The Moors Last Sigh

life; and grew.

3
    O N THE LANDING OF the wide, steep staircase leading to Epifania’s bedroom was the private family chapel, which Francisco had in the old days permitted one of his ‘Frenchies’ to redecorate in spite of Epifania’s piercing protests. Out had gone the gilded altarpiece with the little inset paintings in which Jesus worked his miracles against a background of coco-palms and tea-plantations, and the china dolls of the apostles, and the golden cherubs posing on teak pedestals and blowing their trumpets, and the candles in their glass bowls the shape of giant brandy glasses, and the imported Portuguese lace on the altar, and even the crucifix itself, ‘all the quality stuff,’ Epifania complained, ‘and Jesus and Mary lockofied in the box-room along-with,’ and not content with these desecrations the blasted fellow had gone and painted the whole place white as if it were a hospital ward, furnished it with the least comfortable wooden pews in Cochin, and then, in that windowless interior room, fixed giant paper cutouts to the walls, imitations of stained-glass windows, ‘as if we can not put proper windows if we want,’ Epifania moaned, ‘see how cheap it makes us look, paper windows in the house of God,’ and the windows didn’t even have decent pictures on them, just slabs of colour in crazy-paving patterns, ‘like a child’s party décor,’ Epifania sniffed. ‘In such a room one should not keep-o blood and body of Our Saviour, but only birthday cake.’
    Francisco had rejoined, in defence of his protégé’s work, that in it shape and colour not only took the place of content but demonstrated that, properly handled, they could in fact be content: provoking Epifania’s contemptuous reply, ‘So maybe we have no need of Jesus Christ, because just shape of cross will do, why bother with any crucifixion, isn’t it? What a blasphemy your Frenchy type has made: a church that lettofies off the Son of God from dying for our sins.’
    The day after her husband’s funeral Epifania had it all burned, and back came the cherubs, lace and glass, the thickly padded chapel chairs covered in dark red silk and the matching cushions edged in golden braid upon which a woman of her position in the world might decently kneel before her Lord. Antique tapestries from Italy depicting kababed saints and tandooried martyrs were restored to the walls and surrounded by ruched and gathered drapes, and soon the disconcerting memory of the Frenchy’s austere novelties had been obliterated by the familiar mustinesses of devotion. ‘God’s in his heaven,’ the brand-new widow announced. ‘All is tip-top with the world.’
    ‘From now on,’ Epifania determined, ‘it is the simple life for us. Salvation is not to be found in Little Man Loincloth and his ilks.’ And indeed the simplicity she sought was anything but Gandhian, it was the simplicity of rising late to a tray of strong, sweet bed-tea, of clapping her hands for the cook and ordering the day’s repasts, of having a maid come in to oil and brush her still-long but quickly greying and thinning hair, and of being able to blame the maid for the increasing quantities left each morning in the brush; the simplicity of long mornings scolding the tailor who came over to the house with new dresses, and knelt at her feet with mouthfuls of pins which he removed from time to time to unloose his flatterer’s tongue; and then of long afternoons at the fabric stores, as bolts of magnificent silks were flung across a white-sheeted floor for her delight, cloth after cloth flowing thrillingly through the air to settle in soft fold-mountains of brilliant beauty; the simplicity of gossip with her few social equals, and of invitations to the ‘functions’ of the British in the Fort district, their Sunday cricket, their dancing teas, the seasonal carolling of their plain heat-beaten children, for they were Christian after all, even if it was only the Church of England, never mind, the British had her respect though they would never have her heart, which belonged to Portugal, of course, which dreamed of walking beside the Tagus, the Douro, of sashaying through the streets of Lisbon on the arm of a grandee. It was the simplicity of daughters-in-law who would attend to most of her needs while she made their lives a living hell, and of sons who would keep the money supply flowing as freely as was required; of everything-in-its-place, of being, at long last, at the