Jubilate (4 page)

‘Gillian! Over here!’ I smile apologetically at the people in front, but the queuing system is so erratic that no one – not even the
Italians
– seems to blame me for jumping it. ‘You sit here,’ she says, directing me to a bench next to a trim, well turned-out woman who, if it weren’t for the wheelchair beside her, might have been lining up for the summer sales. ‘Most of our lot have already gone in. I’m just keeping an eye out for stragglers.’ That puts me firmly in my place but, as I glimpse my neighbour’s friendly smile, it no longer feels such a lonely place to be.

No sooner has she found me a seat than Louisa moves away. I
settle on the bench and examine the figure in the wheelchair. Both her arms and waist are strapped in position and she wears a woollen cardigan in spite of the heat. Her neck is stretched back on a
pillowed
ledge, making it hard to determine her age, although I detect the faint outline of a bust beneath the baggy clothes.

I watch as my neighbour stands and, with infinite solicitude, lifts the lifeless head from the pillow and holds a bottle of water to her lips. ‘Is this your daughter?’ I ask, trusting that I have not confused a wizened mother or a flat-chested friend.

‘Yes, my Anna,’ she says, in an indeterminate accent.

‘Was there … was she in an accident?’

‘Birth,’ she replies flatly, putting my twelve years of nursing Richard into perspective. However much he may have changed, I at least retain the memory of the man he was. She only has the elusive image of the girl her daughter might have been.

‘Is this your first time at the baths?’ I ask, taking the shortcut to intimacy that has defined my week in Lourdes.

‘No, we come every year. Every year since Anna is three. She is now sixteen years old.’ My hopes of the water’s miraculous
properties
begin to founder. ‘We come here from Groningen in the
Netherlands
. Perhaps you know of it?’

‘Of course,’ I say, eager to offer her what little support I can.

‘And you?’

‘From Surrey in England. Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, this is my first time. My husband had a brain haemorrhage twelve years ago. In many ways he is like a child.’

‘There is no hope?’

‘Not for him, no … Do you have any other family?’ I lower my voice in case Anna’s condition should turn out to be congenital.

‘Just Anna and me. She is the first child. The only child. I used to wish that I had other children before, but now I am glad that it is just us. With others there would have been comparing. There would have been too much time with Anna and not enough time with them. There would have been “please do not bring her out when my friends are nearby”. No, it is better like this.’

‘And your husband?’ I ask, trying not to let myself be distracted by the flies circling above Anna’s head.

‘He is no more. I mean he is no more my husband. He has a new wife and family in Rotterdam. Please do not think he is a bad man for leaving.’

‘No, I’m the last person to think that.’

She gives me a searching glance. ‘He tried to do his best but he couldn’t make a life with Anna. To him there is only one life. He is not like us.’ It is unclear whether she is alluding to our faith or our gender. ‘He wanted to put Anna in a home, a good home, a home that he would have to pay for … a home that he would find it hard to pay for, but then he wanted it to be hard. I said “no”. I wouldn’t permit him to shut her away because she was not perfect. My parents grew up in a world like this, a world where not perfect people were thrown out from the rest.’ She swats at the flies and I realise that, far from not noticing them, she is sensitive to every detail of her daughter’s state.

‘Do you have friends? Old friends who are there for you when it all gets too much?’

‘One or two, yes. But not so many any more. There are the mothers of the children at the centre where Anna goes three mornings each week. With three of these I play tennis. But with my old friends it is harder … for them as it is for me. They have their lives and I have Anna. How can they talk to me about the things they have wrong in their lives when I have Anna? How can they talk about the things they have right in their lives when I have Anna?’

‘Oh yes, I know that syndrome so well. They start by wanting to help and end up blaming you for their failure.’

‘It is not their fault. But it is better not to wish for too much.’

‘I’m amazed – full of admiration but also puzzled – by the way you can be so accepting of everything. Do you never think of packing a suitcase, running off and not looking back?’ I am so desperate for an answer that I no longer worry about giving offence.

‘Sometimes, yes.’ She seems to be struggling with her inner self. ‘But only at night.’ She stands and wipes her daughter’s face with a damp cloth. ‘And you must not feel sorry for me. I have so many happy things in my life. Small things that are no longer small. The sounds Anna makes when I rub her skin with lotion or when I scratch, you know, like a mouse behind her knees. Jörgen, my
husband, he said it was just the gas in her stomach: the air in her throat. But I know it is so much more.’

‘You’re very brave.’

‘If you knew me, you would not say that. I am frightened of so many things. But, most of all, I am frightened of my Anna dying. I used to be frightened that I would die before and leave her on her own. But not any more. I know it is selfish. I know I am a bad woman –’ She brushes aside my protests as casually as she did the flies. ‘But she is my life; without her, I could not go on.’

‘Madame!’ The woman starts as an official in a navy sash summons her into the building with a flick of the wrist that cuts through the confusion. She releases the brake on her daughter’s chair, ready to wheel it inside. Then, confident that we will never meet again, she leans towards me and whispers: ‘Most of all I am frightened of the pills, the pills I give Anna to help her sleep … that, when she is sleeping for ever, I will take them for me. It is then that I will know that my life is no longer worth living. It is then that I will turn my heart against God.’

She makes her way inside and I resist the urge to ask for an address or a number or even a name that might compromise the essential
anonymity
of our association. I shuffle up the bench, soaking up its
residual
warmth, while moving one step closer to my goal. I watch while entrants are selected seemingly at random until, at last, the all-
powerful
finger beckons me and I walk into a long low room, dominated by a row of green-and-white curtained cubicles, resembling a municipal swimming pool. I take a seat to the right of the door between an albino girl, surrounded by shopping bags, noiselessly saying her rosary, and a gnarled nonagenarian with filmy eyes and a toothless smile. Every few minutes a glowing woman emerges from one of the cubicles and a replacement is ushered in. I strive to empty my mind of worldly
concerns
but find it filling with more speculation about the men’s cubicles than at any time since school. Is Vincent in there filming, his innocent camerawork later to be subverted by a lethal voiceover? Is Richard behaving? I pray that he will be neither prurient nor coy, dipping one toe into the icy water and refusing to venture further, when a woman in a damp T-shirt printed with a portrait of the Virgin leaves the extreme right cubicle and the attendant summons me.

I enter the cramped space to find five women in varying states of undress. In semaphored French, the attendant tells me to strip to my bra and pants and then slips out through a second curtain. I smile encouragingly at my Slavonic-featured neighbour, who sits hugging her chest in a vain attempt to hide the rolls of flab that spill over her knees, but she seems so wretched that I turn away, taking off my jumper and skirt and folding them with studied precision in a bid to delay the moment when I must turn back and face the room.

I am distracted by a delicate young woman who returns from the inner sanctum. She makes straight for the pile of clothes to my left and I watch in awe as the beads of moisture on her neck and
shoulders
evaporate like water on a hotplate. The force of Vincent’s jibes dries up with them. It is clear that we have no need of towels.

‘L’eau était froide
?’ With no clues as to her nationality, I choose the courteous option. She fails to respond, and it is not until she puts on her clothes that I realise her plain grey dress is a habit and her mind will be full of God. Twenty years after leaving school, I still expect nuns to be old.

Each of the women takes her turn to go through to the bath until finally it is mine. I shiver so violently at the prospect of the glacial water that they must think I have come to be cured of a tremor. The attendant leads me into a small granite-lined room with a tub like an outsize hip bath at the centre. The air is damp with a metallic tang, and a layer of condensation lines the walls. I am welcomed by two more attendants wearing light plastic aprons.

‘English?’ one of them asks.

‘Yes,’ I say, wondering if it is the Marks and Spencer pants that give me away.

She nods at her companion, who tells me in a soft Scottish burr to remove my underwear and place it on the shelf. She then holds up a small piece of wet linen, wrapping it around me like a sarong and tying it loosely at the back. Taking my arm, she guides me into the bath and down its three inner steps. The water is so biting that it feels like treading in a tub of broken glass. With her companion holding my other arm, she instructs me to sit. I lower my bottom gingerly into the arctic depths.

‘No, no, bend your knees as if you’re on a stool!’ I do so, pressing
heavily on their arms and leaving my bottom suspended. ‘Now you must make your intentions.’

This is the moment of truth: the moment when I am planning to ask St Bernadette to intercede for Richard, to give me back the man I loved, the man I married, or, at the very least, the man. She herself said that the water of Lourdes had no power without faith. Well, mine is a faith that has never faltered even at the bleakest prognosis. This is the chance for it to reap its reward. Or is the clear-cut faith of my catechism irredeemably muddied by desire?

I look into my heart and wish that I saw nothing. I pray for
Richard’s
recovery as intently as ever, but my motives are no longer pure. Should a miracle occur and he regain the forty years he has lost during the last twelve, my Te Deums would ring across the Pyrenees, but I fear that, even then, St Bernadette would find them wanting. Knowing that he no longer depended on me, would I at last be able to leave him with a clear conscience, or would I feel obliged to stay out of gratitude for my deliverance?

The water is still but I feel it swirling around me. The Scots
attendant
recites the Hail Mary and, fixing my gaze on the statuette of the Virgin directly in front of me, I strive to drain my mind of
everything
but her compassion. Although she lived more than eighteen hundred years before Bernadette, her experience and
understanding
feel so much closer. I cannot believe that, having followed her son to Calvary, she would endorse Patricia’s ‘We all have our crosses to bear,’ or that, given Christ’s gospel of love, she would condemn my love for Vincent.

Or is that sheer self-deception, more contemptible than ever in this sacred place?

A chill spreads through me from somewhere beyond the water. I realise that I am agonizing over questions that have already been answered. How typical that I should be so fixated on the mystery of the baths that I have ignored the message of the courtyard! How typical that God should speak to me not through the Virgin or St Bernadette but through a nameless Dutch woman in a queue! Her selfless devotion has shown me the true meaning of love. I feel faint and am afraid of sinking, but the attendants have me in their grip. It is clear that I can never leave Richard. It would be hard enough to
justify in Bath, let alone in Lourdes. I shall speak to Vincent at once and without apology. If he asks for reasons, I shall cite my
original
ones for coming. The rest has just been a week-long moment of madness. And I shall refuse to let him portray it as a sacrifice. He must have no grounds for appeal. Nothing has been sacrificed except for my own self-esteem.

I suddenly feel strong and, what’s more, I have learnt a lesson which I could never accept from the exemplars at school: true strength lies in self-denial.

The attendants recite the Lord’s Prayer, a sign that my allotted time is up. They raise me to face the statuette of the Virgin and I feel a dizzying sense of peace as I kiss her feet. After helping me out of the bath, the Scot unties my wrap and gives me the same scrap of privacy as before while I put on my bra and pants. Decent again – at least in the eyes of the world – I say an inadequate ‘
Merci
’ and return to the cubicle where I quickly slip into the rest of my clothes.

I hurry out into the open. The sun’s glare makes me squint and I struggle to read my watch, but, even in the blur, I am sure that I must be due at the Grotto Mass. For the first time since the International Mass on Tuesday, I feel that I can participate with a pure heart.

‘Gillian!’ I hear a voice which, after a moment, I identify as Patricia’s.

‘I wasn’t expecting to see you here,’ I say. ‘Aren’t we meeting at the Grotto?’

‘Yes, but I need to speak to you. Before you make any decisions you may regret.’

‘They’re made. But don’t worry. I shan’t be leaving Richard. Not now, not ever.’

‘Oh Gillian!’

‘We came looking for a miracle and I’ve found one. I’m cured of my delusion; I’m ready to resume my life.’

‘W
hen I was fourteen, my mother asked me if I’d ever thought of becoming a priest. “No,” I replied, “isn’t it bad enough being a Catholic?”’

‘I bet that had them rolling in the aisles at Television Centre,’ Jewel says.

‘I see you’re setting out with your usual open mind,’ Sophie says.

‘You’ve missed your calling, chief,’ Jamie says.

‘That’s what my mother thought.’

‘Yeah, you’re wasted in broadcasting. You should be wowing them on the club circuit.’

I sit with my crew of three at a lozenge-shaped table in a café at Stansted airport, waiting for the pilgrims to arrive. The stools, which resemble pawns on a giant chess set, have been fixed at such a
distance
from the table that it is impossible to relax. I have been trying out the opening line of my voice-over on an audience who, I know, will not spare me. We are a close-knit team, sufficiently respectful of each other’s talents to be able to mock them, veterans of a day in an asylum centre, a week at
Hello
magazine and a trip with two soap stars to a WaterAid project in Zambia. To my left is Jamie, the cameraman, whose sharp eye belies his burly physique and bluff tone. He has a bristly beard, a ring in each ear and a propensity to sweat that bothers him far more than it does the rest of us. To my right is Jewel, the sound recordist, who with characteristic rigour, has had her childhood nickname ratified by deed poll. Unlike Jamie’s beer-and-indolence belly, Jewel’s bulk is congenital and, what with her cropped hair,
regulation
check shirt and jeans, not to mention the Celtic tattoo which first came to my notice in Africa, it would be easy to assume that her desire to be one of the boys went beyond the professional, had not her outrageously raunchy stories in various hotel bars proved otherwise. Completing the group is our newest recruit, Sophie, the assistant producer, a tirelessly efficient media studies graduate who, unlike the rest of us, makes no secret of her longing to work on features. Petite, stylish and as studiedly accessorised as a fashion editor, she currently sports a fitted black satin waistcoat, grey pencil skirt and carmine
lipstick
, which exactly matches her handbag and shoes.

Sophie’s outfit has caught the eyes of a gang of Geordies at the neighbouring table. Having worked out that our quartet is not romantically entwined, one of them approaches. His courage,
bolstered
by the whoops of his friends, wilts in the face of our expectant smiles. ‘Can I get you a coffee, love?’ he asks, ‘or how about
something
harder?’

‘Ta very much,’ she says with a Mockney twang. ‘I’d love some. I’m sure my friends would too.’

‘That’s great then,’ he says, taken aback.

‘One mocha, two lattes and an espresso. Ta.’

‘Great. Well then, I’ll go and get them, shall I?’

‘That’s so kind,’ she says dismissively. ‘Now where we were? Oh yes, your opening gambit, Vincent.’ We watch the chastened suitor slink away and join the queue at the counter.

‘The poor lad,’ Jewel says. ‘We’ll have to pay for them.’

‘Don’t you dare! Make him think twice before trying it on next time,’ Sophie says with chilling indifference. Yet, for all my
reservations
about her manner, I have none about her expertise. She cuts through red tape as effortlessly as her mother cuts the ribbon at a village fete. Ambition and altruism may be uneasy bedfellows but, when we are on a shoot, she allows nothing to distract her from the matter at hand. Like Jamie and Jewel, she has a shrewd understanding of the kind of film I make: passionate, polemical and quirky, where the director is a presence in front of the cameras as well as behind. Nonetheless, I take it as a compliment that, even after hobnobbing with the
Eastenders
in Zambia, I’ve only been recognised – or at any rate accosted – once, by a boy who asked if I were a weatherman.

I wonder whether our professional shorthand will be as effective this time. If so, they will need to know my mind better than I do myself. I am still perturbed by the strength of my reaction when Miles Redfern, head of Lion’s Share, announced that the Beeb was looking for someone to make a film to mark the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s apparitions at Lourdes.

‘The so-called Virgin’s so-called apparitions,’ I insisted.

‘Which is why you’re the perfect man for the job.’

‘It’s such an easy target. However cynical Scott’s and Sammy Jo’s motives may have been for travelling to Zambia, the trip at least
ensured that the villagers got their latrines and the great British public was alerted to the problem. What can we possibly find to say that’s positive about Lourdes?’

‘Challenge yourself along with the viewer. How often have I heard you hold forth on the evils of the Roman Catholic church? The opium of the masses; the absurdity of the mass. Anti-abortion; anti-birth control; pro-life but life-hating. Now’s your chance to put it to the test. Spend a week in a place where their faith and your scepticism are at their most pronounced. It’s a brilliant opportunity all round. Prime time, not God slot.’

I delayed signing until my long-awaited drama debut fell through, when the BBC hired Douglas Simcox to helm its serialisation of
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
. All the class resentment that afforded me an intimate insight into the piece bubbled up when they chose Simcox’s public school poise and confidence over my
commitment
and experience. Alarmed by the lack of alternative offers, I accepted Miles’s. He arranged for us to join the Jubilate, an
independent
pilgrimage about two hundred strong, which, drawing its members from around the country, is less parochial than most. Now that we are finally on our way, I remain at a loss as to the cause of my unease. I have never made any secret of my contempt for the Church, but I am equally exercised by the incarceration of asylum seekers and the cult of celebrity, and I had welcomed the chance to shed light on them.

Then, when the luckless Geordie returns with the coffee and I clasp the steaming cup by the flimsy handle that protrudes like the cardboard wings on a Nativity play angel – an angel played by a
perfectly
cast five year-old girl – I realise why my feelings are so intense.

‘Shall we play I-spy?’ Jamie asks, as the conversational lull slumps into boredom. He takes no offence when no one replies.

‘It’s not fuel prices or carbon footprints that will ultimately do for mass travel,’ I say, ‘it’s airports.’

‘The Japanese have the best idea,’ Jewel says. ‘They don’t bother to actually go anywhere anymore – except to the photographer’s, where they have themselves filmed against massive blow-ups of the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty or whatever. Then they put out the photos for all their friends to admire.’

‘But don’t their friends piss themselves?’ Jamie asks.

‘Not at all. They’re doing the same thing. It’s the accepted
practice
: the new way to travel in the virtual world.’

The word
virtual
has its usual effect on me and I switch off until I hear Sophie say that it’s half past eight and the coaches should be arriving soon.

‘All you want are some establishing shots of the guys gathering at the check-in, is that right, chief?’ Jamie asks.

‘Yes, as colourful as you can. I should be able to pick out our lynchpins. If not, I’ll ask one of the organisers for help.’

Louisa, the Pilgrimage Director, with whom I’ve been in such frequent contact over the past three months that I’ve bumped her up to Friends and Family on my phone, has given me a list of the pilgrims, along with brief descriptions which at times stretch to a paragraph and at others stop at a word (‘teacher’, ‘goitre’, ‘Scottish’). Prompted by dim memories of O level English, I envy Chaucer the more compact and flamboyant cast in his Prologue and yearn for someone even half as salty as the Wife of Bath. With nothing but instinct to guide me, I have chosen a representative selection of hospital pilgrims: Brenda, a sixty-year-old with MS; Martin, a
teenager
with cerebral palsy; Frank, a former chartered surveyor with chronic Lyme Disease; Fiona, a six-year-old with Down’s Syndrome; and Lester, a middle manager with terminal cancer, a fact which, grossly overestimating our audience, he declared himself willing to share with ten million strangers but none of his fellow pilgrims. I spoke at length on the phone to Lester and his wife, Tess, as well as to Martin’s and Fiona’s mothers, the latter assuring me that her daughter is ‘quite personable’, as though I were the scout for a
disabled
talent show. Brenda’s snarled and Frank’s slurred speech made sustained conversation impossible but, after a few strained words, I secured the cooperation of both Brenda’s girlfriend and the warden of Frank’s sheltered housing.

My able-bodied selection is to a large extent dictated by the sick: Lester’s wife, Tess; Fiona’s parents, Steve and Mary; Martin’s mother, Claire; Brenda’s girlfriend, Linda (the cynic in me wondered whether Louisa’s ease with their relationship had been assumed for my benefit). For human drama I have chosen Lucja and Tadeusz,
a young Polish couple with a brain-damaged baby: she a staunch Catholic with an absolute belief in miracles; he a sceptic who only agreed to the trip when his wife’s church presented him with a ticket. From the volunteers I have chosen Maggie, a retired midwife, with sixteen pilgrimages under her belt (and three long-service medals above it), and Kevin, who is currently suspended from school and will only be allowed back on proof of good behaviour. Finally, I have chosen two priests: Father Humphrey, the spiritual director, who wants it known that, despite the committee’s approval, he has strong reservations about the filming; and Father Dave, a former estate agent who, in his own phrase, ‘once sold time-shares and now sells eternity’.

Having run through all the names in my head, I am seized by a momentary panic, convinced that I have forgotten some vital piece of documentation which will prevent my boarding the plane.

‘Hey chief,’ Jamie asks, ‘are you making the sign of the cross or playing with yourself?’ Looking down, I realise that I have
involuntarily
checked for my passport, ticket and wallet in my jacket pockets and coins in my trousers.

‘Who should be on the comedy circuit now?’ I reply, flustered in spite of myself. Travelling always brings out the child in me: more precisely, the child who was left behind on a school camping trip because his mother had sent him on the coach with a duffel bag, refusing to ‘waste good money’ on a rucksack. I choke down the bile that has risen in my throat. It can be no accident that a visit to Lourdes should put me in mind of my mother.

Jamie goes to Smith’s in search of magazines and Sophie and Jewel to the Body Shop to ‘check out the three for twos’, leaving me to guard the bags. I struggle to memorise the schedule, but thoughts of my mother distract me. The diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes was her first ever trip abroad and, despite my offer to pay for the flight, she insisted on taking the coach as if to keep faith with the
charabancs
of her past. Every August we would spend a week in either Blackpool or Skegness. When my father suggested that one year he might quite fancy Scarborough, she was outraged, less by the break with tradition than by the presumption. ‘Dr Supple goes to
Scarborough
,’ she said reverentially, ‘with his widowed sister.’ In retrospect I
suspect that, along with the desire to maintain strict class divisions, which also ensured that even when seated two rows in front she would defer to the doctor at mass, she was anxious to avoid a
reciprocal
glimpse of his unclad flesh.

My memories of icy seas and heavy downpours, of humiliating changes behind skimpy towels and luncheon-meat suppers served by supercilious landladies have no doubt been embellished, but I realised even at an early age that my mother regarded such ordeals as the price of pleasure. The only holidays she embraced were authentic holy days: the Marian feast days when, along with our fellow
parishioners
, we would process through the streets of Barnsley behind a statue of the Virgin, while I prayed that none of my school friends caught sight of me in my surplice.

For once, however, I have reason to be glad of my background. ‘I presume you’re a Catholic, Mr O’Shaughnessy,’ Louisa asked, on hearing my name.

‘In one respect,’ I replied lightly, ‘the guilt.’

Jamie returns, munching an Aero and brandishing copies of
Maxim
and
Club
.

‘For God’s sake, Jamie! This isn’t sex tourism in Eastern Europe; it’s a pilgrimage to Lourdes.’

Looking hurt, he rolls up the magazines into the pocket of his shoulder bag. We sit in awkward silence until Sophie and Jewel appear, the latter carrying a packet, which she pulls open. ‘Smell this, Jamie. It’s bliss.’ He squeezes some oil on to his palm and presses it to his nose. ‘Hey, I said
smell
,’ she says, grabbing back the bottle, ‘not scratch and sniff.’

She passes the bottle to me, but we are interrupted by the ring of Sophie’s mobile. I listen eagerly as she takes a call from Louisa announcing that the London coach has arrived.

‘Let battle commence,’ I say, leading my troops to the check-in. Jamie sets up his camera, arousing the suspicion of two security guards, whom Sophie deftly placates with the requisite permit. My heart sinks as the first pilgrims appear, immediately identifiable by the lime-green luggage tags which, unlike us, they have
obediently
tied to hand-baggage and even wheelchair handles. While not expecting the beautiful people of the
Hello
film or the exotic
landscape of Zambia, I was hoping for something a little less drab. I wonder whether there is a tenet in canon law that restricts the wearing of primary colours to priests.

Louisa stands to one side, with a quartermaster’s clipboard. Giving me a hearty wave, which draws attention to the filming, she heads our way. She greets Sophie and myself and I introduce her to Jewel and Jamie.