Emerald Germs of Ireland Read Online Free PDF

the time I’m finished with you, they’ll all want to be Pat McNab! Instead of being a poor wee gom with the whole place laughing at you, the way she had you growing up!”
    “It’s not true, Mrs. Tubridy!” cried Pat pitifully. “She had not!”
    “‘It’s not true! It’s not true!‘” sneered Mrs. Tubridy. “Sure didn’t I see you going to school with my own two eyes, and a shirt on you like a girl and a wee wine tie with elastic on it. And them all falling about the place like Duffy’s circus had come to town!”
    Pat was aware that he was beginning to choke now as he said, “It’s not true! They were not!”
    But Mrs. Tubridy had not yet concluded.
    “And the little ankle socks,” she continued, “the litde ankle socks she put on you! Is it any wonder they’d call you names and make a cod of you! Is it?”
    “They didn’t!” shrieked Pat. “They didn’t make a cod of me!”
    “They did, Pat. They did, and you know it! Every day you walked that street, they had a new name for you. And that’s why you were miserable. That’s why sometimes you even wanted to die. Because of her.”
    “No, Mrs. Tubridy!” cried Pat, almost pleadingly. “You’ve got it all wrong!”
    There was something shocking now in Mrs. Tubridy’s equanimity.
    “I haven’t, Pat,” she said, “and the other person in this room knows it.”
    The light of the moon glittered for a long time in Pat’s subsequent tears as his head forced its way toward her breast and she stroked his head as many times before.
    “It’s going to be all right, Pat,” her soothing voice continued. “From now on, it’s going to be all right. Just so long as you remember that from now on you’re mine.”
    She paused and inserted her litde finger into his ear.
    “You’ll be just like my litde Paudgeen. You understand, don’t you, Pat?”
    Pat nodded. This time he didn’t say, “Yes, Mrs. Tubridy.”
    He knew she understood.
    “I don’t blame you for doing what you did, Pat. Nobody would. She should have cared more. She just should have cared more.”
    Throughout the following hours, the sobs of Pat McNab were pitiful as he found himself slipping away. As indeed did Mrs. Tubridy, to the hospital of a dream which seemed at once so strange and yet bewilderingly familiar. What appeared to be a younger—and startlingly attractive version of herself, sans head scarf—was sitting up in bed, clearly anxiously awaiting someone or something. It was only some moments before a grave young doctor arrived in his white coat.
    “How is my baby?” the young Mrs. Tubridy cried. “How is my little baby?”
    Tonelessly, the doctor replied, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Tubridy.”
    The screams of that young woman, in a hospital of long ago—they just cannot be described. And go a long way toward explaining why exactly it was that within that dream Mr. Tubridy was to be found surrounded by a seemingly endless array of bottles and completely enshrouded in cigarette smoke, as Timmy Sullivan did his best to attract his attention, repeatedly insisting, “Mr. Tubridy! There’s a phone call for you! It’s about your son!”
    Which succeeded only in eliciting the gruff reply, “What are you talking about? Give me another drink! What do I care about sons!”
    As, far away at the other end of town, in a spodess but clinically spartan maternity ward, a heartbreak was borne alone.
    Pat, approximately one week later, and in the middle of preparing the dinner—Brussels sprouts and fish—was shocked when he looked up to see Mrs. Tubridy, fresh from town, bearing in her arms a large brown parcel and uttering the words, “Wait till you see what I have for you!” Barely a few moments later, equally shocked, perhaps—although embarrassed is probably much more apt in the circumstances—to find himself attired from head to foot in a white shirt, black tie, and spotless white lounge jacket, with Mrs. Tubridy proud as punch extravagant with her compliments as she