A Young Man's Passage (5 page)

As Doreen had a weak bladder, she was obliged to get up at frequent intervals throughout the night. Even this she turned to practical advantage. When she got up at 6 a.m. she would wash and brush her teeth before returning to bed for the final hour of rest. This would save time later on, and five minutes after the alarm clock went off she was up and dressed and shovelling breakfast into her children. Lunch would be over by noon and tea on the table at half past three in the afternoon.

If in the summer we went on a trip to the local open-air swimming pool, it was important to Doreen that we be the first to arrive. We would find ourselves sitting by the pool before it was warm enough to change into swimming costumes, and sleepy-eyed we would watch the attendant clean the scum from the water’s surface.

I don’t remember Doreen ever being depressed, but she was frequently ill and unable to carry on at the usual frantic pace. She was asthmatic and slept with an oxygen cylinder by her bed. Sometimes she would seem to run out of breath, and I remember her groping in her handbag for a small plastic contraption she called her ‘puffer’. She would place one end of this in her mouth and inhale, and then her breathing would be easier. As well as asthma, Doreen seemed prone to all sorts of other afflictions. A superficial finger wound became septic and her finger was amputated. For Doreen this was a great talking point and she would waggle her stump in the air and shriek with laughter. Bronchitis and influenza also seemed to enter and depart her body as they pleased. The maladies kept her thin and frequently weak, but they served only to increase her desire for quickness and efficiency in every aspect of her day. On Saturday mornings she would often boast that she had done her entire week’s housework, dusting, hoovering and all, by 8 a.m.

As her children grew up, Doreen was able to enter more fully into the swim of social activity in Teddington. Thus her conversation took on a different tone, centring in general on the Railway Tavern. Fortunately for me, the character called Shauna was also a regular there. I had grown quite attached to the infamous Shauna over the years and, like a wayward relation, I would have hated to lose touch.

For my mother, now free from child-bearing duties, time was more her own too. She chose college and career, but their friendship weathered the contrast.

In the summer I would still sunbathe near Doreen on her visits, bury my face in a towel and be presumed to be in the trance of adolescence. Sometimes, at the vital part of her anecdote, Doreen would lower her voice, something she had never done when I was six, and I was obliged to cease breathing and sprout antennae to capture the sordid climax of the tale.

WE WERE RAISED
as Catholics, washed and smartly dressed every Sunday for church, which we attended with our mother – our father being more of an atheist. ‘You live, you die, that’s it,’ he said, rather unimaginatively.

I loved church, the smells and the bells and the seriousness of it all. I had complete faith in the power of prayer and would close my eyes and press my mouth against the bitter dark varnished wood of the pew, reciting ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’ over and over under my breath, dedicating one each to my parents, my sisters, cats and guinea pigs.

Christenings, first holy communions and confirmations were big family affairs. I had a pale blue rosary kept in a clear plastic case and a prayer book with a picture of a saintly-looking boy kneeling in prayer on the cover, who I thought looked a bit like me.

When I was ten I became an altar boy and, of course, it altered me.

I took my duties very seriously. The priest at the Sacred Heart Church was Canon Moore, a delicate, elderly man with kind, watery eyes. I loved lighting the big candles on the altar, reverently passing him the water and wine, and wafting around in my boy-size cassock and surplice.

There were a selection of these in the sacristy, and as you never quite knew how many boys were going to turn up, I made sure I got there early. There was nothing worse than being left with an ill-fitting cassock. Just an inch above floor length was what you wanted, although I would rather have it too long than too short. I didn’t mind having to lift my ‘dress’ from the knee as I went about my holy business, rather like a well-to-do lady in an old-fashioned film. If the cassock was too short in the arm and stopped unceremoniously halfway down the calf, you felt a bit of a fool and tried to move about with slightly bent knees to disguise things.

To be given the task of ringing the hand-held gold bells during the transubstantiation was a thrilling responsibility. This is the climax of the mass, the moment the priest raises the Eucharist and says, ‘The Body of Christ.’ This isn’t just ritual: the true Catholic knows that a real transformation has taken place, signified by the bells.

None of this drama was lost on me, and the special effect of the bells, if timed correctly and gently shaken with the merest ripple, could greatly increase the potency of the congregation’s spiritual experience, sending shivers down their collective spine.

Nowadays the nearest I get to that sensation is the transformation scene in my annual production of
Cinderella
, when the Fairy Godmother turns rags into a ballgown and a pumpkin into a glittering coach. Light this moment properly through some gauze, add plenty of dry ice, some bad-tempered miniature ponies and a click-track of session singers ooh-ing and ah-ing ethereally, and you are indeed transported once again.

I went to confession regularly and once asked Canon Moore to pray for Hildebrand. She’d had an abnormally large litter and one was dying each day despite my mother’s best efforts with an alarm clock and an eyedropper full of milk.

‘And who is Hildebrand, my son?’ he asked.

‘A guinea pig,’ I said.

I blushed furiously the next Sunday, mortified to hear the story repeated at the end of his sermon as an amusing anecdote. What of the confidentiality of the confessional? The holiness of the sacraments? Nevertheless I started weeding the priest’s garden once a week for half a crown. It was mainly shrubs and very overgrown, but a rich source of dandelion leaves, which I proudly presented to Hildebrand and Patch. Their eyes glistened and their jaws swivelled.

MY LAST FEW
years of primary education at the Sacred Heart School were stress-free. I skipped over the road to school and rode my bicycle round Bushey Park. ‘Never on the roads!’ was one of my mother’s rules, and I persisted in riding on the pavements until I was 16, oblivious to the angry old ladies forced to flatten themselves against privet hedges in order to let me past.

I continued to be fascinated by animals. I joined the RSPCA and various wildlife organisations, avidly read Joy Adamson’s books about Elsa the ‘Born Free’ lion and wept buckets over the fate of her various cubs.

My mother and I continued to amuse each other, developing secret catchphrases, nudging each other during mass if we spotted someone wearing an unflattering hat. My father made a good straight man, and didn’t seem to mind being the fall guy, although he’d get a bit cross if he fell asleep in front of the TV and my mother poked a knitting needle down his ear.

Years later I had a similar relationship with my pianist Russell Churney. He’d fall fast asleep in the tour bus and I’d use his open mouth as an ashtray.

I slowly caught up with my reading and writing, thanks mainly to an inspiring teacher called Mrs Lang. Petite and energetic, she had red hair but I liked her even so. She was patient with me and seemed genuinely thrilled when I got something right. I wasn’t exactly backward – I just did things back to front. The next year I was in Miss Lomax’s class. She was thin and powdery and didn’t take much notice of me so I fell behind a bit.

I was a bit in love with a girl called Catherine and gave her a Valentine’s card.

Once a week I cycled to Hampton Wick to have piano lessons with Mrs Keable, who had a vase of dusty plastic chrysanthemums on display in her front window winter and summer. Each lesson cost a very reasonable half a crown, but she used to secretly give me sixpence back. Already in her eighties, she was a patient teacher and would demonstrate the correct way to play ‘The Moonlight Sonata’ despite the fact that her arthritic fingers made it impossible. I smiled politely.

Progress was slow, though. The mirror-writing problem resurfaced when I read music, and I somehow managed to play backwards. I finally mastered a piece called ‘Swans on the Lake’, from Book One. Simple and sedate, it became a family joke when a year later it was still the only thing I could play.

One week I turned up and the plastic flowers had gone. So had Mrs Keable, her bereaved daughter informed me. She had passed away during the week and there would be no more piano lessons.

As I hadn’t displayed any shining talent as a pianist, no new tutor was sought, but we had an old upright at home, all candlestick holders and ivory keys, and I continued to thump out ‘Swans on the Lake’ whenever the fancy took me.

A few years later, when I had every intention of becoming a famous pop star, I waited till everyone was out and wrote what I thought were fabulous songs on the now out-of-tune piano.

Then one day I came home from school and saw my father having one of his weekly bonfires. It wasn’t until I wandered into the dining room and saw the empty space against the wall that I realised what he was burning. My piano.

‘What are you doing? I play that!’

‘No you don’t,’ he said.

As no one had heard me play, my story that I was writing the hits of the future wasn’t very persuasive. At any rate, it was too late.

Always ready to cast myself as the wronged heroine, I salvaged a few keys from the pyre and flew up to my room in tears. I still have them somewhere, and about once a year I bring up the subject of the piano-burning. The fact that I didn’t develop into the next Elton John we can put down to that needless incineration.

For my final year in primary school I was in Miss Ronson’s class. A big-boned woman with a manly round nose and a booming voice, she lived locally in a bungalow opposite the shrew-like Miss Leeming. Neighbours watched to see if there was light on in both homes at the same time. . .

‘He’s come on leaps and bounds!’ she informed my mother at the parents’ evening.

Secondary school was looming and although Broom Road comprehensive school for boys was the obvious local choice, the select few could apply for a grant to St Benedict’s, part of Ealing Abbey in west London, and suggested all those years ago by Julian Stoner.

My mother asked if this was worth considering for me.

‘Oh Mrs Clary!’ guffawed Miss Ronson. ‘I said he was coming along, but I don’t for a moment think he stands the remotest chance of getting in there. He won’t even pass the eleven-plus!’

If only she’d been right.

TWO

“Will you walk a little faster?” Said the whiting to the snail

“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.”

‘THE LOBSTER QUADRILLE’, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, LEWIS CARROLL

I PASSED THE
exam. This uncharacteristic flash of academic success I put down to my ‘lucky pants’, which my mother had bought for me a week before from Marks and Spencer. They were red tartan Y-fronts with a light blue trim and I wore them for any future exams or special occasions for the next ten years. My first boyfriend was to pick them up one day and read the label. ‘Ages 9–11?’

If I hadn’t gone to St Benedict’s, it would all have been so different. It was the unholy monks who taught me the rudiments of glamour, alternative living and brutality. Until I walked through the gates of St Ben’s on that fateful day in September 1970, I was a naive, uncomplicated, albeit slightly eccentric eleven-year-old, anxious to please, interested in guinea pigs, local gossip and church.

When I made my exit seven years later I was a languid, head-flicking teenager determined to avenge myself.

But we had better stick with the facts, and their consequences.

Everyone, especially me, was flabbergasted when the letter arrived saying I had passed the entrance exam and was accepted into St Benedict’s. I think I probably did better in the interview than the exam. I was a perky, well-spoken boy and I had explained in some detail to the bemused panel of monks how to tell the sex of a baby guinea pig. My pedigree as an altar boy, not to mention my job as Canon Moore’s gardener, also stood me in good stead. My mother was particularly pleased.

I felt a sense of achievement that was new to me, and I was very glad I didn’t have to go to Broom Road as I’d encountered chaps from that school and they were rough and tough – characteristics in a boy I had not yet learned to appreciate.

St Benedict’s was a public school, though, and the fees were more than my parents could afford, but we filled out forms and applied to Richmond Borough Council for a grant, which was duly given.