Jubilate

by Michael Arditti

  The water is still but I feel it swirling around me. The Scots attendant recites the Hail Mary and, fixing my gaze on the statuette of the Virgin directly in front of me, I strive to drain my mind of everything but her compassion. Although she lived more than eighteen hundred years before Bernadette, her experience and understanding feel so much closer. I cannot believe that, having followed her son to Calvary, she would endorse Patricia’s ‘We all have our crosses to bear,’ or that, given Christ’s gospel of love, she would condemn my love for Vincent.

  Or is that sheer self-deception, more contemptible than ever in this sacred place?

  A chill spreads through me from somewhere beyond the water. I realise that I am agonizing over questions that have already been answered. How typical that I should be so fixated on the mystery of the baths that I have ignored the message of the courtyard! How typical that God should speak to me not through the Virgin or St Bernadette but through a nameless Dutch woman in a queue! Her selfless devotion has shown me the true meaning of love. I feel faint and am afraid of sinking, but the attendants have me in their grip. It is clear that I can never leave Richard. It would be hard enough to justify in Bath, let alone in Lourdes. I shall speak to Vincent at once and without apology. If he asks for reasons, I shall cite my original ones for coming. The rest has just been a week-long moment of madness. And I shall refuse to let him portray it as a sacrifice. He must have no grounds for appeal. Nothing has been sacrificed except for my own self-esteem.

  I suddenly feel strong and, what’s more, I have learnt a lesson which I could never accept from the exemplars at school: true strength lies in self-denial.

  The attendants recite the Lord’s Prayer, a sign that my allotted time is up. They raise me to face the statuette of the Virgin and I feel a dizzying sense of peace as I kiss her feet. After helping me out of the bath, the Scot unties my wrap and gives me the same scrap of privacy as before while I put on my bra and pants. Decent again – at least in the eyes of the world – I say an inadequate ‘Merci’ and return to the cubicle where I quickly slip into the rest of my clothes.

  I hurry out into the open. The sun’s glare makes me squint and I struggle to read my watch, but, even in the blur, I am sure that I must be due at the Grotto Mass. For the first time since the International Mass on Tuesday, I feel that I can participate with a pure heart.

  ‘Gillian!’ I hear a voice which, after a moment, I identify as Patricia’s.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you here,’ I say. ‘Aren’t we meeting at the Grotto?’

  ‘Yes, but I need to speak to you. Before you make any decisions you may regret.’

  ‘They’re made. But don’t worry. I shan’t be leaving Richard. Not now, not ever.’

  ‘Oh Gillian!’

  ‘We came looking for a miracle and I’ve found one. I’m cured of my delusion; I’m ready to resume my life.’

  VINCENT

  Monday June 16

  ‘When I was fourteen, my mother asked me if I’d ever thought of becoming a priest. “No,” I replied, “isn’t it bad enough being a Catholic?”’

  ‘I bet that had them rolling in the aisles at Television Centre,’ Jewel says.

  ‘I see you’re setting out with your usual open mind,’ Sophie says.

  ‘You’ve missed your calling, chief,’ Jamie says.

  ‘That’s what my mother thought.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re wasted in broadcasting. You should be wowing them on the club circuit.’

  I sit with my crew of three at a lozenge-shaped table in a café at Stansted airport, waiting for the pilgrims to arrive. The stools, which resemble pawns on a giant chess set, have been fixed at such a distance from the table that it is impossible to relax. I have been trying out the opening line of my voice-over on an audience who, I know, will not spare me. We are a close-knit team, sufficiently respectful of each other’s talents to be able to mock them, veterans of a day in an asylum centre, a week at Hello magazine and a trip with two soap stars to a WaterAid project in Zambia. To my left is Jamie, the cameraman, whose sharp eye belies his burly physique and bluff tone. He has a bristly beard, a ring in each ear and a propensity to sweat that bothers him far more than it does the rest of us. To my right is Jewel, the sound recordist, who with characteristic rigour, has had her childhood nickname ratified by deed poll. Unlike Jamie’s beer-and-indolence belly, Jewel’s bulk is congenital and, what with her cropped hair, regulation check shirt and jeans, not to mention the Celtic tattoo which first came to my notice in Africa, it would be easy to assume that her desire to be one of the boys went beyond the professional, had not her outrageously raunchy stories in various hotel bars proved otherwise. Completing the group is our newest recruit, Sophie, the assistant producer, a tirelessly efficient media studies graduate who, unlike the rest of us, makes no secret of her longing to work on features. Petite, stylish and as studiedly accessorised as a fashion editor, she currently sports a fitted black satin waistcoat, grey pencil skirt and carmine lipstick, which exactly matches her handbag and shoes.

  Sophie’s outfit has caught the eyes of a gang of Geordies at the neighbouring table. Having worked out that our quartet is not romantically entwined, one of them approaches. His courage, bolstered by the whoops of his friends, wilts in the face of our expectant smiles. ‘Can I get you a coffee, love?’ he asks, ‘or how about something harder?’

  ‘Ta very much,’ she says with a Mockney twang. ‘I’d love some. I’m sure my friends would too.’

  ‘That’s great then,’ he says, taken aback.

  ‘One mocha, two lattes and an espresso. Ta.’

  ‘Great. Well then, I’ll go and get them, shall I?’

  ‘That’s so kind,’ she says dismissively. ‘Now where we were? Oh yes, your opening gambit, Vincent.’ We watch the chastened suitor slink away and join the queue at the counter.

  ‘The poor lad,’ Jewel says. ‘We’ll have to pay for them.’

  ‘Don’t you dare! Make him think twice before trying it on next time,’ Sophie says with chilling indifference. Yet, for all my reservations about her manner, I have none about her expertise. She cuts through red tape as effortlessly as her mother cuts the ribbon at a village fete. Ambition and altruism may be uneasy bedfellows but, when we are on a shoot, she allows nothing to distract her from the matter at hand. Like Jamie and Jewel, she has a shrewd understanding of the kind of film I make: passionate, polemical and quirky, where the director is a presence in front of the cameras as well as behind. Nonetheless, I take it as a compliment that, even after hobnobbing with the Eastenders in Zambia, I’ve only been recognised – or at any rate accosted – once, by a boy who asked if I were a weatherman.

  I wonder whether our professional shorthand will be as effective this time. If so, they will need to know my mind better than I do myself. I am still perturbed by the strength of my reaction when Miles Redfern, head of Lion’s Share, announced that the Beeb was looking for someone to make a film to mark the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s apparitions at Lourdes.

  ‘The so-called Virgin’s so-called apparitions,’ I insisted.

  ‘Which is why you’re the perfect man for the job.’

  ‘It’s such an easy target. However cynical Scott’s and Sammy Jo’s motives may have been for travelling to Zambia, the trip at least ensured that the villagers got their latrines and the great British public was alerted to the problem. What can we possibly find to say that’s positive about Lourdes?’

  ‘Challenge yourself along with the viewer. How often have I heard you hold forth on the evils of the Roman Catholic church? The opium of the masses; the absurdity of the mass. Anti-abortion; anti-birth control; pro-life but life-hating. Now’s your chance to put it to the test. Spend a week in a place where their faith and your scepticism are at their most pronounced. It’s a brilliant opportunity all round. Prime time, not God slot.’

  I delayed signing until my long-awaited drama debut fell through, when the BBC hired Douglas Simcox to helm its seri
alisation of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. All the class resentment that afforded me an intimate insight into the piece bubbled up when they chose Simcox’s public school poise and confidence over my commitment and experience. Alarmed by the lack of alternative offers, I accepted Miles’s. He arranged for us to join the Jubilate, an independent pilgrimage about two hundred strong, which, drawing its members from around the country, is less parochial than most. Now that we are finally on our way, I remain at a loss as to the cause of my unease. I have never made any secret of my contempt for the Church, but I am equally exercised by the incarceration of asylum seekers and the cult of celebrity, and I had welcomed the chance to shed light on them.

  Then, when the luckless Geordie returns with the coffee and I clasp the steaming cup by the flimsy handle that protrudes like the cardboard wings on a Nativity play angel – an angel played by a perfectly cast five year-old girl – I realise why my feelings are so intense.

  ‘Shall we play I-spy?’ Jamie asks, as the conversational lull slumps into boredom. He takes no offence when no one replies.

  ‘It’s not fuel prices or carbon footprints that will ultimately do for mass travel,’ I say, ‘it’s airports.’

  ‘The Japanese have the best idea,’ Jewel says. ‘They don’t bother to actually go anywhere anymore – except to the photographer’s, where they have themselves filmed against massive blow-ups of the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty or whatever. Then they put out the photos for all their friends to admire.’

  ‘But don’t their friends piss themselves?’ Jamie asks.

  ‘Not at all. They’re doing the same thing. It’s the accepted practice: the new way to travel in the virtual world.’

  The word virtual has its usual effect on me and I switch off until I hear Sophie say that it’s half past eight and the coaches should be arriving soon.

  ‘All you want are some establishing shots of the guys gathering at the check-in, is that right, chief?’ Jamie asks.

  ‘Yes, as colourful as you can. I should be able to pick out our lynchpins. If not, I’ll ask one of the organisers for help.’

  Louisa, the Pilgrimage Director, with whom I’ve been in such frequent contact over the past three months that I’ve bumped her up to Friends and Family on my phone, has given me a list of the pilgrims, along with brief descriptions which at times stretch to a paragraph and at others stop at a word (‘teacher’, ‘goitre’, ‘Scottish’). Prompted by dim memories of O level English, I envy Chaucer the more compact and flamboyant cast in his Prologue and yearn for someone even half as salty as the Wife of Bath. With nothing but instinct to guide me, I have chosen a representative selection of hospital pilgrims: Brenda, a sixty-year-old with MS; Martin, a teenager with cerebral palsy; Frank, a former chartered surveyor with chronic Lyme Disease; Fiona, a six-year-old with Down’s Syndrome; and Lester, a middle manager with terminal cancer, a fact which, grossly overestimating our audience, he declared himself willing to share with ten million strangers but none of his fellow pilgrims. I spoke at length on the phone to Lester and his wife, Tess, as well as to Martin’s and Fiona’s mothers, the latter assuring me that her daughter is ‘quite personable’, as though I were the scout for a disabled talent show. Brenda’s snarled and Frank’s slurred speech made sustained conversation impossible but, after a few strained words, I secured the cooperation of both Brenda’s girlfriend and the warden of Frank’s sheltered housing.

  My able-bodied selection is to a large extent dictated by the sick: Lester’s wife, Tess; Fiona’s parents, Steve and Mary; Martin’s mother, Claire; Brenda’s girlfriend, Linda (the cynic in me wondered whether Louisa’s ease with their relationship had been assumed for my benefit). For human drama I have chosen Lucja and Tadeusz, a young Polish couple with a brain-damaged baby: she a staunch Catholic with an absolute belief in miracles; he a sceptic who only agreed to the trip when his wife’s church presented him with a ticket. From the volunteers I have chosen Maggie, a retired midwife, with sixteen pilgrimages under her belt (and three long-service medals above it), and Kevin, who is currently suspended from school and will only be allowed back on proof of good behaviour. Finally, I have chosen two priests: Father Humphrey, the spiritual director, who wants it known that, despite the committee’s approval, he has strong reservations about the filming; and Father Dave, a former estate agent who, in his own phrase, ‘once sold time-shares and now sells eternity’.

  Having run through all the names in my head, I am seized by a momentary panic, convinced that I have forgotten some vital piece of documentation which will prevent my boarding the plane.

  ‘Hey chief,’ Jamie asks, ‘are you making the sign of the cross or playing with yourself?’ Looking down, I realise that I have involuntarily checked for my passport, ticket and wallet in my jacket pockets and coins in my trousers.

  ‘Who should be on the comedy circuit now?’ I reply, flustered in spite of myself. Travelling always brings out the child in me: more precisely, the child who was left behind on a school camping trip because his mother had sent him on the coach with a duffel bag, refusing to ‘waste good money’ on a rucksack. I choke down the bile that has risen in my throat. It can be no accident that a visit to Lourdes should put me in mind of my mother.

  Jamie goes to Smith’s in search of magazines and Sophie and Jewel to the Body Shop to ‘check out the three for twos’, leaving me to guard the bags. I struggle to memorise the schedule, but thoughts of my mother distract me. The diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes was her first ever trip abroad and, despite my offer to pay for the flight, she insisted on taking the coach as if to keep faith with the charabancs of her past. Every August we would spend a week in either Blackpool or Skegness. When my father suggested that one year he might quite fancy Scarborough, she was outraged, less by the break with tradition than by the presumption. ‘Dr Supple goes to Scarborough,’ she said reverentially, ‘with his widowed sister.’ In retrospect I suspect that, along with the desire to maintain strict class divisions, which also ensured that even when seated two rows in front she would defer to the doctor at mass, she was anxious to avoid a reciprocal glimpse of his unclad flesh.

  My memories of icy seas and heavy downpours, of humiliating changes behind skimpy towels and luncheon-meat suppers served by supercilious landladies have no doubt been embellished, but I realised even at an early age that my mother regarded such ordeals as the price of pleasure. The only holidays she embraced were authentic holy days: the Marian feast days when, along with our fellow parishioners, we would process through the streets of Barnsley behind a statue of the Virgin, while I prayed that none of my school friends caught sight of me in my surplice.

  For once, however, I have reason to be glad of my background. ‘I presume you’re a Catholic, Mr O’Shaughnessy,’ Louisa asked, on hearing my name.

  ‘In one respect,’ I replied lightly, ‘the guilt.’

  Jamie returns, munching an Aero and brandishing copies of Maxim and Club.

  ‘For God’s sake, Jamie! This isn’t sex tourism in Eastern Europe; it’s a pilgrimage to Lourdes.’

  Looking hurt, he rolls up the magazines into the pocket of his shoulder bag. We sit in awkward silence until Sophie and Jewel appear, the latter carrying a packet, which she pulls open. ‘Smell this, Jamie. It’s bliss.’ He squeezes some oil on to his palm and presses it to his nose. ‘Hey, I said smell,’ she says, grabbing back the bottle, ‘not scratch and sniff.’

  She passes the bottle to me, but we are interrupted by the ring of Sophie’s mobile. I listen eagerly as she takes a call from Louisa announcing that the London coach has arrived.

  ‘Let battle commence,’ I say, leading my troops to the check-in. Jamie sets up his camera, arousing the suspicion of two security guards, whom Sophie deftly placates with the requisite permit. My heart sinks as the first pilgrims appear, immediately identifiable by the lime-green luggage tags which, unlike us, they have obediently tied to hand-baggage and even wheelchair handles. While not expecting the beautiful peop
le of the Hello film or the exotic landscape of Zambia, I was hoping for something a little less drab. I wonder whether there is a tenet in canon law that restricts the wearing of primary colours to priests.

  Louisa stands to one side, with a quartermaster’s clipboard. Giving me a hearty wave, which draws attention to the filming, she heads our way. She greets Sophie and myself and I introduce her to Jewel and Jamie.

  ‘That’s some green,’ I say of her sweatshirt.

  ‘Easy to spot in a crowd,’ she says. ‘You need it in Lourdes. Of course it’s not so useful when we hold mass in a meadow.’ I smile politely.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jamie asks, pointing to the logo stretched across her impressive bust.

  ‘Oh, it’s the Jubilate angel blowing her horn. His horn; her horn: you can’t tell with angels.’ I find myself warming to her. ‘We have one for each of you. It’s designed specially for the anniversary. You never know,’ she adds with an embarrassed laugh, ‘it may turn out to be a collector’s item.’

  Louisa leads us to the check-in counter, where she introduces us to Sister Anne, whose title is the only sign of her vocation. As I shake hands with the sturdy forty-year-old in sensible shoes and an anorak, wearing a more discreet cross than many of her charges, I think back to all the penguin jokes of my boyhood and wonder how we are supposed to know who’s who any more. I picture myself as a McCarthyite commentator in fifties America, warning the honest citizen of the subversives in their midst. ‘Ten telltale signs to detect a nun.’ But even I have to admit that the only one in evidence is compassion, as she hears a paralysed man sniffing beside her and tenderly wipes his nose.

  Louisa is summoned to deal with a missing ticket. ‘Duty calls,’ she says apologetically. We take our places in the queue. Check-in counters are not built for wheelchairs and the staff seem more forbidding than ever as they peer down at the confined figures in front of them. I suddenly become aware of a commotion to my left. A middle-aged man has opened his suitcase and is tossing out the contents. Clothes fly everywhere, causing nothing more serious than confusion until a sandal hits his chair-bound neighbour, provoking an indignant howl. The man then throws down the case and twists his neck back and forth as though to ward off a persistent wasp. Two pilgrimage officials rush up to him. One puts his arms around his shoulders, gently calming him; the other gathers up the scattered clothes. Meanwhile Sister Anne consoles the victim, whose overemphatic wails sound increasingly like pleas for sympathy and less like genuine pain. Jamie has captured it all on film and gives me a thumbs-up sign which is intercepted by Louisa who approaches, hand-in-hand with a little girl.