The Miracle Man (36 page)

“Switch on the torch there, Seumas.”

The torch was lit, sending a glow of light upwards that caught the whole garment and gave it an ethereal appearance that was most effective in the darkness.

“Jasus!” John Breen said, “That’s brilliant. I can’t wait to see the wee bugger’s face. McAllister’ll be sorry he missed this. Raise yer arms, Seumas!” The arms were duly raised. “Spot bloody on, boy. Now, let’s hear the voice.”

After a clearing of the throat there came on the night air a moaning, female voice.

“Limpy McGhee, you have been telling the world a pack of lies about me.”

All three of them laughed.

“Marvellous! Bloody marvellous! Right, Michael, away down and get him, just like I told ye.”

When Michael Maguire rushed into Pig Cully’s living-room, eyes wide with fright and hair nicely standing on end, he shouldered his way through the crowd to where Limpy was gulping down a large glass of whiskey held in his two shaking hands. The prospect of a cheque with his name and “Fifty Thousand Dollars” written on it was more than his fuddled
brain could encompass without a huge leap of the imagination, assisted by a large measure of alcohol.

“McGhee! Come quick! There’s a – woman in white out there – all glowing and floating in the air! And she’s asking for you!” Michael Maguire grabbed the little man’s arm and pulled at him. “Come on for God’s sake, McGhee, and make it go away. It’s frightening the bejasus outa me!” Limpy blinked a few times and then fixed the messenger with an imperious gaze. “A woman in white, did ye say? Floating in the air?” “And asking for you, McGhee. Asking for you.”

“And where is she?”

“Up at the Mass Rock. Come on for feck sake!” The old man’s eyes drifted heavenward and he said with reverence in his voice,

“It’s her. I knew she’d come back.” He rose swaying to his feet and said to Georgina, whose look of wide-eyed innocence and amazement was a stranger to her face, “Excuse me, Georgina, but the Virgin Mary’s asking for me.”

Then with regal if unsteady gait he walked slowly behind Michael Maguire who bulldozed a way for him through the throng of people, a Saint John the Baptist preparing the way for the Messiah. Within a few seconds, the record that had been playing was abruptly stopped and from one group of people to another the message crackled around the room like an electric current. Then as one man, the occupants of the room surged towards the door, all except Mr Patel who, in the sudden silence could explain better to a bewildered Peggy May the necessity of her providing him with a receipt for the services which he hoped she was about to supply.

Outside, the night was clear and a bright moon sailed in a cloudless sky, throwing a wan light over the crowd that moved in silence out of the house and through what Pig Cully referred to as “the back garden”, a plain grassy patch formerly littered with abandoned domestic appliances and farming implements.
Ahead of them, dragged at a half run by the pointing Michael Maguire, went Limpy, his jacket flapping out behind him like dark angel wings in the cool breeze.

“Where did ye say she was, son? I can’t see nothing.” His breath wheezed in his chest from the exertion.

“Up there it was, Mr McGhee. On the hill.”

He pointed to an area halfway up the hill and behind the Mass Rock, in front of which was an extensive thicket of whin bushes, into which even the most wayward of sheep would not have ventured. In like manner, the reporters too held back and simply watched alongside the other partygoers as Limpy ducked under the thorny branches and disappeared.

At that moment, the white-clad figure suddenly glowed against the blackness of the hill high above, appearing to float amongst the branches of a tree. The crowd gasped in unison and some raised their arms to point. Limpy popped up between the whin bushes. His arms rose up before him as though he was about to fly up and join the apparition. Michael Maguire had now melted into the darkness.

“Limpy McGhee!” The voice floated down on the breeze. From the people below there was a buzz of chatter that quickly died to silence. Limpy bowed his head.

“Yes, your holiness. It is me, Limpy McGhee. Recipier of the celestial transplant, for which I thank you most sincerely.”

“Limpy McGhee, I would like you to do something for me.”

The Virgin Mary seemed to be having difficulty keeping her voice at an even tenor.

“Whatever ye say, yer holiness. Just you name it.”

The crowd strained forward as the breeze snatched away some of the words of this historic conversation. There was an awkward moment as the apparition suppressed the urge to laugh and then regained control of itself to say, in a slightly deeper tone of voice and now tinged with the local accent,

“I want ye to tell all of the people about yer miracle. Spread the word far and wide. I want ye to . . . ”

The remainder of the words were made indistinct by a sudden gust of wind. The little old man leant forward and put a hand to his ear.

“What – did ye say? Give’s that again – yer holiness.” He tried to move towards the apparition but was held back by the thickets of jagged whin.

“I want ye, Limpy McGhee,” the Virgin and the tree behind her were now shaking, “to convince – aah! Bastard!” With a cracking of twigs and branches the holy apparition did a half somersault and came to rest with a pair of boots pointing skywards, head and arms hanging down and trousers exposed to the crotch by the leg-mounted spotlight. The cowl of the garment had fallen away to reveal the contorted features of Seumas Kernohan who was shouting,

“Breen, get me down! The rope’s cutting the feckin’ knackers off me! Ah, Breen!”

From the spectators below, a great gale of laughter suddenly swept up the hill on the breeze, followed by shouts of, “Heaven’s up that way, your holiness!” and “She’s carrying a torch for ye, McGhee!”

But Limpy McGhee was oblivious to all of them as he threw himself forwards, oblivious to branches, thorns and rabbit holes, his two small fists clenched before him, his face drawn in anger at the insult to his patron and himself. For a few moments he disappeared beneath the bushes and then suddenly was free of them, clawing his way up the hill. Upside down, Seumas Kernohan saw him coming, and the ever-tightening constriction of the rope and the speed with which Limpy approached made the fallen idol all the more anxious to be set free.

“Breen, you hoor! Where the hell are ye?”

The faint sound of laughter drifted up from a clump of bushes at the bottom of the hill.

“When I get my hands on ye,” Limpy shouted, “I’ll kill ye, Kernohan! I’ll rip yer innards out, so I will!”

But in the darkness, and with another tangle of bushes before him, the old man could not get near to where Seumas Kernohan was trapped.

“McGhee! Have ye a knife on ye? Get me down, for feck’s sake, before I’m ruined!”

Limpy stood in front of the whin bushes, chest heaving as he gasped for breath.

“To hell with you, Kernohan. Ye can get your bloody self down. Or maybe if ye pray hard enough a miracle’ll happen and ye can fly down.”

And with that Limpy turned and, skirting wide around the bushes, trudged back down the hill, ignoring the alternate pleading and insults from the Virgin Mary up the tree.

From their grandstand view of the whole proceedings, the crowd was moving back to Pig Cully’s house, talking and laughing, some shaking their heads in disbelief while others wiped away their remaining tears of mirth. Here and there individuals replayed the scene, taking on the roles of the Virgin Mary and then Limpy with upstretched arms and finally the upside-down Kernohan. At the back of the retreating crowd, Dan Kowalski and Lee walked along in silence, by the light of the moon Lee scribbling his emerging story beneath the headline, “TRANSVESTITE VIRGIN FALLS FOR SEXYGENARIAN”.

The American slowly shook his head and said,

“God damn, the whole thing was a fake! Would you believe how crude that was, Louis?”

“Lee,” the other man said, without looking up.

Dan Kowalski suddenly stopped and grasped Lee’s arm. Some people bumped into them as they walked past.

“Why’n the hell didn’t I – ? You know what? Us reporters, we’re supposed to be smart, aren’t we? Sophisticated, worldly-
wise, all that crap. But I reckon we’re no different from these people. We needed this story as much as they did, only for a different reason.”

Lee stopped beside him but continued looking at his pad.

“Same shit, same reason,” he said. “Doesn’t work if you think you’re better than your audience, Don.”

“Jee-sus! I’ve just signed up that old guy for fifty grand.” He spun round to look back up the hill. “Where’n hell is he? I gotta get that paper back.”

But in the wan light of the moon Limpy McGhee was nowhere to be seen. In the copse near the top of the hill, Seumas Kernohan was being helped to the ground by his fellow conspirators, their humour long since vanished at the thought of Dermot McAllister’s reaction when he heard about the mess they had made of the job they had been well paid to do.

As the crowd approached the house, Fergus Keane, tousledhaired and still tipsy, came pushing his way against it, plucking at people’s sleeves and asking,

“What’s happened? Eh? Can somebody tell me? What the hell’s happened?”

Too busy laughing and talking, they ignored him. So, as the crowd drew away from him, the young reporter was left standing on his own, with only Kowalski and Lee between him and the dark horizon. As they approached, Fergus half ran to meet them.

“What happened here?” he shouted. “I’m from the Northern Reporter.”

“Dan Kowalski, Boston Globe-Tribune.”

Fergus Keane’s eyes widened and he stared at the big American. God Almighty, the Boston Globe-Tribune? Did this man know that he, Fergus Keane, had broken the story? You could bet that American newspapers were always ready to give a chance to a bright young journalist. How many times had he seen that in the movies. But the American said,

“Some newspaperman you are. You missed the main event, kid.”

“Look,” Fergus said, “I was the one that broke this story in the first place.”

“Well, Mr Newspaperman, I reckon you were taken for a ride, and then some. Turns out our miracle man’s a big fat fake. There was a guy up in those trees there, pretending to be an apparition of the Virgin Mary, until he fell on his ass and gave the game away. Damndest thing I ever saw. I wouldn’t be surprised if that old guy doesn’t get lynched.”

“Mrs McKay?” Father Burke came rushing into the chapel house kitchen, his black soutane swishing around his ankles. His eyes were bright, there was the hint of a smile on his face and his drooping shoulders of recent days had given way to an upright posture that recaptured his old enthusiasm and determination. Mrs McKay looked up from stirring a pot whose contents gave off an aromatic smell that had the young priest’s nose twitching.

“Minestrone soup, Father,” she said. “And then we’re having beef olives with asparagus and broccoli for the main course – if that’s all right.”

“Fine, Mrs McKay, fine. Have you seen my plans for the Mass Rock site? There were six big sheets, rolled up together with an elastic band around them. Can’t find them anywhere and I’ve got work to do on them. I’m going to put them on display when the Bishop makes his visit, to demonstrate how much effort we’ve put into this.”

Mrs McKay noted the “we” but refrained from smiling.

“Big white sheets, were they? Done in black felt tip pen?”

“Yes, yes, that’s the ones. Have you seen them?”

Mrs McKay suppressed a smile and slowly began to stir the pot again.

“Was that the same ones you told me to throw them in the bin, Father.”

“In the – bin? Ah, Mrs McKay, you never did.”

“‘If I never see them again it would be too soon’ you said. ‘Put the lot of them in the bin.’”

“But, Mrs McKay, I wasn’t myself. Surely you realised that.” He lifted his hands and then dropped them in despair. “I’m never going to get them done again on time.”

Mrs McKay gave him a mischievous look and then said,

“Just as well I didn’t throw them out, then, isn’t it? They’re in the cupboard under the stairs.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs McKay. You’re a gem.” For a moment it looked as if he was about to grasp her by the shoulders and kiss her, but then he cleared his throat to remonstrate with himself. Smiling in anticipation, he bounded through the doorway like a little boy, the housekeeper saying after him,

“And Father, I don’t want to see you up half the night at those things like you were before. If you get sick, it’s me has to look after you.”

She heard his laugh echoing from the cupboard under the stairs before he shouted,

“All right, Mrs McKay, I’ll bear that in mind.”

It was only half-an-hour later that Father Burke’s reawakened interest in the Mass Rock miracle was dealt a blow that left him white faced and a little unsteady on his feet. Slowly he walked across the hall to the kitchen, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Mrs McKay. I’ve just had a ‘phone call from Mrs Dargan.”

“That’s nice for you, Father,” the housekeeper said without looking round from the sink.

“No, no. She told me that – last night – outside the house where John McGhee was having a party – there was supposed to be an apparition of a woman in white up on the hill, asking for McGhee – and it turned out to be one of the locals dressed
up.” The young priest looked at his housekeeper, his face contorted with puzzlement, anxious that his housekeeper, his new mother substitute, would explain all of this to him, tell him that everything would be fine and she would make the hurt go away. His drooping shoulders, so recently thrust back in renewed enthusiasm, were once more in evidence.

“I knew it,” he said forlornly, “I knew it was a hoax all along. And what’s the Bishop going to say now – after the Canon persuading him to visit the Mass Rock?” Then his eyes narrowed and he looked intently at her. “Mrs McKay – Mrs Dargan seemed surprised that I didn’t know about it already.”

Mrs McKay pulled open a drawer and began to rummage among the cutlery.

“I do believe the milkman said something of the sort this morning, but sure you couldn’t believe the half of what they’d swear to in this parish.”