At My Mother's Knee (23 page)

Honesty, as I soon discovered, was not the best policy when
dealing with the Brothers. I quickly cottoned on to the fact that
if you showed the slightest inclination towards joining the
ranks of the Brotherhood when you grew up it gave you a bit
of breathing space from the strappings. The thought that they
might have made such a lasting impression on one of their
charges that he wished to emulate them appealed to the
Brothers' vast egos. Another recruit for the ranks of God's
Army. Frankly, there was more chance of my joining the Royal
Ballet, but I kept up the pretence for a while until Brother
Kearney finally twigged that my intentions might not be that
sincere and it was back to business as usual. There was no
point my telling my mother that the Brothers were strap-happy
and that the reason I couldn't hold my knife and fork properly
was because my thumb and fingers were bruised and swollen
from yet another vigorous strapping – she'd only have taken
the Brothers' side. In her eyes they were good and saintly men
of the cloth and therefore unable to do any wrong. If I did tell
her that they'd hit me I'd usually get a slap across the head
from her for 'obviously deserving it'.

I learned a lot about Greek mythology at St Anselm's, but
not from a teacher, from my pal
Szwelski
. (It was the custom
to call each other by your surnames.) His father owned the
woodyard at the bottom of Holly Grove and we became
'bezzie mates'. We both hated the same people, which is always
a strong bond in friendships, and his enthusiasm for the tales
of the Cyclops and the Labours of Hercules infected me until I
too became an addict. I must have read every book on Greek
mythology that was available in Birkenhead Central Library.
Szwelski
also shared my passion for
The Avengers
. Cathy
Gale had moved on by then and had been replaced by the mind-boggling Emma Peel. We'd practise judo throws on each
other in his back garden and sneak into his father's woodyard
when it was closed via a small hole in the back fence that led on
to the park. Szwelski played the dual roles of the Diabolical
Mastermind and John Steed, while I of course took the part of
Mrs Peel. He would tie me to a plank facing one of the very large
and very real buzz saws and then switch on the circular saw. He
had assured me that there was no chance of the blade's actually
touching me, let alone cutting me in half, but it was a very nervous
Mrs Peel who lay on that plank and I was always relieved
when Szwelski eventually metamorphosed into John Steed.
Then, after an energetic session throwing himself noisily around
the woodyard to show that he was fighting off the Diabolical
Mastermind, he would rescue me from the jaws of death.

We were also big fans of
The Man from UNCLE
and spent
hours inventing secret codes to foil the enemy, the evil Thrush.
We longed for the incredible gadgets that Napoleon and Ilya
had at their disposal and made do instead with homemade
versions concocted from things found lying around the house.
('Paul, have you seen my powder compact? And have you any
idea where the aerial off the tranny is?') If I couldn't get a job
on the buses or behind the counter of the dry cleaner's, which
at the time were my chosen professions, I decided that a career
as a secret agent was where my true destiny lay.

It was Szwelski's older sister Hannah who introduced me to
classical music. I found her one day in the front room sobbing
heavily into a tissue as she listened to Madam Butterfly belting
out 'One Fine Day'. I joined her on the sofa and she explained
the plot to me between sobs. Something on the lines of
American sailor gets underage geisha pregnant and then dumps
her, causing the heartbroken geisha to top herself. 'Typical
bloody man,' Aunty Chris snorted with disgust when I related
the sorry tale to her.

I was also introduced to one of the mysteries of the female sex when I saw the unappealing sight of used sanitary towels
at the back of the unlit fire, laid and awaiting a match, in the
frontroom grate. These we would poke and prod at with a
stick, unrolling them and examining them for clues. We had no
idea what they were or where the blood had come from; we
just had an inkling that it was something 'rude'.

Apart from my debut as a sheep in St Joey's nativity play I
made my first stage appearance in drag, at St Anselm's. The
senior boys of the main college were putting on a Christmas
show and the powers that be thought it would be a good idea
if the Redcourt boys joined in the fun with one of their own.
The vehicle chosen to display our varied talents was
Hiawatha
,
based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's long-winded poem.
It was a strange choice for an all-male cast as there were scenes
that involved giving birth, but the Brothers obviously thought:
Ah,
Hiawatha
– perfect for boys, lots of Red Indians and stuff.

I was picked to play Hiawatha's grandmother, old Nokomis.
The parents were expected to provide the costumes for their
offspring's part in this epic production and my mother spent
weeks bent over a decrepit Singer sewing machine, cursing as
she tried to run up a Red Indian outfit. It wasn't bad, either, by
the time she'd finished: a pair of brown cotton trousers
trimmed with yellow looped fringing and a matching waistcoat.
To go over the trousers she'd made, as a nod towards
Nokomis's sex, a sort of tabard on to which she'd sewn a
selection of beads and buttons that she'd found at the bottom
of the sewing tin. To complete the look she'd made a wig using
grey wool threaded into a hairnet. I was beside myself.

We rehearsed every other day, prompted to learn our lines by
the constant threat of the strap. The day before
Hiawatha
was
due to open, it was decided that we'd better have a full dress
rehearsal for the benefit of the teachers and senior boys of the
main college.

*

The curtains slowly parted to reveal a group of Red Indians
gathered nervously around a pile of sticks and scrunched-up
newspaper to show that they were huddling around a campfire,
chanting in a slow laborious monotone outside a
ramshackle tepee. The full moon hung low and wobbly in the
sky.

'Downward through the evening twilight
In the days that are forgotten
In the unremembered ages,
From the full moon fell Nokomis,
Fell the beautiful Nokomis . . .'

At this point I ran on to the stage from the wings in the style
of Isadora Duncan, arms raised high above my head, hands
flapping, mouth and eyes wide open to denote fear since,
according to the text, old Nokomis 'fell affrighted' from this
full moon of hers.

Some of the seniors started to snigger. There was even a
wolf-whistle from the back, throwing the Indian chorus completely
off their stride and causing the Brothers to unsettle the
cast even further by loudly shushing and threatening the perpetrators.
During this temporary hiatus in the proceedings, I
thought I'd try a bit of improv, as they like to call it in comedy
clubs. I felt I couldn't just stand there, I'd better do something,
at least until the Indians got their act together.

I ran downstage throwing my hands to the sides of my face
and giving them the old eyes and mouth 'fear routine' again.
Nokomis was scared and confused – she'd just fallen to earth
from the moon, for God's sake – and via movement and mime
this was my interpretation of the poor woman's plight.

'I know, Edvard Munch's "The Scream",' one of the seniors
shouted, to much hilarity. Arseholes, I thought to myself, ignoring them and instead taking off round the stage like a
mad thing, clutching my head and letting out a harrowing wail
as I ran. It was exhilarating.

'Where am I?' I implored dramatically, now completely as
one with the character of Nokomis. I knew this woman. I was
this woman. 'What is this place?' I asked, arms outstretched.

'The doctor will see you now,' some wag from the sixth form
called out.

'Good, cos I'm going to have a baby,' I snarled at the heckler,
inciting a round of applause from the house. My first putdown;
not a cracker, I'll admit, but OK by nine-year-old
standards.

'In the moonlight and the starlight, Fair Nokomis bore a
daughter,' the drama teacher hissed from the wings, desperate
to snap the paralysed Indians out of their stupor and restore
order. His hysterical voice carried to the back of the hall.

Mild hysteria broke out when, after retiring to the tepee, I
gave birth to a bouncing baby daughter – literally, as the Tiny
Tears doll that was playing the daughter was dropped by the
nervous midwife assisting at the birth and, landing on her
rubber head, bounced beautifully off the stage and fell at
Brother Ennis's feet.

Then the makeshift tepee, a death trap constructed from two
bedsheets and half a dozen garden canes, collapsed along with
what little composure the audience had left. I lay in the
wreckage unable to move, since the looped yellow fringing on
my trousers was caught among the canes.

The Tiny Tears doll grew up to be a big strapping girl who
in turn gave birth in the remains of the tepee to Hiawatha himself,
assisted by me. I had no choice in the matter since I was
still entangled in the ruins. Powerless to free myself, I lay there
and pretended to go to sleep. After all, I reckoned old Nokomis
had had a bit of a day of it, what with falling from the moon,
giving birth with no husband to support her and then seeing her daughter make the same silly mistake by dropping one herself.
She was probably ready to call it a day.

The newly born Hiawatha danced around me in a chamois
leather loincloth chanting his verse. The seniors were howling,
the Brothers shook their heads and coughed. From my prone
position I weighed up the situation. The show was a turkey.
The audience were laughing so hard that it seemed the only
way to salvage what was left was to play it for laughs. My cue
came:

'Safely bound with reindeer sinews,
Stilled his fretful wail by saying—'

I sat up abruptly, as if woken from a deep sleep, and after a
hammy display of yawning and stretching absent-mindedly
scratched my head, deliberately dislodging my wig so that it hung
drunkenly over one eye as I delivered my line in the style of a
deadpan Scouse housewife. '"Hush, the Naked Bear will hear
you",' I drawled. An embryonic Lily Savage had briefly emerged.

It brought the roof in. Even the Brothers couldn't help
smiling. I liked the buzz I was getting from making people
laugh, and basked in the praise that was showered on me by
the senior boys after the show.

'Where's that boy in the grey hat?' a big glamorous-looking
senior asked, piling into the backstage changing area. 'He was
really funny.' It wasn't a hat, it was a wig, I almost said but
didn't, not wanting to spoil the moment.

Hiawatha
never made it to opening night. Brother Ennis
thought it best that we didn't go on in front of the parents and
governors. He said we were under-rehearsed and the show was
more than a little chaotic, a kinder way of saying that we
stank. I was devastated, but with the resilience of youth
quickly put the matter behind me.

'Next time those Brothers want you to wear a Red Indian squaw's outfit,' my mother said, 'tell them to make it their
bloody selves.'

The morning that my
elevenplus results
fell through the letter
box of Number 23 just happened to be the day of my sister's
wedding. I'd failed, and even worse was being told that my
next school would be the dreaded St Hugh's, a secondary
modern on Park Road South that we at St Anselm's looked
upon as the roughest place on earth and avoided even walking
past on our way home.

My mother, who had been convinced that I'd passed,
collapsed on to the sofa in floods of disappointed tears, knocking
her carefully placed wedding hat to one side as she threw
her hands up to her head. 'How could you?' she cried accusingly.
'How could you fail?' She went on to declare that she'd
never be able to hold her head up in the street again. St
Anselm's had kudos; St Hugh's, none.

For me, the world came to a crashing halt that morning. For
a St Anselm's boy to be demoted to St Hugh's was tantamount
to suicide in my book. I felt like Cain, cast out into the land of
Nod. My brother and cousins had been educated there and
told hair-raising accounts of bullying and brutality that made
Flashman
read like
Mary Poppins
. They were probably grossly
exaggerated flights of fancy, those stories, but they were
enough to strike terror into my eleven-year-old heart.

'If I have to go to the Yozzers,' I wailed, 'I'll kill meself.'

My sister appeared from upstairs, her hair wrapped in a chiffon
scarf to protect the Doris Day bouffant she was sporting,
set and combed out that morning by Pat of Birkenhead
Market. 'D'ya mind not ruining my wedding day,' she pleaded
tearfully. 'Dad, tell him, I'm getting married in a couple of
hours and look at the state of me mother.' My father, as ever
the mediator, calmed my sister down, tried to pacify my
mother and consoled me with the promise that first thing Monday morning he would personally go down to the
Education Board and get me transferred to another school.

The bride's mother's tears of despair had turned to hot ones
of anger. 'I bet you all those Cheshire boys have passed, and
let's face it, they're a lot thicker than you,' she ranted, referring
to her suspicion that the boys from Cheshire got preferential
treatment. Throughout my last year it seemed as though all the
boys who lived there were periodically swept away to a classroom
and in private sat an exam in preparation for the
elevenplus. This happened quite frequently, and the boys who
sat these tests never discussed them with the rest of us. My
mother was very suspicious about this and got it into her head
that they were being groomed to go on to greater things.