After Purple (44 page)

At the sixteenth apparition, the Lady had introduced herself at last. “I am the Immaculate Conception,” she told Bernadette. That was the turning point. Or so the standard biography said. Even the Dean himself felt now that such words could only come from the Blessed Virgin. Who else but Christ and His Mother could be conceived immaculate? I rubbed my eyes. It was cold in the room and the light was so dim, I could hardly see the print. I tried to think of Adrian, his concentration on the task in hand, his slow laborious reasoning. “Immaculate Conception”, I jotted down. I couldn't even spell it and I very much doubted whether Bernadette could either. She admitted herself she hadn't understood it. She knew as much theology as I knew Higher Maths. She may even have got it wrong, muddled up the words perhaps. The theologians themselves were buggered by the phrase. They felt a living person couldn't or shouldn't call herself an abstraction. That's what one of the books claimed, though I was feeling so weak and weary, even the word “abstraction” whirled around in my head without meaning much, and the authorities seemed to contradict each other.

The whole thing struck me as fishy, anyway. If it
had
been the Blessed Virgin, then surely she'd have announced herself clearly and simply as the Mother of God or Our Lady of Lourdes, instead of using high-flown jargon to an illiterate peasant girl. After all, Mary herself had come from humble stock. She had been the wife of a carpenter. Actually, I'd never met a carpenter, but I knew our local painter's wife in Twickenham, and the only fancy words she used were the ones on the Dulux colour cards like Indigo and Persimmon. She'd even suggested Aconite for Adrian's study walls, but Immaculate Conception would really have stymied her.

I was getting off the point again. It was difficult to concentrate. The books felt hard and uncomfortable underneath my bottom, but when I tried the floor, that was harder still and scratchier. I yawned and stretched a bit, then smoothed out the paper bag and wrote on it:

“Could anyone else but Mary be conceived immaculate?

Did Bernadette mishear or mistake the phrase?

What else could it mean?”

I must admit I'd never been quite certain what it meant myself until the nuns had dinned it into me at school. It's one of the things they labour at Catholic convents, like the Cardinal Virtues, or the Dangers of Disco Dancing, or wearing your blouses loose so they don't show off your breasts. Lots of non-Catholics still misunderstand it. They think Immaculate Conception means that Mary conceived Jesus without recourse to man or prick. The Holy Ghost just hovered over her, and — presto! — she was pregnant. That's what happened, in fact, but it's called the Virgin Birth — another of those R.C. Technical Terms we spent most of our precious school time sorting out. (The nuns were so coy about the word conception that lots of the smaller girls thought it meant something hard and cold and boring like prie-dieu or ciborium.) What Immaculate Conception
really
means is that Mary was born sinless, the only human creature unstained by Original Sin (yet
another
of their terms!) from the first moment of her conception. It's nothing to do with pricks or sex and semen.

Actually, the whole subject was beginning to depress me, because words like conceive and sin reminded me of the whole mess and loss and tangle of wombs and babies and Confession and Ray and Lucian. I decided to move on, and wrote MIRACLES in large block capitals on the other side of the paper bag, and then “64” underneath it. Such a mingy figure was another point in my argument, especially with so many million invalids. If the Lady
had
been Mary, then surely she'd have acted faster and more generously. An all-powerful Queen of Heaven could have cured the whole damn lot of them just by lifting a finger. On the other hand, if she
wasn't
Our Lady, then how could I explain the sixty-four, let alone all the myriad other cures, non-miraculous but still disturbing? The power of the mind, perhaps, as Ray had hinted, when we'd discussed it in the hospital — hysteria, wishful thinking, self-hypnosis. I decided to try it out myself:

“My brain is working vigorously and well,” I said slowly and out loud, in one of those doomy mysterious voices I imagine hypnotists use.

“I am warm, content and comfortable. I feel no hunger pangs.”

My stomach growled in protest, so I stuffed the end of my flannel in my mouth and chewed on it like gum. It kept my jaws busy and helped me concentrate. I pinched my leg once or twice to disperse the pins and needles, then settled back with my dossier. I tried to remember what else Ray had said on the subject of Bernadette. His priestly logic might convince the other priests.

“Bernadette not cured herself,” I scribbled. That I did remember. In fact, in her later years, she'd been something of a physical and mental wreck. I opened the book in front of me and turned to the closing chapters, underlined the phrases “inner torment” and “spiritual desolation”, skimmed the pages where she died in agony with tears coursing down her face and proclaiming herself a sinner. Maybe she knew already that her story was built on falsehood — that would explain her anguish.

“Anguish,” I jotted, and then “rose bush” underneath it. The rose bush had always been a stumbling block. Dean Peyramale had demanded a miracle as proof of the Lady's supernatural powers. “Ask her to make the rose bush flower,” he'd said to Bernadette. It was a wild rose growing at the bottom of the niche where
Aquerò
always appeared. Bernadette had asked, but nothing happened. Our Lady could easily have made a rose bush bloom in early March — nothing to it, if you were Mother of God and mistress of the seasons — but someone less illustrious would have had trouble messing around with nature, coaxing summer out of early spring.

Bernadette's novice mistress had never been convinced. It wasn't just the matter of the rose bush — it seemed absurd to her that God should choose a sick and ignorant peasant child to pass on His High Commands. There I couldn't agree. After all, Bernadette herself had chosen me, and on a previous occasion God had picked out a humble artisan's wife to be His mother, a simple homely girl who hadn't an O-level to her name. Perhaps I was tackling the thing all wrong. After all, if Bernadette had wanted Adrian's methods, why hadn't she appeared to
him
, touched him on the shoulder as he sat deep in his books in Twickenham public library? It was me she'd come to, me she trusted. She hadn't wanted teachers or professionals. Maybe I should trust her in turn and rely purely on simplicity and truth.

I dragged the suitcase off the bidet, collapsed the pile of books, slowly, achingly got up and stretched my limbs. I pushed open the blind and stared out at the huge black duvet of the sky, snuggling against the town sleeping underneath it. It was still dark, but bleached and fading round the edges where the dawn was nibbling at it. A few stray feathers of mist curled against the broad bare shoulders of the mountain peaks. I marvelled that in a world so vast and magnificent, some supernatural power should knock at my shabby soul and ask me to rewrite history. I should be exultant, not exhausted. Pins and needles hardly counted when the sword of Truth had been entrusted to my hands.

I shut the window and stripped off all my clothes. It was already half-past five. I would wash and change and go down to the Grotto in time for Ray's early service. That was the perfect place to start my mission — a small congenial Mass said in English for the English, so at least I'd be understood without the need for interpreters and intermediaries who would only muddle things; a gathering big enough to carry weight with the authorities, yet not too large to shout me down. Ray himself would be officiating and was bound to back me up, if for no other reason than to prevent me blackmailing him or blabbing out his sin. And there would be other priests around him who might know French and Bishops.

I chose the most boring of my clothes, a droopy brown skirt and matching jumper, and coiled my hair on top. Long hair and jeans tend to make people hostile before you even open your mouth. I crept downstairs and knocked at the connecting door which led to Madame's quarters. I wanted my breakfast early. I'd paid for bed-and-breakfast, yet hardly made the most of either. I could take my bread with me and eat it on the way. I knocked again. Madame was either asleep, or chose not to be disturbed. I shrugged. To tell the truth, my hunger had almost faded now. It might have been the self-hypnosis, but all I felt was a sort of empty curdled nausea.

I hurried through the streets towards the Grotto. I knew my way there almost blindfold now, yet, every time, the town looked different. Now it was suspended between night and day, the street lights still shining, but dawn reaching out and muffling them, the moon fading into a faint singe-mark in the slate-grey sky. There was litter in the gutters, rubbish-bins overflowing with tins and cardboard boxes, but the buildings themselves looked pale and clean and delicate, like invalids who had been woken early in a hospital and washed before their breakfasts. There was a hushed, brooding, expectant feeling poured gently over everything like thin milk over porridge. A few uncertain birds twittered through the gauzy greyish light. A milk van chuntered up the hill. It was a frail and private morning, newly hatched and mine alone, not yet blemished or invaded by the crowds.

St Joseph's gates were open now, and as I walked through them and down into the esplanade, the place became slowly more alive. Little knots of nuns and nurses were hurrying towards the shrine — children in wheelchairs, priests in petticoats. I turned the corner, past the candle stores, the bookshop, the holy water taps. I kept my eyes cast down. It wasn't piety, but fear. If the statue was back in place again, then who would believe my story? But how could it be gone, when all those devout and placid pilgrims were already kneeling in front of it? Slowly, I raised my eyes. It was there — as serene, as hideous as it had been for over a century. It looked smaller somehow, almost insignificant, lost in the dark shadows of the niche. I turned away. It made no difference, really. It was only a hunk of marble, a sculptor's toy. True, it might help my cause if it was seen publicly to have vanished and I could simply step forward and explain the whole mysterious story. But, knowing the authorities, they'd accuse me of larceny then, as well as lies. Best to accept what was.

I glanced at my watch. Only a few minutes to go before the service started. The sky was paling now, every object striding forward with firmer, clearer outlines, the green in the meadows slowly filling in like colour on a palette, and the huge drowsy mountains yawning and stretching in the background, shaking night and snow and sleep out of their eyes. The English pilgrims were taking up their places for the Mass. I made myself as inconspicuous as possible. I had already recognised a posse of Pax Pilgrims, with Doris jabbering in their midst. In any other circumstances, I'd have rushed across and joined them, but I felt they'd hardly welcome me as the Attila of Lourdes. Despite the early hour, there were many different groups and banners present — Birmingham and Liverpool, Killala and Pontypridd. I began to feel a little more at home, seeing all those friendly British faces, with badges I could understand and British Home Stores cardigans. They might even be proud that an English voice had been chosen to proclaim the truth.

I wormed my way towards the front. Truth would only suffer if I had to shout it from the middle of a scrum. The priests were processing in now — five of them in all, with the Irish Father from Pax in second place and Ray bringing up the rear, his rude red hair almost blasphemous above his white priest's petticoat and his golden chasuble. He hadn't slept a wink since I had seen him — that was obvious. His face looked as if it had been sent to a bad laundry and had creases ironed into it where there were none before.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” he intoned. It sounded odd, as if he had borrowed a voice from the Posh Poetry Department at Radio Three and then had trouble fusing it with his own. In different circumstances, I'd have been more or less ecstatic to see him standing there in full vestments, handling hosts and chalices as familiarly as if he were making tea. But now the magic had gone out of it. I kept imagining his limp pink prick coiled exhausted in his nylon pants, polluting all those sacred robes, and anyway, I was so preoccupied with Bernadette that priestly fantasies seemed pointless.

The Mass was going so fast, I feared they'd reach the end before I'd spoken, but suddenly there was silence, and all the priests sat down on the benches around the altar as if they were almost expecting my announcement. My heart was beating so loudly, I felt Leo could have heard it back in England. I groped to my feet, stumbled towards the altar.

Somebody was there before me. A blind girl from the Killala group was standing on the steps, strumming a guitar. I turned my back on her.

“Er … Bernadette …” I started.

A high clear soprano voice swallowed up my own embarrassed croak. It was the blind girl singing a ravishing hymn in Gaelic. I could almost see the sad proud notes swirling up to the sky like the frail white smoke from the guttering candles flickering in front of me.

“
Is maith an bhean Muire mhór
,” she sang, and suddenly the sun slit through the clouds and touched one bright finger against the gloomy rock behind her. A sparrow soared up after it, his ragged shadow dark against the gold. It was so beautiful, I couldn't speak at all. I gazed around at the gold-flecked congregation — a twelve-year-old as bald as an old man, a wailing baby swathed in bandages, a withered grandma with pink woolly bed socks peeping out from under her plastic wheelchair cover. How could I wrest their Blessed Virgin from them when they were crippled, lame and bald; break up the party, tell them to go home?

The hymn had ended, the priests were on their feet again. I had lost my chance.