‘The air feels wet.’
‘That’s because it’s built into the rock.’
‘Where’s Gilly?’ He looks around anxiously.
‘Don’t worry, she’s over there.’ I point to the chapel where, to my surprise, she is kneeling at the rail.
‘Is it Sunday?’
‘It is in Lourdes.’
‘Shall we creep up on her?’
‘Better not,’ I say, striving for a laddish complicity. I watch him staring at his wife and wonder what he sees. Is she just a surrogate mother, her rules a constant source of resentment, or are there moments in the dead of night when the rational world is stilled and they once again become equals? I try to shake off the thought. As though aware of my scrutiny, Gillian stands and genuflects.
‘All done?’ she asks as she joins us. ‘I’d hate to drag you away.’
‘I’m infinitely draggable,’ I say and follow her outside, where we climb a short flight of steps to the Upper Basilica. ‘Two down, one to go!’
‘For some of us,’ she replies, ‘it’s not a chore.’
We enter a Gothic building of traditional greyness, relieved only by the mottled light of the stained-glass windows which, according to Gillian, tell the story of the Immaculate Conception; although, from where I stand, they might just as well be Napoleon’s campaigns. The sweep of the high-vaulted nave, with no rood screen or statuary to obtrude, directs my gaze to the altar where, in place of the Crypt’s benign if sentimental Madonna and Child, sits the ubiquitous symbol of Christianity’s cult of death. Even in Lourdes, with its unique array of human suffering, the focus remains on the eternal suffering of Christ. Our most intimate moments are shared, not with flesh-and-blood lovers, but with the flesh and blood which, by some arcane mumbo-jumbo, is contained in the bread and wine. It would be easy to dismiss it all as a palliative, if I hadn’t seen it blight too many lives.
I suddenly feel stifled and, not stopping to tell Gillian, hurry outside where, by contrast, even the hot, humid air feels fresh. I wait in the porch and, a few moments later, she comes out with Richard.
‘Are you all right? I looked and you were gone.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ I say, elated by her concern. ‘It was my mobile.’ I tap my jeans pocket over-emphatically. ‘Sophie rang. The Grotto procession is about to start.’
We make our way down to the square and out to the drinking fountains where the Jubilate pilgrims have assembled. I excuse myself from Gillian and join the crew.
‘We’d just about given you up!’ Sophie says.
‘Just checking out the lie of the land.’ Jamie’s smirk alerts me to my unfortunate choice of phrase. ‘Ready to roll?’
‘We’ve been ready for half an hour. You’re the one who went AWOL.’
‘Yes, mea culpa and all that. I gather Father Dave is going to begin by giving us some gen on Bernadette. You never know, it may come in handy. So let’s go for it but keep him in close-up. We can always cheat a few reaction shots later.’
‘All present and correct?’ Father Dave asks. ‘Would you move in a little closer? We’re not Anglicans; there’s no need to keep one another at arm’s length.’ He acknowledges the titter. ‘That’s better. Anything to save the old voice box. I shan’t rattle on because I know that it’s been a long morning and some of you are anxious for your lunch, eh Martin?’ Martin chuckles at the sound of his name, emitting a string of drool which Claire discreetly wipes off his chin. ‘But, for those of you who haven’t been here before, and those who have but whose memories may not be what they were –’
‘Guilty as charged,’ Louisa interjects.
‘I’ll give you a quick rundown on Saint Bernadette and the Grotto. I’ll be saying more about her on Thursday, that’s for those of you who take the walking tour of the town. But, if you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to get enough of her. Just thinking about her brings tears to my eyes.’ I signal to Jamie to zoom in on the evidence. ‘The story begins one bitterly cold day in February 1858 when the fire went out in the cachot – that was the small punishment cell in which Bernadette and her family were living –’
‘Punishment cell?’ Lester interjects.
‘Wait until Thursday. They had no money to buy logs so, with her sister and a friend, Bernadette came down to the river to forage for kindling. They were standing on the opposite bank – not far from where the church is now – when one of them saw a pile of wood in the grotto. It seemed like a miracle. Toinette – that’s Bernadette’s sister – and the friend immediately waded into the water. Bernadette, who suffered from asthma, was afraid of catching cold so she asked them to throw in some stones that she could walk on. When they refused (a spot of girlish rivalry there, ladies?), she sat down and took off her clogs. All of a sudden she heard a sound like a gust of wind, and saw a lady in white standing in the grotto. Terrorstruck, she grabbed hold of her rosary. The lady made the sign of the cross, prompting Bernadette to do the same. She began to pray. When she finished, she looked up to find that the lady had vanished. That was the first of eighteen apparitions in a period of just over five months.’
‘Always to Bernadette alone?’ I ask guardedly.
‘She was the only one to see the lady, but thousands of people were there when she did. They saw her fall to the ground and drink muddy water from a hole she had scooped out herself when the lady told her to “drink from the spring and wash herself in it”. They saw her so ecstatic that she failed to notice when the flame of her candle licked her hand for nearly ten minutes. And when the local doctor, a notorious sceptic, examined her afterwards, he could find no trace of a burn. He was among the earliest converts. Within nine months, seven people were cured of illness and blindness. And the legend of Lourdes was born.’
‘So it was the magic not the message?’ I ask, in a bid to draw him out.
‘I wouldn’t use the word magic, but yes. Human beings – and I include Catholics – are by nature a suspicious breed. We need signs. Our Lord said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Precious few of us would pass that test. And of course Bernadette herself was disbelieved at first. Even her family accused her of lying. It makes me weep to think of what that little girl had to go through to bring Our Lady’s words to us. But she refused to be worn down. And look now! This whole place is built on her testimony. Now, if you’ll follow me, let’s join the line which, I’m pleased to say, for once is not too long. After we’ve walked around, anyone who wants to can stay at the Grotto for private prayer. But, remember, lunch is at one on the dot. Maggie and the kitchen staff are implacable. Then, for those who can manage the climb, we’ve the Stations of the Cross at three.’
Taking my place in the queue, I move towards Gillian. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me monopolising your daughter-in-law,’ I say to Patricia, who is standing beside her. ‘But we were having a fascinating theological discussion.’
‘She’s a dark horse,’ Patricia says, stepping back. ‘Come on, Richard, we know when we’re out of our depth.’ Aware of having caused offence, I flash her my most ingratiating smile.
‘You’re starting to embarrass me,’ Gillian says, as we wait side by side in front of the rock face.
‘Embarrass is fine. It’s when we get to exasperate that I’ll start to worry.’
‘Then start. What must she be thinking?’ She looks at Patricia who is talking to Richard. ‘The closest I ever get to a theological discussion is over whether to use Beeswax or Pledge on the pews.’
‘Then it’s high time for a change. Speaking of which, you don’t really believe in these apparitions, do you?’
‘I’ve already told you, you can believe in anything if you believe in God.’
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I say, resisting an easy riposte. ‘I’m not suggesting that Bernadette was deliberately deceitful. I’m sure she thought that she saw something. The question is what? I never knew she had asthma. Maybe that’s the key?’
‘Ast
hma?’
‘I’m no expert, but suppose the vision was a neurological response to an attack – even a mild one – brought on when she stepped into the freezing river.’
‘But she didn’t get that far. She saw the first apparition when she was taking her clogs off on the bank.’
‘All right then. She had a shock when her feet touched the icy ground.’
‘What about all the subsequent apparitions? The last one in July. It can’t have been that icy then.’
‘By then she’d invested too much in it. She was the victim of her own credulity.’
‘She wasn’t the only one. If The Song of Bernadette’s anything to go by – and I saw it every spring at school – the local priests were initially as hostile as the civic authorities. What swayed them was the sixteenth apparition, when the lady named herself as the Immaculate Conception. That was a new dogma proclaimed by the Pope only three or four years before. There was no way that an illiterate village girl could have known about it.’
‘Not read about it, I grant. But the issue would have been in the air. She might have picked up on it without realising. The same thing happened at Fatima when the Virgin appeared to the three shepherd children and demanded the Consecration of Russia a few months after the February Revolution. It begs the question of why she always chooses the poor, the illiterate, the weak and the young – in a word, the gullible. Why not Voltaire or Stephen Hawking or, better still, Richard Dawkins?’
We edge closer to the Grotto, but all we can see are the pilgrims emerging on the other side. Some are so moved that, even though able-bodied, they have to be helped out by their friends or the Domain officials. Priests are right to talk about the mystery of faith, albeit not in the sense they intend. The mystery is how people can cling to a belief-system that has been the source of so much conflict and misery and violence and repression for the past two thousand years. I long to run up and down the line, forcing everyone to confront the truth: that God did not create the world, either in seven days or billions of years; that Jesus of Nazareth did not die for our sins but in a small-time religious uprising; that good and evil lie within our own control. Needless to say, I do nothing of the sort but wait patiently, a fake among the dupes.
‘You’re very quiet all of a sudden,’ Gillian says.
‘I’m sorry. I find this extremely painful. I understand how a nineteenth-century doctor might have been swayed by the lack of a scorch mark, but these people have access to the whole world on TV. Have they never seen the firewalkers in Fiji treading on red-hot coals without so much as a blister?’
‘All right, let’s forget the candle. What about the cures? Seven in the first nine months.’
‘Yes. And I don’t doubt they occurred. Faith healing is a well-documented phenomenon. There’s a perfectly good natural explanation.’
‘And a perfectly good miraculous one too.’
‘So how come the cures are always for conditions that might have a psychological cause: the blind seeing; the lame walking, and so on? Why not the amputee sprouting a new limb?’
‘That’s disgusting!’
‘Not for the amputee.’
We turn the corner and face the Grotto. I watch the pilgrims filing past, pressing their hands to the rock before wiping the condensation on their faces. A mother holds up a young boy who seems uncertain what to touch. Three Asian pilgrims shuffle forward on their knees. A nun causes a temporary blockage by prostrating herself on the ground.
‘May I ask – purely out of curiosity – why you’re so opposed to any notion of miracles?’
‘That’s easy. If I thought there was the slightest possibility of God intervening in the world – no, if I thought there was the slightest possibility of God, full stop – then I’d have to spend the rest of my life hating. How else could I cope with His arbitrariness, His favouritism, His cruelty?’
‘So you’d judge Him by human standards?’
‘Not human … humane. Besides, according to your Church, God made us in His own image, so surely we have the right – no, make that the obligation – to apply our standards to Him? And if any human father had treated his children the way God has treated the world, He’d have had them taken away from Him thousands of years ago.’
‘That’s all very clever –’
‘No, just true. On the one hand Christians profess to value modesty, and on the other they maintain that we stand at the pinnacle of creation. Excuse me? We’re nothing but microbes who’ve outgrown their environment, a chance evolutionary process.’
‘And isn’t that the greatest miracle of all? You talk of the cruelty of God –’
‘No, of Nature.’
‘I think of the beauty, the kindness, the love. The love that I’ve felt all around me, the love that – no doubt you’ll think this presumptuous – I’ve found in myself. And I know – don’t ask me how, but I know it as surely as I know my own name – that it comes not just from inside me but from beyond. Now you can call that whatever you like; I call it God.’
She steps aside to wait for Richard and Patricia, who have lagged several paces behind. I move forward to join Jamie and Jewel at the Grotto which, up close, looks distinctly womblike, a hollow where the ancient Gauls might have worshipped Mother Earth. We film the Jubilate pilgrims in a similar act of devotion, focusing first on Lester and Tess, who linger hand-in-hand at the statue of the Virgin, and then on Matt, Geoff and Kevin, three of the young brancardiers, who lift Sheila Clunes out of her wheelchair and deposit her on the ground, where she kisses the spot on which Bernadette first prayed.
‘Urgh!’ Jamie says, ‘think of all the feet that’ve trodden on it.’
‘Not to worry,’ I reply, ‘they’re the feet of the faithful.’
The momentary irreverence restores my spirits, which have sunk lower than I realised after my exchange with Gillian. If we were anywhere but Lourdes, I would blame a malignant spirit for urging me up on my hobby-horse to trample over both our affections. What do I know of the strains of looking after a brain-damaged husband, aware that there can be no let-up until one of them dies and, in the darkest moments, not caring which it is? What do I know of looking after anyone? Supposing our positions were reversed and it was me left with a wife who – for instance – had been horribly maimed in a car crash? How long before my pledges of devotion rang false and I hired a carer or, worse, put her in a home where weekly visits became first monthly and then confined to high days and holidays, as though she were an elderly aunt.
To be fair, I believe that I could cope with a child whose injuries simply compounded her need, a child whom I carried from sofa to bed as though she were her sane, strong sister who had dozed off in front of the TV. But a wife would be something else: a once powerful adult reduced to a state halfway between patient and captive. I think … I know that I would prefer her dead.
Does Gillian ever succumb to such treacherous thoughts? Or does not my will be done, but thine, oh Lord hold true, even in extremis? What does her faith mean to her? Is it the usual baptismal brainwash or is it rooted in something real? Is that what she means by the love she found in herself? In which case I should know better than to doubt it, since it has touched me more deeply than anything in years. But that is still no reason to pursue it. Even if she were a free agent – or simply shared my taste for the furtive – our relationship would be doomed. We have nothing whatsoever in common. It is only in fiction that opposites attract; in real life they keep their distance.
The procession over, the Jubilate pilgrims stroll back to the Acceuil, apart from Tess and Lester who, still holding hands, stand staring at a bank of burning candles.
‘Earth to Vincent!’ Jamie calls, waving his hand in front of my face.
‘Sorry. I was miles away.’
‘Lunch!’
I follow the crew out of the Domain, braving the crowded streets as we search for a restaurant that is cheap (Jamie), music-free (Sophie), and vegan-friendly (Jewel). I am unusually compliant since I am co
nscious of no needs beyond Gillian. Without realising, I have regressed to a state of adolescent impotence where the only way to express my feelings for a girl was to ink her name on my arm. My mind is racing so fast that I can do little more than nod at the choice of the Café Jeanne d’Arc.
‘Have they no shame?’ Sophie asks. ‘What does Joan of Arc have to do with Lourdes?’
‘What does Shakespeare have to do with Barnsley?’ I ask. ‘But you still find his name above a local pub. Not everything in Lourdes is a sham!’
My outburst takes them by surprise, but I have neither the will nor the strength to explain, lowering my head to my demi and letting the conversation flow over it. While Jamie and Jewel discuss various remixes of tracks that I am too old to know in the original, and Sophie replies to messages and texts on her mobile, I reflect on my predicament, faced with the resurgence of emotions that I had thought were long dead.
‘Would you please tell the court how you can be so sure?’
‘Because I buried them myself, m’lud.’
To my relief, the others leave me in peace, attributing my silence to thoughts about the film. At the end of the meal Sophie calls for the bill, deftly divides it, and leads the way back to the Acceuil where we are to conduct the first of the afternoon’s interviews: with Father Humphrey who is waiting for us in the Priests’ Room. In spite of the plural, there is only one bed.
‘We share it. Not at the same time.’ He says with a chortle. ‘Whichever of us is on night duty.’
‘Of course,’ I say, immune to the bar-room humour. The monastic bed looks a tight squeeze even for one. Given my current concerns, I am convinced that his bulk is compensation. Moreover, with his mountainous gut overhanging his genitals, he must be able to break the golden rule of his Church and maintain that what he cannot see does not exist.
I invite him to share his experience of Lourdes. He responds with a potted life- history, peppered with the cringeworthy jokes which I used to think priests told to show that they were still one of the boys but which I now realise are a way to distance themselves from the awful reality of their lives. He starts with ‘I was born in a Lancashire village so prejudiced that, when the postmistress asked what denomination of stamps you wanted, you’d reply five Roman Catholics and no Protestants,’ followed by ‘Would you like to know how I became a priest? When I was sixteen, my father told me the facts of life. There are nine in this family and only eight beds. You’re out.’ Just when the sense that he has mistaken the interview for an audition becomes overwhelming, he embarks on a long and heartfelt account of his stint as an army chaplain. ‘We all know that it’s hard for soldiers to readjust to civilian life,’ he says. ‘Let me assure you it’s equally hard for priests. I’ve never felt so alien, so lonely and, to be honest, so disgusted with the people I was supposed to love. The men in the desert had been ready to lay down their lives – and some did, some did – to bring peace to a foreign land; I had parishioners who wouldn’t lift a finger or, at least, put their hands in their pockets to help the homeless on their doorsteps. But God answered my prayers. I was in a bad way, on the verge of despair, when I received a phone call from the Jubilate director – not She Who Must Be Obeyed, her predecessor – to say that they were looking for a priest to lead their pilgrimage and a friend had suggested me. A friend indeed! At first I made up my mind to refuse. A trip to Lourdes didn’t rate high on my list of priorities. But, thank God (and, believe me, I do every day), I had a change of heart. Here, I saw the same self-denying love I’d seen in the forces. I met men and women willing to set aside their own wants for the sake of others. Lourdes has given me back my faith in humanity when it was in danger of disappearing for ever. And, if that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.’
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