The Breath of Night (16 page)

Seeing that there was nothing to be gained from further
questioning
, Philip took his leave of her and went outside to find Dennis, who was sitting on his haunches, puffing contentedly on a thin cigarette.

‘Now we go back to the hotel?’

‘No, the
poblacion
,’ Philip replied, priding himself that he was now able to pronounce the word with native sibilance. Dennis looked at him like a child who suspected his parents of reading his diary, but said nothing. They headed back into town, where Philip proposed to pay a call on Consolacion. Although she had replied to neither his nor the Vicar General’s letters, he was pinning his hopes on a direct approach. Page after page of Julian’s correspondence attested to their closeness and, despite her bewildering loss of faith, she of all people must wish to see his virtues recognised by the Church. She might not even have read their letters but, like many old people daunted by
unfamiliar
writing and postmarks, have buried them at the bottom of
a drawer. Casting his mind back, he wondered whether Julian had ever mentioned that she was literate, before dismissing such conjecture as both desperate and distasteful.

With supreme self-confidence, Dennis led them down several dead ends before finally chancing on the right road and drawing up outside a small house, with breeze-block walls and a corrugated-iron roof. As he walked through the well-tended garden, past a sparse vegetable patch and a half-dozen banana trees, Philip felt like a devious antique dealer out to cheat an old lady of her treasures, which was doubly absurd when he would be helping to preserve the thing that she treasured most: Julian’s memory. He reached the door, where his knock was anticipated by a cheerful man in his mid-thirties, as crisp and spruce as his shirt.

‘Hello! I hope I’m not disturbing you. My name is Philip Seward. I’m here to –’

‘Yes, I know. This is a small town. News travels fast.’

‘In which case you have me at a disadvantage.’

‘I’m Mark Villena,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘The local schoolteacher, for my sins, as you English say.’

‘We English generally have good reason.’

‘And Consolacion’s grandson. She came to live with
Jennifer
– my wife – and me ten years ago. Next month she will be ninety-four.’

‘That’s a great age,’ Philip replied, wondering whether she might prove to be one of the few genuine centenarians on the electoral roll. ‘I trust she’s in good health.’

‘She has various aches and pains, and some difficulty walking, but her mind is as sharp as ever. Her biggest problem is that she’s blind, so she can no longer read the Bible every day.’

‘That’s sad,’ Philip said, feeling more ashamed than ever of his recent surmise.

‘I should tell you now that she won’t talk to you about Father Julian. She won’t talk about him to anyone, not even Jennifer and me. I’m sorry if this means that you’ve had a wasted trip.’

Undeterred, Philip emphasised the importance of the meeting, not just for Julian’s sake but for Consolacion’s, to help her gain ‘closure’ (a term appropriated from his grief counsellor) after a loss so harrowing that she could no longer bear to speak Julian’s name. Mark, visibly impressed, agreed to plead his case and, while promising nothing, asked him to return the
following
day.

After eating a hot dog and noodles at a stand in the
poblacion
square, Philip left Dennis stretched out on a crumbling stone bench and walked through the near-deserted streets to keep his appointment with Jocelyn Alvarez. He had been nonplussed on asking her for her address to be told to ‘take the left road from the east side of the plaza and look for the pink building; you will not miss it’. In the event, the bright salmon walls, which seemed to blush at their own audacity, bore out her words. It was a huge house by neighbourhood standards, with two floors and an attic, a wide verandah at the front and a small flight of steps leading to a second door at the side. As he strolled up the gravel path, Philip was curious to know how Jocelyn could afford it, but no sooner had she come out to greet him than the mystery was solved. It belonged to her son who, she declared
unrepentantly
, ‘was making much more money as a nurse in Los Angeles than a dentist does in Manila’.

Modesty was once again set aside, as she led him indoors and claimed credit for much of the design and decor, including ‘two comfort rooms on every floor’. That her son shared her taste was evident from the faux Gainsborough portrait of him in a powdered wig and frock coat, painted by a Beverly Hills artist who, according to Jocelyn, was a ‘personal friend of First Lady Reagan’, and which hung in a place of honour on the
sitting-room
wall.

‘You will be hungry,’ she said, reaching for a bell, even though a maid was hovering within earshot. The switch from the
emollient
English she adopted for Philip and the tart Tagalog with which she chivvied the maid verged on the grotesque. Philip
watched as the girl wheeled in a trolley that would not have been out of place in the Berkshire drawing rooms of his youth,
trembling
for her as its wheels caught on the fringe of the rug which, fittingly, was a giant reproduction of a 100-dollar bill. Disaster averted, she handed him a glass of iced tea, with a mint and lemon garnish, and a far more varied selection of sticky cakes than he had been offered by Felicitas the day before.

Jocelyn, meanwhile, regaled him with a series of anecdotes about Julian, who had baptised one of her children, married another, and buried two more within the space of eight years. ‘He was a good man; he came from such a good family,’ she said, as if virtue had been in his blood: first ‘honourable’, then ‘
venerable
’, then ‘blessed’. ‘I was fortunate to meet his niece and her intended when they came to stay. Please to say to doña Isabella good morning from the woman in the churchyard. She will know.’

‘Of course,’ Philip said, cloyed by both the chatter and the cakes. ‘Do you think it is time to send for señora Vaollota.’

‘She is in here already.’

‘Really?’ Philip looked around.

‘Of course. She is in the kitchen. I keep her there with the other woman while you have your tea, so that you will not become disturbed. Modesty aside, I think that you enjoy your
conversation
more with me. I have spoken English in Hollywood.’

Resigned to the need to share her visitor, she rang for the women who entered with a diffidence that Philip suspected owed more to their presence in Jocelyn’s sitting room than to meeting him. Jocelyn introduced him as Philip
Seaweed
, evoking painful memories of prep school, while not seeing fit to introduce them at all, so that when the older of the two launched into a fervent account of how praying with Father Julian had destroyed the tumour on her breast, he assumed that she was Benigna and had forgotten the English ‘neck’. It was only when she added that her cure was not considered a miracle because she had previously been treated by the
baylan
– at whose name Jocelyn looked as if
she might spit, were it not straight into Benjamin Franklin’s eye – that Philip realised she was someone else entirely, who found the lack of official recognition for her recovery as distressing as the original disease.

‘I know this is him. I felt his hand like a blade on my breast, cutting out all that is rotting and wicked but also making me whole. It is me – I am the one – who is the first to tell the world that he is a saint. Is this not true?’ She appealed to Jocelyn, who nodded sagely, and to Benigna, who hung her head. ‘So you must tell my story. Victoria Lopez. You know how to write this name?’

‘L – O – P – E – Z,’ Philip replied.

‘Yes,’ she said and then, as if taking no chances, walked over to check his notebook.

‘Honestly!’ Jocelyn said, affronted on Philip’s behalf. ‘Mr Seaweed is a famous person. I think that he can know how to write a simple – a very simple – name like yours.’

‘Not that famous,’ Philip interjected. ‘But perhaps Benigna will tell us her story?’ he asked, turning a page deliberately.

In contrast to Victoria, Benigna had to be coaxed at every step, although it was this very hesitation and humility in the face of what had happened to her that Philip found most compelling. Echoing the Vicar General, she described how, after her neck had swollen ‘like a puffer fish’, Julian appeared to her at night and told her to go straight to the church. She insisted, however, that she had been wide awake. ‘I was not sleeping for three days.’

‘How can you be sure that it was Father Julian? Did you know him when he was the parish priest? You must have been very young.’

‘Yes, this is true, and I do not remember his face at all. But I have seen many pictures. And when he spoke to me – like so many people, you will say to me that I am dreaming – but I hear his voice from when he is giving me my names at my
christening
. I feel his arms round me like when he is holding me in the water. This is the first miracle, no?’

‘It’s certainly remarkable.’

‘And the second miracle is when I come to the church – after my husband and his mother and his father and all of the people are telling me “no” – I am finding that the door, it is open. At night it is always locked. Father Marlon, he swears that he has locked it also after mass, but it is open for me to go inside. And I kneel on the steps. It is hard for me to sit up in the bed, but when I am there it is easy to kneel. And when I look up, I see Father Julian with the Blessed Virgin. And she is smiling at me. But it is not just a smile on her lips; it is like the whole air is smiling. And I am there through all of the night, but it does not feel like a night; it does not feel like time at all. Then my husband, he carries me back to my bed and for three days they are afraid I am dying. But on this third day I have no lump on my neck. I have no wound and no mark. You must look!’ She twisted her neck to reveal the unblemished skin. ‘After this everyone is happy for me and I am happy, but I am also sad. I hear a voice – although it is not the same voice of Father Julian – telling me to give up this life and go inside a convent. But my husband, he speaks to Father Marlon, and the priest, he tells me that God will be wanting me to stay with my family, so this is what I am doing. But all the time I am thinking that this can be another message from the saint.’

Philip thanked her for her moving testimony. After another glass of iced tea and a respectful flick through Jocelyn’s Los Angeles album he escaped and returned to the hotel. As he sat in his room typing up his notes, trying to capture the women’s views and voices, he had a strong sense – almost a revelation – that they might be a springboard to something more. For the first time since abandoning his novel, he saw a way to revive his literary ambitions. A dread of personal revelation had led him to defy the conventional wisdom to write about what he knew; but now, either by chance or providence, he found himself in a world so different from his own that he would be able to make the unknown his theme. Fired with enthusiasm, he sketched out a series of plots about foreigners grappling with Philippine
culture: first, an adventure story about a gang of rogue marines who stayed on after the US withdrawal and mounted a military coup (he could hear Hollywood tills rattling); next, a mystery about an aid worker in Manila who uncovered an organ-
farming
racket run by the Vatican (less cash but more kudos); finally, a romantic comedy about a troupe of ballet dancers, headed by a thinly disguised Margot Fonteyn (Max’s memories would be invaluable), who toured the country, losing their hearts to the locals.

He dismissed each idea as fast as he jotted it down, taking his notepad with him to dinner where Dennis, seizing his advantage, pulled out his mobile to text. Even so, Philip felt too euphoric to stop and, after wolfing down his food, he returned to his room, where he continued to map out characters and scenarios before ripping up his notes, a destruction which for once felt creative, and settling down for an early night in a bid to bring his
subconscious
into play. Any dreams were lost, however, when he was shaken awake by Lerma.

‘Please, mister, please. You must hurry and leave this hotel!’

‘What?’

‘Please, mister, please!’ She continued to shake him, even though he was wide awake.

‘What’s the time?’ he asked, shrugging off her hand and looking at his watch. ‘Quarter to two!’

‘Please, mister, my husband has come back a day too soon to surprise me.’

‘It’s a hotel! Aren’t you supposed to have guests?’

‘He surprises me in the bed with Dennis.’

‘Dennis?’

‘It is correct. He has run away into the car.’

‘My car?’

‘It is parked in the street, in the other side of town. I take you there.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Philip said implacably. ‘He’s made his own bed – or whatever – let him lie in it.’

He turned on his side, emphasising his resolve, at which she began to shake him harder. ‘My husband will search for him. I am fearful; you must leave.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’

‘You must pack up your case. I will make your bill.’

‘What?’

‘For your visit.’

‘Of course! Don’t forget to charge for sundry services,’ he added with a bitterness that seemed to stem from his groin.

Angry and frustrated, he threw on his clothes and gathered up his few belongings. Feeling like an actor in a second-rate farce, he hurried into the corridor, where he was met by Armin, who took his grip and, steering him away from the main
staircase
, led him down an even more dingy and decrepit staircase at the back. As they sneaked through a bare concrete hallway, past sacks that might have been filled with rice, vegetables, or the body parts of adulterous guests, Philip studied Armin in the hope of finding out what he felt about such goings-on, but his face gave nothing away. Lerma met them at the door and
wordlessly
thrust the bill into Philip’s hand. A cursory glance showed that, whatever the hotel’s failings, he had not been overcharged.