The Shaftesbury Miracle

By Leif Bodnarchuk

"How the f%%k are we gonna get Jesus a passport?"

Meet Beamer. He and his best mate Dave live in Belfast. It’s 1993 and everybody’s drunk and stoned. One night a guy shows up at their door, desperate for a place to stay.

Meet Jesus Christ – the Son of Man needs to lie low.
A corrupt Heaven wants him upstairs, so The Vatican send bounty hunters. If they get their hands on Jesus... well... there’ll be much gnashing of teeth on Earth.

Meet Katya from Belarus…and Sergei, and Agnes-Marie, and Bob & Doug the vipers, and Inspector Whiteside, and PJ the knicker-thief…Meet Sprout the spide, and the Brits and the RUC…Meet a local crime lord from the telly. Some of them want to help Beamer spirit the Holy Spirit to safety.
Some don’t.
Others…haven’t a baldy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781326645748

Book preview

The Shaftesbury Miracle

The Shaftesbury Miracle

by Leif Bodnarchuk

Copyright

© Copyright 2016 Leif Bodnarchuk, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work

ISBN 978-1-326-64574-8

First digital edition

Published by Lulu

Cover art by Kes Carew

All characters fictional — resemblances to anyone living or dead are coincidental.

That said… Jesus Christ is completely legit

Dedicated to decent criminals who make our world a better place

The Shaftesbury Miracle

When I first met Jesus Christ, I thought he was a drug dealer. You would too, if you and your best friend were smoking weed and some desperate hippie showed up at the door. You wouldn't say 'Alright there, Messiah?' because this is Belfast. No one expects anything good to happen in Belfast.

My name's Beamer. Actually it's John, but everyone uses my nickname. In the summer of 1993 something amazing happened.

I'm a university dropout, so don't expect a dazzling read. My school reports generally went like this:

When John applies himself, he shows promise. If only he would apply himself to his studies.

I've hardly ever finished what I started.

But then I met Jesus.

1

127 Fitzroy Avenue should've been bulldozed to dust before I was born. It's a three-bedroom place, and me and Dave have been flatmates for years. We're proud of our record, mentally scarring a string of flatmates who've come and gone, leaving us with a handy spare bedroom. We call it a house – everyone around here calls their place a house, even if it's a flat, or a bedsit, or in our case, a damp-infested terrace hovel. I'm amazed we don't have TB, asthma, or the black lung.

The landlord advertises constantly to keep a body in that third bed, but me and Dave usually find a way to scare would-be tenants off. Despite this pattern you'd expect us to be exposed and evicted, but for some reason the landlord thinks I'm the responsible type.

I got saddled with collecting rent for a guy I've never laid eyes on. He's called Rhubarb, and that's all I know. On the second Friday of every month I take an envelope stuffed with crinkled cash to a night safe. For this honour, the mysterious Rhubarb lets me off a tenner's rent. Dave doesn't know that bit – if he did he'd probably want a share. Even though I barely know Rhubarb, I'm convinced he's sleazy for two reasons:

1) he's a landlord

2) too many awkward pauses on the phone.

The last flatmate me and Dave had was Sharon. She spruced the place up, but after she left it went downhill again. Unlike me and Dave, Sharon had a job, so when she said (often) she knew a thing or two about responsibility, we just believed her. She was a couple years older than me, wore foundation like cake icing, and her hair was permed so tight it threatened to implode on itself. How did we get rid of Sharon? Toilet paper.

Traditionally, when me and Dave ran out of bog roll, we used whatever junk mail came though the door until all that was left were glossy flyers. Whoever used the last of the good stuff had to go buy a two-pack of proper stuff from the Spar. When Sharon moved in, the place got cleaner, and there were always four rolls stacked on the plunger handle. Spoilt like kings, me and Dave went overboard and clogged the toilet nine times in seven weeks.

Sharon left.

We rationed.

The three-ply lasted another four months.

Me and Dave are jobless, and you might wonder how we can afford rent. For a start, if you're paying more than 80 quid per bedroom for anything on Fitzroy, you're a mug. Second, there are plenty of landlords who accept housing benefit, or as Dave once called it, the Royal Horn of Plenty.

Me and Dave are fully-fledged Catholics, and if you're a Catholic from Downpatrick, you're supposed to have an in-built gripe with Her Majesty the Queen. So when it comes to state handouts, there are two schools of Downpatrick Catholic thought:

1) bleed the monarchy dry by taking every penny you can

2) stand tall, support yourself, show the orangies you're no beggar.

But me and Dave don't go in for sectarian nonsense. We've created a third school of thought: we're just trying to avoid real jobs. Dave's folks aren't thrilled with his situation, whereas mine encouraged me to use the welfare system to gain a foothold after I left home. Still, I don't think they meant for me to spend four years on the dole.

But never mind what our parents want for us. The last thing me and Dave want are factory jobs or shirt-and-tie careers. This is how we approach suit-and-tie guys:

Us: 'What do you do?'

Guy: 'I work in–'

Us: 'You sell insurance.'

Guy: 'No, I design–'

Us: 'Listen mate. You wear a tie. You sell insurance.'

So thank Christ for Lizzie's Royal Horn of Plenty. Hold on, scratch that. Don't thank Christ – he (little h) told me he had nothing to do with it.

Me and Dave are pursuing a life of guitars and metal. I have a Flying V copy, modelled after Kirk Hammett's Gibson he played on Kill 'Em All. Dave plays a red Charvel Avenger, which would be the gayest guitar ever made if Randy Rhoads hadn't played something similar. Anyway Dave's playing makes up for the unnecessary flamboyancy. He's a hundred times better than me.

We live near Queen's University, in what I call Studentville. Let's just say Queen's is no Oxford. The majority of this lot are culchies – country-type folk who've barely ever seen the city before. They have no style, no sense of humour (but they think they do), and no idea how things work around here. It's pretty simple:

Lesson 1: learn to party

Lesson 2: there is no lesson 2

Anyone who falls down after five pints on a Friday and goes home so their mammy can do their washing is a lightweight, and doesn't deserve to stick around here. No one knows how to party anymore except me and Dave. And Jesus of course.

2 –

THURSDAY JULY 1

July – in the run-up to the new university year, Studentville gets busy with fresh-faced newcomers, culchies checking out new places to live. Like any landlord, Rhubarb wants to fill his shanty to capacity, and we start to receive enquiries. He has a cheek to advertise this dump as a TOWNHOUSE. Thankfully he's never around, and too tight to let an estate agent handle things. Therefore, me and Dave are the vetters.

Rhubarb can't understand why no one's taking the room.

It might have something to do with me answering the door in tight denim cut-offs, and faded T-shirts riddled with blim-holes. I get the six-day stubble going, puff on a half-smoked rollie, and generally open with:

'You the rat-catcher?'

It keeps that spare bed empty.

When all the decent places have been let out, a quiet panic sets into the latecomers. You can read their faces when they look around. Dave calls it quietly crestfallen – panicky students don't want to come right out and say this place is horrible, because they don't know for sure how many options they have left.

Like Joanne.

I guessed she was nineteen. Chubby face, pink lipstick, retro glasses to match. Her hair was dyed black, with brown roots.

Pause

I need to explain something about Dave. What Dave does sometimes, he refuses to call acting. Instead he calls it believing the lie. Just last week he rented Risky Business for one night but kept it a week. When the guy at the video shop demanded a late fee, Dave was adamant he'd only had the movie a night, and asked to see the manager, and she came out, and Dave accused her of running a racket, and he started to get emotional, demanding evidence, and she pulled out a record of when Dave rented the movie, and sure enough it had been a week, and Dave got angry, saying they cooked their books, and finally she showed Dave a newspaper, pointed to the date, and Dave went white – he actually went white – with supposed shock.

He broke down, shaking, doe-eyed. 'A week!' he cried out. 'They took a week from me. The… bastards!'

Dave left it to the manager's imagination.

An entire script can just pop into Dave's head in seconds and before you know it, he's giggling to himself. And when panicky student season rolls around, desperate, fresh-faced country folk become unsuspecting actors, when Rhubarb's TOWNHOUSE becomes the theatre of the absurd.

Play

Joanne.

She looks like a worrier. There's a sort of edginess to her, like she isn't quite sure if leaving home is the right thing to do. My bet is that her parents are the controlling type – most likely Christians – and Joanne has threatened something rash if they don't give her some space, but now she's scared, past the point of no return, trapped into proving herself.

When I was nineteen my parents were happy for me to leave. Not that we didn't get along, it's just I outgrew Downpatrick. The excitement of Belfast made the shoe rapist bearable.

More on the shoe rapist later.

Anyway, Dave is upstairs waiting in the bathroom.

He told me to play the butler – dry, deadpan, unquestioningly subservient. His final instruction:

'But make it look like there just might be something wrong with you.'

I answered the door and Joanne gave me a friendly 'Hello.'

I stare through her, into the middle distance, and drone:

'Please. Come in. Mister Bernard will see you shortly.'

Trying to play up to the wacky student stereotype, Joanne laughs nervously and steps into the hallway.

I close the door behind us and said nothing, waiting.

Joanne makes small talk, and everything she says ends in a question:

'I'm going to Queen's?'

'I'm taking psychology?'

'I like to paint in my spare time?'

When someone's talking to you, and you don't give some form of response after every sentence, they start thinking you're simple… Joanne obviously thinks my character can't grasp the concept of school and hobbies. I just stare through her, my mouth open a crack, and burp with a straight face.

Her eyes dart away and I manage not to break character and laugh. Then slowly, I pull my face into a particular look. Like it was an exercise my character's team of psychiatric nurses had prescribed. Like it was almost painful to do. The look my character is going for is a smile, but what I want it to look like is Bing Crosby after ten glasses of champagne.

'Ah, I see you've met Clyde!' Dave calls down from the upstairs landing.

That's our in-joke. Clyde was the orang-utan in Every Which Way But Loose.

Dave bobbles down the stairs like he's Robert Plant hosting a wine tasting party. He's wearing a scarf, and tosses one end behind him before giving Joanne a wide grin, saying:

'You must be here for the murder room!'

I nearly lose it.

'The what?' says Joanne with an edgy smile.

'Oh. Uh… The birder room,' says Dave, laughing far too much, finishing with an edgy smile of his own. 'Great tits.'

Joanne's nearly gobsmacked. 'I beg your pardon?'

'Tits. And sparrows of course. Lots of those. Starlings, the occasional robin. I dare say if it weren't for the herring gulls we'd probably have a veritable smorgasbord of feathered friends.' Creepy smile, followed by an extended hand, and 'I'm Mister Bernard, such a pleasure to meet you.'

Joanne takes Dave's hand, and looks like maybe she's relieved she got the wrong end of the stick.

Dave says 'Follow me,' and does this thing where he wrings his hands while making it look like he's trying to hide his wringing hands, like he can't help himself, putting the edge back on things.

By now Joanne must have wanted out, but just like the deal with her parents, there was a symbolic point of no return in her mind. She had already crossed the threshold. To back out now was tantamount to running home to mummy and daddy with her tail between her legs. She swallows, and says:

'Okay?'

Dave addresses me: 'Oh, Clyde – there's a bit of trouble with the bathroom, can you see to it?'

I pull a painful Bing face, and answer flat:

'Right away Mister Bernard.'

Dave shows a confused Joanne up the stairs, to the room, and I follow.

I call from the bathroom: 'Sir? It appears to be the usual blockage.'

Dave calls back: 'Ah, terribly sorry about that, I've forgotten how the commode works again. Sink it for me, won't you Clyde?'

'Of course sir.'

I wish I could see Joanne's face.

I pump the toilet handle to get a good flush going, then call:

'Looks like I shall have to mash it with my fingers sir.'

All I hear is Joanne saying 'I can't.'

Overlooking the staircase, I stand outside the bathroom. If you add a few drops of water to a shot-glass of instant coffee, you get an ulcer-brown sludge, and my right hand is caked in it. I give Joanne the Bing as she focuses on the front door.

Following, I call down:

'Sir, will the lady be stay-ay-ay-ahhhh!'

I stunt-tumble down the stairs, wailing.

I hit the bottom limply, fake poo smeared all over me.

Stunned silence.

Deathly still.

Dave looks awkward.

Joanne doesn't know whether to run, scream, or help.

My shitty hand jitters, and Joanne whimpers.

Then I gasp as if I'd just reawakened from death, and whisper hoarsely, desperately, eyes bulging out of me:

'The demon is asleep Joanne! Run, run for your life!'

Seconds later, me and Dave are in stitches, applauding ourselves.

There's a few panes of glass on the living room door that aren't cracked, and I catch my reflection, and something happens in my head, like a flicked switch, and suddenly I don't like what I see.

3 – FRIDAY JULY 2

I think what happened to me – the flicked switch – was something my counsellor once called introspection. Yep, counsellor. I had/have mental things. Anyway there was a thing in the back of my head that made me feel bad about scaring Joanne off. So to try and lift myself out of it, I justified:

1) she was far too nice for this place, so we actually did her a favour

2) she'd freak out at me and Dave smoking grass

3) she would've had annoying, frigid Christian friends over.

After I convinced myself our play was for the greater good, I got thinking. I'm 23 – nowhere near old, but lots of people my age do big life things. I don't want to get married, and I don't want a mortgage, and I don't want kids, and I don't want a job. What I want is to play guitar in a band, and have sex with girls, and smoke weed, and see the world.

Band: I play guitar, but it's just me and Dave, and he's light-years ahead of me.

Girls: the most serious it ever got was with Gráinne, and since then it's been a bunch of near misses.

The world: I went to Slough once.

So far my only steady achievement is weed.

My counsellor said if you do exactly the same things all the time and expect different things to happen, you're crazy. At least that's how I remember it.

So I need a change.

I asked myself, what repetitive thing in my life had the potential to drive me mad? Rhubarb, for a start. I was getting fed up being his money man. There have been times I've had to ransom Dave's last stash of weed to get him to pay up his rent, and when it caused grief, it wasn't worth Rhubarb's tenner discount. I want out of the tax-collecting game, and there's probably no better time to strike than panicky student season.

I told Dave we should let someone have the room.

He was reluctant at first, but I explained that the responsibility was driving me mad. He understood. There's one thing I'd never want to change: Dave's always been a good mate. We agreed the next girl would get the room. No dudes. Dudes don't want responsibility. Girls love it. And they buy the good bog roll.

*

If you're sitting in our living room, you know when someone's at the door before they knock, because they press the buzzer that doesn't work. It rattles against the plywood, which scrapes against the brick, and those scrapes transfer through the dense layers of yellowed wallpaper, and they become little scrabbles, like mice clawing in the cavity. Once the visitor realises the futility of the button, they knock the door.

I'm sitting by the window watching TV, hear the mice noises, and get up before the knocks. We're ready to let the room. Me and Dave are wearing black jeans with no rips in them, and plain black T-shirts. Our mission: just be two likeable guys who happen to have long hair.

I open the door and my jaw nearly drops. She's wearing a long knitted jumper like a dress. She's slim with curves, and milky-skinned. Her hair is almost purple – but not punk purple – and her big wide eyes go with the friendly smile. When most girls see me (if they're not looking right past me) they give me a quick scan up and down, and either make a face like I'm inferior, or just ignore me altogether.

She looks into my eyes, and says 'Hello,' with a hacked H – she's not from around here. Framed in our grubby and chipped doorway, she looks to me for an answer. I was so busy fantasising, I must have missed something she said.

'M'what?' I say.

'You hev a room for rent?'

She's Russian or something. She has smooth, bare legs and wears shoes a bit like DMs.

'My God you're beautiful!' I say. Or do I just think it? Hopefully I just thought it. Yep, I think I just thought it.

I think I actually said 'Uh…'

Dave steps in to rescue the situation.

Guys like me don't talk to girls like this. We can't. It's impossible. Dave can. He can believe his own lies. He invites her in, I stand aside, and she brushes past me. She smells like chocolate. My mouth waters. Dave leads the way up the stairs and does the talking.

I swear – when she went up the stairs – I swear I tried to not look at her backside, I honestly did. But still, no one would know if I snuck a peek. The only way I can describe her movements is like this:

Imagine you're milking a cow, and you also have to hold a lightbulb in each hand. Now drape some knitted material over the bulbs – up, down, up, down… That's a bit like