After Purple

by Wendy Perriam

I tried to stop shivering and nodded. He went out into the kitchen and I heard him filling a kettle and banging about with tea-cups. When he returned, it wasn’t cups, but glasses, with something strong and steaming in them. I could smell lemon, honey and whisky — mostly whisky. Mine was fuller than his. He had brought a towelling tea-cloth with him and he wrapped my feet in it and wiped the grass stains off. It was sort of Mary Magdalen in reverse. I noticed his hands were scratched. It could have been the rabbits, or maybe he’d been inflicting some penance on himself. They were holy hands, red and lined and chastened, as if they were always put upon. Holiness lay thick on everything, like dust. I glanced around the room. There was no television, no radio, no books or ornaments, no comforts or concessions. I thought of Leo’s house, the baroque clutter, his fanfare of possessions. I yearned to strip myself, renounce things, live in a cell, even cut my hair. My own hands looked too pale and cosseted.

  “I want to be a Franciscan,” I said. He didn’t laugh. He had his spectacles back on, and the eyes behind them were the colour of the river at Victoria Embankment, sort of mud and slime combined. But gentle slime.

  “I shouldn’t!” He took the first sip from his glass. It was lighter than mine in colour. I could see he wasn’t a whisky man. I banged mine down on his packing-case.

  “I’m not holy enough, is that it? I suppose Father Sullivan told you I’m a murderer.”

  “No.” The “no” was gentle and matched his eyes. I felt stupid, almost cheap.

  “He wouldn’t give me absolution, Ray.”

  “Do you want it?” He made it sound like a chocolate bar or a packet of salted peanuts, something he could fetch from the kitchen and offer me on a plate.

  “Not particularly,” I lied. “Anyway, I’m too wicked to receive it, according to precious Father Sullivan.”

  “No one’s too wicked, Thea. And apart from playing truant from the hospital and eating double shepherd’s pie, I don’t think you’re wicked at all.”

  “But how can you tell? You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “What have you done?”

  I wondered if this was Confession, and if so, whether it was valid when the priest was sitting on a packing-case wearing his pyjamas. I could feel my thighs nudging each other underneath the sheepskin, and something feverish happening in between them.

  “Well, to start with,” I said, “I’ve had it away with forty-seven men.” (It was really only thirty-one, but everyone exaggerates.)

  “And you think that’s forty-seven mortal sins?”

  “It could be three thousand and forty-seven. I didn’t do it only once with each of them.”

  Ray rubbed at one of the scratches on his hand. “I don’t think God’s much good at arithmetic. He doesn’t count like that. He may not count at all. Sleeping with all and sundry isn’t very wise. Thea, but it’s not necessarily wicked. I think you’re simply using it to keep away from God.”

  He sounded so cool, we could have been discussing the Sunday trading laws or the rules of Scrabble. I wasn’t cool at all. Confession was an aphrodisiac as far as I was concerned, even confession in a grotty sitting-room with whisky on my breath instead of holy water on my brow.

  “Even if you’re screwing around, you can still be OK with God. Oh, I know a lot of priests would disagree with me, but it’s the motive that matters. You’ve got a lot of love in you, Thea, even holiness.”

  I was half-glowing, half-shocked. I’d never met a priest before who used phrases like “screwing around”, nor one who shrugged off three thousand and forty-seven fucks as if they were dropped stitches. (I was secretly annoyed he wasn’t more impressed. Even thirty-one men isn’t bad.) I squirmed at the way he said ikky things like “OK with God”, as if he and the Almighty ran their own cosy little Abbey National, with a branch in heaven and a branch down here on earth. (“Store up Your Treasure in Heaven. It’s OK with God”.) Yet words like love and holiness were a genuine turn-on. They made me hot and damp and throbbing, as if he’d said “soixante-neuf” or “suck me off”. I had longed to be holy, and now it seemed I was. I didn’t even have to renounce the sex. The trouble was I wanted it with Ray. His pyjama bottoms were fastened with a cord which the anorak didn’t quite cover. There was a little gap where his groin was, and if I moved my head a fraction, I could see coarse reddish hairs poking through the space, and a coil of soft pink flesh. I tried to look down at the carpet, but his feet were there and even they aroused me; broad and white, and obscenely bare.

  “Have you ever had it, Ray?” I inquired.

  “No,” he said briefly. He didn’t ask “what?” or blush or stall or tell me to shut up. He could have been refusing a second drink.

  I was astounded, really. Leo had started at thirteen-and-a-half, and even Adrian had attempted his first fumble before he’d reached sixteen. Ray was almost thirty. True, he was plain and shy, and may not have had many opportunities, but a total, untried virgin was still a creature like a unicorn, rare and white and holy. I’d never met a virgin (or a unicorn). I felt it was a challenge. We could swap expertise. Ray could teach me how to grow in holiness, while I worked lower down. I didn’t want to sully him, just make him more aware.

  “Do you ever want it?” I asked.

  He paused. For the first time he looked embarrassed. I could feel the chair growing moister under me, my breasts reaching for him through the nightie.

  He muttered something which sounded more like no than yes.

  “That’s a lie,” I snapped. “Everybody wants it.”

  Now the no sounded yes-ish, though both had been indistinct. He was staring doggedly at a grease stain on the carpet, the nails of one red hand biting into the palm.

  “Why can’t you be honest, Ray?”

  He fumbled for his spectacles and dragged them off. He looked exposed now, almost shamed. The tiny stain seemed to be spreading like a lake. “I want not to want it,” he said at last.

  “Do you think about it?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “How often?”

  “Look, Thea, I don’t really see …”

  “Do you ever touch yourself?”

  “No.”

  The “no” was so emphatic, I knew he wasn’t lying. That was even more remarkable. He was a genuine immaculate, like St Bernadette.

  “I do. Often. Four or five times a day, sometimes. Is that a sin?”

  I’d got him there. If he said “yes” he’d be contradicting what he’d said before; if he said “no”, he’d be encouraging me to frig myself all the way to hell. I knew he cared about my soul. It touched me, somehow. Any man could care about your body. Souls took more.

  “Is this Confession?” I asked.

  “It can be, Thea, if you want.”

  “I do want, but I don’t fancy telling all my sins again. All it did with Father Sullivan was make him run away.”

  “I shan’t run away.”

  I could have hugged him. Though, I must admit, I wondered if my father had ever said that to my mother, or God to His mother. Even gods break promises.

  “Promise?” I said.

  “Promise. You don’t have to tell your sins, in any case. You’ve given me the gist — that’s enough. Remember that bit in the gospel, Thea, where Jesus met the man sick of the palsy? He went straight up to him and said, ‘Your sins are forgiven you.’ The chap didn’t have to spell them out, or rack his brains, or poke his conscience with a stick. Christ forgave the man, not the individual sins — wiped out the whole lot in a sort of general package deal. And He called him ‘son’.”

  When he talked like a priest, I felt faint and burning with the poetry of it. “Your sins are forgiven you” was like the touch of God’s finger on my cunt. Even the word palsy had a strange old-fashioned stir about it. As a child, I had always wondered what it meant. It was like those other phrases you found in the gospels — Pharisees and bushels, motes in eyes, issues of blood, fatted calves, paschal lambs — words which twisted through your mind and startled i
t. “Son” was a word like that. Christ had used it quite a lot. And “daughter”.

  I struggled out of my sheepskin. The nightie underneath was semi-transparent and my nipples showed through like two dark blobs. I pushed the ruching down. One half-breast oozed slowly over the top. I took Ray’s hand and guided it towards me.

  “Do you want not to want it now?” I asked.

  “Thea, get dressed!”

  “I am dressed.” The nipple was still concealed, the second breast completely covered.

  “Look, if that coat’s too hot, I’ll fetch you a sweater or something.”

  “I don’t want a sweater. I’m boiling as it is.” I wriggled my shoulder a bit, so more of the breast slipped bare.

  “I’ll open a window, then.” Ray had turned his back on me and was struggling up from the packing-case.

  “No.” I dragged him down again, pushed up the sleeve of his anorak and ran the tips of my fingers very lightly along his wrist and up towards the elbow. Leo had taught me that. Then I placed his hand just above the ruching, where my neck ended and my breasts began.

  “Thea, no.”

  “Why not? You just said screwing didn’t matter, so why all this fuss about one small breast?”

  “I didn’t say that, Thea. What I meant was that so long as you strive for good, then the sex is less serious. The important thing is to want God rather than the screwing.”

  I could see he was aiming to get us back to God again. I tried to help. “I want to screw God,” I said.

  “Well, at least you want Him. That’s the only way you know how to love at the moment, so God accepts it.”

  I was disappointed, really. That was one of my best lines and he hadn’t even gagged at it. “Then why can’t you accept it? I mean, why shouldn’t you …”

  “I’m a priest, Thea.”

  “You’re a man as well.”

  “Alas, yes.”

  I liked that “Alas”. It was a sort of admission he was tempted. I scooped out the other breast and left it hanging. “I know they’re only small,” I said. “But at least they don’t flop. One of my lovers told me they were the perfect shape — somewhere between a pawpaw and a pomegranate. Mind you, he was so short-sighted, I doubt if he could see! Do you like them, Ray?”

  Ray was blushing. His face was as red as his hands now. I’d trapped him a second time. He couldn’t say “no” without insulting me, yet if he said “yes”, he could hardly cling on to his status as a priest. He mumbled something indecipherable. I took it for a “yes”.

  “Well, go on, touch them, if you fancy them.”

  “Thea, please, you’re making this very difficult.”

  “It’s difficult for me. First you say sex is OK and God doesn’t give a shit about it. Then you change your mind and …”

  “You’re not listening, Thea. That’s not what I …”

  “It’s OK — I don’t give a shit about it, either. I want sex not to matter, like you said. But you’re contradicting yourself. If you get in such a state about a mingy little breast, then you’re making it important. Look, just put your finger on it, just one finger — just for a second — and I’ll prove to you it doesn’t mean a thing, not to either of us.”

  “But it would mean something to me, Thea. That’s the point.”

  “Would it?” I was watching the gap in his pyjamas. Something was twitching in it — stretching it a little wider. I felt triumphant. Tiny drops of sweat were gasping on his hairline, slinking down his neck. “Well, it would to me, too, I s’pose, but only something spiritual. That’s why I want it, Ray. To make my confession real. If you touch me, it makes it a proper sacrament. You know, like a sort of laying on of hands.”

  “That’s done on heads, Thea, not on breasts, and it’s Confirmation, not Confession.”

  “Christ! You’re worse than Adrian. And even he’s not such a prude. What’s the point of giving me all that crap about love and forgiveness, if you won’t even come near me? God would touch my breasts if He was here. Well, wouldn’t He? He made the bloody things, for heaven’s sake.”

  Ray had crossed his legs. To camouflage the twitching, I suppose. Even his hands were tightly clamped together, as if to keep them safe. It was time for a little blackmail.

  “Look, Ray, I haven’t been to confession for more than eleven years.” (That was true, at least — I’d never been at all). “It’s very important to me. You said yourself sex kept me away from God. That’s right, but now you’re keeping me away from Him. If you mess up this confession, I’ll never go again.” Slowly, his hands unclasped, the fingers trembling. I could see him trying to juggle my immortal soul against his own damnation.

  “Look, I’ll hold your hand, Thea. Both hands if you like. But not the … er … other. I doubt if I could even concentrate if …”

  I almost pushed him off. “Forget it! I told you I was too vile for absolution. Well, I don’t even want it now. You priests are all the same. You’re so damned scared of everything. You spew out all that stuff about being Christ’s representative on earth, but Christ wasn’t so damned fussy about touching people. He even touched lepers, didn’t He? And your precious St Francis leapt down off his horse and kissed a leper. You told me that yourself. Well, I’m not a leper, and I haven’t asked you to kiss me. All I’ve asked is … Oh, I disgust you, don’t I? Or you just don’t trust me, which is worse. If you don’t trust me, God won’t.”

  “Thea — please — you know it’s not like that. Of course you’re not a leper. It’s myself I don’t trust …”

  That was an advance. I stopped shouting and peered down at his pyjamas. The gap had disappeared. All I could see was a piece of the white cord and one clenched hand trembling on his knee.

  “I trust you, Ray. I only want you to touch me sort of symbolically, like Christ would. Look, let me show you what I mean. Just …”

  I took his hand. He had closed his eyes, as if not to witness what the hand was doing. Slowly, agonisingly, it groped towards my chest. I helped it there, felt his palm fall damp and heavy like a steam iron on my breasts. They steamed. That clumsy, clammy hand was holy proof of his virginity. He had no idea how to touch a woman. I was his first breast. I was throbbing with the rare and strange excitement of it. I burned to teach him everything, romp and grapple on the floor, pluck his virginity from him like a fat pink flower. I closed my hand over his. I could feel my right breast swooning under his fingers, the left one whimpering for him. I knew he was excited. I could almost feel the twitching now, though his legs were so bent and twisted round the packing case, he must have been in torment. His fingers had strayed towards my nipple. He touched it very gingerly, as if it were a switch which might set off a hidden cache of dynamite.

  “They are beautiful,” he whispered.

  I bowed my head, joined my hands. Now it was a valid sacrament. I struggled to sit still, to collect my thoughts and remember the words of the act of contrition which we’d learnt at school.

  “For these and all other sins of my past life, I beg pardon and absolution from you, my heavenly father.”

  Suddenly, I was crying. The words were so beautiful, I couldn’t bear to mock them. “Heavenly father” took me straight back to my birthday party. I could almost taste the marzipan rancid on my lips, smell Capstan Navy Cut.

  “I want to confess my real sins, Ray,” I sobbed.

  “There’s no need, Thea. God has forgiven you already.” I don’t think he could cope with any more sins. My breasts were almost more than he could handle.

  “I want to, Ray, I must. I’ve never told anyone before. I don’t mean all the sex and screwing and things. You’re right — they’re nothing. It’s worse than that. Far worse. I’ve …”

  Ray had removed the tea-towel from my feet and was mopping up my tears with it. “Hush, Thea, don’t cry. There’s nothing so bad that …”

  “But there is, Ray, there is. Listen, for fifteen years I prayed that Josie Rutherford would die. I hated her. Nothing was too bad
for her. I wanted her boiled in oil and thrown to sharks and scraped off motorways. But then she did die, Ray. I killed her. I keep on killing people. I hate them first and then they die. Look at Janet’s baby! It would have lived, if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “No, Thea, that’s not true.”

  “How do you know? You weren’t even …”

  “Look, my girl, about one in ten first pregnancies ends in miscarriage. That’s an awful lot of babies for you to have killed.”

  “It wasn’t a miscarriage — she lost it at nine months. Even the doctors don’t call it miscarriage when it’s that far on. Anyway, you’re laughing at me …”

  “I’m not laughing, Thea. It’s just that I’m pretty damned certain you’re not a murderer.”

  “Oh yes, I am. What about Josie Rutherford?”

  “Thea, dear, who is Josie Rutherford?”

  “Was.”

  “Was, then.”

  “Oh, some … bitch my father ran away with.”

  “I see. And when did she die?”

  “Eighteen months ago.”

  “Oh, recently. How old was she then?”

  “I’ve no idea. His age, I suppose.”

  “Well, how old was he?”

  “Don’t know!”

  “You told me last time your father married late, and had you even later. So he can’t be young.”

  “Well, he’s not old.”

  “Sixty-ish?”

  “No! Well … yes … maybe.”

  “So his … er … woman was at least sixty when she died?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “And already had a good part of her life. Was it a happy life?”

  “She had my father, didn’t she? For nearly twenty years. I only had him for four.”

  “Happy, then. What did she die of, Thea? I mean, it wasn’t boiling oil, or sharks, was it?”

  “No-o.”

  “Well, what?”

  “She had a chest infection, followed by pneumonia. It didn’t kill her, actually, but she had a relapse. They were living in Saskatchewan at the time, and she insisted on swimming in some sub-zero lake when she was meant to be convalescing.”

  “You mean, you made her swim in it.”