Shambles Corner
Page 31
There was yet another begging letter from Canon Tom, he noticed. There would be as many as one a month when Sharkey could be bothered to post them. He tossed it unopened into the wastepaper basket. Would it ever be safe to ease his banishment, rehabilitate him into society? Canon Tom had caused enough trouble in his time. Though the Silent Madonna was all but forgotten now, he wouldn’t put it past Canon Tom to go stirring up speculation again if he ever returned. He knew how easily it could flare up given the slightest encouragement. The crowd at the airport, the cavalcade through Dublin. Before he knew it they would be dancing in the streets again, speaking in tongues, levitating and prophesying. He couldn’t take the risk. Besides, what harm could come to Canon Tom in his far-off parish? It was a healthy life. Fresh spuds and buttermilk. The lilt of the native speakers if there were any left. Fresh air thick with ozone from the ocean. Many’s a man, stuck in an inner city parish, would give his right arm for such a life. He recalled the haughty young socialite for whom he had fagged as a postulant, ordered out to the bookmaker’s in all weathers to place his bets, and at all hours to the corner shop when the cigarettes and Bewley’s coffee were running low. He took the Parker pen and initialled the form that lay before him on the mahogany desk. Canon Tom would stay in Ballychondom for the rest of his days.
One question still troubled him. Had Feely returned empty-handed from the plateau? Or had he somehow succeeded, stashing the sacred statue somewhere along the way? He would never know now of course, never have a chance to test the efficacy of the icon, never find a cure for his affliction. Joe had taken the secret with him to the grave. He rose and went to the window. Sometimes, when he looked down at the Shambles below, at the place of his birth and Joe Feely’s death, he was troubled by the image of some caged spirit, something older than faith itself, whether benign or malignant he couldn’t say, calling to him. There was something about the Shambles that he feared but could never escape. As if all the misery of the countryside was focused on that one spot, converging lines of hatred from all over Ulster coming into focus there. The opening line of an old poem he learned at school came unbidden into his head every time he stared down on that tawdry square. ‘Ótn sceol ar ardmhagh Fail nt chodlaim oíche.’ Hearing news from the high lands of Ireland I can never sleep at night.
‘Rotha mór an tSaoil,’ the Patriot said ponderously, gazing out of the bar window. The great wheel of the world. He knew that the symmetry had returned. The balance, disturbed by McCoy when he brought the renegade Ramirez to taunt his enemies, had finally been restored.
The Advent market had been crowded again, loud with the oaths of traders and the forlorn cries of animals. With the passing of time, unease and fear would give way to the old surly manners of the past. Occasional outsiders would once more brave it to the Shambles, taking hurried snapshots of the cathedral spires or the grave of Brian Boru, and sometimes venturing into the bar to shake him wordlessly by the hand if they were of patriotic ancestry. ‘Rotha mór an tSaoil,’ he assured Eugene again. The wheel had come full circle. Every generation had its upheaval, when times were out of joint and murder stalked the streets; but such times invariably passed. The pogroms ceased, the guns were buried, the active units stood down. Slowly the old compromises asserted themselves as if nothing had changed. The Silent Madonna would soon be forgotten, her place in the popular imagination usurped by upstart interlopers with newer messages of hope. Hidden from the vulgar gaze, she would stand impassively in the roof space until the day that Ireland was worthy of her.
The Shambles slept uneasily under a sprinkle of new snow. The square was deserted and the stalls boarded up. The Martyrs Memorial was in darkness, a lopsided hulk silhouetted against the louring sky. Midnight Mass in the cathedral was long over. They had prayed for the soul of Cardinal Mac, their prayers for the dying interspersed incongruously among the carols.
A small figure crossed the Shambles, keeping to the shadows, flitting from doorway to doorway. The Patriot saw it and his heart leapt. It slipped through the gates of the cathedral, past the guard house where the Little Sisters of the One True Faith snored at their posts. It began the long climb up the hundred marble steps that led to the ancient hilltop.
The noise of the doorbell in the house of death startled Schnozzle. He parted the curtains with caution and peeped out. Under the neon sign stood Chastity McCoy with a battered suitcase in her hand, asking to be admitted to the faith of her fathers.
If you enjoyed Shambles Corner, check out this other great Edward Toman title.
Oliver Cromwell McCoy, God’s man in Ulster, has stumbled into the radio age. With a crumbling transmitter left over from the Titanic he has taken to blasting the countryside with his inimitable brand of mendacious evangelism.
By turns deeply thought-provoking and wildly funny, Dancing in Limbo plunges the reader into the modern-medieval world created by the author in his hugely acclaimed first novel, Shambles Corner.
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About the Author
Edward Toman was born and brought up in Northern Ireland, attending school in Armagh and university in Belfast. He was one of the founders of the civil rights movement in the province in the late sixties when he was a lecturer in further education in Belfast.
After two years in Zambia in the early seventies he moved to London to organize Open University and distance learning courses in Holloway Prison. He studied for a Master’s degree at Oxford and has recently spent a year in America teaching on the Fulbright scheme.
He lives in London with his wife and two children. This is his first novel.
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Dancing In Limbo
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