Tom hightailed it off to Nora Johnny’s joint in Gort Ribbuck. “Despite the fact that she’s a widow,” he says to Nell and to Caitriona, “I’m telling you truthfully, there’re no flies on her. She’s young in spirit. Her daughter, the one married to your son Paddy, Caitriona, she’s hardly thirty-two or thirty-three. No doubt about it, the daughter is a fine strapping young one as far as I’m concerned …” He said that, no lie. Did you know that? …
— It’s ridiculous that you think I didn’t know …
— How would you have the least clue, as you’re not in the same place as they are? … It was just as well for them that Tom only had a kip of a dive or they’d be totally ruined, no other house under God’s sky got thatched more often. Paddy Caitriona covered the north side from end to end one year. He was an excellent thatcher. He slapped some straw on it. Not the worst of it either. That lovely roof never would have to be covered for another fourteen or fifteen years. The following year Nell’s Peter comes along with his hammer and his mallet. Up he goes on the north side. What do you think he did to the roof that Paddy had put up just a year before? He gutted it all out from the roots and chucked it down on to the road. May I not leave this spot if I am telling you a word of a lie. There wasn’t as much as a pick of Pat’s thatch from end to end that he didn’t yank out from the roots.
“That wouldn’t have been long dripping down on you, Tom,” he said. I swear by all that’s holy that I was listening to him! “The cover that went on last year was totally useless. I’m only surprised that it stopped any drop coming down. Half of it was only that soft heathery stuff. All the signs on it, anyway. Jaysus, he didn’t cause himself too much hassle gathering it up, always avoiding anything that might cause a bit of effort. If you want to gather that stuff you have to go out into the deep sodden sedgy slobber and get your feet wet. Look at what I have, from out there in the middle of Aska Roe …”
He did the two sides of the house, but even so, ’twas a bit of a botched job. Actually, a really botched job! It didn’t even last three years. It was a real pain …
— You’d think the way you’re talking you didn’t know that I knew all this …
— Nobody would have a clue about it, except those in the same place, neighbours …
Another time I saw the two of them at the house at the same time: Paddy Caitriona and Peter Nell. Paddy was up on the north side with his ladder, his mallet and his strip of straw. Peter on the south of the house, with his ladder, his mallet, and his own strip of straw. You never saw work like it in your whole life: they were really at it. Fireside Tom lounging on his butt on the big boulder at the east end, puffing away at his pipe, and talking to the two of them at the same time. He was in exactly the right spot between the two ends of the house. I came along. I sat down on the boulder beside Tom. You couldn’t hear yourself think because of the banging of the two mallets.
“Why don’t you,” says I, “why doesn’t one of you drop the thatching for a while and help the other, as Tom isn’t helping either of you. Either that, or why don’t you take turns helping and thatching …”
“Shut your mouth,” Tom said. “Can’t you see that they’re flying ahead one as good as the other now, God bless them! They’re brilliant thatchers. I reckon that neither one of them is a hair’s breadth or a nail shaving better than the other …”
— Easy to tell that you don’t know that I realise all about it …
— But you don’t know, you haven’t the least clue …
— … “Nell knows all about building fences,
And Cathy’s an expert on thatch and felt …”
— … “Fireside Tom was smirking broadly
At Cathy Paudeen who paid the rent …”
— No, she wasn’t! I wasn’t! It’s not true, Margaret! Oh, Margaret! I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! …
6.
— … The Grave Ghoul! He is as big an eejit as you ever saw …
— It’s a total disgrace, Caitriona, if he has the map, that he couldn’t tell one grave from another …
— God help you and your stupid map! His stupid map makes as much sense as Eddie East Boss dividing up the land with a tongs, when they were divvying it up in strips long ago …
— For all that, Caitriona, I kept that stretch at the top of the fields despite your best efforts, seeing as there wasn’t one of you who didn’t want it. You couldn’t do better than it to fatten up the cattle …
— Ho! Do you hear the cricket chirping again? …
— It’s a disgrace, Caitriona, if the corpses are being put in the wrong graves that someone wouldn’t charge him with treason: let the Government know, or at least tell the priest, or the Foxy Policeman …
— Ara, God bless the Government! Some Government, since Griffith’s crowd were thrown out …
— You lied …
— You told a big black …
— Isn’t that just what Blotchy Brian said: they are being chucked into any old hole in the graveyard now, just as if they were fish guts or leftover limpets …
— Oh, the dirty fucker! …
— If you don’t have a proper cross on your grave now, and it well-marked, who knows what day it wouldn’t be opened up …
— I’ll have a cross on me shortly. A cross of the best Connemara marble just like Peter the Publican and Joan …
— A cross of Connemara marble, Caitriona …
— Wouldn’t they let them put up a wooden cross, Caitriona?
— They’d be dumped out on the road the following day …
— Isn’t that because of the people who make the other crosses? …
— Of course, what else? Everyone feathering his own nest. If you were allowed stick up wooden crosses or cement crosses, nobody would bother with their own. Everyone then could just make their own cross …
— I’d much prefer no cross at all than one made of wood or cement …
— True for you. I’d die of shame …
— It’s this Government’s fault. They get a tax on all the other crosses …
— You’re a liar. That was the law before this Government …
— It’s a terrible thing to dump one of your own down beside a stranger …
— The apple never falls far from the tree …
— That’s the Government for you …
— You’re a liar …
— I heard that they stuffed Tuney Mickle Tuney down on top of Tom the Tailor’s son last year …
— Oh, didn’t I up and kick off the murderer from on top of me! It was the other half of the treacherous Dog Eared mob who stabbed me …
— I was at Jude’s funeral, Jude from our own place, last year. She was shagged down on top of Donal Weaver from Clogher Savvy. They never knew they were digging the wrong grave until they hit the coffin. The dogs on the street know that it’s true, I was there, exactly there …
— Entirely true. Don’t we know you’re telling the truth. They dug four graves for the Poet, and in the end he was left down snug on top of Curran …
— The devil screw him! I’m driven demented with his trivial waffle. He can go and fuck himself as he didn’t stay alive long enough until they put a cross on me …
— The little scut …
— It wouldn’t matter only I had things on my mind, and I didn’t realise it was my big farm of land that your one at home gave to the eldest son …
— What do you think of Michael Kitty from Bally Donough being clapped in on top of Huckster Joan? Joan didn’t even have a cross that time …
— Ah, poor Joan …
— Poor Joan, you must have been totally in distress …