Passion by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online Page A

nothing but a couple of moles and a pile of worms. Exhausted, he had gone back for his boots and there they were.
    'No bigger than a thumbnail.'
    He searched his pockets and handed me a tiny pair of boots, perfecdy made, the heels worn down and the laces frayed.
    'An' I swear they fitted me once.'
    I didn't know whether to believe him or not and he saw my eyebrows working up and down. He held out his hand for the boots. 'I walked all the way home in my bare feet and when I came to take Mass that morning I could hardly hobble up to the altar. I was so tired that I gave the congregation the day off.' He smiled his crooked smile and hit me on the shoulder.
    Trust me, I'm telling you stories.'
    He told me other stories too. Stories about the Blessed Virgin and how she couldn't be relied upon.
    The women, they're always the clever ones,' he said.
    They always sense our lying ways. The Blessed Virgin's a woman too, for all that she's Holy, and there's no man I know can get his own way with her. You can pray all day and all night and she won't hear you. If you're a man, you'd much better stick with Jesus himself.'
    I said something about how the Blessed Virgin was our mediator.
    'Sure she is, but she mediates for the women. Why, we've a statue at home, so lifelike you'd think it was the Holy Mother herself. Now the women come in with their tears and flowers and I've hidden behind a pillar and I'll swear on all the saints that the statue moves. Now when the men come in, cap in hand, asking for this and that and saying their prayers, that statue's like the rock it's made of. I've given them the truth over and over again. Go straight to Jesus, I say (he's got a statue near by), but they don't heed because every man likes to think he's got a woman listening to him.'
    'Don't you pray to her?'
    'Sure an' I do not. We have an arrangement you might say. I see to her, give her proper respect and we leave each other alone. She'd be different if God hadn't violated her.'
    What was he talking about?
    'See, women like you to treat them with respect. To ask before you touch. Now I've never thought it was right and proper of God to send his angel with no by your leave and then have his way before she'd even had time to comb her hair. I don't think she ever forgave him for that. He was too hasty. So I don't blame her that she's so haughty now.'
    I had never thought of the Queen of Heaven in this way.
    Patrick liked the girls and was not above sneaking a look uninvited.
    'But when it comes to it, Pd never take a woman without giving her time to comb her hair.'
    We spent the rest of our Christmas leave on top of the pillar sheltering behind the apple barrels and playing cards. But on New Year's Eve Patrick swung out his ladder and said we were to go to Communion.
    Tm not a believer.'
    Then you'll come as my friend.'
    He cajoled me with a botde of brandy for afterwards and so we set off through the frozen streets to the seaman's church that Patrick preferred to army prayers.
    It was filling slowly with men and women from the town, muffled against the cold but in the best clothes they could find. We were the only ones from the camp. Probably the only ones still sober in this desperate weather. The church was plain except for the coloured windows and the statue of the Queen of Heaven decked in red robes. Despite myself I made her a little bow and Patrick, catching me, smiled his crooked smile.
    We sang with our strongest voices and the warmth and nearness of other people thawed my unbeliever's heart and I too saw God through the frost. The plain windows were trellised with frost and the stone floor that received our knees had the coldness of the grave. The oldest were dignified with smiling faces and the children, some of whom were so poor that they kept their hands warm in bandages, grew angel hair.
    The Queen of Heaven looked down.
    When we had put aside our stained prayer books that only some of us could read we took communion with clean hearts, and