— They have a fantastic team. Everybody says that even if they were hobbling around on crutches, they’d win the All-Ireland. Green Flag said as much the other day …
— Cannon will bite their arses that day …
— Cannon is only a sub!
— A sub! A sub! If that’s the case what are you on about? They’ll never win. They won’t win. They …
— They have a brilliant bunch of young players. The best. They’ll win, I’m telling you. Wait and see yourself …
— Come on, put a cork in it! What’s the point in blabbing on about it? I’m telling you that those young players aren’t worth frog spawn without Cannon! What’s the point of screaming “They’ll win! They’ll win!” …
— Listen now, neighbour, in all fairness, you’d think that you’d prefer that they’d be beaten with Cannon than to win without him! Being right is a great thing. Cannon was to blame for most of it in 1941. I was never as pissed off leaving Croke Park as I was that day …
— That’s the truth, Billy …
— Billy was always obliging …
— He’d always be thrilled to bring you some good news …
— And even if it was bad news, I swear that all his gabble and chatter was a kind of a safety belt …
— Who laid Fireside Tom out, Billy? …
— Nell and Blotchy Brian’s daughter, and Tommy’s wife, Kate …
— And who keened him, Billy? …
— Nell and all the local women, Biddy. But yourself and Little Kitty were sorely missed. Everyone was saying: “May God have mercy on Little Kitty and Biddy Sarah, the poor creature. Didn’t they just love to lay a man out and to keen him! We’ll never see the likes of them again …”
— Your good health, Billy! …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, who gives a toss who lays you out or keens you! …
— … Hitler is still hammering them to bits, good on him!
— Easy now, neighbour, easy …
— What do you mean, easy! Shouldn’t he be landed in England by now! …
— Not so, neighbour, but the English and the Yanks are both back in France …
— They are, yea! You’re just spouting lies, Billy the Postman! This is not just bullshitting about sport, you know …
— It’s months now, neighbour, since I had a chance to read a newspaper, so I can’t tell you exactly how things are. Everyone said that time that the English and the Yanks would never get a toehold in France on D-Day …
— Why Billy, dear, why do you think that they would? They were driven back leaving heaps of skulls on the beach, driven into the balls of the devil, into the sea …
— I suppose that was it, neighbour …
— And Hitler pursued them this time — something he should have done that time at Dunkerque — and he’s in England now! Der Tag! I think there’s isn’t a single Englishman left there now …
— Non! Non, mon ami! C’est la liberation qu’on a promise. La liberation! Les Gaullistes et Monsieur Churchill avaient raison …
— Hoora, you gutty, you plonker, you blind bollix!
— C’est la liberation! Vive la France! Vive la République Française! Vive la patrie! La patrie sacrée! Vive de Gaulle! …
— I suppose you heard, Frenchie, my neighbour, about the stuff that was in the papers about your heroics: you were presented with the Cross …
—Ça n’est rien, mon ami. C’est sans importance. Ce qui compte, c’est la liberation. Vive la France! La France! La patrie sacrée! …
— Hoora, do you see how the little shit is all over the place! He’s even better than the Old Master …
— Come here, I want you, Billy, was there any talk at all that we’d get the English market back?
— Do you hear again the midget mewling?
— The English market will be fine, neighbour …
— Do you think so, Billy?
— No doubt about it, my neighbour. No hassle. I’m telling you that the English market will be hunky dory again …
— God be good to you, Billy! You have taken the bitter dart out of my heart with your beautiful talk. You’re certain it will be alright? I have a bit of land up on the top of the town …
— … It’s published, you know, your book of poetry …
— The Yellow Stars! Oh, Billy, my dear Billy, it can’t be true …
— I didn’t see it myself, but the Postmistress’s daughter told me as much … Don’t worry about it, neighbour. Your book will be published soon too, before too long …
— But do you think it might, Billy? …
— I’m certain it will, neighbour.
— You know something the rest of us don’t, so, Billy?
— Ah, sure, I’d hear bits and pieces, you know the way it is, neighbour. I got to know a lot of people round aboutish. The Postmistresses’s daughter … Ah, come off it Master, cool it now! Take it easy! … Master, please! …
— Have a bit more manners than that, Master! …
— There’s lots and loads of money to be made in England still, Billy, isn’t there? …
— Not as much as before, good neighbour. Scraping through can be hard enough. The crowd from Shana Kill, Clogher Savvy, and Bally Donough are all back home …
— Taking their ease in the superior nettles of Bally Donough will do them the power of good …
— … Your own son, his wife, and two children, they’re back at home also …
— Now you’re telling it, Billy!
— Well done and good for you, neighbour! By the holy finger itself! …
— And did he bring a black wife home with him?
— Yes, of course, and two children too …
— But, come on now, Billy! Tell me the pure unadulterated truth. Are they as black as they say? Are they as black as the Earl’s own little house black?
— Don’t worry about that, neighbour. Not a bit like that …
— Are they as black as Top of the Road after he’s been stuck up a sooty chimney? …
— Ah no, really, nothing as bad as that.
— As black as Big Nob Knobbly Knacker? …
— Don’t worry about it, neighbour, nothing like that …
— As black as Baba Paudeen’s fur coat after she visited Caitriona? …
— Shut your hole, you grabber!
— As black as Blotchy Brian sweating stew after a night’s pissup? …
— Blotchy Brian was as happy as a pig in shit coming up before the judge after he went to see the geyser in Dublin, as happy as one of those saints you see in the window of the church …
— Blotchy Brian sweating after a night’s piss-up. About as black as that, yes …
— Well, in that case, they’re hardly niggers at all …
— The kids aren’t as black as the mother, then …
— Did they have to call on the priest for the grandmother? …
— Too true, neighbour, she was in a bad way. She didn’t want to let them into the house at all, at all. All the neighbours gathered around, and many of them wanted to stone them and to drive them away. But anyway, to make a long story short, they were brought over to the priest who splattered them with holy water and dipped them into the font, and the granny was happy after that … She has great fun with them now. She even brings them to Mass every Sunday …
— If that’s the way it is, Billy, then I’m not really dead at all. I thought her heart would break into little bits …
— Come here, like, have you any news at all about that youngfella of mine, Billy? …
— John Willy, that youngfella of yours is a real cute hoor and knows which side his bread is buttered on. He bought a colt the other day …