After Purple (53 page)

I tried to push the ceiling away. It seemed to have fallen in on me and was pressing on my forehead, so that everything was jumbled up together. Leo pregnant, Otto lying in his arms in a tiny muslin dress, both of them in bed making babies together, Adrian in the delivery room being stitched and sterilised.

“I'll just have a bath,” I said.

“Look, Thea, I didn't
want
you to know, honestly I didn't, but Janet thought … You're not
too
upset, are you?”

“No,” I said. “I'm not.”

I knelt on the lino in the cold, cramped black-and-white tiled bathroom, which had little droplets oozing down the walls and three different types of bath-cleaner, each with a J-cloth folded neatly on the top.

“Bernadette,” I prayed. I knew she was listening. After all, she'd planned this entire thing — the loss of Leo, the long wait on the doorstep, Janet's pregnancy, the dead and living baby clothes. She was forcing me to see I didn't need homes or husbands or pregnancies. I was special, chosen, branded, however I might fear it. I had tried to run away from her, refuse to be a seer, turn instead to all the trifling tinsel baubles like love and babies and luncheon vouchers, double-barrelled offices, chocolate-coated toys. One by one, she had wrested them away from me, cut off all my bolt-holes. She had found me a job far more dazzling and exclusive than anything the Burton Bureau could offer, lifted me above the squalid pettiness of screwing and spawning, and saved me for her own high calling, to be hallowed, hallmarked, blest.

I knew now what I must do — follow her example and go back to St Maur's, to those simple dove-white nuns who had turned their back on earthly ties and dross. Bernadette herself had entered a convent, given up her friends, her home, her relatives. It hadn't been easy for her. She had sobbed all through that first bitter night away from home, pined for her Grotto, her father, the safe familiar life with her brothers and sisters in their cramped and cosy kitchen. She could have married and produced a string of kids. But God had made her fruitful in another way, filled her womb with visions instead of babies. Even if they were false visions, she was still famous, still allowed to flit about the world. I had tried to evade her, stamp her out, trample on her, call her just a nightmare, or an illusion, pretend she never happened. But I knew I had seen her more truly than I knew anything in my life. She was forcing me to accept it. She would pursue me and punish me, pounce on all my comforts and securities until I fell on my knees and cried “thy will be done”.

I was on my knees now, the squiggled lino pressing into them, the steam from the bath I didn't want but which Adrian had run for me, coiling up to the polystyrene ceiling, like incense or a prayer.

“I'm coming,” I whispered to her. It didn't matter now that Leo was in Kashmir or Janet six weeks gone. I had my mission too, my goal, my labour. I would suffer birth-pangs for the Truth. I had no more need to demean myself, to trail around employment agencies and put up cards for shabby basement rooms or answer ads for “Fourth girl wanted, to sleep in dining-room”. I would return to the convent and soar beyond the world, live in a white nest at the top of a tree, with winged white nuns fluttering all around me. I pulled out the plug and let the shining, untouched water glug away. I didn't need to wash — I was clean now, uncorrupted.

I walked downstairs, coat buttoned, hair combed. I had even made my bed — returned all the baby clothes to their sworls of tissue paper. They hardly mattered now.

Adrian was tinkering with the waste-disposal unit. His back was bowed and leaden, as if he had grown older in an hour.

“I'm going to the hospital,” I told him.

“
What
?” He swung round. There were splashes on his shirt and one button had pulled undone. Despite the rationing, he was still too broad. “
No
, Thea. Look, if you're worried about that bill, I …”

“I'm
not
,” I said. They wouldn't charge me. They had accepted Bernadette without a dowry. I would pay in Truth, if not in fees. It would be an honour for them to shelter me. Several different convents had
fought
for the privilege of housing Bernadette.

“I've got to see Sister Ursula,” I explained. “I've something to tell her — something vitally important.”

He tugged a piece of carrot out of the sink and stared at it as if it were a new type of vegetable he'd never seen before. “She's … er … not
there
, Thea.”

I smiled. Janet had instructed him to say that. They were both shit-scared I was going to cost them more. They were so materialistic, so worldly, they couldn't see beyond bills and fees, scrimping and screwing, making babies on the National Health, eking out the Camembert all week.

“It's OK,” I said. “They won't charge me. All I want is a fiver for the taxi, and after that I won't bother you for a cent.”

“I'll help you as far as I can, Thea — you know that — but you're
not
to go to St Maur's.”

I wondered now how I could ever have admired him. He was so
limited
, so narrow, floundering around among his ha'pennies and his cash-books, not realising that souls and truth come free.

“D'you know the number of a taxi firm?” I shrugged. I was already thumbing through Janet's ready-reference book which was full of plumbers and discount houses and hairdressers called Maison Victor.

“Thea,
listen
, they're pulling down the hospital. It's going to be demolished. I didn't want to tell you, but …”

Amazing the lies Janet woud resort to. She'd pull whole buildings down, just to pay me back. She'd probably spent the night polishing up her stories, then passing them on to Adrian after they'd finished screwing, instructing him to confuse and con and frighten me.

“Look,” I said. “I'm getting out of here.” Next thing I knew, she'd be telling Adrian to inform me they'd demolished Kashmir.

“Thea,
please
, you
can
stay — just for a day or two. I'm sure it'll be all right. Janet's only a bit on edge because she's nervous about the baby and feeling sick all the time and …”

“Oh, horrid,” I said. I remembered it with Lucian. “Tell her I'm sorry, will you.” I
was
sorry. Who
wanted
to be pregnant, with all that morning sickness and cramps and swelling ankles, and only pain and death at the end of it? I didn't even want to go to Kashmir. There would be flies and germs and roaring feverish roads and gaunt suspicious border-people who couldn't speak your language. I had a white nest waiting for me, quiet and uncorrupted, a Calling.

Adrian turned his back on the waste-disposal unit. “Why don't we go out together? Take a little walk, or have a cup of coffee in the high street. I'll buy you a skirt or something, if you like. You'll need some decent clothes if you're going to get a job.”

“I've
got
a job,” I said. “And I don't need anything.” The nuns would give me my robes and daily bread.

Adrian still had the piece of carrot in his hands, picking at it, shredding it, littering Janet's floor. His face was strained, taut, wary. The drop of blood had congealed on his chin, but he looked as if he might bleed again all over, if I even raised my voice. No point in talking to him about souls or saints or nuns — he'd never been religion. Religion for him was just another string of isms — Deism, theism, Judaism — explored in his neat scholarly handwriting in essays and dissertations, and then contrasted with atheism, rationalism, materialism. He couldn't understand that I might crave bread and wine and sackcloth rather than coffee and a skirt. I knew I'd have to lie to him.

“It's all right,” I breezed. “I know what I'll do — I'll go to Patricia Jane's. She said I could stay with her. She'll even find me a job. Her father runs a kennels and he told me once I could help him with the dogs.”

I had kennels on my conscience. I'd never liked Karma, but I knew he'd droop and die without his master. Everyone would
loathe
him in a kennels. He was far too big, for one thing, and too opinionated. He hated other dogs and refused to fawn on people. They only like dogs who wag and squirm and grovel and
conform
. I could see him standing tall and proud and suffering, refusing to eat or drink or knuckle under, his black non-Afghan ears pricked to hear Leo's footsteps on the path. When he didn't hear them, he'd just lie down and wait for loss and pain and hunger to snuff him out.

“Well,
that's
a relief,” said Adrian. “You're talking sense at last. Look, where does Patricia live? I'll take you there, if you like. Perhaps we'd better phone her first, in case she's …”

“No need,” I said. “There's always someone in. She's got an enormous family — cousins and aunts and brothers and sisters and things. I'm always welcome. I don't even have to knock. ‘Just walk straight in' her father says. He's
wonderful
, her father. He …”

Adrian dropped the last shred of carrot and took my hand instead. “Thank God for that, Thea. You need to be with normal decent people. I've been worried sick, if you really want to know. I've never liked you shacking up with Leo.”

I wished he wouldn't say that name. It was like wheels running over and over me on a ten-lane motorway. “Just lend me some money for the train fare, will you?”

“I'll come
with
you, better still.” He was already turning off the extractor fan and bolting the back door. “Make sure you arrive there safe and sound. And I ought to have a word with them about your job. People tend to exploit you, you know, especially if you work for friends.”

“No, really, Adrian, I …”

“I'd like to, Thea. Please.”

“No.”

“Well, just to the station, then.”

“
No
.”

I still had his sweater on. I didn't hand it back — it would be the one last link between us. I knew I wouldn't see him again. I kissed him very slowly and solemnly on the lips. He tasted of low-calorie marmalade and Janet. I could feel his heart beating strongly through his chest like an efficient and well-regulated machine.
Rationalism. Mechanism
. We stood for a moment holding hands, while the bird in the laburnum tree called “Bernadette, Bernadette”, and at last I pulled away and walked slowly down the hall.

The last I saw of him, he was standing at the door, still sweaterless, calling out final, hopeful, new-start sort of things after my dwindling form. I think it was his way of telling me he loved me.

He had also given me two dirty ten-pound notes.

I sat slumped on the taxi seat and stared. The driver had tried to warn me, but I'd thought he was simply one of Janet's stooges and hadn't listened when he'd gone on about redevelopment and demolition men. I'd been planning my campaign with Bernadette and couldn't be bothered to chat to taxi drivers.

“Just look at
that
!” he said.

I looked. Three brutal yellow cranes towered above what had once been the middle section of St Maur's. The roof had already gone and most of the outside walls. You could see right inside, into bare, gaping rooms with all their skin scraped off. The hospital looked as if it was having an operation on itself. It had been drugged and anaesthetised, then opened up and gutted, all its vital organs wrenched out, tubes and scaffolding shoring up its body. The surgeons had sauntered off before bothering to stitch it up again. They'd left it sick and bleeding, switched off its life-support system, declared it a hopeless case. A gang of looters was snatching all its treasures, the rings from its fingers, the gold from its teeth. Beside it stood a towering pile of rubble — iron bars and wooden frames, twisted piping, broken bricks — its own guts and entrails shovelled out of its belly and flung into a slop-bowl.

One of the cranes gripped a huge iron ball in its yellow teeth and was crashing it into what was left of the walls. Two tons of Portland stone crumbled like sugar. It was a child's game, knocking skittles down, dismantling houses made of cards, except this time, it wasn't wood or paper, but a hundred-year-old fabric built to outsmart man and time. Elegant stone pillars, slim and white and gracious like the nuns, had snapped in half like matchsticks, triple-bonded walls sunk to their knees with no one to help them up again or drag them to a convalescent home.

“Blimey!” said the driver, as another storey bellowed to the ground in a shroud of dust. I had paid him, tipped him, over-tipped, but I still sat there in his cab, like a numb and stupid chunk of masonry myself, unable to move my limbs. I turned my back on the window, but the view from the other one was even worse. A huge whooping fire was gobbling up window-frames and floorboards, its gloating flames leaping to the sky, showers of sparks singing against the charred, distorted corpses of bookcases and bedsteads. It was like a sacrament — fire and smoke and incense pouring up to God, and instead of gilded and embroidered priests, a gang of demolition men in filthy dungarees, with picks and spades for gleaming chalices.

The driver had opened his door and was staring out across the carnage. “Bloody hell!” he muttered. “Bloody bleeding hell.”

“I was a patient here,” I faltered, turning back to the other window and watching the cruel iron ball shatter a marble portico as if it were plywood. “I'm
still
a patient here.”

“Don't think you'd stand a chance, Miss.” He laughed. “Only terminal cases, I'd imagine.” He lit a cigarette and settled down in his cab to watch the larger blaze. “They told us down at the Plough they were going to pull it down, but I never dreamed this quick. Hey, gov,” he called to one of the demolition men. “What the hell you up to?”

“What d'you
think
we're up to? Having a party? The place was rotten, cracked right through like a teacup. A danger to the public. Would have cost thousands to restore. No one
had
thousands, so …” He shrugged.