‘Is it him I’m feeling Agnes.’
‘You daft thing, wouldn’t you know by now the feel of your own wife. It’s him just to the left of you there now. The left, the left. Don’t you know the left. I’ve got holt of his arm and another on his belt. Carve his fucking head off.’
The rooster lying feebly flapping its wings as it slowly turns-on its back in a circle, feet sticking in the air pointing up at the smashed picture of the man in white raiment. A sheep dog rushing to bark in the door and cowering away again. And Sexton pulling out his dentures.
‘Ah god so you bog trotters use language will you and gang up on me like Judases betraying Jesus at the last supper.
Mick, the horizontal stump of his arm trembling in its sleeve, lifting the shovel up over Sexton’s bead. Darcy Dancer rushing forward from his corner. Crushing pebbles of sugar underfoot. Two pigs honking and snorting in the door, pink eats flapping over their eyes and biting and squealing at each other as they suck up the milk from the floor. Darcy Dancer pushing with two hands against Mick’s rear end. As the blind man’s rusty spear shaped shovel descends on the red haired woman’s back with a lung thudding thwack.
‘I’m kilt.’
‘O tempora o mores, no sweeter sound is there than, the thump of justice.
‘It’s, the young one Agnes gave me a shove.’
‘What’s wrong with ya, ya blind fool. Smash the holy father the pope and now murther your wife.’
The figures crumpled upon one another in a mass of entwining limbs. Gasps of air sucked in and breath heaving out of chests. A shadow at the door.
‘Vas is diss. Achtung. Stop. Stop. At once immediately. I call the police stop.’
Miss von B, riding whip in her hand. Smacking it into her glove. The end of the long thong falling over the tip of her black boot. As she stood legs astride in derby hat, white breeches and brown hunting coat. The antagonists slowly standing. Grabbing back pieces of their clothing still clutched in other hands. The pigs rooting and snorting for tid bits in under and around the upturned furniture.
‘What ist diss fight. You should be ashamed. Grown people. Do you not know any better.’
Miss von B’s blonde hair coiffeured in a net under her hat. Spurs on her boots. A gold pin stuck sparkling with a large diamond in the white scarf at her throat. Upon which she places her hand as the avian livestock flap in her direction to escape. And the woman of the big bosoms points her finger.
‘Isn’t she the fine one now coming in here. Giving orders. With the heathenish gang of you from over there in Thormondstown raping me.’
‘Achtung. Shut up you woman. What do you know about rape. I know about rape. Come. We go.’
Sexton bowing. The pink darkness of his toothless smile. Long scratches dripping blood down his concave cheeks.
‘Excuse me Countess for my temporarily suspended phonetics. Occasioned by the recent dislodgement of my false choppers both uppers and lowers.’
Sexton brushing his dentures off on his sleeve. Placing them back in his mouth and taking them out again.
‘Ah god haven’t they been maltreated out of shape by you savages. Let’s out of here now, Master Reginald and leave the habitués of these waterlogged banshee riddled bogs to stew in their ignorance. And madam, my esteemed Countess, a lady of your high standing and dignified status should not have to witness the unpleasant consequences of a common brawl.’
The red haired woman, holding her torn flowered garment together across her chest. Following Sexton out the cottage door, her neck craned forward spitting words between Sexton’s shoulder blades as he guided Darcy Dancer with a hand behind the dark haired head.
‘I’ll be suing you, you cycling romeo, for damages. And the sacrilege of smashing in the face of the pontiff.’
Miss von B shaking the rein of her horse as it pulls its head away to grab more grass. Her backside two gleaming mounds of white under her kid skin breeches as she pulls herself up over her saddle and shifts a thigh over the mare’s quarters to seat herself. Sexton helping Darcy Dancer up into the trap, wiping a place dry and placing him snug on the leather cushion and wrapping him tight in a blanket. The woman clutching the leg of a chair in her hand, holding it up shaking at Sexton who wags his finger down at the red fuming face.
‘Sue madam, sue if you like. Continue to conduct your hate and strife. Sure it will be good to hear evidence given concerning this occasion with all the attendant reasons, wherefors and whatfors. And as the searchlights of publicity is placed upon you in the dock and your faulty slanderous testimony is recorded in the books for all time, just remember that there is he, the eternal omnipotence above you, who shall be the final judge. And in the exercise of his great level headedness he will sure as hell put the flames scorching you in your rigor mortis.’
‘Don’t be talking as if yez are the only saint on earth. I’ll get the lawyers to you bunch for the damages. Trespassing, breaking and entering. Rape. Assaulting a blind disabled and altered cripple. I’ll have the writs out after you.’
Sexton face up to the skies. His palm raised to the fine falling mist. A sudden beaming ray of sun casting a shimmering blaze of purple green and orange in a rainbow out over the brown bog lands.
‘Dear god, to whom these days can we say, dearly beloved. Sure the Prince of Peace himself would break a leg running to escape from the likes of the pair of you. But look at the irony of that now. Beauty in the heavens. Over a miserable bit of landscape the likes of this.’
‘Well there’ll be bloodshed on earth, yet. Wait and see. I’ll get you.’
‘And if you do madam you’ll only be bringing grief to the pistils petals and stamens grown by a poor humble common gardener. Ah and who knows it may do your lunatic self esteem a world of good. But beware you don’t get a fatal fist in the gob first.’
The red haired woman throwing the chair leg whistling past Sexton’s ducking head as he slaps down the reins and the barrel shaped Petunia takes off galloping after Miss von B’s horse cantering ahead up the pot holed drive.
‘Go on you dirty romeo, go home and put more of your black filthy grease on your hair.’
Two small scraggly ash trees on either side of the gate out to the tar black shiny road. Which stretched straight out into the white mists descending from hills ahead. The emptiness in all directions. As we rolled over the steamy smell of Miss von B’s horse’s dung freshly plopped. And another rainbow now high above the first, spanning all the countryside from one end of the world to the other.
‘Ah Master Reginald, you’ve learned your first lesson in life. Unless you were better off where you’ve been, you’re always better off where you are. But no matter where you’ve been or where you are you’ll never know if you’ll be better off where you’re going. Are you right, now.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks be to the sacred heart of Jesus your beautiful gentle mother wasn’t alive to witness any of that back there. But the real sad horror of it all. Is your blind man. He isn’t only missing an arm and like meself, an eye. But didn’t a mare he was after beating with a club throw him from her back on to the ground and then come with her teeth, and with one swift awful mouthful like the handiest surgeon who’d ever wielded a scalpel, bite completely off all the things most men are born with between their legs.’
And you’d
Not think
The pair of them
Back there
Would need this soon
Another sample of justice