After Purple (24 page)

The grass was freezing, but I hardly felt it. How could I be cold with God's breath against my neck? I wasn't lonely. I was joined now with the whole singing chain of earth and heaven, with all three hundred girls at school, with all three million visitors to Lourdes. Soon I would be one of them. And at Lourdes I would creep even closer into God. I would swallow Him, store Him in my stomach, feel Him flooding through my bloodstream. This was only Confession; Communion would be as wonderful again as a constellation to a single star.

I closed my eyes. I had still to say my penance. Ray had asked me to say an Our Father. Just one Our Father for a lifetime of sin, a backlog of screwing. God wasn't insisting on His pound of flesh. I lay straighter on the grass, clasped my hands together, closed my legs. The rain had turned my nightie into a penitential garment, damp and dark and clinging, but I was so white and light and radiant, it felt like a bridal gown.

“Our Father,” I began. Then stopped. The words were so beautiful, I kept repeating them over and over again. Our Father, father, father, father, father. I could feel His rough beard prickling against my breasts, His strong arms swinging me round and round the sky; I could smell the lure of His tobacco lingering on all the trees, their brown bark stained with it. I didn't want lovers any more, only fathers. Forty-seven fathers, three thousand and forty-seven.

“Our Father,” I whispered.
My
father. I wasn't going to share Him. “My father who art in heaven.” (I could never be an Anglican because they used to say “
which
art” and so turned fathers into things). “Hallowed be thy name.” It was already hallowed. Father — no name more sacred or more special. And
I
was hallowed on account of it. I was made of starlight now, of lilies, snow, ambrosia — no longer a dingy thing of dust and slime.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” I continued. I think I'd missed out something in between, but God wouldn't mind. He wasn't a fusspot like Adrian, ruler-rapping your knuckles, pedantic finger pointing to the text.

Daily bread. Soft white food which couldn't hurt my gums. No aubergines, no purples, no blancmange. God providing goodies like titbits on a birdtable, sons and daughters feeding from His hand. No need to struggle to pay the grocery bills, or fake a face to convince the Burton Bureau. Just sit at home and God would pop the loaf in through the open window. Bread and jam. Bread and peanut butter …

“Forgive us our trespasses …” Another strange word that, like Pharisees and prodigal and palsy. I'd first seen it written up at school. The path beyond the lake said, “Private, no trespassing”, so when we chanted, “Forgive us our trespasses”, I'd always thought we were asking God to forgive us our secret walks beyond the water, through the thicket, over the stepping stones. But it was other thickets He'd forgiven. I was virgin now, like Ray; pink and white instead of stained and sallow. I could almost revert to my maiden name. Maiden meant celibate and unspotted. No man had ever had me, except my father. God had wiped out Elliott and Morton, rooting and rutting, marriage and divorce. He'd even forgiven murder. Josie Rutherford no longer glowered at me from the Other Side. I could feel her like a flower now, dead perhaps, but only because it was winter. She must have been flower-like if my father loved her. But flowers never lasted long. (That's why Adrian bought pot plants. Josie wasn't a primula. Only a brief, frail, fading, insubstantial weed.)

I returned to the Our Father. “As we forgive them,” I prayed, “Who trespass against us.” That meant Leo and there was nothing to forgive. My mouth was holy now — part of my penance, even. I wasn't hideous. Ray had told me I was beautiful.

There was also Janet to forgive. I had washed away the hate for her, but what about the envy? That was less important, now she hadn't got her baby. Janet with an empty womb and a sore, stitched cunt and her perm growing out, was easy to forgive. True, she still had Adrian, but I had Ray and God.

“And lead us not into temptation …”

No more pricks and park-keepers, ravening sharks, jars of boiling oil. God holding me by the hand now, guiding me from the cliff's edge, the black hole, the murderer's cell.

“But deliver us from evil.” The clenched fist, the shattered vase, the bleeding bortsch, the choking cul-de-sac.

“Amen,” I shouted. “Amen.”

I could hear the sky roaring out “amen” with me, the whole earth humming it as it spun and dazzled around the sun. I sprang to my feet. I was still so tall, my hair kept catching in the stars; so strong, I could have picked up the whole hospital and pinned it on my lapel like a brooch. I knew I could leave it now. Or take it with me. I had my own white walls inside me, as Ray had said. Just one more night, then Leo would come with my suitcase, and in it I would cram all the grace and strength and healing which Ray had promised me, and which the nuns stored in their light white rustling souls.

Softly, I opened the little side door of the hospital and padded along the passage and up the stairs. No one had missed me. I slipped into bed and stretched out my arms to God the Father. My own fond, returned, and doting Heavenly father who would stay with me now for ever and ever amen.

“Put out your pipe,” I whispered. “And kiss my breasts.”

It was still raining in the morning and God had returned to heaven with all His angels. The earth looked drab and damp without them and I had caught a cold. It hurt to blow my nose, so I dabbed and sniffed instead. It wasn't slops for breakfast, but hard toast and burnt bacon. I took that as a Sign — my time for being cosseted was over. Today was Departure Day.

A nun stripped my bed and left it stripped. The mattress was covered with a cold white mackintosh cover, like a baby's cot. I kept wondering who would be lolling on it tomorrow and whether Ray would visit them and hold their hands. Leo hadn't come. I had washed and dressed (I must have lost weight because my jeans drooped) and collected all my things together and said goodbye to Sister Ursula who kissed me, and Sister Aidan who told me it was a beautiful day outside. When I pointed out that it was pouring, she said it was God's own rain and good for the crops. There aren't any crops in January, but I didn't press the point. She was simple, like Ray — which meant holy. I wished Leo was more simple, the sort of simple person who came when he said he would and left notes and said sorry.

I sat and waited. I refused the mid-morning Ovaltine and biscuits in case they charged me for another day. It was getting close to lunchtime and I was starving. God had fed me last night with manna and ambrosia, full to overflowing, but He'd crept away at dawn and left no one on the Day Shift.

I stole down the passage to the bathroom with the mirror in it. Perhaps Leo had changed his mind about collecting me. He'd seen me yesterday, asleep, and I didn't look too fancy. Leo lived with
objets d' art
, not rejects. I didn't dare confront the mirror head-on, but darted furtive little glances in it, sideways. I think I kept hoping that somehow my teeth would have been returned to me and my old face stuck back on. It wasn't. All that had changed was the colour of the bruising which was now yellowish-purple instead of purplish-yellow. There was a brown scaly residue on the outside of my lips and a sort of pussy gunge inside them. My nose was running again. I sniffed and shook my hair around my face, to try and hide the worst bits.

As I walked back to the room, I forced a smile in case Leo had arrived. My legs were wobbly with the sheer fear and lust and longing of seeing him again. I think I was suffering Leo withdrawal symptoms. Ray and God and the Sisters had filled his place to some extent, but there was some dark, strong, violent part of him which no one else could offer.

He wasn't there, but someone else was — a small greasy man in a black leather jacket, displaying a mass of chest hair with two silver medals entangled in it. Another priest, I guessed. Their disguises were getting better all the time. This one was even armed with one of Leo's suitcases.

“Mrs Thea Morton?” he inquired. His accent was Suffolk crossed with Bethnal Green. But he couldn't be a pop priest — not if I was Mrs.

“Yes,” I said. “That's me.” Actually, I didn't feel like anyone. Everything was crumbling. My soft white bed had turned into glaring mackintosh, and Leo into a Cockney spiv with bracelets.

“I suppose you're going to tell me you're a Dominican?” I added.

“No. Fleetway Taxi Service. Instructions to pick up a Mrs Morton and take her to W. ll.” He tossed the suitcase on to the mattress and lit a cigarette. “OK?” (You weren't allowed to smoke.)

“Er … yes … OK.” It could have been worse, I suppose. At least it wasn't Otto. Perhaps Leo had an auction or a deadline, or had fallen foul of Sister Aidan yesterday.

I opened the case. Inside was a piece of paper with a kiss on it — just one large kiss in Leo's bold black writing with a florid ‘L' underneath. The fountain pen had leaked and one leg of the kiss looked as if it were bleeding or deformed. Leo couldn't come himself, but he had sent me a spiv, a taxi, and a crippled kiss.

I stuffed the paper in my pocket and my possessions in the suitcase. I had nicked the books on Bernadette. I couldn't bear to leave her in that fusty hospital library — she was my sister now, so she had to go where I went. I also packed the tiny cereal packets. There were three of them — my babies. One of the girls I'd worked with once had given birth to triplets last October. I'd read it in the
Daily Mail
.

“Kept you hungry, did they?” The driver had seen the chocolates and the custard creams follow the Sugar Puffs. He was standing in front of the window, blocking the view, so I couldn't say goodbye to my tree. Even the nuns had disappeared. It was Angelus time, so they'd all be in the chapel. A cleaner and an orderly were holding the floor with the first lay nurse I'd seen there. It seemed odd that she should come complete with legs and hair and breasts, when the nuns had managed perfectly well without them. Sister Aidan had hinted they were short of nuns. Not enough vocations.

“I'm … er … leaving now,” I mumbled.

The greyish curls and tinted spectacles barely wavered from their paperwork. “Mrs Morton isn't it? Got your drugs?”

“Yes,” I said to both. Perhaps that's why Leo hadn't come. If I was Mrs Morton, then he was an adulterer. Wildman had disappeared again. And I'd never be Mrs Rzevski. It was a name which no one could ever spell or share.

I was still lingering by the desk. It seemed wrong to leave with so little send-off, especially after yesterday. I felt there should have been a heavenly guard of honour handing me not my penicillin, but chunks of light and love. Instead, I picked my way round mops and buckets, followed by a whistling taxi driver scattering a trail of ash. He was a fairly professional whistler, but every time he hit a high note, the noise caught on my mouth and ripped it. I hoped the cleaners wouldn't assume he was my husband. He had long black hairs protruding from his nostrils and gold bits on his shoes. Sister Aidan would have really been confused. Another Jewish uncle, she'd assume, but from a less favoured tribe of Israel. We trailed through the drizzle to the car park. I wondered what the car would be — not, I prayed, a sneering scarlet snob like Otto's. It was a green Granada Ghia with fake fur on the seats and a pink plastic girlie doll dangling naked over the driving mirror. The driver helped me in, banged the doors, flung his fag-end out of the window and lit another.

“Smoke?” he offered, as we cruised round the corner and on to the main road.

“No thanks.”

“Your bloke been bashing you up, then?”

I tried to laugh, but it came out like a gasp. Was he just joking or had he seen my case notes? Perhaps the crowd he mixed with all beat their women up, like those articles you read on battered wives or women's refuges. I'd never thought about them much. Violence was like sex — it went on all the time, but no one talked about it. Now I was a statistic, I suppose, an entry in Erin Pizzey's guest book.

“No,” I stuttered. “I … had an accident.”

“Nasty,” he said and switched the radio on. So that was that. He'd dismissed the whole thing in a couple of syllables. I felt a little better. I tried to listen to the programme which was a record request thing where people called Cheryl, Val and Les were sending love to Brenda and the twins, or the Best Mum In The World. There were four Best Mums before we'd even got to Richmond. Everyone
belonged
. Stacey had six aunts and eleven cousins and wanted each one mentioned individually, and Gavin from Grimsby said goodbye to all his old workmates and hallo to all his new ones, and not forgetting Gran up in Glasgow and Mum (Best?) down in Kent.

I had only ex's. One ex-husband, one ex-baby and one almost ex-mother. She'd moved to Jersey for the climate, so she said, but I suspected it was more to avoid the burden of having me as a daughter, instead of Patricia Jane. I wondered if I should request a record for her. Thea (
who?
) Morton sends greetings to the Best Ex-Mum In The World and to her workmates at the Mayfair office where she was recently receptionist, and love to all the ex-Franciscans posing as tramps and taxi-drivers, and please tell Leo she hopes he isn't ex, and she can't wait for him to come and fetch her home from hospital.

The driver turned Gavin down and removed his cigarette. “Can't get on with nuns,” he said, racing an amber light. “I mean, it's not natural, is it, shutting themselves away like that, with no blokes?”

I'd yearned to be a nun all the years I'd been at the convent school. We
all
had. Who wanted blokes, when God was on offer?

“Men aren't
every
thing,” I said. I wondered if Leo would be in. If he wasn't, I couldn't even pay the cab. Perhaps he'd take a Chinese vase in lieu of, or a hand-painted jardinière.