Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille
Page 20
“That’s why no Jew ever settled on Aran since …”
—The way I used to hear that story, Cóilí, from old people in our own village, was: the time the two Patricks7—Old Patrick, alias Cothraighe, alias Calprainnovetch, and Young Patrick—were travelling all over Ireland, trying to convert the country …
—The two Patricks. That’s heresy …
—… There was such a day, Peadar the Pub. Don’t deny it …
—… Master, dear, the bed was very hard. Very hard indeed under my poor buttocks, Master …
—I was bedridden for only a month myself, Máirtín Pockface, and I felt it hard enough …
—My back was completely blistered, Master. There wasn’t a shred of skin on my thighs …
—The devil a shred then, Máirtín, you poor thing …
—The devil a shred, indeed, Master, dear, and there was an old injury in my groin. The bed was …
—Let us forget the bed now till some other time. Tell me this now, Máirtín Pockface, how is … ?
—The Schoolmistress, Master. In the bloom of youth, so she is. Earning her salary in the school every day, Master, and caring for Billyboy from night till morning. She slips over from the school twice a day to see him, and they say she gets very little sleep, the creature, sitting on the edge of the bed and plying him with medicinal draughts …
—The hussy …
—Did you hear, Master, that she brought three doctors from Dublin to see him? Our own doctor comes to see him every day, but I’d say, Master, the same Billyboy has had it. He’s lying down for so long now that he must have bedsores …
—May his lying be long and without relief! The thirty-seven diseases of the Ark on him! Hardening of the tubes and stoppage on him! Graveyard club-foot and crossed bowel on him! May the pangs of labour consume him! May the Yellow Plague consume him! May the Plague of Lazarus consume him! May the Lamentations of Job consume him! May swine-fever consume him! May his arse be knotted! May cattle-pine, bog lameness,8 warbles, wireworm, haw and staggers consume him! May the squelching of Keelin daughter of Olltár consume him! May the Hag of Beare’s diseases of old age consume him! Blinding without light on him, and the blinding of Ossian on top of that! May the itch of the Prophet’s women consume him! Swelling of knees on him! The red tracks of a tail-band9 on him! The sting of fleas on him! …
—Bedsores are the worst of them all, Master dear …
—May bedsores consume him too, Máirtín Pockface.
—She does the Stations of the Cross for him, day and night, Master, and a visit to St. Ina’s Well once a week. She made the pilgrimage to Knock Shrine for him this year, the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, to St. Columkille’s Well, to St. Mary’s Well, to St. Augustine’s Well, to St. Enda’s Well, to St. Bernan’s Well, to St. Callen’s Well, to St. Mac Dara’s Well, to St. Bodkin’s Well, to Conderg’s Bed, to St. Brigid’s Well, to the Lake of the Saints and to Lough Derg …
—A pity I’m not alive! I’d empty St. Brickan’s Well10 against the thief, against the …
—She told me, Master, only for the shaky state of the world, she’d go to Lourdes.
“Lough Derg11 is worse than any of them, Máirtín Pockface,” she said. “My feet were bleeding for three days. But I wouldn’t mind all the suffering if it did poor Billyboy some good. I’d crawl on my hands and knees from here to …”
—The hussy …
—“I was broken-hearted after the Big Master,” she said …
—Oh, the hussy … If you only knew, Máirtín Pockface! But you wouldn’t understand. It would be no use telling you …
—Well, the way it is, Master, the bed was so hard …
—To hell with yourself and your bed, give it a rest! … Oh, the things that hussy said to me, Máirtín! …
—Faith then, I suppose so, Master …
—The two of us seated below by the Creek. The gentle lapping of the tide licking the flat rock at our feet. A young seagull encouraged by his father and mother on his first flutterings, like a shy bride making her way to the altar. Shadows of nightfall fumbling at the feet of the setting sun on the wave crests, like a blindfolded child groping to “tip” the other children. The plashing of the oars of a currach on its return from the fishing-ground. Holding her in my arms, Máirtín. A lock of her abundant tresses brushing against my cheek. Her arms around my neck. I reciting poetry:
“Glen Masan:
White its stalks of tall wild garlic.
Uneasy was our sleep
Above the long-maned firth of Masan.
“‘If ever you come, love, come discreetly.
Come to the door that makes no creaking.
If my father asks me who are your people,
I’ll tell him you are the wind in the treetops.’”
Either that or telling her love-stories, Máirtín …
—I know what you mean, Master …
—The Sons of Uisneach, Diarmuid and Gráinne, Tristan and Isolde, Strong Thomas Costelloe and Fair Oonagh McDermot Ogue, Carol O’Daly and Eleanor of the Secrets, The Red-Hot Kiss, The Powder-puff …
—I know what you mean, Master …
—I bought a motor car, Máirtín, for the sole purpose of taking her out. I could ill afford it but I didn’t begrudge it to her, all the same. We went together to films in Brightcity, to dances in Wood of the Oxen, to teachers’ meetings …
—Indeed you did, and you went the Mountain Road, Master. One day when I was fetching a cartload of turf, your car was by the roadside at the Steep Hillock and the two of you were over in the glen …
—We’ll forget about that till some other time, Máirtín Pockface …
—Faith then, I remember the day I got the form for the pension. Nobody in the house knew from the soles of the devil what it was. “The Big Master is our man,” says I. I went as far as Peadar the Pub’s and I stayed there till the pupils had gone home. Over I went then. When I got to the school gate there wasn’t a grunt or a groan from inside. “I left it too late,” said I, letting on to be mannerly. “He’s gone home.” I looked in through the window. Faith then, begging your pardon, Master, you were screwing her inside …
—I was not, I was not, Máirtín Pockface.
—Faith then, you were, Master, there’s nothing better than the truth …
—Had Dad, Master!
—You should be ashamed of yourself, Master.
—Who would think it, Bríd?
—Our children were going to school to him, Cite …
—If the priest had caught him, Siúán …
—It was Pentecost Monday, Máirtín Pockface. I had the day off. “You should come to Ross Harbour,” said I to her, after lunch. “The outing will do you good.” Off we went. That night in Ross Harbour I thought, Máirtín Pockface, I got to know the secret of her heart more than ever before … The long summer’s day was losing its light at long last. The pair of us were leaning on a rock, looking at the stars glittering in the sea …
—I know what you mean, Master …
—Looking at the candles being lit in houses on the headlands across the bay. Looking at the phosphorescence on the seaweed left by the receding tide. Looking at the Milky Way like bright sparkling dust out beyond the mouth of Galway Bay. That night, Máirtín Pockface, I felt I was part of the stars and of the lights, of the phosphorescence, of the Milky Way and of the fragrant sighing of sea and air …
—I know what you mean, Master. That’s how it was, I suppose …
—She told me, Máirtín Pockface, that her love for me was deeper than the sea; that it was more sincere and more certain than sunrise or sunset; that it was more constant than the ebbing or the flowing tide, than the stars or the hills, because it was there before tide, star or hill. She told me her love for me was eternity itself …
—She did, Master …
—She did, Máirtín Pockface. She did, upon my word!
… But hold on. I was on my death-bed, Máirtín Pockface. She came in after
doing the Stations of the Cross and she sat on the edge of the bed. She took my hand. She said if anything should happen to me that her life after me would not be life at all, and that her death would not be death to her if we both would die together. She swore and she promised, whether she lived for a long time or for short, that she’d spend it in mourning. She swore and she promised she’d never marry again …
—She did now, Master …
—By God she did, Máirtín Pockface! And after all that, see how the serpent was in her heart. I was only a year under the sod—a short miserable year compared to the eternity she promised me—and she was making promises to another man, with another man’s kisses on her mouth, and another man’s love in her heart. Me, her first love and husband, under the cold sods, and she in the arms of Billyboy the Post …
—In the arms of Billyboy the Post, then, Master! I saw them myself … There are many things one should turn a blind eye to, Master …
—And now he’s in my bed, and she giving him full and plenty, tending to him night and morning, going on pilgrimages for him, sending to Dublin for three doctors … Had she brought even one doctor from Dublin to me, I would have recovered …
—Would you believe what she said to me about you, Master? I called on her with a little bag of potatoes a week after you were buried. We spoke about you. “The Big Master is a great loss,” said I, “and the poor man had no cause to die. If he had gone to bed with that cold, minded himself, drank a few whiskeys, and sent for the doctor when it first came on …” “Do you know what it is, Máirtín Pockface?” she said. I’ll never forget the words she said, Master. “Do you know what it is, Máirtín Pockface, all the physicians of the Fianna wouldn’t cure the Big Master. He was too good for this life …” Yes indeed, Master, and she said another thing I never heard before. It’s probably some old saying, Master. “He whom the gods love, dies young …”
—The hussy! The hussy! The promiscuous little hussy …
—De grâce, Master. Watch your language. Don’t make a Caitríona Pháidín of yourself. The curate came in to her one day. He was new in the place. He didn’t know where Nell’s house was. “Nell, the bitch,” said Caitríona. Honest! …
—You Filthy-Feet damsel! You So-an’-so! … Muraed! …
5
—… He had Big Brian pestered every Friday when he was collecting the pension. “You’d better take out a bit of insurance on yourself soon, Briany,” the scoundrel would say. “Any day now you’ll be going the County Clare Way12 …”
—“There isn’t a thing in creation that creeping little scrounger wouldn’t take insurance on,” said Big Brian to me one Friday in the post office, “except Nell Pháidín’s little dog, that has a habit of sniffing around in Caitríona’s house whenever it passes up the boreen.”
—I was over there collecting the pension with Brian the day he was buried.
“The Insurance Man didn’t live long himself,” said I.
“That’s him gone west now, the windbag,” said Brian, “and if he goes up above, he’ll have the Man Above demented, droning on about that accident long ago, and trying to get him to insure his property of saints and angels against sparks from the Man Below. If the Man Below gets him, he’ll have him demented, pestering him to insure his few embers against the water-cocks of the Man Above. The best thing for both of them to do with the cheeky little leech would be to play Tomás Inside’s trick: every time he gets annoyed at Nell’s cattle coming onto his patch of land, he turns them in to Caitríona’s land, and Caitríona’s cattle in to Nell’s land …”
—Did you hear what he said when Road-End Man died? “By cripes, lads, St. Peter had better watch his keys now, or this new tenant of his will walk off with them …”
—Arrah, that’s nothing compared to what he said to Tomás Inside when Caitríona died:
“Tomás, you snow-white angel,” said he, “yourself and Nell and Baba and Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter will be visiting the harness-maker often, to get your broken wings mended, if God grants you to be on the same roost as herself. I myself have a very slim chance of getting any wings at all, I’d say. Caitríona wouldn’t consider my valuation high enough. But, by Dad, Tomás, you blessed dove, your wings would be quite safe if I managed to get any little lobster hole of a lodging near her …”
—Ababúna! Brian the wretch near me! God forbid tonight! Oh, what would I do? …
—What the Postmistress said about my death was—that she didn’t manage to open a single letter for days, as she had to attend to so many telegrams …
—My death was in the newspaper …
—My death was in two newspapers …
—Listen to this account from the Reporter about my death:
“He was a member of a well-known old local family. He played a prominent part in the national movement. He was a personal friend of Éamon de Valera’s …”
—This is the account that was in the Irishman about me:
“He came from a family that was well-respected in the locality. He joined Fianna Éireann13 as a child, and afterwards the Irish Volunteers.14 He was a close friend of Arthur Griffith’s …”
—… And Cóilí recited “The Tale of the Pullet that Laid on the Dung-heap” at your wake too.
—You’re a liar! What a story to tell at any decent wake! …
—Wasn’t I listening to him! …
—You’re a liar! You were not …
—… A row at your wake! A row where there was nobody but two old-age pensioners!
—And one of them as deaf as Tomás Inside, whenever Caitríona suggested he should come with her to see Mannion the Counsellor about the land.
—Yes indeed, and not a vessel in the house that wasn’t filled with holy water.
—There was a row at my wake …
—There was. Tomás Inside took exception to Big Brian telling him: “You’ve thrown back so much of Éamon of the Hill Field’s ‘fresh milk’ since you came in, Tomás, you should have enough for a churning by now.”
—I had two half-barrels at my wake …
—I had three half-barrels at my wake …
—You had indeed, Caitríona, three half-barrels at your wake. That’s the God’s honest truth, Caitríona. You had three—three fine big ones—and a splash of the waterworks of Éamon of the Hill Field as well … Old and all as I was, I drank twelve mugfuls of it myself. To tell you the truth, Caitríona, I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking that much if I’d known my heart was faulty. I said to myself, Caitríona, when I saw the lashings of porter: “This man would be better off buying a colt than making those loudmouths drunk …”
—You sourpuss! …
—They were nothing else. Some of them were stretched like hulks in everybody’s way. Peadar Nell fell into the bed you were laid out on, Caitríona. His injured leg couldn’t prop him up …
—The dirty sponger!
—That was nothing, till Bríd Terry’s son and Cite’s son began to trounce one another, and they broke the roundtable before they could be separated …
—Ababúna! …
—I went to separate them. Faith then, if I’d known the heart was faulty …
—… Indeed, it seemed to me you were laid out in a very common way, unless there was something wrong with my eyes …
—There must be something wrong with your eyes if you didn’t see the two crosses on my breast …
—There were two crosses and the Scapular Mantle on me …
—Whatever was or was not on me, Cite, there wasn’t a dirty sheet on me as there was on Caitríona …
—Ababúna! Don’t believe that little slut …
—… Your coffin was made by the little carpenter in Mangy Field. He made another one for Nóra Sheáinín and it was like a bird-trap …
—You had a carpenter-made coffin yourself as well …
—If I had, it wasn’t made by the Mangy Field botcher, but by a carpenter who served his full apprenticeship. He had his certificate
from the Tech.15 …
—My coffin cost ten pounds …
—I thought you had one of the eight-pound coffins like the one Caitríona had …
—You liar! you dolt! I had the best coffin in Tadhg’s …
—It was Little Cáit laid me out …
—It was Little Cáit laid me out too, and Bid Shorcha keened me …
—Indeed, she keened you badly. There’s some stoppage in Bid’s throat that doesn’t dissolve till she has her seventh glass. That’s when she starts singing “Let Erin Remember” …
—I think Caitríona Pháidín wasn’t keened at all, unless her son’s wife and Nell did a bout of it …
—… Six pounds, five shillings is all the altar-money that was collected at your funeral …
—I had ten pounds of altar-money.
—Hold on now till I see how much was collected at mine: 20 by 10 plus 19, equals 190 … plus 20, equals 210 shillings … equals 10 pounds, 10 shillings. Isn’t that right, Master? …
—Peadar the Pub had a big altar collection …
—And Nóra Sheáinín …
—Faith then, there was a big collection of altar-money at Nóra Sheáinín’s funeral. There would have been a big collection at my funeral too but nobody knew about it, I went off so suddenly. The heart, God help us! If only I’d been bedridden for a long time with bedsores …
—I would have had an even fourteen pounds, only for a dud shilling in the collection. It was only a halfpenny wrapped in silver cigarette paper. It was Big Brian noticed it when he felt the pig on the halfpenny. He says it was Caitríona put it there. Many is the bad shilling like that she left on altars. She wanted to be on every altar, which she couldn’t afford, the poor woman …
—You scrawny little liar …
—Oh, I forgive you, Caitríona. I wouldn’t mind at all, only for the priest: “They’ll be leaving their old teeth on the table for me soon,” he said.
—It was “Pól” here and “Pól” there from yourself and your daughter, Peadar the Pub, the time she played the parlour trick on the Gaelic Enthusiast. But there was no mention of Pól when it was time for you to put a shilling on my altar …