After Purple (16 page)

The whole confessional box was shaking and groaning. He had wrenched down the partition and laid his bare annointed hands across my bum. I was panting and slavering like Karma. I had reached that hair-trigger moment when you
have
to come. Even if the Pope walked in, or someone shouted “Fire!” and the entire Metropolitan Fire Brigade rushed clanking and slooshing up the stairs, I knew I'd still come before I packed my valuables or thought about escape. Why I like coming is that it's the only moment in your life when you're really committed to something. There are no ifs and buts, or analyses of terms, or parentheses, or maybes. Come is written over everything and goes through layers and layers and layers of it, like letters in a stick of rock. (I've done it with a stick of rock — in Blackpool.)

I came. And so did Sister Ursula. She was
running
. Nuns never run. Even if a dozen fires had broken out, she'd still only
glide
from the inferno.

“What's the matter, Thea? What's
wrong
? I could hear you half a mile away.”

I tried to turn my gasp into a groan.

“I don't feel well,” I said. I didn't. There was a roaring in my ears, and the throbbing in my thighs had set my mouth alight.

“You're feverish!”

I placed my hands innocently on the outside of the counterpane, and tried to inch my nightie down with my feet.

She popped a thermometer underneath my tongue and took my pulse. It was roaring. Neither of us spoke. I was gagged and she was counting. She scribbled something on my chart. Her brow was all puckered up, as if someone was trying to make a pleated curtain out of it.

“I think I'd better get the doctor to take a look at you.”

“I don't want a doctor,” I peeved. “I want a priest. Father Sullivan
promised
. Well, he didn't, but Dr Davies did. He said he'd send him two whole days ago.”

“I expect he's busy, dear. You mustn't let it upset you. It's affecting your temperature.”

“Well, it
does
upset me. Priests shouldn't break their promises.”

The puckering pulled tighter. A spiritual crisis
and
a rise in temperature. She pushed up her sleeves and hovered. “Try and rest, Thea, dear, and I'll see what I can do. I know Father Sullivan's
around
, but …”

Of course I didn't rest. Coming once only makes me randier. As soon as she shut the door, I started off again. Father Sullivan was more or less insatiable. After fifteen minutes of the straight stuff, I decided to hurt him. He'd abandoned me, hadn't he, turned me over to a psychiatrist, refused to give me absolution? Right, he'd suffer for it. First, I bit his balls, then I changed the rhythm when he wasn't expecting it. I made him almost come and then lost contact. He was a gibbering idiot by the time I'd finished with him.

“Satisfied?” I said.

He slunk out of the door with his balls bleeding and his cassock torn, and someone else sneaked in. He looked like one of Adrian's part-time students at the local F.E. College — youngish, shabbyish, and Leftish. He had raggedy red hair left free to do its own thing, and National Health glasses perched on a pale, tense, shining sort of face which looked as if it were about to announce Universal Revolution to the world. He was wearing glum brown cords with shiny patches where they had lost their pile, and a green home-knit sweater balding at the elbows.

“Hi!” he said. “D'you mind if I sit down?”

I wondered if he was the occupational therapist, except he didn't come complete with feltcraft kits or wicker baskets. He couldn't be a dietician or a radiographer — his nails weren't clean enough. He was possibly a friend of Leo from his earlier, less successful days, come to bring me a message or explanation. (I didn't fall on stone, I bumped into a brick wall.)

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

I wiped my wet and slimy fingers on the sheet.

“Shagged out,” I said. I knew with this one I didn't have to be too careful with my words. It was almost a relief. The strain of talking politely for four whole days was beginning to tell on me. Sister Francis had frowned when I'd let out just a “damn”.

“Are they treating you OK?”

“Fine,” I said. I tried to see his eyes behind the glasses. They were a sort of muddyish-brown, like the stuff you find at the bottom of ponds. “Expect I think they regard me as a sort of nutcase.”

“Same here,” he said, cocking one leg over the other and balancing it at an angle on his lap. They were skinny legs, underneath the corduroy. His wrists were thin as well.

“You're Thea, aren't you? I'm Ray. That's a formal introduction.” He grinned, showing strong, sturdy teeth (though perhaps they only seemed that way, compared to the ruin of my own mouth. I peered at people's teeth now with a sort of fierce, fascinated envy, whereas before I'd hardly noticed them).

“I hear you've had a bit of a rough-up?”

I ignored the question. He spoke standard English, but with a faint undertone of northern dance-halls and a slight broadening of the vowels which Leo would have shuddered at. Leo never knew people called Ray, in any case. All his acquaintances had foreign names like Jochen or fancy ones like Jasper, and spoke either breathy Sloane Street or Middle European ponderous.

“So you're not a friend of Leo's?”

“No, I'm afraid I'm not. Were you expecting one?”

“Well, not
exactly
.” I'd learned from experience never to expect Leo or his friends.

“So who's this famous Leo?”

“My lover,” I said, sort of nonchalantly. I liked the word lover. It made me feel doomed and romantic, like Mary Queen of Scots or Judy Garland. I'd told Sister Francis that Leo was my uncle, but there was no point in lying to Ray. He was the sort of man you could say “fuck” in front of, and he wouldn't turn a hair.

“The one who hit you?” he asked.

“No,” I said, too quickly. “I bumped into a brick wall.”

Ray had taken off his glasses and was polishing them with a fag-end of the sheet. His face looked soft and vulnerable without them, like a clam without its shell.

“I think he hit you, Thea, didn't he?”

“No.”

“Didn't he?” The eyes were very gentle. You could have snuggled up inside them and gone to sleep.

I paused. “Yes,” I whispered.

He took my hand. Both our hands were hot and sticky like slabs of toffee that had stuck together and melted in a sweet-shop window. I felt a tremendous lightness saying “yes”, as if granite had turned into candyfloss. I could feel tears sliding down my cheeks — somebody else's tears, distant and cleansing and permissible.

“It was my fault,” I explained, through sniffs.

He nodded. “Bit of both, I expect. Always is.”

I stared at him. He had made my mouth acceptable, given us absolution. Leo was no longer a brute, a batterer. Nor had I driven him to violence by being a cruel and lying bitch. We weren't rough and dangerous delinquents any more, just two normal people who bashed each other up a bit. I suddenly felt starving. I didn't want slops for breakfast, but a roasted ox.

“I'm
famished
,” I said.

“So'm I. Shall we ring for breakfast?”

I laughed. He'd turned the hospital into a four-star hotel with room service. I hadn't believed I could ever laugh again. “Ask for sausages,” I said. “Pork ones. Fat ones. Not those mingy chipolatas.”

“Sausages,” he repeated to the nun. “Big ones, please, with lots of fried bread. Oh — and some good strong English mustard.”

I thought she'd kick him out. It wasn't a doss-house for shabby-sweatered drop-outs to give their orders in. But she thought the breakfast on a silver tray with matching silver covers over the food. It was usually melamine and lukewarm. There were three tiny little cereal packets, the one-portion size from Variety Pack. They reminded me of Adrian. (Though, actually, we'd never bought that size when we were married. They were too uneconomical and didn't come with competitions or free Bugs Bunnies.)

Ray ate my slops himself. They had brought me watery porridge, swamped with still more liquid until it looked like a greyish puddle in a builder's yard. Then he mashed my sausages into a sort of soggy paste with mustard, and fed me with the mustard spoon, which was small enough to slip between my stitches. The pain nagged away like a spiteful third person sitting down to breakfast with us.

“Sore?” he asked.

I nodded. Ray wasn't one for words, and those he chose were mainly monosyllables. It made me feel protected. He wouldn't try and outsmart me or give me history lessons.

“What
is
this place?” I asked him. I hadn't dared ask anyone else before. I was terrified the answer might lead back to paper-weights. But with Ray I felt protected. “I'm not even sure where I
am
, you see.” I knew he'd understand how strange (and yet safe) it felt to be living in a limbo where no one could flush out or find you on a map. “I wasn't really with it when they brought me here.”

“You're in Surrey, Thea — the Walton and Weybridge bit — but nearer Weybridge. The hospital's called St Maur's.”

“St
who
?”

“Maur.”

“Never heard of her.”

“It's a
him
.”

“Oh,” I said. I liked the thought of a male saint called St More. It's one of my favourite words. “Who was he?”

“A friend of St Benedict's. I think he's vaguely connected with invalids. I seem to remember a special St Maur's Blessing of the Sick which Benedictines use.”

“Nice,” I murmured. “All the same, I can't really think why Leo brought me here. He's not a Benedictine.”

“He's a Catholic, though, I suppose?”

“Oh, no. His religion's sort of patchwork. A bit of this and a bit of that. You know, Buddhism and Beethoven and Bertrand Russell all cobbled up together.”

Ray looked a little nervous. I think he was frightened I was going to embark on Music or Philosophy or Eastern Mysticism like Leo does with me.

“Is he coming to see you today?” he asked. The “coming” sounded oddly northern, as if Manchester had slipped down into Surrey.

“Maybe,” I hedged.

“It's a long way for him, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Does he drive?”

“No.” Leo rarely did things other men did. He'd never owned a car or played golf or taken out insurance policies. I felt I ought to excuse him. “He's … er … very busy,” I explained.

“What's his job, Thea? What sort of work does he do?”

“Oh … things.” I hardly knew myself. There were the translations and the picture dealers, the buying and selling of manuscripts, the absences with Otto. I wished I hadn't thought of Otto. The breakfast tasted tainted now. I pushed the spoon away. “Have you ever heard of Louis de Gonzague?”

Who?”

“Louis de Gonzague.” I'd probably got the pronunciation wrong.

“No. Yes — wait a minute — isn't he the chap who scripted the James Bond films?”

“No,” I said. “He died in 1595.”

“Oh, sorry. One of those early French kings, then?”

“No,” I said again. Adrian would have put him in the Remedial class. “He's a sort of murderer. Leo's got a friend who thinks he's him.”

“Who, Leo?”

“No, Louis …”

There was a sort of prickly silence. Ray was holding my cup for me while I took slow and painful sips from it. His own tea was over-stewed and cooling.

“What are you reading?” he asked. I don't think he could cope with reincarnation. He nodded towards the pile of Leo paperbacks and saintly hardbacks jumbled on my locker.

I blushed. “
Life of St Bernadette
,” I mumbled. I'd picked her for my female saint from the hospital librarian. The only other ones I could have chosen were St Teresa of Avila who had A-levels in everything including ecstasy, and St Barbara who was martyred. Bernadette had asthma and a sense of humour and a shocking academic record. She didn't even know what the Blessed Trinity was and she hadn't learnt to write until she was fourteen and a half. I warmed to her for that. We even looked alike — the same dark eyes and long brown hair, the same heavy, undistinguished faces. I'd seen her photograph. She was small of course, but so was I, at fourteen. I only shot up after I'd left the convent.

“I've always rather fancied her,” I explained. “We had lots of books about her at my school. Though this is a better one. Less sickly.”

Ray picked up the book and stared at the frontispiece, a picture of Bernadette, as Sister Marie-Bernard, in her black and white nun's habit. He frowned. “I sometimes think she shouldn't have been a nun. I suppose they don't know what to do with people once they've seen the Blessed Virgin, so the simplest thing is to shove 'em in a convent. She was wasted, really.”

“Well she's not a nun
yet
,” I said. “I've only reached page sixty-three.”

“Has she had the apparitions?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Four.” I'd read them over and over again. The beautiful white lady appearing to her in the Grotto in a rush of wind. Dressed in a white robe with roses on her feet, bathed in light and holding a golden rosary. Invisible to everybody else, but entrusting heavenly messages to a shivering wreck of a kid who was out gathering sticks and bones to raise a sou or two for her starving family. A family who shared a converted prison cell with overflowing lavatories and lice.

“Do you realise, Ray,” I told him, “they were so poor that her little brother was discovered in the church eating
candle
wax to try and fill his stomach. I tried it once myself, and it was so foul, I had to spit it out.”

Ray nodded. He seemed better informed on saints than murderers. “One theory puts the whole thing down to hunger. Apparently, if you eat too little over a long period of time, you start to see visions merely as a result of semi-starvation. And there's another book which suggested Bernadette was suffering from ergotic poisoning. Ergot's a sort of fungus which contaminates the bread and causes hallucinations.”