Shambles Corner. Edward Toman
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came up for the third time a great chorus of hallelujahs rose up from the bank and the tambourine started up again. They burst into song, led by a wee girl who was coaxing a few chords from the squeeze-box. The woman in the river stood stunned for a few seconds as the water drained from her ears, eyes and hair.
‘Like the proverbial drowned rat,’ remarked Joe, ‘but keep an eye on her a minute till you see the leaps of her.’ And right on cue she began to hop. She started whooping and yelling, arching her body back as if trying to immerse herself once more. McCoy and the boy had a strong grip on her, but it took them all their time to hold her. She struggled and kicked, shouting the praises of the Lord. Hands reached out from the bank for her; someone dried her face with a towel, but still she whooped and jumped and pulled away from them. ‘It certainly seems to do the trick,’ Joe admitted grudgingly. ‘You can’t tell me they’re all play-acting.’
McCoy was back in midstream now, arms raised in praise and thanksgiving. The purple youth, his wet shirt clinging to his nipples, was preparing to lead another catechumen to the water, while the dark-skinned girl, little more than a toddler, tried to play ‘Shall We Gather at the River?’ on the bulky accordion.
‘Would you look at what he has the lassie doing!’ said Joe. ‘And her hardly fit to lift the squeeze-box. He wasn’t long putting her to work. And there’s her ladyship as well!’ Señora McCoy was struggling out of the brackish water, tossing her head and wringing the water from her long, black hair. Her thin dress clung to the contours of her body, showing sturdy thighs and voluptuous breasts. Joe studied her carefully. ‘It’s as well I didn’t waste my time looking for confession last night,’ he whispered. ‘One look at that and you’re right back to square one.’
He surveyed the rest of the scene with growing distaste. He disliked the sight of Protestants having a good time any day of the week, but particularly on a Sunday. Sunday was the day his own people played Gaelic football and pitch and toss, threw bullets on the long country roads, or drank illicitly in the back rooms of licensed premises. The Protestant Sunday should be spent indoors, in silent sobriety. He turned to Frank. ‘I’ll leave you to keep dick while I nip back to the tractor. There’s no sign of the butcher boy, Magee; the pair of them must be still fallen out. The rest of them are nothing but a few old women and a couple of old fellows. The boy with the purple face looks like a right animal, but he’ll be slow. And look at the state of McCoy, he’s so full of water he can hardly move. Keep your eye on the girl from Ipanema and don’t let them see you. I don’t need to tell you McCoy’s a dangerous bastard!’
He was back in five minutes with a jerry can and a length of hosepipe. ‘I’d give a pound to see the hoor’s face when he tries to make a getaway! I’ll not leave him a drop.’ He unscrewed the petrol cap, rammed the hosepipe into the tank and began to suck till he was red in the face. There was a gurgle from the innards of the van and the black diesel spurted out on to the road. ‘It’s nothing but shite!’ he spat, filling the can. ‘But with God’s help it’ll get us home in time for Mass.’
He settled Frank into the trailer and they made their way home through the maze of unapproved roads that crossed and recrossed the old border. Joe was still laughing, and he fancied he saw a flicker of interest in the dull eyes of his son. He had made a start, he had introduced him to the world of men’s affairs. If God spared him, there would be other forays into the city, and in due course he would tell the boy the full story of McCoy’s chequered career. He would tell him about the conversion of Sammy Magee, and how the pair of them had got hold of the Mexican priest and paraded him, like a monkey on a rope, round the townlands of South Armagh, bringing a curse on the land. When he was old enough to hear of such things, he would tell him the tale of Señora McCoy and how she came to the Shambles.
But, by way of introduction, where better to start than with the story of the ice-cream van itself?
It had once been a real ice-cream van, selling wafers and slides and pokes, back before McCoy had liberated it for the service of the Lord. The prayer meeting in the Ulster Hall had been a great success, the auditorium so packed that Magee had to rig up loudspeakers halfway round Donegall Square for the crowd who couldn’t get in. At the time the province had been on the crest of a great revivalist wave, and the spirit of the Lord was to be felt everywhere. He took as his text: ‘Come ye therefore out from among them and be ye separate.’ It was a text he loved, for he could tease from it a thousand anti-papist nuances. He allowed himself a fulsome elaboration of the text, exploring every syllable of it. Before their eyes he built up a gruesome picture of the great Antichrist. Carefully he proved, with ample quotations, how the Church of Rome was the great beast of the last days and Old Red Socks her bridegroom. Everywhere the hand of the great whore was to be seen. He delved into Revelations for a list of prophecies coming true in the modern world. Everywhere the Kingdom of the Beast was being established. Only one people stood undefiled. Those people were the Protestants of Ulster. Between them and the rule of darkness stood only a frail border, and even now the enemy was within the gates.
It was a familiar message, and they bayed their approval when he vowed that the people of Ulster would never bow the knee to the harlot of the Tiber. Then he turned on them:
‘You call yourselves Protestants?’ They were voluble in assent.
‘You renounce the Pope of Rome?’ At the mention of him they hissed with palpable hatred.
‘You say you want no truck with the scarlet woman riding on the back of the beast?’ They stamped their feet. McCoy lowered his voice, lowered it to a whisper, lowered it so that the crowd in the street fell silent and inside the hall they scarcely dared to breathe. Then how is it,’ he began slowly, ‘how is it possible?’ and he began to fumble in a back pocket … ‘How is it possible?’ He had a piece of paper now and was holding it up for their inspection. He had thrown back his head in anger and his voice was echoing from the galleries of the hall … ‘How is it in the name of the crucified Christ that half of you can be seen any night of the week sucking ice-cream pokes in a shop owned by Roman papists, papists from the Vatican City itself? I was handed this paper by a Christian man from the Shankill Road tonight. He doesn’t want me to mention him by name for fear of reprisals. On it is written the address of these Eyetie popeheads. They are living openly in a house in Dover Street, a house that used to be a Protestant home! The Protestant people of the Shankill are being driven out by the invading papists. And not just content to steal our land from under us, they are now plotting to poison us with their tutti-fruttis and God knows what else, while the Protestant people stand idly by and let it happen …’ The boys at the back of the hall had burst through the doors and were heading down Royal Avenue before he had finished speaking.
They brought the van back from the smouldering ruins of Cafolla’s Café an hour later, the RUC escorting them through the cheering streets. McCoy had it repainted. Where previously it had tempted the passersby with pokes at one and six, it now exhorted them to ‘Flee the Wrath to Come’. The big Bakelite cone which adorned the roof he had resprayed in the red, white and blue of the Union Jack. Magee spent a Saturday frittering with the chimes, rearranging the spiked metal teeth on the revolving drum that struck the notes, and for a while ‘Papa Piccolino’ was transposed into ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ until they slipped back to their old settings, and Papa Piccolino from sunny Italy re-asserted himself. The redundant fridge was pulled out and a fold-away bed rigged up in its place. The small sink was left where it was. With the addition of a gas ring and a few curtains, McCoy had all his orders.
McCoy came from a long line of preaching men that could be traced back to the plantation. He could dimly recall, as a baby, being brought to the deathbed of his grandfather, ‘Hallelujah’ McCoy, and the old man rising from the pillow to curse the great whore of Babylon with his dying breath. For the first fourteen years of his life he had known only the itinerant life, for his father had worked the northern circuit; throughout the year they would meander from Ballymena through Cullybackey, Irvinestown, Sion Mills, Fivemiletown and