Dancing in Limbo - Edward Toman

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Donatists started to feel the Spirit moving among them again. And without the Palace for protection, who could say how far things might deteriorate this time?

      The GPs’ surgery was a small room at the back of the lounge that Billy kept reserved for any passing member of the profession who might drop in to entertain colleagues and to discuss patients and their upcoming treatment. Though a hard man in anyone’s books, even Billy felt uneasy till his guests had gone silently about their business. These were men you didn’t mess with. Men you didn’t question, men you didn’t contradict. They arrived unexpectedly by taxi, flanked by their minders and personal assistants, looking relaxed and exuding bonhomie, but behind the dark glasses their eyes were cold. When there was company in the back room an unnatural quietness fell on the bar. There was no singing, no raucous ribaldry. A careless word could give offence. Billy’s regulars kept their noses in their pints and their eyes to themselves; only the very drunk or the very foolhardy ever staggered in from the saloon to interrupt their conferences or regale them with unsolicited camaraderie. For the man who can pay a house call is one of a very special breed.

      To give Billy his due, though he had done his share in the Loyalist cause, he had never made a house call. He lacked the bedside manner. But he recognized and admired the talent in others. The true GP is a professional, a member of a unique brotherhood, who can officiate at death and take it in his stride. Billy could picture how they went about their business. The playful chiming of the bells in the hall, tinkling the theme from Z Cars, announces to the excited children that there is a visitor at the front door. Soft voices, solicitously inquiring of the youngsters if Daddy by any chance is in? But Daddy will be in; the GP will have checked in advance. Into the hall and through to the kitchen, as casual and natural as a member of the family. Daddy is behind the table, eating his tea and watching the box. The GP, unruffled, opens his bag and delicately removes the tools of his trade. Daddy’s brains splatter the chattering television and congeal on the fry, while the baby gurgles vacantly at the stranger and the children stand helpless and embarrassed at the foot of the stairs. The GP is in no hurry out, closing the door behind him quietly. There is no need for conversation. It is too late for speeches, for recriminations, for anger, for abuse. Only the new widow, running flushed to the banisters above will interrupt the banal normality of the scene with her sudden screaming.

      The Boyne Lounge, already subdued by the presence of company in the surgery, fell silent when Magee entered. He wasn’t a regular and like all Portadown men he was rarely welcome on licensed premises. But Magee needed no whiskey to fortify himself. He indicated to Billy that his business was in the back room. Billy slipped away and returned a moment later to inform him that they would see him now.

      McCoy was scrutinizing the latest postcard from Chastity when Magee arrived next morning to tell him that they were in business. The boys in the dark glasses had given their grudging blessing to his interdenominational scheme. They had spelled out the exact percentage of his profits they would be expecting, and outlined to him the penalties that nonpayment would incur. He didn’t need their reminder that any cock-ups, especially in a venture involving the papists, would not be appreciated. ‘Put that away and get off your arse!’ he ordered McCoy. ‘It’s all systems go! Lily’ll need all the rags you can get your hands on.’

      ‘Would you look at the weather they’re enjoying in London,’ McCoy said, ignoring his impatience. ‘Couldn’t we do with a bit of it here once in a while.’ He held out for Magee’s perusal the sepia portrait of the dowager Queen Mary at her most disapproving.

      But Chastity McCoy was nowhere near Buckingham Palace. Unknown to McCoy and Magee on the one side of the Shambles, and to Eugene and the Patriot on the other (and certainly unsuspected by the boys in Billy’s back room), unknown in fact to everyone but Archbishop Schnozzle O’Shea, Chastity was at that precise moment no more than a stone’s throw away, locked in the attic at Ara Coeli. And though she could glimpse nothing through the skylight but the gilded cross atop one of the spires, she could recognize every muffled noise from the Shambles below and was sobbing with homesickness. But the door was locked. Nor would it would have done her much good had it been open, for the door beyond that was locked, and the great front door too. And Schnozzle had the keys in his pocket, where he checked them with obsessive regularity every five minutes.

      Suddenly the window frame shook and the room vibrated as the bell from the north tower began to toll the Angelus. It was a sound that could be heard all over the county, a summons to the faithful to stop what they were doing and face the church on the hill, united in prayer. Chastity had heard the Angelus bell every day of her childhood, journeying with her father in the ice-cream van to the loyalist townlands, proclaiming the Crucified Jesus. She had seen the papist farmers in the fields cross themselves when it tolled. Her father had always cursed its intrusion on his preaching, cursed the papists for their superstition and blind adherence to the error of their ways, cursed their priests for whoremongers and parasites and their pontiff as the Antichrist himself. Now for the first time she understood the ritual of its summons. She crossed herself carefully and knelt to pray before the picture of the Dancing Madonna.

      When she had first presented herself at his kitchen door asking for religious instruction, Archbishop Schnozzle’s immediate reaction was suspicion. He smelled a rat. A childhood round the Shambles had tutored him well in the wiles of the other side. But closer inspection revealed that the girl with the battered suitcase standing in the snow was indeed Chastity McCoy. Was it a trick or was it God’s work? He felt his heart racing. It was a miracle in itself that she had got past the guards, for the Sisters of the True Faith should have picked her up at the bottom of the Cathedral steps. He opened the door cautiously, checked that the coast was clear, and invited her to step inside.

      ‘Did your father send you?’ he demanded, still looking for the catch.

      ‘I came on my own.’

      ‘Does he know you’re here?’

      ‘He’d kill me if he knew!’

      ‘Did anyone follow you?’

      ‘I saw no one.’

      ‘Did the Sisters not challenge you?’

      ‘They were asleep.’

      ‘What age are you?’

      ‘I’m fourteen.’

      ‘Do you realize what you are doing?’

      ‘I’m old enough to make my own decisions.’

      ‘You know you can never go back?’

      ‘I know that. Am I safe here?’

      ‘You have my word on it!’

      She would have his word indeed! A cast iron guarantee! For no one in Ireland had followed the story of Chastity McCoy more closely than Schnozzle. He knew every detail of her strange upbringing, a childhood steeped in the bigotry that was her father’s hallmark. It had all started with the arrival of Ramirez, the apostate priest and his blasphemous circus, who travelled the roads at McCoy’s bidding to shame and outrage the Catholic people. He remembered all too well her late mother, a one-time nun seduced away from the convent to join in this provocative charade. He could say with pride that he himself was the only man brave enough to confront them, to stalk them fearlessly from townland to townland, risking the wrath of Magee and his bully boys. Schnozzle foretold that it would end badly and when he heard that Ramirez had been murdered he knew he had been proved right. God was not mocked! But what was he to make of the corollary to this tale of shame? The Señora moving into the Shambles with McCoy, heavy with his child? For years it had troubled him, this enigma of the half-caste girl playing in the gutters on the Protestant side of the square. If God had a plan in all this, Schnozzle couldn’t see it. He reluctantly accepted that the ways of the Almighty might not be ours. He prayed that the blood in her veins would one day prove unsuited to the cold Presbyterian ways of Armagh. And in time his patience was rewarded.

      The rumours at first

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