The Miracle Man

by James Skivington

  “Lizzie, would I lie about a thing like that? I’m just glad it’s going to do some good for somebody.”

  The Winter Cook put her head to one side and looked at her brother, long the black sheep of the family.

  “Ye know, despite your rough ways, I always thought there was a good streak in ye.” She rummaged in her handbag and brought out a five pound note. “Here,” she said and ruffled his hair, “get yerself a wee drink. You’re a man any sister would be proud of.”

  Young Patrick McAllister sat up in bed with a smile on his face and his arms around two packets of crisps, a bar of chocolate, a bag of wine gums, a packet of peanuts and a large bottle of lemonade. He looked down at the collection again and gave it a squeeze just to reassure himself that it was real. Parents were difficult to work out sometimes. Mum was always telling him not to eat sweets and things. They were bad for him. They would ruin his teeth and make him fat and he wouldn’t be able to eat his dinner – which was good for him and his teeth and wouldn’t make him fat. And sometimes Dad would tell him that too, though not as often as Mum. Now, when Mum had gone out somewhere, Dad had said he should go to bed early as he had to get up for school in the morning and had given him all this stuff although he didn’t go to bed early any other nights. Maybe all this was for keeping the secret about Dad and Miss Quinn from Mum – the time they were doing something with the furniture and Miss Quinn had got hot and had to take some clothes off. Dad had asked Patrick if he had kept the special secret because it was going to be a surprise for Mum and he had told Dad he had kept it a secret except for Mrs Megarrity and Dad had said that didn’t matter because she knew about it already and she could keep a secret too.

  He looked down at the riches before him and wondered which one he should start on first and should he eat everything before he went to sleep or keep some for the morning. But if he took anything to school they would all want a share and he would get hardly any and he didn’t feel like sharing because they didn’t share and they tried to eat things secretly by sneaking them out of their pockets and up to their mouths and chewing quietly. He lifted the chocolate bar and tore away the wrapper, revealing the thick chocolate beneath, then slowly bit into it. Next he took the cap from the lemonade bottle and had a drink of that before deciding that crisps and chocolate would make a nice mixture.

  When he had eaten some of the crisps he took another swig of lemonade, looked at the packet of peanuts, made a hole in the paper and poured some into his mouth. This was better than doing homework. He had tried to tell Dad he had homework to do, but when he had been ignored he hadn’t said it again. Dad had just told him to hurry up and get to bed and make sure he went to the toilet first so he wouldn’t have to get up again. He said that it didn’t matter about Patrick brushing his teeth after he had eaten the sweets and before he went to sleep because it wouldn’t do any harm for one night, and for a few seconds Patrick worried about the army of little bugs with drills and picks that would be banging away at his teeth all night. But only for a few seconds. The chocolate bar and the crisps and the peanuts and the wine gums were rapidly being washed down by the lemonade. He burped twice and then tried a third one at a higher pitch.

  He was quite important now, and that was probably why he’d got the new bike and these sweets from Dad. And another time, Mrs Megarrity had said not to tell when he saw her drinking from the little bottle that smelt like the bar and was good for her health. But she hadn’t given him any sweets, only a fierce look. Somebody at school told him that Mrs Megarrity had about a hundred kids and they would come and take you away if they didn’t like something you did. That’s why there were so many of them.

  Patrick finished off one packet of crisps, had another drink of lemonade and opened the second packet. He was beginning to feel a bit full up and he pulled up his pyjama jacket and looked at his stomach, wondering where everything was going. He put the lemonade bottle to the side of his mouth and squinted down at his stomach to see if it got bigger as he drank but it didn’t and then the drink went down the wrong way and he coughed and spluttered. He finished the crisps and peanuts, although he didn’t feel like eating much more. The chocolate bar seemed more difficult to chew now, and there was no lemonade left to wash it down so he swallowed the last of it in two big lumps that he thought were going to stick in his throat and when they came to waken him in the morning he would be dead because the chocolate had blocked his tubes and then his Dad would be sorry he had given him so much to eat and his Mother would wish she hadn’t gone out without tucking him in and kissing him goodnight. Unknown to Patrick, there was a chance that his wish would be fulfilled. At the meeting in the chapel house to discuss the Mass Rock site, Agnes had just said that the best way to get Dermot to change his mind was for them to put their proposals to him as a committee, and that they should go and see him right away, as she knew he would be at home and at a loose end.

  Dermot slowly and quietly opened the door to Patrick’s room and by the light from the hallway saw his son fast asleep in the bed. Beside it on the floor lay the empty lemonade bottle and the sweet wrappers. Smiling, Dermot gathered the debris then shut the door quietly before walking back down the hall to the sitting-room, where Nancy Quinn was stretched on the couch with her skirt rucked up round her hips.

  “Dead to the world,” Dermot told her. “He won’t bother us this time.”

  She held her arms out for him to come to her and after they had kissed long and passionately she rubbed her nose against his and said,

  “Well, what d’you think of the idea? I read it in a magazine. ‘How to spice up your love life.’ I’m sure it’ll work. And it’ll make it more – “ she craned forward again and gave a little bite at his chin, “ – exciting.”

  “I don’t know, Nancy. Sounds bloody daft to me. Maybe I’ve just developed some kind of – physical problem I can do nothing about.”

  “Don’t be silly, Dermot. It’s all in your mind. Trying to do it in a car. That’s enough to put anybody off. I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “So have I,” he said, slipping his hand up her leg. “All the time.”

  “No, not that. The answer. Look, what we’ll do is this. You leave the room and I’ll take my clothes off and hide somewhere. Then you come in pretending to be some kind of wild animal – that’s what it said – a lion or something – and then you find me and – take me all of a sudden. Oh, Dermot, it’ll be fantastic!”

  Dermot’s eyes widened a little as he imagined it. Maybe she had something and anyway, it couldn’t hurt.

  Nancy said,

  “Have you got a shaggy rug or something like that – to put over you? Make it more realistic. A big hairy animal coming to get me. Oh God, I can’t wait!”

  The more he thought about it, the more Dermot warmed to the idea. That had obviously been part of the problem between him and Agnes, no excitement in it. Just the same dreary old routine every time. If Nancy wanted a big hairy animal, by God that’s what she would get.

  “Right!” he said, and jumped up. “Let’s do it!”

  “We’ll both be on our hands and knees, all right? And you’ve got to come in and get me.”

  Dermot made a growling sound, said,

  “You just be ready, that’s all,” and went out of the room to find a suitable disguise and prepare himself. Nancy went behind the couch – she did not want to be too hard to find – took her clothes off and got down on all fours to await the call of the wild.

  In the hallway, Agnes held open the door to allow the four people who accompanied her to enter – Father Burke, Maggie Nolan who joined all parish committees as a matter of course, Master Boylan, the retired headmaster of the local school, and wee Mrs Laverty with the funny eye and six children.

  “If you would like to go through to the sitting-room,” Agnes was saying, “ – the door at the end there – I’ll make some coffee. I’ll find out where Dermot is and then we can all hear what he has to say.”

  Led by the priest, the gro
up went down the hallway and into the sitting-room, where everyone except Father Burke took a seat on the couch. He placed himself apart, on an armchair by the fire, in order the better to emphasise his position as chairman of the committee. As a trickle of polite conversation began between the priest and Master Boylan – the two women were evaluating the style and quality of the furnishings and fitments whilst examining them for dust – behind the couch Nancy was going rigid with shock. She had rolled up her clothes and stuffed them under a cabinet at the other end of the couch, and now she could not reach them without moving and risking detection.

  In the bedroom Dermot put the finishing touches to his animal costume, a large goatskin rug held on by a belt round his chest, and over his head a shaggy cushion cover. It had been a bit of luck finding that. Apart from a chink of light from the aperture at his neck, he could see nothing, but that would only add to the excitement, which had already produced the desired effect on him. He would need to be careful he didn’t catch it on the furniture. Nancy had been right after all. This gave a whole new perspective to things. On his hands and knees he tried a few thrusting movements and, feeling pleased with these, he crawled out of the bedroom and down the hallway towards the sitting-room. Reaching up to the handle, he quietly opened the door and paced forward into the room with all the vigour and bearing of a male African lion.

  “Ahrgh!” he called as he moved towards the middle of the room, feeling before him as he went. Master Boylan looked round slowly. There was nothing he hadn’t encountered in a lifetime of teaching. The eyes of the two women widened as they turned in their seats to find the cause of the noise – a moving goatskin rug with a bare backside sticking out of the after end. By the fireplace, and unable to see Dermot, Father Burke drew a faint smile across his lips. One would have expected a child to have been in bed at that time of night. At the end of the couch nearest Dermot, wee Mrs Laverty drew in a sharp breath as she saw the naked haunches fringed by the rough hair of goatskin.

  “Jasus!” she whispered and crossed herself. At her side, Maggie Nolan bit her lip in excitement and pressed her spectacles tight against her face to ensure optimum vision. Although she had kept up hope all these years, Nirvana had been no more than a dream. How often was such an opportunity afforded a spinster woman.

  “Ahrgh!” Dermot voiced again, and added a growl calculated to raise the hackles on any female of the species within hearing distance. Father Burke, seeing the bare backside coming into view and guessing at the appendages that swung beneath, thrust himself back into his armchair to whisper,

  “Good God Almighty!”

  By this time Nancy was almost prostrate behind the couch, her limbs trembling and her breath coming in gasps. But with slow deliberation and infinite caution she began to move towards her clothes beneath the cabinet. Halfway across the room Dermot paused to sniff an unfamiliar odour before loping forward, his ears pricked for sound and his body tensed in anticipation. He could stop and take the cushion cover off his head, but that would spoil the fun. And besides, it would be all the better when his searching hand unexpectedly came across the cool smooth flesh. He gave a little shudder and put one probing hand in front of him. The audience watched with the paralysis of fascination as Dermot’s fingers closed around Maggie Nolan’s ankle and with a grunt of satisfaction his hand rapidly slipped up her leg while at the same time he let out the triumphal mating cry of his species. Maggie Nolan’s eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled heavenwards. Master Boylan, who had only ever understood such matters in terms of animal and insect behaviour, watched this with a detachment that suggested he might later write a treatise on it. And then a number of things happened almost at once.

  Father Burke jumped up and shouted,

  “Enough!”

  Dermot leapt to his feet in front of Maggie Nolan who saw what she had never seen before and fainted at the sheer physical impossibility of it. More coolly circumspect, wee Mrs Laverty made a judgement that favoured Dermot. From the hallway Agnes came sweeping in with a trayful of drinks and an apology on her lips. She took in the scene, screamed and threw the tray in the air, a cup of hot coffee splashing over Nancy’s buttocks just as her hand at last closed round her bundle of clothes. She sprung up from behind the couch, startling everyone, especially Father Burke and Master Boylan who had thrust upon them a new and enlightening experience. Agnes screamed again at the sight of the naked Nancy and the realisation of what it all meant. As Maggie Nolan struggled to consciousness, aware that her last chance was fading fast, Dermot whipped the cushion cover from his head, blanched at the sight that met his eyes and clamped the cover over his groin.

  “You – !” Agnes flung at him, but could find no more words and gave another scream in their stead. Behind her the door opened to admit Patrick who, blinking against the light said,

  “Mum – I feel – sick,” and immediately threw up over the cups and saucers and slices of cake that lay scattered on the floor.

  chapter thirteen

  In the morning of the last Saturday in May, the narrow road to the chapel and the Mass Rock beyond had vehicles nose to tail for a hundred yards or more on either side of the gate into the Mass Rock field. Just inside the gate and behind an old kitchen table that had paint splashes and a four-inch saw-cut in it, John Healy sat collecting entrance money. For want of anything more formal, he wore an old cap with the skip pulled down and the crown up, at the front of which a rubber band held a piece of paper bearing the word “OFFICIAL” in John’s tortured handwriting. Slung across his chest was his money pouch, a handbag of his wife’s in black and red shiny plastic. On the side of the table was pinned a notice which said, “MIRACLE SITE. ENTRANCE £2. MIRACLE MAN VISIT £1. BOTTLE OF WATER 50p.” As the field was on a slope, the table, the chair and its occupant all inclined steeply towards the road, although now and then John Healy would lean the other way to compensate, giving the impression that he was a victim in the last stages of some grave paralysis. Despite his discomfiture, he smiled gently to himself as he gathered the coins and notes across the table and dropped them into his official receptacle, trying as he did so to calculate the percentage of the take he would get from Dermot McAllister and how long it would have taken him to make the same amount of money from raising sheep. His wife had already been out twice that morning to conduct a financial audit, including the takings for visits to the Miracle Man, which John Healy kept separately in his pocket. After all, it was only fair that Limpy got something out of all this, seeing as how the old bugger had started the whole thing off. And the old bugger himself was very much in evidence, wearing a double-breasted suit that was very well tailored, although unfortunately not for Limpy, a suit that could have graced an Edwardian drawing room and, by the appearance of the frayed cuffs and mildewed seams, had probably done so. His hair was plastered down on either side of a middle parting, his lurid tie sported a huge knot and his chin and jowls shone from the unaccustomed attention of a razor blade. He was just now showing a group of visitors around his house and environs, as he put it.

  “Here we are, ladies and gentlemen, this is my humble abode.” A few of them looked at the small, dilapidated building and nodded in agreement. “It was on this very spot I discovered that the Virgin Mary had done a miracle on me. So, follow me and I’ll tell yez the whole story.”

  Limpy’s big black dog, which had long craved a bit of excitement in its dull life by way of having new people to bite, now found itself overwhelmed by an embarrassment of riches, as a consequence of which it appeared that the beast did not know where to begin and had in fact bitten no-one in the last two weeks. Limpy, though, had put this down to the visit by the Virgin Mary and claimed it a greater miracle than the curing of his leg.

  People were spread in a semi-circle around the Mass Rock, some praying on their knees, while others stood and looked around them aimlessly, the dark rock with its small and indecipherable carving having failed to hold their attention for more than a few minutes. Children ran here and there be
tween the adults and a pair of them had to be pulled away from the dam of stones they had started to build across the stream, beside which a piece of cardboard stuck on a twig proclaimed, “NO DRINKING THE WATER”. A few of the pilgrims filled bottles with the holy water, one woman glancing round in John Healy’s direction before stuffing a full bottle at the bottom of her bag and arranging a scarf over it.

  At the table two well-dressed men stood, one holding a camera and with a bag slung over his shoulder.

  “This is where it happened then, is it? The miracle,” the one without the camera said in an English accent. As he spoke he drew a pen and a notebook from his pocket. “We’re from the Press.”

  John Healy sat as straight up as he could in the circumstances and smiled broadly.

  “Right there, gentlemen,” he said and pointed towards the Rock, “and there’s the holy stream. And over there,” he nodded towards Limpy’s house, “is the very man it happened to. Good value, at two pound each, gentlemen. Three pound if you want to meet the Miracle Man himself.” He held out his hand. The man with the notebook gave a little snickering laugh then nodded to his companion who put the camera to his eye and pointed it at John Healy.

  “The Press don’t pay,” the reporter said. “And we don’t charge for putting your picture on the front page of a national newspaper either.”

  “The – front page,” John Healy said. “Well.” He straightened his cap, stuck out his chest and gave a big smile.

  “Oh, very likely,” the reporter said. “Unless of course a world war or something happens between now and Monday morning.”

  The cameraman pressed the button, apparently unaware that the lens cap was still on the camera, and said, “That should come out nice.”