The following is from John Broderick’s The Pilgrimage. Broderick (1924–1989) was born in Athlone, County Westmeath, Ireland and died in Bath, England. He worked as a journalist and was author of numerous novels including An Apology for Roses (1973), The Pride of Summer (1976), London Irish (1979) and The Trial of Father Dillingham (1982).

The next day the first letter arrived.

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Julia did not get up early. Since Michael’s illness her days had followed an identical pattern. She woke about eight o’clock; made a cup of tea with the electric kettle she kept near her bed; lit the fire which had been laid the night before by Stephen, and read a book from the pile of novels which always littered her night-table. Her taste was not bad. Her favourite novel was Anna Karenina, and she loved the tender bitter-sweet romances of Turgenev. At the moment she was reading a translation of Colette’s La Vagabonde.

Stephen brought her breakfast and the post at nine o’clock. There was never anything exciting: a letter from home, bills, a circular soliciting alms for some convent or foreign mission. If her book was interesting—and she found La Vagabonde difficult to put down—she read until ten o’clock, and then got up and had her bath. By then the room was warm and comfortable. It was a large high room facing south. From the windows she could look across the roofs of the town at the bottom of the hill. When Michael had built this house twenty years ago, while his mother was still living, it had been almost in the country; but now the red-roofed bungalows and the semi-detached villas had reached the gate. From his room on the other side of the landing Michael could, while sitting up in bed, just see the roof of the enormous Celto-Romanesque parish church which he had built twenty years ago, his first big contract. After that followed schools, convents, hospitals, more churches.

Julia drew back the curtains. It was a bright morning, and the frost had not yet melted from some of the roofs. Tomorrow would be the first of February. She felt vaguely happy as she went into the bathroom. The bright clinical wall, the rows of gleaming bottles, the thick coloured towels were comforting and reassuring. She opened a jar of bath essence and breathed the heavy oily perfume of pines. She threw off her dressing-gown, stepped out of her pyjamas and dipped her fingers in the rushing water. She went back into the bedroom and looked at her naked body in the cheval glass. (Michael would have been shocked at the idea of a full-length mirror in the bathroom.) That plumpness about the thighs, that full waist which would have put other women dieting did not worry her. She did not want to be boyish. She knew she had a magnificent body, a smooth-skinned marble body which would last for many years yet. She had always had radiant health, and the sense of power which filled her when she had bathed, dried and powdered herself was intoxicating. The true wisdom, Howard had said, is the wisdom of the flesh; it is the one thing you will be thankful for when you are old.

She dressed herself in front of the crackling fire, made up her face lightly, took up her letters from the breakfast-tray, and went across to Michael’s room. It was now eleven o’clock; the morning papers would have arrived: they would have coffee and read them together. This was part of the ritual. Since Michael became bedridden the huge, chilly dining room had not been used: Julia had her lunch with him on trays in his bedroom. Until about two years ago Stephen had massaged him for an hour in the morning, and Julia had had her coffee in her own room, or walked down to a coffee shop in the town. Now they had it together: Michael’s limbs were too twisted for massage; and Julia went for her walk at noon.

She poured out his coffee, put in plenty of cream and sugar and took it across to him. They no longer kissed; and lived rather like brother and sister, which Julia imagined was what he had wanted from the beginning. It was fortunate that she had always managed to find lovers; but until she thought of bringing Jim down she had always had to go to Dublin, where there were still three or four men she knew from her days at the hotel.

One of the letters was from the local musical society who were putting on The Mikado and wanted ‘patrons’ at a guinea a head. She supposed Michael would attend to that: he liked to see his name in print at the top of programmes. There were some bills from dressmakers in Dublin, and a letter written in a curiously childish hand. At first she did not entirely grasp its contents: it was like reading a foreign language one has not spoken for a long time. She looked at the end. It was unsigned. It was a complete and detailed account of her affair with Jim; or rather of how they made love together. It made no comment as to the time or place at which these acts took place: it simply described them, crudely and clinically, and without any threats or demands. It was like a passage copied from a badly written pornographic novel, except that, as Julia realized with a thrill of horror, she was one of the characters.

‘Anything interesting?’ Michael inquired. He could no longer bend his head properly, and coffee dribbled down his chin. He dabbed at it feebly with his twisted hands.

‘The musical society want a subscription. They’re doing The Mikado.’

‘I think I gave them a guinea last year.’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to give the same this year. I got a letter from the travel agency. They want to know if I’d like to go on to Rome from Lourdes. Of course that would be impossible, wouldn’t it?’ He sounded as though he were toying with the idea.

‘I don’t know.’ Julia looked at the postmark on the envelope. It had been posted locally. She closed her eyes and turned to the fire.

‘Lots of people go on to Rome.’ Michael’s voice was petulant. ‘Father Victor could arrange an audience with the Pope for us through his college in Rome. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the doctor.’

‘Jim? Yes, I suppose so. In that case I won’t be able to reply to the letter until next week. However, I suppose there’s plenty of time. Wouldn’t you like to see the Pope?’

‘What’s that, Michael?’

‘I said wouldn’t you like to see the Pope?’

‘Oh, yes, yes, of course.’ Why did people fear the thought of being found out at something which they did not consider in the least sinful? She had never at any time suffered from a sense of sin. Was it simply the disruption of ordinary everyday routine, the unpleasantness spoken or unspoken which was bound to ensue, that filled her with so much distaste?

‘Do you think Jim will come to Lourdes with us?’ Michael was asking.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he say anything to you about it?’

‘To me?’ She was suddenly dragged back from the lurking horror of disclosure to the reality of the coffee-cups, the blazing fire, the crumpled newspapers. ‘How do you mean, to me?’

‘I thought he might have talked about it to you.’ ‘No, no, he didn’t say anything to me.’

‘I don’t suppose he’ll want to come. Young people don’t want to be bothered with pilgrimages.’

‘No, I suppose not. I don’t think we ought to ask him again, it might embarrass him. If he wants to come he’ll come.’ She looked down at the letter on her lap. Already it was beginning to take effect, like the first nibbling bites of a cancerous growth. Yesterday she would have urged Michael to ask Jim to come. She put down her coffee-cup and stood up.

‘I think I’ll go out for my walk now, Michael. It’s a nice morning, and I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

‘Send Stephen up to me, will you? I’ve got this pain in the back of my neck again, I want him to massage it.’

Before she went out she put the letter in the fire and watched it burn. As it crumbled into ash some of her natural optimism came back. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait for the memory of this to fade, for life to close in about it, like flesh around a scar.

*

Fear shakes our ancestral bones. Julia went down to the town and into one of the churches where she remained for a long time huddled in her seat. The dim light, the flickering candles, the shapeless old women in black moving from station to station of the cross soothed her; it was warm and peaceful and utterly removed from ugliness. Her lips moved, mechanically repeating the prayers of her childhood. But her mind was not at rest. Out there in the town, behind some window she had passed, somebody knew something which could bring her comfortable, secure life toppling about her. She would never be able to hold her head up again, control the snigger at the street corner, the familiar glint in the eyes of the men who knew. She had committed the unforgivable sin: she had been found out. She got up and went to the monastery door. She gave five pounds to the porter for masses for a special intention, and was gone when he came back with the receipt. She had nothing to do and nowhere to go. She had never made any friends in the close, prickly society of the town. It was exactly like her own home-town on a larger scale.

There were more cars, more semi-detached villas, more churches, more pretentions to ‘culture.’ But, underneath, it was the same: narrow-minded, money-grubbing, hypocritical, furtive.

The writer of the letter could be anyone. She had been reared in the preternatural awareness of a small town. As a blind man will develop an extraordinary sense of touch, these people, trapped for ever in the narrow mould of their tribal customs, developed a sixth sense. A woman still desired by her husband, her eyes wearied with love-making, created in one of those small, stuffy drawing-rooms, where the interminable bridge parties went on, a sort of emotional furnace from which all drew back as if they would burn. Julia, for whom love was a sunshine thing, knew all this and hated it. As she hurried through the streets she felt as though she were bearing the purple marks of Jim’s fingers upon her face. When she got back to the house after running up the hill she was breathless, and almost in tears.

Stephen was in the hall holding the telephone in his hands.

‘A call for you, madam.’ He put down the receiver on the table and went upstairs.

Julia reached out her hand instinctively, and then stopped. The distant force was at work again, playing with her as though she were a puppet.

‘Hullo,’ she said quietly.

‘Hullo, Julia?’ The voice came through brisk and confident. ‘Jim here. How are you?’

‘I’m all right. How are you?’ The palms of her hands were damp.

‘Ploughing away. Listen, I won’t be able to make it next Thursday. Will you tell Uncle Michael? I’ve got a meeting I can’t get out of. It’s important. He can get the local man in if he wants to, but it isn’t really necessary. Stephen knows about the usual sedatives.’

‘Jim—’ she burst out loudly, and then stopped herself. No, of course she couldn’t tell him. Or had he got a letter too? She thought of those students from the town who lived in the same house. Was this why he wasn’t coming down? She tried desperately to read something into the calm, confident voice. There were so many possibilities. And if he hadn’t received a letter should she tell him? Perhaps that might put him off for good. She knew how cautious he was. Where was the truth? Was there any such thing? Wasn’t it in fact something one simply wanted to believe in? She must have time to think.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, nothing. I was just going to ask you if you had thought of the Lourdes business. Michael was talking about it this morning.’

‘Listen, Julia, I’ve got something else to do—’

Stephen was coming down the stairs carrying the coffee tray.

‘Yes, yes, I know. Michael was saying that you probably wouldn’t be able to afford the time. But I think it’s quite settled that we’re going. In fact we’re thinking of going on to Rome from Lourdes. We were talking about that too. It’d be lovely to see the Pope.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Jim’s voice was impatient. The pips sounded.

‘Well, so long.’

‘Jim, hullo;’ but he had rung off. She went upstairs and lay down on the bed. Madness, she thought, must be a little like this: no face entirely beyond suspicion, no room empty of menace. She felt the accumulated malice of the town at the bottom of the hill rise up and claw at the windows like a nightmare thing. She twisted on the bed and moaned. The door opened and Stephen came in. For a moment their eyes met, and she saw him for the first time as a human being whose eyes were capable of communication. She had never quite thought of him as a man at all; but simply as a creature for whom bodies were a daily trade to be rubbed and pummelled back to life. He was part of Michael’s world; more than once in the early days she had gone into the bedroom to find him bending over her husband’s pale naked back. Michael would stir and mumble something, sensing she was there, but Stephen would never look up, and simply go on kneading the prone body. It was a position from which she was never afterwards able to dissociate him. She had ceased to look at Stephen.

But now suspicion made her conscious of him as of everybody else as never before. She looked at him as though she were trying to read his mind. What did he hope to gain by writing such a letter? If it were he who had written it. She assumed he did not care for women: there was therefore no erotic satisfaction in writing it. But just what were his relations with Michael? Was it part of a plan to discredit her? Was there some monstrous link between the two men? What did she, living in her own closed world, know of her husband?

‘Yes?’ she asked sharply. There was nothing obviously effeminate about him. She knew that there was a whole half submerged world of such men, like a secret society, whose varying degrees of masculinity were like the badges of an order. She had touched upon this world here and there during her years in Dublin. She regretted now that she had not observed it more closely. Accustomed always to appraise men in purely physical terms she could not help noticing that this tall, quiet manservant was, in his way, attractive.

‘I have brought up Mr Glynn’s lunch, madam. Will you have yours here or in his room?’

‘I have a headache, Stephen. I think I’ll have it in here.

Will you tell Mr Glynn?’

He bowed his head, and she lay back, expecting him to leave. Instead he came towards the bed, took up her coat from where it had slipped to the ground, and hung it in the wardrobe. He did all this calmly, methodically, as if he did it every day. He closed the wardrobe, and as he did so their eyes met. Julia blinked and looked away. But when he had gone and she had lit a cigarette to steady her nerves she told herself that she was a fool. You can read any expression you like in another’s face. In a month or two all this suspicion would be forgotten. Stephen would simply be Stephen again: she would read no sinister questions in his eyes. There were so many people who could have sent the letter, as she well knew. That was the terrible thing about suspicion: it had no ending.

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From The Pilgrimage by John Broderick. Used with permission of the publisher, McNally Editions.