Fifty-Minute Hour (58 page)

Mary sighed, trailed into the bathroom. Even her bladder seemed irritable tonight. She'd blamed it on the wine at first – three glasses in the café, and then champagne on top. But it could be just another symptom of her pregnancy. She had planned on telling James about the baby in the first hour of the new year, which would surely be symbolic; mark the new start in their marriage and their hopes. She had imagined a romantic lull with all the fireworks spent, the children sleeping peacefully, and even Harry anaesthetized by his tumbler of champagne. She could hear him through the bathroom wall, splashing water, coughing; guessed he might lurch in again with some new and fatal symptom. She didn't want her baby's birth mixed up with Harry's death. Maybe safer not to tell James until they were actually back home, had off-loaded both the fathers, waved the three boys off to school. She could choose a Sunday afternoon when he was relaxed from golf, replete with beef and trifle; take his hand in hers as they sipped coffee by the fire, draw it gently to her tummy and …

She jerked back from the basin as a shattering crash outside aborted her soft thoughts – the noise of broken glass, maybe broken bodies. She fretted to the door, opened it an inch, glimpsed the man from 207 dancing with the pie-eyed Lithuanian; his party guests storming down the corridor, hurling glasses at the picture-frames. Then, suddenly, another figure came limping into view, one whose legs and hips she recognised, though his head and neck and torso were more or less obliterated by what looked like yellow porridge.

‘James!' she cried, darting out to grab him, steer him safely to the room, since his eyes were yellow-poulticed and he was carrying his shoes; in danger from the broken glass, the pools of spilt champagne. ‘How …? Who …? Why …? What …? What
is
it?'

‘Lentils,' James groaned softly, as he scooped them from his mouth, shook a glutinous coating from his shoulders. ‘Six pints of lentil stew. It's some special dish they make for New Year's Eve.'

She slammed the door and locked it, snapped the safety-chain in place, led him to the bathroom, found flannels, soap and towels. He no longer smelt of aftershave – the Brut he'd splashed on earlier to celebrate New Year – but overwhelmingly of garlic. ‘I'm sorry, James, but I just don't understand. Why lentils on your
head
?'

He sank down on the bathroom stool, let her sponge and scrape him, unplug his ears and nose. ‘Well, I was just talking to that desk clerk, telling him it was high time we got a bit of shuteye, or was that infernal bloody bunfight continuing till dawn? I suppose he imagined I was threatening him, because he summoned three more staff, and this damn great slanging match breaks out, with total strangers joining in – other guests and waiters and some riffraff from the bar – and soon everybody's shouting and even using fists. I didn't stand a chance, Mary. I lost my coat and dressing gown – could have lost an eye, as well, the way those nerds were carrying on. Then this jackass of a chef in a tall white hat and apron and pissed out of his mind, comes prancing from the kitchen with a bloody great cauldronful of what he calls
lenticchia alia toscana
and dumps the whole lot on my head.'

‘He could have
killed
you, darling, or blinded you, at least. Were the lentils hot or cold?'

‘Tepid and congealing – and with enough garlic in the mixture to halt a Roman legion. Yet he even had the cheek to say they'd bring me luck. Apparently it's some old Roman custom. You eat lentils at New Year and they're meant to make your fortune – “many many monies”, as he put it.'

‘Well, that would be a change, dear. Now you'd better have a bath. I've scraped off what I can, but your hair's still plastered with the stuff and it's sort of hardened round your chest-hair. While you're soaking, I'll wash out your pyjamas and try to clean your shoes.' She ran his bath, found shampoo and bath-foam, cleaned the stool and floor where he'd been sitting, then dragged back to the basin with his lentil-soggy shoes. The left one felt much heavier than the right; seemed blocked not just with garlic-pungent sludge, but with something hard and knobbly, which had been rammed inside like a gross dismembered limb.

‘James! Whatever's this?'

James had discarded his pyjamas in a damp heap on the floor, was just stepping into the bath. ‘What?' he said. ‘Oh, that. A present from the chef. It's a pig's foot – a
zampone
– meant to bring you luck again; in fact, not just luck, but health, wealth, happiness, the rainbow's end, delirium – you name it. Another of their damnfool New Year customs. It's served up with the lentils. You get a wish or something with the first slice that you cut. The chef's English was atrocious, so I couldn't really follow it. And frankly, I wasn't all that riveted, not with half a hundredweight of lentils dripping down my neck.' He plumped into the bath, still railing and complaining; tipped right back, so his head was half-submerged.

Mary ran more water, sponged the pig's foot clean. Perhaps it was an omen and James's constant worries about debts and bills and creditors would be miraculously relieved; the brave New Year be filled to overflowing with ‘many many monies'. She'd be contributing herself by giving up her therapy, axing those substantial monthly bills. And if lentils brought you luck, then their luck was running over – oodles of thick golden luck still smeared across the floor, floating in the bath-water, blocking up the basin, clinging to her nightie. She heard the clock outside strike three, savoured each long chime, touched her swollen breasts a moment as she paused in swabbing shoes. Never mind the problems. If Simon sicked his cake up, or Lionel decided he was flying home that night (as he'd already threatened twice), or Harry staggered in again with rabies or Bell's palsy, or that jackass of a chef appeared with a saucepanful of boiling ravioli, did it really matter? Those were simply trivia, life's minor snags and hitches. She let her hands slide lower, pressed them to her belly, could almost feel the foetus quickening in her womb. She had her luck already. The New Year was growing, swelling, already three hours old – the most blessed year she'd ever know, in which she'd give birth to a daughter who would explode like a bright rocket on the dark face of the world – Joanna-Pauline, her dazzling saviour girl-child.

Bryan lay back in his tomb, wincing at the dank chill of the stone, drawing in his legs and arms to fit the cramped and narrow grave. Hundreds of thousands of bodies had been buried in this place, wrapped in lime-encrusted shrouds and racked in simple niches sculpted from the rock. The air smelt musty, fetid, as if the corpses were dissolved in it, or some left simply rotting. There was no chink or glint of daylight, just an unhealthy sallow glimmer from the crudely-wired lighting-system filtering down the black and bleary walls. He could just make out the carving of Jonah and the Whale, depicted on a sarcophagus above him. The guide had told them it symbolised redemption, deliverance from death. He shut his eyes to block it out, had no wish to be reminded of his own release from death, his own bungled suicide.

This attempt would be surely more successful. Nobody could live long in the catacombs, survive a night unscathed. He'd deliberately lost his party, darted left while they were turning right, got entangled with another group of tourists – Japanese with cameras and interpreters – but had thrown them off as well; hurtled down a flight of steps marked ‘VIETATO ENTRARE!', with a scarlet-painted hand held up in warning. No one had come after him, no one called his name – no Colin yelling ‘Bryan, mate!', no frantic Lena searching for her son. This particular catacomb closed at five o' clock, and it was already twenty past. They'd never find him now. There were seven miles of subterranean passages, on at least five different levels. Even if they dragged through every passage, climbed every stair and storey, they'd hardly spot him hidden in his niche.

He rubbed his arm, which had developed pins and needles, wished he had his snake. He had always hoped to be buried with poor Anne, had even left instructions in his will. But the snake was dead already, its grave some dirty gutter or unknown rubbish-tip. Clive had tied it to a rocket, exploded it away on New Year's Eve. He should never have brought it with him in the first place. Even at the airport it had proved a real embarrassment; dragged out of his suitcase as a possible security risk, held up by its tail for all the giggling pilgrims to deride. The only child he'd ever have, and he'd still failed to protect it. He was a useless mother, useless son as well. He hadn't even said goodbye to Lena. He'd tried, in fact, but she'd been closeted with Father Smithby-Horne, receiving her first lesson on transubstantiation. Yes, his Mother was taking instruction in the Roman Catholic faith – a faith she'd disparaged and decried for over thirty years. It had genuinely shocked him, redoubled his resolve to seek extinction for himself. Once she was a Catholic, she would be even more cut off from him, shun him as an unbeliever, a danger to her new beliefs. He might join the Church himself, of course, as a last desperate bid to regain her attention and approval, but the prospect horrified him – not just the shabby compromise of all that he believed, but the thought of Lena hovering by the confessional box while he stuttered out his sins, reminding him of heinous ones he was too ashamed to tell.

Was it a sin to worship Mary, still hope to …? No, he mustn't dwell on Mary, had vowed to die without sparing her a thought. He had neither a mistress nor a Mother now, was orphaned and abandoned, a near-corpse in a lime-encrusted shroud. His clothes felt stiff already, stiff from cold, stiff from grime and rock-dust. This form of death took courage – no instant poison, merciful sharp knives. He might linger on all night before the airlessness and fetor, the total lack of drinking water, finally snuffed him out – maybe even two nights. The catacomb was shut all day on Thursdays, so no one would disturb him, no one interrupt his slow demise; no tramping bands of sightseers, no multi-lingual guides.

He'd been impressed, despite himself, by their own old but ardent guide – the way he'd made those early Christians spring to instant life. Eighteen centuries had rumbled back and he'd seen them milling in these warrens, weeping for the death of some trusted friend, or child, yet rejoicing in the afterlife, the promise of reunion; living in a spirit of serenity and hope. Saints and Popes had been buried here, as well as ordinary men – even famous martyrs. He'd heard about the martyrs from yet another guide on their party's recent expedition to the grisly Colosseum, where swarms of naked Christians had been thrown to ravening lions.

He shivered, would have welcomed a fierce lion, to dispatch him sooner, remove the clammy aching chill spreading down his slowly numbing limbs. He really ought to move, even jog a pace or two to restore his circulation, and anyway, he was bursting to relieve himself. How undignified it seemed that even a man's final hours could be so crudely interrupted by the need to obey basic calls of nature. He struggled from his niche, stood embarrassed, clutching at his flies. It seemed a desecration to pee in front of Jonah, and with so many graves surrounding him. A skull in the top niche seemed already to be staring, empty sockets wide with disapproval. He skulked along the passage, lowering walls threatening to engulf him, blackened roof pressing grimly down. He waited till he found a shadowy corner, then unzipped his trousers furtively, let his urine flow. Every time he peed now, he had to shut his eyes, couldn't bear the sight of it, the humiliating memories. He tried – and failed – to quash them, blushed with shame and horror as he saw himself sitting on that toilet seat, just two days ago, gulping disinfectant. Except it wasn't disinfectant – it was pee.

Some cruel or cranky pilgrim had left a disinfectant bottle full of fresh-passed urine concealed behind the cistern – God alone knew why – a joke, maybe, or perhaps some test or sample needed for a doctor, or … Never mind the reason. He'd retched in sheer disgust as the first drops hit his tongue, bolted from the lavatory, bumped smack into the swarm of eager pilgrims surging up the stairs from chapel. They'd no idea how desperate he was, how close to death, extinction; had merely clucked with disapproval at ‘Payne in the Arse' (as Clive had christened him) up to one of his silly little tricks again, the despair of his poor mother. He'd just started to explain, when suddenly, dramatically, the senna pods decided to take action and he'd dashed back to the toilet, remained there a good hour, as wave after wave of griping churning spasms reduced the entire contents of his body to an awesome liquid deluge.

He shuddered at the memory as he shook off the last drops of shaming urine, rezipped his flies, wandered on forlornly down, the passage. He had no more heart for reclining in his coffin, could surely die as well in a common stretch of corridor, lying where he fell. There were at least fifty separate catacombs encircling Rome – or so the guide had told them – six hundred miles in all, if you placed their cavernous tunnels end to end; six million bodies buried there
in toto
. If the passages were linked, those tunnels all connected, he might stumble on for endless miles, haunted by six million ghosts, until he finally expired from sheer horror and exhaustion. Would his Mother miss him, even notice that he'd gone, or would she be too busy mugging up the Seven Works of Mercy or the Eight Beatitudes? He had tried composing letters in his head to the Government of Iceland, regarding the new volcanic island off its shores. Could a parcel (Mother) delivered there mistakenly be in any way retrieved? Could he call on their emergency services, helicopters, lifeboats? Never mind the cost – he'd find the money somehow. He'd also written to the Foreign Office, the Chairman of the Post Office, the Ministry of …

His thoughts and feet faltered to a stop. The dark confining passage had opened out to form a murky chamber on his left, with an altar at one end of it, surmounted by a rough stone arch hacked crudely from the rock. The guide had told them that Roman Catholic Masses were still said in these small rooms; twentieth-century pilgrims recalling those of seventeen hundred years ago as they offered bread and wine. A large but artless loaf of bread was actually carved into the stone – the bread of life, the guide had said, the bread of our redemption – along with other Early Christian symbols of hope and resurrection, depicted by those second-century faithful. He was tired of resurrection, longed to see some symbol of certain foolproof death, unalterable, irreversible, mined with worms, crumbling into dust.