The Miracle Man (26 page)

“Oh, I saw him,” the Winter Cook said and glanced at the letter rack, “but I don’t think he saw me.”

“Fine man, fine man. He and I have got quite – friendly recently. Really quite – close.”

“Close, Mr Pointerly?”

“Yes, Mrs Megarrity, close. We share the same interests, if you know what I mean.” He gave her a knowing look. “Neither of us married, you know? Tell me, was he always – that way?”

“What way would that be, Mr Pointerly?”

“You know.” Mr Pointerly inclined himself to the left.

“Ah, we always put that down to the bad leg. He’s never been any different since ever I remember him.” Mr Pointerly smiled broadly. “You know, that’s very good to hear. Very good indeed.” Turning away from the Winter Cook he went towards the sitting-room, nodding and saying to himself, “Yes. We’re obviously two of a kind, he and I. Two of a kind.”

Mrs Megarrity looked after him for a moment, shook her head and said,

“Silly old fool.”

Then with a quick look around her she plucked the envelope from the letter rack and shoved it into the pocket of her black dress before hurrying away towards the kitchen.

It took over a minute for the steam from the kettle spout to loosen the adhesive on the envelope flap, during most of which time Mrs Megarrity stared in disbelief at the name on the front of the envelope and kept repeating it.

“Cissy Garrison? Cissy – Garrison? Jasus tonight, why would he be writing to her?” She half closed one eye, stared with the other and drew in air through her pouted lips. “By God, I knew he was up to something, the little git.”

The flap was at last open. With eager fingers she drew out the letter – written on coarse, lined paper torn from an exercise book – unfolded it and began to read it in a low voice.

“‘My Most Dearest Cissy – ‘ My Most Dearest – ? Jasus
Christ of Almighty, what’s this? ‘Thank you for your beautiful and esteemed letter. I’d like you to keep the five hunnerd pounds – ‘ Oh – my – God! Oh – my – good – God Almighty! That lowdown connivin‘ lyin’ feckin’ little rat! Five hundred pound to that wee hallion!” The Winter Cook put a hand out to steady herself against the wall. “God save us entirely!” She drew a deep breath, braced herself and read on, “‘ – an if I had ten times that amount of money an ye needed it an even if you didnt sure Id give it you.’ Ten times – Is he mad or what? ‘We shountve split up all them years ago but thats water under the bridge now.’ Split up? What the hell does he mean, ‘split up’? Oh, by the Lord Jasus, when I get my hands on him I’ll feckin’ split him up, so I will, from head to toe.” The Winter Cook gave such snort of indignation that the letter flapped in her hand. She set her jaw, clenched her fists then tackled the final sentence. “‘Maybe theres still time for us, Cissy, and if your still intrested we could meet tonight at seven beside the old house on the strand of fond memories. Your ever loving Johnny.”

With glaring eyes the Winter Cook stood with the letter held before her, flapping in her shaking hand.

“Johnny, is it? I’ll give him ever-bloody-loving. That wee trollop. The man’s got a bit of money for the first time in his life and she’s lifting her skirt trying to chisel it out of him. Well, not while I’m around, Miss Cissy feckin’ Garrison.” Mrs Megarrity tore the letter and envelope into small pieces, lifted the lid of the stove and threw them inside. She had just taken her little bottle of whiskey from her apron pocket and removed the cap when she stopped and stared into space.

“Jasus tonight! ‘Neither of us married’, he said. And ‘Two of a kind’, he said. Two of a bloody kind! Mother of God, he’s not content with having a wee gold-digger round his neck, he has to have a homersexual as well!” Slowly her eyes narrowed and her face took on a pugnacious look. “Well, they might be able to put one over on my John, but now they’re dealing with
Lizzie Megarrity and that’s a whole different matter.” And to celebrate her new-found status as defender of the family honour, not to mention the family assets, Mrs Megarrity took two large slugs of the liquid which young Daniel McAllister knew smelt like the bar and was good for her health.

Father Burke’s housekeeper, Mrs McKay walked along the shore road towards the village, her big shopping basket bumping at her side, her woollen hat pulled down over her ears and her overcoat buttoned to the throat even although the weather was warm and there was no sign of rain. “Ne’er cast a clout till May is out,” she had always believed, and she wasn’t going to be lulled into a false sense of security just because of the fine weather. It was a blessing to be able to get out of the chapel house for a little while, perhaps to meet a friend or two along the road or drop in on someone for a cup of tea and a chat, but above all to get away from Father Burke. The man was driving her mad, God forgive her. What with his talk of selling the car and taking to a bicycle, his insistence on plain food for both of them, and above all his obsession with this miracle business at the Mass Rock, she wondered how much longer she could take it.

Hour after hour he would sit in his study, calling for tea and yet more tea while he pored over the various plans he had sketched for the Mass Rock site and tried to engage her in discussion on methods of raising finance for the project.

In almost any other situation she would have been able to handle it. She hadn’t been a housekeeper to priests for nearly thirty years without being adaptable. But, God knows, her stamina had almost gone, sapped by his constant harping on the same things, and above all by a steady diet of the likes of boiled fish, turnips, and porridge, without so much as a sniff of a coq au vin or a cream bun to break the monotony. If only she could have the Canon back. He’d had his faults, of course, but
he’d also known how to enjoy himself. In such a situation, she would normally have resorted to prayer. In this case, she was in something of a dilemma, as she felt that Father Burke, by the nature of his profession, would be given preference by The Almighty in any dispute. This whole miracle thing was getting out of hand entirely. It had been a bit of a novelty at first and good for a laugh when that old eejit McGhee had said he’d seen the Virgin Mary. No doubt there had been many a thing he’d seen on the way home from O’Neill’s pub after dark, but they were never there in the morning. One thing was for sure, whoever the Good Lord chose to do a miracle on, it wouldn’t be a flea-ridden old reprobate like him. And that Mary McCartney, she was no more than a simpleton. You may as well say Peggy May had seen a vision. So Father Burke, the man from Dublin who looked down on the locals as a bunch of witless peasants, swallows the whole thing hook, line and sinker and no doubt was already considered a laughing stock by every priest in the country. Each and every day there were people knocking on the chapel house door and calling on the ‘phone – which of course she had to answer, as he was engaged in matters of much greater importance – asking how to get to the Mass Rock and had the Virgin been seen again and had there been any more miracles, and then hordes of sensation-seekers descending like flies on the Mass Rock site itself. God save us, the next thing, there’d be bus-loads of disabled people flying round the roads and piles of crutches left outside the chapel gates. One reporter had actually tried to push his way in at the front door of the chapel house when she’d told him that Father Burke wasn’t in, and that even if he had been in he wouldn’t in a month of Sundays talk to anyone from the scurrilous rag that he worked for, with naked women draped across the pages. And now to add insult to injury she had to walk to the village for all her shopping from the Inisbreen Stores where everything was two prices from that robber
Kilbride – no more rides to Ballymane in the Canon’s big car and afternoon tea at Adare’s Hotel – and her with the housekeeping money cut to a pittance because of the Father’s crazy economies. Where was going to be the end of it all, that’s what she wanted to know.

In this mood of righteous indignation, Mrs McKay approached the front door of the Inisbreen Stores, only to stop abruptly and stare first at one window and then at the other. Gone were the buckets and spades, the dying plastic swan and the fishing lines. The pyramid of cans and the pile of custard packets had also been cleared away, along with the notices of dances and auctions. In their stead, both windows were filled with small plaster statues of the Blessed Virgin, Saint Patrick and the Sacred Heart, as well as crucifixes, holy water fonts, great bunches of rosary beads, little Celtic crosses with each having stuck on its pedestal an oblong of paper on which was typed “INISBREEN” in uneven lettering, a sheaf of stickers for car rear windows saying, “Catholics Do It For The Love Of God” and various other religious artefacts. A poster on each window proclaimed, “INISBREEN MIRACLE. GENUINE SOUVENIRS HERE. BARGAIN PRICES”, and underneath was a crude drawing of what Mrs McKay took to be a gorilla in a dress and with a tea-towel on its head, above which a dinner plate seemed to be floating, and from the gorilla’s mouth a balloon of speech extended, saying, “Peace be with you.”

Mrs McKay gave a snort of rage and, clutching her shopping basket tight to her chest, she marched into the general store. There was no other customer inside except a boy of about twelve who was being served at the hardware counter by Frank Kilbride.

“Mr Kilbride!” Mrs McKay said when she was only halfway across the floor. “What is – that?” She flung an arm out in the direction of the shop windows.

In his usual laconic fashion, Frank Kilbride glanced up and said,

“I’ll be with you in just one minute, Mrs McKay, after I see to this young man here.”

Mrs McKay pulled herself to a halt at the counter and shoved aside the boy, who hastily retreated to a neutral corner.

“Never mind that. I want to know what those – things, those objects – in the window are. What’re they supposed to be, Mr Kilbride?”

“Well now, Mrs McKay, they’re supposed to be souvenirs. That’s what they’re supposed to be. Didn’t you see the notice in the window? ‘Souvenirs’, it says.”

“Souvenirs? I’ve never heard the like in all my born days. Those are religious objects, Mr Kilbride. You can’t sell them in a – a – store, for God’s sake! It’s a sacrilege!”

Peggy May had come out from the back shop at the sound of the commotion and stood scratching one of her breasts. The eyes of the boy in the corner grew wide.

“D’you not like them, Mrs McKay?” she said. “I think that Jesus one’s got a lovely wee face. Did you see my drawing of the Virgin Mary with the halo? I did that all myself, so I did.”

“Mr Kilbride,” the housekeeper said, in as official a tone as she could manage, “as a member of the parish household – and as Father Burke’s representative – I demand that you remove that effrontery from your windows immediately.”

“What’s an effrontery?” Peggy May asked. “Have we got an effrontery in the window, Mr Kilbride?”

“Mrs McKay you’re a decent woman and I don’t want an argument with you, but you must understand. This is a business and there’s people out there that want a souvenir of the place where the miracle happened, and it’s my job to provide it for them.”

“Provide yourself with a nice thick lining to your pocket,
you mean. My God,” Mrs McKay said, “selling religious articles like that – and you not even a Catholic!”

Frank Kilbride gave her a long, steady look and said slowly,

“Well now, Mrs McKay, I’m not a woman either – but I still sell knickers and brassieres.”

The boy sniggered into his hand and Peggy May grinned vacantly.

“Oh!” was all Mrs McKay could utter for a moment. And then, “Oh! I’ve never heard such talk in all my life!” She blessed herself. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Frank Kilbride. And especially in front of these children. Ashamed!” She gathered her basket to her bosom. “Well, you haven’t heard the last of this, I can assure you.” She turned abruptly and stalked towards the door, raising her head so that her eyes might be averted from the effrontery in the windows.

“Oh, I’m sure I haven’t,” the storekeeper said, half to himself. And then as Mrs McKay slammed the front door behind her he added in a sing-song parody of his own voice, “Good afternoon to you, Mrs McKay. Thank you for your custom, Mrs McKay. Call again soon, won’t you?”

Young Dippy Burns rode his old bicycle with unusual vigour as he went through the village and over the bridge at the far side, head low and thrust forward, his legs like two great piston rods driving up his knees almost to touch his chin. He was on his way to see Father Burke at the chapel house on a matter of great importance. About two weeks before, while examining his genitals, Dippy had noticed a distinct redness in the folds of skin. With some difficulty, he held back from seeking guidance on the matter from his favourite book, the medical encyclopaedia, which he had been in the habit of reading at frequent intervals. After all, he reasoned, everything that was a little out of the ordinary wasn’t necessarily an illness. Determined to give time to the self-healing process he had read about, he had ignored it for three days, even deliberately looking away when passing water. On one occasion this had caused him to wet the trousers of the man standing next to him in a pub toilet, and Dippy had narrowly missed having another subject for the healing process, a broken nose. When at last he had brought himself to look at the affected organ, he saw that not only were the symptoms still there but that they had actually become worse. A long study of the medical book
confirmed his worst fears. He had tertiary syphilis. There was no doubt about it. The symptoms were unmistakeable. How he had contracted it was a mystery to him as the book didn’t list any activities in which he normally indulged.

One day, when the itching had got just about more than he could bear, and while aware that nothing could stop the progress of this dread disease, he decided that a disinfectant might take some of the discomfort away. From the bathroom cabinet he took out his sister’s bottle of mouthwash and, holding the affected part over the wash basin, doused it liberally with the contents, his face screwed up against the expected stinging sensation. There being no reaction from his tortured flesh, he examined the bottle. On the other side a piece of paper stuck to it said, “Inisbreen Holy Water”. While it did not result in the instant disappearance of his symptoms, the water did seem to have a particularly cooling effect on the inflammation and so Dippy took himself off to bed, content with the thought that, if these were to be his last hours on earth, at least he would be free of pain. On waking the next morning he found to his amazement that the itch and every other sign of the ailment had gone completely. He had heard about Limpy McGhee’s leg, of course, but tertiary syphilis? That was something else entirely. It had to be – he hesitated over such an awesome word – it really had to be another miracle. Nothing else it could be. And the person to contact was Father Burke. He’d know what to do.