Shambles Corner. Edward Toman
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Shambles Corner - Edward Toman страница 13
Название: Shambles Corner
Автор: Edward Toman
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежный юмор
isbn: 9780008226916
isbn:
‘“Drink no longer water, but use a little wine,”’ shouted Brother Billy in desperation, sensing that he too had been made an eejit of. ‘“It causeth all men to err who drink it.”’ But his pleas fell on stony ground, for the band had struck up a secular tune they could march to, and Magee, still holding Brother Billy’s Bible aloft and testifying to the mysterious ways of the Lord, was led off down the street.
The B Specials brought him home at two o’clock. He had been picked up in Armagh with a crowd as bad as himself. Standing in the middle of the Shambles, the sergeant said, testifying with menaces. He quoted dispassionately from his notes till Lily shut him up. He was apologetic but firm. Seeing it was the religion that had gone to his head, they’d say no more about it, but two-fingered gestures from prod or taig constituted a breach of the peace. If Mister Magee found he was still saved in the morning maybe he’d do them all a favour and keep it to himself.
He got the sharp end of her tongue for the next month but he suffered in silence. He knew he had made a fool of her, showing her up in front of the neighbours. The joy of the night had been shortlived, and he had woken the next morning with a sore head and an empty heart. Whatever service Brother Billy had provided the previous night it hadn’t taken. Life was as empty and as treacherous as it had always been. In his moment of darkness, he began to doubt the Lord and turn away from his Holy Word.
But Lily was a kindly woman in her own way, and she hated seeing him in the state he was in. So when she spotted the advertisement in the Protestant Telegraph for a new Gold Star service from the Reverend Doctor McCoy (‘YOU’VE TRIED THE REST – NOW TRY THE BEST! Full money back guarantee if not completely satisfied’) she clipped out the coupon at once and began to put some of the housekeeping money aside.
It was a cold autumn evening when McCoy strode up to the door. He was dressed from head to toe in black. He wore a woolly Russian hat against the chill wind and a greatcoat that hung almost to his ankles. ‘Where’s himself?’ he demanded. She indicated upstairs. The whole street had turned out in the expectation of more crack, but he silenced them with a single stare. ‘Tell all these people to move away,’ he boomed from the doorway. ‘This isn’t a peepshow. This is the work of the Lord.’
The two men were closeted together for the next hour. Then she heard the footsteps of the preacher heavy on the stairs. She rushed to offer tea but he refused. She slipped the money into his hand and he pocketed it without acknowledgement. ‘You’ll have no more trouble with your man, missus,’ was all he said. ‘The Lord is powerful!’ Without another word he turned on his heel, leaving a faint smell of whiskey lingering in the small kitchen.
But McCoy had been as good as his word. From that day onward Magee lived a life of righteousness and his household with him. They prayed together daily, before and after meals, and testified on the street corner every Saturday. He donned his suit every Sunday and cycled over to Armagh where he assisted McCoy as he laboured in the tin chapel bringing others home to Jesus. He never again visited the Legion or was tempted by the thought of liquor, never again smoked his pipe or laughed at what he read in the paper. And the sound of the Orange flute was heard no more in the house.
No one would willingly befriend a Portadown man, even one that is saved and walks in the way of the Lord. But even the most vocal critic of the place will admit that the Portadown man, though singularly lacking in the social graces, has a rare head for business. And while McCoy had never liked the place, knowing its inhabitants to be parsimonious even when their eternal future was at stake, he wasn’t long in recognizing Magee’s potential as a financial consultant. The Martyrs Memorial, never at the best of times the goldmine its detractors across the square claimed it to be, was now on its uppers. Seven lean years had left the coffers empty. McCoy took the butcher aside one Sunday morning and tried to tap him for a loan. But the Portadown man’s wallet stays buttoned, even to those who have been the agent of his salvation. Magee, instead, volunteered his services at twenty-five per cent, spent the afternoon going over the books, such as they were, drew up an inventory of the goods and chattels, put his finger on some of the more obvious problems and made a few marketing suggestions that were soon put into practice.
‘If you want to get anywhere you’ll have to change that name of yours. Your father did you no favour calling you Oliver,’ stated Magee in his blunt Portadown way.
‘Oliver Cromwell was a Protestant hero; he put the papists in their place once and for all. I’m proud to bear his name!’
‘Oliver’s a Fenian name. It’s been a Fenian name ever since that saint of theirs got the chop.’ It was true of course. Every second one of them seemed to be called Oliver, after Oliver Plunkett whose gruesome, severed head grinned out from the altar in Drogheda.
‘And as for calling yourself Doctor Oliver, it makes you sound like a papist GP. And who do you think you’re fooling with the “Doctor” anyway? Everyone knows you got it for a fiver from the Harvey Wallbanger University of Kentucky! We’ll start calling you Reverend O.C. McCoy. It has a bit of a military ring about it.’ McCoy liked the sound of it and agreed. ‘Next we’ll organize a few Ulster Hall meetings, to get your message through to the people of the Shankill. That’s where the money is. Maybe we’ll fit you up with some transport while we’re at it! And something else. It’s about time you started getting some support from the boys that really matter.’ McCoy knew he meant the groups of hooded men who lurked round the Protestant periphery, demanding protection money. He would leave that end of things to the butcher, for who better than a Portadown man to negotiate such a deal?
The second problem Magee isolated was more fundamental. It had to do with McCoy’s grasp of the sacred texts. McCoy didn’t know his scripture the way a preaching man should. He imagined he had learned enough from listening to the old man, or from his mother when she had taken penny Sunday school, but in later life he had difficulty getting some of the more complicated passages quite right. Worse still, he had difficulty getting any sense out of them. The years he had spent propping up the crew bar on the Stranraer ferry with a variety of companions, some of them very unscriptural indeed, had embedded in his brain a number of quotations and catchphrases of dubious origin. In moments of stress, the Reverend McCoy would attribute these to the Ancients.
‘“The mountain sheep are sweeter but the valley sheep arc fatter,” ‘he would proclaim to the startled citizens of Ballymoney. ‘“We therefore thought it meeter for to carry off the latter.” Proverbs, Chapter two, Verse two.’
‘“Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink!”’ was another favourite. He firmly believed in its inspired origins, and not even Magee’s firmest denials could persuade him to drop it from his repertoire. And while it was undoubtedly good enough for Ballymoney, it cut no ice with the new classes of born-again youngsters that the times were producing. Young smart-arses reared on free school milk, who were hearing the call to their Saviour in their teens and earlier, and who had taken to frequenting the scripture halls and Bible tents, swapping chapter and verse with their elders.
There had been an embarrassing scene one night in the Shambles. McCoy was standing at the serving window of the van, warm as toast from the gas ring at his backside, preaching to a huddled gathering who had braved the elements to hear the Lord’s Word. A smooth-faced young pup had stepped forward, Bible in hand, to accuse him of heresy, shouting to the people to beware, the words they were hearing were not those of Holy Writ but of that papist pomographer and stooge of Rome, William Shakespeare. Magee had been on to him in seconds, and a deft kick in the groin had silenced his warbling. A few of the other men had joined in, dragging СКАЧАТЬ