The Miracle Man (8 page)

He began his tortured progress once again, rising and falling with the action of his bad leg, exacerbated by the uneven ground. A few ragged notes from some half-remembered air escaped his lips as he made his way through the thorny whin bushes on the strand, drawing his jacket collar tighter around his neck. Then abruptly he stopped walking and stared out at the water again, screwing up his eyes to improve his vision. Had he seen something out there, some object bobbing between the dark waves? He leant forward and peered
at the spot, confused by the jumble of waves and troughs and wind-patterned water. A branch of a tree, was it, or a beach ball? Could be a seal, but he didn’t remember having seen one of those at night. He concentrated even harder on the spot. Was . . . was a mermaid possible? He already half believed in the Little People, had heard too much evidence to deny their existence. Maybe this mermaid had come for him, to lead him slowly into the breaking waves to a watery paradise. Well, he wouldn’t be found wanting when it came to it, old and all as he was. He’d picked up a thing or two about women in his time, and enough never to have married one of them. That one in Portrush whose father had been a butcher. He had been doing all right there until he found out she had been flogging her own mutton at the back door to any man that would slap a tenner in her hand. Limpy looked out again at the water and blinked. He could no longer see the object, and as he set off again on his way homeward, he reassured himself that it was probably a seal. And what use would a mermaid have been to him anyway? Didn’t everybody know they were fish from the waist down.

Underneath the tall sycamores of the chapel road Limpy hobbled, zigzagging back and forth across the road, knowing, as someone had said “all the soft places in the hedge to bounce off”. He stopped once, where the road ran close to the river, and stood for a moment listening to the water chuckling over the stones. “I’ll have a salmon or two out of there soon,” he said, perhaps confusing past achievements with future possibilities. Years before, he would have been down there with his little net after dark, wading waist-deep in the brown water and throwing two or three of the great silver fish onto the grassy bank. There was always a hotel would buy them at the back door. Those were the days.

He started forward in a sudden, headlong rush at a pace hardly
sustainable by his mismatched legs, as though wanting to leave those memories behind him by the river. Further along the road he passed the graveyard and the chapel, dark against the last vestiges of light in the sky. With difficulty he climbed the gate on the other side of the road, paused swaying on the top as his bad leg scrabbled for a foothold, then plunged down the other side, barely able to remain upright on the steep ground. In the top corner of the field stood his house, a two-roomed, tumbledown affair with tiny windows that Canon O’Connor said had raised neglect to an art form. The pigs that had been its former inhabitants were long since gone, although it would have been difficult for the untrained eye to know of their departure. At the upper side of the field, the trees of an ancient plantation ended in a rocky outcrop and in this, partly shielded by overhanging branches, was set a crude stone carving of a crucifix some three feet high and surrounded by other Christian symbols. This was the Mass Rock, brought there, some said, at the time of the Penal Laws and for many years used in secret worship. On certain holy days a little procession would come to it from the chapel and now and then a tourist or two who had read the footnotes in the guidebooks. Apart from that, it lay quiet and undisturbed in its wooded seclusion, its former religious significance lost on the agnostic Limpy, whose sole observation on the subject had been, “You wouldn’t know what the hell it was supposed to be. The boy that carved that must’ve been straight out of O’Neill’s bar.”

Slowly, Limpy began to climb his way up the slope, three steps forward and one back, so that at times he teetered on his heels and threatened to fall and roll down to the road again. The trees blocked out most of the remaining light from the western sky, making the rock itself invisible and causing pools of darkness on the uneven land. How often had he crossed this field in the dark – more than once on his hands and knees – with only his homing instinct to guide him to his front door?
The door that had no lock on it and led straight into a kitchen which also served as a bedroom. Had there been any sheets on the bed, they would have been torn to ribbons by the boots he wore, but he had long given up using sheets for the sound reason that it saved undressing at night and dressing again in the morning, as well as a deal of washing of both himself and the sheets.

“Efficiency,” he would say, “is how man has learned to survive and prosper on this earth.” He plunged on through the clumps of grass and benweed, and then all at once he felt as if he had lost contact with the ground and was being borne aloft by some invisible force. Trees and bushes and the ground leapt and spun, against the black sky white light streaked into his vision. Then, as suddenly as he had been flying through the air he was falling in the pitch darkness, farther and farther, until he found himself lying on the ground, which seemed to be swaying and heaving beneath him. He lay there for a few moments, the grass cool against his unshaven cheek, his befuddled mind trying to place himself in the subsiding kaleidoscope of swirling grass and trees and glowering sky. With an effort, he hauled himself to his knees and peered about him.

Dark shapes swam into vision and then out of it. High up somewhere – surely in the sky – there was something white, something moving, a person maybe, and a voice talking to him, saying words that he couldn’t quite understand. Or was it the old eyes? They weren’t so good these days, but he’d be damned if he’d ever wear glasses. He craned forward. It was somebody, surely. A woman, dressed in white and high above him, her two arms extended and a heavenly glow all around her. Again she might have spoken, but still the words weren’t clear. At the third attempt, he struggled to his feet, to take a few tentative steps towards her. His head ached where he had hit it on the ground and a sharp pain gnawed at his bad leg, but nothing a drink
wouldn’t put right. Now the woman, if woman she had been, was nowhere to be seen, so after shaking his head to clear it, Limpy started again for his little house, the terrain easier now, more even and with fewer of the boulders strewn from a broken wall. With an unusual turn of speed he strode across the grass. Indeed, he fairly flew over it. Need to ask O’Neill what the hell he was putting in the drink. Best poteen, for sure. It’s the only thing that would do it. And then Limpy came to a dead stop, to stand rigid at the entrance to his front yard, his mouth wide open and a gentle swaying motion moving his entire body. First one foot went forward gingerly and then the other, as though he were treading with bare feet on hot coals. He considered this for a few seconds then tried another few steps, less cautious than the first ones. Then quicker they came, across the yard and back again with lengthening stride, wheeling at the top like a guardsman, faster and yet faster until his legs raced to pass one another in a frenzy of movement. And when he finally scrunched to a halt in the middle of the yard, his breath coming in short gasps, Limpy McGhee lifted his arms and eyes heavenward and in a voice soft with reverence said,

“Jasus Christ Almighty – it’s gone. It’s bloody well gone!”

Limpy stood outside the house of his neighbour, John Healy and once more battered on the door.

“John! Would you get up to hell and open the door.” Taking a step backwards he looked down at his legs, shook his head and said softly, “Jasus, Mary and Joseph.” Above him came the squeak of a window being raised and before he could look up at it a boot hit him on the shoulder and Mrs Healy’s gruff voice shouted,

“Get away out of that to your bed, you drunken, foulmouthed being, before I set the dog on you.” The window screeched then banged shut. Leaping back, Limpy shook his fist at the darkened window.

“You oul’ witch, I’ll throttle your bloody dog!” He ran at the door and gave it a kick. “John Healy, are you going to let a woman run you? Would you open this door for God’s sake! I’m a dying man!” There was a short silence and then, “John! Would you let me die out here alone?”

Again his boot thudded off the door. After a few moments the light in the upstairs room came on and there was a loud exchange of voices, quickly followed by a thundering of feet on the stairs, before the door was flung open to reveal the touslehaired Healy in his pyjamas.

“Listen, ye wee bugger . . . ”

Limpy fairly flung himself at Healy, shouting, “John, for Christ’s sake listen to me! It’s a miracle! I swear to God! I can walk, man! I can walk!”

“At this time of night, it’s a miracle you can stand.”

“No, no. Look.” The little man walked up and down in front of the house and there was no trace of his limp. “D’you see, John? My bad leg, it’s gone! Over there.” He jabbed his finger excitedly, “I was coming across and I saw this woman above me.” He held out his arms. “Like this. And she called me and – I fell down. And when I got up – Jasus God – the limp was gone. Look!” He gave another demonstration of his new-found ability, executing brisk steps and fancy turns with the skill of an Irish dancing champion.

“John!” Mrs Healy’s voice came bellowing down the stairs, “would you get rid of that wee eejit and come up the stairs!” But her husband’s interest was thoroughly aroused.

“Bloody hell’s teeth, McGhee” he said. “Show me that again.”

It was well after midnight when Healy drove Limpy to the chapel house and with a steady banging on the front door roused Father Burke and Mrs McKay from their beds. Persuaded that it was a matter of great importance and that
anyone looking like Limpy could only have been snatched from the jaws of death in a wet ditch, the priest showed the two men into the living room, ignoring the whispered protests of Mrs McKay, swaddled in a huge old dressing-gown, that the wee one was a drunkard and a crackpot that would need fumigating for a week before a living Christian would let him over the doorstep. Her insistence that he would be “lepping with fleas” fell on deaf ears. In the living-room there was a garbled explanation from both John Healy and the miracle man which only served further to confuse the priest. Then, with a broad grin, Limpy McGhee marched up and down like a toy soldier, leaving a trail of mud on the carpet. A silent snarl set itself on Mrs McKay’s lips.

“God knows, Father, it’s a miracle right enough,” Healy told the priest as they observed the performance. “The wee man here’s had that disablement since ever I knew him. It would’ve pained you to watch him go.”

“You say this happened at the Mass Rock, Mr McGhee?”

“The very place, Father. I was going home, across the field thonder and suddenly – this figure appeared above me. Jasus Christ! It shook me, I can tell you.”

The young priest look puzzled. “You’re saying that – Jesus Christ Himself appeared to you?”

“Ah no, Father. T’was a woman. All in white, she was, with her arms out – like this – and floating above the rock. Well, I needn’t tell you, I fell over at the sight of it.” His eyes grew wide and he leant towards the priest. Mrs McKay was slowly shaking her head at such gullibility in a man of the cloth. “And then – she spoke to me.”

The priest drew back at the acrid breath assailing his nostrils.

“Spoke to you? And what did she say, Mr McGhee?”

“She says – ‘John McGhee, you’ve had that there limp too long, and you never deserved it in the first place. So I’m going to do a miracle on you.’”

“She said that?”

“Them was her very words, Father. Or similar to.”

“Disgraceful old liar,” the housekeeper said under her breath.

“And did she say – who she was?” Father Burke inquired.

“Who she was?” It was Limpy’s turn to look puzzled, but only for a moment. “Well – not exactly. But she didn’t need to. She had this gold thing shining round her head and she says to me, ‘I want people to say their prayers and lead good lives.’ Well, I knew straight off who she was.” And as he assumed that the priest, being a man of God, also knew, Limpy did not elaborate. Father Burke shook his head.

“This is quite remarkable, to say the least, Mr McGhee. Very remarkable indeed. You are in effect claiming to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary.”

“Another night it’ll be pink elephants,” Mrs McKay murmured.

“Tell me, Mr McGhee. Was there by any chance a witness to this event, this – apparition that you saw?”

Limpy leant forward, his face alight with religious intensity.

“A witness, Father? Well, of course there was a witness.” The eyes of the other two men widened in anticipation, and even Mrs McKay leant forward to catch his words. “The Good Lord himself,” Limpy said, with a reverential glance heavenward. “Didn’t he see the whole thing.”

It was stuffy in Doctor Walsh’s small waiting room for the morning surgery. Fourteen people with various ailments or none sat staring at the wall to avoid each other’s eyes, conversing with their neighbours in hushed tones or flicking through ancient copies of Horse and Hound, The Field and Shooting Times. Mrs Maguire’s four-year-old darling James, having tired of scattering the magazines on the floor, crawled beneath a chair and popping his head out between both chair and human legs looked up the skirt of the woman above.

“Don’t do that darling,” his mother told him, “you’ll get your clothes filthy.”

Between a young pregnant woman and a fat woman with varicose veins in her legs, sat Dippy Burns, his thin frame hunched forward, his pale face under the lank hair showing signs of anxiety. Over the past few months he had been steadily working his way through the illnesses in his copy of “The Home Doctor”, and having been mentally if not physically debilitated by the vicissitudes of anaemia, botulism, two minor cancers, (with a temporary diversion by way of ovarian cysts), some physical benefit had at last accrued by the yoga-like contortions he undertook while examining his toes for Foot,
Athlete’s. Now he was in the grip of an unknown fever, and was also momentarily expecting an attack of haemorrhoids so severe that he wondered whether he should really be standing up. Having sneaked a preview of Verrucae, he had pondered the fascinating possibilities of simultaneously suffering these and haemorrhoids, in which case neither sitting nor standing would be possible. This was the first time that he had succumbed to two illnesses at once, and he looked forward with pleasurable dread to the many combinations he might exhibit before finally expiring, his place in Irish medical history secure.