Fifty-Minute Hour (46 page)

‘How's my son?' she was asking now, in an affected stagey whisper. ‘Has the poor boy woken up yet?'

Bryan ground his teeth in fury, could hardly bear to listen to this parody of motherly concern, or watch Phyllis and that strutting priest contorting their smug faces into expressions of false pity.

‘Yes, he's just outside, dear,' Phyllis whispered back. ‘He looks a little peaky. I think he'd better rest today, take things really quietly.'

‘He's very highly strung, you know, suffers with his nerves. He's actually seeing someone for it – been seeing him for years – one of those top brain-doctors they have on television. A brilliant man, as far as I can gather, though he keeps it very dark. In fact …' She lowered her voice still further, so he had to strain his ears to hear. ‘He's no idea I know. He goes three times every week, first thing in the morning, before it's hardly light; claims he's doing overtime, or his firm is short of staff. He likes his little secrets, so I never say a word, just humour him, pretend I …'

‘Ssh!' warned Phyllis, nervously, but Bryan had already turned and fled – back towards the dormitory, fighting total incredulity. Lena couldn't know, she
couldn't
– not when he'd all but killed himself with four years of lies, evasions; covered all his tracks, never left the bills around, or displayed the slightest shred of interest if the subject of psychiatry came up on TV. Yet she even knew what time he went, and how many times a week. Had she had him followed, gained access to his bank statements? He sank down on the narrow bed, all his pointless fabrications screaming in his head – the stolen wallets, plunging shares, the early starts or shiftwork demanded by his firm, the financial crises, pay-cuts. Disbelief and horror gave place to bitter rage. Even if she
had
found out, how dare she share his secret, broadcast it to Catholic priests, to mocking jeering strangers? She'd probably told them everything; his entire shaming childhood history confided to a party of two hundred – how he'd wet his bed till the age of five or six, had difficulty in swallowing solid foods, how he was scared of feathers, spiders, shadows, ghosts.

‘Oh, God!' he groaned aloud, as the sheer unmitigated horror of his position as official party cretin burst into his already aching head.

‘What
is
it, Bryan? What's wrong?'

He swung round, saw Colin's ginger head flashing like a beacon at the door.

‘I feared something might be wrong, mate. I couldn't see you in the chapel, so I was scared you'd … No, don't get up. You're white as a sheet. Shall I call a priest?'

‘No!' It came out like a yell. Didn't Catholics call their priests when they were dying? ‘I'm always pale – it's nothing. Nothing wrong at all. I'm absolutely fine.'

‘Well, you don't look fine to me. But maybe you're just weak from lack of nosh. I mean, you missed your dinner, didn't you, and the refreshments on the plane. And your mother said you've been off your oats for days – too keyed up to eat, she said, and with constant pains and wind. It's breakfast in ten minutes, so why not put your clothes on and I'll take you down to meet the crowd.'

‘I … er … haven't got my clothes.' Bryan prayed he'd never find them, so he could stay in bed the whole two weeks, avoid all meals, avoid the ‘crowd', that mob of giggling sniggerers who would enquire into his bowel habits, dissect his indigestion. His Mother had betrayed him, not only on the issue of John-Paul (did she even know his doctor's name, he wondered with a jolt?), but on still more intimate matters. His flatulence was painful – and strictly fiercely private – or had been till today. Now two hundred strangers knew the workings (or otherwise) of his alimentary canal.

‘No problem, mate. We're roughly the same size.' Colin was rummaging in his suitcase, drew out a pair of denim jeans, an orange cotton sweatshirt with ‘I'M BEST FRIENDS WITH JESUS' splashed across the front.

‘No, really, I can't possibly …'

‘Go on, take 'em, Bryan. I don't mind at all. It's only for an hour or so. Your mother's probably got your case, or Father Campion.' Colin tossed the garments over, drew the curtains round Bryan's bed, hovered just outside. ‘Call me if you need some help, okay?'

Bryan had never dressed so quickly in his life. The thought of someone looking at his body, assessing his … his equipment.

‘Ready, mate?'

‘Er, no.' The jeans seemed worryingly tight, would reveal his lack of bulge and scrawny balls. He never wore jeans anyway, associated denim with hooligans and youth. The sweatshirt was still worse. He buttoned back the raincoat across his Jesus-blazoned chest, slunk out through the curtains.

‘Great! We're just in time for breakfast. It's the only meal we're served here. Apparently the kitchens flooded just this time last year, ruined all the ovens and what have you.'

‘
Meal
?' thought Bryan bitterly, as he sat facing his dry crust of bread, his cup of watery coffee. His head was reeling from the noise – swarms of eager pilgrims jabbering and cackling, clattering cups on saucers – mostly dowdy women, the males totally outnumbered and therefore more conspicuous. At least a hundred females had come up to his table, offered smiles or sympathy, whinnied little condolences as if he'd suffered a bereavement. Well, Lena
had
expired, for all the use she was to him, queening it in bed still, while someone took her breakfast on a tray – fresh fruit and coddled eggs, instead of prison fare. It
was
a prison, this gloomy basement refectory, with its cold stone floor and walls, its scrubbed wood tables, hard and backless benches – he its youngest inmate, bar the boyish priest he'd seen in Lena's room. The majority of pilgrims were his Mother's age or over, and though Colin looked much younger and a few other men were only in their forties, the women were all headed for their Maker.

He had hoped to lose his own Mother, and instead he was surrounded by a tide of mother-substitutes, all fussing fretting Mothers, telling him how pale he looked, or giving him advice about the dangers of the drinking water or the high risk of diarrhoea. The only mother he desired was young and very beautiful – and still in tranquil Walton, nine hundred miles away.

Would he ever meet with Mary in this maelstrom of a city? Rome was far too big. He'd pictured a small town the size of Bath or Oxford, packed with art and churches, and surrounded by soft olive groves – a laurelled Julius Caesar strolling through its Forum beneath a blazing sun, or a turps-tinged Michelangelo sipping rough Chianti in a pavement café open to the stars. And what he'd actually seen (from the bell-tower of the seminary, where Colin had escorted him before they descended to its bowels) was a sprawling grey megalopolis, half-lost in clammy mist, with constipated traffic clogging up the roads, and a few domes in compensation.

Another crowd of pilgrims was just breezing through the door; pals of Colin, obviously, since they were all heading for his table. Bryan drowned in introductions – bad teeth, bad breath, bad accents assailing on three sides. All the names appeared to end in ‘y' – Paddy, Polly, Johnny, Janey, Dotty – and all seemed overweight: bulky hips squeezing in beside him, jutting bosoms shadowing his plate.

‘I can't wait to see St Peter's!' enthused a portly balding matron, sporting Christmas-bauble earrings in deference to the season, and displacing half her coffee with an overload of sugar.

‘I can't wait to see the Pope.'

‘You mean you've never seen him, Milly?'

‘No. Last time we came to Rome, he was …'

‘Have
you
ever seen the Holy Father, Bryan?'

He shook his head, his mind on Holy Mothers still, though his body was assaulted by Milly's thigh on one side and Dotty's on the other. If he didn't find his luggage, he couldn't even search for Mary; would hardly win her hand in Colin's cast-offs. Without a suit or neat grey slacks he felt totally disorientated. A smart suit gave him status, and pinstripes helped to tell him which way up he was. He was unravelling in jeans, becoming Someone Else – a layabout, a pop singer, a scruffy acned teenager. And the raincoat made him furtive, or maybe half-deranged. No one else was eating in their coats. A few kindly (bossy) ladies had tried – and failed – to coax it off his back, and now obviously regarded it as some sort of security blanket which he clung to night and day. But worse to be revealed in flimsy orange cotton with Jesus as his buddy. If he'd never had a mate in thirty-two long years, he wasn't keen to start today, with God.

‘Hey, Bryan, are you going to have your rosary blessed?'

‘Pardon?'

‘The Holy Father blesses them when we meet him at the audience. I've brought thirty-seven with me – all my friends' and family's.'

He nodded vaguely to the beaming frizz-haired spinster with three medals round her neck, one of which was dangling in her coffee cup. He was no longer in the refectory with Polly, Molly, Dolly, but had jetted back to England – Sylvan Gardens, actually – and was staring through the window of Mary's festive kitchen, streamers round the cooker, tinsel round the dog, the smell of roasting turkey mingling with her scent of milk and musk. He watched her three ungrateful brats tearing at their presents, scoffing eggs and bacon, blowing froth off mugs of steaming chocolate. Then James strode in – six foot six, at least, with new dazzling Christmas chest-hair sprouting from the gap in his pyjamas – claimed his master's chair, and Mary's kiss. The room was filling up now – cosy beaming aunties, snowy-pated grandpas, grandmothers with apple cheeks, home-made fudge concealed in apron pockets. He'd never had a family, never been coddled by a Nana, or cuddled on a favourite uncle's lap. Lena had one sister (the Anne who'd made his snake), and she had died of cancer when he was only eight. There were no other aunts or uncles, no grandparents at all – or none that he had seen. When he'd enquired about his relatives, his Mother changed the subject, or said ‘Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies' – her standard answer to all his childhood queries, especially when he asked about his Father.

He suddenly added Skerwin to Mary's crowded kitchen, a Skerwin with a bandaged arm, who'd just spilled all his coffee. Mary didn't nag – just mopped his brown-stained Father up, consoled him with hot muffins. He stared down at his own cold crust – no butter, jam, or even plate. The bare wood was his plate, whereas Mary's kitchen table was swanking in a scarlet cloth, with pretty floral china. James banged his rose-sprigged cup down, strode towards his wife, dragged off her lacy negligée, and the wicked wisp of nightie underneath it. She was naked in his arms now, as he swept her off upstairs, ignoring the shrill protests of his three abandoned sons, the tut-tutting of the shocked and swooning aunts. He threw her on the bed, began planting violent kisses on her breasts, her thighs, her …

‘
No
!' cried Bryan, leaping from the bench and spilling his own coffee, which scorched and stung his groin. ‘She's mine, she's
mine
, you bastard!' He tried to hurl himself on James, who had changed quite unaccountably into a younger, stouter, shorter man in shabby jeans and a ruff of ginger hair.

‘It's all right, Bryan, I've got you. Don't fight me, I'm your pal. Don't worry, Johnny, he's not that heavy, really. I can manage on my own. He needs his pills, that's all. Go and call his mother, could you, Peggy? I expect she's got his tranquillisers. That's better, Bryan. You just flop and take some nice deep breaths. That's it, that's really great. Now, if you lean on me and Johnny, we'll take you back to bed – okay – and Peggy here will go and get your mother.'

Mary opened her eyes. She could hear church bells pealing faintly from somewhere far away, James's snuffly breathing providing a soft descant. ‘James?' she whispered, stretching out a naked arm towards the other (single) bed.

He murmured something in his sleep, something barely audible, though she caught the name Crawshaw, uttered as a groan. Poor James. She'd hoped he could leave Crawshaw back in London, along with Holdsworth, Pierce and Hampton; the mortgage, rates and overdraft; the debts, defaulting customers. Well, perhaps he would, given time and rest. It was only their first morning, after all. She threw back the lumpy duvet, crept softly to the window, lifted up the curtain, gazed in awe at the sparkling floodlit fountain – a tangled writhe of marble mouths and nipples, all spewing moon-kissed water, while gods and satyrs grabbed at thighs and breasts.

She looked beyond the square to the swollen dome which rose between an ornate and ancient building with a carved frieze of fruit and flowers, and what looked like a temple, with a row of fluted columns standing guard in front. The view from Sylvan Gardens was of sturdy double garages, burglar-proof front doors, a gnome or two, crazy-paving paths. Here, statues, churches, columns jostled in the distance – a stern-eyed saint gesturing to the moon, halo glinting in the street-lights as he stretched up from his plinth; a plunging horse in bronze seeming to leap towards the stars. Rome! The Eternal City, the centre of her Faith – of both her Faiths, now John-Paul was here.

She longed to be alone, so she could track him down, call at his hotel, but she was tethered by six males – three sons, two fathers, and a spouse, all needing her, demanding. James's father and her own had both decided to accompany them, despite their myriad ailments and their years. James's father, Harry, had paid almost half of the entire cost of the holiday, offering it as his Christmas gift, and a contribution to what he called his grandsons' cultural education (which had swiftly overruled James's first objections to having a semi-invalid in tow). Her own workaholic father had decided to revise a book he had half-written in his fifties (abandoned due to lack of time) on the Food and Agriculture Organization, whose headquarters were in Rome, and which he'd need to visit to update his researches. He'd packed little else but reference books and file cards, bulky jotters, all his earlier notes.