The Dirty Dust (14 page)

“Isn't it a crying shame that you wouldn't get married, Tom,” you said, “a man like you with a nice bit of land …”

“You never said a truer word,” Tom says. “You may as well hand over the daughter now.”

“By cripes, she's there alright, and I'm not keeping her from you …” you says … There was a time when, Peter. Don't deny it …

Your daughter came into the pub as luck would have it. She took a crock of jam down from the shelf. Do you think I don't remember it? …

“That's neither here nor there now,” you says, “She can make up her own mind …”

“Will you marry me?” Tom says, pressing up against her.

“Why wouldn't I, Tom?” she says. “You have a nice bit of land, and a half guinea pension …”

We were a little while riding away like that, but Tom was half joking, half in earnest. Your daughter was messing around and fiddling with the tie around his neck … I'm telling you Peter, that was the day. Don't deny it …

Your daughter went down to the kitchen. Tom went after her, to light his pipe. She kept him down there. But she was back fast enough to get another shot of whiskey for him.

“That old bollocks will be pissed soon, and then we'll have him,” she said.

You grabbed the glass from her. You half filled it with water from the jug. Then you put whiskey in on top of that … That was the day, Peter …

Do you think I didn't see you do it? Oh, yes, I noticed right well the jiggery-pokery that you and your daughter were up to behind the counter. Do you think I didn't hear you muttering. Your daughter kept plying Fireside Tom with a concoction of water and whiskey right through the day. And he paid the same amount for the water as he did for the whiskey, after all that … Your daughter spent the day teasing him. She even started calling for whiskey for herself, but it was only water all the time. He'd have been killed by a lorry on the way home, only that Nell Paudeen, Jack the Lad's wife, came in to get him … That was the day, I'm telling you, Peter. No point in denying it. You were a robber …

You robbed me too, Peter the Publican. Your daughter lured me into the parlour, pretending that she had the hots for me. She plumped herself down on my lap. A shower of smart asses came in from the Fancy City, and they were ushered down to the parlour along with me, and this eejit was standing drinks for them all evening. The following day, she was up the same tricks. But there was no smart ass from the city there that day. Instead of that, she hauled a crowd of spongers in from the corner, and into the parlour, and this eejit had to call for drinks …

—Oh, I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …

—Until I hadn't enough that would make a tinkle on a tin. That was part of your robbery, Peter: your daughter letting on that she fancied every dog's body that you thought had a few bob, until they were milked dry …

—You robbed me too, Peter the Publican. I was home on holidays from England. I had sixty hard-earned pounds down in my pocket. Your daughter lured me into the parlour. She sat on my lap. Something was slipped into my drink. When I woke up from my stupor I had nothing at all in the whole wide world except two shillings and a few miserable half pennies …

—You robbed me also, Peter the Publican. I had thirty-six quid which I got for three lorries of turf that evening. I dropped into you to celebrate. At half ten or eleven I was on my own in the place. You held your ground. That was another part of your slyness: pretending that you never noticed anything. Went down to the parlour with your daughter. Plonked herself on my lap. Put her arms around me and gave me a big hug. Something went wrong with my drink. When I came to I only had the change from a pound I had before, and that was in my trouser pocket …

—You robbed me as well, Peter the Publican. No wonder your daughter had a big fat dowry when she married Huckster Joan's son. I won't be voting for you, I will in my mebs, Peter …

—I had intended conducting this Election properly on behalf of the Pound Party. But since you lot, the Fifteen Shilling Party have brought unsavoury personal issues into the contest—things I thought would never have been imputed except by the Half Guinea Party—I will disclose certain information about your own candidate, Nora Johnny. She was a friend of mine, Nora Johnny. Despite the fact that I am against her politically, that doesn't mean that I don't respect her and we can't have a pleasant relationship. That is why I really hate having to say this. It eats into me. I despise it. It disgusts me. But you lot started stirring the shit, you Fifteen Shilling crowd. Don't blame me if I hoisted you with your own petard. You can lie in the bed you made for yourselves. Yes, I was a publican aboveground. Nobody only
a filthy liar could say that it wasn't a respectable pub. You are very proud of your joint candidate. She was better than anybody in charm, generosity, and virtue, if what you say is true. But Nora Johnny was a drunk. Do you lot know that hardly a day passed but she wasn't in the door to me–especially on a Friday, when Fireside Tom would be here—and she'd put away four or five pints of stout in the snug behind the shop?

—It's not true! It's not true!

—You're lying, Peter, you are lying …

—You're spouting rubbish! It's not true! …

—It is true! Not only was she drinking, she was also on the bum. I often gave her drink on tic. But she rarely paid for it …

—She never touched a drop …

—It's a brazen lie …

—It's not true, Peter the Publican …

—It's all true, my Fellow Corpses! Nora Johnny was drinking on the sly! Usually when she had no other business in any other shop in the village, she'd hop along the lane, sneak down past the trees, and in through the back door. And she'd come every day of the week, and after closing time at night, and before opening in the morning.

—It's not true! It's not true! Not true …

—Three cheers for Nora Johnny! …

—Three cheers for the Fifteen Shilling Party!

—Nora Johnny for ever! For ever! …

—Good health to you, Peter the Publican! Give it to her up the arse! O, my God Almighty! And I never knew that the bitch was a secret toper! What else would you expect from her? Hanging around with sailors …

—… The heart! The heart, God help us all! …

—… God save us all for ever! … My friends and my close relations might come, they might genuflect on my grave, warm hearts might catch fire with the explosion of light, sympathetic mouths
might murmur prayers. The dead soil might reply to the live one, the dead heart might be warmed in the love of the live one, and the dead mouth might understand the pressing words of the living tongue …

Friendly hands may repair my grave, friendly hands may raise my monument and friendly voices may sing out my requiem hymn. Temple Brandon's clay is the clay of my people! The sacred clay of my Zion …

But there isn't a Kelly to be found in Gallagh, nor a Mannion in Menlo, or any one of the McGraths to be found anywhere, otherwise my heap of bones would not be left rotting in the unwelcoming clay of granite, in the unfriendly clay of hill and harbour, in the ungenerous clay of rock and rubble, in the unfertile clay of bindweed and seaweed, in the unconformable clay of my Babylon …

—She gets very bad when the madness hits her …

—Hang on there now, you, wait 'til I finish my story …

—“The speckled hen started croaking along the street as loud as her voice would carry: ‘I laid an egg! I laid an egg! Fresh hot on the dung heap …' ‘Go away out of that, and don't bother us with your scutty little egg,' clucked one tough old hen who was listening. ‘I've had nine generations, four clutches, six second clutches, sixty stolen eggs, and a hundred and one shell-less eggs since the first day I started crowing on the dung heap. I was done five hundred and forty six times …'”

—It's a real shame that I wasn't there, Peter! You shouldn't let any dirty heretic insult your religion …

—I drank forty-two pints one after the other. You know that much, Peter the Publican …

—I'm telling you, there were no flies on Fireside Tom …

—Are you trying to tell me I don't know that …

—You have your glue with your rubbishy romancing. And I hadn't a clue at this time that your one wouldn't gift the fat land to the eldest son and to the daughter of Tim Top of the Road …

—… “Big Martin John had a daughter …”

—… The murdering bastard gave me a bad bottle …

—O Holy God, as you'd say …

—I am the old man of the graveyard. Let me speak …

—Qu'est-ce qu'il veut dire: “let me speak? …”

—I was just putting my hand in my pocket and emptying it out …

—It was your clogs, Joan, you piece of crap …

—… O, Dotie, my darling, I am really worn out by this election. Quarrelling and quibbling all the time. Votes! Votes! Votes! Do you know, Dotie, that an election isn't a bit as cultured as I thought it would be. Honest, I didn't. The language is awful. And insulting. Honest! And full of lies. Honest! Did you hear what Peter the Publican was saying about me? That I used to drink four or five pints every day aboveground. Honest! Stout! If he had even said whiskey. But not stout! The most uncultured drink you could find. Agh! But you don't really believe that I drank stout, Dotie. Agh! Stout, Dotie! It's a lie! Dirty filthy yucky uncultured stout. It's a lie, Dotie! What else. Honest Injun …

And that I got drinks on the never never … It's a disgrace, Dotie. A disgrace. And that I was on the bum. Agh! All lies and rubbish, Dotie. Who would ever have thought it of Peter the Publican to say such things? I was well got with him, Dotie. There were cultured people in and out to see him … Throwing dirt, that's what cultured people call it. The natural thug that's hidden in the corners of our thuggishness—“the old man,” as Saint Paul calls him—he can be forgotten about during elections … I feel that my own culture is melting away since I took up with those plebs …

Fireside Tom, Dotie? Peter said that also. He said that there'd be no problem going to see him except when Fireside Tom would be there with him. It's easily seen what he was trying to say about me … Honest, Dotie, I had no need to go after Fireside Tom. It was he who came after me. Honest. There are people, Dotie, who are destined to be romantic. Did you hear what Kinks said to Bliksin in
The Purple Kiss?
“Cupid made you, you sweety pie …”

There was never a time when men didn't plague me and have the hots for me. When I was young in the Fancy City, as a widow in Gort Ribbuck, and now right here, I am involved in an
affaire de
coeur,
as he calls it, with the Old Master. But there's no harm in it: it's Platonic, and cultured …

Dotie! The sentimentality! Forget the bright fields of the Fair Meadows. You should really get this in a way that you dumped every prejudice and preconceived notion out of your noggin. It is the first step on the road of culture, Dotie … I was a young widow, Dotie. I married young also. The romantic bug again, Dotie. Fireside Tom didn't give a fiddler's fuck for me when I was widowed:

“I'll tell you one thing for nothing,” he'd say, “but I have a nice warm cottage. Not a truer word, and land to go with it. Cows and sheep. I'm still hale and hearty. But it's hard for me to do everything: cattle, sowing, thatching. The place is going to ruin for want of a good woman … You're a widow, Nora Johnny, and your son is settled in the house, what good is it for you to be in Gort Ribbuck now? By all that's holy, marry me …”

“De grâce, Fireside Tom,” I'd say. But there was no point in saying “de grâce” to him, Dotie. He was following me everywhere like a lap dog. As Pips puts it in
The Hot Kiss:
“The pangs of unrequited love have no borders.”

He'd be stalking me and then crawling up to me in the village trying to cajole me in for a drink.
Honest!
“De grâce,” I'd say, “a drop of drink never passed my lips …”

Honest, never, Dotie … and the things he would sing to me about love, Dotie …

“I'll marry you my Nora Johnny …

You're my star of sunshine, my autumn sun,

My golden treasure 'til kingdom come …”

Honest, Dotie, he'd sing that. But I knew full well that it was only the fine summer of our romance that was talking, and I'd say:

“O moon, O small moon of Scotland, you will be heartbroken tonight, and tomorrow night, and for countless nights after that, strolling the lonesome sky beyond Glen Lay, seeking the loving haunt of Naoise and Deirdre, the lovers …”

He came over to Gort Ribbuck three weeks before I died with a bottle of whiskey. Honestly, he did. He was like a donkey in heat. I
might even have encouraged him, Dotie, if it wasn't for the pangs of unrequited love. It was then I said to him:

“The little moon of Scotland will never discover our loving haunt,” I said. “It is not written that Naoise and Deirdre will ever again encounter one another in a loving haunt, or taste the sweet joys of passion on the gentle rocks of Glen Lay of the lovers.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he said.

“The pangs of unrequited love,” I says. “Other people get what they want, but I and my true love are separated for ever. We will never have a lovers' haunt except the lovers' haunt of the graveyard. But we will live out the sweet joys of true passion there, for ever and ever …”

It nearly broke my heart to say that to him, Dotie. But it was God's truth. Honest, God's honest truth. Caitriona Paudeen came between me and my true love. Small bitchy things. She never wanted to see anybody else darken Fireside Tom's door. She was looking for his land for herself. She didn't leave one thing the sun shone on for him. Honest …

—You're lying, you old hag! I never robbed nor swiped anything from Fireside Tom, or from anybody else. You thundering bitch! Secretly supping and deviously drinking in Peter the Publican's snug. Drinking on the sly! … Drinking on the sly. Don't believe her, Dotie! Don't believe her! …