The Dirty Dust (33 page)

—Ababoona! No harm in that when you think how you stuffed your greedy gut there! How long are you here, slippery Sarah, and you, clippity clappity Kitty? …

—Bloody tear and 'ounds, Caitriona, we nearly all popped off together. I went six days before Biddy Sarah, and ten before Little Kitty …

—That'll teach them to stay in their beds! They were wetting themselves trying to get a hold of that grubby clatterer, Nell. Pure nosiness. They wouldn't bother their barney searching out half-decent people …

—There'll be nobody left now to lay out or to keen Fireside Tom or Nell Paudeen …

—Serves her right, the fart face! …

—It was God's judgement that killed Caitriona Paudeen, no doubt about it. Honest! …

—That's a filthy lie, Noreen! …

—He persuaded her to ruin Fireside Tom, to rob Breed Terry's old man's tea, Kitty's spuds, and to pinch John Willy's periwinkles …

—That wasn't it at all, Nora Johnny, but St. John's Gospel that Nell got from the priest for your daughter. If it wasn't for the daughter wouldn't your daughter have been here at her next birth. She was always a bit sickly until Caitriona died. She was flying after that …

—Ababoona boona boona! Not a word of a lie! I swear I'd never have thought of that deep down! …

—That's it, I'd like to know how Huckster Joan would die. Force her to drink her own coffee …

—… Wear her own clogs.

—I know the death that I'd have liked for you, ya Greedy Guts,
pour pints of porter down your throat until it came out every hole in your body, your nostrils, eyes, ears, under your nails, squelching out of your armpit, your eyebrows, fingers, knees, elbows, through the pores in your scalp, until you sweated seven different kinds of stout …

—… The death you'd deserve would be to keep you alive until you'd witness Kerry beating the crap out of Galway in the All-Ireland in 1941, and to have to listen to “The Rose of Tralee” being played on Cannon's arse …

—… The way I'd have you and every other descendent of the Treacherous Dog Eared Crowd, that you'd …

—Be forced to shout, “Up de Valera” …

—Not good enough, the way I'd do for Tim Top of the Road …

—To leave him to me so that I'd stick one of his thatching yokes down his throat, through his windpipe until it'd burst out through his guts …

—Leave him to me so that I'd clock him with the mallet he stole …

—I'd have no problem lopping his head off with my scythe …

—Wouldn't it be a lot easier to hang him with my rope …

—Peter the Publican? Drown him in his watered-down whiskey …

—Paul? Keep his throat parched while he had to listen to The Great Scholar reading the lesson …

—He can go and stuff himself with his windy waffle! Don't give the little prick anything to eat, the cheapskate dickhead, only his “Holy Ashes” …

—I know the death Caitriona Paudeen would give Nora Johnny. She'd get her to disinfect herself, especially her feet …

—Shut your hole, you grabber!

—… The writer guy, is it? He insulted Colm Cille, the lousy lickspittle. Make him do every second turn over and back, just as the Mistress does to Billy the Postman …

—Force him to stitch
The Thirty-One Sermons
onto his gut …

—Force him to renounce his heresy and his insults to Colm Cille before the congregation; to grovel and seek forgiveness for all
the stuff he ever wrote; for all the innocent young maidens whom he sent astray with his writings; for all the couples who broke up because of him; for all the happy homes that he destroyed; for being the precursor for the Antichrist. And after that to excommunicate him, and to burn his bones. Nothing else would be good enough for a heretic …

—… I know the death the Old Master would give to Billy …

—The robber! The death I'd give to that knob gobbler …

—The Postmistress! I know. Make her go a week without reading any letters only her own …

—Too true. A full week without gossip killed Colm More's daughter …

—They say the Mistress said that what caused the Old Master's death was …

—That he was too good for this life …

—That's exactly what she said. I'll never forget the words she spoke. “He whom the gods love …”

—Oh, the bitch! The scrag! The dipshit! …

—De grâce, Master! Don't be copying Caitriona again! …

—… Don't you remember that I am the old man of the graveyard! Let me speak …

—… Little Kitty! To keep her away from corpses …

—God help your fruitcake head! The Afrika Korps couldn't keep her away, if she got the whiff of one …

—Blotchy Brian, I know the death he'd like Caitriona Paudeen to have …

—Squashing a sneaky cat under the lid of a pot! …

—Force her to stand out on her own road; then Nell to go by with her fancy hat in her lovely car; give a sharp sweet smirk in at Caitriona while she blew the horn with vigour …

—Oh, listen to me! Listen! I'd burst …

—Isn't that just what I said!

—I'd burst! I'd burst! …

—… “‘Would you not come home with me, I have room beneath my shawl

Ah, why not Ja-ack …'”

—
Écoutez-moi, mes amis. Les études celtiques.
We'll have a Colloquium now.

—A Colloquium, bejaysus boys. Hóla, the lot of you, Breed Terry, Chalky Steven, Guzzeye Martin! A Colloquium …

—A
Colloquium,
Redser Tom! …

—I'm saying nothing. Nothing at all …

—Isn't it a pity to God that Fireside Tom isn't here! He'd be a great man for a
colloquium
…

—There's the results of my study of the dialect of the Half Guinea Place. I'm afraid this won't be a proper
colloquium
at all. I'm not fluent enough, nor are any of you, in the only language in which a
colloquium
could be properly delivered …

—Fluent? …

—Fluent,
mes amis.
The first requirement for a
colloquium
is to be able to talk. I have to say, my friends and colleagues, that my research has left me sorely depressed …

—Oh, God help us, the poor man! …

—
Mes amis,
you can't really do any learned research on a language which many people speak, like English or Russian …

—I have my doubts, I think he's a filthy heretic …

—You can only research a dialect—or it wouldn't be worth it anyway—that is spoken by two or three people, at the most. There has to be three slobbers of senile snot for every one word …

—There was a day like that, Peter the Publican, don't deny it …

—There's no point in researching somebody's speech unless every word of his is stand-alone like a crow on the sand …

—Eight into eight, that's once; eight into sixteen, that's twice …

—… This
colloquium
is a God-sent opportunity for me to read “The Sunset” …

—
Pas du tout
! This is a
Colloquium convenable
…

—I'm not going to listen to “The Sunset.” No way. Honest! …

—Just a minute now, you fancy Frenchie! I'll tell you a story …

—
Écoutez, Monsieur
Coley. This here is a colloquium and not a university lecture on Irish literature …

—I'll tell you a story. I swear to God I will! “The Little Pussy who Smudged and Smattered the White Sheets of the North of Ireland …”

—… “Big Johnny Martin's young daughter

Was as huge as you could imagine …”

—… “At dear Doughty Dublin he met Mogcat of the Massive Thighs. ‘Don't budge even another inch,' says Mogcat, ‘I've just come back from seaman Dublin having done the dirty on all the clean sheets there. “Dublin of the Ford of the Stickies,” they'll call it from now on. I left as my heritage this fine piece of nasty nonsense splattered on the country—Reidy's Rump—and before that I had smudged and smattered the nice virgin sheets of the South of Ireland. The South of Ireland, do you get it, derived from Smog Cat, that is a huge cat in Old Irish …'”

—
Ce n'est pas vrai!
The word is Magnacat. Matou. Magnatude. Magnacalves.

—The real authentic word for “cat” in Old Irish was “gast.”

—
Mais non!
Like a gate, a trap, a trick, a snare, a snatch, a device, a thingy, a yokemebob. “My gate of gates, I have gotten you in the get up of go,” in the words of Stitched Arse as he was discarding his robes …

Modern Breton:
gast:
a woman who has a whole wheelbarrow full of blessed stuff which she will sell as a cheapo
pardon
in the Lyons fair. In the dialect of Gwynedd … sorry I'll have to look up my notes, Coley, just to check that out. But the
thèse
is spot on: Old Irish: Gast; “S” giving way to “T”; Gat: Cat: Pangar Bawn; Panting: Panther. The Huge Humungous Fluent Flying Mogcat of Learning and Knowledge …

—Hang on a minute now, like, my good man, and I'll relate to you how the robes were whipped from off the back of Arse Stitch …

—Ah, come on Coley, John Kitty over in our place says just that he only lost them …

—John Kitty from your place! Of course, everybody from your place was always decent and proper, as we know …

—By the oak of this coffin, Little Kitty, I gave her the pound, I gave Caitriona Paudeen the pound …

—… She had a lovely fur coat on her, Redser Tom, just like the one that Baba Paudeen had, but she had to dump it because of all the streaks of soot that had soiled it in Caitriona's house …

—That's another lie, Breed Terry! …

—I just want a bit of peace. Why don't you just shut the fuck up and give me some peace, Caitriona …

—… Might I, if you please, Chalky Steven, be permitted to give you some spiritual assistance? …

—… Billy the Postman, is it, Master? Bloody tear and 'ounds, if somebody dies, they dies. If Billy is on his way out, bloody tear and 'ounds, come on, like, Master, he'll just lie back and there won't be a puff left in him …

—… That's what you say about the young colt that died! …

—About the young mare that died! …

—It's a long time since we heard that story, but Black Bandy Bartley told me that the young colt hadn't long died …

—It was a long time for me, anyway. A queer thing. I bought her at St. Bartholomew's Fair. It was no bother to her to haul a ton and a half up a hill. I had her, just about two years …

—As soon as Black Bandy Bartley said that the young colt had died, “The weather whacked her,” I said, “The youngfella hadn't put a roof on the pen, and he left her too long exposed.” “Bloody tear and 'ounds, that's not what happened at all, no way, never,” he said …

—It was around the time of Bartholomew's feast day, of all days. I was bringing the young mare up to the New Field beside the house. She had chomped and chewed all the way down to the chalk. I met Nell and Peter Nell at the top of the meadow, and they were heading off back home. “Any chance you'd have a match?” Peter asks me. “Bejaysus,
I might,” I said. “Where are you off to with the young mare?” he asks. “Bringing her up to the New Field,” I says …

—“So it goes,” I says to myself. “Bloody tear and 'ounds, that wasn't it all, at all,” Black Bandy Bartley says …

—“She's a lovely little mare, God bless her, and God bless you,” Nell says. “She'd be fine,” says Peter, “if you could control her at all.” “Control her!” I says. “She doesn't even break sweat pulling a ton and a half up a hill …”

—“Glanders,” I says. “Bloody tear and 'ounds, no it wasn't the cough,” Bartley says. “No, that wasn't it at all …”

—“You're not thinking of putting her in for the competition this Bartholomew's Day, are you?” Peter said. “Ah, sure, I wouldn't have much of a clue about that,” I says. “You win some and you lose some. I hate to ditch her. A great little hoor of a young mare. But I haven't much apart from her this winter.”

—“Worms,” I says. “Bloody tear and 'ounds,” says yer man of the Black Bandy …

—“How much are you looking for her now, God be good to her?” Nell says. “Ah, like, if I brought her to the market, I'd look for twenty-three pounds,” I says. “What do you mean, twenty-three pounds!” Peter says, as he wends his way up the bit of road. “Would you be happy with sixteen pounds?” Nell asks. “Do you know the way it is, Nell, I wouldn't,” says I. “Seventeen pounds,” she says. “For crying out loud, what do you mean by seventeen miserly pounds!” Peter exclaims. “Get the fuck out of here!” The mother went off out behind away after them, while she cast every second glance back on the white-headed mare …

—“What do you mean, worms!” he screams. “Bloody tear and 'ounds, she hadn't as much as a worm wriggling inside him as I did! Wasn't she opened up! …”

—Caitriona Paudeen appeared from behind the little Hedge Fields, her own lot. “What was that pus bitch saying?” she demanded. “I'd let her go for twenty, or maybe even nineteen. I'd sell her for a pound cheaper than I would to any blow-in. 'Twould raise my spirits to see her trotting past every day. I'd say because she liked her so much
herself or her son would be knocking on my door before the morning was past. They won't let me bring her to the fair.” “Arrah, was it that small snouty smelly bitch?” Caitriona says. “She'd destroy that lovely fair-headed mare of yours, going up the cliff path with her. But if she buys her, bad luck to her …”

—“God knows so,” I says, “what use would that little colt be. Any chance she'd have a dicey heart? …”