After Purple (58 page)

Leo had sent me not just peace, but flowers. There was a vase of white narcissi on my altar. The blossoms were drooping a little, but they still spelt life and spring. I watched their slow white throats breathe in and out. They had tiny dots of yellow in their centres, which swelled into huge round suns, so bright they blinded me. I tried to stare only at the vase, but it was so vast and glittering, the whole room roared with light. Even if I closed my eyes, the brightness dazzled them. I realised, then, it was coming from inside me.

“All right, my dear?”

Someone had swum in again — a handmaid, probably. I could see her mouth gaping like a vast black jewel-box lined with scarlet plush, and one hand crouching on my blanket with all its struts and girders sticking up. Next time, there were two of them, but all their different parts had floated away from each other and were scattered around the room. They must have been in pain, but they still kept smiling. The smiles themselves had cracked into tiny fragments which fell on my bed like hail.

“We're taking you up now, Mrs Morton.”

I nodded. They all understood about my Mission now, because they had sent a man with a litter who lifted me high on to it and wheeled me out of my room along miles of white, shining corridor which smelt of God and ether. White walls reared up in front of me and then fell away again, white doors yawned open and closed effortlessly behind me. People bowed and whispered as I passed.

“Careful with her now.”

We had stopped a moment and they were cramming me into some grey metal box with wrought-iron gates which clanged so loudly shut, I could feel the echo like a sharp knife cutting through my skull. There was a sudden judder and the earth fell right away, and we were soaring up, up, up, so fast some of my limbs were left shuddering behind. There was a pause, a jolt, and then up again, until suddenly my head grazed against the sky, and we had pierced right through it and were streaking past the higher constellations in black, rushing space.

When we stopped, the air smelt purer and we were in some high shining room where the gods wore green and huge glaring lights stared into my eyes like planets. Fuzzy white angels kept curving towards me and retreating. I felt so light, so radiant, I must have become pure soul. Solemn white faces were bending over me and I could hear the heartbeat of the universe roaring through my veins.

I knew now, this was the place and moment for my message. I could see sacred vessels gleaming in glass cupboards — tubes and chalices, syringes and phials. Important people were gathered round my litter, tense and reverent, hanging on my words.

I struggled up, but part of my body was missing and its hinges wouldn't work. A green archangel came and held me down.

“S … something to tell you,” I stuttered. “Message for the world.”

“Tell us
later
, dear. Plenty of time when you come round.” She didn't sound like an angel. Her voice scratched and chafed against my soul. I tried to push her away and lift my head. I knew it must be now — there wouldn't be a later.

“What's the matter, Mrs Morton? You really must lie still, dear.”

“Bishop,” I gasped. My voice had turned from solid into gas. All the same, they must have heard it, because a tall lordly figure was striding towards me, a man in a dress with neither legs nor hair, but robed all in green and transfigured like a god. He was holier than a bishop because he wore his vestments even on his face. All I could see were two piercing eyes and a blaze of light behind him like a halo.

“Must … tell you … something,” I mouthed.

“All right, my dear, you go ahead and tell me.” His voice was beaten bronze, his eyes as deep as the Saskatchewan Lake.

“Listening?” I whispered. It was essential that he caught my words. My voice was only a vapour trail dissolving into space.

He nodded. Behind him, I glimpsed other faces, faces behind faces, distorted in shining silver surfaces, reflected in mirrors, cut and branded by the light.

“It wasn't” — I paused — “the Blessed Virgin.” I could feel the whole world drawing in its breath as I scooped up the last fluttering feathers of my voice. “It was … Janet.”

I glanced at the tall green god to make sure he had understood. “
Janet
,” I repeated, as the glory of a task fulfilled broke against my body like a wave.

He was nodding, smiling. “That's all right, my dear. Nothing to worry about at all. We'll take care of everything.”

Relief roared and thundered in my brain. I felt a peace so deep, I longed for it to close above my head. I had done it, said it, kept my tryst with Bernadette, and now the burden had been lifted from me. Other, stronger powers would shoulder the toil, the fear, the anguish, the conflict with authorities, the struggle with the priests. All I had to do was lie back and let all things pass. I didn't belong in Lourdes or London any longer. I had reached that place where words and work and turmoil were just an interruption of the light. The green god's hands were hovering over my arm. Blue rivers flowed slowly to his fingertips, dark forests sprouted on his wrists. He was so strong, he could topple Lourdes with just one finger, break up all the marble and mosaics, and set up Janet in some new, no-fuss, no-nonsense shrine.

I closed my eyes. The last dregs of my body dropped away. I could see the whole shining, singing universe from Kashmir to Saskatchewan spread out like Leo's postcard in my hand, all centuries shaken up together, all continents scattered like a drift of petals in one small cul-de-sac. There were no boundaries any longer, no marriages, or birth certificates. We were all one, all joined. Lucian was Leo's and Leo Lucian's, and Louis de Gonzague was only the unborn child of Otto's father alive and smiling among his shoe-boxes.

I stared at the small glass bottles in the cabinet, the rolls of bandages, the lengths of tube. I felt them leap and breathe and quicken as they shouted up to heaven that they were as vibrantly alive as I was. My shape and outlines were already blurred and merging, until I was glass and bandage with them, star and stone. This was my Communion, communion with all things. It didn't matter any longer that I had never been a ticked and slotted Catholic, or that my so-called First Communion had left me choked and disillusioned. There were no more shrill religions feuding with each other across their barbed-wire walls. We were all priests, all gods; all absolute, all light. Every smallest, humblest object, whether pin or pot or thumbnail, blazed and hymned with light. There was only light. One light, one singing life.

All creeds dissolved, all colours fell away. I could hear the sound of whiteness surge slowly through the room. I recognised it. It was Leo's music, that safe, soft, healing music he had played when I returned from hospital, but now it was the
feng huang
who was singing it, pouring out its hymn of peace and light and harmony, fertility and grace. I climbed on the sound and soared. I was a phoenix now, a white one, rising from the flames of pain and violence, flying away from purple, from the colour of pomp and penance, the shades of Lent and sin. I had left pain and death behind, scorched through fire and furnace, and come out hallowed on the other side where the pure cold light of heaven smote scalding on my eyes.

Somewhere, far below me, the green god touched my arm. “We're going to put you to sleep now, Mrs Morton.”

I smiled. Of course I couldn't sleep. Even if I closed my eyes, the radiance would startle them apart again. And I wasn't Mrs Morton. All names had been rubbed out or whited over — Elliott, Rzenski, even Wildman. No deed polls now, no Babel, no baffling, battering words to show me up or shout me down. Not even any different languages.
Feng huang
meant phoenix now without any mistranslation, and I was simply, only, Thea, which meant goddess and divine.

An angel pushed my white sleeve slowly up my white arm. I had no sleeve, no arm. I was so high, high, above them, I could see the door of heaven opening slowly in the sky.

The shadow of a streak of silver fell across the light, a javelin gleaming in the green god's hands. He was trying to pierce me with it, but I had already flown too far. The sky came hurtling forward, and as I soared, roared, rushed to meet it, I saw my father sitting up in heaven, holding out his arms.

First published in 1982 by Michael Joseph

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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Copyright © Wendy Perriam 1982

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