The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  —Nell never said as much as one word about you, nor about Fireside Tom. The tricks of the trade, Caitriona my beauty …

  —Hoora, Margaret! … Did you hear that … I’m going to burst …

  6.

  Peter the Publican is a right sourpuss too. Even after I went against the grain and voted for him, he didn’t even thank me, or nothing. If he had any manners he might have come right out and said to me:

  “Caitriona Paudeen, I am very grateful that you voted for me. You are a woman with enough balls to face down all of the Fifteen Shilling Lot together. We really screwed Toejam Nora …”

  But he didn’t. He should have remembered—whether during an election or not—that I still had no cross.

  I had to tell Huckster Joan a long time ago that they had to put up a cross. So what now, like? It’s been a long time since I was depending on her and her friends. But I may as well do it now, now that the great opportunity of the Election has passed …

  Hey, Joan! Huckster Joan you … Are you there? … Joan, are you there? … Do you hear me, you shower in the Pound Plot? … Or are you all asleep? … Huckster Joan, that’s who I’m looking for … It’s me Joan. Caitriona Paudeen, John Thomas Lydon’s wife. Joan, they’ll be putting up a cross of the best Connemara marble on me … very soon. Like the one on Peter the Publican, and railings around it, just like your own, Joan …

  Don’t let me bug you, Joan? Is that what you said? I thought you’d like to hear about it, Joan … You don’t want to have any hand, act, nor part with the Fifteen Shilling gang. I voted for Peter the Publican, Joan. I brought the whole Fifteen Shilling gang down on my head as a result … You’d be better off without my vote! … It’s not right nor proper that you Pound Plot proper snobs should talk to us plebs in the Fifteen Shilling Place! Do you feel any better now? I can wear my tongue out gabbling and yacking away, but you won’t take a blind bit of notice of me … You’re not happy to talk to my likes of a gossip machine! Gossip machine, Joan! Gossip machine, Joan! You don’t want to talk any more to a gossip machine like me! …

  Go piss off so, you clot! You’ll talk again when I get going on you! There’s plenty of stuff about you, if you only knew about it! … Just because you had a bit of a shop up above and you were ripping us off with your clogs …

  I know what you’re on about, you trollop. I voted for Peter the Publican in the Election. It’s a pity I did! Yourself and himself are really pissing yourselves because I’m going to get a cross and rails just as fancy as yours. I’ll be as good as the two of you then …

  That wretch, Joan. That’s life, by Jaysus …

  —… “Fireside Tom was there with his trousers …

  Torn from the top to the bottom and then …”

  —… Nora! Nora Johnny! …

  —Hi! How are tricks? Have you got over the Election yet? I feel a bit shagged myself.

  —You’ll excuse me now, Nora …

  —Ara, Peter, my pet, why wouldn’t I? A nod is as good as a wink to the wise. There was a bust up—some of them call it a stink—but between ourselves, who cares? “The flighty mind forgives and forgets. The noble mind needs necessity,” as Jinks said in The Russet Tresses. Honest …

  —Holy God Almighty! Peter the Publican talking to Nora Johnny again, even though he swore black and blue during the Election that he wouldn’t ever ever say another word to her. Oh, what’s the effing point in talking! …

  What’s this he called her? A bitch and a whore and a cunt. Toejam Nora. Nora the Sailors’ Bit. The piss artist from Gort Ribbuck of the puddles and the piddles! He said that she was drinking on the sly in the snug in his pub; that she often had to be carted home; that she started screaming songs at the top of her head when Michael Tooney’s funeral was going past; that she fleeced a beast-buyer inside in his own parlour; that she drank the black porter of the black butler that the Earl had; that she’d feck bottles around when she was pissed; that she brought Johnny Colm’s buck goat into the shop when she was totally scuttered and installed him behind the counter, and hoisted him up on the barrel of booze and started stroking his beard and plying him with drink; that she tried to grab Fireside Tom and jizz him up …

  But what’s this he called her? … It’s terrible, I just can’t think of it … I’ve got it, that’s it. A So-and-so. I’ll have to ask the Master, if he ever comes around to his senses again, what’s a So-and-so?

  But he called me a So-and-so as well, and he’d have called me worse if he could. But for all that he’s talking as gently and as quietly to her now as if they never spoke a cross word. And he would never even think of thanking me for voting for him …

  As there’s no cross on me … If that’s true. Maybe it was just that Nora wouldn’t leave him enough booze money, up above. Peter, or any other Peter the Publican, wouldn’t have much of a pub if they were depending on me. He knows right well that he’d have neither a cross nor company here if it wasn’t for Nora of the pints, and her likes … I was never a drunk … But for that, and for all that, sometimes it was hard to pass the door …

  —… That’s the way, Peter. All the cultured people voted for me, and the Fifteen Shilling Crowd too, apart from Caitriona Paudeen, and God knows that trollop of an airhead never had the slightest bit of culture or manners.

  I’d have preferred not to get Caitriona’s vote, but I’d have got it anyway except for one thing. Caitriona only voted for you, Peter, because she was scared shitless about what she had left unpaid in your place. Honest! …

  —You’re a dirty liar, you So-and-so! When I died I wasn’t as much as a penny in debt, no more than the bird on the wing, thanks be to God the Father Almighty. You old bat! “What she had left unpaid …”!

  Hey there, Margaret! Hey Margaret! Did you hear what Nora the Tippler said? I’m going to burst! I’m about to burst! I’m going to burst!

  Interlude 5

  THE MUCK MANURING EARTH

  1.

  I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken to what I have to say! You must hearken unto my voice …

  Here in the grave the spool is for ever spinning; turning the brightness dark, making the beautiful ugly, and imbricating the alluring golden ringlets of hair with a shading of scum, a wisp of mildew, a hint of rot, a sliver of slime, and a grey haunting of mizzle. The vespertine veil of indifference and forgetfulness is being woven from the golden filaments of the setting sun, from the silver web of moonlight, from the resplendent cloak of fame, and from the departing wafture of fugacious remembrance. For this weaver’s material is none other than the malleable and kneadful clay. His loom is the rickety rack on which he who attached his chariot to the most effulgent star in the firmament climbed with his dreams, or that other who snatched a bunch of the forbidden fruits from the dark of the dubious deep. This old masterweaver has webbed them all: the purr of passing ambition, the ostentation of transient beauty, the desires of unrequited dreams.

  Aboveground everything is bedecked in the garments of everlasting youth. Every shower of rain creates a multitude of mushrooms miraculously in the grass. The opium flowers are like unto the dreams of the goddess of plenty laid upon meadow and field. The ear of corn is imbued with a tinge of yellow from the constant kisses of the sun. The somnolent susurrus of the waterfall sloshes silently through the lithe lips of the salmon. The elder wren is happy as he hops amongst the large leaves observing his young nestlings at their pecking play. The forager is going to sea with a tune on his lips bearing the effervescence of the elements, the tide, wind, and sun. The young woman is seeking the pearlescent purse of promise so that she may clothe herself with lustrous splendour, and wear the precious stones of serenity that her heart so desires as she floats upon the dew in the morning …

  But some evil warlock has singed the green canopy of the trees with his accursed wand. The golden tresses of the rainbow have been clipped by the nip of the east wind. A tubercular tinge has crept into the crepuscular sky. Milk is indurating in the udders of the cow while she
seeks shelter in the inglenook of the ditch. The voice of the young swain who tends the sheep on the hills is suffused with a sadness which cannot be silenced. The stack-maker is beating his arms as he comes down from his covered rick of corn, because bad boils of threatening terrors are gathering in the northern sky and a cackling cloud of grizzled geese are hurrying away to the south …

  Since the living must pay its dues to the graveyard …

  I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken to what I have to say! You must hearken unto my voice, listen …

  2.

  … Who are you? … What kind of an old cadaver are they trying to shove down on top of me at all? … My daughter-in-law, certainly, this time. Oh, no you’re not. You’re a man. You’re not one of the Lydons anyway. You’re a blondie. None of the Lydons were ever blondies. They were all black. Black as the sloe. Nor none of my own people either, apart from Nell, that old trollop of a tramp! …

  You’re related to Paddy Lawrence. I should know you. Are you Paddy Lawrence’s second or third son? … The third one … Only nineteen years of age … Young enough to start on this caper, I’m telling you … You were three months failing … TB. That’s the real bitch. This graveyard is stuffed full of them …

  You were going to go to England only this shit hit you … You said you were all packed up and ready to go … All the youth of Bally Donough went last week … And the ghouls from Gort Ribbuck! May they never come back! … That’s true, too true, my boy. You can make bags of money there …

  You said you heard nothing about them putting a cross on me. Nobody’s saying nothing about it now … Not a whisper, even, you say … He brought it up when he was in visiting you. What did he say? … Don’t be ashamed to tell me, youngfella. You should know by now that I had no time at all for Blotchy Brian … All of Clogher Savvy have upped and awayed to England too. Sure, don’t you know, that that crowd were always just navvies and wage slaves … If you hadn’t got sick, you’d be there too … to earn money. It’s a bit late now to be going on about earning money … But what did Blotchy Brian say? Weren’t you always arselicking him anyway? … “That old bitch doesn’t deserve a cross,” he said. “Far from crosses they were reared. A man who couldn’t feed his own children—Patrick Caitriona—talking about putting up a cross of the best Connemara marble!” He said that! He still hates my guts …

  You said that Blotchy Brian was up in Dublin. In Dublin! … That prick in Dublin! … He saw the guy stuck up on the top of the Pillar! It’s a pity he, and all that concrete didn’t fall down on top of his knob, the scum bucket! … There were great pints there, he said! I hope it chokes up his snotty nose! … Lashers of women in Dublin too. It’s a pity he didn’t go there years ago after I had to refuse him, twice. The Dublin women would really fancy his gammy leg and his hunched back … He saw the wild animals! There was no wilder or uglier animal than himself, not to put too fine a point in it! … And the judge praised him to the skies! … He must have been a really thick judge so! … “You are really a wonderful old gentleman to come all this way, considering your age, in order to assist the court,” he said. Oh, he must have been a really thick judge if he didn’t see that he was only there to help his daughter and her husband, the slob-faced skanger! …

  You’d really think that a youngfella like you wouldn’t believe any of that old shite, and yet you’ll end up like John Willy and Breed Terry, if you live long enough. I was hoping for some news about the court, but you said that the crowd from Glen Booley had all taken off to England. Bad luck to them! The Glen Booley shower can go and fuck themselves as far as I am concerned! The bastards wouldn’t even come to my funeral …

  For crying out loud! Nell got eight hundred pounds … Even though he was on the wrong side of the road. You’re sure of that? Maybe Nell, the cute hoor, added five or six hundred to it … It was in the paper! You can read it in the paper yourself. Six weeks ago … In The Galwegian. Don’t take a blind bit of notice of that paper … It was in The True News also, and in The Irelander? … And you say there’s nothing wrong with him … He’s thrown away the crutches altogether now … He’s doing all kinds of work … And three doctors swore black and blue that he wasn’t himself, and would never be himself again. O sweet Jesus! Truly he was a very thick judge. Did they tell him that he was on the wrong side of the road? The priest told him. What else so! …

  She gave the priest fifty quid for a mass. She would too, the witch. Her son is fine and she has a pot of money … She gave him ten pounds to say a mass for me also! … She gave it straight to him and into his fist while Patrick was looking, is that it … The mass money that that cow would give would do me no good, I’m telling you …

  The gang from Derry Lough went to England also five weeks ago. There! Tough shit for England that they had to put up with those gougers from Derry Lough … They wouldn’t come to a funeral to someone half as good as themselves … Hang on! Don’t vanish until you tell me some more! … Jack the Lad isn’t that well. You’d easily know it. St. John’s Gospel. He’ll be here now any day soon. Nell and Blotchy Brian’s daughter made up that potion for him. They’ll get insurance money from it …

  They’re blasting a road in as far as Nell’s place! God help us all! I never thought they’d be able to hack a road into that ugly goddam awful place … This new crowd she voted for, they’ve got it in for her, is that what you’re saying. The little piss puss really knew who to vote for! … They’re chopping off a corner from our land! For Chrissake! That’s the field. The Laccard. We don’t have any other field next to the path up to Nell’s kip of a house … My own Patrick gave away a chunk of the Laccard! Aaagh! I knew as soon as I croaked that Patrick would be putty in the hands of that bitch … The priest came along to see what was going on … That’s all part of Nell’s sly shy shift shit … The priest himself, he laid out the boundaries … That was the same day that Nell gave him the money to say masses for me. My God Almighty, what was she thinking about, no flies on that one! That was her sneaky trick to get the road done. There was no other way to do it apart from taking chunks from our land, especially the Laccard … You’d think that Patrick was paid for the field? You have your glue! He shouldn’t have let her get away with it. Isn’t it a pity he didn’t live a few more years! … That’s what Blotchy Brian said: “Ah, come on, like, you don’t expect that Nell would pay for a pate bald baldy bollocks of a heap of stones that couldn’t ride one another? If Caitriona’s Paddy had the least ounce of sense he’d have built some kind of a crappy kip for her heap of bones over there … Up over on Laccard … And there’d be tons of stuff for headstones there too, no need at all for Connemara marble … John Willy and Breed Terry … to keep them away from the hedgehog …” Oh, the bitch! The nasty bitch! …

  This is it again: “If I was only in England! Oh to be in England!” Did I stop you? … The whole shower from Kin Teer took off six weeks ago! I couldn’t give a tinker’s curse or an itinerant’s malediction where the sun goes down on anybody from Kin Teer. There’s a couple of babbling blabbers here for sure, and they add to the place …

  Are you saying that you heard nothing about my sister Nell’s will? … Not a word … How could you with your itchy langer out trying to go to England? … That’s all you heard about Fireside Tom? … He’s still in his old shack … He drops in to us every time he’s heading down for the pension. A good man! That’s great news … He sometimes gives my daughter-in-law the pension book to get it for him! Good for him! … He’s not as sprightly as he was … Oh, you mean he also gets Nell and Blotchy Brian’s Maggie to get it too! Shag that! …

  Little Kitty’s back is bad again, you say. I hope there’s no one else laid up who won’t be laid down before her in the cemetery clay! … Biddy Sarah is also very crocked. Another one of them. She wouldn’t come to keen me, the bloodsucking ghoul! …

  You never gave a toss about anything except going to England … You’d go to England just because the gang from Shan Kyle went there two months ago!
Anyone who copied the knackers from Shan Kyle never came to any good. My son’s wife, she’s still a bit sickly, all the time …

  God be good to us! … She was fighting with Blotchy Brian’s daughter! … Fighting with her! … She went up to Nell’s house, straight in the door, and grabbed Blotchy Brian’s daughter by the scruff of the neck! You’re having me on! … Oh, so it wasn’t Little Kitty who said that Maureen’s college outfit was bought in Jack Chape’s. What was Breed Terry on about so, the whore? … Oh, it was Blotchy Brian’s daughter who said it first to Little Kitty! She always had the bad word. The bitch’s daughter! And my daughter-in-law scrawled her hair out, right in her own house … She flattened her on the ground! I never thought she had the guts, Toejam Nora’s daughter! …

  She chucked Nell into the fire! Threw Nell into the fire! I love her! She’s brilliant! A good one! A good one! You’re sure she fucked Nell into the fire? … Nell then tried to defend Blotchy Brian’s daughter, and my son’s one threw her into the fire also! May God give her good health and happiness! She’s a good one! My life on you, ya good thing! That’s the first bit of good news that has raised my spirits in the cold rag hole of this earth.

  They were beating the shit out of one another until Patrick went up and hauled his wife back home! God’s curse on him that he didn’t leave them at it! …

  Ara, who knows but the gang from Tawney Lawr mightn’t be better off at home. A mob of mangy maggots! They won’t leave a crumb after them in England. But hey, my daughter-in-law and Blotchy Brian’s Maggie, they’ll be in court after this …

  What, they won’t? What do you mean? If she went into the Bright City and persuaded Mannix the Counsellor that her good name had been ruined, she wouldn’t be long in putting a big hole in Nell’s money. Maybe ’twould cost her five or six hundred pounds …