After Purple (46 page)

One thing was clear — I hadn't time to waste. It was already Monday, and we were due to depart on Saturday — five short days to undo centuries of falsehood. I still needed a plan of action, even more now that my task had been extended. Truth and simplicity just hadn't proved enough, science had misfired, and Ray was confusing sex with insanity. There were other priests, of course. Bernadette had commanded me to start with them. I mustn't forget her words and go gallivanting off on some vaguer, wider mission of my own. I wrote “Priests” as the next heading underneath the sorbets and sat staring at it while I scraped out the last tepid morsels of my gruel.

Almost as if in answer to a prayer, a priest walked in. He was wearing a grubby black cassock with hobnailed boots underneath it, and a small black beret perched on top of untidy greying hair. He had dirty fingernails and a rough red complexion criss-crossed with tiny broken veins. I knew he wasn't English. English priests (bar Ray) are always posh and have pale, pasty skins and manicure sets for Christmas, and finicky housekeepers who handwash everything. He chose a seat in the furthest corner from me, but I refused to be deterred. I picked up my bill and the menu and marched across.

“
Bonjour
!” I said and seated myself beside him.

He didn't look surprised. I suppose he thought he was meant to recognise me. Priests meet so many people, they probably learn to smile at total strangers, just in case they turn out to be last night's communicant or the multi-murderer in Saturday's confessional.

“Do you speak English?” I asked. The
bonjour
had exhausted my only general French, and I didn't want to start on big ends or sparking-plugs or municipal museums.

When he nodded, I almost threw my arms around his neck. The waiter had brought him a glass of cold colourless liquid, three croissants and a plastic pot of something called
gelée de groseilles
which sounded vaguely obscene, but looked much the same as jam.

“You like?” he asked, offering me one of the croissants already spread liberally with butter. Its fresh greasy fragrance wafted up to my nostrils, tempting me, enticing me, little golden flakes crumbling off it into the glowing pool of jam.

“No,” I said firmly. I must keep my message pure. Bernadette herself had never accepted a morsel, preferred to starve rather than risk anyone accusing her of graft. I removed my eyes from the breakfast and fixed them on a poster of the bare and starving Pyrenees. “I have a message for you,” I told him. “From St Bernadette.”

He smiled, but continued chewing. “St Bernadette, yes.”

I stared at him. How could he calmly carry on with breakfast when I was about to bulldoze his life and Lourdes' at once.

“Bernadette
appeared
to me,” I said, in case he hadn't understood.

Little morsels of half-masticated croissant sprayed from his lips.

His fingers were stained with nicotine, and there were grease stains down his front. “Very good,” he murmured.

“She
spoke
to me,” I insisted, making the words as clear and distinct as possible, like the tight-arsed lady on the Linguaphone records. I only had half his attention, anyway. The other half was on his spirits glass. I wondered what it was. It looked decadent like absinthe.

“She told me to tell you it wasn't the Blessed Virgin that she saw.”

“Good,” he repeated. “
Very
good.”

“Do you
understand
?”I almost shouted. He was drinking the liquor now. It shocked me, really. First Ray with an erection and now a priest with an aphrodisiac.

“Yes, yes, I understand.” There was a little ruff of butter along his upper lip. “The Blessed Virgin.
La Sainte Vierge
. I understand.”

“No!” I howled. “
Not
the
Sainte Vierge
.” Even my phrase-book French could cope with that. “It
wasn't
the Blessed Virgin who appeared to her.”

He smiled again and nodded. “The Blessed Blessed Virgin.
Mère de Dieu. Notre Dame
. Our church in Amiens, we calls 'im
Notre Dame
. You understand?”

“Yes, but you
don't
,” I blurted out. “Look, she
said
she was the Immaculate Conception, but that didn't mean Mary. Well, not necessarily. The priests just
assumed
it. There may have been another one. I mean
anyone
could be conceived immaculate. It's up to God, I suppose. If He did it once, He could do it several times.”

I'd lost him now. The croissants were finished, but he was scooping up the last scattered crumbs with a moistened finger and cramming them into his mouth. He kept on smiling through the guzzling, but I knew he hadn't understood a word.

“You nursing?” he asked.

I glanced down at my meagre, unmaternal breasts. “
What
?” I exclaimed. Surely he couldn't think …

“You teaching?”

“Oh, I
see
. No, neither. Look, what I'm trying to tell you is …”

“
Touriste
?”

“
No!
”

He jumped when I shouted. It was simply a waste of breath. Half the clergy were imbeciles and drunkards, and the other half sexual cripples who couldn't keep their vows.

“Bishop,” I demanded. “Where does the bishop live?”

He stopped suddenly, with his mouth open and his glass poised motionless before his face. “You work for
bishop
?” he asked incredulously, and with new respect.

“Oh
fuck
,” I said and got up. I suppose he thought it was some sort of English
au revoir
, because he jumped to his feet and shook my hand and kept on saying, “Bishop. Good, very good,” over and over.

A sort of damp, lumpy fury was seeping out of my body like wet sawdust. I was almost surprised he couldn't feel it sticky on my hand. All my simple joy at coming to Lourdes had crumbled into horror and frustration. Even the fact of being chosen by St Bernadette I now saw less as an honour and more as a crippling burden. Judging by my lack of results so far, I would need at least a year in Lourdes, not one paltry week — yet how could I survive on a pocketful of centimes? Truth wouldn't fill a belly.

I snatched my hand from the priest's and turned to go. Someone was blocking my way — a waiter with a three-foot silver serving platter piled high with an authentic English breakfast.
More
than authentic. There was not only bacon, eggs and sausages, but steak and chips as well. The steak itself was a good two inches thick, oozing blood and juices. It was like a miracle, an answer to my prayer. The only problem was, the waiter was setting it down in front of the priest — not me — and then besieging him with napkin, mustard, salt, coffee, bread. I stared.
Mon père
had already demolished three whole croissants and a glass of booze, yet here was a full cooked breakfast (
dinner
, almost), when I was starving, hollow, weak. I sat straight down again. I wasn't leaving now — I was going to have it out with him.

“Is that
yours
?” I asked. “I mean, who's
paying
for it? What about your Vow of Poverty? Your conscience? All those slums in Preston with communal lavatories and families of seven who can't
afford
a decent meal?”

He beamed, tucking his napkin tight beneath his chin and gesturing with his fork towards the steak. “
Bifteck
. Good. You 'ave in England, yes?”

“No, I
don't
'ave. Can't afford. Can't even afford one mingy little croissant. You had
three
— I counted. No
wonder
you don't care about Bernadette. You're too busy with the fleshpots.”

The smile cracked a bit. His English might only be rudimentary, but bitterness sounds the same in any tongue.

“You ' ave pain?” he inquired. “You 'ave sad?”

“Oh
no
,” I said. “I'm only bloody starving. Don't mind me. You go ahead and eat.”

He was. He had already salted his sausages and blasted his bacon with the peppermill. He was now uncapping the mustard.

“No!” I shouted, suddenly. “
Don't
— please don't. You'll ruin it. I
loathe
mustard on my food.”

I snatched the jar away. Little flecks of
moutarde à l' estragon
sprayed across his sleeve. He was goggling at me, astonished, almost scared.

“I'm sorry,” I muttered. “It's
not
mine, is it — it's yours. That's priests' perks, I suppose.” I remembered the huddle of faithful, queuing for Masses. Thirty-three francs a Mass cost — three pounds-fifty, English money — except it
was
n't Mass, it was meat. Those wretched, patient, conned and simple pilgrims were buying egg and chips and absinthe, not hosts and God and prayers. “D' you realise,” I quivered, “they're not only sick and crippled, they're
bankrupting
themselves as well, to subsidise your fancy five-course breakfasts, your finest fillet steak.”

He was feeding his face again, munching stolidly through my monologue, egg yolk glistening on his upper lip, little threads of
bifteck
stuck between his teeth. I think he'd stopped trying to understand me, was just shrugging me off as a crackpot like Ray and the rest had done. Easy to label someone loony when they were simply crazed with hunger. Anyway, it wasn't just the food I craved — it was the sudden sight and taste of England — that same crisped and streaky bacon which we had at home, the fat familiar sausages with little uneven knobs on the end of them, the greasy “Fred's caff” chips. I longed to cling to their safe and solid solace, to stuff myself with them until I was whole and strong again.

I almost genuflected as the priest sliced into his egg. I tried to shut out everything but that slimy viscous white quivering from his knife-blow, the rich gummy yellow spurting towards the breakwater of his sausage. If I kept my eyes fixed only on his plate, I could imagine I was sitting safe with Adrian, sharing a fry-up in our cramped and steamy kitchen, or back at school, gorging a bumper breakfast on Reverend Mother's Feast Day, with the scent of stocks outside the refectory, and the nuns' cool white voices echoing from the chapel. I watched him cut a chunk of sausage off — a plump pinkish bolster studded with tiny jewels of fat. He left it idling on his plate while he laid his knife and fork down and poured his coffee. The sausage stump was almost
speaking
to me, throbbing across the table, flinging me its smell. My entire body ached and slavered for it. I waited till the priest was blockaded by his cup, then — grap, gulp, gone. He hadn't even noticed, so I pinched the largest chip on his plate and then the second largest. I hardly dared to chew them in case he saw my lips moving, just forced them down, whole and fat and greasy. He caught me with the fourth — it was red-hot in my hand as his eyes looked up and followed it from his platter to my mouth. I didn't falter, just swallowed it unflinchingly.

“Go on,” I challenged him. “Criticise me, tell me I'm a glutton.”

Now that he had caught me, I might as well continue. I seized a piece of bread from the piled-high wicker basket, leaned across and dipped it in his egg-yolk. I almost choked as I crammed it huge and scratchy in my mouth. Tears were streaming down my face. The food was so dear and safe and beautiful, I couldn't bear to have to snatch and snarl it up like this, ram it down my gullet like an animal.

Tears splashed on to my hands. I was weeping not just for my own shock and disappointment, but for all the empty bellies in the world, the whole aching sham of Lourdes.

People were staring at me. A nun at the next table had come clucking over and passed me a large white handkerchief to dry my tears. I tied it round my neck like a napkin. The priest and I were both robed for eating now, but it was my turn for the plate. I yanked it over to my side of the table. The smell of grease, of meat, of plenty, was like incense in my nostrils. Almost reverently, I picked up the sacred implements and knifed into the steak.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered to the gawping, plundered priest. “I know you don't understand, but I've been given a mission to the world and I can't cope with it until I've eaten. My stomach's rumbling so loudly, it blocks out all the words.”

The fork felt so heavy in my hands, it was as if the whole burden of Bernadette's message was bleeding and sobbing into it. Staunchly, I clung on — swallowed bacon, sausage, comfort, nurture, strength — the strength to continue my calling. I mustn't mewl or falter any longer. This afternoon at the Blessing of the Sick, I would take up my task again. The whole of Lourdes would be gathered together then, in the most important ceremony of all — every nation processing round the square with their sick and handicapped, their laymen and their priests. The procession didn't start till half-past four — I couldn't starve till then. Bernadette had sent this blessed breakfast to feed and fortify me, had broken my fast through the bounty of a priest.

Even so, I was still sobbing into his chips. The
relief
of food, the wonder of it, had touched me like God's finger. There were other hands on mine. The nun had joined our table and was crooning at me in a language so strangely guttural, I couldn't even guess which half of the globe it came from. Two waiters had waltzed over and were shouting and gesturing at my plate. I was terrified they'd charge me chip for chip. I shoved in another mouthful. A knot of people were gathering round me now, all jabbering, all staring. Alien words lashed at me like hail. All those different languages were almost proof that God was a muddler. Any rational, orderly deity like Adrian would have insisted on one universal tongue, with compulsory demotion for anyone claiming to be a foreigner.

Yet, here, I realised, was a captive audience. I had tried and failed at an English Mass; a French café might prove simpler. Bernadette had addressed me in a strange outlandish language I had never heard before, and made me understand it. Maybe she could do the same for them.