Our Lady of ClerkenwellDomenica de Rosa Our Lady. Queen of Heaven. The Ocean Star. Blue robe. Stars circling her head like a juggler’s balls. Plaster foot firmly crushing an unconvincing looking snake. Eyes upturned. Blessed Virgin Mary, pray for me. Mother of God, pray for me. Oh blessed, oh loving, oh sweet virgin Mary. Although she doesn’t look so good at the moment, the poor old BVM. Her blue robe is flaking off like the very Satan snake itself. Someone has tipped some red paint over her feet so it looks as if she has been paddling in the Red Sea. And her face! The end of her nose has come off. One eye has lost its paint, giving her a distinctly wall-eyed look. Her veil is dusty from being kept all year in my Uncle Alfredo’s garage. One of the piously praying hands is covered in birdshit. As a child, I remember being told that my father, a carpenter, had made the stand that carried Our Lady in the Clerkenwell Easter procession. I remember straining through the crowds to see the stand, carried past by eight altar boys, and being disappointed that it was so ordinary, just a wooden platform, rather like a large teatray except that during the procession it was covered in white flowers. Roses, lilies and May blossom. Ooh Mary, we crown you with blossoms today, that was how the hymn went, Queen of the Angels and Queen of the May. Now, twenty years later, I am standing in Uncle Alfredo’s garage, looking at the stand. It still looks the same, nothing special, made of dark wood with a handle at each corner for four of the altar boys to hold; the others stand at the sides like pallbearers. In the processions of my childhood, the altar boys had included my brother Daniel (now living in Australia and married to a Seventh Day Adventist) and my cousin Franco. Cousin Franco. Now the black sheep of the family, but once so completely the opposite. What is the opposite of black sheep? White sheep doesn’t have the same ring, all sheep are white. What do we call the brother of the prodigal son, the good one? The only other character I remember from the story is the fatted calf. Perhaps Cousin Franco was the fatted calf of the family. Certainly he was always given the best of everything, prepared for a brilliant future. Scholarship to grammar school, brilliant exam results, star of the seminary in Rome, a priest at an extraordinarily young age. Christ, I still remember Franco’s ordination. Flocks of priests, their vestments billowing in the breeze from the incense, so fervently was it swung by Daniel. Franco himself, face down on the altar. That was a shock. Franco, so handsome and assured, in such an undignified pose. Prostrating himself. The aunts crying, my mother, although she’s not a Catholic, crying too so as not to be left out. I think I cried as well when I saw Franco’s slim figure on the altar, raising his hands to receive the chalice. Only a few years ago he had been raising the school football trophy, now he was a father. Father de Napoli. He had joined a different generation. He had betrayed me. "Sophie?" The garage door starts to open, revealing startling sunlight and a large dark figure. The fatted calf has certainly become heavier over the years. "Hi, Franco. Mary’s in quite a state." "Will she clean up OK? It’s her big day at the weekend." "I still know when Easter is. I may not go to mass but I still know when Easter is. I can tell because Francesca’s on holiday." "How is she, Francesca?" "OK. How are your kids?" "OK." Franco sat down on Uncle A1fredo’s work bench. "I don’t see enough of them." Yes, the star of the family, is, like me, divorced. But worse even than me because he left the priesthood for this woman, broke his mother’s heart, had two children and then got divorced, breaking Aunt Rosaria’s heart again. I imagine it like the Sacred Heart of the statue in the church, exposed outside her body, proudly held aloft so that we can see the deep wound splitting it in two. I don’t know about hearts. I thought mine was broken when David left me (the pain was actually, literally in my heart) but I’m still here. "I know," I say, scraping at the blue paint, "It’s tough. I wish David would see more of Francesca but he’s busy with his new family." His new family. It was never like that in the old days. The Holy Family. Man, woman and child. Joseph, older than Mary with his grey beard, leading the donkey. The BVM endlessly cradling her perfect baby. When I had Francesca, I actually felt like Our Lady, it is an image that has travelled untouched through the ages, the mother and child. Imagine if Joseph had left Mary for Mary Magdalen with her long scented hair. Would he have set up a new holy family and not bothered to visit Mary and Jesus? After all, he was not even sure if the baby was his. Franco says nothing so I say, because I am grateful to him, "Thanks for asking me to paint her." The procession committee (chaired by Uncle Alfredo) is not paying much but they are paying me. I am trying to rebuild my career as an artist and any commission is welcome. I am certainly not too proud to stand in a garage painting this North London Madonna. Franco shrugs. A very Italian gesture although, with his accentless English, Franco has never seemed really Italian. I don’t either and people are always surprised by my name (I never changed my name). I don’t feel Italian either. I know that the Italian church, where the women still wear veils and carry rosary beads, will seem very alien on Sunday. When, as a student, I moved from Clerkenwell, it was as if I was making a real gesture. Against Italy, my family, Catholicism, everything. I only moved south of the river to Greenwich but it felt as if I had crossed continents. Clerkenwell, with its delicatessen shops dizzy with Italian food; its church where the opera stars used to come on Sunday and startle the congregation in the first bars of the Credo; its old men in hats standing at street corners waiting for something to happen, seems more like Italy than Italy. In my grandfather’s day, Mussolini arranged for the Italian children of Clerkenwell to go on holiday to the land of their fathers. What did they think of it, these London Italians? Did the blue skies and cypress trees seem less Italian than the grey streets where they had been brought up? The next day, when I drive over after dropping Francesca off at school, I see that even Clerkenwell is changing. The delicatessen shops are still full of pasta and olives, but then so is Sainsburys. There are still some baggy trousered old men on street corners but it is mostly young men in designer sportswear. When I stop to buy cigarettes, the voices in the shop are not Italian but the flat vowels of Londoners. When I get to Uncle Alfredo’s, Franco is not there. I am disappointed. I know he is staying for a week and yesterday we talked for over an hour, Franco perching uncomfortably on the workbench and me scraping away at the Mother of God. Mary looks much better today. I have not painted her yet but I have cleaned away all the dirt and red paint. The old paint has been scraped off and she looks like a sepia image of the original. I have also moulded a fetching new nose. Carefully I mix my paints and begin on her face. It is easier to start at the top because I can catch any paint as it drips down. I am tempted to give her a rather darker skin than the previous peaches and cream (Mary was, after all, Jewish) but I content myself with a slightly olive tinge. She looks rather Italian. After about an hour, Franco comes in with a cup of coffee and we both sit on the workbench and admire my handiwork (I am the handiwork of the Lord). "Are you going to the procession?" asks Franco. "I don’t know. I thought it might be quite nice for Francesca." Francesca has never been to Clerkenwell. When my father died, my mother moved to Surrey to be near her family. When I got divorced, Aunt Rosaria wrote saying she was praying for my marriage. I did not feel inclined to go to visit. "I’m taking Alessandro and Piero," Franco volunteered, putting down his cup to light a cigarette. "Italian names," I say teasingly, getting out my own fags. "So’s Francesca." "I suppose so." "We shouldn’t forget our Italian roots," says Franco, "It’s up to our generation to get the balance right. Our grandparents were immigrants and clung to the old ways, our parents tried too hard to assimilate, it’s up to us to reclaim our Italianity." "Is that a quote from one of your sociology books?" I ask. Because that’s what he does now, Franco, teaches sociology at the sixth form college. Franco shrugs again. "It’s a theory. All sociologists have got theories." "And all priests?" "Priests don’t have theories. They have it all handed down from the top." "The Pope?" "God." Francesca is staying the night with a friend so I work quite late. At seven, Franco comes to see me. I have finished the painting so I have opened the garage door to let out the smell. It is cold for April and I don’t have a coat. I pull my jumper down over my hands. "The old girl looks great," says Franco. And she does. Her robe shines azure in the garage’s electric light. Her veil is shiny white and her olive-skinned face is beautiful. "Thanks." Then he comes over and gently takes my hand, extricating it from the sleeve. "Your tiny hand is frozen," he says smiling. I say, "You’ve never held my hand before." "Yes, I have. At our first holy communion. We had to hold hands as we went up the aisle." "That doesn’t count." "Does this?" The weather is fine for the procession. Saffron Hill is covered in bunting, in the window of Gennaro’s the salamis sport little Italian flags, at the street corners old men are playing scorpa. All around me I can hear Italian spoken. Last night I stayed for dinner with Aunt Rosaria and Uncle Alfredo and my ear is tuned to the hoarse dialects of Naples, Salerno and Sicily. In front of me, Francesca jumps up excitedly to see the statue carried past by altar boys who could easily be the young Daniel or Franco. Crowned with white roses, the BVM looks magnificent. Next to us, Alessandro and Piero wave yellow papal flags. "They support the Pontiff FC." Franco says dryly. My eyes meet Franco’s and we smile. I can feel my smile getting wider and wider. I am glad I am Italian. I am glad I am a Londoner. I am glad I am a mother. I am glad I am not a virgin.
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© 1999 Westminster Writers' Group. Last updated 02/07/99.