Dancing in Limbo

‘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.’