Page 16

"Would y'know free-church Davey is a keen botanist? Claims all plants on earth are part of His divine purpose but I reckon the Garden of Eden was all muck and frustration like mine."
His Maude let slip that being 'took' in his azalias bed had put his bun in her oven. Mercifully it delivered her wedding cake. Muck and frustration was taken as a cry from the heart.
He turned to Ernest and gave sanctimonious assent. Generosity, attached to cost-me-nothing-favours, struck a holy chord in flinty Chapel life.

"Sweep it clean, lad. For a florin you can have the chest dregs."
Jones-the-cheese had a coveted set of intact incisors and could give an almost full width grin. Before long Ernest had his own warehouse.

15

An abandoned, curiously crenellated bacon factory languished dusty and cobwebbed in a street off the main shopping zone. Its roof was intact but it was without doors, windowless and draughty. Folk said the place was older than recent use suggested. Romancers said it was once a lock-up for Napoleonic prisoners. Legend hinted darkly of its cruel function as an interrogation centre for Cromwell's puritan thugs. Tales told of men hanging from high ceiling-hooks and deep grooves in the bricks below the rafters couldn't help but suggest the agonies of their oscillation.
It was put about that men had crafty ways to cheat the noose. They stuck corn-straws in their windpipes to help them breathe. In the main, though, they died from de-hydration. The hangman would leave a flagon of ale just out of reach to drive them mad with thirst and for days, so the whispers went, a man would pitch like a pendulum till he snuffed it. If the rope should happen to break 'the silly buggers hung abart boozing'. Some had three hangings.
Tramps and vagabonds had once used it as a shithouse but by the time Ernest claimed it no one had crapped there for years. A window over a dry bench gave good light.

Sister Lizzy used the term 'purloined' - an ominous prelude to a beating - when she charged the boys with taking anything not sanctioned by the women, still Ernest happily purloined a rusty iron pivot scale and weights from a neighbour's yard. Next he purloined a stack of clean brown-paper bags from Jones-the-cheese and using muslin cloth set to sifting tea debris. He mixed leaves with tea dust in equal portions and bagged the stuff. Tea was revered by the Parnells but because of cost Lizzy once forced the boys to drink an infusion brewed from dandelion leaves. Its attraction was that it cost nothing but the collecting. She spun a yarn that an aunt 'into herbal cures' found it flushed kidneys and bowels. Ernest took days to recover from uncontrollable diarrhoea. He revenged himself, poking hairy caterpillars into her Sunday cabbage but their green guts mixed easily and she was a fast eater; mashed with potatoes she fancied it was the best meal of the week.
Seamus Flaherty was trying to kill his dad with earth worms.
"Even dead they goes through the stumick, circles the 'eart, and strangles it - nasty death but it's wot the bastard deserves."
Lizzy flourished.

To raise his skills Ernest waited for the women to leave for market. Slurping blends he found one he judged his mam would drink. Her views on tea were received like papal bulls. His final blend was a joy. In the run up to Epiphany he was a slave to family chores but by the end of January he was free to develop market strategies. Pre-Christmas sorties had been depressing; he was assailed by doorstep insults and frequent kicks aimed at his arse. When festive booze was gone attitudes changed. He targeted the poor. Passing the priest's house he crossed himself. He'd played hooky from church recently and couldn't afford to take chances. Lizzy said poverty and suffering were heavenly gifts since St Francis scorned wealth to do God's bidding and proof of his divinity came when lions half-crazed with hunger smelt Christ's glory on him and ate out of his hands.

This is a page from Milk and Honey by Gerald Moore, available for purchase from Lazarus Press.

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