Читать книгу Dancing in Limbo - Edward Toman - Страница 9

Sammy Magee’s sausages were never going to win any prizes from the true epicurean, but though fatty and flaccid they had one remarkable feature that brought him customers from as far away as Tandragee. They were faintly marbled throughout their full length — red, white and blue — the colours running through them like a stick of Portrush rock. ‘I’ll take a pound of thon Protestant sauce-dogs!’ the farmers would demand in their mountain accents, sidling into the butcher’s after conducting their bits of business in the town of a Saturday. And though the gristle content was enough to make even the farmyard dogs think twice before tackling them, Magee’s sausages sold like hot cakes, especially coming up to the Twelfth of July.

The farmers sidling into the shop had another motive too, one they didn’t dare remark on to the butcher’s face. They wanted to get an eyeful of Lily. For it was a curious fact that, like the chameleon, Lily Magee never seemed to be the same colour two weeks running.

It was with the arrival of the Marching Season proper, when for a brief few weeks Portadown bedecked itself in patriotic livery, that the mystery was solved. Magee was spotted at midnight, trundling a handcart of bunting into the back of the Orange Hall and the cat was out of the bag. By morning the whole town knew that the butcher had a secret sideline supplying loyalist flags and favours, and the coloured sausages and the coloured wife were revealed as the side-effects of this cottage industry. Week in and week out, early on the Sabbath morning, he and Lily had been scouring the dustbins at the back of the linen mill for discarded remnants. They dragged these home through the silent streets and stored them in the shed behind the house.

During the weeks ahead Lily cut and snipped while Magee himself trundled away on the old Singer, seaming each triangle at the base to accommodate the twine on which he would later thread them. Once a month, on a Saturday night, he shut up the shop early. The rest of the town, by way of entertainment, would be out on the streets, busily preaching the word of the Risen Lord and prophesying His imminent return. But Magee and Lily would forgo the delights of the soap box, for there was work to do. He would hose out the big copper he used for boiling up the black puddings, drag it out into the backyard and begin to brew up the colour of the month. He had three large barrels of industrial strength dye, purloined from a factory in Antrim, which he kept in the coal-hole, the smell of them acting as deterrent enough to anyone who might be tempted to sample them in alcoholic desperation. He collected up the month’s output and bundled it into the pot while Lily stirred with a stick.

As she walked to the Meeting House next morning, Lily’s complexion reflected the labours of the night before. The dye permeated her hair, it clung to her clothes, it lurked in the cuticles of her fingernails, resistant to all exertions with the Sunlight soap. If it were a red month then Lily would glow with the deep red of the blood of martyrs spilt in the defence of her heritage, the red of the Red Hand of Ulster itself. ‘Little Plum, your Redskin Chum,’ a corner boy might quip as herself and the butcher passed on the street, but sotto voce, for you didn’t get on the wrong side of Magee. Or a month later, seeing her approaching from the mill, her natural pallor bleached to a spectral white, the same corner boy might snigger about the ghost of Christmas Past. Or whistle ‘Blue Moon’, what he knew of it, if the colour of the month were blue. During the cheerless winter Lily’s changing appearance provided a measure of much needed entertainment round the town.

But in the new year the people of Portadown, to their consternation, began to discern the colours of the republican tricolour running faintly through their breakfast offal, and noticed that Lily was now exuding a faint but unmistakable glow of papist infamy. It was clear that once more things were getting out of hand.

Though the Protestant, with his complex calendar of memorials and marches, is a great consumer of red, white and blue bunting, Magee had realized long ago that he would never become Portadown’s first millionaire by trading with his own side of the house alone. His kinsmen, for one thing, retrieved their bunting from the lampposts when the patriotic moment had passed, drying it and storing it carefully for another day. Furthermore, the Loyalist marching season lasted only for the summer months. They commemorated the Somme in the spring, and remembered 1690 in July. But after they had marched round Derry’s walls and honoured the Apprentice Boys in August, they were ready to put away their banners and their trombones for another year. Magee faced six long fallow months till the lambeg drums summoned them to arms once more.

But with the Fenians it was a year-round business, and Magee wasn’t long in spotting the market gap. He knew enough about the habits of the Romanists; if it wasn’t the Ancient Order of Hibernians who were celebrating, it would be some Holy Day or other. What was more, they alternated their need for the green, white and gold of the Republic with the yellow and white of the Papal States. And what he’d seen round their side of the Shambles appalled him. Tattered and torn green and yellow banners, badly made from old vests and knickers, crudely stitched, the colours running in the rain. Home-made efforts, of uncertain size and design. The papists, it went without saying, showed nothing of the parsimony or foresight of the Protestant when it came to retrieving their bunting after the bands had passed, leaving theirs to rot in the rain till it fell down. If Magee could expand his enterprise and start selling bunting to the Fenians he knew he could be on to a winner. But it was a mad thought and he knew it! To turn out the green and yellow of papist treachery in the heart of loyalist Portadown! Through his butchering business he had occasional contact with the Fenians, bartering with them through the rituals of fair days, necessary if distasteful intercourse. He knew how untrustworthy they could be in financial matters. But that wasn’t the only snag. Before he could even consider such a scheme he would have to obtain the blessing of the big boys. The ‘GPs’ as they liked to call themselves! Had he the nerve to approach them, offering them a percentage, come rain or shine, in exchange for their approval? Or was he mad altogether, getting himself mixed up with the men in black glasses? He was still wavering when McCoy’s message arrived, summoning him to the Shambles.

Every since the débâcle with the dancing statue, he had been giving the Reverend Oliver Cromwell McCoy a wide berth. McCoy might be a true blue bigot, but he had an uncanny knack of ballsing up everything he touched. And since his daughter’s disappearance, Magee knew he had forsaken the preaching and was reduced to scrounging drink round the back of the Boyne bar. But when the boy appeared from Armagh with the news that Brother Murphy was in urgent need of papal flags, that he was buying only the best, and that (unheard of for a Christian Brother) he was paying cash on the nail, Magee swallowed his principles and set off for the town to check things out for himself.

‘Where’s that girl of yours now that we need her?’ he demanded. ‘I could have done with an extra pair of hands.’

‘She’ll be back in her own good time, never fret,’ her father said. ‘When she tires of the bright lights of London.’

Chastity McCoy, the preacher’s daughter, had walked out on him on Christmas Eve, disappearing from the Martyrs Memorial Chapel like a thief in the night without as much as goodbye. Her desertion of him hadn’t come as a total surprise to her father, for the pair of them had been fighting like cat and dog for the best part of a year. But she had packed her bags this time, taking with her what scanty possessions she could call her own, and it was beginning to look as if she had gone for good.

‘London!’ Magee spat on the hearth at the mention of the place. ‘You should have married her off the day she turned fourteen. Many’s a farmer would have been glad of her, and there’d have been less lip out of the same lady.’

‘I’m only relieved she’s safe,’ McCoy said. Since she had flown the nest he had discovered a soft spot for Chastity. He regretted now that he hadn’t treated her better. ‘There was a card from her this morning. Old King George, no less.’ He reached up to the mantelpiece and took down a tattered postcard. King George the Sixth, looking ill at ease, stared back at them, framed by his family and the household dogs. ‘I swear I was having nightmares she’d been kidnapped and I’d have to fork out good money to rescue her.’ He turned the card over and read once more the message on the back. ‘She sends you her best at any rate,’ he said. ‘“Greetings from the heart of the Empire. Give Mister Magee my regards.” There you are! Mentioned in dispatches.’

‘No doubt the same lady will be back when it suits her, eating you out of house and home.’

‘And she’ll be welcome. There is more joy in heaven over one who is lost …’

Magee cut him short. ‘About these flags … ?’

‘I heard it from that scut from Tyrone.’

‘The bucko who’s never out of the Patriot’s across the way?’

‘As tight as an arsehole, like the whole shooting gallery of them. But it appears half Tyrone has been cutting up sheets this past month and they still can’t meet the demand.’

‘The Fenians must have something special planned,’ Magee said with suspicion.

‘What concern is that of you or me, Mister Magee! Let the Romanists damn themselves in whatever way they want. You, Sir, are an entrepreneur.’

Magee pondered this news for a while. Then he came to a decision. If the Fenians needed flags badly enough to be paying for them he was their man!

‘I’ll need all the rags I can get my hands on,’ he demanded.

‘If you think I’m going round the doors collecting hand-me-down drawers …’

‘Send McGuffin! What else is he good for?’

‘Fuck all else and that’s the truth,’ McCoy said. ‘But I can hardly have him put down after all the trouble he’s put me to.’

Outside the window, cowering on his mattress under the ice-cream van, they could make out the shadow of the renegade. Patrick Pearse McGuffin cut a pathetic figure, a Belfast man, a native of the Falls Road, who had turned his back on his faith and his people, to embrace the dubious pleasures preached by McCoy. It had been the action of a desperate man to desert Father Alphonsus on his pilgrimage to Lough Derg, an action that had left him friendless in a bitter land. It had been the action of an even more desperate man to convert to McCoy. If the truth were to be told, his conversion to the loyalist lifestyle had not been totally voluntary. But beggars can’t be choosers and as a runaway his hopes for the good life were sorely curtailed. When he had taken the soup Patrick Pearse had dropped the Republican forenames in an effort to integrate into his new surroundings, but changing your name was an old McGuffin trick that fooled no one; and since the day he had embraced the Lord as his personal saviour, McGuffin had been lucky to eke out a precarious existence round the Martyrs Memorial.

‘Did the girl leave on account of him? Was he bothering her?’ Magee demanded.

McCoy shook his head. ‘Chastity was always headstrong. Like her mother.’

‘I’ll wring that wee bitch’s neck when I see her next!’ Magee declared. ‘Just when she could have been some use.’ There was something about Chastity’s disappearance that made him uneasy. He lifted the postcard down from the mantelpiece and scrutinized it again. The postmark was smudged. It could have been from anywhere. The lassie was giving nothing away either. No address, no details. Just a message in her neatest handwriting telling them not to worry. Inside Magee’s gut an icy finger of doubt began to stir.

He outlined his scheme to meet the Fenians’ demands to Lily that night as she was scrubbing herself down at the scullery sink.

‘Do you want your head examined?’ she asked.

‘There’s no harm in trying,’ he insisted.

‘And get the pair of us lynched! It’s bad enough you have me walking round like a Union Jack! How in the name of God can I put my face out that door and me green, white and yellow!’

‘If anybody’s bothering you, you refer them to me.’

‘They’re already complaining about the black pudding.’

‘I’ll get it cleared at the highest level. I’ll take a wee run over to the doctor’s next week.’

‘You’ll do no such thing! Do you want us killed in our beds?’

‘You’re afraid of your own shadow! What harm is there in putting it to them as a business proposition!’

‘Those are the same boys who’d drop you in the shite if anything goes wrong. Take my advice and stay well away from that crowd. I don’t see your buddy McCoy getting too closely involved.’

‘McCoy would only balls it up. Besides what use is he with the daughter gone?’

‘I never liked that wee bitch,’ Lily said with sudden vehemence. ‘She had her mother’s snotty looks. Too good for the Shambles. He’s well rid of her.’

‘She’s run off before,’ Magee said uneasily, ‘but never for as long as this.’

‘If the pair of you had taken my advice you’d have put her out to service years ago,’ she grumbled. They were offering a fair price on the Antrim plateau for girls willing to work. Not that the bold Chastity was ever any use except for giving cheek and eating him out of house and home.’

‘The same lady will be back, mark my words. To embarrass the lot of us unless I’m very wrong.’

‘If McCoy had wanted a woman that bad,’ she said, remembering the Señora, ‘why couldn’t he have stuck to his own sort instead of running after darkies? What was wrong with a decent Ulster Protestant?’ She turned her rump towards Magee by way of invitation. Lily’s was a solid arse, an arse bred of generations of Protestants, now faintly stained in variegated patriotic hues. It was an arse as solid, reliable and unexciting as the plains of Antrim or the farming land of North Armagh. Magee closed his eyes and conjured up a memory of the Mexican, her sultry looks, her voluptuous body, her dark hair cascading in wanton profusion. Señora McCoy was dead and buried a decade ago, but an old, guilty lust began to stir somewhere deep in him. He pulled Lily roughly towards him and began to fumble inexpertly at the strings of her pinny.

Round Armagh there were other omens that springtime, foretelling imminent changes. The uneasy equilibrium of the town was about to tilt again. The tinkers with their gift of second sight were the first to grow suspicious. In old Cardinal Mac’s day tinkers would be for ever round the back door of the Palace of Ara Coeli, squatting stoically in the lee of the limestone wall, knowing there’d be either a handout or a bollocking before the end of the day, for you took the old man as you found him. And even after Big Mac had taken to his bed, which he did in the last years, they could rely on Major-domo MacBride to see them right. But all that had suddenly changed. Those who trekked up the hill now from the Shambles to Ara Coeli, found Schnozzle Durante O’Shea in residence and every door and window bolted against them. The place was sealed as tight as a drum. Tighter than the Sistine Chapel during a contested consistory. Every window shuttered, every door fastened. Not a sign of Major-domo Mac-Bride nor the staff of skivvies who worked under him.

And strangest of all, not a sighting of Schnozzle himself since Christmas. Curious and mysterious behaviour for a party who had been, until his recent elevation to the Primacy, so keen to keep poking his nose in the public’s business.

The tinkers cursed the new man on the hill when they returned to the Shambles, cursed him and his new ways more openly than any local would have dared, for tinkers are a law unto themselves, beyond even the reaches of the Sisters. There was a notice on the saloon door expressly barring travellers from the Patriot Arms, but Eugene served them through the window, letting them squabble and spit in the entry till their money was through. Tinkers were the prime source of information in the countryside; there was little they didn’t know. He listened to their complaints and forebodings without a word. And when they had gone he sent next door for Peadar the vegetable man, ordered him to close up the stall forthwith, to proceed to the cathedral on the hill above, to recce the territory and to report on what was going on.

‘The whole place is locked and barred,’ Peadar told the company when he returned, pale and terrified that evening. ‘There’s definitely something up! No one allowed in or out, Schnozzle’s orders.’

‘Holy God! That sounds ominous.’

‘You’d think he’d be out and about, making a name for himself, instead of closeted away,’ the Tyrone man ventured. ‘Now that you mention it, we haven’t seen hilt nor hair of the major-domo.’

‘Aren’t I telling you, they’re all confined to barracks,’ Peadar said. ‘The breadman is stopped at the gate. The milkman too. With the Little Sisters sniffing every bottle before they take it inside. The grounds are sealed off. The Sisters patrolling the gardens with walkie-talkies and some class of an Alsatian they’ve got their hands on. A fucker that would take the leg off you quick enough!’ He had been forced to make an ignominious retreat in the face of the dog when he had stumbled on a posse of Sisters, their faces blackened, bivouacked near the tomb of old Cardinal Mac.

‘A special retreat or something?’ speculated the man from Tyrone. ‘Praying for the soul of poor old Ireland? I’d have said myself it’s a bit late for that.’

‘I was wondering why young Frank hadn’t shown his face. When he first got the job he’d be in here every morning,’ Eugene said.

‘The lad hasn’t been home since Christmas,’ the Tyrone man told him. ‘He’s cooped up with the rest of them. All leave cancelled till further notice. His poor mother’s half out of her mind.’

‘You’re still interested in that quarter, I see,’ said Peadar bitterly. ‘Tell us, which gives you the bigger hard-on, dreaming about the widow or dreaming about her ten acres?’

‘Fuck off with your dirty talk!’ the Tyrone man told him. ‘The farm is nothing but a liability.’

‘The young pup left his bicycle in the passage. I’m never done tripping over it.’

‘They’re saying you can see strange lights playing round the tomb of Cardinal Mac at night. Great devotion is getting up already, and him hardly cold in the grave.’

‘And now I hear there’s a big order out for papal flags. Where’s Snotters MacBride now that we need him to give us the lowdown?’

‘Someone somewhere has a treat in store for us,’ said Eugene dubiously, catching perfectly the mood of the occasion.

Mister MacBride, they all acknowledged, was a martyr to the lumbago. And though it was somewhat infra dig for a man in his position to be found drinking on the Shambles, hardly a night would pass that Snotters didn’t slip down to the Patriot’s for a medicinal rum and black. Though he wore the Pioneer Pin proudly, he would allow Eugene to urge a second or a third glass on him to ease the ache in his joints, and with his tongue thus loosened he could be pressed discreetly for details of the comings and goings on the hill.

‘It’s not like Snotters to desert us in our hour of need,’ the Tyrone man said again. ‘It must be a three line whip. If you ask me it’s the thin end of the wedge. If somebody doesn’t get a grip, the head-the-balls from Fermanagh will be up to their tricks again.’ And at the mention of Fermanagh the bar fell silent. With the coming of the long nights they knew it could only be a matter of weeks before the Derrygonnelly Donatists started to feel the Spirit moving among them again. And without the Palace for protection, who could say how far things might deteriorate this time?

The GPs’ surgery was a small room at the back of the lounge that Billy kept reserved for any passing member of the profession who might drop in to entertain colleagues and to discuss patients and their upcoming treatment. Though a hard man in anyone’s books, even Billy felt uneasy till his guests had gone silently about their business. These were men you didn’t mess with. Men you didn’t question, men you didn’t contradict. They arrived unexpectedly by taxi, flanked by their minders and personal assistants, looking relaxed and exuding bonhomie, but behind the dark glasses their eyes were cold. When there was company in the back room an unnatural quietness fell on the bar. There was no singing, no raucous ribaldry. A careless word could give offence. Billy’s regulars kept their noses in their pints and their eyes to themselves; only the very drunk or the very foolhardy ever staggered in from the saloon to interrupt their conferences or regale them with unsolicited camaraderie. For the man who can pay a house call is one of a very special breed.

To give Billy his due, though he had done his share in the Loyalist cause, he had never made a house call. He lacked the bedside manner. But he recognized and admired the talent in others. The true GP is a professional, a member of a unique brotherhood, who can officiate at death and take it in his stride. Billy could picture how they went about their business. The playful chiming of the bells in the hall, tinkling the theme from Z Cars, announces to the excited children that there is a visitor at the front door. Soft voices, solicitously inquiring of the youngsters if Daddy by any chance is in? But Daddy will be in; the GP will have checked in advance. Into the hall and through to the kitchen, as casual and natural as a member of the family. Daddy is behind the table, eating his tea and watching the box. The GP, unruffled, opens his bag and delicately removes the tools of his trade. Daddy’s brains splatter the chattering television and congeal on the fry, while the baby gurgles vacantly at the stranger and the children stand helpless and embarrassed at the foot of the stairs. The GP is in no hurry out, closing the door behind him quietly. There is no need for conversation. It is too late for speeches, for recriminations, for anger, for abuse. Only the new widow, running flushed to the banisters above will interrupt the banal normality of the scene with her sudden screaming.

The Boyne Lounge, already subdued by the presence of company in the surgery, fell silent when Magee entered. He wasn’t a regular and like all Portadown men he was rarely welcome on licensed premises. But Magee needed no whiskey to fortify himself. He indicated to Billy that his business was in the back room. Billy slipped away and returned a moment later to inform him that they would see him now.

McCoy was scrutinizing the latest postcard from Chastity when Magee arrived next morning to tell him that they were in business. The boys in the dark glasses had given their grudging blessing to his interdenominational scheme. They had spelled out the exact percentage of his profits they would be expecting, and outlined to him the penalties that nonpayment would incur. He didn’t need their reminder that any cock-ups, especially in a venture involving the papists, would not be appreciated. ‘Put that away and get off your arse!’ he ordered McCoy. ‘It’s all systems go! Lily’ll need all the rags you can get your hands on.’

‘Would you look at the weather they’re enjoying in London,’ McCoy said, ignoring his impatience. ‘Couldn’t we do with a bit of it here once in a while.’ He held out for Magee’s perusal the sepia portrait of the dowager Queen Mary at her most disapproving.

But Chastity McCoy was nowhere near Buckingham Palace. Unknown to McCoy and Magee on the one side of the Shambles, and to Eugene and the Patriot on the other (and certainly unsuspected by the boys in Billy’s back room), unknown in fact to everyone but Archbishop Schnozzle O’Shea, Chastity was at that precise moment no more than a stone’s throw away, locked in the attic at Ara Coeli. And though she could glimpse nothing through the skylight but the gilded cross atop one of the spires, she could recognize every muffled noise from the Shambles below and was sobbing with homesickness. But the door was locked. Nor would it would have done her much good had it been open, for the door beyond that was locked, and the great front door too. And Schnozzle had the keys in his pocket, where he checked them with obsessive regularity every five minutes.

Suddenly the window frame shook and the room vibrated as the bell from the north tower began to toll the Angelus. It was a sound that could be heard all over the county, a summons to the faithful to stop what they were doing and face the church on the hill, united in prayer. Chastity had heard the Angelus bell every day of her childhood, journeying with her father in the ice-cream van to the loyalist townlands, proclaiming the Crucified Jesus. She had seen the papist farmers in the fields cross themselves when it tolled. Her father had always cursed its intrusion on his preaching, cursed the papists for their superstition and blind adherence to the error of their ways, cursed their priests for whoremongers and parasites and their pontiff as the Antichrist himself. Now for the first time she understood the ritual of its summons. She crossed herself carefully and knelt to pray before the picture of the Dancing Madonna.

When she had first presented herself at his kitchen door asking for religious instruction, Archbishop Schnozzle’s immediate reaction was suspicion. He smelled a rat. A childhood round the Shambles had tutored him well in the wiles of the other side. But closer inspection revealed that the girl with the battered suitcase standing in the snow was indeed Chastity McCoy. Was it a trick or was it God’s work? He felt his heart racing. It was a miracle in itself that she had got past the guards, for the Sisters of the True Faith should have picked her up at the bottom of the Cathedral steps. He opened the door cautiously, checked that the coast was clear, and invited her to step inside.

‘Did your father send you?’ he demanded, still looking for the catch.

‘I came on my own.’

‘Does he know you’re here?’

‘He’d kill me if he knew!’

‘Did anyone follow you?’

‘I saw no one.’

‘Did the Sisters not challenge you?’

‘They were asleep.’

‘What age are you?’

‘I’m fourteen.’

‘Do you realize what you are doing?’

‘I’m old enough to make my own decisions.’

‘You know you can never go back?’

‘I know that. Am I safe here?’

‘You have my word on it!’

She would have his word indeed! A cast iron guarantee! For no one in Ireland had followed the story of Chastity McCoy more closely than Schnozzle. He knew every detail of her strange upbringing, a childhood steeped in the bigotry that was her father’s hallmark. It had all started with the arrival of Ramirez, the apostate priest and his blasphemous circus, who travelled the roads at McCoy’s bidding to shame and outrage the Catholic people. He remembered all too well her late mother, a one-time nun seduced away from the convent to join in this provocative charade. He could say with pride that he himself was the only man brave enough to confront them, to stalk them fearlessly from townland to townland, risking the wrath of Magee and his bully boys. Schnozzle foretold that it would end badly and when he heard that Ramirez had been murdered he knew he had been proved right. God was not mocked! But what was he to make of the corollary to this tale of shame? The Señora moving into the Shambles with McCoy, heavy with his child? For years it had troubled him, this enigma of the half-caste girl playing in the gutters on the Protestant side of the square. If God had a plan in all this, Schnozzle couldn’t see it. He reluctantly accepted that the ways of the Almighty might not be ours. He prayed that the blood in her veins would one day prove unsuited to the cold Presbyterian ways of Armagh. And in time his patience was rewarded.

The rumours at first were will-o’-the-wisps, ephemeral whisperings, fading away to nothing when he tried to pin them down. Ireland had always been full of rumours, of visitations and apparitions and miracles, all promising deliverance from the horrors we had brought on ourselves. At first he dismissed them, but they persisted. There was something unsettling about them, something that marked them out from the ordinary run of superstition, these whispers from Donegal of a broken chapel at the end of the Yellow Meal Road, in a place they mockingly called Ballychondom. Whispers of a dancing Madonna, a mysterious icon, a statue of unrivalled potency. He began to hear of powerful cures for the sick and wonderful promises of the nation united under the leadership of the One True Church. Briefly Schnozzle dared to hope.

But the tale, so full of expectation, had ended suddenly in shame and humiliation. The rumours that reached the palace now spoke of dark and treacherous deeds. He heard how McCoy and the girl had ventured to the very end of the Yellow Meal Road and stolen the Dancing Madonna on the eve of Her Epiphany. Stolen it for an exhibit in a peepshow, to mock him and his people once more. Terror and bloodshed still ruled the land, tolerance remained as elusive as ever. Protestant and Catholic still slaughtered each other with ritual regularity.

Few now remembered, or cared to remember, the Madonna of Ballychondom. She had been consigned to the scrapheap of collective memory, along with a thousand other lost hopes and false dawns. But Schnozzle hadn’t forgotten her. He still clung to a wisp of hope. For one rumour, stranger than all the others, had reached his ears. A sting in the tail so implausible that it could only be true. The Little Sisters had reported to him that on her trip to Donegal with her father the Madonna had danced for Chastity McCoy.

When the door was safely bolted he sat her down at the kitchen table and gave her the third degree for a bit, to allay any residual suspicions, but her answers measured up. What had given her confidence to cross the Shambles and turn her back on her father and his heresy? Shyly she hinted at the presence of Patrick Pearse McGuffin round the place, and Schnozzle, though his eyes never left her, offered up a pious ejaculation to the Sacred Heart for His mysterious ways. To be on the safe side, though, he’d have Immaculata give her a full gynaecological examination in a while to check if she was a virgin or not. Immaculata was a veteran among veterans of the never-ending abortion struggle; the foetus had yet to be conceived that could escape her stringent searches. Was McGuffin her boyfriend, Schnozzle asked, all smiles now? Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t was all she would concede. He pressed her further. Was she expecting? She blushed, denied it vehemently, began to cry and got up to leave. He put his hand firmly on her shoulder and let her cry; these were things he had a right to ask. If, with the help of God, she joined the Church, she would have to answer questions like these every week in the confessional.

He was on the point of questioning her about the Missing Madonna, but he bit his tongue. An inner voice counselled caution. This was something that could wait. He had gleaned enough already to know that these were deep waters. He knew that the three of them had seen Her dance and heard Her message. An unlikely trio they were too! Frank Feely, a simpleton from the hills above the town. Noreen Moran, gauche and unschooled, the child of a spoiled priest forced to share her father’s wretched exile. And Chastity McCoy, least likely of the threesome! A ragged half-breed from across the Shambles. He had the boy in service below stairs where he could keep an eye on him in person. Noreen was in the convent in Caherciveen out of harm’s way. He had a monthly report from the Reverend Mother on her spiritual progress. And here was the third of them, landing on his doorstep without benefit of preliminaries. Subtlety and patience had never been virtues that Schnozzle admired, but for once he knew better than to go probing too deeply the will of the Almighty. All would be revealed in time. In the meantime there were a thousand practical details to attend to.

Already his mind was racing with the responsibility of the project. How much time had he got? How long would it be before McCoy sobered up and spotted that the bird had flown? Was there some way he could throw him off the scent till the job was done? Normally it would take a year’s instruction to turn a Protestant, but given the girl’s pedigree could the job be expedited? He had a month, two if he was lucky. It would have to be done by Easter. She would receive instruction under conditions of the greatest secrecy, and her conversion would only be announced when it was complete.

But then what was to become of her?

Anywhere in Ireland would be out of the question. She would have to be returned to Mexico. It was the only place she would be safe. Was there anyone he could rely on there? Mentally he ran through a list of those with experience in Latin America. Father Alphonsus was the man he needed! Father Alphonsus had connections in Tijuana, he remembered. When the time came, Chastity would return to the land of her forefathers, and the great sin of her mother would be expiated. He looked up in gratitude at the portrait that hung over the Adam fireplace. A hint of a smile was playing round the lips of old Cardinal Mac. Schnozzle dropped to his knees on the Persian rug, gave the girl his rosary beads, and showed her how to count them as he offered up the five decades of the joyful mysteries. Our Blessed Lady had answered his prayers! Saint Jude had intervened on his behalf! The old Cardinal’s dream, of one, just one lost sheep returning to the true fold, had come spectacularly true! He had the genuine article on his hands at last.

On the mantelpiece beneath Big Mac’s portrait, propping up the Peter’s Pence inventory, stood three fading photographs in silver frames. He picked up the middle one and stroked his nose. Then with the air of a man making a momentous decision, he ripped the backing from the frame and removed the picture of King George.

The young Schnozzle O’Shea had grown up believing that the late king of England was the father he had never known. It was a strange fantasy for a boy from the slums of the Shambles. A dangerous fantasy too, for such an idea might be construed as a denial of the men of 1916 and could get you kneecapped, or worse. But Schnozzle’s childish loyalty to the House of Windsor was based on the evidence before him. Throughout his youth, the face of the old King had stared down on him with bovine resignation from the dresser. His Majesty formed the central panel of a royal triptych, his picture flanked by sepia lithographs featuring the youthful princesses, his dumpy queen and his haughty mother. No other house on the Shambles would dare display the portrait of the British monarch, tempting as it did summary court martial at the hands of the forces of the Republic. But old Mrs O’Shea was acknowledged by one and all to be several coppers short of the full shilling. There were few visitors to her house, and fewer still who needed to be ushered into the parlour where these strange icons held pride of place.

The pictures were a memento, the only memento, of his real father, who had taken the mailboat to England the day before he was born and had never returned. They had arrived together in the post the morning of his birth, a concertina of perforated postcards, bearing no forwarding address. Where other children grew up believing in Santa Claus, Schnozzle O’Shea grew up believing that the man in the beard would one day arrive on the doorstep and claim him. He would have done better with Santa. Even round the Shambles, Santa was good for a Bramley apple, a tangerine, and a Roy Rogers sixshooter in the stocking. When George the Sixth died, shunning the Shambles to the end, Schnozzle’s hopes died too. When he had grown old enough to stand on tiptoe and see himself in the mirror he realized that not even the Battenbergs could have bequeathed him a nose like the one he saw reflected there. He set aside his dream and turned to the cultivation of his vocation, knowing now that he was on his own.

But our childhood dreams never fade completely. A resonance lingers. His mother died before he was ordained. When he cleared the house the only souvenirs he took back to Maynooth were the faded postcards from the dresser. And now it looked as if the hand of God had intervened, and that the old monarch had a purpose after all.

‘Let’s send your daddy a postcard,’ he told the girl. ‘To stop him worrying.’

‘Mister Magee too,’ she said. ‘He’s worse than my da!’

‘You can set his mind at rest while you’re at it. What could be more appropriate than one of His Majesty? The Christian Brothers will see that it’s delivered first thing on Boxing Day.’

Then he rang for Immaculata McGillicuddy.

Frank Feely had been on his way home when he found the kitchen door bolted against him. He rattled it a few times, knowing it for a door that stuck easily in the damp weather. But when Sister Immaculata appeared at the noise, took him firmly by the ear and led him without another word back inside, he realized that something was up and knew better than to start asking questions. All day and all evening he sat in the scullery, listening to the muffled sounds of the house, the frantic scurrying of feet and the far-off ringing of the telephone. As it grew dark Major-domo MacBride appeared, looking flustered and ill at ease.

‘My mother will be worried if I don’t get home,’ Frank told him.

‘There’s nothing to be done about it! She’ll just have to fret like the rest of them.’

‘Any idea what’s up?’

Mister MacBride looked at him. ‘Nobody tells the likes of us anything. But there’s a three line whip out. No one in and no one out till his nibs gives the order. If you take my advice you’ll lie low till whatever it is blows over.’

It was as well he got on with the major-domo for Snotters was a petulant wee man, inflated by notions of his own importance, who could have made his life a misery. He had served the old Cardinal and his humble needs for forty years, supervising the kitchen and the cellar, checking the linen when it returned from the convent laundry, cuffing the young servants into line. He liked the title ‘Major-domo’ and the quasi-clerical soutane that went with the job. The permanent candlestick of red eczema hanging from his nose and the hint of a hare lip had earned him the nickname Snotters round the Shambles, but they never used it to his face, for the major-domo was touchy to a fault. Frank always gave him his title, even in the Patriot’s of an evening when he called to collect his bike and answer Eugene’s gentle interrogation.

The major-domo had belted him round the ear often enough in the first months, when Frank was still cack-handed and awkward with the clumsy kitchen implements, cutting himself as he peeled the sprouts or scalding himself as he teemed the potatoes. But he learned fast, and in the slack periods after breakfast, the major-domo would sit him down and make him learn his declensions, over and over till he was word perfect. ‘Do you want to be a skivvy all your life?’ he would shout, if Frank hesitated over the dative or the ablative. ‘Book learning is the only way a lad like you will ever make anything of yourself. Your father, God rest him, would have wanted more from you.’

He had begun to grow during his time in the kitchen. The food that came daily from the college farm was nothing but the best, floury red King Edwards, a churn of buttermilk for the soda farls, yellow butter and long root vegetables. They killed their pigs in the autumn and salted the carcases for the rest of the year. There were chickens and boiling fowl for holy days of obligation, salmon from the Blackwater and Warrenpoint herrings for Friday abstinence. But Schnozzle was a picky eater. He would turn up his nose at everything, pushing away his plate half-eaten, to the despair of the major-domo. ‘You’re a growing boy,’ Mr MacBride said as yet another plate of bacon and cabbage returned untouched from the master’s study. ‘Waste not, want not,’ he said, beckoning the boy to the kitchen table. Frank rarely needed a second invitation.

Not all his time was spent in the scullery. Sometimes, if Schnozzle rang for a sherry late at night, the major-domo would send him to the drawing-room with the fresh decanter, spitting on his hair and smoothing it down before he let him out of his sight, and reminding him every step of the way to mind his manners, not to speak till he was spoken to, and not for the love of the suffering Jesus to drop anything. In the corner of the study the machines kept up their endless chatter, ticker tape and telex and telephone, monitoring the moral pulse of the nation. From every parish in the land the information poured in round the clock. The Archbishop sat humped over the computer screen, a silent spider at the centre of a web of information. Frank would slip unobtrusively into the room, set the sherry down on the occasional table and try to slip out again. But Schnozzle would call to him to stop, order him to stand against the light, scrutinizing his profile for the features of his father Joe. He knew the details of Frank’s upbringing. How as a boy he had been dragged through every parish in the land as Joe searched for a cure for his affliction. He knew too that his speech and his understanding had been miraculously restored by the intervention of the Silent Madonna herself. And though the boy was still gauche and ill at ease, Schnozzle could recognize in him a certain quality that made him both excited and uneasy.

‘How old are you now, boy?’

‘Fifteen, Your Grace.’

‘Have you cultivated a special devotion to Our Blessed Lady?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

‘Do you practise the virtue of Holy Purity?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

‘You’re attentive in your spiritual duties?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

‘Do you pray for the repose of the soul of your poor father, God rest him?’

‘Every day, Your Grace.’

‘You’re not neglectful of your studies?’

‘No, Your Grace.’

‘And Mister MacBride looks after you well enough?’

‘He does, Your Grace.’

But there were no further conversations after the mystery guest appeared. No further visits to the drawing-room. All areas were out of bounds. Frank found himself banned from everywhere but the kitchen, ordered to sleep in the scullery and wash at the cold tap. The Sisters were suddenly everywhere, at his elbow when he bent over the jawbox to scrub the carrots and among the pots and pans when he tried to cook them, checking and rechecking his every movement, censoring all idle speculation. Every door had its turnkey. A tense silence had fallen over the house. No phones rang. He knew better than to speak to the major-domo, or even to catch his eye.

But alone among the cockroaches, night after night, Frank could hear the faint faraway sound of a young girl weeping. It haunted his dreams. He knew that the crying came from the deserted attic at the top of the house. It was the crying of a tortured soul, a cry that echoed the accumulated terrors of his native land.

The path that leads to Truth is never an easy one. And for someone raised in bigotry it can prove particularly stony. Schnozzle knew that if he relaxed his vigilance she would be gone, running down the long steps that led to the Shambles, scurrying across the wide square to the Protestant quarter where her father would be waiting for her, belt in hand, to welcome her back into heresy. But with God’s help, he told himself, that would never happen. Long days and longer nights followed, the Archbishop and the girl closeted together, going over and over again the mysteries of the true faith. She learned by rote the catechism and the creed; she recited the unfamiliar prayers till she had them word perfect; she practised her responses till they were automatic. He coached her in how to lead the rosary and how to comport herself during Mass. He explained patiently the true meaning of the miracles at Lourdes, Fatima and Knock. She was a keen pupil, with a ready grasp of the intricacies of the faith as he unfolded them to her. With the help of God, he told himself, she would make a lovely convert. By the beginning of Lent the girl knew enough about the Trinity and the mystery of Transubstantiation to pass muster and it was time to get down to what really mattered, what would make a real Catholic of her.

Sex!

As he prepared her for her first confession, he explained to her how she should examine her conscience. He probed her soul for sins. He winkled out her impure thoughts. Her innermost fantasies were exposed and analysed. He told her about hell and purgatory and the terrors that lie ahead for the unclean in spirit. He questioned her again and again about Patrick Pearse McGuffin, the gorge rising in his throat every time he pronounced the name. Had he interfered with her? Had he kissed her? Had he put his hands on her breasts? Up her skirt? How far? How often? Had she enjoyed it? What had she done in return? Chastity was as pure a virgin as any convent school girl, but she learned to answer these and other questions without tears and without embarrassment, in a spirit of thoughtful remorse.

They discussed sex in marriage, they discussed sex outside marriage. Every aspect of carnality was dissected and analysed. Like every member of his celibate profession, Schnozzle was an authority on sex. He knew with unerring certainty the Church’s position on every aspect of the marriage bed. No man in Ireland could hold a candle to Schnozzle O’Shea when it came to knowing about women and their sexuality. From the confessional he had learned of their little ways and wiles. There was not an orifice of the female body that he had not explored and dissected with the aid of the Church Fathers. He knew the precise viscosity of the mucus on the vaginal walls at the time of ovulation, and the mean temperature of the urine in the week before ovulation. To within an hour, maybe less, he could instruct the women of Ireland on the exact time for coition to fall within the morally acceptable safe period. He could advise on the best moment for conception to occur, and the best position for it. He knew every pore of their bodies, their changing smells as the cycle of fertility waxed and waned with the passing month, their swelling bellies when they were pregnant, their emissions and discharges, shows and flushes, menstrual, pre-menstrual and postnatal. He hovered vicariously at the elbow of the gynaecologists in the Mater Hospital, advising them of their moral responsibilities, giving them permission to break the waters or forbidding them from inducing labour. In all matters of reproduction he stood above contradiction. He could tell to a centimetre, to a millimetre, how far penile penetration must go for it to be within the natural law. He could calculate the degree of guilt attached to each party when anal penetration had been attempted or even considered. He could spell out, for those contemplating matrimony, the four requirements of canon law, erictio, introducio, penetratio, et ejaculatio, and how they must take their appointed order before he could be certain that a pious consummation had taken place. He knew the difference between praecox voluntare and involuntare and the respective degrees of divine wrath attaching to each. Any attempt to frustrate the fullness of the sexual act he was wise to.

Chastity took notes and learned them thoroughly before each confrontation. They devoted a month to contraception alone, leaving no stone unturned till he was sure she fully grasped the difference between mortal and venial digressions. But it all seemed to come naturally to her. When she told him on Palm Sunday that she had awakened to find the picture of the Madonna smiling at her, the crude features in Sharkey’s painting rearranged into a smile of beatific acknowledgement, he knew that her doubts and fears were behind her.

Old Cardinal Mac had his miracle! He was home and dry!

Brother Murphy appeared on the Shambles on Good Friday morning with a ladder, a cartload of flags and a dozen shivering orphans. He propped the ladder up against the Patriot’s gable and without as much as a by-your-leave ordered one of the lads up to check if the gutter would hold. The other boys clambered on to the roofs of the low houses at the top of Irish Street, hauling coils of bunting behind them. The work went on all morning, and by the time they had bedecked the south side of the square Brother Murphy had lathered himself into a right state. After the Angelus he retired to the Patriot’s snug demanding free drink, running out occasionally to kick the backside of any orphan he found slacking off.

By nightfall the town was bedecked. The bunting fanned out from its epicentre in the Shambles down all the narrow streets of the Fenian quarter. The flags hung limply in the damp air the length of Thomas Street and Banbrook Hill; they doglegged into Dobbin Street, skirted one side of Callan Street and back over Windmill Hill. They faltered a little as they crossed into the mixed territory round Abbey Street, but when they took the left-hand bend into Irish Street again and ran its full length down to the Shambles they were a sight to behold. They fluttered and danced in the breeze, as numerous and promiscuous as the host of golden daffodils. A canopy of yellow and white arched over the entire street, transforming the familiar thoroughfare into something magical.

The people stood on their doorsteps and gazed in wonderment at the metamorphosis. No Fenian had ever seen flags like these. There was no denying it, Mister Magee had done them proud. ‘Somebody’s got a right treat in store for us and no mistake,’ said Eugene, surveying the boys’ handiwork through the window.

‘There’d be no harm in inquiring what it’s all in aid of?’ asked Peadar, emboldened by drink. Brother Murphy began to turn red, the veins in his neck bulging like taut hawsers. As is often the way with the Christian Brothers, the drink had made him querulous and the sight of a past pupil had inflamed him with dim memories of unfinished business. He lurched across to Peadar, lifted him by the scruff of the neck and began to cuff him round the head. ‘You were a pup then and you’re still a pup! I see you’ve no more manners now than you had in Book Three!’ Eugene didn’t interfere. The bar was as good as empty anyway, even the Tyrone man having taken his custom elsewhere. A Christian Brother on the premises was always bad for business. He poured another rum, knowing the Brother would need it when he’d finished with the greengrocer. He made it a double. With God’s help Brother Murphy would pass out on the floor before long. He could see the foundlings standing outside in the rain, waiting to wheel him home.

When he realized the extent of the Romanists’ preparations McCoy grew worried. It was one thing to sell the Fenians flags for special occasions. It was another thing altogether to have them turn the Shambles into the Papal States. This was a challenge that could not go unanswered. He sent for Magee post haste.

‘Suddenly we’re on all fours with the papists,’ Lily protested when she saw him parcelling up a jumbo-sized order of the red, white and blue. ‘You expect me to run the shop singlehanded while you gallivant off at McCoy’s beck and call!’ But she knew him too well to say any more. The Portadown soul loves to show the flag. The only thing that brightens the drab grey streets of his environment are the primary colours of the polyester triangles. But even Magee was unprepared for the show of Fenian defiance that greeted him when he hit Armagh. He stood at the door of the Martyrs Memorial Chapel and gazed with anger and incredulity over at the papist quarter. The Brothers’ boys had returned and were adding the finishing touches to their handiwork, fixing cardboard shields to the lampposts, portraying the emblems of the four provinces.

Magee spat into the gutter. ‘A man of my age has more to do than running up and down ladders. Is there still no sign of that girl of yours?’

‘Another postcard. The Little Princess, Margaret Rose.’

Magee turned his attention to the ice-cream van that was parked on the pavement behind them. Underneath it, up against the rusting exhaust pipe, Patrick Pearse McGuffin had fashioned a makeshift nest. Cardboard cartons had been torn in strips in an effort to keep the rain out, and there was a soggy mattress stuffed with discarded newspapers where the renegade now cowered. ‘Why keep a dog and bark yourself?’ Magee growled, striding towards the van.

Patrick Pearse McGuffin too had been looking out on the sea of papal splendour and dreaming of happier times. He had been dreaming of Saint Matt Talbot’s, the parish on the Falls which he would never see again, and the people of the ghetto he could never meet again. He knew in his heart of hearts that he belonged on the Falls, among the warmth of his own people squabbling in the ladder of backstreets that led down to the no man’s land round the abandoned peace line. But there would be no going home for McGuffin. Not this year, not next, not ever! They had their own ways for dealing with touts and informers where he came from. And if they needed any reminding of his perfidy, Father Alphonsus was still there, still condemned to eke out his days in Matt Talbot’s; and as long as Father Alphonsus was there, McGuffin would never see the Falls Road again.

But how much longer could he survive like this, away from his natural habitat? The Shambles was as foreign to him as Timbuctoo. It would never feel like home. These were not his streets. They had a different smell, a different sound. These were not his people either. Nor ever would be. He knew he was living on borrowed time, despite his insistence to any who would lend him an ear that he was now as good a Protestant as they, any day of the week. They could smell the Fenian on him still. He suffered daily ignominies, especially from the farmers when they had drink taken, or from the children in the gutters when he ventured out. He had learned to suffer their jibes and insults. He had learned too to live with his fear of the GPs who had left him alone so far. But he didn’t need McCoy’s reminder that they would eliminate him at the first hint of backsliding. The Protestants of Scotch Street might be accustomed to the sight of McGuffin running messages for McCoy, but one of these days he would be murdered before he’d reached the end of the road, and no one would raise a finger in his defence.

He was gazing at the riot of papal flags with tears in his eyes when his reverie was rudely interrupted by the butcher Magee’s boot demolishing his cardboard home and ordering him to get off his arse and start earning his keep.

Though he had to work far into the night, by morning the job was done. The red, white and blue fluttered the full length of English Street, down to Scotch Street, round the Mall and back up by way of College Street. The entire town was now decorated. Like isobars on a weather map, the interweaving colours of the flags delineated precisely the political affiliations of every street. In the Shambles itself the loyalist bunting zigzagged into the square, interfacing with the green and yellow over the latrine at the centre. Everything now stood in readiness for the epiphany of Chastity McCoy.

Forty miles to the east, in Saint Matt’s vestry at the foot of the Falls Road, Father Alphonsus McLoughlin knelt at the dying embers of the fire praying like a man condemned. You wouldn’t have known it to look at him now, for he was a gaunt figure, wasted to skin and bone, but luck had once smiled on Alphonsus McLoughlin. He had won the most coveted prize a Belfast priest can hope for, the sabbatical to California, to spread the faith among the beautiful people. Alphonsus had briefly felt the sun on his back and the warm Pacific breeze playing through his hair. He had gambolled chastely with the gilded youth in the surf off Big Sur, and had ridden the ferryboat daily to Sausalito. But the sun and the surf and the laughter of innocent voices was now only a distant memory. His tan and his accent had faded and the pallor and the harshness of the ghetto had returned to his face and his voice.

He looked up at the stern features of the Sacred Heart on the wall and redoubled his efforts, screwing his knuckles into his eyesockets and howling aloud the words of the De Profundis. Alphonsus had been praying without a break since Ash Wednesday. He had persevered in his Lenten vigil, fasting for forty days and forty nights, not a morsel of food passing his lips, a hunger strike to draw heaven’s attention to his plight. And now it was Holy Saturday night, the eve of Easter, the last day of Lent, and it was clear that the Sacred Heart was determined to let his suffering continue. In a few hours it would be dawn. There would be no reprieve, no escape. He rose from the lino, spat on the fire and cursed, as he did day and night, the name of Patrick Pearse McGuffin.

Alphonsus felt there was a jinx on him that no penance could lift. He was haunted by a guilt he could neither understand nor explain. What latent malignant force had he unwittingly unleashed that day he had gone into the mountains beyond Tijuana and brought back the figurine of the little Virgin? Had he been seduced by a graven image of idolatry? Had he become a catalyst for the slow blight that was spreading over the land and its people? And how could he atone for what he had started?

A faded tricolour hung from the gable of Saint Matthew’s vestry in deference to the season. But there was nothing but despair in Alphonsus’s heart. He crossed himself one last time. The features of the Sacred Heart above the mantelpiece stayed as stern as ever. If only he could be given a sign, just one, no matter how small, that he would not have to see out his days in this dreadful place among the McGuffins and their bastards, scraping for a living among the fetid backstreets of the shanty town. But the Sacred Heart, as so often, was keeping the cards close to His chest. Alphonsus started his last, desperate rosary unaware that back in Ara Coeli, the powerhouse of the organization to which he had devoted his life, Schnozzle had called a meeting to brief his senior staff, and that his own name was prominent on the agenda.

Major-domo MacBride was run off his feet. In all his days he had never known anything like it. There were bishops and archbishops from the four provinces, the papal legate in person, monsignors and administrators, all crowded into the boardroom upstairs with their personal staff. The back parlour was overcrowded with lesser clergy and selected laity, awaiting their orders. Sam O’Dowd of the Irish News was there, waiting patiently on the stairs for Schnozzle to check his spelling before he gave him the Imprimatur. Sister Immaculata McGillicuddy guarded the front door, showing each of the guests to their places. And to cap it all, John Joe Sharkey, the new Taoiseach, was there, ordered up from Dublin, slipping unnoticed over the border with his minder O’Malley. John Joe, like everyone else who had arrived, would have his part to play in the momentous events of the morrow.

‘There isn’t time to stand about!’ Immaculata shouted, bursting into the kitchen where the major-domo and Frank were having a well-earned smoke. ‘Their Lordships need more whiskey; a cappuccino for the papal nuncio, and a brandy for the Taoiseach. Quickly!’

‘Brandy if you please!’ shouted MacBride when she was out of earshot. ‘Whiskey is good enough for the cloth, but John Joe wants a brandy!’ He rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘Sit where you are,’ Frank said. ‘I’ll see to John Joe.’

‘You’ll be lucky!’ the major-domo declared, holding up the Napoleon Four Star. The lumbago had been playing him up all day and the bottle was as good as empty.

‘He’ll drink whiskey with the rest of them! What is he anyhow but a jumped-up gombeen man from Annagery,’ Frank said with sudden vehemence.

‘Spoken like a true man!’ the major-domo concurred. ‘Take it in to them while you’re on your feet. You’ll easy recognize the Taoiseach, he’s the one in the morning suit, done up like a conjuror on the London Palladium. You’ll find him in the corner with Schnozzle’s hand up his ass, pulling his strings,’

‘I’ll recognize him all right,’ Frank said. ‘I remember the same boy from long ago.’

Frank carried the Waterford decanter carefully up the wide staircase. With each step the noise of male bonhomie grew louder, with each step the smell of cigars and aftershave grew stronger. Here was power, palpable power, a heady sensation. He paused at the door, steadied the tray and pushed it open carefully. The bulky shape of John Joe’s bodyguard sprang forward, barring his way. O’Malley! He recognized at once the close-set eyes, the sweat-flecked jowls of the guard. It was not O’Malley’s first trip across the border since John Joe had plucked him out from his contemporaries for special duties. But the North left him feeling uneasy. Amid all the splendour of Ara Coeli he stood out like a sore thumb. He wouldn’t stop sweating till he’d delivered John Joe safely back to his fancy woman in Monaghan town. He took the decanter roughly from Frank and ordered him back below stairs. But not before the boy had caught a glimpse of the splendour within, of the red capes and purple robes of the hierarchy gathered round Schnozzle, vociferous in their congratulations. And a glimpse too of the man in the corner, John Joe Sharkey, whom he had last seen at the end of the Yellow Meal Road.

At the stroke of midnight, Schnozzle’s limousine sped quietly down the drive, crossed the square and headed out towards Belfast. Its siren was silent, its lights dimmed. Only the Patriot, the last defender of the purity of the national dream, keeping vigil at the window, witnessed its passing. ‘Tá gluaistean ar an bhóthair’ he called up to Eugene. There’s a car on the road. There had been a procession of motorcars up to the Palace all that afternoon, but this was the first movement out.

‘The Easter Bunny is off somewhere in a great hurry,’ Eugene observed, staggering to the window in time to see it speeding away from the Shambles. He caught a glimpse of Immaculata McGillicuddy sitting at the wheel, and despite a lifetime rigorously devoted to the military cause, found himself wincing at the thought.

Major-domo MacBride, sobered up with a pot of black coffee and hastily dressed in his best soutane and surplice, marched the servants in through the back door of the cathedral while it was still dark and ushered them into a corner behind a pillar. They huddled there as slowly the great cathedral came to life. One by one the priests of the parish filed out of the sacristy to say their trinity of masses at the scattered side altars. At ten o’clock the organ began to play, great improvised voluntaries of joy. At eleven the choir scrambled into the loft and sang a glorious Te Deum of thanksgiving. The pews began to fill, and Frank was soon conscious of the vast, expectant congregation that was crushing into every nook and cranny. And though he could see nothing of the ceremonies that began at the stroke of noon, he wasn’t long in realizing the true import of what was happening on the high altar. The clouds of incense that hung in the air told him that every clerical dignity in the land was in the church that day, and the voice of the organ and the sound of the choir underlined how momentous the occasion was.

The procession moved out from the Lady Chapel, ranks of dignitaries leading the swaying and buckling canopy. Under the cloth of gold, closely flanked by Schnozzle resplendent in Pascal robes, Frank caught a glimpse of a frail girl in a white dress, her face hidden under a veil. A shiver of terror ran through him for what it might presage.

She was baptized in the Lady Chapel by the Bishop of Derry as the choir sang ‘Hosanna’. She was led to the confession box where the Bishop of Galway was waiting in the dark compartment; she confessed her sins and was shriven. At the High Mass that followed she made her first communion, receiving the melting host from the hands of the Bishop of Down and Connor. And then, as the carillon pealed out the news to the waiting city, she was led up to the great high altar and there formally confirmed in her new faith by Schnozzle himself.

On the grave of Big Mac the scarlet fuchsia round the Celtic cross burst forth miraculously into unseasonal blossom.

The congregation erupted from the cathedral and poured down the hundred steps into the Shambles, shouting and chanting and giving thanks for the miracle they had just witnessed. They swarmed into the Patriot’s, regulars and teetotallers alike, filling the bar with their chatter. A group of them broke away, and emboldened by the occasion, crossed the square to taunt McCoy with the news of his daughter’s perfidy. But McCoy didn’t need to be told. The Irish News, a special colour edition, had already hit the streets, with the story on its front page, in capitals six inches high.

‘And to think I nearly missed it!’ said Peadar for the tenth time, regaling the company with news of his good fortune in witnessing the conversion of Chastity McCoy.

‘It was a great day for the town all right,’ said a wee man from Drumarg who had been stranded in the bar since early evening. From somewhere further up the town there came the dull thud of another explosion.

‘Not that I saw a thing with the crowds, and the leg killing me after kneeling so long on the cold marble.’

The Tyrone man was at the window, cautiously peering out at the riot through a crack in the plywood shutters. ‘It’s as good as over, I’d say,’ he said.

‘Go off home then!’ Peadar shouted.

‘I will like fuck! Magee and that crowd will be out and about and they won’t rest till they’ve killed someone.’

‘They’ll be out searching high and low for her, no doubt about it,’ said the wee man from Drumarg.

‘The trouble’s only starting, if you want my opinion,’ Peadar said.

‘Aren’t we as safe as houses where we are,’ the Tyrone man insisted, ‘with Eugene on the roof.’

The Tyrone man had been right. The riot was as good as over, but Eugene stuck to his place. From the skylight in the attic he had control over most of the Shambles, a clear line of sight halfway down Irish Street in one direction and in the other, over the roof of the Martyrs Memorial the length of English Street. The Armalite felt good against his cheek again. Good too to smell the cordite and hear grenades once more at Easter. In the Shambles below him no one was moving. The square was littered with glass and cobblestones and strewn with coils of collapsed bunting. Beyond the concrete latrine he could make out the giant ice-cream cone on the roof of McCoy’s Salvation Wagon. He took aim and gently squeezed off a round. The shot echoed round the square. The bakelite shattered into jagged fragments. He laughed at the thought of McGuffin’s discomfort, lying like a dog under the van while some maniac took potshots at the ice-cream cone above. Eugene set the rifle down and groped for a cigarette. He’d loose off a round or two more and then call it a night.

There’d been wild rumours in the bar earlier that the Donatists were heading for the town looking for trouble, but there was no sign of them, thank God. Magee wouldn’t be bothering them any more tonight either. He’d seen the butcher and his cronies, bad-looking bastards, heading out of town and into the hills earlier. They’d be ransacking the high ground, plundering isolated farms, as much to vent their anger as in any hope of finding the runaway. He lowered his head before striking the match. From the bar below came the muffled sounds of querulous drinking, but it was oddly peaceful in the attic. At his side the figure of the Dancing Madonna silently surveyed the rooftops with a vacant, enigmatic stare.

Only two people in the whole of Ireland, himself and the Patriot, knew of her hiding place. Muire na nGael, Mary of the Gael, the Patriot had called her. She had been there since the night Frank’s father had returned with her from the Antrim plateau, the Patriot decreeing that she would never be subjected to such ignominy again. She would stay under his roof till her mission became clear. Some day, if you believed the prophecy, she would call the people together, planter and dispossessed, and we would be a nation once again. It was the Patriot’s last great hope, to be spared to see that day.

She was a small statue, crudely carved from weather-beaten timber, yet with a hauteur that distinguished her from the thousand other representations of the Virgin. It was hard to think sometimes that a thing so small, so insignificant, so patently manmade could be the cause of so much conflict. But it was ever so. The icon had long ago become what every man wanted her to become. To one side a symbol of the unbroken line of their faith, a repository for their aspirations. To the other side an object of fear and illicit fascination.

Eugene finished his smoke and carefully stubbed the butt out on the joists. There’d been enough fires in the town that night already, he didn’t want to go starting another one. Carefully he eased open the skylight and scanned the town below. All was quiet. He fired once more, in the general direction of Scotch Street, and ducked down. He waited five minutes. There was no return fire. The sniper who had pinned down the head of the town must have been disposed of all right. He fired once more and waited. All was quiet. He lifted the one-legged statue and slid it under the skylight. ‘Be a good girl and keep an eye on things for us for a while,’ he said, ‘while I oil, strip and grease the rod.’

Frank pedalled homeward through the darkness, sticking as best he could to the back lanes that wound up into the hills. He hadn’t dared leave till the rioting had died down. Even then there was no way through the Shambles, for there were snipers in Scotch Street covering every corner. Rumours of the unrest had been reaching the palace all afternoon, of three or four dead and others injured. He had heard it on authority that Magee had led a crowd into Irish Street, further up than they had gone in years, burning the Catholics out before them. Marooned on the hilltop he heard the sporadic crack of the Armalites, and saw the dull glow where the houses were ablaze. At midnight he decided to risk it. He would take a detour out by Blackwatertown and bypass the town through the maze of lanes his father had taught him, heading for the safety of the hills.

It was a dark night, the moon only a sliver, obscured behind angry clouds, but he didn’t dare risk even the flickering light of the dynamo. For an hour he had wandered through the Dark Lonen, unsure of his bearings, terrified of rousing the brutes of dogs that lurked behind each gateway, petrified of God knows what might be waiting for him around each corner. In the distance he could still make out the sounds of battle, the rattle of hailstones that he knew was automatic fire, the dull thud of grenades and incendiaries.

The scream of a gearbox! Dogs frantically giving chase! A sudden commotion on the narrow road a mile behind him! A car was coming through the darkness! More than one, at speed! Frank threw himself into the ditch and pulled the bicycle on top of him. In the nick of time, for round the corner raced a cavalcade of dark motors, one, two, three of them, at full speed, kicking up gravel and dirt, the tyres squealing on the narrow bends, rasping on the ditches and the overhanging bushes in the darkness. They roared past him. He lay without moving, listening till the noise of the engines had faded on the night air. When he was sure they were gone he quietly picked himself up. The bike was buckled but there were no bones broken. He threw it into the field and with a prayer to the Sacred Heart for protection, started to make his way on foot over the treacherous fields towards home.

In the darkened interior of the car, Father Alphonsus also said a prayer to the Sacred Heart, his protector and benefactor. Dear Heart of Jesus, don’t let this prize, so unexpectedly bestowed, be plucked away from me at the eleventh hour! The driver was gunning the limousine like a maniac, tearing through the countryside in the dark, trying to keep up with the bodyguards in front. Dear Jesus don’t let him crash! Don’t let him put us over the side of the ditch, where we’ll be easy pickings for the loyalist gangs who are everywhere this night!

Alphonsus couldn’t believe his luck. Five years earlier, when Schnozzle had recalled him from the sunshine in California to the horrors of the ghetto, he had thought his days in the sun were over for ever. And here was a second chance! Twenty-four hours ago he was dying on hunger strike, sunk in despair of ever escaping. And now, like a man in a dream, he was hurtling through South Armagh, dressed in civvies by command of the boss, a wad of dollar bills in his pocket, guarded by a dozen armed Sisters of the True Faith, with a pair of one-way tickets in his hand and Chastity McCoy sobbing beside him. He crossed himself and shouted out His praise, shouted it loud above the screaming of the engine on the mountain road. Alphonsus McLoughlin would never doubt the goodness of God again! He tried to calm himself, to recall what they had told him. All arrangements had been taken care of. Inspector O’Malley of the Garda Síochána would meet him as soon as he cleared the border and escort him to the plane. Fidelma Sharkey, the Taoiseach’s wife, would be waiting on the tarmac to see them off. The red carpet would be laid on; there would be no hitches. The authorities on the other side had been squared too. There would be no trouble with entry visas or residence requirements. Alphonsus started another decade of the rosary, and the girl, through her sobs, joined in. If only he could survive the next hour he would be home and dry. Magee and his lot would never follow them beyond the borderlands. If he were spared he would carry out his orders. He would deliver Chastity to the land of her ancestors, back to the Indians in the mountains of the new world. See her safely ensconced in the convent where she would spend the rest of her days.

And then what? Return to Armagh? Report back to Schnozzle that the mission was accomplished? Return to the grim despair of the ghetto, to live day after day among the unwashed?

The car was still climbing, up through the foothills and into the mountains that separated Ulster from the rest of the country. Alphonsus gingerly opened the window a crack and sniffed the mountain air. He lit a cigarette and started to relax. Chastity was crying now, openly weeping as she left the land of her birth. He put his hand on her knee and squeezed conspiratorially. All the same, he didn’t put the beads away completely, nor reach for the Jameson, till they had crossed the Black Pig’s Dyke and had started to descend again, down into the great dark central plain, and he was sure that the province of Ulster was firmly, and he hoped irrevocably, behind them.