116 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

Somebody must have put it in the window for
Armistice Day, and there is stayed, like the Poppy
Day posters in Freetown, through the winter months,
black sooty dripping months.

In Nottingham I was instructed in Catholicism,
travelling here and there by tram into new country
with the fat priest who had once been an actor. (It
was one of his greatest sacrifices to be unable to see a
play.) The tram clattered by the Post Office: "Now
we come to the Immaculate Conception"; past the
cinema: "Our Lady"; the theatre: a sad slanting
look towards The Private Secretary (it was Christmas
time). The cathedral was a dark place full of inferior
statues. I was baptised one foggy afternoon about
four o'clock. I couldn't think of any names I par-
ticularly wanted, so I kept my old name. I was alone
with the fat priest; it was all very quickly and
formally done, while someone at a children's service
muttered in another chapel. Then we shook hands
and I went off to a salmon tea, the dog which had
been sick again otx the mat. Before that I had made
a general confession to another priest: it was like a
life photographed as it came to mind, without any
order, full of gaps, giving at best a general
impression. I couldn't help feeling all the way to the
newspaper office, past the Post Office, the Moroccan
cafe, the ancient whore, that I had got somewhere
new by way of memories I hadn't known I possessed.
I had taken up the thread of life from very far back,
from so far back as innocence.