“You’ll be OK. Listen if it was serious I’m sure they would have said so over the phone.”
“Maybe that’s why they want to see us in person?”
The priest pocketed the handkerchief again and rubbed life into his hands. The bruise had retreated from the surface and withdrawn to the point of origin. He had watched with abject curiosity as the colours changed in the preceding weeks. Initially, the black touched it like frostbite changing to angry reds, softening to various shades of blue and green until the present hue of orange. There was no longer any pain there and he flexed the fingers, feeling for the familiar sharp pain but only finding it in his memory.
“What if it’s a tumour?”
The younger man said the words still looking away from the priest, seeing the countryside now open up around them, an unforgiving sun balanced like a bright coin in the upper quadrant of the window.
“It won’t be. Your blood was clear. The results for the scan will be clear. It was just the heat. You don’t…”
The priest broke into a dry cough and cupped his mouth. The exertion shook his thin frame, bending him forward. His neighbour turned, slapping him hard on the back several times, the coughs and splutters drawing the attention of the others in the carriage. The face of the older man struggled to latch onto a breath and his mouth gaped, the trembles from his panic setting on his face which was turning red. Suddenly, the dry rasp passed, and his staggering breath found firm footing again, treading lightly until composure was restored. A standing man offered a small bottle of water, which he took and thanked him for, and the swallow of warm liquid felt like cool glazed honey that lubricated his corrugated throat.
“That was a close one,” the priest said and smiled. “One of these days.”
“You should be taking something for it, Father.”
“Don’t be silly. A man of my age? I’ve got a fifty-year head start on you. I’ve lived my life. When the good Lord sees fit for me to join him, he’ll let me know.”
The younger man smiled, casting his eye over the landscape. The ground was dry and arid, yellow like honeycomb and the trees that whizzed past looked like craggy old men, all twisted with gnarled limbs, thin and without colour. They seemed to be reaching out at the train, the passengers within, imploring for help and watching as the vehicle bounded past. The sky above was a sheet of blue with a few wisps of cloud high above, like scraped cream on the side of an empty desert bowl.
Whether it was because their nostrils had finally accustomed to it, or the trickle of air that escaped from the open window had neutralised the smell, the final leg of their journey was relatively odour free. When the younger man looked, he saw that the priest had fallen asleep. In his hands and wound around the fingers were brown rosary beads, fat drops of amber gold hanging on a pearl string that spooled onto the man’s lap. The twitching of the man’s mouth suggested that he was locked in a prayer. It played silently on his lips as his head moved with each sway of the cabin.
The younger man stared into the closed lids, watching the eyes behind flicker on internal images now. His face was chalk white despite the suffocating heat around. A few drops of sweat beaded on the priest’s forehead and threatened to spill down his long face, but they remained frozen.
He turned away from the priest and tried to burrow into the window sill which was as hard as the seat back, eventually forming a soft pillow cushioning his face with a palm pressed into the ledge. The grip held his head and he too soon found himself drifting. Unlike the priest’s soft and silent prayers, words to soothe his passage into unconsciousness, his own sleep brought with it terrors that escaped his lips in a frantic chatter. It punctured the chugging sound of the train, attracting the bemused stares of those who stood nearby. They traced the source of the agitated man and smiled at the contrasting faces of the neighbours – one in calm repose, a beatified Saint. The other, face twisting and contorting, as if he were possessed by demons.
FOURTEEN
The door opened into darkness and she took the necessary two steps forward and four steps left until her hand was on the handle of her bedroom door. It opened, just as the front door slammed shut. She dumped her bag on the small desk and fell onto the bed. Molly kicked off her shoes, and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes as she lay, forcing herself to take slow, deep breaths. There was a gentle rapping on her door, which she ignored, turning away from the noise and curling up into the embryonic position, tucking knees into her chest. It persisted and she gave the knocker a grunted response.
“You OK, Mol?”
She offered another grunt then pulled the edge of the duvet between her knees, and burrowed deeper into a pillow in the corner.
“Can I come in?”
The garbled response that Molly gave seemed to encourage the voice. The door opened a crack and the woman stepped inside.
“Rough day?”
Molly turned around, extricating herself from the covers and nodded. The woman standing and looking down at her was plump, pouched cheeks like a hamster with beady eyes. She was wearing a black shimmering dress that ended at knees as big as heads, and was cut at the elbow. As she moved, the fabric seemed to sparkle like a moon beam across a river current, but the effect seemed lost with the owner.
“Yeah, I know the feeling. Listen, I’ve got leftovers if you fancy it? Plenty to go around.”
“Wow. Louise, you look great.”
“Well,” she said, giving a little curtsey, offering her best coquettish look.
“Seriously. I love the dress.”
“Thanks,” she said and couldn’t stop the cheeks prising apart her smile.
“You don’t need to go to any bother.”
“It wasn’t. Dylan said he was coming around but…” The woman let the sentence hang in the air before snapping herself free from the thought. “Listen, it’s only spag bol.”
“Sounds like heaven,” Molly said and flung her feet off the bed and onto the wooden floorboards.
“Cool. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Molly slipped her socked feet into the carpet slippers and rose from the bed; surveying the room, she shook her head. Two bags of clothes choked up the entrance to her wardrobe. The hanging dresses, of which there were few, tickled the mouths of boots and shoes neatly lined on the bottom of the wardrobe. The chair by the table was already dressed for work, the blue pinstripe shirt draped around its wooden shoulders with navy trousers, pressed and ironed, laid on the seated lap. Books that had an order at the beginning of the year had escaped from their holding position in the corner of the room and gone walkabouts, one showing up behind the curtained blind, another hiding under the bed, while she was sure another had slipped down the back of the narrow wardrobe. Her bed was tucked into the corner of the room against the wall where a window, despite her best intentions with sticky tape, still carried a small breeze in winter months, a nervous lover’s breath tickling her lower spine in the cold nights.
Wallpaper peeled from the walls around the edges of the window, exposed to the elements. A soggy, cardboard smell she had now gotten used to bathed the room. In the corner of the window ledge, which she also used as a bedside table, damp spread in little pools and climbed the wall, mildew rising like thought bubbles. Molly suddenly felt disgusted, quickly leaving the room, and the door open as ventilation.
Five steps later she was in the kitchen cum living room. Two plates were on a small table, one bone dry and the other a volcano, a hollowed centre in the heap of spaghetti filled with steaming Bolognese. Her flatmate had already quickly changed out of her dress and was wearing pyjamas, lying across the couch with a remote flicker in her hand.
“All het up.”
“Thanks. I’ll do the…” Molly looked inside the little postage stamp kitchen area and saw the suds in the sink and plates drying on the dish rack. “In that case, I’ll grab some takeaways from work tomorrow on the way home.”
“You’re working?”
She sat down and heaved a sig
h, pulling the Excalibur fork from the thick mound and fishing in the bowl for a few easy loose strands.
“They changed my hours. Need me working extra shifts coming up to Christmas.”
“More money though?”
“Yeah,” she said and winced. “I’m spread thin as it is. I need to get on top of my thesis. The lecturer is all over my ass.”
“How’s it going?”
“Meh. Slow. I got to interview one of the prisoners up in Lockworth though. That was interesting.”
“Oh cool. That’s right. Your grandad runs the place, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah. Paired me up with a real character,” Molly said, smiling and looking back down at her plate of food.
“Oh yeah?” Louise replied, a curious eye studying her friend’s face. “A guy?”
Molly nodded. She had wrapped a forkful of the pasta strands tightly and dunked it into the pool of Bolognese in the centre. She blew on it lightly and slid it off the fork with her teeth.
“Let me guess,” Louise said. “Not bad looking, your age but…complicated.”
“You know me too well,” Molly said and they both laughed. “Listen, first things first, I need to focus on this thesis. That’s the priority.”
“Can you not ask for an extension?”
“Nah. He wouldn’t give it. It’s not panic stations yet. Just need to find the time. Maybe stop the boxset binges.”
“No!” the other woman cried and held her hands to her face in mock horror.
“Well,” Molly said. “Maybe cut them down to three hours a day.”
They smiled and her flatmate continued flicking through the terrestrial channels.
“Anything good on?”
“Nah. Just the usual. Celebrity Dating. Celebrity Dancing. Celebrity picks their nose and we have exclusive cameras there to capture the footage. The usual garbage. If it’s not that, it’s news about the Pope’s European tour.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Slow news day.”
“It was confirmed then?”
“The Pope? March, I think. Hey,” she said, “fancy a movie tonight? I feel like downloading something and just turning the heat up. Get some Oreo cookie ice cream in. What do you think?”
Molly could feel the heat already in her belly, not just because of the warm food but the chillies that the cook had inserted. There was a thin sweat on her brow and she rubbed it off with her palm and gave a little gasp of air like a Choo Choo train.
“Too hot?” Louise asked and winced.
“Think I’ll pass on the movie,” she said and nodded, “but I could kill for ice cream!”
FIFTEEN
The return journey from Marrakesh to Tangier was quicker. That was not to say it was any more pleasant because both men were deeply occupied in their own thoughts. Their silence continued when they eventually stepped off the train and moved to the exit terminal of the station, hailing a taxi with the priest mumbling an address to the driver.
In the thirty minutes it took to edge through the main thoroughfare and cut through lines of traffic, it was already dark when they reached their destination. The priest fumbled with the key in his trembling hand, until the younger man intervened and slotted it into the lock then followed inside. Snapping a light in the doorway, they walked slowly to the second line of pews in the chapel, genuflected and slid across the waxed seats, kneeling on the cushioned rest in front. There they sat, heads lowered, arms outstretched and held in prayer. The priest’s body had slumped forward and down, resting his hidden face on the loop created by his spread arms. His hands, all creamy bone threaded together in a network of blue veins, were clenched tight, rosary beads dangled from them, fluttering under the vibrating movements as if caught by a breeze.
The younger man had repeated the actions of the older priest. He was staring at the solitary spotlight which lit the altar before looking up at the suspended hanging cross above, jewelled against the window behind like a precious butterfly. After a few minutes, the younger man turned to read the expression of the priest which was still hidden in the arms. Suddenly, there was the sound of crying which followed shakes from the man’s head. When they had broken through, the cries became more pained and the priest raised his head, face wet with tears and spread with anguish, small eyes squirting freely and filling the hollows of his face. The emotion touched the younger man now too, and he felt it swell in his chest, but his resolve was stronger and he beat it back down, each swallow becoming harder and rising higher until he had to look away.
The sound continued unabated, a crying like an animal in agony. The voice stretched thin across the small chapel, rebounding back off hard edges, seeking another sympathetic ear but returning to them, more mournful than before, finding no one but themselves alone in the room.
Slowly, the cries stopped, replaced by the wet sniffles and a throat raw with emotion, clearing itself as sharp coughs dislodged the remaining tears. The priest wiped his tear stained face with a shirt sleeve and, curling an arm around the shoulder of the younger man, bade him to sit back on the seat. The thaw in the priest’s face was evident and the smile came naturally, sweetened by the emotion like a summer drought broken by thunderstorm.
“We’ll fight this together, you and me. OK?”
The younger man nodded and, although he couldn’t match the priest’s eyes, feigned a smile in agreement.
“Doctors get these things wrong all the time. We can get other opinions. Specialist opinions.”
“They are the experts. The best in the country.”
“Well, we’ll get other specialists,” he replied, voice raised. “In other countries. We can look for-”
“I have six months,” came a softly spoken mumble.
“Doctors in the U.K. It’ll be easier there. I can make some calls. They can-”
“Six months.”
“See you if I tell them it’s me. It’s my country and I know they’ll be-”
“Six months!”
The younger man shouted the words and rolled out from under the arm of the priest, who was startled from his own conjecture with a fright.
“You heard them, Father. I don’t have much time. Not enough to ask for a second or third opinion.”
The comment seemed to carve a wedge between the two men, and the priest’s face suddenly clouded with the reality of the timeline that they faced. A hopeful smile which had crept onto his face, now sloped off into the shadows around them. They sat in silence.
A sound from the vestry distracted them both. It was quick and sharp, and they had almost dismissed it, except it came back stronger for a second time and they locked stares.
“What the-”
A booming knock against the door filled the room, and they shot to their feet. Heavy thuds followed, and they stood rooted to the spot, listening to the heavy beat.
“Who in God’s name-?”
Suddenly, they heard the door splinter, a piercing crack which sped their movement. They backtracked away from the source, down the aisle toward the entrance.
“Hurry!”
They could hear voices in the vestry. The door had been breached. The younger man guided the priest, the weak hand held in the crook of his arm. Sounds became closer now behind them and they could hear the crashing and ruination of fixtures in the little anteroom - heavy boots kicking and puncturing holes in wooden cabinets, the rattle of silver and brass off the walls. The priest tripped suddenly, legs not used to giving flight and was helped back onto unsteady feet.
He turned off the altar light on the wall and they stumbled through the darkness, fumbling for the heavy door and finding the bar handle, opening it wide enough to slip through. The priest turned to watch as the door slowly edged back, catching a glimpse. The group of tall black shadows had emerged and fanned out into the room. One of them had already climbed onto the altar, reaching up for its prize. As the door closed, the priest heard the large wooden cross crash off the marble surface and hit the ground. The men began laughing a
nd it was still ringing in their ears as they ran down the street.
SIXTEEN
Piergianni’s was a family owned restaurant on Mayor Street, the jewel of the crown when it came to fine dining options in the area. Owner Carl Piergianni was also head chef, a duty he excelled at and, if truth be told, a role he preferred given his lack of tact and soft skills of communication. Customer facing roles were delegated to the maître d’hôtel, and then in turn to a server - a slick line of cogs that moved in tandem to sweeten a client’s experience. The restaurant had, since its opening a decade earlier, received many plaudits and accolades from peers in their industry, the pinnacle of which was a Michelin Star. It was a considerable triumph for the Italian immigrant who had worked his way up, learning the trade and earning his stripes in a fiercely competitive market.
Piergianni approached the group before doors had opened to customers, warning them in no uncertain terms about the need to be on top of their games for what was expected to be one of their busiest periods – two Saturdays before Christmas. When he had barked his orders, and received the requisite number of head nods, he retired to his kitchen to begin preparing the dishes, ably assisted by a troupe of faithful and obedient chefs, sponges content to soak up the abuse with a view to collect a few precious drops of the magic formula. Their own secret desires and wishes of replicating the successful restaurant business were fuelled by the thirst for knowledge.
“Molly, we have a big group coming in at eight tonight,” the maître d said, a French inflection in his accent. “I want you to try and clean yourself up a little bit more. I know you have an expression here – you can’t polish a turd, but try and smile. Can you do that for me? Can you smile?”
She gave her best fake smile and fluttered her eye lids, beauty queen style. The tall man didn’t appreciate the mock, his pencil thin moustache trembling like a thin caterpillar inching its way across his lip.
“Don’t take the pith,” he said and stabbed a finger at her in the air. “Girls like you are ten to a euro. I can bring in someone much prettier to take your job. Girls would be fighting to work in a place like this, so keep that in mind.”
Raising Lazarus Page 7