Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘We’re in Rome, mate.’

  Bryan subsided on his pillow, smoothed his tousled hair. ‘Ah, yes, I see. Of course we are.’

  ‘And we’re just going down to Mass, so if you’d like to sling some clothes on and join us in the chapel … Don’t worry if you’re late. This is just the first Mass – Father Campion’s. There’ll be two or three more later, then High Mass in St Peter’s.’

  Bryan nodded, closed his eyes, heard the scuff and tramp of feet beyond the curtains, a last carillon of voices, the sharp slam of a door, then sudden silence. Shreds and scraps of memory were stirring in his brain, images so shameful he wished he could disown them. Not much point in that, though, when Colin knew, the whole plane knew, the entire two hundred pilgrims knew – knew he was a coward – worse than just a coward: a madman and a laughing-stock. The whole appalling ignominious scene was now playing in his head: the aircraft taking off, at last; crowded, claustrophobic and clearly overloaded – bombs on board, and terrorists, not just priests and pilgrims – his panic taking off, as well, as he clawed his seat-belt open and plunged frantic down the aisle, shrieking out a warning.

  He’d only meant to help, give the others time to snatch their snakes and notebooks, as the plane juddered, whined, vibrated, on its death-dive. Three stewards had grabbed hold of him, but he’d fought them fist and foot; punched three solar plexuses, kicked three heaving groins. More braided arms assaulted him, till he was hopelessly outnumbered, and sobbing for his Mother. They’d held him down like a drunk, or common criminal, then strapped him in a harness thing and snapped on plastic handcuffs. He’d been so humiliated, horrified, he’d only howled the louder, until some bossy creepy cleric who seemed to think he was a doctor crossed with God and Billy Graham had started praying loudly over him, then tamed him with a handful of shiny purple pills. He sat up on one elbow, pressed his aching head. Those pills had furred his brain, turned his mouth into a cesspit.

  The remainder of the journey was mercifully blank, though he did recall jolting through some nightmare of a city, which seemed far too bright and noisy considering it was night; lights flashing in his eyes, buildings looming up, then vanishing again; the constant noise of singing, very close and threatening. Fragments of the songs and hymns still echoed in his head – a curiously confusing mix of ‘Ten Green Bottles’, ‘Tipperary’, ‘Faith of our Fathers’, and ‘Wake, O Wake with Tidings Thrilling’. He wished he could wake up – wake in some quite different room, without those galling memories; wake to sweet normality: a temperamental boiler; some strike or jam or go-slow on the news.

  He eased slowly out of bed, explored the draughty room – though there was little to explore: no washbasins or wardrobes, no rugs or chairs or cupboards; nothing much at all save thirty beds (all with their blue curtains), and pathetic heaps of luggage – underpants and sweaters spewing from old duffel bags, dented cases leaking shoes and socks. He squinted through the one small deep-set window, glimpsed a blank brick wall, a row of battered dustbins. So this was Rome – and it was probably also Christmas, since he’d been wished a happy one. It didn’t feel like either. Christmas meant his Mother rousing him at five a.m. so she could complain about the dark, or the price of Tesco’s turkeys, or the brown bits in the sprouts. And Rome meant warmth and fountains, exotic sun-kissed ruins, murals on the walls – naked-breasted goddesses, and nymphs without their fig leaves. He glanced around the drab walls of the dormitory – only cracks and stains and scribblings, and a patch of greenish mould. The cold was worse than London, not bracing sleety sharp, but a clinging clammy damp which reminded him of rubber gloves and mortuaries.

  He picked up someone’s shaving mirror abandoned on a bed, studied his own face. He didn’t look the way he should, the way that he remembered; seemed to have become a stranger, foreign to himself. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he wished the face; watched the pale lips mouth it back. Then tense uneasy silence. He shouldn’t be alone on Christmas Day. Yet worse to join that cheery singing crowd again, endure their false concern. He’d just have to find his Mother, brave her scorn, her fury. Anything was better than this chilly barren dormitory, this accusing solitude. He borrowed a fawn raincoat crumpled on a suitcase, limped out to the passage, bare feet flinching on the coldly naked stone. He could hear more eager singing from the far end of the corridor – women’s voices, this time, which meant Lena might be near.

  Long live the Pope! His praises sound

  Again and yet again …

  He shuddered for his Mother, who opposed the Pope on principle, as being doubly foreign (Roman and a Pole), stubborn, male, and Catholic, and dressing in a frock. He yanked up his pyjama bottoms, which were threatening to trip him up, crept towards the voices, tapped shyly on the door. No one seemed to hear him, so he pushed the door a crack, stuck a timid head round. The hymn broke off abruptly, embarrassed shrieks replacing it, gasps of wild alarm. He glimpsed a swarm of females in various stages of undress – droopy flesh bulging over corsets, or being hoisted into boned and bossy brassières; pink suspenders dangling over wobbly blue-veined thighs.

  He slammed the door immediately, stood shaken just outside, dodged a bruised backside as it burst open once again and a terrifying female clapped him on the shoulder. He knew how he must look to her – a pervert and a flasher in the proverbial dirty mac, who invaded women’s dormitories, stole their underwear.

  ‘Look, honestly, I didn’t mean … I’m not that sort of …’

  ‘Hallo, dear. I’m Phyllis. It’s Bryan, isn’t it? Poor Bryan, you do look pale! Someone should be with you.’

  ‘I’m … er … looking for my Mother.’

  ‘Of course you are. That’s natural. You’ve been very poorly, haven’t you? Your Mother said you often get these turns.’

  He couldn’t speak for shame. Had Lena been maligning him, telling all those matrons his secret fears and failings – how he still slept with a nightlight, could only swim with water-wings?

  ‘Look, I need to find my Mother. I’m feeling rather …’

  ‘Don’t panic, dear. She’s quite all right – just sleeping in a single room, that’s all. It’s really Father Fox’s room, but he moved out late last night, so she could have some peace and privacy. He felt it wasn’t fair that she should have to share a dormitory when her leg was playing up so much, and she’d been through all that …’ Phyllis broke off, tactfully, cleared her throat to fill the nervous silence. It was already filled for Bryan. Those mortifying memories had swarmed back into his head again as he completed her docked sentence: Lena coping heroically with her frenzied babbling son, being pitied for her thankless role of being tied for ever to a retarded child of thirty-two.

  ‘You come along with me, dear. Your Mother’s fine – you’ll see. I popped in to say hallo to her, earlier this morning. She’s a brave soul, isn’t she? That right leg’s really swollen, yet …’

  Guilt joined shame and fury, as Bryan shambled down the stairs, Phyllis clutching on to him as if fearful he might faint or fall, or simply run amok.

  ‘That’s it. Mind your head now. This place is very old. Sixteenth century, I think Father Campion said.’ She paused to pull her socks up, knee-length woollen socks in thick green rib, worn beneath a tartan skirt and a knobbly home-knit cardigan. ‘Right, we just continue down this corridor and your Mother’s at the end here. It’s a lovely little room, and sweet of Father Fox to give it up, but then he’s charity itself. He’s sleeping in the attic with Father Smithby-Home.’

  Bryan counted on his fingers. Three priests, at least, in just the last three minutes. His Mother would be virulent, surrounded by these Catholics, dragooned by Popish priests, still smarting at the ‘scene’ he’d made, humiliated, shamed. He hardly dared to face her, hung back behind the door, peered in through the crack as Phyllis knocked and entered.

  Lena was sitting up in bed in a new pink (pink?) knitted bed-jacket, a young and handsome priest in a smart black suit and dog collar hovering at her side, pouring out what looked like prop
er English tea from a normal English teapot.

  ‘Sugar, Lena dear?’

  ‘Two, please, Father, thank you.’

  Father! Lena dear? Bryan stared in disbelief. His Mother looked not furious, but smug – lolling on her pillows, handing back the sugar bowl to her attentive servant-priest, then greeting Phyllis effusively as if they’d been bosom friends since childhood. He remembered Phyllis now. She’d been talking to his Mother before the plane took off, drawn to Lena because of her role as VIP: the one and only pilgrim in a wheelchair. By five o’ clock, when they’d met up with their party, his Mother’s leg had swollen up so badly, the airline had offered her a wheelchair; laid on a smart young lackey in a braided uniform to push her to the plane. They’d even boarded first, been allowed to jump the queue; Lena scattering gracious smiles like the Queen Mother in her landau, as smarming stewardesses swathed rugs across her knees, offered embrocations.

  ‘How’s my son?’ she was asking now, in an affected stagey whisper. ‘Has the poor boy woken up yet?’

  Bryan ground his teeth in fury, could hardly bear to listen to this parody of motherly concern, or watch Phyllis and that strutting priest contorting their smug faces into expressions of false pity.

  ‘Yes, he’s just outside, dear,’ Phyllis whispered back. ‘He looks a little peaky. I think he’d better rest today, take things really quietly.’

  ‘He’s very highly strung, you know, suffers with his nerves. He’s actually seeing someone for it – been seeing him for years – one of those top brain-doctors they have on television. A brilliant man, as far as I can gather, though he keeps it very dark. In fact …’ She lowered her voice still further, so he had to strain his ears to hear. ‘He’s no idea I know. He goes three times every week, first thing in the morning, before it’s hardly light; claims he’s doing overtime, or his firm is short of staff. He likes his little secrets, so I never say a word, just humour him, pretend I …’

  ‘Ssh!’ warned Phyllis, nervously, but Bryan had already turned and fled – back towards the dormitory, fighting total incredulity. Lena couldn’t know, she couldn’t – not when he’d all but killed himself with four years of lies, evasions; covered all his tracks, never left the bills around, or displayed the slightest shred of interest if the subject of psychiatry came up on TV. Yet she even knew what time he went, and how many times a week. Had she had him followed, gained access to his bank statements? He sank down on the narrow bed, all his pointless fabrications screaming in his head – the stolen wallets, plunging shares, the early starts or shiftwork demanded by his firm, the financial crises, pay-cuts. Disbelief and horror gave place to bitter rage. Even if she had found out, how dare she share his secret, broadcast it to Catholic priests, to mocking jeering strangers? She’d probably told them everything; his entire shaming childhood history confided to a party of two hundred – how he’d wet his bed till the age of five or six, had difficulty in swallowing solid foods, how he was scared of feathers, spiders, shadows, ghosts.

  ‘Oh, God!’ he groaned aloud, as the sheer unmitigated horror of his position as official party cretin burst into his already aching head.

  ‘What is it, Bryan? What’s wrong?’

  He swung round, saw Colin’s ginger head flashing like a beacon at the door.

  ‘I feared something might be wrong, mate. I couldn’t see you in the chapel, so I was scared you’d … No, don’t get up. You’re white as a sheet. Shall I call a priest?’

  ‘No!’ It came out like a yell. Didn’t Catholics call their priests when they were dying? ‘I’m always pale – it’s nothing. Nothing wrong at all. I’m absolutely fine.’

  ‘Well, you don’t look fine to me. But maybe you’re just weak from lack of nosh. I mean, you missed your dinner, didn’t you, and the refreshments on the plane. And your mother said you’ve been off your oats for days – too keyed up to eat, she said, and with constant pains and wind. It’s breakfast in ten minutes, so why not put your clothes on and I’ll take you down to meet the crowd.’

  ‘I … er … haven’t got my clothes.’ Bryan prayed he’d never find them, so he could stay in bed the whole two weeks, avoid all meals, avoid the ‘crowd’, that mob of giggling sniggerers who would enquire into his bowel habits, dissect his indigestion. His Mother had betrayed him, not only on the issue of John-Paul (did she even know his doctor’s name, he wondered with a jolt?), but on still more intimate matters. His flatulence was painful – and strictly fiercely private – or had been till today. Now two hundred strangers knew the workings (or otherwise) of his alimentary canal.

  ‘No problem, mate. We’re roughly the same size.’ Colin was rummaging in his suitcase, drew out a pair of denim jeans, an orange cotton sweatshirt with ‘I’M BEST FRIENDS WITH JESUS’ splashed across the front.

  ‘No, really, I can’t possibly …’

  ‘Go on, take ’em, Bryan. I don’t mind at all. It’s only for an hour or so. Your mother’s probably got your case, or Father Campion.’ Colin tossed the garments over, drew the curtains round Bryan’s bed, hovered just outside. ‘Call me if you need some help, okay?’

  Bryan had never dressed so quickly in his life. The thought of someone looking at his body, assessing his … his equipment.

  ‘Ready, mate?’

  ‘Er, no.’ The jeans seemed worryingly tight, would reveal his lack of bulge and scrawny balls. He never wore jeans anyway, associated denim with hooligans and youth. The sweatshirt was still worse. He buttoned back the raincoat across his Jesus-blazoned chest, slunk out through the curtains.

  ‘Great! We’re just in time for breakfast. It’s the only meal we’re served here. Apparently the kitchens flooded just this time last year, ruined all the ovens and what have you.’

  ‘Meal?’ thought Bryan bitterly, as he sat facing his dry crust of bread, his cup of watery coffee. His head was reeling from the noise – swarms of eager pilgrims jabbering and cackling, clattering cups on saucers – mostly dowdy women, the males totally outnumbered and therefore more conspicuous. At least a hundred females had come up to his table, offered smiles or sympathy, whinnied little condolences as if he’d suffered a bereavement. Well, Lena had expired, for all the use she was to him, queening it in bed still, while someone took her breakfast on a tray – fresh fruit and coddled eggs, instead of prison fare. It was a prison, this gloomy basement refectory, with its cold stone floor and walls, its scrubbed wood tables, hard and backless benches – he its youngest inmate, bar the boyish priest he’d seen in Lena’s room. The majority of pilgrims were his Mother’s age or over, and though Colin looked much younger and a few other men were only in their forties, the women were all headed for their Maker.

  He had hoped to lose his own Mother, and instead he was surrounded by a tide of mother-substitutes, all fussing fretting Mothers, telling him how pale he looked, or giving him advice about the dangers of the drinking water or the high risk of diarrhoea. The only mother he desired was young and very beautiful – and still in tranquil Walton, nine hundred miles away.

  Would he ever meet with Mary in this maelstrom of a city? Rome was far too big. He’d pictured a small town the size of Bath or Oxford, packed with art and churches, and surrounded by soft olive groves – a laurelled Julius Caesar strolling through its Forum beneath a blazing sun, or a turps-tinged Michelangelo sipping rough Chianti in a pavement café open to the stars. And what he’d actually seen (from the bell-tower of the seminary, where Colin had escorted him before they descended to its bowels) was a sprawling grey megalopolis, half-lost in clammy mist, with constipated traffic clogging up the roads, and a few domes in compensation.

  Another crowd of pilgrims was just breezing through the door; pals of Colin, obviously, since they were all heading for his table. Bryan drowned in introductions – bad teeth, bad breath, bad accents assailing on three sides. All the names appeared to end in ‘y’ – Paddy, Polly, Johnny, Janey, Dotty – and all seemed overweight: bulky hips squeezing in beside him, jutting bosoms shadowing his plate.

&nbs
p; ‘I can’t wait to see St Peter’s!’ enthused a portly balding matron, sporting Christmas-bauble earrings in deference to the season, and displacing half her coffee with an overload of sugar.

  ‘I can’t wait to see the Pope.’

  ‘You mean you’ve never seen him, Milly?’

  ‘No. Last time we came to Rome, he was …’

  ‘Have you ever seen the Holy Father, Bryan?’

  He shook his head, his mind on Holy Mothers still, though his body was assaulted by Milly’s thigh on one side and Dotty’s on the other. If he didn’t find his luggage, he couldn’t even search for Mary; would hardly win her hand in Colin’s cast-offs. Without a suit or neat grey slacks he felt totally disorientated. A smart suit gave him status, and pinstripes helped to tell him which way up he was. He was unravelling in jeans, becoming Someone Else – a layabout, a pop singer, a scruffy acned teenager. And the raincoat made him furtive, or maybe half-deranged. No one else was eating in their coats. A few kindly (bossy) ladies had tried – and failed – to coax it off his back, and now obviously regarded it as some sort of security blanket which he clung to night and day. But worse to be revealed in flimsy orange cotton with Jesus as his buddy. If he’d never had a mate in thirty-two long years, he wasn’t keen to start today, with God.

  ‘Hey, Bryan, are you going to have your rosary blessed?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The Holy Father blesses them when we meet him at the audience. I’ve brought thirty-seven with me – all my friends’ and family’s.’

  He nodded vaguely to the beaming frizz-haired spinster with three medals round her neck, one of which was dangling in her coffee cup. He was no longer in the refectory with Polly, Molly, Dolly, but had jetted back to England – Sylvan Gardens, actually – and was staring through the window of Mary’s festive kitchen, streamers round the cooker, tinsel round the dog, the smell of roasting turkey mingling with her scent of milk and musk. He watched her three ungrateful brats tearing at their presents, scoffing eggs and bacon, blowing froth off mugs of steaming chocolate. Then James strode in – six foot six, at least, with new dazzling Christmas chest-hair sprouting from the gap in his pyjamas – claimed his master’s chair, and Mary’s kiss. The room was filling up now – cosy beaming aunties, snowy-pated grandpas, grandmothers with apple cheeks, home-made fudge concealed in apron pockets. He’d never had a family, never been coddled by a Nana, or cuddled on a favourite uncle’s lap. Lena had one sister (the Anne who’d made his snake), and she had died of cancer when he was only eight. There were no other aunts or uncles, no grandparents at all – or none that he had seen. When he’d enquired about his relatives, his Mother changed the subject, or said ‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies’ – her standard answer to all his childhood queries, especially when he asked about his Father.