Jubilate Read Online Free PDF

eye out for stragglers.’ That puts me firmly in my place but, as I glimpse my neighbour’s friendly smile, it no longer feels such a lonely place to be.
    No sooner has she found me a seat than Louisa moves away. Isettle on the bench and examine the figure in the wheelchair. Both her arms and waist are strapped in position and she wears a woollen cardigan in spite of the heat. Her neck is stretched back on a pillowed ledge, making it hard to determine her age, although I detect the faint outline of a bust beneath the baggy clothes.
    I watch as my neighbour stands and, with infinite solicitude, lifts the lifeless head from the pillow and holds a bottle of water to her lips. ‘Is this your daughter?’ I ask, trusting that I have not confused a wizened mother or a flat-chested friend.
    ‘Yes, my Anna,’ she says, in an indeterminate accent.
    ‘Was there … was she in an accident?’
    ‘Birth,’ she replies flatly, putting my twelve years of nursing Richard into perspective. However much he may have changed, I at least retain the memory of the man he was. She only has the elusive image of the girl her daughter might have been.
    ‘Is this your first time at the baths?’ I ask, taking the shortcut to intimacy that has defined my week in Lourdes.
    ‘No, we come every year. Every year since Anna is three. She is now sixteen years old.’ My hopes of the water’s miraculous properties begin to founder. ‘We come here from Groningen in the Netherlands . Perhaps you know of it?’
    ‘Of course,’ I say, eager to offer her what little support I can.
    ‘And you?’
    ‘From Surrey in England. Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, this is my first time. My husband had a brain haemorrhage twelve years ago. In many ways he is like a child.’
    ‘There is no hope?’
    ‘Not for him, no … Do you have any other family?’ I lower my voice in case Anna’s condition should turn out to be congenital.
    ‘Just Anna and me. She is the first child. The only child. I used to wish that I had other children before, but now I am glad that it is just us. With others there would have been comparing. There would have been too much time with Anna and not enough time with them. There would have been “please do not bring her out when my friends are nearby”. No, it is better like this.’
    ‘And your husband?’ I ask, trying not to let myself be distracted by the flies circling above Anna’s head.
    ‘He is no more. I mean he is no more my husband. He has a new wife and family in Rotterdam. Please do not think he is a bad man for leaving.’
    ‘No, I’m the last person to think that.’
    She gives me a searching glance. ‘He tried to do his best but he couldn’t make a life with Anna. To him there is only one life. He is not like us.’ It is unclear whether she is alluding to our faith or our gender. ‘He wanted to put Anna in a home, a good home, a home that he would have to pay for … a home that he would find it hard to pay for, but then he wanted it to be hard. I said “no”. I wouldn’t permit him to shut her away because she was not perfect. My parents grew up in a world like this, a world where not perfect people were thrown out from the rest.’ She swats at the flies and I realise that, far from not noticing them, she is sensitive to every detail of her daughter’s state.
    ‘Do you have friends? Old friends who are there for you when it all gets too much?’
    ‘One or two, yes. But not so many any more. There are the mothers of the children at the centre where Anna goes three mornings each week. With three of these I play tennis. But with my old friends it is harder … for them as it is for me. They have their lives and I have Anna. How can they talk to me about the things they have wrong in their lives when I have Anna? How can they talk about the things they have right in their lives when I have Anna?’
    ‘Oh yes, I know that syndrome so well. They start by wanting to help and end up blaming you for their