The Dirty Dust (16 page)

Ah, come on, Breed, just look at who's talking: one of the beggars. Didn't I rear your father? Coming on over to me anytime it suited him, cadging a cup of tea when he was getting nothing but potatoes and a dry herring. Talk about speaking snottily and an inflated opinion! There's no way that the dungheaps are getting bigger these days … What's that you're saying, you hag you? … I don't have a cross over me yet as good as Nora Johnny's … Get stuffed yourself, you sluttish slag!

Breed Terry, the hag … Biddy Sarah the sponger … Kitty the small potatoes … Little Kate the gossip … Fireside Tom, the cunt … Blotchy Brian …

It's easy enough for that muppet to have bragging rights again and his son-in-law doing OK. What was that John Willy the periwinkles said that he wouldn't do a stroke of work ever again? He was cured at Kill Eeney Well! He was in my arse! Even if he was, it was because that harridan of a mother got John's Gospel from the priest. Jack the Lad will pay for it. He'll try some black magic now instead of John's Gospel. He'll be here soon. And I'm sure they never gave him either a hint or a warning. Great balls of fire! They don't really give a toss!

The priest and Nell and Blotchy Brian's young one gossiping away to one another in secret:

“The way it is,” Nell would say, “if anyone is going to plop his clogs, it's likely to be old Jack. It won't be long before he snuffs it. He hasn't been well for ages. But, say nothing about it. It would only bug him. Nobody, really nobody likes to kick the old bucket …”

She'd certainly say it, the cute hoor … Another young one, she's got so, my daughter-in-law. It's a wonder it didn't take her. But that cow is tough. Just as tough as the rocks of Gort Ribbuck that the road engineers cursed because dynamite couldn't even blast them apart … But she'll be here at the next birth. I'd bet anything on that …

And they called the kid Nora! Isn't a pity I wasn't there! My daughter-in-law thought she'd try the same trick when Maureen was born. I had her wrapped up in the blanket myself, before we took her out to be baptised.

“What'll you call the little thing, God love her?” says Maggie Frances, who was waiting there.

“Maura,” I says. “What else would I call her. After my mother.”

“Her mother stretched on the bed says we should call her Nora,” Patrick says.

“Toejam Nora,” I says. “To name her after her own mother. What else would she do? But why so, Patrick?”

“You're not exactly short of names,” Maggie says. “Caitriona or Nell or …”

“Fuck the fucking fruitcake,” I says. “I'd prefer to give her no name at all rather than Nell … No name would suit her better than that of her great-grandmother: Maura.”

“Is the kid yours or mine?” Patrick says, and he was getting stroppy. “She will be called Nora.”

“But Patrick, my lovely son,” I says myself, “think about the child and her future life and what she will have to put up with. Do you remember what I said? Sailors and so on …”

“Shut your face, or I'll be totally bollixed …”

They were the very first cross words that ever came out of his mouth, that I heard, I think.

“If it's like that,” I says, “then off you go. But somebody rather than me will take her to the baptism font … I have more respect for myself, God's honest truth. If you are going to call her Nora, then do it! But I might get a bit pissed off what with one Nora toddling up to my house, and the other Nora hardly ever to be seen. If that's the way it's going to be, I won't be hanging around. I'll take myself off, wherever …”

I gave Maggie the baby, and I grabbed my shawl from the closed door.

Patrick took off to the back room to Nora Johnny's daughter. He was back as quick as a flash. “Call her whatever damn name you like,” he said, “Call her ‘Diddly high di dee diddelly dum' if you like. But don't drag me into it. There's not a day that I wake up but that one of you isn't shitting on me …”

“It's your own fault, Patrick,” I says. “If you had taken my advice, and Baba's …”

He was out the door as swift as snot off a shovel. From that day until the day they laid me out there was no talk about calling any of the kids Nora. But his trollop of a wife fancies it, now that I'm gone …

The words are all ready for the cross anyway. Poor Patrick is alright even though he doesn't seem to have anything left because of that frump of a woman who couldn't rear a pig or a calf or do any work in the field or on the bog. I know in my heart of hearts that he can't do everything. But when Maureen is a schoolteacher, she'll be able to provide a few bob …

Wasn't Breed Terry fast with the quip when she said: “Your cross isn't as good yet as Nora Johnny's.” But it will be, you old bat. A cross
of Connemara marble like that of Peter the Publican's, or Huckster Joan's, and wreaths, and an inscription in Irish …

If I could be bothered, I'd tell Peter the Publican about the cross. I suppose I should be sooner talking to him—as I am going to vote for him—rather than for Margaret, or Kitty, or Dotie. They are the people who have the crosses, of course. It wouldn't be that important only the way he listened to Toejam Nora! But the cat is out of the bag now. Lord Divine Jesus, didn't they tear strips off one another the other day. If Peter the Publican had taken any notice of me in time, I'd have told him what Toejam Nora Stinky Soles was like. But, it's fierce hard to talk to that Pound crowd. They fancy themselves twice as much as anyone else …

I won't bother Peter now. He's far too busy bothering about the elections anyway. I'll tell Huckster Joan, and she'll pass it on to the Pound crowd. I'd better say that they'll put the cross on me between now and …

—… He stabbed me through the three layers of my liver. The Dog Eared crowd were always treacherous …

—… Didn't we make a right mess of screwing up the English market, Curran? …

—… “It's ‘the War of the Two Foreigners,' Patch,” I said …

—… Honest, Dotie! Our lot were always sharp and smart. Take me, for instance … My son had a young fellow, he's married over at Gort Ribbuck, and he was going to school with the Old Master, and he said there was nobody like him. He was really into literature:

“He had culture in his bones,” he said. “I could see it in him.”

Honest, Dotie, that's what he said. Do you know that daughter of mine that's married to Caitriona Paudeen's boy. She has a girl now who's going to be a schoolteacher. She got that from my daughter. And if she didn't, there's no way she got it from the Lydons or from the Paudeens.

—You're lying up to your teeth, you old cow! Drinking on the sly in the snug in Peter's pub! Drinking on the sly! Hanging out with sailors! Sailors! …

Hey, Margaret! Hey, Margaret! … Did you hear that? … Did
you hear what Toejam Nora said? … I'm going to burst! I'm going to burst! …

—… May God Almighty give you a bit of sense, Nora Johnny, and would you ever just leave me alone. You picked a great time to talk about novelettes! I have to have a few words with my old neighbour, Breed Terry. I had no chance to talk to her at all since she arrived, what with yourself and your culture and elections! …

Are you there, Breed Terry? … Fell into the fire! The first science lesson I ever taught them in school, Breed, was how necessary it was to keep air from a fire. Air fans the flames, Breed. People should know that … Oh, there was nobody left to keep the air out, is that it, Breed! … In that case the best thing to do was … I'm afraid science could do nothing at all about that situation, Breed … You want some peace and quiet, Breed! … I'm afraid science can do nothing about that situation either … What's that you said, Breed? … The whole country were at the wedding, oh Breed.

That's the truth, Master. The whole country was at the wedding. You can be rightly proud of your wife, Master. There was no shortage of nothing: bread, butter, tea, and six different kinds of meat, porter, whiskey, and Sam Payne, Master. Sam Payne, Master. When one of our lot—Seamus, it was—got pissed off with the whiskey and the porter, he took off to the parlour and laid into Sam Payne. Every bit as good as the poteen that Ned Tawny has, he said.

Don't worry one bit, Master. It was a great wedding; just as good as if you had been there. The Mistress is a fine woman, Master. She toddled down to us just two nights before the wedding and invited everyone into the house. I was weak to the world, Master. If I wasn't I swear, Master, I swear it's not a word of a lie, but I would have been there.

“Any chance you'd have a bit of a can of buttermilk to spare there, Breed,” she says.

“Of course, and I might have two of them also, Mistress,” I says
myself. “If it was more than that, I wouldn't begrudge it to you, or to your husband who's laid out in the cemetery clay—the Old Master himself—may God have mercy on him!” I says myself.

“I'm determined to have a great wedding,” Breed, she says to me. “Myself and Billy the Postman were talking about it,” she says:

“‘A great wedding,' said Billy the Postman,” she said. “That's how he'd love it himself, God bless him!”

“‘I am absolutely certain that if he knew, that if the Old Master knew, Billy, that I was going to marry again,' I says myself, Breed, I says, ‘that's exactly what he'd say to me, to have a great wedding. And, he'd be happy for the neighbours. And, of course, he'd be happy for me also.' No, he wouldn't either, Breed …

“Feck me anyway, Mistress,” I says—I didn't really know what I was saying at all, Master, only the words slipped out—“I swear really, Mistress, but I swear I thought you'd never marry again.”

“Ah, sure, Breed dear,” she says, “I wouldn't have either if it wasn't for what the Old Master said to me a few days before he died. I was sitting on the edge of his bed. I took his hand:

“‘What will I do at all,' I says, ‘if anything happens to you?'

“He let out a great guffaw, Breed.

“‘What will you do?' he says. ‘What would a fine young strap of a woman like you do—but get married again?'

“I started sobbing, Breed: ‘You shouldn't say something like that,' I tells him.

“‘Something like that,' he said, and he was really serious this time, Breed.

“‘Something like that,' he said, ‘is nothing but the truth. I won't rest easy in my grave unless you promise me that you'll marry again.'

“That's what he said, I swear he did, Breed,” she said.

—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! …