— How could I? The Minister’s dog never took a bit from me …
— But the Spanish eat meat every Friday, and they’re fine Catholics …
— You’re a liar, you piece of mush! …
— The Pope gave them permission …
— That’s a lie! You black heretic …
— … O, is that so, Master, my old pal? If I rubbed — what’s that you call it again, Master … Oh, yes, if I rubbed methylated spirits on me in time, I’d never have got bedsores. Ara, but Master, there was nobody any good looking after me. They were all thick. You can’t beat the bit of education, after all. Methylated spirits. Who’d have thought of it! You say it comes in a bottle. Do you know what, Master, they must be the same bottles that the Mistress buys from Peter the Publican’s daughter. I’m told she buys loads of them. For Billy …
— Not them, Poxy Martin. You wouldn’t get them in a pub at all. She’s drinking the stuff, the dipso. Certainly downing it. Or else Billy is sloshing it back. Or the two of them together. That’s one way with money, Poxy …
— Really and truly honest to God, Poxy Martin, I would have burst my gut to be at your funeral. It wouldn’t have been right for me not to be at Poxy Martin’s funeral, even if I had to crawl on my hands and knees …
— Margaret! Margaret! … Do you hear Chalky Steven bullshitting again? He’s a terrible pain … Hey there, Margaret! Did you hear? Hello, Margaret! … You’re very quiet recently. Do you hear me, Margaret? … It’s about time for you to say something … I’m talking about that blubby blabber, Chalky Steven. I didn’t know he was here at all until a while ago. There’s a very dour lot here, Margaret. They’d tell you nothing. Look at the way they stayed dumb about Chalky Steven …
O, I know full well, Margaret, that Chalky Steven is here. I was talking to him. They thought they’d dump him in on top of me …
That’s true, Margaret: anybody is easy to recognise when there’s a cross over his grave. It won’t be too long now before my own cross is ready, although they say that the Connemara marble is getting used up, that’s it’s hard to get enough stone for a proper cross. Poxy Martin says you’d only get one now if you knew somebody. But he told me they were hurrying up with it, all the same …
He didn’t say that, is that what you’re saying, Margaret … There’s enough marble left in Connemara to last for ever! Ah come off it, Margaret, stop talking through your hole! Why would I bother laying lies on a decent man? Neither himself nor myself are trying to compete in telling lies just because we have been dumped in this dive together …
You say that my daughter-in-law said that, Margaret: “We’ll be well off in this life when we can afford to start buying a cross.” Oh, I get it alright. You were eavesdropping behind closed doors again, Margaret, just as you used to do Up Above … Now, now, Margaret, there’s no point in denying it. You were eavesdropping behind closed doors. That tale you told Dotie and Nora Johnny here about my life, where else did you hear that except from behind the door? …
What! You used to listen to me talking while I was walking the road! … And behind the ditch when I was working in the field! Well then, Margaret, isn’t it just the same to be listening behind the door, and listening on the road, or skulking behind a ditch …
But, hang on a minute now, Margaret? Tell me this much, why are the people in the graveyard so set against me? Why can’t they find someone else to chew the cud about apart from me? Because like …
Because like, I don’t have any cross yet, is that it? What else? What else? …
They don’t like me since I was stroppy about cooperating? How did I get stroppy, Margaret? …
Now I get it alright. I voted against Nora Johnny! Don’t you know in your heart of hearts, Margaret, that I couldn’t have done otherwise. The hairy molly of the Toejam trollops! The Fine Time that was had by all the sailors, the so-and-so … She was a candidate for the Fifteen Shilling Party after that, is that what you’re saying, Margaret? And your shower didn’t give a toss about Toejam Nora, nor about quacky ducks, nor about salacious sailors, nor about her toper tippling on the sly, nor about her being a so-and-so …
What’s that you said the Master called me, you said? … A scab. He called me a scab because I voted against the Fifteen Shilling Party. But I didn’t vote against the Fifteen Shilling Party, Margaret. I voted against Nora horse arse Johnny. You know full well that our family always voted the same way aboveground. Nell was the one who was different. Nell, the fucking fussock, did the dirty. She voted for this new crowd because they got a road built up to her house …
The Master called me that too, did he. Say it again, Margaret … A bowsie! A bowsie, Margaret! … Because I cursed Huckster Joan after she had insulted me! O my God Almighty! I never called her names, Margaret. It was she had a go at me, Margaret. I’ll tell that much to the Master. I’ll tell him straight up, without fear or hesitation. “Caitriona,” she said, “Caitriona Paudeen, do you hear me?” she said. “I want to thank you for voting for us. You are a courageous woman …”
I never pretended, Margaret, I never pretended that I heard the sour tone in her voice. If I answered her at all, I would have said: “You fat floozie, I wasn’t voting for you, or for Peter the Publican, or for the Pound Party, no way, I was voting against that so-and-so, Nora Johnny …”
She said that I was a turncoat because I called Nora Johnny … pretending to be friendly … after all the badmouthing I had given her since I came to the graveyard … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Margaret! Me calling Nora Johnny! … What’s that Margaret? … He called me that! The Master! No, that’s what he called Nora Johnny, Margaret. What else would he call her! …
He called me a so-and-so, Margaret. A so-and-so! I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! Burst …
Interlude 7: THE MOULDING EARTH
1.
I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken to what I have to say! Hearken unto my voice …
Here in the graveyard is the parchment whose weave of dreams is a feculent and enigmatic epigraphy; where the gauntlet of life’s gallantry is no more than a smear of faded ink; where the majesty of our best moments melds into mouldy pages …
Aboveground all of earth, sea, and sky is a virgin golden parchment. Every hedgerow is a flourish. Every pathway is a streamline of colour. A field of corn is a golden letter. Every sun-kissed mountaintop and every curved cove under spangle-suffused sails is a compound sentence. Every cloud lenites the purple capital letters of the pirouetting peaks of the mountains. The rainbow is a semicolon between the half-quatrain of the sky and the other half-quatrain of the earth. Because it is thus that what is writ by this scribe can unfold its gospel of glory on the parchment of earth, sea, and sky …