Free The Teapots Are Out and Other Eccentric Tales from Ireland by John B. Keane

codding yourself. They’re only letting on to have it good. Most of them are prisoners in the homes they once owned.’
    â€˜But isn’t that the whole cause of the trouble Tom? Those that bought houses in the town or rented rooms are content enough. It’s only when you have two women under the one roof that the trouble starts.’
    â€˜Do you want me to spend every penny I possess on a house. Is that it?’
    â€˜It needn’t be big.’
    â€˜Of course it needn’t be big but the money will be big and we’ll end up paupers depending on a daughter-in-law for handouts.’
    â€˜If you signed over we’d have our old age pensions.’
    â€˜Will you get it into your head woman that I will not sign over. Do you think I’m mad. You want me to part with all I have in this world with one stroke of a pen.’
    â€˜You could go halves with him.’
    â€˜Won’t work. The place isn’t big enough to support two families.’
    â€˜Would you not tell him that you’d be prepared to sign over after a year or two?’
    â€˜No I would not, nor after twenty years if I live that long. There’s a bit of a want in that fellow. He’s a man for the good times. All he wants is drink and fags and carousing.’

    â€˜Still he’s a good worker.’
    â€˜Is he now and pray how do you think he’d fare without me managing the place?’
    â€˜A woman would manage it for him quick enough.’
    â€˜This place calls for a thrifty man, a man that won’t squander money foolishly. Let him wait. He’ll appreciate it all the more when ’tis his. I’m away to the cows.‘
    â€˜Who’s to say but you’re right,’ Minnie Cutler conceded. Experience had taught her that it was prudent to concede ground which she knew she could not win anyway. Consequently there was never conflict between them, at least not of late.
    For years too she had not mentioned his tight-fistedness. She took it for granted. According to him there was never anything to spare for clothes or holidays or titbits. He would always provide enough for the bare necessities but nothing more. In time she had stopped asking. It made for a peaceful atmosphere and in her estimation that was worth all the deprivation. Waste not want not had been Tom Cutler’s strategy from the day he assumed ownership of the farm. It had been heavily in debt. Minnie’s modest fortune had not been enough to compensate but non-stop penny-pinching had. Now they had cash in the bank and the land was stocked to its capacity. As the money mounted Tom would regularly repeat a phrase which he had coined the day he discovered he was out of the red. ‘Thrift won’t lose,’ he would say, ‘because thrift can’t lose’. The logic of his composition appealed more and more to him as the years went by.
    He was well aware that his neighbours and those who knew him further afield criticised him constantly for what he considered to be one of the great virtues. His parsimony had
become something of a local joke. Those who conducted church gate collections for various charities would nudge each other when Tom Cutler approached. He never subscribed no matter how worthy the cause. As soon as he had passed the collection tables he would permit himself the faintest of smiles. He smiled purely and simply because he still had his money. That, to Tom Cutler, was a genuine cause for mirth. He really relished such incidents. They were the only luxuries in which he indulged.
    His son John, on the other hand, was known as a decent type. He hadn’t much, his neighbours said, but by God that much was yours if you wanted it.
    â€˜He didn’t bring it from his father,’ Mick Kelly would say, “tis from the grandfather he brought it, his father’s father. Now there was your decent man. Give you the shirt off his back he would.‘
    Inevitably these assessments of his