The Dirty Dust (9 page)

—…

—… Our candidate, our joint applicant—our own candidate if you like, the Fifteen Shillings—she's a woman. Don't let that bother you. Her husband was never a Teachta Dála, a Member of Parliament. She made a name for herself by her own ability and cop on. When she came down into the dirty dust three years ago she knew as little as any of the windbags that are spouting rubbish down in the Half Guinea Place. But despite what the Half Guinea crowd say, there are absolutely equal rights and opportunities in this graveyard (more knocking and clapping of skulls). Our candidate is the living proof of that. She is cultured and wise. Let me introduce her to you … Nora Johnny! (Even more knocking and clapping of skulls.)

—Toejam Nora! The whore. Milking the ducks … Hey, Margaret! … Hey Margaret! … Nora Johnny … I'm about to burst! … I'm going to burst! …

… Toejam Nora standing for election! Jesus Christ Almighty, they have no respect left for themselves in this cemetery, especially if they can't put up anyone else only Fleabag Nora from Gort Ribbuck … She won't get elected … But who knows? … Kitty, Dotie, and Margaret talk to her, and Peter the Publican, and Huckster Joan sometimes. As for the Old Master, it's a total disgrace the kind of things he tells her every day … He says they're all in the book, but I can't imagine myself that propriety would allow those kinds of things to be printed:

“Your curling tresses fair

Your eye sparkling like the dew

Your smooth and pointed breasts

Set my soul ablaze anew.”

… That's lovely talk altogether for a schoolmaster. The Mistress and Billy the Postman are being driven mad. If he wasn't a bit
nuts himself, of course, he wouldn't be praising Nora Johnny: “Her mind has really improved,” he said. “She has acquired some culture now …”

Wasn't she very quick to remind me about the cross over her grave. “I have a fine big cross,” she said, “something you haven't got, Caitriona.” She'd only have a small scutty little cross if it wasn't for what that fool of a brother spent on her, something I told her straight up. She'd be down in the Half Guinea place without a plaque or a headstone, in among those gangsters from Clogher Savvy and Derry Lough, and that's where she should be, if the truth be told. That's what they were going to do anyway, until she died. When did anyone ever have a good word to say about any of her lot? Never, I'm telling you. Never ever. Never happened. A useless shower …

Having a cross here is like having a big slate house aboveground, a house with a name over the door—The Fox's View, Heavenly Haven, The Fairy Throne, Lovers' Way, Sun Spot, All Saints Grove, Leprechaun Green—and a cement border around it, trees and flowers to the edge of the garden, an iron gate with a bowered arch overhanging it, security and money in the bank … The railings on the grave are just the same as the fancy borders around the Earl's house. I never really peeped into the Earl's place without a flutter in my heart. I always thought I would see something miraculous. The Earl and his Lady having descended on their wings from heaven after their dinner. Either that, or St. Peter accompanying them to a table underneath a shady bower; he was carrying a net, having fished on the Earl's Lake; and in it a big golden salmon; his great keys rattling away; and then, he opening his Big Book and inquiring of the Earl which of the people of his district should be allowed into heaven. I always thought that to be in good standing in the Earl's book was the same as to be in good standing in heaven …

That shower aboveground are very innocent. “What good will it do them to have a cross over their graves?” they ask. “Not the smell of an oil rag! Those crosses are only snobbery and one-upmanship and a waste of money.” If they only knew! But they never get it until they are buried, and then it is far too late. If they knew up there that a cross
here earns respect even for the Toejammers, I don't think they'd be dawdling around as they are …

I wonder how long will it take to put my cross up? Patrick would never delay that much? He promised me faithfully:

“You'll have it within a year, or even before that,” he said. “It's the least we could do for you …”

A cross of Connemara marble, and the inscription in Irish … It's all the rage to have Irish on your headstone these days … and lovely flowers …

I often warned Patrick:

“I raised you with love and care, Patrick,” I said. “I kept a good house always. God knows that wasn't always easy. I never told you how I suffered after your father died. I never asked anything of anybody because of that. I often felt like buying a strip of pork to give some taste to the head of cabbage; or a fistful of raisins to chuck into the cake; or to hop into Peter's Pub when I felt my throat parched from dust and cleaning, just to ask him for one of those golden bottles that smiled at me every time I went past his place …

“But, Patrick, my precious, I didn't. I saved every brass farthing. I hate to give Nell or Blotchy Brian's Maggie the satisfaction now that I wasn't buried properly. Get me a plot in the Pound Place. Put a cross of Connemara marble over me. Have it up a year after I'm buried, at the latest. I know that it will cost a bit, but God will reward you …

“Don't give in to your wife if she's nagging you about money. She might be your wife, but I brought you into the world. I never bothered you for anything, only this. You'll be finished with me then. Whatever you do, don't give Nell the satisfaction …”

He didn't bury me in the Pound Place after all that. His wife … or his wife and that other piece of shit, Nell. Although, Patrick can be sharp enough himself when he wants to. He promised me the cross …

I wonder what kind of a funeral I had? I won't know that until the next corpse comes. Biddy Sarah was fading away. But I'd say there's nothing wrong with her yet. And then there's Guzzeye Martin, Black Bandy Bartley, and Breed Terry, and of course, that old gobshite himself, Blotchy Brian, keep his bag of bones away from us! … Fireside
Tom should be dead already with the rain through his roof … If Patrick did what I told him, his shack would have fallen down by now …

My son's wife will be here, she has to be, at her next birth. Nell is a bit flattened since Peter got injured, and she has rheumatism, the old snotbag. That isn't likely to kill her, though. She was dead a few times, according to herself, but the seven plagues of Egypt wouldn't kill some people. May nobody else come to the cemetery before her! …

I haven't a notion if any letter has come from America since. I'm really afraid that Nell will have it all her own way about Baba's will. If I only lived another few years …

Baba was very fond of me more than anyone else. When we used to be messing around as young girls in the Hedge Field … Wouldn't you think she could put up a cross over me just as Nora Johnny's brother did for Nora …

—… Does anyone know is this war “The War of the Two Foreigners”? …

—It's only when you are expecting some real peace and quiet that these chattering gossips really get going. Isn't what they say up above a real joke: “She's at home now. She can rest in peace now, and can forget all the troubles of life in the cemetery clay” … Peace! Peace! Peace! …

—… If you elect me I promise you I'll burst my gut as good as any man—I mean any woman—for culture's sake, and for the sake of enlightened and progressive public opinion …

—Margaret! Margaret! Hey Margaret! … Did you hear what Nora Johnny just said? … “If you elect me” … I'm going to burst! I swear I'm going to burst! …

—… “Fireside Tom was dying to get ma-arried,

As he always wa-as when pla-astered drunk …”

—… It's really hilarious, isn't it Dotie? … Everyone calls him Fireside Tom … He lives in a hole of a dump of a place up on the
top of the town land. He never married. He has no living relations—not in Ireland anyhow—except for Caitriona and Nell Paudeen. I couldn't really tell you, unless I was to give you a very short answer, what exact relation he is to Nell and Caitriona, and not because I haven't heard it often enough …

We were first cousins once removed, Margaret. Young Paudeen, Caitriona's father, and Fireside Tom were cousins …

—… “I've a small bit of land and a nice little shack …”

—Fireside Tom's bit of land is rubbing up beside Nell's, and there's a lot more gab about hers than Caitriona's, because hers is farther away, and she has plenty of it anyway …

—… “And I know two who can pay my rent …”

—Caitriona was always crawling her way up to Fireside Tom's place trying to coax him down to her own, not entirely because of his land, but just to spite Nell …

—But hang on, Margaret, wasn't she driving Paddy totally nuts …

—If he was up to his balls in work she'd be bugging him to go on and help Fireside Tom, anyway …

—Paddy Caitriona is a decent guy …

—A great neighbour, to tell the truth …

—He never had his eye on Fireside Tom's land …

—He never felt much like toddling up to help him, but just for the sake of peace …

—… “And Nell is gre-eat at digging di-itches …”

—I rarely got so much fun out of anything, I'd say …

—I'd say you never got as much fun out of anything, true …

—But you didn't see the half of it …

—I saw enough …

—If you were in the same town land …

—I was near enough to them. What I didn't see, I heard. Wasn't the whole country talking about them? …

—There wasn't a single soul in the whole town land that wasn't weak with the laughter from morning to night. You wouldn't believe half of it, even if I told you …

—Of course, I'd believe it. Nearly every Friday when we drew
the pension myself and Fireside Tom would toddle into Peter's Pub for a couple of scoops, and he'd go through it all backwards and forwards …

—Careful now. Do you know that Caitriona Paudeen's buried here a little while—in the Fifteen Shilling Place. Maybe she'd hear you …

—Let her for all I care. And everyone else in the Fifteen Shilling Place also, if they want to. Yea, like, I'm really worried about them. Themselves and their airs and graces. You'd think we were only muck and garbage …

—All the same I wouldn't want Caitriona to hear me. I was in the same spot as her all her life, and she was a good neighbour, except that she seriously had it in for her sister Nell. Fireside Tom was the only one who really gained in any way from all the spite …

—He often told me that when we were having the few scoops …

—You'd see Caitriona heading out in the morning driving the cows to the top of the fields. She'd deliberately take the long way round home in order to go by Thomas's hovel:

“How's the form today, Tom? … I see those two turf creels you have there are on their last legs. Do you know what, I think I have two of them sitting at home somewhere, and they're not needed at all as Patrick was out weaving baskets only the other day, and he made himself two new ones …”

Tom would get the baskets.

Caitriona would hardly have vanished over the brow of the meadow when Nell would be down quicker than shit through a goose:

“How's the form today, Tom? … Do you know, I think that those trousers of yours aren't that good. They could do with a few patches … But I don't know if they'd be worth it. They're totally in shreds. As it happens, we have a pair at home and they're as good as new for all the wear they got. They were made for Jack, but the legs were too thin, and he didn't wear them twice …”

Tom would get the trousers.

—Didn't he tell me as much? …

—Another day then Caitriona would be there again:

“How's the form today, Tom? … Didn't I just notice that the fences on the field over there are completely flattened … The donkeys in this town land are a terrible curse, Tom. God's honest truth. They're a terrible curse when they're not kept locked up in their own outhouse. Gut Bucket's old donkey, and the one that Top of the Road has are bad enough, but the nastiest of all are the ones over there”—she meant Nell—“and she lets them run wild … Of course an elderly man like yourself can't be expected to go around driving out donkeys. You have enough to be thinking about. I'll have to tell Pat that the fences are down …”

The fences would be repaired for Fireside Tom …

—But of course, didn't he tell me himself …

—Nell would pop down:

“How's the form today, Tom … There's nothing done in this field, God bless you. Nothing sown, only in a tiny little corner. You only have about a fortnight more. But it's hard to do a decent stroke of work if you're all on your own. It's a bit late for sowing spuds now. Isn't the best of May over and done with already! … It's a disgrace that that other crowd”—meaning Caitriona's family—“wouldn't give you a day's help, and they're already finished a fortnight ago … I'll have to tell Peter to drop around tomorrow. Nothing better would suit the two of us for the rest of our lives, Tom, but to be on both sides of the fire together …”

The field of potatoes would be dug for Fireside Tom …

—What makes you think he didn't tell me that often enough? …

—Nobody would really have the least clue that was going on after that, apart from those from the same place … Caitriona was always trying nonstop to rope him in and to have him all to herself, alone. But listen to me now, by the burnt balls of the morning! I'm telling you that Tom was no slouch, despite the way everyone was trying to take him for a ride …

—Do you actually think that I don't know this? …

—Nobody would really know anything, apart from the closest
neighbours … Tom was as fond of that wreck of a hovel as a king would be of his palace. If he hooked up with one sister, then sure as hell, the other would disown him. And neither of them would have the least time for him if he let go of his grubby patch of land. But he didn't. Fireside Tom was a class of a cute hoor and certainly didn't come down in the last shower.