The Widow's Tale (13 page)

T
alking of saints, I’ve always had a sneaking respect for Simeon Stylites, the original pillar saint who spent half his life perched on top of said pillar, delivering sermons, dispensing wisdom and subsisting on nothing but whatever snacks the general public felt inclined to toss up to him.

It’s a pretty extreme way of showing one’s devotion. Like those chaps in India who sit with one arm raised above their head for year upon year, until the fingernails curl into coils and the whole limb goes as black as a prune.

As for pillar-living, setting aside the obvious concerns, re sleeping and bathroom arrangements, I do rather balk at such a public display of devotion. I suppose pillar saint-dom is always going to attract the more extrovert type. Whereas, if I ever went down the ascetic route – and, let’s be honest, if I were to make a name for myself in that department I’d have to be getting on with it pretty damned quick – I’d be more inclined to seek out some little cell or cave and go about it quite quietly. I wouldn’t say no to the odd bar of chocolate, but I really couldn’t be doing with great hordes of people. How would one find the time to reflect?

Well, there’s not much point my pretending that I just tripped over the Slipper Chapel this morning, as if I just
happened to be wending my way around those tiny lanes out there. The fact is I’d picked up a couple of leaflets when I was over in Walsingham, one of which had a little calendar of events tucked inside. And I’ve always been rather intrigued by the idea of the Stations of the Cross. But, for what it’s worth, I went along more as an observer than a potential participant.

I’d had an extra glass or two of wine last night, which didn’t help matters. When I woke I felt about as bad as I’ve felt all week, and it seemed to take me an extra hour just to get myself up and moving. In fact, I was pretty sure I was going to be late. But either I’d got the times wrong or what I’d taken to be the start of the service was actually when people were just meeting up. So I’d gone haring down the little lanes, not entirely sure where I was going, then suddenly, out in the middle of nowhere, there was this massive car park, with rows of coaches and hundreds of people milling about.

I parked up and, albeit a little self-consciously, joined the general stream of people. We wound around a couple of buildings and came out into a large open area, with an oval patch of grass in the middle, and maybe 150 chairs arranged across it.

I feel obliged to note that it was exceptionally cold this morning – if only to explain how odd it was to see a lectern and microphone set up at the front, on a low dais. But I suppose if you’re going to do the Stations of the Cross this time of year and you’ve got a fair-sized crowd of people you want to be sure everyone can hear what’s going on.

I walked down one side, past a series of wooden crosses, each about six foot tall, around which, I assumed, the Stations would be taking place. Not for the first time, it occurred to me what remarkable power is contained in a simple wooden cross. You just take two lengths of wood and nail them together and, for anyone brought up in a Christian society, it fairly stops you in your tracks.

Anyway, by now I was simply hanging around, with little or no idea what was going to happen but not wanting to ask anyone for fear of drawing attention to myself. So I just did my best to look deeply earnest, and whenever anyone caught my eye I did that dreadful apologetic smile/grimace I tend to do at parties when I don’t know anyone.

At the far end of the open space a small crowd was buzzing around a trestle table. I mean, really quite frenetic, like the crush around a WI stall when the cakes first come out. So I drifted over in that general direction and, when I was close enough, went up on my tiptoes to try to see what all the fuss was about.

A wooden box sat in the middle of the table – about the same size as a small harmonium, with a slot in the top. And all around the table people were bent over small squares of paper, scribbling little messages. I came around one side and saw a sign beside the box which said, simply, ‘PETITIONS’. Some of the people scrawling away were using their spare hand to shield what they were writing. Then folding them up, and posting them into the wooden box.

Over the years, my exposure to the Catholic Church has been pretty minimal, so it took me a moment or two to work out what people might be petitioning
for
exactly. Namely, help. Help with their bad leg. Or their sick mother. And, one imagines, in many cases, for help with their own troubled mind. Seeing the rate at which those little notes were being folded up and posted I was suddenly struck by the colossal weight of pain and anguish all around me, and was profoundly moved by it. And not just the idea of it existing in that particular churchyard, but right across the land. That, at any given moment, despite appearances to the contrary, half the people you pass in the street are suffering their own private torment, and just doing their best to get from one minute to the next.

Anyway, it seemed a little indecent of me to stand there watching these people writing their private little messages, so I wandered off. I wonder what actually happens to all those bits of paper. At some point, presumably, the wooden box is carted off to a secret location, where a priest picks out each petition and blesses them … or reads them aloud. To be honest, I haven’t a clue what the process might consist of. In other cultures they’d quite possibly set fire to them, as an act of cleansing, or conveying the contents to the appropriate place. Perhaps they burn them here, once they’ve been read, or dealt with. Not for any mystical reasons, but just for the sake of privacy. I mean, what else are you going to do with them?

There was still no sense of the service starting, so I carried on round the corner and found myself in a tiny
courtyard, where an old stone font stood and a steady trickle of water poured from the pipes in all four corners into the trough below. Around each one, people were politely queuing, clutching plastic bottles, many of which were identical and I assume had been bought somewhere on the premises. But some people had their own bottles, which they’d brought along themselves.

Everyone was doing their best to be patient, but you could see that here and there people were getting a little browned off, not least those waiting behind one chap who was filling the sort of vessel you’d expect to see at the taps on a campsite. Of course, nobody actually said anything to him. But you could tell that people were thinking, ‘What’s he planning to do – take a ruddy bath in it?’

I went and stood over by a wall, so as not to get in the way. And I suppose because I was just standing there watching, rather than queuing, I must have stuck out like a sore thumb. After a minute or two I became aware of an older woman, in her seventies or eighties, giving me the once-over. I turned and unleashed in her direction a smile of maximum inanity. She nodded back at me, but kept on staring, until I felt obliged to explain myself.

‘I’m just an observer,’ I said. Which was perfectly true, but sounded faintly ridiculous, as if I was there on behalf of the United Nations or some other international organisation.

She gave me a little smile. Then nodded towards the far end of the font. ‘I’m waiting for my sister,’ she said. I looked over and saw the woman to whom she was
referring, hanging around behind the chap with the five-gallon drum.

‘If he’s not careful,’ she said, ‘they’re going to suddenly turn and set upon him.’

We both stood and watched for another couple of moments. Then, if only for something to say as much as anything else, I asked her what people actually did with the water.

‘I mean, do you drink it?’ I said.

She turned and had a good, long look at me now, presumably having worked out that I was (a) most certainly not a Catholic, and (b) quite possibly the biggest idiot she’d ever come across.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It’s just to have around the house. You know, in case a priest happens to drop by.’

It was the sort of answer which gives with one hand and takes with the other. But as we’d at least established that, like certain medicine, it wasn’t to be taken internally, I assumed that the priest would use it for some sort of blessing or anointment. So I smiled and nodded very slowly, as if some great truth had been revealed to me.

I didn’t want her to think me rude, or feel that her efforts had been wasted. I also wanted to bring this whole embarrassing conversation to a close. So I said goodbye and headed off, as if I had urgent business elsewhere. Then, as soon as I was out of sight, I slowed down again. By now the place was getting very busy. There was a huge shop – in fact, pretty much a mini-market – which I might have been tempted to have a look around if I could’ve
only found the entrance. But I appeared to be round the back of it, peering in through a smallish window. And, even at the time, it occurred to me that this was quite a reasonable representation of how I felt wandering around among all these pilgrims.

My only other distraction before the main event was when I spent a couple of minutes queuing up to visit a tiny chapel. I quite fancied immersing myself in a little more quiet candlelight. But as the queue slowly shuffled forward it slowly dawned on me that there was not going to be a great deal of solitude in there. And I’ve never been that keen on being in confined spaces with lots of other people. My nerve finally cracked about three yards from the chapel entrance. A priest was standing by the doorway, like a bouncer. He seemed to be eyeing up each individual as they passed – a sort of spiritual frisking. And as I was just about the only person queuing who wasn’t carrying an unlit candle it was pretty clear that I was an interloper. Even if I’d happened to locate the special stall where they sold the candles, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it when I got in there – would, no doubt, have curtsied at quite the wrong moment, or put the lit candle in the wrong place, or set fire to something/someone.

Besides, I had the sneaking suspicion that, deep in his ear, the priest had a tiny receiver, through which information was currently being transmitted regarding a woman of stupendous ignorance in all things Catholic, especially holy water, who was starting to get on everyone’s nerves. So at the very last moment I bolted, as I rather
seem to have got into the habit of doing lately. And spent the next few minutes doing a little more wandering. Until, at last, I heard the screech of feedback over the Tannoy, as a microphone was tested, and everyone started heading towards the open space.

I walked back around the perimeter and tucked myself away by the wall closest to the car park, so that if I found the whole thing too weird or overwhelming, or happened to find myself being chased by an angry mob, I might have half a chance of making it to my car and getting away.

I suppose I’m not used to being around religious people – at least, not in such numbers. Among my friends I would estimate that there are, at most, two or three firm believers, the rest subscribing to something which hovers between agnosticism and atheism. By which I mean they don’t subscribe to anything much at all. In all likelihood, they said their prayers and sang hymns every day at school assembly and nowadays troop into church for weddings and christenings and funerals maybe once or twice a year. They might have some sense of something significant off in the shadows. Something which is only ever really called upon in times of adversity, at which point its lack of substance and all-round inchoate nature is rather alarmingly laid bare.

As I glanced around me at my co-congregants this morning I couldn’t help but try to identify some common characteristic. If not quite the saintly gold-leaf aura, then at least some sense of spiritual self-confidence. Of course, I was working on the basis that everyone else present was
both a) a believer … and b) that their belief was topped right up to the brim. But that is to assume that faith is by definition a solid thing – unshakeable … constant. Whereas, there’s every reason that it might wax and wane. If so, is a pilgrimage also a way of recharging one’s spiritual battery? I imagine it probably is.

The last of the stragglers were taking their seats now and trying to find a space around the perimeter wall and I was beginning to get a little nervy. This was, after all, the lights-going-down part of the performance, prior to the conductor striding out towards the podium and tapping his baton on the music stand. I was worried about my not knowing when to bow or close my eyes or when to speak – or indeed what I was meant to say when I did. Not simply because I wanted to avoid making an even greater fool of myself than I’d already succeeded in doing, but because I genuinely didn’t want to disrupt the proceedings. I felt quite strongly that I was a guest – albeit an uninvited one – at someone else’s ceremony and the best way for me to show some respect for what was going on was to be as inconspicuous as possible.

All I knew about the Stations of the Cross was that it basically consists of a circuit, and that the congregation’s focus slowly shifts from one designated site to another, which this morning was marked out by the wooden crosses, rather than the tableaux that you get inside a church. The priest at the microphone appeared to have overall authority, but just as things were about to get started two or three other priests appeared, one of whom
had a staff with a cross at its tip and another had a candle the size of an artillery shell.

Everyone grew quiet. And I suddenly saw how I was part of a great gathering of people outdoors on a freezing winter’s day, and in such stillness now that the only sound was the cackle of crows in some neighbouring field, and the wind high up in the cold, bare trees.

Then the fellow at the lectern began his incantation, and everyone turned to face the appropriate cross.

Those first words echoed around the stone walls of the surrounding buildings. The actual phrases might have been somewhat foreign, but the language and the manner in which they were delivered were quite familiar. And when the priest paused and the whole congregation began to utter their part in unison I suddenly felt very much at home.