In RE we learnt about Christianity, Islam and Judaism. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat, even if it’s only a Cheshire cat,’ said Dad. ‘Protestant or Catholic, Sunni or Shia, Ashkenazim or Sephardim, take your pick. Double cream, full fat, semi-skimmed or skimmed, why not try goats’ milk? You can have one one week and another the next.’
Mum glared at Dad in rebuke.
‘Why not? I know people who’ve done just that. You know, chop and change, duck and dive.’ Dad bobbed his head like a chicken when he said that. He claimed to be Church of England but when pressed as to why he never practised on a Sunday and went to play tennis instead, he could only muster a weak, ‘What I need to practise is my tennis serve,’ which in of itself was quite true.
We decorated the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, a Polish tradition that Dad was happy to follow because he could wait until the very last minute before selecting an overstocked Christmas tree supplier and haggling aggressively. At Dad’s insistence, we had our Christmas meal on Christmas Day rather than on Christmas Eve. ‘That’s the way we do it in our family. Turkey and a vinorosso. No pierogi, no fish and vodka, thank you very much,’ was said to endear himself to Nonna, Mum’s Italian mother.
Lunch would be spent trying to guess what the gifts from Dad were, on one occasion thinking of funny things the poorly wrapped bicycles marked Sherah and Sharon could be, as though we hadn’t really known. Hula hoops and flying saucers had been the best guesses and they had been Seamus’s. Of course, the correct guesses would have been a new bike for Sherah and Sherah’s old bike for Sharon. ‘It’s as good as new after the thorough cleaning I gave it!’ had said Dad, in response to a withering look from Nonno, Mum’s father. ‘Look, I changed the brake blocks, I fitted new ones,’ he’d added weakly.
Nonno had left the room.
Dad’s face had sagged, then crumpled, as though the effort of Christmas cheer were too much for him. His nose and eyes had collapsed and disappeared into his sharp, ridged chin that had slumped to his chest as though in defeat in a battle he had been waging under the winking green and red lights of the Christmas tree.
I liked being part of the trickle of churchgoers on Christmas morning that swelled as we passed the doors of other Christians. Sherah, Seamus and I had taken our Holy Communion under Mum’s direction and yet we didn’t attend church regularly. Mum had done her bit out of loyalty to one part of her family tree by giving us Hebrew names, Dad would joke, and to the other by bringing us up as Catholic; and yet, whenever I tried to engage Mum on such issues, she ducked them. She, I knew, had tried several Catholic churches around South London before settling on the one nearest us. I wasn’t quite sure whether she had been actively seeking Polish congregations or trying to avoid them.
I walked alongside Mum, making a big show of checking the time on the digital watch she had given me. She was distracted, not herself, apprehensive. I held her arm tightly and chatted inconsequentially. I wanted to make her feel better but didn’t know how. Neighbours greeted us and Mum pulled herself together, her absorbed air replaced by a masking smile.
Christ the King was a pale grey brick building of no architectural merit, despite its architect of note. It squatted at the bottom of a long hill at the top of which presided the Anglican St Mary’s Church, emblematic of the country’s attitude to the two religions, Dad had once said – the Protestant above the Catholic.
I liked the hymn-singing best of all and looked at the choristers and altar boys and girls with envy, wishing that church could be another performance event for me but afraid that the sentiment and emotion such engagement risked bringing with it would expose me as hollow, not spiritually worthy. I thought of the man Dad had read about in the paper who was found to have no brain, just a layer of brain cells around the inside of his skull, but emptiness where grey matter should have been. That was me, I felt, at a personal level: cut me in two and you’d find nothing, just an inner lining to an exoskeleton that walked and talked like a human being.
‘Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you,’ pronounced Father John, holding a wafer up for his congregation to see. He paused, then placed it on his tongue and swallowed it. The reflected light on his glasses hid his expression.
Father John reached for a chalice, the choir sang and the congregation queued. I stood in line between my siblings, uneasy not because I considered myself to have sinned and not because I hadn’t been to confession, but because the doctrine of transubstantiation bothered me.
‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.’
The idea of eating someone’s flesh was unsettling, at best. That it was Jesus’ struck me as idolatrous to an extreme. Father John offered me the wafer. I trembled and took it. Father John blessed me. The body of Christ tasted faintly of what I imagined to be starch and dishwater as it dissolved between my tongue and palate.