—Crosses. Bloody tear and ’ounds, they hardly talk about anything else. John Willy’s cross, Breed Terry’s cross, Redser Tom’s cross, Jack the Lad’s cross that they’ve done nothing about since … Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitriona, but it doesn’t matter by the hangers of the halls of Hell whether you have a cross or not when you are dead! “Oh-row, Maureen …”
—You won’t be piping that tune much more when you’re here a bit longer, Bartley, listening to Nora Johnny. You’d think she was the mother of the Earl. But, come here to me, did you hear that Patrick was going to stick up a cross over me anytime soon?
—Himself and Nell are often away off and yonder in the car ever since Jack the Lad was buried. Stuff about crosses, stuff about wills …
—But it wouldn’t do him any good to be going off with that scum scuzzy slag …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitriona, but he’s doing all right, God bless him! He never had as many cattle on his land. He raised two litters of pigs recently: you never saw the likes of them, lovely luscious lusty pigs with loaded backsides as hot and heavy as bullocks on the boil. Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t he sending two of them to college! …
—Two of them? …
—Yeah, two, that’s it. The older one and the young one after her …
—God help them, like! …
—And the one after that will be going in the autumn, they say. Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t that exactly what Blotchy Brian said! … “Ho-row, then Mary, your belts and your buckles …”
—But what exactly did he say, Bartley?
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, it was just a slip of the tongue, Caitriona! “Ho-row …”
—No harm, Bartley, no harm. I can’t exactly contradict him, can I? God bless you anyway, Bartley, but hey, listen, just tell me. It’ll do me good …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitriona, it’ll do you no good, no good at all. “Ho-row, then Maureen …”
—I’m telling you it’ll do me a power of good, Bartley. You’d never credit the lift we get from a bit of news here. The crowd down here would tell you nothing at all at all, even if they could get back up again for a while as a reward. See! Jack the Lad buried in his grave for the last three weeks! Jack the Lad! Jack …
—“Ho-row, then Maureen …”
—Ah go on! Let it out. Good man, Black Bandy Bartley! … Straight up now. They’ll know soon enough up above that this is the wrong grave …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitriona, it doesn’t matter diddly squat where they chuck your old bag of bones! …
—But tell me anyway, Bartley, what did Blotchy Brian say …
—Well, if it’s going to cause shit, Caitriona, it’s going to cause shit. “Paddy is away on a hack,” he said, “ever since he left that meddling muppet of a mother in the hole of the graveyard. He should have boiled a blazing pot years ago, lit it up with burning flames, and dumped her into it like you’d do with a kitten …”
—They’ve blotted you out, you bastard Black Bandy Bartley! Jack the Lad! Jack the Lad! … Jack the Lad! …
3.
—… I was crushed when I heard that the Graf Spee was sunk. I came here a fortnight since then …
—The mine nearly got us. Apart from that, Mrukeen was going to take the five …
—… Stabbed me through the twists of my kidneys. The Dog Eared Shower always had that sneaky stab …
—I caught the death of me from sweating in my sleep, that time I cycled to Dublin to see Cannon …
—… Fell off the rick of oats and broke my hip …
—Pity you didn’t break your tongue, as well! …
—Your legs took you a long way up, up on a rick of oats …
—I swear that you’ll never fall from a rick of oats again. I swear you won’t …
—If you hadn’t fallen from a rick of oats, you’d have died some other way. You’d have got a kick from a horse; or your legs would have given out …
—Or he’d have given you a bad bottle …
—Or your daughter-in-law wouldn’t have given you enough to eat, seeing as you lost your pension because you had money stashed in the bank.
—You can be sure you would have died anyway …
—To fall is a terrible thing …
—If you fell in the fire like I did …
—It was the heart …
—Bedsores. If only they had rubbed a bit of hot stuff into me …
—Joan, ya jizzer ya! You caused the death of me. Lack of fags …
—And your coffee, ya ugly Joan ya …
—One way or the other, that’s the reason I died …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, there was no reason for me to die. I just laid back and drifted away …
—The reason the Old Master died was …
—An excess of love. He thought that if he died the Mistress thought her life wouldn’t have been worth living without him …
—That’s not it, but it dawned on him that he’d be doing the dirty on Billy the Postman if he hung on any longer …
—No way, but Caitriona cursed him after he wrote a letter to Baba. “May not another corpse come to the graveyard before her!” she’d say. “Going from the table to the window …”
—The reason for Jack the Lad’s death was that Nell sent him off with St. John’s Gospel …
—Shut your hole, you grabber! …
—It’s true! It’s too true. The little whore’s git got St. John’s Gospel from the priest …
—… You died from shame. Your son marrying a black in England …
—It would have been a lot worse if he had married an Italian, like your son did. From that day on you had no luck. I saw you going home one day. “He’s done for,” I said to myself, “he’s like a dead man walking. Since he got the news that his son married an Italian he’s been wasting away. Pure shame. Nothing would surprise you …”
—… The guy from the east of the town died because we let the English market go …
—… He was so pissed off mulling over whether or not to stick his foot out the door.
—Blotchy Brian said that Curran died because he was totally pissed off ’cos he couldn’t do a hatchet job straight down through the middle of the Guzzler’s donkey that he found gobbling the oats in his field …
—I thought it was Tim Top of the Road’s donkey …
—Up his arse anyway, it was Top of the Road’s donkey, but I’d have much preferred it if it was his daughter rather than his donkey …
—Colm More’s daughter died because …
—The sad sickness of Letter Eektur …
—No way, no way, at all. But since she got a belt nobody visited the house apart from the doctor, and there wasn’t a stir out of her …
—You are insulting the faith. You’re a black heretic …
—The insurance man was only one letter short in the crossword. He had abbreviated …
—The reason for Redser Tom’s death was that his tongue was too loose …
—What happened to me? What was wrong with me? What saw me off? You’d want to be very smart to know that …
—Chalky Steven died with sheer disappointment that he heard nothing about Caitriona Paudeen’s funeral …
—… One way or the other, as you say, the reason I popped my clogs was the old guts …
—… Hoora! Did you hear that? The guts! His guts, like! It was God’s great revenge that he killed you, Tim Top of the Road. You stole my turf …
—It bugged him that he wasn’t made the Grand Inquisitor …
—The wrath of God, Peter the Publican. You were watering the whiskey down …
—I was robbed blind in your house, Peter the Publican …
—Me too …
—God’s justice, Guzzler. Drinking forty-two pints …
—“Nobody could ever say that I was just one of God’s windbags,” I says. “To go between hell and a hot place. Even if I had said a full and proper act o
f contrition, but I had hardly gone beyond the second bit of the credo, when the young one from the house beyond came looking for me. You’re all lucky, you Tom types, that I have drunk forty-two pints …”
—Didn’t God himself hassle you, you being an insurance man, that you were pulling a fast one on Caitriona Paudeen about Fireside Tom? …
—Ah come on now! I never did that, I never did …
—Too true, Caitriona, you never did, and you never didn’t. The tricks of the trade …
—And when the Goom rejected my collection of stories, The Yellow Stars …
—You were better dead than alive, you poor shagger. Inside next to the fire praying by the ashes. “O Holy Ashes!” … Dear frozen blood that was spilled so that the balls of my bowels could be warmed! …
—He’s a dirty black heretic …
—The Irish Paddy wasn’t happy to publish “The Setting of the Sun.” Nobody in the six parishes wanted to hear me read it …
—God’s justice, no doubt about it! You said that Colm Cille made a prophecy just to fool the people …
—… No wonder that you died. I heard the doctor saying that nobody could keep their health on the nettle-infested fields of Bally Donough …
—The priest himself told me that twenty years ago, nineteen households paid for it on the flea-infested hillocks of your own pissy little town, but now …
—Jack the Lad’s funeral did me in. I crawled up out of my bed just to keen him. I collapsed on the way home. I burst out in a sweat. I was still sweating my guts out when I pegged out …
—Jack the Lad’s funeral did me in also. I started swelling up after that …
—Ababoona! No harm in that when you think how you stuffed your greedy gut there! How long are you here, slippery Sarah, and you, clippity clappity Kitty? …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitriona, we nearly all popped off together. I went six days before Biddy Sarah, and ten before Little Kitty …
—That’ll teach them to stay in their beds! They were wetting themselves trying to get a hold of that grubby clatterer, Nell. Pure nosiness. They wouldn’t bother their barney searching out half-decent people …
—There’ll be nobody left now to lay out or to keen Fireside Tom or Nell Paudeen …
—Serves her right, the fart face! …
—It was God’s judgement that killed Caitriona Paudeen, no doubt about it. Honest! …
—That’s a filthy lie, Noreen! …
—He persuaded her to ruin Fireside Tom, to rob Breed Terry’s old man’s tea, Kitty’s spuds, and to pinch John Willy’s periwinkles …
—That wasn’t it at all, Nora Johnny, but St. John’s Gospel that Nell got from the priest for your daughter. If it wasn’t for the daughter wouldn’t your daughter have been here at her next birth. She was always a bit sickly until Caitriona died. She was flying after that …
—Ababoona boona boona! Not a word of a lie! I swear I’d never have thought of that deep down! …
—That’s it, I’d like to know how Huckster Joan would die. Force her to drink her own coffee …
—… Wear her own clogs.
—I know the death that I’d have liked for you, ya Greedy Guts, pour pints of porter down your throat until it came out every hole in your body, your nostrils, eyes, ears, under your nails, squelching out of your armpit, your eyebrows, fingers, knees, elbows, through the pores in your scalp, until you sweated seven different kinds of stout …
—… The death you’d deserve would be to keep you alive until you’d witness Kerry beating the crap out of Galway in the All-Ireland in 1941, and to have to listen to “The Rose of Tralee” being played on Cannon’s arse …
—… The way I’d have you and every other descendent of the Treacherous Dog Eared Crowd, that you’d …
—Be forced to shout, “Up de Valera” …
—Not good enough, the way I’d do for Tim Top of the Road …
—To leave him to me so that I’d stick one of his thatching yokes down his throat, through his windpipe until it’d burst out through his guts …
—Leave him to me so that I’d clock him with the mallet he stole …
—I’d have no problem lopping his head off with my scythe …
—Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to hang him with my rope …
—Peter the Publican? Drown him in his watered-down whiskey …
—Paul? Keep his throat parched while he had to listen to The Great Scholar reading the lesson …
—He can go and stuff himself with his windy waffle! Don’t give the little prick anything to eat, the cheapskate dickhead, only his “Holy Ashes” …
—I know the death Caitriona Paudeen would give Nora Johnny. She’d get her to disinfect herself, especially her feet …
—Shut your hole, you grabber!
—… The writer guy, is it? He insulted Colm Cille, the lousy lickspittle. Make him do every second turn over and back, just as the Mistress does to Billy the Postman …
—Force him to stitch The Thirty-One Sermons onto his gut …
—Force him to renounce his heresy and his insults to Colm Cille before the congregation; to grovel and seek forgiveness for all the stuff he ever wrote; for all the innocent young maidens whom he sent astray with his writings; for all the couples who broke up because of him; for all the happy homes that he destroyed; for being the precursor for the Antichrist. And after that to excommunicate him, and to burn his bones. Nothing else would be good enough for a heretic …
—… I know the death the Old Master would give to Billy …
—The robber! The death I’d give to that knob gobbler …
—The Postmistress! I know. Make her go a week without reading any letters only her own …
—Too true. A full week without gossip killed Colm More’s daughter …
—They say the Mistress said that what caused the Old Master’s death was …
—That he was too good for this life …
—That’s exactly what she said. I’ll never forget the words she spoke. “He whom the gods love …”
—Oh, the bitch! The scrag! The dipshit! …
—De grâce, Master! Don’t be copying Caitriona again! …
—… Don’t you remember that I am the old man of the graveyard! Let me speak …
—… Little Kitty! To keep her away from corpses …
—God help your fruitcake head! The Afrika Korps couldn’t keep her away, if she got the whiff of one …
—Blotchy Brian, I know the death he’d like Caitriona Paudeen to have …
—Squashing a sneaky cat under the lid of a pot! …
—Force her to stand out on her own road; then Nell to go by with her fancy hat in her lovely car; give a sharp sweet smirk in at Caitriona while she blew the horn with vigour …
—Oh, listen to me! Listen! I’d burst …
—Isn’t that just what I said!
—I’d burst! I’d burst! …
4.
—… “‘Would you not come home with me, I have room beneath my shawl
Ah, why not Ja-ack …’”
—Écoutez-moi, mes amis. Les études celtiques. We’ll have a Colloquium now.
—A Colloquium, bejaysus boys. Hóla, the lot of you, Breed Terry, Chalky Steven, Guzzeye Martin! A Colloquium …
—A Colloquium, Redser Tom! …
—I’m saying nothing. Nothing at all …
—Isn’t it a pity to God that Fireside Tom isn’t here! He’d be a great man for a colloquium …
—There’s the results of my study of the dialect of the Half Guinea Place. I’m afraid this won’t be a proper colloquium at all. I’m not fluent enough, nor are any of you, in the only language in which a colloquium could be properly delivered …
—Fluent? …
—Fluent, mes amis. The first requirement for a colloquium is to be able to talk. I have to say, my friends and colleagues, that my research has left me sorely depressed …
—Oh,
God help us, the poor man! …
—Mes amis, you can’t really do any learned research on a language which many people speak, like English or Russian …
—I have my doubts, I think he’s a filthy heretic …
—You can only research a dialect—or it wouldn’t be worth it anyway—that is spoken by two or three people, at the most. There has to be three slobbers of senile snot for every one word …
—There was a day like that, Peter the Publican, don’t deny it …
—There’s no point in researching somebody’s speech unless every word of his is stand-alone like a crow on the sand …
—Eight into eight, that’s once; eight into sixteen, that’s twice …
—… This colloquium is a God-sent opportunity for me to read “The Sunset” …
—Pas du tout! This is a Colloquium convenable …
—I’m not going to listen to “The Sunset.” No way. Honest! …
—Just a minute now, you fancy Frenchie! I’ll tell you a story …
—Écoutez, Monsieur Coley. This here is a colloquium and not a university lecture on Irish literature …
—I’ll tell you a story. I swear to God I will! “The Little Pussy who Smudged and Smattered the White Sheets of the North of Ireland …”
—… “Big Johnny Martin’s young daughter
Was as huge as you could imagine …”
—… “At dear Doughty Dublin he met Mogcat of the Massive Thighs. ‘Don’t budge even another inch,’ says Mogcat, ‘I’ve just come back from seaman Dublin having done the dirty on all the clean sheets there. “Dublin of the Ford of the Stickies,” they’ll call it from now on. I left as my heritage this fine piece of nasty nonsense splattered on the country—Reidy’s Rump—and before that I had smudged and smattered the nice virgin sheets of the South of Ireland. The South of Ireland, do you get it, derived from Smog Cat, that is a huge cat in Old Irish …’”
—Ce n’est pas vrai! The word is Magnacat. Matou. Magnatude. Magnacalves.
—The real authentic word for “cat” in Old Irish was “gast.”
—Mais non! Like a gate, a trap, a trick, a snare, a snatch, a device, a thingy, a yokemebob. “My gate of gates, I have gotten you in the get up of go,” in the words of Stitched Arse as he was discarding his robes …
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