The Dirty Dust (42 page)

—To cut a long story short, Master: “If it happens that you don't come out of this, Billy,” she said, “my life wouldn't be worth living without you …” Ah, come on, Master, don't be so nasty … If she marries yet again, can I do anything about it? … Have a bit of cop on, Master! …

… To cut a long story short, Master, I was just on the edge of eternity, when she screamed into my ear: “I'll bury you properly, Billy,” she shouted, “no matter how long I live after you …” Back off, Master, take it easy! Give me a break for God's sake, Master! … But I think my peace is gone, actually … If she had only thought to bury me in any other place in the graveyard except right next to this nutjob. But I suppose she couldn't help it, the poor thing. She didn't really know what she was doing … Come on, patience Master, get ahold of yourself! …

—Bloody tear and 'ounds anyway, isn't that what Blotchy Brian said when Billy was struck down: “That little wanker isn't too far from the graveyard,” he said. “By dad, he'll be lucky if he's buried at all. If he died in Dublin he'd be dumped in a bin. But she'll slash him in one big scoop on top of the Old Master in the same hole. Then the two of them will gouge one another like two dogs whose tails are tied together … '

—… God help us all, and fuck you too! … Blotchy Brian was right this time … Two dogs whose tails are tied together … Do you know, this time he was right! … Our tails were tied together, Billy …

—You got it right this time, Master …

—We were bucklepping around, wagging our tails you might say and just lounging there when we were seduced by the magic of the lights, the sparkle of the stars, the wonder of the will o' the wisp and
the pleasure of promises. Do you know what, Billy, we thought that will o' the wisp was like unto the candle that is never extinguished …

—That's so true there, Master …

—We believed at that moment that the heavenly stars would be our wedding present; that we would sup of the harvest home wine wherein no dregs lie …

—Oh my, how romantic! …

—Ah come on, Billy my pal, it was only all the kind of mushy mush that our egos inflict us with. We were caught in a trap. Our flighty tails were nailed and tied down. She was only, my good pal Billy, but a bushwhacking brasser of a woman who knew how to play the game. “One day I'm in Rathlin, and the next in the Isle of Man …”

—It's “One day in Islay, and the next beyond in Kintyre,” my good Master, my good neighbour …

—You've got it in one, Billy my boy. That woman isn't worth the steam of your piss or even a hard word or a moment's worry. Billy boy, she got two stupid dogs who let her trap them and tie up their tails …

—Never spoke a truer word, ya Master ya …

—Listen Billy, my good man, we are obliged from now on not to put any strain on our tails, but just to be pleasant and neighbourly to one another …

—Well said, Master! Now you're talking, chalk it down. Peace and quiet, Master. That's the best possible thing here six feet under, Master: Peace and quiet. If I thought even for a minute that I'd be lying here next to you, I'd have never married her …

—It doesn't matter a dog's dinner what anybody does! She is the way she is, but you made a right proper hames of it anyway, you tramp, you thief, you tinker! You should have been pitched into the gas chamber, you fart face, you pig's puke, you …

—Ah come on, Master, zip your lip for a minute, easy up now, easy! …

—If I'd lived a bit longer …

—It was a blessed relief …

—If I'd lived a bit longer …

—It was a blessed relief …

—I'd be getting the pension by St. Patrick's Day …

—Another few months and I'd have been in the new house …

—God save all here! If I had lived just a little bit more, maybe they would have brought my heap of bones beyond the Fancy City …

—… I was to be married in a fortnight. But you stabbed me right through the walls of my liver, you nasty murdering bastard. If I had survived for just another bit, I wouldn't have left a Dog Ear within a sight of us …

—I'd have got the Old Wood's land from my brother. Mannix the Counsellor told me as much …

—I never thought I'd die until I got the satisfaction from the seaweed that Tim Top of the Road stole …

—Oro, I hope the devil fucks him! If I had lived even another short while, I'd have hightailed it into Mannix the Counsellor, and made a proper will. And then I'd have dumped out on his arse the eldest boy, and would have got a woman for the other youngfella, Tom. Then I'd have served a summons on the boozer Crossan and his drove of donkeys, and if the court didn't fix it up for me, I'd have driven nails through their hooves. Then I'd have gone into hiding during the night just to catch the Top of the Road shower trying to steal my turf, and then I'd hammer them with the bitch of a summons … And if the court didn't solve it to my satisfaction, I'd get a few sticks of dynamite from the boss himself. And then …

—Then I'd sue Peter the Publican's daughter …

—Bloody tear and 'ounds, I'd get a lift the likes of which I never got before in Nell Paudeen's car …

—I'd see “The Sun Set” published …

—If I had lived just another bit, I'd have rubbed—what's that you called it, Master? … that's it, right, I'd have rubbed methylated spirits on myself …

—By the oak of this coffin, I'd have pursued Caitriona Paudeen about that pound she owed me …

—God wouldn't forgive us, Kitty …

—I'd have made a love letter of my body covered with tattoos of Hitler …

—The Postmistress said the other day that the Irish Folklore Commission and the Director of Official Statistics asked her to give them the complete lists of the number of xxs that were on every letter. The Master averaged about fifteen, and Caitriona always appended about seven normally to Blotchy Brian: one for his beard, another for his hips, another …

—… Easy! Easy! Come on my good Master!

—… Don't believe him Jack …

—I'd have gone to England just to earn money and to hang out with the lads from Kin Teer … My spies tell me there are hundreds of them in London … some of them wearing fancy jackets … and poncy monocles …

—I'd have travelled the world: Marseilles, Port Said, Singapore, Batavia. Honest, I would …

—
Qu'il retournerait pour libérer la France
…

—If I'd have lived another while, you wouldn't have killed me, ya ugly witch ya, Joan. I'd have switched the ration cards …

—… I'd have gone to your funeral, Billy the Postman. It wouldn't have been right for me not to go to a funeral …

—I'd have keened you, Billy, I'd have keened you softly and sweetly …

—I'd have laid you out, Billy, I'd have tended you as gently as a young girl would tend her first love letter …

—If I had lived any longer, I'd have insisted they put me in a different grave … Master, Master, come on, fix it up, forget about it!

… I know, but listen to me, Master! Two dogs whose tails are tied …

—Of course, and certainly I'd drink whole tons of porter …

—… We would have won the game. I had the nine, and it was my partner's chance. Fuck the mine anyway, it exploded just at the wrong time! …

—I'd sue the murdering bastard because he poisoned me. “Here, drink two spoons of this stuff …”

—I would have too, even though I have no time for trying to argue
with Mannix the Counsellor. Son of a gun, that's not to say, like, that I wouldn't sue him. He told me to start downing some whiskey. That's what he said, no doubt about it. If I had stayed on the pints I'd have been alright. I never had a pain or a sickness, nor nothing …

—If I had lived, I'm sure I would have cracked the crossword. And, of course, I'd have got a huge scoop of insurance money from Jack the Lad's place. I'd have put “God be with the days of the simplified spelling” as a
nom de plume
on the first ticket in the sweepstake …

—… “Say ‘cheese' now, nurses,” I'd have called it! …

—“Cala Rossa,” Billy would have called it …

—I'd have gone to the pictures again. I swear to God I'd have given anything even to see that woman in the fur coat once more. It was just exactly like the coat that Baba Paudeen had until the soot came tumbling down in Caitriona's place …

—That's a lie, ya scrubber!

—Back off from me, Caitriona. I just want peace and quiet. I don't deserve you bitchiness …

—… If I had lived another while! If I had lived another while, for jay's sake! What would I have done? What would I have done, that is the question. A wise man might be able to deal with that …

—If I got as far as the election, I'd have given the lie to Corsgrave and his crowd. I'd have said to him that they were only sent over as plenipotentiaries, or messenger boys, and that they went way beyond their remit …

—I lived though, thanks be to God, I lived long enough to say to de Valera that they were sent over with full powers. I told him that to his face. To his face. I told him straight up to his …

—You're a liar. You never said nothing like that! …

—I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …

—If you lived for another bit, you'd have seen the young ones from Bally Donough sucking and smoking pipes. They started that since the fags got scarce. Some people say that dock leaves and nettles are just brilliant in a clay pipe …

—If you lived as long as Methuselah and the Hag of Beare, you'd
never have seen the end of the fleas being fucked off the hillocks of your own place …

—If the Postmistress had lived another while …

—She had no need to. Her daughter picked up where she left off …

—If I'd lived for another while …

—Why would you live anyway? …

—I'd have seen you buried, that much …

—If Fireside Tom had lived? …

—He'd have moved on …

—He'd have gone on the sauce again …

—He'd have kicked Patrick Caitriona's cattle off his own patch of land …

—Nell's cows, careful now!

—If Caitriona had lived …

—And buried that bitch before her …

—If I had lived, I would have dispensed spiritual assistance. Even if I had lived just another week I would have been able to tell Caitriona precisely what she needed to know …

—Hey, Colm More's daughter, didn't you used to be in at the Rosary just to eavesdrop and find out were all the neighbours saying their own Rosaries …

—I'd have gone to Croke Park to see Cannon …

—Billy the Postman saw your ghost after the final and there you were sobbing and sniffling and whining and whimpering …

—I'd have finished the pen and the colt would not have died …

—Didn't everyone in the place see your ghost! …

—… I don't believe, Redser Tom, that there's any such thing as a ghost …

—Some people say there is. Other people say there isn't. You'd want to be very wise …

—But, of course, there are ghosts. God forbid that I'd tell a lie about anyone, but I saw Curran driving the Guzzler's donkey and Tim Top of the Road's cows out of his corn, and he was dead a whole year! …

—Wasn't the first thing that happened to Billy the Postman, wasn't it that he saw the Old Master the day after he was buried rummaging around in the cupboard of his own kitchen? …

—… Easy up now, Master! … Oh, come on, take it easy, take it easy! … I never shaved myself with your razor. Go away with yourself now, Master, and just listen up a minute. Two dogs …

—Tim Top of the Road was seen …

—By the hokey, as you'd say yourself …

—But it could have happened! I have no doubt he was stealing my turf …

—Or mallets …

—They say, God help us, that a ghostly airplane is heard over Cala Lawr every night since the Frenchie was downed there …

—Not at all, that's the regular airplane on its way to America from somewhere in the North, or from Shannon! …

—Are you saying I wouldn't recognise a normal airplane! I heard it clear as a bell, when I was saving seaweed late at night …

—Maybe the night was dark …

—Come off it, what's the point of dribbling shite talk! For Moses' sake, what's this about it not being a regular airplane. Any gobdaw would know a regular airplane …

—
Mes amis
…

—Let me speak! Let me get a word in, please! …

—When all is said and done, though, it looks like it. I never gave a petrified puke about ghosts until I heard about John Matthew who's buried here, in the Half Guinea place. His own son told me about it. I've only fallen under the hatch since then myself. He was himself up in the land of the living at the time, but he'd never say his father was a liar. The last thing his father begged them to do, just when he was dying, to bury him here along with the rest of his people. “I'll die happy,” he said, “if you can promise me that much.” They're a shower of drippy dossers over there in Kin Teer. They threw some dust there just in front of the door. For the next month the son was pitching dried seaweed over by the shore. He told me straight out of his very own mouth. He saw the funeral coming out of the grave-
yard. He told me it was a clear and present to his own eyes—the box, the people, the whole lot—as clear as the clutch of seaweed he was pitching on the heap. He moved over closer to them. He recognised some of the people, but he'd never even dream of calling them by their names, he said. He was a bit scared at first, but as he got nearer to them, he plucked up a bit of courage. “Whatever God has in store for me,” he said, “I'll follow them.” He did. They moved along the shore, and he kept after them step by step, until they came to this graveyard, and they put the coffin down here, and buried it in the Half Guinea place. He recognised the coffin. He wouldn't tell a lie about his own father …