Страница 74 из 83
Pat picked up a plate and a glass. Perhaps he’d wait until tomorrow to make his getaway.
The fire grew higher, sending out sparks in bursts of blue, red, gold, and green. In a haze of alcohol and peat smoke, Pat thought what a neat trick it was to make it seem as if the fireworks were coming out of the center of the blaze.
There was singing and drinking and dancing and drinking and wrestling matches far into the night. Pat soon realized that he had imbibed more than he could stand. He knew this because he tried to stand and failed. He began to crawl back to the trailer, blaming his lack of stamina on the jet lag.
His eyes must be going, too. He’d hardly gone ten yards when he felt someone fall on top of him.
“Oops-a-daisy!” a lilting feminine voice giggled. “Sorry, mate! I didn’t see you down there.”
Pat muzzily looked around for the source of the body and the voice, but didn’t see anyone. Jerry must have been right. The porter in Ireland was much stronger than the kind they drank in the States. He continued on to the trailer and fell into bed.
HE awoke the next morning feeling completely disoriented. The silver curve of the ceiling gave him the impression that he was lying inside a metal ball that was rolling uphill. After several moments spent clutching the edge of his bunk to avoid falling out, he realized that it was only the wind sweeping from the ocean across the treeless land that was rocking the trailer. The door to his parents’ cubicle was ajar. Pat peeked in and found they were gone. The clock on the wall said half past ten.
As Pat dressed and boiled water for coffee, he read the program that he found on the table.
“Welcome!!! Welcome!!! Welcome Home!!!” it began.
Pat liked their enthusiasm. He skimmed down the page. It seemed that he had already missed the full Irish breakfast. The morning seemed to be taken up with seminars, not what he had expected. However, if everyone was inside listening to edifying talks, he should have no trouble creeping off.
The kettle whistled and Pat sat down again with his mug. He looked over the program more carefully.
“What the hell . . . ?” he said, reading the titles of the seminars. “ ‘How to keep your pot of gold in trying times.’ ‘Invisibility, the best defense.’ ‘Which end of the rainbow?’ ‘To jig or not to jig: fighting the stereotypes.’ ‘Making shoes that last.’ What kind of nonsense is this?”
Burning with curiosity and no little a
THE sun was begi
Inside, the building was a typical Irish shotgun house, if much larger than most. A long hallway stretched from front to back, with rooms branching out on either side. The subjects of the talks were posted on the doors. Pat first looked into the one on invisibility, but it was empty. The next room was the talk on keeping a pot of gold. This one was packed. He edged into a space near the door. No one noticed him as they were all intent on the speaker, a solemn woman with thick spectacles and a mound of white hair pulled into a bun.
“Of course,” she was saying, “apartment living makes subterranean deposits difficult. However, a well-constructed space beneath the floor-boards, preferably in a bedroom, can be used in a pinch.”
“But what about fire and thieves?” a man in the front row asked.
“We always have to worry about thieves,” the speaker told him. “As for fire, don’t they teach the protection charms anymore? Really, that should have been explained to you about the time you were weaned, young man. What is this race coming to?”
She gestured to the audience. “How many here never learned the five essential charms?”
Over half of the group raised their hands. The woman sighed. “Eithne, add that to the seminars for tomorrow. Just because you’re living away from home doesn’t mean you can go native.” She looked at the note cards in front of her. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, guarding against fluctuation in the price of gold.”
Watching the audience intent on every word, Patrick was certain he had found the secret his parents had been hiding; he came from a family of lunatics. The sooner he was out of here, the better.
He started out the open door, back into the sane sunshine, when he collided with something. He wasn’t much hurt, for it was soft.
“We meet again,” a voice said in his ear. “Is this the American idea of courtship?”
Very, very slowly, Pat turned his face in the direction of the sound.
In the sunlight something was sparkling. The bits of light gradually coalesced into the form of a woman. When he could make out her face, Pat saw that she was straining in concentration, eyes squeezed shut and her mouth tight with effort. At last she came into focus. He saw that she was about his own age, with black curls, hazel eyes, and the sun-touched skin of the Australians. She laughed at his expression.
“I know I’m not great at reappearing,” she said. “But that’s no reason to look like a dying mackerel.”
Pat closed his mouth. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m going back to my bed until I wake up.”
It had to be something in the beer. There was no other explanation. Perhaps this was some sort of CIA experiment. He probably wasn’t in Ireland at all, but strapped into a chair with electrodes stuck in his brain. Although why the government would want him to believe that beautiful Irish-Australian women could appear out of thin air was more than he could imagine.
Before he could make a move, the sound of applause signaled the end of the talks. The doors flew open and people came piling out. Patrick grabbed his father as soon as he appeared.
“You have got to tell me what’s going on!” he demanded. “Am I hallucinating or crazy? Is any of this really happening?”
Aunt Teresa appeared at his elbow. Had she been there a second before? She shook her head at Pat in disgust.
“That’s what you get for being blind drunk last night and missing the breakfast meeting,” she told him. “Eileen, it’s time you told the boy the truth. I never agreed with the way you and Michael kept him so completely in the dark.”
“Mind your own business,” Eileen shot back. “It’s not like you told your children the whole truth.”
“Well, they at least know the five charms.” Teresa went nose to nose with her sister. “You just let Patrick stuff his head with all that Celtic nonsense.”
“This is not the time,” Michael said, gently pushing the women apart. “Come along, Pat. Teresa is right for once. Your mother and I have some explaining to do.”
THEY settled back into the trailer. Eileen fussed with the tea things for a bit, making such a clatter that conversation was impossible. At last she set mugs down for each of them. Michael cleared his throat.
“You see, son,” he began. “You seemed so happy thinking you were a Celt that we didn’t want to—”
“Oh my God!” Pat interrupted. “I’m adopted!”
“Of course not,” Eileen laughed. “And you with your granddad’s nose and his mother’s own eyes. Don’t be silly.”
“It’s the O’Reilly name, Pat,” Michael continued. “We took that when we came to America. We’re Irish, right enough, but not from the Celts. Our ancestors were the Fir Bolg, who were here before the Tuatha ever landed and long before the Celts appeared.”
Patrick waited for the rest of the explanation. He knew the old stories. The Fir Bolg were the Irish defeated by the Tuatha de Dana