by David Lodge
They know it, cognitively, yes; but believe it, intuitively, they do not. In that regard they are no different from other young, healthy human beings. They look forward to life, not death. Their plans include marriage, children, jobs, fame, fulfilment, service – not the grave and the afterlife. The afterlife figures in their thoughts rather like retirement: something to insure against, but not to brood on at the very outset of your career. Religion is their insurance – the Catholic Church offering the very best, the most comprehensive cover – and weekday mass is by way of being an extra premium, enhancing the value of the policy.
But it is also more than that. For their Faith teaches them that God does not only control the afterlife; He also controls this one. Not a sparrow falls without His willing it. As far back as they can remember, the cradle Catholics among them have been encouraged to pray for good fortune in this life as well as in the next: fine weather for the School Sports Day, the recovery of a lost brooch, promotion for Daddy, success at the Eleven Plus. There is a convent somewhere in the south of England which advertises in the Catholic press the services of its nuns, praying in shifts twenty-four hours a day for whatever intentions you care to send them in return for donations to their charitable cause (“Send no money until your prayer is answered – then give generously”) and which is heavily in demand around the time that GCE results are expected. You might think that the time to pray was before the examinations were taken, otherwise it was asking God to tamper with the marks, but that was not the way these Catholics looked at it. God was omnipotent, and it would cost Him no effort, should He be so minded, to turn back the clock of history and make the tiny adjustment that would allow you to put the right answer instead of the wrong one and get a Pass instead of a Fail and then set the mechanism ticking again without your marker or the rest of the world or indeed you yourself being any the wiser. If such prayers were not always answered this did not show that the system did not work, but merely that God had decided that it wouldn’t be in your interest to gratify your wish or that you didn’t deserve it. One way or another, it was obviously prudent to keep on the right side of God, as long as you believed in Him at all, since then, even without your asking, He might reward you by ensuring that the right examination question or the right job or indeed Mr Right turned up when you were most in need.
To be fair to the young people in Our Lady and St Jude’s, it must be said that they are not here entirely out of self-interest. To a greater or lesser extent they have all grasped the idea that Christianity is about transcendence of self in love of God and one’s neighbour, and they struggle to put this belief into practice according to their lights, trying to be kind, generous and grateful for their blessings. Admittedly, Angela is the only neighbour for whom Dennis has any love to spare at the moment, and Michael feels too hopelessly abandoned to sexual depravity to make much of an effort at being good in other ways, but Angela neglects no opportunity to do a good deed, shopping for an old lady or baby-sitting for her landlady: and Ruth is a more systematic philanthropist, helping in the nursery of a Catholic orphanage on one afternoon a week, sometimes taking Polly along with her – and, although Polly can never be relied upon, when she does turn up she entertains the children more successfully than Ruth, so that Ruth has a struggle not to feel jealous; and Adrian is a cadet in the Catholic Evidence Guild, and spends every Sunday afternoon at Speaker’s Corner at the foot of the Guild’s rostrum, lending moral support and learning the tricks of the trade against the day when he will take on the atheists and bigots of the metropolis in his own right; and Miles is a tertiary of the order of Carmelites and wears under his beautifully laundered white shirts and silk underwear an exceedingly itchy scapular the discomfort of which he offers up for the souls of all his Protestant forebears who may be languishing in the Purgatory in which they did not believe; and Edward plans to practice medicine for at least two years in the mission fields of Africa when he has qualified; and Violet is liable to sudden, alarming fits of self-mortification and good works, such as fasting for a whole week or descending upon bewildered tramps under the arches of the Charing Cross Embankment, offering them rosaries which they accept in the hope of being able to sell them later for the price of a cup of tea, and, if they have sores, little bottles of Lourdes water, which the tramps drink in the expectation of its being gin and then disrespectfully spit out on to the pavement when they discover it isn’t.
Violet is the last to receive Communion. Placing the host on her tongue, Father Brierley murmurs, as he has murmured to each of the communicants, “Corpus Domini Nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen.” May the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy soul to life everlasting. He turns back to the altar to perform the ablutions – purifying his fingers and the chalice with water which he then swallows to ensure that no crumb of the consecrated host, no drop of the consecrated wine, should remain unconsumed and therefore at risk of irreverent or unseemly treatment. Any entire hosts that remain are locked away in the tabernacle above the altar, its door screened by a little gilt curtain. Meanwhile the communicants have returned to their places, where they kneel in silent thanksgiving, their eyes closed, their heads bowed.
This is a difficult business for nearly all of them. For what is it that has happened, for which they are to give thanks? They have received the Body and Blood of Christ. Not literally, of course, but under the appearances of bread and wine – or rather bread alone, for it is not at this date Catholic practice to administer Communion under both kinds to the laity – and not really bread either, for the host bears very little resemblance to an ordinary loaf. A small, round, papery, almost tasteless wafer has been placed on their tongues, and they have swallowed it (without chewing it, an action deemed irreverent by those who prepared them for their First Communions) and thus received Christ into themselves. But what does that mean? The consecrated host, they know, has not changed in outward appearance, and if Dennis, say, were, like sacrilegious scientists in Catholic cautionary tales, to take one back to the laboratory on his tongue and analyse it there, he would discover only molecules of wheat. But it would be sacrilege to do so precisely because the host has changed into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Jesus Christ, Saviour. In the language of scholastic philosophy, the substance has changed but the accidents (empirically observable properties) have not. The doctrine of transubstantiation, as they have been reminded often enough in RI lessons, is a mystery, a truth above reason. That is all very well, but it means that the mind has little to grip on when it comes to making one’s thanksgiving after Communion. In fact, the more intently you think about the mystery, the more irreverent and disedifying your thoughts are apt to become. At what point, Dennis cannot help wondering, does the miracle of transubstantiation reverse itself, since it cannot be that Christ submits himself to the indignities of human digestion and excretion? Is it as the host begins to dissolve on the tongue, as it passes the epiglottis, or as it travels down the oesophagus that Christ jumps from His wheaten vehicle and into your soul? Such speculations are not conducive to pious recollection. There are, of course, set prayers which one can say, but they don’t mean a lot either.
“O Lord Jesus,” Adrian reads from his missal, “I have received Thee within myself, and from within the sanctuary of my heart into which Thou hast deigned to descend, do Thou give to Almighty God, in my name, all the glory that is His due.”
Adrian, who has a good logical mind, might well ask by what right he can describe his heart as a sanctuary, and how Christ, being God, can give glory to God, or putting that aside, why He should be bothered to do so in his, Adrian’s name, when he, Adrian, is perfectly capable of giving glory to God himself. But Adrian is conditioned not to ask such awkward questions, and while reading these words with a vague feeling of piety, thinks of something else. In fact, within thirty seconds of kneeling down and bowing their heads, most of them are thinking of something other than the Eucharist – of breakfast, or study, or the weather, or sex o
r just the ache in their knees.
It is easier for them when Father Brierley, having read the Last Gospel, comes to the foot of the altar and kneels to recite the customary prayers to Our Lady.
“Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy; hail our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears …” Only the converts actually listen to the words and try to make sense of them – to the rest it is just a familiar pious babble; but all can think, as the baroque rhetoric of the prayer lifts them up on its surging cadences, of Our Lady, a sweet-faced woman in blue and white robes, with her arms and hands lifted slightly and extended forward, as she is depicted in a thousand cheap statues in Lady Chapels up and down the land. Praying to her for help is much easier than puzzling over transubstantiation.
Nevertheless, all feel better for having attended the mass, as they assemble outside the church porch, greeting each other, laughing and chattering, donning scarves and gloves against the cold, damp air. All (all except Michael anyway) feel cheerful, hopeful, cleansed, at peace. Perhaps this is indeed the presence of the Lord Jesus in them, and not just the lift of spirits that naturally comes with the termination of mild boredom and the expectation of breakfast.
Father Brierley has unvested with almost unseemly haste in order to race round the back of the church in time to greet his little flock before they move off to the Lyons cafeteria. “Good morning, Angela, good morning, Dennis, good morning, Polly – overslept this morning?” He laughs too heartily, showing teeth stained with nicotine, breaks open a packet of Player’s and presses cigarettes upon the boys who smoke. The students stamp their feet and shift the weight of their bags and briefcases from one hand to another, impatient to be off, but unwilling to seem discourteous. Violet takes one of Father Brierley’s cigarettes, rather to his consternation, for he does not like to see women smoking in public. Some badinage is exchanged about St Valentine’s Day, and Father Brierley, desperately aiming at an effect of good-humoured tolerance of harmless fun, doubles up with forced laughter.
“Did you get my Valentine?” Dennis murmurs to Angela.
She smiles. “Yes. I got two, actually.”
Two! Dennis is immediately stricken with jealous fear. “Who sent you the other one?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.”
Eventually the cigarette ends are stamped into the muddy pavement and the little band begins to shuffle off in the direction of the Tottenham Court Road. “Goodbye, Father!” they call; and Austin Brierley, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his cassock, and rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, calls back, “Goodbye, goodbye, see you on Monday, at the study group. First Epistle to the Corinthians.”
“Aren’t you coming to the St Valentine’s Party, Father?” Ruth cries, and then winces as Polly pokes her in the ribs.
“No, no, I think not,” the priest replies. “There’s a meeting of the Legion of Mary …”
“What did you do that for?” Ruth mutters, rubbing her side.
“We don’t want him there tonight, he’s such a wet blanket,” says Polly sotto voce, and flashes Father Brierley a brilliant smile over her shoulder.
He blushes, and turns back to the church porch, which the two old ladies have just reached after a laborious arm-in-arm shuffle up the nave, and dutifully pauses to exchange a word with them. Then he makes his way back to the presbytery, where his congealing breakfast awaits him and, behind the Daily Telegraph propped on the other side of the table, his parish priest.
“Many there?” enquires the parish priest, without lifting his eyes from the Daily Telegraph.
“Nine,” says Austin Brierley. “Plus Mrs Moody and Mrs O’Dowd, of course.”
The parish priest grunts. Austin Brierley takes the cover off his bacon and egg. It is only eight forty-five and the best of the day is already over.
It begins to drizzle again as the students make their way along the pavements in twos and threes. Rather reluctantly (for the rolling of it is a work of art), Miles unfurls his rapier-thin silk umbrella and gallantly holds it over Violet’s head. “Did you know, Miles,” she says, “that Our Lady of Fatima left a message about how the world will end which was sealed up and given to the Pope and mustn’t be opened till 1960?”
“My dear, how exciting! He must be awfully tempted to have a peep at it.”
“They say he has, and it was so terrifying, he fainted.”
“You must know,” says Dennis to Angela. “You must have some idea.”
“Well, I haven’t. It wasn’t signed, like yours. You’re not supposed to sign Valentines, you know,” she says, a little tartly, because she is getting irritated by Dennis’s persistent questioning. “That’s the whole point of them.”
“What about the writing on the envelope? Couldn’t you recognize that?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dennis, let’s drop the subject.”
As they draw nearer the Tottenham Court Road, secular London engulfs them with the hiss and roar of traffic, and crowds of jostling, fretting pedestrians hurrying to work. No Lord Jesus in them, anyway, by the look of it; their faces are drawn, their eyes anxious or vacant as they cluster on the pavement’s edge, waiting for the traffic lights to change. Flags fly at half-mast on some buildings for the recent death of King George VI, and a newspaper placard announces, THE NEW ELIZABETHANS: SPECIAL FEATURE.
“Did you know you were a New Elizabethan, Michael?” Ruth asks.
Michael, who is gazing lustfully at an unclothed and headless mannequin in a shop window, starts. “What? eh?” he says, flicking back his lank forelock.
“We’re the New Elizabethans, apparently.”
“Gadzooks! Zounds! Marry come up! Buckle your swash!” cries Edward, waving his tattered, broken-winged umbrella in the air. And as the traffic lights change he leads them across the road, crying, “Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more!” Some of the other pedestrians stare, amused or disapproving. Grinning and giggling, the students straggle after Edward, enjoying the feeling of being young and irresponsible. Their gait has a different rhythm to that of the businessmen and typists hurrying to work. They have no lectures before ten o’clock, or if they have, they will cut them in order to have breakfast. And they are dear friends, Ruth thinks to herself; she has never had so many friends before, and it is such a relief to know that the friendship does not depend on one’s being pretty or wealthy or smart, but simply on having the same beliefs in common; and she feels blessed, walking along the Tottenham Court Road behind Edward and Polly, who are discussing a sketch to be performed at the St Valentine’s party.
It is deliciously warm in the basement of the Lyons cafeteria, a steamy, tropical heat emanating from the kitchens and the hot-water urns. They take off their coats and scarves, heap them with bags and briefcases in a corner, and relieve their hunger and thirst with baked beans and bacon, toast and sticky buns, cups and cups of dark, sweet tea. Ruth stirs two heaped teaspoonfuls of sugar into her cup: it will soon be Lent and she will be giving it up. As indulging a sweet tooth is her only weakness of the flesh, this will be no light penance.
“I hope everyone is coming to the party,” says Polly, who has sat up half the night cutting out paper hearts for decorations. “Or are you all going to the Union do instead?”