The Dirty Dust (34 page)

—Do you know what, she said something like that, John Willy? “Hop off to the fair,” he says, “with your white-headed mare, and get what you can for her, and don't believe a word from that saccharine sly slinky slut …”

—“Bloody tear and 'ounds,” the Black Bandy fucker said, “why would she up and lie down and die on us? …”

—“Go away off to the fair with your white-headed mare,” Caitriona says again. I wouldn't have taken a blind bit of notice, if it wasn't for the terrified look I saw in the eyes of the young mare …”

—It's tough luck now on the poor youngfella that the young colt is gone. He'll be hard put now to get any kind of a woman …

—That very evening the colt was coughing and spluttering. The very next morning at the crack of dawn Peter Nell turned up at my door. The two of us headed off to the New Field. 'Twas a total disgrace, John Willy. She was laid out from ear to arse, dead to the world …

—Just like the young colt …

—“How it goes,” I says. “The evil eye.”

—They always said that Caitriona had the evil eye. I refused to buy any young colt as long as she was around …

—Come off it! Ababoona! Nell, the bitch, gave the evil eye.

—She went by me without as much as a “hallo,” and I hadn't even put two more stumps up on the stook when I collapsed …

—I swear to God she never even gave me a nod, and I twisted my ankle that very day …

—And of course, the Old Master never had one more day of decent health since he wrote that letter for her. A curse …

—She obviously never gave Mannix the Counsellor the evil eye, as he's still alive …

—Don't believe them Jack! Jack the Lad! …

—… How is it you never heard, Kitty, how is it you never heard that Fireside Tom has moved again? … He did … I swear, a fortnight ago …

—Ababoona! …

—There was no way he could get a wink of sleep in Paddy Caitriona's house, what with the pigs snuffling and sniffing from morning till night. The sow had some young ones, and they were brought into the house. “You'd really think they'd need a snorting of sows,” he says. “Look at the likes of me who never had a smell of a sow. I'm off up to the house where there's no grunting or growling of pigs, and what's more, a house that has a slate roof.” On his way up to Nell's house, he drove Patrick's cattle clean out of his own bit of land …

—The little slime skin, that's Fireside Tom …

—You'd be far more disgraced, as you said yourself, if he upped and offed and married an Italian. Those blacks are a fairly slick lot. Remember the black guy who was a butler to the Earl, a long time ago now?

—But that black guy was a rough enough diamond …

—Yea, true, sometimes he could be a bit rough. Well, God knows, what will happen to the guy left at home? The priest's sister asked him to marry her, as it happens. They're still talking and hanging out together, one way or the other.

—That's exactly what happened to my youngfella in England too. He was knocking around or knocking up this black yoke for a while, and then she asked him to marry her. And do you know what, the fucking eejit upped and married her …

—By the holies, as you say yourself, that's how it goes. Stupid senseless lads. I heard that there was great crack in that one Nancy, back home—I think she's called Nancy too—but if I was alive I know what I'd tell him: “Take it nice and easy now, boy. What could that young one do in a country house? Do you think she'd lift a load of turf, or carry a creel of seaweed? …”

—Isn't that exactly what I wrote to my son in England! “You've
hitched up with a right floozie there,” I says to him. “If you ever dare to come home, you'll have a right queer gang hanging out of you: a little black picanniny, and a whole flock of small blackies skiting around the town. You'll be the talk of the whole country. They'll come from north and south and east and west to get a gawk at them. Of course, there's no way she'll be able to raise a sweat on field or on shore. There wasn't a smell of either turf or seaweed where she came from …”

—You could hardly get more stupid than that, as you'd say yourself! Our guy, you couldn't talk any sense into him. He was always a bit of a … What's that Nora Johnny called him? …

—A dolthead? … A bowsie? … A dosser?

—Ah no, not at all. He was never a dosser. I brought him up good and proper, and not just because I'm saying it. How is it that I can't remember how Nora Johnny described him? …

—Adonis! …

—That's it exactly, now that you say it. Nancy took him into the Fancy City, and got him to stick a ring on her finger. The old one was beside herself with excitement …

—You can say that again, and my old one too! She thought that the negress was some big important upper-class lady until I pointed out to her that the colour of her skin was exactly the same as the Earl's butler's. They had to call for the priest after that …

—That's how it goes, as you say yourself. The priest was trying to get Nancy to marry the Derry Lough schoolmaster, but I swear didn't she tell him straight out without sparing her tongue, that she wouldn't, no way. “That poncy microphallus is already married to the school,” she says, “so why would he bother marrying me? I don't like him, I don't like the Derry Lough master,” she said. “There's no jizz in him! He's only a wimp and a wanker …”

—My son was a bit of a wimp anyway. You'd think for a minute that there was a shortage of opportunities in London, a city in which there are as many people as in all of Ireland, or so they say … Her hair, I hear, is as curly as an otter's …

—Sheer stupidity, as you say yourself. “I won't marry the Derry
Lough wimp,” Nancy says. “Tim Top of the Road's son has a motorbike. He's a hunter, a fisherman, a fiddler, and he dances like a dream. He scrubs up brilliantly. He threatened to shoot Lord Cockton, if he ever saw him around me again. His house is like a
vile
”—that's the word,
vile,
that she used, I swear!—“his house is so spacious and sheer class. It cleans the cockles of my heart every time I go near it …”

—It's easy for you to be blathering and boasting about your classy house, Tim Top of the Road. Classy …

—Because of my stolen seaweed …

—Honest, Dotie. Every word I said is the complete truth. Caitriona Paudeen never paid for anything: the round table, Kitty's pound …

—You're a liar!

—And her son is like that too, Dotie. He wasn't paid for her coffin yet, in Tim's shop, or for the booze at her wake, or her funeral at Huckster Joan's …

—You're a liar, Noreen!

—A bill lands on her son's lap every second day concerning them, doesn't it! Honest. Why else do you think that Peter the Publican and Huckster Joan are so pissed off with her here …

—Ababoona, Noreen, Noreen …

—Not one miserable cent was paid for her burial, Dotie, apart from the fact that my son paid for Gort Ribbuck, and for the tobacco, and the snuff …

—Oh, Noreen, the margarine legs of every maritime man! Don't believe her, Jack the Lad …

—God would avenge us …

—And it was Nell, too, who paid for her grave here, simply out of shame …

—Oh, the whore, the wretch, the wench, I did not, I did not! Don't believe a word from that rancid rump from Gort Ribbuck! Don't believe her, Jack! I'm going to burst! I'm going to burst! I'll burst! …

—… It was I who laid you all out, good friends and neighbours …

—You were all right, Little Kitty, if the truth were told …

—I never took neither a pound, a shilling, nor a penny from any man or beast. When the Earl's mother died, the Earl called me up. When I had laid her out, “How much will that be?” he asked. “It's up to yourself …”

—They'd lock you up for ever, Little Kitty, if you even tried to lay a finger on her, or get to within a smell of the room she was laid out in …

—'Twas I laid out Peter the Publican …

—No, Little Kitty, it wasn't you. It was two nurses from the Fancy City decked up in dresses and white hats. Some people say they were nuns …

—It was I prepared the Frenchman …

—If you as much as laid a hand on him, Kitty, you'd have been locked up for violating Irish neutrality during wartime …

—I laid out Huckster Joan …

—You did in your arse. My daughters wouldn't give you a whiff of a puff of a half-nostril of the air that was in the same room as my body. Why would they? There you would be pawing and poking at me! …

—There was only a whiff of a glance of Joan's body anyway, Kitty …

—The Old Master …

—Not you at all, Little Kitty. I was up working in our own field, beside the road, just next to the house. Billy the Postman called me over:

“He's on his way to the lost property office,” he says. You and me, Kitty, were in the door as quick as a rat out of a hole. We shot up the stairs and rattled off a raft of prayers with the Mistress and Billy.

“The poor Master has passed away,” the Mistress said, whimpering so. “You'd easily know it. He was too good for this life …”

—Oh, the thundering bitch! …

—Then, Kitty, you went over and stretched out your hand to
close his eyes, but the Schoolmistress stopped you. “I'll do whatever has to be done to the poor Old Master,” she said …

—The twerpish tart twat! …

—Now, remember, Master, that Guzzeye Martin saw you at school …

—Nothing beats the truth, Master …

—“You go off on down to the kitchen, and take it easy, Little Kitty,” she says. She said that Billy should go and get some food, and drink and smokes. “Spend whatever money you need,” she said to Billy. “I couldn't begrudge the Old Master anything …”

—With my money! Aaah! …

—When we came back, Kitty, you were still in the kitchen. Billy went up to the Mistress, who was still bawling her eyes out …

—Oh, the skunk! The poxy shitmonkey! …

—When he eventually came down, you spoke to him, Kitty. “That poor thing has every reason to be distraught,” you said. “I'll go up and try to help her.” “It's alright, take it easy there, Little Kitty,” Billy says. “The Mistress is so heartbroken over the death of the Old Master that she needs some time to herself,” he said. He took a razor out from a cabinet and I held the belt for him, until he sharpened it …

—My own razor and belt! I kept them on top of the cabinet. He found them, the fecking filcher! …

—You were hopping around the kitchen, Kitty, just like a dog with fleas.

—Like Nora Johnny moseying around Caitriona's house …

—Shut your mouth, you grabber! …

—“I'll have to go up and keep him on his side while you are shaving one side of his face,” you said. “Don't worry, the Mistress will do that,” Billy says. “You just relax there, Little Kitty …”

—Oh, the poxy prick!

—Don't take a blind bit of notice of that, Master. I laid you out. You were a gorgeous-looking corpse, too, God love you! That's exactly what I said to the Mistress when I had you dickied up. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Mistress,” I says. “He's a gorgeous-looking
corpse, God help him, and so he should: a man as fine as the Old Master! …”

—One way or the other, Kitty, it wouldn't matter how you dressed any one of us, but I'd say you'd be very much at home doing your thing with a schoolmaster …

—… I was five days looking after you, Mister Eastman; up and down to your house; up and down the hillock to look back at your place, to see if there was any sign of you. You were rambling and raving and rabbitting on about that slice of land at the top of the town, the very best for fattening up cattle. You'd think you didn't want to go at all unless you could take it with you …

—And the chancer blah blahing all the time about the market in England …

—… It was I laid you out, Curran, and even so, you were very reluctant to depart. There's no way you were going to go with the first death rattle. I was always just about ready to close your eyes, when you'd jump up again. Your wife took your pulse. “He's passed away, may God have mercy on his soul!” she said.

“May his soul have a calm crossing and a good day!” Blotchy Brian said, he just happened to be there. “He's got his passage at last. But by jaypurs, I never thought he'd sail away without Tim Top of the Road's daughter along with him.”

“May he have a bed in paradise tonight!” I said myself, and I got them to prepare a basin of water. Of course, just at that very second you decided to wake up! “Make sure that Tom doesn't get the large holding,” you said. “I'd rather see it blown away in the wind, than that it would be left to the eldest son, unless he marries some other woman except Tim Top of the Road's daughter.” You sat up a little bit more: “If you let the eldest son get his claws on that land,” you said to your wife, “I swear by all the devils in hell that my ghost will have you by the balls all day and all night! Wasn't it terrible that I didn't get a lawyer to make an unambiguous will! …”

Then you rose up the third time: “That spade that Tommy's daughter borrowed for the new potatoes, somebody better go and
get it, seeing as they don't have the common decency to return it. The devil fuck them! Make sure too that you get a summons served on Greedy Guts up there about his donkeys wandering about and destroying our oats. And if you don't get any satisfaction in the court, the next time you catch any of them inside your fence, take a few horseshoe nails and drive them through their hoofs. The devil fuck them all! Don't be either lazy or listless and remember to get up well before dawn to keep an eye on your turf, and if you ever catch that Tim Top of the Road …”