You’d really think that a youngfella like you wouldn’t believe any of that old shite, and yet you’ll end up like John Willy and Breed Terry, if you live long enough. I was hoping for some news about the court, but you said that the crowd from Glen Booley had all taken off to England. Bad luck to them! The Glen Booley shower can go and fuck themselves as far as I am concerned! The bastards wouldn’t even come to my funeral …
For crying out loud! Nell got eight hundred pounds … Even though he was on the wrong side of the road. You’re sure of that? Maybe Nell, the cute hoor, added five or six hundred to it … It was in the paper! You can read it in the paper yourself. Six weeks ago … In The Galwegian. Don’t take a blind bit of notice of that paper … It was in The True News also, and in The Irelander? … And you say there’s nothing wrong with him … He’s thrown away the crutches altogether now … He’s doing all kinds of work … And three doctors swore black and blue that he wasn’t himself, and would never be himself again. O sweet Jesus! Truly he was a very thick judge. Did they tell him that he was on the wrong side of the road? The priest told him. What else so! …
She gave the priest fifty quid for a mass. She would too, the witch. Her son is fine and she has a pot of money … She gave him ten pounds to say a mass for me also! … She gave it straight to him and into his fist while Patrick was looking, is that it … The mass money that that cow would give would do me no good, I’m telling you …
The gang from Derry Lough went to England also five weeks ago. There! Tough shit for England that they had to put up with those gougers from Derry Lough … They wouldn’t come to a funeral to someone half as good as themselves … Hang on! Don’t vanish until you tell me some more! … Jack the Lad isn’t that well. You’d easily know it. St. John’s Gospel. He’ll be here now any day soon. Nell and Blotchy Brian’s daughter made up that potion for him. They’ll get insurance money from it …
They’re blasting a road in as far as Nell’s place! God help us all! I never thought they’d be able to hack a road into that ugly goddam awful place … This new crowd she voted for, they’ve got it in for her, is that what you’re saying. The little piss puss really knew who to vote for! … They’re chopping off a corner from our land! For Chrissake! That’s the field. The Laccard. We don’t have any other field next to the path up to Nell’s kip of a house … My own Patrick gave away a chunk of the Laccard! Aaagh! I knew as soon as I croaked that Patrick would be putty in the hands of that bitch … The priest came along to see what was going on … That’s all part of Nell’s sly shy shift shit … The priest himself, he laid out the boundaries … That was the same day that Nell gave him the money to say masses for me. My God Almighty, what was she thinking about, no flies on that one! That was her sneaky trick to get the road done. There was no other way to do it apart from taking chunks from our land, especially the Laccard … You’d think that Patrick was paid for the field? You have your glue! He shouldn’t have let her get away with it. Isn’t it a pity he didn’t live a few more years! … That’s what Blotchy Brian said: “Ah, come on, like, you don’t expect that Nell would pay for a pate bald baldy bollocks of a heap of stones that couldn’t ride one another? If Caitriona’s Paddy had the least ounce of sense he’d have built some kind of a crappy kip for her heap of bones over there … Up over on Laccard … And there’d be tons of stuff for headstones there too, no need at all for Connemara marble … John Willy and Breed Terry … to keep them away from the hedgehog …” Oh, the bitch! The nasty bitch! …
This is it again: “If I was only in England! Oh to be in England!” Did I stop you? … The whole shower from Kin Teer took off six weeks ago! I couldn’t give a tinker’s curse or an itinerant’s malediction where the sun goes down on anybody from Kin Teer. There’s a couple of babbling blabbers here for sure, and they add to the place …
Are you saying that you heard nothing about my sister Nell’s will? … Not a word … How could you with your itchy langer out trying to go to England? … That’s all you heard about Fireside Tom? … He’s still in his old shack … He drops in to us every time he’s heading down for the pension. A good man! That’s great news … He sometimes gives my daughter-in-law the pension book to get it for him! Good for him! … He’s not as sprightly as he was … Oh, you mean he also gets Nell and Blotchy Brian’s Maggie to get it too! Shag that! …
Little Kitty’s back is bad again, you say. I hope there’s no one else laid up who won’t be laid down before her in the cemetery clay! … Biddy Sarah is also very crocked. Another one of them. She wouldn’t come to keen me, the bloodsucking ghoul! …
You never gave a toss about anything except going to England … You’d go to England just because the gang from Shan Kyle went there two months ago! Anyone who copied the knackers from Shan Kyle never came to any good. My son’s wife, she’s still a bit sickly, all the time …
God be good to us! … She was fighting with Blotchy Brian’s daughter! … Fighting with her! … She went up to Nell’s house, straight in the door, and grabbed Blotchy Brian’s daughter by the scruff of the neck! You’re having me on! … Oh, so it wasn’t Little Kitty who said that Maureen’s college outfit was bought in Jack Chape’s. What was Breed Terry on about so, the whore? … Oh, it was Blotchy Brian’s daughter who said it first to Little Kitty! She always had the bad word. The bitch’s daughter! And my daughter-in-law scrawled her hair out, right in her own house … She flattened her on the ground! I never thought she had the guts, Toejam Nora’s daughter! …
She chucked Nell into the fire! Threw Nell into the fire! I love her! She’s brilliant! A good one! A good one! You’re sure she fucked Nell into the fire? … Nell then tried to defend Blotchy Brian’s daughter, and my son’s one threw her into the fire also! May God give her good health and happiness! She’s a good one! My life on you, ya good thing! That’s the first bit of good news that has raised my spirits in the cold rag hole of this earth.
They were beating the shit out of one another until Patrick went up and hauled his wife back home! God’s curse on him that he didn’t leave them at it! …
Ara, who knows but the gang from Tawney Lawr mightn’t be better off at home. A mob of mangy maggots! They won’t leave a crumb after them in England. But hey, my daughter-in-law and Blotchy Brian’s Maggie, they’ll be in court after this …
What, they won’t? What do you mean? If she went into the Bright City and persuaded Mannix the Counsellor that her good name had been ruined, she wouldn’t be long in putting a big hole in Nell’s money. Maybe ’twould cost her five or six hundred pounds …
Nell called in the priest to fix it up! She would, wouldn’t she … That’s what Patrick said about them: “Don’t take a blind bit of notice of women clawing and clattering one another,” he said. Nell got him to say that. She misses me, the withered old gummy crone! …
What’s that you said? That my daughter-in-law is very busy these days … She’s bursting her guts working since the fight … She’s never sick or slacking now! That’s a big change! And I was certain she’d be here any day now … Up at the crack of dawn, you say … Out in the fields and in the bogs … She’s raising piglets again! Good for her! They had three or four calves at the last fair! Good for them! Sound man, now you’re talking, I’m telling you … And you said you heard your mother say that the whole road was swarming with chickens! How many clutches do you think she had this year? … It’s not your fault, of course, that you know nothing about that …