Читать книгу Shambles Corner - Edward Toman - Страница 10

Two

Magee stood in the drizzle gently prodding the sow with a hazel switch, gauging the depth of the fat on her haunches, but careful not to bruise the flesh so soon before slaughter. The animal pivoted her bristled snout away from him, but he prodded her firmly on the other flank till she turned back to him.

From the door of Hughes’s Joe watched him, saying nothing. He reached into his pocket and produced a battered pouch. Carefully he rolled a thin cigarette. He cupped his hands around the match, his back hunched against the wind from the lower end of the town. His full attention seemed to be devoted to English Street where knots of pedlars were eyeing one another suspiciously before the serious business of the day began. He turned his attention down the town, to the bleak curve of Irish Street. There was only one shop on the street, Peadar’s Fruit’n’Veg, whose proprietor had positioned a few crates on the pavement as a concession to market day. Peadar himself hovered uneasily at the door, keeping an eye on the muddy potatoes and long-leafed carrots. Joe nodded to him.

Meanwhile Magee had turned his back on the pigs and was facing up the town. They nonchalantly surveyed their respective quarters for a few minutes more, then turned slowly to check on developments across the Shambles. Magee cleared his throat and spat a ball of gleaming mucus into the gutter. The pigs jostled forward, investigating it with their dripping snouts. He held his nose between forefinger and thumb and blew it, hard and long, snapping the snot from his fingers over the backs of the beasts. Joe cocked his leg and farted loudly. Then, their toilettes completed, each of them settled their caps on the backs of their heads to indicate that they were ready for business, and turned to face the other for the first time.

‘How much are you looking for them?’ demanded Magee.

‘I’m looking plenty. You’ll not find better animals in Armagh today.’

Magee grunted. The preliminaries were over; the ritual of selling could begin in earnest. Both men knew their parts and how they would be expected to play them. They spat on their hands. They offered to shake on it. They turned their backs on derisory offers, took umbrage, swore they’d not take a penny less nor offer a penny more. Then they would grab each other round the neck and whisper loudly into the other’s ear, the meanwhile squeezing the forearm vigorously to convey some hidden nuance. They assured each other they were decent men, and hurled abuse in the next breath. But finally, as both of them knew from the beginning, the deal was struck. There was spitting and the bargain was sealed with a knucklecrushing handshake and a vigorous slap on the back as the wad of notes changed hands.

‘You’ll take a drink with me now,’ demanded Joe, indicating the Patriot’s.

‘I will not,’ said Magee.

‘You’re a God-fearing man, sir, I can see that,’ Joe said with a smirk. ‘Sure something tells me you dig with the other foot. But we’ll not hold that against you.’ They both laughed sparingly. ‘Are you sure now you won’t join me in a pint? You’re not going to stand there and tell me that all you fellows are teetotallers?’

‘You’ll not take offence if I decline,’ Magee grunted.

‘I respect you for that now, sir. If there were more like you, decent men, on both sides, the country wouldn’t be in the state it’s in. Tell me, am I right on that one?’

‘You are,’ Magee said without much conviction. He extricated himself from Joe’s clutches and drove the squealing animals before him across the Shambles to the corner of Scotch Street, without looking back.

When he was out of earshot, his father turned to Frank and laughed uneasily. ‘Did you ever see the beat of that Magee? But hadn’t I got him well taped?’

Peadar the greengrocer, who had been lurking behind the soup vegetables during the negotiations, emerged on to the footpath and allowed himself to agree with Joe that he had the measure of your man and no mistake.

‘Magee’s a hoor all right,’ he volunteered. ‘As black as the ace of spades! If it wasn’t for him, McCoy would have been out of business long ago. A Portadown man, I need hardly add!’

‘Did you see the bastard trying to do me out of the price of the sow at the last minute? Did you note that?’

‘Mind you, he’s smart enough not to venture indoors at any rate. Eugene and the Patriot would eat him alive.’

The post-mortem on the sale was a necessary ritual. All round the Shambles there were men, happy for the price of a pint to listen to every detail of the dispute of the pig-keepers, to slap you on the back and assure you that you got the best of the bargain. The vegetable man was inching closer to the door of the bar, his body language expressing a desire to continue the conversation inside.

‘It’s time I introduced you properly to the proprietor,’ Joe declared, taking Frank by the hand. Then, pausing only to wink at Peadar, he spat loudly and lunged once more at the swinging door.

The Sabbath is taken seriously around Caledon. The houses remain shuttered, no one walks the roads and even the cattle in the fields by the sullen Blackwater seem to adopt a sombre expression. But it is a pretty place despite its people, and it had been Joe’s idea, when he woke the boy at first light and the pair of them slipped out of the side door of the Patriot Bar, that they should take the long way home, seeing a bit of the countryside as they went. Their pleasure trip had come to a sudden halt a mile outside the village, however, when the tractor had died on them. Joe searched out the garage, and threw pebbles at the upstairs window till he raised the owner who grudgingly agreed to serve him. But the voice of his wife ordered him back inside and the diesel pump stayed righteously locked. Father and son made their way back to the abandoned tractor, taking the low road by the river. Despite their predicament, the pale sun, the quietness of the countryside, the afterglow of the feed of drink from the night before, and the few pounds still in his pocket from the sale of the pigs had Joe in high spirits. He drew Frank’s attention to the beauties of the river, for at this point it is wide and sluggish, meandering between shallow banks. And then, turning a corner in the lane, they spotted the ice-cream van.

Joe stopped in his tracks and gripped the boy tightly by the shoulder. He put his finger to his lips in a gesture of caution. They listened. From the flood plain there came the spasmodic sound of singing and shouting. He took Frank by the hand and steered him towards the ditch; then keeping low they made for the safety of a clump of trees which gave a view of the wide river beyond. A small crowd had gathered on the bank and were singing hymns to the beat of a tambourine and the uncertain accompaniment of a piano accordion. They were dressed in their Sunday best, the women in white dresses, the men in suits and bowler hats. In the middle of the river stood a large, red-faced man. His hands were held high in supplication, his eyes closed in concentration. He was dressed in a three-piece suit that had seen better days. The brown water flowed round his bulging midriff and his wet hair straggled down over his ears.

‘It’s McCoy!’ said Joe. ‘I knew it was the old reprobate when I saw the ice-cream van. The Reverend Oliver Cromwell McCoy. Would you look at the stunt he’s pulling!’

As they watched, a couple from the bank detached themselves from the crowd and began to wade slowly out to midstream. One was a burly, purple-faced youth, the other a stout old woman, doing her best to overcome an obvious fear of the water. When they had reached the middle of the swirling river, McCoy clasped the woman firmly to him and, with the purple-faced boy backing him up, began to call down the spirit of the Lord. The woman began to thrash about. ‘Wait till you see the hops of her when he’s done the business,’ whispered Joe into Frank’s ear.

McCoy ducked her suddenly into the river. ‘In the name of God which is the Father,’ they could hear him roar, ‘and God the Son which is Jesus’ – he immersed her a second time – ‘and God the Holy Ghost,’ and down she went again, gasping for breath. But when she came up for the third time a great chorus of hallelujahs rose up from the bank and the tambourine started up again. They burst into song, led by a wee girl who was coaxing a few chords from the squeeze-box. The woman in the river stood stunned for a few seconds as the water drained from her ears, eyes and hair.

‘Like the proverbial drowned rat,’ remarked Joe, ‘but keep an eye on her a minute till you see the leaps of her.’ And right on cue she began to hop. She started whooping and yelling, arching her body back as if trying to immerse herself once more. McCoy and the boy had a strong grip on her, but it took them all their time to hold her. She struggled and kicked, shouting the praises of the Lord. Hands reached out from the bank for her; someone dried her face with a towel, but still she whooped and jumped and pulled away from them. ‘It certainly seems to do the trick,’ Joe admitted grudgingly. ‘You can’t tell me they’re all play-acting.’

McCoy was back in midstream now, arms raised in praise and thanksgiving. The purple youth, his wet shirt clinging to his nipples, was preparing to lead another catechumen to the water, while the dark-skinned girl, little more than a toddler, tried to play ‘Shall We Gather at the River?’ on the bulky accordion.

‘Would you look at what he has the lassie doing!’ said Joe. ‘And her hardly fit to lift the squeeze-box. He wasn’t long putting her to work. And there’s her ladyship as well!’ Señora McCoy was struggling out of the brackish water, tossing her head and wringing the water from her long, black hair. Her thin dress clung to the contours of her body, showing sturdy thighs and voluptuous breasts. Joe studied her carefully. ‘It’s as well I didn’t waste my time looking for confession last night,’ he whispered. ‘One look at that and you’re right back to square one.’

He surveyed the rest of the scene with growing distaste. He disliked the sight of Protestants having a good time any day of the week, but particularly on a Sunday. Sunday was the day his own people played Gaelic football and pitch and toss, threw bullets on the long country roads, or drank illicitly in the back rooms of licensed premises. The Protestant Sunday should be spent indoors, in silent sobriety. He turned to Frank. ‘I’ll leave you to keep dick while I nip back to the tractor. There’s no sign of the butcher boy, Magee; the pair of them must be still fallen out. The rest of them are nothing but a few old women and a couple of old fellows. The boy with the purple face looks like a right animal, but he’ll be slow. And look at the state of McCoy, he’s so full of water he can hardly move. Keep your eye on the girl from Ipanema and don’t let them see you. I don’t need to tell you McCoy’s a dangerous bastard!’

He was back in five minutes with a jerry can and a length of hosepipe. ‘I’d give a pound to see the hoor’s face when he tries to make a getaway! I’ll not leave him a drop.’ He unscrewed the petrol cap, rammed the hosepipe into the tank and began to suck till he was red in the face. There was a gurgle from the innards of the van and the black diesel spurted out on to the road. ‘It’s nothing but shite!’ he spat, filling the can. ‘But with God’s help it’ll get us home in time for Mass.’

He settled Frank into the trailer and they made their way home through the maze of unapproved roads that crossed and recrossed the old border. Joe was still laughing, and he fancied he saw a flicker of interest in the dull eyes of his son. He had made a start, he had introduced him to the world of men’s affairs. If God spared him, there would be other forays into the city, and in due course he would tell the boy the full story of McCoy’s chequered career. He would tell him about the conversion of Sammy Magee, and how the pair of them had got hold of the Mexican priest and paraded him, like a monkey on a rope, round the townlands of South Armagh, bringing a curse on the land. When he was old enough to hear of such things, he would tell him the tale of Señora McCoy and how she came to the Shambles.

But, by way of introduction, where better to start than with the story of the ice-cream van itself?