Before Easter, in spite of all the attention it was attracting, the cactus shrivelled and died. The Irish News spiked the story, Maud Gonne McGuffin was given her cards, and Alphonsus’s interests turned back to his impending vocation. His aunt had had to wait twenty years, until his ordination day, to see her smudged likeness on the front page of the paper.
Even now, swaying through an endless vista of stunted spiky growths, Father Alphonsus recalled the incident with a pang of residual guilt.
The guide, who had talked him into the trip the previous evening, had sworn to him on his mother’s grave that he would not be disappointed. But when they finally reached their destination at noon it needed only one glance at the scruffy Indian village for Alphonsus to know that he’d been sold a pup. But then what did he expect? he asked himself. The treasures of Teotihuacán? Half a dozen adobe huts were scattered round a makeshift square. Chickens and a goat scratched unconvincingly in the dust. A few children detached themselves from a lethargic game and tried to sell him knick-knacks. The guide ordered him to take photographs, then ushered him into the souvenir emporium. His heart sank. A boyhood on the Falls Road hadn’t taught him much about the glories of the Teoamoxtli, but he knew he could have spared himself the discomfort of the journey, could have stayed in the motel in Tijuana with a cold beer and a copy of Newsweek, enjoying impure thoughts by the poolside, instead of trekking all the way up to this God-abandoned spot. There was nothing here he couldn’t pick up in the town. He bought a few items out of politeness and was about to go when his eye was caught by the figurine nailed to the wall high above the cash register.
It was a small female figure, no more than six inches tall, a Madonna perhaps, crudely carved from driftwood. Though the features were roughly executed, they captured an expression of hauteur in the blank stare, the slightly curled full lips and the oval Aztec eyes. He knew at once that he must have it. It certainly wasn’t the sort of thing his aunt would go for, but it had an authentically ethnic look that might impress his new friends back in Sausalito.
‘Esta, ¿quién es?’ he asked.
The proprietor, a wizened little man with the wrinkled face of a dried prune, didn’t answer, didn’t move.
‘¡No es nada, señor! ¡No se vender the guide said. It’s nothing. It’s not for sale.
‘Can I see it anyhow?’ Alphonsus said.
‘¡No es posible!‘the guide answered hurriedly.
‘¿Cuánto cuesta?’ Alphonsus insisted.
‘¡Solamente una réplica!’ the guide assured him. ‘Not bring so good luck.’
If they don’t want me to have it then it must be something rare, Alphonsus started thinking. Then he thought ‘bollocks’, as his Belfast common sense re-asserted itself. It was all a ploy to build up his interest, to sucker the gringo into parting with more greenbacks. The guide was taking mugs like himself up the mountain every day of the week; no doubt the old guy had a cardboard box full of similar carvings under the counter, and a kid out the back whittling away on demand. But the more Alphonsus contemplated it the more he knew he wanted it. He could picture it already on the mantelpiece in his study bedroom.
The old man suddenly reached up and pulled the figurine roughly from the wall and handed it to him, muttering something in an ancient tongue.
‘What is he saying?’ Alphonsus asked.
The guide shrugged his shoulders, suddenly appearing to lose interest in the transaction. ‘Señor Ramirez say you can have! He likes that you are priest; he too once had brother a priest. For you if you want it is present. And maybe you pray for his brother? Okay?’
‘Ask him how much he wants for his present?’ Alphonsus said suspiciously.
‘It is present!’ the guide repeated. ‘You can have! Now we go, pronto, eh?’
He beckoned to him to leave. Alphonsus pocketed the statuette and followed him out into the glare of the noonday sun. He’d have another tequila, he told himself. Then he’d help the guide prise the mules away from the peyote plants.
The same sun that shone on Father Alphonsus had already gone down in the hills above Armagh. It was cold as well as dark, with a wind that would have cut corn. A night, you would have thought, for the fireside or the early bed.
But not this night! For this was a night when none could sleep.
The ice-cream van had stopped at the foot of the lane below the house, and a crowd had gathered. Frank Feely was standing up on a chair to look out of the window. His father was standing cursing inside the front door, his face red with anger, using words the boy had never heard before, and his mother was outside the house screaming back in at his father to come out and fight like a man. ‘You’re a no-good coward, a yellow-livered whore’s get out of hell! Are you just going to stand there and let him get away with it?’ His father went over to the gable wall of the house and began to throw lumps of stone over the potato patch in the direction of the chiming van. ‘For the love of the suffering Jesus,’ she shouted at him, ‘who do you think you are going to hit from that distance?’ She raced into the house, pushed Frank aside and, opening the window, grabbed the stout pole from which the papal flag hung limply. ‘Keep your eye on the child at least,’ she ordered. She ran to the road and he saw her begin to lay about her with the flagpole.
Frank ran to follow her, but his father picked him up and carried him inside. ‘Sometimes there’s not a lot of point getting yourself caught up in that sort of carry-on,’ he said. ‘McCoy’s trailing his coat. He won’t be happy till there’s ructions. We’ll leave it to Father Schnozzle to sort out.’
From the safety of the ice-cream van, Oliver Cromwell McCoy took stock of the developing situation with some satisfaction. The Mexican and his wife cowered on the floor, covering their ears against the noise of the riot building up outside. But the sounds were music to McCoy’s ears. ‘Mucho people! Mucho money! Eh?’ he announced to the couple at his feet. He switched off the chimes and blew into the microphone; the time had come to take control of the situation.
‘Protestant people of Armagh! Once more the lackeys of Rome are trying to stop us! They think they can come between us and our true Bible faith; but let them be warned, they’re dealing with Ulstermen, not some forelock-tugging toady from down the Free State, and it will take more than a few nancy boys from Rome, in their skirts and Italian hats, to stop us. With the help of God, and the Tynan B Specials’ – here a cheer went up from the crowd as these gallant defenders of the Protestant way moved through the crowd and took up their positions – ‘they’ll not stop us tonight either. Ulstermen will be free to travel the roads of their beloved province and exercise their right to religious freedom, won for them through the blood of their forefathers.’
The reason for the hold-up had now become clear. Up ahead at the crossroads a throng of papists, led by a priest, had felled a tree and were gathered behind this barricade, reciting the rosary. Some of them knelt in the road as the thin cleric gave out the Hail Marys through a megaphone. Across the fallen tree stretched their banners and placards:
LEGION OF MARY;
SAINT MATT TALBOT’S MISSION TO THE PERVERT (Father forgive them for they know not what they do!)
McCoy cautiously opened the sliding window of the van and craned his neck round, the better to survey the scene. He dodged back from the hail of stones which this gesture prompted. But he had seen enough to know that the B-men were massing for a frontal attack on the barricade and he gripped the mike and began to bellow his orders:
‘I see our long-nosed friend is here again. Mister Schnozzle Durante, if I’m not very