— … What’s that? … You’re a corpse … A new corpse … I won’t have any dealing with you in this grave. A corpse’s grave is his castle. There’s respect here for the right of private property …
— … Be off with you! By the oak of this coffin, you’ll not come down on top of me. I’m going to join Rotary …
— … Peace is what I want, not company. I’m going to join Rotary …
— … You’d hurt me. I’ve already got bedsores …
— … My heart is faulty …
— … Be off with you out of this grave. I’ll not tell you a thing. Graves have holes. Wouldn’t you think you’d easily recognise all of us? We have crosses over us. Even so, they dug your grave too far over towards mine. The drink! Get over there to Caitríona Pháidín. Over to Caitríona! …
— She has a great welcome for every new corpse. She’ll give you plenty of gossip …
— It’s down on top of her they throw anybody they can’t find a place for in the graveyard …
— You must have trodden on the stray sod, not to have gone over to her. There’s no cross over her …
— And she won’t be accepted in Rotary …
— Red-haired Tom! Red-haired Tom! Muraed! Cite! Bríd Terry! Máirtín Pockface! Seáinín Liam! Red-haired Tom! Red-haired Tom has got his speech back! I’ll explode!
Interlude Eight. THE FIRING OF THE CLAY
1
I am the Trump of the Graveyard. Let my voice be heard. It must be heard …
The ploughed red earth is unwelcoming to its lining of ice. The kernel of the clay has an acid-sour taste. For this is the meadow of tears …
The new suit of Spring is being fashioned for the surface of the earth. The gentle small stalks of late corn and the faint green smile that is springing up all over the bare clay are the basting thread in this suit. The rays of sunlight — like refined gold on the epaulettes of the clouds — are its hems. Its buttons are the clusters of primroses in the welcoming arms of hedgerows, in the recesses of every fence and in the shade of every crag. Its lining is the love-song of the lark, coming to the ploughman from the vault of the firmament through the light April haze, and the thicket that has become a gentle harp with the coupling song of blackbirds. The joyful gambolling of the boy who received the reward for finding a newborn lamb on the rugged uplands, and the cheerful tune of the boatman peaking his sail in the welcoming weft of the wavelets, are the seams of hope that stitch the transient beauty of eye and of heart to eternal glory, which is the reverse side of this perishable tunic of land, sea and sky …
But the strands the tailor is threading through the eye of his needle are now a pallid rainbow. The scissors of the gale are severing the buttons. The cloth is being chewed up by the smooth-cutting sickle. The golden hem is fraying in the field where the grain is falling from the head …
The fairy whirlwind reaps havoc in the haggard, sweeping off every ear of corn, wisp of hay and flake of chaff left over from last year’s harvest.
There is a tremor in the milking girl’s song as she returns from the summer pasture. She knows the cattle will soon be removed to the old milking place by the homestead …
Because Spring and Summer have slunk furtively away. They have been hoarded by the squirrel in its hovel beneath the tree. They have disappeared on the wings of swallows and sunshine …
I am the Trump of the Graveyard. Let my voice be heard! It must be heard …
2
— … “Hoh-roh, my Mary,1 your wares and your bags and belts,
And my Stack-of-Barley La-ady …”
— What’s this? Beartla Blackleg, upon my word, and he singing away to himself. You’re welcome, Beartla!
—“Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags and belts …”
— Upon my soul, ’tis fine and cheerful you are, my good Blackleg friend …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds,2 who have I here?
— Caitríona. Caitríona Pháidín …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona. We’re going to be neighbours again so …
— They’re not burying you in the right grave, Beartla.
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, sure it doesn’t matter to a person where his heap of old bones is thrown. “Hoh-roh, my Mary …”
— It seems death didn’t upset you too much, Beartla. What was your cause of death?
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, haven’t you heard that the steed can’t keep its speed forever, as Big Brian said about …
— Oh! The boastful scold!
— Devil the cause at all, but lying down with no life left. Bloody tear and ’ounds, but isn’t that cause enough! “Hoh-roh …”
— How are they blooming up there, Beartla? …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, just as you’ve always seen them. Gaining one and losing one and one in between. Isn’t that how it is and that’s how it has to be, like a gun being loaded and then being fired, as Big Brian said …
— Oh! Faith then, he’s the gunner, alright …
— He hasn’t stirred out, Caitríona, since he went to see Red-haired Tom after Tom was anointed.3 He was grief-stricken after Tom …
— They were well matched, the red-haired sourpuss and the snotty streak of misery …
— I was listening to him that night giving Tom advice up in the room. “Bloody tear and ’ounds,” he said, “if you should take a tour over there, Red-haired Tom, and if you should meet herself in your travels, take care you don’t tell her anything. Unless she’s greatly changed she’ll be looking for gossip …”
— But who is “herself,” Beartla?
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, it wouldn’t be right or proper for me to answer a question like that …
— Oh! Beartla, for the love of God, don’t make a Red-haired Tom of yourself. That’s how he’s going on ever since he came into the graveyard clay …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, if there’s going to be trouble let there be trouble. Yourself. Who else, Caitríona?
— Myself, Beartla? Me looking for gossip! He’s a damned liar. That man’s big mouth will keep getting him into trouble till death puts its latch-pin in his tongue …
— I’d say that won’t be too long now, Caitríona.
— The devil’s welcome to him …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, don’t you know he’s a dying man when he didn’t have the courage to go to Jack the Scológ’s funeral! …
— Ababúna búna! Jack the Scológ’s funeral! Jack the Scológ’s funeral! Jack! Jack! Spouting lies you are, son of Blackleg …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t he here for the past three weeks!
— Alas! and woe forever! Jack the Scológ here that long and Muraed and the others didn’t tell me. Oh! This place has been turned upside-down by Nóirín Filthy-Feet, Beartla. Guess what she’s planning now? … Rotary! …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, Rotary! “Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags …”
— Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ is here! Easily known he wouldn’t live long. The St. John’s Gospel …
— Bloody tear and ’ounds, the St. John’s Gospel, Caitríona! …
— The St. John’s Gospel, wheedled out of the priest by that pussface, what else? Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ in the graveyard for the past three weeks and I didn’t know. Those boobies here wouldn’t tell a person anything, especially since that cursed Election. Seáinín Liam the dullard and Bríd Terry the strap and Red-haired Tom the sourpuss would all have been bundled down in the one grave with me. Jack! Jack the Scológ …