by Edward Toman
‘Since when did that crowd pay any attention to what the Brothers said?’ asked the Canon.
‘The clergy like to stick together,’ ventured Cornelius, stepping into contentious territory.
‘Clergy!’ the Canon snorted. ‘Clergy! Since when have the Christian Brothers been described as clergy? A pack of ignorant gobshites that could hardly get beyond book three.’ He had loosened his dog collar and taken off his shoes while he calmed his nerves with a Sweet Afton and a hot rum, presents brought back by Joe from his visit to the great world beyond. It was a time for indiscretion.
‘Your son answered up like a gentleman,’ Cornelius said, trying to steer the conversation away from controversy. ‘I’d say that’s a boy you could be right and proud of in years to come.’
‘He knew how to handle the Sisters right enough,’ agreed the Canon. ‘You’ve got to hand it to him. That’s a young man could go far, with a talent like that. What had you in mind for him?’
‘What else would he do but follow in his father’s footsteps?’
‘And what business might that be precisely?’ prodded the Canon.
Cornelius intervened to head off any embarrassment. ‘If you want my opinion, I think the lad would make a lovely priest.’
‘You might have a point there. It would do no harm to try him in that direction, Mister Feely. It would do our reputation no harm either, if you take my meaning.’
‘How do I know if he has a vocation? It’s early days yet,’ Joe said.
‘Never too early,’ said the Canon wistfully. ‘Never too early. It’s a good life, and a useful one, the greatest calling a man can have. Thou art a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. There’s something they can’t take away from you.’ He stared for a moment at Cornelius, and they could hear the spite in his voice when he asked: ‘Tell me, Mister Moran, do you ever regret throwing it back in God’s face the way you did?’
Cornelius went scarlet. He had heard the Canon on this tack before, when the drink had disagreed with him, or self-pity had overtaken him. He didn’t think the present occasion was a time for such chat.
Normally Joe liked a good row as much as the next man, and he had to admit that the preliminaries were well up to standard. An injudicious amount of drink had been consumed, of course, as was only natural after such a period of anxiety and tension. Another time he would let them at it properly; sit back and watch the fur fly. But this was not the time for harsh words and recriminations. It was a time for rejoicing. The departure of the Sisters empty-handed as good as gave them the nod to open for business. But there was still work to be done if they were to make a go of the venture. He would have to mollify the pair of them.
‘I’d say it would make his poor mother a very happy woman to have reared a priest,’ he said.
‘A priest in the family is the greatest honour there is,’ asserted the Canon.
‘I can see him now. Father Frank! We’ll see him ordained yet.’
‘If God spares us,’ said Cornelius quietly.
The rain was beating hard against the window pane and the wind from the Atlantic moaned round the chimney. Over by the church the flashing lights of the Madonna winked hypnotically. The three men fell silent. Presently the Canon began to snore.
‘Pay no attention to him,’ Joe said. ‘It’s all the excitement, it reminds him of happier times. Let’s have one more before we hit the hay.’ He poured whiskey into Cornelius’s glass and proposed a toast. ‘To the Silent Madonna. May She be everything we expect.’
‘What’s the next step?’ asked Cornelius.
Joe thought for a few moments before answering. ‘With God’s help we open on schedule. After Christmas.’
Fifteen
Chastity McCoy sat amid her father’s faded relics weeping forlornly. Chastity wept often since the fateful day the snakes had returned, crying by day at the loneliness of her life, crying herself to sleep at night with the fading memory of her mother calling to her in creole from the great void. She was weeping now at the memory of the belting her father had given her earlier, and with frustration at the dirty job he had set her to do. She had spent the morning in the damp box room at the top of the Martyrs Memorial, while he and Magee hung around drinking and giving her orders. She heard their footfalls on the stairs and started back to her task. She reached up to clean a pickle jar of saints’ penises when the feather duster slipped again, toppling a jam-pot stuffed with old rosary beads. They scattered over the floor. This time Magee, who was first through the door, belted her.
‘Can that girl do nothing right?’ he asked.
‘She’ll feel the weight of my boot on her backside if she breaks one more thing!’ her father assured him.
‘It’s not as if you’ve got stuff to waste,’ Magee said drily.
‘They’re good enough for Antrim men,’ McCoy said, defending his heirlooms. ‘They don’t expect a lot.’
Every year Pastor McCoy took his travelling museum up to the high plateau. He had inherited the Antrim rights in his father’s will and with it the bits and pieces that made up the show, an assortment of Protestant relics and a rudimentary chamber of papist horrors. No other man of God had tried to muscle in on this particular franchise, for the pickings were meagre. As a young man McCoy sometimes pictured himself curator of a more comprehensive collection, a rival Madame Tussaud’s of the Shambles, that would instruct, edify and entertain the paying customer. Nothing had come of the dream. No new artefacts had been added to the collection, and the originals, mildewed and moth-eaten, now cut a sorry spectacle under Magee’s critical inspection. ‘I’ll not deny it could do with a few new bits and pieces,’ McCoy conceded. ‘Maybe a confession box or a few dancing statues …’
‘There’s this new one they’re all on about. It’s going to make papists of us all! A singing, tapdancing plaster Virgin that is going to have us loving our neighbour and living in peace under the jackboot of Rome and its lackeys in Dublin.’
‘You and the Patriot beyond will make a lovely couple! Kissing and cuddling.’ But though McCoy joked, he too had heard the persistent rumours and sometimes, in the stilly night, was troubled with a nightmare that refused to be assuaged.
‘I’ll tell you what you need,’ Magee said. ‘You need a live exhibit. That might bring the punters in.’
And, having planted the idea, he packed a bottle of rum and the contents of the petty cash box from the Martyrs Memorial and set out for the village of Caledon.
Old Biddy McCusker was busy at the range when Magee went calling. He hammered on the door a couple of times and then lifted the latch and let himself in. Anyone in Caledon could have told you that Biddy was as deaf as a post, and crotchety with it. They would also have told you that any flies on the old bitch were paying ground rent. Magee had had his share of rows with her down the years, for she was forever trying to diddle him out of a decent price for the pigs she reared or palming him off with eggbound broilers. So when word reached him that she had taken a hired hand to help on the farm, and when he heard the rumour that the hired hand was a Fenian, Magee felt suspicious. Any Roman Catholic desperate enough to be working in Caledon must be in a bad way indeed.
‘Jesus, Sammy Magee, you gave me a turn! Have you never heard of knocking before you come barging into a body’s house?’
‘I’ve come on business.’
‘Haven’t you a neck on you all the same, going sneaking round, half scaring the shite out of people! What’s it you’re after this time?’ Her voice was high, harsh and staccato, like listening to broken glass.
‘You’ve got a taig working round the place?’ he demanded.
‘Speak up will you!’ she shouted back at him.
‘You heard me rightly. I said you’ve a Roman Catholic working round the place!’
‘And I suppose you’ve come to shoot him?’ she said.
‘If I don’t someone else will.’
‘You’ll not lay a finger on him without my say-so! Do you think I�
�ve got money to burn!’
‘Are you telling me you paid for him?’ Magee asked.
‘Of course I did. Paid a travelling man fair and square for him. No one’s shooting him till I’ve got my money’s worth out of him. Do you follow me, Sammy Magee!’
‘What I don’t understand in the first place is what you’re doing with a Fenian. Could you not get a decent Protestant to work for you?’
Biddy cackled. She indicated the run-down hovel and the glarencrusted yard outside. ‘What prod would put up with the likes of this? Answer me that? Would you shovel shite in a place like this, eh?’
‘I’ve seen worse.’
‘You’ve seen better! You wouldn’t get one of our own to work here for love or money.’
‘Are you not afraid and him sleeping in the same house as you? An ould woman like yourself?’
‘He sleeps down with the beasts,’ she retorted quickly. ‘Do you think I’m a heathen altogether?’
‘Maybe he’ll rise up one night and slit your throat when you’re still in your bed, the way his forefathers did in 1689?’
Biddy cackled. The same boyo won’t be doing too much rising up at night. Rest assured of that.’
‘Is he on the run from his own sort? Is that the way it is?’
‘You’re very full of questions all of a sudden.’
Magee carefully pulled out the last of the petty cash from the chapel and laid it on the table.
‘What’s the Fenian worth?’ he demanded roughly.
‘He’s worth fuck all! He’s good for nothing and that’s the truth. But he’s paid for fair and square, and I’ll not part with him unless the price is right.’
Magee bent over and squeezed her by the hand. It was rough and leathery. He shouted confidentially into her ear. ‘As a matter of fact it’s the Reverend McCoy himself who’s interested in your man. You’d be doing a great service to your own people if you could let us have him.’
‘What use would he be to the Reverend McCoy? He’s nothing but skin and bone. He’s not worth his keep.’
‘Sister,’ said Magee, suddenly dropping down on his knees and pulling the old woman down with him. ‘Sister, are you not familiar with the words of Our Lord Himself on the subject of the prodigal son?’
‘You’ve no need to take that tone with me,’ she snapped. ‘I know my scripture as well as the next one.’
‘“Rejoice with me then, for I have found the sheep which was lost.’”
‘“For this my son was dead, and is alive; he was lost and is found,”’ she answered. ‘What’s that got to do with your man?’
‘The Reverend McCoy’s going to make your Fenian famous! He’s going to convert him to Jesus! You’ll be the envy of Caledon.’
‘The papists will never stand for it!’
‘Fuck the papists and fuck the Pope! Now let’s have a look at him.’
She took the keys to the byre and, bending to scoop up the pile of coins on the table, led him out into the farmyard and down through the manure to the outbuildings.
It was dark in the barn, and the stench was fierce. Magee cast an experienced eye over the collection of mangy beasts cowering in the straw. As a butcher he could tell at a glance that not one of them was worth a damn. Biddy was getting too old to be running this place by herself; it was time some of the local lads put it to her politely but firmly. This was no way for a Protestant to live. In the corner of the byre, sectioned behind a flimsy partition, lay the taig. Magee approached cautiously through the pigshit and peered over the partition. The man lay on a pallet covered in straw, his feet manacled by a chain fastened to a metal pin on the wall. He stared up at them without interest.
‘Take him or leave him,’ cackled Biddy. ‘If the Reverend McCoy thinks he can turn him he’s more than welcome.’
Magee took the key from the widow and removed the chain from the hook. He tugged on it and the man struggled to his feet and cowered in front of him. Magee looked him over. As she said, he was nothing but skin and bone. He turned to the woman. ‘He’ll need something to eat if I’m to take him off your hands. He’ll never reach the Shambles in this condition.’
‘I haven’t a bite in the house,’ she shouted across at him. ‘“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Isn’t that what it says in the Book?’
Magee said no more. He headed up the lonen to where he had left his bike. He fastened the chain to the rear mudguard, and with Patrick Pearse McGuffin trotting along behind him as best he could, he began to pedal methodically back towards the city in the distance.
Sixteen
Snow fell rarely in Ballychondom. The proximity of the ocean and the ever-present wind made it one of the wettest and bleakest places on the island, but any snow quickly turned to sleet and then to biting rain. On Christmas Eve, however, it turned colder than any of the native speakers could remember, and the clouds that scudded in from the Atlantic were heavy with snowflakes. By the middle of the afternoon the wind had dropped and it had begun to snow. The road was white with it; it lay on the roof of the church and the roof of the factory, it nestled into the thatch of the cabins, it blanketed the bogs and the marshes, and covered the mountains. By nightfall the countryside had been transformed out of all recognition.
Noreen and Frank stood at the window, their noses pressed against the glass, watching the fields and walls silently change shape. The room was warm, for Cornelius had earlier stacked the open fire with an armful of dry turf against the cold of the evening. The menfolk were in a mellow mood. It was a time to celebrate. The grotto would open on schedule on the feast of the Epiphany, whatever the weather. It was also a time to remember happier days and absent friends, and each man, as he looked into his glass in the fading light, felt the essential sadness of the season.
‘Here’s to your very good health,’ said Canon Tom, raising his glass to the other two, ‘and a very happy Christmas to all here.’ He was thinking of Christmases back in Adam and Eve’s: midnight Mass (a ticket only affair); the presents from the ladies of the parish, each one trying to outdo the others, or to surprise him the most; Christmas dinner with the curates; and maybe drinks later in the evening at the home of one of the prominent families of the locality. And Boxing Day! The binoculars and shooting stick, hip flask and car rug, and the sound of pounding hooves and the smell of the saddling enclosure and the shouts of Honest Eddie. He sighed as he emptied his glass. ‘And let’s drink to the success of our venture here. May God look favourably on our plans, and may His Blessed Mother continue to honour us with Her presence, and may the Holy Ghost guide us in all our business decisions, and may Saint Patrick look down on us and protect us. Amen!’
‘Amen,’ Cornelius said. He had been thinking about Maud Gonne. During the rest of the year he found he could think about her in a matter-of-fact way now, but at Christmas he saw her face again and heard her voice. They had only known one Christmas together, but it was the one time they had been truly happy. He knew he should have no more to drink or he’d go making an eejit out of himself in front of the Canon and Mister Feely, not to mention the children. But when Joe reached across and filled his glass he made no effort to restrain him.
Joe, in his own way, was sentimental about the festive season too. At least, as he kept repeating, he had nothing against it. He thought briefly about herself back home in South Armagh with a mixture of affection and unease. She’d have gone to her sister’s for the duration of the Yuletide, or maybe had her sister come to her. Either way, he told himself, she’d be as right as rain. Maybe when they got the show on the road and things were running smoothly, before the rush started round Ash Wednesday, he’d get a run home with Frank. She’d give the pair of them a right bollocking, it went without saying, notwithstanding the change in the boy. He expected nothing less of her, the pair of them AWOL so long. Yes, he thought to himself as he slowly sipped his whiskey, that’s what they’d do in the new year. ‘A very happy Christmas,’ he said to t
he others, raising his glass. ‘What more could you ask for than a warm fire and a drop of whiskey on a bitter night like this?’
‘It’s the worst I can remember,’ Cornelius agreed. ‘God help any poor soul on the roads on a night like that.’ They lapsed into silence, content to contemplate the flames, each lost in his own private thoughts, while the children stood silently at the window staring at the snow.
The silence was broken by the sound of an engine. The men looked at each other, then rose and went to the window, peering over the heads of the two young ones. A van of some sort was coming slithering down the mountain road. Its engine spluttered, backfired and died. It freewheeled down the hill and skidded to a halt in front of the house, its one headlight dying. A man got out and kicked it viciously and systematically, first one side and then the other. There was a discordant jangling of bells from the roof. The engine remained stubbornly dead. The man struggled with the bonnet for a few minutes, gave up and kicked the side of the van again. He was a big man with a Russian hat pulled down over his ears, and a ruddy, pockmarked face. He managed to lift the bonnet finally, cursing as he burned his raw fingers.
‘Try her now!’ he bellowed. A small figure in the passenger seat moved across and fiddled with the ignition. It turned once, spluttered and expired with a wail.
‘For Christ’s sake don’t flood the fucker!’ the man shouted. His voice was powerful, that of a man used to the open air and getting his way. He had the harsh accent of Armagh town.
‘Tinkers?’ asked the Canon. ‘What in God’s holy name brings them about the place on a day like this?’
‘Them’s no tinkers,’ Joe said softly. He had gone pale the minute he had seen the silhouette of the ice-cream van coming down the road. He didn’t need to read its numberplate (FTP1690) or get a look at its driver to know that it was McCoy. What was he doing here? On a night like this? If he was on the run he had chosen a strange place to hide. Or was there some treachery afoot? ‘Them’s no tinkers,’ he repeated, ‘and I can tell you something else; I don’t think he’s come this length to sell us ice-cream cones either.’