BONES OF CONTENTION

I

It was as a visitor to my grandmother that I knew the old lady.

My grandmother, if I may be permitted to digress so soon, was a
terror. Five years before she had undergone an operation. She was then
sixty-four, and we were not surprised when Peter Dooley, the
undertaker, paid us what was supposed to be an informal and friendly
visit.  Neither were we surprised when the nun at the hospital told us
there was nothing we could do but pray. We did pray, but not very
hard, for my grandmother, as I say, was a terror. But our calculations
were out. She did not die. The doctors, who were beginning to be
really concerned, operated a second time. After that they told us
there was no chance whatever.

In spite of it all she came home to us. She had lost the use of her
legs, but she ruled us as always from her attic. We still attempt to
take off her calm and grateful look when the doctor informed her that
had she been accustomed to drink she could not have endured the first
operation, much less the second. The old woman, God rest her, had a
colossal appetite for whiskey. I have seen her put away a half pint
without turning a hair. I am told she could manage a pint. No one had
ever seen her drunk.  She was much too dignified for that.

In the days when she sold vegetables about Cork she was looked on as a
knowledgeable woman, always well up in the news, and in her retirement
this reputation did not desert her.  Poor people consulted her as one
might consult a solicitor, and always when they came they brought a
glass or two of whiskey in which the health of good counsel was
drunk. Her pet subject was ‘international politics. She had a mind
like a card index and could produce a miniature biography of
Clemenceau, Poincaré or Venizelos while you waited. She disliked
Viviani. I can still see her, plump, gracious and opinionated, sitting
up in bed, scrutinising the day’s news, and giving a judgment as
carefully considered as a lawyer’s. She had a naturally loud and
penetrating voice acquired in her business, but the more opinionated
she grew the milder grew the voice. When she was beginning to get
really angry it sank to a whisper, and beyond that whisper no one I
knew ever had the courage to draw her. Beyond it, I imagine, was
something that would have been consumed by spontaneous combustion. I
don’t profess at this hour of the day to decide whether or not she
talked sense.


II

But to return to the old lady. She had had three sons, all killed in
the Boer War. Three sons, three violent deaths, three wake-houses
without a corpse. No wonder she had never been the same since then.

She had one daughter still alive. At the age of sixteen this girl had
been sent to Paris by the nuns. She lived au pair with a French family
for a year. Then she married a baker up for a few days from the
country. She knew nothing of him or he of her, but they had married on
the strength of an immediate liking and lived ever since like a family
in a storybook.  Because he was an atheist she had ceased to practise
her religion. They lived in a little town in—Limousin, perhaps it
was—where the English were still the hereditary enemies, and her
mother-in-law frightened the children to bed with tales of the Black
Prince. Her mother described how year by year her letters became more
difficult to understand, till, at the time I speak of, they were
written in a pidgin English that was translated by a hilarious
gathering in our parlour. And meanwhile the old lady sat with her
frightened air, her hands in her lap.

She came to my grandmother to have the news explained. A Government
fell and a new Government was formed. How would it affect Joan? There
was a strike in Bordeaux or Marseilles.  Would Joan’s husband be out
of work?  There was trouble on the frontier. Would he be conscripted?

I remember one such occasion, a grey February day. A cold light was
streaming down through the attic window on my grandmother, who was
sitting up in bed, her spectacles very far down her nose, her little
crimson shawl about her. A fire was burning in the airless room; it
was hot and smelly. All round her was crowded her furniture (for even
the few things she allowed us to have she demanded a daily reckoning
of); and on the mantelpiece were ranged her china figures, Cinderella,
Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk.

She nodded when the old lady appeared, because to seem surprised would
be the admission of mortal weakness.

‘Is that yourself, Mary? I was expecting you.’

‘I’m a worry to you,’ said the old lady.

“You are so.’

‘I am, then, a worry. Were you reading it?’

‘I wasn’t considering it.’

By this time the old lady had produced a flask of whiskey which she
laid on the table beside the bed. My grandmother looked at it long and
hard with a set frown.

‘Well,’ she exclaimed slowly and emphatically.  ‘Aren’t you an awful
gom of a woman? Oughtn’t you to be ashamed of yourself? How many times
did I tell you not to be wasting your couple of ha’pence on that
stuff? Sure, ’tis daylight robbery!’

At this the old lady chuckled—she had a delicious chuckle—and sat
down.

‘Judy!’ my grandmother called in wistful tones, ‘Judy, girl!’

“What is it?’ asked my mother from the foot of the stairs.

‘Tis a couple of glasses, girleen o! Hurry, leave you now before the
thirst would wear off me.’

She winked at her guest, who rocked with silent mirth.

When my mother appeared with the glasses the old lady began to
protest. She wouldn’t drink—didn’t my grandmother know well she had no
head for it? My grandmother waved a contemptuous hand and said in her
mildest, most nonchalant tone, ‘Pour out, girleen!’

The two old cronies raised their glasses to one another. _‘Slainte
chughat_,’ my grandmother said in a challenging voice.

‘Your health, ma’am.’

‘_Slainte_,’ my grandmother repeated belligerently.  She did not
believe in these new-fangled English toasts. Then she drank and a look
of unutterable loathing suddenly broke across her face. Her little
eyes got lost in their folds, her mouth spread across the width of her
face; she spluttered and shivered as if in the grip of a violent
revulsion of her whole nature. Then gradually her features grew calmer
and she hastily drew her hand across her lips. The old lady looked
deeply concerned but my mother only laughed.

‘Poor creature!’ she exclaimed, ‘’tis a trial of her!’

The poor creature gasped three or four times without speaking, but you
gathered that her system was slowly recovering from the shock it had
experienced. Then she put out her bare arm carefully and gathered in
the snuff-box. She passed it to my mother, who took a pinch; the old
lady took a pinch; I took a pinch. My grandmother waited in silence
for someone to say the traditional prayer.

‘For the souls of all that are gone before us,’ the old lady said
mildly.

‘And for our own poor souls in the time of trouble,’ added my mother.

‘_Go ndeanaidh Dia trocaire orainn abhus agus thall,’ my grandmother
trumpeted. ‘God have mercy on us here and yonder.’

Then she drew up the snuff in a long pull through either nostril,
dusted herself neatly, and picked up the paper once more.


III

I was sorry when the old lady became ill. You missed her more than a
noisier visitor. She was removed to the workhouse hospital, where my
mother and I went to see her. She was very grateful to us. No one else
had come near her, and I think she was very lonely. We brought her a
noggin of whiskey which my grandmother had entrusted us with.

‘Make Michael write to her daughter,’ said my grandmother. ‘She should
be told her mother is dying.’

I wrote. In reply I received a letter that caused me some difficulty
in the reading. Eventually I made out that Joan was sorry (‘Well she
might be,’ said my grandmother, who couldn’t understand why any
supposedly educated woman shouldn’t be able to write her own
language); that there was not enough money to bring her all the way to
Ireland but that she left the burial to us. With very humble apologies
she begged us to see that everything was as decency required.

‘Decency,’ said my grandmother, with scorn and loathing for such an
ungenerous quality, ‘requires very little. Tell her that when you're
sending the bill.’

One evening a messenger came to say the old lady was dying. When we
reached the workhouse we found her bed already stripped.

‘That little woman will be a great loss to me,’ said my
grandmother. ‘Judy, bring out my walking-clothes and give them an
airing.’

‘Are you taking leave of your senses?’

‘I’m taking leave of my bed. For one day anyhow.’

‘You won’t attempt it!’

‘Faith, then, I’ll do more than attempt it,’ said my grandmother with
great placidity.

My father was called in.

‘Listen to me, Ma,’ he said determinedly, you’re stopping where you
are. Judy and Michael and me will be enough at that funeral.’

‘Denis,’ she said, reaching him the snuff-box, ‘you’re forty-six years
in this world come the third of February, God spare you, and would you
tell me when you or anyone else hindered me doing something I made up
my mind to do?’

‘But when you can’t walk, woman!’ he shouted in exasperation.

‘Why would I walk when I’ve my fine strong son to carry me?’

All that evening the argument went on but my father made no impression
on her. She had made up her mind to go to the funeral, and go she
would if the heavens fell. That little woman, she declared, was one
she had a great regard for, one of the old stock that had almost died
out.  But all her obstinacy would not have availed her if she had not
had another argument, her money.  She had the money, and would have
more in two months’ time when she qualified for the pension.

‘Cross me, Denis,’ she said mildly, wagging a bony forefinger, ‘cross
me, acushla, and I'll shift my tent.’

The old rogue knew my father did not like the thought of her pension
leaving the house.  After a while you noticed he was disputing only to
save his face.

And imperturbably she went on making her plans. Her wardrobe was
spread out on the bed, her two bonnets, her dolman, bright with beads
and lace, her bodices, skirts and petticoats.

Next morning ripened into a bright windy day. The spring light was
like the motion of a blue and silver dress. We had an early dinner and
soon afterwards a carriage drove up to the door. My father was
upstairs, and when I ran to call him I heard him swearing
atrociously. He was so angry that he did not cease even for me.

‘Look at me!’ he shouted, with outstretched arms as my mother came
upstairs in hat and coat.  “Look at me, the father of a family, and I
being turned into a public show!’

He began to beat his hands together distractedly and strode up and
down the room. It was only then I noticed my grandmother. She was
sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows and very red under the
weight of her bonnet and dolman. Yet she seemed in spite of them to
have diminished till she was no bigger than myself.

‘Merciful God!’ said my father. ‘How will I ever get over it? The
shame and disgrace of it!  A man like me that have a job to mind and a
wife and family to see through the world! Blast you, woman,’ he
shouted at my mother, ‘are you a dummy or what to be standing there
with that idioty bloody smile on your puss? Do you hear what I’m
saying? Do you know what I’m being made to do? Do you know your
children will never live down the shame of it?’

‘Ah, what shame?’ asked my mother innocently, with what he described
as her idioty smile.

‘What shame?’ He raised his fist at her, choking with rage. ‘Are you
mocking me too, are you?’

“Is it a man ashamed to carry his own mother.  Often enough she
carried yourself.’

‘Ay,’ agreed my grandmother complacently, ‘and leathered him.’

‘The divil in hell roast you!’ he shouted as he made a sudden dive
towards the bed. It seemed as though he were about to strangle her,
but instead, he caught her deftly in his arms and whirled her out of
the room and down the stairs.  He seemed scarcely conscious of her
weight, for she had dwindled to nothing in those few years.  He placed
her in the carriage, and then, mad with shame and rage, went off to
look for the driver, who had gone to look for a drink. My grandmother
gravely took out a large mirror from under her cloak and proceeded to
readjust her bonnet.


IV

On our way through the city we saw other funeral carriages on their
way to the workhouse.  ‘That must be for the poor little man we saw in
the mortuary,’ said my mother. Instead of taking the short cut to the
cemetery we paraded the city in state. My grandmother wanted to see
what changes had occurred since she had taken to her bed. Though she
would not have wished us to know it, she was wildly excited.

‘Give a knock on the window and tell that man not to drive so fast,
Denis,’ she commanded once or twice, and each time my father sat and
glowered at her.

‘Oh my, oh my, there’s great alterations in the world,’ she exclaimed,
pulling out her snuff-box. ‘Look at that new shop! Denis, Judy,
Michael, who owns the new shop?’

‘Linehans do,’ replied my mother.

‘Cronins used to own the old one. Oh my, oh my, what happened the
Cronins at all?  And I remember well the time that man used to have
two carriages and a dozen servants. He was a real nice man too. For
all his grandeur, he’d be the first to raise his hat and say “Good
morrow, Mrs Kiely,” whenever he ran into me.  Judy, girl, don’t forget
to run over to the new shop and enquire what happened him. I’d sooner
than a five-pound note that nothing unforeseen happened little Mr
Cronin.’

“By the jumping bell of Athlone,’ swore my father, looking at his
watch, ‘if he don’t hurry up we’ll be burying that woman by
starlight!’

‘Ah, what hurry is on you!’ she exclaimed.

At that moment we happened to be mounting the hill from the
river. Suddenly the carriage pulled up with a jolt and the horses
began to prance distractedly about the roadway. My father looked out
and swore, this time by something more substantial than the bell of
Athlone.  I looked out at the other side and saw what was wrong.

Another hearse had pulled right across the road. The driver of our
hearse was swearing in a horrible fashion. Then as, followed by my
father, I jumped from the carriage, I saw him lean forward and lash at
the other driver with his whip. The other dodged, just in time, and
with an infuriated yell ours lashed out again, this time at the horses
under the obstructing vehicle.  They reared, our horses began to take
fright and moved forward, but even as they did, a covered car emerged
from a lane and the road was blocked once more.

By this time there was inextricable confusion, and to make it worse
every house and lane was shooting out contingents of shawled and
aproned women and dirty children and men in shirt sleeves who dodged
this way and that under the noses of the terrified animals. The
drivers of the two hearses were standing up on their boxes shouting
abuse and oaths at one another.

Then I suddenly seemed to reach the heart of the confusion. The voices
of the drivers died away. I was one of a ring of people that
surrounded two figures; one an elderly woman in hat and coat, the
other a young woman with a shawl that trailed about her feet. The
older woman was supporting her. She was swaying backwards and forwards
with rhythmical pendulum-like movements, tossing her arms and
screaming.

‘Now, now, now,’ said the older woman, ‘don’t take it to heart so,
Nonie girl. Never fear, the neighbours will see you righted. Go easy
now, girl, go easy!’

‘Easy?’ screamed Nonie. ‘Oh, you sweet heart of God, how would I go
easy? I’m trod and trampled underfoot. I’m only a poor lonely woman
with no man to mind me. I’m only seaweed on the rocks.’

“What happened you at all, poor woman?’  called a female voice from
the crowd.

“What happened her, is it?’ echoed the elder woman, with tears
standing in her eyes. ‘Ask her and she’ll tell ye, neighbours. Ask her
now, leave ye, till ye hear her story!’

‘From under me eyes,’ screamed Nonie, rising on the last word to a
pitch of rage and anguish that made the hair stand on my head, ‘they
stole me Auntie Mary.’

I looked up and saw my father behind me.  His eyes were dilated with
terror.

“What did they do to you?’ came the voice again.

‘They stole her Auntie Mary,’ wailed the older woman.

‘Me Auntie Mary,’ screamed Nonie, ‘that I loved more than my own
mother! The smiling thieves of Ireland stole her from under my eyes,
and no man will fire the shot at them.  Seaweed on the rocks, seaweed
on the rocks, is all I am.’

“Come on away out of this,’ hissed my father, and his hand alighted on
the collar of my coat.

‘Look at this what you’re after bringing on us!’ he hissed at my
grandmother. ‘Stealing the woman’s auntie we're after doing.’

‘That the Almighty God would break their faces!’ the voice of Nonie
intoned piously as she was escorted towards us by an excited throng.

‘Oh, merciful Jesus!’ moaned my father, putting his hands before his
face. ‘We're disgraced for ever and ever. How will I face the world
after this black day?”

“Let her come here to me,’ said my grandmother with perfect
composure. ‘I'll talk to her.’

But there was no need to call Nonie. Nonie was coming, her excitement
growing with every step. She begged the woman who accompanied her to
let go of her for one minute till she put our noses through the back
of our necks. And you could feel the crowd was siding with her.  My
grandmother took out her mirror and straightened her bonnet. Then she
took a meditative pinch of snuff. As she did so Nonie’s brilliant
features appeared at the window.  Nonie was drunk. There was no doubt
about that. Nonie was exceedingly drunk. The mood of the crowd changed
when instead of the smiling thieves of Ireland it saw a harmless
looking old lady in an old-fashioned bonnet. There were shouts,
threats and questions. My grandmother took no notice of Nonie but
nodded and smiled in reply. I could hear the exclamations.  ‘Lemme
see, can’t you? Is that the one fecked the girl’s Auntie Mary? Wisha,
God help us, would you blame her?’

Nonie herself scented the change and felt that more emotion was called
for. Gathering up her shawl, she levelled a naked and accusing arm at
my grandmother and began to execute an intricate dance step.

“There she is,’ she yelled. “There’s the old witch that stole me
Auntie Mary.’

My grandmother winked. As a gesture it was less than nothing, but the
three or four who noticed it laughed, the laughter spread, and soon
you could scarcely hear Nonie for the mirth of the crowd.

After a while the other woman began to speak very rapidly. Whatever
about Nonie, she was sober enough. She had documentary evidence, she
hissed. Leave us try to cross her, and she’d see us all, man, woman
and child, in the body of the County Gaol. The poor creature she was
speaking for was the grand-niece of the corpse; she had documentary
evidence to prove it. And hadn’t she the dead woman insured herself?
She had. And wasn’t she a respectable publican that could clap her
hand on her bank-book at any hour of the day or night? She was.  And
did we think after the mint of money she sank in the funeral that she
was going to let us run off with the corpse on her?

‘Denis,’ cried my grandmother. ‘Lift me out of this till I talk to
her. Neighbours, leave ye take me in off the public road till I tell
ye my story!’

My father, who by this time was beyond reasoning, lifted her out, and
half a dozen women crowded round offering the shelter of their
roofs. The crowd began to cheer.

I remember vaguely being swept into a room where she was lying on a
bed with a patch-work quilt. Nonie did not appear—I had left her
clinging for support to the jamb of the street door—but the woman who
had sunk the mint of money in the funeral did. Dispassionately my
grandmother dealt with her vindictive speeches.

‘Steal her Auntie Mary?’ she asked in the mildest of tones (that
phrase was getting on everyone’s nerves). ‘How could we steal her
Auntie Mary? Is it larceny you’re charging us with, woman? And are you
fool enough to think anyone in his senses would believe you? Sure, how
could you steal a corpse, honest woman?  Tell me, now! Don’t the whole
wide world except yourself know you could-do nothing with a corpse but
take a loan of it?’

‘Never mind your excuses,’ the other woman hissed. ‘Never mind your
excuses, you old alligator! We know who she is and where she came
from. We have documentary evidence.’

‘A grand-niece,’ declared my grandmother in infallible tones, ‘have no
existence in law. The best authorities say so.’

At that moment a sudden silence fell. Everyone turned towards the door
expectantly. Then we heard a rattle of wheels and a shout of fury.
Someone burst through the crowd. It was the driver of our hearse.

‘They’re after stealing the hearse,’ he shouted.  ‘Hearse and coffin
and all. Give the word, ma’am, give the word and we'll folly them.’

‘Who was it?’ asked my grandmother.

‘Mike Sullivan, the hearseman. Oh, you, God, why did I take me eyes
off him? Himself and the drunken gazebo. Oh, ma’am, what came over me?
And it was just one saucy word from the man on the covered car that
made me turn on him!’

‘Never mind,’ said my grandmother philosophically.

‘One word,’ he said beseechingly, going upon one knee and extending
his open hand, ‘one word and I’ll make so many pieces of him that all
the wax-end in Ireland won’t sew him together.’

‘Never mind,’ she repeated. ‘Denis!’ she called.

My father lifted her and carried her back to the carriage.

‘Home,’ he shouted to the driver. ‘Home as fast as them bloody horses
will carry you!’

‘Ah, what home!’ exclaimed my grandmother.  ‘Would you disappoint the
poor men and they after going to such trouble and worry for you?’

‘God increase you, ma’am,’ said the driver of the carriage, touching
his hat.

‘Home,’ said my father weakly.

‘To Carrigrohane,’ said my grandmother.  ‘Step in, Denis.”

‘As sure as faith ’tis to the madhouse we’ll go after,’ he said with a
scowl. But he did as he was told.

‘Grandma,’ said I, ‘could I sit on top with the driver?”

‘To be sure you could.’

So I sat on the box beside him. He was in great good humour and told
me at the top of his voice that if he had a little woman like my
grandmother to drive he wouldn’t mind if they stole every damned
corpse in Ireland off him.

At a rattling pace the empty hearse and carriage jolted in clouds of
dust along the wide valley road to the west. It was an evening of
sparkle and scurry. The clouds rolled up silently across the horizon,
and it seemed as if the whole sky was spinning up with them upon a
well-oiled axle. The wind whistled past our ears. The trees that
fringed the river swayed with a sombre and gentle motion as if from
their roots.

We stopped outside a public-house. There were trees above and around
it and a wide shallow river flashed and tinkled nearby. The driver
went in for drinks, and reappeared with lemonade and biscuits for my
mother and me and a double whiskey for my grandmother. She was telling
how she and a young man had come here on a jaunting-car one Sunday
before he went to America. He was a nice young man, but he had died
before she was ready to go out to him. My mother smiled. After that we
went on to Blarney. She and the young man had gone on to Blarney too.

We drove back to the city under a full moon.  My father was sitting
beside the driver of the hearse. Where the trees stopped and the moon
shone clear I could see him tilted sideways, his head on the driver’s
shoulder. I, almost asleep, was wrapped in a portion of the carriage
driver’s coat, the buttons of which flickered in the moonlight. And he
and my father and the driver of the hearse were singing in broken and
tearful voices a ballad about a young man who had to leave his native
place and go to America.  Three weeks later we took my grandmother by
the same route to the hillside cemetery, and the drivers of the hearse
and carriage swore that she was as nice a spoken woman as ever they
listened to in their lives. The last words belong to me. As I write
them I remember her favourite prayer and murmur it with affection and
reverence: ‘God have mercy on us here and yonder.’

(1932)

Source: _Bones of Contention and other stories_, reprinted Core
Collections Books Inc. Great Neck, N.Y., 1978, pp 201-220.