she fecking is! Haw haw! Ho ho!”
Patsy chorded and drew a small circle in the gravel with the toe of his boot.
“Haw haw ho ho is right!” he said. “And I’ll bet she’s given this litde gosson a few bright shillings for his lunch—would you say that’d be the case now, McGush?”
Henry McGush knitted his brow and stroked his chin slowly and contemplatively.
“I’d say she’s looked after him well in that department, Patsy, now that’s what I’d say!”
“Mm,” said Patsy, “and which he is now about to hand over to help the Patsy Traynor/Henry McGush Fund. Isn’t that right, young Pat McNab? Would I be right in saying that?”
Pat’s cheeks were florid as those of a fever victim.
“It’s all I have,” he answered in plaintive, fragile tones.
“And c’mere—how much do you think we want?” countered Patsy, lowering his voice in a significant manner. “Sure what you have is all we want! McGush—he thinks we want more! What does he think we are—greedy guts?”
Henry McGush feigned astonishment.
“Ah now, Pat,” he said, “don’t be like that! Don’t be thinking bad things about us!”
“Come on now, Pat,” went on Patsy Traynor, “fork it out there like a good lad!”
Pat inserted his right hand into the pocket of his gray serge trousers and from it removed the coins therein. Two silver shillings gleamed in his palm. Patsy Traynor’s eyes lit up like matches flaring inside his sockets.
“Ah the blessings of God and his Holy Mother on you, Pat, from your old friends Patsy and young McGush! Money for the boys for drink! And plenty of it!”
“Plenty of money for Double Diamond, Smithwick’s Ale and—”
“Phoenix, the best of all!”
“Phoenix—the bright beer!”
“The best available in the world of beer for Patsy and his old pal Henry McGush! Well—good luck now, Pat McNab. We’ve to be off now about our business! Say good-bye to us now till we quench our thirst, now there’s a lad!”
Pat’s mouth was dry as a well long forgotten in the vastest, most arid of deserts.
“Good-bye,” he choked, his voice only just audible.
An eyebrow was slowly elevated as Patsy smiled wryly and in tones of feigned hopefulness, enquired, “And maybe, do you think—one last wee twang?”
Pat swallowed and fancied his face as a bush aflame.
“Please,” he pleaded.
“Ah go on,” said Patsy, “don’t be such an auld spoilsport, Pat! Here, McGush! Give it a twang there!”
It was as though Pat’s entire body was being modulated toward a state of almost total elasticity, Henry McGush moving backward and forward on his heels, his face contorted with wickedness, the moments before he released the thin, knotted piece of cotton material which he clutched in his right hand seeming to Pat as though infinity itself.
“Pitchaow! cried McGush aloud as he released his grip and, in a blur, the wine-colored knot thudded against Pat’s Adam’s apple like a small missile careering through space. In that instant, he experienced a sense of total disorientation, a sickening, almost unbearable galactic solitude. He leaned backward against the frontage of Linencare Dry Cleaners, their departing voices as smudges, tiny specks revolving beneath him.
“Well, Pat! Must be off now! See you then!” called back the loathed Traynor.
“Double Diamond works wonders! Works wonders! Double Diamond works wonders! Works wonders it does!” chuckled Henry McGush.
“Ha ha ha!” laughed Patsy Traynor.
There was something undeniably, perhaps hopelessly, abject about Pat’s efforts to adjust his tie as his two adversaries were swallowed up by the thick warm darkness of Sullivan’s Select Bar, which was situated directly across the street. It was as though someone else had succeeded in inhabidng his body as he light-headedly began to negotiate his way homeward, knowing full well the reception which would be awaiting him when he arrived. “But why did you let them do it?” his mother would say. “Are you going to stand there all your life and let the likes of Traynor walk all over you? Well, you won’t, for I’ll go down this very minute and let him and the whole cheeky tribe of them know what I think of them! Traynors! Tramps and tinkers and twopence-halfpenny chancers!”
His pleas, he knew so well, would be in vain.
“No—please, Mammy! I beg you—don’t!” he would cry, but she would already be pulling on her coat.
“Oh yes! I’ll talk turkey to them for what they’ve done to my son! Not that it’s any wonder, mind you! With that father of his lying on top of the melodeon outside Sullivan’s every night God sends! As for the mother, if you could call her