Therapy

her, needless to say, but club protocol forbade exclusive pairing, and I was a rather popular choice in “ladies’ invitation” sets because of my nifty footwork. It was of course ballroom dancing — quickstep, foxtrot and waltz — with a few old-time dances thrown in for variety. We danced to strict-tempo music by Victor Sylvester, diversified with popular hits by Nat King Cole, Frankie Laine, Guy Mitchell and other vocalists of the day. Pee Wee Hunt’s “Twelfth Street Rag” was a great favourite, but jiving was not allowed — it was expressly forbidden by Father Jerome — and the solo twisting, ducking and swaying that passes for dancing nowadays was still in the womb of time, awaiting its birth in the sixties. When, nowadays, I put my head inside a discothèque or nightclub patronized by young people, I’m struck by the contrast between the eroticism of the ambience — the dim, lurid lighting, the orgasmic throb of the music, the tight-fitting, provocative clothes — and the tactile impoverishment of the actual dancing. I suppose they have so much physical contact afterwards that they don’t miss it on the dance floor, but for us it was the other way round. Dancing meant that, even in a church youth club, you were actually allowed to hold a girl in your arms in public, perhaps a girl you’d never even met before you asked her to dance, feel her thighs brush against yours under her rustling petticoats, sense the warmth of her bosom against your chest, inhale the scent behind her ears or the smell of shampoo from her freshly washed hair as it tickled your cheek. Of course you had to pretend that this wasn’t the point of it, you had to chat about the weather or the music or whatever while you steered your partner around the floor, but the licence for physical sensation was considerable. Imagine a cocktail party where all the guests are masturbating while ostensibly preoccupied with sipping white wine and discussing the latest books and plays, and you have some idea what dancing was like for adolescents in the early nineteen-fifties.
    Admittedly, Father Jerome did his best to damp down the fires of lust, insisting on opening the evening’s proceedings with a tedious recitation of the “Hail Mary” ten times in succession, something he referred to as “a mystery of the holy rosary” — it was certainly a mystery to me what anybody got out of the droning gabble of words. And he hung about afterwards, eyeing the dancing couples to make sure everything was decent and above board. There was actually a clause in the club rules — it was known as Rule Five, and was the subject of mildly risqué humour among the members — that there must always be light visible between dancing couples; but it was not rigidly enforced or observed. Anyway, Father Jerome usually left (it was rumoured to drink whisky and play whist with some cronies in the presbytery) well before the last waltz, when we would turn out some of the lights, and the bolder spirits would dance cheek-to-cheek, or at least chest-to-chest. Naturally I always ensured that Maureen was my partner then. She was not an exceptionally good dancer, and when I saw her partnered by other boys she sometimes looked positively clumsy, which I didn’t mind at all. She was responsive to my firm lead, and laughed with delight when I whirled her round and round at the end of a record, making her skirts swirl. She had two outfits for the Sunday-night socials: a black taffeta skirt worn with various blouses, and a white frock covered with pink roses that fitted her tightly round her bosom, which was shapely and well-developed for her age.
    I was soon accepted by the other members of the club, especially after I joined its football team, which played on Sunday afternoons against other South London parishes, some with similarly bizarre names to ours, so you would get scorelines like, “Immaculate Conception 2, Precious Blood 1” or “Perpetual Succour 3, Forty Martyrs nil.” I played at inside right, to such good effect that we won the league championship that season. I was top scorer, with twenty-six goals. The manager of a rival team found out that I wasn’t a Catholic and made an official complaint that I shouldn’t have been allowed to play in the league. For a while it looked as if the trophy might be taken away from us, but after we threatened to pull out of the league we were allowed to keep it.
    We played on bumpy, sloping pitches in public parks,