The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

“Maybe,” I said to myself, “I might be able to find his weak spot now. The Schoolmistress would be a great help, if I could soft-soap her. And you can always soft-soap her …”

  There isn’t a woman alive who doesn’t fancy herself, but she needs to be told. I didn’t spend years messing with insurance without learning that much.

  —I know that much, too. It’s much easier to flog things to women than to men, only to have enough cop on …

  —I had to give him a while until the novelty of being married wore off. But I couldn’t leave it too long, either, in case her influence began to wane, when her magic was fading away. Insurance people know all about that …

  —And booksellers too …

  —I gave him three weeks … It was a Sunday. Himself and herself, the pair of them, were outside sitting on the front of the house just after dinner.

  —“I’m coming to get you, you muppet,” I said, “I swear by my balls I’ll get you today! … You have your week’s work all laid out, and those notes you are always going on about, they’re all ready. You’re stuffed up to the gills, and if your wife is anyway pleasant at all, it’ll be easier to get you than ever …”

  We chatted a bit about politics. I said I was in a bit of a hurry. “Sunday is the same as any other day to me,” I said, “always on the lookout ‘to see whom I can gobble up.’ Now that you’re married, Master, the Mistress should encourage you to take out a life insurance policy. You’re better off now than ever. You have a spouse to look after … My opinion is,” I said to his wife, “that he doesn’t really love you at all, that he’s only out to get what he wants from you, and if you weren’t around he’d be off chasing another straight away.”

  The two of them laughed. “And,” I said, “as an insurance man I have to tell you that if he pops off, there is no provision made for you. Now, if there was ‘a gilt-edged guarantee’ like you there …”

  She pulled a bit of a face. “That’s it,” she said to the Master, half serious and wholly in earnest, “if anything happened to you, we’d all be in a proper mess …”

  “What could happen to me?” he said, grouchily.

  “You know not the day nor the hour,” I said, “it’s the duty of an insurance man to say that kind of thing all the time.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Of course, I hope nothing would ever happen. God forbid that it would! If it did, I couldn’t live without you. We pray that nothing would ever happen, but if you died, and if I didn’t die at the same time … How would I be fixed then? You have a duty …”

  And do you know what, he took out a life insurance policy! Fifteen hundred pounds worth. He had only paid up four or five instalments—big fat ones too. She made him take out another two hundred and fifty when he paid the last bit.

  “He won’t last long,” she said jokingly, and winked at me.

  True for her. He snuffed it soon after that …

  I’ll tell you about another coup of mine. It wasn’t half as good as the one I put over on the Old Master.

  You played the Old Master just as sharp as Nell Paudeen played Caitriona about Jack the Lad …

  —Aboo boona, boona! I’m going to burst! I will burst! I’ll burst! Burst …

  4.

  Hey, Margaret! Hey Margaret! … Do you hear me?

  … They were dumping John Willy in on top of me, I swear they were, Margaret … May God help your head, Margaret! Why would I let him into the same grave as myself? I never collected periwinkles to hock. Didn’t he and his whole family live on periwinkles, and I’d soon tell him that. Even though I was only talking to him for a small bit, he nearly drove me nuts yacking on about his old heart … That’s true, too, Margaret. If they had the cross up over me, it would be much easier for them to recognise the grave. But it won’t be long now, Margaret. John Willy told me that much. A cross of the best Connemara marble just like Peter the Publican’s … My daughter-in-law, is it? John Willy told me she’d be here at her next birth, no doubt about it …

  Do you remember, Margaret, do you remember our Patrick’s eldest girl? … That’s her. Maureen … That’s right. She’d be fourteen years old now … You got it there. She was only a little strip of a thing when you died. She’s in secondary school now. John Willy told me … she’s going to be a schoolteacher! What else! You don’t think, do you, Margaret, that they’d be sending her to secondary school to learn how to boil potatoes or to cook mackerel, or to make beds, or sweep the floor? That might be all right for that bag job of a mother she has, if any such school existed …

  Maureen also took a fancy to school. She has a great head for learning, for a girl as young as that. She was far better than the Mistress—that is, the Old Master’s wife—before he himself died. There’s not one in the school who can hold a candle to her, John Willy tells me.

  “She’s way beyond them all at learning,” he said. “She’ll be qualified a year before anyone else.”

  I swear he said that, Margaret … Ah come on now, Margaret, there’s no need to be talking like that. It’s no surprise at all. Why do you say that it is a surprise? My family always had brains and intelligence to burn, not because I say so …

  —… But that’s not what I asked you, Johnny.

  —Ah, Master, it was my heart! My heart, for God’s sake! I was going for the pension. I didn’t hear a whisper … Now, come on, Master, no need to be so pissed off. I couldn’t help it. I was humping along with a basket of spuds. When I was letting them down … But, Master, I am telling you nothing now, apart from the whole truth. But, sure, I haven’t a clue, apart from what people say to me. There were other things on my mind. The basket came down skewways. It happened … What were people saying then, Master? But, of course, we couldn’t say anything, or even hear anything. We were making a new pen for the colt …

  So, what were people saying then, Master? You know the way it is—somebody like you who has so much education, God bless you—there are bags of people out there who wouldn’t be alive if they couldn’t gossip. But then, someone with a dicey heart … Amn’t I telling you what they were saying, Master, but just back off and don’t be so crappy with me. It wouldn’t have mattered, but we had great weather when we were building the pen … It’s just people, the way they are, Master. They have a lot more on their minds apart from prayers. But the guy with the dicey heart, God help us! …

  You were asking about the Mistress? I never saw her so beautiful, God bless her. She’s getting younger, no doubt about it. She must have a very healthy heart … Ah, sure, people used to be talking. That’s the way they are. I swear, myself and the youngfella were caught up with the pen … Ah, come on, don’t be so pissed off with me. Don’t you know, that everyone said that Billy the Postman wouldn’t leave that house of yours, no matter what.

  It was a fine big colt, Master … What good is it for you to be pissed off with me? I couldn’t do anything about the lot of you. There was something bugging me, God help me … He’s often in the house, is that it? I’m telling you, that’s the way it is, Master. But you wouldn’t mind, only the school. He moseys into the school every day, gives the letters to the kids, and then, himself and the Mistress toddle off into the hall for a chat. Ara, God help your sense, Master! You haven’t a clue. There was something bugging me. I hadn’t a breath left. The heart …

  5.

  —… But, Coley, Coley …

  —Let me finish my story, my good man:

  “‘There’s absolutely nobody who could instruct me in this case now,’ said Daniel O’Connell, ‘except one person only—Biddy Early—and she is seven hundred miles removed from here muttering charms for poteenmakers whose moonshine is being stolen by the fairies in a big town called Horse Bones in County Galway back in Ireland. Get ready and saddle up my best horse in the stable so that I will take her as a pillion rider behind me to London in England …’

  “We went. ‘Miss Debonair,’ he said to her … ‘Why would any son of a bitch insult me like that? …’”

  —�
�� Ah come on now, Huckster Joan! Whoring after votes for Peter the Publican! And why wouldn’t you? Your son is married to his daughter aboveground. And even if they weren’t, yourself and Peter would be as thick as the greatest two thieves ever …

  —That’s all the thanks I get. You’d have been dead long ago only I cut you some slack. Running in scrounging and begging every day: “For the love of God and Mary his mother, lend me a grain of meal or something until I can sell the pigs …”

  —I paid dearly and sorely for that grain, Joan, you miserable shite! All I ever heard was: “Huckster Joan is a lovely person, kind and charitable. She trusts you.” Trust, yea, sure thing, because you knew, Joan, that you would be paid, and for every one person who didn’t pay you back there would be another hundred who would …

  —That is precisely the same principle that obtains in insurance …

  —I’d get a bag of grain for a pound, if I paid on the button. But if I waited for the fairday, or if I was a sharp shark, then sixty. If I couldn’t pay for another six or nine months, then seventy. You were kind and sweet and pleasant with the bigwig hard chaw. You were mean and stingy and tighter than a cow’s arse during fly season with the guy who didn’t have the ready penny. Thanks be to God that we don’t have to give a crap about you and that you can’t throw it up in our faces anymore …

  —Listen, Joan, you sly bitch—a sly supporter of those who had money anyway—Joan, you sly bitch, you done for me eighty years before my time. Without fags … I saw you slipping them to the sergeant, a guy you had no dealings with, except in the Fancy City. I saw you giving them to a man in a lorry, you hadn’t a clue where he was from, and you didn’t get a penny’s profit from him. You had them down under the counter.

  “Just one,” I says, “I could do with one now, and maybe there’ll be more tomorrow, the beginning of the month …”

  “Where would I get fags?” you said. “You don’t think that I’m making them! …”

  “If I was rich enough to give you four or five shillings for a box,” I said … “You can stuff them …”

  I went home.

  “You’d better spread out that sweep of seaweed you left behind on the field beyond,” my mother said.

  “Seaweed,” I says, “I’m finished with the stuff, with seaweed, mother.”

  I spat out a glob. It was as stiff as a hard-on. May I never leave here if I’m not telling the truth. There was a little kitten by the fireplace. He started slobbering up the snot. He started to choke with a cough. May I never leave here if he didn’t!

  “That’s no way to be,” I says. I took to the bed. Never got up again. No fags. You killed me, you sly bitch—always arselicking people with money …

  —And my death too. It was the clogs you sold me that finished me off, you old wretch. I gave you forty-five shillings straight up into your fist. It was in the depths of winter and we were hacking out the road to Bally Donough. I was hauling the barrow in the wet muck down below. Fuck that place anyway, and everything about it! That was the spot where I died. I put the clogs on my feet. They wouldn’t keep out a drop after two days …

  I let down the barrow.

  “What’s up with you?” says one of the guys.

  “Everything,” I said. I sat down smack bang in the guts of the barrow, and I pulled my pants up from around my ankles. My ankle was as purple as Gut Bucket’s nose. I swear it was.

  “What’s up with you?” the big boss asks when he comes along.

  “Everything,” I says.

  “Everything is right, I’m afraid,” he says.

  “Huckster Joan’s clogs,” I say.

  “Fuck them clogs, and everything to do with them!” he says. “If she lasts much longer I swear that I won’t have any salesman on the road who won’t be buried in the grave.”

  I went home. Lay down on the bed. The doctor was called that night.

  “You’ve had it,” he said. “The feet …”

  “I’ve had it for sure,” I says, “The feet … the clogs …”

  “Huckster Joan’s clogs, certainly,” he said. “If she survives, I won’t be alive …”

  The priest was called the next morning.

  “You’ve had it,” he said. “The feet …”

  “Had it for sure,” I said. “The feet … clogs …”

  “Huckster Joan’s clogs, certainly,” he said. “If she survives, I won’t be alive. But you’re a goner anyway …”

  And by Jaysus he was right. I was on crutches a week from then. It was your clogs, Joan, you old wretch. You killed me …

  You killed me too, Joan, you hag! Your coffee. Your piss-like coffee! Your jam, yes, your shitty jam, you hag you. Your coffee instead of tea: your jam instead of butter.

  That was the fateful day for me—not that I could do anything about it—the day I left you my ration cards, you old cow:

  “There’s no tea this week. I don’t know why they didn’t send me any.”

  “So, no tea came so, Joan?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “So, nobody has any tea this week, is that it?”

  “No, I swear to you. But you’ll get enough for a fortnight next week.”

  “But you always say that, Joan, and we were never compensated for the weeks it never came … For the love of God almighty, just one pinch of tea, please, Joan. Just a smell of it … Just a nail shaving’s worth … I’m sick with the coffee …”

  “Don’t you know that I can’t make tea. If you don’t like it, you can give your ration cards to somebody else …”

  And Joan, you old wretch, you knew full well that I couldn’t. There you were hoarding the tea for those who could pay three times as much: the houses that took in learners of Irish, tourists, the big shots, and so on. I saw you with my own two eyes giving some to the priest’s girl, and you gave a quarter of a pound to the sergeant’s wife. You were hoping the priest wouldn’t denounce you from the altar for your underhand dealings, and were trying to bribe the sergeant from squealing on you in court …

  I toddled off home with my coffee. The wife brewed some.

  “I won’t drink a drop of it,” I said, “God bless you anyway …”

  “You’ll have to have something soon,” she said. “You had nothing since yesterday morning.”

  “So be it,” I said. I glugged up another lump of gunge. It was as tough as leather, if the graveyard permits me to say so. The dog started snuffling around me. Didn’t stay long. Fecked off and wasn’t seen for two days.

  “The lining of my guts is not as it should be,” I said. “Wouldn’t I be better off dying straightaway? I’ll die if I drink that bilge of coffee, and I’ll die if I don’t drink it …”

  And I did. I couldn’t speak a word now, only I spat it out in a sweat when I was laid out. It was your coffee killed me, Joan, you old wretch. You killed me …

  —And you killed me!

  —And me!

  —And me!

  —… I won’t vote for you, Peter. You allowed a dirty heretic to insult the church in your own premises. You were a bloodless watery wimp. If that had been me …

  —You were a complete crook, Peter the Publican. You charged me four bits of coins for a half one of whiskey, and I was so innocent that I didn’t know what I should pay …

  —Your wife would know all about it. She finished off lots of half ones in my place. But I suppose you never knew anything about that either, until now …

  —You were a crook, Peter the Publican. You were watering down the whiskey …

  —I was not.

  —I’m telling you, you were. Myself and Fireside Tom went into you one Friday after drawing the pension. This was before the war. Whiskey was flowing like tap water everywhere. As soon as you knew that Tom was pissed, you started on at him about women:

  “Isn’t it a crying shame that you wouldn’t get married, Tom,” you said, “a man like you with a nice bit of land …”

  “You never said a truer word,” Tom says. “You m
ay as well hand over the daughter now.”

  “By cripes, she’s there alright, and I’m not keeping her from you …” you says … There was a time when, Peter. Don’t deny it …

  Your daughter came into the pub as luck would have it. She took a crock of jam down from the shelf. Do you think I don’t remember it? …

  “That’s neither here nor there now,” you says, “She can make up her own mind …”

  “Will you marry me?” Tom says, pressing up against her.

  “Why wouldn’t I, Tom?” she says. “You have a nice bit of land, and a half guinea pension …”

  We were a little while riding away like that, but Tom was half joking, half in earnest. Your daughter was messing around and fiddling with the tie around his neck … I’m telling you Peter, that was the day. Don’t deny it …

  Your daughter went down to the kitchen. Tom went after her, to light his pipe. She kept him down there. But she was back fast enough to get another shot of whiskey for him.

  “That old bollocks will be pissed soon, and then we’ll have him,” she said.

  You grabbed the glass from her. You half filled it with water from the jug. Then you put whiskey in on top of that … That was the day, Peter …

  Do you think I didn’t see you do it? Oh, yes, I noticed right well the jiggery-pokery that you and your daughter were up to behind the counter. Do you think I didn’t hear you muttering. Your daughter kept plying Fireside Tom with a concoction of water and whiskey right through the day. And he paid the same amount for the water as he did for the whiskey, after all that … Your daughter spent the day teasing him. She even started calling for whiskey for herself, but it was only water all the time. He’d have been killed by a lorry on the way home, only that Nell Paudeen, Jack the Lad’s wife, came in to get him … That was the day, I’m telling you, Peter. No point in denying it. You were a robber …

  You robbed me too, Peter the Publican. Your daughter lured me into the parlour, pretending that she had the hots for me. She plumped herself down on my lap. A shower of smart asses came in from the Fancy City, and they were ushered down to the parlour along with me, and this eejit was standing drinks for them all evening. The following day, she was up the same tricks. But there was no smart ass from the city there that day. Instead of that, she hauled a crowd of spongers in from the corner, and into the parlour, and this eejit had to call for drinks …