Emerald Germs of Ireland (8 page)

“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 lug 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?”

The sound of Pat’s swallowing seemed unnaturally loud to him. The solicitor, however, gave no indication whatever of noticing it.

“What?” Pat responded, with an urgency that was quite unnecessary. “Oh—she’s gone to America. She says the hot weather’ll be good for her veins.”

“I see,” the solicitor replied and went to the window to stand there staring out with his hands behind his back. “Ah yes,” he went on, contemplating the irregular-shaped roofs of the town, “memories. They can be a heavy burden sometimes.”

There was an unmistakable hint of melancholy in Pat’s eyes. He found himself suddenly declaring, “Sometimes, Mr. Kidwell, I think of us going out the road—down the lane from the house and off out the road to gather pussyfoots.”

The solicitor turned from the window. His countenance bore a look of puzzlement as he stroked his chin.

“Gather what, Pat?” he said.

“Pussyfoots,” his client replied. “That’s what she used to call them.”

A smile of recognition began to manifest itself on the young solicitor’s face.

“Ah yes!” he declared. “The catkins! The catkins of spring! Didn’t I used to collect the litde buggers myself!”

Pat lowered his head as though in disappointment.

“Don’t call them that, Mr. Kidwell,” Pat pleaded softly. “I’d rather you didn’t call them that.”

Mr. Kidwell knitted his brow.

“Call them what, Pat?” he asked earnestly. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Little buggers,” Pat replied. “It’s just that it sounds—well, disrespectful, quite frankly.”

The solicitor’s cheek jerked.

“What?” he gasped, then modified his tone to say: “Ha ha. Yes. Why, of course it does! I’m sorry, Pat.”

He rested his hand on his client’s shoulder.

“I shouldn’t have,” he murmured apologetically.

“It’s all right, Mr. Kidwell,” Pat said. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now anyway. Now that the memories are gone. And the house.”

The solicitor was seated once more.

“No matter, Pat!” he said, donning his spectacles. “I’m sure you’ll be able to start a new life for yourself. Start all over again with the money you get from Mr. McGaw. Who’s going to be pleased, don’t you think? Now that everything’s worked out so well. Don’t you think he’ll be pleased, Pat?”

It was as though Pat’s face had been mysteriously transmogrified into a blank sheet of canvas. As, without a single, identifiable trace of emotion, he responded, “Yes. I’m quite sure he’ll be delighted, Mr. Kidwell.”

There can be no doubt but that the chill wind which appeared to disturb the shutters of the solicitor’s office window found its source in the arctic stillness that formed the “inscape” of the gaze of Pat McNab.

At three o’clock exactly the following day, the telephone rang in the McNab residence and Pat removed the receiver from its cradle to hear a familiar voice uttering the following words in clearly delighted tones, “Absolutely over the moon, Pat! Sure the likes of you and me shouldn’t be fighting! Didn’t your mother know my mother! Jasus, Pat, this is great news! And do you know what—just for being so dacent, I’m prepared to throw in another fifty pound! What do you think of that, eh? Another fifty pound—free gratis and for nothing! What do you say, Pat? And I’ll bring it over this very evening—along with a bottle of the best phwishkey! What do you say to that, eh?”

In an unconscious gesture, Pat pressed his closed fist to his lips and coughed in a polite, almost feminine manner. “Bring the sheep too,” he said into the receiver.

There was a pause.

“What was that, Pat?” was Bat McGaw’s reply.

“Bring the sheep too, will you, Mr. McGaw?” continued Pat softly. “You might as well move in now as later. Sure, aren’t the sheds lying there idle? Especially the big haybarn.”

For a fraction of a second, Bat stammered a litde.

“What’s that, Pat?” he said. “Are you sure? God, but that’s very decent of you! And it just so happens I had two dozen come in this morning on the lorry! Thanks, Pat, I will! I’ll bring them over and the pair of us will drink till cock crow! Just like old pals! Like frigging old pals, you and me, Pat! Yes sir!”

Not a flicker of emotion registered itself on the face of Pat McNab as into the receiver he piped: “Like old pals, Mr. McGaw! Old frigging pals!”