Therapy

slightly.
    She was just in time to catch her usual tram — I saw her emerge from the top of the stairs on to the upper deck as it passed me moments later. My own tram had gone without me, but I didn’t care. I had actually spoken to her! I had almost touched her. I kicked myself for not having been quick enough to help her get up from the ground — but never mind: a contact had been made, words had been exchanged, and I had done her a small service by picking up her books and papers. From now on I would be able to smile and say hallo every morning when she passed me. As I contemplated this exciting prospect, something shiny caught my eye in the gutter: it was the clip on a Biro pen, which had obviously fallen out of her bag. I pounced on it exultantly and stowed it away in an inside pocket, next to my heart.
    Ballpoint pens were still something of a novelty in those days, and absurdly expensive, so I knew the girl would be pleased to have it restored to her. I slept with it under my pillow that night (it leaked and left blue stains on the sheet and pillowcase, for which I was bitterly berated by my mother, and clipped round the ear by my father) and took up my usual position outside the florist’s shop the next morning five minutes earlier than usual, to be sure of not missing the pen’s owner. She was indeed a little early herself in making her appearance at the top of Beecher’s Road, and descended the incline slowly, with a kind of self-conscious deliberation, carefully placing each foot in front of the other, looking down at the pavement — not, I was sure, just to avoid tripping up again, but because she knew I was observing her, waiting for her. They were tense, highly charged minutes that ticked by as she walked down the hill towards me. It was like that wonderful shot at the end of The Third Man, when Harry Lime’s girlfriend walks towards Holly Martins along the avenue in the frozen cemetery, except that she walks right past him without a glance, and this girl was not going to, because I had a flawless pretext to stop her and talk to her.
    As she approached me she affected interest in a flight of starlings wheeling and swooping in the sky above the Co-op bakery, but when she was a few yards away she glanced at me and gave me a shy smile of recognition. “Erm, I think you dropped this yesterday,” I blurted out, whipping the Biro from my pocket and holding it out to her. Her face lit up with pleasure. “Oh, thanks ever so much,” she said, stopping and taking the pen. “I thought I’d lost it. I came back here yesterday afternoon and looked, but I couldn’t find it.” “No, well, I had it,” I said, and we both laughed inanely. When she laughed, the tip of her nose twitched and wrinkled up like a rabbit’s. “Well, thanks again,” she said, moving on. “If I’d known where you lived, I’d have brought it round,” I said, desperately trying to detain her. “That’s alright,” she said, walking backwards, “As long as I’ve got it back. I daren’t tell my Mum I’d lost it.” She treated me to another delicious nose-wrinkling smile, turned her back on me and disappeared round the corner. I still didn’t know her name.
     
    It wasn’t long before I found out, though. Every morning after her providential dive at my feet I smiled and said hallo as she passed, and she blushed and smiled and said hallo back. Soon I added to my greeting some carefully rehearsed remark about the weather or enquiry about the functioning of the ballpoint pen or complaint about the lateness of my tram which invited a reply on her part, and one day she lingered at the corner outside the florist’s for a few moments’ proper conversation. I asked her what her name was. “Maureen.” “Mine’s Laurence.” “Turn me over,” she said, and giggled at my blank look. “Don’t you know the story of Saint Laurence?” I shook my head. “He was martyred by being slowly roasted on a gridiron,” she said. “He said, ‘Turn me over, this side is done.’ ” “When was that?” I asked, wincing sympathetically. “I dunno exactly,” she said. “Roman times, I think.”
    This grotesque and slightly sick anecdote, related as if there was nothing the least disturbing about it, was the first indication I had that Maureen was a Catholic, confirmed the following day when she told me the name of her school. I had noticed the heart embroidered with red and gold thread on her blazer badge, but without