—And Road-End. His old lady put a hearse under him for fear his poor bowels would be shaken …
—Upon my soul, then, as you say …
—Everybody in Road-End’s house was in the Legion …
—And his son is going out with the priest’s sister …
—His whole household stole my turf …
—And my lump-hammer …
—You’re insulting the faith. You’re black heretics …
—… You’ll be accepted. The Big Butcher was at your funeral, wasn’t he? …
—Tomás Inside would be a good Rotary man. He’s a friend of culture.
—And Big Brian. He was in Dublin …
—And Nell Pháidín. She meets many Rotary people. Lord Cockton …
—Permission to speak. Permission …
—Seáinín Liam will give the first lecture to Rotary. “My Heart” …
—Cite then: “Money-lending” …
—Dotie: “The Fair Plains of East Galway” …
—Máirtín Pockface: “Bedsores” …
—The Big Master then: “Billyboy the Post” …
—This fellow over here: “The Direct Method for Twisting Ankles” …
—Caitríona Pháidín: “Big Brian’s Beauty” …
—Oh! Flat-footed, miserable Brian …
—Red-haired Tom then …
—I’ll say nothing. I won’t indeed. Nothing …
—… You’ll give a lecture on the prophets of Donagh’s Village …
—And you, on the flea-bitten hillocks of your own village …
—… Honest, Dotie, there was never a day that I wasn’t keen on culture. Whoever told you I took it up here is prejudiced, I assure you. When I was in Brightcity as a young girl, I was no sooner home from the convent and finished with my dinner than I was out again in search of cultural activity. That’s when I met the sailor …
—You never told me, Nóra, that you were attending the convent …
—De grâce, Dotie. I often told you, but you have forgotten. You understand I was putting the finishing touches to my education in Brightcity, and I was lodging with a relation of mine, a widow-woman called Corish …
—You’re a damned liar, Nóirín Filthy-Feet. She was no relation of yours. You were in service with her. It was a great wonder she allowed yourself and your stock of fleas into her house at all. But the very minute she found out you were hanging around with sailors she whipped you home with a nettle to your buttocks, to Mangy Field of the Ducks, of the Puddles, of the Fleas and of the Filthy Feet. I wouldn’t mind, but to say she was going to school in Brightcity …
—Don’t let on you hear her at all …
—My goodness me, Dotie, that strap isn’t entitled to talk at all. Lying there without a cross or inscription over her, like a letter posted with no address …
—Be thankful to that idiot of a brother of yours, Nóirín …
—Your son is at home and he can’t afford to pay the insurance you took out on Tomás Inside. And the very moment Tomás found out, he left your house and went to Nell …
—Oh! Oh! …
—Whether it’s O or P, that’s the truth. Your son Pádraig has let his land to Nell, and all the cattle on your holding now are Nell’s rent-cattle …
—Oh! Oh! Oh! …
—If he goes on much longer the way he is, he’ll have to sell the land. A man is hardly worthy of a wife if he can’t afford to keep her. I gave him my daughter as I didn’t want to be a hindrance to pitiable love. That was the only reason he got her. I was always romantic. But romance or whatever, if I’d realized what I was doing and knew exactly where she was going …
—… What’s that? … You’re a corpse … A new corpse … I won’t have any dealing with you in this grave. A corpse’s grave is his castle. There’s respect here for the right of private property …
—… Be off with you! By the oak of this coffin, you’ll not come down on top of me. I’m going to join Rotary …
—… Peace is what I want, not company. I’m going to join Rotary …
—… You’d hurt me. I’ve already got bedsores …
—… My heart is faulty …
—… Be off with you out of this grave. I’ll not tell you a thing. Graves have holes. Wouldn’t you think you’d easily recognise all of us? We have crosses over us. Even so, they dug your grave too far over towards mine. The drink! Get over there to Caitríona Pháidín. Over to Caitríona! …
—She has a great welcome for every new corpse. She’ll give you plenty of gossip …
—It’s down on top of her they throw anybody they can’t find a place for in the graveyard …
—You must have trodden on the stray sod, not to have gone over to her. There’s no cross over her …
—And she won’t be accepted in Rotary …
—Red-haired Tom! Red-haired Tom! Muraed! Cite! Bríd Terry! Máirtín Pockface! Seáinín Liam! Red-haired Tom! Red-haired Tom has got his speech back! I’ll explode!
Interlude Eight
THE FIRING OF THE CLAY
1
I am the Trump of the Graveyard. Let my voice be heard. It must be heard …
The ploughed red earth is unwelcoming to its lining of ice. The kernel of the clay has an acid-sour taste. For this is the meadow of tears …
The new suit of Spring is being fashioned for the surface of the earth. The gentle small stalks of late corn and the faint green smile that is springing up all over the bare clay are the basting thread in this suit. The rays of sunlight—like refined gold on the epaulettes of the clouds—are its hems. Its buttons are the clusters of primroses in the welcoming arms of hedgerows, in the recesses of every fence and in the shade of every crag. Its lining is the love-song of the lark, coming to the ploughman from the vault of the firmament through the light April haze, and the thicket that has become a gentle harp with the coupling song of blackbirds. The joyful gambolling of the boy who received the reward for finding a newborn lamb on the rugged uplands, and the cheerful tune of the boatman peaking his sail in the welcoming weft of the wavelets, are the seams of hope that stitch the transient beauty of eye and of heart to eternal glory, which is the reverse side of this perishable tunic of land, sea and sky …
But the strands the tailor is threading through the eye of his needle are now a pallid rainbow. The scissors of the gale are severing the buttons. The cloth is being chewed up by the smooth-cutting sickle. The golden hem is fraying in the field where the grain is falling from the head …
The fairy whirlwind reaps havoc in the haggard, sweeping off every ear of corn, wisp of hay and flake of chaff left over from last year’s harvest.
There is a tremor in the milking girl’s song as she returns from the summer pasture. She knows the cattle will soon be removed to the old milking place by the homestead …
Because Spring and Summer have slunk furtively away. They have been hoarded by the squirrel in its hovel beneath the tree. They have disappeared on the wings of swallows and sunshine …
I am the Trump of the Graveyard. Let my voice be heard! It must be heard …
2
—… “Hoh-roh, my Mary,1 your wares and your bags and belts,
And my Stack-of-Barley La-ady …”
—What’s this? Beartla Blackleg, upon my word, and he singing away to himself. You’re welcome, Beartla!
—“Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags and belts …”
—Upon my soul, ’tis fine and cheerful you are, my good Blackleg friend …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds,2 who have I here?
—Caitríona. Caitríona Pháidín …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona. We’re going to be neighbours again so …
—They’re not burying you in the right grave, Beartla.
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, sure it doesn’t matter to a person where his heap of old bones is thrown. “Hoh-roh, my Mary …”
—It seems death did
n’t upset you too much, Beartla. What was your cause of death?
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, haven’t you heard that the steed can’t keep its speed forever, as Big Brian said about …
—Oh! The boastful scold!
—Devil the cause at all, but lying down with no life left. Bloody tear and ’ounds, but isn’t that cause enough! “Hoh-roh …”
—How are they blooming up there, Beartla? …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, just as you’ve always seen them. Gaining one and losing one and one in between. Isn’t that how it is and that’s how it has to be, like a gun being loaded and then being fired, as Big Brian said …
—Oh! Faith then, he’s the gunner, alright …
—He hasn’t stirred out, Caitríona, since he went to see Red-haired Tom after Tom was anointed.3 He was grief-stricken after Tom …
—They were well matched, the red-haired sourpuss and the snotty streak of misery …
—I was listening to him that night giving Tom advice up in the room. “Bloody tear and ’ounds,” he said, “if you should take a tour over there, Red-haired Tom, and if you should meet herself in your travels, take care you don’t tell her anything. Unless she’s greatly changed she’ll be looking for gossip …”
—But who is “herself,” Beartla?
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, it wouldn’t be right or proper for me to answer a question like that …
—Oh! Beartla, for the love of God, don’t make a Red-haired Tom of yourself. That’s how he’s going on ever since he came into the graveyard clay …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, if there’s going to be trouble let there be trouble. Yourself. Who else, Caitríona?
—Myself, Beartla? Me looking for gossip! He’s a damned liar. That man’s big mouth will keep getting him into trouble till death puts its latch-pin in his tongue …
—I’d say that won’t be too long now, Caitríona.
—The devil’s welcome to him …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, don’t you know he’s a dying man when he didn’t have the courage to go to Jack the Scológ’s funeral! …
—Ababúna búna! Jack the Scológ’s funeral! Jack the Scológ’s funeral! Jack! Jack! Spouting lies you are, son of Blackleg …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t he here for the past three weeks!
—Alas! and woe forever! Jack the Scológ here that long and Muraed and the others didn’t tell me. Oh! This place has been turned upside-down by Nóirín Filthy-Feet, Beartla. Guess what she’s planning now? … Rotary! …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Rotary! “Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags …”
—Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ is here! Easily known he wouldn’t live long. The St. John’s Gospel …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, the St. John’s Gospel, Caitríona! …
—The St. John’s Gospel, wheedled out of the priest by that pussface, what else? Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ in the graveyard for the past three weeks and I didn’t know. Those boobies here wouldn’t tell a person anything, especially since that cursed Election. Seáinín Liam the dullard and Bríd Terry the strap and Red-haired Tom the sourpuss would all have been bundled down in the one grave with me. Jack! Jack the Scológ …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, sure it doesn’t matter to a person—unless he wants to be silly about it!—who’s going to share a grave with him. “Hoh-roh, my Mary …”
—I’ll bet Nell was at her boastful best the day of the funeral! Showing off and capers, and not the slightest bit of pity for the poor creature who was laid out. She buried him in the Pound Plot, of course? …
—In a grave beside Siúán the Shop …
—That slut, Siúán the Shop. Poor Jack has a bad article beside him. That sharp-tongued jade will slander him. But what would mat-haired Nell care but to throw him down in any old hole …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, didn’t she get a dry pound grave for him beside Siúán the Shop and Peadar the Pub; didn’t she put a hearse under him; wasn’t there plenty of everything at the wake and funeral, except that she didn’t let anyone fall down drunk; wasn’t there a High Mass for him, as there was for Peadar the Pub and for Siúán the Shop; four or five priests singing, and the Earl above on the gallery with Lord Cockton and that other fowler who comes there …
Bloody tear and ’ounds, what else could she have done? …
—She’s still very fond of the priests and the Lords. But I’ll wager any bet she didn’t shed as much as a tear for the poor man. Arrah, herself and Big Brian’s daughter didn’t give a damn but to get the poor creature out of the house, out of their way …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, herself and Big Brian’s daughter keened him tearfully. And everybody says they never heard a finer outburst from Bid Shorcha …
—Bid Shorcha! I thought that sponger was confined to her bed now …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, she is too! Didn’t Big Brian say about herself and Little Cáit and Billyboy the Post: “The priest has rubbed so much oil on those three,” he said, “that there won’t be a drop left for us when we need it …”
—Indeed, that streak of misery Brian doesn’t deserve any oil! And Bid Shorcha came to Nell? …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t Nell send a motor car to fetch herself and Little Cáit! But Cáit decided to walk …
—The scent of the corpse, what else? …
—“Bloody tear and ’ounds,” she said, as she was laying Jack out, “if I were to go on the bier-poles tomorrow myself I couldn’t but come, seeing who sent for me.”
—Bid Shorcha the sponger! Little Cáit the grinner! They went to Nell but they wouldn’t come to decent people at all. I wouldn’t begrudge it to Jack the Scológ, the poor creature, only for that other dishevelled little bitch. Jack the Scológ! Jack …
—It won’t be long till somebody will have to keen Bid Shorcha herself. Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t she fall on her way home from Jack’s funeral and didn’t they have to send the motor car back to the house with her again …
—Drunk! As she often was …
—She took ill. She didn’t get up since. “Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags and belts …”
—Has Nell herself any notion of coming here?
—She says she’s not well. But bloody tear and ’ounds for a story, she came to see me, and I think I never saw her looking so young.
—That’s because she’s delighted she got Jack shifted. Jack! Jack …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, isn’t it easy for her, with a motor car under her backside to go wherever she wants …
—In Lord Cockton’s motor car. Hasn’t she little decency or shame, to be off gallivanting! Jack the Scológ …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, she doesn’t have to, Caitríona. She has a car of her own!
—A car of her own?
—The only regret I had about leaving life was that I didn’t get a ride in it. Herself and Peadar had promised to bring me anywhere in the county I wanted, but bloody tear and ’ounds, I lay back with no life left! …
—Ababúna! It can’t be that the motor car is her own, Son of Blackleg! …
—Her own and her son Peadar’s. Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, didn’t you hear she bought a car for Peadar?
—Oh! She didn’t! She didn’t, Beartla Blackleg …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, she did. He’s not fit for hard work on account of his leg. He’ll never put much strain on it, even though you wouldn’t notice any lameness in his step. He’s earning great money with the motor car, bringing people places in a hurry.
—I suppose there’s no end to the noise she makes with it going past our house. Amn’t I lucky I’m not alive, Beartla …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, and she wears a hat any day she travels far from home! …
—Oh! Bear
tla! Beartla Blackleg! A hat …
—A hat as fancy as the Earl’s wife wears …
—I’m absolutely convinced, Beartla, that she has charmed some of the money out of Baba …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, of course she has, and for the past four months! Two thousand pounds!
—Two thousand pounds! Two thousand pounds, Beartla Blackleg! …
—Two thousand pounds, Caitríona! Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t that how she bought the motor car, and isn’t she going to put a grand big window into the church! …
—She has good reason to be thankful to the priest. But I’d have sworn on the book, Beartla, that Baba wouldn’t take her claws off her money till she died! …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t she dead a long while! Nell got a thousand before she died, and another thousand since. She has some odd hundreds to get yet, and she’ll hand them in to the bank down there to be spent on the fellow who’s going to be a priest …
—Ababúna! What my Pádraig will get won’t cover the palm of his hand …
—Some people say he’ll get a lot, but that he won’t get as much as Nell. Bloody tear and ’ounds, he’s so easy-going that he doesn’t query it! …
—He’s been deluded by Nell.
—“Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags and belts …”
—Oh! Good God Almighty! Baba’s will. Poor Jack, like a burnt stick, thrown out in the refuse, and her son kept alive by St. John’s Gospel. A new road up to her house. Her son’s son going to be a priest. The pussface building a slate-roofed house. A motor car. Tomás Inside’s land. Jack …
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, nobody has Tomás Inside’s land.
—But isn’t he staying in Nell’s?
—Bloody tear and ’ounds, he is not, not for a long time. He’s in your Pádraig’s house, and Pádraig’s cattle are on his land. He didn’t like the gentry who frequented Nell’s. “By the docks, they’re not half as generous as they’re made out to be,” he told Pádraig. “I wasn’t able to sleep a wink up there. Motor cars roaring outside from night till morn; chopping and hammering and blasting from morn till night. Aren’t they badly off with their slate-roofed houses! By the docks, look at me, and not a dry spot for the bed in my cabin, where the drop wouldn’t hit me between my gob and my eye …”
Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille Page 25