Shrine

by Herbert, James

  Even the painted-in obscenities were the same, although an erect phallus in one might be different in size and colour from the next, the shape of the breasts different in shape from another, the grinning red mouth more distorted than the one next to it.

  27

  Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing.

  Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

  Ben scooted along the rows of benches, Indiana Jones fleeing from hundreds – no, thousands – of screaming Arabs, ready to turn and whip swords from the hands of any who got too close, his imaginary bull-whip settled comfortably over his left shoulder and no weight at all. Up one row, down the next, slipping once on the damp grass, but up in a flash, pausing only to gun down the seven-foot-tall, black-clothed assassin brandishing a long curved sword, laughing at his scream of surprise, speeding on in his race to find the Lost Ark before the dirty Nazis got to it and used its power to win the world. Indiana Jones was better than Han Solo (even if it was the same man) and Han Solo was better than Luke Skywalker. Run, out of breath, mustn’t stop, mustn’t catch me, out of breath, got to keep going, mustn’t – somebody’s foot!

  He sprawled on the ground and hands reached down to pick him up. It hadn’t hurt, just jarred his knee. He rubbed at the earth on his jeans and a voice said, ‘Careful, son, you’re going to hurt yourself if you tear around like that.’

  He said nothing, remembering he was still Indy, a man of few words. The hands released him and with one bound he was free.

  The field was fast filling up with people, the benches nearer to the scaffolded centre-piece – not those specially roped off for particular Church and non-Church dignitaries, nor those reserved for certain religious associations – becoming more and more full, the crowd spreading outwards like a blossoming flower. It was still early, two hours before the Mass was due to begin, but already the people were pushing through the newly constructed entrance gate to the field, eager to find a seat near the altar, many wanting just to see the Miracle Girl, others wanting to be close so that her holiness would wash over them, fearful that it wouldn’t stretch too far back.

  The sun was just a dull glow in the hazy sky and there was a harshness in the air that was particularly unkind to the invalids in the crowd. The buzz of conversation, of excitement, and of a certain fear, increased as the numbers swelled; the well-organized stewards, ushers, the young priests called in to help marshal the expected huge congregation, could not help but feel a trembling of their own senses as the intoxicating atmosphere spread. Voices were hushed, reverential, as though the gathering were inside a cathedral, only their multiplicity giving them an overall loudness. Wheelchairs, their passage through the field not easy because the soft earth had been churned up by too many feet, were already beginning to obstruct the aisles and the ushers made mental notes that an area would have to be sectioned off for such invalids on future occasions.

  Ben ran on, this time careful to avoid booby-trap feet, keeping to the less occupied benches, an eight-year old enjoying his game, oblivious to the gathering tension, lost in the excitement of his own mind’s creation. A truck-load of dirty Nazis was tearing down on him and he rolled over the bench to his right, shooting the driver in the face as he went by. Then he was up again, running on, fearless and to be feared. He was dimly aware that the game would have to end soon, that his mother had made him promise to return to the church before the field became too full. If she wasn’t there, she would be in the priest’s house. It wasn’t too full yet, there were plenty of empty benches, plenty of dark, Arab alleyways, plenty of—

  The man had just entered that particular row and Ben’s hurtling body caught him momentarily off-balance, knocking him onto the bench on which he was about to sit. He held the boy’s shoulders to steady him and Ben, startled and breathless, looked up into his face. The man cringed inside when he saw the boy’s eyes widen in shock, his mouth drop open, his body become rigid. The man could only smile to reassure him, but even that made his physical mask more grotesque.

  He released his grip and the boy slowly shrank away, never taking his eyes off the man’s ulcerated mouth and nose, the terrible disfigurement of facial tuberculosis. He lifted the silk scarf, dislodged when the boy had cannoned into him, to his face again, the mask natural enough on such a cold day. He shouldn’t have been here, not with this terrible affliction; people were afraid of him, friends, so-called loved ones, afraid his disease was contagious. In the old days lupus vulgaris was known as ‘dog’s muzzle’ and the description was appropriate; sometimes they treated him warily, like a crazy dog, afraid he would bite them and they would become as he. The skin disease was rare, but that gave him no feeling of distinction, just a sense of hopelessness, a feeling of impotent fury that he should be chosen to bear the hideous brand which, for him, no antibiotics could clear. One last hope. Today, one last hope. If not, if he could never again feel another’s lips against his, never look into another’s eyes without seeing the barely-hidden revulsion therein – never hold a child without feeling their muscles tense to run away – then there was no point to it all, no reason to go on. What was so precious about life that you felt obliged to live it? Better cold, senseless oblivion than a scorned existence. He watched the boy run from him and tried to retain the numbness in his mind, his only barrier against the seeping self-pity.

  Ben ran on, afraid now of this big field, these people pouring in, all strangers, all suddenly a threat. Time to find Mummy; Indiana Jones had faded without final credits.

  ‘You’ll have to move on. Nowhere to park here.’

  ‘Press.’ Fenn leaned across and flashed his card at the constable.

  ‘Yeah, you and eight thousand others. Keep moving.’

  Fenn forced his car into the slow-moving traffic. ‘Bloody carnival day again,’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘It’s amazing how many’ll turn up for a free show, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think a lot of them have stronger motives for coming than that, Fenn.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  They were nearing the drive to the priest’s house and Fenn saw even that was blocked with vehicles, presumably those of visiting clergy and helpers. He swore. ‘I should have cleared it with Delgard to get parking space. I’m supposed to be “official”.’

  ‘I guess we should have gotten here earlier.’ Nancy studied the shuffling people, the queue spilling into the road, police and stewards at various points endeavouring to keep some kind of order, preventing the thoroughfare itself from being swamped. The coach in front of Fenn’s hired car came to a halt and he reluctantly eased his foot down on the brake pedal. Nancy poked her head out the window on her side to see what was causing the hold-up.

  ‘There’s an ambulance up ahead – by the entrance to the field, I think,’ she told him. ‘Yeah, it’s unloading. Jesus, coupla stretcher cases.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. They’ll be bringing their dead along next.’

  Nancy rummaged in her bag for cigarettes. ‘I’m not sure why you’re still so cynical,’ she said as she lit up. ‘You gotta face it, there’s been results.’

  ‘I know, but look, look over there.’ He indicated to the opposite side of the road where makeshift stalls were set up on the grass verge. Through the gaps in the crowds around the stalls they could see small statues and holy trinkets hung from wire frames, while flimsy posters of the Virgin Mother, the Virgin and the Christ-baby, the Virgin at the Crucifixion, hung limply from long strings tied to the branches of trees behind the stalls. They caught a glimpse of a poster of the Pope in a cowboy hat, another blurred one of him being shot. The traders looked sullen, even though business appeared to be brisk. A Mr Whippy van looked busiest of all, and Fenn wondered if Madonna ice-lollies were on sale.

  ‘I’m surprised your police allow it.’

  ‘Probably too busy keeping the crowds under control to worry about unlicensed traders,’ Fenn replied, moving the car on again as the coach in front advanced.


  ‘Looks like nobody’s getting into St Joseph’s today,’ Nancy said as they approached the church gate.

  He saw the policemen moving the queue along past the locked gate, patiently explaining to the more insistent that the service was to take place in the field today, not the church. ‘They don’t look too happy about it.’

  ‘I’m not surprised – it’s goddamned cold outside.’

  ‘It’s not going to do some of those invalids much good.’ Fenn shook his head. ‘I can’t understand their doctors allowing it.’

  ‘You can’t stop human nature, Fenn. If they think they’re going to get cured, nothing’ll keep them away. How would you feel, say, if you had an incurable disease, or a terminal illness? Wouldn’t you take one last desperate chance, even if you thought the possibility of being cured was a thousand – or even a million – to one?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘You’d have nothing to lose.’

  ‘Except to feel pretty stupid.’

  ‘What’s stupid against a chance to live again?’

  He remained silent, accepting the point. Then he said, ‘There’s the entrance to the field. Look, it’s jammed solid.’

  They could now see that the queue converged on the gate from both directions, forming an untidy mass at the entrance.

  ‘If only I were selling tickets,’ Fenn muttered.

  They drove on, the journey slow, cars, vans and coaches now parked bumper to bumper along the roadside, only the immediate area around the church and field entrance kept clear by the police. ‘You want to jump out here while I find somewhere to park?’ Fenn suggested.

  ‘You’re going to see Delgard, aren’t you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then I’ll stick with you.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘Like glue.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Ahead, he saw the driver of a coach parked half on the grass verge having a heated argument with a policeman. Guessing what the dispute was over, Fenn swung in towards the vehicle’s rear tyre and stopped. Angry blasts from horns behind greeted the manoeuvre as other drivers were forced to swing around and squeeze through the gap between his hired Fiesta and approaching traffic.

  ‘What the hell are you doing, Fenn?’

  ‘The road isn’t wide enough for coach parking so the driver’s being moved on now that his passengers are unloaded.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like he’s moving to me.’

  ‘He will be.’

  Fenn was right. With a last gesture of disgust the driver disappeared back inside and the coach throttled into life. He pulled out into the traffic without signalling and without waiting for space. Fenn whipped in quickly, two cars behind following his strategy. ‘There you go,’ he said triumphantly as he pulled on the handbrake.

  They left the car and began the walk back to St Joseph’s, keeping to the opposite side of the road from the shuffling queue. ‘There’s gotta be thousands upon thousands here today,’ Nancy remarked, pulling her scarf around her throat to keep out the cold.

  ‘There were thousands last week.’

  ‘Yeah, but not this many. Even the Pope couldn’t haul in these kind of numbers.’

  Soon they were forced into the roadway to avoid the people clustered around the traders’ stalls. They stopped for a closer inspection of the wares. ‘Unbelievable,’ Fenn said, shaking his head and smiling at the same time. ‘Look, over there.’ He pointed. ‘Flasks containing Holy Soil from the field of the Madonna. Jesus wept!’

  Nancy picked up a small dome-shaped transparent container filled with water in which an ill-defined plastic version of Mary stood. She shook it and snowflakes almost obliterated the image.

  Fenn shook his head again in amused dismay when he saw a seven-inch shrine, again made of plastic, small red candles in holders on either side of an inset photograph of Alice which had obviously hastily replaced another kind of holy picture. The black and white shot had been reproduced from a newspaper, for the blow-up revealed the fine printed dots to a crude degree.

  Nancy pointed out a white-painted grotto whose lights flashed on intermittently to reveal a Madonna and what could only have been Bernadette of Lourdes.

  They watched as a pilgrim picked up a tiny doll which bore the faintest resemblance to Alice Pagett, and a mechanical parody of a child’s voice said, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is . . .’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Fenn said. ‘How can they manufacture these things so fast?’

  ‘They call it enterprise,’ Nancy said, not amused by any of the trivia on display. ‘They’re just quick and simple adaptations of junk that’s been selling for years. I’ll bet under some of those labels saying “Alice, the Miracle Worker” or “Our Lady of Banfield” you’ll find others referring to something totally different.’

  They moved on, passing medallions of all shapes and sizes, crucifixes plain and gaudy, chinaware, handbags, even umbrellas, somehow alluding to the fact that they were all touched by holiness. They were approached by a man selling postcards of Sussex villages, Banfield itself not among them. Fenn declined the offer to buy with a bemused wave of his hand.

  They crossed the road when they were opposite the gate leading to St Joseph’s, dodging between the slow-moving cars and plunging into the queue. The policeman they had spotted earlier directing the crowd barred their way.

  Fenn took out his Press card. ‘Monsignor Delgard is expecting me.’

  The policeman turned towards a steward who was lurking beyond the entrance. ‘D’you know anything about a Mr Gerald Fenn?’

  The small man, who had spoken with Fenn on a previous occasion, nodded his head. ‘He’s okay, you can let him through.’

  The gate swung open and Nancy made as if to follow her companion.

  ‘Sorry, miss, Mr Fenn only.’

  ‘But I’m with him.’ Nancy opened her bag and took out her card. ‘Look, I’m Press too.’

  ‘Miss, er, Shelbeck?’ The policeman had scrutinized the card and turned towards the other man again.

  ‘No, don’t know anything about her.’

  ‘Sorry, miss, you’ll have to use the other entrance further down. Only authorized persons allowed through here.’

  ‘But I told you, I’m with him.’ She pointed at Fenn who was trying not to grin.

  ‘I’d like to oblige you, miss, but I’m afraid I can’t.’

  ‘Fenn, will you speak to this guy?’

  ‘Sorry, Nancy. I guess orders is orders.’

  ‘You bastard! You knew this would happen.’

  Fenn held out his hands in mock denial. ‘How could I?’

  Nancy’s mouth became a straight line across her face. ‘Now, look, officer, I’m from the Washington Post. I’m here to cover this—’

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ came the polite but firm reply, ‘but if you’ll just join the queue. You can go straight to the front, just show your Press card.’

  ‘But—’ She saw there was no point in arguing. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she snapped at Fenn before shoving her way back into the crowd.

  Fenn passed through the gate, the grin broad on his face. It slowly faded as he walked along the shadowed path towards the church. He felt uncomfortable, as though the old building itself were watching him, the black open doorway waiting to devour his soul. If there was such a thing as a soul. He wasn’t sure (he’d reached no definite conclusions – and how could anyone?), but he thought he believed in the ‘spark’ of life, an essence inside which gave man his drive, generating energy as well as thoughts, through chemically derived impulses. A tiny pilot light, if you like, that was necessary to set everything else in motion. So what was God? A bigger spark? Were his and all the others just offshoots from the big one? Or was God everything the different religions wanted Him to be? And did it really matter? Not to Fenn. And maybe not even to God.

  But the church puzzled him. There was a coldness to it that seemed to be more noticeable each time he visited
– unless he, himself, was absorbing the fears of first Hagan, and now Delgard. ‘Spiritually devoid’ was a strange expression to anyone who had no particular beliefs in that direction, so why did it seem so apt to him? He had been disappointed that his week’s research had uncovered no deep mysteries or scurrilous activities surrounding St Joseph’s or the village, but only because it would have provided an interesting, perhaps intriguing, storyline. Yet had he been that cynical when he had first undertaken the research, or was it just rationalization after discovering no hidden skeletons? He remembered that his attack on the archives had been almost obsessive. The fire, the deaths of the priest and Alice’s father, the strangeness of Alice herself, and the veiled insinuations of Monsignor Delgard had instilled doubts and suspicions in his own mind, had kindled a peculiar fear within himself, one that he had not understood and could not ignore. Perhaps the week of relentless research had purged the fear from him, the multitude of mundane historical facts and dates overwhelming the real purpose of his searches.

  He stood outside the worn building and gazed up at the small tower. Its origins dated from way back – no one was sure just how far back its history went – and he wondered at how much the ancient stones must have witnessed, how times had changed beneath its spire, those changes escalating with each passing century. It had stood, or parts of it had stood, from pre-mediaeval England to the era of microchips and space rockets, through sorcery and superstition into the age of the realist. If the church were human, if stone and mortar were flesh and blood, the window its eyes, the altar its brain, how would it absorb those vast changes, what effect would they have on its living being? And would its spiritual aura survive the debasing onslaught of materialism? Or would the wisdom-giving years pass on a new perception that far surpassed the achievements of scientific knowledge?

  He shook himself. Jesus, Fenn, a philosopher yet. It was just a pile of stones standing before him, with no feelings, no brain, and no soul. Man-made, stamped and packaged by the Roman Catholic Church. End of profound philosophical contemplation. Footsteps made him turn sharply.