Jubilate

by Michael Arditti

  Richard stares at her and, as if the last twelve years were all a dream, spits out with controlled venom: ‘You cunt!’ Then he thrusts his hands under her nose. Stunned, she squirts the handwash and he rubs his palms together.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sister,’ I say, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Richard says, ‘it’s that –’

  ‘Come on!’ I push him into the room and turn back to the nun. We exchange that look of pained compassion which I suspect is ubiquitous in Lourdes.

  Louisa walks over to greet us. ‘Morning,’ she says. ‘Sleep well, I trust? Good!’ Her brusqueness makes the question even more rhetorical than usual. ‘We’ve a busy day ahead, so I’m sure you’ll be wanting your breakfast.’

  ‘Should we sit anywhere?’ I ask.

  ‘Only on the first night. From now on we prefer to stick to fixed seating. With so many special diets, any chopping and changing causes havoc. You’d find a gluten-free turning into a lactose intolerant. Isn’t that so, Patricia?’ She addresses my mother-in-law, who has come to coddle her surly son. ‘I was saying: you just can’t get the staff these days.’

  ‘Too true!’ Patricia says, as ever more sympathetic for the loss of a maid than the loss of a limb. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without my Rose. She’s a treasure.’ She gives me a look which is part appeal, part warning. I turn away in case I should unwittingly reveal that ‘her Rose’ left fifteen years ago after a distressing encounter with ‘her Thomas’, to be replaced by a succession of contract cleaners. Still, if I am to enjoy a week’s respite from reality, why shouldn’t she?

  ‘We’ve put you on a table by the window,’ Louisa says. ‘See, you have a glorious view over the Domain.’ The view is partially obscured by a huge woman who is about to swallow an entire croissant. ‘Have you met Sheila Clunes?’

  ‘We bumped into each other at Stansted. I’m Gillian, this is Richard.’ Sheila glances up.

  ‘Sheila has one of our healthiest appetites,’ Louisa says. ‘Bless!’

  ‘I have a little hole that needs filling,’ Sheila says, cramming the croissant into her mouth.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Gillian and Richard?’ Louisa asks.

  ‘Hello Gillian. Hello Richard,’ she says, spluttering crumbs into her neighbour’s orange juice. He is too busy counting on his fingers to notice.

  ‘This is Frank,’ Louisa says, ruffling his hair and pressing his head to her bosom in a manner which, were their positions reversed, would surely be labelled abusive. ‘Frank likes to chew.’ That seems to be all he likes since he does not look up, either at Louisa or us, but quietly returns to zero. ‘And last, but by no means least, this is Nigel. Oh dear, you seem to have slipped!’ Without more ado, she reaches under his arms and heaves him upright.

  ‘Richard,’ Nigel says, banging his spoon on the table.

  ‘No, I’m Richard,’ Richard says.

  ‘Richard,’ Nigel repeats.

  ‘No, I’m Richard.’

  ‘He understands you,’ I interject, ‘he’s saying hello.’

  ‘I know that,’ Richard says to me, contemptuously. ‘We’re just playing. Aren’t we, little man?’ He plumps himself in the vacant chair next to Nigel.

  ‘Not there,’ Louisa says. ‘That’s for the handmaiden to cut up Nigel’s food.’ Her appeal comes too late, since Richard has already made himself at home to the extent of dipping his spoon into Nigel’s cereal.

  ‘No, Richard, that’s Nigel’s,’ I say, finding my worst fears of a week of communal eating confirmed.

  ‘Don’t worry. There’s plenty more. It’s good for Nigel to have a friend,’ Louisa says, dropping her voice. ‘He doesn’t have an easy time of it. He’s thirty-eight, but he lives in a home for geriatrics. You can’t blame the local authority. It’s the only residential place they have available. What makes it particularly cruel is that he has a mental age of six.’

  ‘He should get on well with Richard then,’ I say sadly, ‘although at least he had thirty years’ grace in-between.’

  No one would guess it to see him rolling Nigel’s wheelchair backwards and forwards. My instinct is to intervene, but I take my cue from Louisa’s indulgent smile. There are sufficient helpers on hand to deal with any breakages and bruises.

  ‘Do you like being pushed around?’ Richard asks Nigel.

  ‘I like it,’ he replies.

  ‘I get pushed around,’ Richard says, with a rancour that shocks me. ‘And I don’t have a chair.’

  How I envy their instant rapport! As a girl, I made friends within moments of meeting. Pushing forty, I vet every new acquaintance as if for membership of MI5.

  ‘You sit here, Gillian.’ Louisa directs me to the empty chair between Frank and Sheila. ‘I’ll get someone to bring you a bowl of cereal.’

  ‘I can fetch it myself. Really. There’s no need.’

  ‘Oh but there is,’ she says firmly. ‘A little bird told me you wouldn’t let the young brancardiers help you with Richard this morning.’

  ‘He doesn’t need … I mean you have so many more deserving cases.’

  ‘We’ll be the judges of that. We have more than enough helpers. So promise me you’ll make use of them. I know it can be hard to let go, but we’re here to give you the chance to relax and enjoy the pilgrimage too.’

  ‘I promise,’ I reply and, to my relief, she seems satisfied, She walks away, to be quickly replaced by Charlotte, a small, elderly handmaiden with buck teeth and twinkling eyes.

  ‘Would you like some orange juice, my dear?’ she asks, in such effortlessly patrician tones that I understand Patricia’s re-engagement of Rose.

  ‘Thank you. That would be lovely.’ Her trembling hands as she lifts the jug make me doubly embarrassed. While Frank calculates the correct ratio of chews per mouthful, I calculate how many meals I am destined to spend at this table: two more today; two tomorrow (since we are having a picnic lunch at an ancient abbey); three on Thursday; one on Friday. Maybe my pilgrimage should include a fast?

  I decline all offers of food. If I had an appetite, the sight of Sheila Clunes dripping honey from her toast to her chin to her plate would destroy it. I am pleased, however, to see Richard eating heartily, until I realise that he is not actually swallowing but engaged in an unspoken contest with Nigel, to see who can stuff the most spoonfuls of Rice Krispies into his mouth. I am about to intervene, when Nigel splutters all over the table.

  ‘You pig!’ Sheila Clunes shrieks. ‘You dirty, disgusting pig!’ For a moment I fear that she is going to breach the ban on physical violence but she confines herself to a bitter tirade, the commotion attracting the attention of the entire dining room. Louisa and Derek hurry over, arriving just as Richard, with unsuspected delicacy, wipes the milky mulch off Nigel’s cheek.

  ‘What’s wrong, Sheila?’ Louisa asks.

  ‘He’s a pig! Look!’ She points to the regurgitated cereal.

  ‘Worse things happen at sea,’ Louisa says. ‘We’ll soon have that cleared up.’ While waiting for a handmaiden to bring a cloth, she stands behind Frank and ruffles his hair. He makes no response but returns to his little finger and resumes counting.

  Derek gazes approvingly at Richard and Nigel. ‘Looking out for one another already. That’s what Lourdes is all about.’

  ‘I’m going to look out for Nigel,’ Richard says staunchly.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Derek replies.

  ‘I’m going to look out for him at every meal.’

  Derek and Louisa move off. A handmaiden wipes the table. I am touched by the evidence of Richard’s newfound compassion, while reminding him that toast tastes better eaten through the mouth than the nose.

  ‘I’m not eating it,’ he says, as if to a simpleton. ‘I’m showing Nigel my moustache.’

  Nigel, at least, seems to relish the sight. Moments later the young doctor comes to wheel him away for an injection. ‘Anticonvulsant,’ she whispers to me.

  ‘I had a needle
in my brain,’ Richard says proudly to Nigel as we follow them out, leaving Sheila and Frank to continue eating.

  We assemble outside the building at eight o’clock, which seems premature for a service that begins an hour later in a church a few hundred yards away, but that is to ignore the logistics of a Lourdes procession. Ken looks baleful as he barks out commands which are erratically obeyed. Like a ten-year-old boy playing soldiers, he marshals us into a line that is regularly broken when people step out to fetch sunshades, exchange greetings and distribute water. I intervene to stop Richard accepting the wheelchair that is routinely offered to every malade, a term rendered all the harsher by the coarse English accents. It feels cruel to separate him from his new friend, but I refuse to tempt fate by letting him claim a phantom handicap.

  ‘Do you want people to think you can’t walk?’

  ‘I don’t care. My brain doesn’t work properly, which is more dangerous than Nigel’s legs.’

  Once again I am left to speculate on the extent of his self-knowledge. ‘The exercise will give it oxygen.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry if I fall over.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Louisa interjects, as she hurries past with a sun hat. ‘You’re a fine figure of a man.’ Far from bridling at the interruption, Richard looks smug.

  ‘If I can’t go at the front with the chairs, then I’ll go at the back.’

  ‘If you insist.’

  ‘The very, very back.’

  ‘Wherever you like, as long as you stay in line.’

  I see no sign of the film crew and, to my surprise, feel a tinge of disappointment. Yesterday at the airport I was unduly sharp with the director (Victor? Gilbert? Hubert?). I did my best to make amends during the evening mass and, fanciful though it might seem, I would swear that we shared something more than the collective Peace. I would like the chance to build on it, not least because his sensitivity and intelligence (the glint in his sea-green eyes) make a welcome change from the doleful antics of Frank and Sheila Clunes. But he is here to work and I am here for Richard. I am not one of his chosen interviewees and I have no intention of pushing myself forward. Nevertheless, I cannot deny the spark of … what: sympathy? solidarity? that I felt when I held his hand. Victor? Robert? Clement? How can I have forgotten his name?

  Patricia strolls up and rests her hand on Richard’s, only for him to brush it away. I have to admire the skill with which she camouflages the rejection, swatting an imaginary fly off his sleeve. ‘Your first procession, Gillian,’ she says, as piously as if it were my first communion.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s good to see everyone wearing their Jubilate shirts. No distinctions. All one body, even the disabled.’

  ‘Yes.’ I repeat, distracted by the glimmer of her brooch.

  We pass a fresh-faced young priest who might have walked straight off a Fra Angelico fresco. Patricia gives him an unctuous smile.

  ‘Did you see his hair?’ she asks, as we walk on.

  ‘Beautiful,’ I say of the russet locks spilling down his neck.

  ‘He’s just trying to be clever.’

  ‘Our Lord had long hair.’

  ‘Our Lord wore a loincloth,’ she says, peremptorily.

  I compose myself as we process around the Esplanade and down the steep incline to the church, where we find the crew waiting for us at the entrance. I decline to play to the camera and fix my gaze straight ahead. We walk into a building reminiscent of a vast nuclear bunker, along a ramp lined with primitively painted posters of saints, and down to an egg-shaped nave with a ribbed concrete ceiling like an upturned boat. The pews are already packed, but neither the wealth of humanity nor the brightly decorated altar can relieve the brutality of the design.

  Given the lack of seats, I suggest that we join the Jubilate helpers in one of the shadowy recesses bordering the nave. Patricia objects. Spotting a modest gap on a distant bench, she makes a dash for it, flashing a gracious smile at the Mediterranean family on the other side who, realising that she is in earnest, shuffle their already cramped bottoms closer together. That done, the three Pattersons, one triumphant, one indifferent and one embarrassed, squeeze into the vacated space.

  ‘See,’ Patricia whispers to me, ‘all these people need is a push.’

  Conscious of activity behind us but unable to distinguish it over the sea of heads, we watch the lengthy procession on a giant screen. First, representatives of the various pilgrimages, holding up banners, file down the nave and around the altar before vanishing from view. Then a line of priests and bishops, with a cardinal at the rear, approach the altar, kneel and kiss it, before taking their designated seats opposite the choir. Every so often the director – or whoever else selects the shots – cuts away to the conductor waving his hands like a schoolboy tracing an hourglass figure or a potter throwing a dimpled vase. At slack moments the screen fills with stock footage of the Virgin, St Bernadette or a chalice. At others, the camera pans over the congregation, lingering on the wheelchairs at the front. Richard jumps as he spots Nigel, his face fixed in a permanent grin, nodding out of time with the chorale.

  ‘That’s Nigel,’ he says to Patricia, who looks blank. ‘That’s Nigel,’ he says to me. I nod and smile. The fortuitous sighting keeps him busy, as he fixes his eyes on the screen in the hope of another. Meanwhile, the officiating priest welcomes pilgrims from around the globe, listing their many different cities and organisations, each of which is greeted with warm applause. At the mention of Barcelona, I clap with particular vigour, a compliment which our disgruntled neighbours resolutely fail to return to the ‘Jubilates from the UK’.

  The prayers, spoken in French, German, Swedish and Italian, with simultaneous translations into German, Spanish and Dutch, remind me of the woman I once wanted to be: someone with a world of language at her fingertips. I feel cheated when an American voice booms over the loudspeakers, rendering my one skill superfluous.

  The linguistic duplication drags out the service and I am grateful for Richard’s preoccupation. The Communion is equally protracted, the congregation lining up in front of scores of priests who are dotted around the church. Anxious not to be accused of queue-jumping after our appropriation of the bench, I steer Richard and Patricia away from the Spaniards towards a huddle of wheelchair-bound Jubilates. We stand behind Brenda, the woman with the ferocious sales pitch, as two young Irish girls walk among the malades, offering them cups of water.

  ‘Can I give you some?’ the larger girl asks Brenda.

  ‘Have you got one with gin in it?’ she replies.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Gin! Gin!’ she cackles. Heads turn. The priest looks up from his current communicant. Marjorie rushes forward to silence Brenda. The two girls scurry away.

  ‘She’s got multiple sclerosis; she’s a lesbian; she lives in Hull,’ Patricia hisses in my ear, leaving it unclear which of the three distresses her the most. She breaks off on finding herself next in line for the priest. Richard follows, opening his mouth to receive the Blessed Sacrament. I turn away wondering why, given his wholesale regression to childhood, it should offend me so much that he takes communion on the tongue like his mother, rather than in the hand like me.

  We emerge from the subterranean gloom into blazing sunlight. Marjorie is waiting for us at the entrance.

  ‘Straight up to the square for the group photograph! I don’t need to tell you where to go, do I?’ she asks Patricia.

  ‘Of course not,’ she replies, her pleasure at being deemed a doyenne overriding her dislike of being taken for granted. A silver-haired brancardier who knows her of old comes up to greet her. My mind drifts during the introductions and I spend the next few minutes trying – and failing – to catch his name. He explains that six months ago he was diagnosed with high blood pressure and ordered to take more exercise, hence the pedometer on his belt, which he slips off at Richard’s insistence. Having shown him how it works, he enters Richard’s statistics – a procedure complicated by his refusal to acknowledge h
is weight in kilograms – before clipping it on to his waistband. Richard dashes up and down the path, narrowly avoiding both wheelchairs and crutches, before returning to announce triumphantly that he has ‘lost eight calories’.

  Eager to clear my head, I leave Richard in his mother’s charge and press on, finding myself alongside Claire, the softly spoken woman with the cerebral-palsied son, whom I met at the airport. She supports his elbow as he limps along, dragging his left leg with his right foot turned inwards, his arms bent and his hands pressed to his chest like a child mimicking a begging dog.

  ‘Hello again,’ I say. She smiles warily. ‘Did you do the International Mass on your previous pilgrimages?’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s one of the highlights. Martin looks forward to it, don’t you, love?’ He emits a sound like escaping gas. She strokes his hair protectively. His right hand flails as if to flick her off, but his face beams. ‘Let me do that again.’ She strokes his hair and sniffs it. ‘Oh you smell so good.’ He giggles and dribbles down his chin. ‘I’m sorry,’ Claire says to me, ‘but I can’t resist. He’s so clean. He had his second shower of the year this morning.’

  ‘When was the first?’ I ask inanely.

  ‘Last night,’ she says, with a laugh. ‘Last night.’ I am afraid that she might burst into tears. ‘He’s getting so big now that I can’t manage on my own. Of course we do our best. A strip wash every day. But there’s nothing to beat the smell of freshly showered boy.’ She nuzzles his neck and I try not to stare at the patch of drool on her sweatshirt.

  ‘It must be hard for you.’

  ‘It’s harder for Martin,’ she says sharply.

  ‘I didn’t mean –’

  ‘I understand. But I won’t be made a martyr. People who know – who knew – me far better have tried. When Martin was born and everyone was throwing in their pennyworth, it was my mother – my dear, sweet mother who always wanted everything to be just so – who put it best. “God doesn’t make rejects,” she said. And she was right.’ Looking at Martin, his broad smile a sign that he knows we are talking about him even if he cannot make out what is being said, I am inclined to agree. ‘Martin isn’t my cross or my trial or my burden; he’s my son.’