What’s this he called her? A bitch and a whore and a cunt. Toejam Nora. Nora the Sailors’ Bit. The piss artist from Gort Ribbuck of the puddles and the piddles! He said that she was drinking on the sly in the snug in his pub; that she often had to be carted home; that she started screaming songs at the top of her head when Michael Tooney’s funeral was going past; that she fleeced a beast-buyer inside in his own parlour; that she drank the black porter of the black butler that the Earl had; that she’d feck bottles around when she was pissed; that she brought Johnny Colm’s buck goat into the shop when she was totally scuttered and installed him behind the counter, and hoisted him up on the barrel of booze and started stroking his beard and plying him with drink; that she tried to grab Fireside Tom and jizz him up …
But what’s this he called her? … It’s terrible, I just can’t think of it … I’ve got it, that’s it. A So-and-so. I’ll have to ask the Master, if he ever comes around to his senses again, what’s a So-and-so?
But he called me a So-and-so as well, and he’d have called me worse if he could. But for all that he’s talking as gently and as quietly to her now as if they never spoke a cross word. And he would never even think of thanking me for voting for him …
As there’s no cross on me … If that’s true. Maybe it was just that Nora wouldn’t leave him enough booze money, up above. Peter, or any other Peter the Publican, wouldn’t have much of a pub if they were depending on me. He knows right well that he’d have neither a cross nor company here if it wasn’t for Nora of the pints, and her likes … I was never a drunk … But for that, and for all that, sometimes it was hard to pass the door …
— … That’s the way, Peter. All the cultured people voted for me, and the Fifteen Shilling Crowd too, apart from Caitriona Paudeen, and God knows that trollop of an airhead never had the slightest bit of culture or manners.
I’d have preferred not to get Caitriona’s vote, but I’d have got it anyway except for one thing. Caitriona only voted for you, Peter, because she was scared shitless about what she had left unpaid in your place. Honest! …
— You’re a dirty liar, you So-and-so! When I died I wasn’t as much as a penny in debt, no more than the bird on the wing, thanks be to God the Father Almighty. You old bat! “What she had left unpaid …”!
Hey there, Margaret! Hey Margaret! Did you hear what Nora the Tippler said? I’m going to burst! I’m about to burst! I’m going to burst!
Interlude 5: THE MUCK MANURING EARTH
1.
I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken to what I have to say! You must hearken unto my voice …
Here in the grave the spool is for ever spinning; turning the brightness dark, making the beautiful ugly, and imbricating the alluring golden ringlets of hair with a shading of scum, a wisp of mildew, a hint of rot, a sliver of slime, and a grey haunting of mizzle. The vespertine veil of indifference and forgetfulness is being woven from the golden filaments of the setting sun, from the silver web of moonlight, from the resplendent cloak of fame, and from the departing wafture of fugacious remembrance. For this weaver’s material is none other than the malleable and kneadful clay. His loom is the rickety rack on which he who attached his chariot to the most effulgent star in the firmament climbed with his dreams, or that other who snatched a bunch of the forbidden fruits from the dark of the dubious deep. This old masterweaver has webbed them alclass="underline" the purr of passing ambition, the ostentation of transient beauty, the desires of unrequited dreams.
Aboveground everything is bedecked in the garments of everlasting youth. Every shower of rain creates a multitude of mushrooms miraculously in the grass. The opium flowers are like unto the dreams of the goddess of plenty laid upon meadow and field. The ear of corn is imbued with a tinge of yellow from the constant kisses of the sun. The somnolent susurrus of the waterfall sloshes silently through the lithe lips of the salmon. The elder wren is happy as he hops amongst the large leaves observing his young nestlings at their pecking play. The forager is going to sea with a tune on his lips bearing the effervescence of the elements, the tide, wind, and sun. The young woman is seeking the pearlescent purse of promise so that she may clothe herself with lustrous splendour, and wear the precious stones of serenity that her heart so desires as she floats upon the dew in the morning …
But some evil warlock has singed the green canopy of the trees with his accursed wand. The golden tresses of the rainbow have been clipped by the nip of the east wind. A tubercular tinge has crept into the crepuscular sky. Milk is indurating in the udders of the cow while she seeks shelter in the inglenook of the ditch. The voice of the young swain who tends the sheep on the hills is suffused with a sadness which cannot be silenced. The stack-maker is beating his arms as he comes down from his covered rick of corn, because bad boils of threatening terrors are gathering in the northern sky and a cackling cloud of grizzled geese are hurrying away to the south …
Since the living must pay its dues to the graveyard …
I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken to what I have to say! You must hearken unto my voice, listen …
2.
… Who are you? … What kind of an old cadaver are they trying to shove down on top of me at all? … My daughter-in-law, certainly, this time. Oh, no you’re not. You’re a man. You’re not one of the Lydons anyway. You’re a blondie. None of the Lydons were ever blondies. They were all black. Black as the sloe. Nor none of my own people either, apart from Nell, that old trollop of a tramp! …
You’re related to Paddy Lawrence. I should know you. Are you Paddy Lawrence’s second or third son? … The third one … Only nineteen years of age … Young enough to start on this caper, I’m telling you … You were three months failing … TB. That’s the real bitch. This graveyard is stuffed full of them …
You were going to go to England only this shit hit you … You said you were all packed up and ready to go … All the youth of Bally Donough went last week … And the ghouls from Gort Ribbuck! May they never come back! … That’s true, too true, my boy. You can make bags of money there …
You said you heard nothing about them putting a cross on me. Nobody’s saying nothing about it now … Not a whisper, even, you say … He brought it up when he was in visiting you. What did he say? … Don’t be ashamed to tell me, youngfella. You should know by now that I had no time at all for Blotchy Brian … All of Clogher Savvy have upped and awayed to England too. Sure, don’t you know, that that crowd were always just navvies and wage slaves … If you hadn’t got sick, you’d be there too … to earn money. It’s a bit late now to be going on about earning money … But what did Blotchy Brian say? Weren’t you always arselicking him anyway? … “That old bitch doesn’t deserve a cross,” he said. “Far from crosses they were reared. A man who couldn’t feed his own children — Patrick Caitriona — talking about putting up a cross of the best Connemara marble!” He said that! He still hates my guts …
You said that Blotchy Brian was up in Dublin. In Dublin! … That prick in Dublin! … He saw the guy stuck up on the top of the Pillar! It’s a pity he, and all that concrete didn’t fall down on top of his knob, the scum bucket! … There were great pints there, he said! I hope it chokes up his snotty nose! … Lashers of women in Dublin too. It’s a pity he didn’t go there years ago after I had to refuse him, twice. The Dublin women would really fancy his gammy leg and his hunched back … He saw the wild animals! There was no wilder or uglier animal than himself, not to put too fine a point in it! … And the judge praised him to the skies! … He must have been a really thick judge so! … “You are really a wonderful old gentleman to come all this way, considering your age, in order to assist the court,” he said. Oh, he must have been a really thick judge if he didn’t see that he was only there to help his daughter and her husband, the slob-faced skanger! …