The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  Nell, was it … I nearly buried her. If I had lived just a tiny little bit more … That accident to her boy, that really shook her … A lorry hit him over near the Strand about a year or a year and a half ago, and it made bits of his hip. The hospital didn’t know whether he would live or die for about a week …

  O, you heard about it already, did you? … He spent another six months on the flat of his back … He hasn’t done a thing since he got home, just hobbling around on two crutches. Everyone thought he was a goner …

  He can’t do anything for the kids, Maggie, except for the eldest fucker and he’s a bollocks … that might be the case alright … Like his grandfather, same name Big Blotchy Brian, a total asshole. Who cares, but then, his grandma, Nell … Nell and her crowd never harvested anything for the last two years … That injury has really shagged the two of them, Nell and that Brian Maggie one. I got great satisfaction from that bitch. We had three times as many spuds as her this year.

  Ah, for God’s sake, Maggie Frances, wasn’t the road wide enough for him just as it was for everybody else to avoid the lorry? … Nell’s boy was thrown, Maggie. “I wouldn’t give you the steam of my piss,” the judge said … He let the lorry driver come to court in the meantime, but he didn’t allow Nell’s youngfella to open his mouth. He’s bringing it to the High Court in Dublin soon, but that won’t do him any good either … Mannix the lawyer told me that Nell’s crowd wouldn’t get a brass farthing. “And why would he,” he said, “wrong side of the road.” … No truer word, Maggie. Nell won’t get a hairy cent from the law. It’s what she deserves. I’m telling you, she won’t be going past our house so easily from now on singing “Ellenore Morune” …

  Ara, poor Jack isn’t that well either, Maggie. Sure, Nell never minded him one bit, nor did Blotchy Brian’s daughter since she went into their house … Isn’t Nell my own sister, Maggie, and why on earth would I not know? She never paid a blind bit of attention to Jack, and not a bit of it. She was wrapped up in herself. She didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone, apart from herself … I’m telling you, that’s the God’s honest truth, Jack suffered endlessly because of her, the slut … Fireside Tom, Maggie. Just as he always was … In his hole of a hovel all the time. But it will fall down on him someday soon … Ah, for God’s sake didn’t my Patrick go and offer to put some thatch on it … “Look, Pat,” I said to him, “you have absolutely no business sticking thatch on Tom’s wreck of a house. Nell can do it if she wants. And if she does so, then so will we” …

  “But Nell has nobody at all now since Peter’s leg was smashed,” said Pat.

  “Everybody has enough to do for himself,” I said, “everyone has to thatch their own place, even a kip like that prick Fireside Tom.”

  “But the house will collapse on him,” he says.

  “It can if it wants to,” I says, “Nell has enough on her plate without filling up Tom’s mouth with shite. That’s it, Pat, my boy, keep at it. Fireside Tom is like rats being drowned in a bath. He comes crawling to us to keep out of the rain” …

  Nora Johnny, is it? … It’s a queer thing to find out more about her here … I know far too much about her, and every single one of her breed and seed, Maggie … Listening to the Master every single day, is that it … The Old Master himself, the wretch … the Old Master reading to Nora Johnny! … Nora Johnny! … ah, for Christ’s sake … he doesn’t think much of himself, does he, the master … Reading stuff to Nora Johnny … Of course, that one has nothing between her ears. Where would she get it from? A woman that never darkened the door of a school, unless it was to vote … I’m telling you it’s a queer world if a schoolmaster spends his time talking to the likes of her … What’s that, Maggie? … that he fancies her … I don’t know who she is … If her daughter lived in the same house as him for the last sixteen years, as she has here, he sure as hell would know who she was then. But I’ll tell him yet … I’ll tell him about the sailor, and the rest of it …

  —“Johnny Martin had a daughter

  As big as any other man …”

  —Five-eight’s forty; five-nine’s forty-five, five ten’s … sorry sir, I don’t remember …

  —“As I roved out to the market, seeking for a woman to find”

  —I had twenty, and I played the ace of hearts. I took the king from your partner. Mrukeen topped me with the jack. But I had a nine, and my partner out of luck …

  —But I had the queen, and was defending …

  —Mrukeen was going to play the five of trumps, and he’d beat your nine. Wasn’t that what you were going to do, Mrukeen?

  —But then the mine blew our house up into the air …

  —But we’d have won the game anyway …

  —No way. If it wasn’t for the mine …

  —… A lovely white-headed mare. She was gorgeous …

  —I can’t hear a thing, Maggie. O my God almighty and His precious mother … a white-headed mare … The five of trumps … I can’t listen to this …

  —I was fighting for the Republic …

  —Who asked you anyway …

  —He stabbed me …

  —Then he didn’t stab you in the tongue anyway. Bugger the lot of you. My head is totally screwed up since I came here. Oh, Maggie, if you could just slink away. In the other world, if you didn’t like someone’s company you could just leave them there, and shag off somewhere else. But unfortunately, the dead can’t budge an inch in the dirty dust …

  3.

  … And after all that they shagged me into the Fifteen Shilling Place. After all my warnings … Nell had a grin on her as wide as a barn door! She’ll surely get buried in the Pound Place now. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it was she put Patrick up to sticking me in the Fifteen Shilling Place instead of the Pound. She wouldn’t have the neck to darken the door of my house, only that I was dead. She didn’t put a foot on my floor since the day I married … that is, if she didn’t sneak in unknown to me while I was dying.

  But, Patrick is a bit of a simpleton. He’d give in to her crap. And his wife would agree: “To tell God’s truth, but you’re right Nell. The Fifteen Shilling Place is good enough for anybody. We’re not millionaires …”

  The Fifteen Shilling Place is good enough for anyone. She would say that. She would say that, wouldn’t she? Nora Johnny’s One. I’ll get her yet! She’ll be here for sure at her next delivery. I’ll get her yet, I’m telling you. But I’ll get her mother first—Nora Johnny herself—in the meantime.

  Nora Johnny. Over from Gort Ribbuck. Gort Ribbuck of the Puddles. It was always said they milk the ducks there. Doesn’t she just fancy herself. Now she’s learning from the Master. It was about time for her to start anyway. No schoolmaster in the world would speak to her, except in the graveyard, and even then he wouldn’t if he knew who she was …

  It is her daughter’s fault that I’m here twenty years too soon. I was washed out for the last six months looking after her mangy children. She’s sick when she’s expecting a child, and sick when she’s not. The next one will take her away. Take her away, no doubt about it … She was no good for my Patrick anyway, however he would get on without her … You couldn’t talk to him. “It’s the only one thing I’m going to do,” he said, “I’ll feck off to America and I’ll leave the place go to hell, seeing as you don’t give a toss about it …”

  That was when Baba was home from America. She did everything she could to get him to marry Blotchy Brian’s Maggie. She really took a fancy to that little ugly hussy of Blotchy Brian’s for some reason. “She looked after me well when I was in the States,” she said, “especially when I was very sick, and all my own people miles away. Blotchy Brian’s Maggie is an able little smarty, and she has a bit put aside herself, as well as what I could give her. I had more time for you, Caitriona,” she says, “than for any other of my sisters. I’d prefer to leave my money in your house than to anyone else belonging to me. I’d love to see your own Paddy get on in the world. You have two choices now,” she sa
id to him, “I’m in a hurry back to America, but I won’t go until I see Blotchy Brian’s young girl fixed up here, as she is having no luck at all over there. Marry her, Paddy. Marry Brian’s Maggie and I won’t see you stuck. I have more than enough to see me out. Nell’s son has asked her already. Nell herself was talking to me about her only the other day. She’ll marry him, Nell’s son, I’m telling you, if she doesn’t marry you. Marry her, or marry who you like, but if you marry who you like yourself …”

  “I’d sooner take to the roads,” said Patrick. “I won’t marry any other woman who ever sniffed the air other than Johnny Nora’s daughter from Gort Ribbuck.”

  He did.

  I had to put the clothes on her back myself. She didn’t have as much as a penny towards the wedding, not to mention a dowry. A dowry from the crowd of the Toejam trotters? A dowry in Gort Ribbuck of the Puddles where they milk the ducks? … He married her, and she is like death warmed up ever since. She couldn’t raise a pig or a calf, or a hen or a goose, or even a duck, and she knew all about them from Gort Ribbuck. Her house is filthy. Her kids are filthy. She’s totally clueless whether she’s working the land or scavenging stuff on the shore …

  There was some decent stuff in that house until she came along. I kept it as clean as a whistle. Every single Saturday night without fail I washed the stools and the chairs and the tables out in the stream. I spun and I carded. I had bags of everything. I raised pigs and calves and fowl … as long as I had the go in me to do it. And when I hadn’t I shamed Johnny Nora’s one enough that she didn’t sit on her arse completely …

  But what will happen to the house now without me? … Nell will get great satisfaction anyway … She can afford to. She has a fine woman to make bread and spin yarn on the floor of her house now: Blotchy Brian’s Maggie. She can easily be jeering about my own son who only was a bit of a waster, a messer. She’ll be going up past our house every second day now saying: “Bejaysus, we got thirty pounds for the pigs … It was a great fair if you had some cattle. We got sixteen pounds for the two calves” … Even though the hens aren’t laying right now, our Maggie has always a few tricks up her sleeve. She brought eighty eggs to the Fancy City on Saturday. We had four clutches of chicks this year. The hens are laying twice as many eggs. I had another clutch yesterday. “The little speckled oat coloured clutch,” Jack called them, when he saw me handling them … She’ll have ants in her pants when she’s going past our house. She’ll know I’m not there. Nell! The Bitch! She might be my sister, alright, but I hope and pray that not one other corpse will come to the graveyard before her … !

  4.

  —… I was fighting for the Irish Republic, and you had me executed, you traitor. You fought for the English, just the same as fighting for the Free State … You had an English gun in your hand, English money in your pocket, and love of England in your heart. You sold your soul and your ancient heritage for a mess of porridge, for a “soft bargain,” for a job …

  —That’s a lie! You were a criminal, fighting against the legitimate Government …

  —… I swear by the oak of this coffin, Margaret, I swear I gave her, I gave Caitriona the pound …

  —… I drank forty-two pints …

  —I remember it well, you scumbag. I bollixed my ankle that day …

  —… You stuck the knife in me, straight between my gut and the top of my ribs. Through the skin of my kidneys. Then you twisted it. The foul stroke always by the Dog Eared crowd …

  —… Let me speak. Free speech …

  —Are you ready now for an hour’s reading, Nora Johnny? We’ll start a new novelette today. We finished “Two Men and the Powder Puff” the other day, don’t you remember? This one is called “The Berry Kiss.” Listen carefully now:

  “Nuala was an innocent young girl until she met Charles ap Rice in the nightclub …” Yes, I know. There isn’t any chance to get away here, or to talk about culture … and just as you say, Nora, they are always talking about small stupid insignificant stuff here … cards, horses, booze, violence … we are totally pissed off about his racing mare every bloody day … that’s the whole truth, undoubtedly, Nora … Nobody has a snowball’s chance in hell of developing their intellect here … Right on, that’s the complete truth … this place is as bad-mannered, as thicko, as barbaric as whatever happens over in the dregs of the Half Guinea place … we are really back in the dark ages since the sansculottes started scrimping money together from the dole to be put in the Fifteen Shilling Place … I’ll tell you how I would divide this place up, if I had my way: those who went to university in the Pound Place, those who … No, no, that’s not it Nora! Yes, it’s a crying shame that some of my own past pupils are lying next to me here … It really depresses me to learn how ignorant they still are, after all I burst my guts for them … and sometimes they are pig ignorant rude with me … I just don’t know what’s happening to the young crowd … that’s it, Nora … no chance whatsoever of culture …

  “Nuala was an innocent young girl until she met Charles ap Rice in the nightclub …” A nightclub, Nora? … You were never in a nightclub? … Well, a nightclub isn’t that different from this place … Ah, no, Nora, ah no. Nightclubs aren’t the same places as sailors hang out. They are “dives” really, but cultured people go to the nightclubs … You’d like to go to one of them … Not a bad idea really to put the finishing touch, the last notch, to bring a proper cachet to your education … I was in a nightclub once, just that time when they had raised teachers’ salaries, just before they reduced them again, twice. I saw an African prince there … He was as black as the sloe and was drinking champagne … You’d love to go to a nightclub, Nora! Aren’t you the brazen hussy … oh, the “naughty girl” … Oh Nora, so “naughty …”

  —You thieving bollocks! Johnny the Robin’s daughter out from Gort Ribbuck! Where did she say she wanted to go, Master … ? Her tricks will get her yet! Don’t take a gnat fart’s notice of her, I’m telling you. If you knew her like I do you’d keep your trap firmly shut. I’ve been dealing with herself and her daughter for the last sixteen years. You shouldn’t bother your arse wasting your time with Toejam Nora. She was hardly a day at school, and she wouldn’t know the difference between the ABC and a plague of fleas in her armpit …

  —Who’s this? Who are you … ? Caitriona Paudeen. I don’t believe you’re here at last … Well, however long it takes, this is where you end up … Welcome anyway, Caitriona, you’re welcome … I’m afraid, Caitriona, that you are … How will I put it … You are a bit hard on Toejam No— … Nora Johnny … She has come on a bomb since you used to be … What’s that the way you put it … That’s it … dealing with her … We find it hard to measure time, but if I get you correctly, she’s three years here already under the positive influence of culture … But listen here Caitriona … Do you remember the letter I wrote for you to your sister Baba in America … ’Twas the last one I wrote … The day after that, my last sickness hit me … Is that will still in dispute … ?

  —I got many letters from Baba since you were writing them for me, Master. But she never said either “yea” or “nay” about the money. Yes, we got an answer from her about that letter, alright. That was the last time she mentioned the will: “I haven’t completed my will yet,” she said. “I hope I do not pass away suddenly or by happenstance, as you have suggested in your letter. Do not be concerned in this matter. I’ll execute my will in due course, when I know what is required of me.” I know what I told her when I caught up with her. “I’m sure the schoolmaster wrote that for you. No one of us ever spoke like that.”

  The Young Master—he succeeded you—he writes the letters for us now. But I’m afraid that the priest writes for Nell. That hag can pull the wool over his eyes with her chickens and knitted socks and her twisted tricks. She is a dab hand it, Master. I thought I’d live another few years yet and see her buried, the maggot … !

  You did your best for me anyway, Master, about the will. You could handle the pen. I
often saw you writing a letter, and do you know what I thought? I thought that you could knit words together just as well as I could put a stitch in a stocking … “May God have mercy on the Old Master,” I’d say to myself. “He would always do you a good turn. If God allowed him to live, he’d have got the money for me …”

  I’d say it won’t be long now until the Mistress—that is to say, your good wife, Master—it won’t be long until she gets her act together. No doubt about it. She’s a fine good-looking young thing yet … Oh, I’m very sorry Master! Don’t take a bit of notice of anything I say. I’m often romancing like that to myself, but sure, no one can help who they are themselves … I know, Master, I shouldn’t have told you at all. You’ll be worried about it. And I thought you’d be absolutely thrilled to hear that the Mistress was getting her act together …

  Ah, come on, don’t blame me, Master … I’m not a gossip … I can’t tell you who the man is … Ah, please, Master, don’t push me … If I thought it would really make you so cranky I wouldn’t have said as much as a word …

  She swore blind that she wouldn’t marry another man, did she, Master? Oh, come on! … Did you never hear it said that married women are the best … You were hardly cold in your grave when she had cocked her eye at another guy. I think, honestly, that she was always a bit flighty …

  The Young Master … Ah, no, not him, never, Master … The teacher in Derry Lough. He’s a good guy. Doesn’t touch a drop. Himself and the priest’s sister—that dark fancy slip of a thing with the pants—they are to get married soon. They say he’ll get the new school there …

  Ah, no, certainly not the Foxy Policeman either. He has a lump of a nurse hanging out of him in the Fancy City, or so they say … nor the spuds guy … Go on, have another guess, Master. I’ll give you as many as you want … Paddy is gone to England. They took the lorry from him, and sold it. He never went up a road for turf without letting a string of debts behind him. Guess again, Master … That’s him, dead on, exactly, Billy the Postman. Well done getting it like that, just as a pure guess. Never mind what anyone else says, Master, I think you have a great head on your shoulders …