protested impulsively, as he began. ‘Can you say it in Latin? I mean, with our mother it was always in Latin. Valentine would want it in Latin.’
He looked as if he might refuse, but instead shrugged his shoulders, found a small book in his bag and read from that instead.
‘Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam. Amen.’
May almighty God have mercy upon you, forgive you your sins, and bring you to everlasting life.
‘Dotminus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat
Our Lord Jesus Christ absolves you…
He said the words without passion, a task undertaken for strangers, giving blanket absolution for he knew not what sins. He droned on and on, finally repeating, more or less, the words I’d used, the real thing now but without the commitment I’d felt.
‘Ego te absolvo ab omnibus censuris, et peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.’
He made the sign of the cross over Valentine, who went on breathing without tremor, then he paused briefly before removing the purple stole and replacing it, with the book and the oil, in his bag.
‘Is that all?’ asked Dorothea blankly.
The priest said, ‘My daughter, in the authority vested in me I have absolved him from all blame, from all his sins. He has received absolution. I can do no more.’
I went with him to the front door and gave him a generous donation for his church funds. He thanked me tiredly, and he’d gone before I thought of asking him about a funeral service – a requiem mass – within a week.
Dorothea had found no comfort in his visit.
‘He didn’t care about Valentine,’ she said.
‘He doesn’t know him.’
‘I wish he hadn’t come.’
‘Don’t feel like that,’ I said. ‘Valentine has truly received what he wanted.’
‘But he doesn’t know.’
‘I’m absolutely certain,’ I told her with conviction, ‘that Valentine is at peace.’
She nodded relievedly. She thought so herself, with or without benefit of religion. I gave her the phone number of the Bedford Lodge Hotel, and my room number, and told her I would return at any time if she couldn’t cope.
She smiled ruefully. ‘Valentine says you were a real little devil when you were a boy. He said you ran wild.’
‘Only sometimes.’
She stretched up to kiss my cheek in farewell, and I gave her a sympathetic hug. She hadn’t lived in Newmarket when I’d been young and I hadn’t known her before coming back for the film, but she seemed already like a cosy old aunt I’d had forever.
‘I’m always awake by six,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘I’ll let you know.’
I nodded and drove away, waving to her as she stood in Valentine’s window, watching forlornly in her sorrowful vigil.
I drove to the stable yard we were using in the film and stood in the dark there, deeply breathing cool March evening air and looking up at the night sky. The bright clear day had carried into darkness, the stars now in such brilliant 3D that one could actually perceive the infinite depths and distances of space.
Making a film about muddy passions on earth seemed frivolous in eternity’s context, yet, as we were bodies, not spirits, we could do no more than reveal our souls to ourselves.
Spiritus sanctus. Spiritus meant ‘breath’ in Latin. Holy breath. In nomine Spiritus Sancti. In the name of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breath, the Holy Ghost. As a schoolboy I’d liked the logic and discipline of Latin. As a man, I found in it mystery and majesty. As a film director I’d used it to instil terror. For Valentine, I’d usurped its power. God forgive me, I thought… if there is a God.
The mega-star’s Roller whispered gently into the yard and out he popped, door opened for him as always by his attentive chauffeur. Male mega-stars came equipped normally with a driver, a valet, a secretary/assistant and occasionally a bodyguard, a masseur or a butler. For female mega-stars, add a hairdresser. Either could require a personal make-up artist. These retinues all had to be housed, fed and provided with rented transport, which was one reason why wasted days painfully escalated the costs.
‘Thomas?’ he asked, catching sight of me in the shadows. ‘I suppose I’m late.’
‘No,’ I assured him. Mega-stars were never late, however overdue. Mega-stars were walking green lights, the term that in the film world denoted the capacity to bring finance and credence to a project, allied with the inability to do wrong. What green lights desired, they got.