— I haven’t actually a clue, neighbour, I only know he has a summons …
— The gammy teeth of the devil ride him! He’s just a little brush in the huge sweep of Tim Top of the Road’s filching fingers! …
— Your wife has given them another summons, this time about their cows trespassing on your land …
— Yes, of course! Overnight! Good for her! She’ll do the job now, I’m telling you! Isn’t it a pity that the eldest guy hasn’t been thrown out on his head to the four winds, and some class of a young thing hauled in by the second boy to look after all the land! Do you think, Billy, that Tommy gave back the spade that he borrowed to lift the feed of new spuds? …
— I couldn’t tell you that now, neighbour … To make a long story short now, neighbour, the Top of the Roads are whacked with the law these days. To tell the truth, I thought that the priest was like somebody whose lapdog had taken a bite out of him last Sunday. He was up early in the morning, and he caught a gang snitching his own turf. They say it was the Top of the Road’s gang what done it …
— Even though they were licking his eyebrows …
— I don’t actually think, neighbour, that the priest would take the trouble to put an umbrella between the Top of the Road’s gang and a drop of rain, especially now that the son got six months in prison …
— Tim Top of the Road’s son? …
— Tim Top of the Road’s son, seriously! You’re spouting lies? …
— And they nearly gave another six months to Tim Top of the Road’s old one for receiving stolen goods …
— My seaweed on the shore, certainly! …
— No, it wasn’t that this time, neighbour, but he cleaned out Lord Cockton’s car, the whole lot, fishing gear, his gun and stuff. He broke into the Earl’s house in the middle of the night and made off with his dinner jacket, tennis shorts, gold watches, and ornamental cigarette cases. And then a couple of thousand fags from Huckster Joan’s, and he sold them for three pence each to the young straps from Bally Donough. They were pissed off with the clay pipes …
— More bad luck to Huckster Joan’s daughter! …
— And the Earl! …
— And the young ones from Bally Donough! …
— And Tim Top of the Road’s son, the clot. Son of a gun, I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve always been saying he deserves it! He has had it nice and easy with his …
— He stole the priest’s sister’s pants too, but nobody said anything about that. John Willy’s son and some of the young scuts from Shana Kill saw Top of the Road’s daughter wearing them on the bog, but she had some kind of a skirt over it …
— That sack slapper that my son is knocking around with … That’s her! She’ll be sewn into those pants now so as to get a rise out of the older guy …
— The priest’s sister, Billy, it upset her that Tim Top of the Road’s son was sent to prison, didn’t it?
— Ara, you know full well that it did, Breed! …
— Listen, Breed, my good neighbour, it never even darkened the slightest furrow on her brow. “What good is a man in prison to me?” she asks. “Top of the Road’s son is an old impotent worrywart …”
— She’ll marry the Master from Derry Lough now, so? …
— The Master from Derry Lough is just another one of her exes for a long while. She’s hooked up with some Scottish dude in Shana Kill now, and she spends her time drawing pictures. He wears a bit of a kilt …
— How’s that for you! A bit of a kilt. And tell me now, Billy, confidentially like, does she wear the pants when she’s out with him? …
— Not at all, Breed Terry, just a skirt. Top of the Road’s son stole the best pants she had — the stripy one …
— The pants that Fireside Tom snotted the spit on? …
— While we’re talking about Fireside Tom, the Postmistress’s daughter told me that Paddy Caitriona … Easy now, Master! Cool down, Master! … Back off, Master! … I never ever opened one of your letters, Master … Listen to me, Master. Two dogs f …
— A bit of balance, now Master. What was that she said about my Patrick, Billy? …
— That he got the insurance money on Fireside Tom, and that Nell got a nice little nest egg from Jack …
— Good for you, Billy, my comrade in arms! If you’d believe Nora Johnny’s viperous tongue you’d think that Patrick never paid that insurance after I died! Since I came here, I’m the receptacle for every single spit she squirts out of her slobby gob. Do you hear that, sponger Johnny? God be good to you Billy, tell her that — tell swamp slut Johnny — tell her that Patrick got …
6.
— God would punish us for saying something like that, Caitriona …
— But it’s the truth, Jack …
— Not so, Caitriona. I was very poorly for years. She brought me to every single doctor who was any good in the Fancy City. An English doctor who used to come fishing down our way about eight years ago told me to the day exactly how long I would live. “You’ll live until,” he said …
— … “Yea,” I says myself. “Locked up in my body …”
— … “My ankle is gone again,” he says, “By the hairy balls of Galen …”
— … You’d never really believe, Caitriona, my good neighbour, how much I owe to your Paddy. Not a single Sunday would pass but himself and his wife would come to visit me …
— The Toejam trotter crowd …
— Howandever, Caitriona, neighbour, there isn’t any bit of earth that doesn’t have some kind of weed. Look at the change that came over the Old Master there! You wouldn’t have met a nicer man on the pilgrimage to Knock than him …
— But did you see the way that she and that suet brain Nell got me, Billy? They got St. John’s Gospel from the priest and I got dumped down into this casket thirty years too soon. They did the same dirty trick on poor Jack …
— God will not forgive us …
— That’s only all old guff, Caitriona. If I was you I wouldn’t believe a word of it …
— Believe it, Billy, even if it’s all only old guff, as you say. The priest is able to …
— I believed a lot of that stuff too, Caitriona, neighbour. I did really, even though you mightn’t think it. But I asked a priest once — he was a very learned priest — and do you know what he said to me? He told me something I should have known ages ago only that the old guff was still stuck in my mind. “All the St. John Gospels in the whole wide world wouldn’t keep you alive, Billy the Postman,” he said, “when it’s God’s will to call you home.”
— I find it hard to believe that now, Billy …
— Another priest said the exact same thing to my wife — to the Schoolmistress — Caitriona. He’s a very holy priest, Caitriona, the two eyes in his head are bursting out of him with holiness. The Mistress did every single pattern and pilgrimage in Ireland and Aran for me … Take it easy, now Master! Back off a minute! … Stop making that racket! What could I have done about it? … “You should make the pilgrimages,” he said, “but you never know when God is ready to perform a miracle …”
— But a pilgrimage isn’t the same as St. John’s Gospel, Billy …
— I know that, Caitriona, but wouldn’t St. John’s Gospel be a miracle too? And if God wanted to keep someone alive, why would he have to take another in his place? You don’t think for a minute that God in his heaven has as much red tape as the Post Office, do you? …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, anyway, isn’t that exactly what Blotchy Brian said …
— … “Do you think this is ‘The War of the Two Foreigners’?” is what I ask myself …