Authors: Michael Arditti
‘Sure.’ I walk up to Patricia and remove the microphone. ‘The interview’s over but I’d still be glad of an answer.’ I sweep aside Sophie, who is trying to intervene. ‘You have a daughter-in-law. What right do you have to impose your beliefs on her?’
‘I could ask you the same thing. You want to make her forget – no, to throw out – all her ties and responsibilities.’
‘No, I’m trying to remind her of her primary responsibility – her responsibility to herself.’
‘She came here on pilgrimage, not for a dirty weekend.’
‘Vincent, it’s time for us to go to the baths.’ Sophie says.
‘Just a moment! Please, a moment!’ Disturbed by the urgency in my own voice, I turn back to Patricia. ‘We only have one life. Even if you believe it extends into eternity, it’s still only the one. Doesn’t she have the right to love?’
‘She has a husband whom she vowed to love and honour.’
‘Wasn’t that vow mutual? Didn’t he break it over and over again with his casual affairs?’
‘Lies! Is that what she told you? Well, did she also tell you that she was the one who caused his haemorrhage?’
‘What?’
‘Yes, that’s knocked the stuffing out of you! She threatened to leave him. The stress it caused went straight to his brain.’
‘You can’t really believe that?’
‘Who are you to tell me what I believe?’
‘And you’ve said so to Gillian?’
‘Of course not. What do you think I am? But she knows my mind.’
‘The guilt must be unbearable.’
‘No guilt is unbearable if it’s absolved by the Church. But perhaps you realise now that, whatever promises you may have made, you won’t be seeing her again once we leave the plane. She’s come back to her senses and to her husband and to God.’
‘So you really think that Richard was enjoying a relaxing round of golf when the threat of Gillian’s departure hit home?’
‘Yes, of course. What are you saying?’
‘I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m going down to the baths,’ Sophie says. ‘It’s almost nine thirty and the women’s queue will be half a mile long.’
‘Yes, you and Jewel go. Have your baths. Jamie, if you keep a place for me, I’ll be along any minute.’
‘Are you sure, chief? I can wait here.’
‘No, run on down. Then they’ll know we’re on our way.’
‘What about you?’ Sophie asks Patricia. ‘Would you like me to stay?’
Whether because she fears further public revelations or is
convinced
that she can refute my charges, she shakes her head. With some hesitancy, Sophie, Jamie and Jewel move away.
‘Do you want to sit down?’ I ask Patricia. ‘There’s an empty bench.’
‘What? You mean like two old friends out for a stroll? No, thank you. You overestimate your power to wound, Mr O’Shaughnessy. Just say what you wish to say and have done with it.’
‘I want you to understand Gillian’s position. Richard didn’t
collapse on the golf course but in bed with one of his secretaries. She was the one who took him to hospital. It was her mother who rang Gillian.’
‘Oh really! Were you there?’
‘She’s tried to keep it from you all these years. She thought you’d been through enough.’
‘Whereas you evidently don’t?’
‘I think you should know the truth. The haemorrhage didn’t put an end to his affairs, although
affairs
is too kind a word for visits to local prostitutes.’
‘What prostitutes? He’s like a little boy. He could never …’ She abruptly changes tack. ‘He would never find a way.’
‘Some of his old friends arranged it. I don’t know if they thought they were doing him a good turn or amusing themselves at his expense.’
‘This is vile! It’s a slur on someone who can’t answer back. Is this how she tries to gain sympathy? Where’s the proof?’
‘At the doctor’s surgery,’ I say deliberately.
‘What?’
‘On one of the visits he contracted herpes, which he passed on to her.’ Fearing that Patricia is about to faint, I move to take her arm, but she steadies herself and thrusts me away. Meanwhile we are attracting unwelcome attention from a pair of gardeners.
‘But isn’t that like AIDS?’
‘Don’t worry, it’s not life-threatening. I had a PA –’ She looks blank. ‘An assistant. The doctor assured her she was as safe as the Queen Mother except when she was having an attack.’
‘What sort of attack? How will I know?’
‘You won’t. Gillian thought she was having one this week; it turned out just to be thrush. But it’s more than her blood that’s infected – it’s her self-respect. If she’d moved in the circles I have, she’d know it’s no big deal. But she’s been left on her own with Richard.’
‘She had me.’
‘Really?’ I try not to sound incredulous.
‘I’m not a monster, Mr O’Shaughnessy, whatever you may think.’
‘What I think is immaterial. It’s what Gillian thinks – and feels – that counts. And that’s
ashamed
. It may not be logical – it’s certainly
not right, but that’s how it is. Ashamed in front of you and your Church and all that bloody purity.’
‘She should have told me. You can’t blame me for something I didn’t know.’
‘And not just ashamed but inadequate. She saw everything you’d had to put up with in your marriage.’
‘She’d no right to say that. It’s nobody’s business but mine!’
‘Precisely. The more she saw you hanging on, making the best of things, the harder it was for her to complain about Richard.’
‘But it’s not the same. My marriage may not have been perfect, but my husband respected me. Whatever mischief he may have got up to – not that I’m saying he did, you understand – he kept it to himself. He would never bring dirt into the hall, let alone the bedroom.’ She begins to weep. ‘He always took his boots off at the back door.’
‘That’s why I’m begging you not to stand in Gillian’s way.’
‘She’s thirty-nine years old,’ she says tonelessly. ‘She doesn’t need permission from me.’
‘There are other ways to hold someone back besides locking them in their room. She needs your blessing.’
‘I can’t do that!’
‘Don’t begrudge her this chance of happiness!’
‘And Richard?’
‘She’ll never leave him. I might want … but she’ll never leave him. Anyway, there are plenty of alternatives. We’ve not begun to explore them of course, not yet. But look how well he gets on with Nigel. Maybe in the right sort of home?’
‘I won’t let you shut him away with a lot of hopeless cases.’
‘Of course not. Gillian … I … no one would dream of it. But there are homes of all sorts, for all ages. Or else he’ll live with Gillian – with us – and have a carer when necessary. What I’m trying to say is that there is a solution. Life doesn’t have to be
either … or
.’
‘Or right and wrong, I suppose?’
‘Oh I believe in right and wrong, just so long as they’re not writ in stone.’
‘I shan’t ever come to Lourdes again.’
‘Of course you will. You must. The Jubilate wouldn’t be the same without you.’
‘I have to go inside. I have to think.’ She moves away and turns back. ‘I shouldn’t thank you for telling me this, but I do.’
She nods and walks slowly towards the Acceuil. I make my way across the bridge, wondering whether my revelations will have any effect. If ever I supposed that my mother was unique in her
self-serving
servility, Lourdes has disabused me. It beggars belief that, at the start of the twenty-first century, millions of people still cling to the notion that our birthright is sin and suffering. What use is proclaiming that God is dead, when His reach extends so far beyond the grave?
‘On your way to the baths?’ I look up to see Louisa, who is heading back to the Acceuil.
‘That’s right. Have you just been?’
‘Only on escort duty. Making sure there are no snarl-ups in the women’s queue. Don’t worry, the men’s is always much shorter.’
‘I suppose it takes us less time to undress.’
‘No, there are fewer of you.’
‘Yes, of course.’ I feel my knuckles smart.
‘We may not have the chance to talk later. As soon as we finish at the Grotto, we’re off to the airport. So tell me, have you found the pilgrimage useful? Did you get all you hoped?’
‘Far, far more,’ I say, with unexpected intensity.
‘Yes, I imagine you did.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t look so shocked. Even an old stick like me can put two and two together. A certain person stays out all night, claiming that she was with her mother-in-law.’
‘I’m sorry. I hope you don’t think I’ve betrayed your trust.’
‘Not mine. Whether you’ve betrayed anyone else’s, I leave to you and your conscience. Just take care, that’s all I ask.’
‘I thought you’d be horrified.’
‘Let me tell you a story: no, not a story, mine.’ She glances in the direction of the men’s baths. ‘Yes, it’s quiet – you have the time. Life in the forces can be lonely. Comradeship only goes so far. I used to say I was married to the job (I may even have believed it), but a job can disappoint you as much as a man. Then I met Clive.’ I try not to show my surprise. ‘He was an academic. A philologist. You wouldn’t
think we had anything in common – me used to barking out orders, him to studying words – but we did. More than I’d have ever thought possible. We fell in love – we were going to be married. No one in the squadron could credit it. They all made the same assumption as you. It’s no use denying it – it’s written all over your face … But he was killed in a train crash coming to visit me in High Wycombe (they say it’s the safest way to travel). And I soldiered on. I’m sorry – I didn’t mean that.’ She laughs nervously. ‘There again, perhaps I did. At fifty-five, I retired. Back to Chalfont St Giles and my mother. She moved there when my father died. It was a dreadful mistake.’
‘Her moving there or your moving in?’
‘Both.’ We are distracted by a chant that echoes from the Grotto. ‘It was as though she’d just been waiting for me in order to give up. Within a few months of my arrival she grew seriously confused, and within a year she’d lost all her marbles. Believe me, nothing in life prepares you for wiping your own mother’s bum. I began to drink. I’d never been a stranger to the mess bar but this was something new. Whisky was my tipple, and not just a wee dram. Ten years ago you wouldn’t have liked me. Perhaps I should say you’d have liked me even less than you do now.’ She waves aside my protests. ‘Then one day – a day that on the face of it was no different from any other – I took myself in hand. My mother was dead and I was heading rapidly the same way. I went to AA. I gave myself up to a higher power. In my case that was God. And from that day to this, not a single drop of alcohol has passed my lips. That’s the reason I began coming here: not to pray for a miracle but to give thanks for one – the miracle that I’m still alive. A minor miracle, I grant, but one for which I’m profoundly grateful.’
‘I think we all are.’
‘That’s kind of you. Now I’ve kept you long enough. I have to check on the packing and you have to get to the baths.’
Astounded as ever by the sheer unpredictability of people, I watch as she crosses the bridge. Then, conscious of the time, I stride past the Grotto to the baths, where I find Jamie waiting in a queue which, in its organised chaos, resembles Barnsley Bus Station circa 1970. There is a strict sorting system: hospital pilgrims and their carers in one line; children and their escorts in a second; healthy pilgrims
in a third. Each moves at a different pace, although in no
discernible
order. Priority is given to stretcher cases, priests … and
filmmakers
, as we discover when, five minutes after showing our permit to an attendant who objects to Jamie’s camera, he ushers us inside. A second attendant directs us to one of the small wooden benches in front of a row of blue-and-white curtained cubicles. To my surprise, I find myself next to Lester.
‘Jammy bugger!’ he says. ‘I suppose you waltzed straight in?’
‘Fraid so.’
‘Some of us have been sitting here the best part of an hour.’
‘I wasn’t expecting you at all.’
‘When in Rome.’ He shows no inclination to talk so I look round the shabby vestibule, studying the posters on how to pray. I am about to ask Jamie to pan over them, when an attendant steers Lester and myself into the far left-hand cubicle. He holds Jamie back until I once again produce the permit, which he examines diligently before allowing him in. We join three fellow pilgrims, two stripped to their underpants: a stringy old man with a savage scar across his chest and feet like rock crystal; and a close-cropped young man who might be waiting for an army medical. I have never taken much interest in other men’s bodies, either as a source of comparison or fulfilment, but there is enough of the prurient schoolboy in me to gawp at the slack-waisted friar who pulls off his habit, revealing a pair of jazzy boxer shorts and a strikingly protuberant navel. He catches my eye and I quickly stare at the floor. Meanwhile Jamie stands to one side, wreathed in embarrassment, as though he were the one with his pants down.
A hospitaller escorts a young African out of the inner sanctum and summons the friar. I notice that Lester is having trouble
unlacing
his trainers. ‘Would you like any help?’
‘Like? No. Need? Yes. Sorry, sorry, thank you. I can’t seem to manage this morning. My arms feel as though they’ve lost a foot overnight. Hey, that’s funny. My arms have lost a foot! No, it’s not.’ I squat and pull off his shoes and socks, leaving his toes looking strangely raw.
The friar returns with a beatific smile that makes me doubly ashamed of my prurience, and the hospitaller leads in the old man.
I gaze at the African who has put on a T-shirt and jeans, the damp patches on his shoulders and back belying all the claims for the miraculous properties of water that dries instantaneously on the skin.
The hospitaller leads out the old man and calls me into a
marble-walled
chamber with a vaulted grey ceiling and a dangerously
slippery
floor. An enormous bath stands at the centre, and an image from the
Satyricon
flits irreverently into my mind. Three more
hospitallers
stand at the ready. Their colleagues must have told them of the filming since they express no surprise at seeing Jamie, camera in hand.