By now, it was only the thought of Leon and the scene to come that was keeping Hermione in the church. She couldn’t shake the idea she was being watched, the sense of activity just suspended, as if she’d interrupted something. She imagined that, as soon as she left, the air would whoosh back into place behind her. More than once she spun round, sure that someone else was there – a tourist who’d slipped in without her hearing or a local woman come to polish or pray – but there was no one.
Hermione found herself standing at the communion rail. She lifted her head and saw a bleeding Christ, nailed to his cross, and a starched white altar cloth embroidered with greens and golds. More oppressive was the army of plaster statues, like a fossilised congregation, stationed between her and the altar.
Their paint was ragged round the edges, chipped pastel pinks and yellows and sea-green. Saint André, Sainte Germana, Saint Jean, Saint Antoine, adult faces on three-quarter size bodies, as if they’d stopped growing before time. One in a monk’s robe, a naked baby in one hand and a Bible in the other. One leaning on a staff, a lamb warming his dead feet. One clutching a skeleton’s hand, sharp like a claw. But most of all it was their dead eyes, their claustrophobic eyes, which pressed into her, accusing her, judging her.
Suddenly, Hermione couldn’t bear it a moment longer. Overwhelmed by a need to get out of the church, she turned and ran back down the nave, her leather sandals slipping on the smooth stones. Where was the door, why couldn’t she find the door? And still the eyes were burning into her back, challenging her to stand her ground, to stand up for herself. But she’d forgotten how.
She didn’t see Sainte Thérèse until it was too late. Hermione collided with the statue. Dazed, she touched her forehead with shocked fingers and found she was bleeding. She couldn’t make sense of it. How could she possibly have missed seeing the statue when she came in? It was so much bigger than the others and set right in front of the door.
She raised her head.
The plaster face of the saint wore an expression of such serenity, such grace, that Hermione’s fear evaporated. She felt her shoulders drop and heard a sigh, of relief or contentment, slip from between her lips. A cobweb was caught between the fingers on Sainte Thérèse’s right hand which cradled the outline of a quill. No longer frightened, Hermione found herself reaching up to brush it away. It was an act of such intimacy, she found herself blushing.
And in that moment, no more than a pinprick of time, she was touched by a presence that was white and clear, as if something pure had crept inside her head and was pushing out all other sensations. Such lightness, such stillness. An absence of physical being, a calm and peaceful silence that seemed to go on for ever.
For a moment, she was looking into living eyes. Thérèse looking at her. Hermione smiled.
Then, it was over. Just the grey of the church and the tick, tick of the electricity meter and herself, alone again, but at peace. Hermione had no idea what had happened, only that something had. And even though she didn’t believe in living saints or spirits, she knew that her world had shifted.
Hermione pushed the hair out of her eyes, picked up her handbag, then opened the door and walked out into the Midi sun. Lost in the shadows or an act of deliberation, she did not notice her wedding ring lying on the cold floor at the feet of the saint.
Years later, friends would still talk about how Hermione came back from that French holiday a different woman. About how strange it was that, after years of putting up with Leon’s bullying and belittling, she’d had the courage to send him packing. Walked out of a church in a place called Montolieu, called a taxi to the airport in Toulouse, bought a new ticket and flown home on her own. It was as if she’d got a new lease of life, they said. As if she’d got a bit of her old spirit back, they said.
You could see it in her eyes.
Author’s Note
Along with ‘Red Letter Day’, this is another of the earliest stories I wrote set in the Languedoc.
In the 1990s, when we were discovering Carcassonne, we spent many summer weekends driving from village to village, exploring the region. We fell in love with Montolieu – known as the ‘village of books’ – a pretty place north-west of Carcassonne. Like most French towns in the Aude, large and small, the church is at the heart of the community and unlike their Protestant counterparts, Catholic churches are usually colourful affairs – plaster saints, vivid paintings, richly decorated.
There are several Saint Teresas. Saint Teresa d’Ávila, a sixteenth-century Spanish saint, has a quill and book as her symbol and, among her various responsibilities, she is the patron saint of those in need of grace.