Shambles Corner

by Edward Toman

  They were marked out from the rest of their countrymen by the haunted, suspicious look in their eyes. They were lean and hungry-looking. The women were dressed in cheap, inappropriate summer wear, and huddled together against the cold, cackling incomprehensibly. The men were emaciated, scrawny backsides hardly filling thin jeans, bomber jackets and tartan bumfreezers drawn across pigeon chests. Their pallor was grey; ‘too fond of tea and biscuits and fierce boys for smoking,’ whispered Joe. He was careful not to be overheard, for the Belfast boys had a reputation for taking offence easily, and though they were skinny, half-starved specimens they were known for dirty fighting. Only the very foolhardy, or the very drunk, meddled with them needlessly.

  They stood on the jetty, peering suspiciously at the vista around them: mountain, bog, forest and cold, muddy lake. Everyone else fell quiet, careful not to provoke trouble by word or deed. Then their priest stepped down from the coach. He was tall, tanned and assured; his serge suit was well cut and he carried an overnight bag. He carefully counted his flock and then re-counted them. ‘Dia duit,’ he addressed the boatman, ‘scaifte annseo as Béal Feirsde. Paróiste Matt Talbot.’ There was in his accent an unmistakable trace of California. The boatman touched his cap and said nothing. He held his swaying craft hard against the harbour wall and offered the priest his hand. Father Alphonsus McLoughlin stepped into the boat and beckoned to his charges to follow. They lined up dourly and staggered into their places as he counted them once more. ‘One of our party has sadly gone AWOL,’ he announced to no one in particular. ‘I don’t imagine he’ll get far or last long.’ He stared at the bleak Donegal landscape. ‘Any man found giving solace to the fugitive will find himself answerable to Cardinal Maguire himself. It’s a terrible thing to break a binding promise to the Sacred Heart, and it’s every bit as bad to help a sinner fly in the face of Almighty God.’ In the prow, two older women were retching noisily in time to the swell of the waves. He smiled suddenly. ‘Not exactly the Falls Road, eh?’ They all tittered respectfully. He raised his voice suddenly: ‘Let Master McGuffin find his own way back to the Falls! He’ll see then that God is not mocked!’

  The boatman leaned over and spoke to the chaplain. There was much nodding and shaking of heads. To his horror Joe found they were looking in his direction. Then he saw the boatman beckon him over, and the priest give orders for some of his party to move up and make room for the boy and his father. ‘Jesus Almighty!’ Joe swore under his breath. ‘I’d rather take my chances with the Charismatics than with this crowd.’ But there was nothing for it. The silent eyes on the jetty were on the pair of them. The priest with the blackthorn had tactfully withdrawn at the approach of the Belfast party so the coast was clear. Joe rose and took Frank firmly by the hand. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be right as rain,’ he said unconvincingly. Then added, unnecessarily, ‘Just leave the talking to me!’

  Father Alphonsus waited till they were in the boat and had thanked one and all before he began his inquisition. ‘What age is that boy?’ he demanded.

  ‘He’s very small for his age, Father, isn’t that why he’s doing the pilgrimage?’

  ‘Can he not answer for himself?’

  ‘The poor lad hasn’t spoken for ten years, Father. We’re praying for a cure.’

  ‘The Brothers, I don’t doubt!’

  ‘All the same, where would we be without them?’

  ‘Has it been cleared with Monsignor O’Brian?’ demanded the priest.

  Over his shoulder Joe could see the Monsignor, blackthorn in hand, waiting till the Belfast crowd were on the water before venturing down the hill again. ‘It has surely,’ he lied. ‘Told us to take the first boat we could find any room in.’

  ‘Has he made his first Communion?’

  ‘The lad will be no trouble, Father,’ Joe assured him quickly.

  Father Alphonsus suddenly softened. He reached deep into his pocket and took out a shiny medal. Embossed on its face were the stern features of the Sacred Heart; but on its reverse was stamped the profile of an unfamiliar Aztec Virgin. ¡Virgencita de Chihuahua Reza por Nosotros! ran the exhortation round the rim.

  ‘A little souvenir from warmer climes,’ he said, handing it to Frank. ‘Pin that to your vest and don’t lose it.’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ Joe said. ‘I can see you’re a well-travelled man. All the same, there’s no place like home.’

  The priest looked at him balefully and Joe wondered for a moment if he hadn’t gone too far. But he turned away from them and gave a signal to the boatman to cast off. He blessed himself and began to intone the rosary:

  ‘Thou O Lord wilt open my lips

  And my tongue will announce Thy praise;

  Incline unto my aid O Lord …

  O God make haste to help me.’

  ‘Ár nAthair atá ar neamh, go naofar Do ainm, go dtaga Do ríocht; go ndéantar Do thoil ar an talamh mar a níthear ar neamh … ‘Ár n-arán laethúil tabhair dúinn inniú …’

  The familiar words droned out across the water as the pilgrims turned their faces once more towards the small island that would be their home for the next week.

  Joe Feely was no stranger to the rigours of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory. It was his twenty-ninth trip. He had been coming to the island every year at the beginning of the season since he turned sixteen. He showed Frank the ropes. Together they fasted and prayed, trod barefoot the stony stations, told their beads till their fingers were blistered. For the first night they stayed awake, reciting the rosary over and over again in the chilly chapel, the priests patrolling the aisles, their eyes peeled for any who might nod off. After the night’s vigil they walked stiffly out into the cold dawn and drank Lough Derg soup of hot water and salt. The round of the stations began again, stony pathways that marked the site of ancient monastic cells. The pilgrims slowly moved round them, like convicts in a prison yard, murmuring the words of the rosary: ‘Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’

  ‘Begob I can feel it doing me a power of good,’ Joe remarked as they sat by the lakeside in the early morning mist, taking a rest. ‘Take a lungful of that air; you’ll not find purer the length and breadth of Ireland.’ They gazed out at the drizzle that was spreading over the brackish water from the Donegal hills. Joe lit two cigarettes and passed one to the boy. ‘Do you know what I’m going to tell you,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘This time I could nearly swear I’m ready to give up the drink altogether. Sure who needs it anyway?’ he added defiantly.

  A fat priest had come upon them from over the rocks. He reached down and lifted Frank up by the ear. ‘Enjoying yourself I see,’ he growled. ‘I suppose it’s better than Butlins.’

  ‘It was all my fault, Father,’ said Joe, rising. ‘We were just taking a wee break for a smoke.’

  ‘How many decades have you said this morning?’ demanded the priest, ignoring Joe and tightening his grip on Frank’s ear.

  ‘He’s been keeping up with me, Father; sure the lad’s no bother.’

  ‘Can he not answer for himself?’

  ‘He has a wee problem in that department, Father. The Christian Brothers …’

  ‘A great crowd of men! Bringing education to the plain people when the British wanted us illiterate.’

  ‘Indeed, Father, where would we be without them?’

  The priest dropped Frank and turned away. He scanned the rocky foreshore for any other backsliders. Joe caught the boy’s eye and they slipped back to the stony pathways to join the sullen, shuffling crowds. It is never a good idea to get on the wrong side of the clergy, especially on an empty stomach.

  He was about to open the public house door when he heard the Belfast accent. He stopped, his grip tight on the handle. He listened. There was no mistaking it. There was a bucko from Belfast in Paddy John’s. Joe hesitated on the threshold. There were other pubs in Pettigoe, but he was unsure of his welcome in any of them, having passed this way before. He opened the door a crack and peered in.
>
  The man was propped up against the counter, holding forth to himself on national matters. Paddy John sat impassively behind the bar reading a paper. Apart from the pair of them the place was empty. ‘I think we’ll take a chance on it,’ Joe said after a while. ‘There’s only the one of them, and he’s nothing but a wee runt with no arse in his trousers.’ Frank squeezed under his father’s arm to take a look at the Belfast man; thin jeans, tartan jacket, canvas shoes, thinning curly hair. He looked harmless enough. But who wants to take a chance with a Belfast man? Joe still hesitated. He weighed up the odds. At his back the wind was cold and wet; he hadn’t eaten or drunk (bar Lough Derg soup) for a week. From within came the welcome smells of porter and tobacco. He could try his chances in another public house, but so soon after the Charismatics they’d be touchy; he’d be lucky to be served at all. Paddy John would let him drink all night if he wanted, though there’d be no credit, but against that he’d have to put up with the wee man from the big smoke telling his story. On the other hand, he rarely found himself in Belfast company, and it would have a certain novelty value. He had the natural curiosity of all country people, and the enigma of a Belfast lad, so far from home and so obviously ill at ease, intrigued him. ‘We’ll risk it this once,’ he said, opening the door.

  Patrick Pearse McGuffin was a man of indeterminate age. His wizened grey face sat askew on his hunched, birdlike body; the face could have been that of youth or again that of middle age, but the body was already that of an old man, lungs crippled by smoke, limbs distorted through a diet of grey bread, marge and stewed tea. He was away from home for the first and last (he emphasized that) time; indeed he had only one fixed idea in his head, which was to get back to the Falls Road as expeditiously as possible.

  Like all residents of the Falls he had never felt the urge to travel; it was the local custom to scorn those who had ventured outside the area for work or pleasure. It was his belief that everything that the heart could desire was to be found within the ghetto. From time to time the people would glance up through the smog at the peak of Divis or Cave Hill, or over the river to the rusting cranes on Queen’s Island, but these distant horizons stirred no curiosity in their souls. The Falls and its attendant streets were world enough for them. Balaclava, Crimea, Sebastopol, Cupar; Patrick Pearse McGuffin rhymed off the names of his childhood and tears sprang to his eyes.

  Between these streets and the neighbouring Shankill there ran a stout wall. Sometimes the other crowd would try to throw things over it, but there was a sterile zone on both sides and the missiles fell ineffectually into the clearing. The wall ran through the city, slicing through streets, twisting this way and that round the contours of the ghetto. Only the noise of Orange bands on summer evenings drifting across the no-man’s-land reminded them of the Protestants beyond. Hemmed in between wall and mountain, it was his territory, and to him it was an enchanted kingdom.

  He liked the predictability of the life. As a boy he had known the alarums and excursions when the wall was incomplete. Gangs of Orangemen advancing down their street after dark, houses burning, the sound of gunshots as he crouched under the bed. Later there had been indecisive battles on street corners, snipers on the rooftops, men running from building to burning building, danger and fear everywhere. But those were dim recollections of boyhood, the stories now of old men, returning only to haunt him as nightmares. All had been peaceful in the ghetto for many years. Night after night as he grew to manhood he listened to the same songs in the same clubs; week after week he heard the same sermons from the pulpits and confessed the same sins. In the kitchen in Sebastopol Street, over bread and marge, he had heard the same gossip from Maud Gonne and her friends. Once a week he went to the dogs with his dole money, watching the same dogs chasing the artificial hare round Celtic Park. Patrick Pearse was a born loser, but he never tired of his world or its charms. So what was he doing in Pettigoe, so far from home? It wasn’t long before the pilgrim pair were to hear the whole story.

  When his sister brought disgrace on the house, things changed forever. No matter how ardently he might declare himself an innocent party, a man with no interest in the Irish dancing, he knew his goose was cooked. Henceforth his life was that of the outcast, barely tolerated, forced to survive on the fringes of the community. He was shunned by his erstwhile mates and intimidated by the vigilante groups both secular and religious. The tick man refused him credit; he got no service in the Roger Casement Lounge. It was a half life, a shadow of how things had once been. The months went by, but there was no forgiving, no forgetting. Maud Gonne’s elopement with the hapless Cornelius had plunged the parish into a reign of terror for which the McGuffins were blamed in full. It was as much as his life was worth to put his snout out during the hours of daylight. For a sociable party like Patrick Pearse it was a cruel reversal of the dream of life.

  He had all but abandoned hope when Father Alphonsus was recalled to the Falls.

  The success Schnozzle was making of the place, after the initial debacle, had not gone unnoticed in higher quarters. ‘This is the sort of man Ireland is in sore need of,’ mused the Cardinal as he laid aside the Irish News wherein the new spirit of the parish was daily extolled. ‘Father Schnozzle has really put the place on the map. A right bastard, but isn’t that what they’re lost for! Single-minded, determined, not afraid to tread on a few toes or break a few heads to get things done!’ He chuckled to himself at the discomfort he must be causing in Belfast. Belfast! A place he himself had long since given up as hopeless, beyond redemption. But the news in the paper told a different story now. The town was a model of discipline and clean living. Every Sunday the churches packed. Crowds three deep trying to get into the Redemptorist mission. Schnozzle run off his feet hearing confessions, baptizing infants, comforting the dying. The Irish News was full of whist drives, sponsored pray-ins, sodalities, confraternities, holy hours, meetings of the Knights, the Legion of Mary, even the AOH. Elsewhere in the country, the loutish element might risk lying abed on Sunday mornings, ignoring openly the bells summoning them to their duties. You didn’t lie long in Saint Matthew’s these days! The Cardinal grinned at the thought. You’d hardly have time to pull the blanket over your head before you’d hear the front door splintering and the heavy boots of Sister Immaculata or one of her buddies on the stairs. Good enough medicine for them! What was there ever in Belfast but corner boys! It took a firm hand! He had seen the audited returns too. Every man jack of them on a voluntary weekly contribution of ten per cent of all income, be it ever so humble. Collected no doubt by the Sisters in their own inimitable style. He allowed himself to dream. What if these principles were extended to the whole diocese, to the whole nation? We would see a great return to the values of the past. Weren’t the people secretly crying out for it, for a man who would give them a firm lead?

  There and then he decided that his bequest to the nation would be just such a man.

  So it was that Schnozzle found himself once more on the carpet in Ara Coeli. But this time the decanter of Black Bush was open and Immaculata was helping herself to the panatellas. Cardinal Mac didn’t beat about the bush. ‘I’m not getting any younger,’ he began. ‘It’s time to start handing over to someone else.’

  ‘Go away with you, you’ll outlive us all, Eminence,’ Schnozzle said, clumsily attempting a bantering tone. Big Mac silenced him.

  ‘I don’t need flattery. I need someone I can trust.’

  ‘You’ll not regret your decision.’

  The Cardinal snorted quietly. ‘I may as well tell you that this action has been forced on me by Rome. They tell me I’m to have an assistant. An amanuensis, if you don’t be minding! Someone to take over the day-to-day duties of running this country while I start preparing my soul to meet my Maker! Someone who can step into my shoes when my time comes.’

  ‘It will be an honour to serve Your Eminence in that capacity.’

  ‘We’ll have you made up to Monsignor straight away. There’ll be a mitre in it for you whe
n Rome sorts out the details. Adjutant bishop of some place or other that no one has ever heard of. Chililabombwe! Not that you’ll be doing much gallivanting. There’s enough paperwork here to keep you busy for a lifetime.’

  ‘And Saint Matthew’s … ?’ Schnozzle dared ask.

  ‘You can say goodbye to the Falls Road,’ the Cardinal said with a chuckle. ‘Have a look through the books and pick yourself a replacement. Find some bucko, a native son, who’s had it cushy for too long. Meanwhile get one of your women to dust the room at the back and move in here by the weekend.’

  Schnozzle took only one souvenir from Belfast. Sister Immaculata unscrewed the neon sign that had stood above the vestry door, forlornly winking out its invitation to the passing Protestant. Though the old man said nothing, Schnozzle knew that the project was still dear to his heart and that his dream of converting just one souper remained intact. He had them rig it up above the side door of the Palace, where Big Mac could see its reflection as he lay in bed. Below in the Shambles, the sign on the wreckage of the Martyrs Memorial still blinked sporadically. From now on it was to be challenged nightly from the hilltop.

  There was a period of official mourning in Saint Matthew’s when the news leaked out that Schnozzle and the Sisters were moving on to greater things.

  ‘He was a great man!’ they told each other, suppressing their relief, for the walls had ears.

  ‘Wasn’t he the very thing the doctor ordered! Got us back on our knees again. And the Sisters too …’

  ‘Rough diamonds, but God bless them anyway, aren’t their hearts in the right place.’

  These, and other topics in similar vein, occupied the ghetto people till they were sure that Schnozzle had truly taken his leave and that the coast was clear for them to revert, as expeditiously as possible, to their former slothful ways. The only area of speculation that now concerned them was who would succeed him. And while all agreed that Schnozzle would be a hard act to follow, the consensus was that whoever it was couldn’t be any worse.