The Miracle Man Page 2

  Under the bridge at the village there had come floating one afternoon a woman’s nightdress, spread out on top of the water and rippling seductively in the waves, as if worn by a river siren who was beckoning to the men who watched its progress from above. As they observed its approach there was speculation amongst them as to whom its former owner might be and the circumstances of her disrobement, with someone suggesting it was a signal and that she could even then be observing them from some riverside haunt, naked and awaiting their attentions. There was even talk from some of a search party, with declarations of intent more appropriate to the search for the source of the Nile. And then Seamus McAvoy, a man who had once given serious consideration to working for a living and who had managed to last six weeks as a haberdasher’s assistant, gave it as his considered opinion that the size of the nightdress was at the very least Extra Large and that its former owner would therefore have been of such a build and temperament as to require the attentions of a man with the power and stamina of a prize bull. After this, the men’s interest in the nether garment faded with its rapid passage towards the mouth of the river and thence to the sea, where a being of more mythical proportions, they fancied, might take up the challenge that it offered.

  Now the days of driving sleet, of torrential rain or grey mist creeping down the hillsides had gone, and the sun probed its warm fingers into wooded crevices and rocky fissures that had lain dark all winter. On the slopes above the valley, heather and bog cotton put on new growth and high above them the skylark sang of them and of the growing lambs and the black turf banks. The sheep lay on the warming grass and on the road, their starkly stupid faces turned towards the North Channel with the Scottish hills beyond, ranging in colour with their proximity, from dull green and brown to a faded purple, from the near to the far distance. Here and there, at the side of the winding, rutted tracks that led off the road and into the bog, stood turf stacks depleted from winter usage, like the ruins of some ancient clachan. Curlews called across this treeless landscape and snipe flew zigzag to hidden nests among the tiny pools.

  From the topmost hills could be seen the whole valley, from the steep-sided upper slopes where the viaduct bridge crossed, past the plantation of oak and sycamore, the chapel and graveyard held in the crook of the river’s arm, to the broad strand and sandy crescent bay. At one end of the bay stood the village, its main street continuing over the bridge and making a sharp right turn to climb the hill above the river. To the left, a road ran down by the side of the river and in front of the Glens Hotel, petering out a few hundred yards farther on where a tumble of rocks was washed by the sea. The yellow-painted front of the hotel – with the name picked out in brown Gaelic-style letters – looked across the bay, the building’s ancient bulk seeming to have settled back into the hill behind it at a slight tilt, an old boy with his hat at a rakish angle, someone had said. And like an old hand too, it had been around and seen a few things in it’s time and it’s past was a little mysterious. Some said it had once been a ropeworks and others a warehouse to store the produce wrested from the land and the mouths of Irishmen for shipment to the groaning tables of mainland landlords. A retired schoolteacher – and self-appointed chronicler of local history – had even claimed evidence of a meeting between Charles Stewart Parnell and a Prussian count to plan a German invasion of Ireland, but this story was dismissed by locals on the grounds that the schoolteacher’s brother, as the owner of a nearby taxi business, had a vested interest in the tourist trade. In any event, the small, sleepy-eyed windows and heavy oak door of the Glens Hotel were giving no clue as to its past life.

  The hotel’s tourist business was highly seasonal, running from the beginning of June to the end of September at best and was largely comprised of expatriate families on a two-week break from mainland cities, as well as the odd – sometimes very odd – American, French or German couple on an overnight stop during a tour of the North coast. There were a few permanent residents in the hotel – three to be precise – and they had something of a second-class status, guests who were tolerated rather than attended, serviced rather than served. Dermot McAllister had tried in a number of ways to increase the off-season business of the hotel, but to little avail. He had advertised weekend breaks for two with a champagne breakfast and fishing holidays with warming alcoholic beverages supplied. He had even considered bringing in busloads of men for an evening meal and strip show at an all-inclusive price, but he had a wife to reckon with, the formidable Agnes, and an eight-year-old son who somehow, sure as hell, would have managed to sneak into the proceedings. And of course there would be the clergy to contend with. The trouble was that Dermot, first and foremost, was a man of the land, more at home climbing steep acres after sheep than bowing and scraping to people who, having paid his modest prices for a fortnight’s full board, appeared to think that they had bought the hotel and could therefore enjoy certain rights in perpetuity.

  Like the people of the glens, being of the land, Dermot had its scale of time upon him, a reckoning that dictated that things happened in days or weeks but never in minutes or hours. Nothing was so urgent that it could not wait until a few words were exchanged with a neighbour or a final drink was taken to keep the previous ones company. Time was marked by the passage of the seasons, by sowings and lambings and harvestings, and not by the three o’clock bus to Ballymane or the school bell that drew reluctant children to the rigours of grammar and arithmetic. And being a man of the land, Dermot had always been interested in acquiring as much of it as possible. Boggy tracts high on the mountain or the broad and lusher pastures of the valley, land was the only truly worthwhile possession. It gave a man status and power and a sense of belonging. So when Dermot had heard that the young piano teacher Nancy Quinn had inherited a few acres next to some of his own land, naturally he was interested. While she was still considering whether or not to let him buy the land, he had started an affair with her which, he fancied, would go some considerable way in compensation if she decided not to sell. If he could manage to enjoy the benefits not only of the land but also of its current owner, he would be a happy man. Until, that is, another piece of land became of interest to him, or the flick of a different skirt caught his eye.

  From his armchair by the window of the Glens Hotel sitting-room, Mr Pointerly looked out at the river, placid beneath the calm evening sky, then above and beyond it to the green-marled waters of the bay. The scene could have been from last year, he thought, or half a century ago. Nothing much seemed to change. Oh, they had built a few houses at the back of the village – ugly, black and white things that looked more like police barracks than domestic accommodation – but that was all. And neither had he changed. Older, of course – who wasn’t? Yet he still walked out every day to his haunts of six decades, and his mind was as active and sharp as ever. Well, perhaps a little misty at the edges. Only to be expected when you were getting on a bit. “Blessed with a poor memory,” he would say, and “Selective forgetfulness”. Slowly the memories came drifting back to him of warm summer days on the strand with Celia and Mother in her straw hat that was almost the colour of her hair, of afternoons beneath the shade of the wild rhododendrons, those that Seumas the gardener was always going to “blast the buggers out with dynermite”. That was where his and Celia’s hide-out had been, where they had laid their plans to ambush some passing tribe of Red Indians. But the Red Indians had never come. Now, if he cared to speak her name, lifted his head and said clearly, “Celia!”, she would answer him from the rhododendron bushes. It was possible. Anything was possible. He had his dreams, always had done. Dreams in the past that his parents would understand him, dreams of the present that some day he would turn and there before him would be . . . well, he had his dreams. So many of them had gone over the years, ground away to nothing by the cruel abrasion of time, or dashed from his hands with a laugh of derision. Like the grains of sand on the beach, he decided, in a flood of self-pity. If only they could have understood him, made some kind of effort. But t
hey had never even tried.

  The door to the sitting-room opened and the Misses Garrison came in, first Margaret, the older one, the larger one, with her severe look and sharp voice that reminded him a little of Mother, and then Cissy, small and thin, always one step behind like those Indian women, she being more of a sympathetic nature like himself. He had watched them so often – observed them with his artist’s eye – and overheard their little bickering conversations while he pretended to read one of the mildewed Vicki Baum or Jeffrey Farnol volumes from the bookcase in the corner. There was “A Brief History of Ireland” there, so old that it was itself part of history, and a “Highways and Byways of Donegal and Antrim” with ink drawings of scenery through which wound unsurfaced roads walked by quaintly-clothed men in munchkin hats – halfway between humans and leprechauns. He had read all the volumes in the bookcase, or at least flicked through them. He really should buy some books, he thought, keep himself up to date with what was passing for literature these days. But books were so expensive, and if the one a visitor had left behind last year had been any indication, he would stick with the classics. He glanced down at the copy of “Chrome Yellow” by Aldous Huxley which lay on his lap, one of his slender fingers a bookmark at page eight. Now there was a writer, he decided, at least judging from the first two chapters, which was all he had ever managed to read.

  “Good evening, Richard,” Margaret Garrison said, as if by using his Christian name she was paying him a compliment. It was “Richard” when she felt kindly disposed towards him and “Mr Pointerly” when she did not, and there was no reason he could ever fathom for either attitude. He nodded gracefully at both women and smiled. Margaret took her customary seat in the armchair by the empty fireplace while Cissy sank into the couch, the broken springs offering so little support that when she finally came to rest, her eyes were almost level with her knees. Only when she was in company could she risk sitting on the couch, as she generally had to be assisted to her feet from it. She fussed at the folds of her dress, pulling it down taut over her knees. What a look she might otherwise receive from Margaret, who was saying to Mr Pointerly,

  “And what d’you think we might expect for dinner this evening, Richard?”

  Mr Pointerly gave a rueful smile, lifted and dropped a languid hand.

  “Ah, who knows, my dear? Who knows? We are entirely at the mercy of the Winter Cook.”

  “Hmph! A cook, she calls herself? The woman hasn’t the slightest idea what the word means. If she’s boiled potatoes for pigs, that’s about the height of it. And have you seen her hands? There’s bears’ paws that are cleaner. It’s a wonder we’re not all poisoned.” She gave a sniff. “I ask you, how much longer do we have to suffer the depredations of that woman? We’ll all be in an early grave.” Frowning, she glanced over at Cissy who was as usual off somewhere on thoughts of her own. “Where are we now, Cissy?”

  Her sister blinked at her. “Why – the sitting-room, Margaret.”

  For a full five seconds Margaret closed her eyes in silent martyrdom before opening them to gaze up at the ceiling.

  “The date, Cissy!” She said. “The date, for goodness sake!”

  “The – second week in May – I think,” Mr Pointerly volunteered. “Don’t know the exact date, I’m afraid. Don’t possess such a thing as a calendar now – or a diary.” He shrugged. “Used to keep one years ago, of course. We all did. Hardly seems much point now.” His voice trailed away as his gaze drifted from the sisters to the sunlit scene on the other side of the window. Margaret Garrison tutted and gave a little flick of her head. Like a favourite cat, her large macramé bag sat hunched on her lap and from it she took a lighter and a packet of cigarettes, screwed a cigarette between her pouted, magenta lips, lit it and puffed smoke out without having inhaled it. It was a habit of some sophistication that she had picked up in London in her twenties, during the year she had spent there with her cousins, the Hennessys.

  “Cissy,” Margaret said without looking at her sister, “as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I really don’t think that cardigan goes with that dress. Perhaps you should go upstairs and change it before dinner.”

  Pinched between two fingertips, the cigarette was held aloft, a symbol of her authority and superior knowledge in matters of couture.

  From the couch Cissy peeped over her knees and gave a vacant smile.

  “Well – I rather like it, Margaret,” she said, smoothing the rumpled fabric over her flat chest. “And it’s not as though we’re going to dine with the Queen, dear.”

  “Puts me in mind of fuchsia. This is the place for fuchsia,” Mr Pointerly said, as if revealing a great truth. And then he said simply, “Ballerinas.”

  Margaret ignored this irrelevance and said to him,

  “I don’t know about you, Richard,” with the clear implication that she meant the opposite, “but I intend to make the strongest possible representations to Mr McAllister about the food we’ve been forced to endure at the hands of that – woman. Indeed, I fully intend to demand a reduction in my bill – and I would strongly advise you to do the same.”

  Mr Pointerly opened “Chrome Yellow” and glanced down at the beginning of Chapter Two.

  “Perhaps,” he said, half to himself, “if the food was better, the bill would be higher.”

  At that very moment the banshee wail of Mrs Megarrity, the Winter Cook, came hallooing down the hall, an inescapable call to account. Margaret groaned and Cissy valiantly tried to struggle from the grip of the couch. Without the page being marked, “Chrome Yellow” was closed and laid on the water-marked wood of the windowsill, long since devoid of varnish. The cooking smell that was beginning to drift from the kitchen into the sitting-room was really quite pleasant. Perhaps this evening’s meal would be different.

  Although all three of them, the Garrisons and Mr Pointerly, had been residents in the hotel for a number of years and in the off-season were frequently the only people who were dining, two tables were set and always the same ones, Mr Pointerly’s beside the huge black sideboard with its cabinet full of grubby glassware, and the Garrisons’ in the middle of the room. All three of them sat, heads slightly bowed, silently awaiting their sentence. For, what would it be this evening? Tasteless fish in a watery white sauce, accompanied by lumpy mashed potatoes and peas which, fired from a gun, would have brought down a rabbit at fifty yards? More of that tough beef, so rare that, as another guest had remarked, a good vet could have got it back on its feet? Or the now famous curry made from unspecified meat – the chimera curry, Mr Pointerly had called it – so vicious and glutinous that it could have been used as rat poison and was certainly instrumental in depleting the hotel’s stock of stiff and shiny Bronco toilet rolls. With every swing of the pendulum on the old grandfather clock, the gloomy mood of the room deepened.

  From the direction of the kitchen came the ominous squeak of Mrs Megarrity’s tea-trolley and in a moment she appeared in the doorway, bent low and with arms straight out in front of her as if pushing a load of boulders up a steep incline, instead of the three bowls of soup which wobbled on the trolley’s top shelf. One leg of the trolley was badly askew and every few inches gave a judder which threw the vehicle sideways and brought a mumbled oath from the Winter Cook as she fought to bring it back on course. At last she came to a shuddering halt between the two tables, the soup dribbling from the bowls. She drew herself up to the full five feet two of her height. As usual, she had made an effort to dress for her secondary role as waitress, with a little white waitress’s hat, frilled but starchless, jammed on the front of her head and drooping over one eyebrow, and a crumpled white apron to match, worn over a black skirt that was a veritable menu, a sampler of all the meals cooked since she had last changed it a fortnight before. The cuffs of the black polo-neck jumper she wore had been turned back three or four times to fit her short arms and now hung like tyre inner tubes on her wrists, wobbling back and forth at every movement.

  “Jasus tonight!” she breathed, her great
chest heaving. “If I’ve got to put up with this thing one more day, I’ll throw it in the tide – an’ him along with it.” As though it were McAllister himself, she kicked the bad leg of the tea-trolley and sent more soup slopping onto the top shelf. Mr Pointerly peered hopefully into the soup bowls. With a bit of luck, she might spill it all. On Margaret Garrison’s face a kind of restrained anguish was in evidence as she stared straight ahead.

  “God alone knows why I stay in this place,” Mrs Megarrity was saying as she shoved a bowl onto the table in front of Mr Pointerly, driving more of the soup over the edge and onto the table-cloth.

  “You’re – not thinking of leaving us, Mrs Megarrity?” There was a quiver of hope in the old man’s voice.

  “And where would the likes of me find another job around here?” she demanded of him. “Tell me that, Mr Pointerly.”

  “Well,” he said, hastily taking up his spoon, “I only meant that perhaps . . . ”

  Mrs Megarrity swept the remaining bowls from the trolley and planted them in front of the Misses Garrison.

  “Ye slave your backside off for pittance wages,” the Winter Cook was saying. “Cook, waitress, toilet attendant, jack of all bloody trades – and what thanks d’ye get for it?” She stuck her face near that of the elder Miss Garrison. “I’ll tell ye. Damn all, that’s what. The amount of work I have to do, he must think I’m twins. Get that down ye before it gets cold.” Turning away, she laid hands on the trolley as if about to give it the thrashing it had so long deserved and wildly swung it around to face the kitchen, the momentum almost throwing her off balance and into the sideboard full of glasses. Margaret slowly lowered her eyes and looked at the grey liquid with the globules of fat floating in it. Around the inner rim of the plate there was already a dark tideline beginning to form and lumps of some unknown substance moved turgidly beneath the surface.