At My Mother's Knee (21 page)

Religious education at St Joseph's had been a cosy affair. I liked
the branch of Catholicism they taught there. The Bolger's
account of the Nativity was enchanting and in my mind's eye
the story ran like a Disney cartoon, prince and princess played
by Joseph and Mary. The angel became the fairy godmother,
Herod was a perfect substitute for the wicked queen, the Magi
provided the magical effects and the shepherds and animals
contributed the comedy relief. I was more than pissed off when
I was chosen to play a sheep in my first nativity play. I wanted
to be the Angel of the Lord, and instead I had to crawl around
on all fours wearing my sister's white polo-neck jumper with
the neck pulled up over the back of my head for a fleece and a
black sock on each hand and foot for hooves. I didn't even try
to upstage the rest of the cast by employing a bit of focus-pulling imaginary grass-munching or letting them have a
couple of well-timed baas; instead I just mooched around in
the background, bitterly disillusioned with showbiz.

I made my
first confession and communion
at St Joseph's,
and thank God I did, for if the Brothers of St Anselm's had
been instrumental in preparing a young child to search his
conscience and confess his sins before partaking of a slice of
Christ's body then the occasion would've rivalled the
Inquisition. I couldn't wait to get in that confessional; it held
all the mystery of a conjuror's box. First you had to examine
your conscience – had you honoured your father and mother?
Or taken the Lord's name in vain or coveted your neighbour's
goods? I had no idea what coveted meant but it sounded sinful
so I mentally ticked the box. We were told to write our sins
down so that we would remember them come the day. I was
forever leaving lists of sins around the house that my mother
would find.

'What's all this? "I have coveted my neighbour's goods"? "I
have been disobedient"? "I stole a penny off the mantelpiece"?
Did you now, my lad? Well, you'd better tell the priest or you'll
roast.' I did tell the priest, and on a slow week when I hadn't
been particularly sinful I would invent some peccadilloes so he
wouldn't feel I was wasting his time. The penance you received
depended on the severity of your sin, and in my case it was usually
half a dozen Hail Marys and Our Fathers and an Act of
Contrition.

Nowadays I'd need a team of exorcists working through the
night to hear my confession and my penance would probably
be crucifixion. I haven't been to confession in years and nor
can I see myself going in the foreseeable future, but back then
I thought it was marvellous – confess your sins on a Saturday
night and after holding back on any thoughts, words or actions
that could be construed as sinful you took your communion
with a clear conscience on the Sunday morning. Then, allowing a suitable space of time for the host to go down (God
forbid you should chew it), you went straight out and started
sinning again.

There were two types of sin: mortal and venial. A venial sin
was nicking a penny off the mantelpiece. Mortal sin was a little
more serious; you only earned this badge if you committed
murder or missed mass. Newborn babies were scarred with the
Original Sin of Adam and Eve and if they died before receiving
the sacrament of baptism they went to a place called limbo. If
you died with the stain of sin on your soul, having been unable
to get a priest to your bedside to hear your last confession, then
you were packed off to purgatory. This was only temporary,
though – just until your soul had been purified and 'purged in
the flames'. If you liked, you could help the dead on their way
to their heavenly reward and spring them from purgatory by
offering up a spiritual appeal in the form of prayers or indulgences,
particularly during Lent. It felt good when, after a
prolonged bout of chewing the altar rails – Aunty Chrissie's
description of the devout at a heavy session of prayer – another
tortured soul entered the pearly gates of heaven.

You only went straight up to heaven, bypassing the annoyance
and inconvenience of a stopover in purgatory, if you were
truly righteous. St Bernadette, the Holy Family and other Alisters
of the Catholic stage held court there. On the gates
stood St Peter, all beard and flowing white robes, beautifully
backlit against the clouds, leaning on a marble lectern and idly
flicking through the pages of a large tome that contained all
the names of the worthy allowed to enter, a sort of celestial
bouncer on the door of a very exclusive members-only club.
Hell was for folk like Hitler, Rose Long and the Orange
Lodge.

So, as you will have gathered, I had theology all sewn up and
sorted out neatly into little compartments in my mind at an
early age. I was ready for the big day, the most important day in a Catholic child's life, known in the trade as your
First Holy Communion
.

Along with all the other kids in the class, I took it very
seriously.
Father Doyle
from
St Joseph's Church
came and
spoke to us, stressing the importance of the occasion and
heightening our growing excitement at the knowledge that we
were finally getting to sample that little white wafer.

Oh, the magnificence and splendour of it all! The church
packed to the rafters, ablaze with candles and alive with music
as the church organist, working full steam ahead, blasted out
a hymn to glory while I sailed majestically down the aisle with
Clare McGrath
, my communion partner and secret love, at my
side.

My mother had knitted me my communion jumper, and
she'd also made one for Franny while she was at it. Underneath
this startlingly white garment I wore a Bri-nylon shirt and a red
tie on elastic; a pair of grey shorts and knee-length socks completed
the outfit. The pièce de résistance of this ensemble was
emblazoned proudly across my chest: a shiny scarlet sash. This
was my finest hour – Steve Zodiac, eat your heart out. With
the beautiful Clare of the soft brown curls and rosy cheeks
walking alongside me, resplendent in her scaled-down version
of a bride's
dress
, complete with veil, her eyes modestly downcast,
her tiny fingers encased in white lace gloves and wrapped
around a prayer book, I thought we were possibly the most
gorgeous sight on the face of Planet Earth. I tried to keep up
the butch Prince Valiant act as I knelt at the altar but I was
afraid my shaking would give me away as I trembled in
anticipation of my first taste of God.

Would it taste salty like a crisp, or like a sherbet flying
saucer, I wondered as Father Doyle lowered the wafer into my
mouth. I closed my eyes respectfully and waited for an electric
shock of divine energy to enter my body as the sacrament and
I became one. It was a bit of an anti-climax. The wafer slid off my tongue and clung to the roof of my mouth until I scraped
it off with the tip of my tongue, when it dissolved into mush
and slid down my throat. No lights, no heavenly choirs, no
pounding in the ears. Was this what I'd starved myself and
missed supper and breakfast for? Surely there should be some
slight indication from the physical body, a tremor at least, or
better still blinding rays of light emanating from various parts
to show that a spiritual earthquake had just taken place inside
and I was now in a state of grace. Still, I wasn't going to be
downhearted, and at the undoubted post-mortem back at
school, when the recipients would excitedly discuss their
experiences of swallowing the host, I'd hold my own with a
completely fabricated but compelling story of flashing lights
and divine interventions.

Apart from the sheer glory of it, making my
First Holy Communion
turned out to be a highly profitable occasion. I
got a pound from Aunty Chris, a pen off my dad and a prayer
book from my sister, and in every 'Congratulations on your
First Holy Communion' card there was at least a ten-bob note.
After the ceremony there was a party in the school hall with
trestle tables laid out with orange juice, cakes, sandwiches and
jelly, which was just as well since most of the kids were close
to fainting from hunger, not having eaten since the night
before. After the feast came the group photo and then individual
shots of us standing, smiling shyly, on a wobbly table with
a statue of the Virgin Mary peering over our shoulders. Living
as I did in my protected and cloistered world, of which the
majority of the inhabitants were of the Catholic persuasion,
Catholicism felt like more than membership of an exclusive
and superior club. I felt part of a large, secure and loving family,
but my attitude to religion was about to change as I was
introduced to some of the darker members of the Catholic
brotherhood.

T
HE SUNDAY BEFORE I STARTED AT ST ANSELM'S I WAS ALLOWED
to wear my new school uniform to church. My parents
never went to Sunday mass together. My dad preferred St
Joseph's while my ma was a worshipper at the altar of downtown
St Werburgh's
. Usually I went to St Joseph's with my dad,
but this day was my mother's moment of glory and she
paraded me around outside St Werburgh's like Madam Rose
showing off Baby June. In response to Father Lennon's obvious
delight at seeing me in my new school uniform, the hallowed
badge of St Anselm's embroidered on my breast pocket, my
mother went into the act.

'Yes, Father, he does look smart, and he'd better stay that
way . . . or else.' She broke into peals of false merriment but
the look in her eye said if I got that uniform dirty I was dead
meat. 'He starts at St Anselm's in the morning,' she went on to
explain, emphasizing the
St Anselm's
just in case anyone within
a two-hundred-yard radius hadn't heard her. 'Yes, he passed
the entrance exam; now all he has to do is work hard. You
wouldn't believe the books he has to read . . .' and she was off.
Brother Ennis
, the headmaster, had sent a letter to my parents
advising them of what was suitable for a St Anselm's boy in the
way of reading matter.

All comics, with the exception of
Look and Learn
, a weekly magazine for children that was considered educational, were
forbidden. The only comic strip deemed suitable to grace the
pages of
Look and Learn
was Asterix the Gaul, which I hated,
so I took myself off to Mersey Park to read my
Beano
,
Dandy
and
Beezer
in peace, hiding them, along with the stack of
American comics Uncle Al and the cousins had brought back
from sea, under the guinea pig's cage in the shed outside. I
loved American comics, in particular Casper the Friendly
Ghost and Archie and Jughead. The small ads at the back had
me drooling. What wouldn't I have given for a pair of X-ray
specs or a tank full of Sea Monkeys, but you needed to send
dollars or a money order and had to have something called a
zip code, all very frustrating to an eight-year-old on a mission.

Brother Ennis went on to advise that
reading
should be
restricted to suitable works such as
Moby Dick
,
Ivanhoe
,
King
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
and, of course, the
Catechism. Consequently, to my horror, I received copies of
those hated books for Christmas instead of the usual Popeye
annual, Famous Five sagas and Borrowers stories.

Television
was to be heavily restricted and censored by the
parent, said the Gospel According to Brother Ennis. Instead of
watching television the time could be spent more productively,
quietly reading or studying.

No more
Avengers
? I rebelled against this outrage instantly.
No more evenings wrapped in a towel after the Saturday night
bath, glued to the telly, absorbing and memorizing every detail
of the plot that was unfurling before me so I could re-enact it
in my mind the next day on my way to church? It was my
reason for living, my source of life. What were these Christian
Brothers thinking? Didn't they have tellies? Hadn't they
relished the sight of the glorious goddess that was Mrs Gale
dressed head to toe in black leather beating ten bells of shite
out of the villain's henchmen? I lived for
The Avengers
. John
Steed with his bowler and brolly at the ready and his cavalier attitude to life, and Cathy Gale the ice-cool anthropologist
who chucked men over her shoulder with a flick of her wrist,
touched a nerve and started a lifelong love affair with the
show. In the end my dad agreed that providing I'd done my
homework I could watch
The Avengers
and a few selected children's
programmes approved of by the Brothers, a rule that I'm
glad to say was never really enforced.

My mother took me to school that first September morning in
1963, but not without paying a visit to Henshaw's first to
show off her very own child prodigal.

'I see they've arrested that
Christine Keeler
for perjury,'
Eileen said as we came into the shop, looking up from the
Daily Mirror
that was spread out before her on the counter.

'I'm not interested in the affairs of trollops,' my mother
replied curtly. 'I'll just take a
Woman's Own
, please, something
to read on the bus.'

'And where are you off to then?' Eileen asked, looking at me
and pulling a face as if she'd just discovered dogshit on the
floor.

'School,' my mother replied before I could speak. 'It's his
first day of term . . . at St Anselm's College.' She savoured the
words. 'It's two buses, you know, but worth the journey seeing
how it's the best boys' school in Birkenhead.'

Eileen, resenting the implication that her own little darling's
school might be somewhat inferior to the omnipotent St
Anselm's, took the gloves off and unsheathed her claws.

'Isn't that a fee-paying school?' she asked, her face a picture
of innocence.