Jubilate

by Michael Arditti

  ‘It’s my fault,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry. I distracted your mother-in-law with talk of the documentary.’

  ‘Yes, well, she’s easily distracted. Maybe one day you people will learn that the whole world doesn’t revolve around a camera. Not everyone’s burning ambition is to appear on TV!’

  ‘I’d put him straight on the plane if I were you, love,’ one of the guards says. ‘And take better care next time. The place is full of kiddies!’

  ‘Oh God!’ Gillian says, and, with her arm tucked through Richard’s, turns to the counter to pay for the shirt. The guards leave; the onlookers disperse; a customer scans the shelves; and life returns to normal. To my chagrin, Patricia starts to apologise for Gillian.

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to think she’s an uncaring wife.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘But it can be hard for her. Though I say so myself, he’s a handful. It would be easier if she had children.’ She sighs. ‘She’d know from experience how to deal with him. That’s where I could help. But she’s proud. You’ve seen for yourself. And you know what they say about pride.’

  ‘Well, we all fall sometimes,’ I say quickly. Then, checking that we are not overheard, I make my pitch. ‘I think that Richard and Gillian – and you, of course – would make a very interesting strand of the documentary. I hope you’ll agree to be interviewed.’

  ‘Really? How flattering! Who am I to refuse? If it helps put the message of Lourdes across … It is for the BBC?’

  ‘A new series of Witness.’

  ‘I can’t speak for Gillian. She has a mind of her own.’

  ‘I’m relying on you to persuade her. To work, it will need the entire family.’

  ‘I promise to try my very best.’

  Keen to escape while Gillian is still at the counter, I say a hurried goodbye to Patricia and return to the bar. No sooner have I sat down than the flight is called. We gather our bags and make our way to the gate.

  ‘You took your time,’ Sophie said. ‘Anything special?’

  ‘I got caught up in an ugly scene when one of our lot – a middle-aged guy with brain damage – broke in on a woman in a changing cubicle.’

  ‘Why didn’t you text us, chief? We’d have come over.’

  ‘Have a heart, Jamie! You’ve got to allow people some privacy.’

  ‘You are joking?’

  To my surprise, I find that I am not.

  The long delay in boarding gives us a further taste of the ‘wheelchair factor’ that looks set to dominate the trip. I edge down the aisle, hoping for a smile from Gillian, but she is preoccupied with Richard’s seatbelt and I have to be content with Patricia’s skittish wave. I sit next to Jamie, who struggles to accommodate himself to the narrow seat, his one compensation being the ‘well-stacked’ stewardess whom he summons with embarrassing frequency.

  ‘Enough, Jamie! It’s humiliating,’ I say, after he has pressed the bell for the fourth time, simply to ask whether it is hot in Lourdes.

  ‘She’s cracking, chief. She smiled then.’

  ‘She curled her lip. What are you playing at? She’s way out of your league.’

  ‘Then she can lean back and relax. Leave me to make the running.’

  ‘So far it’s all been her: up and down the aisle! You’re incorrigible. Do you try it on with every woman you meet?’

  ‘Pretty much. It’s the law of averages. Sooner or later, one of them’s bound to break. You should go for it, chief. Good-looking bloke like yourself. Lighten up a little.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.’

  I turn back to my novel, but Jamie’s fidgeting makes it hard to concentrate. Retribution is at hand in the form of the captain’s announcement when, in answer to ‘the gentleman who asked about the weather on the ground’, he informs us that conditions are normal for mid-June with a high of seventy-two degrees, a low of fifty-eight and sixty-nine per cent humidity. Jamie’s embarrassment is capped when the stewardess swaps places with a male colleague who, bringing round a mid-flight snack, winks at him and, echoing his tone, asks if he would ‘like to sample one of my buns’.

  He declines.

  On arrival at Tarbes, we are greeted by such a fleet of wheelchairs that several remain empty. I am amazed to hear the pushers speaking with Birmingham accents and immediately ask one of them for an interview. He identifies himself as Pete, a British Gas fitter, who travels here for a fortnight every summer with a gang of his mates. All the porters, all the attendants and all the baggage handlers are volunteers. ‘Sounds weird, don’t it? Coming away and staying in the airport. Most people can’t get out of it quick enough. But we have a good laugh. And we go out on the piss in the evenings. Oh fuck, can I say that on the BBC?’

  ‘We’ll edit it later. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I made a promise to the wife,’ he says with a diffident smile. ‘We came here ten years ago when the kids were kids. She was fairly far gone with the big C. Breasts. Lungs. Ovaries. You name it.’

  ‘But she was cured?’ I ask incredulously.

  ‘No, not at all. She died four months later.’

  ‘So there was no miracle?’

  ‘You tell me, mate? I’m down here, aren’t I?’ He rubs his knuckle against his cheek. ‘Along with the rest of the lads. Coming to Lourdes made all the difference to Jackie. She said she saw so much goodness that she felt safe about leaving me and the kids. Oh fuck, now you’ve got me going.’ That’s one fuck I’m determined to fight for and I signal to Jamie to carry on filming as, without a jot of self-consciousness, Pete pulls out his handkerchief and wipes his eyes.

  ‘Have you brought the children with you?’ I ask, for some reason picturing surly teenagers.

  ‘Fat chance! They’re both grown up. One’s a good Catholic girl; the other’s more of a good-time girl. Oh no, she’ll kill me! But seriously, mate, it’s a very special place. Forget the Costa del Sol, this is the Costa del Hope.’

  My fear that the filming will cause a delay proves to be unfounded, given the logistics of loading a dozen wheelchairs on to the coaches. Discreetly waiting till last, I clamber to the back where I pass Patricia sitting alone, a bag forbiddingly placed on the adjacent seat.

  ‘Have you been deserted?’ I ask lightly.

  ‘Richard and Gillian took the coach to the Acceuil. Hospital pilgrims.’ She mouths the hospital as if, even in this setting, it is taboo. ‘Which hotel are you staying at?’

  ‘The Bretagne.’

  ‘Really? I’m at the St Claire.’ Her tone hints at its superiority. ‘I thought you’d be staying there or the Gallia Londres.’

  ‘BBC cutbacks,’ I say, with rare gratitude to the financial squeeze for sparing me this fellow guest, while plotting – precipitately, futilely – how my shooting schedule might compel me to spend a couple of nights at the Acceuil.

  I am appalled by my readiness to conjure a romantic scenario out of thin air. I am a documentarist, not a drama director. My metier is facts not fantasies. Yet every relationship springs from a seed of fantasy, so why not this? For the first time in years I am open to the possibility of intimacy. No wonder I feel scared. But is it the prospect or the setting that scares me? Do I mistrust myself even more than Lourdes?

  The questions hang in the air as I am distracted by Father Humphrey, who fills the forty-minute journey with a running commentary, first informing us that ‘watches, tick-tocks and time-bombs need to be advanced by an hour,’ then telling a succession of hoary priest jokes which draw the same enthusiastic response from his audience as their favourite hymns, and finally leading us in the Five Joyful Mysteries. I seek solace in the landscape, but the relentlessly flat countryside convinces me that south-west France looks better from 25,000 feet in the air. So I am doubly grateful when we reach town, dropping off passengers at three hotels on the way to the Bretagne. I note, with a mixture of relief and alarm, that there are only three other Jubilate guests besides ourselves: two elderly West Indian women, one with synthetic blond curls, and
a gaunt middle-aged man with a disconcerting amount of luggage for a four-night stay. The short straw scratches my hand.

  From the moment we enter the hotel it is clear that its three stars have been awarded very liberally. The walls are bare, apart from two large noticeboards plastered with information about current pilgrimages, a black-and-white poster for son-et-lumière at the town castle and a brightly coloured one for a funicular railway. The only decoration is a life-size statue of St Bernadette holding a chipped crucifix, with a vase of plastic lilies at her feet. A stylishly ageless woman with long fair hair, porcelain skin and half-moon glasses, an autumnal scarf draped artfully around her neck, looks up from her desk to greet us. We huddle behind Sophie who introduces us in fluent French, only to be trumped by the proprietress’s flawless English. We fill in the registration forms while she perfects a look of exquisite boredom that puts me in mind of a penniless countess forced to open her stately home to hoi polloi. Her contempt seems more admissible when two plain girls in their early teens, dressed in bright pink shell-suits, run through the foyer, carrying cans of shandy.

  ‘Tell us where’s the shops please, Miss?’ one asks.

  ‘What is it you want to buy?’ she replies coldly.

  ‘Oh you know, things.’

  ‘Ah things, of course. If you want souvenirs, there’s the hotel gift shop. If you want clothes or shoes or cosmetics, climb the hill to the main square. If you want food, try the market. But, if you want things, I’m not sure that we can help you in Lourdes.’

  Bewildered, the girl takes a gulp from her can and drags her companion outside. The proprietress returns her attention to us.

  ‘Do you get a lot of British guests?’ Jamie asks, with such exceptional politeness that for one ghastly moment I fancy he may be applying his law of averages to her.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the name?’ he says.

  ‘Thank you, I have never thought of that,’ she replies dryly. ‘The meal times are printed on your bedroom doors. Breakfast is six thirty to eight thirty, lunch twelve thirty to one, and dinner at seven.’

  ‘Seven to when?’ Jewel asks.

  ‘Seven.’

  She hands us our room keys, each attached to an oblong block of a size that would make Mae West blush. ‘When you go out, you should leave them on there.’ She points to a half-filled board in full view of the door.

  ‘What about thieves?’ I ask, exercised by the lack of security. ‘Surely someone could walk in off the street and pick them up?’

  ‘The desk is always manned. We have never yet had a problem. Not even from gypsies. Of course there’s always a first time.’ She smiles grimly, as if she would welcome it in my case.

  ‘I suppose they’d target the grander hotels,’ I say, goaded to retaliate.

  ‘We don’t aim for grandeur, Monsieur,’ she replies, opting for the native pronunciation. ‘We’re very basic Jesus.’

  She turns back to her computer screen, underlining our dismissal. We go up to our rooms in a lift so rickety that Jewel starts to panic.

  ‘Basic Jesus, indeed,’ Sophie says with a snort. ‘Did you see the Hermès scarf?’

  Jamie and Jewel get out at the fourth floor, the latter so desperate to escape that she is willing to haul her case up a flight of stairs. With Jamie’s foot wedged in the door, we agree to rendezvous in the street in an hour, to avoid the frosty foyer. Sophie and I brave the lift for a further floor. I drag my case to my room, which seems more suited to an anchorite than a pilgrim. The ceiling is low, so low over the window that I am unable to stand upright. A heavy oak wardrobe with a recalcitrant door faces the bed. The fixed coat hangers show that the proprietress has less faith in the probity of her guests than that of the passers-by. An oxblood carpet falls two foot short of the door where it is replaced by a floral runner. A small daguerreotype of nineteenth-century peasants hangs on an otherwise empty wall and a television sits on a metal arm above a frayed wicker armchair. I hurriedly unpack, draping T-shirts over the chair, spreading books on the floor, and placing my travelling photo-frame by the bed in a vain attempt to infuse the room with personality. Then I peel off my clothes: sweater, shirt and vest in one swoop, which even after thirty years fills me with a sense of defiance, take a tepid shower, dress and go downstairs.

  The proprietress fails to look up as I rattle my key on the board. I dash outside and apologise for being late.

  ‘How’s your room?’ Jewel asks.

  ‘Functional,’ I reply with a shrug.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ she says. ‘The plug won’t fit my basin.’

  ‘Very basic Jesus,’ Jamie says.

  ‘The sash on my window is broken,’ Sophie says.

  ‘Very basic Jesus,’ Jamie and Jewel chime.

  ‘There’s no porn channel on the TV,’ Jamie says.

  ‘Oh please!’ Sophie says.

  ‘Hello!’ Jamie replies. ‘Has someone had a sense of humour bypass?’

  ‘Shall we go over to the Domain?’ I interject.

  ‘Do you know the way?’ Jamie asks.

  ‘Director’s intuition,’ I say, pointing to a sign.

  We edge through the milling crowds, down a narrow side street lined with cheap religious souvenir shops.

  ‘Welcome to the town that taste forgot,’ I say.

  ‘The perfect place for Christmas shopping,’ Jamie says.

  ‘Sure, if all your friends are nuns,’ Jewel says.

  ‘I’ve never felt so Protestant in my life,’ Sophie says.

  We join the hordes streaming in to the Domain. The preponderance of elderly pilgrims feels strangely blasphemous, as if the miracle that they seek is eternal youth. Passing a memorial to a cured cardinal, we come across a line of officials, each one pushing an empty wheelchair that resembles a miniature brougham carriage.

  ‘Do you think they belong to people who’ve got up and walked?’ Jamie asks. I appropriate one of the proprietress’s scowls. ‘Sorry, chief.’

  Once in the square we pause to take our bearings. Despite seeing them only six weeks ago on my research trip, I remain impressed by the twin basilicas: the lower one, bulbous, breasty, its gilded cupola gleaming in the afternoon sun, flanked by two flights of steps that lead to the upper one, its grey-and-white stone spires like a Disneyland model. Twisting around, I gaze past a crowned statue of the Virgin, down a long, grassy esplanade to the Breton Calvary, a rare image of the Son in a landscape that is largely maternal. An unintelligible prayer crackles over the loudspeakers, and a heavy, musky fragrance fills the air.

  Sophie ushers us over a stone bridge, which spans a river so clear that the empty crisp packet being swept along looks even more of a desecration.

  ‘Bet that’s the Brits,’ Jewel says, and no one chooses to argue.

  ‘Voilà, the Acceuil,’ Sophie says, pointing to a vast stone-clad structure like an open concertina, with two shimmering copper roofs. We walk towards it, past a small rockery with an elaborate fountain.

  ‘So what’s an Acceuil when it’s at home?’ Jewel asks.

  ‘It comes from the French for welcome,’ Sophie says. ‘A kind of hostel.’

  ‘It’s fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A,

  ‘It’s fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A,’ Jamie sings.

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ Sophie says. ‘It’s run by nuns.’

  We walk into the lobby, dominated by a huge photograph of John Paul II, looking much like a hospital pilgrim himself as he sits slumped at the altar during his last Lourdes mass. A taciturn nun directs us to the third floor, where we enter a scene of complete disarray. Suitcases, rucksacks and shopping bags are piled high along one wall. Boxes of food, medical and cleaning supplies, rugs and windcheaters are stacked up along another. A uniformed nurse of indeterminate rank is handing out instructions to a trio of brancardiers, none of whom looks to be over twenty. Scanning their earnest faces, I wonder if they are here of their own accord or have been bullied into it by parents and priests.

  I identif
y Kevin, a painfully thin lad with acne scars and a thicket of tawny hair, and ask if he will share his first impressions with the camera.

  ‘First impressions of what?’

  ‘Anything you like. The town. The journey. The pilgrimage. They’re your impressions, not mine.’

  Ignoring his friends’ taunts, he takes out a comb and runs it through his hair. ‘I’ve my reputation to think of,’ he says shyly.

  ‘This will do wonders for it, believe me,’ I say, steering him into position and nodding to Jamie to start filming. ‘It’s early days yet, Kevin, but perhaps you can tell us what you’re hoping for from your time in Lourdes?’

  Answers,’ he replies with unnerving intensity. ‘Why? Are you going to give us some?’

  ‘Answers to what?’

  ‘People come to Lourdes cos they’re good people, right?’

  ‘In the main, yes; I expect so,’ I reply, taken aback.

  ‘Then God lets them die. Why?’ My studied silence forces him to expand. ‘This morning, we passed a pile-up on the autoroute. A coach full of Poles … Polish people. It skidded across three lanes, straight into the opposite traffic. There was blood and guts everywhere. You could see the bodies.’

  ‘No you couldn’t, Kev.’ One of his friends interjects. ‘They were all covered up.’

  ‘Well you could see the stretchers, so you knew they were there! And there was this stink of burning flesh.’

  ‘Burning tyres, you dork!’

  Kevin draws me aside. ‘But they weren’t ordinary Poles. They were pilgrims who’d been to Lourdes. Yesterday – maybe this morning even – they were at mass. Some of them were sick. Some of them were kids. Some of them were sick kids. Maybe some of them had been cured. What’s the point of coming here then if God allows that to happen? Tell me: what?’ I say nothing, signalling to Jamie to zoom in on Kevin’s tortured face, confident that it is far more eloquent than any doubts I might express.

  I wind up the interview, leaving Kevin to resume his duties. Venturing further on to the ward, I spot Gillian outside the nurses’ station.