“He brought me lots of … presents,” I faltered.
“What, this trash?” Adrian gestured towards my locker as if he had found its contents on a rubbish dump. “Sister told me you hadn’t even got a nightdress.”
“I’m borrowing one.”
“Borrowing! It’s absolutely monstrous that you should …”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go now, Mr Morton.”
It was Sister Robert, slinking through the door. I had never liked her and now I knew why. She was bloody aunt to Louis de Gonzague. Her fingers on my bed were sharp as swords.
“No!” I said, grabbing the bit of Adrian nearest me. He was tidying away the biscuits, picking up both St Bernadettes who had fallen on the floor, putting their jackets straight. It was like a last, desperate effort to straighten up my life.
“That’s our job, thank you, Mr Morton.”
The carnage had seeped even into Sister Robert’s bloodshot eyes. She shut the door on Adrian. At least she hadn’t turfed me out as well. I still had the bed and the room and my supper on a tray. I didn’t touch the supper. You never knew, meals might be charged as extras, and a hundred and twenty pounds was bad enough for Leo.
It was difficult to sleep that night. Every time a nun walked by, I thought she was coming in to strip my sheets and slip another patient into the bed. Leo hadn’t visited. He hadn’t even phoned. How did I know he’d even have me back? He hadn’t bought the Chinese vase because it was too expensive. And he couldn’t afford the fees. It was almost like a choice between me and the feng huang. Perhaps he couldn’t choose. I felt like a smashed, devalued thing myself, lying on the floor in smithereens, with no one rich or concerned enough to restore me. I felt I had lost my place in Leo’s drawing-room. I’d been banished to the cellar, thrown out with the junk.
Hadn’t St Bernadette felt much the same? She’d compared herself to a broom, once, which had been used by the Blessed Virgin to sweep the floor, then stuck back in its corner. I lay on my back and floated off to Lourdes. You didn’t need cash to get round Madame Soubirous. She took me in exactly as I was, made me one of the family. It solved the problem of my job, my digs and my convalescence, all in one. I was lying next to Bernadette in her little wooden truckle bed (they were too poor and cramped for separate sleeping quarters), and though she was saying her rosary and refused to chat, at least it was warm and safe and comfortable. Père Soubirous brought us maize porridge on a tray and tucked us in. It was nice to have a father. He even smelt of Capstan Navy Cut. By the time the moon came up across the Pyrenees, Bernadette and I were fast asleep.
Chapter Twelve
Ray arrived, next day, in time for lunch.
“You’re a priest,” I said accusingly.
He nodded.
“I thought you were an occupational therapist.”
“They’re pretty much the same, sometimes. They shouldn’t be, of course. But a lot of priests spend half their time on church bazaars and bingo.”
“So what do you do? Apart from eating people’s meals in hospitals?” I knew that wasn’t fair. He had hardly touched his food again, and they’d brought us Raspberry Ripple in his honour, instead of the blancmange.
“I’m a Franciscan, Thea.”
I almost sniggered. A Franciscan was even more unlikely than a priest. Adrian knew all about Franciscans. They were thirteenth-century freaks who wore brown robes and dusty sandals and went about chatting up the wildlife.
“Friars live in friaries,” I retorted.
“Not always.”
“Friars wear dresses.”
“Sometimes.”
He had the same clothes on as yesterday, only the hole in his elbow was slightly larger now, and he had gym shoes on instead of moccasins.
“Where’s yours, then?”
“In a carrier bag, in my suitcase.”
“Why? Are you ashamed of it?”
“No, not ashamed. But those robes are expensive, Thea. They take nine yards of cloth per friar. Ten for the really tall ones. And it’s good cloth. They’re more or less impossible to wash. That means more expense — dry-cleaning bills and so on.”
He was sounding worse than Adrian. Adrian had drawn a chart up once, proving how much I cost him if I left the lights on all night or used the washing-machine for only half a load.
“I thought monks had pots of money. I mean, all those acres of land and fancy chapels and stained glass windows and vintage ports and …”
“But we’re not monks, Thea. That’s the whole point. We’re not meant to own things or shut ourselves away. St Francis didn’t want that. He went out into the world and wore ordinary ragged clothes like the peasants he saw around him.”
Christ! This was worse than pop priests. Ray sounded like some half-baked revolutionary. I’d almost rather he strummed a guitar than jawed on about Lady Poverty. Adrian had written a paper on St Francis once, examining his credentials as the first real Communist.
“So you beg in the streets, I s’ pose?”
“I sometimes think we ought to.” He was grinning, but I could see he really meant it. His face had lit up. He was so thin and pale and scraggy, he looked almost under-nourished. He probably lived on bread and water, when he wasn’t toying with Sister Anselm’s soup. (I had eaten both the shepherd’s pies.) “Life’s far too comfortable, even in the friaries. Three meals a day and full central heating. In my community, we’ve got stately corridors and a stereo cassette-player and Dunlopillo mattresses and lime trees in the garden with lawns and rose beds. We must have more than fifty square feet per friar, while bang next door there’s a school with five hundred kids squashed together in a tiny tarmac playground, and their mums and dads slumming it in grotty little semis with sooty cabbage patches and outside toilets.”
I was impressed, despite myself. Father Murphy at school had eaten steak and claret in the parlour, and even Father Sullivan had quite a belly on him. Most priests had cars and housekeepers and quartz digital watches and holidays abroad. You often saw them in the theatre in the front stalls, quaffing whisky in the interval. I’d even spotted two or three at Ascot. Ray would have been banned from Ascot, except as a hot-dog seller or a man who picked up litter from the stands. It seemed strange to hear him talking like a worker priest.
“St Francis would have hated us living soft like that. Do you know, Thea, they tried to build him a house once, a proper one made of stones and mortar, instead of his mud hut or pigsty or whatever it was he lived in, and he was so upset, he shinned up on to the roof and started flinging all the roof tiles down.”
I tried to smile, but I was beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable. Here I was, queening it in a private hospital, with five meals a day if you counted tea and elevenses, and extensive grounds outside, and people waiting on me hand and foot. I didn’t want to give it up. I’d skip the meals, make my own bed, turn off the central heating — anything — so long as they let me stay there. It wasn’t the frills I craved, but the sanctuary. Ray had power. Nuns go crackers over any priest, even one with holes and dotty principles. He could use that power to help me keep my bed.
“Listen, Ray,” I said. “They’re making me leave this place.”
“Yes, I know.” How could he sound so calm about it? The stern white life of the hospital had hardened round me like a shell, and I was safe inside it. World population had shrunk to a flock of nuns, a doctor and dentist; nature was just a yellow primula and the top part of a tree; wildlife the flash of wings past my window or a caterpillar in my salad. Seas and rivers were reduced to a bottle of mouthwash. I preferred this smaller world.
“I don’t want to leave, Ray.”
“It is tough, isn’t it?”
I rather liked the way he didn’t contradict me. Everyone else was always telling me what was good for me, or what I ought to think, or why what I did think was totally misguided.
“Adrian wants me to go to Tom and Maggie’s. But that’s where Janet conceived the baby.”
He nodded
. He seemed to understand. Adrian tripped himself up over what he called my non sequiturs and lectured me about logical connections and coherent narrative. Leo rarely listened. But Ray popped in and out of all my culs-de-sac and didn’t say boring things like “Who’s Tom?” or “Why Janet?” He was rather like a brother. I never had a brother and my mother certainly wouldn’t have produced one who looked anything like Ray. I wondered if the Soubirous would have room for him as well. He could help in the fields or at the mill. With him as a brother and Bernadette as sister, I’d have some handhold on the world.
“Convalescence might be fun,” he said. “I mean, if you chose a place you fancy. What about the seaside?”
“No,” I said. The sea was too big to tackle on my own. Anywhere on my own is usually too big.
“The thing is, Ray, I don’t want to go alone.”
“Of course you don’t.” We had reached the icecream now. Or I had. I doubt if St Francis approved of Raspberry Ripple. It cost 54p for the small size. Ray was sipping water.
“What about a relative? Somebody you really like. Or an old school friend? You’ve got to go somewhere you feel good about. A nice fat cosy aunt with flour up to her elbows, or a place where you were happy as a child.”
He understood exactly. The trouble was, I didn’t have floury aunts and as a child I hadn’t gone anywhere exciting. We either went to places where the air was good for asthma, or we stayed at home and saved my mother’s money for what she called a decent education, which meant speaking like Lord Harewood and using butter-knives.
“There must be some place you fancy. Somewhere you’ve read about, or …”
“No,” I repeated. I wished he’d let me off. They wanted the bed, that’s all, and had ordered him to come and turf me out of it. He’d be renouncing his Raspberry Ripple to somebody else next week. It was simply part of the service. Father Sullivan for conventional, conforming Catholics and Father Murphy for the murderers and the fornicators.
“Yes,” I shouted, suddenly. “There is!”
He squeezed my hand. “Well?”
“Lourdes!” I whispered, kicking Bernadette in the shin and begging her to support me. “I want to go and convalesce in Lourdes.”
Ray didn’t even put his tumbler down. Adrian would have said “impossible” and started lecturing me on the commercialisation of peasant superstition; Leo would have muttered “where?” and gone on with his Listener, and my mother would have closed the conversation with a shudder.
Ray just wiped his mouth and said, “What a good idea. Funnily enough, I’m going there myself.”
I was so astounded, I dropped my spoon and splattered the sheets with raspberry. Though I suppose it wasn’t that surprising — all priests land up at Lourdes. But I kept forgetting Ray was God’s Anointed, especially when he was mopping up icecream.
“When?” I stuttered. It would probably be next year. I’d be dead by then, or unable to get time off from my job as a receptionist. Receptionists never go to Lourdes in any case, only Acapulco.
“Early April,” he said. “It’s glorious then. All the blossom out and the buds unfurling. I’ll be there for Easter Day.”
I pushed my bowl away. I was so light and white and radiant inside, I didn’t need icecream. I’d always planned to go to Lourdes at Easter. That was the date of my First Communion. It wouldn’t be my nineteenth year, but not really that far off it, and anyway, I doubt if God bothers with a calendar. I could receive the host from Ray’s own hands. A Ray dressed not in gym shoes, but in snowy alb and golden chasuble.
“But that’s three months off,” he was saying. “Far too late for you. You need your convalescence right away, if it’s to do you any good.”
“No,” I said. “I must go to Lourdes and I want to go with you.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Thea dear. I’m taking a group of handicapped boys who need a lot of looking after. Sometimes, I don’t get off till after midnight.”
I frowned. There wasn’t room for boys. I wanted to be alone with him, holding his hand in the Grotto, sharing his poverty, mending his holes.
“I still want to go when you’re there.”
“But it won’t be convalescence, then.”
“I don’t care. You can’t go to Lourdes in January, anyway. It’s freezing cold and all shut up.” The girls at school had told me that. They’d always been in August, but it was very crowded then. Easter would be better. Easter was the time of the Resurrection and I needed resurrecting.
Ray was looking worried. “Yes, I suppose it is. I hadn’t really thought about the weather.”
“Everywhere’s freezing cold in January. Except ritzy places like Barbados. And if I had the cash to zip off there, then I could afford to stay in the hospital and wouldn’t need any stupid convalescence.”
“Weymouth’s quite warm in winter. I’ve got a cousin there who might …”
“Weymouth stinks.”
“Or there’s a convalescent home in Bath. Really nice. It’s even got a squash court.”
“I don’t play squash.”
“Well, how about your mother?”
“She doesn’t play, either.”
“No, I thought perhaps …”
“I want to go away with you, Ray, not my bloody mother.”
“Look, Thea, I’d love to take you with me, but priests can’t just rush off on holiday with beautiful young girls.”
“I’m not beautiful, I’m hideous. That’s why I want to go to Lourdes, with all the other wrecks and write-offs. And I want to go at Easter.”
“But Easter’s thirteen weeks away. Even if you came with me, there’s still the problem of what you’re going to do meanwhile.”
“I’ll go back to Leo’s, where I live.”
“But that’s not convalescence.”
“It could be …”
“But do you think you should? I mean, aren’t you worried that …”
“Look, Ray, if I know I’m going to Lourdes, then everything feels different. It’s something to look forward to. Something special. I’ve wanted to go there ever since I was thirteen. I had a sort of thing about it. The whole school went except me — every year in our summer holidays. I begged and prayed to be included, but I was always left behind. My mother said she simply couldn’t afford it.” (I didn’t tell him what she really said. After all, he assumed my mother and I were good conventional Catholics like the rest.) “That’s why I’ve got to go now, Ray. Don’t you see, it’s the first real chance I’ve ever had. I know I’ll get better if you let me go. I don’t care when it is, or how, but I must be there when you’re there.”
“Look, Thea, dear, I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but it really isn’t on. Once I get to Lourdes, I’ll hardly have time to turn round. It’s a full-time job. The boys take all my time. They have to — they’re sick and disabled. Some of them can’t even feed themselves. I’d love to be with you, but it’s just not possible. I’m even on call at night.”
“That’s OK,” I shrugged. It wasn’t. The last thing I wanted was a gang of greedy boys devouring all of Ray, but I didn’t intend to lose Lourdes altogether. Not when I’d got this far. “Then I’ll go on my own,” I said. Once we’d both arrived there, I could always fiddle his timetable.
“You can’t go alone, my girl. That’s no fun. Why don’t you ask one of your mates to go with you? Then you’d have some company.”
I almost said, “I haven’t got any mates”, but I didn’t want to ruin everything, not after that “my girl”. I’d never been called that by a priest before. It was the sort of thing Père Soubirous would have called me, fatherly and caring.
“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll ask Patricia Jane.”
“Is she nice? I mean, will she look after your mouth and not let you do too much, and be willing to sit around and eat the odd icecream in between the services?”
“Oh yes,” I lied. “She’s terribly kind and very sort of sensible. She used to be a nurse.” I didn’t
even know her, but I suspect she was the daughter my mother should have had. She was the least of my problems. There were more serious things like cash to be considered. If I couldn’t afford the hospital, then how could I pay my way to the very bottom bit of France? Ray’s famous poverty didn’t seem to stop him travelling halfway across Europe.
“There is one slight problem, Ray. I mean Patricia’s loaded, but I’m — well …”
“Yes, I’d thought of that.” Ray put his glass of water down, as if even that must be rationed. “I’m working on it. Have you any savings at all?”
I didn’t know whether to rival Patricia’s riches and buy up my share of Lourdes, or come clean and admit I didn’t own a tin-tack. “I’ve … er … got a little in the Abbey National,” I said.
“I may be able to help. There’s various funds and things for deserving cases.”
“I’m not deserving.”
“Of course you are. I think the best thing to do is to book you on a package tour. Some of them are pretty cheap and have guides and couriers and a proper daily programme. You even get your own priest.”
Priests were becoming as common in my life as pain-killers. Once, they’d been rare and elusive; now they came cut-price in a package.
“In fact, there’s one company I’ve got a bit of sway with. You might be able to fly with them and then book your own accommodation. That sometimes works out cheaper. Especially if you don’t mind slumming it a bit. Would Patricia Jane object?”
Too bad if she did. I shrugged her off. “Is that what you’re doing?” I asked.
Ray grinned. “I have done — many times — bed-bugs and all! I can’t do it with the boys, though. We’re staying at a special place which can cope with wheelchairs and stretcher cases.”
I stared. He seemed to be turning into a cross between Florence Nightingale and Albert Schweitzer, and I wasn’t sure I could keep up with him.
“Can’t I stay there too, then?”
After Purple Page 15