Fifty-Minute Hour (53 page)

He's prosing on and on still. I'm trapped in words, foreign words, which make me feel totally alone – alone among six or seven thousand – as if I've landed on a planet where I don't belong at all, and where people's mouths and larynxes are shaped differently from mine. He's switched from halting English to what I guess is Polish, judging by the speed with which he rattles through his notes. I hate those notes – they're so unspontaneous. (I wonder if John-Paul makes notes – notes on all his patients, and whether he's chucked all mine away, or marked them ‘Case Concluded'?)

I peer along the row to check if anyone is smoking, and whether you're skewered on those Swiss Guards' lethal halberds if you dare to disobey. No one's even chewing gum or fingers. The lovey couple next to me are joined at hand and knee; the stout woman on the other side has linked arms with her crony. My own arm fidgets to my bag, hand closing round my pack of boring Rothmans (I couldn't find Capstans – or Chesterfields – in Rome), turns it into a gun, a small but lethal Mauser, fumbles for the trigger. Bang-bang, John Paul, you're dead. It would be a relief to shoot him, actually. I've been sitting here so long I'm dying for some action, need to use my restless hands, which are cold and all but trembling without their fix of nicotine. And it would force my own John-Paul to turn his mind to Nial, remember who she is, even if he only saw her picture in the paper – a picture of a heroine-assassin. It would also shut His Endless up, and I doubt if anything else will. I suppose that's part of being an autocrat – he pontificates, we listen.

I'm wrong – he's stopped – spontaneously, without a bomb or bullet. At least he's praying now, not preaching, and everyone is standing up, so I presume we're near the end. Yes – he gives his final blessing and all the pilgrims thresh and writhe and wave their flags or banners, then half the hall starts swarming out, stampeding for the exits. I'm about to join the scrimmage when I see the other eager half surging towards the centre of the hall; packing close against the barriers which line the middle aisle, leaping up on chairs with cameras poised. Although I'm stuck right at the back, I actually chose a seat smack-bang in the centre, adjoining that wide aisle – simply because it seemed less claustrophobic. Now I realise that position is like gold dust, and several hundred pilgrims are intent on ousting me and stealing it, even at the cost of a dislocated shoulder or painful trampled foot. I've no idea what's going in, but I stick fast in my seat, refuse to give it up, and it's only when I eventually jump up on it (copying my neighbours), that I realise what I've battled for – access to the Pope.

I assumed he'd disappeared, left with all his entourage by the small door on the stage, but he's actually ploughing down that centre aisle, flanked by just one purple-robed disciple, two Swiss Guards and a few assorted lackeys and photographers. I peer at him, amazed. He's stopping every second to squeeze hands, or bless the sick, talk to dribbling morons, cuddle little children. I've watched politicians do the same when they're trying to mop up votes by wooing hideous females or kissing bawling brats, but it's always a performance. However hard they kiss and coo, you can tell they're insincere; can't wait to hand the babies back, shake off the smirch of common hands and escape into their elitist clubs for pheasant and champagne. This is absolutely different. I can't explain it really, except Giovanni Paolo seems to love his flock – yes, even its most poor and abject specimens.

I watch as he embraces a stooping shrivelled man whose gaunt and haggard face seems marked by death. He takes both his hands in his, speaks to him intently, his own face creased with genuine concern. Then he reaches out to hold a baby, an ugly lumpy creature which would tempt most normal people to infanticide. Not
II Santo Padre
. He loves that kid – you can see it on his face. I register a jolt of griping green-fanged jealousy. That's how
every
father should hold and love his child, with that total deep commitment, that expression in his eyes. This man loves the world, and not the world in abstract, or sterilised or sanitised behind a cold glass wall. He's face to face with a really grubby woman now, a gypsy by the looks of it, her vulgar beads tangling in his buttons, her hair greasy on his neck. He doesn't shrink away from her. She could be his own mother, the affectionate almost reverent way he treats her.

John-Paul would rather die than touch a patient – except to fling her in an ambulance, or hold her down by force. He might ‘verbalise' about it: what does touching signify; what pictures does the word bring up? – but actual contact, never. Even if I had a stroke, or fainted, he'd leave me where I'd fallen, gasping on the floor, rather than risk an arm around my neck. Both Giovanni Paolo's arms are wrapped around a young girl in her twenties. It's not sexual – she's a spastic – he just understands that all of us crave comfort, the physical maternal sort which is so rationed in this lousy world, especially if you're old or sick or hideous.

Almost every single person is stretching out their hands to him, as if his touch can heal, like the Royal Touch in Stuart England, when God's Appointed Monarch could cure anything from syphilis to scrofula. I leave my own arms strictly by my sides. This may be mass hysteria and I shan't let myself succumb. Anyway, he's still a few yards distant, and my wretched arms would be dropping off their hinges if I kept them horizontal until he finally inched up to us. He certainly takes his time, refuses to stint anyone of their individual chat – and that includes the small fry. He's heavily involved now with a skinny little five-year-old who presents him with a painting of a matchstick Pope with spots – a smudged and messy botch-up without a shred of talent, but accepted with such reverence it could be a Velasquez. He's being showered with offerings from all sides – baskets of exotic fruit, swanky hothouse flowers, but he's equally delighted by a few mangy stems of ragwort proffered by some nutcase who keeps clutching at his sleeve. He doesn't brush her off; listens to her, bothers, despite the impatient bodyguard who tries to hustle her away. He must be tired and hungry, gasping for a drink. He's been speaking for two hours in at least eight different languages, and it's already well past lunch-time.

I must say I'm impressed. I've always been suspicious of words like humanity or piety. You say a man is holy and most people cringe or shrug. Holy can mean priggish, sanctimonious. Not with
Sua Santità
. The title's apt, I see now. He spreads holiness like ointment, rubs it in himself. And it isn't just a duty, an empty show to impress us gawping pilgrims. I keep a sort of lie-detector somewhere in my head, and it's not registering at all. This guy is bona fide.

He's much nearer now, and I can see his face close up. Okay, he's old and plain – that I don't retract – his receding forehead lined, his face sunken around the eyes, but it's the face of a good man. There's a minor sort of hurricane swirling all around me – hands reaching, waving, clutching; bodies lurching perilously on seats. Everybody's trying to kiss his chunky ring: lips smacking, missing, moueing in midair. Others offer gifts instead of kisses. A huge bouquet of roses grazes my left cheek as it's passed across in front of me; someone else is shelling out what look like gold doubloons. I've nothing to present, just a crappy hand which probably smells of nicotine, and that deceitful cruel umbrella.

I let the brolly fall, climb down from my chair, stand absolutely silent while a hundred-hundred imploring mouths yammer on all sides, begging for a hand-clasp, a private word, a hug. John Paul stops a second, looks at me directly, as if he's picked me out from all those other faces, prefers my wary silence to their din. He takes a step towards me, servile lackeys following, tall guards Argus-eyed. Suddenly, he's there, standing right in front of me, so that I can smell his stalish breath, see the tiny craters in his skin. His hands close over mine – hot and rather clammy hands; solid, stumpy-fingered, the skin roughened round the thumbs. I'm not idealising the man. His piggy eyes are all but lost beneath the frowning brow. His neck is slack and fleshy, and I'm taller by an inch. It's his touch which counts, that rare and dazzling sense of being cherished and enfolded, as he lets my hands go, dares to hold me right against his chest, pressed close into his body, to his heart, his warmth, his sex. I've been held like that in dreams, in endless lying fantasies; held by my cold father who wouldn't hold a dog; held by cruel John-Paul who'd let me weep my eyes out rather than reach across and dry them.

The whole vast crowd has vanished. There's only him and me now, from some era long ago. He's chatting to me, questioning me, but I've become an infant and can't speak any language, including my own tongue. Is he talking English or Italian? I've no idea at all, though I suspect he's granting me forgiveness for what I haven't done, the years I haven't lived yet, the shot I haven't fired. Whole centuries seem to lumber by, yet still he makes no move to cast me off. The Prodigal Son was never held so long. I'm fatted calf and silken robe; I'm rings on every finger; I'm wine and oil and sweetmeats at the feast. Then, at last, he pulls away, but holds me with his eyes still, my own eyes faltering from his gaze as I recall that sawn-off shotgun concealed in Giuseppe's flat.

I jerk back in surprise as I feel his hot and sweaty thumb trace a cross on my cold forehead.
II Santo Padre's
blessing me – which no one's ever done before, not even in a fantasy. You can only bless something which is good. I'm good – despite the guns – become so instantly, as he keeps his thumb pressed against my head. Everybody's staring, cameras flashing, jealous women shoving, impatient children tugging at his arm. He's been longer with me than anyone, as if he knows how much I need him, knows exactly who I am.

I'm suddenly aware of all the noise again: pilgrims gabbling, clamouring, shouting out what sounds like ‘
Papa, Papal
' as he slowly turns away from me, moves on down the aisle. I touch my blazing forehead, can feel that cross transfiguring my brow. They're right – he is a father –
mio santo padre
.

Mary gazed around her, eyes tracking from the lustrous sky with its swathe of silver moonlight, to the tiny stars and coloured lights looped across the streets for tonight's big celebration. A full moon and New Year's Eve! The two seemed to contradict each other – the year only just conceived and not yet formed; the moon already at full term. Yet both were so exhilarating; the flurry of New Year throbbing in the shops and squares, as the whole of Rome prepared for fevered midnight; the moon elusive, teasing, as it dodged behind the Pantheon, then courted her again, springing out between two towers, flirting with the clouds. It was a treat to be alone, if only for an hour or less, a snatched but vital hour in which she would know her fate once more.

She'd left the three men and three children deep in teddy-bears and tinsel in the Piazza Navona, where they were enjoying the huge toy-fair – brightly coloured market stalls selling sweets and games; Father Christmas quaffing rough Chianti among a group of sozzled gnomes; streamers and balloons strung along the pulsing pavement cafés. Lionel had been buying lions – sugar lions and chocolate lions, lions with manes of marzipan or sleek black liquorice noses, as his own small contribution to their celebration supper, which they'd planned to eat picnic-style in the safety of their room. Their courier had warned them of the dangers of the streets tonight – how the native Romans followed the old custom of flinging out the old, to symbolise the ending of the year. And ‘old' might mean old beds, old junk, old pots and pans, even huge old wardrobes, which could kill a person strolling underneath. It was also Fireworks Night in Rome, like Guy Fawkes back in England, and the fireworks were reputed to be perilous as well – two fatalities last year, and over ninety injuries, despite the constant warnings to stay inside, avoid all public places.

Mary turned into the Via del Pastini, looking back anxiously to make sure James wasn't following, or Simon pounding after her, demanding to ‘come, too'. She had told them all – quite truthfully – that she had to do some shopping, buy a few last items for the supper, including a celebration cake. She'd seen some quite amazing cakes in a shop just round the corner – airy cream-filled sponges in the shape of the Colosseum, or special New Year cakes with ‘
Buon' Anno'
piped across them, or beribboned figure ones, to depict January the first. She stopped outside the window, admired the range again, decided on a clock-cake with a stark white-icing face and two black hands pointing dramatically to midnight. She was obsessed with time at present, trying to work out when she had actually conceived. Her last (apparent) period could have been a fluke. It had certainly been light, perhaps not a period at all, just a fleeting show of blood, which she'd read did sometimes happen in early pregnancy. Could she have conceived a whole two months ago – or maybe even longer? Certainly her breasts felt full and tender, and, looking at these creamy cakes, she felt a wave of nausea very similar to the sickness of her previous pregnancies. As soon as she got home, she must make an appointment at the surgery, be properly examined, replace her Orgasm Chart with a Calendar of Pregnancy, start ticking off the days until the birth.

She tripped inside the
pasticceria
, still marvelling at their opening – hours – a full spread of cakes and pastries at seven in the evening – examined all the other gâteaux while the girl was wrapping hers, so she could pick up some ideas. It was time she made some fancy cakes herself, gave up ‘Science and Society' for family and home, returned to her old skills. With her own deep needs fulfilled, she could concentrate on James, try to resurrect the softer, more romantic man she'd married. He was probably jealous of John-Paul, maybe felt excluded, but that jealousy could cease now – along with the steep bills. She was married to John-Paul in the most sacred, fundamental sense, bonded to him, one with him, carrying his child, but that would stay their secret, and outwardly and publicly she'd devote herself to James – yes, even on this holiday. No need to try to find the Doctor, search out his hotel, when his genes, his vital essence, were encompassed in her womb.