The Miracle Man (3 page)

The door to the sitting-room opened and the Misses Garrison came in, first Margaret, the older one, the larger one, with her severe look and sharp voice that reminded him a little of Mother, and then Cissy, small and thin, always one step behind like those Indian women, she being more of a sympathetic nature like himself. He had watched them so often – observed them with his artist’s eye – and overheard their little bickering conversations while he pretended to read one of the mildewed Vicki Baum or Jeffrey Farnol volumes from the bookcase in the corner. There was “A Brief History of Ireland” there, so old that it was itself part of history, and a “Highways and Byways of Donegal and Antrim” with ink drawings of scenery through which wound unsurfaced roads walked by quaintly-clothed men in munchkin hats – halfway between humans and leprechauns. He had read all the volumes in the bookcase, or at least flicked through them. He really should buy some books, he thought, keep himself up to date with what was passing for literature these days. But books were so expensive, and if the one a visitor had left behind last year had been any indication, he would stick with the classics. He glanced down at the copy of “Chrome Yellow” by Aldous Huxley which lay on his lap, one of his slender fingers a bookmark at page eight. Now there was a writer, he decided, at least judging from the first two chapters, which was all he had ever managed to read.

“Good evening, Richard,” Margaret Garrison said, as if by using his Christian name she was paying him a compliment. It was “Richard” when she felt kindly disposed towards him and “Mr Pointerly” when she did not, and there was no reason he could ever fathom for either attitude. He nodded gracefully at both women and smiled. Margaret took her customary seat in
the armchair by the empty fireplace while Cissy sank into the couch, the broken springs offering so little support that when she finally came to rest, her eyes were almost level with her knees. Only when she was in company could she risk sitting on the couch, as she generally had to be assisted to her feet from it. She fussed at the folds of her dress, pulling it down taut over her knees. What a look she might otherwise receive from Margaret, who was saying to Mr Pointerly,

“And what d’you think we might expect for dinner this evening, Richard?”

Mr Pointerly gave a rueful smile, lifted and dropped a languid hand.

“Ah, who knows, my dear? Who knows? We are entirely at the mercy of the Winter Cook.”

“Hmph! A cook, she calls herself? The woman hasn’t the slightest idea what the word means. If she’s boiled potatoes for pigs, that’s about the height of it. And have you seen her hands? There’s bears’ paws that are cleaner. It’s a wonder we’re not all poisoned.” She gave a sniff. “I ask you, how much longer do we have to suffer the depredations of that woman? We’ll all be in an early grave.” Frowning, she glanced over at Cissy who was as usual off somewhere on thoughts of her own. “Where are we now, Cissy?”

Her sister blinked at her. “Why – the sitting-room, Margaret.”

For a full five seconds Margaret closed her eyes in silent martyrdom before opening them to gaze up at the ceiling.

“The date, Cissy!” She said. “The date, for goodness sake!”

“The – second week in May – I think,” Mr Pointerly volunteered. “Don’t know the exact date, I’m afraid. Don’t possess such a thing as a calendar now – or a diary.” He shrugged. “Used to keep one years ago, of course. We all did. Hardly seems much point now.” His voice trailed away as his gaze drifted from the sisters to the sunlit scene on the other side
of the window. Margaret Garrison tutted and gave a little flick of her head. Like a favourite cat, her large macramé bag sat hunched on her lap and from it she took a lighter and a packet of cigarettes, screwed a cigarette between her pouted, magenta lips, lit it and puffed smoke out without having inhaled it. It was a habit of some sophistication that she had picked up in London in her twenties, during the year she had spent there with her cousins, the Hennessys.

“Cissy,” Margaret said without looking at her sister, “as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I really don’t think that cardigan goes with that dress. Perhaps you should go upstairs and change it before dinner.”

Pinched between two fingertips, the cigarette was held aloft, a symbol of her authority and superior knowledge in matters of couture.

From the couch Cissy peeped over her knees and gave a vacant smile.

“Well – I rather like it, Margaret,” she said, smoothing the rumpled fabric over her flat chest. “And it’s not as though we’re going to dine with the Queen, dear.”

“Puts me in mind of fuchsia. This is the place for fuchsia,” Mr Pointerly said, as if revealing a great truth. And then he said simply, “Ballerinas.”

Margaret ignored this irrelevance and said to him,

“I don’t know about you, Richard,” with the clear implication that she meant the opposite, “but I intend to make the strongest possible representations to Mr McAllister about the food we’ve been forced to endure at the hands of that – woman. Indeed, I fully intend to demand a reduction in my bill – and I would strongly advise you to do the same.”

Mr Pointerly opened “Chrome Yellow” and glanced down at the beginning of Chapter Two.

“Perhaps,” he said, half to himself, “if the food was better, the bill would be higher.”

At that very moment the banshee wail of Mrs Megarrity, the Winter Cook, came hallooing down the hall, an inescapable call to account. Margaret groaned and Cissy valiantly tried to struggle from the grip of the couch. Without the page being marked, “Chrome Yellow” was closed and laid on the water-marked wood of the windowsill, long since devoid of varnish. The cooking smell that was beginning to drift from the kitchen into the sitting-room was really quite pleasant. Perhaps this evening’s meal would be different.

Although all three of them, the Garrisons and Mr Pointerly, had been residents in the hotel for a number of years and in the off-season were frequently the only people who were dining, two tables were set and always the same ones, Mr Pointerly’s beside the huge black sideboard with its cabinet full of grubby glassware, and the Garrisons’ in the middle of the room. All three of them sat, heads slightly bowed, silently awaiting their sentence. For, what would it be this evening? Tasteless fish in a watery white sauce, accompanied by lumpy mashed potatoes and peas which, fired from a gun, would have brought down a rabbit at fifty yards? More of that tough beef, so rare that, as another guest had remarked, a good vet could have got it back on its feet? Or the now famous curry made from unspecified meat – the chimera curry, Mr Pointerly had called it – so vicious and glutinous that it could have been used as rat poison and was certainly instrumental in depleting the hotel’s stock of stiff and shiny Bronco toilet rolls. With every swing of the pendulum on the old grandfather clock, the gloomy mood of the room deepened.

From the direction of the kitchen came the ominous squeak of Mrs Megarrity’s tea-trolley and in a moment she appeared in the doorway, bent low and with arms straight out in front of her as if pushing a load of boulders up a steep incline, instead of the three bowls of soup which wobbled on the trolley’s top
shelf. One leg of the trolley was badly askew and every few inches gave a judder which threw the vehicle sideways and brought a mumbled oath from the Winter Cook as she fought to bring it back on course. At last she came to a shuddering halt between the two tables, the soup dribbling from the bowls. She drew herself up to the full five feet two of her height. As usual, she had made an effort to dress for her secondary role as waitress, with a little white waitress’s hat, frilled but starchless, jammed on the front of her head and drooping over one eyebrow, and a crumpled white apron to match, worn over a black skirt that was a veritable menu, a sampler of all the meals cooked since she had last changed it a fortnight before. The cuffs of the black polo-neck jumper she wore had been turned back three or four times to fit her short arms and now hung like tyre inner tubes on her wrists, wobbling back and forth at every movement.

“Jasus tonight!” she breathed, her great chest heaving. “If I’ve got to put up with this thing one more day, I’ll throw it in the tide – an’ him along with it.” As though it were McAllister himself, she kicked the bad leg of the tea-trolley and sent more soup slopping onto the top shelf. Mr Pointerly peered hopefully into the soup bowls. With a bit of luck, she might spill it all. On Margaret Garrison’s face a kind of restrained anguish was in evidence as she stared straight ahead.

“God alone knows why I stay in this place,” Mrs Megarrity was saying as she shoved a bowl onto the table in front of Mr Pointerly, driving more of the soup over the edge and onto the table-cloth.

“You’re – not thinking of leaving us, Mrs Megarrity?” There was a quiver of hope in the old man’s voice.

“And where would the likes of me find another job around here?” she demanded of him. “Tell me that, Mr Pointerly.”

“Well,” he said, hastily taking up his spoon, “I only meant that perhaps . . . ”

Mrs Megarrity swept the remaining bowls from the trolley and planted them in front of the Misses Garrison.

“Ye slave your backside off for pittance wages,” the Winter Cook was saying. “Cook, waitress, toilet attendant, jack of all bloody trades – and what thanks d’ye get for it?” She stuck her face near that of the elder Miss Garrison. “I’ll tell ye. Damn all, that’s what. The amount of work I have to do, he must think I’m twins. Get that down ye before it gets cold.” Turning away, she laid hands on the trolley as if about to give it the thrashing it had so long deserved and wildly swung it around to face the kitchen, the momentum almost throwing her off balance and into the sideboard full of glasses. Margaret slowly lowered her eyes and looked at the grey liquid with the globules of fat floating in it. Around the inner rim of the plate there was already a dark tideline beginning to form and lumps of some unknown substance moved turgidly beneath the surface.

Mrs Megarrity was halfway to the kitchen when Margaret Garrison’s voice boomed out.

“What – is this?”

The squeaking of the trolley stopped abruptly. The Winter Cook turned on her heel, her eyes glaring.

“That,” she said, with the authority of an official declaration, “is the best of mutton soup.”

Mr Pointerly gave a muffled cough, his spoon clinking against his plate.

“Mutton – soup?” Margaret Garrison said, her face contorting. “Who ever heard of mutton soup? It’s disgusting.”

Cissy, who had been craning over her bowl, spoon gently parting the rapidly-forming crust of yellow fat, gave a little shriek, dropped her spoon with a splash and squeaked, “There’s a piece of wool in my soup! A fleece!”

“Jesus save us!” From the trolley Mrs Megarrity came stamping across to the table and peered into Cissy’s bowl. “What is it, for God’s sake? I never met as fussy people in my life. Holy
God, if this was in our house, they’d have this lot cleared and the hand ate off ye as well. Where is it?” she demanded of Cissy who had one hand clamped over her mouth. She jabbed a finger at the bowl. With practised ease Mrs Megarrity’s grubby finger hooked out the half dozen strands of curly wool. “Ah, sure it’s only a bit of oul’ wool. Clean meat never fattened a pig,” she said, and with a deft flick of her hand fired it away behind her. Mr Pointerly, who had been straining for a sight of Cissy’s bowl, as though expecting to see nothing less than a crocodile hauled from its grey depths, was caught in the eye by the projectile, dropped his spoon and sent half the contents of his bowl down the front of his trousers. At his frightened yelp, Mrs Megarrity turned and came towards him as he leapt to his feet. “God Almighty, what’re ye doin’ to yerself now, Mr Pointerly? You’re a terrible man for accidents.” He stood with his hands in the air, steam gently rising from the front of his trousers. “Here, let me get that.” So saying, the Winter Cook took a tea towel from her apron strings and began to rub vigorously at Mr Pointerly’s crotch.

“Please – Mrs Megarrity – please – stop!”

“Now now, Mr Pointerly, don’t be getting yourself into a sweat. I’m a married woman and a former nursing assistant. If I’d a pound for every one of them I’ve handled, I’d be wearing fur knickers.” She gave a final sweep with the cloth, making Mr Pointerly flinch. “There now,” she said with a wink, “that’ll put a bit of colour back in your cheeks.”

Wide-eyed, the Misses Garrison had sat watching Mrs Megarrity. As the Winter Cook returned to her trolley, Margaret regained her composure and demanded of her,

“What, might I ask, is for the main course?”

“Well, boiled mutton, what else! Waste not, want not.”

“But – I don’t like boiled mutton!” Margaret Garrison said with a stamp of her foot, her voice leaping two octaves in perfect parody of a spoilt child. The Winter Cook’s face took on a savage look.

“It’d be a fine thing if we only got what we wanted in this life, so it would. Most’ve us’ve just got to take what we can get and lump it. The food money I get from him upstairs wouldn’t keep a cat in fish heads. Mutton it is and mutton ye’ll get!” She grasped the handles of her trolley, bent low behind it and began to push. “And I’ll thank ye to be quick about it too,” she threw over her shoulder. “I’ve still got them toilets to muck out before I finish and by the state of that one at the back, there must’ve been an acrobat in it.” And, mumbling to herself, she squeaked her way into the kitchen and slammed the door behind her. Margaret Garrison gave a long, shuddering whimper, her sister, hands clasped before her as if in prayer, stared into the murky depths of her bowl, while Mr Pointerly sat slumped in his chair and vaguely wondered why he should have been so naive as to think that this evening’s meal might just have been better than any of the others.

Mrs Megarrity came out of the back door of the Glens Hotel kitchen, glanced around the cluttered yard and up at the rear windows of the hotel before giving a low whistle. After a few moments the bushes at the rear of the yard parted and a boy of about ten poked his head out. The Winter Cook silently beckoned to him. Out he came, to be quickly followed by four others, ranging in age from about six to fourteen, all of them tousle-haired and scruffy, with torn and patched clothes. Without exception, their hands and faces gave the impression that they had at that very moment emerged from a coal mine, rather than from the lane at the back of the yard. One after the other they ran across the yard and into the kitchen, crowding together just inside the doorway, their dark faces turned expectantly towards the mound of sandwiches and the blue jug of milk that sat on the table. She crossed the kitchen and turned the keys in the doors that led to the dining-room and to the corridor. At the table she poured out five cups of milk.