“I am warm, content and comfortable. I feel no hunger pangs.”
My stomach growled in protest, so I stuffed the end of my flannel in my mouth and chewed on it like gum. It kept my jaws busy and helped me concentrate. I pinched my leg once or twice to disperse the pins and needles, then settled back with my dossier. I tried to remember what else Ray had said on the subject of Bernadette. His priestly logic might convince the other priests.
“Bernadette not cured herself,” I scribbled. That I did remember. In fact, in her later years, she’d been something of a physical and mental wreck. I opened the book in front of me and turned to the closing chapters, underlined the phrases “inner torment” and “spiritual desolation”, skimmed the pages where she died in agony with tears coursing down her face and proclaiming herself a sinner. Maybe she knew already that her story was built on falsehood — that would explain her anguish.
“Anguish,” I jotted, and then “rose bush” underneath it. The rose bush had always been a stumbling block. Dean Peyramale had demanded a miracle as proof of the Lady’s supernatural powers. “Ask her to make the rose bush flower,” he’d said to Bernadette. It was a wild rose growing at the bottom of the niche where Aquerò always appeared. Bernadette had asked, but nothing happened. Our Lady could easily have made a rose bush bloom in early March — nothing to it, if you were Mother of God and mistress of the seasons — but someone less illustrious would have had trouble messing around with nature, coaxing summer out of early spring.
Bernadette’s novice mistress had never been convinced. It wasn’t just the matter of the rose bush — it seemed absurd to her that God should choose a sick and ignorant peasant child to pass on His High Commands. There I couldn’t agree. After all, Bernadette herself had chosen me, and on a previous occasion God had picked out a humble artisan’s wife to be His mother, a simple homely girl who hadn’t an O-level to her name. Perhaps I was tackling the thing all wrong. After all, if Bernadette had wanted Adrian’s methods, why hadn’t she appeared to him, touched him on the shoulder as he sat deep in his books in Twickenham public library? It was me she’d come to, me she trusted. She hadn’t wanted teachers or professionals. Maybe I should trust her in turn and rely purely on simplicity and truth.
I dragged the suitcase off the bidet, collapsed the pile of books, slowly, achingly got up and stretched my limbs. I pushed open the blind and stared out at the huge black duvet of the sky, snuggling against the town sleeping underneath it. It was still dark, but bleached and fading round the edges where the dawn was nibbling at it. A few stray feathers of mist curled against the broad bare shoulders of the mountain peaks. I marvelled that in a world so vast and magnificent, some supernatural power should knock at my shabby soul and ask me to rewrite history. I should be exultant, not exhausted. Pins and needles hardly counted when the sword of Truth had been entrusted to my hands.
I shut the window and stripped off all my clothes. It was already half-past five. I would wash and change and go down to the Grotto in time for Ray’s early service. That was the perfect place to start my mission — a small congenial Mass said in English for the English, so at least I’d be understood without the need for interpreters and intermediaries who would only muddle things; a gathering big enough to carry weight with the authorities, yet not too large to shout me down. Ray himself would be officiating and was bound to back me up, if for no other reason than to prevent me blackmailing him or blabbing out his sin. And there would be other priests around him who might know French and Bishops.
I chose the most boring of my clothes, a droopy brown skirt and matching jumper, and coiled my hair on top. Long hair and jeans tend to make people hostile before you even open your mouth. I crept downstairs and knocked at the connecting door which led to Madame’s quarters. I wanted my breakfast early. I’d paid for bed-and-breakfast, yet hardly made the most of either. I could take my bread with me and eat it on the way. I knocked again. Madame was either asleep, or chose not to be disturbed. I shrugged. To tell the truth, my hunger had almost faded now. It might have been the self-hypnosis, but all I felt was a sort of empty curdled nausea.
I hurried through the streets towards the Grotto. I knew my way there almost blindfold now, yet, every time, the town looked different. Now it was suspended between night and day, the street lights still shining, but dawn reaching out and muffling them, the moon fading into a faint singe-mark in the slate-grey sky. There was litter in the gutters, rubbish-bins overflowing with tins and cardboard boxes, but the buildings themselves looked pale and clean and delicate, like invalids who had been woken early in a hospital and washed before their breakfasts. There was a hushed, brooding, expectant feeling poured gently over everything like thin milk over porridge. A few uncertain birds twittered through the gauzy greyish light. A milk van chuntered up the hill. It was a frail and private morning, newly hatched and mine alone, not yet blemished or invaded by the crowds.
St Joseph’s gates were open now, and as I walked through them and down into the esplanade, the place became slowly more alive. Little knots of nuns and nurses were hurrying towards the shrine — children in wheelchairs, priests in petticoats. I turned the corner, past the candle stores, the bookshop, the holy water taps. I kept my eyes cast down. It wasn’t piety, but fear. If the statue was back in place again, then who would believe my story? But how could it be gone, when all those devout and placid pilgrims were already kneeling in front of it? Slowly, I raised my eyes. It was there — as serene, as hideous as it had been for over a century. It looked smaller somehow, almost insignificant, lost in the dark shadows of the niche. I turned away. It made no difference, really. It was only a hunk of marble, a sculptor’s toy. True, it might help my cause if it was seen publicly to have vanished and I could simply step forward and explain the whole mysterious story. But, knowing the authorities, they’d accuse me of larceny then, as well as lies. Best to accept what was.
I glanced at my watch. Only a few minutes to go before the service started. The sky was paling now, every object striding forward with firmer, clearer outlines, the green in the meadows slowly filling in like colour on a palette, and the huge drowsy mountains yawning and stretching in the background, shaking night and snow and sleep out of their eyes. The English pilgrims were taking up their places for the Mass. I made myself as inconspicuous as possible. I had already recognised a posse of Pax Pilgrims, with Doris jabbering in their midst. In any other circumstances, I’d have rushed across and joined them, but I felt they’d hardly welcome me as the Attila of Lourdes. Despite the early hour, there were many different groups and banners present — Birmingham and Liverpool, Killala and Pontypridd. I began to feel a little more at home, seeing all those friendly British faces, with badges I could understand and British Home Stores cardigans. They might even be proud that an English voice had been chosen to proclaim the truth.
I wormed my way towards the front. Truth would only suffer if I had to shout it from the middle of a scrum. The priests were processing in now — five of them in all, with the Irish Father from Pax in second place and Ray bringing up the rear, his rude red hair almost blasphemous above his white priest’s petticoat and his golden chasuble. He hadn’t slept a wink since I had seen him — that was obvious. His face looked as if it had been sent to a bad laundry and had creases ironed into it where there were none before.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” he intoned. It sounded odd, as if he had borrowed a voice from the Posh Poetry Department at Radio Three and then had trouble fusing it with his own. In different circumstances, I’d have been more or less ecstatic to see him standing there in full vestments, handling hosts and chalices as familiarly as if he were making tea. But now the magic had gone out of it. I kept imagining his limp pink prick coiled exhausted in his nylon pants, polluting all those sacred robes, and anyway, I was so preoccupied with Bernadette that priestly fantasies seemed pointless.
The Mass was going so fast, I feared they’d reach the end before I’
d spoken, but suddenly there was silence, and all the priests sat down on the benches around the altar as if they were almost expecting my announcement. My heart was beating so loudly, I felt Leo could have heard it back in England. I groped to my feet, stumbled towards the altar.
Somebody was there before me. A blind girl from the Killala group was standing on the steps, strumming a guitar. I turned my back on her.
“Er … Bernadette …” I started.
A high clear soprano voice swallowed up my own embarrassed croak. It was the blind girl singing a ravishing hymn in Gaelic. I could almost see the sad proud notes swirling up to the sky like the frail white smoke from the guttering candles flickering in front of me.
“Is maith an bhean Muire mhór,” she sang, and suddenly the sun slit through the clouds and touched one bright finger against the gloomy rock behind her. A sparrow soared up after it, his ragged shadow dark against the gold. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t speak at all. I gazed around at the gold-flecked congregation — a twelve-year-old as bald as an old man, a wailing baby swathed in bandages, a withered grandma with pink woolly bed socks peeping out from under her plastic wheelchair cover. How could I wrest their Blessed Virgin from them when they were crippled, lame and bald; break up the party, tell them to go home?
The hymn had ended, the priests were on their feet again. I had lost my chance.
“The Lord be with you,” chanted the Irish priest from Pax.
“And also with you,” I responded, almost automatically, along with the rest of the congregation.
The Lord — for heaven’s sake —they still had Him. God Himself, the Blessed Trinity, the gospels, the mysteries of the Mass. All those consoling, gentling, Sister Aidan-ish phrases I’d heard spoken in this service would still be there to comfort them — child of God, love of God, agnus dei, kiss of peace, unity, eternity — those I wasn’t spoiling. Even without a Blessed Virgin at all, would it really be such a loss? Frankly, I’d always preferred a man in heaven, a Father, not a Virgin. I myself had rarely prayed to Mary. She always looked a little too like Janet with that superior smile and perfect skin and everlasting baby in her arms. Everything she’d done was a put-down. Conceiving her baby via the Holy Ghost without even taking off her clothes, when I’d have insisted on a hot-blooded man and the whole works, including simultaneous orgasm. Giving birth in a stable after a rough and dangerous journey by donkey-back to Bethlehem. I hadn’t even risked a bicycle and yet I’d still miscarried. All those paintings of her kneeling on the straw and beaming, only minutes after the birth, when I’d have been howling on my back, sore and stitched and drugged, with puerperal fever or post-natal depression, or breast-feeding problems. I couldn’t identify with her at any point at all, from her immaculate conception to her deathless death. Perhaps it was because I was so involved with her Son — a sort of mother-in-law problem if you like. I’d always kept away from Adrian’s mother, so I suppose I did the same with Mary.
There was a sudden wail from one of the handicapped, a creak and rustle from the congregation as they all fell to their knees. I was still standing, rambling again, my mind on Adrian’s mother instead of on the service. How would I ever carry out a vital months-long mission, if I couldn’t even concentrate on one mingy Mass? Ray and his fellow priests were grouped around the altar, already preparing for Communion.
“The Lord has risen and has appeared to Peter, Alleluia,” announced Ray in his new, phoney voice.
No one contradicted him. Every pilgrim present was happy to accept that a man three days dead could slip out of his winding-sheet and carry on as usual. Christ had appeared to his disciples at Emmaus — spoken to them, eaten with them, and then vanished up to heaven. One of the priests had read it to us in the gospel only five minutes previously. If dead people could appear and disappear in first-century Emmaus, then why not in twentieth-century Lourdes? My story was no more exceptional than the one they’d just swallowed, standing there fidgeting and yawning while the priest dropped phrases like “rose from the dead” or “vanished from their sight” as casually as if he were saying “lovely weather” or “mind the step”.
The priests had consecrated the bread and wine and were receiving their own Communion. I watched Ray’s rough red hands clasp the silver chalice and tip it to his lips. No longer illicit brandy in a toothmug, but Christ’s own blood steaming hot and crimson down his throat. Ray was a priest again and his sin forgiven. I could hardly take it in. The living God was crouching on that altar — God in a goblet, the world in a grain of wheat. A million million priests from the time of Peter onwards had believed it unwaveringly, and all their countless congregations through the centuries. Seeing Bernadette was nothing to that miracle. Indeed, the dead were probably all around us, supernatural powers hovering over our gas-stoves or our easy-chairs, and all we did was slam the door or spray them away with Air-fresh. People tried to make a sane and safe society, pin things down in catechisms, define them in dictionaries, cage them up in fusty encyclopaedias. All the rest they fled from, or unloaded on to madmen or to children. Witches, ghosts and magic they gave away like presents to their kids. Snowqueens and stepmothers were dismissed as myths or fairy tales and any remaining mysteries re-labelled “religion” or “physics” or “philosophy” so they didn’t sound so threatening, then sternly separated, so no one went berserk trying to reconcile them all. Other societies hadn’t been so blinkered. The Greeks had talked to ghosts and gods and dealt in dreams and entrails, at the same time as inventing geometry and being better at rational things like maths and medicine and astronomy than anyone before them. The Chinese allowed mystery to curl up in their souls and homes like cats. We had only science.
Maybe I should turn to science. It had often rushed in like a shining knight to slay the last expiring remnants of some religious dream. The scientific world might even welcome my announcement, set up a laboratory where Our Lady’s statue had stood. New facts for their textbooks could flow from Thea Morton’s humble message, new definitions of death or time or ghosts cluster around my name. Scientists and ESP societies might flock to Lourdes as new-style priests and pilgrims.
I had to speak — it was my duty to truth and textbooks — and I had to do it now, or as soon as the singing was over. The Liverpool mixed choir had launched into a noisy and discordant rendering of the “Adore Te Devote”.
“Truth itself speaks truly,” the sopranos were shrilling. “Or there’s nothing true.”
Truth, true. My head was spinning with the word. It was like that game you play as a child, where you repeat one word over and over until it loses all its meaning and disintegrates into a fraying web of empty syllables. How could so many battles have been fought for truth, so many lines written in its honour when it was only four consonants with a vowel shoved between them? And yet I had been entrusted with it, chosen to make it manifest to the entire Christian world, to change history, challenge science, to bring the ancient world nearer to our own.
The last verse wavered to an end. I sprang up on a bench so that I could address the crowds from a higher vantage point and lifted up my hands. I could see the sun rising in my honour, climbing in the sky. The mountains seemed to bow to me.
“I have a message for you …” I announced, cursing the shake and wobble in my voice. I stopped a moment. A train was rumbling by on the railway line high up behind me, the noisy river rushing through my words. They couldn’t hear. I’d have to go up to the altar itself, where there was sure to be a hidden microphone. I clambered off the bench and pushed my way towards the priests.
“Wait your turn, can’t you?” muttered an angry Liverpudlian, jostling me out of the way. I shook her off, fought my way towards the altar, then turned to face the congregation.
Christ Almighty! The whole seething, struggling crowd was surging towards me. They had somehow guessed the content of my message and were out to get my blood. They didn’t want truth or science, only miracles and Masses. Heavy shoes and flailing arms were bearing down on m
e. I slipped through a gap in the offensive and hid behind an invalid carriage. Yet the charge continued, not towards me any longer, but still towards the altar. I stared at the tangled limbs, the shoving bodies. It was the Communion rush — nothing to do with my message. They weren’t out to lynch me, just to grab their God. Mouths open, elbows jabbing, they pressed towards the priests like parched and angry tipplers shut out of the pub all week. Ray was filling mouths like tankards. Greedy lips smacked shut. I hadn’t a hope of speaking. Not only would they never hear nor see me, but they were so avid for everything religious, they’d flay me alive if I trampled on their favourite shrine. What did they care for laboratories or textbooks, or for contributing to the march and clash of knowledge? All they craved were the old safe solid rituals, the comfort and luxury of hope, the Virgin they had prayed to since they were babes in arms, even if she was a fraud.
The bells of the basilica were chiming out the notes of the Lourdes hymn, before the clock struck seven. “Ave, ave, ave Maria.” The Aves showered across the town like advertising leaflets dropped from an aeroplane. All the streets spelled Mary here, all the shops sold her as their number-one product, even the clocks cried out her name before they told the time. The Blessed Virgin had become as huge and indestructible as the Pyrenees which ringed her round. She was imprinted on every page of Lourdes like that hospital library stamp on all my books. However much I chipped away at her, or tried to rub her out, she would still stamp and stain the town like a tattoo.
I slipped away, dodging the crowds, weaving in and out of wheelchairs, treading on toes. More and more people were sweeping down towards the Grotto, buying candles, booking Masses. It was only early morning and yet the rush hour had begun, the whole busy ferment centred on a sham. I couldn’t buy a candle, I wouldn’t buy a Mass. I’d splurge my few mean francs on a decent cup of coffee and something to dip into it. I hadn’t swallowed a morsel since I’d set foot in France. Christ Himself had eaten before He ascended into Heaven — hadn’t we just heard it in the gospel? Right — I, too, must break my fast before I descended any further into the hell of being a heavenly messenger.
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