In Sainsbury’s today (I was buying Choritso because I am middle class, since you ask) Nina and I spotted a tiny girl pretending to sleep on the floor. A Jamie Olive leaflet was her pillow, and her hands were in the classic two hands to the ear pretending to sleep position which nobody ever adopts to do the actual deed. It brought back a rush of childhood memories for both of us, mine most strongly of my Nan’s Cornish voice, ‘Del’a, get up of the dirty floor!’ What with thinking about the Pope’s visit, and about faith, stories, values and belief, I’ve since been remembering something from Nina’s childhood. She hates me to write about her, but this is cute, so I’m going for it.
We were walking home sometime in the first term of year one. Blue gingham dress and grey cardi, lunchbox swinging high. We had gone around the corner, past the blackberry bushes that stuck out so that you had to step into the road, and over the lollypop man’s road. The crowd was thinning out as people went their own ways. Nina attended a Roman Catholic primary school. Not because we were Catholic, but because of the two local schools, this one had a sense of order and a headteacher that came out onto the playground every morning and afternoon. Nina had been learning a lot about Catholicism, and teaching us in turn. Sometimes our lack of faith would reap frowns and sly comments from the other mums, but back then, as well as being open minded and ambitious, we were young and brave.
‘Mummy,’ Nina chirruped, ‘Tonight we have to pray for an old man’. The old man, she went on, wasn’t a very good or nice man, but he was old and poorly. He lived alone and didn’t keep his house clean. He liked to drink and sometimes swore at Mrs F, so he needed people to pray for him, Mrs F’s class especially. It was a charming tale, but although I didn’t object to Nina doing a bit of praying, it made no sense to me. ‘Well you can if you want,’ I said, ‘ but maybe your class should do something to help him like taking him some food, or being his friend, and Mrs F could help him with his cleaning. Perhaps then he wouldn’t be so grumpy or need to drink’.
Nina had been listening intently, looking at me sidelong as she skipped, but she came to a sudden halt. ‘I don’t think we can do that’ she said. ‘We can’t see him; he’s in the waiting room’. I asked a few more questions and in the way that only parental understanding of a child can, it hit me. The old man had died and was now as far as Mrs F knew, in Purgatory from which the way out was via the prayers from a class of thirty five year olds. Nina remembered the word and agreed. We carried on walking, I was keen to find out what else Nina had picked up ‘So, what’s this Purgatory place like?’ Nina thought hard for a while. We were almost home when she said ‘Well I don’t know, but it’s a waiting room a bit like the one at the Station....and it has a chocolate machine and seats.’
‘Do you think he’s happy there?’
‘I expect so, there are people to talk to and a cleaner and if you have the money you can buy Ribena’.
Platform 1 of Coventry Railway Station: as good a place as any to spend eternity. I expect the old man would have preferred wine though.
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