After Purple (47 page)

I untied the hankie from my chin and struggled to my feet. I stared at the swarthy faces — puzzled waiters, suspicious customers. “Listen,” I implored them. “Our Lady never appeared here. St Bernadette didn't see her. She thought she did, but she was wrong. I know it won't help your profits or your livelihoods, but Truth is more important, isn't it?”

Silence.

“
Isn't
it?” I repeated in a whisper.

Mutters, giggles, shrugs. A circle of blank uncomprehending faces, a sudden howl of laughter from the coffee machine. I tipped the last two inches of steak into the handkerchief and stuffed it up my sleeve. At least I wasn't starving any longer. I'd
make
them understand me. At the Blessing of the Sick, I'd win a sudden blazing breakthrough, a total revelation.

“Just wait till half-past four!” I cried, as I marched through them to the door and made them scatter out of my path. That was just a foretaste of my power.

Half-past four. I heard the music before I even reached the square — church bells tolling, hymns of praise and supplication in several different languages roaring through the microphones. The crowds were converging all along the esplanade, excited and expectant as if waiting for a coronation. Except this was the Blessing of the Sick, the greatest parade of the diseased and disabled anywhere in the world.

I took up my place by the steps of the Crowned Virgin, midway between the processional route and the steps of the rosary basilica where Benediction would be given. I had been resting since my breakfast and felt calmer, stronger, now, but I had no intention of joining the procession myself, walking side by side with my compatriots or holding up a banner emblazoned Notting Hill or Twickenham. I was so much an outsider, it would be a mockery to process around that concourse, singing hymns to Our Lady when I knew she had never set foot in Lourdes in all her life and hadn't even had the decency to correct the story herself.

Yet Our Lady was everywhere. In the prissy statue of the Virgin towering over me; sitting sculpted above the doorway of the rosary basilica, dressed in frills and flounces and looking cross; weeping in bronze at the foot of the cross at the far end of the esplanade. Her statue stood in all the churches, her name was woven into every hymn; her face shone on all the medals hung round necks and pinned on coats; she dangled from a thousand rosaries. She was even stamped on the holy lozenges which people sucked for sore throats or sore souls. All around me were her fans, her satellites, her suckers.

I shivered. It was colder now. The Easter sun had vanished and a grey bad-tempered sky lowered down on stoic crowds. Not that anyone cared about the weather. Every eye was turned towards the white-haired, black-robed priest at the head of the procession, holding up his placard of a suffering Christ. The sick and handicapped were lining up behind him, nurses wheeling crocks and cripples, nuns leading halt and blind, all the diseased from all the different nations flocking to his banner.

A blast of music thundered from the loudspeakers and the sort of proud, plummy voice which Leo likes announced, “This procession is a celebration of our Faith” — and then repeated it in several languages. I could hear the capital letter echoing across the square, the same triumphant F which Adrian gave to Future. Lourdes had neither Faith nor Future now, yet no one even suspected it. They were like passengers on the Titanic, tangoing towards the iceberg.

Suddenly, the whole crowd bobbed and rippled. There was a murmur of excitement, a stir and shuffle like horses in a stable when they hear their buckets coming. People stood up straighter, joined their hands. The priest with the placard stepped forward, held his banner high above the crowds. The procession had begun.

The babies came first — pale, withered creatures whimpering in their pushchairs. Some of them would never walk at all. Their prams would be exchanged for wheelchairs or their cots for coffins. For the first time in my life, I was almost relieved Lucian had never made it past his jar. Next came the children — kids who should have been running and tumbling in the grass, strapped like sacks on to stretchers or wearing ugly metal callipers; toddlers with bumps instead of legs, teenagers with acne and no arms; a lad with a punk pink haircut pushed by a Mongol girl with a moustache. Scores and scores of children who, if they survived at all, would only join the batallion of handicapped hobbling and dribbling behind them, the mindless pushing the legless, the blind leading the blind. One huge man of fifty-five or sixty was sucking his thumb like a baby, two or three wore bibs. Some moaned or shivered or threw their hands about; others lay so pale, so still, so hopeless, they were dead in all but definition.

I watched in horror as row after row of sick passed slowly by — strange distorted creatures like rejects in a doll factory, their limbs and features twisted out of shape. Many were just old, or had been old since they first drew breath — withered — shrivelled rag-bags staring woodenly ahead. One woman was crying in a low, hopeless wail; another cackled to herself, screwing up her face and pointing at the crowds. Most were silent — a grim, resigned silence which had no more tears to shed and nothing left to laugh at.

A boy as beautiful as Lionel but without his legs, grinned at me from his stretcher-bed. Tears were streaming down my face, but I tried to smile at him. Two French nurses were pulling his bed behind them like a coal wagon, girls younger and prettier than I was, but as familiar with pain and horror as if it were their stepsister. My words would disrupt all these nurses' lives as well. Where could they bring their patients, once I'd removed Our Lady from Lourdes?

The loudspeakers were blasting out the
Lauda Sion
. Although it started in Latin, I remembered it from school and knew it was a song of praise. How could we praise a God who had created handicap on such a scale? Every sick person passing now in front of me had parents, relatives, helpers, friends, all of whom had wept and suffered with them, so that their combined grief was shouting up to heaven. Even the able-bodied looked shabby, plain and tired, trudging behind the wheelchairs, with their bunions and their heartache, their dreary faded clothes, their concrete faces. All the world's misery seemed to be concentrated in this one grey square. Not just the sick, but the lost and the defeated, the poor and the bereaved. I could almost see the broken nights, the bleeding marriages, the lost fathers, dead babies; tears, fights, deceits and disappointments. If Mary hadn't appeared here, then she bloody well should have done. She and her Son could have wiped out this weeping world and made a better one. Just one word, just a gesture even, and all that pointless suffering could be swept away.

The English contingent was shrilling the chorus now:

Praise O Sion, praise your Master,
Praise your Saviour, praise your pastor,
In a joyous melody.

The crowd took up the refrain in a score of different languages, praise and joy resounding all around me. I myself was dumb. I couldn't hymn the Lord, only blame Him, rail at Him, weep for His cruel and senseless world.

The next verse was swallowed in a sudden crash of thunder. In seconds, the sky had turned from grey to purple, and stinging rain lashed the bowed and shivering procession. It was as if God had added the last mocking test of faith and courage. No one failed it. Wheelchair hoods were snapped firmly into place, plastic covers patiently fastened, waterproofs put on. The singing hardly faltered —“Praise him, praise him” — even soaked to the skin or threatened with pneumonia, they would still ring out His praises.

Umbrellas sprouted all along the esplanade, but there were still many with no shelter. Either they had come without their brollies, or they needed both their hands to push the wheelchairs. Sick and helpers alike squelched along in the pouring, drenching rain. Hair dripped, glasses steamed, clothes were splashed with mud. Rain rattled on the hoods of wheelchairs or slammed against the white sticks of the blind. Nurses' uniforms turned from blue to weeping black, nuns dragged their skirts through puddles. I had no umbrella myself, but even if I had, I would have given it away a thousand thousand times. It seemed scandalous that the well and strong should shelter, while that army of disabled limped and tottered through the downpour. Yet they kept on singing, kept on praying, lips moving, hands joined, while the rain joined in the choruses and lightning crackled through the clouds. A storm was nothing to them, because at the end of the rainbow stood the Blessed Virgin herself, ready with her miracles. How could I dethrone her? At any moment, her slim white finger might flash down from the sky, restoring sight or limbs or strength. It
had
happened. I had read the records, seen the photographs. Even if it were only psychological, merely the power of their faith or hope or longing, who was I to take that hope away? Hope and faith were more valuable than truth, more necessary. Truth would never heal them.

I watched nation after nation plod and shuffle by, all united by that one hopeless hope. Most wore black or grey. There was almost no colour, save for the bobbing umbrellas and the embroidered banners shouting Meaux, Milano, Munchen, Deul-La-Barre, Corbeil-Essonues, even grand Versailles. Some of the names sounded exotic or quaint and reminded me of fairy tales, until I looked down and saw the wrecks and rejects holding them. The sad clock chimed the quarters, the hymns resounded on, and still they came, rank after rank after rank of fervent dripping faces. At last, I could see the end, the line of white-robed priests following after all the people, and, finally, the Blessed Sacrament sheltered under its golden canopy, Christ Himself caged in a gleaming monstrance, held high in front of him by a purple-skirted bishop. As he splashed and splendoured by, the first half of the procession had already doubled back again and was now streaming past me on the other side, and then forming up in rows in front of the basilica. I pressed forward. Even with my news of gloom and disillusion, some crazy spark in me still dared to hope. Hope was catching like the 'flu and all around me were desperately hoping people. This was the place, the moment when miracles occurred, and everybody knew it. I gazed around the square. The plane trees had been docked and pollarded and looked handicapped themselves, their bark blemished, their branches stunted and deformed. One or two stern marble statues stared out across the trees, too high and lonely on their plinths to care about the suffering. Thin white clouds bandaged the pointing finger of the Pyrenees which jutted behind the spire.

Everyone was waiting. Slowly, the golden canopy lurched and swayed towards them, the dazzling monstrance blazing underneath it. The crowds parted like the Red Sea as the Blessed Sacrament sailed past. Pilgrims fell to their knees in front of it, cowering on the cold hard concrete, as if pain and rain were nothing compared to the presence of their Christ. Now the blessing itself began. The bishop went to and fro along the rows of handicapped, signing them with the sign of the cross. Some of them were too sick or dotty to even know he was there. Others yawned or twitched or made strange spastic gestures, or leaned forward from their stretchers and groped out greedy hands towards the host. The prayers continued. The priests stood on the altar steps, taking it in turns to speak to their own nation in their own language. An English priest was now at the microphone, a tall dramatic-looking Titan with a great lion head and a voice dipped in fire and brimstone.

“Lord, that I may
see
,” he cried, on behalf of all the blind, all those who lived in darkness, or were blinkered, blindfold, groping.

“Lord, that I may
see
,” roared the English pilgrims after him.

I held my breath. Surely the Lord would hear them now. Even if the Lady was a sham, God was still in heaven, still had power. I gazed at a blind man with a guide dog, its harness drenched with rain, its fur dripping. “Lord, let
him
see,” I begged. “Just him. Just one.”

Hope was so thick, you could almost see it spread on everything like honey. Maybe God was still not quite awake, still yawning and stretching after His afternoon siesta. I willed Him to get up and get a move on. I had almost forgotten my mission, my announcement. My entire attention was on these desperate sick. Far from kicking all their props away, I was praying for their miracles.

“Lord, let them see,” I mouthed, over and over again, filling in the silence, the suspense.

Nothing happened, except the rain beat faster. No one seemed surprised. The priest continued, as if he hadn't really expected much the first time.

“Lord that I may
hear
,” he tried again, now praying for the deaf, who wouldn't even be aware that he was speaking.

“Lord, that I may
hear
,” took up the crowd.

Most of them had ears, but never heard anything kind or soft or beautiful. They were praying for magic phrases like “everlasting arms” or “peace which surpasseth all understanding”. I was praying with them, praying to hear Leo say “I love you”, or even just “I'm sorry”. (He still hadn't said it yet.)

I wondered if Lionel was there, his full red silent lips mumbling to a God he only saw in pictures, or knew from three barren letters on his card.

“Lord, that
he
may hear,” I implored. Just Lionel. I owed him prayers for having slandered him.

The rain was like grapeshot now, battering down on the faithful, almost drowning the priest's voice. A few people had scuttled away to seek for shelter, but most remained, enduring the weather as simply one more trial. Half of them were still on their knees, their feet in puddles, their bowed necks lashed with rain.

“Lord, that I may
walk
,” intoned the priest, louder now, so that he could be heard above the downpour.

“Lord, that I may
walk
,” bellowed the crowd.

I shut my eyes. When I opened them, every cripple would have leapt out of his wheelchair, or flung away his crutches and be dancing and cavorting in the square. No God could be deaf to such a plea. I could almost see Him rising from His throne, opening up his Box of Miracles and showering them on earth, smiling at the ease with which He did it.