After Purple (29 page)

I gasped. I was so high up, the dingy streets had dropped away, and I was staring up at a narrow tunnel of sky with a portion of the majestic Pyrenees embedded in it, pointing its craggy finger up to heaven. I leaned out further. The flanks of the mountains were swathed in the last golden light of the fading afternoon, their foreheads streaked with snow. The grey of the streets had changed to green and white and gold. I had only to lift up my eyes to see the glory of the place. So far, I had been rooting around the pavements, snuffling in the gutters, so no wonder I had missed it. Lourdes
was
only a village when seen against its surroundings — a tiny toy-town tipped into a green valley, with great grown-up mountains towering over it. Through it rushed the headstrong River Gave, tossing and frothing from the mountain peaks, until it bowed its head by the holy shrine itself. I couldn't see the Grotto, but I glimpsed the tall silver spire of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception glittering against a golden sky. This was the Lourdes I had come for — it was all there, all waiting. How could my room be cramped when a spire soared just outside it, or dingy, when those mountains ringed it round?

Anyway, I'd turned my back on comforts. If I was following Ray, I should
rejoice
that there was only one grubby sheet, and that brackish-brown water coughed and grumbled out of the taps when I tried to turn them on. I could pile penance on privation until tomorrow glorious morning when Christ rose shining from the tomb.

Meanwhile, I'd join Him on His back. I was exhausted from the journey and it was still several hours until the Easter Vigil which began at nine o'clock. There was no evening meal to mop up one or two of them. Not only was I fasting, but I had agreed with Ray that I would pay just for breakfast at Madame's. He was hoping to wangle me in to some of the meals at his hostel, and the rest of the time I'd buy bread and oranges and eat them in my room.

I fell back on the bed. I longed to see the Grotto, but I'd decided to save it until Ray was at my side. It was the high point of the pilgrimage and I wanted his hand in mine when I first set foot upon that spot where Bernadette had knelt before Our Lady. We would go tonight, together, when the Vigil was over. Meanwhile, I must prepare. I threw the pillow on the floor, kicked the duvet off. Christ had no comforts in the grave and I must follow Him. I closed my eyes, took His hand. While my fellow pilgrims guzzled veal and chips in the
Astoria
, I would spirit myself to my own tomb — that great underground basilica, from which tonight I would arise triumphantly a Catholic.

Five hours later, I entered the basilica, not in dreams this time. I gasped. It
was
like the tomb. I was groping my way through a huge mausoleum in almost total darkness.

Nothing had quite prepared me for the size and strangeness of the place. I'd seen pictures of it, of course; knew it was one of the largest underground buildings in the world, with wide sloping ramps leading down to it and huge concrete ribs straining up to the pre-stressed concrete roof. People had compared it to a massive underground car-park or an aircraft hangar. It reminded me more of a giants' air-raid shelter, but perhaps that was just the dark and all the scurrying people jostling for a place. Easy to have been lost, swept aside by all those thronging crowds, trampled underfoot. I huddled close to Bridie, kept my eye on our two Pax priests who were shepherding us through the gloom to the section where the English pilgrims sat. We were all arranged by nation — Belgians next to English, across from them the Germans, then Spanish, Poles, Italians, Austrians, French. The place held twenty-five thousand worshippers. My family had swollen now to twenty-five thousand relatives, pressing and milling all around me, each of us grasping an unlighted candle, symbol of our spiritual darkness. Slowly, their bodies began to take shape and substance in the gloom. I even made out features — fifty thousand eyes, a hundred thousand arms and legs, give or take a few for the blind and handicapped. I could see rows and rows of wheelchairs banked round the altar, stretchers, crutches, trolley-beds, with their nurses and attendants. Ray would be among them. I couldn't see him, of course — the faces were only blurs — but I could almost feel his prayers breaking over me.

Suddenly, the whole congregation sort of rippled as if a wind had sprung up across it and set up little waves. Bridie nudged me in the ribs. “Here they come!” she whispered. I looked where she was pointing, saw a stream of white-robed figures frothing into the basilica like a white wake behind the dark hulk of a ship. Never before had I seen so many priests. At school we were lucky to have our one scrawny Father Murphy and perhaps a visiting chaplain on high days and Holy Days; at Westminster Cathedral I'd seen up to half a dozen at the altar, with two or three more patrolling the aisles. But here were two
hundred
. Two hundred radiant white seraphim dispersing the gloom, two hundred representatives of God on earth. There was even a bishop. Some of my swankier schoolfriends had been introduced to bishops, kissed their rings, curtseyed to them, begged them to bless a prayer-book or a rosary. They had told me this with the same hushed awe and pride my mother reserved for Rothschilds. Yet here was my own tame bishop, parading up the aisle for me, welcoming me into his fold, resplendent in his snow-white chasuble and gold-encrusted mitre, and carrying a gleaming crosier. I had never seen a crosier before. I knew it was the pastoral staff, the shepherd's crook. Christ was the shepherd, we His lambs. It felt safe and warm and sacred to be a lamb.

The priests had reached the altar now, and the entire congregation (handicapped excepted) risen to its feet. There was no sound except the shuffling. The massive organ was dumb, the choir silent. And yet the hush was so tense, so expectant, it was more like a stifled scream. Muffled coughs choked through it, a sudden groan from an invalid or gasp from an idiot sliced it in half. Hopes, fears, prayers, longings, clogged and stained that winding-sheet of silence.

Suddenly, a tiny point of light sprang through the shadows, a pinprick in a huge lowering cave. The weak flame flickered, wavered, almost went out. Twenty-five thousand people held their breaths. This was the paschal candle which would illuminate the world, the flame which would pierce the sin and death and darkness of the Lenten night.

The flame shuddered, sagged, and then miraculously revived, flared higher, almost sang. Every eye was on it as slowly it tipped sideways to light a second candle, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and suddenly there were five, six, seven quivering tongues of light. Every candle lit another candle, priest illuminating priest, until there was a circle of golden flame around the altar, two hundred candles holding hands. The first candle moved outwards now, bobbing down towards the altar-rails, reaching out to the darkness all around it, until every pilgrim, every nation, was lighting its candle from the next. The whole gigantic basilica and its throbbing congregation were coming alive, coming alight, as little by little, one by one, twenty-five thousand candles turned from cold wax to leaping flame. Rock-hard pillars seemed to move and tremble. The solid roof dissolved into shadows. Eyes, medals, buttons, buckles, glinted in the gloom. Faces thawed from blank stares into rippling, flickering surfaces, candle flames were trapped in every eye. We had all left the base element of earth behind and been transmuted into fire.

We were one. Each individual candle flame was swallowed up in the total glare and roar of light. Mine was one of them. It was impossible to be an outcast any more. My candle had been lit by Bridie's and hers by Paddy's and his by a swarthy woman in the Belgian group, and hers by a nun's and the nun's by a child on crutches and the child's by a priest, and the priest was God on earth, so my candle had been lit by God Himself. I stood clutching it in front of me, watching the huge, saw-toothed shadows of the Easter palms fling themselves across the altar, knowing my own light had helped to banish the darkness of the world. I was fiery, radiant, as strong as one of the gigantic thrusting pillars supporting the heaviest concrete roof in Christendom. I belonged. Not only to my own Pax family but to all the nations shimmering around me, all the billion million Catholics who had ever lived since Christ and now sat smiling on their fat white clouds.

“Alleluia, alleluia,” sang the chief celebrant, his voice leaping like a hawk to heaven.

“Alleluia, alleluia!” thundered the whole church in response, and the sea of lighted candles swept up, up, as if twenty-five thousand puppet masters had all pulled their strings at the same instant. I, too, had lifted my candle high above my head. I wasn't even a Catholic, yet I was following the ritual. It was like dancing when you don't know the steps. If your partner is skilled enough, you go along with him, never stumbling, never treading on his feet. My partner was God, so every time I had to kneel or stand or sit or raise my candle, I did it exactly as I should. If there are angels (which Leo doubts and Adrian classes under “Paranormal”), then they had all flocked here to join us. I could sense them filling all the empty spaces in the church, their soft white wings brushing the rough grey concrete of the walls.

My brain had been kindled as well as my candle, because slowly, gropingly, I began to understand lines and fragments of the service. I recognised the Latin from my schooldays, but there were other languages alternating with it and I realised now that every nation was allowed a share of the prayers and readings in its own tongue. Adrian would have understood them all. I could make out odd words here and there, different accents, different intonations. And then suddenly, the high electric voice of the English priest cut through the congregation like a saw on stone. Every word he said was addressed to me:

“This is the night when Christ

broke the bonds of death

and rose triumphant from the grave …”

I had broken the bonds of sin and death myself. This was my own glorious baptism. I knew from all my homework that the early Christian catechumens were baptised on this Easter Saturday night, before they received the Body and Blood of Christ. I was following their example. I loved the word catechumen. It sounded mysterious and special. It
was
special — I was the only catechumen in that whole thronging congregation. All the others were cradle Catholics who had been baptised long ago, so in a sense, the entire ceremony was for my benefit alone. All those thousands had only gathered there to witness my admission to the Church. They would renew the baptismal promises made for them as babies, as a symbol and an echo of my own vows. My years of schoolgirl prayers would at last be answered, as the outcast was admitted, the leper made clean.

Latin, Italian, German, French, washed over me. Incense soared to the ceiling like the soft smoky wings of the Holy Ghost. They had switched on all the lights now, and the church blazed with splendour. The English priest was standing at the lectern, directly facing me, his eyes piercing down almost into mine. I recognised the lines from Genesis.

“And God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him, male and female both. And He blessed them, saying, ‘Increase and multiply and fill the earth.”

I knelt. The hard stone floor bit into my knees. I knew now that this was the time to pray for Leo's miracle. The priest had just declared sex holy and therefore Leo's prick was holy. I prayed that it would swell and harden like a paschal candle and that he and I would increase and multiply and fill the earth. That had been God's first command to man, therefore my life was sacred. All I had been doing with my forty-seven men was seeking to procreate. My record was poor as yet — only one four-month foetus pickled in a jar, but after these rituals of fire and water, I would pour out sons upon the earth. Janet would be shamed as Leo's sallow features were reproduced a score of times between my loins. The English priest was already prophesying it:

“The time is coming when every plant and tree in the land shall swell and be fruitful …”

The organ was resounding now, shrills and squawks of sound echoing round the walls, the whole congregation roaring out Hosanna. I rose from my knees, whispered some excuse to Bridie, and crept out through the swarming, singing thousands. Everyone made way for me. It was like the Red Sea parting so that I could pass. My heart was so full, I dared not stay a moment longer, in case I dissolved into flame or turned into a disembodied spirit before I had made my First Communion. The catechumens would have made it there and then, on the same night as their baptism. I preferred to wait till morning, when Ray could lay that first host on my tongue. He would be acting priest then, one of the two hundred sanctified, robed in shining vestments instead of just a helper with his handicapped. He had told me already he planned to concelebrate the Easter Mass.

I walked up the wide ramp to the exit. The crowds had spilled over even here, and were kneeling on the concrete, peering over the balcony, praying, singing, taking part. I flung them a handful of smiles, then pushed my way to the shivering night outside. The sky looked dark and very far away, the stars more scarce and grudging than the wealth of dazzling candles in the church. But the air was so clean and cold, I gulped down greedy mouthfuls of it. My stomach was fainting for some substance. I almost took a bite out of the moon, it looked so fat and full and creamy. But this was the great Domain where everything was holy. I could see the other two basilicas, one built above the other, soaring up to heaven, blazing with floodlights, haloed by stars. I could almost hear Christ rising from His tomb. The breeze in the plane trees sounded like the swish and rustle of His garments.

I stood against the railings which ringed the ghostly white statue of the Crowned Virgin, where Ray had arranged to meet me after the Vigil. It was the Number One Rendezvous in Lourdes, like the lions in Trafalgar Square or the Juice Bar at Harrods. It was almost deserted now. Ray and all the rest were still coffined in the tomb of the underground basilica. I had risen early, prematurely. I sat down on the cold stone step to wait for him. Stuck all round the railings were bouquets of fresh spring flowers left there by Our Lady's fans. I pulled one free. I would present it to Ray as soon as he appeared for our assignation. He had given me a faith, a purpose, and a Resurrection — the least I could do was pay him back with flowers.