proud of his zoot suit and loafers, partners the excited,

nubile paleskins who flock in from the snow

for the heat brought in from the tropics.

Kensington, London, 1953

ELLEN thought British boys danced like ironing-boards.

The students from Strawberry Hill’s Jesuit College

sought the pristine convent ladies of Maria Assumpta

at Kensington’s balls, tantalised by copious layers

of pink sequinned tulle, boned strapless tops, stoles,

corsage, lace gloves, silk purse and score cards.

Fearful of being lumped with the miserable wallflowers,

Mary with the hare lips and Deirdre with the hairy lip,

Ellen waltzed under the ballroom’s cut-crystal chandeliers

with earnest, pallid suitors to bland, suited dance bands

but before the stroke of twelve, Assumpta’s flushed

Cinderellas were gliding exquisitely through hushed

lamp-lit streets to curfew and their rooms in the Square.

Sunday mornings in the refectory, Ellen relished tales,

along with tea and buttered toast, of the Overseas Club, Victoria,

brimming with foreign students of the darker variety,

and before long her twitching antennae led her

to the jumping church hall where she jitterbugged

to rock ’n’roll, did the quickstep to swing, while Taiwo,

from his discreet observation post by the door, beamed

at the homely type in polka dot dress, a shy dimpled smile,

and knew she was the girl he would take for a wife.

ELLEN wanted to marry the Heavenly Bridegroom,

imbued from birth in the sanctity of the Catholic Church,

she worshipped Her Lord in daily prayer, did penance

for man’s original sin and her inherent wickedness.

She embraced suffering for infinite Love and Happiness

awaited her at the Eternal Bridal Feast in the Sky.

A life of love, duty, self-sacrifice to God and souls

would be embodied in her role as a White Sister,

a teaching missionary enlightening the dark continent.

This Assumpta virgin bought black babies from photographs,

paid for their upkeep, for they who were born in the southern wild

(she read) were bereft of light, though their souls were white,

although white as an angel was the English child.

She adored the choir nuns of the Assumption, well-to-do

women who as postulants gave their wealth to the convent,

striking medieval figures in purple habits, lush as drapes,

topped by a cream wimple, leather belt, rosary, crucifix.

Unlike the lay nuns in plain black and white, consigned

to stir the stewing pot with floor-scrubbed hands.

Ripe for the plucking, Her Purity, small wonder, then

that Ellen’s divine lover came in the guise of Taiwo

and in His Vivacious Company her heart was elevated

by cherubim and seraphim who trilled sweetly in her ears

and she was thrilled to be in his Noble Presence.

THE SUPREME test of submission to the Will of God

was the acceptance of pain; life was not to be a joyride,

but during the spring of Nineteen Fifty-two, Ellen,

hitherto shaped in the fashion of clay spun into a pot,

lived with a passion she’d reserved for the hereafter.