—It’s not true! It’s not true!
—That’s a damned lie! That’s a damned lie, Peadar …
—You’re spouting lies! It’s not true! …
—It is true! Not only did she drink, she sponged for drink. I often gave her drink on credit. But it’s not often she paid me for it …
—She never took a drop of drink …
—It’s a damned lie …
—It’s not true, Peadar the Pub …
—It is true, Fellow Corpses! Nóra Sheáinín was a secret drinker. Usually when she had no business in any other shop in the village, she would come over by the old boreen, down through the little wood and in the back entrance. And she used to come on Sundays as well as weekdays, after closing time at night and before opening time in the morning.
—It’s not true! It’s not true! It’s not true!
—Hurrah for Nóra Sheáinín! …
—Hurrah for the Fifteen-Shilling Party! …
—Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah for Nóra Sheáinín! …
—May God save your health, Peadar the Pub! Let her have it where it hurts! Oh by God! And I never knew she was a secret drinker! What else would she be! Keeping company with sailors …
6
—… The heart! the heart, God help us …
—… God help us forever and ever … My friends and relations and my kith and kin would come and kneel at my grave. Kindred hearts would break into a blaze of prayer and sympathetic souls would compose an Ave.11 Dead clay would answer living clay, the dead heart would warm to the love of the living heart and the dead voice would comprehend the bold utterances of the living …
Familiar hands would repair my grave, familiar hands would raise my memorial and familiar tongues would accord my funeral rites. The clay of my native Temple Brennan! Sacred clay of my Zion …
But there can’t be a Kelly in Gallough, or a Mannion in Menlo, or a Clan McGrath left on the Plain, for if there were my earthly remains would not be left to decompose in the rude clay of the granite, in the inhospitable clay of hills and harbours, in the barren clay of stones and cairns, in the sterile clay of bindweed and sandweed, in the lonely clay of my Babylon …
—She’s very bad when the foolishness comes over her …
—… Hold on you, my good man, till I finish my story:
“… The speckled chicken began clucking around the yard at the top of its voice: ‘I laid an egg! I laid an egg! Red hot on the dung-heap. Red hot on the dung-heap. I laid an egg! …’ ‘Bad scran to your little egg, and don’t deafen us with it,’ says an old laying hen that was there. ‘I’ve laid nine clutches, six second clutches, four broods, three score odd eggs and a hundred and one shell-less eggs since the first day I began to cluck on the dung-heap. I was felt for an egg five hundred and forty six times …’”
—I wish it had been me, Peadar. You shouldn’t have allowed a black heretic to insult your faith …
—… I drank two score pints and two, one after the other. You know that, Peadar the Pub …
—… I’m telling you there were no flies on Tomás Inside …
—Do you think I don’t know that …
—May the devil take your futile verses. And for all I know at this very moment the old woman at home could be handing over the big holding to our eldest son and Road-End’s daughter …
—… “Mártan Sheáin Mhóir had a daughter …”
—… A bad bottle the murderer gave me …
—Faith then, as you say …
—The elder of the graveyard here. Permission to speak …
—Qu’est-ce qu’il veut dire: “Permission to speak”? …
—… But I was putting my hand in my pocket and turning it out …
—… Your clogs, you cheating Siúán …
—… Oh, Dotie dear, the Election has me exhausted. Always questioning and quibbling. Votes! Votes! Do you know, Dotie, an election isn’t half as cultural as I expected? Honest it’s not. The talk is barbarous and insulting. Honest! And all lies. Honest! Did you hear what Peadar the Pub said about me: that I used to drink four or five pints of porter every day above ground. Honest! Porter! If he’d said whiskey, even. But porter! The most uncultured drink of all. Ugh! … Of course you don’t believe that I drank porter, Dotie! It’s a lie! Filthy, black, uncultured porter. It’s a lie, Dotie! What else. Honest Engine …
And that I got drink on credit … Scandal-mongering, Dotie. Scandal-mongering. And that I was sponging. Ugh! Lies and scandal, Dotie. Who would think it of Peadar the Pub? I was friendly with him, Dotie. He was a man who had cultured people coming in and out to him … Mud-slinging is what cultured people call it. As the Big Master says, that elemental beast fettered and repressed within us—the “old man” as Saint Paul called it—is let loose at election time … I feel my own culture diminished since I came into contact with the demos12 …
Tomás Inside, Dotie? Peadar said that too. He said that I was never as keen to go in to him as when Tomás Inside was there. It’s easily known what sort of reputation he was trying to give me … Honest, Dotie, I had no need to run after Tomás Inside. It was he who used to run after me. Honest! There are certain people who are destined for romance, Dotie. Did you hear how Kinks expressed it to Blixen in The Red-Hot Kiss? “It was Cupid created you out of his own rib, my tweetie-sweetie …”
There was never a time that there wasn’t a plague of lovers haunting me. In my youth in Brightcity, as a widow in Mangy Field, and now here, I’ve an affaire de coeur, as he calls it himself, with the Big Master. But it’s quite harmless: Platonic; cultural …
Dotie! Sentimentality! Never mind the fair Plains of East Galway. You must understand what I’m saying so that you can rid your mind of every misjudgement and prejudice. That is the first step in culture, Dotie … I was a young widow. I married young too. Romantic fate once more, Dotie. Tomás Inside lost every spark of sense over me when I was a widow:
“By the docks, but I have a cosy cabin,” he would say. “I have indeed, dear, and a nice patch of land. Heads of cattle and sheep. I’m still a strong and supple man myself. But I find it difficult to attend to every call on me: cattle, sowing, thatching. The place is going to wrack and ruin for want of a good housewife … You’re a widow, Nóra Sheáinín, with your son married in the house, and it’s no benefit to you to be in Mangy Field any more. By the docks, marry me …”
“De grâce, Tomás Inside,” I’d say. But it was no use saying “De grâce” to him, Dotie. He was at my heels everywhere. As Pips puts it in The Red-Hot Kiss: ‘True love knows no obstacles.’ He was always pressing me to come in for a drink every time we met in the village. Honest! “De grâce, Tomás,” I used to say, “I never touched a drop …”
Honest I didn’t, Dotie … But the things he used to say to me about love, Dotie:
I’ll marry you, Nóra Sheáinín …
“My star of light and my sun of harvest,
My locks of amber and my earthly store …”
Honest he did, Dotie. But I knew it was only an Indian summer of romance for both of us, and I used to say:
“Little moon, little moon of Scotland, it’s lonesome you’ll be this night, tomorrow night, and long nights after, and you pacing the lonely sky beyond Glen Lee, looking for the trysting-place of Deirdre and Naoise,13 the lovers …”
He came to Mangy Field to me a few weeks before I died and a bottle of whiskey with him. Honest he did. He was so hot for marriage he was to be pitied. I don’t know that I wouldn’t have encouraged him too, Dotie, but for the obstacles to true love. I told him so:
“The little moon of Scotland will never find our trysting-place,” I said. “Naoise and Deirdre are not fated ever to keep a tryst again, or to taste the harvest festival of their love under the pleasant rocks of Glen Lee of the lovers.” “By the docks, why not?” said he. “The obstacles to true love,” said I. “Others have something to gain by keeping me and my true love apart till death. The only trysting-place in store fo
r us is that of the graveyard. But we’ll spend the harvest festival of everlasting love there for all eternity …”
It broke my heart to tell him, Dotie. But it was true for me. Honest, it was. Caitríona Pháidín came between me and my true love. Petty worldly concerns. She didn’t want to see any woman coming into Tomás Inside’s house. She wanted his land for herself. There wasn’t a thing under the sun she didn’t steal from him. Honest …
—That’s a damned lie, you bitch! I didn’t rob and I didn’t steal from Tomás Inside, or from anyone else. You bitch! You were a secret drinker in the snug in Peadar the Pub’s … A secret drinker! … A secret drinker. Don’t believe her, Dotie! Don’t believe her! …
Hey, Muraed … Muraed … Hey, Muraed … Did you hear what that bitch Nóra Sheáinín said about me? … I’ll explode! I’ll explode! I’ll explode! …
Interlude Four
THE CRUSHING OF THE CLAY
1
I am the Trump of the Graveyard. Let my voice be heard! It must be heard …
Here in the graveyard the spectre of Insensibility is violating coffins, grubbing up corpses and kneading the decayed flesh in his cold earth-oven. He cares nothing for cheek of sunlight, fairness of complexion or the pearly teeth that are the maiden’s pride. Nor for the stout limb, the nimble foot or the sturdy chest that are the pride of the youth. Nor the tongue that beguiled the multitudes with enchanting words and sweet cadences. Nor the brow that bore the laurel wreath of triumph. Nor the brain that was once the guiding star for every seafarer “on the wide seas of high learning” … For these are tasty morsels in the wedding cake he is baking for his family and his assistants: the fly, the maggot and the worm …
Above ground the tufts of bog-cotton are on every hummock of the marsh. The meadowsweet is a divine pharmacist in every meadow. The fledgling seagulls are fluttering gently in the wrack of the shore. The playful voice of the child in a pen can be heard in the proud growth of the ivy on the house gable, in the boastful branching of the thorn-bushes in the hedgerow and in the protective roof of the trees in the grove. And the milking-woman’s lively song at sunset from yonder seashore pasture is the cheerful music of rediscovered happiness in the Land of Gold …
But the foam-flakes on the brink of the gushing stream are being dragged into the river’s channels and turned into mud. The pale chaff of mountain-grass on the windswept moor is being carried into the hidden gullies at the will of the wind. The humming of the bee on its journey to the hive from the empty honey-store of the foxglove is a grumble of hopelessness. The swallow is preening its feathers on the copestone of the barn, and its song echoes the loneliness of the wind that screams through desolate expanses of desert. The mountain ash is cowering before the withering wind …
The feet of the sprinter turn sluggish, the whistling of the cowherd sounds hoarse, and the reaper lays down his sickle in the swathe that is still uncut …
The graveyard must have its dues from the living …
I am the Trump of the Graveyard. Let my voice be heard! It must be heard …
2
—… What’s this? Another corpse, I declare! My son’s wife for sure! ’Twas easily known … It’s a cheap coffin too. If you really are my son’s wife …
Bríd Terry! I don’t believe it. It’s a long time ago you should have been here. You had tremors and phlegm and heart trouble for as long as I can remember … You fell into the fire? … and you didn’t have the strength to get yourself out of it. You’ve had it bad enough, indeed …
Listen here to me! … You didn’t come here for news, Bríd? Well now, what do you know! … Oh! Looking for peace, are you? That’s what they all say when they arrive. You heard that the cross is to be put over me soon, Bríd? That it’s ordered. But when? Two weeks? A month? … You don’t know? To tell the truth, Bríd, you seldom knew much about anything …
I know. You already told me you fell into the fire … They didn’t leave anyone at home to mind you? Musha now, they’d have better things to do! An old hag like you. There’s no harm done, Bríd. You might as well have it over with … But you won’t fall here! Or if you do, you won’t have far to fall …
Listen here to me, Bríd … Now, Bríd, have a bit of decorum and don’t be making a Seáinín Liam of yourself, who has the graveyard demented since he arrived, about his rotten old heart … My son’s wife is sickly all the time, you say? … She had another little one! Is that true? … And it didn’t kill her! It’s a hell of a great wonder, then. But she’ll never survive this pregnancy … I’ll bet you anything you like, Bríd, she’ll be here on her next confinement … A girl-child … Ababúna, Bríd! … They called her Nóra … Named her after Nóra Filthy-Feet! She knew well I wasn’t alive! …
My son’s wife and Little Cáit had a scolding match? … Pulling each other’s hair out, you say! Had-dad,1 indeed! That’s it now, Bríd! Nobody would believe how that slut from Mangy Field treated me, since she was shoved into the house on top of me. The tea she used to give me! And the bedclothes, only for I used to wash them myself! She has to turn her snappishness on someone else, now that she doesn’t have me, Bríd. Faith then, Little Cáit is no pushover, I’m telling you …
There’ll be a court case, you say? Faith then, there’ll be contention and conflict and costs over that … Little Cáit said that? That Máirín’s college clothes were bought from Cheap Jack in Brightcity! My son’s wife didn’t give her half enough, so! How would Little Cáit know, only that her tongue was too long? And even if they were, what’s that to her? Hasn’t she little shame, to be passing remarks about the poor girl who’s going to college? It would be a long time before anyone belonging to her could become a schoolmistress. The law will settle her, you just wait and see! I hope Pádraig will have the sense to hire Mannion the Counsellor against her. That’s the fellow who’ll wring the cider out of her …
Peace is what you want, you say. Isn’t that what we all want? But you’ve come to the wrong place looking for peace, Bríd … That’s all the potatoes my Pádraig has sown this year, the Root Field? Why, there aren’t two decent patches of soil in the whole lot of it … Nell has the two Meadows under potatoes! … Well now, Bríd, those two fields are pretty big, but they’re a long way from the seven patches you say there are …
What’s that last thing you said, Bríd? … Never mind your falling in the fire, just wake up and stop slurring your words … What are you saying about Nell’s son? … Right as rain again! Ah! … Doing the odd job, is he? Ababúna! I thought, from what Seáinín Liam said, that he’d never do another day’s work! …
He was cured at St. Ina’s Well? Not likely! How well that pussface of a mother of his knew where to bring him for a cure. That pussface can see her own future! But indeed I wouldn’t believe it was at St. Ina’s Well he was cured. Nor would I believe there’s any cure at all in St. Ina’s Well. My son’s wife wore out her kneecaps on pilgrimages there. Sure, there isn’t a well from our own well at home to the Well at the End of the World2 she didn’t visit, for all she has to show for it. Always sickly. Her next child will give her enough to do, I’m telling you.
That’s only a bit of Nell’s trickery, bringing him to St. Ina’s Well and then saying he was cured there. That pussface and the priest are thick as thieves! … Arrah, God bless yourself and your St. Ina’s Well, Bríd! Not at all. It was your man, the priest. Who else? He gave her son the St. John’s Gospel.3 That’s how he was cured, Bríd. How else! The priest. Someone else will have to die in his place now, on account of him being cured by the St. John’s Gospel. Death will have its due. We’ve always heard it said …
God bless your innocence, Bríd! As if Nell herself would be the one to go! It’s no wonder you fell in the fire, Bríd, you’re such a simpleton. Devil a bit of danger of Nell going … Or Big Brian’s daughter either. Or any of her brood. Jack the Scológ is the one they’ll shift. You may be sure it was Jack she told the priest to kill in return for curing her son. God help us! Poor Jack has had a
hard life with that pussface. That one didn’t give him the slightest bit of care. Mark my words, Bríd: the bad luck falls on Jack now, and you’ll see him here before long. It doesn’t bother Nell or Big Brian’s daughter. Won’t they get a heap of insurance money on him! …
Is that so? The law case is still going on, so … They’ll be going to Dublin in the autumn? Faith then, going to Dublin is expensive business, Bríd … Oh, they say it will go to a retrial even then! It’ll leave Nell stony broke in the end, and may it do so! But Bríd, if her son is cured he can’t go looking for money … Oh, he only works on the sly, is that it? … He keeps the crutches by him wherever he’s working! … He has doctors’ certificates that his hip won’t get better? He would! Not only that, he brings the crutches with him into the garden and out on the bog! More of Nell’s trickery. She was always treacherous.
There’s talk now of building a road in as far as her house? So the priest and the Earl will be able to get to it in a motor car. May she not live to enjoy her road, then! … Arrah, the devil a road or a bit of a road ever, Bríd! What could shift those big boulders?
Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille Page 13
