Therapy

pressed a pound coin into the hands of each twin, thanked their mother and grandfather, and left.
    I walked back to the Five Ways and then began to climb Beecher’s Road. It was quickly apparent that a certain amount of yuppification had taken place on the higher levels of Hatchford, probably in the property boom of the eighties. The big houses that had been divided up into rented flats in my childhood had in many cases reverted to single ownership, and been smartened up in the process, with brass fittings on the front doors, hanging flower-baskets in the porches, and potted shrubs in the basement areas. Through front windows I glimpsed the signs of AB lifestyles: ethnic rugs and modern prints on the walls, well-stocked black ash bookshelves, angular lampstands, state-of-the-art hi-fi systems. I wondered if the same fate would have overtaken 94 Treglowan Road, where Maureen’s family used to live. First left at the top of Beecher’s Road, then first right and right again. Was it the exertion of the climb or nervous expectation that made my heart beat faster as I approached the last corner? It was highly unlikely that Maureen’s parents, even if they were alive, would still be living there; and even if they were it would be a chance in a million if she happened to be visiting them today. So I told myself, trying to calm my pulse. But I was not prepared for the shock I received when I turned the corner.
    One side of the road, the side on which Maureen’s house had stood, had been demolished and cleared, and in its place a small estate of new detached houses had been built. They were flimsy, meanly-proportioned brick boxes — so narrow they looked like sawn-off semis — with leaded windows and fake beams stuck on the facades, and they were laid out along a curving cul-de-sac called Treglowan Close. There was not a single visible trace of the monumental Victorian villa in which the Kavanaghs had lived, not a brick, not a stone, not a tree. I calculated that the entrance to the estate passed directly over the site of the house. The basement area where we had kissed, where I had touched Maureen’s breasts, had been filled in, levelled off, and sealed under a coating of tarmac. I felt robbed, disoriented and quite irrationally angry.
    The Church of the Immaculate Conception, on the other hand, was still standing. Indeed, it had hardly changed at all. The statue of the Virgin Mary still stood on her pedestal in the forecourt signalling a wide. Inside there were the same dark stained pews, confessionals like massive wardrobes against the wall, votive candles dripping stalactites of wax. There was something new, though: up at what Philip Larkin called the holy end, in front of the carved and pinnacled altar that I remembered blazing with candlelight at Benediction, was a plain stone table, and there were no rails at the bottom of the altar steps. A middle-aged lady in an apron was hoovering the carpet on the altar. She switched off the machine and looked enquiringly at me as I hovered nearby. I asked if Father Jerome was still attached to the church. She had heard his name mentioned by some of the older parishioners, but thought he must have left long before she came to Hatchford herself. She had an idea that he had been sent to Africa by his order to work in the missions. And Father Malachi, I presumed, was dead. She nodded, and pointed to a plaque on the wall in his memory. She said the present parish priest was Father Dominic, and that I might find him in the presbytery. I remembered that presbytery meant the house where the priests lived, the first one around the corner from the church. A thirty-something man in a pullover and jeans opened the door when I rang the bell. I asked if Father Dominic was in. He said, “That’s me, come in.” He led me into a cluttered living-room, where a computer screen glowed green on a desk in the corner. “Do you understand spreadsheets?” he said. I confessed I didn’t. “I’m trying to computerize the parish accounts,” he said, “but really I need Windows to do it properly. How can I help you?”
    When I said I was trying to trace someone who had lived in the parish forty years ago, he shook his head doubtfully. “The order who had the parish in those days were pretty hopeless at paperwork. If they had any files on parishioners, they must have taken them with them when they pulled out. All that’s left by way of an archive are the registers of Baptisms, First