Midwinter Break

by Bernard Maclaverty

  She showed him the colourful biblical plaques and the ancient church. There was another statue. A woman, her head covered with a veil. Stella had not really noticed it on her first visit. She went closer. And then realised the statue was of one of the early Beguines. A woman – was she of stone or bronze? – in the act of walking, her left hand lifting the hem of her dress.

  ‘In the early days this place was below sea level, the guidebook says. Flooded all the time,’ said Stella. ‘She’s a woman who’s getting things done. Isn’t she great?’

  They continued to wander along the path. Gerry pulled a face.

  ‘There’s a feel of Van Gogh’s prison yard here.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘This path. Round and round. Like Albert Speer.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Hitler’s architect. Remember the story about him in prison?’

  Stella shook her head, no. Gerry told her about the time Speer had spent in the garden at Spandau after the war. Each day, as he took his daily exercise, walking in circles, he wondered about the distance covered. He measured his own stride and the length of the path and calculated the mental journey as if he was walking around the world – visualising all the places. He read everything in the library he could get his hands on about what lay ahead – the geography, the cuisine, the culture – so that he would know what to imagine when he got there.

  Before his sentence was served he’d got as far as Mexico – about 20,000 miles.

  Somewhere a door slammed and a young woman strode towards them. She smiled at Stella.

  ‘Is the church open yet?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Wheech church?’

  ‘Is there more than one?’

  ‘There is two.’ The young woman pointed to the brick church, ‘This is the Scots Kirk,’ and then to a doorway which seemed to form part of a terrace of houses. ‘This is Roman Catholic.’

  ‘Is that a church?’

  The young woman nodded and gestured for them to enter.

  ‘You must like us much.’ She smiled and walked on, keeping the smile on her face.

  ‘What did she mean by that?’ said Gerry.

  ‘She was in the office earlier,’ said Stella. ‘And now I’m back.’

  ‘You’re definitely well in here.’

  ‘We talked a bit. She was nice.’

  ‘And what, may I ask, was the nature of your enquiry?’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t with her. She was just being friendly. My enquiry was spiritual – and would be of little interest to you.’

  Stella walked up to the row of houses. She reached out to the door the young woman had indicated and pushed it open. There was a faint squeaking noise. Gerry stepped into the porch behind her and followed her into the dark space of a church. The altar was, unusually, on the long wall. A sacristy lamp gleamed red – a sure sign that the place was Catholic.

  Stella blessed herself and knelt briefly to say a prayer. There was no one else in the place. As they walked around, their footsteps bumped and squidged on the boards of the floor. Stella found a rack of leaflets in different languages. She skimmed the one in English.

  ‘I remember hearing of this when I was last here,’ she said. Because they were on their own she didn’t whisper but read the words aloud. In the 1600s, it seems, Catholic worship was banned by the Protestant powers that be. No public Masses were allowed so they resorted to using their own houses.

  ‘A bit like the Mass rocks in Ireland?’

  ‘That’s why it doesn’t look like a church outside,’ said Stella. ‘It’s camouflaged. Last time I remember going to a church in the red-light district called, Our Dear Lord in the Attic.’

  Gerry raised his eyebrows. ‘Brothels with a sanctuary lamp?’

  He was gazing upwards at a series of painted panels on the wall. The whole thing seemed to be telling a story. The largest image was of a woman sitting on a wooden chair in front of the fire. She was leaning forward, lifting something from the flames under the watchful gaze of two angels. The thing she was lifting resembled a white sea urchin, spiky with light. The other panels showed a man sitting up in bed being given communion by a priest. Then another man – or was it the same man? – what was he doing? Being sick? Gerry waved to Stella, beckoning her.

  ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Stella’s head moved, following the narrative.

  ‘That priest is doing your job,’ said Gerry. ‘Giving out communion. Can you make out what’s happening? Spewy street in this one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s throwing up.’ Gerry pointed. ‘It’s a graphic novel – a storyboard sequence.’

  Stella put on her glasses and began to read the leaflet aloud.

  ‘In the year 1345 in the city of Amsterdam a man lay dying in a house on Kalverstraat.’

  ‘A good opening sentence,’ said Gerry.

  ‘A priest came and gave the man communion. And after he had gone the sick man felt unwell so the maid brought him a bowl and he vomited up the sacred host.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Gerry.

  ‘At a loss to know what to do with something so sacred afloat in something so vile – something so divine in the midst of something so human – the maid consigned the contents of the bowl to the fire . . .’

  ‘Must be a translation,’ said Gerry. ‘Nobody consigns contents.’

  Stella looked up over her glasses at him. She read the rest silently to herself. Then told Gerry.

  ‘The man, it seemed, died later that night. But in the morning when the maid was clearing out the grate she saw the host – still there – untouched by the flames.’

  ‘Fireproof, sickproof wafers. Might be a market for . . .’

  ‘Stop it, Gerry.’

  ‘And then . . .?’

  ‘The priest had a church built to commemorate the miracle.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘The indestructible host.’

  ‘Minor league, that.’

  ‘Miracles come in all sizes. I should know.’

  ‘What happened to you was not miraculous. It was within the bounds of possibility,’ said Gerry. ‘Miracles seem easier to believe in the Middle Ages. Glad about the church, though. Keeps us architects going, that kind of thing.’

  Gerry wandered to the back of the church where it was dark. The wood was old. Blackened floor planks and roof beams were of irregular sizes. There was a book on a wooden shelf.

  Buch der Gebete

  Book for your prayers.

  Liver por vows prières

  A ballpoint pen lay beside it. Gerry looked at the page and the various hands and the different languages and colours of ink – some were pencil. French and German he recognised easily but could not follow the meaning. He turned pages, looking into the past. Most of the entries were short, a line or two. He laughed out loud and Stella shushed him. He pointed to the book and read, ‘May Arsenal win just one piece of silverware this season.’

  Stella smiled. Gerry turned the pages and his eye was drawn to a longer entry. It was in English but the style of handwriting was American. Characteristic slanted loops and downstrokes in ballpoint. Immediately he knew it was a girl because she says she is pregnant. She asks God for help. Further down the page there were other entries in the same hand. For three days in a row this girl had come and prayed. In the second entry she is critical – Yesterday I prayed and nothing happened. The miracle of Amsterdam, indeed!!! Three exclamation marks. This woman was obviously in some distress. Two exclamation marks would have been enough. But it wasn’t the baby which was the problem. Her lover had abandoned her. By the third entry she has become indignant: what sort of a God was he to pass up this chance to bring three such beautiful people together – her, her lover and the unborn baby. She was close to despair – the child’s father was not willing to take up his responsibility. He was running away. And it was not as if she was pursuing him. What sort of a God would make him feel that way? Was there a God at all? We haven’t done anyt
hing to You. In this entry she sounded confrontational and at the same time sad. Make everything right and I’ll believe in You, she wrote.

  Gerry called Stella and pointed out the sequence to her.

  ‘Poor thing,’ she said, after reading it. She patted the written surface of the paper like it was the girl’s hand then returned the book to the most recent page.

  They walked back along a canal in the direction of the hotel and came to a bridge where hundreds of bicycles were parked or abandoned. It was as if they had silted up during some massive flood – as if they had been unable to negotiate the ram-stam rush through the eye of the bridge and had ended up snagged by its side. Some of them appeared to have been there for years. Flat tyres, rusted frames, twisted front wheels – frames with no front wheels – poor bare forked animals, Stella called them. Gerry offered her his hand and she took it.

  ‘You’re freezing,’ he said. He put their joined hands in his pocket. ‘The other two hands will have to fend for themselves.’

  A girl cyclist rattled past them over cobbles. Then in what could only be an act of bravado she reached up both hands and adjusted her ponytail.

  ‘Wow,’ said Stella. ‘If a car and a cyclist have an accident here, the law always blames the car driver.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Looking at the state of some of these bikes . . .’

  ‘Bread-carts,’ said Stella, ‘bread-carts of bicycles. Things left over from the last war.’

  ‘Or the one before that.’

  They came to a main road and waited to cross it. He took her hand from his pocket but still held onto it.

  ‘You’re a good deal warmer,’ he said. A gap opened up in the traffic and he walked her to the middle. There was a black four-by-four approaching but they had time to cross. Gerry strode forward but Stella was nervous and held back. He tightened his grip on her hand but she had frozen in the middle of the road.

  ‘Come on.’ She wrenched her hand away from his. Her whole body was immovable so Gerry walked on across the road. He waited for her on the far pavement. She stood in the road looking this way and that. The black four-by-four cruised past her and she came almost running to Gerry’s side.

  ‘Some day you’ll get us both killed,’ he said.

  ‘I can judge for myself,’ she said. ‘But you can’t judge for me.’

  They stopped and looked at lunch menus in windows. Some displayed their fare in English. One place looked promising but just as they were about to sit down music started up. Frenetic pounding. American rap with the occasional mutha-fucka. They turned and left. On the street Gerry said, ‘That stuff is so relentlessly the same. I don’t give a fuck about the fucks. It’s the volume.’

  ‘Just as well. They have cups the size of chamber pots.’

  ‘The whole idea of size is American. To sell twice as much as you wanna drink. And charge you half as much again. Paying for what you throw away.’

  ‘My mother had a mantra about Mister Coleman – how he became a millionaire from the mustard left on the side of your plate.’

  ‘And popcorn. In buckets. Big enough to annoy your neighbour throughout the whole film.’ Gerry mimed furious hand-to-mouth eating. ‘Another American stunt – eating watching movies. In every cinema your feet are stuck to the ground. It’s such a waste sitting here watching the screen – we could be getting fat at the same time. Go get another. Gasometer size. And bring me a ten-gallon Coke. It’s no wonder American arses are the biggest in the world. What size Levi’s, madam? You got two measuring tapes there, baby? One ain’t gonna be enough.

  They eventually found somewhere that pleased them – off the Amstel Canal.

  ‘Gooood-sized wee cups,’ said Gerry. The place was a cross between a club and a hostel. No tablecloths. The staff were friendly.

  ‘It’s so nice to sit down,’ said Stella. ‘I’ve been on my pegs all morning.’

  The waitress brought menus and Stella and Gerry produced their reading glasses.

  ‘Some wine?’ Gerry said.

  ‘At lunchtime?’

  ‘We’re on our holidays.’

  ‘Are there no half-bottles?’

  ‘Not that I can see. Where does that leave me?’ said Gerry. ‘Finishing the bloody bottle, that’s where. Priests drink more wine saying Mass than you do – just a wee splash.’

  ‘They have small carafes.’

  Gerry ordered one of house red and when it came he sipped his glass and made noises of pleasure. Stella joined him, sipping a half glass. They chinked.

  ‘Moderation in all things,’ said Gerry. ‘Especially moderation.’

  Music was on faintly in the background. Something familiar.

  ‘It’s an improvement on the muthafuckas.’

  ‘Have you noticed the muzak?’ said Stella. ‘Apart from that last place all the stuff they play seems to be from the fifties and sixties. “A white sport coat and a pink carnation”, “Bye bye love”, “Just a-walking in the rain”.’

  ‘Bill Haley and Elvis.’

  ‘And Buddy Holly.’

  ‘Things so old they could be from “the hit parade”.’ They laughed a little at the dated words. ‘Hit parade.’

  ‘We always listened to stuff like that in the dark,’ said Stella. ‘Hugging cushions. “The Great Pretender” was the first time I ever got the shivers on the wireless.’ She smiled.

  ‘I thought you were too poor to have a radio.’

  ‘Daddy got an old one from somebody. I remember the day it came into the house. The Platters.’

  ‘They were the boys.’

  ‘And the words – you got to know them off by heart. She half sang, half spoke the opening of ‘The Great Pretender.’

  A waiter arrived with their food and they stopped talking. They ate quickly, taking the edge off their hunger.

  ‘The child would be two,’ Stella said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The pregnant girl in the comments book.’

  ‘Are you still thinking about her?’

  ‘According to the date of her entry.’

  ‘Or nine months after it.’

  Stella ignored the remark.

  ‘The sadness in some people’s lives,’ she said.

  ‘We can’t be responsible for everybody’s grief.’

  ‘That’s the only way forward.’

  ‘Stella – don’t be daft.’

  ‘I don’t mean responsible – I mean, take it into account, somehow. Maybe even try to do something about it. I like John Wesley . . .’

  ‘John who?’

  ‘The founder of Methodism. Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, and so on and so on.’

  ‘I can go along with that. Except for the definition of good. Your friend the pope . . .’ said Gerry.

  ‘Pope Francis? He’s doing his best.’

  ‘. . . he might see good as banning condoms. But others would see it as just more people to feed. More suffering. More AIDS. More death.’ Gerry wiped his lips with a paper napkin. ‘But we’re on our holidays. Spare me the gloom.’

  ‘Just before we lighten up – where do you want to be buried?’

  Gerry rolled his eyes and shrugged.

  ‘And you? At home or in Scotland?’ he asked.

  ‘Scotland is home now,’ she said.

  ‘Would you mind if I, or my ashes, was buried with you?’

  ‘If you’re still drinking I don’t want you next nor near me.’

  ‘I’ll definitely have given it up by the time I’m dead.’

  ‘In that case . . .’ She smiled. ‘I’ll move over.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Gerry poured the remainder of the carafe into his glass. Stella was trying to mop up the tiny bits of salad with bread.

  ‘How did you end up in . . . that place?’

  ‘Which place are we talking about?’

  ‘Where we were – just now.’

  ‘The Begijnhof ?�
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  ‘How do you know how to pronounce it?’

  ‘The woman told me. When I started asking questions.’ Stella stopped eating.

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘About origins. Medieval times. It began as a home of the Beguines.’

  ‘You’re just trying to confuse me now.’

  ‘A Catholic sisterhood who lived alone as nuns, but without vows. They had the right to return to the world and marry if they wanted to. I think the place has a great sanctuary feel to it.’

  Because she had been up so early and ‘on her pegs’ all morning Stella said she needed a rest and a doze before taking on the afternoon. They went back to the hotel and she pulled the curtains to dim the room. She folded herself into the coverlet and was asleep almost immediately. Gerry did not join her. He sat in the gloom watching flickering pictures on the silenced television. News items, unrelated to the scrolling text constantly moving from right to left. Words on a red travelator. A Russian archbishop dressed like a Christmas tree waving his crozier. Agitation, crowds, riots of some description. Guns being fired. A reporter and his microphone ducking away.

  Gerry sought out his ancient iPod. It was one of the first – big, like a white enamel washing machine. The knack of getting the music he wanted mostly eluded him. He couldn’t swirl his finger properly, couldn’t leap to the piece of music he was after so he just listened to whatever came on, through the headphones. But he had chosen the pieces in the first place so it didn’t feel completely random. He slipped the iPod into his pocket and, with great care, poured himself a whiskey. Nothing obstreperous, just something to keep him going. He sipped. The music on the headphones became Bach.

  Once, in a mammoth session, a friend had warned him against drinking on his own. Other people act as brakes, he said. People like you and me set the pace. Nobody’ll be as bad as us. This man had been in to dry out – several times – so he knew what he was talking about. This friend had said that people who drank the way they did hated themselves. Getting drunk was a form of temporary suicide. But the good thing was you got a chance to begin all over again the next day. How could he avoid drinking on his own when Stella hardly drank at all? He mock-toasted her. Here’s to you. Remember the time in Germany? Was it words spoken aloud? Or thought? Some conference or other. Or an architectural jury. Maybe Stella wasn’t with him. Weimar, was it? And a trip to the concentration camp at Buchenwald had been arranged. And everyone got off the train and there was a tour bus waiting. It was so hot and the bus full. Everybody sitting silent and afraid of what they were going to see. You could hear people breathing. And Gerry heard a wasp. It flew amongst them – and everybody leaned back or moved their face to one side to avoid it. It nosed up and down the windows, bouncing a bit, and nobody had the courage to whap the bastard because of where they were going and what had happened there. The Bach ended and he switched the thing off. Pouring from the bottle was dodgy – it had to be angled – so too the receiving glass. Or the time in Spain. It was a wedding – outside the cathedral. Stella was more interested in the bride’s dress than the medieval architecture. There was a burst of machine-gun fire. Incredibly loud with flashes and smoke all over the Plaza del Obradoiro. Who would want to murder such a couple? Not good for people coming from Belfast. Time for a change of underwear. Smoke drifting close to the ground. Fireworks, not machine-gun fire. Jumping jinnies, squibs. Just like at home in Ireland – the firing of shotguns at country weddings – to scare away evil spirits.