The camera rolled towards the door. Jed opened it. They walked back out into the lights. The camera followed behind.
CHAPTER 26
Bridie McFee stared at herself in the mirror. She looked at her eyes and her eyes looked back at her. They were somehow special now, she felt. A fresh wave of wonderment spread through her, veins percolating in that strange way they had ever since the Happening the day before. She gently pressed fingers to her lips, now chaste. The cold sores that had festered and wept there, long the bane of her existence, were gone. There weren't even reddish spots where they had once been. They had magically disappeared. But it wasn't magic. It was divine intervention. She flushed the toilet, flicked off the light, entered the landing and walked down the stairs of her auntie Bernadette's house.
The wallpaper was a barrage of orange and yellow flowers that assaulted the eyes, but Bridie's eyes were now special; the horrid wallpaper didn't affect them. They were super eyes. Her nose, however, wasn't so blessed. The house's fragrance opened with notes of spoiled milk, the heart was sickly sweet bargain bin perfume, and the base secreted sweat. The main accord was old aged pensioner. Bridie didn't care. Her heart sang and, indeed, she began to hum “You Light Up My Life” as she walked to the front hall.
Once she had been filled with an eternal emptiness, lumbering despondently through the rain-soaked streets of Derry, but now she was filled to bursting, brimming with life and all the marvelous possibilities the Lord had arranged for all His creatures, big and small (she was one of the big ones). She tugged open the door to her aunt's overheated front room, and Bernadette Mulholland, she of the daisy-speckled rain cap, flicked off the game show on the telly and turned to her expectantly. The old woman's face, lines of the ages somehow amplified by the brownish foundation troweled on them, the pinkish rinse in her wisps of hair doing her no favors, was filled with a mixture of caution and excitement.
“Have you a wee seat next to me here,” Mrs. Mulholland said, pouring Bridie a cup of tea and adding the five sugars.
She patted the lumpy settee, perhaps thinking 'wee' was a poor choice of words. The sofa protested, creaking, under Bridie's weight as she sat, took a guzzle of tea, then grabbed the old woman's hands. Bridie's mother had called her much older sister Bernadette the moment Bridie had told her what had happened at Kebabalicious, as Mrs. Mulholland was the one in the family best positioned to deal with it. Indeed, Mrs. Mulholland had been waiting for it all her life.
“I still kyanny believe it, Auntie!” Bridie breathed. “Can ye credit it? Och, the way me eyes feel now! They've seen the blessed Virgin!! There she was, Holy Mary, the Mother of God, looking up at me from the lard and mouthing secrets to me!”
Mrs. Mulholland knew everything about Virgin Mary sightings and how to go about getting them verified. “Song of Bernadette” was her favorite movie, of course, and perhaps one of the reasons she felt a sighting would happen to her was because of the Christian name her parents had given her. But as the years passed and she grew up and got married and grew old, then older, Mary never appeared to her (and she looked for Her everywhere), and she despaired it would never happen. When her sister had called, frantic, ecstatic and fearful in equal measures, and told her that Bridie kept insisting she saw the Virgin Mary no matter how many times she slapped and thumped the girl, Mrs. Mulholland realized this was the moment she had been waiting all these decades for. She hadn't been the lucky one, but for Her to appear to a niece was better than the family slipping away into obscurity. Infamy! She knew what had happened to Mary Beirne and Margaret O'Loughlan when the Virgin Mary had appeared to them in Knock in 1879. They were being talked about still; that Bernadette Mulholland knew their names was proof of that.
And Mrs. Mulholland had been on that bus to the Marian shrine in Knock, across the border in county Mayo, so often, she knew most of the trees and the hedges and which parts of the roads were more bumpy (there were many) and could brace herself before they went over them, while others seated around her spilled their teas and toppled into the aisle. And the woman in the gift shop knew her to see, and she nodded and smiled at Mrs. Mulholland as she entered and pointed out the new stock that had arrived since her last visit and even offered her 10% off on occasion. For which Christian kindness Mrs. Mulholland, scrimping and saving on her pension, which was scant even though it included a special compensation from the British government for her husband, who had been killed by a British paratrooper's bullet in 1973, was most grateful.
Mrs. Mulholland was all set to phone the special contacts in the church she had spent years building up to get the verification process started as quickly as she could. She wasn't long for this earth, and wanted it completed before she was too dead to see it happen. But she knew it was a difficult process, higher and higher up the ranks of the church it had to go, all the way to the Vatican City and the Pope, and she also knew that young people lied all the time. And she knew her niece Bridie McFee only too well. She had to be sure the feckless girl wasn't making an eejit out of herself. She had some questions and tests for the girl. She unraveled Bridie's hand from her own, gulped a mouthful of tea, and stared firmly at the girl in the grubby t-shirt of some rock band the woman had never heard of (Oasis) and muddy boots not befitting a young lady.
“First and foremost, wee girl, Marian apparitions, they're called. Not Virgin Mary sightings. And yer mammy tells me ye're of the mind ye're after having a Marian apparition, are ye?”
“Aye—”
Mrs. Mulholland held up a hand. She knew the girl could talk about it for hours.
“I've a few questions for ye before I take ye to them what matters in the church. I don't want them looking at me as if I'm a mental case.”
“I understand, Auntie Bernadette. Ask away.”
“Now, Mary only appears to the pure of heart,” Not the black of heart, she longed to add, as that would have been quite fun to say, but she didn't want to give the girl a complex, and it really wasn't true in any event. Bridie didn't have a black heart, she was only misguided. “And, much as I love ye, dear...”
Bridie bowed her head in shame. As well she should! Her aunt was like most of Derry. They knew exactly what type of person Bridie was. She was especially guilty of the three sins of lust, sloth and gluttony. And a large dose of covetousness. A pint in her path never went un-drunk, an E never un-swallowed, a lad un-shagged. And a steak and kidney pie, a hot cross bun, a chicken vindaloo, an extra helping of apple tart and custard, a shoplifted Crunchie or Jelly Baby never went uneaten.
“I've to give ye a few pointers about the Catechism of the church. Them priests, then bishops, then archbishops, then cardinals will be wanting to know where the Christian—Holy Roman Catholic!—virtues are in ye. Where's the prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance and so forth in ye?”
“Och, auntie, I know they talk about them things at mass all the time, but they be's old fashioned words and I don't really know what the priest be's blathering on about most of the time. Prudence, to name one. The only thing I know about it is that “Dear Prudence” be's an old Siouxsie and the Banshees' song I heard on the radio once, and I liked it and downloaded it.” She grimaced, for now she was the new Bridie McFee. “Illegally, I must admit.”
Mrs. Mulholland didn't quite know what this illegal downloading meant or how one might go about it, but it seemed suspiciously like the shoplifting of yore. And that was Thievery. Another sin!
“Prudence means being sane and sober for yer prayers for the Lord, acting the right way.”
“Only when I'm saying me prayers?” Bridie looked hopefully at her aunt.
So there were no drunken visits to the church in the girl's recent past then, Mrs. Mulholland thought, and for that Bridie should at least be commended. Mrs. Mulholland sipped her tea and thought about faith, hope and charity. Maybe the girl had faith, but she was hopeless and...charity? Mrs. Mulholland remembered Bridie's gift to her last Christmas, a coupon for half off a portion of chips at the Kebabalicious.
As the last three rang from her withered lips with an air of righteousness, Bridie began to whimper.
“I just want ye to be aware what the process involves. Ye need to be sure ye want to go through with it all. They'll be putting ye through tests of all sorts, Bridie, barraging ye with questions, like an episode of Law and Order, so it will be, with ye sitting in a chair and a good priest and a bad priest paired together, the bad one barking the questions at ye, the good one bringing ye a cup of tepid tea, though I imagine it'll be bishops or cardinals instead of priests. It's gonny be a cross between a police interrogation and one of them medical evaluations for them what be's off their rockers, a psychiatric one. Are ye sure ye want to go through with it all?”
The settee groaned and creaked as Bridie squirmed on it uncomfortably. She seemed to have no answer. The warning dealt with, Mrs. Mulholland continued with the investigation of her own.
“Yer mammy said ye took photos? Of whatever ye saw in the chip vat? Let's have a look at them photos of yers.”
She seemed to looking around the general area of Bridie for an album. Bridie tugged the phone out of her jeans pocket, pressed a few buttons and handed it, reverently, to her aunt.
“Only the one came out, like,” Bridie said sadly.
The girl held her breath, her eyes blazing as if with an excitement she hoped her aunt would share. Mrs. Mulholland looked down at the greasy screen of the phone, flicked away something sticky, and then her eyes struggled to comprehend what they were looking at. She could make out, just, the latticework of the frying basket that framed the photo, but it was blurry and perhaps she knew what it was only because she knew what it was supposed to be. Inside the basket, though, there was only a murky, brownish mass that looked exactly like what it was: a blurred photo of melting lard.
“Pah! That's useless, so it is!”
“Me hand was shaking that much, auntie, I couldn't take the photo correctly.” Bridie bent over the phone and a chubby finger tried to point out, “If ye stare enough there, ye can maybe make out Her lips, parted, ye see, and Her eyes be's here, and then Her lovely long flowing hair, here on this side of Her face, and there on the other.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Mrs. Mulholland stared down at the phone, alternating with and without glasses, then finally handed it back.
“I kyanny see a thing. Ye said She had a mouth and eyes and hair. Did ye see a nose?”
Bridie looked startled at the question.
“I...I...”
“Look at that portrait over there, love.” Mrs. Mulholland nodded in some direction, but her head was so shaky, it seemed Bridie didn't know quite where on the wall and its shocking wallpaper her special eyes were meant to look. She saw a dusty frame and a portrait next to the three flying ducks on the wall and studied it, but it was of three men.
“I don't see the Virgin Mary there, auntie. Does this be a test of me eyesight of some sort?”
“Daft cow! Though, now ye mention it, ye'll be subjected to a barrage of tests mental and physical, so the church might give ye one of them and all. The Vatican has loads of dosh at its beck and call, do ye not know? But, naw, not that picture, that's me granny's portrait of My Beloved Johns, Pope John XXIII, now a saint, by the by, John the Baptist and John F. Kennedy.” They all had halos. “Naw, the one over the settee, I'm talking about.”
Bridie craned her neck, and there the Bleeding Heart of Jesus portrait indeed was, given pride of place over the sofa. Withered palm leaves from last year's Palm Sunday poked out from the back of it.
“Do ye see the Virgin Mary there, wee girl?”
“Aye. Behind Jesus, so She is, looking on in grief as He shows us His bleeding heart.”
“And now I want ye to have a wee juke at these.”
Bridie jumped back as her aunt tugged a battered old Quality Street tin, purple, that had once held chocolates when Mrs. Mulholland had received it from her second oldest son back on Christmas Day, 1987.
“Inside here be's me collection of Virgin Mary nicknacks and what have you I've collected over the years.”
She pried open the lid with a squeak and rummaged inside.
“Dear God!” she said, and Bridie tensed. But the old woman only pulled out a mound in golden wrapping. She put on her glasses to inspect it. “It's a Caramel Swirl! Isn't that always yer favorite on a Christmas morning, Bridie?”
Bridie nodded glumly. “Used to be.”
“How long has it lain there, I wonder? And do ye think it be's edible still? No mind. That doesn't be what we're here for.”
She placed it carefully on the coffee table next to Bridie's teacup, then delved back into the tin.
“I'll only show ye a few, like.”
One by one the artifacts appeared on the table. A porcelain statue from Lourdes, a plastic one from Knock (10% off), a selection of medals, bronze, silver and gold in color, one with a drop of holy water inside, three prayer cards, a candle her granddaughter had sent her from Ibiza, and a snow globe. Mrs. Mulholland beamed with pride at her collection.
“Now ye have before ye twelve different images of the Blessed Virgin. When ye seen Her in the chip vat, which one did She look most like, hi? Have a look, wee girl. I spent many a night wondering about this meself. All the Blessed Virgins on all these items be's different. I'm asking this now not only to help ye in the process later on, but for me own piece of mind. Did She look like this one here, with the wee crown on her head, or this one here, with the more showy crown with them hearts on the points as gems, or was she like these here, with a halo, but there's two different types of halos, if ye can see, one with stars sprinkled throughout it, the other just a round ring, or did she look like yer woman over there, with nothing but the blue shawl wrapped around her head?”
Bridie had to make the right choice. Mrs. Mulholland saw in the girl's face Bridie felt like a contestant on a quiz show whose prize was eternal life. Bridie's finger hovered uncertainly until she pointed at the golden medal in the middle. “That one,” she nodded her head with sudden conviction. “Aye, that one!”
Mrs. Mulholland's face crumpled with disappointment. It was as if Bridie had chosen the briefcase with £2 in it when the £50,000 one was still in play.
“That, wee girl, be's the Archangel Gabriel I threw in just for to test ye.”
Bridie flashed with anger and Mrs. Mulholland jumped as the girl spat out, “Och, they're all wearing flowing robes, and why did men wear their hair so long back then anyroad?”
“Self control, girl! Ye see there? That flash of anger? That's what the committee'll be looking for! Them types of emotions is not befitting a messenger of the Holy Father! Or the Blessed Virgin!”
As much as Mrs. Mulholland wanted to believe Bridie's sighting was true, she was still very unconvinced. She sighed.
“Why don't we focus on what ye think has happened since ye saw Her yesterday. What have ye told me about them welts on yer face?”
“Aye, me cold sores, auntie. They've all gone. It must have been Mary what made them disappear. And, this was the most important thing. I'd given up chips for Lent, ye see.”
From the size of her niece, Mrs. Mulholland thought, that would indeed show temperance, and bucket loads of it.
“I went to the Kebabalicious to sleep in the store room. Aye, strange, I know, please don't ask why. Anyroad, I wanted to sleep, as I've said, but ravenous with hunger, so I was. I wanted chips. I needed chips. I didn't care that Lent has just begun. The temptation was gnawing at me stomach. I went to that fry vat to make meself some. And it was just as the lard was heating up that She app
eared to me.”
Mrs. Mulholland stared at Bridie for a long time. She ran her hand over the Mary snow globe, dusting it with the tips of her fingers. She fiddled with a prayer card. She finally looked up.
“Are ye telling me it was the...temptation of the chips? Ye seriously expect me to believe the Blessed Virgin came down from Heaven to stop ye from filling yer fat bake with chips?” The incredulity was thick in her voice.
Bridie either didn't notice or didn't care, such was her conviction. Her face sans cold sores bobbed firmly.
“Aye, aye, that's right! She wanted to keep me on the right road. The road without sin. A life of all them things ye was telling me about, piety, patience, fortitude. Och, and chastity! Och, it's just coming to me now, auntie! Chastity be's one of them virtues I do know the meaning of. And I know I haven't been...chastetic...in the past. But...now I mind, after I saw Her in the lard, I ran out of the Kebabalicious, and when I was wailing in the streets, like, I caught a glance of...oh, I don't wanny reveal this to ye, auntie, I'm mortified, so am are, but ye know Eamonn McGreenly, the one who works as the trainer at the sports complex? The one who be's going out with Charlotte Bleeny?”
“From Rosemount Gardens?”
“Aye, that's the one. Anyroad, Eamonn was just passing, and on normal days I always have a quick peek at his ar—his bum. I don't know what it is, the cut of his jeans or something. Maybe they're ones he bought from some Yank website and had delivered specially.”
“And the point of this is?” Mrs. Mulholland didn't know where to look.
“I had not the slightest desire to look at his bum! None! I'm cured!”
Mrs. Mulholland was unimpressed. But Bridie talking about wailing on the street brought up another point.
“That's another thing, wee girl. I know ye blabbed it to everyone right after it happened. Hopefully they've not told anyone else. Seems unlikely, but ye never know. From now on, but, ye kyanny tell a soul. Otherwise, the committee'll think ye're doing it for gain. Or for the fame.”
Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4) Page 24