Don’t know if I am in the Pound grave, or the Fifteen Shilling grave? Fuck them anyway if they plonked me in the Ten Shilling plot after all the warnings I gave them. The morning I died I calls Patrick in from the kitchen, “I’m begging you Patrick, I’m begging you, put me in the Pound grave, the Pound grave! I know some of us are buried in the Ten Shilling grave, but all the same …”
I tell them to get me the best coffin down in Tim’s shop. It’s a good oak coffin anyway. I am wearing the scapulars. And the winding sheet … I had them ready myself. There’s a spot on this sheet! Like a smudge of soot. No, not that. A daub of finger. Who else but my daughter-in-law! ’Tis like her dribble. Oh, my God, did Nell see it? I suppose she was there. Not if I had anything to do with it …
Look at the mess Kitty made of my covering clothes. I always said that that one and the other one, Biddy Sarah, should never be given a drop to drink until the corpse was gone from the road outside the house. I warned Patrick not to let them near my winding sheet if they had a drop taken. All they ever wanted was a corpse here, there, or around the place. The fields could be bursting with crops, and they’d stay there, if she could cadge a few pence at a funeral …
I have the crucifix on my breast anyway, the one I bought myself at the mission … But where’s the black one that Tom’s wife, Tom the crawthumper, brought me from Knock, that last time they had to lock him up? I told them to put that one on me too. It’s far nicer than this one. Since Patrick’s kids dropped it the Saviour looks a bit crooked. He’s beautiful on this one, though. What’s this? My head must be like a sieve. Here it is, just under my neck. ’Tis a pity they didn’t put it on my breast.
They could have wrapped the rosary beads better on my fingers. Nell, obviously, did that. She’d love it if it fell to the ground just as they were putting me in the coffin. O Lord God, she better stay miles away from me …
I hope to God they lit the eight candles on my coffin in the church. I left them in the corner of the press under the rent book. You know, that’s something that was never ever on any coffin in the church, eight candles! Curran had only four. Tommy the Tailor’s lad, Billy, had only six, and he has a daughter a nun in America.
I tells them to get three half-barrels of porter, and Ned the Nobber said if there was drink to be got anywhere at all, he’d get it, no bother. It had to be that way, given the price of the altar. Fourteen or fifteen pounds at least. I spent a shilling or two, I’m telling you, or sent somebody to all kinds of places where there was going to be a funeral, especially for the last five or six years when I felt myself failing. I suppose the Hillbillies came. A pity they wouldn’t. We went to theirs. That’s how a pound works in the first place. And the shower from Derry Lough, they’d follow their in-laws. Another pound well spent. And Glen Booley owed me a funeral too … I’d be surprised if Chalky Steven didn’t come. We were at every single one of his funerals. But he’d say he never heard about it, ’til I was buried.
And then the bullshit: “I’m telling you Patrick Lydon, if I could help it at all, I would have been at her funeral. It wouldn’t have been right if I wasn’t at Caitriona Paudeen’s funeral, even if I had to crawl on my naked knees. But I heard nothing, not a bit, until the night she was buried. Some young scut …” Steven is full of crap! …
I don’t even know if they keened me properly. Yes, I know Biddy Sarah has a nice strong voice she can go at it with if she is not too pissed drunk. I’m sure Nell was sipping and supping away there also. Nell whining and keening and not a tear to be seen, the bitch! They wouldn’t have dared come near the house when I was alive …
Oh, she’s happy out now. I thought I’d live for another couple of years, and I’d bury her before me, the cunt. She’s gone down a bit since her son got injured. She was going to the doctor for a good bit before that, of course. But there’s nothing wrong with her. Rheumatism. Sure, that wouldn’t kill her for years yet. She’s very precious about herself. I was never that way. And it’s now I know it. I killed myself working and slaving away … I should have watched that pain before it got stuck in me. But when it hits you in the kidneys, actually, you’re fucked …
I was two years older than Nell anyway … Baba. Then me, and Nell. Last year’s St. Michael’s Day, I got the pension. But I got it before I should have. Baba’s nearly ninety-three, for God’s sake. She’ll soon die, despite her best efforts. None of us live that long. When she hears that I’m dead, she’ll know she’s done for too, and then maybe she’ll make her will … She’ll leave every bit to Nell. The bitch will have one up on me after all. She has Baba primed. But if I had lived another bit until Baba had made her will, she’d have given me half the money despite Nell. Baba is quick enough. She wrote to me mostly for the last three years since she abandoned Blotchy Brian’s place and took off to Boston. It’s a great start that she has shagged off from that poisonous rats’ nest anyway.
But she never forgave Patrick that he married that cow from Gort Ribbuck, and that he left Blotchy Brian’s Maggie in the lurch. She would never have gone next or near Nell’s house that time she was home from America if it wasn’t for the fact that her daughter married Blotchy Brian. And why would she? … A real kip of a house. A real crap kip of a house it was too. Certainly not a house for a Yank. I haven’t a clue how she put up with it having been in our house and in fancy homes all over America. She didn’t stay there long though, she soon shagged off home …
She’ll never come back to Ireland again. She’s finished with us. But you’d never know what kind of a fit would hit her when this war is over, if it suited her. She’d steal the honey from a bee’s hive, she is so smarmy and sweet. She’s gutsy and spirited enough to do it. Fuck her anyway, the old hag! After she buggered off from Blotchy Brian’s place in Norwood, well, she still had a lot of time for Maggie. Patrick was the real eejit that he didn’t listen to her, and didn’t marry the ugly bitch’s daughter. “I wouldn’t marry Meg if she had all of Ireland …” Baba hurried off up to Nell’s place as if you had clocked her on the ear. She never came near our place again, but just about stood on the floor the day she was returning to the States.
—… Hitler’s my darling. He’s the boy for them …
—If England is beaten, the country will be in a bad way. The economy has already gone to the dogs …
—… You left me here fifty years before my time, you One Eared Tailor git! You lot were always twisted. Couldn’t trust you. Knives, stones, bottles, it didn’t matter. You wouldn’t fight like a man, but just stab me …
—… Let me talk, let me talk.
—Christ’s cross protect me!—Am I alive or dead? Are the people here alive or dead? They are all rabbiting on exactly the same way as they were above the ground! I thought that when I died that I could rest in peace, that I wouldn’t have to work, or worry about the house, or the weather, that I would be able to relax … But why all this racket in the dirty dust?
—… Who are you? How long are you here? Do you hear me? Don’t be afraid. Say the same things here as you said at home. I’m Maggie Frances.
—O may God bless you. Maggie Frances from next door. This is Caitriona. Caitriona Paudeen. Do you remember me, or do you forget everything down here? I haven’t forgotten anything yet, anyway.
—And you won’t. This is much the same as the “ould country” except that we only see the grave we are in, and we can’t leave our coffin. Or you won’t hear any live person either, and you won’t have a clue what they’re up to, except when the newly buried crowd tell you. But, hey, look Caitríona, we are neighbours again. How long are you here? I never noticed you coming.
—I don’t know, Maggie, if it was St. Patrick’s Day, or the day after that I died. I was too weak. I don’t know how long I’m here either. Not that long, anyway … You’ve been buried a long time now, Maggie … Too true. Four years this Easter. I was spreading a bit of manure for Patrick down in Garry Dyne when one of Tommy’s young ones came up to me. “Maggie Frances is dying,” she said. And what do you know, Kitty, the young one, was just going in the door when I reached the end of the haggard. You were gone. I closed your eyes. Myself and Kitty laid you out. And thanks to us, well, everyone said that you looked gorgeous on the bed. Nobody had any need to complain. Everyone who saw you, Maggie, everyone said that you were a lovely corpse. Not a bit of you, not a hair out of place. You were as clean and smooth as if they had ironed you out on the bed …
… No I didn’t hang on that long, Maggie. The kidneys had packed up a long time ago. Constipation. I got a sharp pain five or six weeks ago. And then, on top of that I got a cold. The pain went into my stomach and then on my chest. I only lasted about a week … I wasn’t that old either, Maggie, just seventy-one. But I had a hard life. I really had a hard life, and I looked every bit of it. When it hit me, it really hit me, left its mark on me. I had no fight left …
You might say that Maggie, alright. That hag from Gort Ribbuck didn’t help me a bit. Whatever possessed my Patrick to marry the likes of her in the first place? … God bless you, Maggie, you have a heart of gold, but you don’t know the half of it, and a word about it never passed my lips. A full three months now and she hasn’t done a stroke … The young one. She just about made it this time. The next one will really put her to the pin of her collar, though … Her brood of kids out of their minds except for Maureen, the eldest one, and she was in school every day. There I was slaving away washing them and keeping them from falling into the fire, and throwing them a bit of grub whenever I could … Too true, too true. Patrick’s house will be a mess now that I am gone. Of course that hag couldn’t keep a decent house any way, any woman who spends every second day in bed … O, now you’re talking, tell me more … Patrick and the kids, that’s the real tragedy …
It was so. I had everything ready, Maggie, the clothes, the scapulars, the lot … ’Tis true, they lit eight candles for me in the church, not a word of a lie. I had the best coffin from Tim’s place. It cost at least fifteen pounds … and, wait for it, not two plates on it, but three, believe me … And every one of them the spitting image of the fancy mirror in the priest’s house …
Patrick promised he’d put a cross of Connemara marble on my grave: just like the one on Peter the Publican, and written in Irish: “Caitriona, wife of John Lydon …” He said it himself, not a word of a lie. You don’t think I’d ask him do you, I wouldn’t dream of it … And he said he’d put a rail around it just like the one on Huckster Joan’s, and that he’d decorate it with flowers—I can’t remember what he called them, now—the kind that the School Mistress wore on her black dress after the School Master died … “That’s the least we could do for you,” Patrick said, “after all you did for us throughout your life.” …
But listen to me, what kind of place is this at all, at all? … Too true, too true, the Fifteen Shilling plot … Now, come on Maggie, you know in your heart of hearts that I wouldn’t want to be stuck up in the Pound plot. Of course, if they had put me in there, I could have done nothing about it, but to think that I might want that …
Nell, was it … I nearly buried her. If I had lived just a tiny little bit more … That accident to her boy, that really shook her … A lorry hit him over near the Strand about a year or a year and a half ago, and it made bits of his hip. The hospital didn’t know whether he would live or die for about a week …
O, you heard about it already, did you? … He spent another six months on the flat of his back … He hasn’t done a thing since he got home, just hobbling around on two crutches. Everyone thought he was a goner …
He can’t do anything for the kids, Maggie, except for the eldest fucker and he’s a bollocks … that might be the case alright … Like his grandfather, same name Big Blotchy Brian, a total asshole. Who cares, but then, his grandma, Nell … Nell and her crowd never harvested anything for the last two years … That injury has really shagged the two of them, Nell and that Brian Maggie one. I got great satisfaction from that bitch. We had three times as many spuds as her this year.
Ah, for God’s sake, Maggie Frances, wasn’t the road wide enough for him just as it was for everybody else to avoid the lorry? … Nell’s boy was thrown, Maggie. “I wouldn’t give you the steam of my piss,” the judge said … He let the lorry driver come to court in the meantime, but he didn’t allow Nell’s youngfella to open his mouth. He’s bringing it to the High Court in Dublin soon, but that won’t do him any good either … Mannix the lawyer told me that Nell’s crowd wouldn’t get a brass farthing. “And why would he,” he said, “wrong side of the road.” … No truer word, Maggie. Nell won’t get a hairy cent from the law. It’s what she deserves. I’m telling you, she won’t be going past our house so easily from now on singing “Ellenore Morune” …
Ara, poor Jack isn’t that well either, Maggie. Sure, Nell never minded him one bit, nor did Blotchy Brian’s daughter since she went into their house … Isn’t Nell my own sister, Maggie, and why on earth would I not know? She never paid a blind bit of attention to Jack, and not a bit of it. She was wrapped up in herself. She didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone, apart from herself … I’m telling you, that’s the God’s honest truth, Jack suffered endlessly because of her, the slut … Fireside Tom, Maggie. Just as he always was … In his hole of a hovel all the time. But it will fall down on him someday soon … Ah, for God’s sake didn’t my Patrick go and offer to put some thatch on it … “Look, Pat,” I said to him, “you have absolutely no business sticking thatch on Tom’s wreck of a house. Nell can do it if she wants. And if she does so, then so will we” …
“But Nell has nobody at all now since Peter’s leg was smashed,” said Pat.
“Everybody has enough to do for himself,” I said, “everyone has to thatch their own place, even a kip like that prick Fireside Tom.”
“But the house will collapse on him,” he says.
“It can if it wants to,” I says, “Nell has enough on her plate without filling up Tom’s mouth with shite. That’s it, Pat, my boy, keep at it. Fireside Tom is like rats being drowned in a bath. He comes crawling to us to keep out of the rain” …
Nora Johnny, is it? … It’s a queer thing to find out more about her here … I know far too much about her, and every single one of her breed and seed, Maggie … Listening to the Master every single day, is that it … The Old Master himself, the wretch … the Old Master reading to Nora Johnny! … Nora Johnny! … ah, for Christ’s sake … he doesn’t think much of himself, does he, the master … Reading stuff to Nora Johnny … Of course, that one has nothing between her ears. Where would she get it from? A woman that never darkened the door of a school, unless it was to vote … I’m telling you it’s a queer world if a schoolmaster spends his time talking to the likes of her … What’s that, Maggie? … that he fancies her … I don’t know who she is … If her daughter lived in the same house as him for the last sixteen years, as she has here, he sure as hell would know who she was then. But I’ll tell him yet … I’ll tell him about the sailor, and the rest of it …
—“Johnny Martin had a daughter
As big as any other man …”
—Five-eight’s forty; five-nine’s forty-five, five ten’s … sorry sir, I don’t remember …
—“As I roved out to the market, seeking for a woman to find”
—I had twenty, and I played the ace of hearts. I took the king from your partner. Mrukeen topped me with the jack. But I had a nine, and my partner out of luck …
—But I had the queen, and was defending …
—Mrukeen was going to play the five of trumps, and he’d beat your nine. Wasn’t that what you were going to do, Mrukeen?
—But then the mine blew our house up into the air …
—But we’d have won the game anyway …
—No way. If it wasn’t for the mine …
—… A lovely white-headed mare. She was gorgeous …
—I can’t hear a thing, Maggie. O my God almighty and His precious mother … a white-headed mare … The five of trumps … I can’t listen to this …
—I was fighting for the Republic …
—Who asked you anyway …
—He stabbed me …
—Then he didn’t stab you in the tongue anyway. Bugger the lot of you. My head is totally screwed up since I came here. Oh, Maggie, if you could just slink away. In the other world, if you didn’t like someone’s company you could just leave them there, and shag off somewhere else. But unfortunately, the dead can’t budge an inch in the dirty dust …
… And after all that they shagged me into the Fifteen Shilling Place. After all my warnings … Nell had a grin on her as wide as a barn door! She’ll surely get buried in the Pound Place now. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it was she put Patrick up to sticking me in the Fifteen Shilling Place instead of the Pound. She wouldn’t have the neck to darken the door of my house, only that I was dead. She didn’t put a foot on my floor since the day I married … that is, if she didn’t sneak in unknown to me while I was dying.
But, Patrick is a bit of a simpleton. He’d give in to her crap. And his wife would agree: “To tell God’s truth, but you’re right Nell. The Fifteen Shilling Place is good enough for anybody. We’re not millionaires …”
The Fifteen Shilling Place is good enough for anyone. She would say that. She would say that, wouldn’t she? Nora Johnny’s One. I’ll get her yet! She’ll be here for sure at her next delivery. I’ll get her yet, I’m telling you. But I’ll get her mother first—Nora Johnny herself—in the meantime.
Nora Johnny. Over from Gort Ribbuck. Gort Ribbuck of the Puddles. It was always said they milk the ducks there. Doesn’t she just fancy herself. Now she’s learning from the Master. It was about time for her to start anyway. No schoolmaster in the world would speak to her, except in the graveyard, and even then he wouldn’t if he knew who she was …
It is her daughter’s fault that I’m here twenty years too soon. I was washed out for the last six months looking after her mangy children. She’s sick when she’s expecting a child, and sick when she’s not. The next one will take her away. Take her away, no doubt about it … She was no good for my Patrick anyway, however he would get on without her … You couldn’t talk to him. “It’s the only one thing I’m going to do,” he said, “I’ll feck off to America and I’ll leave the place go to hell, seeing as you don’t give a toss about it …”
That was when Baba was home from America. She did everything she could to get him to marry Blotchy Brian’s Maggie. She really took a fancy to that little ugly hussy of Blotchy Brian’s for some reason. “She looked after me well when I was in the States,” she said, “especially when I was very sick, and all my own people miles away. Blotchy Brian’s Maggie is an able little smarty, and she has a bit put aside herself, as well as what I could give her. I had more time for you, Caitriona,” she says, “than for any other of my sisters. I’d prefer to leave my money in your house than to anyone else belonging to me. I’d love to see your own Paddy get on in the world. You have two choices now,” she said to him, “I’m in a hurry back to America, but I won’t go until I see Blotchy Brian’s young girl fixed up here, as she is having no luck at all over there. Marry her, Paddy. Marry Brian’s Maggie and I won’t see you stuck. I have more than enough to see me out. Nell’s son has asked her already. Nell herself was talking to me about her only the other day. She’ll marry him, Nell’s son, I’m telling you, if she doesn’t marry you. Marry her, or marry who you like, but if you marry who you like yourself …”
“I’d sooner take to the roads,” said Patrick. “I won’t marry any other woman who ever sniffed the air other than Johnny Nora’s daughter from Gort Ribbuck.”
He did.
I had to put the clothes on her back myself. She didn’t have as much as a penny towards the wedding, not to mention a dowry. A dowry from the crowd of the Toejam trotters? A dowry in Gort Ribbuck of the Puddles where they milk the ducks? … He married her, and she is like death warmed up ever since. She couldn’t raise a pig or a calf, or a hen or a goose, or even a duck, and she knew all about them from Gort Ribbuck. Her house is filthy. Her kids are filthy. She’s totally clueless whether she’s working the land or scavenging stuff on the shore …
There was some decent stuff in that house until she came along. I kept it as clean as a whistle. Every single Saturday night without fail I washed the stools and the chairs and the tables out in the stream. I spun and I carded. I had bags of everything. I raised pigs and calves and fowl … as long as I had the go in me to do it. And when I hadn’t I shamed Johnny Nora’s one enough that she didn’t sit on her arse completely …
But what will happen to the house now without me? … Nell will get great satisfaction anyway … She can afford to. She has a fine woman to make bread and spin yarn on the floor of her house now: Blotchy Brian’s Maggie. She can easily be jeering about my own son who only was a bit of a waster, a messer. She’ll be going up past our house every second day now saying: “Bejaysus, we got thirty pounds for the pigs … It was a great fair if you had some cattle. We got sixteen pounds for the two calves” … Even though the hens aren’t laying right now, our Maggie has always a few tricks up her sleeve. She brought eighty eggs to the Fancy City on Saturday. We had four clutches of chicks this year. The hens are laying twice as many eggs. I had another clutch yesterday. “The little speckled oat coloured clutch,” Jack called them, when he saw me handling them … She’ll have ants in her pants when she’s going past our house. She’ll know I’m not there. Nell! The Bitch! She might be my sister, alright, but I hope and pray that not one other corpse will come to the graveyard before her … !
—… I was fighting for the Irish Republic, and you had me executed, you traitor. You fought for the English, just the same as fighting for the Free State … You had an English gun in your hand, English money in your pocket, and love of England in your heart. You sold your soul and your ancient heritage for a mess of porridge, for a “soft bargain,” for a job …
—That’s a lie! You were a criminal, fighting against the legitimate Government …
—… I swear by the oak of this coffin, Margaret, I swear I gave her, I gave Caitriona the pound …
—… I drank forty-two pints …
—I remember it well, you scumbag. I bollixed my ankle that day …
—… You stuck the knife in me, straight between my gut and the top of my ribs. Through the skin of my kidneys. Then you twisted it. The foul stroke always by the Dog Eared crowd …
—… Let me speak. Free speech …
—Are you ready now for an hour’s reading, Nora Johnny? We’ll start a new novelette today. We finished “Two Men and the Powder Puff” the other day, don’t you remember? This one is called “The Berry Kiss.” Listen carefully now:
“Nuala was an innocent young girl until she met Charles ap Rice in the nightclub …” Yes, I know. There isn’t any chance to get away here, or to talk about culture … and just as you say, Nora, they are always talking about small stupid insignificant stuff here … cards, horses, booze, violence … we are totally pissed off about his racing mare every bloody day … that’s the whole truth, undoubtedly, Nora … Nobody has a snowball’s chance in hell of developing their intellect here … Right on, that’s the complete truth … this place is as bad-mannered, as thicko, as barbaric as whatever happens over in the dregs of the Half Guinea place … we are really back in the dark ages since the sansculottes started scrimping money together from the dole to be put in the Fifteen Shilling Place … I’ll tell you how I would divide this place up, if I had my way: those who went to university in the Pound Place, those who … No, no, that’s not it Nora! Yes, it’s a crying shame that some of my own past pupils are lying next to me here … It really depresses me to learn how ignorant they still are, after all I burst my guts for them … and sometimes they are pig ignorant rude with me … I just don’t know what’s happening to the young crowd … that’s it, Nora … no chance whatsoever of culture …
“Nuala was an innocent young girl until she met Charles ap Rice in the nightclub …” A nightclub, Nora? … You were never in a nightclub? … Well, a nightclub isn’t that different from this place … Ah, no, Nora, ah no. Nightclubs aren’t the same places as sailors hang out. They are “dives” really, but cultured people go to the nightclubs … You’d like to go to one of them … Not a bad idea really to put the finishing touch, the last notch, to bring a proper cachet to your education … I was in a nightclub once, just that time when they had raised teachers’ salaries, just before they reduced them again, twice. I saw an African prince there … He was as black as the sloe and was drinking champagne … You’d love to go to a nightclub, Nora! Aren’t you the brazen hussy … oh, the “naughty girl” … Oh Nora, so “naughty …”
—You thieving bollocks! Johnny the Robin’s daughter out from Gort Ribbuck! Where did she say she wanted to go, Master … ? Her tricks will get her yet! Don’t take a gnat fart’s notice of her, I’m telling you. If you knew her like I do you’d keep your trap firmly shut. I’ve been dealing with herself and her daughter for the last sixteen years. You shouldn’t bother your arse wasting your time with Toejam Nora. She was hardly a day at school, and she wouldn’t know the difference between the ABC and a plague of fleas in her armpit …
—Who’s this? Who are you … ? Caitriona Paudeen. I don’t believe you’re here at last … Well, however long it takes, this is where you end up … Welcome anyway, Caitriona, you’re welcome … I’m afraid, Caitriona, that you are … How will I put it … You are a bit hard on Toejam No— … Nora Johnny … She has come on a bomb since you used to be … What’s that the way you put it … That’s it … dealing with her … We find it hard to measure time, but if I get you correctly, she’s three years here already under the positive influence of culture … But listen here Caitriona … Do you remember the letter I wrote for you to your sister Baba in America … ’Twas the last one I wrote … The day after that, my last sickness hit me … Is that will still in dispute … ?
—I got many letters from Baba since you were writing them for me, Master. But she never said either “yea” or “nay” about the money. Yes, we got an answer from her about that letter, alright. That was the last time she mentioned the will: “I haven’t completed my will yet,” she said. “I hope I do not pass away suddenly or by happenstance, as you have suggested in your letter. Do not be concerned in this matter. I’ll execute my will in due course, when I know what is required of me.” I know what I told her when I caught up with her. “I’m sure the schoolmaster wrote that for you. No one of us ever spoke like that.”
The Young Master—he succeeded you—he writes the letters for us now. But I’m afraid that the priest writes for Nell. That hag can pull the wool over his eyes with her chickens and knitted socks and her twisted tricks. She is a dab hand it, Master. I thought I’d live another few years yet and see her buried, the maggot … !
You did your best for me anyway, Master, about the will. You could handle the pen. I often saw you writing a letter, and do you know what I thought? I thought that you could knit words together just as well as I could put a stitch in a stocking … “May God have mercy on the Old Master,” I’d say to myself. “He would always do you a good turn. If God allowed him to live, he’d have got the money for me …”
I’d say it won’t be long now until the Mistress—that is to say, your good wife, Master—it won’t be long until she gets her act together. No doubt about it. She’s a fine good-looking young thing yet … Oh, I’m very sorry Master! Don’t take a bit of notice of anything I say. I’m often romancing like that to myself, but sure, no one can help who they are themselves … I know, Master, I shouldn’t have told you at all. You’ll be worried about it. And I thought you’d be absolutely thrilled to hear that the Mistress was getting her act together …
Ah, come on, don’t blame me, Master … I’m not a gossip … I can’t tell you who the man is … Ah, please, Master, don’t push me … If I thought it would really make you so cranky I wouldn’t have said as much as a word …
She swore blind that she wouldn’t marry another man, did she, Master? Oh, come on! … Did you never hear it said that married women are the best … You were hardly cold in your grave when she had cocked her eye at another guy. I think, honestly, that she was always a bit flighty …
The Young Master … Ah, no, not him, never, Master … The teacher in Derry Lough. He’s a good guy. Doesn’t touch a drop. Himself and the priest’s sister—that dark fancy slip of a thing with the pants—they are to get married soon. They say he’ll get the new school there …
Ah, no, certainly not the Foxy Policeman either. He has a lump of a nurse hanging out of him in the Fancy City, or so they say … nor the spuds guy … Go on, have another guess, Master. I’ll give you as many as you want … Paddy is gone to England. They took the lorry from him, and sold it. He never went up a road for turf without letting a string of debts behind him. Guess again, Master … That’s him, dead on, exactly, Billy the Postman. Well done getting it like that, just as a pure guess. Never mind what anyone else says, Master, I think you have a great head on your shoulders …
Careful now with Nora Johnny. I could tell you things, Master …
Ah, forget about that now, get over it Master, and don’t let it bother you … Maybe you are dead right … It wasn’t just letters that had him coming to the house … Ah, come off it, Master … She was always a bit flighty, your wife …
—… They were sent as plenipotentiaries to make a peace treaty between Ireland and England …
—I’m telling you you’re a filthy liar. They were only sent over as messenger boys, they exceeded their authority, and betrayed us, and the country is buggered up ever since …
—A white mare. She was a beauty. No bother for her to carry a ton and a half …
—… By the oak of this coffin, I swear Nora Johnny, I swear I gave Caitriona the pound …
—… “That daughter of Big Martin John
Was just as tall as any man
When she stood up on the hill …”
—… Why don’t you go stuff your England and its markets. You’re just scared shitless of the few pence you have in the bank. Hitler’s the boy! …
—… Now, Coley, I’m a writer. I read fifty books for every one that you read. I’ll sue you if you think I am not a writer. Did you read my last book, “The Dream of the Jelly Fish?” … You didn’t Coley … My apologies Coley. I’m very sorry. I forgot that you couldn’t read … It’s a great story though … And I had three and a half novels, two and a half plays, and nine and a half translations with the publishers, The Goom,* and another short story and a half “The Setting Sun.” I never got over the fact that “The Setting Sun” wasn’t published before I died …
—If you’re going to be a writer, Coley, remember that it’s taboo for The Goom to publish anything that a girl would hide from her father … Apologies, Coley. I’m sorry. I thought you intended becoming a writer. But just in case you get that blessed itch … There isn’t an Irish speaker who doesn’t get that itch sometime in his life … they say it’s the stuff on the coast around here that causes it … Now, Coley, don’t be rude … It’s the duty of every Irish speaker to find out if he has the gift of writing, especially the gift of the short story, plays, poetry … These last two are far commoner than the gift of the short story, even. Take poetry, for example. All you have to do is to start at the bottom of the page and to work your way up to the top … either that, or scribble from right to left, leave a huge margin, but that isn’t half as poetic as the other way …
Apologies again, Coley. I’m really sorry. I didn’t remember that you can’t read or write … But the short story, Coley … I’ll put it like this … You’ve drunk a pint, haven’t you? … Yes, I understand … You drank lots of pints of stout, and often … Don’t mind how much you drank, Coley …
—I drank forty-four pints one after the other …
—I know that … Just hang on a minute … Good man. Let me speak … Get an ounce of sense, Coley, and let me speak … You’ve seen what’s on the top of a pint of stout. The head, isn’t it? A head of useless dirty froth. And yet, the more of it that’s there on the pint, the more your tongue is hanging out for the pint itself. And if your tongue is hanging out for it you’ll drink it all the way down to the dregs, even though it tastes flat. Do you see now, Coley, the beginning, the middle and the end of the short story … Be careful now that you don’t forget that the end has to leave a sour taste in your mouth, the taste of the holy drink, the wish to steal the fire from the gods, to take another bite of the apple of knowledge … Look at the way I’d have finished that other short story—“Another Setting Sun,” the one I was working on if I hadn’t died suddenly from an attack of writer’s cramp:
“Just after the girl had uttered that fateful word, he turned on his heels, departed the claustrophobic atmosphere of the room, and went out into the fresh air. The sky was dark with threatening clouds that were coming in from the sea. A weak faceless sun was entering the earth behind the mountains of the Old Town …” That’s the tour de force Coley: “a weak faceless sun entering the earth”; and there should be no need for me to remind you that the last line after the last word has to be richly splattered with dots, writer’s dots as I call them … But maybe you’ll have the patience to listen to me reading it all to you from start to finish …
—Wait now, my good man. I’ll tell you a story:
“Once upon a time there were three men …”
—Coley! Coley! There’s no art in that story: “Once upon a time there were three men …” That’s a hackneyed start … Wait now a minute, Coley, patience one minute. Let me speak. I think that I’m a writer …
—Shut your mouth you old windbag. Keep going, Coley …
—Once upon a time there were three men, and it was a long time ago. Once upon a time there were three men …
—Once upon a time there were three men … ah yes, there were three men a long time ago. I don’t know what happened to them after that …
—“… I swear by the book, Jack the Lad …”
—… Five elevens fifty-five; five thirteens … five thirteens … nobody learns that … Now, Master, don’t I know them! Five sevens … was that what you asked me, Master? Five sevens, was it? … five sevens … five by seven … wait now a second … five ones is one …
—… But I don’t get it, Margaret. Honest Injun, I just don’t get it. She—that’s Caitriona Paudeen, I mean—was badmouthing me to the Master. You wouldn’t mind, but I did nothing to her? You know yourself, Margaret, that I wouldn’t stick my nose into anybody else’s business, I’m too busy with culture. And there’s a big flashy cross on my grave too. Smashing, the Old Master says. She insulted me, Margaret …
—I think you had better start getting used to Caitriona’s tongue, Nora Johnny …
—But all the same, Margaret …
—… “Like an eel on a hook, by crook or by luck
Caitriona would snare Nora Johnny.”
—But she has it in for me all the time, she never stops, I just don’t get it, honest …
—… “Each morning that dawned Nora Johnny came over
To make bits of Caitriona like she would with a fish …”
—… “My beautiful daughter, she married your Paddy
Your hovel is better for all she brought in …”
—“Caitriona, you maggot, you were never ashamed
For disgracing yourself you were the best thing …”
—… All his lies, Margaret! Honest to God! I wonder what does she say to Dotie … Hey, Dotie … Dotie … What does Caitriona Paudeen say about me …
—God save us all. I don’t know who you are at all at all. I wish they had brought my sod of clay east of the Fancy City and laid me down on the flat surface of the Smooth Meadow in Temple Brandon with my ancestors …
—Dotie! I told you already that that kind of talk is only sentimental tosh. What did Caitriona say …
—I heard the filthiest talk you could imagine from her about her own sister Nell. “May not another corpse come to the graveyard before her,” she said. You’d never hear that kind of talk on the Smooth Meadow.
—Dotie! But just about me …
—About your daughter.
—… “Not a coat on her back, and I paid for that too,
Nor as much as a shirt to get married in …”
—She said that you were of the Toejam crowd, and that you were riddled with fleas …
—Dotie! De grâce …
—That there were sailors …
—Parlez-vous français, Madame, Mademoiselle …
—Au revoir! Au revoir! …
—Mais c’est splendid. Je ne savais pas qu’il y avait une …
—Au revoir. Honest, Margaret, only that Dotie knows me well she’d believe all those lies … Dotie! That old sentimentality again. You are my fellow mariner on the illimitable sea of culture, Dotie. You should be able to distil every twisted prejudice and every prejudged notion out of your head, just like Clicks did in “Two Men and the Powder Puff” …
—… The Poet did it, I’d say …
—Oh, was it that chancer …
—No certainly not. It wasn’t him. He wouldn’t be that lucky. Big Micil Connolly made it up:
“Bonking an Old Yank was our Baba Paudeen
And there was no one just like her in all of Maine …”
—Honest, Margaret, I’ve forgotten all that business about Caitriona Paudeen in the place above. It’s the culture, Margaret. It raises the mind up to the noble heights and exposes the magic fairy forts in which the hidden elements of sound and vision dwell, just as Nibs said in “Evening Tresses.” You don’t have any interest any more in normal inanities nor in the petty pastimes of mortal life. My mind is possessed by a glorious disorder for this last while as a result of the rushing wonders of culture …
—… “And there was no one just like her in all of Maine
She came back home dressed up to the nine
With money the old hag left to her name …”
—Baba Paudeen never married, but she was looking after an old crone since she went to America. What do you know, but the old one left her all of her money—well nearly all—when she was dying. Baba Paudeen could fill all the graves in this cemetery with golden guineas, at least that is what they say about her, Dotie …
—… It was Coley who made up all that rubbish. What else?
“‘Ara, Baba, my darling,’ said Caitríona’s cat
‘Don’t yield a farthing,’ said Nell’s cat back.
‘If I only got the money,’ said Caitríona’s cat
‘It’s all for me, honey,’ said Nell’s cat at that.”
—Caitriona would prefer, better than another thousand years, to scrub Nell from Baba’s will …
“‘I have a nice deep pocket,’ said Caitriona’s pussy.
‘I have a nice deep pocket,’ said Nell’s pussy back.”
—“‘For an old hag’s money,’ said Caitríona’s pussy.
‘Baba didn’t promise you,’ said Nell’s pussy at that.”
—She had every single teacher in the whole area totally driven out of their minds getting them to write to America for her …
—And Mannix the Counsellor …
—The Old Master told me he wrote very cultured letters for her. He picked up a lot of Americanese from the films …
—That time when he used to bring the young mistress to the Fancy City in his car …
—The thing that really pisses Caitriona off is that she died before Nell. I often heard her going up the lane and muttering to herself: “I’ll bury her yet before me in the Cemetery Clay.”
—… Tell the truth, Coley. Did you write that rubbish?
—Big Micil Connolly did it. He did “The Ballad of Caitríona” too, and “The Ballad …”
—… But Nell is still alive. She’ll get what’s in Baba’s will now. There’s no other brother or sister, only herself …
—I’m not sure about that, Margaret. Baba was very fond of Caitriona.
—Do you know what my boss used to say about all of them, the Paudeens: “Weather cocks,” he’d say. “If one of them went to market to buy a cow, he’d come home with a donkey. Then he’d say to the next person who made some smart remark about the donkey: ‘I’m sorry now I didn’t buy a cow instead of that old bag of bones of a donkey. She’d be a lot more useful …’”
—… “Would you come along home with me, I’ll shelter you under my cloak,
And I swear young Jack the Lad, we’ll have songs until we croak …”
—… It’s a strange nickname for a man, alright, Dotie … Yes. Jack the Lad. He lives up there at the top of the town land where Caitriona and myself lived. I knew the original Lad himself, Jack’s father … The Old Lad. He was one of the Feeneys, really … No need to laugh, Dotie … Dotie! “Lad” is just as handy as “Dotie” any time. Even if you do come from the Smooth Meadow, I’m telling you, we weren’t pupped by hens no more than yourself …
—De grâce, Marguerita …
—… “‘I’ll marry Jack,’ said Caitríona’s dog.
‘I’ll marry Jack,’ said Nell’s dog too …”
—Caitriona refused many men. One of them was Blotchy Brian. He had a good chunk of land and pots of money. Her father advised her to hook up with him. He was so worthless, according to her, she wouldn’t give him the time of day …
—… Start that song again, and sing it right this time …
—“The Lad’s son he got up and went …”
—… You’d nearly think that God gave Jack the Lad a soul so that he could go about singing. If you heard his voice just once it would haunt you for the rest of your life. I don’t know at all what exactly to call it …
—A musical dream.
—That’s it, Nora. Just like a strange and beautiful dream. There you are on the edge of a cliff. A drowning hole down below you. Your heart thumping with fear. Then, suddenly, you hear Jack’s voice wafting up from the depths. Your desire immediately banishes your fear. Then you seem to let yourself go … You feel yourself sliding down and down … and down … getting nearer all the time to that voice …
—Oh my, Margaret! How thrilling! Honest …
—… I never met anyone who could remember exactly any song that Jack sang. We would forget everything but the soul he put into his voice. Every young girl in the place would lick the winding path which he trod to his door. I often saw the young ones up on the bog and as soon as they caught a glimpse of Jack the Lad over at his own turf they would crawl through muck and glob just to hear him sing. I saw Caitriona Paudeen doing it. I saw her sister Nell doing it …
—Smashing altogether, Margaret. Cultured people call it the eternal triangle …
—… “Jack the Lad rose up and took the early morning air
And went off chasing women with the frolics at the fair …”
—… Too true. It was at the Big Pig Fair that Nell Paudeen and Jack the Lad took off together. Her people were fit to be tied, for all the good it did them. I don’t know if it’s the way you do things over on the Smooth Meadow, you know, that the eldest daughter has to get married first …
—… “She carried him off through bog-holes, swamps and mucky glob
Disturbing all the curlews whose chicks had open gobs …”
—Jack was up on the bog and all he had was waste scrub and some drowned moorland …
—Ara, Maggie Frances, I never saw a more awkward pathway up to a house than that of Jack the Lad’s. Didn’t I twist my ankle that night coming home from the wedding at …
—… You did, because you made a pig of yourself, as usual …
—… The night of the wedding in Paudeen’s house Caitriona was holed up in a corner in the back room with a face as miserable as a wet week. There was a small gang of us there. Nell was there. She started ribbing Caitriona: “I really think you should marry Blotchy Brian, Caitriona,” she said. She knew right well that Caitriona had already refused him …
—I was there, Margaret. “I’ve got Jack now,” Nell said. “We’ll leave Blotchy Brian for you, Caitriona.”
—Caitriona went ape. She stormed out, and she wouldn’t go near the room again until the next morning. Nor did she go to the church either the following day …
—I was cutting a bunch of heather that day, Margaret, and I saw her winding her way up through the bog by Tulla Bwee even though the wedding was over the other way at the Lad’s house …
—She didn’t put one foot, right or left, across the threshold of Jack the Lad’s joint from that day to this. You’d think Nell was riddled with some kind of nasty pox the way she used to give her a wide berth. She never forgave her for Jack …
—… “Brian is a darling with his land and his cows
But he’ll never be right without a woman and a house …”
—… Despite all his wealth, Blotchy Brian failed utterly to get a woman. It’s a small wonder he didn’t come crawling to her again …
—… “‘By japers,’ says Triona, ‘here’s a fine pig for scalding,
Turn the kettle to the fire: he might get the warning.’”
—They’d use the handle of the pot over beyond the Fancy City. That time Pat McGrath came knocking …
—We refuse them that way too on this side of the city, Dotie. Honest. In my own case, for example …
—Did you hear what the Tailor’s sister did when an old dribbling dunderhead came over from Derry Lough looking for her? She took a long knife out of the press, and started sharpening it in the middle of the floor. “Keep it for me,” she said …
—Oh, she’d do that alright. The Dog Eared crowd …
—After all that, what do you know, Caitriona married John Thomas Lydon from our own place, and never said either “yea” or “nay” when he came for her …
—I swear, Margaret, John Thomas was far too good for her …
—He had a fine plot of the best rich soil …
—And the willingness to work it …
—A fine spacious house …
—She drooled for the place, certainly. To be better off and have more money than Nell. And to be close enough so that Nell could see every single day that she was better off and had more money than her to the end of her days …
—“‘I have a huge haggard,’ said Caitríona’s cat
‘I have the best fat cows, and butter as well …’”
—“‘I am sleek and useful and friendly and cuddly
Quite just the opposite of that kitty of Nell’s …’”
—Letting Nell know that she didn’t get the worst of the bargain, and that Nell could suck on her disappointment and failure. That much came out of Caitriona’s own unforgiving mouth. It was her revenge …
—Oh my! But that’s very interesting. I don’t think I’ll bother with the reading session I have with the Old Master today … Hey there, Master … Let’s skip the novelette today … I’m doing something else intellectual. Au revoir …
—Caitriona was particular, thrifty and nifty in John Thomas Lydon’s house. I know that well, as I was next door to her. The sun never woke her up in bed. Her card and spinning wheel often chattered and gabbled through the night …
—And it looked every bit of it, Margaret. She had stuff and more …
—… I wandered into Barry’s betting shop up in the Fancy City. I had my hand in my pocket just as if I had a pile. All I had was one shilling. I made a racket chucking it on to the counter. “‘The Golden Apple,’” I said. “‘The three o’clock. A hundred to one … It better win,’ I muttered putting my hand in my pocket and sauntering out” …
—… It’s a pity I wasn’t there, Peter, I wouldn’t let him get away with it. You shouldn’t let a black heretic like that insult your religion.
“Faith of our fathers, Holy Faith,
We will be true to thee ’til death,
We will be true to thee ’til death …”
—You’re a bloodless wimp, Peter, letting him talk like that. I wasn’t there to …
—Put a cork in it! Neither of the two of you have shut up going on about religion for the last five years …
—They say, however, Margaret, after all the savaging that Caitriona did of Nell that she would have been glad of her when her husband died. She was in a bad way that time, as Patrick was only a toddler …
—That I would have been glad of Nell! That I would have been glad of Nell! That I would take anything from Nell. God Almighty Father and his blessed angels, that I’d take anything from that hog face! I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! …
—… “The nettle-ridden patches of Bally Donough,” you say.
—The little pimply hillocks in your town land couldn’t even grow nettles with all the fleas on them …
—… Fell from a stack of corn …
—By the hokey, as you might say, myself and the guy from Men-low were writing to one another …
—“… Do you think that this war is ‘The War of the Two Foreigners’?” I says to Patchy Johnny.
—Wake up, you lout. That war’s been over since 1918 …
—It was going on when I was dying …
—Wake up, I’m telling you. Aren’t you nearly thirty years dead. The next war is on now …
—I’m twenty-one years here now. I can boast something that nobody else here can: I was the first corpse in this cemetery. Don’t you think that the elder in this place would have something to say. Let me speak. Let me speak, I tell you …
—Caitriona had stuff and plenty, no doubt about it, Margaret …
—She certainly had, but despite that her place was better than Nell’s, Nell didn’t let things slide either …
—God bless you. Margaret! Neither herself nor Jack ever did a toss except gawk into one another’s eyes and sing songs, until Peter, the son, grew up and was able to do some work on that old swamp and clear some of the cursed scrubs …
—Nell didn’t have a penny to her name until Blotchy Brian’s Maggie brought her dowry.
—However much you dress up her place, the truth is that what saved her was being near a river and a lake, with some wild grouse around. Of course, there’s no telling what money hunters and fishermen gave her. I myself saw the Earl slipping a pound note into the palm of her hand: a nice crisp clean pound note …
—… Over on the Smooth Meadow, you call your swamps “fens,” don’t you, Dotie? I also heard that you call the cat “a rat catcher,” and the thongs “the fire friend.” … No doubt about it, Dotie, that’s not the proper and correct “Old Irish” at all …
—God save us all! …
—… “‘We’ll send pigs to the market,’ said Caitríona’s cat
‘You’d do better with bullocks,’ said Nell’s cat back.”
—… It’s not one smell of an exaggeration that Caitriona would add bits to her prayers for Nell to shrivel away. She was thrilled to bits if a calf died, or if her potatoes rotted …
—I won’t tell one word of a lie about her, Margaret. God forgive me if I did! That time when the lorry crocked Peter Nell’s leg, Caitriona said straight up my face: “I’m glad it hit him. The road is plenty wide enough. It serves the maggot right …”
—“Nell won that round anyway,” she admitted, the day her husband, John Thomas Lydon, was buried …
—He was buried in the eastern graveyard. I remember it well, and I had good reason to. I twisted my ankle, just where I slipped on the stone …
—Where you made a pig of yourself, as you usually did …
—… To have more potatoes than Nell; more pigs, hens, hay; have a cleaner smarter house; her children to have better clothes: ’twas all part of her vengeance. It was her vengeance …
—… “She ca-me back ho-me dressed to th-e nines
As she fi-lched a sta-ck from the old grey hag.”
—Baba Paudeen got laid low by some sickness in America, and it took her to death’s door. Blotchy Brian’s Maggie looked after her. She brought Maggie back home with her …
—… “Baba was holed up in Caitríona’s house …”
—She rarely went near Nell. She was too out of the way and the path was too awkward after her sickness. She seemed to like Caitriona a lot better for some reason …
—… “Nell’s house is only a rotting hovel
She needn’t bother be spouting lies
The fever was there, no use denying it
If that plague gets you, you’ll surely die …”
—… Caitriona only had one son in the house, Padd …
—Two daughters of hers died …
—No, three did. Another one in America. Kate …
—I remember her well, Margaret. I twisted my ankle the day she left …
—Baba promised Caitriona’s Paddy that she wouldn’t see him short for the rest of his days if he married Blotchy Brian’s Maggie. Caitriona really hated Blotchy Brian’s guts, and she was the same way with her dog and her daughter. But she had a big dowry, and Caitriona had a notion that Baba would more than fancy leaving money in her house as a result. Just to best Nell …
—… “Baba was holed up in Cat-rion-a’s house
Until Paddy rejected the Blotchy’s Maggie.
Nora Johnny has a lovely fair maiden
Without cows or gold I took her fancy …”
—High for Gort Ribbuck! …
—Nora Johnny’s daughter was a fine piece of work, I swear …
—… That’s what turned Caitriona against your daughter in the first place, Nora Johnny. All that old guff about the dowry is only an excuse. From the day your daughter stepped into her house, married to her son, she had it in for her like a pup with his paw on a bone and another pup trying to whip it from him. How often did you have to come over from Gort Ribbuck, Nora …
—… “Each morning that broke, Nora Johnny came over the way …”
—Oh my! We’re getting to the exciting part of the story now, Margaret, aren’t we? The hero is married to his sweetheart. But there’s another woman lurking away in the background. She’s been wounded by the conflict, and there will be lots of trouble ahead … Anonymous letters, sly gossip about the hero, maybe a murder yet, certainly a divorce … Oh! My! …
—… “‘I wouldn’t marry Blotchy Brian,’ said Caitriona’s kitty …”
Add a few lines to that yourself …
—“‘But you thought for to hurt him,’ said Nell’s kitty back …”
—“‘But I’d marry his daughter,’ said Caitriona’s puss to that.”
—“Said Nell’s kitty then, ‘That’s a chance you won’t get.’”
—It pissed Caitriona off even more that Baba took off and stayed in Nell’s house more than Nell’s son got the money and the dowry that had been promised to her own Paddy …
—I remember well, Margaret, the day that Baba Paudeen went back to America. I was cutting hay above in the Red Meadow when I saw them coming down from Nell’s house. I ran over to say good-bye to them. As God is my witness, just as I was jumping across the furrowed dyke, I twisted my …
—Don’t you think, Margaret, isn’t it twenty years since Baba Paudeen went back to America? …
—She’s gone sixteen years. But Caitriona never took her beady eye off the will. If it wasn’t for that she’d be dead a long time ago. It added years to her life to be badmouthing her son’s wife …
—Yes, Margaret, and the pleasure she got in going to funerals all the time.
—And Fireside Tom’s land …
—… Listen to me now, Curran:
“A great big altar as a kind compensation …”
—Don’t mind that little scut, Curran. Sure, he couldn’t compose a line of poetry …
—The story is getting a bit boring now, Margaret. Honest. I thought they’d be a lot more hassle by now …
—… Listen, Curran. Listen to the second line:
“And to add to my pride, to be in the Pound Place …”
—… Honest, Margaret. I thought there’d be at least a murder and a divorce. But Dotie can assess every prejudice …
—… By japers, I have it now Curran. Listen:
“The cross above me will drive Nell to distraction
And in the cemetery clay I’ll have won the race …”
—Hoora, Margaret! … Can you hear me, Margaret? … Nora Johnny has no shame talking to a schoolmaster … Of course, that’s true, Margaret. Of course, everyone knows she’s my inlaw. You wouldn’t mind but there is no place here you can get a bit of privacy, or get out of the way. Sweet God almighty! A bitch! A bitch! She was always a bitch. That time when she was a skivvy in the Fancy City before she got married they used to say—we don’t want to even think about it!—that she used to hang around with a sailor …
Sure thing, Margaret … I said it to him. “Patrick, my darling,” I said, just like this. “That thing from Gort Ribbuck that you are determined to marry, did you hear that her mother was hanging around with a sailor in the Fancy City?”
“So what?” he said.
“Ah, Patrick,” I said. “Sailors, you know …”
“Hu! Sailors,” he said. “Couldn’t a sailor be just as good as any other person? I know who this girl’s mother was hooking up with in the Fancy City, but that’s a long way from America, and I haven’t the faintest clue who Blotchy Brian’s Maggie was knocking around with over there. With a black, maybe …”
Sure thing, Margaret. If it wasn’t that she couldn’t warm to Nell and didn’t want to give her the money, there’s some chance that I’d let my son bring a daughter of Blotchy Brian into my house. I swear, I could have been fond of Blotchy Brian’s daughter. The night that Nell got married, that’s what the cow threw in my face. “I have Jack,” she said, “You can have Blotchy Brian now, Caitriona.”
Do you know what, Margaret, but those few words hurt me far more than all the other wrongs she did me. What she said was like a plague of stoats buzzing back and forth through my brain spitting out venomous snots. They never left my head up to the day I died. They never did, Margaret. Every time I saw Blotchy Brian I’d think of that night in the room at home, and on the gloating grin on Nell’s puss because of Jack the Lad. Every time I’d see Brian’s son or daughter, I’d think of that night. Every time somebody even mentioned Blotchy Brian, I’d remember it … on the room … on the grin … on Nell in Jack the Lad’s arms! … in Jack the Lad’s arms …
Blotchy Brian asked me twice, Margaret. I never told you that … What’s that Nora Johnny calls it? … The eternal triangle … the eternal triangle … That was her silly shite, alright … But, Margaret, I didn’t tell you, did I? … You’re mistaken. I’m not that kind of a person, Margaret. I’m not a blabbermouth. Anything that’s my own business, anything I saw or heard, I took it into the clay with me. But there’s no harm talking about it now when we are gone the way of all flesh …
He asked me twice, I’m telling you. The first time I was hardly more than twenty. My father was trying to get me to do it. “Blotchy Brian is a good decent man, with a nice little spot, and a decent stash of money,” he said.
“I wouldn’t marry him,” I said, “even if I had to borrow the shawl from Nell and stand out in front of everyone in the middle of the fair.”
“Why’s that?” said my father.
“Because he’s an ugly git,” I said. “Look at his ridiculous goatee beard. See his sticky out teeth. His nasal whine. His bandy leg. See the dirty dive of a hovel he lives in. See the coat of filth all around it. He’s three times as old as me. He could be my grandfather.”
And I was right. He was nearly fifty that time. He is nearly a hundred now, still alive and not a bother on him, apart from the odd bout of rheumatism. He’d be going to collect the pension same time as me when we were up there. The ugly gom! …
“Every brat to her own device,” my father said, and that was all he ever said about it.
Nell wasn’t married long when he came slavering for me again. I was just getting a cup of tea in the evening as the shades of night came down. I remember it well. I had put the teapot down on the hearth trying to blow some life into the embers. This guy comes in totally unexpectedly even before I had a chance to recognise him. “Will you marry me, Caitriona,” he said, just like that. “I think I deserve you, coming like this the second time. And as it’s not doing me any good, living without a nice woman …”
I’m telling you straight, that’s exactly what he said.
“I wouldn’t marry you, you rotten poop, even if cobwebs grew out of me for want of a man,” I said.
I had put the thongs down and I had the boiling kettle in my hand. I didn’t blink an eye, Margaret, but went for him in the middle of the floor. But he had vanished out the door by then.
I know I am hard to please when it comes to men. I was good-looking enough and had a decent dowry … But marry Blotchy Brian, come on now like, Margaret, after what Nell said …
—… “It’d better win,” I said, sticking my hand in my pocket and hightailing it out the door. “When you lose, you’re screwed,” I said, taking the ticket from the wench. She smiled at me: that kind of innocent smile from a young innocent heart. “If ‘The Golden Apple’ wins,” I said, “I’ll buy you some sweeties and take you to the pictures … Or would you prefer a bit of a dance … or a few quiet drinks in the snug in the Great Southern Hotel? …”
—… Qu’est-ce que vous dites? Quelle drôle de langue! N’y a-til-pas là quelque professeur ou étudiant qui parle français?
—Au revoir. Au revoir.
—Pardon! Pardon!
—Shut your gob, you shitehawk!
—If I could reach that gander, I’d shut his trap for him. Either that, or he’d talk proper. Every time he mentions Hitler he starts spluttering away in a torrent of talk. Sweet jumping Jesus, but if he really knew I don’t think he’d be that happy about Hitler at all …
—Didn’t you notice that every time that Hitler’s name is mentioned, he calls him a “whore” immediately. Who are we to say he hasn’t picked up that much Irish …
—Oh, if only I could get my hands on him! High for Hitler! High for Hitler! High for Hitler! High for Hitler …
—Je ne vous comprends pas, monsieur …
—Who is that, Margaret?
—That’s the guy who was killed in the airplane. Don’t you remember? He went down in the middle of the bay. You were alive that time.
—Sure, didn’t I see him laid out, Margaret … He had a fantastic funeral. They said he was some kind of a hero …
—He jabbers away like that. The Master says that he’s French, and that he’d understand him if his tongue wasn’t worn away by the time he spent in the sea …
—So, the Master doesn’t understand him, Margaret?
—Not the slightest clue, Caitriona.
—I always knew, Margaret, that the Old Master wasn’t very learned. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t understand a Frenchy! I should have known that yonks ago …
—Nora Johnny understands him better than anyone else in the graveyard. Did you not hear her answering him just a while back? …
—Ara, would you get an ounce of sense, Maggie Frances. Do you Mean Toejam Nora with the smelly feet? …
—Ils m’ennuient. On espère toujours trouver la paix dans la mort, mais la tombe ne semble pas encore être la mort. On ne trouve ici en tout cas, que de l’ennui …
—Au revoir. Au revoir. De grâce. De grâce.
—… Six sixes, forty-six; six sevens fifty-two; six eights, fifty-eight … Now, amn’t I great, Master! I know my tables up to now. If I had gone to school as a kid, there’d be no stopping me. I’ll say all the tables from the beginning now, Master. Two ones are … Why don’t you want to hear them, Master? You’ve been kind of neglecting me for the last while, since Caitriona Paudeen told you about your wife …
—I swear by the oak of this coffin, Curran, I gave her the pound, I gave the pound to Caitriona Paudeen. But I never got a gnat’s glimpse of it since.
—Ababoona! Holy cow! You lied, you old bat …
—Honest, Dotie. You wouldn’t understand: a stranger this way from the rich lands of the Fair Meadow. This is the truth, the unadulterated truth, Dotie. Honest, it is. I was going to swear “by the Holy finger,” but that is unbecoming talk. Instead of that, Dotie, I’ll say: “I’ll put the blessed crucifix on my heart.” Margaret told you about herself and Nell, but she never told you about the dowry I lavished on my daughter when she married into Caitriona’s house. You should know that story, Dotie. Everyone else here knows it. Sixty pounds, Dotie. Honest! Sixty pounds in golden guineas …
—For the love of God Almighty! Margaret! Hey, Margaret! Do you hear me?
I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst, Margaret! I’m going to burst, Margaret! Nora Johnny’s young one! … sixty … dowry … for me and us … I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! O my God, I’m going to burst! … Goi … bur … Go … burs … G … bu … Burs …