Therapy

the same South London accent as myself. Maureen was the eldest child, and the apple of her parents’ eye. Her scholarship to the Sacred Heart convent was the subject of particular pride, and the fact that I was a grammar-school boy was obviously a mark in my favour. Against me was the fact that I was a boy, and non-Catholic, therefore an inherent threat to Maureen’s virtue. “You look like a decent sort of lad,” said Mrs Kavanagh, “but her father thinks Maureen is too young to be gallivanting about with boys, and so do I. She has her homework to do.” “Not every night, Mum,” Maureen protested. “You already have the Youth Club on Sundays,” said Mrs Kavanagh, “That’s quite enough socializing at your age.”
    I asked if I could join the youth club.
    “It’s the parish youth club,” said Mrs Kavanagh. “You have to be a Catholic.”
    “No you don’t, Mum,” Maureen said. “Father Jerome said non-Catholics can join if they’re interested in the Church.” Maureen looked at me and blushed.
    “I’m very interested,” I said, quickly.
    “Is that so?” Mrs Kavanagh looked at me sceptically, but she knew she had been out-manoeuvred. “Well, if Father Jerome says it’s alright, I suppose it’s alright.”
     
    Needless to say, I had no genuine interest in Catholicism, or indeed in religion of any kind. My parents were not churchgoers, and observed the Sabbath only to the extent of forbidding me and my brother to play in the street on Sundays. Lambeth Merchants’ was nominally C of E, but the prayers and hymns at morning assembly, and occasional services in the chapel, seemed part of the school’s ceaseless celebration of its own heritage rather than the expression of any moral or theological idea. That some people, like Maureen and her family, should voluntarily submit themselves to such boredom every Sunday morning, when they could be enjoying a long lie-in instead, was incomprehensible to me. Nevertheless I was prepared to feign a polite interest in her religion, if that was the price of being allowed to keep Maureen company.
    The following Sunday evening I turned up, by arrangement with Maureen, outside the local Roman Catholic church, a squat redbrick building with a larger-than-lifesize statue of the Virgin Mary outside. She had her arms extended, and a carved inscription on the plinth said: “I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.” A service was going on inside, and I lurked in the porch, listening to the unfamiliar hymns and droning prayers, my nostrils tickled by a strong sweet smell which I guessed must be incense. Suddenly there was a clamour of high-pitched bells, and I peeped through the doorway, looking down the aisle to the altar. It was quite a sight, ablaze with dozens of tall, thin lighted candles. The priest, dressed in a heavy embroidered robe of white and gold, was holding up something that flashed and glinted with reflected light, a white disc in a glass case, with golden rays sticking out all round it like a sunburst. He held the base of the thing wrapped in an embroidered scarf he had round his shoulders, as if it was too hot to touch, or radioactive. All the people, and there were a surprising number of them, were kneeling with their heads bowed. Maureen explained to me in due course that the white disc was a consecrated host, and that they believed it was the real body and blood of Jesus, but to me the whole business seemed more pagan than Christian. The singing sounded queer too. Instead of the rousing hymns I was used to at school (“To be a Pilgrim” was my favourite) they were singing slow, dirge-like anthems that I couldn’t comprehend because they were in Latin, never my best subject. I had to admit, though, that there was a kind of atmosphere about the service that you didn’t get in the school chapel.
    What I liked about Catholics from the beginning was that there was nothing holier-than-thou about them. When the congregation came pouring out of the church, they might have been coming out of the pictures, or even a pub, the way they greeted each other and joked and chatted and offered each other cigarettes. Maureen came out accompanied by her mother, their heads covered with scarves. Mrs Kavanagh began talking to another woman in a hat. Maureen spotted me, and came over, smiling. “You found the way, then?” she greeted me. “What if your Dad sees us talking?” I asked nervously. “Oh, he never comes to Benediction,” she said, untying her headscarf