Jubilate

by Michael Arditti

  I continue past a lavender-seller setting out heavily perfumed sachets on his cart and down a pavement barely wide enough for pedestrians, let alone the wheelchair that sends me scuttling into the road. I linger outside a photographer’s window where a solitary wedding portrait sits among the pictures of current pilgrimages. The Jubilate has its own screen on the far right and I spot myself in the formal group on the basilica steps as well as in a snapshot with Richard, Patricia and Father Dave at the Grotto. I think of all that has happened since they were taken on Tuesday. I examine my face through the blurry glass for any hint of anticipation, any awareness of having agreed to do more than consider giving Vincent an interview, but it is as blank as the one in my passport. Richard beams. Perhaps he has just told a joke? Which would explain Patricia’s frown. Or has she seen me with Vincent and understood my feelings more clearly than I did myself?

  I move away, resisting the urge to buy a copy, refusing to let a photograph compromise my memories, and reach the main road. I pass a crocodile of African nuns, their white habits and black faces still a novelty to my black-and-white mindset, and enter the Domain through St Joseph’s Gate. Even after a week of constant coming-and-going, I thrill to the sight of the grey basilica spire soaring above the treetops and the glimpses of the bronze Stations among the foliage on the hill. I join the steady stream of pilgrims making their way to the Basilica Square. Large groups congregate behind banners in Italian, Portuguese and Dutch and one, to my amazement, in Arabic. Most wear matching sweaters or baseball caps or scarves and I think, with a pang, of the wilful individualism that has limited my use of the Jubilate sweatshirt to the pilgrimage photograph. Smaller groups of family and friends stroll hand-in-hand with an intimacy that warms the heart, until a glance at the vacant eyes and too-trusting smiles of the ageing children and the freakishly unlined skin of the childlike adults reveals this to be from necessity rather than choice.

  I pass under the massive stone ramp that leads to the upper basilica and glance at the knot of people by the drinking fountains. Some put their mouths to the taps; others fill bottles and jugs; still others wash their faces and hands. A wiry old man, with tufts of white hair protruding from his grimy vest, cups water in his hands and pours it over his head and shoulders. To his right, an olive-skinned boy struggles to carry a canister which dwarfs him. I allow my gaze to drift towards the Grotto, but the sight of the crowds hurrying to the Baths keeps me from dawdling. I step on to the bridge and look up at the Acceuil, its irregular, fan-like structure strangely reflective of its status: half-hospital, half-hostel. I slip in by a side-door and walk down the labyrinthine corridors to the lift. Making way for a stretcher, I brush against a pair of Milanese youths, their Buon giornos muted by the rivalry at yesterday’s procession. Irritated by their private jokes, I consider disconcerting them with my Linguaphone Italian, but I arrive at my floor too soon.

  I enter a hive of activity. Everywhere, nurses and handmaidens are preparing their charges for the final morning of the pilgrimage, anxious not to hasten the moment of departure while at the same time packing up the equipment for the journey home. An end-of-term mood grips some of the young helpers, with one steering his friend, the virtuoso guitarist of last night’s concert, around the nurses’ station in a rickety wheelchair. He earns the inevitable reprimand from Maggie, as keen to prolong the stay as any of the ‘malades’, acutely aware of the authority that will seep away on her return to the small retirement flat in Deal where her only subordinate is her cat.

  I break off in dread at the dismal picture. For all I know, she may be the leading light of the local bowls club with a social life that is the envy of the South Coast. I realise that it is not her future so much as my own which frightens me and despair that my happiness should have evaporated so fast. I head for the bedroom and bump into Ken, supervising the brancardiers, while exuding his familiar air of a hunting dog that has been kept too long as a pet.

  ‘Been for a stroll?’ he asks, weighed down by the box of groceries he is carrying to the van. Caught off guard, I strain to detect a double meaning. His kindly smile makes me feel twice as guilty. The only duplicity is mine.

  ‘Making the most of it while I can. Now I’d better go and find Richard.’

  ‘No rest for the wicked!’

  ‘None,’ I reply, determined to keep from anatomizing every remark.

  I approach my bedroom and am intercepted by Fiona, formally dressed for the trip, her Easter Island face at odds with her Barbie doll hair. As ever she carries her tape measure, which she presses against my legs. I pause as she loops it slowly around my knees before holding it up for my inspection.

  ‘I can’t bear to look. Have I put on weight? All this rich food!’ Unsure whether it is my jocular tone or her own high spirits that spark off her fit of giggles, I carry on down the corridor where I come across the guitarist and his friend, now gainfully employed hauling boxes of equipment.

  ‘I really enjoyed your playing last night,’ I say as we pass. A boyish blush suffuses his pustular cheeks and his friend smirks as though at an innuendo. I speculate on the street meanings of enjoy and play and recall my first encounter with Kevin who, four days later, still cannot look me in the eye. Talking to teenagers is even more fraught than talking to Fiona.

  I enter the empty bedroom to find the floor strewn with clothes, evidence either of Richard’s primitive attempts at packing or the brancardiers’ struggle to get him dressed. The noise emanating from the dining room suggests that he is still at breakfast and I seize the chance to change my bra and shirt, free from the threat of his prying hands. I am busy folding pyjama bottoms and T-shirts when I hear a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in!’ I call, too feeble as ever to emulate Patricia’s commanding ‘Come!’ Louisa enters, her upright bearing and forthright manner a testament to her years in the WRAF. For all her fusty officiousness, I like her. It is as though she once heard one of her subalterns describe her as ‘Firm but Fair’ and has striven to live up to the label ever since.

  ‘I understand you didn’t sleep here last night?’ she asks, instantly slipping into Pilgrimage Director mode.

  ‘No,’ I say, strangely relieved by her bluntness. ‘I went for a drink with some of the kids at the Roi Albert. I knew I’d be late and didn’t want to disturb anyone so I stayed with my mother-in-law in the hotel.’

  ‘Yes, Patricia’s here,’ she says, in one breath blowing my cover. Her eyes fill with disappointment, as though I were a pregnant flight sergeant afraid to trust her. I suddenly feel sick. ‘Why do you ask? Has anything happened to Richard?’

  ‘Don’t worry; he’s fine. Busy having breakfast. The last I saw, he and Nigel were competing with each other as to who could eat the most Weetabix.’

  ‘What it is to be six again!’

  ‘Nigel’s been six since the age of twelve,’ she replies severely. ‘But I’m sorry to say there was an incident last night. Richard went on walkabout. I expect he was looking for the lavatory.’ She glances in confusion at the bathroom. ‘By a stroke of bad luck, the nurses’ station was temporarily unmanned. He muddled the rooms and made for Brenda and Linda’s next door.’ She rehearses the evidence as though for a military tribunal, while I picture the two women: Brenda, paralysed and solid, her face shadowed by a visor, forever seeking to sell me a cure-all magnetic bracelet for which she is hardly the best advertisement, and Linda, scraggy and wan, with no distinguishing features other than lank hair and foul breath. ‘Richard tried to get into Linda’s bed. She woke up screaming, which alerted the nurse, but she couldn’t get him off. He’s very strong.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Fortunately, Father Humphrey and Father Dave were burning the midnight oil. They heard the rumpus and managed to disentangle Richard and take him back to bed.’

  ‘Is Linda all right?’

  ‘Just a few ruffled feathers. We’ve explained that Richard isn’t himself.’ I nod politely at a phrase that has made me squirm for the last tw
elve years. ‘But the Pilgrimage has a duty to protect vulnerable people.’

  ‘Richard is vulnerable too.’

  ‘Believe me, I do understand, but we’re in a delicate position. Linda could lodge a complaint when she gets home. Some of our hospital pilgrims are funded by their local authorities.’

  ‘Yes, I see. It’s my fault. I should have stayed with him. I’m extremely sorry.’

  ‘It’s forgotten.’ She moves towards me and I fix my grin in anticipation of a squeezed shoulder or, worse, a hug, but she thinks better of it and, with a sunny smile, turns and walks out. I am left to clear up the mess of my marriage and seize gratefully on the more pressing task of clearing up the discarded clothes.

  Richard saunters in, stopping dead the moment he sees me. He stands still, putting his hands over his eyes like a child who has yet to learn the laws of perception.

  ‘I’ve been a naughty boy.’ I blench to hear the timeworn words, which used at least to be ironic. He walks towards me with a shy smile. It feels wrong that, after all that has happened, he should still exude such charm. He plants a wet kiss on my cheek and continues across my nose and up to my ear, until I feel devoured by his empty affection. I take him in my arms and stroke his hair, proving yet again that pity is a most overrated virtue.

  ‘I looked for you in the night and you were gone.’

  ‘I told you I was staying at the hotel.’

  ‘You told them you were staying with me.’ I look up to see Patricia, her timing worthy of a wider stage, her face a mask on which I project my guilt.

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought it for the best.’

  ‘Who for? I came in at eight o’clock to serve the breakfasts and what do I find?’ Richard, responding to the inflection, looks up, but she is not playing the game. ‘Whispers and insinuations flying around from people who should know better: people who know nothing at all. Poor Richard muddling the rooms in the dark. It’s an easy mistake. But no, you’d think some people had never taken medication! All that screaming and shouting. My darling, you must have had a dreadful shock, and on the last night too! Are you feeling better now?’ She moves to kiss him but he burrows his head in my breast and she adroitly switches to stroking his neck, while turning her fire on me. ‘I can’t believe you’d be so irresponsible. Gallivanting off and leaving him here on his own.’

  ‘One night! One night in twelve years! There are doctors, nurses, priests. How much more responsible could I be?’ I hate myself for craving her understanding, even if not her approval.

  ‘They asked me where you were. “Here,” I said, not realising. And then I found out that you were supposed to be spending the night with me. I mumbled something about you getting up early to come back to the Acceuil. I think I got away with it. I can’t be sure.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to drag you into it. I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Me? What do I matter? It’s Richard. How can we ask Our Lady for a miracle with you in a state of mortal sin?’ I say nothing. ‘Oh Gillian … Gillian.’ She takes my hands. Richard slips in and out of our extended arms until he grows bored and sits on the bed in a stupor. ‘I know it’s not been easy for you. Who knows that better than me? But believe me, this isn’t the way. You’re worth more.’

  ‘Am I? I thought I was just a money-grubbing nobody who wasn’t worth your son’s little fingernail.’

  ‘That was nearly twenty years ago! I can’t believe you still hold it against me now.’ Her air of genuine distress makes me feel even more guilty.

  ‘I don’t. We all say things we don’t mean. So let’s not say any more,’ I reply hopefully. ‘We should get ready for the baths.’

  ‘Everything happens for a reason. That’s what you must cling to. The more confusing it seems to us, the clearer it is to God. I’ve pondered and prayed and asked myself why: what have I done to deserve this? But it’s no use. The Lord will explain it in His own good time.’ Her voice rings with conviction and I feel a mixture of admiration and envy. ‘We all have our crosses to bear.’

  ‘Aren’t we allowed to share the load? Even Our Lord had Simon of Cyrene.’

  ‘I hardly think that what you were doing last night –’ her voice quavers as if in response to the darkness – ‘counts as sharing.’

  ‘You don’t – you can’t – understand.’

  ‘No? Richard hasn’t been the only sadness in my life.’

  ‘I know.’

  For all the placid assurance of her manner, she too has endured much. It is hard to reconcile the elderly woman standing before me with the fresh-faced bride posed on the steps of St Wilfrid’s, Burgess Hill. It is not so much that her cheeks have puffed, neck puckered and waist thickened, but that an inner light has been doused. The vision of married life instilled in her by the nuns faded when her husband treated his vows like tax demands, leaving sacrifice as her only satisfaction. Watching her play the widow with more conviction than she ever did the wife, I wonder if adversity has made her strong or simply hard.

  ‘Did you never think of leaving Thomas?’ I ask, building on the rare moment of intimacy.

  ‘Never! We were married. In the sight of God.’

  ‘I know you were unhappy.’

  ‘He was the perfect husband.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘You were there, were you?’

  ‘No, of course not. But I’ve heard from Richard – and Lucy.’

  ‘She never got on with her father.’

  ‘And I worked at the office. I saw how he behaved towards the other girls.’

  ‘Why are you doing this? Isn’t it enough to betray your husband? Must you attack mine too?’

  Richard starts to whimper. I move to the bed and rub his hands.

  ‘No, of course not. I thought if we could only be honest, just this once.’

  ‘I’m not your priest.’

  ‘No, I know. Forget I mentioned it. Come on, old boy. You need to go to the loo before the baths.’ I pull Richard off the bed, anxious to forestall any inadvertent sacrilege.

  ‘Why did you ask?’ Patricia refuses to take her cue from me. ‘Are you thinking of leaving Richard?’

  ‘No, of course not … not really … from time to time. Wouldn’t you? Sorry, I know you’ve already answered that question.’ I push Richard into the bathroom. He turns it into a game by pressing back on my hands. ‘Thinking, perhaps, in the sense of dreaming, not in the sense of making plans. I dream of so many things that would make life easier.’ I catch her eye and know that she takes me to mean Richard’s death. ‘Like a miracle,’ I say brightly, but she is not deceived.

  ‘How much do you know of this cameraman?’

  ‘He’s a director.’

  ‘Vincent O’Shaughnessy.’ She drags out every offending vowel.

  ‘You were the one who was all over him, angling to feature in his film.’

  ‘That’s not true! Did he say that? It’s not true!’

  ‘No?’ I ask, as Richard bounds back into the room, pointedly drying his hands on his trousers. ‘I remember how keen you were for me to talk to him.’

  ‘I thought we should show willing, help him to see the pilgrimage in its best light. I didn’t expect you to jump into B-E-D with him.’

  ‘Bed,’ Richard shouts out, which makes me wonder how much more he understands.

  ‘Have you never suspected that he might be using you as material for his film?’

  ‘Come on! Surely you see that that’s nonsense?’

  ‘Remember Julia Mason at the Holy Redeemer? A reporter from the Dorking Advertiser visited her at home. Spent ten minutes complimenting her on her japonica. The next week, her private views on Father Aidan and his housekeeper were splashed all over the front page!’

  ‘Vincent’s a serious film-maker not a muckraker.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been given a secret brief to show that pilgrims are all liars and hypocrites, that Lourdes is a seedbed … a hotbed –’ she struggles to find a less compromising word – ‘
a melting-pot of immorality. The BBC will go to any lengths to undermine the Church.’

  ‘He was brought up Catholic himself.’

  ‘They’re the worst.’ She changes tack with surprising adroitness. ‘Not that anyone would want to keep you here against your will. I’m seventy-one years old, but I’m still in full working order. You remember Mrs Jameson?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Of course you do. Brian Jameson’s mother. Died at a hundred and one. Telegram from the Queen. Kept going for the sake of her other son. Not Brian: I forget his name. He was a little … well …’ She looks at Richard. ‘I don’t need to spell it out. Then he went all of a sudden. Pneumonia, I think. Three months later we were at her requiem.’

  ‘Poor woman!’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve never seen anyone more at peace. I remember speaking to her after … what was he called? I’m thinking one of those ‘en’ names: Ben, Ken, Len … no, it’s gone. ‘They say there’s nothing worse than to outlive your children,’ she said. ‘But not for me. I washed and powdered him when he was born and I laid him out when he died.’ And, if she can do it, so can I.’ My image of Patricia cradling her son shifts imperceptibly to a Pietà and I wonder, not for the first time, whether she sees that as the crown of motherhood. ‘Isn’t that right, darling? If Gillian wants to go off for a holiday, you can come to me.’

  ‘I don’t want you,’ he says gruffly.