The bishop hit us in the face. That was the best thing about confirmation. When I was 12, along with every other boy in the school, I was formally prepared for the sacrament that marked our passage from infancy to adulthood. Confirmation lacks the festive atmosphere of a bar mitzvah where families enjoy booze, dancing and speeches along with the exchange of gifts. For us, it was a cheerless affair held in the vast, under-heated parish church where 200 fidgety 12-year-olds waited to receive the appropriate blessing from the bishop. He was called Cyril. We were familiar with his name from Sunday Mass when he was cited as an appropriate subject for our orations. ‘We remember our Bishop Cyril in our prayers,’ said the priest.
A cynic might have asked what Cyril got up to each week that merited an appeal to God on his behalf from the entire diocese. But I wasn’t a cynic. I was a fervent young believer and I was fascinated by the act of violence at the heart of the ceremony. ‘It’s symbolic,’ the priests told us. ‘It represents the knocks and setbacks that await you as adults.’ This was unsatisfactory. We demanded more details. Was it a slap with an open palm or a punch with a closed fist? Surely not a hook or an uppercut. Would Bishop Cyril disguise the blow and hit us when we were off-guard? Or would he give us a gentlemanly warning? Might we duck out of the way? Could he take a second swing? How many free hits did Cyril get before we could throw one back? The absurd ritual seemed ripe for subversion. And I had a special plan up my sleeve.
Would Bishop Cyril disguise the blow and hit us when we were off-guard? Or give us a gentlemanly warning?
At previous ceremonies, I noticed that the bishop read out the forenames of each candidate along with their confirmation name. But the surname was left out. My older brother, John Trevelyan Evans, took the saint’s name Patrick and the bishop announced his new identity as ‘John Trevelyan Patrick’. The word ‘Evans’ wasn’t uttered. Here was a perfect opportunity. My first names are David and Lloyd, and if I selected George as my tutelary saint I would oblige Bishop Cyril to say: ‘I confirm you, David Lloyd George.’ Waves of hilarity would break across the pews as this famous but incongruous name was intoned by the bishop. First, I had to secure the adults’ consent. My mother took no interest in minor liturgical details. My father was an atheist who detested clerical mumbo-jumbo and had no stake in my religious development. The priests were another matter. In the year above me, a prankster had chosen the name Lucifer (after St Lucifer of Cagliari) and had been firmly ordered to rethink his selection.
My father, who had walked out on the family a year earlier, happened to pay us one of his occasional visits a week before the ceremony. He spotted my half-completed application form on the table. I explained my intricate plan to tease the bishop and to extract a little merriment from the tedious church service and, to my horror, he sided with the bishop. Worse still, he shared my intentions with my mother. In a rare outbreak of concord, they forbade me from taking the name George. I was outraged. And I was furious with myself for misreading my father’s reaction. My little firework had been defused on the launch pad.
I was still in need of a saint’s name. As I hesitated, my father reached into his jacket and produced his Parker fountain pen, with its gleaming golden arrow, and leaned over the application form. In the space marked ‘confirmation name’ he wrote his own middle name in capital letters. ‘There. That’s what you’re going to be called,’ he said with a self-satisfied chuckle, as if he were naming a goldfish or a tortoise. The ink dried. For some reason I needed to be alone for a few moments so I walked silently into the kitchen. My mother, always sensitive to my mood, came in after me and closed the door. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. My role in the family was never to complain or make a fuss about anything, let alone to scream, weep or bawl. (I left that to the adults.) ‘It’s my name,’ I said, with quiet fury. ‘I deserve to choose my own name.’ Too late. It was done. The precious form now bore the indelible imprint of my father’s decision. I accepted my fate. In fairness, he had no intention of causing me any distress. He’d stumbled on a minor problem and resolved it with a few swift strokes of his pen. An hour later, as he strolled home to his girlfriend’s house in Putney, he had probably forgotten all about it.
I filed up to the high altar with the other boys and I knelt before the plump elderly bishop. He wore green robes, a yellow mitre and a chunky cross on a chain of gold. My new name, Basil, sounds ludicrous now but it passed unnoticed at the time. ‘David Lloyd Basil,’ announced Bishop Cyril. Then he landed the infamous blow. It was a glancing tap across my face. Nothing really. I felt as if I’d been struck on the cheek by a lightly thrown chess piece – which was appropriate since he was a bishop.
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