"Queer that we're both renegade Catholics, isn't it? You were right when you said that it's a bit like coming home. What I mean is, we understand a country like this better than the Protestants. We belong to its traditions." He indicated, with a kind smile, a couple of hungry-eyed children at the foot of the terrace steps, the elder of the two solemnly nose-picking. "Even if you don't believe any longer," said Enderby, "you're bound to find England a bit strange, a bit inimical. I mean, take all the churches they stole from us. I mean, they can keep them for all I care, but they ought to be reminded occasionally that they're really still ours." He looked round the full drinking terrace happily, soothed by the jabber of alien phonemes.
Vesta smiled somewhat sourly and said: "I wish you wouldn't talk in your sleep. Not in public, anyway."
"Why, what was I saying?"
"You were saying, "Down with the Pope", or words to that effect. It's a good thing that not many people on this trip can understand English."
"That's funny," said Enderby. "I wasn't even thinking of the Pope. That's very curious. Amazing what the subconscious mind can get up to, isn't it?"
"Perhaps you'd better stay awake on this leg of the journey," ordered Vesta. "It's the last leg."
"I mean, it isn't as though anybody mentioned the Pope, or anything, is it?" puzzled Enderby. "Look, people are climbing aboard."
They followed the chatter, smiling faintly at their fellow-passengers as they moved down the aisle of the coach. There had been some changing-round of seats, but that didn't matter: at the very furthest, you could not be more than one seat away from the window. A paunched small cocky Frenchman, however, linen-suited and with panama as though resident in a colony, hurled and fluted sharp words at a German who, he alleged, had taken his seat. The German barked and sobbed indignant denial. A tipsy lean Portuguese, thus encouraged by a fellow-Latin, started on an innocent red cheese of a Dutchman: a claim had, at the outset, been staked to that seat nearest the driver and renewed at this stop for refreshment-see, your fat Dutch arse is sitting on it, my map of Rome and environs. Europe now warred with itself, so that a keen-eyed Texan called, "Aw, pipe down." The guide came aboard and spoke French, saying that as a little infant at school he had been taught to keep to the first seat allotted to him. Enderby nodded; in French that sounded reasonable and civilized. The guide translated into American, saying, "Like you were in school, stick to your own seat and don't try and grab somebody else's. Okay?"
Enderby felt himself growing instantly red and mad. He cried: "Who the hell do you think you are-the Pope?" It was an Englishman's never-never-never protest against foreign overbearingness. Vesta said, "Why don't you keep your big mouth -" The words of Enderby were translated swiftly into many tongues, and faces turned to look at Enderby, some wondering, others doubtful, yet others fearful. But one elderly man, a grey and dapper raisonneur-type, stood to say, in English. "We are rebuked. He reminds us of the purpose of our journey. Catholic Europe must not be divided." He sat down, and people began to look more warmly on Enderby, one wizened brownish woman offering him a piece of Belgian chocolate. "What did he mean by that?" asked Enderby of Vesta. "The purpose of our journey, he said. We're going to see this lake, aren't we? What's a lake got to do with Catholic Europe?"
"You'll see," soothed Vesta, and then, "I think, after all, it might be better if you did have a little sleep."
But Enderby could not now doze. The countryside slid past, brilliant distant townships on high sunlit plateaux, olive, vine, and cypress, villas, browned fields, endless blue sky. And at length came the lake, a wide white sheet of waters in laky air, the heat of the day mitigated by it, and the little inn close by. The guide, who had sulked and been silent since Enderby's blast of brash Britishry in rebuke, now stood up to say, "We stay here two hours. The coach will be parked in the parking-place for coaches." He indicated, with a sketchy squizzle of his Roman fingers, roughly where that might be. He frowned at the Enderbys as they came down the coach-aisle, a blue-jawed lean Roman's frown despite Enderby's "No hard feelings? Eh?" He was even stonier when Enderby said, "Ma é vero che Lei ha parlato un poco pontificalmente."
"Come on," said Vesta.
The wide silver water breathed coolness. But, to Enderby's fresh surprise, nobody seemed anxious to savour it. Crowds were leaving coaches and toiling up a hill towards what seemed to be a walled township. Coach after coach came up, disgorging unfestive people, grave, some pious with rosaries. There were carved Africans, a gaggle of Chinese, a piscatorium of Finns, a rotary chew of Americans, Frenchmen haussing their épaules, rare blond Vikings and their goddesses, all going up the hill. "We," said Vesta, "are also going up there."
"What," asked Enderby carefully, "lies up yonder hill?"
"Come on." Vesta took his arm. "A little poetic curiosity, please. Come and find out."
Enderby now half-knew what lay at the top of the hill-street they now began to ascend, dodging new squealing arriving coaches, but he suffered himself to be led, passing smiling sellers of fruit and holy pictures. Enderby paused for a moment aghast, seeing a playing-card-sized portrait repeated more than fifty-two times: it seemed at first to be his stepmother in the guise of a holy man blessing his portrait-painter. And then it was not she.
Panting, he was led up to massy gates and a courtyard already thronged and electric. Behind himself and Vesta crowds still moved purposefully up. A trap, a trap: he would not be able to get out. But now there was a holy roar, tremendous, hill-shaking, and an amplified voice began to speak very fast Italian. The voice had no owner: the open ecstatic mouths drank the air, their black eyes searching for the voice above the high stucco buff walls, the window-shutters thrown open for the heat, trees and sky. Joy suffused their stubbled faces at the loud indistinct words. The cry started-"Viva, viva, viva!"-and was caught up. "So," said Enderby to Vesta, "it's him, is it?" She nodded. And now the French became excited, ear-cocking, lips parted in joy, as the voice seemed to announce fantastic departures by air: Toulon, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Avignon. "Bravo!" The vales redoubled to the hills, and they to heaven. "Bravo, bravo!" Enderby was terrified, bewildered. "What exactly is going on?" he cried. Now the voice began to speak American, welcoming contingents of pilgrims from Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Delaware. And Enderby felt chill hands clasp his hot body all over as he saw the rhythmical signals of a cheer-leader, a young man in a new jersey with a large blue-woven P.
"Rhode Island," said the voice. "Kentucky, Texas."
"Rah, rah, rah!" came the cheers. "The Pope, the Pope, the Pope!"
"Oh God, no," moaned Enderby. "For Christ's sake let me get out of here." He tried to push, with feeble excuse-mes, but the crowd behind was dense, the eyes up to the hills, and he trod on a little French girl's foot and made her cry.
"Harry," said Vesta sharply, "you just stay where you are."
"Mississippi, California, Oklahoma." It was like something from a sort of holy Walt Whitman.
"Rah, rah, rah! The Pope, the Pope, the Pope!"
"Oh Christ," sobbed Enderby, "please let me get out, please. I'm not well, I'm ill, I've got to get to a lavatory."
"The Church Militant is here," said Vesta nastily, "and all you want is a lavatory."
"I do, I do." Enderby, his eyes full of tears, was now grappling with a redolent Spaniard who would not let him pass. The French child still cried, pointing up at Enderby. Suddenly there was a sort of exordium to prayer and everybody began to kneel in the dust of the courtyard. Enderby became a kind of raging schoolmaster in a sea of stunted children. She too knelt; Vesta knelt; she got down on her knees with the rest of them. "Get up!" bawled Enderby, and, like a sergeant, "Get off your bloody knees!"