“Glen Masan:
White its stalks of tall wild garlic.
Uneasy was our sleep
Above the long-maned firth of Masan.
“‘If ever you come, love, come discreetly.
Come to the door that makes no creaking.
If my father asks me who are your people,
I’ll tell him you are the wind in the treetops.’”
Either that or telling her love-stories, Máirtín …
— I know what you mean, Master …
— The Sons of Uisneach, Diarmuid and Gráinne, Tristan and Isolde, Strong Thomas Costelloe and Fair Oonagh McDermot Ogue, Carol O’Daly and Eleanor of the Secrets, The Red-Hot Kiss, The Powder-puff …
— I know what you mean, Master …
— I bought a motor car, Máirtín, for the sole purpose of taking her out. I could ill afford it but I didn’t begrudge it to her, all the same. We went together to films in Brightcity, to dances in Wood of the Oxen, to teachers’ meetings …
— Indeed you did, and you went the Mountain Road, Master. One day when I was fetching a cartload of turf, your car was by the roadside at the Steep Hillock and the two of you were over in the glen …
— We’ll forget about that till some other time, Máirtín Pockface …
— Faith then, I remember the day I got the form for the pension. Nobody in the house knew from the soles of the devil what it was. “The Big Master is our man,” says I. I went as far as Peadar the Pub’s and I stayed there till the pupils had gone home. Over I went then. When I got to the school gate there wasn’t a grunt or a groan from inside. “I left it too late,” said I, letting on to be mannerly. “He’s gone home.” I looked in through the window. Faith then, begging your pardon, Master, you were screwing her inside …
— I was not, I was not, Máirtín Pockface.
— Faith then, you were, Master, there’s nothing better than the truth …
— Had Dad, Master!
— You should be ashamed of yourself, Master.
— Who would think it, Bríd?
— Our children were going to school to him, Cite …
— If the priest had caught him, Siúán …
— It was Pentecost Monday, Máirtín Pockface. I had the day off. “You should come to Ross Harbour,” said I to her, after lunch. “The outing will do you good.” Off we went. That night in Ross Harbour I thought, Máirtín Pockface, I got to know the secret of her heart more than ever before … The long summer’s day was losing its light at long last. The pair of us were leaning on a rock, looking at the stars glittering in the sea …
— I know what you mean, Master …
— Looking at the candles being lit in houses on the headlands across the bay. Looking at the phosphorescence on the seaweed left by the receding tide. Looking at the Milky Way like bright sparkling dust out beyond the mouth of Galway Bay. That night, Máirtín Pockface, I felt I was part of the stars and of the lights, of the phosphorescence, of the Milky Way and of the fragrant sighing of sea and air …
— I know what you mean, Master. That’s how it was, I suppose …
— She told me, Máirtín Pockface, that her love for me was deeper than the sea; that it was more sincere and more certain than sunrise or sunset; that it was more constant than the ebbing or the flowing tide, than the stars or the hills, because it was there before tide, star or hill. She told me her love for me was eternity itself …
— She did, Master …
— She did, Máirtín Pockface. She did, upon my word!
… But hold on. I was on my death-bed, Máirtín Pockface. She came in after doing the Stations of the Cross and she sat on the edge of the bed. She took my hand. She said if anything should happen to me that her life after me would not be life at all, and that her death would not be death to her if we both would die together. She swore and she promised, whether she lived for a long time or for short, that she’d spend it in mourning. She swore and she promised she’d never marry again …
— She did now, Master …
— By God she did, Máirtín Pockface! And after all that, see how the serpent was in her heart. I was only a year under the sod — a short miserable year compared to the eternity she promised me — and she was making promises to another man, with another man’s kisses on her mouth, and another man’s love in her heart. Me, her first love and husband, under the cold sods, and she in the arms of Billyboy the Post …
— In the arms of Billyboy the Post, then, Master! I saw them myself … There are many things one should turn a blind eye to, Master …
— And now he’s in my bed, and she giving him full and plenty, tending to him night and morning, going on pilgrimages for him, sending to Dublin for three doctors … Had she brought even one doctor from Dublin to me, I would have recovered …
— Would you believe what she said to me about you, Master? I called on her with a little bag of potatoes a week after you were buried. We spoke about you. “The Big Master is a great loss,” said I, “and the poor man had no cause to die. If he had gone to bed with that cold, minded himself, drank a few whiskeys, and sent for the doctor when it first came on …” “Do you know what it is, Máirtín Pockface?” she said. I’ll never forget the words she said, Master. “Do you know what it is, Máirtín Pockface, all the physicians of the Fianna wouldn’t cure the Big Master. He was too good for this life …” Yes indeed, Master, and she said another thing I never heard before. It’s probably some old saying, Master. “He whom the gods love, dies young …”
— The hussy! The hussy! The promiscuous little hussy …
— De grâce, Master. Watch your language. Don’t make a Caitríona Pháidín of yourself. The curate came in to her one day. He was new in the place. He didn’t know where Nell’s house was. “Nell, the bitch,” said Caitríona. Honest! …
— You Filthy-Feet damsel! You So-an’-so! … Muraed! …
5
— … He had Big Brian pestered every Friday when he was collecting the pension. “You’d better take out a bit of insurance on yourself soon, Briany,” the scoundrel would say. “Any day now you’ll be going the County Clare Way12 …”
—“There isn’t a thing in creation that creeping little scrounger wouldn’t take insurance on,” said Big Brian to me one Friday in the post office, “except Nell Pháidín’s little dog, that has a habit of sniffing around in Caitríona’s house whenever it passes up the boreen.”
— I was over there collecting the pension with Brian the day he was buried.
“The Insurance Man didn’t live long himself,” said I.
“That’s him gone west now, the windbag,” said Brian, “and if he goes up above, he’ll have the Man Above demented, droning on about that accident long ago, and trying to get him to insure his property of saints and angels against sparks from the Man Below. If the Man Below gets him, he’ll have him demented, pestering him to insure his few embers against the water-cocks of the Man Above. The best thing for both of them to do with the cheeky little leech would be to play Tomás Inside’s trick: every time he gets annoyed at Nell’s cattle coming onto his patch of land, he turns them in to Caitríona’s land, and Caitríona’s cattle in to Nell’s land …”
— Did you hear what he said when Road-End Man died? “By cripes, lads, St. Peter had better watch his keys now, or this new tenant of his will walk off with them …”
— Arrah, that’s nothing compared to what he said to Tomás Inside when Caitríona died:
“Tomás, you snow-white angel,” said he, “yourself and Nell and Baba and Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter will be visiting the harness-maker often, to get your broken wings mended, if God grants you to be on the same roost as herself. I myself have a very slim chance of getting any wings at all, I’d say. Caitríona wouldn’t consider my valuation high enough. But, by Dad, Tomás, you blessed dove, your wings would be quite safe if I managed to get any little lobster hole of a lodging near her …”