I was suffused with a melancholy awareness that approximated happiness at the thought of my own and others’ failings. I read a series on infidel books and urged Nan to turn from the True Confessions under the mattress. I talked of Satan clothing himself like an angel of light, of fatal poisoning of the soul, of discerning between the precious and the vile, and marvelled at my eloquence. My grandmother did not seem convinced; looked perplexed; decided to smile. I prayed harder than ever that she would be one with Christ.

And so when Betty Smith asked me to attend the Mile End Baptist Sunday School with her and Joan, I felt that I was one of the truly chosen. I had to walk across the Beach Road by myself, but this was as nothing to salvation. I turned up Victoria Street and met the twins under the walnut-tree beside the church. We went into the hall and I was put into Miss Enid Scott’s class. I sat on a bench on the girls’ side and the Sunday School superintendent talked to us. She didn’t wear lipstick. We sang hymns, recited verses, and marched to our classes, where I was given a book to colour.

It was a far cry from the rarefied world of the once Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, whom I decided looked sensitive in Home Words, and took as my mentor. I signed a pledge of total abstinence from alcoholic beverages; thought of tobacco as Devil’s weed. I learned that a Christian did not need an insurance policy or a bank account — it was enough to believe. I told my mother this and she laughed.

There was a Sunday School Anniversary, and I sang with the others on the platform; a Harvest Thanksgiving Festival with light refreshments. There was a Missionary Evening, and a black man showed slides of camels, and Jesus’ face flickered and disappeared on the back wall; a Concert, and I was a daffodil in crêpe paper.

When I went to Sunday School my hair was freshly washed, and so tightly curled that it went frizzy and my head hurt. I wore my wedgie sandals and the dress with the velvet bows upon the yoke. I had a shoulder-bag studded with silver pimples and a straw hat trimmed with rose-buds. I carried coloured pencils and a hymn book. I had a feeling deep inside I looked a fool.

I marched on my Christian way, regardless, until a Sunday came when I saw someone had written on the fence under the walnut-tree that I stank. And I knew I was different, and wished they had put ‘smells’. I feared I was doomed to eternal damnation, but I would not go again.

And so I heard no more the song we crooned as we dropped our pennies in the collection box. Never again did I feel the touch of the peacock’s feather the teacher stroked our heads with as we left. No more was I part of the tableau dressed as a heathen with a blackened face. The picnics at Lobethal and the fronds we were given on Palm Sunday, the egg-and-spoon races and the Harvest Festivals ceased.