— Toejam Nora! The whore. Milking the ducks … Hey, Margaret! … Hey Margaret! … Nora Johnny … I’m about to burst! … I’m going to burst! …
4.
… Toejam Nora standing for election! Jesus Christ Almighty, they have no respect left for themselves in this cemetery, especially if they can’t put up anyone else only Fleabag Nora from Gort Ribbuck … She won’t get elected … But who knows? … Kitty, Dotie, and Margaret talk to her, and Peter the Publican, and Huckster Joan sometimes. As for the Old Master, it’s a total disgrace the kind of things he tells her every day … He says they’re all in the book, but I can’t imagine myself that propriety would allow those kinds of things to be printed:
“Your curling tresses fair
Your eye sparkling like the dew
Your smooth and pointed breasts
Set my soul ablaze anew.”
… That’s lovely talk altogether for a schoolmaster. The Mistress and Billy the Postman are being driven mad. If he wasn’t a bit nuts himself, of course, he wouldn’t be praising Nora Johnny: “Her mind has really improved,” he said. “She has acquired some culture now …”
Wasn’t she very quick to remind me about the cross over her grave. “I have a fine big cross,” she said, “something you haven’t got, Caitriona.” She’d only have a small scutty little cross if it wasn’t for what that fool of a brother spent on her, something I told her straight up. She’d be down in the Half Guinea place without a plaque or a headstone, in among those gangsters from Clogher Savvy and Derry Lough, and that’s where she should be, if the truth be told. That’s what they were going to do anyway, until she died. When did anyone ever have a good word to say about any of her lot? Never, I’m telling you. Never ever. Never happened. A useless shower …
Having a cross here is like having a big slate house aboveground, a house with a name over the door — The Fox’s View, Heavenly Haven, The Fairy Throne, Lovers’ Way, Sun Spot, All Saints Grove, Leprechaun Green — and a cement border around it, trees and flowers to the edge of the garden, an iron gate with a bowered arch overhanging it, security and money in the bank … The railings on the grave are just the same as the fancy borders around the Earl’s house. I never really peeped into the Earl’s place without a flutter in my heart. I always thought I would see something miraculous. The Earl and his Lady having descended on their wings from heaven after their dinner. Either that, or St. Peter accompanying them to a table underneath a shady bower; he was carrying a net, having fished on the Earl’s Lake; and in it a big golden salmon; his great keys rattling away; and then, he opening his Big Book and inquiring of the Earl which of the people of his district should be allowed into heaven. I always thought that to be in good standing in the Earl’s book was the same as to be in good standing in heaven …
That shower aboveground are very innocent. “What good will it do them to have a cross over their graves?” they ask. “Not the smell of an oil rag! Those crosses are only snobbery and one-upmanship and a waste of money.” If they only knew! But they never get it until they are buried, and then it is far too late. If they knew up there that a cross here earns respect even for the Toejammers, I don’t think they’d be dawdling around as they are …
I wonder how long will it take to put my cross up? Patrick would never delay that much? He promised me faithfully:
“You’ll have it within a year, or even before that,” he said. “It’s the least we could do for you …”
A cross of Connemara marble, and the inscription in Irish … It’s all the rage to have Irish on your headstone these days … and lovely flowers …
I often warned Patrick:
“I raised you with love and care, Patrick,” I said. “I kept a good house always. God knows that wasn’t always easy. I never told you how I suffered after your father died. I never asked anything of anybody because of that. I often felt like buying a strip of pork to give some taste to the head of cabbage; or a fistful of raisins to chuck into the cake; or to hop into Peter’s Pub when I felt my throat parched from dust and cleaning, just to ask him for one of those golden bottles that smiled at me every time I went past his place …
“But, Patrick, my precious, I didn’t. I saved every brass farthing. I hate to give Nell or Blotchy Brian’s Maggie the satisfaction now that I wasn’t buried properly. Get me a plot in the Pound Place. Put a cross of Connemara marble over me. Have it up a year after I’m buried, at the latest. I know that it will cost a bit, but God will reward you …
“Don’t give in to your wife if she’s nagging you about money. She might be your wife, but I brought you into the world. I never bothered you for anything, only this. You’ll be finished with me then. Whatever you do, don’t give Nell the satisfaction …”
He didn’t bury me in the Pound Place after all that. His wife … or his wife and that other piece of shit, Nell. Although, Patrick can be sharp enough himself when he wants to. He promised me the cross …
I wonder what kind of a funeral I had? I won’t know that until the next corpse comes. Biddy Sarah was fading away. But I’d say there’s nothing wrong with her yet. And then there’s Guzzeye Martin, Black Bandy Bartley, and Breed Terry, and of course, that old gobshite himself, Blotchy Brian, keep his bag of bones away from us! … Fireside Tom should be dead already with the rain through his roof … If Patrick did what I told him, his shack would have fallen down by now …
My son’s wife will be here, she has to be, at her next birth. Nell is a bit flattened since Peter got injured, and she has rheumatism, the old snotbag. That isn’t likely to kill her, though. She was dead a few times, according to herself, but the seven plagues of Egypt wouldn’t kill some people. May nobody else come to the cemetery before her! …
I haven’t a notion if any letter has come from America since. I’m really afraid that Nell will have it all her own way about Baba’s will. If I only lived another few years …
Baba was very fond of me more than anyone else. When we used to be messing around as young girls in the Hedge Field … Wouldn’t you think she could put up a cross over me just as Nora Johnny’s brother did for Nora …
— … Does anyone know is this war “The War of the Two Foreigners”? …
— It’s only when you are expecting some real peace and quiet that these chattering gossips really get going. Isn’t what they say up above a real joke: “She’s at home now. She can rest in peace now, and can forget all the troubles of life in the cemetery clay” … Peace! Peace! Peace! …
— … If you elect me I promise you I’ll burst my gut as good as any man — I mean any woman — for culture’s sake, and for the sake of enlightened and progressive public opinion …
— Margaret! Margaret! Hey Margaret! … Did you hear what Nora Johnny just said? … “If you elect me” … I’m going to burst! I swear I’m going to burst! …
5.
— … “Fireside Tom was dying to get ma-arried,
As he always wa-as when pla-astered drunk …”
— … It’s really hilarious, isn’t it Dotie? … Everyone calls him Fireside Tom … He lives in a hole of a dump of a place up on the top of the town land. He never married. He has no living relations — not in Ireland anyhow — except for Caitriona and Nell Paudeen. I couldn’t really tell you, unless I was to give you a very short answer, what exact relation he is to Nell and Caitriona, and not because I haven’t heard it often enough …