Nell wasn’t married long when he came slavering for me again. I was just getting a cup of tea in the evening as the shades of night came down. I remember it well. I had put the teapot down on the hearth trying to blow some life into the embers. This guy comes in totally unexpectedly even before I had a chance to recognise him. “Will you marry me, Caitriona,” he said, just like that. “I think I deserve you, coming like this the second time. And as it’s not doing me any good, living without a nice woman …”
I’m telling you straight, that’s exactly what he said.
“I wouldn’t marry you, you rotten poop, even if cobwebs grew out of me for want of a man,” I said.
I had put the thongs down and I had the boiling kettle in my hand. I didn’t blink an eye, Margaret, but went for him in the middle of the floor. But he had vanished out the door by then.
I know I am hard to please when it comes to men. I was good-looking enough and had a decent dowry … But marry Blotchy Brian, come on now like, Margaret, after what Nell said …
— … “It’d better win,” I said, sticking my hand in my pocket and hightailing it out the door. “When you lose, you’re screwed,” I said, taking the ticket from the wench. She smiled at me: that kind of innocent smile from a young innocent heart. “If ‘The Golden Apple’ wins,” I said, “I’ll buy you some sweeties and take you to the pictures … Or would you prefer a bit of a dance … or a few quiet drinks in the snug in the Great Southern Hotel? …”
— … Qu’est-ce que vous dites? Quelle drôle de langue! N’y a-til-pas là quelque professeur ou étudiant qui parle français?
— Au revoir. Au revoir.
— Pardon! Pardon!
— Shut your gob, you shitehawk!
— If I could reach that gander, I’d shut his trap for him. Either that, or he’d talk proper. Every time he mentions Hitler he starts spluttering away in a torrent of talk. Sweet jumping Jesus, but if he really knew I don’t think he’d be that happy about Hitler at all …
— Didn’t you notice that every time that Hitler’s name is mentioned, he calls him a “whore” immediately. Who are we to say he hasn’t picked up that much Irish …
— Oh, if only I could get my hands on him! High for Hitler! High for Hitler! High for Hitler! High for Hitler …
— Je ne vous comprends pas, monsieur …
— Who is that, Margaret?
— That’s the guy who was killed in the airplane. Don’t you remember? He went down in the middle of the bay. You were alive that time.
— Sure, didn’t I see him laid out, Margaret … He had a fantastic funeral. They said he was some kind of a hero …
— He jabbers away like that. The Master says that he’s French, and that he’d understand him if his tongue wasn’t worn away by the time he spent in the sea …
— So, the Master doesn’t understand him, Margaret?
— Not the slightest clue, Caitriona.
— I always knew, Margaret, that the Old Master wasn’t very learned. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t understand a Frenchy! I should have known that yonks ago …
— Nora Johnny understands him better than anyone else in the graveyard. Did you not hear her answering him just a while back? …
— Ara, would you get an ounce of sense, Maggie Frances. Do you Mean Toejam Nora with the smelly feet? …
— Ils m’ennuient. On espère toujours trouver la paix dans la mort, mais la tombe ne semble pas encore être la mort. On ne trouve ici en tout cas, que de l’ennui …
— Au revoir. Au revoir. De grâce. De grâce.
— … Six sixes, forty-six; six sevens fifty-two; six eights, fifty-eight … Now, amn’t I great, Master! I know my tables up to now. If I had gone to school as a kid, there’d be no stopping me. I’ll say all the tables from the beginning now, Master. Two ones are … Why don’t you want to hear them, Master? You’ve been kind of neglecting me for the last while, since Caitriona Paudeen told you about your wife …
— I swear by the oak of this coffin, Curran, I gave her the pound, I gave the pound to Caitriona Paudeen. But I never got a gnat’s glimpse of it since.
— Ababoona! Holy cow! You lied, you old bat …
— Honest, Dotie. You wouldn’t understand: a stranger this way from the rich lands of the Fair Meadow. This is the truth, the unadulterated truth, Dotie. Honest, it is. I was going to swear “by the Holy finger,” but that is unbecoming talk. Instead of that, Dotie, I’ll say: “I’ll put the blessed crucifix on my heart.” Margaret told you about herself and Nell, but she never told you about the dowry I lavished on my daughter when she married into Caitriona’s house. You should know that story, Dotie. Everyone else here knows it. Sixty pounds, Dotie. Honest! Sixty pounds in golden guineas …
— For the love of God Almighty! Margaret! Hey, Margaret! Do you hear me?
I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst, Margaret! I’m going to burst, Margaret! Nora Johnny’s young one! … sixty … dowry … for me and us … I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! O my God, I’m going to burst! … Goi … bur … Go … burs … G … bu … Burs …
Interlude 2: THE SCATTERED EARTH
1.
You were asking for it. If I hadn’t stabbed you, somebody else would have stabbed you, and isn’t the fool and his lackey all the same? As you were going to be stabbed anyway, wasn’t it better to be stabbed by a neighbour than by a stranger? The stranger would be buried miles away, maybe, over on the flat plains of the Smooth Meadow, or up in Dublin, or the arsehole of the country somewhere, and what would you do then? Look at the satisfaction you get chewing me up here. And if the stranger was lying next to you, you would be at a loss to know what to throw up in his face, as you would know nothing about his seed, breed, and generation. Cop yourself on, you knacker. You wouldn’t mind, but I stabbed you cleanly …
— The Dog Eared Lot often stabbed cleanly! …
— … A white-headed mare … She was gorgeous …
— … I swear, Huckster Joan, I swear by the oak of this coffin, that I gave her the pound, Caitriona Paudeen …
— … That’s the way it was. Went up to the Bookie’s around three o’clock. “‘The Golden Apple,’” I said. “She better win,” I said, sticking my hands in my pockets and turning on my heels out the door. I didn’t have a brass farthing …
Won the three o’clock. The race was over. “The Golden Apple” at a hundred to one. Went to collect my fiver. The wench smiled at me again: a sweet innocent smile from a pure heart. It meant a lot more to me than a fiver: “I’ll get you sweets, or I’ll bring you to the pictures, or to a dance … Or would you prefer …?” I was mortified. I didn’t finish what I was saying.
“I’ll meet you outside the Plaza at a quarter past seven,” I said.
Go home. Shave, shower, shite, shampoo, slap on the slime, get ready. Didn’t even drink a drop for good luck. I had far too much time for that innocent smile from a pure heart …
To the Plaza for seven. Put a hole in my fiver buying her chocolates. The chocolates would really melt her young pure heart, and the glint of the beauty of the rose would appear in her smile like the first rays of the breaking morning. Wasn’t I the eejit who had spent so much …
— Hang on now ’til I read you the Proclamation that Eamon de Valera put before the people of Ireland:
“Irish men and Irish women …”
— Wait now, until I read the Proclamation that Arthur Griffith put before the people of Ireland:
“Irish men and Irish women …”
— … I drank forty-two pints that night one after the other. And I walked home after that as straight as a reed … as straight as a reed, I’m telling you. I delivered a calf from the brindle cow, which was in labour for two hours already. I drove the old donkey out from Curran’s oats … and I tied up Tommy. I had just taken off my shoes and about to go on my knees to say a bit of a prayer, when the young one comes in. Her breath was totally shagged. “My Mam says to go over straight away,” she said “Dad is doing his thing again.”