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completely over the top.’
    ‘What’s bothering you? Too many candles for your austere tastes? I admit those cartwheel chandeliers are a bit of an eyeful. Marvellous, though.’
    ‘An eyeful? Did you realize they each have a candle for every day of the year?’
    ‘Really? Bit of a maintenance problem, I should think.’
    ‘To Father Davage’s deep distress they’re lit only on great occasions. No, the candles don’t bother me, even though I was taught they had something to do with selling indulgences. Nor was I upset by the highly decorated tabernacles in front of which Father Davage kept prostrating himself. What rocked me was the unProtestant worship of the Virgin Mary.’
    ‘You’ve got this wrong. Even Catholics don’t worship her. She’s prayed to as an intermediary.’
    ‘Tell that to Davage. He gives every impression of treating her as a goddess – or rather, as goddesses.’
    ‘You speak in riddles.’
    ‘He took me to this extraordinary shrine – otherwise known as the lady chapel.’
    ‘Nothing wrong with that. Lots of cathedrals have lady chapels.’
    ‘I would be surprised if other cathedrals sported a representation of the mother of Jesus which bears a striking resemblance to Bette Davis.’
    ‘Don’t be silly. You’re imagining things.’
    ‘I’ll take you there en route to dinner and you can see for yourself. Besides, Cecil – we’re on first-name terms now – told me all about it.
    ‘Apparently the artist was a protégé of the late dean. I’m told that among the treasures of the deanery – now mostly in Cecil’s possession – were a rather nice Boy David and a rather rough and macho John the Baptist. He is, incidentally, very bitter that the Boy David was left to his colleague, Dominic Fedden-Jones, whom he loves to hate. The implication was that Fedden-Jones was for a time the dean’s catamite, but in later years failed to look after the old man as Davage thought he should.
    ‘Two years ago the dean and chapter commissioned this youth to provide a painting to hang at the back of the altar of the lady chapel. So here, in amid the canopies of blue, white and gold – which are bad enough – we have this extraordinary piece of art which is intended to show Mary the cosmopolitan. As Cecil explained, she appears in various guises to demonstrate how she would be represented in different parts of the world. Thus, though a dark-skinned Jew, here she has traditionally been represented as a blue-eyed blonde. So the artist wanted to show that she was all things to all races.’
    ‘Sounds a bit modern to me, but otherwise inoffensive.’
    ‘In this substantial canvas there are perhaps twenty small alternative faces of Mary, all surrounding the major central representation – a pouting Miss Davis.’
    ‘What do the other Marys look like?’
    ‘I easily identified Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe – and I think the black one was Diana Ross and the Indian, Indira Gandhi.’
    She looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. What’s the attraction of these for queers?’
    ‘Don’t you know anything about gay icons?’
    ‘Certainly not. Just because I’m catholic in my sexual tastes doesn’t mean I know about homosexual popular culture.’
    ‘The more camp type of homosexuals have a particular passion for legendary female stars, whether waiflike and vulnerable like Garland and Monroe, glamorous like Dietrich, melodramatic like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis or brassy and vulgar like Mae West and Bette Midler. I fancy it is your resemblance to Ethel Merman that explains why little Davage was so keen to meet you.’
    ‘Beats me. Why should you fancy someone you don’t want to fuck?’
    ‘This is a philosophical matter for another day. Let us concentrate for now on the implications of the New Testament according to Hollywood.’
    ‘Didn’t the locals go mad?’
    ‘Davage did mention that there was a bit of screaming – or rather thcreaming – but that it died down