THAT same Friday the afternoon and the evening papers were as full of miracle and metaphysic as they were ordinarily full of horse-racing and adultery. A few spineless æsthetes had, it appeared, been converted and had asked the competent authorities to receive them into the Church of Rome; but such, as the press took pains to point out, were for the most part disloyal members of the Church of England, whose superstitious mummeries had long been condemned by representative thinkers like the Lord Brentford and the bishop of Birmingham. The great mass of the people was still unconvinced of the reality of the miracle and leader writers were confident that a thing called British sanity would win another thing called the day. Scotland, especially, was not going to be false to her ancient traditions and that very afternoon, at a united anti-miracle meeting, an eminent local Luther had preached (S.B. to all stations): “O God, Who art surrounded by cherubime and seraphime, deliver us from all drunkards, breakers of the Sabbath, whoremongers, and Roman Catholics.”
Such, at any rate, were the facts which Mr. J. Shyman Bell gleaned from the Edinburgh Evening Messenger propped, like a groggy altar card, against the mirror of his dressing table. Yes, he argued as he began tying his black tie for the fifth time, yes, the papers were right. British sanity would win the day. Miracles simply didn’t happen; and sooner or later the thing would be exposed for the hoax that it was. And, even if the real truth of the matter were never known, he would always get that hundred thousand for the wrongful removal of his dancing hall. If necessary, he would take the matter to court; a popish priest wouldn’t stand an earthly before an honest Scottish judge. Not that it was at all likely that he would be forced to take proceedings. Fear of his own skin would make the priest pay up, fear of being shown up for the imposter that he was. And on the interest from a hundred thousand pounds he and Bella could live like a couple of fighting cocks and get slewed up every night of the week if they wanted to.
“Nearly ready?” he called through the open door to the bedroom where his hardboiled wife, kilted in white underclothes, was polishing her nails.
“Almost, Jimmy.” Her voice was the querulous wail of a woman to whom fashionable hotels, champagne, and jazz are the ultimate beatitudes. “Dear, but I do wish we hadn’t to go and dine with these beastly Succoths.”
“I know, Bella, I know. A bore, of course.” He was silent as he fumbled intricately with his tie. “But these little social duties have got to be done. And the Succoths, remember, are one of the most wealthy and cultured families in Murrayfield.”
“I think that Alastair Succoth looks more like a tram conductor than a stockbroker. That thin, measly, peasly face of his.” She probed with her nail file as though the quick on her finger were the thin, measly, peasly face of Alastair Succoth. “And, as for his wife, she’s the most stuck-up woman in Edinburgh. I’m not so sure, either, that she hasn’t got lovers. Not that I’d blame her for that. I know jolly well that I shouldn’t like to have to be pawed about by Alastair Succoth.”
“Still,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell, patting peace to his tie and reaching for his waistcoat, “still, it doesn’t do us any harm socially to know these people. Succoth’s got a lot of influence in the right quarter. A member of Muirfield and all that. He might be useful to us some day. You never can tell.”
There was a rustling as Mrs. Shyman Bell poured a crimson and silver frock over herself.
“And another thing,” she said, “they’ll be asking us all about that bloody miracle.”
“Yes, Bella, I suppose they will.”
“Well, if they do, I’ve got a good mind to tell them straight out that it’s none of their business. I’m just about fed up with that miracle. Only this afternoon Mrs. Mackenzie stopped me in Princes Street and asked me if I thought it was the Lord Jesus Christ or the Devil who had remove our dance hall. I nearly told her—oh, I don’t know what I nearly told her; but I was so angry that I almost spat in her face.”
“Poor Bella.”
Mrs. J. Shyman Bell gave some final pulls and tugs to her frock and, gazing at her reflection in the glass, decided that she looked at least five years younger than she actually was.
“Oh, well,” she said, “I hope to God they give us something decent to drink.”
2
At that very moment Mr. and Mrs. Succoth, dressed for dinner, were sitting in the smoke room of what transatlantic captionists would have called their luxurious Murrayfield home. They were drinking a preliminary cocktail and Nora Succoth, who was twenty-seven and was looking very worldly in a wispy black frock, said on a little wind of alcohol:
“God, Alastair, but whatever made you want to invite swine like that I can’t for the life of me imagine.”
Alastair Succoth picked at his pseudo-military moustache. He was a man of about thirty-five years of age and had become a stockbroker because his father had made money in machine tools and because there were “no bally exams to pass.” He owned an Isotta-Fraschini, lunched every day in the grill room of the North British Station Hotel, was a member of the Church of England and the other best clubs, had thought, during the war, that conscientious objectors were dirty skunks who ought to be shot, though now that war was damned stupid, was of the opinion that High Churchmen, intellectual novelists, homosexualists, and people who didn’t like rugby ought to be kicked out of the country, and that it was a waste of time to learn French, Italian, or German when all the waiters in the best foreign hotels could speak English. As he sat there, manly and ox-like, one felt certain that he would never experience any inclination to revise eucharistic formulæ or to rape girls of under sixteen. No; he was the normal healthy man about whom Anglican bishops enthuse when they talk about grit to junior official cadet corps.
“Oh, Bimmy’s not such a bad sort,” he drawled, still picking at his moustache. “And it’ll be amusing to hear about his miracle.”
“Bimmy! I thought his name was Jimmy.”
“So it is, old girl. So it is. But as his face hap-pens to look rather like his backside…Rather good, don’t you think?”
“Sometimes, Alastair, I think that you men are too vulgar for words.” Nora Succoth’s mind was by no means as emancipated as her legs. “And all I can say is that I’m jolly glad that this rotten dance hall was spirited away to the Bass Rock. And as for his wife, she’s as common as you make them. Always winking and rolling her eyes at men when her husband isn’t looking.”
“Oh, well, if all that one hears is true, Bimmy does a good deal of that sort of thing on his own account.”
“And,” Nora Succoth went on, “a miracle is just the sort of thing that would happen to people like that. A miracle indeed. Did you ever hear of somebody who was at all decent allowing themselves to get mixed up in a miracle? Alastair, if anything like that were to happen to us I’d make you sell out and we’d go live abroad. But, of course, people like that have no sense of shame. I expect, if you could get at the truth of the matter, you’d find out that they were actually enjoying the publicity.”
“I expect they do.”
“Alastair.” Nora Succoth was leaning forward with her glass in her hand and was regarding her husband with a definitely serious expression on her face. “Alastair. What do you make of all this Garden of Eden business?”
Alastair Succoth picked at his moustache with one hand and waved his glass with the other.
“Blest if I know, old girl, blest if I know.”
But Nora Succoth continued to look like a youthful Lady Diana Manners hungering for the manna which is from above.
“Yes,” she said, “but supposing it’s really true? Alastair? Religion and—Christ and all that?”
Alastair Succoth appeared as unhappy as his general expressionlessness would allow. Like most men to whom the Name of their Saviour is an expletive rather than a noun, he considered that the discussion of religion was at all times the worst of bad form. Golf, wireless, hunting, shooting, these were the things that men could talk about with profit to themselves and others. But religion! And who would ever have thought that a sensible girl like Nora would get onto that tack. Well, it showed you how careful you had to be of those priests and parsons.
“Look here, Nora,” he said, “you’re letting this business get on your nerves.” He pointed to where the Cinzano and the gin stood side by side. “I’d have another little drink if I were you. It’ll do you good.”
“But I’m serious, Alastair. Dead serious.” And indeed Nora Succoth was looking like a young girl in love with and listening to a poet. “What’s your opinion of Christ, Alastair?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” This time Alastair Succoth felt that he had to give her some kind of answer. “Decent enough sort of fellow, I suppose, but not exactly my line.” He reached out and pushed the Cinzano and the gin towards his wife. “Now do have another little drink, old girl. It’ll do you good, I tell you.”
Nora Succoth sighed, gave up the manna from above, and had another little drink.
3
The Shyman Bells arrived in a taxi.
“How are you, my dear?” said Nora Succoth to Mrs. Shyman Bell. “We really must apologize to both of you for bringing you out on a night like this.”
“But how silly of you.” Bella Shyman Bell was all dimples and good will. “Why, we’d have walked through miles of mud just to have the pleasure of seeing you. Wouldn’t we, Jimmy?”
“Of course we would.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell was half bending over Mrs. Succoth’s hand, like a prudent curate compromising between a bow and a genuflection. “Through miles of mud, Alastair, old boy. For to be perfectly frank, it’s not every day of one’s life that one has the opportunity of dining with an old pal like you.”
After Mrs. Shyman Bell and Alastair Succoth had greeted each other in the same spirit of brassiness a silence fell over the company and, falling, seemed to suggest that those present were not very great friends after all.
“What about a little spot?” Alastair Succoth asked brightly, just as though hundreds of thousands of other Alastair Succoths in the British Empire were not simultaneously extending the same invitation in the same terms.
Bella Shyman Bell smiled a wide smile which relieved her of the necessity of acquiescing verbally while her husband gave an informal chuckle and said:
“That’s the stuff, Alastair. Another little drink, eh? Well, well, where would we all be without it?”
“That’s a fact,” said Alastair Succoth, busying himself with the bottles.
“What a ducky little dog,” said Mrs. Shyman Bell, noticing a small Aberdeen terrier lying curled up on the hearth rug. “Tzoop, tzoop, tzoop.” She made sucking noises with her lips. “Snoodger, come here.”
But Smoodger merely opened a bored eye, closed it again, and lay still.
“I’m afraid that he’s not very sociable.” Nora Succoth prodded the dog with her foot. “Get up, Mac, and say ‘How-d’ye-do’ to the visitors.”
“We’ve got a dog,” Bella Shyman Bell informed as she reached out to receive her cocktail from her host. “Billy, we call him. He’s a cocker spaniel and such a darling.”
“I adore dogs,” said Nora Succoth solemnly and as though she were a martyr about to be burnt for her faith. “They’re so much more intelligent than cats, don’t you think?”
“Well,” said Alastair Succoth, holding up his glass, “cheerio, everybody.”
Everybody dutifully repeated the salutation and Mrs. Shyman Bell, after a sip at the amber liquid, said sociably:
“Yes, I quite agree with you. Dogs are ever so much more intelligent than cats.”
Another silence fell on the company. Mr. J. Shyman Bell, who always left the main burden of polite conversation to others, began to wonder what his hostess must look like without any clothes on; Nora Succoth thought that Mr. J. Shyman Bell looked uncommonly like a cabman; Bella Shyman Bell asked herself if Nora Succoth’s frock was as expensive as it looked; and Alastair Succoth hoped that his guests would leave before eleven.
Nora Succoth was the first to perceive the si-lence and, realizing that a barrier of noise was the only possible screen between their souls, said at random to Bella Shyman Bell:
“And, my dear, of course we sympathize most frightfully with you about this terrible miracle. And not only us. Everybody’s most frightfully sorry for your both. Most frightfully sorry.”
Bella Shyman Bell, startled by the unexpected switch from dogs to miracles, made a stiff little inclination with her head.
“I can only assure you,” she said, “I can only assure you that both my husband and myself are more than grateful to you for your kind expression of sympathy.”
“Yes,” said Alastair Succoth. “All that I can say is that it’s a damned shame. A damned shame, that’s what it is.”
“Oh, well,” said Mr. Shyman Bell, “we’ve all got our little crosses to bear, what?”
“A pretty big cross, I should call it.” Nora Suc-coth’s third cocktail was beginning to make her feel what she expressed. “If some meddling old priest were to start moving any of my belongings I’m afraid that I shouldn’t be so good-tempered about it.”
“Oh, well,” said Mr. Shyman Bell, “one must make allowances. These priests aren’t as well educated as we are, you know.”
“But,” protested Alastair Succoth, “you must have dropped a pretty penny over this business, haven’t you?”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell folded his hands over his paunch and addressed the fireplace.
“A pretty penny, as you say, old man, and like the other fellow I’m not in business for the good of my health. And the first thing that I did when I got back from North Berwick was to go and see this priest.”
“Of course,” exclaimed Nora Succoth, “you were in the Garden of Eden when it did a bunk, weren’t you? I had quite forgotten that. It must have been too terribly thrilling for words. Weren’t you frightened? I know I should have been.”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell smiled modestly to the burning coal, to the tongs, and to the bright brass fender.
“I will admit, Mrs. Alastair Succoth, that I was a little bit startled for find myself and my dance hall on the Bass Rock; but the curious part of the affair is that nobody can remember feeling any particular sensation when the building was supposed to be flying through the air. Extraordinary, what?” His hand left his paunch, scratched at his face, went back again. "Well, as I was saying, I went to see this priest and I put it pretty plain and straight to him that I was a stout Protestant and that I couldn’t, in loyalty to my forefathers and respect for all that I held most dear, that I couldn’t believe in all this mumbo-jumbo and hanky-panky. I said that I was a plain man who was accustomed to dealing with plain facts and I pointed out that, priest or no priest, he had no right to play hide-the-thimble with my dance hall. I said that I didn’t give a tinker’s curse by what—by what underhand, dagoish trickery he had removed my property and that either he or the Pope of Rome would have to bring it back right on the dot or pay me cash down a tidy little sum in compensation.” He turned to his wife who was three inches taller than he. “Yes, little woman,” he said, “I think that, as our American friends would say, J. Shyman showed those illiterate bums just where they got off.”
“And quite right, too,” Alastair Succoth applaud-ed. “That’ll teach the swine not to go practising their dirty work on honest, good-living citizens.”
“But,” asked Nora Succoth, “how did the Gar-den of Eden get onto the Bass Rock? After all, it must have got there somehow.”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell made a gesture which he had learned from a lady at Dieppe.
“Mrs. Alastair Succoth,” he said, “I’m not a reli-gious man; but I believe in doing good to my fellow-men and in being a true pal in the hour of need. And I think that you may take it from me that this removal of my dance hall is nothing but rank dishonesty and superstition.”
“That’s right,” said Alastair Succoth, afraid that his wife was again going to ask embarrassing questions. “The thing’s nothing more nor less than a clever fraud from start to finish. A clever fraud, I admit; but none the less a fraud for all that.”
Nora Succoth nodded.
“I was only wondering,” she said apologetically.
Downstairs the gong rumbled, like a giant gripe in a giant belly.
4
“What I always say,” said Alastair Succoth as he passed the port to his guest, “what I always say, Bimmy, is that it’s the fellow who knows how to play the game who wins in the long run. Fair play, that’s always been my motto and I think, if I may say so without boasting, that it’s a very British motto. For, when all is said and done, it’s fair play that has won Britain her place among the nations. What I always say is that the world is divided into two classes: Britishers and wops, white men and yellow men. What say you, Bimmy?”
The ladies had left the room two minutes previ-ously and the men were now free to indulge in manly man-to-man conversation.
“You’ve hit the nail on the head, Alastair, old man.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s mind was at a loss to know whether it was misted more by the alcohol which had come or by that which was yet to come. “Being British, that’s what matters.” He raised his hand to his mouth, but too late, for a large hiccup had already escaped and was now sailing magnificently round the room. “’Scuse me, Alastair old boy; but your wines are so good that I can’t help belching out of sheer appreciation.” Yes, and sometimes I say to myself in the still watches of the night: ‘Bimmy, old lad, if you suddenly woke up to find that you weren’t British you’d shoot yourself.’”
“British. Yes, Bimmy, we’re British.” Mr. Ala-stair Succoth pronounced the Cives Romani Sumus as though it were the first article of the Nicæn Creed. “And that’s more than priests and miracle-mongers can say, Bimmy. No person who was really and truly and wholly British would pinch another fellow’s dance hall and wheich it away to the top of the Bass Rock.
Mr. J. Shyman Bell gulped at his port.
“Alastair, old scout,” he said, “I can see that you’re a man after my own heart. It’s a funny thing, but one doesn’t run into such a hell of a lot of people who think the same thing as we do; about being British and all that. And you’re quite right about the miracle. It was one of the most un-British things that I’ve seen in all my life.”
“Yes, Bimmy, and you can take my word for it that it won’t stop there. You won’t get a penny compensation, not a penny. It doesn’t matter what the priest said to you. I know their tricks. All he’s got to do is wire to the Pope and ask for an indulgence to do the dirty on a stout Protestant. Oh, yes, I know their tricks. They’re not trained in those seminatories or whatever they call them for nothing. No, Bimmy, my boy, you’ll be lucky if you see a brass farthing.”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell protested through his round, red balloon of a face.
“But, damn it, Alastair, the fellow promised.”
“Promised!” Alastair gave a Muirfield washing-room laugh. “Promised! Damn it, Bimmy, those fellows don’t think anything of promises. The end justifies the means, as the Jesuists say. And these Jesuists are all over the country, lighting candles and burning incense and plotting and planning to ruin our womenfolk and to make a Roman Catholic lord Provost of Edinburgh. Jesuists. I’ll bet this priest is a Jesuist in disguise. If he isn’t one himself, his father was.” He blew out a cloud of smoke, deliberately, self-consciously, as though the act were an accomplishment and symbolic of virility. “But I’ll tell you how you can get your own back, Bimmy. You can turn your Garden of Eden into a sort of casino and rake in the shekels. That’ll make the cads sit up, Bimmy, that’ll make the cads sit up.”
“A casino?” Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s sense of ac-quisitiveness (described by him as a business brain) had been somewhat dulled by wine. “A casino, Alastair? But why a casino?”
“To show those rotters the true meaning of Brit-ish pluck, Bimmy. And, as I say, you’d fairly coin money. Far more than you did when the Garden of Eden was in Edinburgh. Damn it, man, North Berwick’s becoming more and more fashionable every year. Golf, of course. But, apart from the hotels, there’s no first-class dancing place where people can go in the evening. And they’d be only too glad to take a launch out to the Bass Rock after dinner and shake a hoof and have a drink or two. The miracle may be a hoax, Bimmy, but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t use the hoax to your own advantage. The Garden of Eden’s famous all over the world now. You’d get Americans coming all the way from Ohio to dance on the Bass Rock. People’d be tickled to death at the thought of being able to dance in the original Garden of Eden stuck on top of the Bass Rock by the treachery of a priest. Damn it, man, the place is still yours. All you’d have to do to make it really international would be to get a special license to sell drink till all hours and provide some ootchy-looking actressy sort of girls to sit alone under palms. And you’d make money hand over fist.”
“Alastair, you’re a pal.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s soul was glowing almost as redly as his face. Already he could see the purple and red and gold lights shining out across the water from the Bass Rock. Already he could see the launches filled with well-dressed and well-fed men and women putting out from the harbour. Already he could see himself receiving them at the top of the carpeted steps. He’d open in ten days’ time while the miracle was still hot. On Christmas night for preference. Lots of people would motor down from Edinburgh. From Glasgow even. From Dundee. From Perth. From Aberdeen. He’d see that priest to-morrow and tell him he could put his hundred thousand pounds where the monkey put the nuts. Yes, Alastair was indeed a pal.
“Not at all,” Alastair Succoth protested as Mr. J. Shyman Bell thanked him for the seventh time. “Not at all, Bimmy. After all, it’s only British to help a friend.”
“British. Yes, it’s a great thing to be British.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s sense of acquisitiveness dulled again into hoggish content. “By the way, Alastair,” he asked, leaning across the table and speaking through the fingers of his right hand, “by the way, Alastair, did I ever tell you that one about the newly married couple in the railway carriage?”
Father Malachy's Miracle: Chapter Ten
Father Malachy's Miracle: Chapter Eight
Notes
Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Cooper, Viscountess Norwich (née Lady Diana Manners; 29 August 1892–16 June 1986) was a famously glamorous social figure in London and Paris.
Cives Romani Sumus: We are Roman citizens
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