The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  The Schoolmistress wasn’t writing letters for anyone either, is that it … Too much to do, looking after Billy the Postman. The sleazy slouch! Oh, if Patrick had listened to me he wouldn’t be beholden to anyone now, if he had just gone into Mannix the Counsellor. He was the guy who could pen a perfect letter for seven shillings and sixpence. But Nora Johnny couldn’t bear to spend even a halfpenny … You heard that Patrick didn’t give a sugar about the will … That’s more of Nell’s sneaky stuff, the slippery tit … You didn’t think for a minute that she was getting a bad conscience about my son when she was doing the same thing with her husband … “Paddy was perfectly all right until Besheen passed away.” Blotchy Brian would say that … Leave me alone with your gabble about spiritual assistance …

  Maureen’s going back to college again. She’ll do the business this time. Sure, she wasn’t thrown out the last time at all, just that she came home herself. A bit of homesickness, the poor thing. You don’t know what she’s doing this time, do you? … To be a schoolteacher, I suppose … That’s what you heard …

  Patrick has lots of cattle on his land. Good on him! …

  Fireside Tom has left his house … The rain coming in got rid of him … It should have happened a long time ago. That’s what he said: “I swear to God the dirty drop was smacking me, sometimes in my mouth, then in my eye. It didn’t matter where I shifted the bed. I think I’ll go and arselick the quality for whatever time I have left …” He stayed two nights with Patrick and then he slung off to Nell’s house completely. Nell will get the land so … Do you know did he sign it over to her or not? Only someone like Mannix the Counsellor would be able to answer that … It doesn’t matter a tinker’s fart what you would have known in a week’s time! It’s what you know now … Fireside Tom said that: “Nell had a much bigger heart than Caitriona. I’d far prefer to stay in Nell’s house where I could rub shoulders with high society. Nobody with any decency visits Caitriona’s house.” Fireside Tom’s midget head would be a wonderful sight to behold! … “The best people always have the best smokes and they also have fine-looking women.” That hard-hearted harridan will soon have him craving women all right. If she senses anything happening to herself, she’ll get St. John’s Gospel from the priest, and Fireside Tom will be the first out the door. Isn’t it a great pity that there’s nobody alive up there to warn the poor fucker! What’s the world coming to at all when Fireside grotty Tom can think he’s going to rub shoulders with the high and mighty and the rich and famous? …

  Lord Cockton came fishing every day to Nell’s place. He could leave his car right up to the door … The priest drives his right up to her door, too … Ababoona! Lord Cockton took the slag bag out in his car … He took her out for a stroll to Rosses Cove. He must have had very little respect for his car to take piss flaps like her out in it! …

  The priest’s sister was up there on the hunt also. Was she wearing the pants or a dress? … The pants … Herself and Lord Cockton were out on the hunt together. How could a priest have anything to do with them! I suppose that Lord Cockton is a black heretic. They were all saying that she was going to marry the Master in Derry Lough … Oh, for God’s sake almighty, you’d have known all about it in a week’s time! We’ll have to get permission to hoist you up again next week …

  You think the marriage is all off? I thought that that Master in Derry Lough was a decent kind of a guy, never touched a drop … What’s that you’re saying? My ears are all stuffed up … She has a thing going with Tim Top of the Road’s son. It’s a queer world all right, no doubt about it! …

  Tim Top of the Road’s son said that to Lord Cockton: not to go hunting with her anymore, unless he was there … John Willy’s son heard him say that …

  What’s this? Where have you gone? … They’re shunting you away … They know this is not your grave … Good luck to you, wherever you’re going! Even if you’re related to Blotchy Brian, it was good of you to talk. You’re not like that other worthless wanker, Redser Tom …

  6.

  —… I was swapping a word for every pint with the Great Scholar …

  —… The Big Butcher often said that he had great respect for me because of the respect that his father had for my father …

  —… And I was down to my last shilling …

  —If the Junior Master isn’t down to his last shilling now …

  —… “‘I laid an egg! I laid an egg’ …”

  —C’est l’histoire des poules, n’est-ce pas?

  —… Honest, Dotie. My mind is totally gunked up for the last while. I need culture as desperately as the stalk of wheat needs the heat of the sun. And there is not a twitter of culture here anymore. The Old Master should be ashamed of himself. You’d think that when someone descended down into the grave that he’d leave the petty pissy grievances of the other life above behind and that he’d use his time to perfect his mind. I often said that to the Master, but what’s the point? He can’t help it now, but think about the Schoolmistress and Billy the Postman. Something has to be done to help him. Honest, I swear, Dotie. We don’t have that many educated people with some kind of culture that we can do without even one of them. We’ll have to stop him aping Caitriona Paudeen’s slabbering and slattering. Every second word he bawls out now is “bitch” and “witch” and “wagon.” Caitriona is a pernicious influence on him. She should have been kicked down to the Half Guinea Plot …

  —Mange-pocked Nora …

  —Don’t let on you hear her at all, Norita …

  —Yep, Dotie. I have every intention to proceed and to establish a cultural communion in this place. I think that a lot can be done to improve the depth and breadth of our cultural consciousness. When I establish this communion of souls we will dispute about politics and relationships, economics and science, learning and education and so on. And they shall be discussed with due academic objectivity, notwithstanding gender, race, or religion. Nobody shall be prevented from expressing his opinion, and there shall be no other qualification for membership apart from his or her being a companion of culture …

  —Do you think for some reason that I was thinking of culture when I grabbed the handle of the pot and chucked it at …

  —De grâce, Dotie. “God forgives the big sinners, but we ourselves, can we not find it in our hearts to forgive our small sins,” as Eustasia said to Mrs. Cruikshank when they were fighting over Harry. We’ll try to broadcast information about other aspects of life—strange and foreign aspects certainly—and by that to enhance peoples’ understanding of one another. We will have regular debates, lectures, soirées, Pub Quizzes, Symposiums, Colloquiums, Plentiful Periodicals, Chapters, Summer Schools, and Weekend Schools and Information on Demand for those in the Half Guinea Place. This communion and get-together will be a wonderful device and stratagem in the pursuit of peace and in the communication of culture. This kind of thing is called a Rotary. Only cultured people like the Earl have anything really to do with the Rotary …

  —And sailors!

  —And just don’t pretend, Norita, that you hear her at all …

  —Yep, Dotie. I won’t. But that’s exactly one of those nutcase ideas that should be properly crushed with the grace of the Rotary. Caitriona is not the only one who thinks thoughts like that. If she wasn’t it wouldn’t matter that much, but she’s very common. Sailors are very interesting, as you know. Only a narrow bigoted uncultured mind would even think to condemn them …

  —All apart from those knives they have, Norita?

  —De grâce, Dotie. That’s another one of those weird ideas that needs to be squashed …

  —So, who else will be in the Rotary, Norita?

  —I can’t absolutely say, with complete certainty yet. You yourself, of course, Dotie. The Old Master. Peter the Publican. Huckster Joan …

  —The poet …

  —He can go and fuck himself, the little scut! …

  —… But you never read The Yellow Stars, Nora.

  —No infernal odds
, old man! You’re not acceptable. Honest! You’re decadent! …

  —Breed Terry should be accepted. She went to a film in the Fancy City once …

  —By gaineys! I was with the little messer, that time we bought the colt …

  —Hold on there now! Take it easy. I am a writer …

  —We couldn’t take you. If we did the whole graveyard would be ripped from limb to limb. You insulted Colm Cille.

  —… There’s no point in you reading it. I am not going to listen to your “Sundown.” Honest, I’m not. I’m not going to listen to it … There’s no point in bugging me about it: I won’t do it. I am very broadminded really, but at the same time and at the end of the day one must hold on to a certain amount of propriety … I am a woman … I will not listen. No way, honest! … We could not accept you. The stuff you write is Joycean gunge … There’s no point in being at me about it. I don’t want to hear “Sundown.” You really have a disgusting lowdown mind to write something like that … You’re writing “The Dinosaur’s Dream” … No, I won’t listen to it. “The Dinosaur’s Dream”! A right Joycean galoot. You are really a lowlife form … There’s no way you are going to be accepted until you learn The Seventy Sermons off by heart …

  —I propose that we accept the Frenchie. He’s a real Irishman. He’s bursting his guts learning the language …

  —He’s already writing a thesis on the dental consonants in the Half Guinea’s dialect. He says that their gums are sufficiently worn out by now that they can make a learned study of its sounds …

  —The Institute has delivered the judgement that he has learned too much Irish of a kind which has not been dead long enough according to the appropriate approved schedule, and that there is a suspicion that some of it is “Revival Irish,” they are of the opinion that he must needs unlearn every single syllable of it before he shall be qualified to pursue that study.

  —He also wants to collect every piss and piddle of folklore that he can, and save it so that every new generation of Gaelic corpses will know in what kind of republic former generations of Gaelic corpses lived. He says that there is no other storyteller who could hold a cat’s candle to Coley this side of Russia, and that the likes of him we will never meet again. He says it would be easy to make a Folklore Museum of the Cemetery, and that there’d be no problem getting a grant …

  —Come off it, wasn’t the little flyboy fighting against Hitler! …

  —Let us accept him. Bring it on …

  —I am so grateful to you, mes amis! Merci beaucoup …

  —Hitler is against the Rotary …

  —Ara, so what, shut up your old trap and your asshole Rotary! …

  —A man who drank forty-two pints! They wouldn’t even take him in Alcoholics Anonymous or in Mount Mellery. Nowhere at all, apart from “Drunken Pissartists Limited” …

  —I drank those forty-two pints, too true …

  —But Nora Johnny drank twice as much on the sly …

  —Shut your gob, you grabber!

  —But you couldn’t think that you would accept any of the Dog Eared lot, could you? If you do, you’ll know all about it …

  —… How could they let the likes of you into the Rotary, and you don’t even know your tables? …

  —But I do. Listen now, like. Twelve ones, twelve; two twelves …

  —… Why would they take him: a guy who murdered himself going to look at Cannon? It was a very uncultured way to die …

  —The bookseller will be acceptable. He handled thousands of books …

  —And the Insurance Inspector. He used to do the crossword …

  —And Chalky Steven. He was a great one for going to funerals, death kept him alive …

  —… So, why is it they won’t accept you? Isn’t your son married to a black! The blacks are a cultured race, kinda.

  —They’re more cultured anyway than the Italians, and one of them old bags is married to your son …

  —Caitriona Paudeen should be accepted. She has a round table at home …

  —And Nora Johnny’s wardrobe …

  —She was a good friend to Mannix the Counsellor …

  —And her son’s daughter is training to be a teacher …

  —Big Colm’s daughter should get in also. She was a member of the Legion of Mary. She gives people spiritual assistance …

  —Easily known and all she knows. She hasn’t kept her gob shut since she got back home …

  —This is very offensive …

  —If that’s the way it is they should accept the Postmistress also. She was the Legion’s Information and Investigation Officer, and there’s no way she wasn’t stuffed full of culture when you think of everything she had ever read …

  —And Kitty too. Her son was deputy head bottle-washer in the Legion, and she belonged to a Credit Corporation …

  —And Tim Top of the Road. His old one stuck a hearse under his arse in case his bowels would be bollixed, or his guts would be gandered …

  —So it goes, as you might say yourself …

  —Everyone in Tim Top of the Road’s House was in the Legion …

  —And his son is all up for the priest’s sister …

  —Everyone in his house stole my turf …

  —And my hammer …

  —You are all insulting the faith. You are all bad black heretics …

  —You’re all right, you’ll be accepted. The Big Butcher attended your funeral, didn’t he? …

  —Fireside Tom would have made a good Rotary person, wouldn’t he? He was always a friend to culture.

  —And Blotchy Brian. He was in Dublin …

  —And Nell Paudeen. She meets up with a lot of the Rotary crowd. Lord Cockton …

  —Let me speak. Give me a chance …

  —John Willy will give the first lecture to the Rotary Club. “My Heart” …

  —Then Kitty: “A Loan” …

  —Dotie: “The Mild Meadows of the Pleasant Plain” …

  —Guzzeye Martin: “Bedsores” …

  —The Old Master: “Billy the Postman” …

  —Yer man over here: “The Direct Method for Twisting Ankles” …

  —Caitriona Paudeen: “Handsome Blotchy Brian” …

  —Bugger off! Brian the bastard, bummer Brian …

  —Then Redser Tom …

  —I’ll say nothing at all. Not even nothing. Zilch …

  —You’ll give a talk about the prophets from Bally Donough, won’t you? …

  —And you on about the flea-ridden knoblets of your own little townlet …

  —To be honest, Dotie, I was always hot into culture. Whoever said to you that I started here is displaying an ignorant prejudice. When I was only a young girl in the Fancy City, as soon as I came home from the convent and had eaten my dinner I was hightailing it out in search of culture. That’s exactly the time when I met the sailor …

  —But you never said anything to me, Norita, about you attending the convent …

  —De grâce, Dotie. I told you all the time, but it’s gone clean out of your head. You must realise that I was putting the finishing touches to my education in the Fancy City, and I was staying with a relation of mine, a widow, as it happens, Mrs. Corish …

  You’re all gab and guts and a filthy liar, you Toejam Nora you. You’re not related to her in the slightest. You were only her skivvy. I have no idea why she let you or your bag of fleas ever into her house. But as soon as she found out you were having it off with sailors she stuck a nettle up your arse and sent you off home to Gort Ribbuck, Gort Ribbuck of the ducks, the puddles, the nits, and the gummy glue between the toes. And, for all that, you went to school in the Fancy City! …

  —Just don’t pretend you hear a word she says …

  —My goodness me, Dotie, that old wagon isn’t allowed to speak. There she is, without a cross or a crucifix just like a letter that was sent without any address …

  —You can thank your eejit of a brother, Noreen …

  —Your son is a
t home, and he can’t pay Fireside Tom’s insurance. As soon as Tom heard that he upped and offed the fuck out of there, and awayed to Nell’s place …

  —Oh! Oh! …

  —It doesn’t matter if it’s Oh or Pee, that’s the way it is. Your son, Paddy, has let his land to Nell, and Nell’s cattle are there renting their ruminating on his fields all the time …

  —Oh! Oh! Oh! …

  —If he lives a bit longer, he’ll have to sell the land, the whole lot. Pity the woman that her man can’t look after her. I gave him my daughter, as no way did I want to obstruct the ways of true and romantic love. That was the only reason he got her. I was always romantic. But whether I was romantic or not, if I really knew what I was on about, and if I really knew what she was up to …

  —… What’s that? … Another corpse … A new one … I’ll have no time for you in this place. A corpse’s corner is its castle. Everyone here believes in the sanctity of private property …

  —Fuck off! By the oak of this coffin, they’re not going to dump you on top of me. I’m going to join the Rotary …

  —… Peace is all I want. Not company. I’m joining the Rotary …

  —… That will injure me. I’ve already got bedsores …

  —… I have a dicey heart …

  —Go away and get stuffed out of this grave. I’m going to tell you nothing. The graves are full of ears. You’d think that we should be easily recognisable. We have crosses to tell who we are. But even so, they’ve left that grave far too close to mine. Oh! Head off over there to Caitriona Paudeen’s. Over as far as Caitriona’s! …

  —She loves to welcome a new corpse. It gives her a plentiful supply of jabber and clatter …

  —They dump everyone else down on her, people for whom they can’t find any other hole in the graveyard. She’ll keep them clattering and clappering about the neighbours …