‘Now, luckily for you, Father Kelly, Brendan and myself are probably your two most totally trustworthy parishioners. But as your two most influential businessmen, we also have something of a problem with the fact that from now on Ballymahoe is going to be an Our Lady-free zone.’ He stopped to draw breath.
‘Obviously it’s a tragedy from the religious angle that we have been falsely worshipping Paddy O’Riordan’s fornication, but aside from that there are several other matters,’ he licked his lips before broaching the delicate subject, ‘of financial concern that need our attention if this lovely little parish of yours is to survive.’
The priest stared at him.
‘Is he breathing?’ asked Brendan. ‘Shall I hold a mirror up to his face?’
‘He’s breathing, all right,’ Gerry told him. ‘It’s making my eyes water from here.’
He leaned in. ‘Are you with us, Father?’
The priest nodded.
‘What we reckon is that with your help, Father,’ and he emphasised the world ‘help’, ‘this terrible situation of the Virgin being a bit of an exaggeration and the pub closing down and the Mahoneys having to leave town and all your parishioners deserting you needn’t be the disaster it otherwise most certainly would be.’
He gave the priest time to take this in.
‘Deserting me?’
‘In other words,’ said Gerry, ‘we have a plan.’
‘With my help?’ the priest croaked.
‘That’s right Father, with your help.’
Very slowly the priest sat up, his face going from green to white and back to green again. ‘Water,’ he gasped desperately at Brendan.
‘Would you like me to slip a bit of brandy into that, Father?’ the barman asked, only half joking. The priest went a darker shade of green and ever so slightly shook his head. Brendan went to the kitchen to fetch him a glass.
Slightly rehydrated, the priest found that half the little hammering men had gone away, and the more he sat up the less the acid burned his gullet.
‘Are you ready for our plan, Father?’ Gerry asked.
The priest nodded.
‘We need you to call a meeting of the parish to explain to them what has happened with the Holy Virgin and then Brendan and myself will outline an alternative plan to protect and enhance the livelihoods of those who have become dependent on her patronage.’
Father Kelly’s eyes lost focus, and found it again. ‘You want me to explain to the parish that Our Lady was merely a vehicle for Paddy O’Riordan to camouflage his adulterous lust for the widow Monaghan?’
‘That’s right, Father, yes.’
The priest finished his water and put it down on the side table with a shaky hand.
‘And would I not then be alerting my entire flock to my, um—’ he closed his eyes, ‘my difficulty with the sacred secret seal of which you earlier spoke?’ He opened his eyes again. ‘And would they not want to tear me limb from limb for being the bearer of such bad news?’
Brendan beamed from ear to ear but Gerry maintained his original look of deep concern.
‘Oh, well, now you mention it, I don’t suppose that would be an ideal way to handle it, Father, from your angle. So it wouldn’t.’
He let a cloud of doom move in and hang over the hangover.
‘Of course,’ he started slowly, as though the idea were coming to him for the first time, ‘I don’t suppose we would have to tell the whole story. The whole sordid tale, you know.’
The priest closed one eye and looked closely at Gerry with the other. ‘Which bit of the whole sorry tale would we not have to tell, do you think?’
‘Get your man another glass of water, will you, Brendan? I think he’s coming right. Well, just as we’re sitting here talking about it, Father, I’m thinking that perhaps we wouldn’t have to tell them the whole Virgin-Mary-not-being-the-Virgin-Mary bit. You know, the fornicating and the mirrors and all that.’
The priest had no clue where this was leading but he was perking up all the same.
‘So what bits would we tell them?’ he asked, a hint of eagerness in his voice, as he grabbed the glass of water from Brendan.
‘I was thinking that perhaps we could tell them, you know, so as not to give them an awful fright, that Our Lady has appeared to Margaret Mary and announced that her work here is done and that she’s moving on to greener pastures somewhere where the people aren’t anywhere near as holy.’
The priest looked green again.
‘Well, that’s putting bits in more than leaving bits out, though, isn’t it, Gerry?’ he said, looking disappointed. ‘You know, a little bit like lying.’
‘Not a lot like lying, though, if you look at the end result,’ Gerry was quick to add. ‘Just think what would happen if you were to tell them the real story behind the Virgin. It’d do terrible things to their faith, Father. Imagine. They’d never believe anything again.’
‘You’d be lucky to get a fiver in the collection plate,’ Brendan added helpfully.
The priest rested his elbows on his knees and sank his head into his hands. ‘What have I done?’ he asked no-one in particular. ‘What have I done?’
Brendan looked at Gerry and shrugged his shoulders. They didn’t quite have him.
‘Look, Father,’ Gerry said gently, ‘if you’d kept Mary Monaghan’s confession to yourself the damage would have been far greater. Can you imagine the Mahoneys dragging their sandwich stand up to the valley month after month while the crowds dwindled away to nothing? Or poor Brendan here eventually having to abandon the hostelry that’s been in his family for 300 years? Or Maeve O’Riordan pestering you every hour of your day for a rosary? It would be death, Father Kelly. A slow, torturous death for Ballymahoe. This way there’s no false hope. It’s quick and painless.’
The priest looked up. ‘It would break your sister’s heart, Gerry. Margaret Mary will never go for it,’ he finally said.
Gerry smiled.
‘I’m thinking of suggesting Margaret Mary relocates to Dublin to further her devotion to Our Lady by joining the parish of the Blessed Virgin in Drumheedra. That husband of hers, the bollocks, is making an awful lot of trouble with Brendan’s great-niece Lucy and she might look 18 but she’s only 12 so it’s going to end in disaster if we don’t get rid of him.’
‘She’ll move away, just like that?’ the priest asked, hopefully.
‘Well, I may have to offer a small financial incentive but sure it’ll be nothing in the grand scheme of things.’
‘The grand scheme of things,’ Brendan repeated, beaming.
The priest looked at them both, then sank his head into his hands again.
‘Oh, I can’t tell lies,’ he said in despair. ‘It would be the end of me. I can’t do the thing about putting the bits in. You know, the Virgin, who we now know isn’t the Virgin, appearing to Margaret Mary one final time and all that. I can’t. I couldn’t. It would stick in my throat. It would. Especially now I know why she came here in the first place. Or that she wasn’t here at all. Oh, it’s all hopeless …’ He seemed to be crying.
Gerry was at the end of his helpful-suggestion selection but he wasn’t ready to walk away. The truth was that the Virgin had saved this place — saved it from abandonment and depression and hopelessness — and he wasn’t going to let it go to wrack and ruin without a fight. Unless …
‘Father, we have to let the parish down gently, not with a great walloping thump. Do you agree with that?’
The priest looked up with wet eyes. ‘That I do, Gerry. Yes.’
‘Well, you see, Brendan and I have a bit of a rescue package worked out but no-one’s going to go for it if they think there’s any chance that the Virgin will keep appearing. Do you agree with that?’
The priest thought about it for a while. ‘You mean they wouldn’t want to fix something they don’t think is broken?’
‘That’s right, Father. That’s right.’ We’re getting close, thought Gerry. ‘But if you don’t want to put bits
in, Father, and tell them that the thing is broken and can’t be fixed, and they need to find another thing, how will they ever find out? Why would they go for the alternative plan? Someone needs to tell them. Someone very important. Someone they would believe.’
The priest sniffed, and Gerry could see the cogs in his brain working overtime, through the fug.
‘Suppose, for example, Father, you were to say that the church has had to distance itself from the Ballymahoe Virgin, in line with papal priorities, or something like that, you know, from the Vatican?’
The priest looked up, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. ‘Well, the church should distance itself from unratified apparitions,’ he said. ‘The Vatican says so. It’s not just me.’
Gerry and Brendan exchanged a quick smile. They had him.
‘But I don’t really think it would be appropriate for me to announce that at a parish meeting, Gerry. What with all the distancing myself from it, you know. I think perhaps that you could pass on the church’s intention to distance. And Margaret Mary’s distancing as well. On my behalf. At a meeting that I could certainly announce in the parish bulletin to discuss, um, let me think …’ he foundered.
‘To discuss an ongoing feasibility study into the viability of securing the future of Ballymahoe,’ Gerry finished.
Brendan beamed again. ‘A meeting,’ he said proudly ‘to discuss the alternative plan. We’re going to use the Book of Relations to track down long-lost loved ones!’
They left Father Kelly gnawing on a piece of dry toast, holding a wet cloth to his head, and headed back to Brendan’s bar to discuss their alternative plan.
‘Hand over the Book of Relations, would you?’ Gerry asked, once they were sitting in front of the two-bar electric heater sipping steaming cups of tea.
‘Is there no other heating in this place, Brendan?’ he moaned, clutching his mug for warmth. ‘I’m freezing to death in here.’
Brendan looked around the place doubtfully. ‘Well, there was the fireplace but we boarded that up after the night Nan McCormack’s wig caught fire. Sure, it warms up quickly enough when there are a few in here, though, Gerry.’
‘The fireplace,’ said Gerry, thoughtfully, as he walked across the room to where it had been covered with chipboard. He lifted up the plastic pot plant Brendan had stuck in front of it and started to look around him afresh, as though he had never frequented the place in his life.
‘What this place needs,’ he said slowly, ‘is a facelift.’
‘Ah, you’re joking,’ Brendan said. ‘Haven’t I just got all the chairs and tables finally to match and this is only second-hand this flooring, from that hospital up in Cork, you know, the one with all the bugs. And there’s hardly a scratch on it. Just a couple of spots of blood here and there that only I know about.’
‘Don’t stop me, Brendan, I’m on to something,’ Gerry insisted, spinning slowly around. ‘We want to get rid of the pinball machine,’ he said, ‘and the jukebox and what are those velvet things on the wall?’
‘Rachael brought them back from Vegas,’ Brendan said. ‘I think they’re supposed to be Elvis.’
‘All of them?’ Gerry asked. ‘Doesn’t this one look like a house?’
‘Well, anyway, I don’t think Rachael would appreciate it if they were to disappear,’ Brendan said nervously. He’d seen Gerry like this before and trouble usually followed. ‘And I’m quite attached to the jukebox, too, Gerry. People like a bit of music when they come in for a pint. What are you on about?’
‘Listen, Brendan,’ Gerry spun around, his eyes gleaming. ‘People — that’s what I’m talking about. Never mind the locals, they’d come here if the place was a burning stump. I’m talking about the people coming from America and Canada and Australia and New Zealand. The people coming to look for their roots, Brendan. They don’t want neon lights and pop music and football blaring on a huge-screen TV.’
‘They don’t?’
‘No, Brendan. It’s 1989. They want sawdust on the floor and dim lights and old jugs and a roaring fire. They want old Ireland, Brendan. They want old street signs with the paint chipping off and water pumps in the front and a cow in the back. They want mis-matching chairs from your old Auntie Eileen and barrels instead of tables and real Irish music playing in the background. They want rusty old horse gear hanging from the walls and pictures of hatchet-faced old ladies. Can’t you see it, Brendan? We can make this little bar of yours into the best pub in Ireland. Just like it was in the old days!’
‘I never went to a pub like that in the old days,’ Brendan said sulkily.
‘And neither did I, man,’ roared Gerry. ‘They probably didn’t even exist but the brand-new version will be a hundred times better anyway. And it’ll cost you next to nothing. Look, we rip up the floor, un-line the walls, hide the microwave bleeding oven and the toasted sandwich machine and we’re halfway there. You’ve got piles of old junk in that broken-down shed out the back that we can stack around the place and what you haven’t got we’ll get from Mam or the O’Mearas or the widow Mary Monaghan, God rest her soul, dark horse that she was!’
Gerry was panting with excitement but Brendan was resisting its contagion.
‘We’ll make this the rendezvous point where all those foreign families dreamed about meeting their long-lost loved ones,’ said Gerry, sitting down again and flipping open the Book of Relations.
‘They’ll love it so much they’ll want to stay on, Brendan. The Gintys and the O’Mearas can turn their places into B and Bs. The Mahoneys will do a roaring trade at the corner store and Dan can do old-fashioned Irish food for in here. You’ll make a fortune, Brendan and Kathleen Fogarty can keep the craft shop and as long as there are visitors, there are souvenirs!’
He looked across at Brendan, who was still sulking. ‘And to think it was all your idea,’ he said, worshipfully. ‘Now let me see,’ he went on, fingering the pages of the giant Book of Relations. ‘We’ve got folk looking for O’Sullivans, McCarthys, O’Callaghan’s, Kennedys and Keanes. How hard can it be, Brendan? There are Keanes all over the place,’ he turned another page. ‘They want Flahertys, Flynns and Faheys, Redmonds and Maguires. Well, it’s going to take a while to track these people down but I’m sure we can draft the locals in to help. They’ll be mad for it. Isn’t there a whole pile of Maguires over the hill at Glenlurgan?’
‘There’s a few, yes,’ Brendan said sniffily. ‘Big football fans and no television of their own, as it happens.’
Chapter 27
Sunday, 21 February 1999
The coach jerked to a stop and woke Molly from a bizarre dream where she had been lying asleep in bed between Bill and Hillary Clinton.
What was the point, she thought groggily, of dreaming about famous people if you were not going to have erotic sex with them? You may as well be awake.
She rubbed a patch in the foggy window to see what was happening outside but all she could see was rain, rain and more rain.
Why wouldn’t Bill Clinton want to sleep with her? she wondered. She was his type, after all. Well, she was a woman. And what was Hillary doing there anyway? The last thing you need in a sexy dream is a chaperone. Or the wife. Perhaps Molly subconsciously wished she were Chelsea Clinton. Surely not. Having no father at all must be infinitely less complicated than having a father who stuck his pecker in places the whole world would eventually find out about.
Could the dream be about Pohraig? She pushed aside the memory of her awful night, unable to face the humiliation of it all. Again.
She felt a sharp jab in her left shoulder blade.
‘I think this here is your stop,’ said an unfriendly looking woman in an ill-fitting wig, nodding at the driver who was twisted around and glaring back at his difficult passenger with not the slightest attempt to conceal his feelings towards her.
She’d had to ask him seven times to stop so she could be sick on the side of the road and neither he nor any of his poxy passengers had shown her the least bit of sympathy.
Molly scuffled around on the floor searching for her bag before remembering she didn’t have one, then stood up, too quickly, and saw stars. She swooned ever so slightly: not enough to fall down again, but enough to bang her head on an upright bar.
Her fellow passengers were looking at her with matching pained expressions and for some reason Molly felt like laughing, but resisted the urge. For all she knew she had concussion.
‘Thanks,’ she smiled at the driver as she passed him to alight. ‘Thanks a bunch.’ The doors snapped behind her with unwarranted haste and the bus chugged off, leaving Molly choking in a cloud of diesel fumes.
The bus stop was right outside the gates to the Ballymahoe church, in a prime position perched on a cliff, overlooking a bay. The main village seemed to be further down the hill and from where she stood in the freezing cold and whipping rain Molly could see the bus stop again and let somebody on at what was obviously the real bus stop.
All the freezing cold and whipping rain in Ireland, however, could not have driven Molly inside another church to take refuge. She’d learned her lesson about finding happiness in the house of the Lord.
Pulling her collar up around her ears she pitched herself against the gale and, head down, marched down the hill past the pastel painted joined-up houses on either side of the road until she reached the pub, where she pushed open the door and shook herself off like a dog to get rid of the extraneous water.
‘Look at you, you poor soul,’ laughed the woman behind the bar, a pretty, plump woman Molly guessed to be in her late thirties. ‘Can I get you a towel for your hair, there?’
She crouched down behind the bar and emerged with a Guinness bar towel.
Is there any point? Molly thought, but walked over to grab the offering anyway. ‘Does the bus always stop right outside?’
‘Only for about the last 40 years,’ laughed the barmaid. ‘Did you come on the bus, did you? How did you get so wet?’
‘Oh, I got dropped off up at the church for some reason.’
‘Is that so? God, normally you can’t pay them to drop you off anywhere else but right at the door here. Typical, isn’t it? Now, can I get you anything?’ She looked Molly up and down and shook her head. ‘Have you been in the wars or what?’ she said. ‘A cup of tea?’