by Edward Toman
And it goes without saying that Schnozzle heard it too. He was staring out over the Shambles, picking his nose and cogitating on the meaning of these rumours when Sister Immaculata phoned him on the hot line in a state of agitation. She advocated a preemptive strike. ‘Go in hard, take no hostages, ask questions later, that’s my motto!’ she told him.
‘Hold on to your horses a moment,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll have to have a word with Cardinal Mac before you do anything.’
‘There’s no need to involve His Eminence in this carry-on! Just give the word and we’ll get started.’
But where would they start? It was as yet nothing but a whisper, one that could die away as quickly and mysteriously as it had begun. There were ten thousand churches on the west coast alone; to search Donegal would take a year. Looking for the new elusive Virgin would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But if there was trickery afoot, as so often there was in these cases, he would have the Sisters sniff it out, no matter what the cost.
Before he came to Armagh the Palace had been plagued with applications for licences for this sort of thing, till even the old man, who had a weakness for Marian apparitions, considered it time to call a halt. He had handed the files over to Schnozzle, with responsibility for investigating and approving all claims of sightings, miracles, cures, and associated heavenly phenomena. With Schnozzle in the hot seat, the flood had dried to a trickle. He had set about his task with the ruthlessness for which he was renowned. Many a potential holy site, already packing them in by the busload, had been put out of business by a summary visit from the Sisters. Simony, usury, avarice; they dealt with them hard. Woe betide the shopkeeper who jumped the gun and started to sell bottled water from the local grotto before Schnozzle had personally sampled it and given it his grudging approval. Woe betide the cripple who tried to get his name in the papers or make a few shillings against his old age by claiming a cure if his medical record showed otherwise; the Sisters would break both his legs before they had done with him, and it would take more than a rub of the relic to set them straight. Many a charlatan of a farmer, tempted to turn a fairy bush or a saint’s well into a money-spinner, had learned of the Sisters’ thoroughness to his cost. Many an old curate, trying to turn a calvary into a place of pilgrimage, had reason to curse quietly the name of Sister Immaculata from his sanatorium bed. They would descend on any parish priest who claimed a visitation from Our Lady, and they wouldn’t leave until they were satisfied that all was in accordance with the regulations of the Synod of Armagh.
But some sixth sense cautioned Schnozzle to tread carefully this time. There was something about this business that made it different. It stood to reason that the country was due for a major visitation sooner or later. All the prophecies foretold it; all the signs pointed to it; daily the people expected it. As the new millennium dawned, it was clear that She would come again to Ireland. But who could tell the day or the hour, or the means of Her coming? It had been well established over the years that She could be very touchy, very easily put off, and less than generous to those who put obstacles in Her path. Did he want to go down in history as the man who scared Her away, especially at a time when we so desperately needed Her intervention and guidance? The Sisters, God bless them, had no finesse. They’d run up to Donegal and kick shite out of a few dozen people, then claim the problem was solved. You couldn’t behave like that with Donegal people. And if, as the rumours seemed to suggest, this was happening in a Gaeltacht area, then that was another ball game altogether. The crude tactics of the Sisters were well and good for the cities, for settling arguments with the pro-abortionists, or the clan who advocated married priests. He had reason to be grateful to Immaculata and her inner cumann for the work they had done in these fields in the past. But putting the boot in was no way to proceed in the matter in hand. For one thing, it would be wrong to make any move till he had heard from the parish priest formally. There was due process to be observed. Besides … he fingered his nose thoughtfully … if it turned out that there was something in it after all, he would want to be part of it from the beginning. For Schnozzle lived in secret hope of one cosmetic miracle that would transform his life.
By midsummer the rumour had reached the seaboard to the east and crossed the Irish Sea. For a while it was all the talk in Kilburn and the building sites of Hammersmith. It travelled to Luton and Leeds; it travelled to Detroit and Melbourne. And though the road kept the buses away, the Canon could do nothing about the returning sons and daughters of Ballychondom who started to trickle back into the village, looking for the headstones of ancestors and claiming tenuous kinship with the native speakers. On the bare bedrock between the chapel and the bogs the breeze-block foundations of their bungalows began to sprout. Deserted outhouses, long derelict, were given a quick lick of whitewash and started to offer special rates for the severely disabled. A few of the immigrants tried passing themselves off as legitimate licensees, till a call from Joe put them right. Sharkey was back too, smelling money. The donkey and cart, laden with materials and consumables, was never off the road, and Tobias himself and the sons would manhandle the loads across the boulders and through the floods where the road was still impassable. The goalposts in the hurley field had been pulled down and a network of sticks and string delineated the direction of the number one runway. The Canon and Cornelius had struggled one weekend trying to tarmac the forecourt of the house much to Joe’s scorn. ‘Why would you pay a crowd of tinkers good money when you could do it yourself?’ argued the Canon.
On the Feast of the Assumption a small procession left the factory and walked across to the chapel. There were processions all over Ireland that day but none was as special as this. Cornelius led the way, carrying high a crucifix lashed to a driftwood pole. Joe came next, swinging a makeshift thurible. The children and the native speakers followed, all in best bib and tucker. Canon Tom, in the full vestments reserved for a joyous feast, took up the rear. Inside the chapel he moved to the old confession box and indicated that he was open for business. Frank stepped forward. In the stillness of the church, stillness broken only by the crying of the gulls and the distant moaning of the sea, they heard his voice, stumbling and hesitant at first, then growing stronger and more confident as the sacrament continued. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.’ With growing assurance he recited the Confiteor, as they had rehearsed him, calling on the angels and saints of antiquity to witness his entrance into manhood. He hadn’t much to confess, for his had been a blameless life, but he stumbled through the formula that they had taught him and emerged smiling. Joe knelt on the hard earth and gave thanks. There were times when he had given up hope, times when he had doubted he would ever see the boy right again. And here he was, making his first confession and Communion. There would be no need for the Brothers and their unique services after all. He thought about himself and his own predicament. What better place to ask forgiveness than right here? Hadn’t the Canon been in the business himself before he turned to higher things? If the pair of them were going to be around for a while to see the project off the ground, he should start the Nine Fridays again. Make an appointment and have his confession heard. After
Christmas, he told himself, prevaricating as usual. After Christmas, if we’re spared.
After Mass they walked in procession a half mile up the Yellow Meal Road to consecrate the archway. Frank and his father had been preparing it for a fortnight, a massive triumphal arch, based on the models the Orangemen erected in Enniskillen round the twelfth of July. Inlaid cameos portrayed the Virgin in a variety of roles, with a bas-relief bearing a passable likeness of Noreen, her father, the Canon and Frank, kneeling in supplication before the Silent Madonna. Above the arch was the salutation:
FÁILTE ROMHAT I MBAILE AN CHONDOIM.
WELCOME TO BALLYCHONDOM.
HOME OF THE MIRACULOUS MADONNA.
SILENT NO LONGER!!
The rest of the structure was festooned with pious aspirations in
English, Irish and Latin, and an exhortation to the visitor to be sure to call at MORAN’S (and Partner) souvenir shoppe – directly opposite the church – for all your religious needs.
By the end of the summer, the place was nearly ready. The church had been given a coat of whitewash. The winter would in all probability skin it off again, but at least it would pass muster for when the Sisters arrived. As the Canon was fond of remarking, once they got the licence they’d be able to gold plate it if they wanted. The churchyard had been tidied up and neat paths laid between the old graves. The statue had been restored to its niche on the gable wall, cemented back into place. Round it, Joe had constructed a conservatory of wood and perspex, to protect the Madonna from the elements and the attentions of over-eager supplicants. He cut a hole in the plywood through which they could touch Her feet, and he gave this part of the statue a couple of coats of polyurethane to stop it wearing away. Pilgrims who wished to touch the statue with other bodily parts were advised by notice to apply to the priest in charge, and warned that special rates were in operation for this service. Within the glass case he had rigged up a string of lights, more or less hidden by the framework, and at dusk these could be illuminated from a switch inside the church. He experimented with flashing bulbs that he got from Letterkenny, which had once adorned the municipal Christmas tree. He switched them on on Midsummer’s Night and even the native speakers tore themselves away from their traditional cultural pursuits to come and kneel in front of the flickering icon.
‘There’s no doubt but that you’ve done a great job,’ the Canon conceded. ‘But I hope you appreciate that our friends the Sisters will think nothing of tearing your handiwork to pieces if they smell a rat.’
‘They can poke about to their hearts’ content. There’s no hidden wires or anything of that sort. Haven’t we always said that our only hope was to run a classy joint?’
‘Has She enough room to move, do you think?’ asked Cornelius. ‘You haven’t built the glass too tight?’
‘Will the pair of you leave the worrying to me,’ said Joe. ‘It’ll be all right on the night, as the saying goes.’ He turned to the Canon. ‘I think, Father, the time has come to get the ball rolling officially. The letter to His Eminence …’
The Canon put a brave face on it. He knew he could put it off no longer. ‘Whatever you say, Mister Feely. I’ll get started on it this very night.’
He needed the better part of a week to get the letter written, for it’s not the sort of thing you do off the top of your head, a sentiment he took to repeating to the others. Every word was carefully chosen, from the initial salutation to the assurance of faithful servility. No firm opinion was expressed one way or the other about the series of alleged supernatural happenings in the parish. A studied neutrality was observed in referring to the cure that some were attributing to the intervention of the Virgin. He was at pains to stress his reluctance to disturb one so busy as His Eminence, assuring him that he took this step only after much prayerful thought. He threw himself at the latter’s feet in this matter, asking only for guidance and to be diverted from error. Whatever decision His Eminence made, he could assure him it would be fully endorsed by his servant in Christ. There was much, much more in this vein, and the Canon had to be fortified with many brandies before he could bring himself to write it, but he had been long enough in the business to know the form. The application was finally completed, signed and sealed, and entrusted to Joe for safe posting.
It took him three days to get to the village over the mountains, and another to get Sharkey to open the Post Office. He argued till he was sure the letter was properly registered, and he stood at Sharkey’s elbow, keeping it in sight till he saw it safely on to the weekly Lough Swilly bus. Even then he was in no hurry to return to Ballychondom. You didn’t have to be a genius to work out the effect the letter would have on the Canon’s old pal Schnozzle; it was a pound to a penny that the roadblocks would be up within a week and the whole place under quarantine while the Little Sisters of the One True Faith went through it with a fine-tooth comb. He retired to John. Joe Sharkey’s bar, keeping his ear cocked for the rumbling of tanks along the country roads.
He hadn’t been far wrong. Five nights later Cornelius and his household were suddenly awakened by lights in the yard and the sound of hammering. There were voices everywhere, shouting at him to open up. He crossed to the window and peeped out, blessing himself at what he saw. They had drawn up their cavalcade outside the church and were busy uncoiling razor wire back along the road. He became aware of the Canon at his side, his breathing nervous, his whispered voice heavy with fear and emotion. ‘The back door …’ he stammered.
Cornelius gripped him firmly by the shoulder. ‘No chance, Father! They’ll have the place surrounded.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ He was weeping openly.
‘Easy, Father. Take hold of yourself. Just remember what we agreed. We’ve been over it a hundred times.’
‘Easy for you to talk that way, Mister Moran! Don’t forget I’ve had personal experience of these people. Haven’t I still got the mental scars to prove it!’
‘You’ll be right as rain,’ Cornelius tried to assure him. His own voice was beginning to quaver, and he sounded far from convincing. ‘Just remember we have Our Blessed Lady on our side.’
‘And they’ve got fucking Schnozzle Durante on theirs!’
‘They’ll be gone in a couple of days. Keep that to the front of your mind. And then we’ll be on the pig’s back.’
The knocking on the door was now too insistent to ignore, and from the direction of the erstwhile parochial house there came the crack of shattering wood. Cornelius took a deep breath and offered up one last aspiration to Our Lady, Shield against Tyrants. ‘Time to let our guests in,’ he said, shaking off the Canon’s grip and moving towards the door.
Even in Annagary, far off over three ranges of mountains and proud of its reputation as the least friendly town in Ireland, they could take no pleasure in the thought of what was happening in Ballychondom. Sharkey set Joe up a free pint, something no local had seen happen in living memory, and winked at him in a gesture of solidarity and commiseration. And while Joe sweated it out in Annagary, the Canon and Cornelius, the children, the returned sons of the soil, and even the cainteoiri dúchais sweated it out back in the settlement. With commendable foresight the Canon had secreted a bottle or two of vodka among the Communion wine to fortify himself and to keep his breath sweet; for two whole days and nights they gave him the business in the sacristy. Noreen and Frank were interrogated separately, then together, then separately again; made to repeat their stories over and over, their statements scrutinized for the slightest discrepancy that would indicate collusion. But the children had been well schooled. Even under the hardest questioning their innocence and persistence shone through. The Canon could only admire them. Perhaps due to the vodka, or was it some inner source of strength, he struggled through the hours of abuse and cross-questioning, to emerge with his alibi as a humble, reformed character intact. Even Cornelius got through those terrible days somehow, despite the obvious distaste the Sisters shared for his past life.
They had brought with them their own field laboratory, which they towed behind the dormer van. For the duration of the inspection it straddled the road outside Cornelius’s premises, generator humming, guarded day and night by a grim-faced novice. Her ears were deaf to all his invitations to step inside out of the cold and have a warm. Inside the mobile laboratory the Silent Madonna, ripped once more from Her perch, suffered the indignities of a stringent and intimate examination. Cornelius could hear them at their work as he lay shivering in his bed, for who could think of sleeping, even for an hour, at a time like this? He could hear the muffled voices from the kitchen, the clatter of their boots on the strip of tarmac as they changed the guard, the curt, barked commands, the whine of the generator, and occasionally – or was his imagination getting the better of him? - the pleading voice of the Virgin Hersel
f.
And then, as suddenly as it had started, it was all over. The Sisters left as quickly as they had come. No trace of hidden wires or concealed batteries was discovered, nor secret channels to simulate the flow of tears. When he pulled back the blinds on the third morning, Cornelius saw that She had been restored to Her rightful place in the grotto, and the road was deserted. He pulled on his vest and ran across to the chapel. She still wore the same haughty expression; the eyes still appeared to focus somewhere round the summit of far-off Errigal. There was no sign of any damage to the wood. He reached his hand in through the opening Joe had made and touched the foot of the statue, giving thanks at the same time for his own deliverance and that of the neighbourhood.
‘I do believe we’re in the clear!’ It was the Canon, struggling over the rocks, unshaven and unslept. He twirled the empty vodka bottle round his head and shattered it against the rocks in a gesture of Dionysian triumph.
‘If we weren’t we’d have heard all about it by now,’ Cornelius said, shaking him emotionally by the hand.
Joe was back as soon as he knew the coast was clear. ‘I do believe it was the letter from Brother Murphy that swung it our way,’ he declared. Before his departure he had given the Canon a photocopy of the letter from Frank’s old school, confirming that the boy was for all intents and purposes an amadán, a half-wit, lacking the basic faculties, and demanding his attendance as a boarder in Drogheda where the deaf and dumb Brothers awaited him.