— So what if John Kitty says what he likes? Didn’t God himself — all praise to him — reveal himself there? The sun was up just as Colm Cille was saying his Mass. Then it went down, and God kept it down until Colm Cille had walked to the arse end of Aran. And it was only then that St. Paul saw it rising for the first time! …
“‘You may as well toddle off now, Shnozzle,’ says Colm Cille. ‘I’ll leave you weeping when you return to the Wailing Walclass="underline" the exact same horsewhipping you got when Christ drove you out of the Temple. You should be ashamed of yourself! Who would give a damn only that you are so greasy and sneaky as you slither away …’”
“That’s exactly why no Jew boy settled in Aran ever since …”
— This’s the way that I heard that story from oldfellas in my own place, Coley: when the two Patricks — Old Patrick alias Cothraighe, alias Calprainnovich, and Young Patrick — when they were hawking around Ireland trying to change the country …
— Two Patricks! That’s a heresy …
— … There was a day like that, Peter the Publican. Don’t deny it …
— Master, my darling, the bed was very hard. Really very hard underneath my poor arse, Master …
— I was only in it about a month, Poxy Martin, and I found it very hard …
— My back was totally flattened, Master. There wasn’t even a screed of a shred of skin left on my backside …
— Not as much as a screed, Martin, you poor hoor …
— Not as much as a screed, my dear Master, and there was a very tender spot in my groin. The bed was …
— Let us forget about the bed until some other time. Tell me this much, Poxy, how is …?
— The Mistress, Master. O, she’s flying, not a bother. She earns her money every day at school, Master, and then she looks after Billy from then until the morning. She flashes over from the school twice a day to look after him, and they say that the poor thing hardly sleeps a wink, but is only sitting on the edge of the bed giving him his medicine …
— The cuntish gash … the brasser …
— Did you hear, Master, that she brought him three doctors from Dublin? Our own doctor visits him three times every day, but I’d say, Master, that it’s kind of wasted on Billy. He’s been laid up so long now that he couldn’t not be riddled with bedsores …
— I hope he lies and never rises! I hope he gets the thirty-seven diseases of the Ark! I hope all his tubes get glutted and his bunghole stuffed! That he gets a clubfoot and a twisted gut! The Ulster flies! The yellow bellies! The plague of Lazarus! Job’s jitters! Swine snots! Lock arse! Drippy disease, flatulent farts, wobbly warbles, wriggly wireworm, slanty eyes, and the shitty scutters! May he get the death rattle of Slimwaist Big Bum! The decrepit diseases of the Hag of Beare! May he be blinded without a glimmer and be gouged like Oisín after that! The Itch of the Women of the Prophet! His knees explode! His rump redden with rubenescence! Be lanced by lice! …
— Bedsores are the worst of them all, dear Master …
— May he get bedsores too so, Poxy Martin.
— She makes the Stations of the Cross twice a day, Master, and the trip to Killeana’s Well every week. She did the Mountain Pilgrimage this year, and Croagh Patrick, and Colm Cille’s Well, Mary’s Well, Augustine’s Well, Enda’s Well, Bernine’s Well, Cauleen’s Well, Shinny’s Well, Boadakeen’s Well, Conderg’s Bed, Bridget’s Pool, Lough Nave, and Lough Derg …
— Isn’t a great pity I’m not alive! I’d drain Brickeen’s Well on the thief, on the …
— She told me too, Master, that if it wasn’t for the way things are so dicey at the moment she’d go to Lourdes.
“Lough Derg is the worst of them, Poxy Martin,” she said. “My feet were pumping blood for three whole days. But it didn’t matter to me how I suffered as long as it did poor Billy some good. I’d crawl from here to …”
— The thundering bitch …
—“I was heartbroken after the Old Master,” she said …
— Oh, the whore of a thundering bitch! … If you only knew, Poxy! Ah, but you wouldn’t understand. There’d be no point in telling you …
— Well, anyway, Master, the truth is the bed was too hard …
— Will you hump off to hell hollering on about that bed, and just listen to her! … Oh, the things that that bitch of a one said to me, Martin! …
— I know that’s all true, Master …
— The pair of us sitting down in Crompaun. The gentle susurration of the suds caressing the rocks at our feet. A young seagull calling to his father and mother to thrill about his first flight, not unlike unto a shy bride approaching the altar. The shades of evening sliding across the shafts of sunlight on the crest of the waves, like the young kestrel slowly shaping to snatch the unready. The oars of the currach returning from its fishing grounds plashing in the water. She’s in my arms, Martin. A wisp of her gorgeous hair gently touching my cheek. Her hands are around my neck. I am quoting poetry:
“Glen Mason:
Rock high, sun facing.
We slept all evening
On its sward and apron
“‘If you come, my love, come like one creeping,
Come to the door that admits no creaking
If my father asks who it is I’m seeking
I will say it’s the wind outside that’s keening.’”
Either that or reciting love stories, Martin …
— I get that alright, Master …
— The Sons of Uisneach, Diarmaid, and Gráinne, Tristan and Isolde, Strong Tom Costello and Fair Una McDermott, Carol O’Daly and Eleanor Aroon, The Hot Kiss, The Powder Puff …
— I get that too, Master …
— I bought a car straight up, Martin, just to take her out and about. I could hardly afford it, but I thought she was worth it anyway. We’d go into the pictures in the Fancy City, to dances in Derry Dav, to teachers’ meetings …
— That’s all true, and up the Hill Road, Master. There was that day when I was going for a creel of turf and your car was planked there at the side of the road at Ardeen More, and the two of you over beyond in the glen …
— OK, forget about that now, Guzzeye Martin, until some other time …
— But for all that, Master, I also remember that day when I got the news about the pension. Not one of us in the whole house had the least clue, by the mebs of the Devil himself, what it was about. “The Old Master is the boy for us.” I says. I went on over to Peter the Publican’s place and stayed there until all the students had gone. I went back then. When I got back to the schoolhouse all I could hear was moaning and groaning and sighing. “I left it too late,” I says to myself, “pretending to be proper, according to myself. He’s gone off home.” I gawked in through the window. Saving your presence, Master, there you were with her, bonking and beasting away …
— I wasn’t. I wasn’t, Poxy Martin, no I wasn’t.
— Ah, but you were, Master, there’s nothing better than telling the truth …
— Good for you, Master! …
— You have no reason to be ashamed, Master.
— Who would ever have thought it, Breed? …
— We were sending our children to him, Kitty …
— If the priest had caught him, Joan …
— It was Whit Sunday, Poxy. I had the day off. “We should go down to Ross Harbour,” I said to her, after dinner. “Getting out and about will do you no end of good.” She did. We went. I really thought, Martin, that I knew what she was all about, that night on Ross Harbour … The long summer day was fading in the west after its long labours. Both of us were lovingly stretched on a rock observing the stars glittering on the shiny surface of the sea …