The Dirty Dust (19 page)

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 …

Nell called in the priest to fix it up! She would, wouldn't she …
That's what Patrick said about them: “Don't take a blind bit of notice of women clawing and clattering one another,” he said. Nell got him to say that. She misses me, the withered old gummy crone! …

What's that you said? That my daughter-in-law is very busy these days … She's bursting her guts working since the fight … She's never sick or slacking now! That's a big change! And I was certain she'd be here any day now … Up at the crack of dawn, you say … Out in the fields and in the bogs … She's raising piglets again! Good for her! They had three or four calves at the last fair! Good for them! Sound man, now you're talking, I'm telling you … And you said you heard your mother say that the whole road was swarming with chickens! How many clutches do you think she had this year? … It's not your fault, of course, that you know nothing about that …

Patrick is away on a hack now, you say. He'll soon best Nell with her eight hundred pounds so. That judge hadn't a clue from Adam. But if my daughter-in-law goes on the way she's flying now, and when Maureen becomes a schoolteacher …

You're right about that, youngfella! Patrick was robbed … What did he say? What's that Blotchy Brian said? That Patrick would be better off, as he couldn't pay his rent, he'd be better off giving a mortgage to someone else on a handful of land, on his handful of a wife, and take off to England to get some work … To call a fine holding like that a handful of land, the scum bucket! … “But it's just as well that that old bat of a mother of his isn't around to give him bad advice,” he said. The scum bag! The scum bag! The scum …

Where have you gone, youngfella? Where are you? … They've taken you away from me …

You don't know, my good man, why the land in Connemara is so rough and barren …

—Patience, Coley! Patience. The time of the Ice Age …

—Ara, put a sock in it! The time of the Ice Age, for God's sake! Nothing to do with it, it was the Curse of Cromwell. That time
God banished the Devil down to hell, he nearly didn't succeed. He tumbled from heaven down here. Himself and Michael the Archangel spent a whole summer wrestling it out. They tore the guts out of the land from the bottom up …

—You're right there Coley. Caitriona showed me the mark of his hoof up there on Nell's land …

—Shut your trap, you nasty grabber! …

—You're insulting the faith. You're a heretic …

—I've no idea how things would have ended up after their brawl, only the Devil's shoes started to give way. Cromwell had made them. He was a cobbler over in London. His shoes fell off along the shoreline. One shoe broke into two pieces. They're the three Aran islands out there since. But as the Fallen Angel was up the creek without his shoes, he forced Michael to retreat all the way to Skellig Michael. That's an island there facing Carna. He roared and screamed at Cromwell to come and mend his shoes. I've no idea how things would have ended up after the struggle if his shoes had been mended …

Cromwell hightailed it to Connacht. The Irish hightailed it after him—not surprisingly—as they were always fighting against the Devil …

Michael confronted them, still running away from the Devil, five miles from Oughterard in a place they call Lawbawn's Hole … “Stand, you knave,” he said, “and we'll give it to you straight in the balls.” That's the spot where he was banished to hell, at Sulpher Lake. That's where the Sulpher River rises to flow through Oughterard. Sulpher is the correct name for the Devil in Old Irish, and Sulphera is his wife's name …

With all the messing, didn't Cromwell escape their clutches and took off to Aran, and he's been there ever since. It was a holy place until then …

—But Coley, Coley, let me speak. I'm a writer …

—… Go and get stuffed, yourself and your
Yellow Stars
! …

—The way it is, as you say yourself, the very best sods were stolen from us …

—Who are you to talk about stealing, Tim Top of the Road, when
you'd rob the egg from the stork, and the stork after that? I was cursed that my bog was right next to yours and I didn't have a patch of land to dry my turf on except that bit right next to yours. You'd cosy your own cart or donkey up against your own rick, but you'd fill your own load from mine. Do you remember the morning I caught you at it. It was just at daybreak. I told you the night before that I was going to the market with some pigs. You said you were going to the market also …

And the day I caught your wife. I saw her heading off to the bog in the cold light of day. I knew there'd be nobody up there. They'd all be down at the shore at full tide. I was going to go there too, but I knew by the look of your one that she was up to no good, off for a bit of stealing …

I crawled up on my belly down around the back of Drum, then I shot up and saw her tightening the rope over the top of the load …

“However much the fox escapes, he'll be caught in the end,” I said …

“I'll get the law after you,” she said. “You have no business sneaking up on a woman on her own in a lonely place like this. I'll swear it black and blue. You'll be deported …”

—And you talking about stealing, Tim Top of the Road, you'd steal the honey from the hive. Selling every clump of your own turf. Not a bit of yours taken in since Hallowe'en, and yet a blazing fire in the kitchen, in the parlour, upstairs …

I was in visiting you one night. I recognised the turf I had cut in the bog myself the day before that.

“The way it is, as you say, there's neither heart nor heat in any of that turf,” you said. “It should be a lot better … The very best sods were stolen from us …”

—And you talking about stealing, and you'd whip the sheet from a corpse. You stole the wrack that I had slaved for over from the Island.

“If we can't pile this stuff on the bank either on our backs or with the horse,” I said to the wife, “I'd better put some string around the end of it, so we'll know it's ours. It'd be no bother for that shower at the top of the road to swipe it from the shore in the morning.”

“You're not saying that they'd go as far as to rob the wrack,” the wife said.

“God grant you sense, woman,” I said. “If it was spread out there on your own ground, they'd swipe it, not to mention anything else.”

… The following morning I was coming down from the houses, and I bumped into your daughter at Glen Dyne, with a load of seaweed astride the donkey.

—Oh, that fast one my eldest is hanging around with.

—I recognised some of my own wrack immediately, even though some of the string had been removed from the end.

“You got that in Cala Colum,” I said.

“In Cala Lawr,” she said.

“No way,” I said, “you got it in Cala Colum. Seaweed never comes in to Cala Lawr from the Island with a south wind and a full tide. That's my wrack. If you have any decency at all you'll unload it and leave it to me …”

“I'll get the law after you,” she said, “assaulting me on my own in a lonely place like this. I'll swear it black and blue. You'll be deported …”

—You stole my hammer. I spotted it when you were working on the back of the house …

—You stole my sickle …

—You stole the rope I left outside …

—You stole the thatching stick that I left stuck out in the barn after two rough days in Kill Unurba. I recognised my own two notches on every stick …

—If the truth be told, a fistful of my periwinkles were stolen too. I left them in a bag up at the top of the road.

“Come here 'til I tell you,” I said to the youngfella, “if we collect as much as this every week from now 'til next November, we'll nearly have enough for a colt.”

There were seven big lumps of bags there. The next morning I went down to the periwinkle man. He looked at them. “This bag here is a couple of stone short,” he said.

He was right. It had been opened the night before and a couple of stone had been stolen from it.

The truth is always the best. I had some suspicion about Caitriona Paudeen …

—Holy moley! Abuboona! …

—I had, I'm telling you. She was nuts about periwinkles. I heard someone say that they were just the stuff for the heart. But I hadn't a clue then that I had a dicey heart, God help us! But I got a catch in my …

—You old dolt head! Don't believe him …

—Usen't I see my old man, John Willy. The old gom, he drank tea morning, noon, and night. I never saw a brass farthing of his pension in the house, and I have no idea where he stashed it away. But there were buckets of tea that time, and he'd buy a pound and a half, or even two pounds, every Friday. Huckster Joan told me he'd often buy two and half pounds. “As long as it's there, it'll do,” he'd always say, the poor gom.