Shambles Corner. Edward Toman

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      For years Sammy Magee had sought a personal relationship with his Saviour, and for years his Saviour had eluded him. Every time Sammy went calling on Him, the Lord was out to lunch. As the years went by, he became more and more worried about his prospects for salvation. Though it left him free to enjoy drinking, playing the flute, kicking Catholics when they ventured too far out of their territory and such other pleasures of the flesh as Portadown offered, Sammy was aware that he had not been put on the earth simply for this. He was willing to exchange his lifestyle for the austerity demanded by the Elect if and when the call came. For it seemed a fair enough bargain, to forswear the good life here and now in exchange for guaranteed eternal happiness in the hereafter. A hereafter that would be peopled by folk like himself and in which the papists would be few and far between.

      As his fortieth birthday came and went, Magee grew desperate. What if he had an accident, and was called to the Judgment Throne in the state he was in? Night after night he flung himself on his knees calling on the Lord. Nothing happened. He couldn’t fool himself. He had heard Lily’s brother-in-law testify often enough to know he was nowhere near the experience. There were no blinding lights nor voices in his head welcoming him into the exclusive club, no uncontrollable desire to run into the street and start witnessing. Some are born to be saved and sit forever at the right hand of God. But so too are many destined to damnation in the outer darkness, a fate ordained for them since the beginning of time. But Magee, damn it all, was no popehead or pagan Hindu for whom this fate was good enough. He was an Ulsterman, a Protestant, an Orangeman, an Apprentice Boy and leader of the Temperance Memorial Flute Band. For the Lord to continue to ignore his prayers was decidedly worrying.

      Though taciturn and inhospitable by nature – character traits not uncommon in his native town – his door was always open to those who could bring him the Good News, and every day there would be a string of visitors: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Elim Pentecostal Brethren, Plymouth Brethren, Select Brethren, Presbyterians, Free Presbyterians, Wee Free Presbyterians, Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Anabaptists, Moravians, Holy Rollers, Quakers and Shakers and many more, all eager to save Sammy’s soul and claim the credit. The boys would be ordered in from their game of marbles in the gutter and made to kneel with Lily on the flagstones in the kitchen, while Magee and the preaching man sweated away upstairs.

      Sometimes it almost worked. He would feel the Spirit move within him. He would begin to shout and praise the Lord, and the visiting preacher would punctuate his shouts with loud hallelujahs; the neighbours would come running to their doors at the commotion. Word would pass down the street that Mister Magee had really got it this time. The kitchen would fill with wellwishers. The boys would rub their knees, red and bruised from the cold floor, thanking Christ the whole thing was over at last. There would be ragged hymn-singing for a while after, though music was never Portadown’s strong point. But Magee would wake the next morning knowing that the security he had experienced the previous evening had faded away and the old uncertainty had returned.

      *

      One evening coming up to the twelfth, a wee man from the Primitive Brethren called into the shop on spec and had been ushered into the back room where Magee was wrestling with his soul among the strings of sausages. Together they knelt and prayed. Brother Billy could feel, he said, that Brother Samuel was on the verge. What was holding him back? he demanded. Was it pride? Was it covetousness? Or was it lust? He flung open the Good Book at random and began to pore over it, praying that the Lord would guide his hand to a text to fill the bill. Sammy opened the door to the house and ordered his family to kneel with him and pray that he might overcome the sins of pride and lust.

      An hour later he was still wavering. The Lord was felt to be hovering somewhere, Brother Billy was sure of it, waiting to be invited into his soul. But these things can’t be forced. He was on the point of calling it a day through exhaustion when Magee began to shiver and then to shake and then to holler in strange tongues. Brother Billy had never known anything like this. The Lord is powerful,’ he shouted. ‘Praise His name!’ He removed his glasses and wiped the sweat from his brow. By now Magee was on the floor in the sawdust, howling like a dog. The Primitive Brother looked down on him with a look of righteous pride.

      In no time at all the word had spread. Lily made tea in relays, both pleased and embarrassed to be the cynosure of so many eyes. How would she manage now, one of them asked slyly, and her married to a man who was saved? Someone made a joke about a mixed marriage, for it was acknowledged that she was not ‘as yet’ called to Jesus. She blushed and apologized for the lack of cake in the house. ‘I haven’t a thing to put down,’ she repeated, till the boys were despatched to the corner shop with a note for a sponge sandwich and a packet of fancy biscuits.

      Magee moved into the parlour to hold court. He repeated for each newcorner the details of his conversion experience. He stood with his back to the fire, his face flushed, his speech animated with the joy of certain salvation. With each new visitor he fell dramatically to his knees and groaned and thanked the Lord for his deliverance, and the company muttered their praises and jangled their teacups and tried to get a hymn going. Brother Billy, the instrument of God’s goodness, stood beaming beside his prodigy’, calculating the rich harvest of souls that awaited him in the vicinity.

      By dark, word had spread across the town, and the Temperance Memorial Band, holding an impromptu rehearsal, made their way to the butcher’s shop to the strains of ‘The Wondrous Cross’. They stood in the rain outside the house and the people began to sing, and Magee came to the door and began to bellow more loudly and more fervently than the rest put together:

      ‘My richest gain I count but loss

      And pour contempt on all my pride.’

      A Land Rover, its windscreen encased in wire mesh and skirted like a hovercraft, crept round the corner with its lights out. There was no law against street parties of a Protestant religious nature, the occupants agreed. Like many who live with the possibility of meeting their Maker at any moment, the RUC men aboard hoped they were saved. They drove quietly away, humming the hymn to themselves.

      But old habits die hard. As ten o’clock approached, above the hubbub of the crowd and the noise of the band, Magee’s voice could be heard declaring that what was needed now, to put the tin hat on his great good fortune, was a drink. The thought was father to the deed. The protestations of Brother Billy, the look of horror from the teetotallers with the teacups, even Lily’s urgent attempts to mark his card with regard to the role of alcoholic beverages in his new calling were all lost in the general enthusiasm to celebrate the occasion with a few bottles in the Legion Bar.

      The man of the moment was handed out from the hearth to the pavement over the heads of the crowd and hoisted on to the shoulders of the bandsmen. Lily followed him out, elbowing her way through the throng, grabbing him by the trouser leg, trying to unseat him. She was screaming now with СКАЧАТЬ