It was a fine big colt, Master … What good is it for you to be pissed off with me? I couldn’t do anything about the lot of you. There was something bugging me, God help me … He’s often in the house, is that it? I’m telling you, that’s the way it is, Master. But you wouldn’t mind, only the school. He moseys into the school every day, gives the letters to the kids, and then, himself and the Mistress toddle off into the hall for a chat. Ara, God help your sense, Master! You haven’t a clue. There was something bugging me. I hadn’t a breath left. The heart …
5.
— … But, Coley, Coley …
— Let me finish my story, my good man:
“‘There’s absolutely nobody who could instruct me in this case now,’ said Daniel O’Connell, ‘except one person only — Biddy Early — and she is seven hundred miles removed from here muttering charms for poteenmakers whose moonshine is being stolen by the fairies in a big town called Horse Bones in County Galway back in Ireland. Get ready and saddle up my best horse in the stable so that I will take her as a pillion rider behind me to London in England …’
“We went. ‘Miss Debonair,’ he said to her … ‘Why would any son of a bitch insult me like that? …’”
— … Ah come on now, Huckster Joan! Whoring after votes for Peter the Publican! And why wouldn’t you? Your son is married to his daughter aboveground. And even if they weren’t, yourself and Peter would be as thick as the greatest two thieves ever …
— That’s all the thanks I get. You’d have been dead long ago only I cut you some slack. Running in scrounging and begging every day: “For the love of God and Mary his mother, lend me a grain of meal or something until I can sell the pigs …”
— I paid dearly and sorely for that grain, Joan, you miserable shite! All I ever heard was: “Huckster Joan is a lovely person, kind and charitable. She trusts you.” Trust, yea, sure thing, because you knew, Joan, that you would be paid, and for every one person who didn’t pay you back there would be another hundred who would …
— That is precisely the same principle that obtains in insurance …
— I’d get a bag of grain for a pound, if I paid on the button. But if I waited for the fairday, or if I was a sharp shark, then sixty. If I couldn’t pay for another six or nine months, then seventy. You were kind and sweet and pleasant with the bigwig hard chaw. You were mean and stingy and tighter than a cow’s arse during fly season with the guy who didn’t have the ready penny. Thanks be to God that we don’t have to give a crap about you and that you can’t throw it up in our faces anymore …
— Listen, Joan, you sly bitch — a sly supporter of those who had money anyway — Joan, you sly bitch, you done for me eighty years before my time. Without fags … I saw you slipping them to the sergeant, a guy you had no dealings with, except in the Fancy City. I saw you giving them to a man in a lorry, you hadn’t a clue where he was from, and you didn’t get a penny’s profit from him. You had them down under the counter.
“Just one,” I says, “I could do with one now, and maybe there’ll be more tomorrow, the beginning of the month …”
“Where would I get fags?” you said. “You don’t think that I’m making them! …”
“If I was rich enough to give you four or five shillings for a box,” I said … “You can stuff them …”
I went home.
“You’d better spread out that sweep of seaweed you left behind on the field beyond,” my mother said.
“Seaweed,” I says, “I’m finished with the stuff, with seaweed, mother.”
I spat out a glob. It was as stiff as a hard-on. May I never leave here if I’m not telling the truth. There was a little kitten by the fireplace. He started slobbering up the snot. He started to choke with a cough. May I never leave here if he didn’t!
“That’s no way to be,” I says. I took to the bed. Never got up again. No fags. You killed me, you sly bitch — always arselicking people with money …
— And my death too. It was the clogs you sold me that finished me off, you old wretch. I gave you forty-five shillings straight up into your fist. It was in the depths of winter and we were hacking out the road to Bally Donough. I was hauling the barrow in the wet muck down below. Fuck that place anyway, and everything about it! That was the spot where I died. I put the clogs on my feet. They wouldn’t keep out a drop after two days …
I let down the barrow.
“What’s up with you?” says one of the guys.
“Everything,” I said. I sat down smack bang in the guts of the barrow, and I pulled my pants up from around my ankles. My ankle was as purple as Gut Bucket’s nose. I swear it was.
“What’s up with you?” the big boss asks when he comes along.
“Everything,” I says.
“Everything is right, I’m afraid,” he says.
“Huckster Joan’s clogs,” I say.
“Fuck them clogs, and everything to do with them!” he says. “If she lasts much longer I swear that I won’t have any salesman on the road who won’t be buried in the grave.”
I went home. Lay down on the bed. The doctor was called that night.
“You’ve had it,” he said. “The feet …”
“I’ve had it for sure,” I says, “The feet … the clogs …”
“Huckster Joan’s clogs, certainly,” he said. “If she survives, I won’t be alive …”
The priest was called the next morning.
“You’ve had it,” he said. “The feet …”
“Had it for sure,” I said. “The feet … clogs …”
“Huckster Joan’s clogs, certainly,” he said. “If she survives, I won’t be alive. But you’re a goner anyway …”
And by Jaysus he was right. I was on crutches a week from then. It was your clogs, Joan, you old wretch. You killed me …
You killed me too, Joan, you hag! Your coffee. Your piss-like coffee! Your jam, yes, your shitty jam, you hag you. Your coffee instead of tea: your jam instead of butter.
That was the fateful day for me — not that I could do anything about it — the day I left you my ration cards, you old cow:
“There’s no tea this week. I don’t know why they didn’t send me any.”
“So, no tea came so, Joan?”
“Not a bit.”
“So, nobody has any tea this week, is that it?”
“No, I swear to you. But you’ll get enough for a fortnight next week.”
“But you always say that, Joan, and we were never compensated for the weeks it never came … For the love of God almighty, just one pinch of tea, please, Joan. Just a smell of it … Just a nail shaving’s worth … I’m sick with the coffee …”
“Don’t you know that I can’t make tea. If you don’t like it, you can give your ration cards to somebody else …”
And Joan, you old wretch, you knew full well that I couldn’t. There you were hoarding the tea for those who could pay three times as much: the houses that took in learners of Irish, tourists, the big shots, and so on. I saw you with my own two eyes giving some to the priest’s girl, and you gave a quarter of a pound to the sergeant’s wife. You were hoping the priest wouldn’t denounce you from the altar for your underhand dealings, and were trying to bribe the sergeant from squealing on you in court …
I toddled off home with my coffee. The wife brewed some.
“I won’t drink a drop of it,” I said, “God bless you anyway …”
“You’ll have to have something soon,” she said. “You had nothing since yesterday morning.”
“So be it,” I said. I glugged up another lump of gunge. It was as tough as leather, if the graveyard permits me to say so. The dog started snuffling around me. Didn’t stay long. Fecked off and wasn’t seen for two days.