My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress (3 page)

Gradually, in the warm presence of my new temporary mother, I began to thaw and hesitantly unfold my wings, stretching them out to the sides of my desk to touch my equally tremulous classmates. I sat beside Doreen and made tentative friends with her. She broke into my solitude and gave me the acceptance I needed in the vast, strange world of school.

Doreen was tall and pale and thin with long, black hair cut in a Cleopatra fringe. We held hands in the playground and kept fear at arm's length as best we could by sharing talk and toys. Doreen was my first friend. We'd endure a lot together, especially throughout our final three school years.

In P1 we copied down the endless letters and numbers that marched across the blackboard. With thick, black pencils cocked in our clumsy fists, we patterned pages with ‘walking-stick Fs' and ‘fat-men 5s'. My jotter was a marvel of disorder, showing all those fitful attempts at accuracy. I would force the pencil so hard onto a page that its grooved impression could be seen on all those
underneath. Then the shame of a silly mistake was rubbed with such frenzy that not only the flawed letter disappeared but the very paper itself, leaving damning evidence in the shape of a big, smudgy hole. Miss would give me an admonitory tap on the hand and sigh at my red face and threatened tears, and I'd guiltily turn to a clean page and start again.

Relief from such rigour came in the form of a great fulvous ball of Plasticene and a board. My classmates and I spent many happy afternoons rolling out long sausages and shaping them into people and dogs. What an industry this was: palms moving together in circular motions to make bodies and heads, our stubby fingers stumbling over the more delicate demands of noses, eyes and ears.

Before hometime Miss would read us a story as the fire died. She'd open a big, shiny book on her lap and tell us about fairies or goblins, or sometimes the man named Jesus. She was on her favourite territory then; I was to hear a whole lot more about Him in the near future.

Miss McKeague's choice of career had obviously been arrived at after much soul-searching. I believe she'd pondered deeply the confines of the convent before settling on the relative freedom of the classroom. I can picture her as a young girl: head bowed over steepled fingers, kneeling at the altar in pious supplication, asking the Good Lord for guidance. Her final choice seemed a fitting compromise, promising God that as a teacher she would do all in her power to instil His message in her pupils.

To say that she was a religious zealot would be an understatement because the nun within the educator was forever to the fore. Under her tutelage I learned more about Catholicism than I would at any other time in my life. Too much too soon is a recipe for disaster, so much
so that these days I can only describe myself as ‘a recovering Catholic'.

The RE lesson started at nine and ended at three, or so it seemed. There were morning prayers, mid-morning prayers, grace before meals, grace after meals, then the RE lesson proper, which lasted longer than any other, and finally prayers before hometime. We might have had difficulty with the two-times table or the spelling of our own name, but any such faltering with the Our Father or Hail Mary was the gravest sin of all, and a very good reason for our orisons to be repeated ad nauseam.

We were floored by Christ's Passion and invigorated by his Resurrection. There was an extravagance about Miss then which no other subject could evoke; the dramatic gesturing of crossing and breast-beating of herself as she told of His gruelling journey to Calvary and final expiation. She wept real tears then and we did too, as only children can, trying to understand His suffering and wondering all the while how we could have caused it. I would see His bloodstained face and beseeching eyes every day as He looked down on me from the glossy scroll that hung on the classroom wall, and was conscious always that Jesus was watching me closely for the merest sign of weakness.

Miss had the ability to fuel our fantasies to an intoxicating degree. Heaven was where it all happened. The boys could drive around for all eternity in pink Cadillacs and we girls could wear frothy white gowns with matching wings and golden crowns. At the wave of a silver wand, showers of sweets would pour from an ever-blue sky. There would be rivers of chocolate and mountains of cake and the sun would always shine. We all yearned to go there, but there was just one small problem: we had to die first. And not only that, we had to die in a ‘state of grace'. So we learned our prayers
fervently and struck our chests harder with our tiny fists, knowing that the more we prayed and suffered, the speedier would be our entry into paradise.

Not surprisingly, all this religious brainwashing took up so much room in my head that it tended to block out the rudiments of my early education. And no more so than when I reached P4 and was required to undergo the twin terror-inducing ordeals of confession – the fearful preamble to First Holy Communion – and the Religious Examination.

Our teacher was nothing if not inventive, improvising with a cup of water in place of wine, and pieces of ice-cream wafer for the host. We stood in a solemn circle, sipped the water, threw back our heads, stuck out our tongues and waited for the proffered wafer. Afterwards there was a tense silence as we hung our heads and contemplated the wafer doing its work of pouring all that grace and goodness into us.

I was looking forward to the pomp and ceremony of my First Communion. Nobody, however, had told me about the reality of confession. Confessing sins to Miss was easy, but nothing quite prepares a young child for the tyranny of the confessional – the inky darkness, the stranger behind the grille and the stilted litany of one's misdeeds.

Father Monacle's confession box had been designed for adults, not for very short people or little children like me. I entered its dark interior and, obeying Miss's instructions to the letter, knelt down on the prie-dieu – and disappeared from view. The bewildered priest waited and waited. I heard a tentative ‘Yes, my child?' and became so petrified that I could not get up. Miss had impressed upon us that we must always remain kneeling in the sight of God and the priest.

On getting no response, the good Father stuck his head out the cubicle door.

‘Who's next?' he asked gruffly.

A lady at the head of the waiting row blushed fiercely, got up at once and entered the confessional – to find me cowering there. She hesitated.

‘What's this?' Father Monacle roared at me. ‘What are you doin' down there, in the name of God?'

‘M-Miss s-said—'

‘What!'

‘Miss said I was to kneel down, so she did, and I—'

‘Miss isn't the priest, is she?'

‘No, Father.'

‘Well, tell Miss that I said it's all right if you stand up on the kneeling board from now on.'

‘Yes, Father.'

‘So I hope you're not going to waste any more of my precious time, are ye?'

And with that I was hotly dismissed with a very red face and a decade of the rosary to be said right up at the altar.

Every penitent in the waiting row knew that to be given the rosary and the altar by Father Monacle implied that you had done some serious sinning indeed.

It was a bad beginning and I was determined from that day on never to put a foot wrong when it came to our parish priest and his confessional. I continued to intone that oft-repeated preamble ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned; this is
my first confession
' when I must surely have been on my twenty-first. It shows how well I'd ingested the mantra, how little I understood the whole sorry charade and, most importantly of all, how fearful I was of committing the sin of disobedience and actually thinking for myself.

My First Communion was a triumphant affair. I was all got up in a lacy white dress and veil, white patent-leather shoes and matching handbag, and carried the essential
accessories of every aspiring young Catholic girl: a prayer-book with a pearlised cover and plastic rosary beads. The book, with its gilt edging and lettering proclaiming
My Holy Missal
, had been purchased by my thrifty mother in a 1960s' equivalent of today's Poundstretcher. It was printed – or rather misprinted – in Belgium, with amusing consequences. Here and there an ‘a' would mysteriously be replaced by an ‘o'. That missal would help me to relieve the boredom of many a Sunday mass – I would fervently entreat the Lord to ‘wosh owoy' my sins.

In my white frock and matching accessories I looked like a miniature bride and felt like a fairytale princess. I believe there's a conspiracy afoot within the Church with regard to young girls. We're given the sensation of that white frock and veil so early in life. It acts as the proverbial dangling carrot and gives the dream of marriage focus.

Not that I entertained such thoughts that day. As I stood at the altar in my finery it seemed to me that all the difficult days of preparation had been worthwhile. Simply to wear the frock – and be made to feel special for once, no matter how fleetingly – was a reward in itself.

With Communion done and dusted, Miss McKeague focused all her energies on preparing us for the Religious Exam, a yearly test conducted by the fearsome Father Monacle. It seemed to have no other purpose than to ensure that we were in no danger of even
thinking
about consorting with the Evil One.

Certainly we children could have done without it, but for our teacher it was yet another excuse to neglect ‘less important' subjects, such as history and geography. After all, what was more relevant to a Catholic child: knowing about the world or knowing who had made it?

Our green-covered, dog-eared catechisms of Christian doctrine were learned by heart and we fought
feverishly to retain it all in our wee heads until the dreaded day arrived.

Q. Who made the world?

A. God made the world
.

Q. Who is God?

A. God is our Father in Heaven, the Creator and Lord of all things
.

Q. How many persons are there in the one God?

A. There are three persons in the one God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost
.

Miss rehearsed the questions, guiding us with a pencil waved dramatically in the air like a conductor's baton. We sang out our responses, sometimes falling out of tune – due to inattention or, more probably, temporary brain paralysis – but managing always to end together on an ear-popping crescendo. Most of what was taught and learned was delivered in this lilting manner so that eventually the words took on a meaningless life of their own.

And for ever and ever Amen,

And two times twelve makes twenty-four,

And they all lived happily ever after.

Rote-learning had turned us all into performing parrots. The pedagogical aim of my early schooling seemed to be ‘learn by heart first and understand later'. We were word-perfect though confused, but what did that matter?

Miss always appeared a wee bit flustered on the morning of the great event, the Exam. After all, her very probity was at stake; she could not be seen to falter in the eyes of the good priest, nor could any of us. When the sharp rap sounded on the door we all scrambled to attention. Silence fell like a great blanket as
he
entered.

I'd seen Father Monacle before in the dim light of the confessional, and from a distance as he celebrated Sunday mass (for most of the time with his back to us, in conformation with the Church wisdom of the time). Now I saw him at close quarters.

He was a heavily built man with an alarmingly bald head that shone, as if he'd used a buffing wheel on it that very morning. His eyes appeared huge and menacing behind bifocals, and his head and neck were all of a piece with a spreading purple hue. He looked like a great, black wine bottle, with his purple stopper head and white elliptical collar.

The air quivered with his stertorous breaths, the floorboards creaked under his substantial tread as he waded into the room. We watched and waited in the dreadful silence until he finally came to a halt at the front of the class.

Miss by this stage had begun to unravel, one hand fluttering to the back of her hair, the other smoothing down her skirt. She was swallowing hard, the brooch at her throat rising and falling with the rhythm of her anxiety. Father Monacle struck fear and holy terror into our wee hearts as he stood there, scanning our submissive little faces with his great searchlight eyes, probing for the slightest stain of sin. When at last he spoke it felt like a volcano erupting – a long, low rumbling that caused even our desks to tremble.

‘Are they all good children, Miss McKeague?'

‘Oh yes, Father!'

‘What about young Lagan and McCloy down there? Learning, are they?'

‘Yes, Father. Brendan and Michael are making good progress, Father.'

‘Is that so, miss? Well, we'll see about that, won't we?'

And with that he was off on a tour of the room,
plucking out surnames and punching us with questions. Miss kept one pace behind him, her pained face and mouth working like a goldfish's, urging us on as we stammered and babbled our answers.

Everyone passed of course – that was part of the charade. Father Monacle would appear to soften as he prepared to leave. It seemed as if all the fear and panic he'd spread among us was gathered back into his great, black coat as he bestowed a beaming smile upon us and vented a hearty ‘Well done, children!' Our little faces melted in the warmth of such praise and Miss gave a huge sigh of relief.

When he'd gone, Miss had an announcement to make.

‘Because you've been such good children, I have a special reward for all of you.' And she ducked into her storeroom.

We waited in joyous anticipation, whispering among ourselves, each trying to outguess the other as to what this wonderful prize could be. Some thought money, others were convinced it would be sweets, and the general consensus favoured the latter.

Miss re-emerged moments later, clutching our trophies: a brand-new, plain brown pencil for each of us. It was a right miserable gift when you come to think of it. We'd set our hearts on a chocolate, or even an Imperial Mint from the frequently replenished little round tin on her desk, but it was not to be. We did get out to play, though, while Miss helped herself to a cup of very sweet tea and a Marie biscuit, no doubt to get her blood sugar levels back to normal, poor thing.