— You’re an old codger, Chalky Steven. How long are you here? I didn’t know you were here at all. The bad pains …
— There were gangs of people at my funeral. The Parish Priest, The Chaplain, The Chaplain from Lough Shore, A Franciscan and Two Brothers from the Fancy City, The Schoolmaster and Mistress from Derry Lough, The Master and Mistress from Kin Teer, The Master from Clogher Savvy, The Master from Glen Beg, and the Junior Mistress, The Assistant Teacher from Kill …
— No doubt about it, every single one of them, Master, and Billy the Postman too. To tell you the truth he was very helpful that day. He fastened and screwed down the bolts on the coffin, he carried it out of the house, and he slid it down into the grave. In all fairness, he wasn’t either slow or sluggish. He threw off his jacket with gusto and grabbed the shovel …
— The robber! The homuncular homo! …
— There were five cars at my funeral …
— Yea, that gimp from Derry Lough, his car got stuck right in the middle of things, and your funeral was an hour late …
— There were as many as thirty at Peter the Publican’s. He had two hearses …
— Just as you mentioned it, I had a hearse as well. The old woman wouldn’t rest easy until she had got one: “His guts would be all shook up if he was up on their shoulders, or being hauled in an old cart,” she said …
— Oh, it was easy for her to talk, Tim Top of the Road, with my turf …
— And my wrack from the sea …
— … There weren’t enough there to even haul Caitriona to the church they were so mouldy from the booze. Even they started to act the maggot. They had to let her corpse down twice, the way they were. I swear they did: smack bang in the middle of the road …
— God help us! Ababoona!
— I’m telling you God’s honest truth, Caitriona, love. There were only six of us from beyond Walsh’s pub. The rest of them went into Walsh’s, or else they fell by the wayside. We thought we’d have to get the women to carry the corpse …
— Ababoona! Don’t believe him, the bollocks …
— That’s the whole bare unadorned truth, Caitriona. You were heavy as hell. You weren’t sick that long, and you had no bedsores.
“The two old buckos will have to lift her,” Peter Nell says just near the lane at Clogher Savvy. The old men were great, Caitriona. Peter Nell was on crutches and Kitty’s youngfella and Breed Terry’s youngfella were beating the shit out of one another, metaphorically, like: each one blaming the other about smashing up the round table the night before. The truth is always the best, Caitriona. There is no way I would carry the coffin, or even go a step of the way with you, if I knew then that I had a dicey heart …
— Too busy piddling around with periwinkles, you piss artist …
—“There she is, still acting the mule. You wouldn’t know from hell if she wanted to go to the church or even to the cemetery,” Blotchy Brian said, while himself and myself and Kitty’s youngfella were lifting you up to take you in along the church path …
“Not a word of a lie, my good friend,” Peter Nell says, as he dumps his crutches, and goes in up and under the coffin …
— That’s really the pits! The slut’s son carrying my coffin. Blotchy Brian carrying me. The beardy bastard. If that twisted hunch humped whore was carrying me, then the coffin was baw ways. Abooboona boona! … Blotchy Brian the bum! … Nell’s son! Margaret! Margaret! … If I had known all about it I would have burst. I would have burst on the spot …
6.
— … Are you telling me now, that they don’t take any insurance on colts? …
— Well, my kind of insurance broker wouldn’t take it anyway, Johnny.
— You’d think you weren’t taking any chance with a fine healthy young horse. It would be well worth it, before anything happened, to get a big pot of money …
— I nearly got a big pot myself, Johnny, in the crossword in The Sunday Scandal. Five hundred pounds …
— Five hundred pounds! …
— That was it, by Jaysus, Johnny. I only had one letter wrong …
— I get it …
— What they wanted was a word in eight letters ending in “e.” The clue said that it meant something that flew through the air by means of mechanical propulsion.
— Yea, I still get it.
— I immediately thought of the word “aeroplane,” as I had seen them flying in the sky. But that was nine letters …
— Yea, still with you.
—“That can’t be it,” I said to myself. I spent ages and aeons wracking my brains and torturing myself. Anyway, in the end I put down “aerplane,” as I couldn’t think of anything else …
— I get it.
— But what do you know, when the answer came out on the paper it was “airplane”! Fuck that new spelling anyway Johnny! If I had a handgun I’d blow my brains out. That was one of the reasons why my life was cut short …
— Now, I really get it.
— … By the oak of this coffin, Chalky Steven, I swear I gave her, I gave Caitriona Paudeen the pound …
— … He had a broad grin on his mug …
— That stupid grin that the Junior Master makes is a good sign, anyway! He might go the way of the Old Master, who knows. There’s some kind of curse on our school that the women don’t get on with the masters there …
— … I’ll tell you now the advice I gave to Cannon after he won the semifinal for Galway:
“Cannon, my hero,” I says to him, “even if you don’t manage to kick the ball in the final against Kerry, kick something. There must be some kind of equality in clocking people. The ref will be up for Kerry anyway. Why else would they have won so many All-Irelands? You can do it. You have the guts and the balls for it. Every time you clobber something, I will raise the roof …”
— Hitler is my darling! I can’t wait for him to get to England! … I’m sure he’ll damn them all to hell and the devils will be dancing on the dunes of England: that he’ll give the bum’s rush to their snotty snoots: that he’ll plant a million tons of mines in their belly buttons …
— God help us all! …
— Ah, come on, you can’t say anything bad about England. There’s lashings of work there. What would the youth of Bally Donough, or for that matter, the crowd from Gort Ribbuck, and Cloghar Savvy do without her …
— Or the old gom over here who has a slice of land up above the town land that is the very best, beyond measure, for fattening cattle up …
— Après la fuite de Dunkerque et la bouleversement de Juin 1940, Monsieur Churchill a dit qu’il retournerait pour libérer la France, la terre sacrée …
— You shouldn’t let any black heretic like that insult your religion, Peter. It was fucking lucky I wasn’t there! I’d have asked him straight up, no bullshit: “Do you believe in God at all? Maybe you’re just like a cow or a calf, or like a … cunty little pup.” A dog doesn’t give a fuck about anything only to fill his gut. A dog would eat meat on a Friday, I’m telling you that. It would be just great, just great for him. But, of course, not every dog would eat it, either … I had a smidgen of meat left over when I was in the town, one time. “I’ll drag it out ’til Saturday,” I says, “Tomorrow’s a fast day, no meat” …
Coming in from eating out on Friday when I was returning from the fields with a fist of spuds, I saw the Minister passing by, heading off hunting. “Maybe you’ll get away with it, you damned heretic,” says I. “Of course I’m fully aware that you won’t get past Friday without fresh meat … or even a young pleasant pup. Of course, without speaking crudely, you are very like a cow or a calf … or even a little plump pup.” When I went in clutching my fist full of small potatoes, the loop was missing from the dresser. Every single fillet of flesh gone! “It’s a cat or a dog for certain,” I said. “When I get you, you’re done for.” Eating meat on a Friday. Amn’t I the stupid eejit that didn’t put them out, and close the door after me! I caught them on the way up. The Minister’s dog gobbling the meat, and my dog growling at him trying to stop him. I got a hold of the pike. “You’d easily know who you belong to,” I roared at him, “guzzling meat on a Friday.” I thought I’d gut him with the pike. The filthy wretch got away by the skin of his teeth. I offered the meat to our own dog. May God forgive me! I shouldn’t have been tempting him. He wouldn’t refuse anything. Not a bit. Now do you feel any better? He knew it wasn’t right … It’s a pity you didn’t tell him that, Peter, and not give him the chance to insult your religion. Lord God, if it had been me …