The Miracle Man (33 page)

Cissy looked away from him and her hand tightening on the bunch of flowers made the newspaper crackle.

“People can change. It’s the best part of forty-five years.”

“Ah Cissy, that’s near a whole lifetime. Why didn’t we do something, you and me?”

“You know the answer to that as well as I do. My family would never have allowed it.”

“Well then we should’ve said to hell with them. And it’s not too late now, Cissy. Look – “ He took a step towards her and she moved backwards. “I’ve arranged a party on Saturday night – specially for you. It’ll be a great night, darlin’. Music and dancing and a wee drink or two. Ye used to love parties, didn’t ye? Tell me ye’ll come to it.”

“A party? For me?” She looked down at the flowers and began to pick at one with a tiny fingernail. “I – don’t know. I mean, I haven’t been to a party for – “ Cissy slowly shook her head. “For half a lifetime.”

“Then ye’re long overdue for one.” He stepped forward quickly and caught her by the arm. She did not resist. “Say ye’ll come, Cissy.”

“I – I really don’t know, John. You know what Margaret’s like and – ”

“To hell with Margaret! Cissy Garrison, it’s about time ye were yer own woman.” He looked earnestly into her face. “C’mon, what d’ye say? For the first time in yer life, break free!”

Into Cissy’s eyes crept a little twinkle of excitement which had not been there for a very long time.

“Well – I don’t know. It would be nice, I suppose. And it has been such a long time.”

Limpy clapped his hands together.

“That’s my girl! Now ye’re talking.” He gave a little skip. “Boy, this is going to be one helluva night, I can tell ye!”

“Where’s it going to be, this party? Oh, I hope Margaret doesn’t throw one of her tantrums. You’ve no idea, when she gets started.”

“Never you mind about Margaret.” He gave a knowing smile. “And I’ll provide the transport there and back for you. Chauffeur driven.” He rubbed his hands together. “Ah, it’ll be just like old times, Cissy, so it will. Just like old times. Leave everything to me.”

“And – I’ll need to think of something to wear. I’m sure I haven’t got a single decent thing and – with us never going to social events, or anything . . . ”

“Never worry about that. If ye put one of them bin bags on ye’d still look beautiful. Ye’ll be the belle of the ball, Cissy.”

Cissy lowered her eyes and gave a little smile.

“Oh, get away with you, John McGhee. You’re as full of blarney as ever you were. Now, off you go and let me have a look through this bunch of old things I’ve got in the wardrobe.” She gave a little sigh and said half to herself, “I just know I’ll have to go to Castleglen to buy something new.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Limpy said, hardly able to contain his excitement. Cissy looked at him for a moment.

“And for goodness sake, John McGhee, you haven’t changed one bit.” She turned and, lifting a brush from her dressing-table, she came over to him and began brushing his
hair, saying, “Look at you. You’re like something the cat dragged in.” While he stood beaming, she put a parting in his grey hair and swept back the sides to give it a semblance of neatness. “There. That’s a bit better. Now, off you go. But before you do – “ She took the flowers from the paper and with a smile and a shake of her head she handed them to him. “It was a nice thought, but you can take these back down to the dining-room where they belong.” She opened out the newspaper and began to smooth it. “And I’m sure Mr McAllister would like to read today’s newspaper on – “ Cissy stared at the front page of the Northern Reporter. “Oh – my God!”

“What? What is it?” Limpy came round beside her and looked down at the newspaper. Across two columns at the top of the page it said, “Amazing Sex Life of Miracle Man,” and underneath in smaller type, “by Fergus Keane”.

“Ah – Jasus,” he said softly.

Cissy was rapidly scanning the article beneath, with phrases such as “many lovers” and “love nest on the hill” leaping out at her.

“Oh,” she said and threw the newspaper from her to land on the floor. “How could you – embarrass me with this?”

“Ah now listen, Cissy, listen. Don’t believe a word of that. He made it all up. Ye see, I told him ye thought I’d gone queer, and how bad I felt when ye wouldn’t see me again. So the boy’s only trying to do me a favour – get me back in your good books, like.”

“Good books? Good books? John McGhee, you get out of this room at once! I never want to speak to you again! Ever!”

“Ah Cissy, don’t be like that. Ye know there was never nobody but you.”

Cissy marched to the door and flung it open.

“Out – you – you – gigolo! I wouldn’t go to a party with you if you were the last man on earth!”

With fingers from both hands squeezed into the one small
handle, Limpy hauled at the door of the telephone box, using all of his strength and more than a little of his weight against the strong spring. No sooner had he got the door open far enough to dart inside than it came slamming back and threw him against the far side of the box. Angrily he kicked the bottom of the door.

“Bugger!” he said and then he began rummaging through his pockets, bringing out one coin from this pocket, two or three from that one, until he had a small pile on the shelf before him. He lifted the receiver, screwed up his eyes as he concentrated on remembering the number, before slowly and deliberately pressing the required buttons.

“Hello? Georgina, is that you?” he shouted into the receiver. As he recognised the voice, he smiled. “This is Johnny McGhee from Inisbreen here. Listen, Georgina, I’m having a party on Saturday night, and everybody and his brother’s going to be there. It’ll be the best bloody party this side of Ballymane, so it will, and I want ye to come – and bring yer girls with ye.”

In the kitchen of the Glens Hotel the pots fairly rattled together as Mrs Megaritty nested them before putting them away in the cupboard under the sink. Wee Henry, who had brought the fish order and was now sitting at the table drinking tea and eating a sandwich that looked as if it had been cut with a hatchet, knew the signs well. Mrs Megarrity was on the warpath.

“What a set-up,” she was saying. “What a bloody set-up. It’s Soddomin Begorra all over again. I tell ye, that McAllister wants doctoring. Throwing out a decent wife like that so’s he can put one up that little tart.”

Wee Henry appeared to choke on a piece of bread but he made no comment.

“And now her at it behind his back with one of them bloody Englishmen. I knew all along she was nothing but a hotarsed little scut. And her a convent girl too.”

“Aye, them sort’s often the worst,” Wee Henry agreed absent-mindedly, and then, after proper consideration, “or the best, depending on your point of view.”

Mrs Megarrity turned and gave him a look that had the little man’s heart shrivelling inside of him. He gave a series of rapid blinks.

“For some people. I’m not – ”

“Drunkards and fornicators every one of them! My mother, God rest her, would turn in her grave if she knew I was threw in with a crew like this – and me always wanting to be a nun when I was a child.”

Wee Henry stared over his huge sandwich, his eyes widening as his brain struggled to imagine Mrs Megarrity in a nun’s habit.

The Winter Cook pointed to the door into the hallway, which was slightly open.

“But I’ve got the wee bitch taped, so I have. There’s something going on up there while he’s down in the bar, and I’m just watching and waiting.” She wagged an admonitory finger. “Watching and waiting, Wee Henry.”

The Winter Cook continued with her work, attacking the dirty dishes with unaccustomed vigour while glancing frequently at the open door. Having fought his way through the outsized sandwich, Wee Henry proceeded to roll himself a cigarette so thin that it appeared to have scarcely any tobacco in it at all and when he lit it, the end flared momentarily like a Roman Candle. Now and then the Winter Cook would mutter something to herself and jab with the dish-mop at a particularly offensive plate. Then suddenly she stiffened and craned forward, watching something through the gap in the doorway.

“I knew it!” she said at last in a loud whisper. “There she goes now, and him up two minutes ahead of her.” She quickly untied the strings of her apron, sweeping it from her waist and onto the table. “I’m going to put a knot in her knickers once and
for all,” the Winter Cook asserted. “You just see if I don’t.” She began to tiptoe towards the door.

No more than five minutes later, Mrs Megarrity came rushing back into the room and closed the door behind her, leaning against it and breathing heavily. There was a look of triumph on her face as she said,

“They’re at it in number twenty-seven, hammer and tongs. The very same room they had to send for Doctor Walsh for them honeymooners last year. I told him a bucket of cold water round them would’ve done the job just as well, but no, it had to be injections. Now, Wee Henry,” she said, grasping his arm and hauling him to his feet, “you’re going to make a ‘phone call.”

“Me, Mrs Megarrity? Why me?” In his sudden ejection from

his chair he had bent his roll-up, which now hung dejectedly from his mouth.

“Because McAllister would recognise my voice. Ye’re going to be the man next door to them, wanting something done about the din they’re making. Come over here.”

By the shoulder she dragged him trotting behind her as she stalked across the room to where the old telephone was mounted on the wall. “Now, when McAllister answers in the bar, you tell him ye’re in room twenty-five and there’s a racket next door in twenty-seven and he’d better come up right now and do something about it. Have ye got that?”

“Yes but, Mrs Megarrity, he’ll recognise my voice.”

“Not if ye put on an English accent, he won’t.”

“I – don’t think I want to do this, Mrs Megarrity. I mean, I’ve never – ”

“Look,” she said, catching the little man by the collar and propelling him towards the telephone, “either you ‘phone McAllister right now or ye’ve slapped yer last haddock on my slab!”

For a man who had never been further than Dublin, Wee
Henry’s imitation of an English accent was surprisingly good. Dermot tried to explain that he could not leave the bar unattended, but Wee Henry was very insistent, saying that his headache was being made ten times worse by “the devil of a noise coming from next door”, and he demanded that Dermot do something about it “forthwith”. Wearily, Dermot said that he would come up immediately and put a stop to it, and yes, he agreed that a decent hotel wouldn’t tolerate such behaviour for a single moment.

When the shouting began, Mrs Megarrity was listening at the kitchen door, with Wee Henry half crouched behind her, as if suddenly overcome by the immensity of what he had done. As it was a warm day and some of the bedroom windows were open, three people strolling past the hotel at that moment also heard the commotion, and much to the entertainment of its occupants, the noise also came echoing down the back stairs to the bar below.

“You little bitch!” they heard Dermot shout. “I turn my back for five minutes and you’re jumping into bed with somebody!”

“No, Dermot, listen, it’s not like that.”

“It’s not like what? You’re standing here in your underwear and he’s just legged it down the corridor!”

“He never laid a finger on me!”

“It wasn’t his finger I was on about.”

There was a pause before Nancy was heard to retort,

“Well, we know why you could mistake it for a finger, don’t we?”

There was a chorus of “Ooohs” from the crowd in the bar and gestures of knives being stuck between ribs.

“Is it any wonder, looking at you. You’re like a beached whale!”

“Oh, you pig! You told me you adored puppy fat!”

“Puppy fat, darlin’, not a sack of mongrels!”

The people in the street and in the bar below and even the Winter Cook and her vassal at the kitchen door, heard the sound of the ensuing slap. “Bitch!” “Bastard!” “Randy little whore!”

“Oh!”

In total silence the listeners waited for the rejoinder. “Bloody – impotent old lecher!”

Breath was drawn in sharply. Someone remarked that the teacher was now ahead by a good length, and in view of the previous remarks, the metaphor was generally taken to be a horse-racing one.

“Right, get your fat arse the hell out of here. I don’t ever want to see you in this hotel again.”

“Listen, I wouldn’t come anywhere near you again even if your arse was studded with diamonds – which would be it’s only attraction!”

Then came the sound of protest from Nancy and two sets of feet walking quickly. Everyone in the bar glanced up at the ceiling as they followed the progress of the pair. Along the corridor, down the flight of stairs to the half-landing, back through the short passageway, shouting at each other as they went. They were heading for the front door of the hotel. Without a word of co-ordination, the occupants of the bar rose as one and moved swiftly and silently towards the two windows of the lounge, those behind standing on chairs or kneeling on tables in order to see over the heads of those in front. Some went to the doorway and lounged against it, trying to look as if they had been there all day. In the kitchen, the Winter Cook and Wee Henry drew back a little from their observation point as the shouting and the thundering of feet on the stairs grew closer.

Nancy came out of the front door of the hotel and bent over to adjust one of her red high-heeled shoes, which John Breen said later should have told Dermot that she was up to no good.
The men in the doorway and at the window of the lounge bar craned forward the better to see this rear elevation, and it might have been thought by some that she lingered just a little longer than was strictly necessary over this adjustment. Then, having taken her keys from her handbag, she turned and walked slowly past the glens Hotel lounge towards her car, exaggerating her hip movements and tossing her long red hair. On reaching the car, the ex-teacher at the Catholic primary school who as a pupil herself had once been one of Sister Monica’s Little Saint Brenda’s in the Legion of Mary, half turned and gave a v-sign to the men inside, who smiled and gave a rousing cheer.