Donal Ryan - A Slanting of the Sun

There wasn’t a coffin to be got here, you know, for a full year once that First World War ended. The Spanish flu was brought back by soldiers, and laid waste to all about. All the weak were taken: babies and old people and anyone already disposed to frailty or sickness. And many a strong man and woman that was never sick a day in their lives. No resistance, you see, it blew through them the very same as the wind through the girders of the railway bridge between Ballina and Killaloe. I clearly remember the day of my seventeenth birthday, going on the trap with my father to town, and seeing a line of coffins at the bottom of Queen Street, and another row started where that one ended, of poor souls shrouded in blankets and sheets, rosary beads draped across their breasts. And the Foleys in the sawmill yard working night and day to provide short planks for makeshift coffins, and the priests and the curates stepping along the ranks of dead, anointing them. The stench, I’ll never forget, of rotting things and incense. The hums and chants of prayers, the wailing cries.

I heard a man say years upon years later on a television programme that that was all needed by humankind, all that death. It was Nature’s way of pruning back excess, of ensuring bounty. That was needed, says he. The world was short of orphans. The earth was short of human flesh and bones. Lord, but isn’t it a sight altogether the things people say, the things they think they know, the certainties they carry about for themselves. As full as ticks with satisfaction at their own smartness.

I’ll die soon, I suppose. I’ll hardly get a look at this new millennium that all the hullabaloo is about. The world will go haywire by all accounts, the minute it turns 2000. Machines will all turn off, or go quare on people, or something. I’m as well off out of it if that’s the case. Robert Coleman is eighty years dead, imagine. That beautiful boy from the big house who walked many a summer day along the far bank of the stream that served as a border between my father’s tiny freehold and his father’s estate of two or three thousand acres. Who talked and laughed across the whispering water, and always waved back at me as he started up the hill towards home.

TRUE AS GOD. True as this pint before me. I told Busty McGrane go fuck herself. Straight into her face I told her. Years ago this was when all they had was the pub and the little shop counter at the front of it and only the bare bit of milk and bread and ham and newspapers being sold there that time and even only scarcely that. Before the big swanky Mace come along and the yard full of pumps under a canopy. Only the one lonesome pump that time and no diesel even. Farmers only used diesel them days anyway and all had their own tanks. I was only a puck, sixteen or seventeen. Says to myself Right, I’ll set out early on for this cow how things is going to be between us. Few hundred pound them days a man could be in Australia and all set up. Didn’t need no job at all off of that wan. Was me doing her the favour.

So there we was on a Sunday evening fine and sunny and a thirst in my throat like sandpaper was rubbing the inside of it and it a bank holiday Monday next day and Mickey Briars and Alphonsus Reilly and all them lads that was all off the next day shouting over at me from inside in Ciss Brien’s that I was only a boy, a bare chap for that orange crowd, and wanting to know was I a fuckin gom altogether or what was I and Busty McGrane standing before me reading me from a height over the dust in the yard and it being rose good-oh by every passing car and truck and destroying her windows and all the stuff inside in the shop was covered entirely in grit. Hers was the only shop in the country them days opened Sundays. And there I stood and her two tits heaving up and down before me while she screeched, mesmerizing me. How am I meant to keep dust from rising, I asked her. Hose it down, says she, and the screech of her near split me in two. Piss on it for all I care! And she poked a long finger into my chest. Well, if she did! Says I to myself, I can die a man or live a child, and I turned around to her and lifted her out of it. Busty, says I – and that alone, calling her Busty and not Mrs McGrane fair vexed her – says I, Go on. Away. And fuck. Yourself. Real slow, like that, straight into her face. And I thrown down my sweeping brush and strolled fine and slow with no look back away from her across to Ciss’s, her main competition as things were then, and was landed up a pint straight the second I walked through the door in congratulations though I wasn’t even strictly of age, but then you’re only a man when you start to act like a man. True as God I done that. And she never once barked at me since. Not like all them young wans she’d have shitting themselves scared of her, doing their few hours for their bit of pocket money, handing out cones to children and standing idle at the tills looking out of their mouths. True as God. Ask Mickey Briars if you don’t believe me.

Then a small while after, and I having the ticket as good as got to go over to Australia and work in demolition with the father’s cousin, didn’t one of the young Comerfords land down to our cottage saying how I was wanted inside in The House of the Big Small Ones. Philomena McGrane was after telephoning their house with the message on account of we had no phone of our own that time, and my father says to me More in your line now to go in as far as the village and make it up with the McGranes and get back your bit of a job and don’t mind your fooling about Australia or what have you. Imagine the cut of you, says he, you’d be sizzled like a rasher and swallowed whole by a crocodile for his breakfast on your first day off of the plane. And I kind of seen the sense in that then, that when a man is offered a good job in the place of his birth isn’t it as well take his luck where it comes besides travelling to ungodly places looking for what you’re only after leaving behind you. And so in I went and the auld husband inside in the bar and it dark as night inside in it as always and it still called The House of the Big Small Ones that time on account of the measures was always gave out massive all along the years before the McGranes blew down from the north and bought it off of auld Mugsy Foley and he half dead that time and no son or daughter left to look after him and the auld wife long buried and he desperate stuck for the few pound to put himself up in the good home out beyond Lackanavea not to be ended up below in the county home that was always along the years known as The Poorhouse. And the auld husband had a puss on him and all he done was grunt at me and nod towards the door behind the bar in towards the kitchen where Busty sat keeping a watch out on shop counter and bar counter and petrol pump and husband.

Look on, says she, in the auld nordie accent, and a big long fag in her hand and a halo of smoke about her head. Look what the cat’s dragged in. Kee-at, says she, like that, in place of cat. Them auld nordies do always make words longer and split them in two. Are you over your little strop, says she, like for all the world I was a bould schoolboy waiting to see would he be slapped or gave out to or both or neither. I said nothing back to her only stood my ground and done my damnedest not to be leaving my eyes settle of their own accord on the front of her tight pink jumper. She wanted to know had the same kee-at got my tongue and all I said was Lookit, you sent for me, I have my bag packed for Australia and all, I have things for doing now if you don’t mind. Woo-ee, says she, letting on to be all wide-eyed with surprise. Well, I’ll give you till the end of today to think on, and if you change your mind, come in to me in the morning. Think on, says she, like that. Quare nordie way of talking.