The Dirty Dust Read Online Free PDF Page A

her breed and seed, Maggie … Listening to the Master every single day, is that it … The Old Master himself, the wretch … the Old Master reading to Nora Johnny! … Nora Johnny! … ah, for Christ’s sake … he doesn’t think much of himself, does he, the master … Reading stuff to Nora Johnny … Of course, that one has nothing between her ears. Where would she get it from? A woman that never darkened the door of a school, unless it was to vote … I’m telling you it’s a queer world if a schoolmaster spends his time talking to the likes of her … What’s that, Maggie? … that he fancies her … I don’t know who she is … If her daughter lived in the same house as him for the last sixteen years, as she has here, he sure as hell would know who she was then. But I’ll tell him yet … I’ll tell him about the sailor, and the rest of it …
    â€”“Johnny Martin had a daughter
    As big as any other man …”
    â€”Five-eight’s forty; five-nine’s forty-five, five ten’s … sorry sir, I don’t remember …
    â€”“As I roved out to the market, seeking for a woman to find”
    â€”I had twenty, and I played the ace of hearts. I took the king from your partner. Mrukeen topped me with the jack. But I had a nine, and my partner out of luck …
    â€”But I had the queen, and was defending …
    â€”Mrukeen was going to play the five of trumps, and he’d beat your nine. Wasn’t that what you were going to do, Mrukeen?
    â€”But then the mine blew our house up into the air …
    â€”But we’d have won the game anyway …
    â€”No way. If it wasn’t for the mine …
    â€”… A lovely white-headed mare. She was gorgeous …
    â€”I can’t hear a thing, Maggie. O my God almighty and His precious mother … a white-headed mare … The five of trumps … I can’t listen to this …
    â€”I was fighting for the Republic …
    â€”Who asked you anyway …
    â€”He stabbed me …
    â€”Then he didn’t stab you in the tongue anyway. Bugger the lot of you. My head is totally screwed up since I came here. Oh, Maggie, if you could just slink away. In the other world, if you didn’t like someone’s company you could just leave them there, and shag off somewhere else. But unfortunately, the dead can’t budge an inch in the dirty dust …
3.
    â€¦ And after all that they shagged me into the Fifteen Shilling Place. After all my warnings … Nell had a grin on her as wide as a barn door! She’ll surely get buried in the Pound Place now. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it was she put Patrick up to sticking me in the Fifteen Shilling Place instead of the Pound. She wouldn’t have the neck to darken the door of my house, only that I was dead. She didn’t put a foot on my floor since the day I married … that is, if she didn’t sneak in unknown to me while I was dying.
    But, Patrick is a bit of a simpleton. He’d give in to her crap. And his wife would agree: “To tell God’s truth, but you’re right Nell. The Fifteen Shilling Place is good enough for anybody. We’re not millionaires …”
    The Fifteen Shilling Place is good enough for anyone. She would say that. She would say that, wouldn’t she? Nora Johnny’s One. I’ll get her yet! She’ll be here for sure at her next delivery. I’ll get her yet, I’m telling you. But I’ll get her mother first—Nora Johnny herself—in the meantime.
    Nora Johnny. Over from Gort Ribbuck. Gort Ribbuck of the Puddles. It was always said they milk the ducks there. Doesn’t she just fancy herself. Now she’s learning from the Master. It was about time for her to start anyway. No schoolmaster in the world would speak to her, except in the graveyard, and even then he wouldn’t if he knew who she