I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken to what I have to say! Hearken unto my voice …
Here in the graveyard the autocratic overseer is darkness. His cudgel is the melancholy which does not melt on the smart smirk of the young woman. His lock is the lock of unknowing, and will neither be opened by the lustre of lucre nor by the winsome words of wonder. His eye is the penumbra which peeps from the pox at the edge of the wood. His sentence is the sentence of death from which no cavalier can escape with his sword of valour before he expires.
There aboveground the brightness is resplendent in its radiance. The sun sports a rose-mottled mantle hemmed with the music of the sea and stitched with a seam of birdsong while tassels of butterfly wings belt the stars from the Milky Way. His shield is of the serenity of the bride. His sword of light swirls like a child’s. His optimum is the corn which is opening on the stalk, the morning panoply of cloud which is penetrated by a shaft of brightness, the young girl whose vision is still lit by the fresh dreams of love …
But the sap is sagging in the trees. The aureate voice of the thrush is coppering. The rose is slouching. The dark rust which ruins, ravages, and runkles is corroding the cavalier’s blade.
The darkness is besting the brightness. The graveyard must get its due … I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken to what I have to say! You must hearken unto my voice …
—Who’s this now, like? … Poxy Martin, be the holies! About time for you, too. I’m here long enough, and we’re the same age … Yes, that’s me, the same woman, Caitriona Paudeen …
You had bedsores, you say …
Ah, Caitriona, my dear, the bed was very hard. Really hard on my poor arse. My back was really in bits. There wasn’t a sliver of flesh on my thighs, and there was a very sensitive spot on my groin. You wouldn’t mind, Caitriona, but I was laid up for nine whole months. I couldn’t turn or twist. My son used to come in, Caitriona, and turn me on my other side. “I can’t really budge my old body at all,” I’d say. “I’m a long time laid up,” I’d say. “Being laid up a long time never told a lie,” he’d say. Ah, Caitriona, my dear, the bed was very hard on my poor arse …
—Your arse never felt much, Martin. Did it good … Well, if you had bedsores, it’s all for the better, they’ll help you get used to the planks here … Biddy Sarah, you’re asking about. She’s still alive. We’re better off without her. She was an ugly trollop aboveground, not to speak badly about her, but I don’t think this place would improve her one tiny bit … Yourself and Biddy were always in competition to see which of you would live longer, is that it. That’s it, alright. That’s it. That’s how it is, Poxy … But she buried you first all the same! We can do sweet fanny all about that, my poor Martin. Bad shit to her anyway, isn’t she the long living thing! She should have died ages ago, only she has no shame … Too true for you Martin, it’s a wonder she wasn’t covered with bedsores she was so fond of the bed. She was sick every single day, except when there was a funeral. Every other day she was choking with a cold. But there wasn’t much wrong with her voice on those days. “If I wasn’t hoarse,” she’d say to you after the funeral, “I would really have keened him.” The lying latchico! She’s still drawing the pension and hauling in half-crowns and shovelling them into her daughter-in-law’s apron. As long as she keeps ladling the money into the apron, her daughter-in-law won’t let her get any bedsores, I’m telling you. They’ll rub butter on those thighs and hips … She doesn’t keen anyone now, she says. What a spouter! … Redser Tom is laid up too. Another one … The shack didn’t fall down on Fireside Tom yet, you say … Ababoona! Nell bought him a table … and a dresser … and a bed. A fecking bed! There’s no way she’d give a bed to anyone if she didn’t want some sneaky money back. Oh, that judge didn’t have the least clue! … She was scared shitless she’d have sores on the old bed. Listen, Poxy Martin, she was scared shitless she wouldn’t get his bit of land …
Blotchy Brian, what about him? He’ll never pop off until they smear him with oil and put a match to him … That’s God’s honest truth, Poxy Martin. That ugly old wagon will never have bedsores … They’ll pop off together. That’s true, pop off together. I hope their old bones rot together! …
What’s that? … They’re all throwing-their-guts-up sick again in Letter Ektur! They were always like that, I’m not blaming them! They’ll be a great help to this place, anyway. They’ll add to it, and addle it …
Our own Baba is down sick in America! By the hokey! … Ah, come on like! You think she has bedsores too, Poxy! She has an arse twice as big as yours ever was. And she could keep a nice soft bed under it, unlike you, Poxy Martin … Have a bit of sense, you stupid prick … You think just because your own bed was hard that every other bed is hard too … God help you, there are plenty of soft beds in America, especially if you have money! … You never heard whether or not she wrote home, did you? You didn’t hear anything about Nell trotting up to the priest recently? … No doubt about it, Poxy. She’ll guzzle up the will, that’s the way she’s made … The priest is doing the writing for her? What next? …
That schoolmaster is no good writing for the likes of us … He hasn’t a clue about anything, Martin! You’re right about that. Everything is all right as long as he doesn’t go squawking to the priest … The priest and the master are often seen out strolling together, you say … The new road to Nell’s house is nearly finished. Why did that eejit of a son of mine have the misfortune to give her Lack Ard! …
Nell is talking about building a house with a slate roof! With a slate roof! I hope she never lives to see her house with a slate roof, the piece of poop! Maybe she’s got some of the will already? That crowd in Derry Lough got a slice of it, before their brother died at all … And of course, she had the money from the court case. They’ll certainly bury her in the Pound Plot now …
Jack is still ailing. The poor man! Nell and Blotchy Brian’s young one, that long string of misery, they fixed him up with St. John’s Gospel! … You never heard about St. John’s Gospel! … You heard something, you must have! Do you think they’d tell you anything about it! …
Patrick’s wife is up at the crack of dawn every morning! God bless her! … There are lots of calves on Patrick’s land, is that it? … Wife has taken over all the business from Patrick! … She does the buying and selling now! Would you believe it! And there I was thinking she’d be here any day soon! … But, of course, you never know with a young one, do you? … There was something crippling you. Bedsores … You’d easily know, Poxy Martin, that you’re very new in this place when you’re talking like that. Don’t you know that you must die from something, and bedsores are as good as anything else …
Ababoona! You heard that they’ve given up on the cross! You heard that! … Now, come on, Poxy Martin, maybe that wasn’t what you heard at all, but that you got the wrong end of the stick completely because of all those bedsores you had … You heard they’re not going ahead with it … That Nell was talking to Patrick about the cross … You don’t know, you don’t want to tell a lie, you don’t know what she said. Come off it, Poxy Martin, forget about that “don’t want to tell a lie” stuff.
“Don’t want to tell a lie”! Nell wouldn’t be afraid to tell plenty of lies about you, if it suited her … And you wishing her luck like fuck! You’re finished with the bed now, anyway. Spit out your story … You didn’t know how bad it would be! You had bedsores! Listen now, just for a moment even. Maybe Nell said something like this to my Patrick: “Come here to me now, Paddy my dear, you have enough on your plate now not to be thinking of a cross …” Oh, it was Nora Johnny’s one said that! Patrick’s wife said that! … “We’ll certainly be on top of things when we can afford to buy a cross … There are plenty just as good as her with no cross at all … She’s damned lucky to be buried in a graveyard at all, and the way things are.” She’d say that, alright. The sly slit of the Toejam tipple! But it was Nell taught her. I hope not another corpse comes to the graveyard before her! … Patrick won’t take a blind bit of notice of them …
Patrick’s daughter is back at home … Maureen is back home! Are you sure she’s not just taking a break from school? … She failed her exams. She failed! … She’s not going to be a schoolteacher after all … Shag her anyway! Shag her! …
Nora Johnny’s grandson from Gort Ribbuck has gone … On a boat from the Fancy City … He got a job on the ship … Just like his grandmother, he really likes his sailors …
Say that again … Say that again … Nell’s grandson is going for the priesthood. Blotchy Brian’s daughter’s youngfella is going to be a priest! A priest! That little feckless fart face going to be a priest! … He’s already gone to the seminary … He was wearing the priest’s garb at home … And the collar … And lugging a huge big prayer book around under his oxter … Reading his office up and down the new road at Lack Ard! You’d think that he’d never make a priest overnight, just like that … Oh, he’s not a priest yet, he’s just going to the college. Aha, Poxy Martin, they’ll never make a priest out of him ever …
What then, what did Blotchy Brian say? … Don’t be chewing and chomping, just spit it out … You’re afraid to, is that it? You’re afraid to! … Because Blotchy Brian is related to me by marriage. It’s to that wench of a sister he’s related. Spit it out … “My daughter has money to burn to make a priest.” Money to burn on a priest. The wrinkly old wretch! … Spit it out, or go to hell! Hurry up or they’ll have whipped you off too. You don’t think that I’d let you down into this grave and you riddled with bedsores for months … “Caitriona Paudeeen’s boy couldn’t even do that much …” Spit out the rest of it, you old gimp … “He didn’t have enough to put as much as a stitch of a college petticoat on his daughter.” Blotchy bastard Brian! The bumming bastard! …
Screw you! You’re muttering again … Nell is singing “Eleanor Aroon” up and down the road every day! Get stuffed, you mangy rash-arsed mong. You never had a good word to say, nor anybody belonging to you …
—… Do you think this is “The War of the Two Foreigners”? …
—… There I was giving a word for every pint to the Great Scholar, and he was giving me a pint for every word …
Over and back again the next day. The third day he had the car under his arse. The journey over and back was flaying us out.
“Paul, darling,” my mother says to me that evening, “there should be a good bit of drying on the grass from now on.”
“What do mean, drying, Ma?” I says. “You could never dry that crappy grass …”
She was on about it for a fortnight before I succeeded in making a few haycocks. Then I took it down again, and turned it up and turned it over and turned it around.
It was like that until one day when it pissed rain and the two of us were inside in Peter’s Pub. I had to up and lay it all out again to give it some more sun.
Then I gutted the gullies, flattened the fences, built them up again, then I cut the grass on the side of the road, brushed away the bracken, bundled the briars out of the way. I carved out culverts. We spent nearly a month in the front field, except that we’d be over and back in the car to Peter’s Pub all the time …
I never met anyone as nice as him. And he wasn’t stupid either. He collected about twenty to thirty words of Irish every day. He had bags of money. A big fat Government job …
But the day he headed off without me Peter the Publican’s daughter took him into the parlour and started to jizz him up …
I was really very fond of him. The week just after he left, I got flattened and that was the end of me … But hey, Postmistress … Hoora, Postmistress! … How do you know that he never paid for his lodging? You opened the letter my mother sent about it to the Government …
—And how do you know, Postmistress, how do you know that The Goom didn’t accept my collection of poetry, The Yellow Stars? …
—Ah, for feck’s sake, it’s too bad about you. They’d have published you yonks ago if you did as I said and wrote from the bottom to the top of the page. But, hey, how about me, The Irelander rejected my short story “The Setting of the Sun,” and the Postmistress knew that too …
—And the Postmistress knew well the advice I gave to Cannon how to crock the Kerry team in the letter I sent him two days after the semifinal …
—And how was it, Postmistress, that you knew about what I had said to the Judge about the Dog Eared crowd when we were taking them to court? …
—And how was it, Postmistress, that your own daughter, who just happens to be a postmistress now, how come she knew that I wouldn’t be allowed into England because I had TB, how come she knew it before me? …
—You opened a letter that Caitriona Paudeen sent to Mannix the Counsellor about Fireside Tom. The world and its mother knew what was in it:
“We will take him to the Fancy City in a car. We will get him drunk. If you had a couple of hot broads in the office getting him turned on, maybe he’d sign over the land to us. He’s a whore for the young ones when he’s pissed …”
—Abuboona! …
—You slitted open letters from the woman in the bookies in the Fancy City that she sent to the Young Master. You used to have tips about the horses before he had a clue about them himself …
—Holy God, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints! Ababoona! …
—You opened a letter that Caitriona Paudeen sent to Blotchy Brian saying she’d marry him no problem …
—Abuboona, boona boona! That I would marry foul fuckmouth Blotchy bastard Brian …
—Just so, Postmistress, I had nothing to thank you for. You always had the kettle simmering away in the back room. You opened a letter my son sent to me saying he married a Yid. The whole country knew about it, and we said neither a jot nor a tittle about it to nobody. What was that about? …
—You opened a letter that my son had sent me from England telling me he had married a black. The whole world knew about it, although we weren’t mentioning a word about it to anyone.
—I wrote to de Valera advising him what he should say to the people of Ireland. You kept it buried in the Post Office. You shouldn’t have done that …
—Every single love letter that Caitriona’s Paddy wrote to my daughter, you opened it first. I never opened one of them that I didn’t know that you had peeped at it already. Honestly. I remembered the letters I got long before that. I warned the postman he had to give them to me directly into my paw. Their lovely exotic smell. Exotic paper. Exotic writing. Exotic stamps. Exotic postmarks that were poetry to my ears: Marseilles, Port Said, Singapore, Honolulu, Batavia, San Francisco … The sun, oranges, blue seas. Sun beauty skin. Peninsulas of Paradise. Gold-rimmed garments. Ebony-toothed glittering grins. Lusty lapping lips … I’d suck them to my heart. I’d kiss them with my mouth. I’d cuddle them to my heart … I’d open them up … I’d take out the billet doux. And it’s only after that, Miss Postmistress, that I would see your slimy slinky paw on any of them. Ogh! …
—You opened the letter I sent home to my wife, when I was working on the turf in Kildare. I had nine pounds in it. You kept the lot …
—And why not? Why didn’t you register it? …
—And don’t you think that The Old Man of the Graveyard might have something to say also? Let me speak. Let me speak …
—Most certainly, Postmistress, there’s no way I’d be grateful to you or to your daughter, or to Billy who gave you a hand in the back room. Every single letter that came to me from London, after I came home, you had opened it. There was an affaire de coeur, as Nora Johnny might say, involved. You told the whole world about it. The priest heard about it, and the Schoolmistress—my wife—heard about it …
—That’s slander, Master. If you were aboveground I’d sue you …
—That time when Baba wrote to me from America about the will, Nell, the blabbermouth, was able to tell Patrick what she said:
“I haven’t made my will yet. I hope I won’t come to a sudden end, as you hoped in your letter …”
You opened it, you pisshead pustule … You got that nasty streak from Nell.
—Not at all, Caitriona Paudeen, I didn’t open the letter about the will at all, but a letter from O’Brien Solicitors in the Fancy City threatening you with the law within seven days if you didn’t pay Holland and Company for the round table you had purchased five or six years previously …
—Abuboona! Don’t believe her, the mangy maggot! Margaret! Margaret! … Did you hear what the Postmistress said? I’m going to burst! I’ll burst! …
—… I’ll tell you a story now, my good man:
“Colm Cille was in Aran when St. Paul visited him there. Paul wanted to have the whole island for himself.
“‘I’m going to open a pawnshop,’ Paul says.
“‘You will in your balls,’ says Colm Cille, ‘but I’m telling you straight up in plain Irish to get the fuck out of here.’
“Then he spoke to him in Legalese. Then he spoke to him in Latin. And then in Greek. In childish gibberish. In Esperanto. Colm Cille knew the seven languages of the Holy Ghost. He was the only one to whom the apostles gave the gift of tongues, when they were dying …
“‘OK, so,’ says Colm Cille, ‘seeing as you won’t fuck off, by virtue of the powers that have been invested in me, we’ll fix it like this. You’ll go off to the arse end of Aran and I’ll go to the west of the island as far as Bun Gowla. Both of us will say Mass at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Then we will walk towards one another, and howsomuchever of the island we will have walked when we meet, we will own that much.’
“‘That’s a deal, then,’ Paul said, in Yiddish. Colm Cille said the Mass and off he walked towards the arse end of Aran, and that’s where we get the saying, ‘being caught arse-ways’ …”
—But, hey, Coley, John Kitty in Bally Donough used to say that Colm Cille never said a Mass in his life …
—John Kitty said that! John Kitty is a heretic …
—So what if John Kitty says what he likes? Didn’t God himself—all praise to him—reveal himself there? The sun was up just as Colm Cille was saying his Mass. Then it went down, and God kept it down until Colm Cille had walked to the arse end of Aran. And it was only then that St. Paul saw it rising for the first time! …
“‘You may as well toddle off now, Shnozzle,’ says Colm Cille. ‘I’ll leave you weeping when you return to the Wailing Wall: the exact same horsewhipping you got when Christ drove you out of the Temple. You should be ashamed of yourself! Who would give a damn only that you are so greasy and sneaky as you slither away …’”
“That’s exactly why no Jew boy settled in Aran ever since …”
—This’s the way that I heard that story from oldfellas in my own place, Coley: when the two Patricks—Old Patrick alias Cothraighe, alias Calprainnovich, and Young Patrick—when they were hawking around Ireland trying to change the country …
—Two Patricks! That’s a heresy …
—… There was a day like that, Peter the Publican. Don’t deny it …
—Master, my darling, the bed was very hard. Really very hard underneath my poor arse, Master …
—I was only in it about a month, Poxy Martin, and I found it very hard …
—My back was totally flattened, Master. There wasn’t even a screed of a shred of skin left on my backside …
—Not as much as a screed, Martin, you poor hoor …
—Not as much as a screed, my dear Master, and there was a very tender spot in my groin. The bed was …
—Let us forget about the bed until some other time. Tell me this much, Poxy, how is … ?
—The Mistress, Master. O, she’s flying, not a bother. She earns her money every day at school, Master, and then she looks after Billy from then until the morning. She flashes over from the school twice a day to look after him, and they say that the poor thing hardly sleeps a wink, but is only sitting on the edge of the bed giving him his medicine …
—The cuntish gash … the brasser …
—Did you hear, Master, that she brought him three doctors from Dublin? Our own doctor visits him three times every day, but I’d say, Master, that it’s kind of wasted on Billy. He’s been laid up so long now that he couldn’t not be riddled with bedsores …
—I hope he lies and never rises! I hope he gets the thirty-seven diseases of the Ark! I hope all his tubes get glutted and his bunghole stuffed! That he gets a clubfoot and a twisted gut! The Ulster flies! The yellow bellies! The plague of Lazarus! Job’s jitters! Swine snots! Lock arse! Drippy disease, flatulent farts, wobbly warbles, wriggly wireworm, slanty eyes, and the shitty scutters! May he get the death rattle of Slimwaist Big Bum! The decrepit diseases of the Hag of Beare! May he be blinded without a glimmer and be gouged like Oisín after that! The Itch of the Women of the Prophet! His knees explode! His rump redden with rubenescence! Be lanced by lice! …
—Bedsores are the worst of them all, dear Master …
—May he get bedsores too so, Poxy Martin.
—She makes the Stations of the Cross twice a day, Master, and the trip to Killeana’s Well every week. She did the Mountain Pilgrimage this year, and Croagh Patrick, and Colm Cille’s Well, Mary’s Well, Augustine’s Well, Enda’s Well, Bernine’s Well, Cauleen’s Well, Shinny’s Well, Boadakeen’s Well, Conderg’s Bed, Bridget’s Pool, Lough Nave, and Lough Derg …
—Isn’t a great pity I’m not alive! I’d drain Brickeen’s Well on the thief, on the …
—She told me too, Master, that if it wasn’t for the way things are so dicey at the moment she’d go to Lourdes.
“Lough Derg is the worst of them, Poxy Martin,” she said. “My feet were pumping blood for three whole days. But it didn’t matter to me how I suffered as long as it did poor Billy some good. I’d crawl from here to …”
—The thundering bitch …
—“I was heartbroken after the Old Master,” she said …
—Oh, the whore of a thundering bitch! … If you only knew, Poxy! Ah, but you wouldn’t understand. There’d be no point in telling you …
—Well, anyway, Master, the truth is the bed was too hard …
—Will you hump off to hell hollering on about that bed, and just listen to her! … Oh, the things that that bitch of a one said to me, Martin! …
—I know that’s all true, Master …
—The pair of us sitting down in Crompaun. The gentle susurration of the suds caressing the rocks at our feet. A young seagull calling to his father and mother to thrill about his first flight, not unlike unto a shy bride approaching the altar. The shades of evening sliding across the shafts of sunlight on the crest of the waves, like the young kestrel slowly shaping to snatch the unready. The oars of the currach returning from its fishing grounds plashing in the water. She’s in my arms, Martin. A wisp of her gorgeous hair gently touching my cheek. Her hands are around my neck. I am quoting poetry:
“Glen Mason:
Rock high, sun facing.
We slept all evening
On its sward and apron
“‘If you come, my love, come like one creeping,
Come to the door that admits no creaking
If my father asks who it is I’m seeking
I will say it’s the wind outside that’s keening.’”
Either that or reciting love stories, Martin …
—The Sons of Uisneach, Diarmaid, and Gráinne, Tristan and Isolde, Strong Tom Costello and Fair Una McDermott, Carol O’Daly and Eleanor Aroon, The Hot Kiss, The Powder Puff …
—I get that too, Master …
—I bought a car straight up, Martin, just to take her out and about. I could hardly afford it, but I thought she was worth it anyway. We’d go into the pictures in the Fancy City, to dances in Derry Dav, to teachers’ meetings …
—That’s all true, and up the Hill Road, Master. There was that day when I was going for a creel of turf and your car was planked there at the side of the road at Ardeen More, and the two of you over beyond in the glen …
—OK, forget about that now, Guzzeye Martin, until some other time …
—But for all that, Master, I also remember that day when I got the news about the pension. Not one of us in the whole house had the least clue, by the mebs of the Devil himself, what it was about. “The Old Master is the boy for us.” I says. I went on over to Peter the Publican’s place and stayed there until all the students had gone. I went back then. When I got back to the schoolhouse all I could hear was moaning and groaning and sighing. “I left it too late,” I says to myself, “pretending to be proper, according to myself. He’s gone off home.” I gawked in through the window. Saving your presence, Master, there you were with her, bonking and beasting away …
—I wasn’t. I wasn’t, Poxy Martin, no I wasn’t.
—Ah, but you were, Master, there’s nothing better than telling the truth …
—Good for you, Master! …
—You have no reason to be ashamed, Master.
—Who would ever have thought it, Breed? …
—We were sending our children to him, Kitty …
—If the priest had caught him, Joan …
—It was Whit Sunday, Poxy. I had the day off. “We should go down to Ross Harbour,” I said to her, after dinner. “Getting out and about will do you no end of good.” She did. We went. I really thought, Martin, that I knew what she was all about, that night on Ross Harbour … The long summer day was fading in the west after its long labours. Both of us were lovingly stretched on a rock observing the stars glittering on the shiny surface of the sea …
—Yes, I get that too, Master …
—Gazing at the candles being lit one by one in the houses shining on the far side of the bay. Gazing at the whisk of the will o’ the wisp wending on the seaweed on the well of the tide. Gazing at the sparkly dust of the weather coming in from beyond the mouth of the harbour. I can tell you, Martin, on that wonderful night I felt myself part of all those stars and lights and flashing phosphorescence and the wonder of the weather and the sweet soughing of the surf and the elevation of the air …
—Ah, yea, sure, I get it all, Master. That’s the way it is …
—She swore to me, Martin, that her love for me was deeper than the deep blue sea; that she was more faithful than the rising and the setting of the sun; more permanent than the ebb and flow of the tide, than the stars and the mountains, that her love for me predated tides, and stars, and mountains. She swore to me that her love was of a piece with eternity itself …
—She said that, Master! …
—She said that, Poxy Martin. She said that, by the hammers of hell! … But hang on a minute. I was on my deathbed. She came in and she had just made the Pilgrimage of the Cross, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. She took my hand. She said that if anything happened to me her life would not be worth living, and her death would not be a death unless we should both die together. She promised and pledged no matter how long she lived after me that she would spend the rest of her days done down and depressed. She promised and pledged that she would never marry again …
—She promised all that, Master! …
—She swore and asseverated, Poxy Martin! … And despite all that she had the poisoned serpent in her heart all that time. I was only buried a year—one short miserable year compared with the eternity she had promised me—and there she was swearing fealty to someone else who wasn’t me, someone else whose kisses, not mine, were on her lips, and someone else’s love that wasn’t mine in her heart. Me, I was her first love and her husband, me laid under the cold sods of the grave and she hot in the arms of Billy the Postman …
—True, hot in the arms of Billy the Postman, Master! I saw it myself … We have to forget about a lot of things, Master …
—And now, there he is on my bed, and she giving him gung-ho and giddy-up and go-for-it, looking after him from morning to night, going on retreats for him, sending for doctors, three of them, from Dublin, to look after him …
… If she had sent for even one doctor from Dublin to look after me, I would have been all right …
—You’d never believe what she told me about you, Master? I went into her with a bag of spuds just a week after you were buried. We were talking about you. “That was terrible news about the Old Master,” I said, “and there was really no need for it. If he had stayed in bed with that flu, and looked after himself, and drank a few quaffs of whiskey, and sent for the doctor at the beginning …” “Do you know the real truth, Poxy?” she says to me. I will always remember exactly what she said, Master. “Do you know the real truth, Poxy Martin, all the doctors in the world couldn’t save the Old Master. He was too good for this life …” That was it, bejasus, Master, and she said something else that I had never heard before. I think it’s an old saying, but I can’t be sure. “He whom the gods love, dies young …”
—The bitch! The witch! The cuntinental cow! …
—De grâce, Master. Speak nicely if you please. Don’t be like Caitriona Paudeen. The chaplain came to visit her one day. He was new in the parish. He didn’t know where Nell’s house was. “Nell, that whore,” Caitriona said. Honest! …
—You tramp of the Toejam trollops! You so-and-so! … Hey, Margaret! …
—… He was there ready and waiting for Blotchy Brian collecting his pension every Friday. “You’d be well advised to grab a fist of insurance for yourself from now on, Briany,” the wretch says. “Who knows, any one of these days you might go the way of all flesh …”
—“There’s no guarantee that that useless old crockery wouldn’t take out insurance himself,” Blotchy Brian said to me one Friday in the Post Office, “or on anything apart from Nell Paudeen’s little pup who used to come in regularly and sniffle around on Caitriona’s floor.”
—I was over with Brian myself getting the pension the day he was buried.
“The insurance lad didn’t last too long after, either,” I said.
“There he is heading away there now, the sewer sucker,” Brian says, “and if he goes up, he’ll piss The Man Above off with his never-ending guff about the accident that happened ages ago, and trying to get him to insure his holy and angelic property against the pyromania of yer Man Below. And if The Man Below gets it, he’ll piss him off getting him to insure his few embers against the wiles of yer Man Above. They both of them couldn’t do any better to that louse lackey than what Fireside Tom did to him: every time he didn’t want Nell’s cattle on his patch of land, he drove them into Caitriona’s, and then Caitriona’s cattle into Nell’s …”
—Did you hear what he said when that headbanger Tim Top of the Road died?
—“Sweet Jumping Jesus, boys, St. Peter had better be looking after his keys from now on, or this new blow-in will have filched them from him in no time …”
—And I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, do you know what he said to Fireside Tom when Caitriona died:
“Thomas, my beautiful angel,” he said, “Yourself, and Nell, and Baba, and Nora Johnny’s young one will have to be constantly calling into the Celestial Smithy to get their wings mended, that is, if God grants that you be allowed around the same place as herself. I’d say I only have a very slim chance of getting wings, though. Caitriona never thought me good enough. But do you know what Thomas, my gentle dove, you’d have no problem at all with anything broken if I could get myself a little cubbyhole of my own near her …”
—Ababoona! Brian next to me to torture me! God forbid! What would I do at all? …
—The Postmistress told me that she couldn’t open any letters when I died she was so busy with the telegrams …
—My death was in the newspaper …
—My death was in two newspapers …
—Listen to the account of my death in the Daily News:
“He was of an old and highly renowned family in the area. He played a significant part in the national movement. He was a personal acquaintance of Eamon de Valera …”
—This is the description of my death in The Irish Observer:
“He belonged to a family that was very well liked in the area. He joined the Fenian Scouts when he was a boy, and after that he joined the Irish Volunteers. He was an intimate friend of Arthur Griffith …”
—… Coley told the story of “The pullet who was born on the dung heap” at your wake, also.
—You’re lying! That’s a disgusting story to tell at any respectable wake! …
—But, wasn’t I listening to him! …
—You’re lying, you were not! …
—… A row at your wake! A row at a wake where there were only two old pensioners!
—And one of them as deaf as Fireside Tom when Caitriona was trying to persuade him to come to visit Mannix the Counsellor about the bit of land.
—All true, and every vessel in the house was overflowing with holy water.
—There was a row at my wake …
—There sure was. Fireside Tom took it upon himself to say to Blotchy:
“You’ve drunk enough of Ned of the Hill’s buttermilk since you came in, Tom, that you must have enough already for churning.”
—There were two barrels at my wake …
—Three at mine …
—That’s true, Caitriona, there were three of them at your wake. That’s the bare honest truth for you, Caitriona. There were three of them there—three fine big ones—and a few shots from Ned of the Hill’s magic waterworks also … And even if I was the oldfella, I still drank twelve mugs of it. To tell you God’s honest truth, Caitriona, there’s no way I would have swilled that much if I knew that my heart was a bit dicey. What I said to myself was, as my eyes were staring at the pints of porter: “Wouldn’t it be a lot better for this guy to buy a colt rather than to be getting pissed with shit artists …”
—You pompous piss artist! …
—That’s what they were. Some of them were laid out smashed drunk on the ground in the way of everyone else. It even happened that Peter Nell fell on top of the bed you were laid out on, Caitriona. His leg was gone, the one that was injured.
—The sneaky swill slurper!
—The best of it all was when Breed Terry’s youngfella and Kitty’s son started beating the crap out of one another, and then smashed the round table before they could be separated …
—Holy fuckaroni! Ababoona! …
—I split them up. If I knew then that my heart was a bit dicey …
—… It appeared to me, anyway, that you were laid out in the proper traditional way, unless my eyes were deceiving me …
—Then your eyes didn’t see the two crosses on my breast …
—I had two crosses and the scapulars …
—Whatever they had on me, or they didn’t have on me, Kitty, it wasn’t a dirty sheet like there was on Caitriona …
—Ababoona! Don’t believe a word from that mangy maggot’s mouth …
—… You had a coffin that was made by the little scutty carpenter from Gort Ribbuck. He made another one for Nora Johnny and ’twas as small as a bird’s cage …
—Your coffin was made by a carpenter as well …
—That may be so, but it wasn’t the jobber from Gort Ribbuck, but a proper carpenter who had served his time. He had qualifications from the Tec …
—My coffin cost ten pounds …
—I thought yours only cost eight pounds: just like Caitriona’s one …
—You’re a liar, you microphallic muppet! I had the best coffin from Tim’s shop …
—Little Kitty laid me out.
—Me too, and Biddy Sarah keened me …
—Then she didn’t make a very good job of it. There’s a kind of a lump in Biddy’s throat and it doesn’t melt until about the seventh glass. Then she starts up with “Let Erin Remember” …
—Anyway, I don’t think anyone keened Caitriona at all, unless her son’s wife or Nell sang a few bars …
—… Your altar was only six pounds ten …
—Mine was ten pounds.
—Hang on a minute now, ’til I see what mine was … 20 by 10 plus 19, that makes 190 … plus 20, that’s 210 shillings … that comes to 10 pounds, 10 shillings. Isn’t that right, Master? …
—Peter the Publican had a huge altar …
—And Nora Johnny …
—That’s true, Nora Johnny had a big altar. I would have had a big altar too, only nobody knew about it, I went too quickly. The heart, God help me! Just the same as if I had been laid up and had bedsores …
—I would have had fourteen pounds exactly, except that there was a bad shilling with it. It was only a halfpenny that somebody had covered with fag paper. Blotchy Brian noticed it, and he copped on to the trick. He said that it was Caitriona Paudeen put it there. She had put many bad shillings like that on the altar. She tried to be at every altar like that but she couldn’t afford it, the poor wretch …
—You lying son of a poor rat bastard! …
—Oh, I forgive you, Caitriona. I wouldn’t give a tinker’s curse or an itinerant’s malediction about, if it wasn’t for the priest. “They’ll be plonking their old rotten teeth on the plate for me soon,” he said …
—I only ever heard “Paul this,” and “Paul that” from yourself and your daughter that time when she jizzed up the Great Scholar in the parlour. But there was no mention of Paul when you had to put a shilling on my altar …
—After I had drunk forty-two pints I tied Tomaseen up, but not one of his kip and kin or anybody from his house bothered their arse to come to my funeral, even though we’re in the same town land. They hardly put as much as a shilling on my altar the lot of them together. They all had a cold, or so they said. That was all the thanks I got, even though he was stuck like shit to a blanket. Imagine, like, if he had to be tied up again? …
—I didn’t have a very big funeral. Most of Bally Donough had gone to England, and Gort Ribbuck also, and Clogher Savvy …
—… And what do you think of Caitriona Paudeen, Kitty, who didn’t as much as darken the door of our house since my father passed away, despite all the cups of tea she polished off …
—That was the time she was going to Mannix the Counsellor about Fireside Tom’s land …
—Do you hear that old strap Breed Terry, and manky Kitty of the piddly potatoes? …
—I had to clamp my hand three times over the mouth of that old windbag over there, where he was singing: “Martin John More had a beautiful daughter” at your funeral, Curran …
—The whole country was at your funeral, journalists and photographers, the lot …
—And for a good reason! You were blown up by the mine, all of you. If you had died on the old bed just like me, there wouldn’t have been a journalist or a photographer next or near the place …
—Bien de monde was at funeral à moi. Le Ministre de France from Dublin came to mine and he laid a couronne mortuaire on my grave …
—There was a representative of Eamon de Valera at my funeral, and the Tricolour was on my coffin …
A telegram from Arthur Griffith came to my funeral and shots were fired over the grave …
—No, you’re the liar. I was First Lieutenant of the First Company of the First Battalion of the First Brigade …
—That’s a lie!
—God save us, for ever and ever! Wasn’t it a disaster that they never brought my bag of bones east of the Fancy City!
—The Big Butcher came to my funeral from the Fancy City. He respected me, and his father respected my father. He often said to me that he respected me because of the respect that his father had for my father …
—The doctor came to my funeral. That was hardly a surprise, of course. My daughter Kate has two sons doctors in the States …
—Now you tell us! That was hardly a surprise, indeed. So that he wouldn’t be entirely shamed—after all the money you had given him—he came to your funeral. And you twisting your ankle every second month …
—The Old Master and the Mistress were at my funeral …
—The Old Master and the Mistress and the Foxy Cop were at my funeral …
—The Old Master and the Mistress and the Foxy Cop and the priest’s sister were at my funeral …
—The priest’s sister! Tell me, was she wearing the pants? …
—It was a disgrace that Mannix the Counsellor didn’t come to Caitriona Paudeen’s funeral …
—It was, disgraceful. Nor the priest’s sister …
—Nor the Foxy Cop …
—He was checking out the dogs in Bally Donough that day …
—No dog would survive on the flea-ridden baldy bumps of your place …
—… “Fireside Tom’s grin was as wide as a gate,
He’d have Nell now, as buried was Cate …”
—I’m telling you, Caitriona Paudeen, if I could have helped it at all, I would have been at your funeral. It wouldn’t be right for me not to be at Caitriona Paudeen’s funeral, even if I had to crawl there on my hands and knees. But I never heard a whisper about it ’til the night of the burial …
—You’re an old codger, Chalky Steven. How long are you here? I didn’t know you were here at all. The bad pains …
—There were gangs of people at my funeral. The Parish Priest, The Chaplain, The Chaplain from Lough Shore, A Franciscan and Two Brothers from the Fancy City, The Schoolmaster and Mistress from Derry Lough, The Master and Mistress from Kin Teer, The Master from Clogher Savvy, The Master from Glen Beg, and the Junior Mistress, The Assistant Teacher from Kill …
—No doubt about it, every single one of them, Master, and Billy the Postman too. To tell you the truth he was very helpful that day. He fastened and screwed down the bolts on the coffin, he carried it out of the house, and he slid it down into the grave. In all fairness, he wasn’t either slow or sluggish. He threw off his jacket with gusto and grabbed the shovel …
—The robber! The homuncular homo! …
—There were five cars at my funeral …
—Yea, that gimp from Derry Lough, his car got stuck right in the middle of things, and your funeral was an hour late …
—There were as many as thirty at Peter the Publican’s. He had two hearses …
—Just as you mentioned it, I had a hearse as well. The old woman wouldn’t rest easy until she had got one: “His guts would be all shook up if he was up on their shoulders, or being hauled in an old cart,” she said …
—Oh, it was easy for her to talk, Tim Top of the Road, with my turf …
—And my wrack from the sea …
—… There weren’t enough there to even haul Caitriona to the church they were so mouldy from the booze. Even they started to act the maggot. They had to let her corpse down twice, the way they were. I swear they did: smack bang in the middle of the road …
—God help us! Ababoona!
—I’m telling you God’s honest truth, Caitriona, love. There were only six of us from beyond Walsh’s pub. The rest of them went into Walsh’s, or else they fell by the wayside. We thought we’d have to get the women to carry the corpse …
—Ababoona! Don’t believe him, the bollocks …
—That’s the whole bare unadorned truth, Caitriona. You were heavy as hell. You weren’t sick that long, and you had no bedsores.
“The two old buckos will have to lift her,” Peter Nell says just near the lane at Clogher Savvy. The old men were great, Caitriona. Peter Nell was on crutches and Kitty’s youngfella and Breed Terry’s youngfella were beating the shit out of one another, metaphorically, like: each one blaming the other about smashing up the round table the night before. The truth is always the best, Caitriona. There is no way I would carry the coffin, or even go a step of the way with you, if I knew then that I had a dicey heart …
—Too busy piddling around with periwinkles, you piss artist …
—“There she is, still acting the mule. You wouldn’t know from hell if she wanted to go to the church or even to the cemetery,” Blotchy Brian said, while himself and myself and Kitty’s youngfella were lifting you up to take you in along the church path …
“Not a word of a lie, my good friend,” Peter Nell says, as he dumps his crutches, and goes in up and under the coffin …
—That’s really the pits! The slut’s son carrying my coffin. Blotchy Brian carrying me. The beardy bastard. If that twisted hunch humped whore was carrying me, then the coffin was baw ways. Abooboona boona! … Blotchy Brian the bum! … Nell’s son! Margaret! Margaret! … If I had known all about it I would have burst. I would have burst on the spot …
—… Are you telling me now, that they don’t take any insurance on colts? …
—Well, my kind of insurance broker wouldn’t take it anyway, Johnny.
—You’d think you weren’t taking any chance with a fine healthy young horse. It would be well worth it, before anything happened, to get a big pot of money …
—I nearly got a big pot myself, Johnny, in the crossword in The Sunday Scandal. Five hundred pounds …
—Five hundred pounds! …
—That was it, by Jaysus, Johnny. I only had one letter wrong …
—I get it …
—What they wanted was a word in eight letters ending in “e.” The clue said that it meant something that flew through the air by means of mechanical propulsion.
—Yea, I still get it.
—I immediately thought of the word “aeroplane,” as I had seen them flying in the sky. But that was nine letters …
—Yea, still with you.
—“That can’t be it,” I said to myself. I spent ages and aeons wracking my brains and torturing myself. Anyway, in the end I put down “aerplane,” as I couldn’t think of anything else …
—I get it.
—But what do you know, when the answer came out on the paper it was “airplane”! Fuck that new spelling anyway Johnny! If I had a handgun I’d blow my brains out. That was one of the reasons why my life was cut short …
—Now, I really get it.
—… By the oak of this coffin, Chalky Steven, I swear I gave her, I gave Caitriona Paudeen the pound …
—… He had a broad grin on his mug …
—That stupid grin that the Junior Master makes is a good sign, anyway! He might go the way of the Old Master, who knows. There’s some kind of curse on our school that the women don’t get on with the masters there …
—… I’ll tell you now the advice I gave to Cannon after he won the semifinal for Galway:
“Cannon, my hero,” I says to him, “even if you don’t manage to kick the ball in the final against Kerry, kick something. There must be some kind of equality in clocking people. The ref will be up for Kerry anyway. Why else would they have won so many All-Irelands? You can do it. You have the guts and the balls for it. Every time you clobber something, I will raise the roof …”
—Hitler is my darling! I can’t wait for him to get to England! … I’m sure he’ll damn them all to hell and the devils will be dancing on the dunes of England: that he’ll give the bum’s rush to their snotty snoots: that he’ll plant a million tons of mines in their belly buttons …
—God help us all! …
—Ah, come on, you can’t say anything bad about England. There’s lashings of work there. What would the youth of Bally Donough, or for that matter, the crowd from Gort Ribbuck, and Cloghar Savvy do without her …
—Or the old gom over here who has a slice of land up above the town land that is the very best, beyond measure, for fattening cattle up …
—Après la fuite de Dunkerque et la bouleversement de Juin 1940, Monsieur Churchill a dit qu’il retournerait pour libérer la France, la terre sacrée …
—You shouldn’t let any black heretic like that insult your religion, Peter. It was fucking lucky I wasn’t there! I’d have asked him straight up, no bullshit: “Do you believe in God at all? Maybe you’re just like a cow or a calf, or like a … cunty little pup.” A dog doesn’t give a fuck about anything only to fill his gut. A dog would eat meat on a Friday, I’m telling you that. It would be just great, just great for him. But, of course, not every dog would eat it, either … I had a smidgen of meat left over when I was in the town, one time. “I’ll drag it out ’til Saturday,” I says, “Tomorrow’s a fast day, no meat” …
Coming in from eating out on Friday when I was returning from the fields with a fist of spuds, I saw the Minister passing by, heading off hunting. “Maybe you’ll get away with it, you damned heretic,” says I. “Of course I’m fully aware that you won’t get past Friday without fresh meat … or even a young pleasant pup. Of course, without speaking crudely, you are very like a cow or a calf … or even a little plump pup.” When I went in clutching my fist full of small potatoes, the loop was missing from the dresser. Every single fillet of flesh gone! “It’s a cat or a dog for certain,” I said. “When I get you, you’re done for.” Eating meat on a Friday. Amn’t I the stupid eejit that didn’t put them out, and close the door after me! I caught them on the way up. The Minister’s dog gobbling the meat, and my dog growling at him trying to stop him. I got a hold of the pike. “You’d easily know who you belong to,” I roared at him, “guzzling meat on a Friday.” I thought I’d gut him with the pike. The filthy wretch got away by the skin of his teeth. I offered the meat to our own dog. May God forgive me! I shouldn’t have been tempting him. He wouldn’t refuse anything. Not a bit. Now do you feel any better? He knew it wasn’t right … It’s a pity you didn’t tell him that, Peter, and not give him the chance to insult your religion. Lord God, if it had been me …
—How could I? The Minister’s dog never took a bit from me …
—But the Spanish eat meat every Friday, and they’re fine Catholics …
—You’re a liar, you piece of mush! …
—The Pope gave them permission …
—That’s a lie! You black heretic …
—… O, is that so, Master, my old pal? If I rubbed—what’s that you call it again, Master … Oh, yes, if I rubbed methylated spirits on me in time, I’d never have got bedsores. Ara, but Master, there was nobody any good looking after me. They were all thick. You can’t beat the bit of education, after all. Methylated spirits. Who’d have thought of it! You say it comes in a bottle. Do you know what, Master, they must be the same bottles that the Mistress buys from Peter the Publican’s daughter. I’m told she buys loads of them. For Billy …
—Not them, Poxy Martin. You wouldn’t get them in a pub at all. She’s drinking the stuff, the dipso. Certainly downing it. Or else Billy is sloshing it back. Or the two of them together. That’s one way with money, Poxy …
—Really and truly honest to God, Poxy Martin, I would have burst my gut to be at your funeral. It wouldn’t have been right for me not to be at Poxy Martin’s funeral, even if I had to crawl on my hands and knees …
—Margaret! Margaret! … Do you hear Chalky Steven bullshitting again? He’s a terrible pain … Hey there, Margaret! Did you hear? Hello, Margaret! … You’re very quiet recently. Do you hear me, Margaret? … It’s about time for you to say something … I’m talking about that blubby blabber, Chalky Steven. I didn’t know he was here at all until a while ago. There’s a very dour lot here, Margaret. They’d tell you nothing. Look at the way they stayed dumb about Chalky Steven …
O, I know full well, Margaret, that Chalky Steven is here. I was talking to him. They thought they’d dump him in on top of me …
That’s true, Margaret: anybody is easy to recognise when there’s a cross over his grave. It won’t be too long now before my own cross is ready, although they say that the Connemara marble is getting used up, that’s it’s hard to get enough stone for a proper cross. Poxy Martin says you’d only get one now if you knew somebody. But he told me they were hurrying up with it, all the same …
He didn’t say that, is that what you’re saying, Margaret … There’s enough marble left in Connemara to last for ever! Ah come off it, Margaret, stop talking through your hole! Why would I bother laying lies on a decent man? Neither himself nor myself are trying to compete in telling lies just because we have been dumped in this dive together …
You say that my daughter-in-law said that, Margaret: “We’ll be well off in this life when we can afford to start buying a cross.” Oh, I get it alright. You were eavesdropping behind closed doors again, Margaret, just as you used to do Up Above … Now, now, Margaret, there’s no point in denying it. You were eavesdropping behind closed doors. That tale you told Dotie and Nora Johnny here about my life, where else did you hear that except from behind the door? …
What! You used to listen to me talking while I was walking the road! … And behind the ditch when I was working in the field! Well then, Margaret, isn’t it just the same to be listening behind the door, and listening on the road, or skulking behind a ditch …
But, hang on a minute now, Margaret? Tell me this much, why are the people in the graveyard so set against me? Why can’t they find someone else to chew the cud about apart from me? Because like …
Because like, I don’t have any cross yet, is that it? What else? What else? …
They don’t like me since I was stroppy about cooperating? How did I get stroppy, Margaret? …
Now I get it alright. I voted against Nora Johnny! Don’t you know in your heart of hearts, Margaret, that I couldn’t have done otherwise. The hairy molly of the Toejam trollops! The Fine Time that was had by all the sailors, the so-and-so … She was a candidate for the Fifteen Shilling Party after that, is that what you’re saying, Margaret? And your shower didn’t give a toss about Toejam Nora, nor about quacky ducks, nor about salacious sailors, nor about her toper tippling on the sly, nor about her being a so-and-so …
What’s that you said the Master called me, you said? … A scab. He called me a scab because I voted against the Fifteen Shilling Party. But I didn’t vote against the Fifteen Shilling Party, Margaret. I voted against Nora horse arse Johnny. You know full well that our family always voted the same way aboveground. Nell was the one who was different. Nell, the fucking fussock, did the dirty. She voted for this new crowd because they got a road built up to her house …
The Master called me that too, did he. Say it again, Margaret … A bowsie! A bowsie, Margaret! … Because I cursed Huckster Joan after she had insulted me! O my God Almighty! I never called her names, Margaret. It was she had a go at me, Margaret. I’ll tell that much to the Master. I’ll tell him straight up, without fear or hesitation. “Caitriona,” she said, “Caitriona Paudeen, do you hear me?” she said. “I want to thank you for voting for us. You are a courageous woman …”
I never pretended, Margaret, I never pretended that I heard the sour tone in her voice. If I answered her at all, I would have said: “You fat floozie, I wasn’t voting for you, or for Peter the Publican, or for the Pound Party, no way, I was voting against that so-and-so, Nora Johnny …”
She said that I was a turncoat because I called Nora Johnny … pretending to be friendly … after all the badmouthing I had given her since I came to the graveyard … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Margaret! Me calling Nora Johnny! … What’s that Margaret? … He called me that! The Master! No, that’s what he called Nora Johnny, Margaret. What else would he call her! …
He called me a so-and-so, Margaret. A so-and-so! I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! Burst …