CAPUCHINS

'Some Capuchin friar came to assemblies

and set the ends of his rope spinning,

like helicopter blades, turning.

Just like the new go-go dancers in Leeds,

I wanted to say, with the tassels on their breasts.

He seemed all right. It was about the time

the BBC came to film us at home

for the God slot. Just before Dad left

for his secretary. We sat round the table

saying a prayer, then there were interviews

on what Catholicism meant to us.

I said it helped in times of trouble.

Soon after, Dad legged it. Mum broke down

and Kevin started doing his head in.

Pat joined the Capuchins, though, still is one.'

She shifted her position on the lawn,

wearing what I would now call old-fashioned shades,

a thin basting of the cheapest sun-oil

and round her neck a Miraculous Medal

on a Heinz Beans chain. In her hand, the five ways

of Thomas Aquinas curled in the sun.

I placed a browning nipple in my mouth

and heard a gasp as the star of Belief

allowed my tongue to massage venial skin.

We arrived together, quite oblivious

of any elders who might be watching

or to lost Thomist proofs. In the kitchen,

afterwards, I poured what I called vin rouge,

while Clare, with a fraying piece of string,

imitated first the Capuchin friar

and then your average go-go dancer.

When Frank, her other lodger, came in,

fresh from leading tourists round the walls,

she didn't cover herself, and I thought,

for not the first time, that I should meet

her religion half-way. 'Clare,' I slurred, still

drunk, not from drink but from the sun on my back,

'I could go with you to Mass. If you'd like.'

Frank stared at me, stared at Clare, took a bite

from a cake that they'd made and Clare looked sick,

just nodded. This is going back four Popes.

Clare and Frank live on the Isle of Wight

with unbaptized children. We do not write.

I wear brown. Can do the trick with the rope.