The Miracle Man (15 page)

That night in the village, just after ten o’clock, the main street was empty except for Mrs McFall’s cat making its nightly round of the dustbins, which Mrs McFall said must be “in the nature of the beast, for it gets well enough fed at home.” Curtains were drawn in the windows of the houses and in O’Neill’s public house, where a tipsy Fergus Keane was filling the pages of a notebook with observational scribblings which later would prove impossible to read, Limpy and his miraculous limb were the subject of heated debate. Despite having demonstrated two or three times in front of the bar his new ambulatory dexterity, there were still doubters who were not prepared to believe the evidence of their own eyes. Someone even said, although not within the hearing of the sainted one, that Limpy had never actually had a limp, but had been faking it all his life in order to avoid work. To the amazement of his companions and with a degree of charity that would have been unthinkable a few weeks before, Limpy gave a magnanimous wave of his hand and said, “Ah well, if they’re slagging me off they’re leaving somebody else alone.” This more than the cure to the leg, convinced some people that perhaps Limpy McGhee had indeed seen the Virgin Mary. He appeared to be a changed man.

In his house in the village square, old Sean Larrity dozed peacefully in his chair before the fire, dreaming of his time in the merchant marine so long ago, his first sight of New York from the heaving deck of his Anchor Line ship, the smell of Lagos four or five miles before they could even see the African
coast, that beautiful girl with the dark, dark hair and scented skin that he had almost jumped ship to be with in Buenos Aires and ever after wished he had and cursed himself as a fool, for he had never found one that even came close to her and he had been a lifelong bachelor. Even now, when he remembered her in his waking hours, it still brought a tear to his eye and a dull ache to his chest.

Next door Mrs McFall had embarked upon a crocheted cardigan for her dog Denis – renamed after her late husband on account of the poor creature’s age and lack of control over its reproductive organ. As there had been no children from the marriage, whilst Mr McFall may not have had any control over the organ, Mrs McFall evidently did. And Sean Larrity had remarked to someone, “Ah, but which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Above the houses turf smoke swirled down from the chimneys and into the street, then up again, to be caught by the wind above the rooftops and borne away over the river and out across the dark bay. At the end of the street nearest to the beach and beside the Inisbreen Stores, the telephone box stood lighted and empty, casting a barred pattern on the pavement and as if in answer to it, at regular intervals the bright beam from the lighthouse on the Mull swept across the undersides of the clouds. All that could be heard was the gentle breaking of waves on the beach, a shimmer of sound now and then from wind-blown leaves and the piping of bats as they patrolled above the hedges and flittered between the branches of the sycamore trees.

At first it was like the faraway call of a seabird, a great white gull swooping to the waves for food, but as it grew nearer it was heard as a series of wails, interspersed with an echo of a higher pitch. Mrs McFall looked up from her crochet and listened again, while people in other houses stopped talking and were attentive. Even old Larrity jerked awake from his
slumber, just as the dark-haired girl from Buenos Aires smiled and took his face in her soft hands. Only in O’Neill’s did the raised voices drown out the strange sound and that not for long. In the wind the sound died away then grew stronger, sending a shiver of fear and apprehension amongst those who believed in the harbinger of death, the Banshee. In a momentary silence, old Larrity turned his face to the fire and settled again. In his younger days he’d had a few nights like that himself in O’Neill’s, or if it was the Banshee come for him at last, he’d been ready for many a day. Then he plunged back into the catacombs of his dreams, desperately seeking his beautiful lost love. Suddenly the noise grew louder and seemed to be coming from the very street itself, curtains here and there were edged open by men with women at their backs and worried glances were exchanged.

“There she is boys, the Banshee. I wonder who she’s for tonight,” Johnny Spade said and nobody knew whether he was joking or not. Young Danny O’Neill kept working, in the knowledge that, even if it was the harbinger of death who had come for him, he would need to keep his nose to the grindstone until his mother gave him permission to leave, Banshee or no Banshee. Limpy, self-appointed arbiter of all things spiritual, declared,

“Banshee? Them’s just peasant superstitions. How can grown men believe in that pagan rubbish? As sure as hell it’ll be a cat with it’s tail caught in a gate.” He marched out of the pub, obviously intent on consolidating his new position as village seer and with that the bar emptied behind him.

The noise from the street was now discernable as that of a tortured human voice, or rather two. Doors were opened and people stepped out cautiously, to see a woman and a girl, hands held, standing in the middle of the street and howling a duet with which Mrs McFall’s cat might have felt a strong affinity, had it not at that moment been engaged with the
remainder of a pork chop from a dustbin. The woman, it was seen at once, was Mary McCartney and her ten-year-old daughter, from the wee white house with the funny windows. In common with her house, Mary McCartney was seen by most people as a little eccentric, although in yet another moment of frustration with her, Doctor Walsh had gone somewhat further and described her to a medical colleague as “a well-known eejit and hysteric.”

Around the pair a crowd from O’Neill’s and the surrounding houses quickly gathered, with people pressing forward to see the cause of the commotion.

“What the hell’s up with the woman?” Pig Cully asked.

“I seen it,” she seemed to be saying, while the child simply screeched in response. People stared and talked in whispers to their neighbours. Dan Ahearn said,

“D’ye think, Cully, she’s finally flipped her lid?”

From the back of the crowd Limpy pushed his way through, saying,

“Make way there, make way,” and surprisingly, they did. Notebook and pen at the ready, Fergus Keane followed him through, whilst at the edge of the crowd new arrivals strained for a sight of the phenomenon and questioned those nearest to them. Mary McCartney fell silent for a moment while a great gulp of air soughed in her throat. Then she started up again, trying to tell something to a woman at the front of the crowd. Johnny Spade stepped forward and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“What are ye going on about? The last time I heard a racket like that was when Tim Hanlon ran off with the wife’s savings.”

Mary McCartney tried to explain.

“I – seen it!” She whined. “Walking past! I seen it!”

With each word he uttered, Johnny Spade shook her, so that Mary McCartney’s lips slapped together.

“What – the – hell – did ye – see, for – Jasus sake?”

At the back of the crowd Pig Cully said, “The woman’s obviously drunk,” and staggered back towards O’Neill’s, fearful that it might close before he had had his quota for the evening. The tearful child looked up as her mother said, more calmly now,

“Up at the Mass Rock – we were walking past – her and me – and we seen it.” The crowd leaned forward expectantly. “A woman in white – above the rock.” Mary McCartney swept her wild eyes around the faces that were pale in the wan light from the street lamps. “I swear to God. Wee Mary and me both seen it.”

“Hah, now they’ll believe me,” Limpy declared, then turning to Fergus Keane he tapped the young reporter’s notebook and added, “Get that down, boy. ‘Another vision at the Mass Rock’.”

On every side there were muted sounds of excitement and

incredulity. And then Mary McCartney began wailing again. Mrs Murphy who lived in Captain Kelly’s old house at the top of the village stepped forward and tried to calm her, imposing her bulk between Mary McCartney and Johnny Spade, thus dismissed as a loudmouth and a bully and entirely typical of the male species. Mrs Murphy said to Wee Mary,

“Don’t be crying now, love. That woman on the rock – she would never do you any harm.”

“It wasn’t,” the girl sobbed and sniffed, “the woman on the rock. I dropped my bag of sweets on the road – and Mum wouldn’t let me go back for them.”

At this, a titter of amusement went round the crowd, but they had caught the excitement of the moment and as the woman comforted Mary McCartney and Wee Mary, people began to talk animatedly in groups, some of them dismissing the incident as the product of the darkness and the pair’s imaginations, while others said that whilst she could be a little eccentric at times, there wasn’t a steadier woman in the glens
than Mary McCartney and if she said she had seen something at the Mass Rock, then seen something she had.

With the assistance of Fergus Keane, Limpy climbed onto a low wall and called for silence. People stopped talking and turned to face him.

“Since the Virgin Mary appeared to me at the Mass Rock and did a miracle on me, there’s been more doubting Thomases than there were in the Bible.” Limpy’s acquaintance with the New Testament was not intimate but he pressed on nevertheless. “It says in the Bible to love your neighbour. Mind ye, the Good Lord obviously didn’t know I’d have John Healy and his wife living next door to me.” There were a few chuckles from Limpy’s audience. Then the little man stuck out his chest and grasped both lapels of his jacket. He was actually beginning to enjoy this, the first proper speech he had ever given. “But that’s what the Virgin Mary said for me to tell people, be good to everybody.” Fergus Keane looked up at Limpy with a fervour verging on the religious, though whether inspired by the proximity of miraculous events or on account of the whiskey he had drunk in O’Neill’s was not immediately clear. “Some of yous didn’t believe I’d seen her,” Limpy continued, “and accused me of being a liar and a fraud.” He stuck out his chin and slowly looked across the crowd, lingering here and there on catching sight of his principal detractors. Then he flung out his arm towards Mary McCartney. “Well, there’s the proof I was telling the truth. Mary McCartney – ye wouldn’t meet an honester woman in a week’s walking – she and her wee girl there saw the exact same as me. And there’ll be more,” he shouted, leaning so far forward to make his point that his acolyte had to grasp his legs to stop him falling off the wall. “There’ll be more. You mark my words.”

“Fergus, me son,” Limpy said as the crowd around Mary McCartney and her daughter melted away, “ye don’t have to
worry yerself about getting a bed for the night. Ye can stay up at my house. The prices that Dermot McAllister charges is bloody scandalous. And anyway, a young fella like you is far better off with the home comforts – ablutions just out the back, bed near the fire, and dammit, ye can reach right out and pull a bottle of stout when ye’ve a mind to. Ye’re giving me a helluva write-up in yer newspaper. The least I can do, young Fergus, is see ye all right for accommodation.” He looked at Fergus and beamed. “After all, the Good Samaritan didn’t pass by on the other side, did he?” As they set off in Fergus’s car towards Limpy’s house, he could not help but feel a glow of satisfaction from his new status as miracle recipient and prophet. Wasn’t it truly wonderful the ways of the Good Lord.

The drive home was a miracle of good fortune, with Fergus clinging onto the steering wheel, one eye closed, as his car hurtled through the tunnel of light formed by the headlamps. Humming tunelessly and tapping time on his knee, his passenger seemed to view the prospect of imminent death with equanimity. They raced at bends and somehow went round them, from hillocks they flew and landed unscathed and when they finally slithered to a halt amidst the screech of brakes and the rattle of stones, Limpy hopped out and said,

“Ye’re steady enough at the driving, young Fergus. Kept her between the hedges, so ye did,” then wandered off into the darkness, apparently under the impression that Fergus’s head bowed over the steering wheel was in thanksgiving for a safe journey.

When he staggered after his host and caught up with him at the door to his cottage, Fergus knew that he was running on reserve. He hugged the rough-hewn wall and from somewhere far away heard Limpy say,

“Jasus wept! That bloody dog’s pissed on the matches again! I’ll kick his arse when I can see which end of him is
which.” There was the sound of furious rasping and the tinkle on the floor as another useless match was thrown down. Then a dim glow sprang up as a match sputtered into life followed by a brighter light from the lamp that had been lit. “Don’t stand on ceremony!” Limpy said, waving his arm. “Come on in! Make yerself at home!”

Fergus swayed around the door jamb, blinked in the light as he looked into the room, and almost instantly became sober. Before him was a scene of devastation. In the far corner of the room stood a narrow bed, the pillow the colour of a coal sack, the huddled blankets, once the creamy white of new wool, now uniformly grey and stiff with grime. On the floor – what could be seen of it – were empty beer bottles, newspapers torn and crumpled, a dog bowl, old shoes, some pieces from a tractor and a collapsed heap of assorted turf and firewood. Supporting itself against a wall, a crook-legged table held an array of dirty crockery, cracked and handleless cups, chipped plates and a teapot with a broken spout, beside which stood a chamber pot whose internal colour had clearly not been of the manufacturer’s devising. On the wall, which was liberally draped with cobwebs, an arthritic clock ticked painfully, as if every swing of its pendulum would be its painful last. And on the mantelpiece above the black stove a cornucopia of oddments. Between the tins, cartons, bottles and boxes, wads of envelopes and papers stuck out, all topped by a further row of random gleanings in the form of pieces of string, broken cork floats from a fishing net, an open carton of rusty screws and an assortment of tobacco tins. Above all of this hung a framed photograph of a country scene, so dark and ancient that it might have seen the reign of Queen Victoria. Fergus averted his eyes from the far end of the room, fearful of what fresh horrors might become apparent if he peered too long into the semi-darkness.