“Good idea,” Corrigan mumbled—he wasn’t looking especially bright-eyed and spiffy, just at that moment, himself. “There’s going to be a party later, up at the house.”
Evelyn shook her head dismally. “I’m not going to survive this.”
“We’re away,” Corrigan announced to everyone. “Got to get a few hours’ sleep. Have fun. We’ll catch you later, okay?”
“Would you get that? He can’t wait.”
Ribald jeers and catcalls, mainly from the male company present.
“Tch, tch. What’s the world coming to, at all?”
“Not an ounce of decency in the man.”
“Will you give over?” Corrigan protested. “We’ve not even unpacked yet.”
“Well, while you’re at it you can unpack this as well.” Jeff, one of the cousins, handed Corrigan a gift-wrapped box. Corrigan tore off the paper and added it to the pile of gifts and wrappings that had accumulated on the table, and opened the box. Inside was a figurine of a grinning Irish leprechaun, sporting a high hat and puffing a pipe. “To take back with ye’s and remind you of us,” the cousin said.
“It’ll do that, all right, Jeff,” Corrigan said. “Sure, it even looks like you.”
“He needs a name,” one of the women called out. “You have to give him a name, Joe.”
Corrigan looked around him. “Ah, what else is he but a Mick, of course? We’ll call him Mick.”
Mick moved over and stared down approvingly at his namesake. “He looks happy enough to be a Mick,” he agreed.
One of the men across the table started to sing, “When Irish eyes are smiling . . .” He looked at Corrigan and raised a hand invitingly for him to take it from there.
Corrigan couldn’t. He was too exhausted, and the drink was hitting him the wrong way . . . and besides, he didn’t remember the words. Then Marvin Minsky’s line came to him, from the day when Corrigan and Evelyn had visited Boston. Grinning faces on every side waited for him to continue the song. He tossed up a hand, acknowledging defeat, and grinned.
“You’ve probably just been ripped off. . . .”
Chapter Twenty-one
Corrigan sometimes said that Europeans had exported Puritanism and the work ethic to America in order to be rid of both, and then get back to the business of enjoying life. The Christmas week that followed became one long round of eating, drinking, dancing, and more drinking, that persisted through into the New Year. By custom, annual holidays east of the Atlantic tended to be generous, and most people saved a healthy portion of them for the year’s end. It seemed that nobody was at work who didn’t have to be, and Evelyn lost track of the homes that were visited, and the pubs and hotel lounges sampled in the annual tribal loyalty-reaffirmation rites. Like many visitors to Ireland, she had a feeling of rediscovering the basics of simple warmth and spontaneous familiarity that can be too easily forgotten when pursuit of wealth and what passes for success becomes obsessive. Even allowing that she was being a bit romantic and impractical for the modern world, she suspended her disbelief willingly and delighted in fond reconstructions of bygone times, doubtless illusory, sparkling with wisdom and elegance that had probably never existed; but, after all, wasn’t this supposed to be the most romantic time of her life?
What marred it a little was Corrigan saying scoffingly that she sounded like a tourist. For him this was just a break. He was becoming impatient to get back to the arena. Americans, it was often said—especially those with Irish roots that were imaginary—could be more Irish than the Irish. It was sometimes true the other way around, too. Mick was not a lot of help in sustaining her romantic images of unsullied Irish charm and simplicity, either.
One evening in one of the seafront hotels, the customers sitting around the lounge began taking it in turns to sing solo. Every one of them seemed to have a party piece, which the rest would listen to appreciatively and applaud loudly—a far cry from dingy downtown bars where people went to get drunk, laid, or lost in anonymity. At one point, Evelyn felt her eyes misting as she listened to a wistful, soaring tenor voice evoking visions of homey farm cottages and green hillsides swept with rain.