Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  I assumed he’d disappeared, left with all his entourage by the small door on the stage, but he’s actually ploughing down that centre aisle, flanked by just one purple-robed disciple, two Swiss Guards and a few assorted lackeys and photographers. I peer at him, amazed. He’s stopping every second to squeeze hands, or bless the sick, talk to dribbling morons, cuddle little children. I’ve watched politicians do the same when they’re trying to mop up votes by wooing hideous females or kissing bawling brats, but it’s always a performance. However hard they kiss and coo, you can tell they’re insincere; can’t wait to hand the babies back, shake off the smirch of common hands and escape into their elitist clubs for pheasant and champagne. This is absolutely different. I can’t explain it really, except Giovanni Paolo seems to love his flock – yes, even its most poor and abject specimens.

  I watch as he embraces a stooping shrivelled man whose gaunt and haggard face seems marked by death. He takes both his hands in his, speaks to him intently, his own face creased with genuine concern. Then he reaches out to hold a baby, an ugly lumpy creature which would tempt most normal people to infanticide. Not II Santo Padre. He loves that kid – you can see it on his face. I register a jolt of griping green-fanged jealousy. That’s how every father should hold and love his child, with that total deep commitment, that expression in his eyes. This man loves the world, and not the world in abstract, or sterilised or sanitised behind a cold glass wall. He’s face to face with a really grubby woman now, a gypsy by the looks of it, her vulgar beads tangling in his buttons, her hair greasy on his neck. He doesn’t shrink away from her. She could be his own mother, the affectionate almost reverent way he treats her.

  John-Paul would rather die than touch a patient – except to fling her in an ambulance, or hold her down by force. He might ‘verbalise’ about it: what does touching signify; what pictures does the word bring up? – but actual contact, never. Even if I had a stroke, or fainted, he’d leave me where I’d fallen, gasping on the floor, rather than risk an arm around my neck. Both Giovanni Paolo’s arms are wrapped around a young girl in her twenties. It’s not sexual – she’s a spastic – he just understands that all of us crave comfort, the physical maternal sort which is so rationed in this lousy world, especially if you’re old or sick or hideous.

  Almost every single person is stretching out their hands to him, as if his touch can heal, like the Royal Touch in Stuart England, when God’s Appointed Monarch could cure anything from syphilis to scrofula. I leave my own arms strictly by my sides. This may be mass hysteria and I shan’t let myself succumb. Anyway, he’s still a few yards distant, and my wretched arms would be dropping off their hinges if I kept them horizontal until he finally inched up to us. He certainly takes his time, refuses to stint anyone of their individual chat – and that includes the small fry. He’s heavily involved now with a skinny little five-year-old who presents him with a painting of a matchstick Pope with spots – a smudged and messy botch-up without a shred of talent, but accepted with such reverence it could be a Velasquez. He’s being showered with offerings from all sides – baskets of exotic fruit, swanky hothouse flowers, but he’s equally delighted by a few mangy stems of ragwort proffered by some nutcase who keeps clutching at his sleeve. He doesn’t brush her off; listens to her, bothers, despite the impatient bodyguard who tries to hustle her away. He must be tired and hungry, gasping for a drink. He’s been speaking for two hours in at least eight different languages, and it’s already well past lunch-time.

  I must say I’m impressed. I’ve always been suspicious of words like humanity or piety. You say a man is holy and most people cringe or shrug. Holy can mean priggish, sanctimonious. Not with Sua Santità. The title’s apt, I see now. He spreads holiness like ointment, rubs it in himself. And it isn’t just a duty, an empty show to impress us gawping pilgrims. I keep a sort of lie-detector somewhere in my head, and it’s not registering at all. This guy is bona fide.

  He’s much nearer now, and I can see his face close up. Okay, he’s old and plain – that I don’t retract – his receding forehead lined, his face sunken around the eyes, but it’s the face of a good man. There’s a minor sort of hurricane swirling all around me – hands reaching, waving, clutching; bodies lurching perilously on seats. Everybody’s trying to kiss his chunky ring: lips smacking, missing, moueing in midair. Others offer gifts instead of kisses. A huge bouquet of roses grazes my left cheek as it’s passed across in front of me; someone else is shelling out what look like gold doubloons. I’ve nothing to present, just a crappy hand which probably smells of nicotine, and that deceitful cruel umbrella.

  I let the brolly fall, climb down from my chair, stand absolutely silent while a hundred-hundred imploring mouths yammer on all sides, begging for a hand-clasp, a private word, a hug. John Paul stops a second, looks at me directly, as if he’s picked me out from all those other faces, prefers my wary silence to their din. He takes a step towards me, servile lackeys following, tall guards Argus-eyed. Suddenly, he’s there, standing right in front of me, so that I can smell his stalish breath, see the tiny craters in his skin. His hands close over mine – hot and rather clammy hands; solid, stumpy-fingered, the skin roughened round the thumbs. I’m not idealising the man. His piggy eyes are all but lost beneath the frowning brow. His neck is slack and fleshy, and I’m taller by an inch. It’s his touch which counts, that rare and dazzling sense of being cherished and enfolded, as he lets my hands go, dares to hold me right against his chest, pressed close into his body, to his heart, his warmth, his sex. I’ve been held like that in dreams, in endless lying fantasies; held by my cold father who wouldn’t hold a dog; held by cruel John-Paul who’d let me weep my eyes out rather than reach across and dry them.

  The whole vast crowd has vanished. There’s only him and me now, from some era long ago. He’s chatting to me, questioning me, but I’ve become an infant and can’t speak any language, including my own tongue. Is he talking English or Italian? I’ve no idea at all, though I suspect he’s granting me forgiveness for what I haven’t done, the years I haven’t lived yet, the shot I haven’t fired. Whole centuries seem to lumber by, yet still he makes no move to cast me off. The Prodigal Son was never held so long. I’m fatted calf and silken robe; I’m rings on every finger; I’m wine and oil and sweetmeats at the feast. Then, at last, he pulls away, but holds me with his eyes still, my own eyes faltering from his gaze as I recall that sawn-off shotgun concealed in Giuseppe’s flat.

  I jerk back in surprise as I feel his hot and sweaty thumb trace a cross on my cold forehead. II Santo Padre’s blessing me – which no one’s ever done before, not even in a fantasy. You can only bless something which is good. I’m good – despite the guns – become so instantly, as he keeps his thumb pressed against my head. Everybody’s staring, cameras flashing, jealous women shoving, impatient children tugging at his arm. He’s been longer with me than anyone, as if he knows how much I need him, knows exactly who I am.

  I’m suddenly aware of all the noise again: pilgrims gabbling, clamouring, shouting out what sounds like ‘Papa, Papal’ as he slowly turns away from me, moves on down the aisle. I touch my blazing forehead, can feel that cross transfiguring my brow. They’re right – he is a father – mio santo padre.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Mary gazed around her, eyes tracking from the lustrous sky with its swathe of silver moonlight, to the tiny stars and coloured lights looped across the streets for tonight’s big celebration. A full moon and New Year’s Eve! The two seemed to contradict each other – the year only just conceived and not yet formed; the moon already at full term. Yet both were so exhilarating; the flurry of New Year throbbing in the shops and squares, as the whole of Rome prepared for fevered midnight; the moon elusive, teasing, as it dodged behind the Pantheon, then courted her again, springing out between two towers, flirting with the clouds. It was a treat to be alone, if only for an hour or less, a snatched but vital hour in which she would know her fate once more.

  She’d left the t
hree men and three children deep in teddy-bears and tinsel in the Piazza Navona, where they were enjoying the huge toy-fair – brightly coloured market stalls selling sweets and games; Father Christmas quaffing rough Chianti among a group of sozzled gnomes; streamers and balloons strung along the pulsing pavement cafés. Lionel had been buying lions – sugar lions and chocolate lions, lions with manes of marzipan or sleek black liquorice noses, as his own small contribution to their celebration supper, which they’d planned to eat picnic-style in the safety of their room. Their courier had warned them of the dangers of the streets tonight – how the native Romans followed the old custom of flinging out the old, to symbolise the ending of the year. And ‘old’ might mean old beds, old junk, old pots and pans, even huge old wardrobes, which could kill a person strolling underneath. It was also Fireworks Night in Rome, like Guy Fawkes back in England, and the fireworks were reputed to be perilous as well – two fatalities last year, and over ninety injuries, despite the constant warnings to stay inside, avoid all public places.

  Mary turned into the Via del Pastini, looking back anxiously to make sure James wasn’t following, or Simon pounding after her, demanding to ‘come, too’. She had told them all – quite truthfully – that she had to do some shopping, buy a few last items for the supper, including a celebration cake. She’d seen some quite amazing cakes in a shop just round the corner – airy cream-filled sponges in the shape of the Colosseum, or special New Year cakes with ‘Buon’ Anno’ piped across them, or beribboned figure ones, to depict January the first. She stopped outside the window, admired the range again, decided on a clock-cake with a stark white-icing face and two black hands pointing dramatically to midnight. She was obsessed with time at present, trying to work out when she had actually conceived. Her last (apparent) period could have been a fluke. It had certainly been light, perhaps not a period at all, just a fleeting show of blood, which she’d read did sometimes happen in early pregnancy. Could she have conceived a whole two months ago – or maybe even longer? Certainly her breasts felt full and tender, and, looking at these creamy cakes, she felt a wave of nausea very similar to the sickness of her previous pregnancies. As soon as she got home, she must make an appointment at the surgery, be properly examined, replace her Orgasm Chart with a Calendar of Pregnancy, start ticking off the days until the birth.

  She tripped inside the pasticceria, still marvelling at their opening – hours – a full spread of cakes and pastries at seven in the evening – examined all the other gâteaux while the girl was wrapping hers, so she could pick up some ideas. It was time she made some fancy cakes herself, gave up ‘Science and Society’ for family and home, returned to her old skills. With her own deep needs fulfilled, she could concentrate on James, try to resurrect the softer, more romantic man she’d married. He was probably jealous of John-Paul, maybe felt excluded, but that jealousy could cease now – along with the steep bills. She was married to John-Paul in the most sacred, fundamental sense, bonded to him, one with him, carrying his child, but that would stay their secret, and outwardly and publicly she’d devote herself to James – yes, even on this holiday. No need to try to find the Doctor, search out his hotel, when his genes, his vital essence, were encompassed in her womb.

  She stepped into the street again, treading the red carpet which many of the smarter shops laid outside their stretch of pavement for Christmas and New Year – or had it been laid down in her honour? The whole city seemed to know about her pregnancy, and be celebrating, revelling – fairy lights in all the shops, wreaths of fertile evergreens hung on doors and windows; the moon itself so brilliant it seemed to have been lacquered just to please her, reflect her buoyant mood.

  She stopped to buy oranges from a stall heaped high with gold – tangerines and Clementines, fat and fragrant melons – golden flowers to match: huge shaggy bronze chrysanthemums, the first frail daffodils. A beggarwoman clutched at her, dragging one thin leg. James complained Rome’s beggars all dissembled, inventing gammy limbs or hacking coughs, wrapping blooming babies in pathetic dirty rags. No matter. She was still more fortunate than they were; the most blessed happy woman in all the world today. She gave the crone her oranges, then crossed the road to dodge her. She needed all her cash today, must keep it for the maghi.

  She rolled the word around her tongue, shivering with excitement. Magi back in England meant three kings. Here it meant magicians. She’d first spotted them herself in the Piazza Colonna, setting up their little makeshift tables just behind the colonnade; had learnt their name from the man at the hotel, whose English was impressive and who always smiled and flirted with her each time she left the room-keys. He had told her the magicians were really basic fortune-tellers, but not just meddling amateurs; some of them true psychics who could see into the future, had access to a depth of knowledge unplumbed by normal reason. She was already quite aware, from the Church, and from John-Paul, how reason never took you very far; how you had to leap beyond it to faith or intuition, had to trust to instinct, or explore the seething id, plunge deep into the coils of the unconsciousness; could learn things on a level quite apart from proof or logic, learn through dreams, through prayer. John-Paul had made her clever, expanded her whole outlook, taught her there were other things besides GCEs, diplomas.

  She checked her watch anxiously as she dithered at the crossroads, unsure which way to go. It was difficult to walk now through the dawdling jostling crowds, especially with her cake-box, her bulky sheaf of flowers. ‘Sorry,’ she kept saying to the people who bumped into her, reflecting on a word they probably didn’t understand. Of course she wasn’t sorry – not about the baby, felt no shred of guilt, not even towards James. He would accept it as his own, and it might even come to bond them, become the focus of a new stage in their marriage, a more tranquil fruitful stage.

  She stopped in shock as she turned into a square, recognised the column in its centre. The little street she’d taken more by chance than by geography had led her straight into the Piazza Colonna. She had found it with no mishap, without once getting lost. That itself was magic, could mean she was being guided to her fate. She crossed the square, slipped between the solid grey-stone pillars of the colonnade, found the three magicians sitting in their shadow, each at a small table with a lighted candle on it. She glanced from the three tiny flames to the radiant moon above. It seemed larger and much closer, as if it had moved down the sky to eavesdrop. She hovered by a column, trying to choose between the maghi. The tallest, most exotic one wore a full-length coat with a dramatic fox-fur collar and a black topper on his head. The youngest looked a gypsy, with his swarthy skin, his one gold dangly earring, and his casual grubby clothes. She was attracted by the third – a dark and wiry man with long artistic fingers, intensely serious eyes, a silver salamander pinned to his lapel. All three were occupied, clients tête-à-tête with them – people like herself who had come to learn their fates, had placed their happiness, their future, in these fortune-tellers’ hands.

  The third man was just finishing, accepting two crisp banknotes from an ecstatic-looking girl, thanking her and smiling, his silver brooch glinting in the candlelight. ‘ENGLISH SPOKE,’ read a roughly crayoned notice propped up on his table. Wasn’t that an omen – the fact they could communicate, the fact his chair was empty now, as if it were urging her, inviting her, to sit in it herself? She was sure this man was right for her, trusted him instinctively, was drawn by his resemblance to John-Paul – not so much his looks, though both were dark and slender – but his air of passionate solemnity, his sharp-boned sensitive face. She edged towards him shyly, sat down at his table, still clutching all her packages.

  ‘You Engleesh?’ he asked softly.

  She nodded, shrinking at his scrutiny, the way he was gazing right into her face as if to drag her soul out; his black eyes so expressive she felt he was speaking with them, through them; pouring out predictions, revelations, though as yet he’d said only two brief words. He gestured to her to put her shopping down, then placed both h
er hands palms-up on the table, started examining the left one, brow creased in concentration as he traced its curving lines, his own hands bony-cold. Still he said no word, appeared to be picking up her character, her basic fears and feelings, not through any confab, but as if he had antennae. That, too, was like John-Paul.

  At last, he spoke, his eyes returning to her face again, and seeming to pierce through flesh and bone. ‘You good lady – very good.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I’m not good at all, honestly I’m not. In fact, I’ve been neglecting things just recently – back at home, I mean – haven’t really bothered with the cooking or the …’

  ‘You good, I say. You strong. But many other person drag your strength.’

  ‘Drag it? What d’ you mean?’

  ‘Peoples take your time, always – how you say? – pulling you and fretting you, so you gives your strength away.’

  Mary’s mind tracked back to last night. She had been up with Harry once again, from one a. m. till three. He’d been complaining of a buzzing in his ears, which he feared might be tinnitus, or even an early warning-sign of Alzheimer’s disease – until she realised she could hear it, too, and it was actually an extractor-fan, set high up on the roof above his window. ‘Well, I suppose Harry is a trial just at the moment, but then he’s always had trouble with his digestion, and it wasn’t fair to bring him, I suppose. But we couldn’t really …’

  ‘Harry is your lover?’

  ‘Oh, no! He’s almost eighty.’

  ‘You have other lover – yes?’

  ‘Er, yes.’ Her cheeks were flaming, as scarlet as the woollen scarf flung casually round his neck above the thin black jacket, the grubby once-white shirt, open to the chest, and revealing coarse black hair.