Country Girl: A Memoir by Edna O’Brien Read Free Book Online Page A

his unwashed, yellow teeth. He was agog. At that time I was too young to notice that Carnero could neither read nor write.
    Only the week before, we were in stitches reading of a Mrs. Considine, up in West Clare, who took a swing at a Mrs. Berg for the larceny of two pounds of sugar, four penny buns, and two candles. The witness, who had been wheeling Mrs. Considine’s bicycle, identified himself in the court as having kept apart “from the scenery,” but did allow that both women had scratches on their faces and also blood and loose teeth. Stillanother woman had been charged with a theft of a piece of mutton, worth one shilling and sixpence. Her excuse was that she had laid her own parcels on the counter and, since the butcher was very busy, had erroneously picked up the piece of mutton. “So the mutton got off the counter and walked in under your shawl?” said the district judge, who was known for his asperity, at which she pleaded poor sight and old age. She was fined ten shillings and sixpence for her chicanery.
    But the one I was about to read out was nearer home, occurred in the very shop where my mother bought jam and raspberry and custard biscuits when she was flush. It concerned Sacko, known as the “Nocturnal Thief.” He was a rover who would come and go, and after long absences would return sporting a silk handkerchief or a silver monogrammed cigarette case, saying he had been given them in return for his services to a lord or an admiral over in England. Everyone knew about the break-in at Eamonn’s shop and the eggs that had been stolen and how Sacko had been a suspect, but never was it so splendidly told as in the article that I read out to Carnero.
    Eamonn the shopkeeper, asleep on the first floor, heard breaking noise underneath and came down to find the two panes of glass had been removed from a back window, a lamp had been overturned, a number of eggs and also two goose eggs were missing out of the cardboard crate. Eamonn the shopkeeper, though worried, went back to bed. In the morning, with the help of the local guard, they applied some detective work and came to the conclusion that the rude intruder was probably a person five feet six inches in height and weighing no more than twelve stone, so as to be able to pass through the window space. Sacko the suspect, when questioned, presented himself as a blameless neighbourly man and charted his movements from midnight ’til four a.m. He had taken a walk all around the village, he had stopped at the parish pump for a slug of water, he had an engaging discussion with the nightwatchman about the prospects of an oncoming war and being a Samaritan,he had driven four stray calves that were wandering around the road into the shopkeeper’s yard, for safety. After that, he had walked a mile out of the town, to a place where a farmer had allowed him to doss, whenever he was stuck for a bed. However, his story had a “lacuna.” The cast made of his footprints matched the footprint in the backyard and, moreover, he was the only person around known to suck raw eggs. The plaintiff surpassed himself, telling the judge how he had spent the night, worn out from walking, he had gone to the shed, procured an old stick, which he rested crosswise in a corner, and sat upright with his hands folded, praying to God as he had always done in the trenches.
    “Trenches, my backside,” Carnero said, but his interest was fully whetted.
    Sacko went on to tell the judge that he had never in his life done any injury to anyone and had taken the eggs only since his rheumatism was awful bad from a life of a vagrant, sleeping in stables.
    “Anything else exciting?” the judge put to him.
    “Yes… I am a versatile man and skilled in musical accomplishments… I am a ventriloquist and a conjuror, gifts that I am sure our local superintendent does not possess… and hence tries to blacken me.”
    “They are gifts I am happy to do without,” the superintendent said, jumping up, red