Seven Short Plays Part 29

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ I don't know. I was ignorant of you being kept to the bed.

_Mike McInerney:_ I am not kept to it, but maybe an odd time when there is a colic rises up within me. My stomach always gets better the time there is a change in the moon. I'd like well to draw anear you.

My heavy blessing on you, Honor Donohoe, for the hand you have held out to me this day.

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Sure you could be keeping the fire in, and stirring the pot with the bit of Indian meal for the hens, and milking the goat and taking the tacklings off the donkey at the door; and maybe putting out the cabbage plants in their time. For when the old man died the garden died.

_Mike McInerney:_ I could to be sure, and be cutting the potatoes for seed. What luck could there be in a place and a man not to be in it?

Is that now a suit of clothes you have brought with you?

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is so, the way you will be tasty coming in among the neighbours at Curranroe.

_Mike McInerney:_ My joy you are! It is well you earned me! Let me up out of this! (He sits up and spreads out the clothes and tries on coat.) That now is a good frieze coat ... and a hat in the fas.h.i.+on ...

(_He puts on hat._)

_Michael Miskell:_ (_Alarmed._) And is it going out of this you are, Mike McInerney?

_Mike McInerney:_ Don't you hear I am going? To Curranroe I am going.

Going I am to a place where I will get every good thing!

_Michael Miskell:_ And is it to leave me here after you you will?

_Mike McInerney:_ (_In a rising chant._) Every good thing! The goat and the kid are there, the sheep and the lamb are there, the cow does be running and she coming to be milked! Ploughing and seed sowing, blossom at Christmas time, the cuckoo speaking through the dark days of the year! Ah, what are you talking about? Wheat high in hedges, no talk about the rent! Salmon in the rivers as plenty as turf! Spending and getting and nothing scarce! Sport and pleasure, and music on the strings! Age will go from me and I will be young again. Geese and turkeys for the hundreds and drink for the whole world!

_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, Mike, is it truth you are saying, you to go from me and to leave me with rude people and with townspeople, and with people of every parish in the union, and they having no respect for me or no wish for me at all!

_Mike McInerney:_ Whist now and I'll leave you ... my pipe (_hands it over_); and I'll engage it is Honor Donohoe won't refuse to be sending you a few ounces of tobacco an odd time, and neighbours coming to the fair in November or in the month of May.

_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, what signifies tobacco? All that I am craving is the talk. There to be no one at all to say out to whatever thought might be rising in my innate mind! To be lying here and no conversible person in it would be the abomination of misery!

_Mike McInerney:_ Look now, Honor.... It is what I often heard said, two to be better than one.... Sure if you had an old trouser was full of holes ... or a skirt ... wouldn't you put another in under it that might be as tattered as itself, and the two of them together would make some sort of a decent show?

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Ah, what are you saying? There is no holes in that suit I brought you now, but as sound it is as the day I spun it for himself.

_Mike McInerney:_ It is what I am thinking, Honor ... I do be weak an odd time ... any load I would carry, it preys upon my side ... and this man does be weak an odd time with the swelling in his knees ...

but the two of us together it's not likely it is at the one time we would fail. Bring the both of us with you, Honor, and the height of the castle of luck on you, and the both of us together will make one good hardy man!

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ I'd like my job! Is it queer in the head you are grown asking me to bring in a stranger off the road?

_Michael Miskell:_ I am not, ma'am, but an old neighbour I am. If I had forecasted this asking I would have asked it myself. Michael Miskell I am, that was in the next house to you in Skehanagh!

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ For pity's sake! Michael Miskell is it? That's worse again. Yourself and Mike that never left fighting and scolding and attacking one another! Sparring at one another like two young pups you were, and threatening one another after like two grown dogs!

_Mike McInerney:_ All the quarrelling was ever in the place it was myself did it. Sure his anger rises fast and goes away like the wind.

Bring him out with myself now, Honor Donohoe, and G.o.d bless you.

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Well, then, I will not bring him out, and I will not bring yourself out, and you not to learn better sense. Are you making yourself ready to come?

_Mike McInerney:_ I am thinking, maybe ... it is a mean thing for a man that is s.h.i.+vering into seventy years to go changing from place to place.

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Well, take your luck or leave it. All I asked was to save you from the hurt and the harm of the year.

_Mike McInerney:_ Bring the both of us with you or I will not stir out of this.

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Give me back my fine suit so (_begins gathering up the clothes_), till I'll go look for a man of my own!

_Mike McInerney:_ Let you go so, as you are so unnatural and so disobliging, and look for some man of your own, G.o.d help him! For I will not go with you at all!

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is too much time I lost with you, and dark night waiting to overtake me on the road. Let the two of you stop together, and the back of my hand to you. It is I will leave you there the same as G.o.d left the Jews!

(_She goes out. The old men lie down and are silent for a moment._)

_Michael Miskell:_ Maybe the house is not so wide as what she says.

_Mike McInerney:_ Why wouldn't it be wide?

_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, there does be a good deal of middling poor houses down by the sea.

_Mike McInerney:_ What would you know about wide houses? Whatever sort of a house you had yourself it was too wide for the provision you had into it.

_Michael Miskell:_ Whatever provision I had in my house it was wholesome provision and natural provision. Herself and her periwinkles! Periwinkles is a hungry sort of food.

_Mike McInerney:_ Stop your impudence and your chat or it will be the worse for you. I'd bear with my own father and mother as long as any man would, but if they'd vex me I would give them the length of a rope as soon as another!

_Michael Miskell:_ I would never ask at all to go eating periwinkles.

_Mike McInerney:_ (_Sitting up._) Have you anyone to fight me?

_Michael Miskell:_ (_Whimpering._) I have not, only the Lord!

_Mike McInerney:_ Let you leave putting insults on me so, and death picking at you!

_Michael Miskell:_ Sure I am saying nothing at all to displease you.

It is why I wouldn't go eating periwinkles, I'm in dread I might swallow the pin.

_Mike McInerney:_ Who in the world wide is asking you to eat them?

You're as tricky as a fish in the full tide!

_Michael Miskell:_ Tricky is it! Oh, my curse and the curse of the four and twenty men upon you!

_Mike McInerney:_ That the worm may chew you from skin to marrow bone!

(_Seizes his pillow._)

_Michael Miskell:_ (_Seizing his own pillow._) I'll leave my death on you, you scheming vagabone!

_Mike McInerney:_ By cripes! I'll pull out your pin feathers!

(_Throwing pillow._)

_Michael Miskell:_ (_Throwing pillow._) You tyrant! You big bully you!