excerpt from the novel, Ireland, a Bicycle, and a Tin Whistle
by
David A Wilson
...and Mick stood up for a story:
Some of you people here might not know this, especially the people
who are here on their holidays. But there was a time , a long time ago, when
there were no looking glasses in Ireland. Now, you’re probably asking
yourselves, well then what did the ladies do? A good question. And the
answer’s quite easy. They would wait for a clear day, walk down to the river,
and see their reflections in a clear pool of water. You didn’t know that, now,
did you?
Well one day, Dinny Noonan came down from Belmullet, a place so
backward, that the men couldn’t count their toes with their fingers. And here,
in a shop in Westport, he saw a whole row of things he’d never seen before,
and didn’t he go up to them and give them a closer inspection. “By
Jaysus,” says he, looking at one straight in the face, “isn’t that picture
the picture of my very own father, and him dead these past ten years.”
“Where’d you get these?” he asks the shopman. “They come in from
England,” says he. “Well that’s a queer thing,” says Dinny, “and me
never knowing me da was such a famous man in England. What would you be asking
for them?” So he bought one for threepence, and carried it home with him, safe
in his trouser pocket. And he’d pull it out everyday, and take a good look at
it, just to remind himself of his own father. But he thought it best to keep it
from the missus, d’ye see, since she and the father had never been too taken
with each other, and it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Now it didn’t take long before the wife began to get her dander up.
There was Dinny, back from away, sneaking squints into his pocket whenever he
thought she wasn’t looking. She began to fear the worst: he’d found some
Fancy Woman in Westport, and was so smitten with the hussy that he couldn’t go
fifteen minutes without feasting his eyes on her. She’d get to the bottom of
this, all right.
Now, one night there was a terrible fire three houses down the street,
and all the men rushed out in their pyjamas to put it out before all Belmullet
burned down. And that was her chance. She fished into his trouser pocket and
what did she pull out but the face of all her fears - the picture of the
Westport Hussy. “And she’s no oil painting, either,” she said to herself
as she snapped it in her purse.
Well, after that they fought like man and wife, till the air was thick
with curses and you couldn’t see the door for all the feathers flying - she
with murder and mayhem on her mind, and he telling her it was only his old da,
and she never did like him anyway, and him famous in England. But if there was
one man in the village who could settle the matter, that very man was the priest
himself. For wasn’t he educated in Maynooth itself, and hadn’t he seen as
much of the world as a decent man could be allowed to see?
So they knocked on his door and went into his house and told him their
different stories. There was only one thing for it; the priest himself must see
the picture, and whoever he said it was, then that’s who it must be. He looked
at it long and hard. He looked at it sideways, and he looked at it lengthways.
He looked at the front, and he looked at the back. And then he started to smile.
And then he started to laugh. And he turned to the husband, and told him that
was never a picture of his old da. And he turned to the wife, and told her that
was never a picture of the fancy woman from Westport. And he turned to them
both, and told them they were a right pair of eejits, if ever eejits there were.
“Would yous ever catch yourselves on and see sense?” he said.
“Isn’t that nothing else but a picture of the old parish priest who was here
before me?”