genetics

The Cure: continued /4

The next morning Madame Céline visited him with a delegation, explaining how she and the other ladies were refurbishing their embroidered tabliers and starching their lace coiffes so that they rose into glorious stiff wings on the sides of their heads.

On Tuesday came the infant teacher at the village school. Long dark Mademoiselle Franchard came from Lyon and it turned out that she could not be more enthusiastic about Breton customs. She wanted to make the Pardon of St. Anne the children's project for the whole week, and promised a bemused Père Benoît that she would turn out her pupils in as many traditional Breton costumes as she could find or make.

— We will have felt hats and vestes for the boys, with rows of silver coins sewn each side, and the pretty multicoloured aprons and lace coiffes for the girls! And my boyfriend Girard, he will bring his Breton pipes and his traditional musicians, les sonneurs, and dancers, she promised. — It will surely be un spectacle magnifique!

On Wednesday M. Barnard confirmed that the band would lead the Pardon procession around the village and back to the site of the well instead of, as more recently, marching straight to the playing fields for a cider festival and Breton music and dancing. Père Benoît accepted graciously and went to the church and furiously cleaned and polished the statue of St. Anne which had stood in the corner of the nave for so many years, untouched except when she was transported for a brief spell in the storeroom during the renovations. Divine inspiration he still lacked, until, that night, he was visited by a dream.

Waves of blue hydrangeas lapped the plinth of an ancient worn stone statue of a female figure. Children, old women, men in business suits and young girls in traditional dress, all sorts of people streamed past the statue leaving offerings at her feet — fruit, tree branches, but also bizarre gifts such as a television, a tall vase, candlesticks — M Barnard himself left a huge bed with traditional Breton lace hangings. In his dream Père Benoît lifted the lace curtain and there were Madame Barnard and five or six small unrecognisable children, in dazzling white cotton night clothes, all left at the feet of St. Anne.

As the people filed past, suddenly the statue started bleeding. Blood oozed out of the stone feet, then trickled, then flowed, then poured, drenching the plinth, and running in a stream towards the people, who scattered and fell over each other in the rush to get away. Still it flooded, until Père Benoît realised that it was not blood but water, rusty water, from an old tap which was now visible on the plinth of the statue.

When Père Benoît awoke, he went straight to the prie-dieu in the corner of his bedroom and made a deep prayer of thanksgiving. The problem of the Pardon had been solved. With joy in his heart, he made two telephone calls. When they were over he nearly danced to the church. He was going to be very busy for the rest of the week, but it would work!

His preparations for the great celebration were delayed a little, because his Sunday announcement seemed to have brought out his parishioners in unexpected numbers to the weekday celebrations of the sacraments. The confessional had never had so long a queue. There were two dozen at Thursday morning Mass instead of the usual two or three, and as for his congregation at the saying of the Rosary — le Père had thought he had already buried some of those who turned up!

The Cure this story continued

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