far side of McConkey’s hedge, staring at a pair of hipsters suspended from the line. Hipsters that belonged to Scott Buglass. Knowing in his heart that Scott’s, even if he had done jobbies—such a consideration being in fact laughable, as he well knew—would inevitably have been so much better than his, jobbies which slid snootily down cool snug hipsters as opposed to tumbling haplessly down baggy frieze britches born for bocketly country legs.

  For the truth is that even from his earliest years Pat had always thought too much—in a hopeless endeavor, perhaps, to create some alternative realities, luxuriating in them to such an extent that he could not see that they might eventually prove harmful, if not effectively engineer his undoing. Which was why he made not the slightest reply of surprise when the “chick”—who did not exist, of course!—appraised her autograph book and, to her delight, found his name inscribed in copperplate within.

  “Oh, Pat!” she cried. “This is fantastic! When are you and the band playing again? I can’t wait!”