Therapy

correspondence, especially in mauve envelopes smelling of lavender, driving my young brother frantic with frustrated curiosity. There was little danger that my parents would pry into their contents, which were in any case totally innocuous. The letters were written on mauve lavender-scented notepaper in a big round hand, with the little circles over the is. On reflection, I think she got the idea from the advertisements for Biro pens. She used to get told off for it at school. Apart from the brief morning encounters at the tram stop, we could only meet in the context of youth-club activities — the socials, the games nights, the football matches, and occasional rambles in the Kent and Surrey green belt in the summer months.
    Perhaps these restrictions helped to keep us devoted to each other for so long. We never had time to become bored with each other’s company, and in defying Maureen’s parents’ disapproval we felt as if we were enacting some deeply romantic drama. Nat King Cole said it all for us in “Too Young”, rolling the vowels round in his mouth like boiled sweets, to a background of syrupy strings and plangent piano chords:
     
They try to tell us we’re too young,
Too young to really be in love.
They say that love’s a word,
A word we’ve only heard
But can’t begin to know the meaning of.
And yet we’re not too young to know,
This love will last though years may go...
     
    It was our favourite tune, and I would always make sure that Maureen was my partner when somebody put it on the turntable.
    Almost the only time we had alone together was when I walked her home from the youth-club socials on Sunday nights. At first, awkward and unsure of how to comport myself in this novel situation, I used to slouch along with my hands in my pockets, a yard apart from Maureen. But one cold night, to my intense delight, she drew close to me as if for warmth, and slipped her arm through mine. I swelled with the pride of possession. Now she was truly my girlfriend. She chattered on my arm like a canary in a cage — about the people at the youth club, about her schoolfriends and teachers, about her family, with its huge network of relations in Ireland and even America.
    Maureen was always brimming over with news, gossip, anecdotes, whenever we met. It was trivial stuff, but enchanting to me. I tried to forget about my own school when I was out of it, and my family seemed less interesting than Maureen’s, so I was content to let her make most of the conversational running. But occasionally she would question me about my parents and my early life, and she loved me to tell her how for so long I used to look out for her every morning at the corner of Hatchford Five Ways without ever daring to speak to her.
    Even after she took my arm on the way home from the youth club, weeks passed before I ventured to kiss her goodnight outside her house. It was a clumsy, botched kiss, half on her mouth, half on her cheek, which took her by surprise, but it was returned with warmth. She broke away immediately with a murmured “Goodnight,” and ran up the steps to her front door; but the next morning at the tram stop there was a dazed glow in her eyes, a new softness in her smile, and I knew that the kiss had been as momentous for her as for me.
    I had to learn to kiss as I had learned to dance. In our male-dominated household there was almost a taboo on touching of any kind, whereas in Maureen’s family, she told me, it was customary for all the children, even the boys, to kiss their parents goodnight. That was a very different matter from kissing me, of course, but it explained how naturally Maureen lifted her face to mine, how comfortable and relaxed she felt in my arms. Oh the rapture of those first embraces! What is it about kissing in adolescence? I suppose it gives you an intuitive sense of what sex will be like, the girl’s lips and mouth being like the secret inside flesh of her body: pink, wet, tender. Certainly what we used to call French kissing, pushing your tongues into each other’s mouths, is a kind of mimic intercourse. But it was a long time before Maureen and I went as far as that. For many months it seemed quite intoxicating enough to simply kiss, clasped in each other’s arms, lips to lips, eyes closed, holding our breath for minutes at a time.
    We used to do it in the shadows of the basement area of Maureen’s house, putting up with the smell from the nearby dustbins for the sake of privacy. We