“Mr Mackenzie is just on his way to see you,” Sister said.
“Mr who?” I stared into the open mouth of a stiff narcissus and saw Kashmir crouching in it. She might have muddled up their names. Rzevski and Mackenzie share some of the same letters.
“Mr Mackenzie. He’s our dental surgeon.”
“Oh, I see.” The narcissus was drooping now. “Why dental?”
“We plan to do something with that mouth of yours. The rest of you is healing up so nicely, we thought we ought to make you as good as new. Ah — here’s the dentist now.”
His shoes boomed so loudly across the lino, he made the vase tremble. He was dressed too vividly for a hospital. His suit was a jabbing navy and there were dizzy red dots on his tie which kept hurling themselves against my eyes. Even his voice was brightly coloured, like those pinks and yellows you get in liquorice allsorts.
“Well, Mrs Morton, we’ve decided to keep you in a little longer and do a wee operation on your mouth.”
I nodded. I had almost forgotten that I had a mouth, but there was no point arguing. My body wasn’t mine any longer. It belonged as much to Mr Mackenzie as to me, and his to Nurse and hers to …
“I’ve already discussed your case with the dental surgeon at St Maur’s …”
“Oh, so he was saved, then?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Perhaps they had all been saved — nurses, doctors, Sisters, priests — bedsteads, bedpans, even the hospital itself. Perhaps I had only dreamed the demolition. I glanced at the marks on my hands — they seemed red and real enough. There was even one last dressing on my arm. I touched it very gingerly with a finger and the pain shuddered a little underneath.
“A Dr Davies also telephoned me …”
I couldn’t remember any Dr Davies. He was probably something to do with the accounts.
“I don’t think they told you much at the time. You were very shocked, I understand.”
“Oh, no,” I said. I think he was muddling me up with someone else. The world was too quiet and shining for it to shock.
“Well, you’re doing very nicely now, my dear. The burns are healing well. There’s no infection. We’re all very pleased with you.”
I smiled. It was so easy now to please people. I had only to lie still and white and silent and let them peer at me and scribble on my chart and bring me things.
“Your front teeth have already been fixed, of course — and very well too, by the looks of them. All you need is a new permanent denture which fits a little better. We’ll look after that, but what I want to work on first are the two adjoining teeth. I’ll have to remove the tips of both those roots. They were fractured off, you see. I believe you had a blow.”
“No,” I said. “I fell on stone.” I couldn’t remember falling. It seemed so long ago, I couldn’t really remember anything. It was only words, anyway. Stone blow odd acquaintance Wildman shoe boxes blancmange. They didn’t have blancmange on the National Health. Or bills. Even the drugs came free.
“Unfortunately, the roots didn’t break cleanly, but were fractured on the oblique. He spoke very slowly and loudly as if I were a deaf or stupid child. “That means at an angle. Do you understand me, Mrs Morton?”
He drew a little sketch on his notepad. The fracture was just a wriggly line and the root looked like a prick. I turned my head away. I was finished with pricks for ever. It seemed strange that teeth had roots. It made them sound like trees. There were no trees in this hospital. There weren’t even any windows. I didn’t mind. I could see everything I wanted in my head.
“In order to remove them, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut out a piece of the upper jawbone. It won’t be much — just a tiny fragment. I shall also excise the …”
“Excise?” I murmured. I picked up the word and put it in my word collection. I’d show all my new words to Leo when he returned. Oblique, Mackenzie, plasma, haemoglobin.
“That simply means cut out.” He smiled. “ … excise the lump on your lower inside lip. We thought it best to do the two together. It means one anaesthetic less, and no one likes anaesthetics, do they?”
His smile was still hanging across my bed, bright and damp and shimmering like a rainbow.
“Is that all right with you, then, Mrs Morton?”
I nodded. I didn’t really mind what they cut out. Mackenzie was standing up now, six foot blue of him breaking up the rainbow.
“I’m afraid you’ll be a little sore, my dear. I’ll have to put a stitch or two in each of the affected gums. There’ll be some swelling, bruising, but we can give you something for the pain. There’s no need to suffer, is there, not these days.”
“No,” I murmured. I wasn’t listening, really. I didn’t want priests or doctors any more. They came, of course — prayed or probed or chatted, sat on my bed and fussed. Sometimes I soared above them, above my own body even, looking down on it as if it were a tiny speck floating in huge white space. Other times, they dwarfed me. Their hands were huge steel pincers, the words they used battered against my face like sharp black stones. Their breath made dirty footmarks on the white space in my head.
I preferred to lie on my own and think about Kashmir. One of the nurses had brought me in some maps and leaflets from the Indian Tourist Office. The Kashmiri place-names were liquid poetry on my lips — Shankaracharya, Manasbal, Chashma Shaki, Shalimar. I read in a guide book that the Vale of Kashmir was known as the Valley of Happiness. That’s because Leo was there. I saw him, sometimes, wandering among the dark ruins and shining waters of Srinagar. Otto wasn’t with him. I doubt if he ever was.
There was a little tap on the door. I didn’t bother with visitors and the nurses never knocked. I squinted through my eyelids. There was a blue blur which was Staff-Nurse and a brown blur hovering a pace or two behind her. I knew its name, but somehow it looked different, so I closed my eyes again.
“This is Mr Mackenzie. He’s taking over Mrs Morton’s case …”
Nurse was introducing someone. I heard them mumbling greetings to each other.
“How is she?” whispered the someone. His voice was male and quite familiar.
“Oh, much better. In fact, I’m glad she’s got a visitor. It’ll take her out of herself. She’s been a bit … withdrawn, you know. We’re going to operate in the morning — just a minor op — finish off that business with the teeth. But you can stay an hour or so. It’ll do her good.”
More whispering, then retreating footsteps and a softly closing door. I lay there a moment, allowing the silence to soak into my eyelids like the soft white cream they rubbed into my bedsores. When I opened them again, there was only the brown blur left. It moved a little nearer and shifted into a man in a brown serge petticoat with a shout of red on top.
“Ray,” I said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“You’ve got your dress on,” I murmured.
“Yes.”
“It suits you.”
“Yes.”
I sat up slowly in bed and stared at him. I could see what he meant about the Franciscan habit. It didn’t look poor at all. All those yards of shining stiff material must have cost much the same as a top-price suit. The design was almost fancy, with a wide cowl collar and broad flowing sleeves. I couldn’t see any trousers underneath, but perhaps they were well rolled up. The girdle round his waist was fat and white and decorative instead of a scrappy piece of string. I had always pictured St Francis wrapped in shivering rags and tatters, like those tramps you see on Charing Cross Embankment with wads of dirty newspaper tied around their feet. Ray had new brown shoes on — not moccasins or sneakers, but conventional lace-ups from a bourgeois shop like Peter Lord. He looked fatter in his robes, and somehow older. His hair had been pollarded and some of the fiery red seemed almost tarnished. Only the spectacles were old and chipped and still familiar.
He didn’t hold my hand or even sit on the bed, just took the chair Mackenzie had been sitting on. I didn’t mind. I knew at least he wouldn’t shout
or hassle, or stare at my scars, or ask stupid questions like when was I going home.
“Don’t … talk,” I said.
He shook his head. The silence was thick and white like snow. I think he was praying through it. I crept all the way to Kashmir and then on to Saskatchewan. There were no seas or mountains in the way.
When I got back, Ray was still sitting there. He was so still and solid, he looked like a smooth brown stone. I remembered vaguely, long ago in some shadowy foreign room, he’d tried to approach a woman. He’d talked a lot beforehand and then had sex with her. I couldn’t recall the details, except there was also a boy involved.
“How’s … Leo?” I asked. No, that wasn’t the right name. I struggled to remember. “Was it John — the one who … ?”
“Mike, I think you mean.”
I nodded. It wasn’t Mike, but at least the name sounded safe and ordinary. “Yes, Mike,” I said. “How’s Mike?”
“I’m afraid he died, Thea. Very peacefully.” (I smiled, to reassure him.) “How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
He looked away. He was fiddling with his girdle. I knew he wanted to say things, ask things, comfort me, hold my hands, reach out and touch my soul. I tried to keep on talking.
“Are the other boys OK?”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Thanks.”
He shifted on the chair a little. I could see lines on his face which he’d never had before. “Actually, I … won’t be working with the lads much longer.”
“Oh?”
“No, I’m … er … going up North. That’s really why I came, Thea. I wanted to say goodbye.”
“You’re going home?”
“Oh no.” He smiled. “Further north than home. All the way to Glasgow.”
“Glasgow?” It sounded almost as exotic as Kashmir. “So you’re leaving the Franciscans?”
“No, no, I’m re-joining them. Properly, I mean. I’m going back to live in the community. Not my old one, but one of the smaller Scottish houses.”
“Working with thalidomides?” I asked. The robe didn’t suit him really. He should have been taller or had holier coloured hair.
“No, not this time.”
“More handicapped?”
“No.” His voice was softer. Everything was softer, bourgeois, better quality.
“A slum, then?”
“No, not really. It used to be a slum, but they’ve rebuilt it all.”
“Paperwork?” I said. The word sounded slick and almost treacherous.
“Yes, paperwork.” When he grinned, he looked almost like the old Ray. “The Vicar up there was taken ill and had to go into hospital. It was all very sudden and they’re still in a bit of chaos, so they want me to help them out. I’ll be doing the administrative stuff — you know, writing letters, paying bills, making sure the roof’s OK and the place isn’t falling to pieces.”
“But I thought you said …” I stared at his shiny toecaps, the thick folds of material which cut him off from people and had to be dry-cleaned.
“I did.” He was smiling still.
I remembered the story he’d told me about St Francis tearing the roof tiles down. His homeless, roofless founder had actually wanted the place to fall to bits. I wondered if Ray would have also to check the kitchens — stockpile the dainties, order the prime pork chops.
“Three meals a day?” I muttered. It was more an accusation than a question.
He nodded. I couldn’t see his socks. Would they be best brown wool rather than thin green nylon?
“And coffee in the lounge and wine on feast days?”
“Quite possibly.”
“And stereos and Dunlopillo mattresses and …” I stopped. Despite the robe, the haircut, his face was still the same, still pinched and plain and radiant. He seemed as eager now for the Dunlopillo life as he had been in denouncing it. I tried to picture him scribbling sums in carbon-copy cash-books (ruled like Adrian’s), checking coal and oil supplies, choosing coffee beans; but all I could see were his burning, shining eyes, blinking earnest and distorted through his spectacles.
“I’m even going to be helping with some fund-raising. You see, Glasgow’s a sort of powerhouse for the Missions. They send forty thousand pounds a year to Africa — fifty thousand last year! That’s more than all our other houses put together.”
I wondered if I’d heard right. Here he was totting up the lucre, when before he’d all but trampled on it.
“You mean, you’re going back to church bazaars and bingo and writing begging letters and all those other things you said you couldn’t bear to … ?”
“Thea …” He was sitting closer now. “I was wrong about all that. Ridiculously wrong. I’d turned my vow of poverty into a sort of vow of self-importance — having to be poorer and holier and shabbier than any of my brothers. And denouncing the cash which other folk and other countries were genuinely in need of, just because it clashed with my so-called principles.” He stretched out his hands and left them lying on the bed like a pair of gloves. They were still rough and red and holy. “In fact, I made a cock-up of all my vows.” His fingers twitched a little as if they were embarrassed. “One of the reasons I came, Thea, was to try and tell you … how sorry I am. I mean, about that …”
I remembered now — the boy’s name was Lionel and he’d screwed me in a toilet, although he was a priest. Ray had come round afterwards and made his apologies for him. He couldn’t make them himself because he was deaf and dumb.
“You said sorry, Ray — at the time.”
“Yes, I know, but, I wasn’t sure if … I mean, now I’m going away, I thought …”
“You already explained about Lionel — don’t you remember? — how he didn’t really mean it and …”
“Lionel! It’s not Lionel I …”
“It doesn’t matter, Ray.” It didn’t, any more. I had moved into a space where sex was only an echo, an old stain from something I’d spilt months or years ago which had dried to a faint white film.
“Thea, you’re a good girl. Truly good. You’ve taught me a lot, you know. See this girdle?”
“Mmm.” He was flicking the two ends of it to and fro between his hands, almost nervously. It made the whole room spin.
“There’s three little knots in it. See them?”
“Mm.” I wished he’d keep things still. Stillness was important now.
“They’re not just decoration, d’you realise that? They stand for our three vows — poverty, chastity and obedience.”
I nodded. Things always came in threes: mummy, daddy, Rutherford — Adrian, Janet, baby — Leo, Lionel, Ray.
“D’you know, Thea, I was so concerned with the first two, I hardly even thought about obedience. Well, not until that … night. It was you who brought me back to it.”
“Me?” I’d given up my own vows. They were only noise and self.
“Yes, I was so disturbed about breaking my vow of chastity and the harm it did you — I mean, seeing you so pale and shocked and obviously upset, and then Mike dying the very next night, almost like a punishment, in fact. When I got back from his hospital, the first thing I heard was that you’d rushed off back to London before I’d even said goodbye. D’you know, Thea, I just sat down and cried. Stupid, isn’t it? I don’t know whether it was shock or exhaustion or whether I was crying for you or Mike or my own sinful doltish self. I haven’t cried for years, not since I was a kid of six or seven. It really shook me up, made me think — I mean, really think. It was as if I was looking at my life from the outside like a stranger passing judgement on it. It was only then I realised that I’d broken my vow of obedience far more often and more seriously than my vow of celibacy, and I hadn’t even seen it. All those so-called scruples and ideals I swamped you with were almost arrogance, petty treacheries — rebellion, if you like, and rebellion is just a more glamorous name for disobedience.”
I shut my eyes. He still didn’t understand. He hadn’t mentioned Bernadette, or grasped that God
and Mike and Glasgow were no nearer or further than the span of his own hand, or that words like disobedience were only strings of letters with a frown on top.
“Forgive me, Thea. I’m rattling on again. I don’t want to tire you out.”
“You’re not,” I said. I was watching Mike, still alive and shining, kicking a ball about on that endless sheet of parchment.
“I shouldn’t be talking at all — not when you’re unwell. But I’m leaving, you see — tomorrow — and I wanted to be sure you understood that …”
“I do understand.”
“It’s funny, really, but when we make a move, or change office, it’s actually called an Obedience. That’s the Franciscan word. You see, Thea, it doesn’t matter how we dress or what we work at — paperwork can be just as sacred as caring for thalidomides. As long as we do it willingly. St Francis was always on about the ‘littlenesses’ of life — those tiny, daily, footling things which lead us to God if we do them for His sake. Even if we’re only sorting jumble or scrubbing out the bath, that’s just as much a calling as preaching in St Peter’s or shepherding whole bus loads of the handicapped. You knew that all the time, Thea — that’s the crazy thing.”
“Hush,” I said. There was no such word as littleness, not when the world was throbbing in my hands.
“I’m sorry, Thea, I’ll go now. I know you want to sleep. Just let me say that if there’s anything … I mean, if I can ever help or …” He slipped a piece of paper on to the bed. “That’s my new address. You can write to me there. Even phone me, if you like.”
He stood up, touched my shoulder. His hand felt hot and tense and awkward, as if he were frightened I might slap it down. “God bless you, Thea,” he murmured. He looked almost like a stranger in his habit. There was no point talking any longer. His God was brown and harsh and handicapped, whereas mine was white and quiet and boundless and neither blessed nor cursed.
I scooped a white narcissus from the vase and pushed it in his hands. “Please,” I said. “Take it.”
The stem was dripping water down his robe. He stood a moment, nervous, at the door. “Look, Thea, even though I’m going, I …” The flower was already drooping. He was clutching it too tightly, stifling all its sap. I listened to it die. “I mean, I’ll still be there if you …”
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