Second Installement Peggy's Secret.

Donie stands, apart in the Graveyard, watching as the coffin is shouldered and borne to the grave. Behind him the gravestones, some old, not straight, leaning, some tall, some short, stand ghosted in a morning dimness. A light rain falls straight down.

Jonnie, in the box over there Paddy, was only sixty-five: not old today, we were cousins. His mother and mine were sisters. We were neighbours and we were friends too. Old friends, who grew up together. I thought we would grow old together.

We were friends as well on the bog. Investors each year in the bank that he always said had no big locked door, no money, no manager, shareholders or funds.

He laughed each time he visited the Bookies. The Turf Accountant, the official taxman's title on the betting business. Are they countin' the sods - of turf? He laughed and said, as well: the only loan we would get from our bank, was the loan of a bog-barrow that was hidden in a drain.

That’s the sister, Peggy in the wheelchair. She looked after him most of the time, even when he used be on the batter, on the drink. He gave that up in the last ten years, but he kept puffin’ on the coffin-nails. That’s what got him in the end.

That lot around her are the nieces and nephews, the ones on the edge of the circle, are the O’Connors. She used call in and keep an eye on them after Molly, her sister died. Martin did not last long after. A broken heart they said.

They're all away in their own places now, with their own families, except the youngest. He's in the home place, letting it fall down around his ears. Too lazy to shake himself, never mind work for a living. On the scratch, calling it disability, 'cause he says his back is at him. It's his elbow resting on a bar counter that is the real culprit.

In isolation - going up the walls - must paint them as well!

Over the next few weeks. I will post extracts from my new kindle - it's short stories - and a short book to boot. Maybe this is what I should do-  Boot It.

A man told me my paperback was a grate book - just great for lighting a fire in the grate! This will fix him - it's a kindle....

Peggy's Secret

Streets of Birdsong

Buteo buteo

&

Other Short Stories

© Pat Mc Namara

writing as Lazarian Wordsmith 2019 2020

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Peggy's Secret

Cill Malogue was a village on the outskirts of the planted town. The English arrived late in the 1600's and founded their Burrough Town, wrote a charter, set up a council and built their Protestant church. Later the Huguenots also arrived and built their dwelling houses, set up their own church and their industries. The native Irish were no longer living in County Laois and County Offaly, but lived in Queen's County and King's County. They built their own Catholic Church in the village, and anglicised the Gaelic name so that the English could pronounce it. Along the road a half mile away they used a scraggy field, near the river, as their burial place. To frustrate the English or French they named it Reilig. In Gaelic the cemetery.

Over time mourners followed the coffin on foot to this place and buried the dead there. As time passed and society changed, the bare footed peasants became the farmers and craftsmen, the planted became the prosperous merchants, and their children became the new generation of the next century, when motorised hearses carried the dead, but from then up until today the locals still walked behind the hearse.

They talked, smoked and slow marched along, over the new railway bridge to the graveyard.

"He didn't last long, when they opened him up."

"Bloody cancer, it's the family disease, got the mother and the father, two sisters and his brother: Billy. He was only twenty or so, no life at all, just a youngster really. It even passed on to the next generation, the nephew who lived with them got it as well. The Big C."

Through the crowd the conversations wavered, wafted and, as the final destination arrived, waned. Then low voiced whispers only.

"Yer man there from Dublin, is he a nephew?"

"And a nuisance, the other two are in the car behind with Peggy. Jonnie and Peggy only saw that side, when one or other of them wanted something. A sack or turf to impress the neighbours with the smell of good bog turf, or a sack of vegetable for their occasional dining experiences. I heard them spoofin' one time I got close enough to hear their whispered conversations. Bloody paranoid that someone would hear them, looking around like they were afraid of shadows."

" Mollie's children?."

"Aye. Don't forget the father, the footballer, he had a bit to do with the action there as well. They don't have his temperament though. Scratchy Briars the lot of them."

"I remember Molly when she was young, a smasher, no wonder she married the best man around."

"Quite! We're away now, they're hoisting him out."

More to come tomorrow....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peggys-Secret-Streets-Birdsong-Stories-ebook/dp/B082MQYP3Y/ref=sr_1_80?dchild=1&qid=1586000028&refinements=p_27%3AThe+Wordsmiths&s=digital-text&sr=1-80

Another "Find" from the store of papers under my desk - NAH on the computer!

Tons of Crap (Retd.)

‘Once up on a time.’ When we were growing up didn’t all good stories start like that?

Aye! And didn’t most end ‘and they all lived happily never after’? It’s hard to find a story like that nowadays.

Once up on a time I worked for a large international airline, you know the one I mean, Yea that’s it. It was a good place to work in then: good management, good staff, good pals and after work a good social life, and fun like the Inter Departmental Competitions.

Once when out section was training some staff from another airline, Air Lanka, here in Dublin, we would have won the Inter D hockey competition, except some smart ass discovered that two of the players we had successfully petitioned the ALSAA council to allow play with us were Sri Lankian hockey internationals.

One was the goalkeeper, the other an attacking forward. That was one story that didn’t end ‘and they all lived happily ever after’.

One of the teams in the soccer tournament for a couple of years was The Tons of Crap team. Their mission was never to win a match and never to have a man or woman booked for tackling another player. The goalkeeper would be dropped if he stopped a shot and any forward who failed to shoot over the bar at an open goal, would be transferred to a better team: and a transfer payment would be made to that team if they took him.

For a few years the team played badly enough and lost all their matches, then disaster struck. Late in injury time in a nil all match the other team scored an own-goal and the referee blew up before the Tons of Crap team could pay back the favour. They had won a match and despite their appeal and protests to the Fair Play Committee the result was a win for Tons of Crap.

The following year the team did not play in any competitions in protest and to my knowledge have not participated in any Inter D to this day. Another unhappy ending.

If they made a comeback today how would they line up? Who would be recruited to play with them? What strategy would they adopt to loose all their matches?

As it so happens, this reporter has been contacted, by their old manager Snitchy and that is just what he is now proposing: the All Old Tons of Crap (Retd.) Team. He even has a wish list of the type of players he wants to attract if you feel you can fill any of there positions contact snitchy@tonsofcrapagain.com.

For the goalkeepers he wants someone who once guided large aircraft to their stand on the ramp. Snitchy told me. “I want men who when they see a ball approach will confuse it with the nose cone of a large jet. I want them to put their right hand to their ear and scream, LEFT LEFT LEFT YA BASTARD and then jump out of the way and run along the end line with both hands over their head”.

He is looking to appoint a Team captain who would once have been a manager or director of a division. He will play in the midfield position, a kind of Roy Keane role. When he gets the ball, Snitchy says, “I’m hoping he will fall back towards defense and pass the ball to the vice-captain, also midfield, who will run with it, while the captain shouts CARRY IT, CARRY IT, DON’T LET US DOWN, KEEP WITH THE PLAN. MAKE SURE IT’S IN THE BUDGET!”

He says he might have a bit of a problem if he messes up the rest of midfield. The players he need to attract will once have been sales or marketing managers who will bring with them two forwards that have previously worked with. “My master plan, depends on them regressing back into their work role. When they get the ball they will only pass it to their man, the sales or marketing forward, with instructions to do their best and report back. The best men for that job would be ex-cargo, they could run at the opposing team roaring NETT NETT, FIVE PLUS FIFTEEN. This would be real confusing in that the NETT NETT would confuse the other team: they would think we were serious about having a real go. I don’t know what the FIVE PLUS FIFTEEN means, as what it was all about, was a secret.”

That’s his plan for the one-four-two roles. The backs he says will be a real problem. He needs stoppers who will fall over when challenged. Retired Business Development Analysts looked promising but when he put the case to them they said it would take three months before they could get together to discuss it. He met a few retired systems programmers but when he said Good Morning at the meeting they replied SIX MAN MONTHS. So he gave up on them as well.

He asked the pilots, if they could supply two centre backs, but they were all working for other outfits and had to look at the roster to see if they would organise a gash day so that they could meet him.

In the end they appointed a committee and two outside advisors to discuss the issue and report back. Then they propose to have discussions and ballot their members to see if they will participate, they also proposed that if they did take part all their members would have to be trained at Old Trafford so that they could rotate players in case of work commitments. If a potential player had not been called on for a certain time they indicated that would need a Soccer Skills Simulator at base in Dublin for refreshers. Snitchy says he is waiting, but not with much hope of a result, for their representative, “TO GET BACK TO HIM.”

He says he rang Reservations three weeks ago and he is still listening to The Jingle, and sometimes he even gets up at night, just in case he is off hold. He considered going in and establishing contact in one of the booking offices but he can’t find any in town. He asked a travel agent to help, get him in contact, but they asked him for a commission. He says he went out to the HOB but he couldn’t get into the car park.

So then he fell back on the old reliable and went looking for the Personnel Department to ask for advice but the PCB is now a Lap Dancing Club. For some reason he said that didn’t surprise him. I advised him to put an advert in Aer Sceala: he said it was gone too. He went up to the Dublin Passenger Terminal but couldn’t find the front door and when eventually he got in all he could see were Ryanair desks.

In the end he fell back on an old reliable; he went to ALSAA on a Friday evening around five, but it was empty; a fellow called Tommy said he hadn’t seen a face he knew in ages.

Snitchy has given up. He says he never thought putting another Tons of Crap Team (Retd,) together for a few Sunday morning games would be such a difficult thing.

All I could say to comfort him was, “Maybe they all lived happily ever after.”

I hate, really hate doing revisions! Wicker Wood Secrets Uncovered

Duchess did not like her new surroundings. Foreign domestics? Who ever heard of such a thing. Did they bathe regularly? Who employed them to be in her house. The boy of course. He had no idea of what she required and no taste in the people they employed. Servitude was required and these colonials had none of that.

The entrance hall was smelly. The smells of urine and faeces reeked from some of the cleaning trolleys. In her household the Privies were emptied in the late evening and by morning no odours remained.

The fare, as she suspected: would be was best forgotten. She was determined not to eat it. Two managerial types, whom she could not remember employing, came and interviewed her and she set her terms, maybe she reasoned the boy sent them to see after her care and comfort.

Her sleeping quarters were now adequate if not as large as she would like, but there was room for her small dining table. She insisted on dining each evening by candlelight. The single stand and a plain white candle was acceptable, if not giving generous light. The other daily coalitions she took on a tray, adorned with a white cloth – of course, while seated.

All in all, the living was primitive, but the boy on a rare occasion when he did visit assured her that the alternative, which would be imprisonment in a Garret was not an attractive option.

As time progressed, however, she grew tired and not as in control of her moods as heretofore. She wanted to consult one of those nice young men, perhaps from the Apothecary, since he wore a similar uniform, but the boy warned her not to dare, or there would be severe consequences. He might imprison her again behind the Confession Box.

She adjusted to a daily routine and time passed. Still the boy only visited infrequently. Then one spring as the days lengthened, he started to visit and converse more frequently.

The boy visited more often now, never with any interesting gossip. He was only interested, it seems, in telling his own stories, ones the Duchess presumed were from his past, his youth, when he lived away from the family. Then she remembered he never lived outside of Bowen Court, at least not for any time.

The stories, the tales he told were vile. No sane human would be involved in such depravity. She hoped he was telling her about his dreams as the scenes, he was able to replay in her head, terrified her, although the telling seemed to excite the boy.

She began to close her mind to his wants, yes wants, he wanted her to know what she had assisted in. He called it that assisted, helped, because she did not stop him. As the time passed he became more insistent that once again she would allow him to be free to do more killing. He enjoyed doing that he said: got off on it. A vulgar sentence it seemed: even though it was one she did not understand.

Over time Duchess got weary, tired, confused again. The world she knew was crumbling. Georgie was becoming aware again.

Duchess tried to resist on those occasions when the boy dressed her as a man and sneaked her out in that guise, from her room to the hospital wards: terrible confused places full of sadness. Georgie was not being honest. He would not let her walk in a normal fashion: her normal deportment. He made her slouch along walls, often making her drool, and mutter obsenities. It was most distressing for her to act in that way, but somehow in those occasions she did not have the will to resist.

Always she wanted to go back to her rooms and take to her bed. Then when they returned she could wash the disguising smell of madness from her body, powder herself, resume her wardrobe, lie on her bed and cry.

The fairies seem to have hacked D2D (draft 2 digital).

My D2D (draft to digital) account has been hacked. But D2D are denying that their system revealed my – wait for it – PASSWORD - not the login the f-ing PASSWORD.

I'm ultra careful and use a separate password for all places I log in to. I change them frequently – I add things to the original. Like Billy...BillyBunter...BillyBunter1957 or BunterBillyagain....

A man in Irish if a Fir, a Big Man is a FirMór, or maybe Fear Láidir if I imagine my password getting over weight, or muscled. Then I add numerals to the password as in fat man from 1967: FearRamhair1967.

So then if my exclusive password was not hacked on D2D and emailed back to me as one used to watch porn on the net while they filmed me doing so. Send the bitcoin! 

Pure twattle: Coc Tarbh in Irish.

If D2D say they were not hacked and my password only was revealed – but it was not according to them. I suspect they have not found the hack yet.

More from Peggy's Secret, Streets of Birdsong and Buteo buteo.

Twenty years or so after I moved to Dublin, I was down home for a funeral. It was a bitterly cold wind-chilling, sleet shower throwing, winter day and I went for a warmer.

In the pub beside a big glowing turf fire a brown over-coated figure crouched to catch the heat, his worn, wide brimmed, battered hat, steaming-off the dampness. The barman brought a pint of Smithwicks. Johnny took a Suicre Bag from a pocket and spooned sugar into the glass.

I went over and tried to talk to him. He ignored me as if I wasn’t there, continued stirring his sugaring beer and didn’t look up.

“We used to live near you. I was two or three. We lived in Maloney's house. Dad and yourself were friends. I think you used bounce me on your knee.”

He looked up into my face with eyes as red as the turf coals and the swirling beer.

“You had fair hair, almost white. Pull up a chair and tell me how you are.”

I told him how I was. He told me stories of rabbits snared, Christmas Turkeys Mam raised and sold, Whist games, Twenty Five and Tricks Trumped, House Dances, Card Tricks and Fools Jokes. All the time he sipped beer sweetened for his old taste.

I asked if he still did the Card Tricks. He didn’t he explained: his hands like his taste were old and faltering. But, he said, he was having a good day and he would show me a trick It would remind us of the old knee-bouncing days.

From the deep coat pocket he took a well worn deck of playing cards held captive by rubber bands. He released the bands and passed the deck into my hands. “Box them!” He instructed. I shuffled the deck and proffered them back. “Do it again,” he said, “‘till you’re satisfied.” I boxed them again and then once more.

The normal buzz of conversation had faded as drinkers gathered around. “Johnny is doing a trick,” was the rallying call.

I offered the cards again. He shook his head.

Softly head deeply bowed, concentrating, he instructed “You hold them and turn over the top card. It’s a ten of spades.”

I placed the ten of spades on the table between us.

“It’s a fine trick!” I ventured. “How did you do it?”

He looked up slightly. “I’m not finished yet!” He tapped the side of his nose with a skinny shaky finger and then this unique human being: who went to school ‘Til the sixth book only, without hesitation without looking up at me or at the cards in my hand, named all remaining cards before I turned them over and placed them on the table.

I asked again how the trick was done. He only smiled and sipped his beer.

This is from the new collection of short stories...

From Peggy's Secret.
https://books2read.com/u/mdLo7X

Donie made the trip to the bog. It was almost a daily ritual when Jonnie was alive. Well! A fair day ritual then. There was nothing as miserable as a wet day in the bog, no shelter and maybe a whipping wind. The wind in summer, made the bog cotton dance on their tall thin green stalks, and the gentle breezes created miniature tornadoes, never, ever, more than a few few tall.

Thank God. The turf is all saved. Poor auld Jonnie. I miss you. At this time of the year with your turf saved you’d say: Sound now for the winter. We have a shed full of dry turf.

I went to the Nursing Home to see The Sister. Most days now she just sits beside her bed muttering, and sobbing. I think she’s remembering things that upset her. She’s troubled. I’d say she’s angry about something. You know the way she used get. All huffy - with that look on her face.

Maybe she feels ashamed that it’s turned out this way. Sometimes she gets frustrated when you don’t understand what she wants.

Poor Peggy her mind is trapped in the past. She just has today and there will be no tomorrow: all she has is yesterdays. Just yesterdays. Only the past for company...

I have your caged birds. They're singing again, went silent for a few days after I moved them.

Ringo, the Mule, with his fringe, took a bit longer. The call eegits birdbrains, feather heads, but I think the birds missed you as well.

What that lot are at isn’t right. She deserves a lot more.

Somethin’ has to be done about it. For all our sakes, I better start looking for him. For the boy.