Jubilate (36 page)

‘Apart from anything else, it gave me a chance to get to know Richard.’

‘And?’

‘I now realise that among all your other virtues you have the patience of a saint.’

‘I thought you had no time for saints.’

‘Only plaster ones.’

‘Patricia knows too.’

‘Why? What’s she said?’

‘Nothing. She didn’t need to. Her face said it all. Ever since I came back this afternoon.’

‘She had to know sometime.’

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘She does if we’re to have any future.’

‘What? Like “Excuse me, Mother-in-law, but would you look after your son while I spend the weekend with my lover?”’

‘Why only the weekend?’

‘It’s so easy for you. You have no ties.’ She catches sight of Pippa’s photograph which, this time, I had not thought to remove. ‘This wasn’t here yesterday.’

‘I put it in the drawer.’

‘You were that sure I’d be coming back?’ She sits bolt upright.

‘Not at all. I slipped it in when we arrived. The business with the light switch.’

‘Yes, of course.’ She relaxes.

‘It shows what a difference one day can make. Last night I thought you might be upset, put off. Tonight it never crossed my mind. I want you to share in every part of me, the past as much as the present.’

‘She’s so pretty,’ she says, lifting the picture to the light. ‘She has
your eyes.’ Then, setting it carefully down, she takes hold of my face and kisses my eyelids. ‘Such expressive eyes.’ I rest my head on her shoulder and her touch becomes almost maternal.

‘Nothing in this world is easy,’ I say. ‘The Church has got that right at least. For two people to have as much as we do, someone else will always lose out.’

‘But does it have to be someone weaker?’

‘Is Richard really that weak? Or is his weakness his strength? You said yourself that, if his brain weren’t damaged, you’d have left him years ago. You feel as guilty as I do, only with far less – with no – cause. Guilty for an act of God! Somewhere deep down, you think God did this to Richard to stop you breaking your vows. So is it a blessing or a punishment? Either way it’s destroying your life. I’m sorry.’

‘Why, if it’s what you believe? How you must despise me!’

‘You know that’s not true. It would be easier if I did, or at least if I was bored by you or as indifferent to you as I am to Mary or Claire or Tess.’

‘She’s looking to have an affair.’

‘Who? Tess?’

‘Forget I said that! She was overwrought. She’s so worried about Lester.’

‘When will you realise that you can trust me?’

‘I’m sorry – I’m so confused. Didn’t you promise me a drink? I’d kill for a Minty Mary.’

‘No need.’ I pick two glasses off the chair. ‘I pinched them from the dining room this morning. I’m equipped for every eventuality.’ As I pour two large vodkas, her eye falls on the condoms lying on the bedside table.

‘So I see.’

‘Well I couldn’t afford the bootleg version two nights on the trot.’

‘You’ve bought six,’ she says, fingering the packets.

‘As I said – every eventuality. Budge up!’ I sit beside her on the bed. ‘Cheers!’ I clink the glass she holds loosely in her hand.

‘So what happens next?’ she asks.

‘We make love.’

‘And then?’

‘We make love again. Sorry, I know that wasn’t the question, but I think we should take things as they come. I don’t mean
slowly
. Quite the reverse. Just that we should face each problem as it presents itself.’

‘What about the problem that’s already here – that’s asleep half a mile up the road?’

‘Some men take on their partner’s children – I’ll take on Richard.’

‘That’s easy to say. It’s not all fun and games and party pieces.’

‘No, Miss.’

‘I’m being serious.’

‘So am I. If it’s what you want, we’ll find a way.’

‘The trouble is I don’t know what I want!’ She lets her head fall on the pillow. ‘Ow!’

‘Oh hell, I forgot! You haven’t hurt yourself, have you?’

‘I’ll survive. What is it?’ She lifts up the pillow and pulls out the package. ‘A present for the chambermaid?’

‘Hardly. It’s for you. Every angel should have a spare.’

‘You’ve lost me. What is it?’

‘Open it and see.’ 

‘W
akey wakey!’ Patricia shouts superfluously through the door. ‘My hands are full.’

‘Come in,’ I say, pinching my cheeks.

‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’ She sets it down on my bedside table.

‘That’s kind, thank you.’

‘I can never sleep well the night before I travel. Shall I draw the curtains?’

‘I’ll do them. It’s fine.’

She pays no attention. ‘It’s a lovely day. Someone up there’s
watching
over us.’ She gazes at the garden. ‘Which is more than I can say for your borders. You can take the rustic look too far. Still, I’m sure you’ve a lot to occupy you.’ She turns to my primary occupation. ‘How’s Sleeping Beauty?’

‘Still sleeping.’

‘It’s a gift. When he was a boy, his father used to say he’d sleep through World War Three. That’s when we still thought there’d be one.’ She kisses his forehead, causing barely a stir.

‘Right. I’ll leave you two to get ready. I only have to slip my coat on.’

‘We have an hour and a half before the car comes.’

‘I’m sorry but it’s the way I am. No point trying to change me now. I’ll wipe down your worktops.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘One less thing for you to worry about. Take advantage of me while you can.’

She heads downstairs to reassert ownership over my kitchen, where she has been creeping about since six o’clock, in an attempt at silence that grates more than noise. I suspect that even now, with
Pattersons
sold, Thomas dead and Richard … well, Richard, she holds that everything I have comes courtesy of her. For all her fawning over her son, she never gave him credit for any initiative. No matter how much business he brought in, she shared Thomas’s view that it sprang from the goodwill he had inherited when he joined the firm. Throughout his working life he felt humiliated at having to remain
Mr Richard in deference to his father. By the time his father died, he was plain Richard, with no status at all.

I taste the tea, which is predictably weak: a single ‘as it comes’ when Richard first took me home, having established a pattern for life. Has she never considered that nervousness at meeting my
prospective
mother-in-law might have made me eager to please? At what point in subsequent years did it become impossible to set her straight? Or has she known all along and been secretly laughing at my cravenness? The thought is too appalling to contemplate.

I give Richard a gentle shake. He turns to me groggily and starts the day with a slurred invective, a gust of stale breath and a routine fumble with my thigh. I push away his hand and apply my usual mixture of carrot and stick. ‘Breakfast time. Your mother’s downstairs.’

‘What’s she doing here?’ he asks, a tremor followed by a frown.

‘She stayed the night, don’t you remember?’ I hustle him out of bed and into the bathroom. ‘We’re going away, so give your teeth an extra-special brush.’ He moves to shut the door. ‘Why so coy all of a sudden?’

‘Mother,’ he replies, slamming it in my face.

I return to the room and make the bed, venting my resentment of Patricia on the pillows. I should have stuck to the original plan of picking her up on the way to the airport rather than letting her twist my arm. ‘It will be one less thing for you to worry about in the morning. And you’ll be doing me a favour,’ she said, shamelessly playing the old lady card. ‘I have to put Toby in kennels the day before, and I don’t feel safe in that big house all on my own.’

At least she keeps herself active. I dread to think what will happen when she grows frail or incapable. Will I have to look after the mother as well as the son? By rights that task should fall to Lucy, whose annual visits home are as routine and joyless as dental
checkups
. I would feel more aggrieved were it not for her hints of some childhood murkiness involving Thomas, which she blames Patricia for ignoring. Having watched him operate at the office, I am loath to pry.

Richard emerges from the bathroom. ‘Your clothes are laid out on the bed,’ I say, prompting a snicker on which I prefer not to dwell. 
‘Go downstairs as soon as you’re dressed and your mother’ll make your breakfast.’

‘That’s your job.’

‘I have to get ready. We don’t have much time. The driver’ll be here in an hour.’

‘What driver?’

‘To take us to the airport, remember? We’re going on holiday.’

‘No, we’re not. We’re going to church.’

‘We’re going to Lourdes, on a pilgrimage.’

‘I know that – I’m not stupid,’ he says sharply. ‘To sing at the cave and hold candles and pray with the priests.’

‘Very good,’ I say, impressed by his memory if disturbed by its slant. ‘All that will make you hungry, so be sure to eat up.’

I shower and put on the Liberty print skirt that Patricia has bought me for the journey, a gift that I would have received with more grace had it not come with a reminder that ‘first impressions count’. I gaze rebelliously at a pair of trainers, which I slip into the top of my case before dragging it downstairs. Patricia hears the clumping and dashes out of the kitchen.

‘You don’t need to do that. I arranged with the taxi firm – the man will bring down all the luggage.’

‘It isn’t heavy.’

‘That’s not the point. He’s been paid.’

I follow her into the kitchen where Richard is eating a boiled egg in a yellow chick eggcup that Patricia must have unearthed from the back of a cupboard. Has she no qualms? It is bad enough that she should connive at his infantile antics without ferreting through my shelves.

‘Everything’s out on the table,’ Patricia says.

‘Thank you. Richard, stop playing with your food! Can’t you eat properly just for once?’

‘I think this visit to Lourdes is going to do you a lot of good,’ Patricia says.

‘If nothing else, it’ll be a break. It’s our first week away since … well, in years. People aren’t exactly showering us with invitations.’

‘I hope you won’t take this the wrong way – as you know, I’m the last one to criticise – but you’re a bit too inclined to feel sorry for
yourself. Seeing all the severely handicapped people, some no better than vegetables (not that you heard that from me!), will show you how well off you are.’

‘I can’t wait,’ I say, taking a bite of cold toast. For all her cod
psychology
, Patricia has failed to realise that the last thing I want is to see people worse off than myself. I am well aware that, in the roll call of victims, I rate fairly low. Hello, Mr Double Amputee, have you met Mrs Sprained Ankle? But the ankle still hurts. I don’t want it put in perspective; I want it cured.

‘Mother?’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘What’s an Irishman’s idea of foreplay?’

‘Finish your egg, Richard!’ I interject.

‘I don’t know, darling. You tell me,’ Patricia says abstractedly.

‘Brace yourself, Bridget!’

‘That’s not funny,’ I say.

‘You laughed. Two times!’

‘I was being polite,’ I reply, eager not to lose face in front of his mother.

‘You mustn’t repeat that on the pilgrimage, darling,’ she says, enjoying my discomfort. ‘There may be someone called Bridget. In fact I’m sure there will.’

I picture a coachload of Bridgets and shudder. I cannot believe that I agreed to join them. Since Thomas’s death, Patricia’s annual trip to Lourdes has been the highpoint of her year. Yet the louder she has sung its praises, the surer I have been that it is not for me. ‘It’s a tonic,’ she says. ‘The
malades
– I find it helps to think of them in French – are so grateful for everything; they give us back far more than we give them.’ It is clear that she has not abandoned her usual priorities! For years she has been urging me to go. ‘You owe it to Richard. What kind of message does it send to God if you can’t make the effort to take him to the Grotto?’ But I have resisted her
blandishments
, more afraid of the message that God would send to me by leaving him as he is. Then this spring, without further reflection, I said yes.

Why? Did she catch me at a moment of weakness? Had I said no so often that it no longer rang true? Am I hoping to revive my
schoolgirl devotion to St Bernadette by going in her Jubilee year? Or is there some secret part of me, hidden behind the vanished hopes and vanquished efforts – a part I am afraid to acknowledge even to myself – which believes that Richard can be cured?

Life would be so much easier if I were an apostate or an atheist, railing against a cruel or a nonexistent God but, try as I might, I have never been able to shed my faith. From as far back as I can
remember
, it has been the one constant in my life. Even in the darkest days of Richard’s haemorrhage and my mother’s dementia, when belief in divine will was more of a burden than a blessing, I could not shake the absolute conviction that God
is
, that it is my understanding, not His goodness, that is flawed.

‘There’s a reason why God has given you this challenge,’ Father Aidan told me, after visiting Richard in hospital. ‘He never gives any one of us more than He knows we can bear. It may take you a lifetime to figure out His purpose, but you must never doubt it.’ And I never have. I go to confession and mass, and say my prayers every day, even though ‘Thy will be done’ rings hollow from one who is forever pressing Him to see things her way.

‘Faith that moves mountains’ may be overstating it, but I have always believed in miracles: not just the easy, everyday ones of beauty and birth: the scent of a flowering rose or the smile of a newborn baby (not that that is always so easy); but the tricky,
transcendental
ones: the blind seeing; the lame walking … the
brain-damaged
recovering their wits. There have, however, been so few in recent years – even in Lourdes – that it is hard to see why God should spare one for Richard. On the other hand, it is not as if health were a finite resource, like the rainforest, that he could only enjoy at someone else’s expense. Doctors prolong lives every day. They are forever finding cures for previously chronic conditions. It is simply a matter of time before they discover a way to reverse the effects of a haemorrhage. So I am asking for Richard’s recovery to be brought forward a few years: more like an experimental treatment than a suspension of natural law.

I must take care not to expect too much, exposing myself to
disappointment
. Instead of looking for the lightning flash when Richard steps out of the baths, brain cells fully restored, I should look for the
gentle glimmer when I step out, fortified for the years – the decades – ahead with a
malade
who is not grateful for anything. That, too, would be a miracle in its way.

The doorbell rings and Patricia leaps up, unbuttoning her
housecoat
to reveal an immaculately pressed skirt and blouse. ‘That’ll be the driver. You let him in, Gillian. Send him upstairs for the other cases.’

‘Of course.’

Patricia goes to ‘the little girl’s room’, re-labelling it for Richard on her return. ‘I am not a little boy!’ he says, bridling at the inadvertent slur. I make a last-minute tour of the house, which Patricia deems to be unnecessary – despite having left her bedroom window open – before joining mother and son outside.

‘Is that everything, love?’ the driver asks Patricia, whom he
correctly
judges to be in charge.

‘Quite. Except for one thing. I’m sure you won’t mind me
mentioning
it.’ She flashes him a steely smile. ‘I am not your love – I’m your passenger. At least I will be if we ever set off.’

‘Yes, of course, lo … Missus,’ he replies, cracking his fingers. ‘No offence meant.’

‘And none taken.’ Patricia steps graciously into the front, leaving Richard and me to squeeze behind with the hand-baggage. No sooner has she settled than she twists round, just far enough to show the driver that he is not party to the conversation. ‘I’m sure you’ll like the Jubilates, Gillian,’ she says. ‘They’re a friendly bunch. No airs and graces. You might have found my other pilgrimages a bit intimidating. On one – I can laugh about it now – we had a
handmaiden
from Argentina. She owned half of … I forget the name of the capital.’

‘Buenos Aires,’ the driver volunteers.

‘She flew to Lourdes in her private jet,’ Patricia continues,
tightlipped
. ‘Then in the dining room, instead of gathering a pile of dirty plates like everyone else, she picked them up, one by one, and handed them to her maid.’ Despite her disapproving tone, I suspect that she secretly admires such fastidious piety. ‘You’d never get that with the Jubilates. Our only concern is the comfort and enjoyment of the
malades
. Though between you, me and the gatepost, I sometimes
think it does more harm than good. They come to Lourdes for a week where they’re made to feel special, then they go back home where the rest of the year they’re ignored.’

The driver snorts; I swallow a laugh; Patricia gives me a furious look and turns back to the front, sitting in silence for the rest of the journey. Mightily relieved, I attend to Richard, who is drawing
big-breasted
women in his breath on the window.

We arrive at the terminal just as a coach carrying our fellow pilgrims draws up, a synchronism that delights Patricia. ‘Be good enough to fetch us a porter,’ she tells the driver, with the assurance of a seasoned traveller on the Orient Express or, more accurately, an avid reader of Agatha Christie.

‘Don’t worry,’ I countermand quickly. ‘I’ll pick up a trolley. Richard, you wait here with your mother.’ I hurry into the vestibule, returning to find Patricia engulfed by a group of Jubilates. She
introduces
me to several and, while I fail to keep track of their names, the breadth of her smile is a reliable indicator of their place in the pecking order.

A bald man in horn-rimmed glasses directs us to the check-in desk. ‘You don’t need to bother about him,’ Patricia says, after
greeting
him like a long-lost brother. ‘Derek. He’s in charge of travel. Bit of a loner. Hello again!’ She waves at a tall poker-backed woman with severely cut pepper-and-salt hair and a large gold crucifix. ‘This is Marjorie, our deputy director. She keeps us all on our toes.’