At My Mother's Knee (26 page)

The Almighty was obviously shocked as well, because the
senior server was struck down as he was coming out of
the Beehive pub one Saturday afternoon and broke his arm.
That's how I got to swing the thurible, that fascinating, ornate
receptacle, straight out of the Arabian nights, that was used to
burn the incense. The SS was in plaster and could hardly move
his arm. He also had a black eye and a cut on his balding head,
but being a member of that group of eternal martyrs he
couldn't stay at home quietly and recover but preferred to
carry on and let people see how unselfishly he ignored his
suffering for the love of his God. I hated him. 'I wish he was
dead,' I'd moan to my mother.

'Beware,' she would answer in her prophet-of-doom voice.
'Curses like chickens come home to roost.'

In spite of the SS I liked being on the altar. I enjoyed the
ceremony and the elaborate and mystifying preparations that
took place before communion, when the thin white wafers
magically underwent something called transubstantiation and
became the actual body of Christ, while the red wine that we
surreptitiously took swigs of in the vestry was transformed into
his blood. But most of all I loved those patent leather shoes,
polished lovingly with milk before each appearance. My
mother couldn't understand why my black school shoes
wouldn't do for the job but after a lot of pressure and pleading
from me she finally gave in and courtesy of the Provident
Cheque Company bought me a pair. They came with a warning.
'If I find after shelling out thirty bob for a pair of bloody
shoes that you suddenly decide to pack it up like you did the
Cubs
, then you are in big trouble, mate.'

I'd joined the Cubs when I was nine but didn't manage to last the month. I hadn't wanted to be a Cub in the first place,
but my mother wanted me to and so off I went. I was bored
tying knots and competing for badges that involved lighting a
fire with two sticks. What was the point when women down
the years had lost half their jawbones from phosphorus
poisoning working as match girls at Bryant and May's, just to
provide us with a far more convenient way to start a forest fire
if we so chose? The Scout movement was also a wee bit jolly
for me, all that dib-dib-dobbing and calling grown men
Bagheera or Akela. It had a sinister whiff to it, and as far as I
was concerned I couldn't wait to hand in my woggle and get
the hell out of it before some bright spark suggested camping
in North Wales.

All went well for a while. I'd been on the altar for nearly six
weeks. I'd dutifully turned up for the Sunday masses, was a
picture of holiness and had even been entrusted with the task
of holding the small silver tray under the punters' mouths as
the priest gave them their communion. Rotten teeth, no teeth,
foul breath, brown tongues, cold sores, nose hair with globules
of snot attached, you saw it all at that altar rail, and when I
wasn't suppressing the urge to retch I was usually trying not to
laugh at the expressions of exaggerated piety on the faces of
some of the congregation.

Even my mother was beginning to believe that this was
something I just might stick at. She became so confident of my
continued success that she took to mentioning it whenever she
found herself in Eileen Henshaw's.

'I'll take six rashers of back, please,' she'd say politely, pointing
at the bacon. 'But not that top slice, it looks a bit . . . tired.'

'Aren't we all?' Eileen shrugged, peeling the bacon off the
tray and on to the scales.

'Not our Paul.' My mother seized her chance. 'He was serving
at six o'clock mass this morning, bright as a button. Father
Doyle is so impressed with him that he's considering him for the priesthood.' A blatant lie and she knew it, for in reality,
deep down in the back of Father Doyle's mind, there was
already a little niggling idea that his judgement might have
been slightly impaired the day he took me on.

'A priest!' Eileen couldn't have been more shocked if my
mother had said I was joining the Jackson Five. 'I wouldn't
fancy my son growing up to be a priest, creepy bloody things.'

'I shouldn't think there'll be much danger of that, Eileen –
he'll grow up to be just like his father, an atheist who boils
hams. Oh and by the way, I'd chuck them King Eddies out if I
were you, they've got more eyes than a spider.'

Yes, all went well until the night a film called
Gypsy
was shown
on TV. It's a musical starring Natalie Wood and Rosalind
Russell and portrays a highly fictionalized account of the life of
Gypsy Rose Lee, the world's foremost striptease artist, and how
she rose from an ugly duckling to be the Queen of Burlesque.
I'd never seen anything like the characters in the burlesque
house scenes: the bugle-blowing stripper with a voice like gravel
and the faded blonde and her bump-and-grind 'butterfly ballet';
the boozy pit band playing its raucous, brassy and dirty music
while above their heads on the illuminated runway of joy the
elegant Gypsy shed her clothing. My first whiff of burlesque
was a heady one and made me seriously giddy – I couldn't get
the music out of my mind and had taken to standing on the
upstairs landing practising my bumping and grinding. I'd been
shown a glimpse of a world that I secretly longed to be part of:
backstage dressing rooms, touring, performing, fame and notoriety;
an intoxicating and seductive mix. There was the added
bonus that you didn't need to have any talent to succeed in
showbiz. All you really needed was a gimmick.

The next morning found me serving at ten o'clock mass to a
packed house. I was no longer standing in the vestry waiting to
form part of a solemn procession behind Franny Mooney, the SS and Father Doyle. No, in my mind's eye I was backstage at
Minsky's Burlesque, about to make a spectacular entrance,
when I would step out on to the runway and shed my cassock
bathed in the light of a surprise pink spot. The organist played
'Oh come loud anthems let us sing' but all I could hear was the
wah-wah mute of the cornet and the rhythmic throb of the
tom-tom.

Father Doyle and his troop filed diligently on to the altar. I
held back for a few moments, delaying my entrance, and then
sashayed out, smiling up to the gallery. My dad, who was
sitting in the third pew from the front, shifted uneasily in his
seat. I took my position on the altar step and slowly knelt
down, making sure that I executed a perfect stripper's dip as I
descended.

The SS glared at me from the other side of the altar. I flashed
him an angelic smile; didn't he realize that he was witnessing
the debut of Birkenhead's very own Queen of Burlesque? I
managed to resist the lure of the brass section blaring in my ear
and retain a dignified composure for as long as I knelt on the
steps. It wasn't until it was time to swing my thurible that I
really lost it. I rose slowly to walk down the three steps to
collect the censer, pausing slightly at the top before bending my
knee and raising my cassock ever so slightly to reveal a wellturned
ankle and a patent leather shoe. The crowd fell to their
knees as I slowly made my descent, swaying slightly in time to
the music in my ears. Picking up the thurible, I started to swing
it from side to side, slowly at first, the smoke from the
smouldering incense curling sensuously around my legs. Then,
as the drummer in my head picked up the beat, I swung it
faster, twisting my hips with the merest hint of a grind. The
crowd were going wild! The band really cooking with gas!
Listen to those horns! That drummer! I slowly turned and
made my way back up the stairs. At the top, I gently let the
censer chain slip from my hand, lowering my right shoulder and looking over it to give the audience an enigmatic smile to
show that my performance had come to its tumultuous climax!
The applause was deafening. They were tearing the place
apart! The band struck up the reprise, the horns blaring. My
God, I'm a Star!

Father Doyle, chalice in hand, coughed as he passed me on
the altar steps, interrupting my reverie. 'When you're ready,' he
said under his breath, peering at me over his glasses in a very
strange way. 'Communion.'

Afterwards in the vestry the SS let rip. 'What the bloody hell
do you think you're up to? Mincing around the altar like a
dirty great nancy boy. I've been watching you lately. Your
mind's everywhere but on your duties. If you don't want to
serve the Lord then fuck off.'

Philistine, I thought to myself. He'll see one day.

My days at St Joseph's were numbered. The straw that
finally broke the camel's back came when Franny and I had an
uncontrollable and prolonged fit of the giggles during a funeral
service. Father Doyle was furious, as were the bereaved's nearest
and dearest, who didn't leave a tip. We were told to quit the
service of the Church and to contemplate our wicked sins, and
only to return when we were truly repentant and thought that
we might, just might, be able to show a bit of decorum at a
graveside instead of behaving like a pair of hysterical hyenas.
We never went back. The patent leather shoes were relegated
to the cupboard under the stairs, to cries of 'Never again will I
waste another shilling on your little fads' from my mother.

School became boring. Apart from the hated maths, I found
the lessons easy. No point going in, I thought to myself one
morning while I was waiting for the bus, I fancy a day out in
the country. So I jumped the bus to Heswall and spent a
pleasant day exploring the country lanes. This was better than
sitting in a miserable classroom. It was also exhilarating – I was doing something forbidden. Kids who sagged classes could
be expelled or caned in front of the entire school at assembly.
There was the added risk of getting caught by the school board
or someone who knew your parents. It was all very exciting.
The world was my oyster; I could go anywhere I wanted to
(dinner money permitting), and I did. I explored all over the
Wirral, taking the bus to my destination of choice and then
walking home. I must have walked miles. It might have been
interesting, but it was also exhausting.

Notes from my parents explaining my absenteeism were easy
to forge. They were always the same, written in a fairly decent
facsimile of my ma's handwriting:

Dear sir,

I'm sorry Paul was not at school yesterday but he was
bilious again.

Yours faithfully,

M. O'Grady (Mrs).

I did have intermittent trouble with my stomach so I didn't
feel bad about this lie. Soon I was hardly ever at school. I was
roaming the streets of Birkenhead instead, as bored now as I
ever was in class. Sitting for the umpteenth time in a bus shelter
in Heswall on a rainy February morning, cold, hungry and
bored out of my mind, I came to the conclusion that it was
time to call my career as a truant a day and get myself back to
school. If nothing else there were kids my own age to talk
to, and it was warm.

'Oh, Mr O'Grady, nice of you to join us,'
Mr Broad
the PE
teacher shouted across the class as he called out the register.
'It's been so long since we last saw you. My, how you've
grown. Why, I hardly recognized you. Class, in case you've forgotten,
that strange boy at the back is Paul O'Grady.' Huge
burst of merriment around the room.

Sarcastic bastard, I thought, my face burning with embarrassment.
If I had been genuinely ill he'd no right to take
the piss, and if he thought he was so bloody smart then how
come he never twigged that I'd been sagging? Berk.

'I'm going into hospital next week,' Franny piped up next to
me. 'I'm having me tonsils out,' he went on proudly. 'Aunty
Kath's bought me a pair of pyjamas and me mam's got me a
sponge bag to put me bits in, and I get to eat loads of ice
cream.'

I wanted a sponge bag to put me bits in. I wanted to go into
hospital. I wa— Suddenly, as in every good Daffy Duck
cartoon when the duck hatches a plan or thinks of a brilliant
idea, a light bulb came on over my head. That was it! I'd invent
an illness and be taken off to St Cath's Hospital and be spoilt
rotten. I could get myself into the bed next to
Franny's
.

There was another reason why I could do with a spell in
hospital just then, and that was because my dad had received
a letter from the Board of Education enquiring why his son had
been absent from school for the best part of the term. The
proverbial shit was hitting the fan. My dad had to go down to
the education office and explain himself. 'I'll see you tonight,'
he had said ominously as he left for work that morning, 'and
you better have some answers.' I had to move quickly.

Franny had duly been carted off to St Cath's Hospital, complete
with new sponge bag, to have his
tonsils removed
, and so
sensing that there was no time like the present I went into
school and dramatically fainted in assembly. I was carried outside
and taken into the school secretary's office, just as I'd
planned. All sick kids ended up in
Miss Savage's
office. She
was a kindly soul, and because of her name I felt that I had a
connection with her. Miss Savage ran off to get me some water
and I seized my chance. I quickly took the register for my class
from her desk and shoved it down the back of the radiator.
There, that was the evidence, the only proof that I hadn't attended class, disposed of. The notion that there might be
corresponding records down at the Board of Education hadn't
crossed my mind. My degree in low cunning was actually just
a low-grade CSE.

'Where's the pain?' a teacher asked.

'Here,' I responded wanly, and pointed to my stomach.
Actually my guts were bad that day so there wasn't much acting
required when the teacher prodded my side with his finger.
'Does that hurt?'

'OW.' To tell the truth it did, but then that area was usually
tender.

An ambulance was called and I was rushed to hospital,
causing a minor sensation around the school. However, instead
of being delivered to St Cath's and Franny I was taken to
Birkenhead General. My plan was starting to come apart at the
seams. 'It's the wrong hospital,' I kept telling the ambulance
driver.