Free The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain Page A

you? Are you against that arsehole too, Nora?
    â€”Honest, he wasn’t right. The jennet is a very cultured beast. Honest, it is. The Rooters in Bally Donough used to have a jennet when I was going to school, years ago. And it would eat raisin bread from the palm of my hand …
    â€”Going to school years ago! Toejam Nora going to school! Raisin bread in Gort Ribbuck! O holy cow and mother of Jesus! Margaret … Margaret, did you hear what Toejam Nora Johnny Robin of the Stinky Soles said? O, O, I’m going to burst …
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    â€¦ Nora Johnny … Nora Johnny … Toejam Nora Stinky Soles … You weren’t happy to leave your lying ways aboveground, but you had to bring it down here too. The whole graveyard knows the devil himself—keep him far away!—gave you a loan of his tongue when you were just a slip of a thing, and you used it so well that he never asked for it back …
    One hundred and twenty pounds dowry for that trollop of a daughter of yours … My goodness me … A woman that didn’t have a stitch of clothes to put on her the day she got married, only I bought her an outfit … Toejam Nora had sixty pounds … There wasn’t sixty pounds ever in all of Gort Ribbuck end to end. Gort Ribbuck of the Puddles. I suppose you’re too snobby now to milk the ducks … A hundred and twenty pounds … A hundred and twenty fleas! No, six thousand fleas. They were by far the commonest creatures that the Toejam Crowd ever had. I’m telling you, if fleas had to give dowries, then that eejit who married your daughter, Noreen, would have enough to make him a knight in a castle nine times over. The two of them had plenty between them coming into my house …
    That was the disastrous day, Noreen, the first day yourself or your daughter ever darkened the door of my house … The little hussy that she is. Certainly, Nora, she is a credit to you: one who can’t put a patch on her child, or make her husband’s bed, or throw out the wasted ashes every week, or to comb her own clump of hair … It was she had me buried twenty years before my time. She’ll bury my son too, and before too long, if she doesn’t come here soon to keep you company and keep you in gossip at her next delivery …
    Oh, your little yackity mouth is in great form today, Noreen … “We’ll be …” How’s that you put it? … “We’ll be OK then.” … “OK”: that’s your catch phrase, Noreen … “We’ll be OK then. You’ll have your son, and I’ll have my daughter, and we’ll be together again down here just as we were aboveground …” The devil’s plaything is in great mocking form altogether in your little yackity mouth today, Noreen …
    That time you were in the Fancy City … You’re telling me I’m lying. It’s you’re the filthy liar, Toejam Noreen …
    â€”Witch!
    â€”Harridan!
    â€”Hag!
    â€”Toejam Crowd … Duck milkers! …
    â€”Do you remember the night Nell was sitting in Jack the Lad’s lap? “We’ll leave Blotchy Brian to you, Caitriona …”
    â€”I never sat in a sailor’s lap anyway, thanks be to God Almighty …
    â€”You never got the chance, Caitriona … I don’t take a devil’s blind bit of notice of you. Your endless bitching and lies doesn’t leave a scratch on me. I’m far more respected in this cemetery than you are. There’s a fine upright cross on my grave, which is more than can be said for yours, Caitriona. Smashing! Honest! …
    â€”… Well, even if there is, it didn’t cost you anything. You can thank that fool of a brother of yours who stuck it up when he was home from America. You’d be a long time getting the money for a cross from milking the ducks in Gort Ribbuck … What’s that you’re saying, Nora? … Spit it out. You