The Miracle Man Read online

  “I’ll ignore them remarks, Cully,” Limpy said grandly, “in the spirit in which they was intended.” Kilbride glanced up and shook his head. Limpy came and stood with his back to the counter. Beside Kilbride, Peggy May had come to stand and watch the comical figure. At least he’d never tried to put a hand up her dress.

  “Did yous boys notice anything when I walked in here?”

  “I thought the air smelt a bit different,” said Cully with a snigger. Ahearn’s eyes narrowed and he scrutinized Limpy from head to toe. Limpy strutted towards the door, his old boots clacking on the tiled floor, before executing a neat turn which was almost a pirouette and marching back again.

  “Well? Did you get her? Eh? What’s different about me?”

  “There’s another hole in your jacket, Mr McGhee?” Peggy May ventured.

  Limpy gave another walking demonstration, half way through which Ahearn leapt up, clapped his hands and shouted,

  “Jasus and his wee brother, I’ve got it!” He hit Pig Cully a thump on the shoulder that raised him from his reclining position.

  “It’s the legs of him! It’s the bloody legs, man.”

  “What the hell about his friggin’ legs?” Cully said angrily.

  “The wee bugger can walk. His limp’s gone!”

  Limpy gave a huge grin and slapped his hands together.

  “Spot on, the big man!” he declared.

  Then several times Ahearn punched one hand into the palm of the other as he walked around and around Limpy and stared down at the miraculous leg. Frank Kilbride, who had been smiling quietly to himself as if he knew something the others did not, began to take an interest and asked to see a further demonstration, which they all watched with fascination.

  “I decided to take a short cut – by way of abbreviation – across the field beside the house. Just when I was passing the Mass Rock, this woman in a white get-up and a kind of a light around her head is sort of floating above the Rock, with the arms out, looking at me. Well, I needn’t tell ye boys, I nearly fell over.”

  “Ye were pissed,” Cully told him.

  “I was damn all of the sort, Pig Cully. God forgive ye. ‘Mr McGhee,’ sez she,” he stuck his arms out in front of him, “‘I have long been troubled by your haffliction, and this very evening you will receive permanent relief from it.’ And then there was this dazzling light came flying down to my bad leg – “ he gave it a resounding slap, “ – and the next thing I knew – I was walking perfect.” Limpy slowly looked from one face to the next for approval.

  “Damn me,” Ahearn said softly. “The Virgin Mary herself.” He crossed himself and stretched out his hand towards Limpy’s formerly bad leg.

  “Would ye mind if I touched the article in question?”

  “Not at all,” said Limpy, “not at all,” almost indicating with a nod of his head that they should form a queue. “That’s what it’s there for. In fact, I sometimes feel as if it’s almost no longer mine. Like, it’s been given over to – “ he searched for the appropriate word, and having found it, held it aloft with evident satisfaction, “ – the faithful.” He must remember that. Father Burke would like it.

  Ahearn’s trembling fingers pressed against the torn and grubby material of Limpy’s trousers.

  “Jasus McGonagle,” he almost whispered, “you can feel a – a sort of – electric thing running through it.” He quickly withdrew his hand. “Boys,” he said with slow deliberation, “if this here isn’t a miracle – then Ian Paisley’s a Fenian.”

  And Limpy puffed out his chest and smiled and smiled.

  Mr Pointerly stood on the bridge and looked out towards the mouth of the river, where the incoming waves met the steady flow of brown water. From time to time the spit of sand across the river from the hotel would change shape or partly disappear, depending on the tidal action of the sea and on the river’s flow, but apart from that, everything looked the same to him as it had done all those years ago, when he had first rowed his little dinghy in and out between the moored boats and cast his line in the hope of bringing a salmon – or at least a brown trout – home to Mother. Now, as he wandered around the village and the strand, the faces of the young people echoed those he had known, so that he was never quite sure of the generation to which they belonged and sometimes even fancied that it could be one of his boyhood companions who had never grown old, and that he himself was still in his youth. It was most disconcerting. But then so had been many things in his life. He had wanted to be a painter, or a poet – something of that sort – but Father wouldn’t hear of it, and Father had held the purse strings. So he had been forced to go into the family business, to spend long boring hours in that hateful factory with its clattering machinery and meaningless metal parts turned out by the thousand, and then in the office with its ledgers of interminable rows of figures. But in the years since he had acquired the time and the income to indulge his artistic leanings, he had never once been able to resurrect them. They had been tragically stifled at birth. It really was too bad.

  Glancing to one side and up the village street, he saw a small figure approaching. Quickly he turned his head away to look across the river. It was that dreadful McPhee chap, the one with the bad leg. Rarely sober, he was. It made you wonder where they got the money. Mr Pointerly watched as a large car pulled up in front of the hotel and a man, a woman and a boy of about ten got out and went into the foyer. He watched the front door intently, until the man came out again and began taking suitcases from the boot to carry inside. They were staying. They were actually going to be staying at the hotel. Would he make their acquaintance? He gave a little shiver of excitement. And then the McPhee person accosted him.

  “And how’re we this fine morning, Mr Pointerly?” Limpy leant on the parapet beside him and looked as if he was settling down for the day. At least he was down-wind.

  “Very well, thank you.” The man was a perfect pain. Why didn’t he go and bother someone else? Mr Pointerly anxiously watched the front door of the hotel.

  “Have ye heard the news?”

  There was no reply from Mr Pointerly who stood like one of the herons to be seen up river, eyes locked on its objective.

  “Well, ye wouldn’t have, would ye? My leg, the bad one, ye know? It’s had a miracle cure, Mr Pointerly.” Limpy looked up at the silent man who was gazing into the distance. “I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but that’s what it was. A miracle cure, as sure as this leg’s walking straight – or will be as soon as I start it off again. Got the power of two now, Mr Pointerly,” he slapped the leg, “the power of two. I swear to God, it could walk two ways at once.”

  Mr Pointerly half turned towards Limpy and gave a wan smile, his gaze remaining firmly on the hotel door. “Is that so?”

  So Limpy began to tell his tale once more, adding a few little flourishes here and there for effect, while Mr Pointerly nodded and said “Really?” and watched the luggage being taken piece by piece into the hotel and the sturdy boy with the golden hair darting in and out of the front door. Here he was trying to keep an eye on things and this idiot beside him was banging on something about a leg. They loved to talk, these people. Any old thing as long as it was talk. Why, when he was a boy there used to be three men and when the weather was fine they would stand on the bridge – this very bridge – and talk the whole day, disputing and arguing, alternately laughing and cursing each other. Sometimes he came out of the hotel in the morning and half expected to see them still there, still arguing about things of little consequence, still laughing about less.

  “What d’you think of that, Mr Pointerly? A bloody miracle. As sure as a gun’s iron. You can touch it if you want to.”

  “I – beg your pardon?”

  “I said you can touch my leg if you want to.”

  “Wh – Why should I want to touch your leg, Mr McPhee?”

  “Then you’ll feel the tingling. Other people do.”

  The old man turned and gave Limpy his full attention.

  “
Good grief, man, not in the street. D’you want to get us both arrested?”

  “What?”

  “How was I supposed to know? You’ve never given any indication before.”

  “Any indication of what, Mr Pointerly?”

  Mr Pointerly nodded and winked. “You know. I mean, if you had come to me – discreetly. Got to be discreet, old fellow. Good Lord, you must know that. Look,” he glanced around him before delving into his pocket and pulling out two five-pound notes, which he crumpled in his hand and then held out to Limpy, “get yourself a drink. We can have a little private talk sometime soon, mh?”

  Limpy glanced down at the two notes that had been thrust into his palm and his fingers quickly closed around them. This was better than working for a living, although as he had had no recent experience of that, he had to rely on his imagination, which fortunately was prodigious. Clearly, he should’ve had this miracle years ago.

  “Thanks very much, Mr Pointerly.”

  “Not at all, McPhee, not at all. Now you run along, like a good man.” He winked. “I’ll be in touch with you soon, don’t worry.”

  Limpy touched the peak of his cap.

  “Good luck to ye, Mr Pointerly,” he said, then quickly added, “and God bless ye.” He was a man of religious significance now, a living example of the power of the Lord, so he had to keep on the right side.

  He set off across the bridge towards the hotel at a jaunty pace. Mr Pointerly looked after him and wondered if at last his luck had turned. Here was someone right under his very nose, and he hadn’t even noticed. Not the most appealing of specimens, of course, but then how particular could he afford to be? A bit of a wash and brush up would work wonders. Mr Pointerly gave a little shiver of excitement and anticipation. He would have to arrange a meeting with him, somewhere discreet. Perhaps up in that little old house of his on the back road, where they would be undisturbed. That sounded ideal. And if the man was a little shy, which was understandable in the circumstances, then no doubt a pleasant surprise would easily overcome his reluctance.

  At the end of the bridge Limpy turned onto the narrow road that ran alongside the river and towards the Glens Hotel. Ten quid for nothing. Maybe he should chat to Mr Pointerly every day. Ever since the miracle, things had been looking up, so maybe now was the time to take the bull by the horns, while his luck was in, and do what he should’ve done years ago. Only it would need to be done on the sly, at first anyway. Given half a chance, Lizzie would have her nose poked into his business. And that sister of Cissy’s, Margaret, treating her like a child, “Cissy come here, Cissy do that”. He sure as hell didn’t want to get the rough edge of her tongue. So as he approached the sitting room window of the hotel he paused to check what was supposedly stuck to the sole of one of his boots and then took a swift sidelong glance into the room. It was empty. He smiled and carried on walking, past the hotel, past the bar – a unique event which substantially tested his determination – and round the corner to the lane at the back.

  Standing just inside the back door Limpy looked around him and listened intently. He thought he could hear some noises from the kitchen. That’d be Lizzie getting the grub ready. All he had to do was make it to the back stairs and he would be okay. All at once and up on his tiptoes he ran down the hallway and was climbing the stairs two at a time as if both Lizzie and Margaret Garrison were chasing him. Unused to rapid movement or indeed any substantial physical exertion, Limpy rapidly became breathless, so that by the time he reached the landing of the first floor his sides were pumping like bellows and he had to cling onto the banister. Maybe this was a job for a younger man. But he’d come this far and he wasn’t going to give up now. He’d given up before, all those years ago, and look what had happened. He pulled himself upright, smoothed his hand over his hair and surveyed the four doors on the landing. One sunny afternoon he’d caught a glimpse of Cissy looking out of her bedroom window, the one directly above the hotel entrance, and he’d taken a mental note of which one it was. It wouldn’t be difficult to work out which was her bedroom door. It was obvious that only the two middle doors led to rooms which faced the front of the building and after a few moments reckoning Limpy decided that the left hand one was Cissy’s. That had to be it. He’d worked it out.

  Quickly he ran over in his mind the little speech he had prepared and then he stepped up to the door and clenched his fist ready to knock. This close, the squiggly marks on the paint of the door that were supposed to look like wood grain made a funny pattern in his eyes. He stepped back, blinking. It had been so long, so very long. Oh, he had talked briefly to Cissy the other day at the sea wall but that had been a casual meeting, albeit the first one where she had been alone. This time it was entirely his responsibility and was therefore up to him to justify. His clenched hand fell to his side. What if yesteryear was just that, yesteryear? What if she thought he was a joke and laughingly wondered how she had ever had anything to do with a person like him? Limpy looked down at his dirty cracked boots his baggy trousers and his worn jacket. As he nervously thumbed a lapel, he saw as with her eyes the stubby hands with the dirty fingernails. He’d been kidding himself. What lady in her right mind would want to take up with the likes of him?

  He didn’t hear a thing, not a footfall on the stairs, not a creaking floorboard, until the voice bellowed into his ear,

  “What business have you got here?”

  Limpy gave a jump, pitched forwards and thumped his forehead on the door. Now he really was seeing funny patterns. Then he felt the index finger poking into his shoulder. Just like her father.

  “I asked you what your business was here.”

  Limpy turned to face Margaret Garrison, to see the brows drawn together, the mouth in an angry pout.

  “I just came – to have a word with Miss Cissy. But I wouldn’t want to disturb her if she was having a visitor or anything.”

  Margaret’s voice rose to the higher pitch which she reserved for addressing the locals. It was the verbal equivalent of a poke in the leg with a walking stick.

  “My sister’s social arrangements are none of your concern. But I can tell you that she has no wish whatsoever to converse with you.”

  “But I was only going to ask her if . . . ”

  “I have made the position clear,” Margaret interrupted, “now if you please,” she waved her hand, “move on.”

  Watched by Margaret, Limpy gave a last forlorn glance at Cissy’s bedroom door and walked towards the stairs. Why did he think there might still be something there after all those years. It was true what they said, there’s no fool like an old fool. He started down the stairs with heavy tread. Maybe two miracles had been too much to expect.

  chapter seven

  On the Sunday, almost a week after Limpy McGhee had received his celestial transplant at the Mass Rock, there was a hurling match at Inisbreen. The game against the visiting team of Culteerim was to be held in the hurling field by the beach, at the far end of the bay from the village, and in the warm spring sunshine of the afternoon the perimeter of the field began to fill with cars and spectators on foot. Malachy McAteer, who said his brother in London was making a fortune in the commodities market – or had the brother said Camden Market, Malachy was never quite sure – had at the entrance to the field a ramshackle ice-cream van that now and then broke into laryngitic chimes and had drawn a good crowd around it, a gathering which might not have been so keen to sample his wares if they had seen how he had made the ice-cream.

  Around the pitch was a wire fence against which people took up positions, couples, groups of friends, whole families together in a clutter of bicycles and prams and dogs fretting on unaccustomed leads. Yet others sought a better vantage point on the higher ground at the side of the field away from the sea. While the majority of spectators were aware of the main rules and conduct of the game and simply wanted their team to win, the aficionados, who were mostly middle-aged and older men who had played the game in their youth, gathered here and there in small gro
ups and argued the finer points of form, stamina and gamesmanship. A small number of spectators, who neither knew nor cared about the outcome of the match, had simply turned up in the hope of seeing a fight between the players and possibly a contribution from some of the more partisan spectators. Mass pitch invasions followed by widespread fighting were not unknown.

  From the sidelines, spectators would exhort individual players to greater efforts, only to curse them later for their mistakes, pointing out how obvious the correct course of action had been and wondering at the tops of their voices whether the player in question was blind as well as useless. They would bang their fists on fence posts, throw their arms wide in delight when Inisbreen was given a free, or pull their caps down over their faces in frustration at a missed opportunity, so that at the end of the game they would leave the field as exhausted as the players. When the Culteerim team came out first onto the pitch for a warm-up, practised eyes from the sidelines narrowed in scrutiny before pronouncements were made as to the capabilities of the opposition. And it did not pass unnoticed that the referee was the self same one who had robbed Inisbreen of a match-winning point the previous season, and if he was rash enough to resort once again to bloody crookery, he would be lucky to leave the field, as one spectator put it, “with his arse facing backwards”.

  Pig Cully wore his cap pulled down so low over his eyes that he had to hold his head back to see under the skip and alongside him Dan Ahearn, who kneaded one hand in the other while shrugging and shuffling in a fever of anticipation, stood at the section of fencing nearest the Inisbreen goal. Now and then quarter-bottles of whiskey would be drawn from inside pockets and a few mouthfuls taken to join what had already been consumed in the lounge bar of the Glens Hotel. A few yards away the two Moore boys, along with Johnny Spade and John Breen stood together and argued about Inisbreen’s chances of winning the Intermediate Cup later in the year. Peggy May, standing a little apart from them and with a huge muffler in the team’s colours of yellow and brown obscuring half her face, had already set up a shout for a player who was not even in the team that day. With a friend in whom he was trying to arouse an interest in medical conditions – specifically his own – Dippy Burns stood at the corner of the field nearest the gate and divided his attention between the match and the skin on the back of his hands, where he expected to see the first signs of yellowing presaged by his reaching the “Jaundice” section of his “Home Doctor” manual.