by Edward Toman
‘Dia’s Muire duit,’ he said, pausing to button his flies before reaching for the bottle and pouring himself a glass of whiskey.
‘Dia is Muire duit agus Padraig,’ Joe answered civilly. Eugene had stopped where he was, half in and half out of the door. The Patriot slowly analysed the tableau before him. Then the penny dropped.
His features broke into a smile of relief and joy and triumph, emotions that for half a century had been strangers to him. He indicated to Eugene that he should bring the statue inside and pour a glass of whiskey for their loquacious customer. He took the Madonna from Eugene, cradling her protectively in his arms. ‘Abhaile arís,’ he said. Home again. He looked reverentially into the statue’s eyes, then, lifting her gently on to his shoulder, he started to climb the stairs.
‘Be carefull with her for the love of fuck!’ Joe whispered in despair at this turn of events. ‘Can’t you see she has a bad leg?’
‘Well, that’s that,’ Eugene said. ‘You’d be wasting your breath remonstrating with him. He’ll keep her here quietly till her hour comes.’
‘What about the man in the Palace above? Or the Sisters, if they get word you’re holding her here?’
‘And who’s going to go telling them?’ For one long moment Eugene stared deeply into Joe’s eyes.
‘Not me, for fuck’s sake!’ Joe said. He had heard enough rumours of Eugene’s way with touts and informers to know that he was suddenly moving into very dangerous territory.
‘Precisely,’ said Eugene. ‘Our Blessed Lady and the Republican Movement are the two greatest forces in this country today. Put them together and …’
‘Dynamite, right enough,’ Joe agreed, wryly.
The Patriot reappeared. Eugene poured another round. They lapsed into silence. After a while he reached up and turned on the radio. It gave out a tinny rendition of some dance music played by a céilí band with more enthusiasm than talent. Joe couldn’t tell a jig from a reel, but he let his foot tap quietly to the incessant beat, noting how the hypnotic lilt of the music seemed to soothe the big man. Eugene reached across the bar and winked. ‘What would your friend upstairs take?’ he whispered.
‘Have you such a thing as a drop of wine?’ Joe asked dubiously, surveying the meagre array of bottles on the shelf.
‘There isn’t much call for wine on the Shambles Corner,’ admitted Eugene.
‘Give her a drop of brandy, and have one yourself.’
‘Not a word to your man!’
‘Focal ar bith,’ said Joe, still unsure whether the barman was codding or not. He wouldn’t leave the premises till he’d thought of some way of talking the Patriot into parting with her ladyship. Or persuaded Eugene to see sense. For unless he did his goose was well and truly cooked.
It was three in the morning when Magee and the boys from Portglenone reached the Shambles. The bells from the clock above in the darkness tolled out the hour, startling the Antrim men. But when the reverberation had died away they heard, from across the deserted square, the voice of their quarry, singing in the Patriot Bar.
‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands!’ said Magee. The Portglenone boys looked at each other, unsure of the ways of the city. He had hired them before he reached the lough shore, a pair of brothers, tall and hard but none too bright by the look of them. They would serve his purpose all the same. They were on piece rates, paid by the day, and he had told them little about the project other than that it involved chasing a Fenian. At first they had been eager for the sport, vying with each other to impress him with tales of their exploits against the Romans. But a cold night outdoors, a forced march through unfriendly territory, and a long and fruitless day spent scouring the lough shore for clues had blunted their appetite for the enterprise. They arrived in the Shambles cold and dispirited and already feeling homesick. The bars on the Protestant side were firmly shut and dark, and the only sign of life in the square came from the window of Hughes’s where their Fenian was sitting snugly, drinking and yarning.
‘So what’s keeping us?’ said one of them. ‘We’ll just go in and do the business and then we’ll be off, mister.’
‘You don’t move till I say so,’ Magee said sharply.
‘As long as you remember it’s double time after twelve o’clock,’ said the other dourly.
‘You’ll get your money.’
‘Let’s go in there for fuck’s sake. We’re not afraid of a few taigs. We done it before.’
‘Shut your hole!’ hissed Magee. ‘What the fuck do you think you are, a fucking singing telegram! Have you any idea who owns that place?’
At that moment, in answer to his question, the door opened and the Patriot emerged. His bulk filled the doorway. In the dark, silhouetted against the light, he took on the appearance of a giant; he had the height of two men, the massive head of a bull, the torso of a dozen warriors, the hair of a stallion’s mane. The men from Portglenone were big men themselves, but they recoiled at the sight of the Patriot.
‘You never told us it was a frigging giant we were after,’ one of them began.
‘There should be special rates for jobs like that,’ said his brother, sounding doubtful.
‘Relax the pair of you,’ said Magee. ‘No one’s going to go messing with the big boy tonight. But that’s the man we have to get past to get to our boy.’
The Patriot looked out over the square to where, in the centre, on the walls of the latrine a single naked bulb burned. For a moment he appeared to consider making the trip across. Then he turned up the entry beside the pub and presently they heard the splash as he pissed, long and copiously, against the barrels that lined the wall. When he had finished he shambled back to the door and went inside again.
‘Do you still suggest we burst in and give them all a surprise?’ asked Magee with a sarcastic smirk. The Antrim men said nothing. ‘We wait here,’ he ordered. ‘Our time will come.’
Inside, snugly sheltered from the elements, they were getting on like a house on fire.
‘If you want to sing a song, sing an Irish song,’ intoned Eugene. They had moved from the brandy to the whiskey with pints in between to help the spirits go down; Joe had felt the circulation returning to his limbs after his ordeal in Antrim. He pieced together the tale of his exploits on the Protestant high ground for Eugene’s benefit, while the Patriot listened, perhaps understanding, perhaps not. They filled their glasses once more. At the back of one of the shelves, Eugene had discovered the remnants of a bottle of ladylike green liqueur. From time to time, and with a great show of secrecy, he poured a glass of it and took it upstairs.
‘How is everything in that quarter?’ Joe asked as he got back.
‘No complaints so far,’ Eugene reassured him.
He still couldn’t decide if the fucker was having him on or not.
‘A stór a stór a grá,
A stór a grá nach dtiocfaidh tú,’
he sang, the words of the song coming imperfectly to him. He could see that the big man was smiling to himself. He must be glad of the company, he reckoned. During the course of the night they had crooned their way through their collected repertory of Irish songs, songs that spoke of man’s insignificance in the face of cruel and inevitable fate – boats sunk off Tory, keens for dead birds, love songs of unrequited and hopeless passion, laments for happy, innocent, simple times that would never be seen again.
Magee and the Portglenone boys huddled in the lee of the latrine, cursing the cold wind and the hint of snow in it. At this rate they’d be here all night while the Fenians enjoyed themselves in the smoky warmth of the bar. They consoled themselves with memories of previous escapades, times when the pair of them had marched as bold as brass into papist drinking dens, quietly ordering pints as the company fell deadly silent, and drinking them down after they had splattered the floor with the brains of their chosen man.
The door of the bar suddenly swung open and Joe came out. He walked like a man in a hurry, straight across the square and into the jacks. M
agee put his finger to his lips and beckoned the other two to follow. Silently they entered the dim latrine. Joe squatted on the communal bench, his trousers hastily pulled to his ankles. He looked up, startled, as he became aware of their presence, but displayed no fear, no foreboding, despite the late hour or the times that were in it. Wasn’t a man as safe here as in his own house, safer maybe? Weren’t all sides agreed on that at least, if they could agree on precious little else? ‘Jesus, lads, I thought I had the place to myself,’ he said to them. ‘And just as well too, for if it had been crowded I declare to God I’d have shit myself. It must have been the feed of beer on the empty stomach that brought it on.’
Neither Magee nor his sidekicks said a word. Magee motioned them behind him; Joe was his! He pulled out his pig knife and raised it; Joe saw the glint of the metal and raised his hand pointlessly against its force. He opened his mouth to protest against the sacrilege, to plead with his assailant, but Magee had him by the hair and as his head jerked back he slit his throat as cleanly as that of any sow he had ever butchered. Magee stepped back as the warm blood spurted from the gash, and let Joe’s head, the eyes still open in startled disbelief, loll to one side. He wiped the blade carefully on the dead man’s sleeve and led his companions quickly from the scene.
The Portglenone men were anxious for their money, keen to be off. The square was strangely silent now without the singing from the pub, and they reckoned it wouldn’t be long before the Patriot sent out a search party to rescue his minstrel. Should he take the bull by the horns and let the lads storm the bar, taking their chances with the Patriot and Eugene as they recovered their lost property? The Antrim boys were keen to see some action before they were stood down. He decided against. Who could say what he might be getting himself into if he opened that particular can of worms? He beckoned to them to follow him, keeping well into their own side of the street as they slipped away.
The first hints of the dawn were streaking the eastern sky as Frank pedalled into the Shambles. He dismounted in the centre and propped the bicycle against the lavatory wall, the way he did every morning before facing another day on the hill above. He lit a cigarette and was about to enter when he heard Eugene, with the Patriot at his heels, running towards him across the no-man’s-land.
Epilogue
‘If anyone has nine lives,’ said Peadar, coming from behind his Christmas trees, ‘it’s your man.’ He indicated across the Shambles where they glimpsed the gaunt figure of Patrick Pearse McGuffin scuttling into the Martyrs Memorial, dodging the blows that McCoy was aiming at his head. ‘Isn’t it the grace of God nobody thought to put him out of his misery?’
Eugene recognized only too well the implied criticism of himself as guardian of Ireland’s honour but let it pass.
‘Tell me this anyhow,’ persisted the vegetable man, ‘is he one thing or the other or what in God’s name is he?’
‘If you’re so interested in the scutter, why don’t you take a trip up the Falls Road and ask Father Alphonsus, instead of quizzing me?’
At the mention of Belfast the trader crossed himself and fell quiet, counting his blessings. But the subject of McGuffin was bothering him, and though Eugene had turned away, ignoring all further speculation on the topic, he wanted to pursue it.
‘Tell me this and tell me no more. How is it that one of their own hasn’t attended to him before this? The lads from Antrim were hanging about for long enough. A pair of dangerous animals! I was scared to put my nose across the door. Or why hasn’t Magee lifted a finger against him?’
‘Maybe you’d like to swap places with him and see what it’s like!’
‘Quit codding,’ said the vegetable man. ‘You wouldn’t wish it on a dog.’ On cue, the pervert appeared once more on the far side of the square, cowering under a hail of blows that the preacher was showering on him with a length of guttering. Chastity had come running out and was struggling with her father, trying to restrain his wrath. McGuffin took refuge under the ice-cream van, where McCoy continued to kick him and his daughter alternately.
‘Nine lives all right!’ he said again, shaking his head in wonderment at the apparent goodness of God. Then another thought struck him. ‘You don’t think the boy is giving her nibs one?’
‘Fuck off! McGuffin couldn’t get it up if you paid him.’
‘Think of the scandal all the same if he sired a half breed. Could you imagine how McCoy would take it?’
‘Was it your arse or your brain that snake took a lump out of? Listen to the shite you’re talking! If McGuffin is still alive it’s because the Sacred Heart isn’t finished with him yet.’
Peadar continued to study the row going on over the square, another thought hitting him. And though Eugene had disappeared into the bar and closed the door behind him, he voiced it anyway, as much to himself as anything else. ‘All the same it’s a wonder he gives him the run of the house, especially with that young one of his getting on.’
In a troubled world where death is no stranger, the living let the dead slip away lest holding them too long will tempt fate. By Christmas Joe was already half forgotten, except by Frank and his mother. The formalities had been observed, the furies propitiated. Teresa had known what was expected of her; she sat impassively as the mutilated remains were brought home. She listened in stony silence to the condolences of the neighbours, their assertions that he had been a great man, one in a million and that they would never see the like of him again. She had smiled wanly when they whispered in shocked tones of the nature of his death, and the way his assassins had shaken off the last vestiges of decency by committing their foul deed in the last safe haven in Ireland. The local cumann sent a message of sympathy, and private assurances that the outrage would not go unavenged. She modestly welcomed Schnozzle into her home. He took her hand in his, and muttered nasal condolences about Joe’s place in heaven, while his bodyguard looked round the house for any sign of the elusive Madonna and questioned the neighbours. Frank was paraded before the mourners and slipped the odd shilling. On the third day he helped shoulder his father’s coffin as they walked to the graveyard. They buried him under Slieve Gullion, and as they lowered him into the ground, Frank’s eyes scoured the encircling hills, half in hope that She might make an appearance. But the mist was low that morning and there was no movement in the rocky outcrops above them. As he heard the first of the clods sullenly hit the wooden lid, he vowed to his father that some day he would find Her and restore Her to the people.
Joe’s passing was marked in the countryside in the time-honoured way. That night a Presbyterian farmhand was found decapitated near Markethill; next night it was the turn of a Fenian barman in Keady. The score was evened up two nights later when a pair of elderly brothers, living in the hills above Bessbrooke, were visited by the lads. After which, honour duly done on both sides, the matter of Joe Feely was let quietly drop.
In keeping with local tradition, they left off bad-mouthing him till after the Month’s Mind. But the Tyrone man had jumped the gun, out calling on Teresa and nosing round the property like a man with an eye to business.
‘The man’s hardly cold in the grave and you’re courting the widow and bargaining for the farm!’ Eugene said.
‘Nothing but rocks,’ he declared. ‘I was only doing a friend a favour, taking a look over it for him.’
‘You were, my bollocks,’ Peadar said. ‘You’ve never done anyone a favour in your life.’
‘It’s the young fellow I feel sorry for,’ he claimed.
‘A young pup,’ said Peadar, nursing an old grudge.
‘Be fair to the lad,’ Eugene said. ‘He never had it easy.’
‘Driven daft by the Brothers, dragged round half the country by his da. Then to end up a skivvy for Schnozzle Durante, peeling Brussels sprouts while his poor mother runs the roads having Masses said for her husband’s soul,’ said the Tyrone man.
‘All the same, that’s a boy will pull through,’ Eugene predicted. He had detected in Frank a look of his
father that indicated future potential. ‘One day maybe he’ll surprise us all.’
Above in Ara Coeli, Monsignor Schnozzle turned quietly from the deathbed and tiptoed from the room. He had been praying for an hour and his knees were stiff. The other priests of the diocese would continue the rosary vigil. The old man would not last the night, would not live to see another Christmas morning. A small thrill of excitement passed down Schnozzle’s spine. The prize, long anticipated, was as good as his.
But there was business to take care of, a sheaf of reports that still awaited his attention. If Cardinal Mac had taught him anything it was never to let the paperwork slip. He lit a cigar and got to work. They showed the same trend; for the time being at least, things were settling down. He scrutinized the returns from Saint Matthew’s, his old stomping ground, the springboard of his rise to greatness. Father Alphonsus was proving a safe pair of hands after all. Things had slipped back since his own day, of course, for without the constant vigilance of the Sisters it hadn’t taken long for the age-old rhythm of life in the ghetto to re-establish itself. But Father Alphonsus was at least keeping the lid on things.
Not surprisingly the parish still awaited its first conversion. That box on the spreadsheet still registered zero. In a few hours the old man next door would be dead, his one great dream unfulfilled. Schnozzle offered up a last prayer, that God in his infinite wisdom would open the eyes of just one of our separated brethren. Let them take that first faltering step this Christmas morning and the Church would greet them with open arms.
All was quiet in Adam and Eve’s too. Immaculata was on fulltime duty there still, reporting to him every week. But the active units had been stood down or had split among themselves now that the excitement was over. From time to time the Spirit would move among the former Children of Love and there would be an outbreak of charismatic enthusiasm, but he was confident it would never again reach scandalous proportions, or threaten the spiritual stability of the rest of the country.