—“I don’t give a toss about him doing his thing if it’s not the right time,” I said, “just as I was about to say my prayers. What’s bugging him now?”
“Downing poteen like water,” she said.
Off I went. He was out of his tree and nobody in the house was able to hold him down. You couldn’t say they weren’t a bunch of wimps …
“Here, grab this,” I said. “Take a hold of this rope, like, right now, before he goes for the axe. Can’t you see he’s eyeing it …”
— I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …
— We won the match.
— Not a bit of it. If the mine hadn’t destroyed the house …
— … “I washed my face in the dew of the morning,
And combed my hair with the wind of my hand …”
It’s not right yet, Curran. There’s a stray bit still there. Hang on a minute now:
“I washed my face in the dew of the morning …” That bit is just dandy, Curran. I already used it in The Golden Stars. Hang on a minute now … Listen to this, Curran:
“I washed my face in the dew of the morning,
And combed my hair with the wind of my hand …”
That’s just perfect. Curran, I knew I’d get it in the end … Are you listening now?
“I washed my face in the dew of the morning,
And combed my hair with the wind of my hand …
My shoelaces were as the sparkle of the rainbow …”
Hang on now, Curran … Wait a second … Eureka … “And the Pleiades were holding up my pants …” I knew I’d get it, Curran. Listen to the whole verse now …
— Will you go and get lost, and don’t be driving everyone around the twist. My mind is numb for the last two years listening to your nonsense verse. I have worse things on my mind, God forgive me: my eldest boy knocking around with the floozie from Up the Way, and the boss of the house all ready to hand the place over to him. And on top of that, I have no idea is it old Gut Bucket’s donkeys, or Tim Top of the Road’s beasts who are guzzling my corn …
— You’re dead right about that, Curran. They should have stuffed the piece of shit in the eastern graveyard. Mike O’Donnell is there, the guy who wrote “The Song of the Turnip,” and “The War of the Hen with the Grain of Corn” …
— And Big Mike Connolly who made up the “Ballad of Caitríona” and “Fireside Tom’s Song” …
— And “The Psalm of the Cat.” That’s a fantastic piece of work, “The Psalm of the Cat.” I’d never be able to do that, never …
— … Eight sixes forty-eight; eight sevens fifty-four … You’re not listening at all, Master. You’re not with it at all, these days, … I’m not making one bit of progress … Is that what you said, Master? Hardly surprising, Master, and the way you have been neglecting me … Answer me this … How many tables are there anyway, Master? … Is that all? Well, fuck me pink if that’s it! I thought that there were at least a hundred … or up to a thousand … up to a million … up to a quadrillion … we have so much time to be lying in the grave, that’s what they say. He who made time, made tons of it …
— God help us! Isn’t it a tragedy that they didn’t transport my mortal bones beyond the Fancy City and to lay me down in Brandon’s Temple on the white bleached plains of the Smooth Meadow amongst my own people! There, the clay is gentle and welcoming; there, the clay is soft and silken; there, the clay is quiet and loving; there, the clay is protective and snug. Decay there is not the decay of the graveyard; corruption there is not the corruption of the flesh. But clay will cling to clay; clay will hug and kiss clay; clay will inter-breed with clay …
— She’s gone all sloppy again …
— You’d never see anyone as crazy mad as her, only when this stupidity gets her …
— It’s the way she is, God help us! Caitriona’s far worse when she starts going on about Nell and Nora Johnny …
— Caitriona’s gone over the top altogether. Blotchy Brian was right when he called her a jennet …
— Blotchy Brian wasn’t right. Honestly, he wasn’t …
— What’s up with you? Are you against that arsehole too, Nora?
— Honest, he wasn’t right. The jennet is a very cultured beast. Honest, it is. The Rooters in Bally Donough used to have a jennet when I was going to school, years ago. And it would eat raisin bread from the palm of my hand …
— Going to school years ago! Toejam Nora going to school! Raisin bread in Gort Ribbuck! O holy cow and mother of Jesus! Margaret … Margaret, did you hear what Toejam Nora Johnny Robin of the Stinky Soles said? O, O, I’m going to burst …
2.
… Nora Johnny … Nora Johnny … Toejam Nora Stinky Soles … You weren’t happy to leave your lying ways aboveground, but you had to bring it down here too. The whole graveyard knows the devil himself — keep him far away! — gave you a loan of his tongue when you were just a slip of a thing, and you used it so well that he never asked for it back …
One hundred and twenty pounds dowry for that trollop of a daughter of yours … My goodness me … A woman that didn’t have a stitch of clothes to put on her the day she got married, only I bought her an outfit … Toejam Nora had sixty pounds … There wasn’t sixty pounds ever in all of Gort Ribbuck end to end. Gort Ribbuck of the Puddles. I suppose you’re too snobby now to milk the ducks … A hundred and twenty pounds … A hundred and twenty fleas! No, six thousand fleas. They were by far the commonest creatures that the Toejam Crowd ever had. I’m telling you, if fleas had to give dowries, then that eejit who married your daughter, Noreen, would have enough to make him a knight in a castle nine times over. The two of them had plenty between them coming into my house …
That was the disastrous day, Noreen, the first day yourself or your daughter ever darkened the door of my house … The little hussy that she is. Certainly, Nora, she is a credit to you: one who can’t put a patch on her child, or make her husband’s bed, or throw out the wasted ashes every week, or to comb her own clump of hair … It was she had me buried twenty years before my time. She’ll bury my son too, and before too long, if she doesn’t come here soon to keep you company and keep you in gossip at her next delivery …
Oh, your little yackity mouth is in great form today, Noreen … “We’ll be …” How’s that you put it? … “We’ll be OK then.” … “OK”: that’s your catch phrase, Noreen … “We’ll be OK then. You’ll have your son, and I’ll have my daughter, and we’ll be together again down here just as we were aboveground …” The devil’s plaything is in great mocking form altogether in your little yackity mouth today, Noreen …
That time you were in the Fancy City … You’re telling me I’m lying. It’s you’re the filthy liar, Toejam Noreen …
— Witch!
— Harridan!
— Hag!
— Toejam Crowd … Duck milkers! …
— Do you remember the night Nell was sitting in Jack the Lad’s lap? “We’ll leave Blotchy Brian to you, Caitriona …”
— I never sat in a sailor’s lap anyway, thanks be to God Almighty …
— You never got the chance, Caitriona … I don’t take a devil’s blind bit of notice of you. Your endless bitching and lies doesn’t leave a scratch on me. I’m far more respected in this cemetery than you are. There’s a fine upright cross on my grave, which is more than can be said for yours, Caitriona. Smashing! Honest! …