After Purple (56 page)

“Later,” I said. I wished they wouldn't speak. There wasn't room for words. Even Janet was taking up too much space. Once I'd announced her as the Lady, I'd leave the rest to her. I no longer wished to fight or challenge people, or rush about the world, or mix with priests. Janet could do all that. She could go to Lourdes herself and master-mind the change-over from Blessed Virgin Mary to Blessed Virgin Janet. The French might even welcome her. They've always been anti-Semitic and Mary was a Jew. Janet is pure Aryan, a natural blonde with breasts. She would also suit the famous Gallic thrift. She could ration the Holy Water and charge an entrance fee to the Grotto and the Baths, and insist on discounts for bulk-bought statues of herself.

“Sleeping again, Mrs Morton?” Sister was holding a vase of spring narcissi. Since the pot-plant, no one sent me flowers, but some of the other patients died before their flowers did, so the nurses passed them on to me. I didn't want them really, but I tried to smile. They seemed to like me smiling. At least the flowers were white. There was so much white inside my head, I preferred the room to match it.

“Mr Mackenzie is just on his way to see you,” Sister said.

“Mr
who
?” I stared into the open mouth of a stiff narcissus and saw Kashmir crouching in it. She might have muddled up their names. Rzevski and Mackenzie share some of the same letters.

“Mr Mackenzie. He's our dental surgeon.”

“Oh, I see.” The narcissus was drooping now. “Why
dental
?”

“We plan to do something with that mouth of yours. The rest of you is healing up so nicely, we thought we ought to make you as good as new. Ah — here's the dentist now.”

His shoes boomed so loudly across the lino, he made the vase tremble. He was dressed too vividly for a hospital. His suit was a jabbing navy and there were dizzy red dots on his tie which kept hurling themselves against my eyes. Even his voice was brightly coloured, like those pinks and yellows you get in liquorice allsorts.

“Well, Mrs Morton, we've decided to keep you in a little longer and do a wee operation on your mouth.”

I nodded. I had almost forgotten that I had a mouth, but there was no point arguing. My body wasn't mine any longer. It belonged as much to Mr Mackenzie as to me, and his to Nurse and hers to …

“I've already discussed your case with the dental surgeon at St Maur's …”

“Oh, so he was saved, then?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Perhaps they had all been saved — nurses, doctors, Sisters, priests — bedsteads, bedpans, even the hospital itself. Perhaps I had only dreamed the demolition. I glanced at the marks on my hands — they seemed red and real enough. There was even one last dressing on my arm. I touched it very gingerly with a finger and the pain shuddered a little underneath.

“A Dr Davies also telephoned me …”

I couldn't remember any Dr Davies. He was probably something to do with the accounts.

“I don't think they told you much at the time. You were very shocked, I understand.”

“Oh, no,” I said. I think he was muddling me up with someone else. The world was too quiet and shining for it to shock.

“Well, you're doing very nicely now, my dear. The burns are healing well. There's no infection. We're all very pleased with you.”

I smiled. It was so easy now to please people. I had only to lie still and white and silent and let them peer at me and scribble on my chart and bring me things.

“Your front teeth have already been fixed, of course — and very well too, by the looks of them. All you need is a new permanent denture which fits a little better. We'll look after that, but what I want to work on first are the two
adjoining
teeth. I'll have to remove the tips of both those roots. They were fractured off, you see. I believe you had a blow.”

“No,” I said. “I fell on stone.” I couldn't remember falling. It seemed so long ago, I couldn't really remember anything. It was only words, anyway.
Stone blow odd acquaintance Wildman shoe boxes blancmange
. They didn't have blancmange on the National Health. Or bills. Even the drugs came free.

“Unfortunately, the roots didn't break cleanly, but were fractured on the oblique. He spoke very slowly and loudly as if I were a deaf or stupid child. “That means at an angle. Do you understand me, Mrs Morton?”

He drew a little sketch on his notepad. The fracture was just a wriggly line and the root looked like a prick. I turned my head away. I was finished with pricks for ever. It seemed strange that teeth had roots. It made them sound like trees. There were no trees in this hospital. There weren't even any windows. I didn't mind. I could see everything I wanted in my head.

“In order to remove them, I'm afraid I'll have to cut out a piece of the upper jawbone. It won't be much — just a tiny fragment. I shall also excise the …”

“
Excise
?” I murmured. I picked up the word and put it in my word collection. I'd show all my new words to Leo when he returned.
Oblique, Mackenzie, plasma, haemoglobin
.

“That simply means cut out.” He smiled. “ … excise the lump on your lower inside lip. We thought it best to do the two together. It means one anaesthetic less, and no one likes anaesthetics, do they?”

His smile was still hanging across my bed, bright and damp and shimmering like a rainbow.

“Is that all right with you, then, Mrs Morton?”

I nodded. I didn't really mind what they cut out. Mackenzie was standing up now, six foot blue of him breaking up the rainbow.

“I'm afraid you'll be a little sore, my dear. I'll have to put a stitch or two in each of the affected gums. There'll be some swelling, bruising, but we can give you something for the pain. There's no need to suffer, is there, not these days.”

“No,” I murmured. I wasn't listening, really. I didn't want priests or doctors any more. They came, of course — prayed or probed or chatted, sat on my bed and fussed. Sometimes I soared above them, above my own body even, looking down on it as if it were a tiny speck floating in huge white space. Other times, they dwarfed me. Their hands were huge steel pincers, the words they used battered against my face like sharp black stones. Their breath made dirty footmarks on the white space in my head.

I preferred to lie on my own and think about Kashmir. One of the nurses had brought me in some maps and leaflets from the Indian Tourist Office. The Kashmiri place-names were liquid poetry on my lips — Shankaracharya, Manasbal, Chashma Shaki, Shalimar. I read in a guide book that the Vale of Kashmir was known as the Valley of Happiness. That's because Leo was there. I saw him, sometimes, wandering among the dark ruins and shining waters of Srinagar. Otto wasn't with him. I doubt if he ever was.

There was a little tap on the door. I didn't bother with visitors and the nurses never knocked. I squinted through my eyelids. There was a blue blur which was Staff-Nurse and a brown blur hovering a pace or two behind her. I knew its name, but somehow it looked different, so I closed my eyes again.

“This is Mr Mackenzie. He's taking over Mrs Morton's case …”

Nurse was introducing someone. I heard them mumbling greetings to each other.

“How is she?” whispered the someone. His voice was male and quite familiar.

“Oh,
much
better. In fact, I'm glad she's got a visitor. It'll take her out of herself. She's been a bit … withdrawn, you know. We're going to operate in the morning — just a minor op — finish off that business with the teeth. But you can stay an hour or so. It'll do her good.”

More whispering, then retreating footsteps and a softly closing door. I lay there a moment, allowing the silence to soak into my eyelids like the soft white cream they rubbed into my bedsores. When I opened them again, there was only the brown blur left. It moved a little nearer and shifted into a man in a brown serge petticoat with a shout of red on top.

“Ray,” I said.

“You've got your dress on,” I murmured.

“Yes.”

“It suits you.”

“Yes.”

I sat up slowly in bed and stared at him. I could see what he meant about the Franciscan habit. It didn't look poor at all. All those yards of shining stiff material must have cost much the same as a top-price suit. The design was almost fancy, with a wide cowl collar and broad flowing sleeves. I couldn't see any trousers underneath, but perhaps they were well rolled up. The girdle round his waist was fat and white and decorative instead of a scrappy piece of string. I had always pictured St Francis wrapped in shivering rags and tatters, like those tramps you see on Charing Cross Embankment with wads of dirty newspaper tied around their feet. Ray had new brown shoes on — not moccasins or sneakers, but conventional lace-ups from a bourgeois shop like Peter Lord. He looked fatter in his robes, and somehow older. His hair had been pollarded and some of the fiery red seemed almost tarnished. Only the spectacles were old and chipped and still familiar.

He didn't hold my hand or even sit on the bed, just took the chair Mackenzie had been sitting on. I didn't mind. I knew at least he wouldn't shout or hassle, or stare at my scars, or ask stupid questions like when was I going home.

“Don't … talk,” I said.

He shook his head. The silence was thick and white like snow. I think he was praying through it. I crept all the way to Kashmir and then on to Saskatchewan. There were no seas or mountains in the way.

When I got back, Ray was still sitting there. He was so still and solid, he looked like a smooth brown stone. I remembered vaguely, long ago in some shadowy foreign room, he'd tried to approach a woman. He'd talked a lot beforehand and then had sex with her. I couldn't recall the details, except there was also a boy involved.

“How's … Leo?” I asked. No, that wasn't the right name. I struggled to remember. “Was it
John
— the one who … ?”

“Mike, I think you mean.”

I nodded. It wasn't Mike, but at least the name sounded safe and ordinary. “Yes, Mike,” I said. “How's Mike?”

“I'm afraid he died, Thea. Very peacefully.” (I smiled, to reassure him.) “How are
you
?”

“I'm fine.”

He looked away. He was fiddling with his girdle. I knew he wanted to say things, ask things, comfort me, hold my hands, reach out and touch my soul. I tried to keep on talking.

“Are the other boys OK?”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Thanks.”

He shifted on the chair a little. I could see lines on his face which he'd never had before. “Actually, I … won't be working with the lads much longer.”

“Oh?”

“No, I'm … er … going up North. That's really why I came, Thea. I wanted to say goodbye.”

“You're going
home
?”

“Oh no.” He smiled. “Further north than home. All the way to Glasgow.”

“
Glasgow
?” It sounded almost as exotic as Kashmir. “So you're leaving the Franciscans?”

“No, no, I'm re-joining them. Properly, I mean. I'm going back to live in the community. Not my old one, but one of the smaller Scottish houses.”

“Working with thalidomides?” I asked. The robe didn't suit him really. He should have been taller or had holier coloured hair.

“No, not this time.”

“More handicapped?”

“No.” His voice was softer. Everything was softer, bourgeois, better quality.

“A slum, then?”

“No, not really. It
used
to be a slum, but they've rebuilt it all.”

“
Paper
work?” I said. The word sounded slick and almost treacherous.

“Yes, paperwork.” When he grinned, he looked almost like the old Ray. “The Vicar up there was taken ill and had to go into hospital. It was all very sudden and they're still in a bit of chaos, so they want me to help them out. I'll be doing the administrative stuff — you know, writing letters, paying bills, making sure the roof's OK and the place isn't falling to pieces.”

“But I thought you said …” I stared at his shiny toecaps, the thick folds of material which cut him off from people and had to be dry-cleaned.

“I
did
.” He was smiling still.

I remembered the story he'd told me about St Francis tearing the roof tiles down. His homeless, roofless founder had actually
wanted
the place to fall to bits. I wondered if Ray would have also to check the kitchens — stockpile the dainties, order the prime pork chops.

“Three meals a day?” I muttered. It was more an accusation than a question.

He nodded. I couldn't see his socks. Would they be best brown wool rather than thin green nylon?

“And coffee in the lounge and wine on feast days?”

“Quite possibly.”

“And stereos and Dunlopillo mattresses and …” I stopped. Despite the robe, the haircut, his face was still the same, still pinched and plain and radiant. He seemed as eager now for the Dunlopillo life as he had been in denouncing it. I tried to picture him scribbling sums in carbon-copy cash-books (ruled like Adrian's), checking coal and oil supplies, choosing coffee beans; but all I could see were his burning, shining eyes, blinking earnest and distorted through his spectacles.

“I'm even going to be helping with some fund-raising. You see, Glasgow's a sort of powerhouse for the Missions. They send forty thousand pounds a year to Africa —
fifty
thousand last year! That's more than all our other houses put together.”

I wondered if I'd heard right. Here he was totting up the lucre, when before he'd all but trampled on it.

“You mean, you're going back to church bazaars and bingo and writing begging letters and all those other things you said you couldn't
bear
to … ?”