2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees Read online

  §

  That night Kevin, Nic and I decided to celebrate the miracle of Serges’s hole. Where else but with a trip to Lourdes? Up until 1858 Lourdes had been nothing more than a modest town of about 4,000 inhabitants with a castle and a few hostelries catering for mountaineers and those in search of the healing waters at nearby spas. However, all that changed—when a fourteen-year-old girl called Bernadette went collecting firewood in a cave. She heard a sound like a gust of wind and saw the ghost of another young girl, surrounded by a shaft of light. People subsequently decided that this was an apparition of the young Virgin Mary. Well, of course it was. Who else could it have been?

  Bernadette continued to see this apparition on a fairly regular basis over the next six months, in spite of her parents trying her with a whole host of different breakfast cereals. On her ninth sighting, the apparition lady (or Mary, as we’ll call her henceforth) instructed Bernadette to dig a hole in the ground and bathe in it (an instruction you might more commonly expect from a middle-aged male apparition). Mary also instructed Bernadette to tell the local pastor to have a chapel built in honour of her appearances there. The pastor, for some strange reason, was reluctant. Perhaps it was because there had been nothing in his ecclesiastical training telling him to accept building instructions from fourteen-year-old girls with vivid imaginations. Anyway, he accused Bernadette of lying, and demanded proof—which Mary duly provided at the next meeting by telling Bernadette, “Que soy era Immaculado Conception”, which means, “She’s not lying, guv, honest.”

  Naturally enough this was accepted as concrete proof and in 1862 Bernadette’s apparitions were officially declared authentic and Lourdes rapidly became one of the world’s leading pilgrimage sites. It has five million visitors every year and it has around 270 hotels, the second greatest number in France—one of which catered for an Irish clientele, with my neighbour Mary tinkling the ivories of an evening.

  Jesus is well known for his ministry in Judea in which he preached forgiveness, love and good will to all men. However, few are aware that he secretly hoped one of the future spin-offs of his teachings would be that a small French town in the foothills of the Pyrenees would grow large and profitable, primarily sustained by sales of trinkets of his mum in various virtuous and heavenly poses. The good people of Lourdes have not let him down in this regard. As Kevin, Nic and I drove through the town centre in search of an elusive parking space, we noted that every other building seemed to be a gift shop, full to the brim with cheap souvenirs of the Virgin Mary, surrounded by a vast miscellany of religious iconography. Jesus would have been proud.

  And then there are the miracles. Every day sick people are brought to Lourdes in their thousands, largely because many have claimed to have received miracle cures here.

  “The biggest miracle of Lourdes seems to me to be that so many people have bought into it,” I said to the others as we left the car and set off on a brief sightseeing tour of the town.

  “That’s a bit cynical,” said Kevin. “Don’t knock it if it works. Some people end up cured.”

  “That’s more likely to be them healing themselves by believing they’re going to get better rather than as a result of any miracle occurring.”

  “What does it matter if they end up getting better?”

  “I suppose it doesn’t,” I replied, sceptically. “But there must be a lot of disappointed people who leave here in the same wheelchair they came in. It does look to me as if the primary aim is tourism and profit—over and above any overwhelming drive to do good.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Kevin was right. I didn’t know that. And today we didn’t have time to find out. The agenda was clear and simple and time was short: quick sightseeing tour and then off to listen to Mary play in her hotel. The obvious first stop was the extravagant Basilique du Rosaire et de 1’Immaculee Conception—the big church which dominates the town. It’s very beautiful if you like big, brash Romano-Byzantine and neo-Gothic architecture, and if you don’t, it isn’t. We wandered silently around its grand environs, and then past the entrance to the Grotte de Massabielle (the site of Bernadette’s visions). Up to this day I had never seen so many nuns. They came in all shapes and sizes. The only things they had in common were uncolourful clothing and a pallid complexion. I guess that sunbathing doesn’t feature as one of a nun’s daily activities. I’ve certainly never seen a nun in a swimsuit (except in 1985 on the video my mate Geoff showed me—and I don’t think she was a real nun anyway).

  “Oh Sister Josephine,” I sang, much to Kevin and Nic’s surprise, “what a very funny nun you are.”

  “What?” said Nic.

  “It’s a song. By Jake Thackray. He used to sing it on the telly when I was a kid.”

  “Yeah, I remember that,” said Kevin.

  “It was about a criminal on the run who disguised himself as a nun to escape capture,” I continued. “And all the other nuns thought he—or she—was great.”

  “That’s the one,” said Kevin. “They don’t write songs like they used to.”

  “Trees, Holes and Pilgrims’ Thanks goodness for that,” said Nic, dryly.

  §

  The hotel had big glass doors and we could see into the lounge bar from the street. It looked more crowded and rowdier than I had expected.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” said Nic.

  “They don’t look like a bunch of pilgrims to me,” said Kevin.

  “Nor to me,” I said. “Although, come to think of it, I’ve never seen a bunch of pilgrims before, so I wouldn’t know what they look like.”

  “I can see a piano,” said Nic. “But there’s no lady playing it.”

  “I think this is the right place though, so let’s go!” I said, uncannily like a commander in a war movie.

  We pushed open the doors and moved inside, only to be hit by a wall of sound—and one that was familiar somehow. But from where? Ah, yes! This was the noise that I’d heard nearly every night for a month when, years before, I’d hitchhiked around the circumference of Ireland with a small refrigerator to win a one-hundred-pound bet. Yes, there it was—sporadic shouting, yelps of joy, pockets of singing, loud exclamations of derision, jovial high-pitched banter, the chink of glasses—all laid over a soundtrack of contented chatter. I knew it so well. I just hadn’t expected it from pilgrims, that’s all.

  As soon as we reached the bar we were assaulted by two grey-haired women who announced themselves as being two of five sisters. They didn’t share any obvious resemblance other than the fact that they were both impressively sloshed.

  “Are you going to sing?” one of them slurred, not to any one of us in particular.

  “We’ll see,” I replied diplomatically. “Perhaps we’ll get a drink first.”

  I swiftly moved off, concerning myself with the business of buying a round of drinks, leaving Kevin and Nic to fend off the overenthusiastic siblings. I looked around me and I could see that these sisters were not the only ones who didn’t necessarily associate pilgrimages with abstinence. This was a bar full of people in high spirits, most of whom appeared to be adhering to a policy of getting ‘massed’ by day and ‘pissed’ by night. What a good job for these people that Jesus had enjoyed a glass of wine at the last supper. Had Catholicism demanded an alcohol-free existence, I doubt very much if the religion would have gained any foothold at all in the Emerald Isle.

  “Ah, Tony, so you came!” It was the voice of Mary. “Not a bad atmosphere, is it?”

  “Very good,” I replied. “Very good indeed.”

  “I’m playing again in a minute,” she continued. “But before I do that, let me introduce you to the priest. He’s a lovely fella and he’s hosting tonight’s entertainment.”

  Mary then disappeared for a few seconds before returning with a man who bore little resemblance to what you might expect from a priest. He looked like a ladies’ man, shirt open at the collar, hair carefully coiffured—not your average monsignor at all.

&
nbsp; “Ah, you must be Tony!” he announced, accurately enough. “Are you going to sing?”

  “Well, I don’t know, I hadn’t—”

  “Ah, you’ll have to sing, so you will.”

  “Yes. Well. Maybe.”

  “Excuse me, Tony, I have to go and play,” said Mary, as she moved off to the piano.

  “Oh dear, Tony, that means I have to go too,” said the priest.

  He proceeded to glide across the room, smiling to all and sundry as he went, before picking a microphone off the piano and addressing the audience.

  “Welcome back to the entertainment,” he said, as smoothly as any DJ. “It’s time now to welcome Pat, who is going to sing ‘If You Were The Only Girl In The World’.”

  Cheers and applause from the assembled throng. After a brief consultation with the elderly and frail Pat, Mary began playing, and soon the singer was bellowing out the tune, with very little regard for the original melody. The drunken sisters sang along and whooped and hollered when it was all over. Another singer followed, and then another, and soon it became apparent that the priest had used the word ‘entertainment’ in its loosest sense. There was no shortage of volunteer crooners—the songs and the singers just kept on coming. Mary skilfully accompanied whatever the song, and whatever key it needed to be in. Kevin, Nic and I looked on, almost in awe.

  “Tony, are you going to give us a song?” asked the priest from the microphone.

  I shook my head and pointed to my neck, mouthing the words ‘sore throat’. I know, it’s terrible—I lied to a priest—but I knew that I didn’t want to sing. It had been a long day and all three of us were fading fast. I for one felt exhausted. It was time to go home.

  I whispered my thanks to Mary, and we slid off into the night. Back to France. The small piece of Ireland we had just left was going to party for some time yet, that was for sure. I knew what they’d all be saying at some point the following day:

  “Forgive me, father, for I got pissed out of me head last night.”

  §

  As the car reached the outskirts of the town, we were still feeling a little dazed by the bewildering evening we had just experienced. It was to become stranger still. Upon approaching a large roundabout we were flagged down by a cordon of traffic police.

  “My goodness,” I said, observing them more closely as we ground to a halt. “They’re wearing very tight trousers.”

  “Yes,” said Nic, not looking altogether displeased.

  “It’s almost as if they’ve been sprayed on.”

  I was to notice more and more in the coming weeks that the French policemen who rode motorbikes all seemed to have a conceited air about them. They strutted around like male models on a catwalk, convinced that their big modelling break was just around the corner and that this police work was only a temporary stopgap.

  “What do they want?” asked Kevin.

  Soon enough we knew. They wanted our passports, driving licences and all the relevant paperwork connected with Nic and Kevin’s hire car. And they wanted a good old rummage and search in the boot.

  “What was that all about?” asked Nic as we drove on, having successfully avoided arrest and internment.

  “Oh, I get it!” said Kevin, in a moment of sudden enlightenment. “It’ll be because of the Pope.”

  “The Pope wanted to have us searched?” I asked, still in flippant mood.

  “No. He’s coming to Lourdes next week on an official visit,” explained Kevin. “This will be the extra security.”

  “Right,” I said, assimilating the new information. “So the police search us as we leave Lourdes?”

  “Evidently.”

  “So it’s just as well we didn’t forget to plant all the bombs and set up the gear for the snipers before we left the town. Otherwise they would have had us bang to rights.”

  “Yes. Silly, isn’t it?” said Nic.

  “They spend too long getting into their trousers and not enough time discussing policy.”

  The comment went unanswered. We were all tired after a long day. Kevin eventually broke the silence.

  “OK, guys. So what’s the best thing about Lourdes, do we think?”

  Another short silence before I pitched something in.

  “Well, it does have excellent wheelchair access.”

  Nic and Kevin laughed. Buoyed with confidence I decided to offer up my Lourdes gag—the one I’d come up with some forty minutes earlier.

  “What do you call ham that’s been to Lourdes?” I said.

  “Cured ham?” said a deadpan Kevin.

  “Er…yes.”

  Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

  12

  Sophie

  Mary must have had her French windows open. The sound of a piano wafted over to our balcony, leaving me feeling uplifted and yet guilty. No doubt one of Mary’s sons was playing, and it was beautiful: a kind of hybrid improvisation of jazz and traditional Irish music. I turned and looked at my piano, with its keys seemingly longing to be caressed by loving fingers. What had happened to my practice regime? Could I ever get back on track?

  Kevin was outside stacking Serges’s wood debris into a neat little pile, his broad smile confirming my suspicion that he was now officially a ‘wood obsessive’ (there’s no medical term). Nic was doing some yoga stretches on the lawn, not far from the enormous hole that now dominated the garden. Lizards darted across tiles and up walls. The cows, now tantalisingly close to my land, munched grass to the sound of their own tinkling bells, and Ron partook of his seventh cup of tea of the morning (there’s no medical term). The birds were singing to the percussive rhythms of the cicadas and crickets. The mountaintops were bathed in the morning sun. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. In short: it was a beautiful day.

  A beautiful day for practising the piano. I told myself that the regime would start this morning. One hour on scales, arpeggios and general exercises to strengthen the fingers—then an hour of free-form improvisation. That was it. It was decided. Nothing was going to stop me.

  “Want to come with us on a walk, Tony?” called Nic from the lawn.

  “Well, I’d love to,” I said, “but I have other—”

  “Oh you’ve got to!” said Nic. “Today is our last day, and we haven’t been on a walk with you yet.”

  “Yes, I know that, but today—”

  “Shut up, Tony,” interrupted Kevin. “You’re coming for a walk. End of discussion. Whatever else you had planned will just have to be delayed by a few hours.”

  “Oh all right,” I conceded, revealing one of the many reasons why I wasn’t a concert pianist.

  §

  I did well to resist the initial suggestion of an excursion to the mountains. It probably would have ended up being a longer walk than I would have wanted. For the investment of energy made, the ‘long trek’ often provided only limited returns of pleasure, sometimes following this pattern:

  Trudge, trudge—nice view—trudge, trudge, trudge, trudge—another nice view—trudge, trudge, trudge, trudge, trudge, trudge—aching pain—trudge, trudge—blister—trudge, trudge—aching pain, blister and sense of feeling lost—trudge, trudge, stagger, stagger—mild delirium—stagger, stagger—feelings of bewilderment—stagger, stagger, stumble, fall—St John’s Ambulance Brigade.

  No, instead I had insisted that the walk should involve an exploration of the immediate locality. For too long all I’d done was look out across the little valley and the lush green pastures that bordered my new house. Closer investigation was overdue. The walk would constitute ambling though my acre of land, past the grazing cows and down to the bottom of the valley where we would meet the stream and follow its course. I figured that this way, the moment I got tired, the ‘turning round and heading home’ option would always be on the table.

  “We may have to climb over a lot of electric fences,” I warned, “and dodge a few cows, but apart from that it’ll be nice and easy.”

  The walk was more beautiful than I could have e
xpected, and-not just because the stroll along the stream supplied us with glistening running water, brightly coloured dragonflies and shafts of sunlight darting through the overhanging trees like beams of light illuminating a film set. It was also beautiful because of what was said. After about an hour of walking, we took a break to sip some bottled water, each of us balancing on rocks in the stream as its sparkling waters cascaded round our ankles.

  “The other day when we went on our trip to the coast,” said Nic, with almost a nervous tremor in her voice, “well…Kevin proposed to me. And I said yes.”

  There was a tear in Nic’s eye, and I must admit one was starting to form in mine too.

  “That’s fantastic news!” I said. “I think a group hug is in order!”

  The three of us leant in towards each other, still balancing rather precariously on the small stones we’d carefully selected for our feet. Then we hugged. A big lovely hug. A hug of friendship and love. You know those nice moments that life can bung your way from time to time? Well, this was definitely one of those. It didn’t last too long because I slipped off my rock and we all overbalanced, trying not to fall in the stream. The subsequent giggles punctured the rare moment of sentimentality. Rare, because Kevin and I certainly hadn’t shared that many up until now. Both of us largely being of the opinion that moments like these ate up valuable time that could be better spent taking the piss out of each other.

  “Guys,” I said, just before we resumed our walk, “I’m proud of you.”

  I was also proud that the house had provided the backdrop for this pivotal moment in their personal history.

  “You’ll be next,” said Nic. “I expect you’ll find yourself a nice French girl out here!”

  “Yes,” I said without conviction. “Perhaps I will.”

  The rest of the day had that strange air of impending loss about it—the kind that so often pervades the atmosphere when people are about to leave. Kevin and Nic wandered around gathering up their things and slowly assembling a neat pile of luggage by the front door. The house would seem empty without them and I felt a little sad. There was a short ceremony on the balcony in which Kevin and Nic presented their many gifts to the house, all drawn from a big plastic bag by Nic. I felt like a child at Christmas, one minute genuinely delighted with a gift, the next—pretending to be. It wasn’t difficult to recognise who had been behind each present: Nic, the nice ones—Kevin, the crappy ones (mostly made of plastic). Men may be better at walking past shoe shops without stopping, but they’re hopeless at buying presents. They’re descended from hunter-gatherers, and as a rule, hunter-gatherers tended to spend very little time in gift shops.