Emerald Germs of Ireland

by Patrick McCabe

  “No, I didn’t,” she said, flicking at her eyelash with her index finger and adding, “I don’t use Pond’s anyway.”

  Mary made a clicking sound with her tongue but remained quite firm, if not obdurate indeed.

  “Well, it’s gone,” she said, “I can’t find it anywhere and I want it. I have to do my face.”

  “Hey—listen to this!” Jo cried abruptly. “‘In California a woman married to a man for thirty years discovered that he had been a woman all along! Mrs. Ellen Mankiewicz, of Twenty-two Sycamore, Berkeley, was shocked to discover that her husband, Errol, had all of their married life been harboring a sinister secret…’”

  Mary stamped her satin-encased foot.

  “Am I talking to myself here or what?” she demanded to know. “Where is my Pond’s, I said!”

  Ann swung in her chair and blurted: “We don’t know anything about your Pond’s! Listen, Mary—do you mind! I am trying to listen to what Jo is saying!”

  Jo continued: “Ha ha! Listen to this, Ann! ‘And then, to her amazement, discovered that the person whose bed she had shared for so long, was in fact a—’”

  There was a new iciness in Mary’s voice as she barked, “And what, may I ask, do you call this?”

  In her hand, like a small white Indian temple, sat a jar of cold cream labeled: POND’S.

  The moment seemed to shudder between them until, at last, Jo snapped, “Oh, why don’t you leave us alone, Mary, you and your stupid old cold cream! Fat lot of good it’ll do you, anyway! Ha ha!”

  Her mocking, needling laughter was boisterously augmented by Ann.

  “Ha ha!” they cried in unison. “Ha ha!”

  Mary sucked in her cheeks and drew her quilted arms more tightly about her.

  “And just what is that supposed to mean?” she frostily enquired, continuing, “Are you listening to me? I said—just what is that supposed to mean?”

  Jo looked at Ann. Ann looked at Jo. Jo was the first to speak.

  “Nothing, Mary,” she said, with a hint of irritation. “It was just a joke. Wasn’t it, Ann?”

  Ann nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Jo—read out some more, will you? Is there more? What does it say about his—”

  But before she could finish, Mary had stormed out of the room, slamming the door loudly behind her.

  It was after midnight when Jo turned over on her side and whispered to Ann in the bed beside her, “Ann?”

  “Mm,” Ann responded sleepily.

  “Do you think it’s strange?”

  “What, Jo?” Ann responded.

  “Mrs. Mankiewicz,” continued Jo, “being married to someone all that time and not knowing. Not knowing—you know …”

  Ann touched her lips with her tongue and replied drowsily, “Yes—it is strange, isn’t it?”

  Jo pulled the bedcovers tighter to her breast and frowned.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said. Outside the moon was fat and full in a corner of the window. Suddenly a thought struck Ann and she said, “Jo—do you think it could ever happen to one of us?”

  “What?” replied her companion.

  “Marry a man—and then discover he’s a woman!”

  In her imagination, an arrowhead of fear went speeding past Jo’s eyes.

  “Oh God! I couldn’t bear it!” she said.

  Far off across the town, a dog barked (Towser McGarry, in fact) and Ann, now troublingly awake, said, “Sometimes I worry, Jo. Because, I mean—we don’t know that much about it, do we? When all you see are girls, you don’t really know what men are like, do you? What it might be like to—”

  “Ann?” Jo said.

  “Hmmph?” came the reply.

  “I don’t like to be talking but—you know Mary?”

  “Yes?” Ann whispered anxiously.

  “You remember the time her tights went missing? Around last November?”

  “Yes,” Ann nodded, “I remember that.”

  “Do you know what she said to me?”

  “What? What did she say?”

  There was a pause, then Jo said—with some reluctance, “She said that you took them. ‘Ann took them,’ she said.”

  You could hear the dry clacks of Ann’s tongue against the roof of her mouth. Large shadows moved across the ceiling of the room.

  “She said I took them?” gasped Ann.

  “Yes. You stole them from her room, she said.”

  Suddenly Ann hissed: “The cow! I did not!”

  “And that’s not all she said,” continued Jo. “She said the reason you did it was that couldn’t afford to buy your own.”

  Ann clenched her fists.

  “I’ll kill her!” she snapped.

  “Couldn’t afford them because your father was just an old farmer,” continued Jo, “that him and his tinker’s trousers were the talk of Bannion!”

  Ann was close to tears as she hissed: “Oh, the bitch! I’ll kill her! I swear I will!”

  Jo coughed politely and said: “I wouldn’t have mentioned it only she came in here tonight narking about Pond’s.”

  “I’ll give her Pond’s, the snot-bag!” snarled Ann. “Blaming me!”

  Jo coughed softly again and said: “Do you know what I think, Ann?”

  “What?” Ann croaked happily.

  “I think she’s jealous of us!”

  There was no mistaking the thin line that Ann’s lips had become as she lay there bathed in the milky moonlight, or the resentment within her that had stiffened every muscle and drawn both, as friends, so tightly together.

  It was morning and Mary was as busy as a bee in her gingham apron. Pat and Jo and Ann were seated at the table with the Delft and cutlery neatly laid out before them as Mary turned and, smiling, said to Pat, “Pat—would you like another rasher?” without hesitation adding, “Of course you will!”

  Pat smiled bashfully and looked at his hands cradled in his lap as she forked the crispy rasher onto his plate. Mary was already on her way back to the cooker when Pat, to his horror, found Ann’s hand resting upon his, gently prizing his fingers apart and lacing them with her own. The net result of which was that he almost choked on the rasher.

  “Are you all right, Pat?” enquired Mary, deftly flicking the fish slice.

  “Yes, he’s fine!” replied Ann chirpily, nibbling on a piece of toast and exchanging glances with Jo, without releasing her grip on Pat’s (clammy) hand.

  They had all been watching The Riordans on television and now it was over. It was approximately ten o’clock. Pat was sitting by the fire sipping a mug of tea, Jo had her legs tucked underneath her bottom, reading a magazine, and Ann was sewing, her lips pursed as she intermittently cast her eyes about the shadow-flickering room (they had built a big fire).

  “Is there enough sugar in it, Pat?” Mary said then as she smiled over at him.

  Jo coughed and, adjusting her legs, said: “Were you down the town today, Mary?”

  “Yes, I was,” replied Mary, momentarily distracted, “I was in Mullaney’s. I bought a new petticoat.”

  The very mention of the word was enough to result in Pat covering himself in a cascade of hot tea. If she noticed, Jo gave no indication of it

  “Oh—did you?” she went on. “What color was it?”

  “Green,” replied Mary.

  It was impossible to decipher Ann’s remark, her intonation being so muted. It was, however, “Green! Like her teeth!” And, at which, Jo erupted into a bout of laughter which she attempted to stifle with her hand. Pat’s cheeks were afire.

  “They say there’s going to be rain,” he unexpectedly declared. In the ensuing silence, he continued to feel tiny hot hammers beating with a dead insistence as though deep within some blast furnace of flesh.

  Later that night—the hands of the clock showed 2:00 A.M.—Pat was adrift in the borderlands of sleep when there came a knock to his door. He felt very warm and his throat was dry again. An uncomfortable, rasping dryness, as that of a fever.

 
“Come in,” he said, having to repeat the phrase, as it was inaudible. “Come in!”

  A shaft of moonlight illuminated Mary in the doorway, her green petticoat flaring lacily out from her waist, making the tiniest of soft whispering sounds. Her small feet made no sound at all as she moved across the bedroom floor. Soon she was seated on the edge of Pat’s bed, her manicured hands as mating doves in the verdant hammock of her lap.

  “Pat?” she murmured softly. “Can I come in?”

  “Mary—of course you can,” replied Pat, adding rather incongruously. “You already are in.”

  “Pat,” continued his visitor hesitantly, “you know when we came here first we were real cheeky and you didn’t want us to stay. And the way we acted like we owned the place—”

  “Yes,” Pat answered, anxiety invading his eyes.

  “Pat—I want you to know something. It isn’t like that now. I want you to know that I’m ashamed of all that. It’s just that we didn’t know how to behave with men around and we got giddy, sort of—Pat, did something ever happen to you that you couldn’t understand?”

  Pat’s Adam’s apple felt as though it had enlarged to the size of a large golf or tennis ball.

  “Something you couldn’t understand? Like what, for example?” he asked, doing his best to squeeze the words out.

  Mary laced her fingers and looked down at them, as though not entirely convinced she would find them there.

  “Pat—did anyone ever tell you have beautiful eyes?”

  “Mammy used to,” choked Pat. “She used to say it all the time.”

  Mary’s eyelids dropped then rose again.

  “Pat,” she went on, “did you ever think what it would be like—if we had this place—this house—all to ourselves? Just you and me.”

  “Just you and me?” gulped Pat, looking up in amazement to find her full, sensuous lips adjacent to his.

  “Yes,” she said, “like man and wife. Like the happiest man and wife who ever lived.”

  A swooshing sensation overcame Pat—as if he were being airlifted out over the roofs and houses and steeples of Gullytown and piloted into the very heart of the vast and limitless cosmos itself.

  It was 3:00 P.M. two days later. Jo and Ann were furious in the hallway with their suitcases. Mary in her apron stood behind Pat. Jo was the first to speak or, perhaps more accurately, seethe. “Oh—we know all!” she snapped at Mary. “Mrs. Green Petticoat with her Pond’s cream!” Then, to Pat, “But you’ll soon learn, mister! Wait till she gets her claws into you! You’ll know all about it then! Everybody in the hospital hates her! We only pal around with her because we took pity on her!”

  “Bocketly Arse!” continued Jo. “Here she comes now—Bocketly Arse! That’s what everybody says!”

  “I’m sorry, girls,” Pat protested weakly, “I—”

  “Oh, you needn’t be sorry, mister!” snapped Ann. “For you’ll be sorry soon enough, don’t you worry!”

  Her parting shot was a repeat of her admonition, “You’ll be sorry soon enough,” ringing in Pat’s ears as she pulled the door behind her.

  The silence which followed the departure of Jo and Ann might accurately be described as “cavernous.” But this was, however, only for a short time, as Pat and Mary became acclimatized to their new situation. And by the time they sat down to dinner that evening, it had almost entirely dissipated. As Mary raised her glass of wine to her lips, she fluttered her eyelashes slightly and said to her host, “I never thought this would happen to me, Pat.”

  Pat broke a piece of garlic bread as a smile jerked elastically to one side of his mouth.

  “Me neither,” he croaked.

  “Would you like some more Pavlov?” asked Mary.

  “Yes, please,” replied Pat as she spooned it onto his plate, noticing that a small blob of hollandaise sauce had lodged itself on his sleeve. The spoon fell resonantly to the floor.

  “Pat!” she cried unexpectedly. “Look at you! God, sometimes you can be so clumsy! Get out there and clean that off!”

  Her index finger was horizontal and stiff as it indicated the kitchen.

  “What? I’m sorry,” stammered Pat, confused.

  Mary bent her knees and retrieved the spoon.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said curtly as Pat left the table, knocking over some knives as he did so.

  The following afternoon, Pat was in his working clothes busying himself in the yard with his graip (a three-pronged farming implement). Mary appeared at the back door with her handbag and said, “I should be back around twelve. Make sure you have all that dung cleaned up when I get back. God, how you could bear to live in these conditions! See you then, pet!”

  As Mary’s heels clacked off down the lane in the direction of the main road, litde did she know that close by, behind a hedge, two sets of eyes were fixed as rivets upon her back.

  “There she goes!” hissed Jo.

  “Ssh!” replied Ann.

  Not long afterward, Pat was inside sitting at the table availing himself of a “cigarette break” when he looked up and there, to his astonishment, beheld both Jo and Ann staring down at him, both also smoking cigarettes. The curling smoke seemed to take an age to make its journey to the ceiling as did their extending smiles before they could be called complete. It was the painful endurance of this leadenly passing time that inexplicably preoccupied Pat and caused him to jump when, together, they burst into song!

  “There are two lovely lassies in Bannion!” they sang as one.

  “Bannion!” cried Ann.

  “Ah, Bannion!” responded Jo.

  There are two lovely lassies in Bannion

  And we are the best of them all!

  Ah, we are the best of them all!

  Pat trembled as Jo slid onto his knee and flung her arms around his neck.

  “Come on now, Pat!” she yelped. “Give us a song, you litde divil you!” as Ann crinkled up her nose and raked her long, slender fingers through his hair, squealing (or pretending to squeal), “Let’s have a look at you, you bold litde rascal you!”

  A very short time later, Pat found himself in the bedroom staring in mute amazement as Jo amused herself blowing smoke rings as she lay back upon the bed, attired in a green petticoat, mimicking cruely, “Oh! I’m going to be a staff nurse! Oh, I’m going to be this! Oh, I’m going to be that! Why, of course I am! Because my name’s Mary! My name’s Mary and I’m the best of the lot! Oh, but where is my face cream? Where oh where is my precious Pond’s, I wonder?”

  Pat edged tentatively toward the door, his mind hot and confused and a maze of interlocking contradictions, his hand curling about the handle as Ann cried, viciously, stabbing the air with her finger, “Get back on that bed you, this instant, till I tear the trunks off you!”

  The sound of their squeals was now becoming unbearable. Pat found himself trapped beneath their bodies (they had literally fallen upon him!) as they set about putting their “plan” into action when downstairs, a familiar voice rang out, “Yoo hoo! Pat! I’m home!”

  The spectacle that was Pat McNab as those words echoed throughout the vast old house was a sorry one indeed, the apposite epithet perhaps being “burlesque” as he stumbled, jesterlike, across the floor, the twin legs of the nylon tights which his powdered assailants had applied to his head swinging preposterously as he spluttered through the lopsided slash of lipstick, his countenance that of a pantomime-style specter with its liberal coating of Pond’s Cold Cream.

  “Oh look!” cried Ann. “What a lovely lassie! I do declare!”

  “There is one lovely lassie in Bannion,” chirped Jo.

  “Bannion!” answered Ann.

  “Ah, Bannion!” chuckled Jo, exuberantly.

  “There is one lovely lassie in Bannion,” they sang together, squealing, “and Pat is the best of them all!”

  Through his Lycra and net cage, all Pat could hear was the taunting valediction, “Totty-bye then, honeybun!” as the curtains fluttered, the door swinging open at that pre
cise moment, and Mary’s horrified scream swooping out into the shocked soft twilight that now touched the roofs of Gullytown.

  As might be explained, nothing was ever quite the same after that. The days went by with the leaden sullenness of deep-sea divers’ boots, as Mary sewed in the corner, intermittently snapping, “And when you’ve that sweeping done, you can do the washing! Do you hear me? Leave the digging to me, for the like of that washing’s all you’re good for!”

  A quavering melancholy subsequently took hold of Pat, its origins not simply in the fact that she refused to understand, but also in her unwillingness to desist from her taunts. Had she been capable of that, even an approximation thereof, he would reflect in quiet moments (when she left him alone, which was rarely enough), events might have taken a different turn.

  “What I can’t understand,” she hissed one day as he hung out the washing, “what I can’t understand is your letting them do it to you! Two girls! How can you bear to look at yourself in the mirror, Pat McNab?”

  “Perhaps if she had left Mammy out of it,” Pat murmured to himself that evening when she had at last gone to town, “maybe there might have been hope. But no—she had to do it. She couldn’t leave her out of it, could she? Someone who had nothing to do with it. Nothing in the wide world.”

  The enure house seemed to shrink before his eyes to the size of a handful of dust, a thimbleful of unbearable sadness.

  Later that night, sitting in the chair by the fire, Pat felt her long sharp fingers moving through his hair, stroking it slowly and softly and tenderly. There was a strange quality in her voice, he thought, as she said, as though she’d been thinking about it: “It was her made you like that, wasn’t it, Pat—your mammy? Never mind those two cows. It was her really, wasn’t it? She did it to you. Mm, Pat?”

  A wave of shame engulfed Pat as he lowered his head and replied, “Yes, Mary.”

  He could feel her nodding above him as she said, her fingers dekling the back of his neck. “I know,” he heard her say. “Well, Pat—you needn’t worry for much longer. I’ll be leaving you soon. And you can forget all about us. It’ll be like we were never here. Me—or those two other turncoats! Myself and those two other—bitches! Isn’t that right, Pat?”