After Purple (37 page)

Maybe he was even in the church, sitting somewhere in the congregation, still tending to his boys. Maybe Mike had choked or Lionel vomited up my kiss. I gazed around. The huge basilica was oval-shaped, with the altar in the middle, so wherever you looked there were banks of people, rows of heads. I'd never find him there. I'd simply have to trust him, keep sending up my own private credo until he stepped radiant up the altar steps. Meanwhile, I'd try to pray.

It wasn't easy. A man had oozed into the last six inches of bench and was shunting me up against the fat woman's overflow. The boy in front was cleaning his ears out with his little finger. People were shuffling and fidgeting all around. Some even strolled about as if they were in Selfridges. Others took photographs with flashlights, or jiggled babies on their knees, or offered drinks to the sick and handicapped. Someone seemed to be offering
me
a drink. A sort of jug on a long handle was suddenly shoved beneath my nose. I wasn't sure whether it was a loving cup, or holy water to sprinkle on myself. It looked, in fact, like one of those bottles men pee into in hospitals. Everyone was digging in their pockets. It was only then I realised it was their version of the collection plate. The woman beside me dropped a fifty-franc note into the jug. I almost fished it out again. Fifty francs would have kept me for a week. I struck a bargain with God. “Look,” I said, “I'll leave it there, if you send Ray back in time for my Communion.”

I only wished he'd hurry. I was so tense now, I could feel the sweat prickling between my breasts. There were great gaps and silences in the service, when the priests just sat or stood about or mumbled things or passed each other various bits of silverware. When they
did
say something, it was largely double Dutch, though occasionally they tossed us a morsel of English, or a word like “amen” which I suppose is universal. I think I must have been sitting with the Germans. The man beside me smelt of garlic sausage and he had one of those small green feathers in his hat you see in commercials for Kronenberg.

Suddenly he shook my hand. I almost pushed him off. I'd had trouble enough with Ray, and didn't want a Kraut on top of it. Then I realised that
all
the congregation were shaking hands. This was the famous Kiss of Peace. It had been a
real
kiss in the early days, a sign of affection and commitment to each other. But then the Church had lost its nerve. Kiss is a four-letter word for bishops, so they'd pared it down to a handshake. In one English diocese, they'd tried even to forbid that, on the grounds that any physical contact whatsoever might incite dangerous and uncontrollable passions. But this was France, not England, so I turned to my other neighbour and shook her warmly by the arm. She was dressed in a sort of damask tablecloth with a medal round her neck. She took my hand very gingerly, as if she feared I hadn't washed it. I yearned for the whole vast congregation to
really
kiss and cuddle, to cast aside all barriers, lie down on the concrete floor and unite in true affection. Why was the church so
terrified
of passion, the slightest stirrings and twitchings condemned immediately as sin? I thought of Ray — outlawed from that band of priests merely because he'd fitted one bit of his anatomy into a slot in mine and kept it there two seconds. I closed my eyes. I could see twenty thousand worshippers rolling naked in the aisles, nuns and priests included, humping and thrusting in their paschal joy. Only last night God had requested us to increase and multiply. What better place to do it than in His own temple which had floorspace enough for everyone and even an organ.

The German tablecloth was trying to retrieve her arm. I'd been pumping it for a good two minutes. My vision faded. I was aware only of Ray's absence now. The huge crowded church was empty because he wasn't there. “Credo,” I whispered. “I believe.” He could still slip in, late but fervent, a newly-shriven sinner with all the angels of heaven rejoicing in his wake. Everyone was kneeling now, as if they were expecting him — twenty thousand people on their knees in relief and gratitude because my Ray had come. The English priest was speaking:

“Lord Jesus Christ,

I eat your body and drink your blood.

Let it not bring me condemnation,

but health in mind and body.”

We had reached the Communion! Christ had exploded from a wafer into living, breathing flesh and I hadn't even noticed. He was there, now, in our midst, waiting to slip inside me. This was the moment I had longed and prayed for since the age of thirteen. I ached to share it. The girls at school had always had their parents present. I remember the mums looking brightly dressed and almost blasphemous among the chaste black nuns. The fathers were more sober, but still too broad and booming for that quiet cramped convent chapel. Vast hairy hands spread-eagled on flimsy prayer-books, resounding baritones making the ceiling flinch. My only parents now were a fat Bavarian
Hausfrau
on one side, and a man with garlic breath on the other. My real father was an out-of-focus snapshot tucked inside my soul, and my mother would have no more gone to Lourdes than to Sing Sing. Even my priest was missing still. Or hiding.

I was suddenly pushed almost off the bench. Everyone was surging and milling past me like a football crowd. Some forty or fifty priests were processing down the aisles, each preceded by a deacon with a lighted candle, each with his chalice full of God, ready to dispense Communion from a dozen different sections of the church. I could hear my stomach rumbling, crying out for Christ. I felt a wild, tearing hunger as if I were standing in a bakery surrounded by fresh-baked loaves, or touring a chocolate factory with rows and rows of candies chugging past. I longed to cram God in my mouth, grow fat and glossy on Him, swallow Him a hundred thousand times. It was all I could do not to rush up to those fifty priests in turn, receive the host from each of them, then double back and beg a second helping, a third, a fourth, a fifth. I wondered how many times you could receive Communion at a single Mass. Could you even attend all the different Masses throughout the day and keep on and on receiving it, glut yourself on God?

No, that was forbidden. Greed was a sin — even greed for God. One single host would be a banquet, as long as Ray had laid it on my tongue.

Where was he? My heart was thumping with fear and hope and longing. He might have just slipped in, arrived that very second, or be round the other side. The trouble was, it was more or less impossible to see. The entire basilica was a tangled mass of bodies, people converging from every aisle and angle, those returning bumping into those still fighting their way towards the priests. I jumped up on the bench and scanned the whole swarming space. I had to have my Communion from Ray. Only then could last night be cancelled and Ray restored to his priesthood. Even without last night, I knew it was essential. My faith and Ray were totally entangled. Even the fact that his surname was the same as our school chaplain's somehow mattered to me. I had knelt in that convent chapel every day, watching a Father Murphy dispense Communion to everyone else but me. Now at last I could receive mine from a Murphy. No other name could really compensate. I jumped off the bench and struggled round to the far side of the altar. Perhaps Ray was hidden there or about to burst in from the other door. “Oh,
please
,” I murmured. “Please.”

The crowds were returning now with God in their mouths. They still looked grey, grim, dyspeptic, grudging —jostling and obstructing one another, treading on each other's feet. There was no harmony, no order, not even any Communion rails. The crowds just stampeded towards the priests, who might well have been mobbed or injured, had the
brancardiers
not linked arms to keep them back. The organ was almost sobbing, the choir singing something sad and spiky which sounded as if it had been stolen from a funeral service. Christ was in twenty thousand stomachs and there was still no jubilation.

By now I had panted and elbowed my way round the entire basilica. Ray simply wasn't there. If I dithered any longer, Communion would be over and I'd have to wait another twenty years. I wouldn't get so much as a morsel or a
crumb
of Christ, let alone a blow-out. Swiftly, I scanned the three priests nearest me, chose the one who looked most like Leo, a dark skinny fellow who could have been Bulgarian. I joined the dregs of the queue, feeble old wrecks who had been pushed aside by the young and strong. A crone with one eye stood just in front of me. She received the host in her hand as if it were a government hand-out, peered at it almost in disappointment, and crammed it in her mouth.

Now it was my turn. Someone in the queue behind me was shoving me almost into the hard golden rim of the ciborium. I opened my mouth, tipped back my head. I only hoped my tongue looked pink and healthy, not furred by my long fast. Bad breath is always a problem with lovers — I'd never really thought of it in the context of Holy Communion. I wished I'd chewed an Amplex now, or gargled with Listerine. Hours seemed to ache and hobble by. My neck hurt, my tongue lolled out, but there was still nothing on it — except a sour and prickly fear. Perhaps the priest had guessed I wasn't a normal cradle Catholic, or Ray had reported me immediately and every priest in Lourdes now knew I'd profaned their profession. Would God send down a thunderbolt, or the entire basilica come crashing down in ruins? Already the organ had stopped crying and started threatening, the choir taken up an angry battle cry.

I squinted through my eyelids. The priest had his back towards me, but it wasn't disapproval. He'd merely run out of hosts and was being refilled from a huge ciborium borne by a younger deacon. Behind their heads I could see the stern white trumpets of the Easter lilies. I closed my eyes again. Relief had made me dizzy. I tried to concentrate. I had been nervous and distracted almost all the Mass — this was my last chance. I remembered the great Prayer of St Bonaventure which the nuns had always recited in the chapel:

“Be thou alone ever my hope and my whole confidence, my riches, my delight, my pleasure and my joy; my rest and tranquillity; my peace my sweetness and my fragrance; my sweet saviour; my food and refreshment; my refuge and my help; my wisdom, my portion, my possession and my treasure, in whom may my mind and my heart be ever fixed and firm, and rooted immovably. Amen.”

It was so beautiful, I almost wept. I had tried with
all
my men to make them my riches, my pleasure, my food, my refuge, my portion, yet I was lucky if I even went six weeks without a bust-up or a broken vase. I'd never met a man called Bonaventure. If I had, maybe things would have worked out differently. Now I was meeting God. I tensed. The priest had turned towards me again and I could feel the host falling on my tongue. It was bigger than I'd imagined, with rough scratchy edges which hurt my convalescing mouth. I couldn't swallow it. There was no wine, not even any of Ray's famous water, to wash it down. I had been pushed away from my place in front of the priest, and the old man behind me was already gulping down his slice of God. I waited for the miracle to fizz and froth inside me. The host tasted slightly fusty like my mother's biscuits which she bought in bulk to save money, and then rationed to three a week to save still more.

I still couldn't get God down. I knew it would be blasphemy to chew Him. You didn't use teeth on Christ. The girls always told me the host simply disssolved away, but this one seemed indissoluble, an invader, an intruder, pressing against my still sore and sensitive gums. My mouth was completely dry with no saliva to lubricate God's body. It was like being frigid with a new, important man. I was also terrified of choking. If I spat out God, it would be proof of my unworthiness. I remembered those books in the convent library about schismatics and apostates swallowing the host in mortal sin, and then being punished with racking pains or terminal diseases.

I bumped into a pillar. I had lost my bearings. Even the German tablecloth had disappeared. I was walking straight towards a bank of wheelchairs. A girl with no arms leered and blinked at me. I swung away. The host was still looming in my throat. In panic, I called on St Bonaventure, St Maur, on St Bernadette, even on St Raymond, if there was one. I squeezed beside a posse of French nurses who were kneeling on the concrete floor. If I choked to death, at least I could be sure of medical attention.

Slowly, agonisingly, the host scratched down — past my throat, down my gullet, slipping lumpenly into my stomach. I had triumphed. I had swallowed it, I had made my First Communion.

I had eaten God. His arms and legs, His torso and His bowels, were all inside me, His prick and His balls, the crease between His bum. I had eaten a man like Leo who sobbed and thundered when He came, who burst out of His grave clothes, who absolved the world. It didn't feel like that. Once I got Him down, He just melted into nothing. I could hear my stomach rumbling and grumbling louder than before, crying out for something with more substance. It was like impotence again, or premature ejaculation. There was no sense of being filled or satisfied, no mutual orgasm. I was more aware of the pain in my knees from the concrete floor than the hosanna in my stomach.

I couldn't even concentrate. One of the nurses was whispering, another stifling a yawn. The priests had all returned to the altar now and were doing the washing-up. I tried to pray, but all I could think of was breakfast. I hadn't had a banquet, I'd hardly had a mouthful. Blasphemous pictures of huge squidgy croissants, hot crusty rolls, were rearing and steaming in my head. I'd almost rather God had changed into bread than the other way round. I wondered how long He
stayed
God, before He crumbled into chemicals, or became pulp in the bloodstream and finally clogged into a turd. I was already bunged up. Without my branflakes, things were worse than usual. Perhaps if you were constipated, God remained with you longer. Had the medieval theologians debated things like that, or was it only angels on a pin?