The Dirty Dust (6 page)

—… “Would you come along home with me, I'll shelter you under my cloak,

And I swear young Jack the Lad, we'll have songs until we croak …”

—… It's a strange nickname for a man, alright, Dotie … Yes. Jack the Lad. He lives up there at the top of the town land where Caitriona and myself lived. I knew the original Lad himself, Jack's father … The Old Lad. He was one of the Feeneys, really … No need to laugh, Dotie … Dotie! “Lad” is just as handy as “Dotie” any time. Even if you do come from the Smooth Meadow, I'm telling you, we weren't pupped by hens no more than yourself …

—De grâce, Marguerita …

—… “‘I'll marry Jack,' said Caitríona's dog.

‘I'll marry Jack,' said Nell's dog too …”

—Caitriona refused many men. One of them was Blotchy Brian. He had a good chunk of land and pots of money. Her father advised her to hook up with him. He was so worthless, according to her, she wouldn't give him the time of day …

—… Start that song again, and sing it right this time …

—“The Lad's son he got up and went …”

—… You'd nearly think that God gave Jack the Lad a soul so that he could go about singing. If you heard his voice just once it would haunt you for the rest of your life. I don't know at all what exactly to call it …

—A musical dream.

—That's it, Nora. Just like a strange and beautiful dream. There you are on the edge of a cliff. A drowning hole down below you. Your heart thumping with fear. Then, suddenly, you hear Jack's voice wafting up from the depths. Your desire immediately banishes your fear. Then you seem to let yourself go … You feel yourself sliding down and down … and down … getting nearer all the time to that voice …

—Oh my, Margaret! How thrilling! Honest …

—… I never met anyone who could remember exactly any song that Jack sang. We would forget everything but the soul he put into his voice. Every young girl in the place would lick the winding path which he trod to his door. I often saw the young ones up on the bog and as soon as they caught a glimpse of Jack the Lad over at his own turf they would crawl through muck and glob just to hear him sing. I saw Caitriona Paudeen doing it. I saw her sister Nell doing it …

—Smashing altogether, Margaret. Cultured people call it the eternal triangle …

—… “Jack the Lad rose up and took the early morning air

And went off chasing women with the frolics at the fair …”

—… Too true. It was at the Big Pig Fair that Nell Paudeen and Jack the Lad took off together. Her people were fit to be tied, for all the good it did them. I don't know if it's the way you do things over on the Smooth Meadow, you know, that the eldest daughter has to get married first …

—… “She carried him off through bog-holes, swamps and mucky glob

Disturbing all the curlews whose chicks had open gobs …”

—Jack was up on the bog and all he had was waste scrub and some drowned moorland …

—Ara, Maggie Frances, I never saw a more awkward pathway
up to a house than that of Jack the Lad's. Didn't I twist my ankle that night coming home from the wedding at …

—… You did, because you made a pig of yourself, as usual …

—… The night of the wedding in Paudeen's house Caitriona was holed up in a corner in the back room with a face as miserable as a wet week. There was a small gang of us there. Nell was there. She started ribbing Caitriona: “I really think you should marry Blotchy Brian, Caitriona,” she said. She knew right well that Caitriona had already refused him …

—I was there, Margaret. “I've got Jack now,” Nell said. “We'll leave Blotchy Brian for you, Caitriona.”

—Caitriona went ape. She stormed out, and she wouldn't go near the room again until the next morning. Nor did she go to the church either the following day …

—I was cutting a bunch of heather that day, Margaret, and I saw her winding her way up through the bog by Tulla Bwee even though the wedding was over the other way at the Lad's house …

—She didn't put one foot, right or left, across the threshold of Jack the Lad's joint from that day to this. You'd think Nell was riddled with some kind of nasty pox the way she used to give her a wide berth. She never forgave her for Jack …

—… “Brian is a darling with his land and his cows

But he'll never be right without a woman and a house …”

—… Despite all his wealth, Blotchy Brian failed utterly to get a woman. It's a small wonder he didn't come crawling to her again …

—… “‘By japers,' says Triona, ‘here's a fine pig for scalding,

Turn the kettle to the fire: he might get the warning.'”

—They'd use the handle of the pot over beyond the Fancy City. That time Pat McGrath came knocking …

—We refuse them that way too on this side of the city, Dotie. Honest. In my own case, for example …

—Did you hear what the Tailor's sister did when an old dribbling dunderhead came over from Derry Lough looking for her? She took a long knife out of the press, and started sharpening it in the middle of the floor. “Keep it for me,” she said …

—Oh, she'd do that alright. The Dog Eared crowd …

—After all that, what do you know, Caitriona married John Thomas Lydon from our own place, and never said either “yea” or “nay” when he came for her …

—I swear, Margaret, John Thomas was far too good for her …

—He had a fine plot of the best rich soil …

—And the willingness to work it …

—A fine spacious house …

—She drooled for the place, certainly. To be better off and have more money than Nell. And to be close enough so that Nell could see every single day that she was better off and had more money than her to the end of her days …

—“‘I have a huge haggard,' said Caitríona's cat

‘I have the best fat cows, and butter as well …'”

—“‘I am sleek and useful and friendly and cuddly

Quite just the opposite of that kitty of Nell's …'”

—Letting Nell know that she didn't get the worst of the bargain, and that Nell could suck on her disappointment and failure. That much came out of Caitriona's own unforgiving mouth. It was her revenge …

—Oh my! But that's very interesting. I don't think I'll bother with the reading session I have with the Old Master today … Hey there, Master … Let's skip the novelette today … I'm doing something else intellectual.
Au revoir
…

—Caitriona was particular, thrifty and nifty in John Thomas Lydon's house. I know that well, as I was next door to her. The sun never woke her up in bed. Her card and spinning wheel often chattered and gabbled through the night …

—And it looked every bit of it, Margaret. She had stuff and more …

—… I wandered into Barry's betting shop up in the Fancy City. I had my hand in my pocket just as if I had a pile. All I had was one shilling. I made a racket chucking it on to the counter. “‘The Golden Apple,'” I said. “‘The three o'clock. A hundred to one … It better win,' I muttered putting my hand in my pocket and sauntering out” …

—… It's a pity I wasn't there, Peter, I wouldn't let him get away with it. You shouldn't let a black heretic like that insult your religion.

“Faith of our fathers, Holy Faith,

We will be true to thee 'til death,

We will be true to thee 'til death …”

—You're a bloodless wimp, Peter, letting him talk like that. I wasn't there to …

—Put a cork in it! Neither of the two of you have shut up going on about religion for the last five years …

—They say, however, Margaret, after all the savaging that Caitriona did of Nell that she would have been glad of her when her husband died. She was in a bad way that time, as Patrick was only a toddler …

—That I would have been glad of Nell! That I would have been glad of Nell! That I would take anything from Nell. God Almighty Father and his blessed angels, that I'd take anything from that hog face! I'm going to burst! I'm going to burst! …

—… “The nettle-ridden patches of Bally Donough,” you say.

—The little pimply hillocks in your town land couldn't even grow nettles with all the fleas on them …

—… Fell from a stack of corn …

—By the hokey, as you might say, myself and the guy from Men-low were writing to one another …

—“… Do you think that this war is ‘The War of the Two Foreigners'?” I says to Patchy Johnny.

—Wake up, you lout. That war's been over since 1918 …

—It was going on when I was dying …

—Wake up, I'm telling you. Aren't you nearly thirty years dead. The next war is on now …

—I'm twenty-one years here now. I can boast something that nobody else here can: I was the first corpse in this cemetery. Don't you think that the elder in this place would have something to say. Let me speak. Let me speak, I tell you …

—Caitriona had stuff and plenty, no doubt about it, Margaret …

—She certainly had, but despite that her place was better than Nell's, Nell didn't let things slide either …

—God bless you. Margaret! Neither herself nor Jack ever did a toss except gawk into one another's eyes and sing songs, until Peter, the son, grew up and was able to do some work on that old swamp and clear some of the cursed scrubs …

—Nell didn't have a penny to her name until Blotchy Brian's Maggie brought her dowry.

—However much you dress up her place, the truth is that what saved her was being near a river and a lake, with some wild grouse around. Of course, there's no telling what money hunters and fishermen gave her. I myself saw the Earl slipping a pound note into the palm of her hand: a nice crisp clean pound note …

—… Over on the Smooth Meadow, you call your swamps “fens,” don't you, Dotie? I also heard that you call the cat “a rat catcher,” and the thongs “the fire friend.” … No doubt about it, Dotie, that's not the proper and correct “Old Irish” at all …

—God save us all! …

—… “‘We'll send pigs to the market,' said Caitríona's cat

‘You'd do better with bullocks,' said Nell's cat back.”

—… It's not one smell of an exaggeration that Caitriona would add bits to her prayers for Nell to shrivel away. She was thrilled to bits if a calf died, or if her potatoes rotted …

—I won't tell one word of a lie about her, Margaret. God forgive me if I did! That time when the lorry crocked Peter Nell's leg, Caitriona said straight up my face: “I'm glad it hit him. The road is plenty wide enough. It serves the maggot right …”

—“Nell won that round anyway,” she admitted, the day her husband, John Thomas Lydon, was buried …

—He was buried in the eastern graveyard. I remember it well, and I had good reason to. I twisted my ankle, just where I slipped on the stone …

—Where you made a pig of yourself, as you usually did …

—… To have more potatoes than Nell; more pigs, hens, hay;
have a cleaner smarter house; her children to have better clothes: 'twas all part of her vengeance. It was her vengeance …

—… “She ca-me back ho-me dressed to th-e nines

As she fi-lched a sta-ck from the old grey hag.”

—Baba Paudeen got laid low by some sickness in America, and it took her to death's door. Blotchy Brian's Maggie looked after her. She brought Maggie back home with her …

—… “Baba was holed up in Caitríona's house …”

—She rarely went near Nell. She was too out of the way and the path was too awkward after her sickness. She seemed to like Caitriona a lot better for some reason …

—… “Nell's house is only a rotting hovel

She needn't bother be spouting lies

The fever was there, no use denying it

If that plague gets you, you'll surely die …”

—… Caitriona only had one son in the house, Padd …

—Two daughters of hers died …

—No, three did. Another one in America. Kate …

—I remember her well, Margaret. I twisted my ankle the day she left …

—Baba promised Caitriona's Paddy that she wouldn't see him short for the rest of his days if he married Blotchy Brian's Maggie. Caitriona really hated Blotchy Brian's guts, and she was the same way with her dog and her daughter. But she had a big dowry, and Caitriona had a notion that Baba would more than fancy leaving money in her house as a result. Just to best Nell …

—… “Baba was holed up in Cat-rion-a's house

Until Paddy rejected the Blotchy's Maggie.

Nora Johnny has a lovely fair maiden

Without cows or gold I took her fancy …”

—High for Gort Ribbuck! …

—Nora Johnny's daughter was a fine piece of work, I swear …

—… That's what turned Caitriona against your daughter in the first place, Nora Johnny. All that old guff about the dowry is only an excuse. From the day your daughter stepped into her house, married
to her son, she had it in for her like a pup with his paw on a bone and another pup trying to whip it from him. How often did you have to come over from Gort Ribbuck, Nora …

—… “Each morning that broke, Nora Johnny came over the way …”

—Oh my! We're getting to the exciting part of the story now, Margaret, aren't we? The hero is married to his sweetheart. But there's another woman lurking away in the background. She's been wounded by the conflict, and there will be lots of trouble ahead … Anonymous letters, sly gossip about the hero, maybe a murder yet, certainly a divorce … Oh! My! …

—… “‘I wouldn't marry Blotchy Brian,' said Caitriona's kitty …”

Add a few lines to that yourself …

—“‘But you thought for to hurt him,' said Nell's kitty back …”