After Purple (57 page)

“Thea …” He was sitting closer now. “I was
wrong
about all that. Ridiculously wrong. I'd turned my vow of poverty into a sort of vow of self-importance — having to be poorer and holier and shabbier than any of my brothers. And denouncing the cash which other folk and other countries were genuinely in need of, just because it clashed with my so-called principles.” He stretched out his hands and left them lying on the bed like a pair of gloves. They were still rough and red and holy. “In fact, I made a cock-up of
all
my vows.” His fingers twitched a little as if they were embarrassed. “One of the reasons I came, Thea, was to try and tell you … how
sorry
I am. I mean, about that …”

I remembered now — the boy's name was Lionel and he'd screwed me in a toilet, although he was a priest. Ray had come round afterwards and made his apologies for him. He couldn't make them himself because he was deaf and dumb.

“You
said
sorry, Ray — at the time.”

“Yes, I know, but, I wasn't sure if … I mean, now I'm going away, I thought …”

“You already
explained
about Lionel — don't you remember? — how he didn't really mean it and …”

“
Lionel!
It's not Lionel I …”

“It doesn't
matter
, Ray.” It didn't, any more. I had moved into a space where sex was only an echo, an old stain from something I'd spilt months or years ago which had dried to a faint white film.

“Thea, you're a good girl. Truly good. You've taught me a lot, you know. See this girdle?”

“Mmm.” He was flicking the two ends of it to and fro between his hands, almost nervously. It made the whole room spin.

“There's three little knots in it. See them?”

“Mm.” I wished he'd keep things still. Stillness was important now.

“They're not just decoration, d'you realise that? They stand for our three vows — poverty, chastity and obedience.”

I nodded. Things always came in threes: mummy, daddy, Rutherford — Adrian, Janet, baby — Leo, Lionel, Ray.

“D'you know, Thea, I was so concerned with the first two, I hardly even
thought
about obedience. Well, not until that … night. It was you who brought me back to it.”

“
Me
?” I'd given up my own vows. They were only noise and self.

“Yes, I was so disturbed about breaking my vow of chastity and the harm it did you — I mean, seeing you so pale and shocked and obviously upset, and then Mike dying the very next night, almost like a punishment, in fact. When I got back from his hospital, the first thing I heard was that you'd rushed off back to London before I'd even said goodbye. D'you know, Thea, I just sat down and cried. Stupid, isn't it? I don't know whether it was shock or exhaustion or whether I was crying for you or Mike or my own sinful doltish self. I haven't cried for
years
, not since I was a kid of six or seven. It really shook me up, made me think — I mean,
really
think. It was as if I was looking at my life from the outside like a stranger passing judgement on it. It was only then I realised that I'd broken my vow of obedience far more often and more seriously than my vow of celibacy, and I hadn't even
seen
it. All those so-called scruples and ideals I swamped you with were almost arrogance, petty treacheries — rebellion, if you like, and rebellion is just a more glamorous name for disobedience.”

I shut my eyes. He still didn't understand. He hadn't mentioned Bernadette, or grasped that God and Mike and Glasgow were no nearer or further than the span of his own hand, or that words like disobedience were only strings of letters with a frown on top.

“Forgive me, Thea. I'm rattling on again. I don't want to tire you out.”

“You're not,” I said. I was watching Mike, still alive and shining, kicking a ball about on that endless sheet of parchment.

“I shouldn't be talking at all — not when you're unwell. But I'm leaving, you see —
tomorrow
— and I wanted to be sure you understood that …”

“I
do
understand.”

“It's funny, really, but when we make a move, or change office, it's actually
called
an Obedience. That's the Franciscan word. You see, Thea, it doesn't
matter
how we dress or what we work at — paperwork can be just as sacred as caring for thalidomides. As long as we do it willingly. St Francis was always on about the ‘littlenesses' of life — those tiny, daily, footling things which lead us to God if we do them for His sake. Even if we're only sorting jumble or scrubbing out the bath, that's just as much a calling as preaching in St Peter's or shepherding whole
bus
loads of the handicapped. You knew that all the time, Thea — that's the crazy thing.”

“Hush,” I said. There was no such word as littleness, not when the world was throbbing in my hands.

“I'm sorry, Thea, I'll go now. I know you want to sleep. Just let me say that if there's anything … I mean, if I can ever
help
or …” He slipped a piece of paper on to the bed. “That's my new address. You can write to me there. Even phone me, if you like.”

He stood up, touched my shoulder. His hand felt hot and tense and awkward, as if he were frightened I might slap it down. “God bless you, Thea,” he murmured. He looked almost like a stranger in his habit. There was no point talking any longer. His God was brown and harsh and handicapped, whereas mine was white and quiet and boundless and neither blessed nor cursed.

I scooped a white narcissus from the vase and pushed it in his hands. “Please,” I said. “Take it.”

The stem was dripping water down his robe. He stood a moment, nervous, at the door. “Look, Thea, even though I'm going, I …” The flower was already drooping. He was clutching it too tightly, stifling all its sap. I listened to it die. “I mean, I'll still be there if you …”

“Goodbye, Ray.”

When I opened my eyes again, he'd gone. I unfolded the piece of paper which was ruled and narrow like his life was. His writing hadn't changed. It was still small and cramped, as if it had grown up in a slum and knew it mustn't spread itself, or leap into fancy swirls.

“St Francis,” I read. “407 Cumberland Street, Glasgow.” He'd even added the postcode and the telephone number.

I opened my hand and let the Glasgow house, St Francis himself and the whole order of Friars Minor flutter gently to the ground.

In the morning, everyone spoke softer and there were no more cups of tea. I was going up to theatre at eleven.

Sister brought my letters in. They came in dribs and drabs from Notting Hill. I supposed Adrian or someone must be forwarding my mail. He was probably keeping my accounts as well, and sending in my sick-notes. I rarely read the letters. The one with a second-class stamp was from my mother and the other said “Good News from Brentford Nylons”. I dropped them in the waste bin without even slitting the envelopes. The third one was a postcard. On the front was a brilliant Eastern bird with sweeping tail feathers and hot scarlet plumage like tongues of fire. Its wings were flexed and soaring, its head bent back and gazing at the sun. Trembling, I turned it over. All the writing had been smudged and blurred, so there were only mangled stumps of letters bleeding and writhing on the back, an indecipherable black stain, as if the rain or God or Time had blotted it out. There were two brightly coloured stamps — foreign stamps — one with a lotus on, and one with a turbaned craftsman at a loom. The postmark said Srinagar.

I held the card like an icon in my hands. It didn't need words or writing. I knew already what it meant. The bird was a
feng huang
, so Leo was telling me the vase was mended and peace restored to the universe, that a Golden Age had come. I stared at the preening beak, the blazing wings. Adrian had nagged and niggled about Leo not apologising. But now he had offered not merely a brief and grudging “sorry”, but had sent me the symbol of peace itself, so that I could hold it bright and breathing in my hands, the bird which was too gentle to peck at a grub or tread on a blade of grass, which flew away in wartime and returned only when gods smiled on the earth.

I turned it over and stared at the print again. Although it was distorted, I recognised Leo's bold black fountain pen. The address was so fogged and fudged, it astonished me that all the post offices from Srinagar to London had passed it so confidently from hand to hand. I knew, then, it was blessed. It would have arrived on my bed, had Leo simply tossed it blank and unaddressed into the air from some high peak of the Himalayas.

This was the “sorry” I had waited for almost four long months (all my life, perhaps), the one Leo had never entrusted to anyone before, not even God or Otto. Only his sorry could heal me — I was healed. I could feel his remorse bandaged round my body, hot like a poultice, soothing like a balm. It was as if the phoenix had nestled on my breast and wrapped me in its feathers. Leo had held that bird. His breath had warmed it, his fingers ruffled it. Therefore Leo's breath and hands were against my own.

I knew what he was saying, knew what he had written on that card. It could be one thing only. Hadn't he told me the
feng huang
symbolised the perfect union of man and woman?

I traced my finger along the tangled mess of print. “I love you,” I spelt out. It was easy, really, once I understood. Leo had written those three short endless words and the rain and wind had rubbed them out again and the customs men excised them, but I could still read them as plainly and simply as if he had daubed them in shouting scarlet letters on the hard white skull of the world.

I smiled. I knew he'd say it in the end.

He had tossed his love in the air like a homing pigeon and it had scorched a trail across the sky. All the way from India to England, I could see whole countries stunned and reeling with it; the landscape branded with Leo for ever — his nails clawing up and down the fields like furrows, the sharp angles of his body sculpted into the hills.

I closed my eyes. His love was so violent, it was like a fist smashed in my face. Leo had never hit me — all he had done was tell me that he loved me and I had bled with the jolt and wonder of it.

“Wakey, wakey, Mrs Morton! We're ready for you now, dear. Be a love and give me that card and those dirty Kleenex, will you. We want to tidy you up a bit.”

I passed her the Kleenex, but not the card. She tried to coax it from me, but I held on tightly while she fussed around. I'd waited so long for Leo's love, I wasn't going to be parted from it now. I let her take my temperature, instead.

I'd already had my bath and enema. I rarely shitted now without assistance. There was nothing left inside me — no food, no faeces, nothing base or low. I was clean and white and empty like the inside of a flower. I had only one last thing to do — to pass on Bernadette's message to the world. I knew I mustn't delay too long. Pilgrim planes were screaming into Lourdes, nation jostling nation for their holy water and their miracles, Mary's name instead of Janet's on a million million lips.

“Excuse me,” I said. “But there's something I've got to do before my operation.”

“You've got to spend a penny, dear, that's for sure. Out you jump, and I'll tidy up your bed a bit while you're out of it.”

I suppose ordinary nurses couldn't grasp I had a Mission, so I walked on, past the bathroom, and knocked at Sister's office. She must have understood because she escorted me back to my room with two assistants and dressed me all in white. It was like a ritual stripping. I was naked underneath. They took away my squalid bra and soiled pyjamas and robed me in a pure white vestment like an alb, with my hair coiled up beneath a spotless coif. I was a nun now — no hair, no cunt, no curves. They even removed my jewellery — the tawdry plastic bangle, the tuppenny-ha'penny chain. They left my wedding ring, but taped it over with a piece of sticking plaster. A ring meant nothing now. I was neither married nor divorced. I wasn't even separate. A ring could only bind two separate people.

They eased my denture out and dropped it in a dish. I wouldn't need it any longer. I didn't intend to eat again, or kiss or bite or talk. I had already renounced my possessions. My room was bare, my locker empty save for the box of hospital Kleenex and the water jug. Even that, they took away. They left me parched and fasting. Nuns always fast before they take their final vows and priests before their ordination. I was nun and priest at once, man and woman fused, like Leo and the
feng huang
. They folded my counterpane away and left only one white blanket and the sheet. If I wriggled down the bed a bit, I was wrapped totally in whiteness, white sheet pressing on my eyes, white hands folded on white breast. Bernadette had died like that, garbed all in white, lying on a white bed with white curtains pulled around her. She had called it her private chapel. I shut my eyes. I was lying in my own chapel, dressed in a robe which was both shroud and wedding dress, and with my handmaids all around me.

The handmaids spoke in whispers. Even they wore white now. They had changed out of their blue and put on dazzling uniforms — white cuffs, white caps, white dresses. Their voices were white to match.

One of them was standing over me with a sacred vessel in her hands. “Just a little prick,” she smiled. “You'll feel a bit woozy, but don't worry, I'll be popping in and out.”

A needle pierced my arm, but I hardly felt it. Leo loved me, and since there was no time nor space nor boundaries, he was with me still, the child of our love leaping in my womb. The phoenix sat soft and sheening on my breast, its feathers ruffled round me like a shield. I lay back and listened to it sing.

All things were mended now. St Maur's was standing whole and unmolested, stretching its white arms up to heaven. Even Adrian's ancient temples which I had seen as only heaps of weeping stones with weeds and picnickers sticking up between them, were now raised high and proud again, incense smoking from their singing mouths.