After Purple

by Wendy Perriam

  “Cosy!” I exclaimed. Vows of chastity, digging vegetable gardens, playing second lead in death-bed scenes …

  “Yes. We might preach poverty, but in fact, we never wanted for anything. I told you in the hospital, remember? How comfortable it was — a nice plush, regular existence which many less privileged folk would have jumped at. Before I joined the order, I worked with thalidomide kids. Some of them were just stumps, Thea. Stumps with souls. Mealtimes were a nightmare. There weren’t enough hands to go round, to start with. We only had two each, and most of them had none. They all had vocal chords, though. The noise was like a monkey-house! Yet there I was six months later, lolling in the novices’ refectory listening to a little gentle reading from the Life of Our Holy Founder, while I toyed with my prime pork chops and fresh fruit flummery. Sometimes, we even had wine, for heaven’s sake, and coffee in the lounge to follow, and a chance to put our feet up. Hell! With the thalidomides, we were lucky if we even got a mouthful down, and then it would be meat stew without the meat, dolloped on to enamel plates with pieces bitten out of them. But — oh no! — not as novices. That was civilsed. Decent china and easy chairs. We didn’t even have the problems of a normal family — toddlers in tantrums or cross incontinent old parents spitting out their teeth. I know, Thea — I was one of seven kids, with two sets of parents all squashed together in a terraced house. And yet all I heard at meals now was, “Father, could I bother you for the cream?” or, “I must tell Brother Cook to use more seasoning”, or readings from the Life of St Francis, our thirteenth-century nutcase who was quaint enough to believe in poverty — ha ha!”

  I took a swig of brandy. Ray had drained the mug again, so I gulped it from the bottle. I needed courage. I wasn’t sure I liked this new ranting Luther. I’d asked him to talk, but only because I thought he wouldn’t. In all the time I’d known him, he’d never said more than three or four sentences in succession. It was mostly monosyllables, or little nods and smiles while I held the stage. Now he seemed to have forgotten I was there.

  “We had no real responsibilities except for our own freshly laundered souls. Oh, I know I said I did parish work, but paperwork would be a more accurate description. I spent most of my time writing begging letters for bingo prizes, or getting estimates for roof repairs or trying to balance the books of the Parish Club. The older priests made all the big decisions, married people, manned the death-beds. All I manned was the cake-stall at the church bazaar. None of us seemed to reach people — not even the older friars. We were the priests, you see, which meant we were too important to be shown the muck. Even in the poorest homes, we were ushered into the front parlour and given the cup and saucer with the roses on, or the cake they’d been saving all week. Then, when we’d taken all they’d got and offered them some half-baked little homily in return, back we waltzed to our fricassee of veal and potted plants, our early bed and wool-and-mohair blankets.

  “Oh, there were problems — of course there were. Wife-bashing and incest, gangs of coloured youths beating up old ladies.… But we weren’t part of them, not really. We might meddle in them, pray for them, but basically we were just the Friar Tucks, quaint cosy little brothers who lived in the Big House and hid behind our education and our middle-class manners, warm and dry and safe and civilised in our picturesque brown robes, a thousand years away from the spirit of our founder.”

  I lay utterly silent, like one of the trembling feathers in the duvet. I’d never heard Ray storm and rave like this — it scared me. I didn’t want him to have problems — that was my prerogative. He’d never talked before or boozed before, and now the barriers were falling all around us. I hugged the duvet close against my breasts.

  “I grew up in Preston, Thea. In a slum. A Roman Catholic slum. The church was at the top of the street, a fancy sort of building with a dome and pillars. All around it were mean little terraced houses with communal lavatories and tiny cramped back-yards. The priests’ garden was the only piece of green in a three-mile radius. Quite sizeable it was, too. Apple trees and flowerbeds — even a rustic garden seat. The only time I ever got to sit on it was when Father O’Leary caught me trespassing and tanned my bare bottom over the slats.

  “Twenty years later, I went back there for a wedding. One of the lads in the street made good and married a local magistrate’s daughter. Both Catholics. They got married in that church and held the reception in the garden. I was standing there, all dressed up in some fancy suit I’d borrowed and watching two little boys rolling down the slope, stuffing grass down one another’s necks, tearing up the daisies. I realised, suddenly, that was the very first time I’d ever seen kids playing in that garden. I felt a sort of rage. None of our parents had owned so much as a blade of grass, and there were those priests sitting on three-quarters of an acre. I remember, once, they caught me stealing an apple. I hadn’t even picked it. It had been lying on the grass, half-mouldy, yet for all the fuss they made, you’d have thought it was a chalice.

  “I don’t want a church like that, Thea. That’s why I joined the Franciscans. They don’t shut themselves off, cultivate their gardens for their own private pleasure, put up signs saying ‘PLEBS AND LAITY KEEP OUT.’ Or at least I thought they didn’t. After eight years as one, I wasn’t so sure.”

  I coughed and fidgeted, but he didn’t so much as glance at me. I wanted to cling on to him and shout, “I’m here, I’m here!” before he totally forgot. He was burying me in words. I was just a tiny face at the bottom of a hole and he was flinging earth on top of me, tearing up that priests’ garden. He’d even stopped worrying about his boys. When I had problems, it was, “Sorry Thea, poor little Mike can’t breathe”; now he was deep in his own, Mike could have choked to death for all he cared. All he could see was that community of friars.

  “About nine months ago, I went on a call to see a Mrs O’Leary. She was new to the parish. No one knew much about her, but she’d had a win on the pools and wanted to donate some of the money to the church. I was sent to fix up all the details — you know, covenants and interest rates and tax exemption clauses. I was hoping to persuade her to use the cash on some of the real grinding problems of the parish. She refused. She wanted to give us something tangible, a hideous plaster statue of the Sacred Heart or some fancy altar-rails with her name and virtue splashed all over them. We sat in the front parlour drinking tea out of rose-patterned cups again, nibbling on dainty little almond cakes and discussing perms and Lit-Plans and score-draws and dividends.

  “When we’d finished the money side, I tried to get her to talk about herself — you know, any problems she might have — spiritual matters, personal. She wouldn’t. It was just, ‘Everything’s fine, Father, now we’ve had the win.’

  “It was only later I found out she had a thalidomide son. A bad case — no lower limbs at all and mentally retarded. He was living with her at the time. In fact, he must have been somewhere in that house the day I called. But she didn’t choose to mention him. We’d talked about her daughter. She was marrying well — a computer operator, I think she said the bloke was. I guess the pools win helped. But the son, no. He was too squalid for the front parlour. No roses on him, I suppose. Or perhaps he couldn’t be trusted with an almond cake. She didn’t want to spoil things by bringing out a cripple. Or embarrass the good priest.

  “Later, he landed up in a home like the one I used to work at. They were desperately short of cash, of course, yet his own mother had just squandered hers on a new gilded statue of St Francis the Poor and a hand-embroidered chasuble. That did it. I don’t know why, exactly, but somehow it brought all my doubts and disillusions to a head. I realised I’d been doing more good as a school-leaver, slaving night and day for my thalidomides, dressed in an old pair of denims and grabbing a sandwich when I could, than I ever did now in all my sackcloth finery with a timetable which included three meals a day and seven hours’ sleep and formal recreation hours.”

  “Why didn’t you leave, then?” I whispered. I could have almost wept with
disappointment. There I was, sitting up in bed in MGM’s most stunning rig-out, with a naked body underneath it and only half a duvet between us, and all Ray could talk about was sackcloth.

  “If I hadn’t been a priest, I might have done. But seven years’ training seemed to have left me almost … paralysed. There was nothing left, no impulses, no certainties. I’d analysed them all away. I got so I couldn’t make a single decision — not the simplest one. I was just a brain and a soul, with nothing solid else. No gut, no centre. I couldn’t even pray. Too many things had always been decided for us — all the small details of our lives — when we got up, what we wore, what we ate for breakfast. It was like a great high wall, keeping out the bogies, the free choices, the decisions, but also shutting out the light, the thalidomides, the real crippling poverty of the world. Franciscans don’t have walls, Thea — we pride ourselves on that. Our houses are meant to be accessible. But our vows are walls, cutting us off from all the real human problems and responsibilities, from sex, from parenthood, from … You’ve just said that yourself, Thea. You saw it, you see. That’s why I’ve tried to explain things. I wanted you to understand, to realise that …”

  God, how I wished I’d never said a word. I didn’t want Ray breaking out. If he smashed his walls, the débris would fall on both of us. I wasn’t his confessor. He was a priest himself, for heaven’s sake, and the joy of priests is they don’t have problems of their own. If he’d been anyone else, I could have felt sorry for him — pitied his squalid childhood, understood his anger. I did feel sorry for him. But I also felt horribly confused. I’d often imagined his background as a spoiled and only child, with a saintly mum and a pipe-and-tweedy father who called him “son” and bought him electric train-sets. I didn’t want slums and communal lavatories. I needed Ray to be strong and safe and stormproof, not racked by rage and anguish with a shop-soiled family swearing and scrapping on the sidelines. All that did was make him a mortal man.

  And a mortal man who didn’t even desire me. I’d just been spurned by Lionel, Leo couldn’t even get it up for me, and here was Ray more interested in his soul than in my body. I must be really hideous to turn everybody off. Mary-Lou could have seduced an entire seminary or a boys’ school, single-handed, and even Cammie would be gasping “Great!” by now.

  I kicked both girls out of the room. I didn’t want to think of them. It was the hostel which had upset me in the first place. And even now I’d escaped from it, with Ray as my stolen goods, his priestly shine was already tarnishing. His face was flushed and fretful, not pious pale. He’d had more to drink than I had. The famous holiness had cracked like a cut-price halo. His hair was tousled, his hands sweaty. Even his voice had changed. There was less of Surrey in it now, and more of Preston. To tell the truth, I didn’t really fancy him as a man — spectacles never turn me on. Of all the forty-seven (thirty-one) men I’d had, only three wore glasses, and those three were unquestionably the worst in bed. It was the priest I craved — not the mortal — the friar, the confessor, the Father. They were still there, underneath the flush. Looks hardly matter when you’re God’s Anointed. Christ Himself may well have been plain and scrawny with thinning hair and hammer toes. Artists always flatter Him, but no one really knows. It was Ray’s soul and sanctity I lusted after — the robes, the vows, the rituals; the fact that bishops had breathed on him, altar boys and acolytes haloed him with incense and hemmed him in with prayers, the Paraclete perched crowing on his shoulder. His hands had touched the flesh of God — now they must touch my own flesh; his lips which had said, “I absolve you”, must say it to my cunt.

  He mopped his forehead, wiped his mouth. I yearned for him to fall on his knees and remember his vocation, but all he did was go rambling on again.

  “Well, finally, I went to see the Guardian. He’s head of our community, like your Reverend Mother. We talked. He didn’t understand. How could he? He’d been stuck in the system fifty years or more and couldn’t even see it straight. In the end, he sent me to the Provincial — that’s our really big boss — who granted me a year out. Meaning out in the world. The very fact we call it “the world” shows we’re not part of it. The earth spins on its axis, and we, the religious, sit aloof from it, on our own cosy little planet, refusing to look further than our holy Roman noses.

  “He suggested I work with prisoners down in Southampton. I was quite attracted by that, I must admit, but I knew my real vocation was with the handicapped. I told him so. We had quite a long discussion. The thalidomide home I’d worked in had been recently closed down — lack of cash, of course — but eventually he found me this job in London with my boys. And”, he shrugged, “that’s what I’m doing now. I’m still under vows of course. I’m still a priest.”

  “You’re not,” I almost shouted. “You’re just a flimsy, limping layman, threatening my religion, upsetting all my plans.”

  Once he’d been as solid as St Peter’s Rock, sanctified and sinless, his foundations as sturdy as one of Adrian’s Romanesque cathedrals. That was how I wanted him, not crumbling away in dribbling little doubts. I glanced at him, standing with his back to me, still clutching the empty tooth-mug, a most unpriestly gap between his sweater and his jeans, one foot twisted round the other. Was that my priest, my rock, my comforter? I could almost feel the room unravelling. It was my duty to shore him up again, return him to his calling. I didn’t want my First Communion from a rebel or a social worker. I had to turn him back to God’s Anointed. I had no intention of arguing, of taking up his points like Adrian would, and starting a debate. We’d talked enough, for heaven’s sake. We needed some action now, some drama.

  I got out of bed and marched over to the bidet, pulled my nightie up. I didn’t bother closing the screen around me. I just peed, noisily, in the bowl, leaving the nightdress looped across my arm so that it was displaying half my thighs.

  “Finished?” I asked, mincing back towards him. I made my voice half-angry, half-voluptuous.

  He didn’t answer. He was turned towards me now and staring at my thighs, hands trembling on the tooth-mug.

  I fell back on the bed with my legs apart, nightie still rucked up. “Come over here,” I whispered.

  “No, Thea, I … er …”

  “Look, I’m tired. Absolutely pooped. D’you know how long you’ve been talking?”

  “I’m sorry. Hell, I got sort of carried away. I must have …”

  “Sit down.” I patted the duvet, parted my legs another inch or two.

  “Look, if you don’t mind, Thea, I think I’ll just …”

  “Sit down.”

  He stumbled over to the bed, perched on the end of it. He was trying not to look at me.

  “Nearer.”

  He edged up almost to the pillows and leant against the wall. Either he was drunk or shagged, or so embarrassed by his outburst, he was willing to submit to anything. His face looked shuttered, barred, like a shop which had stopped trading.

  “It’s my turn to talk now, see? And I want you to listen, Ray.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m going to tell you exactly what Lionel did to me. OK?”

  “OK.” His voice was slurred, sleepy, furred.

  “Well, first he kissed me. Right? Not a brotherly kiss, not a friar’s kiss. Oh no — it was more like this.” I grabbed him by the shoulders and demonstrated. I could smell the brandy on his breath. It tasted sour and almost blasphemous.

  “Thea, no.”

  “That’s what I said, Ray. But Lionel didn’t choose to understand. In fact, he moved down further. Shall I show you?”

  “No, Thea. Look, you said you were tired. I really ought to leave now, so you can get some sleep …”

  “You didn’t care how tired I was when you were talking. You didn’t even mention leaving. I had to listen, didn’t I? Well, now it’s your turn.”

  I took his hand and shoved it on my breasts. “Lionel wasn’t gentle, Ray. Why should he be? He more or less pummelled me — like this.” I rammed his palm h
ard against my nipples.

  “Don’t.” He sounded strangled, almost scared. He could easily have stopped me. Leo would have grabbed my wrists, pinioned them behind me.

  “Lionel’s strong,” I whispered. “He twisted my arms behind my back and kept them there. D’you want to know what if felt like?”

  I seized his arms and dragged them up and back. They were feeble, puny, almost unresisting. He was probably feeble further down as well — limp, like Leo was — like Lionel. I’d pressed against Lionel’s trousers when he kissed me, and there was nothing there. He was deaf and dumb between the legs, a lion, without a mane — two lions. Perhaps I made all men limp. Since the blow, I’d lost my power. I was so shit-scared of fists now, all I got was eunuchs.

  I released Ray’s arms, flung them back to him, as if they were little twigs. “Listen, Ray, you’ve got to understand. It’s not just Lionel, it’s Leo. He doesn’t want me any more. Since he hit me, he hasn’t come near me, hasn’t even mentioned it. I think I must disgust him now. I mean, people just don’t fancy girls with false teeth. You don’t yourself. Look at you — you’re not exactly slavering over me, are you? All you want to do is leave. Oh, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to kiss myself. Of course I’d choose a girl who hadn’t been bashed up. That’s why I’m so upset about Lionel. It was the very first sex I’ve had since leaving the hospital, and it had to be like … that. I suppose nobody normal will ever want me now, only cripples and deaf mutes. I’m just a reject like your handicapped.”

  “Thea, nobody’s a reject. Anyway, you’re beautiful, you’re …” Oh, he was trying to be holy again now, was he, sucking up to me, telling me my soul was radiant in God’s sight?

  “He came in my face, Ray. Did I tell you that? Spurted it all over me? Smeared it on my clothes. No, I suppose I didn’t tell you. There wasn’t time, really, was there? I mean, we had to deal with your problems.”