The Dirty Dust (25 page)

—Anyway, I don't think anyone keened Caitriona at all, unless her son's wife or Nell sang a few bars …

—… Your altar was only six pounds ten …

—Mine was ten pounds.

—Hang on a minute now, 'til I see what mine was … 20 by 10 plus 19, that makes 190 … plus 20, that's 210 shillings … that comes to 10 pounds, 10 shillings. Isn't that right, Master? …

—Peter the Publican had a huge altar …

—And Nora Johnny …

—That's true, Nora Johnny had a big altar. I would have had a big altar too, only nobody knew about it, I went too quickly. The heart, God help me! Just the same as if I had been laid up and had bedsores …

—I would have had fourteen pounds exactly, except that there was a bad shilling with it. It was only a halfpenny that somebody had covered with fag paper. Blotchy Brian noticed it, and he copped on to the trick. He said that it was Caitriona Paudeen put it there. She had put many bad shillings like that on the altar. She tried to be at every altar like that but she couldn't afford it, the poor wretch …

—You lying son of a poor rat bastard! …

—Oh, I forgive you, Caitriona. I wouldn't give a tinker's curse or an itinerant's malediction about, if it wasn't for the priest. “They'll be plonking their old rotten teeth on the plate for me soon,” he said …

—I only ever heard “Paul this,” and “Paul that” from yourself and your daughter that time when she jizzed up the Great Scholar in the parlour. But there was no mention of Paul when you had to put a shilling on my altar …

—After I had drunk forty-two pints I tied Tomaseen up, but not one of his kip and kin or anybody from his house bothered their arse to come to my funeral, even though we're in the same town land. They hardly put as much as a shilling on my altar the lot of them together. They all had a cold, or so they said. That was all the thanks I got, even though he was stuck like shit to a blanket. Imagine, like, if he had to be tied up again? …

—I didn't have a very big funeral. Most of Bally Donough had gone to England, and Gort Ribbuck also, and Clogher Savvy …

—… And what do you think of Caitriona Paudeen, Kitty, who didn't as much as darken the door of our house since my father passed away, despite all the cups of tea she polished off …

—That was the time she was going to Mannix the Counsellor about Fireside Tom's land …

—Do you hear that old strap Breed Terry, and manky Kitty of the piddly potatoes? …

—I had to clamp my hand three times over the mouth of that old windbag over there, where he was singing: “Martin John More had a beautiful daughter” at your funeral, Curran …

—The whole country was at your funeral, journalists and photographers, the lot …

—And for a good reason! You were blown up by the mine, all of you. If you had died on the old bed just like me, there wouldn't have been a journalist or a photographer next or near the place …

—
Bien de monde
was at funeral
à moi. Le Ministre de France
from
Dublin
came to mine and he laid a
couronne mortuaire
on my grave …

—There was a representative of Eamon de Valera at my funeral, and the Tricolour was on my coffin …

A telegram from Arthur Griffith came to my funeral and shots were fired over the grave …

—That's a lie!

—No, you're the liar. I was First Lieutenant of the First Company of the First Battalion of the First Brigade …

—That's a lie!

—God save us, for ever and ever! Wasn't it a disaster that they never brought my bag of bones east of the Fancy City!

—The Big Butcher came to my funeral from the Fancy City. He respected me, and his father respected my father. He often said to me that he respected me because of the respect that his father had for my father …

—The doctor came to my funeral. That was hardly a surprise, of course. My daughter Kate has two sons doctors in the States …

—Now you tell us! That was hardly a surprise, indeed. So that he wouldn't be entirely shamed—after all the money you had given him—he came to your funeral. And you twisting your ankle every second month …

—The Old Master and the Mistress were at my funeral …

—The Old Master and the Mistress and the Foxy Cop were at my funeral …

—The Old Master and the Mistress and the Foxy Cop and the priest's sister were at my funeral …

—The priest's sister! Tell me, was she wearing the pants? …

—It was a disgrace that Mannix the Counsellor didn't come to Caitriona Paudeen's funeral …

—It was, disgraceful. Nor the priest's sister …

—Nor the Foxy Cop …

—He was checking out the dogs in Bally Donough that day …

—No dog would survive on the flea-ridden baldy bumps of your place …

—… “Fireside Tom's grin was as wide as a gate,

He'd have Nell now, as buried was Cate …”

—I'm telling you, Caitriona Paudeen, if I could have helped it at all, I would have been at your funeral. It wouldn't be right for me not to be at Caitriona Paudeen's funeral, even if I had to crawl there
on my hands and knees. But I never heard a whisper about it 'til the night of the burial …

—You're an old codger, Chalky Steven. How long are you here? I didn't know you were here at all. The bad pains …

—There were gangs of people at my funeral. The Parish Priest, The Chaplain, The Chaplain from Lough Shore, A Franciscan and Two Brothers from the Fancy City, The Schoolmaster and Mistress from Derry Lough, The Master and Mistress from Kin Teer, The Master from Clogher Savvy, The Master from Glen Beg, and the Junior Mistress, The Assistant Teacher from Kill …

—No doubt about it, every single one of them, Master, and Billy the Postman too. To tell you the truth he was very helpful that day. He fastened and screwed down the bolts on the coffin, he carried it out of the house, and he slid it down into the grave. In all fairness, he wasn't either slow or sluggish. He threw off his jacket with gusto and grabbed the shovel …

—The robber! The homuncular homo! …

—There were five cars at my funeral …

—Yea, that gimp from Derry Lough, his car got stuck right in the middle of things, and your funeral was an hour late …

—There were as many as thirty at Peter the Publican's. He had two hearses …

—Just as you mentioned it, I had a hearse as well. The old woman wouldn't rest easy until she had got one: “His guts would be all shook up if he was up on their shoulders, or being hauled in an old cart,” she said …

—Oh, it was easy for her to talk, Tim Top of the Road, with my turf …

—And my wrack from the sea …

—… There weren't enough there to even haul Caitriona to the church they were so mouldy from the booze. Even they started to act the maggot. They had to let her corpse down twice, the way they were. I swear they did: smack bang in the middle of the road …

—God help us! Ababoona!

—I'm telling you God's honest truth, Caitriona, love. There were only six of us from beyond Walsh's pub. The rest of them went into Walsh's, or else they fell by the wayside. We thought we'd have to get the women to carry the corpse …

—Ababoona! Don't believe him, the bollocks …

—That's the whole bare unadorned truth, Caitriona. You were heavy as hell. You weren't sick that long, and you had no bedsores.

“The two old buckos will have to lift her,” Peter Nell says just near the lane at Clogher Savvy. The old men were great, Caitriona. Peter Nell was on crutches and Kitty's youngfella and Breed Terry's youngfella were beating the shit out of one another, metaphorically, like: each one blaming the other about smashing up the round table the night before. The truth is always the best, Caitriona. There is no way I would carry the coffin, or even go a step of the way with you, if I knew then that I had a dicey heart …

—Too busy piddling around with periwinkles, you piss artist …

—“There she is, still acting the mule. You wouldn't know from hell if she wanted to go to the church or even to the cemetery,” Blotchy Brian said, while himself and myself and Kitty's youngfella were lifting you up to take you in along the church path …

“Not a word of a lie, my good friend,” Peter Nell says, as he dumps his crutches, and goes in up and under the coffin …

—That's really the pits! The slut's son carrying my coffin. Blotchy Brian carrying me. The beardy bastard. If that twisted hunch humped whore was carrying me, then the coffin was baw ways. Abooboona boona! … Blotchy Brian the bum! … Nell's son! Margaret! Margaret! … If I had known all about it I would have burst. I would have burst on the spot …

—… Are you telling me now, that they don't take any insurance on colts? …

—Well, my kind of insurance broker wouldn't take it anyway, Johnny.

—You'd think you weren't taking any chance with a fine healthy young horse. It would be well worth it, before anything happened, to get a big pot of money …

—I nearly got a big pot myself, Johnny, in the crossword in
The Sunday Scandal.
Five hundred pounds …

—Five hundred pounds! …

—That was it, by Jaysus, Johnny. I only had one letter wrong …

—I get it …

—What they wanted was a word in eight letters ending in “e.” The clue said that it meant something that flew through the air by means of mechanical propulsion.

—Yea, I still get it.

—I immediately thought of the word “aeroplane,” as I had seen them flying in the sky. But that was nine letters …

—Yea, still with you.

—“That can't be it,” I said to myself. I spent ages and aeons wracking my brains and torturing myself. Anyway, in the end I put down “aerplane,” as I couldn't think of anything else …

—I get it.

—But what do you know, when the answer came out on the paper it was “airplane”! Fuck that new spelling anyway Johnny! If I had a handgun I'd blow my brains out. That was one of the reasons why my life was cut short …

—Now, I really get it.

—… By the oak of this coffin, Chalky Steven, I swear I gave her, I gave Caitriona Paudeen the pound …

—… He had a broad grin on his mug …

—That stupid grin that the Junior Master makes is a good sign, anyway! He might go the way of the Old Master, who knows. There's some kind of curse on our school that the women don't get on with the masters there …

—… I'll tell you now the advice I gave to Cannon after he won the semifinal for Galway:

“Cannon, my hero,” I says to him, “even if you don't manage to
kick the ball in the final against Kerry, kick something. There must be some kind of equality in clocking people. The ref will be up for Kerry anyway. Why else would they have won so many All-Irelands? You can do it. You have the guts and the balls for it. Every time you clobber something, I will raise the roof …”

—Hitler is my darling! I can't wait for him to get to England! … I'm sure he'll damn them all to hell and the devils will be dancing on the dunes of England: that he'll give the bum's rush to their snotty snoots: that he'll plant a million tons of mines in their belly buttons …

—God help us all! …

—Ah, come on, you can't say anything bad about England. There's lashings of work there. What would the youth of Bally Donough, or for that matter, the crowd from Gort Ribbuck, and Cloghar Savvy do without her …

—Or the old gom over here who has a slice of land up above the town land that is the very best, beyond measure, for fattening cattle up …

—
Après la fuite de Dunkerque et la bouleversement de Juin 1940, Monsieur Churchill a dit qu'il retournerait pour libérer la France, la terre sacrée
…

—You shouldn't let any black heretic like that insult your religion, Peter. It was fucking lucky I wasn't there! I'd have asked him straight up, no bullshit: “Do you believe in God at all? Maybe you're just like a cow or a calf, or like a … cunty little pup.” A dog doesn't give a fuck about anything only to fill his gut. A dog would eat meat on a Friday, I'm telling you that. It would be just great, just great for him. But, of course, not every dog would eat it, either … I had a smidgen of meat left over when I was in the town, one time. “I'll drag it out 'til Saturday,” I says, “Tomorrow's a fast day, no meat” …

Coming in from eating out on Friday when I was returning from the fields with a fist of spuds, I saw the Minister passing by, heading off hunting. “Maybe you'll get away with it, you damned heretic,” says I. “Of course I'm fully aware that you won't get past Friday without fresh meat … or even a young pleasant pup. Of course, without
speaking crudely, you are very like a cow or a calf … or even a little plump pup.” When I went in clutching my fist full of small potatoes, the loop was missing from the dresser. Every single fillet of flesh gone! “It's a cat or a dog for certain,” I said. “When I get you, you're done for.” Eating meat on a Friday. Amn't I the stupid eejit that didn't put them out, and close the door after me! I caught them on the way up. The Minister's dog gobbling the meat, and my dog growling at him trying to stop him. I got a hold of the pike. “You'd easily know who you belong to,” I roared at him, “guzzling meat on a Friday.” I thought I'd gut him with the pike. The filthy wretch got away by the skin of his teeth. I offered the meat to our own dog. May God forgive me! I shouldn't have been tempting him. He wouldn't refuse anything. Not a bit. Now do you feel any better? He knew it wasn't right … It's a pity you didn't tell him that, Peter, and not give him the chance to insult your religion. Lord God, if it had been me …

—How could I? The Minister's dog never took a bit from me …