After Purple

by Wendy Perriam

  “Goodbye, Ray.”

  When I opened my eyes again, he’d gone. I unfolded the piece of paper which was ruled and narrow like his life was. His writing hadn’t changed. It was still small and cramped, as if it had grown up in a slum and knew it mustn’t spread itself, or leap into fancy swirls.

  “St Francis,” I read. “407 Cumberland Street, Glasgow.” He’d even added the postcode and the telephone number.

  I opened my hand and let the Glasgow house, St Francis himself and the whole order of Friars Minor flutter gently to the ground.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  In the morning, everyone spoke softer and there were no more cups of tea. I was going up to theatre at eleven.

  Sister brought my letters in. They came in dribs and drabs from Notting Hill. I supposed Adrian or someone must be forwarding my mail. He was probably keeping my accounts as well, and sending in my sick-notes. I rarely read the letters. The one with a second-class stamp was from my mother and the other said “Good News from Brentford Nylons”. I dropped them in the waste bin without even slitting the envelopes. The third one was a postcard. On the front was a brilliant Eastern bird with sweeping tail feathers and hot scarlet plumage like tongues of fire. Its wings were flexed and soaring, its head bent back and gazing at the sun. Trembling, I turned it over. All the writing had been smudged and blurred, so there were only mangled stumps of letters bleeding and writhing on the back, an indecipherable black stain, as if the rain or God or Time had blotted it out. There were two brightly coloured stamps — foreign stamps — one with a lotus on, and one with a turbaned craftsman at a loom. The postmark said Srinagar.

  I held the card like an icon in my hands. It didn’t need words or writing. I knew already what it meant. The bird was a feng huang, so Leo was telling me the vase was mended and peace restored to the universe, that a Golden Age had come. I stared at the preening beak, the blazing wings. Adrian had nagged and niggled about Leo not apologising. But now he had offered not merely a brief and grudging “sorry”, but had sent me the symbol of peace itself, so that I could hold it bright and breathing in my hands, the bird which was too gentle to peck at a grub or tread on a blade of grass, which flew away in wartime and returned only when gods smiled on the earth.

  I turned it over and stared at the print again. Although it was distorted, I recognised Leo’s bold black fountain pen. The address was so fogged and fudged, it astonished me that all the post offices from Srinagar to London had passed it so confidently from hand to hand. I knew, then, it was blessed. It would have arrived on my bed, had Leo simply tossed it blank and unaddressed into the air from some high peak of the Himalayas.

  This was the “sorry” I had waited for almost four long months (all my life, perhaps), the one Leo had never entrusted to anyone before, not even God or Otto. Only his sorry could heal me — I was healed. I could feel his remorse bandaged round my body, hot like a poultice, soothing like a balm. It was as if the phoenix had nestled on my breast and wrapped me in its feathers. Leo had held that bird. His breath had warmed it, his fingers ruffled it. Therefore Leo’s breath and hands were against my own.

  I knew what he was saying, knew what he had written on that card. It could be one thing only. Hadn’t he told me the feng huang symbolised the perfect union of man and woman?

  I traced my finger along the tangled mess of print. “I love you,” I spelt out. It was easy, really, once I understood. Leo had written those three short endless words and the rain and wind had rubbed them out again and the customs men excised them, but I could still read them as plainly and simply as if he had daubed them in shouting scarlet letters on the hard white skull of the world.

  I smiled. I knew he’d say it in the end.

  He had tossed his love in the air like a homing pigeon and it had scorched a trail across the sky. All the way from India to England, I could see whole countries stunned and reeling with it; the landscape branded with Leo for ever — his nails clawing up and down the fields like furrows, the sharp angles of his body sculpted into the hills.

  I closed my eyes. His love was so violent, it was like a fist smashed in my face. Leo had never hit me — all he had done was tell me that he loved me and I had bled with the jolt and wonder of it.

  “Wakey, wakey, Mrs Morton! We’re ready for you now, dear. Be a love and give me that card and those dirty Kleenex, will you. We want to tidy you up a bit.”

  I passed her the Kleenex, but not the card. She tried to coax it from me, but I held on tightly while she fussed around. I’d waited so long for Leo’s love, I wasn’t going to be parted from it now. I let her take my temperature, instead.

  I’d already had my bath and enema. I rarely shitted now without assistance. There was nothing left inside me — no food, no faeces, nothing base or low. I was clean and white and empty like the inside of a flower. I had only one last thing to do — to pass on Bernadette’s message to the world. I knew I mustn’t delay too long. Pilgrim planes were screaming into Lourdes, nation jostling nation for their holy water and their miracles, Mary’s name instead of Janet’s on a million million lips.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “But there’s something I’ve got to do before my operation.”

  “You’ve got to spend a penny, dear, that’s for sure. Out you jump, and I’ll tidy up your bed a bit while you’re out of it.”

  I suppose ordinary nurses couldn’t grasp I had a Mission, so I walked on, past the bathroom, and knocked at Sister’s office. She must have understood because she escorted me back to my room with two assistants and dressed me all in white. It was like a ritual stripping. I was naked underneath. They took away my squalid bra and soiled pyjamas and robed me in a pure white vestment like an alb, with my hair coiled up beneath a spotless coif. I was a nun now — no hair, no cunt, no curves. They even removed my jewellery — the tawdry plastic bangle, the tuppenny-ha’penny chain. They left my wedding ring, but taped it over with a piece of sticking plaster. A ring meant nothing now. I was neither married nor divorced. I wasn’t even separate. A ring could only bind two separate people.

  They eased my denture out and dropped it in a dish. I wouldn’t need it any longer. I didn’t intend to eat again, or kiss or bite or talk. I had already renounced my possessions. My room was bare, my locker empty save for the box of hospital Kleenex and the water jug. Even that, they took away. They left me parched and fasting. Nuns always fast before they take their final vows and priests before their ordination. I was nun and priest at once, man and woman fused, like Leo and the feng huang. They folded my counterpane away and left only one white blanket and the sheet. If I wriggled down the bed a bit, I was wrapped totally in whiteness, white sheet pressing on my eyes, white hands folded on white breast. Bernadette had died like that, garbed all in white, lying on a white bed with white curtains pulled around her. She had called it her private chapel. I shut my eyes. I was lying in my own chapel, dressed in a robe which was both shroud and wedding dress, and with my handmaids all around me.

  The handmaids spoke in whispers. Even they wore white now. They had changed out of their blue and put on dazzling uniforms — white cuffs, white caps, white dresses. Their voices were white to match.

  One of them was standing over me with a sacred vessel in her hands. “Just a little prick,” she smiled. “You’ll feel a bit woozy, but don’t worry, I’ll be popping in and out.”

  A needle pierced my arm, but I hardly felt it. Leo loved me, and since there was no time nor space nor boundaries, he was with me still, the child of our love leaping in my womb. The phoenix sat soft and sheening on my breast, its feathers ruffled round me like a shield. I lay back and listened to it sing.

  All things were mended now. St Maur’s was standing whole and unmolested, stretching its white arms up to heaven. Even Adrian’s ancient temples which I had seen as only heaps of weeping stones with weeds and picnickers sticking up between them, were now raised high and proud again, incense smoking from their singing mouths.

  Leo had sent me not ju
st peace, but flowers. There was a vase of white narcissi on my altar. The blossoms were drooping a little, but they still spelt life and spring. I watched their slow white throats breathe in and out. They had tiny dots of yellow in their centres, which swelled into huge round suns, so bright they blinded me. I tried to stare only at the vase, but it was so vast and glittering, the whole room roared with light. Even if I closed my eyes, the brightness dazzled them. I realised, then, it was coming from inside me.

  “All right, my dear?”

  Someone had swum in again — a handmaid, probably. I could see her mouth gaping like a vast black jewel-box lined with scarlet plush, and one hand crouching on my blanket with all its struts and girders sticking up. Next time, there were two of them, but all their different parts had floated away from each other and were scattered around the room. They must have been in pain, but they still kept smiling. The smiles themselves had cracked into tiny fragments which fell on my bed like hail.

  “We’re taking you up now, Mrs Morton.”

  I nodded. They all understood about my Mission now, because they had sent a man with a litter who lifted me high on to it and wheeled me out of my room along miles of white, shining corridor which smelt of God and ether. White walls reared up in front of me and then fell away again, white doors yawned open and closed effortlessly behind me. People bowed and whispered as I passed.

  “Careful with her now.”

  We had stopped a moment and they were cramming me into some grey metal box with wrought-iron gates which clanged so loudly shut, I could feel the echo like a sharp knife cutting through my skull. There was a sudden judder and the earth fell right away, and we were soaring up, up, up, so fast some of my limbs were left shuddering behind. There was a pause, a jolt, and then up again, until suddenly my head grazed against the sky, and we had pierced right through it and were streaking past the higher constellations in black, rushing space.

  When we stopped, the air smelt purer and we were in some high shining room where the gods wore green and huge glaring lights stared into my eyes like planets. Fuzzy white angels kept curving towards me and retreating. I felt so light, so radiant, I must have become pure soul. Solemn white faces were bending over me and I could hear the heartbeat of the universe roaring through my veins.

  I knew now, this was the place and moment for my message. I could see sacred vessels gleaming in glass cupboards — tubes and chalices, syringes and phials. Important people were gathered round my litter, tense and reverent, hanging on my words.

  I struggled up, but part of my body was missing and its hinges wouldn’t work. A green archangel came and held me down.

  “S … something to tell you,” I stuttered. “Message for the world.”

  “Tell us later, dear. Plenty of time when you come round.” She didn’t sound like an angel. Her voice scratched and chafed against my soul. I tried to push her away and lift my head. I knew it must be now — there wouldn’t be a later.

  “What’s the matter, Mrs Morton? You really must lie still, dear.”

  “Bishop,” I gasped. My voice had turned from solid into gas. All the same, they must have heard it, because a tall lordly figure was striding towards me, a man in a dress with neither legs nor hair, but robed all in green and transfigured like a god. He was holier than a bishop because he wore his vestments even on his face. All I could see were two piercing eyes and a blaze of light behind him like a halo.

  “Must … tell you … something,” I mouthed.

  “All right, my dear, you go ahead and tell me.” His voice was beaten bronze, his eyes as deep as the Saskatchewan Lake.

  “Listening?” I whispered. It was essential that he caught my words. My voice was only a vapour trail dissolving into space.

  He nodded. Behind him, I glimpsed other faces, faces behind faces, distorted in shining silver surfaces, reflected in mirrors, cut and branded by the light.

  “It wasn’t” — I paused — “the Blessed Virgin.” I could feel the whole world drawing in its breath as I scooped up the last fluttering feathers of my voice. “It was … Janet.”

  I glanced at the tall green god to make sure he had understood. “Janet,” I repeated, as the glory of a task fulfilled broke against my body like a wave.

  He was nodding, smiling. “That’s all right, my dear. Nothing to worry about at all. We’ll take care of everything.”

  Relief roared and thundered in my brain. I felt a peace so deep, I longed for it to close above my head. I had done it, said it, kept my tryst with Bernadette, and now the burden had been lifted from me. Other, stronger powers would shoulder the toil, the fear, the anguish, the conflict with authorities, the struggle with the priests. All I had to do was lie back and let all things pass. I didn’t belong in Lourdes or London any longer. I had reached that place where words and work and turmoil were just an interruption of the light. The green god’s hands were hovering over my arm. Blue rivers flowed slowly to his fingertips, dark forests sprouted on his wrists. He was so strong, he could topple Lourdes with just one finger, break up all the marble and mosaics, and set up Janet in some new, no-fuss, no-nonsense shrine.

  I closed my eyes. The last dregs of my body dropped away. I could see the whole shining, singing universe from Kashmir to Saskatchewan spread out like Leo’s postcard in my hand, all centuries shaken up together, all continents scattered like a drift of petals in one small cul-de-sac. There were no boundaries any longer, no marriages, or birth certificates. We were all one, all joined. Lucian was Leo’s and Leo Lucian’s, and Louis de Gonzague was only the unborn child of Otto’s father alive and smiling among his shoe-boxes.

  I stared at the small glass bottles in the cabinet, the rolls of bandages, the lengths of tube. I felt them leap and breathe and quicken as they shouted up to heaven that they were as vibrantly alive as I was. My shape and outlines were already blurred and merging, until I was glass and bandage with them, star and stone. This was my Communion, communion with all things. It didn’t matter any longer that I had never been a ticked and slotted Catholic, or that my so-called First Communion had left me choked and disillusioned. There were no more shrill religions feuding with each other across their barbed-wire walls. We were all priests, all gods; all absolute, all light. Every smallest, humblest object, whether pin or pot or thumbnail, blazed and hymned with light. There was only light. One light, one singing life.

  All creeds dissolved, all colours fell away. I could hear the sound of whiteness surge slowly through the room. I recognised it. It was Leo’s music, that safe, soft, healing music he had played when I returned from hospital, but now it was the feng huang who was singing it, pouring out its hymn of peace and light and harmony, fertility and grace. I climbed on the sound and soared. I was a phoenix now, a white one, rising from the flames of pain and violence, flying away from purple, from the colour of pomp and penance, the shades of Lent and sin. I had left pain and death behind, scorched through fire and furnace, and come out hallowed on the other side where the pure cold light of heaven smote scalding on my eyes.

  Somewhere, far below me, the green god touched my arm. “We’re going to put you to sleep now, Mrs Morton.”

  I smiled. Of course I couldn’t sleep. Even if I closed my eyes, the radiance would startle them apart again. And I wasn’t Mrs Morton. All names had been rubbed out or whited over — Elliott, Rzenski, even Wildman. No deed polls now, no Babel, no baffling, battering words to show me up or shout me down. Not even any different languages. Feng huang meant phoenix now without any mistranslation, and I was simply, only, Thea, which meant goddess and divine.

  An angel pushed my white sleeve slowly up my white arm. I had no sleeve, no arm. I was so high, high, above them, I could see the door of heaven opening slowly in the sky.

  The shadow of a streak of silver fell across the light, a javelin gleaming in the green god’s hands. He was trying to pierce me with it, but I had already flown too far. The sky came hurtling forward, and as I soared, roared, rushed to meet it, I saw my father
sitting up in heaven, holding out his arms.

  Copyright

  First published in 1982 by Michael Joseph

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-2263-7 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-2262-0 POD

  Copyright © Wendy Perriam 1982

  The right of Wendy Perriam to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

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