Dancing in Limbo. Edward Toman
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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