My Chocolate Redeemer (8 page)

‘Now you are crying, Grandmama.'

‘But my tears cannot be treated. Promise me you will see our good Father Duval. Tell him what is in your heart.'

‘I'll go and make us some chocolate. And then you must sleep. We have Monsieur Cherubini tomorrow night.'

‘And the great Party rally on Saturday morning. What a time that will be! Monsieur Cherubini is a giant among pygmies.' My grandmother lay back and her tears began to subside. She looked younger, even the mention of Cherubini's name had this effect on her. When I returned with the chocolate, we sat sipping it in silence. She cupped her hands around the mug and looked into the sweet, steaming depths of her chocolate and she smiled sadly.

‘On the morning I lost him, in the rain, I saw on the wall above our heads a great advertisement painted, for chocolate.
Cémoi
, I recall, in letters big as giants. It would have been the last thing he set eyes on.'

This was the first time she had told me about my grandfather's death and I was utterly astonished. I knew that the Maquis had been active in the mountains round La Frisette and the little villages by the lake and I imagined my poor grandfather's horrible, heroic death. I could see she was sleepy, so I'm sorry to say I took advantage of her.

‘Who killed him, Grandmama? The Germans?'

‘Germans!' Her eyes widened. ‘Certainly not! He was killed by the French!'

Chapter 4

So I go to consult Father Duval. The crying sickness has made me desperate. After all, that's what he's there for – to counsel troubled souls. ‘Your priest is here to help, forgive, save,' says Grand-mère. Which is fine if you merely listen to those words, but if you write them in your mind and look at them as you would words on a blackboard – ‘Help, forgive, save' – and try and make them apply to Father Duval, then it's very hard not to giggle. You're
supposed
to believe what the words are supposed to mean. But you're inclined to say, ‘Sod this! I'd rather be watching telly,' as the English sometimes put it. To use certain special words some people ought to have to apply for a damn licence! But having been allowed his badge without a test, Father Duval became responsible for counselling the fearful: and I am one of those. Thus – I fear, and he counsels. Both of us conform to our definitions. Definitions are stormtroopers of science: they used once to work for theology, when she was queen, but they switched sides after the coup. They arrive unexpectedly and presume obedience; they hint at consequences, if we do not do what they tell us. It's odd, considering the damage science has done to the old faithful, to realise that scientists are among the hottest of the new believers. Look at Uncle Claude. He'll believe almost anything – until he's proved wrong. And then he'll believe something else. A search for certainty passed off as the spirit of fearless enquiry. It's bloody pathetic. Certainties have, of course, nothing whatever to do with Father Duval and me. But sometimes all we have left is to pretend that they do.

And, oh, what a wanker! – as we liked to say at the North London Academy for Girls. He would have made a good manager in a medium-sized cement factory; he could have run his own florist shop; I dare say he would have made a fine local councillor. He might, in other circumstances, in more extreme societies, have been one of those deputed to dispose of the victims of some death-dealing regime. Just to look at him gives me the confidence to say that the methods he would employ would be scientific, modern and, wherever possible, humane. No doubt he would have disapproved of wanton cruelty and brutality. Such excesses would have seemed old-fashioned and therefore inefficient. Whatever he touches becomes a manageable, small-scale, smiling world. The thing Father Duval likes to do is ‘to spread a little cheer'. He would have felt the same whether he'd run a bar, or a mortuary. Make the best of things and get on with it! he preaches from the pulpit and you feel – yes – he'd do just that – whether dressing a corpse or pouring a drink. He implies, though he never says as much, that this is the real meaning of the Gospel and it's surely just a matter of time before his congregation, his flock in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, grasp this truth. In the meantime all he can do is to root out superstitious phobias to which the mentally delinquent are prone: hopes of love, dreams of death and eternal punishment; medieval legalisms about the profit and loss of grace – in short all the bad old psychological terrors of the past two millennia. And he does his work of destruction, not of course with any unpleasantness, but like a bank manager cordially turning down sadly unrealistic would-be borrowers. With a shake of the head and a firm smile he shows them the door. How many frail and pitiable human phantoms, what dreads and nauseas are disposed of by his cheerful modesty? What a deathdealer!

The Church of the Immaculate Conception is built of grey stone beneath a red tiled roof and dominates the village, which falls away below it in twisting streets crowded with a bewilderingly rich assortment of houses, hotels, parks and gardens down to the broad lake shore. La Frisette lies like a delicate tendril of vine fallen at the feet of the mountains.

The church was used as a munitions dump during the Revolution and had been shut throughout most of the war after the German invaders arrested the parish priest for hiding gypsies in the crypt (gypsies were detested almost as much as priests in the village of La Frisette and most villagers approved of the arrests). After that, through the fifties and sixties, the church had been allowed to slip gradually into decay until, that is, the appointment of Father Duval in the seventies and his ambitious programme for modernisation. The broken stained-glass windows were replaced with clear glass, the Stations of the Cross on which doves had roosted were plucked from the walls and replaced with photographs of famine victims from distant parts. The organ has gone and in its place is a small music area for guitars, synthesiser, and gamelan; and South American sambas and Eskimo dances replace the more conventional musical element of the mass. What hasn't changed is the vast churchyard, a great, stony, yellow, bald patch of ground which surrounds the church on four sides rather like an area of quarantine. And I think the sewage drains are perhaps in need of repair because the smell is strong enough to carry into the church, when the wind is in the north. The altar, of course, has been turned in order to allow the priest to face the congregation and the expression on Father Duval's face when he does so is almost worth attending mass to see. There passes across it a mixture of fear, uncertainty, regret and defiant pride that I have not seen since I watched on television a trio of generals, the ruling junta of some South American dictatorship, obliged to take their place in the centre of an arena crowded with thousands of their countrymen, since the local team had just pulled off a sensational victory over a foreign rival and the generals were required to show their approval in person. They left the tank-ringed safety of their presidential palace and ventured into the lions' den of the popular football arena and their looks of tremulous, white-lipped bravado were precisely a triple version of the smirk which is to be seen on the pink, square face of Father Duval each Sunday morning as he stands in the pulpit, dressed in the only other parish asset, a set of new vestments designed for him by a famous Paris fashion house, a gift from Monsieur Cherubini. And here, with his mixture of bravado and good sense, with his pleasant, pragmatic, no-nonsense manner, he attempts to coax and jolly and bully his congregation out of their hide-bound superstitious ways.

There is a madonna in our church who survived the Revolution but not the deconstructive powers of Father Duval who moved her to the back of the church where she lives in gloom. She is plump and her square, honest face wears a perturbed, almost frightened, look as if she has just seen a ghost. One of her hands is broken and the missing hand adds to her air of trepidation. She gives the impression that if another ounce of suffering is added to the load she bears she will burst into tears. She looks like a mother should, careworn, anxious. Her nose is very beautiful, full and flared. I pray before her sometimes. And she is in every way so much more friendly than the little statue with which Father Duval has replaced her on the altar steps, a Hollywood madonna, a child starlet, a flawless complexion, jet-black hair and a rosary over her arm, a pretty little chit of a girl utterly unlike the ample matron with her broad body, big hips and missing hand. Whether by accident or design, the dethronement of the madonna and her banishment to the shadows has had one advantage because she stands now directly beneath a stained-glass window depicting the Assumption of Mary. God the Father in a beard, a handsome son with the look of someone who would have found his niche somewhere between the stockbroking profession and veterinary science, together with the Holy Ghost, a shapely white dove, await her. Soon they will be assuming her body and soul into paradise, queen of heaven returned to the Redeemer.

I find the Pol Pot of the pulpit in shirtsleeves and shorts, polishing the tomb of some grand lady who lies buried in the smiling, sleepy loveliness of her marble effigy as Father Duval's yellow duster passes briskly over her lips. How little the feet of noble ladies must have been, if we can believe the tombs! The Church of the Immaculate Conception, despite Father Duval's modernisation, is slowly falling apart, and placed prominently in the aisle, where visitors run straight into it, is a notice saying:
Our Church is beautiful, but beauty will not preserve her. Give generously and may God bless you!

‘Such a frown on a young face! And one so pretty! Please, no frowns! You illuminate, if I may say so, the darkest corner of this medieval house of bad dreams. This stone barn where we humans in our foolishness huddle for warmth and comfort. From the time of Peking Man,
Pithecanthropus
, half a million years ago, with his extraordinarily narrow forehead and his appetite for raw brains, man has built fires in his caves, although for warmth, or worship, we do not know. So, too, some hundreds of thousands of years later did Neanderthal Man, though his fires were for food as well as warmth and he drew pictures on the walls of his cave-church. And here we are today. It's somehow a poignant, pathetic continuity. What are we to do about it? This lady who lies here – do you know who she is?'

I say I do not.

‘Nor do I! Nor does anyone. Some worthy, the wife perhaps of some obscure noble. She was once thought by the devout of these parts to be none other than St Frances of Rome. Such is the shield of ignorance, pilgrims came to kiss her hand. They believed it would cure dropsy, palsy and all manner of illnesses. How much infection would have been spread by this practice! Look – look down there!'

The flagstones are hollowed and polished, a shallow furrow stretched back some ten metres; this was where a shuffling line of human hope and misery had moved closer to the sleeping saint. It is possible to feel their reverence. The lady is both serene and confident with her hands joined on her breast, her grave smile and her tiny feet. The kisses of the faithful have worn away the back of her left hand, lips have rubbed away the marble.

‘Doubtless there were those in authority who knew, even admitted, that this lady was not the saint in question. For St Frances of Rome is buried in the Church of Santa Maria Nuova! Now called, I believe, Santa Francesca Romana. Apparently she saw her guardian angel perched on her shoulder. Fictions devoutly held are proof against truth. Yes. I'm afraid you'll find out as you grow older. Now what can I do for you? Have you come to tell me about the rally? Monsieur Cherubini's in full cry. He promises us something we'll never forget! In the matter of angels, something of a medieval debate has taken hold of the press. That tool of the reactionary left, that gutter news-sheet,
Les Temps
, is at it again. Do you know what the idiots write, Bella? It's called blasphemy. Do people realise,
Les Temps
demands, that the angel is sitting on the
left
shoulder of La Frisette? They refer to Monsieur Cherubini not as a guardian angel, who, of course, sits on the right shoulder, but as the devil who sits on the other! Impudence! But our people on
La Liberté
fired back. Oh yes! We asked if people had noticed how frightened the socialists were. They see ghosts in corners. ‘Some see devils everywhere …' said
La Liberté
. I thought that was good. Damned good!' And he slaps the shoulder of the stone lady in his enthusiasm.

‘Father Duval – I have these feelings.'

He begins polishing even harder, the yellow duster covers the sleeping face of the stone lady.

‘You have – what, exactly?'

‘Urges.'

‘How old are you now, Bella?'

‘Fifteen.'

‘I would have thought you were older.' He does not say why.

‘Just fifteen. And I keep crying.'

‘We have, as I say, these emotions, which we cannot control when we are at sensitive stages in our lives. It's not uncommon.' He looks relieved.

‘But it's like an illness with me. I do it in private and in public and it's so embarrassing. Suddenly, for no reason, I simply howl!'

‘Nonsense! A few girlish tears. A kind heart, perhaps, a certain emotional excess. Well, why not? If you wish, cry often and loudly. As I'm sure you know, there are more difficult urges, as you call them, than this.'

‘Such as?'

But he doesn't answer.

‘And then there are the prayers. I feel the need to pray. In the street. Everywhere. To get down on my knees and talk to God. He haunts me! The worst is when I am praying and crying all at once.'

He stops polishing. ‘Now that's rather more serious. I do not like the sound of that. I must think about that.'

He is pocketing the yellow duster now and banging his hands together, and I see motes and flecks of dust smoking in the shafts of light that pierce the stained-glass windows and splash Father Duval's white shirt red and green. Suddenly there is a great deal of shouting in the porch and a bunch of little kids, dark-haired and dark-eyed, come streaming into the church. Father Duval's feathery laugh flutters among the roof beams.

‘Kemal! It is not permitted to ride on the altar rail!' He gives me a smile. His smile conveys how life presses in on him, he who is in the main a free and willing spirit, who would really get on and do things if only spiritual duties did not so weigh and drag. ‘My catechism class from the nougat factory. These children were delivered into my keeping – with the demand that I instruct them in the Catholic faith. Monsieur Cherubini immediately warned me of a trap. This was possibly a scheme to establish a bridgehead. He has the eye of an eagle, that man! Duval, he says, the workers in Turkey will hear of the conversion of their brethren in La Frisette and will follow in their footsteps. So what happens? You get Catholic children in Muslim communities? This makes the deportation of illegal immigrants more difficult, repatriation less likely. Clever! Monsieur Cherubini acted. He bought the nougat factory. He plans to restructure the workforce.'

Father Duval's eyes water for a moment and I think maybe he is crying but then I see that it's the dust. He goes back to polishing the false St Frances.

‘What about this new arrival at the Priory? The mud-brown type. You've heard?'