Rancid Pansies

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  Other than that, Gerry says he’s thinking of buying another house in the same area of Italy though obviously not on that same bit of mountain. From the point of view of our relationship, such as it is (whatever it is), I’m sorry he’s so far away. From his own point of view it’s logical. He’s more than fluent in the language – verbose, one could say – & the place feels like home to him, so why not? It’s a pity house prices in that part of Tuscany are so ludicrously high he’s probably going to have to spend a good deal, if not all, of his film rights windfall. Our lavishly salaried hearts bleed for him.

  I must now apologise for being gratuitously rude about the man from the DTI. He’s just been back & he’s actually from Defra. He came to remind me there’s virtually no aspect of a Severn Barrage that can’t fall under the heading of the environment or food or rural affairs. Exercising his department’s interest in food he stayed to lunch, & I wish to state that like any sea cucumber he can ingest nourishment even though his mouth is fringed with a moustache rather than tentacles. It remains to be seen whether he can eject sticky white threads when irritated. I’m hoping to give him plenty of opportunity to display this faculty but until he does holothurians still win on all-round performance. Especially their conversation.

  Cheers,

  Adrian

  5

  In pursuit of background information for my nascent opera I have just paid a mental visit to the Vatican, specifically to that administrative area around the Cortile del Triangolo. Here is the sixteenth-century palazzo jocularly known as Castel Birbone whose ground floor houses a large office with ‘De Reliquiis Sanctis’ on the door. These days it is generally pandemonium, being full of short-tempered American novelists of no great literary talent. They are trying to track down that Holy Grail of the popular American novel, the Holy Grail. They have, however, scarcely a word of Latin or even Italian between them, so are reliant on official interpreters with whom they soon run out of patience. The booming voices demanding access to archival evidence spill out into the hall and pursue one’s hurrying heels as they mount the glorious staircase (by Baldassare Bernucci) to the first floor’s comparative hush. There, at the end of a corridor, is a heavy wooden door marked ‘De S. S. Manifestis’.

  This is the office that deals with holy apparitions, mostly of the Virgin. Time was when it was regularly besieged by Irish, Portuguese and French peasants dressed in rusty black, staking their claims to a personal visitation. But as their countries’ economies improved and folk acquired a rudimentary education, the numbers of supplicants coming to this room fell off sharply. It was almost as if the Mother of God, whose own education had stuck at counting to five and learning mnemonic rhymes for knowing when to plant olives and mate sheep, was nervous that She might be asked her opinions on gender theory or economics. Of late, therefore, those to whom She had appeared were almost exclusively children from the remaining wilds of Catholic credulousness: Poles, Bosnia-Herzegovinans, Voynovians and the like, hailing from villages where oxcarts still have solid wooden wheels and suspected homosexuals are periodically burned. Here the Virgin can alight with complete intellectual safety, surprising children on hillsides as they go about their humble tasks of watching olives grow and sheep tup.

  On the day of my visit, however, there was no one in the high, beamed room except a young priest with remarkable curled eyelashes. He was sitting behind a desk playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City when I entered after a respectful knock. The priest zapped the game with a guilty look and as 1980s Miami faded from the screen he sprang to his feet, offering me a chair. His screensaver, I noticed, was a stately swirl of golden Paschal Lambs with their shouldered banners of St George revolving against a velvety blue background.

  ‘You have come to report a vision, signore?’ he enquired. The attractive thing about robes is they always make one wonder what’s under them, something modern secular clothing practically never does. One day couturiers will wake up to this.

  ‘In a way,’ I said. ‘That’s to say, it’s more of a second-hand report.’

  ‘I see. And the individual who saw the vision is still too overwhelmed to testify in person? That is often the case. It was of our Blessed Queen of Heaven?’

  ‘More a princess. It was of Diana, the wife of –’

  ‘– il Principe Carlo? Yes. Remarkable. Only a few days ago in this very room I had a visit from a British couple who likewise reported a visitation by la Principessa, although again it was not a first-hand account.’

  ‘Signori Baghi e Dampi?’ I exclaimed in surprise. ‘Or rather, Signor e Signora Barrington?’ It was strange enough meeting them again as they were dressing the shrine at Le Roccie; but their already having paid a visit to the Vatican was downright disturbing. What possible motive could they have?

  ‘Ah yes. Yes – countrymen of yours, if I may presume? But they didn’t enjoy your excellent fluency in our language, alas. They were accompanied by an Italian friend who I gather is intent on establishing a shrine on the spot where the apparition occurred. Unfortunately I had to tell them what I have to tell you, too, signore. You want Room 21.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Room 21 deals with applications for non-Catholics to be considered officially as having lived vitae sanctae or holy lives. As the wife of a man who might one day become head of the Church of England, the Princess was surely of the Protestant faith? No one here doubts that over the centuries several Protestants may have lived quite saintly lives, but that is unfortunately not the same as being eligible for inclusion in the Catholic Calendar.’

  ‘Surely a bona fide apparition carries some weight?’

  ‘Even if it did you would still be in the wrong room. Regrettably,’ the priest added gently, as though lamenting some undefined pleasure for ever forbidden us. He may have been itching to get back to his computer game but if so he betrayed no hint of it. ‘Here in “De Sancto Spirito Manifestis”, as our name implies, we deal exclusively with instances of the Holy Spirit made manifest as apparitions. Under a ruling of 1889 this is understood to refer only to saints, the Apostles, members of the Holy Family and individuals of the Trinity itself. No one else falls into this category. Candidates for some kind of ecumenical canonisation, such as la Principessa may conceivably be, would still be as it were in an anteroom of sanctity. Their apparitions would likewise be accorded a slightly lower status in hierarchical terms but not, I stress, in terms of miraculous value. If in the distant, unforeseeable future a Holy Father were to grant the late Princess sainthood, then her apparitions before that will acquire, retroactively, the same significance as if they had occurred after canonisation. That of course also goes for anything she might say, any message she might impart during a vision. Did she in fact leave a message?’

  ‘I believe so. “Get out.”’

  ‘“Get out”?’

  ‘She was supposedly warning some people to leave a house that was in imminent danger of collapse.’

  ‘Ah yes, I remember, your compatriots mentioned it. Not a very spiritual saying, on the face of it, but as it narrowly saved lives it would surely count as a miraculous utterance.’

  I was not, unfortunately, in a position to tell my curly-lashed informant that mine was one of the lives saved by this timely but quite imaginary command. ‘So – informally speaking, of course – what would you say her chances were? I mean, in the distant, unforeseeable future?’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly say. The first step, of course, is to be considered a Servant of God, and on a Papal decree of heroicity or martyrdom the subject is pronounced Venerable. Only then can beatification follow when His Holiness declares that she is blessed in Heaven. The basic procedures were all laid down quite clearly in Benedict XIV’s De Servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione. I’m sure you’re familiar with them. First, the life of the candidate is examined. Only if this is found worthy are the miracles then assessed. At least two miracles are essential. The event you allege would undoubtedly qualify as one of them, the
oretically speaking. The majority of miracles involve cures, of course. The paralysed being enabled to walk, that sort of thing.’

  At the dinner party on the night in question we had been as close to paralysis as leglessness entails, what with alcohol and hallucinogens, but I decided to spare this charming young priest’s sensibilities.

  ‘Then there is a systematic examination of the candidate’s virtues. It used to involve a quasi-legal process with a “prosecution”, the promotor justitiae popularly known as the Devil’s Advocate. However, that office was abolished by the late Pope John Paul II in 1983 when he streamlined the whole process, enabling him to achieve four hundred and eighty-two canonisations during his Papacy. These days, opponents of the candidate are simply called in to give any negative testimony. Against these voices a defence is mounted in which the candidate’s writings and the testimony of sworn witnesses are put forward as evidence of his or her consistent virtue.’

  The candidate’s writings? It was already beginning to sound like a pretty long shot. The evidence, inevitably thin, might include a school essay, ‘What I did in my summer holidays’, plus several postcards from places like Biarritz and Klosters. But then I reflected that there must be plenty of saints who hadn’t left behind any writings whatever, who might not even have been literate. There was hope yet.

  ‘I can tell you,’ the young priest added, ‘the Vatican does occasionally receive proposals for recognising a Protestant as a saint. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s name is quite frequently put forward. I believe he was technically a Lutheran pastor. He may indeed have been a remarkably saintly man but in my personal view he could not under any circumstances be eligible for canonisation. I’m afraid any opponent would easily win the case against his being deemed a martyr for the faith. The Nazis hanged him in 1945 not for religious reasons but for high treason since he had taken part in plans to assassinate Hitler. My Church considers that plotting to kill people, for whatever reason, is an insuperable impediment to canonisation.’

  ‘Oh, well, bang go my own chances,’ I said lightly. ‘Anyway, you’ve been most helpful.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m only sorry to disappoint you. Incidentally, I’m afraid I did make a slightly whimsical suggestion to your compatriots when they were here last week. I told them they might find the Princess’s chances for recognition better in the Russian Orthodox Church, which also creates saints. In fact, not long ago I believe it canonised Tsar Nicholas the Second’s family. Since there are blood ties between the British and the former Russian royal families, might it not be possible to argue a kind of honorary Russian Orthodoxy for the Princess as the basis for a plea? Failing that, there are always the Greeks and much the same reasoning.’

  ‘H’m. Rather scraping the bottom of the barrel of sanctity, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, do urge the Princess’s supporters not to give up hope. The restrictions I’ve been quoting are, after all, very worldly. It’s the fragrance of the life itself that rises furthest,’ said the young priest with an encouraging smile of intangible sultry import. ‘One must never despair.’

  ‘I never do. Something always comes up. Room 21?’

  ‘Room 21.’

  As I closed the heavy door I thought I could hear the streets of Miami burst back into life behind me.

  Such is the imaginary scene I am now toying with for an important episode towards the end of my opera. I see it as an exalted version of a courtroom drama, taking place in a Vatican office where the merits of a potential saint’s case for canonisation are thrashed out. These will start in the normal way, with testimony from Diana’s family, friends, African AIDS victims, etc., being read out. And then – coup de théâtre! – Diana herself appears in order to answer her own case. Consternation! This is unheard-of in the annals of the Vatican: an actual apparition of a soul on day-release from Purgatory to answer her critics in person! News of this drama quickly spreads and people crowd in from the rest of the building. So beautiful is her visionary appearance that everyone is instantly swayed, and cries of ‘A saint! A saint!’ can be heard, while her prosecutor, sticking to his guns, tries to make his voice rise above the din, appealing for caution and scepticism. (I have just the heroic bass in mind for his role.) And as the unerring Mozart showed in Don Giovanni, tragedy may mysteriously be intensified by a pinch of comedy so there is even a walk-on part for a lost American novelist (‘Your Blessed Majesty, all hail! / Just tell me, where’s the Holy Grail? / I gotta deadline I must meet and / Gee! Your hair looks real neat!’). For as you can see, I have begun serious work on the libretto at last. If the impression I’ve given so far is of something between Parsifal and South Pacific, I beg you to suspend judgement. These are early days yet. Trust me: this is going to be grand.

  Elsewhere, other matters have been moving quite briskly and Samper’s life is fast regaining some of its former purposeful shape. First, Benedetti found me a small flat in town that I’m renting on a short-term lease. It belongs to a Belgian sociologist who is apparently studying voting irregularities in Italian local elections and has disappeared. But Benedetti says he has the man’s authority to let the flat when he’s not there, so here I am amid furniture that causes me severe anguish, in particular the shade of the bed linen, a sort of Zsa Zsa Gabor peach. It’s no fun being an aesthete; one’s sensibilities are constantly being outraged. But I shall have to put up with it. At least the place is quiet, being over the back-street annexe of a nuns’ retirement home. When I meet them on the stairs – midget creatures like worn-out bats – I look in vain for signs of grace and serenity. They have rumpled little grey faces like unironed school laundry and I reckon they could do with a visitation from the Blessed Diana to cheer them up, poor dears. A lifetime’s service to Mother Church has left them looking sour and battered. But maybe their presence below me is beneficial to my muse since I am making progress with the opera and getting back to work is doing wonders for my spirits.

  I needed the flat also because after several more inspections and much wrestling I have decided to take that house Benedetti showed me. Well, of course the seller dropped his price, what did you think? We have agreed on three hundred and ten thousand euros. It’s still an absurd sum but one has to be realistic, the house being in an area estate agents describe as ‘exclusive’ rather than merely ‘much sought-after’. But for me the clincher is the site. Benedetti’s right: I’m never going to better the position, not in this region and hardly anywhere else. It’s not as dramatically panoramic as Le Roccie, which provided more of a cockpit view, but it’s more authentically ‘Tuscan’, with forested foothills folding and unfolding on either side and pines and villas sprouting half-hidden among them. From a bathroom window there is even a dramatic prospect of Monte Prana, its rocky peak topped by a cross. At the front of the house the partial view of the town’s distant roofs and towers beyond the olives’ headlong plunge manages to suggest both apartness and inclusion, which I think will suit very well the life I am hoping to lead here.

  The first steps of the purchase are now going ahead. Provided all the usual legal stuff about the seller’s right to sell is as straightforward as Benedetti promises, the compromesso and the contratto ought both to be routine. What isn’t routine is a document he is drawing up to the effect that I will be bound not to recant the Diana story the moment the house is mine and I’m safely installed. I’d already thought of that possibility, of course, and had expected him to insist on formalising our deal in some way. Somehow I’m not surprised to discover that Benedetti is a qualified lawyer as well as an ordinary ingegnere. All this document will stipulate is that I don’t repudiate the official account. I shall have a perfect right just to remain silent. The Comune has also drawn up an agreement to buy up the rest of my land at Le Roccie ‘for reasons of public safety’. If their hopes are fulfilled and some sort of tourist industry based on pilgrimages does flourish, I’ll bet they’re planning to build an official shrine up there. I envisage an Apuan version of Lourdes (‘Dr Louse’), complete with
a grotto. For some reason grottoes seem to be an essential part of Marian cults: some nonsense that elides mothers, the earth and wombs, no doubt. I’m sure a Diana cult will require a similar mise-en-scène. Of course if they do develop the site they may even make a bid for Marta’s house, itself dark and damp enough to be a grotto without much in the way of fundamental alteration. With luck this will give the old girl a chance to sell it dear when in normal market terms it’s virtually worthless. I feel a sudden burst of generosity towards her since no matter what she does, she will never again be a neighbour. The nearest house to mine is four hundred metres away, and that’s as the crow flies across olive groves and jungly crevasses. But my experience of living cheek by jowl with her over the last few years (my cheek, her jowls) surely justifies caution, even though a horror of neighbours is sometimes taken as particularly British and can even lead to accusations of stand-offishness.

  In fact, you will scarcely credit that a few months ago a critic in London’s Independent on Sunday described me as ‘an insufferable snob’. I can’t imagine why. Some remark in Millie!, maybe, that he wilfully misunderstood? At any rate it’s rather a wounding thing to see in print about oneself and I ought really to take such an accusation seriously and consult my old friend Patrick Little of Little, Gidding LLP of Lincoln’s Inn. A charge of snobbery certainly has a sting to it, especially when made by a member of the British press, a respected and high-minded body of people famously indifferent to stories involving royalty, the rich and the fleetingly famous. Still, one admires the way their democratic credentials sometimes oblige them bravely to overcome their nausea and deal with the aristocracy. After years of consistently lampooning the late Princess of Wales as a thicko Sloanie scrubber who couldn’t scrape up a single O-level, it took them less than twenty-four hours after her death to discover that she was actually the Princess of Hearts, an icon of selflessness and purity suddenly sacred to the British public.