—The hussy …
—God forbid that I’d say she told a lie, Master. That’s what she said.
“It’s going to cost you a lot, Mistress,” I says. “You have enough money, and the postboy isn’t too badly off either, may God let you enjoy it,” I says, “but there’s no doubt that a wedding can cost an arm and a leg these days.”
“If it wasn’t for what he had stashed away before he died, and the insurance money I got from his death, I wouldn’t have a chance to afford it, Breed,” she says. “The Old Master was very careful with his money, may God bless him,” she says. “He neither drank nor went on the tear. He had a nice little nest egg put away, Breed …”
—The hussy! The bitch! She wouldn’t put a cross over me half as good …
—But, sure, didn’t I say as much to her, Master:
“You shouldn’t do anything at all, Mistress, until you have erected a cross on the Old Master first.”
“It’s just as well for the Old Master,” she says. “The poor Old Master is gone the way of all flesh, and as he has, and as he will be like that, he’s not bothered about crosses. And I’m absolutely certain, Breed, that if he knew how myself and Billy are getting along now, he’d say to hell with the cross, but to enjoy ourselves as much as we could. No doubt the Old Master was a good man,” she says, “he had a good heart and a good …”
That’s exactly what she said, Master …
—The tramp! The dirty tramp! …
—… Fell from a stack of barley …
—… The heart! The heart, may God help us! …
—… I’m telling you, for Christ’s sake, Galway won the All-Ireland football …
—In 1941, is that it? If you’re talking about 1941, they didn’t …
—1941, I’m telling you. And they have Kenny to thank for it. Never saw anything like him as a footballer. He clocked, knocked, houghed and ploughed his way through the Cavan team. He was some lad, some footballer, and beautiful to watch. I was looking at him that day in Croke Park in the All-Ireland semifinal …
—They won the semifinal against Cavan, but they never won the final …
—O they did, certainly! Kenny won it on his own …
—In 1941, you’re saying? Well, I’m telling you, they didn’t win the All-Ireland. They beat Cavan by eight points, but Kerry beat them by a flukey goal and a point in the final …
—Ara, God help you, how could they? Wasn’t I in Dublin looking at the semifinal against Cavan! Three of us went there on our bikes. I’m not telling you a word of a lie: on our bikes the whole way. It was midnight when we got there. We slept outside that night. We didn’t even manage to get a drink. You could have squeezed the sweat out of our clothes. After the match we were in like a flash to meet the players. I, myself, shook hands with Kenny.
“You great ballocks of a boyo, you!” I said. “You’re the greatest footballer I ever saw in my entire life. Can’t wait for the final in a month’s time. I’ll be here again looking at you beating the crap out of Kerry …” But unfortunately …
—1941, you’re saying? If so, then Galway didn’t beat Kerry, but Kerry beat them …
—Ara, God be good to you! Tell that to some twit. “Kerry beat them.” You’d easily know you’re trying to make a total eejit of me! …
—1941, you’re saying? Were you even looking at the match?
—I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. But I was at the semifinal against Cavan, I’m telling you. What kind of an eejit are you that you don’t understand what I’m saying? We came back again on the Sunday evening on our bikes. We were parched and starved. Our guts were hanging out with the hunger! But still and nonetheless we shouted “Up Galway” in every town we passed through. It was nice and shiny bright on Monday morning when we reached home. I got off the bike at the top of the road. “If it’s our good fortune,” I said to the other two, “that we come around after this hunger and thirst in a month’s time, by Jaysus, we’ll go again. I’d love to see Kenny beating seven kinds of shite out of Kerry …” And he did, of course. No bother to him …
—1941, you’re saying? I’m telling you that Kerry won. Were you not at the final? …
—I wasn’t. I was not. How could I be? Do you think that if I could’ve I wouldn’t? What kind of an eejit are you at all? That day after coming back from the semifinal, didn’t I come down sick! I got a cold from all the sweat and from sleeping outside in the air. It went through me straightaway. Five days after that I was here in the dirty dust. How could I have been at the match? You’re a terrible eejit altogether …
—So what kind of rubbishy crap are you on about so, that they beat Kerry?
—It was no bother to them, no bother …
—1941 you’re saying. Maybe you’re thinking about another year! …
—1941. What else. They whacked Kerry in the final …
—But I’m telling you that they didn’t. Kerry beat them by a goal and a point. A goal and eight points for Kerry, and seven points for Galway. The referee robbed Galway blind. But it wasn’t the first time. But the gutty boys from Kerry won the match …
—May God grant you an ounce of sense! How could Kerry win it, when Galway did? …
—But you were dead. And I was looking at the match. I lived nine more months after that. The game didn’t help me one bit. Every day after that I was fading away! If it wasn’t for that I was watching them getting thrashed …
—God help you! You are the biggest fucking eejit I ever met! Even if you saw it a hundred times, Kerry didn’t beat Galway, no way. Wasn’t I there, wasn’t I there at the semifinal in Croke Park. If only you had seen them that day crushing the bejaysus out of Cavan. It was Kenny! He was the footballer for you! I never wished for even one more day’s life when I saw him taking Kerry apart just a month ago … No bother to him, none at all! …
—The final of 1941, is that it? …
—Yes, of course, what else? … Yes, of course, what kind of bollocks, are you anyway?
—But they didn’t beat them. They …
—Oh, yes they did. They did. Kenny would have beaten the whole lot together …
5.
—… Hey, Margaret! … Do you hear me? … Why are ye not talking? What’s happened to yous lately? There’s not a pip or a squeak out of you since the Election. Breed Terry will get some peace now. I hope it does her no good! The little hag! Cursing is better than quiet, for all that …
You’re not disappointed that Toejam Nora was whipped in the Election, are you, Margaret? That’ll teach her not to be so nosy again. She’d go totally out of her tree if she was elected …
I voted for Peter the Publican, Margaret. Who else? You’d hardly think that I’d vote for Nora of the sailors, drinking on the QT. I have more respect for myself than that. Vote for a woman who was a sneaky drinker, is that it? …
And the Master is very angry with her these days, Margaret. You could hardly keep him under the ground since Breed Terry told him about his wife getting married. Do you know what he said the other day, Margaret, do you know what he said to prickly Nora the other day when she was pissed off he wouldn’t read her a bit of the novelette:
“Leave me alone, you piece of shit,” he said. “Leave me alone! You’re not fit company for a cunt, a cow, or a corpse …”
I swear as the day is holy, that’s what he said, Margaret … What’s the point in you saying anything, Margaret? Didn’t I hear him? …
But anyway, Margaret, something is bugging you all in that part of the graveyard, you’re not talking as much as you used to … Rotting away, is that it? … The writer’s tongue wearing away, is it? I doubt if that would bother Coley. He was driven nuts by him … Oh, Coley is rotting away nicely too. Don’t you see, Margaret, I don’t like it one bit. That was a great homely story he had about the hens. I made a packet from the hens, unlike that wretch I left after me: my daughter-in-law … It’s God’s justice, Margaret, to have a maggot in his windpipe, someone who drank forty-
two pints …
Oh, he’s completely putrefied, is he, Margaret … They told you in the Half-Guinea Place that he had disintegrated. I didn’t think, Margaret, that you’d be bothered trying to chat to the Half-Guinea crowd. How else would they be, Margaret, how else would they be only totally manky? Nobody could be any other way in that place, a half-guinea hole in the ground. If I was you, Margaret, I wouldn’t bother my butt with them …
What kind of whooping is that, Margaret? … The Half-Guinea crowd … Celebrating and gloating that their man got in at the Election. They’ll deafen the graveyard. The wankers! The horde of rotten runts! Do you hear the way they are carrying on? Jesus, come down off the cross and let me up! It’s a terrible affliction to be stuck in the same graveyard as them at all … But, by Jaysus, I’d prefer the Half-Guinea guy to get in any day than Toejam Nora. If there was nobody else, I’d have voted for him out of spite …
—… There was a day like that, Peter the Publican. Don’t deny it …
—… The murdering bastard who gave me the poisoned bottle …
—… Whiteheaded mare. I bought her at the fair on St. Bartholomew’s Day …
—I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …
—… Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! …
—… Isn’t it a disgrace they won’t bring my bag of bones …
—… True for you. She’s the gutsiest one in the graveyard until she starts up with that kind of rubbish …
—She always hoped to return to the Pleasant Plain …
—She knew that the cat had upped there already. Enough to crinkle the old man’s cranium beside the fire.
—Maybe he deserved it. She said herself that he didn’t give her a day’s peace since she married his son …
—… Let me talk! …
—… But that was only a gnat’s fart compared to when they were thatching his roof …
—… He had a big broad grin on his face …
—Will the two of you, himself and herself, go and shag yourselves! I hope the devil fucks you! What good was his big broad grin to me? You are just as nasty as the little prick of a poet. Big broad grin! Doesn’t that one, the daughter of Tim Top of the Road, doesn’t she have the same broad silly grin? The devil can fuck her too, isn’t she trying to bewitch my boy, my eldest boy. His eyes are glazed over. Glazed over, I’m telling you! She’s in the Freemasons or some fuckarse thing like that. Trying to get her claws on my house and land, my big house and land …
—… Wait ’til I tell you how I managed to sell the books to the Master …
—I went into Peter’s Pub. The Old Master hadn’t been in there that long. I asked him nicely how he was. He didn’t fancy Peter’s place much anyway. He only came along once in a blue moon. He was a bit of an awkward bollocks. But he wasn’t in any way fired up about the Schoolmistress.
“I know,” I said, “I have the bait that is going to trap you, my boyo …
“The Greatest Love Stories of the World,” I said to him. He was as hungry for them as a ravenous baby for the breast.
“Five guineas for a set,” I said.
“They’re very expensive,” he said.
“What do you mean, expensive?” I said. “A half a guinea now, and the rest in bits just as it suits. They’re a good-looking set. You won’t be ashamed to show them off on your bookshelves at home. Look at the paper! They are the best and brightest of our love stories. Look at the titles there: Helen of Troy; Tristan and Isolde; the Fall of the House of Uisneach; Dante and Beatrice … You’re not married? … You’re not … You’re that age and you have never read any of those stories: about Helen, ‘the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium,’ and ‘The Only Jealousy of Emer’:
‘Once when the Scottish nobles bold
And the Clan of Uisneach, often blessed,
To the Lord’s daughter of Dunatrone
Naoise gave a secret kiss …’
“Think of yourself, now … There you are down in some hollow beside the flowing tide, a young beauty as bright as the sun in your arms, and you can’t even tell her any one of the great love stories of the world! …”
He started humming and hawing. I moved in on him. But no good.
“They’re far too expensive for the likes of me,” he said, “Do you have any secondhand?”
“We are a respectable company,” I said. “We wouldn’t endanger the life or the health of our salesmen or our clients. Who is to say it wouldn’t affect you or your wife? …
“Oh, I get it. You’re not married. But, with the help of God, you will be. You’ll really know then what value this set would be. Those long nights at home with the storm howling outside and yourself and your wife sitting comfortably next to the warm fire …”
But it was like talking to the wall …
I took off to the barracks. The Foxy Cop was the only one there.
“As for books,” he said. “I have a room full of them up there. I’ll have to burn the lot if nobody comes around looking for waste paper.”
“What kind are they?” I asked.
“Novels,” he said. “Crap … rubbish … but they pass the time anyway in this back arse end of nowhere …”
We went upstairs. The place was full of them. Crap, as he said himself. The kind of sloppy romantic slush that young prepubescent girls devour. To tell you the truth, most of them had the name of a nurse whom I knew from the Fancy City scribbled on them. I took the best of them, the neatest, and I tore out the first page of my collection. I travelled the schools in the area, and I came back, in a few days to the Old Master. I was a bit cheesed off with myself that I had slagged off secondhand books a few days before.
“I am heading out into the country today, Master,” I said, “and I thought to myself that it would be a good idea to pay you another visit. I have a collection of love stories here. Secondhand. A friend of mine in the Fancy City was selling his library and I bought them deliberately, because I thought you might like them … They were disinfected, by the way.”
He liked the garish covers, and the romantic titles: The Berry Kiss, Two Men and a Powder Puff, The Russet Tresses …
“Two pounds fifty for you, Master,” I said. “That’s all I paid for them myself. I won’t make anything on it, as they don’t belong to the company. But if you don’t buy them, I’ll be bankrupt …”
The bargaining began. He wanted to Jew me down to nothing. I told him in the end to take them or leave them, but there was no way I would let them go for less than two pounds. I got that much from him, by the skin of my teeth. Of course, they weren’t worth diddly squish …
You knew what you were doing, I’m telling you. But so did I. I never told you about this coup:
There were two sisters living next to me. One of them was Nell Paudeen. The other was Caitriona. She’s here now. The two of them hated one another’s guts … Oh, you heard all this stuff before. Off I went and toddled up to Nell. Her daughter-in-law was there also. I told them about the children’s insurance; they’d get so much money when they reached such and such an age and so on. You know the way it is. The two of them were very wary. I showed them some of the forms the neighbours had filled in. For all the good it did me.
“There’s no chicanery about this,” I said, “but you could get a killing. Ask the priest …”
He did. In the next fortnight I got insurance on the two kids. And then I apprised them about insurance for the elderly: the price of a funeral and so on. The old one was happy to pay for her husband, Jack the Lad …
Off I went down to the other sister, Caitriona. She was the only one in the house.
“Do you see,” I said, “these forms that your woman up there filled out for two children and the oldfella. I told her I was going to drop into you on the way down, but she warned me not to …”
“What did she say? What did she say?” said Caitriona.
“Ara, I don’t really want to be talking about it,” I
said. “You’re neighbours …”
“Neighbours! We’re sisters!” she said. “Did you not know that, or what? … You’re a stranger. Yea, that’s it, sisters. But even so, and so on, I hope that’s she’s the next corpse that goes to the graveyard! But what did she say anyway?”
“Ah, sure, there’s no need to be talking about it. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have a loose tongue, I’d say nothing at all.”
“What did she say?” she shouted. “You won’t leave this house alive until you tell me.”
“As you wish,” I said. “She said I’d only be wasting my time coming in here; that the people in this house didn’t have enough to pay any insurance …”
“The whore! The harridan! …” she said. “It would be a sad day when we couldn’t pay it just as much as Nell. But we’ll pay it. You’ll see that we’ll pay it …”
Her son and his wife came in. The fun started. She was trying to get insurance for two of the kids and they, the couple, they were dead set against it.
“I’m in a hurry,” I muttered. “So, I’ll just leave you now. Maybe you’ll have a decision for me the day after tomorrow; I’ll be calling in to Nell again. She told me to call in and she’d take insurance out on the old man who’s living up there all on his ownio …”
“Fireside Tom,” she said. “Lord Divine Jesus! Fireside flippin’ Tom. This is another one of her sneaky tricks to grab his land from us. Any way we could take out insurance on him? … I’ll pay it out of my half-guinea pension …”
It was like the Battle of the Bitches after that. They were waltzing through the house as if they were dancing on grease. The son and his one wanted to smash my back out on the street. And all the time, Caitriona was trying to pin me down and keep me inside until the forms were filled …
And they were. I had to give in in the end. It was the diciest situation I was ever in in all my time dealing with insurance.
That’s how I got around Caitriona. I couldn’t really help it. The tricks of the trade, and all that …
—You lied! You’re a liar, you didn’t get around Caitriona! And if you did, you got around Nell too …
The Dirty Dust Page 13
