Page 3 of Dublin Debacle

She took a deep breath and continued the saga. “Nevertheless, my father stayed to help his ailing mother. She had, after all, been responsible for getting him out of Ireland to discover a whole free world beyond the stormy coastline of this island.”

“So, you were born here,” the Yank concluded.

“Aye. A year passed and another. Before they knew it, my parents had been here ten years. My grandmother passed, my brother was born and a new, more radical, leader emerged among the Travellers. He sent his minions out to bring the outliers, like my father, back into the fold. The Travellers urged my father to rejoin his gypsy family.”

“More like threatened his life and limbs if he didn’t.” Daphne, the fiery redhead, Emily’s friend and the only barmaid for the evening, plunked a large round tray filled with empties on the counter beside the Yank. “Don’t gloss over the truth.” She lifted her chin toward Emily. “They threatened your father with bodily harm if he didn’t pay his tithe to the family. When her father refused, they threatened to harm Emily’s mother, Emily and Finn, her little brother.”

“That’s a rough crowd,” the Yank said.

Daphne nodded. “Enough to send Katie scurrying back to the States with her chicks under her wing.” She gave Emily her orders to fill and hurried around the bar to clean off the tray, preparing it for the next round of drinks.

Anyone who’d been around the Tap and Tankard Pub for long knew the O’Brien’s story. Emily was happy to let Daphne tell the tale. She’d grown tired of having it rehashed by the regulars whenever a newcomer stumbled on the pub and dug into its history.

The two women worked in harmony, cleaning and filling glasses. Emily didn’t know what she would have done if Daphne hadn’t answered her ad for help when she had. The woman worked harder than most men, especially Irish men who seemed more intent on telling stories, getting drunk and picking fights than actually working for a living.

Emily had to admit she didn’t get away from the pub often enough to form any other opinion. Living in the flat over the bar didn’t help. Other than Daphne, she hadn’t established many friends since she’d been back. Since her father had passed, her only friends were Uncle Paddy and Daphne.

“Are the Travellers still putting pressure on your family?” the Yank asked.

Emily shrugged. “From time to time. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have work. My customers can get testy when I withhold their beer.”

“I’d like to hear the rest of the story,” the stranger said. “Like how you ended up back in Ireland?”

“It’ll have to wait. My customers won’t.” Emily loaded Daphne’s tray and took up an empty one for herself. Daphne took off in one direction, and Emily came out from around the bar and headed in the opposite direction. She waded through the tables collecting empty glasses, bottles and snack bowls, taking new orders as she went. When she returned to the bar, she tossed the beer bottles into a bin and stacked the glasses in the dishwasher. Within seconds, the tray was empty. Daphne arrived back at the bar with another full tray of empties and a long list of orders.

For the next fifteen minutes, Emily focused on filling the orders for her tables and Daphne’s. Pour drinks, serve and clean. Rinse and repeat many times each night. Emily could almost perform the tasks from rote memory. Maybe even with her eyes closed. She didn’t mind the work.

Once both trays had been emptied and refilled, the two women lifted heavily laden trays onto their shoulders and marched out among the tables again.

Emily had only served half the drinks on her tray when the front door of the pub slammed open and her Uncle Paddy burst through, his brow heavily furrowed and his mouth set in a grim line.

She was in the midst of depositing a pint of beer in front of one of her customers when her Uncle Paddy whisked past her. “Uncle,” she called out, sensing all was not well. “Are you okay?” He was supposed to have been at the pub a couple of hours earlier to man the bar while she filled in for the waitress who’d called in sick.

It wasn’t unusual for Uncle Paddy to be late. The man was getting older. The younger brother of her paternal grandmother, he had only been a couple of years older than Emily’s father. They’d been inseparable before Emily’s father had gone to university in the States.

Uncle Paddy weaved through the tables toward the back of the pub. “I’m not here,” he tossed over his shoulder. “If anyone asks, you didn’t see me.”

Derek called out, “Are ye a ghost, old man?” His mate, Sean, chuckled along with a few others.

Uncle Paddy glanced over his shoulder toward the door and then ducked down the hallway that led to the office and the bathrooms.

Distracted by her uncle’s obvious distress, Emily plunked a whisky in front of the wrong customer in a hurry to empty the tray. She wanted to find out what was causing her uncle so much distress.

“I didn’t order whisky,” her customer said.

She placed the whisky back onto the tray and set a pint of beer in front of the man, her thoughts not on serving her customers but on why her uncle had raced through the bar claiming he wasn’t there. He wasn’t the most reliable relative, but then neither was her brother, Finn. Emily suspected the two were spending too much time in the company of their Traveller cousins, being brainwashed by gypsy myth and rhetoric.

Emily had tried hard to convince her brother to continue working at the pub with her. “It’s your heritage as much as it’s mine. We can make it so much more, together.” In fact, she wanted him at the bar so that she could keep a closer eye on him. Unfortunately, Finn hadn’t wanted anything to do with the pub. He’d stuck around during the years they’d been back in Ireland, but as soon as he’d turned eighteen and graduated from school, he’d chosen a laborer’s life rather than go on to university. He’d left their flat, his work at the pub and found a job on the wharfs, working as a stevedore. Emily suspected he’d left because he had no more reason to stay after... She swallowed hard, the pain still too raw.

Emily rarely saw Finn anymore. Uncle Paddy had more face time with the boy than she did. At least her uncle reported back that Finn was doing well. He’d recently found a bonny lass to keep him company. Since her brother was legally an adult, Emily had no say in where he lived or who he hung out with. She couldn’t force him to continue to work at the pub.

And why would Finn want to? It was where her father had stayed when her mother had gathered her two children and moved back to Boston. Emily had been nine and Finn one year old. They’d grown up in the suburbs of Boston, spending most of their time with their maternal grandmother while their mother worked as a nurse to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Emily had earned a scholarship to a local university and saved enough money to spend a semester abroad at Trinity College. She’d been in the middle of her senior year when her mother had contracted a dangerous form of influenza. Before she’d realized she had it, she’d brought it home to her mother. Within days, they’d both been admitted to the hospital, leaving Finn, a fifteen-year-old boy, home, fending for himself and mixing with the wrong crowd of his peers.

Concerned for her mother and grandmother, Emily left the college in the middle of the semester and returned to the States to help with her brother, while her mother and grandmother fought for their lives at the hospital.

Ultimately, they’d lost that battle. Emily had been with her mother when she’d taken her last breath. They’d allowed Emily to don protective gear to be with her. Her grandmother had died days before.

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