At My Mother's Knee (17 page)

We sat sucking happily on our sports mixtures and looked
about us, giving the room the once-over.

The infants' classroom was a prefabricated building,
separate from the main school. Light and airy, it had a frieze of
the alphabet running the length of one wall and a Wendy house
stuffed full of interesting things like a pretend cooker complete
with tiny pots and pans and a plastic tea set in the corner. I was
itching to get in there and set up house but Miss Bolger, an
irascible little woman driven to the brink of insanity by a lifetime
of teaching infants, thought otherwise. The Wendy house
was strictly out of bounds and instead she said we should sit at
our desks and make something 'nice' out of the big lump of
blue plasticine that sat, hard as a rock, on a slate in front of us.
The sound of thirty-five kids smashing rock-hard lumps of
plasticine on slate was enough to set Miss Bolger off with her
duster again.

'Quietly children, QUIETLY!' she shrieked, making more
noise than the entire school put together as she laid into her
desk once more. 'The boy or girl who makes the best model
out of their plasticine can come up to my desk and take a
sweet, only one, mind, from the sweet tin as a prize.'

'Balls to her,' said Franny. 'I've got me own.'

Around mid-morning Miss Bolger told us to line up and
collect our bottles of milk from a crate by the door. I hated
milk then, especially milk that had sat outside in the sun all morning before being brought in by two bigger lads from the
main school.

'Take one bottle each, children, and then return to your
desks . . . quietly,' said the Bolger, clapping her hands. I looked
at the little bottle of milk as if it were poison. Franny sat
sucking his through a straw, swinging his legs contentedly and
humming to himself.

'You gonna drink your milk?' he asked. I'd rather have
drunk the contents of the spittoon in Barney's, but before I
could answer him the Bolger appeared before me.

'Do I spy a little boy who doesn't want to drink his lovely
milk?' she asked in a saccharine-laced voice, bending down to
get a better look at the ungrateful child before her. I didn't like
her being so close. Her breath smelt of peppermints and her
cold eyes belied her tone.

I didn't think her question merited a verbal answer so I kept
my eyes averted from hers and just nodded.

'Oh, but you must,' she said, a hint of threat beginning to
creep into her voice. 'Little boys who don't drink their milk
won't grow up to be big and strong, will they?' She pushed a
straw through the foil cap and offered the bottle to me. 'Come
on, drink it up,' she said firmly. 'There are little black babies
out in Africa who never see milk from one day to the next and
here's a naughty little boy like you refusing to drink his.'

Lucky them, I thought as I sat on my hands and shook my
head defiantly, my lips tightly sealed.

I became obsessed with these little black babies as I progressed
through St Joseph's. There was a scheme, popular in all
Catholic junior schools at the time, called the Good Shepherd.
You were encouraged to contribute a penny or two out of your
pocket money to this fund, and at the end of term the child
who had given the most got to name a baby in Africa and have
tea with the bishop. Fiercely competitive, I'd cadge a penny
from someone every day to hand in to the Bolger to make sure I was always top of the league. Apart from the occasional
group of sailors at Woodside ferry ('Don't stare, Paul'), the
only other black person I was aware of at the time was
Chamois Davies
, a wiry little guy who wore a camel coat and
a fedora, so named because he sold chamois leathers off the
back of a handcart in Birkenhead Market.

Come the day of reckoning, the pennies were counted and
the bearer of the Good Shepherd title, the child who had collected
the most money, was none other than Paul James
O'Grady. Oh, I basked in the glory and gave long and careful
thought to the name of my black baby. Eventually I came up
with Twizzle, after the puppet on the telly. It was explained to
me that this was highly unsuitable and wouldn't I be better off
choosing the name of a saint? I settled on Michael, boring but
safe, and no doubt a huge relief for some poor kid out in
Africa.

Tea with the bishop was akin to meeting royalty, better even.
My mother washed, scrubbed and polished me to within an
inch of my life, dressing me in my Sunday best clothes. With
the winners from the other classes at school, I had jelly and
orange juice and a huge fuss was made of me. I floated home
in a beatific state, much to my brother's amusement.

'What did the bishop have to say to you then?'

'He said I could kiss his ring.'

Total collapse of brother.

The Bolger was a no-nonsense woman. She it was who broke
the earth-shattering news to me that Father Christmas didn't
exist. It was quite a shock. There was no counselling before or
after, no gentle preparation for such devastating news. She just
came out with it, as blunt as a widow's knife, telling me that
all along the bearer of the pillowcase at the bottom of my bed
had been my dad. I sit here today and think what a bitch, and
I can still taste that warm milk as she forced it on me.

'Don't be silly and open your mouth,' she said, her patience
deserting her as she prised my lips open and pushed the straw in.
'Drink your milk.' I could hear Franny sucking air noisily
through his straw as he drained every last drop out of his bottle.
I could smell the disgusting stuff. My mouth grew dry and
I could feel my stomach beginning to rise in revolt. I closed my
mouth tighter and shook my head fiercely.

'DRINK YOUR MILK!' the Bolger roared, losing it
completely. She pulled the straw out of the bottle and forced
the milk down me. The inevitable happened: I threw up all
over her suede shoes. Her cheeks burned red and for a moment
I thought she was going to hit me.

'Francis Mooney,' she said, trying to hide the fury in her
voice, 'take this . . . take Paul O'Grady to the lavatory, will
you?'

'I can't, Mrs,' said Franny nonchalantly, chewing on his
straw.

'It's Miss, Francis, not Mrs, and why can't you go with Paul
to the lavatory?' she asked, her face by now a vivid scarlet.

'Cos I don't know where it is, that's why.'

The Bolger marched us to the classroom door and out into
the playground. When she raised her arm up into the air, I
thought she was going to lash out at us. So did Franny, judging
by the way he winced and covered his head with his hands.
She didn't hit us, although she probably felt like killing us,
especially me. Instead she was pointing across the yard to the
boys' toilet block. 'Over there,' she said. 'The boys' lavatories
are over there, and don't be all day about it.' She turned on her
heel and marched back into the classroom, leaving us alone in
the yard.

'D'ya wanna poo?' asked Franny casually as we walked
towards the toilet block.

'No I don't,' I replied with all the dignity a five-year-old can muster.

'Well, d'ya wanna wee then?'

'No, I don't think so.'

'Well why did she send us to the lav, then?'

'Dunno.'

Even if I had wanted to go, the sight of the boys' lav would
have given me instant constipation. I was as anally retentive as
my mother when it came to using strange lavatories and these
were grim to say the least, housed in an old brick lean-to and
stinking to high heaven of disinfectant and pee. Only a case of
severe dysentery would've induced me to use this cesspit.

We stood there staring up at the sky, unsure of what to do,
while the gurgling water ran down the decrepit urinals. Franny,
having no pisselegant qualms about public lavs, kicked the
door of the solitary lock-up open, strolled in and sat himself
down on the toilet seat. He rummaged in his pocket for his bag
of sweets.

'D'ya want one?' he asked, shoving a couple in his mouth.

'No thanks,' I said, breathing through my mouth, trying to
avoid the smell. How Franny could even contemplate eating
anything in a lav was beyond me. But then Franny was a
species I'd never come across before.

'I'm going to have a poo,' he announced in a matter-of-fact
way, jumping off the seat and dropping his trousers. I didn't
know where to put myself. I'd never seen anyone poo before.
In our house we always closed the door, and here was Franny
looking as if he was about to haemorrhage as he sat there,
grunting loudly, straining to 'do one'. His knuckles were white
as he gripped the lav seat, his face slowly turning purple with
the sheer effort of it all. Suddenly there was a loud plop and
Franny exhaled loudly, letting out a grateful sigh of relief. He
jumped from the seat, his colour returning to normal, and
turned to peer into the pan.

'Cor,' he said in amazement. ' 'Ave a look at this . . . it's
massive.'

Curious as I was, I was spared the experience by the arrival
of the Bolger.

'What are you boys up to?' she demanded, wrinkling her
nose, her gentility offended by the smell of the place.

'Franny's having a poo,' I offered helpfully, pointing to
Franny, who by now was wiping his bum on one of the hard
sheets of Bronco hanging on a bit of string from a nail in the
wall, totally unabashed by the presence of an audience.

'I don't need to know what he's doing, thank you very
much,' said the Bolger, turning her face away and holding the
handkerchief she kept up the sleeve of her cardigan close to her
nose. 'Just hurry along and get back to class . . . and quickly!'

'All right, Mrs,' Franny sang out cheerfully, pulling his pants
up and rushing past her with me in close pursuit. I didn't want
to be left alone in the boys' lav with someone as scary as the
Bolger.

'It's Miss not Mrs,' the Bolger shouted after us. 'And come
back here this instant, Francis Mooney, and pull that chain and
rinse your hands under the tap.' But we pretended not to hear
her and carried on running to the comparative safety of the
classroom, leaving the Bolger to deal with the problem of
Franny's gargantuan turd.

At dinner time we were marched two by two up the road to the
hall of the
Tranmere Methodist Church
. I didn't know what a
Methodist was, but I was sure they weren't Catholics and a
slight niggle of anxiety lurked in the back of my mind that I'd
probably go straight to hell for entering such an unholy and
alien temple. Wait till I tell my mother about this, I thought.
She won't be pleased at all. I eyed the Bolger suspiciously as
she herded us into the hall, counting our heads and barking
instructions as we trooped past her.

'. . . sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . . Stop that, Edward Kelly,
and walk properly . . . nineteen, twenty . . . I hope that's not a sweet you're putting in your mouth, Francis Mooney . . .
twenty-one . . .' Aunty Chris would call her a right Irma Grese
if she ever came across her, I said to myself.

The inside of the hall was dark and foreboding. Whenever I
watch David Lean's harrowing adaptation of
Oliver Twist
and
it comes to the scene where Oliver and the miserable orphans
line up for their gruel in that cold, bleak workhouse I think of
the Tranmere Methodist Church Hall. Like the Dickensian
workhouse of the film, the hall had bare brick walls and long
trestle tables with benches for us to sit on. We even had a Mr
Bumble in the shape of an enormous woman with an angry
florid face, her blonde hair severely dragged back into a mean
little bun, and a starched white apron pulled taut across her
ample bosom.

Seeing this woman years later, I could hardly believe that the
apple-cheeked sweet little old lady who smiled gently to herself
as she made her way to church was once the stuff of my nightmares.
Back then she was as terrifying as a rogue bull elephant
as she stood behind the counter, her face scarlet with rage,
viciously smashing a ladle of alarming proportions on the
counter's metal surface. Banging assorted implements on hard
surfaces with a heavy hand seemed to be the preferred method
of terrorizing little children into petrified silence, but after a
while you got used to it and no longer found it quite so
frightening. Instead, you learned to live with it as part of the
soundtrack of school life.

'Silence,' the she-monster roared, her great booming voice
reverberating around the hall. 'And sit yourselves down
smartish, or there will be no dinner. Do you hear me? No
dinner!' She emphasized her point by hammering her ladle on
the counter again.

The children in the know chorused 'Yes
Miss McGregor
' and
sat down smartish. We infants, ignorant of the protocol of
school dinners
, gathered together in a confused huddle, some of us starting to cry. I could feel my throat muscles beginning
to tighten again as I came out in sympathy, and fought back
the tears.

'Don't start grizzling and whingeing, children,' the Bolger
said in a voice that was not unkind, shepherding us together
and sitting us down at one of the vacant tables. I found myself
with Franny on one side and a strange-looking kid who was
known as
Plug
on the other. I've no idea what his real name
was; he'd earned his unfortunate moniker because of his
uncanny resemblance to one of the Bash Street Kids in the
Beano
. Poor old Plug certainly wasn't the prettiest puppy in
the litter. Tall and skinny with ears like the FA Cup, he had
protruding teeth and a really bad turn in his right eye for
starters. He was the kind of kid that caused my mother to coo
'Ah, God love him' under her breath and press a couple of
pennies into his hand whenever she saw him hanging around
the school gates waiting hopefully for someone to remember to
come and pick him up after school. Plug was always the last
to be claimed. 'Don't worry, love,' my mother would shout
(she always spoke to Plug as if he were deaf), 'your mam will
be here soon . . . the dilatory bitch,' she'd add sadly to herself
under her breath, turning to look up the street for Plug's errant
parent. Plug's mum would eventually appear, tall and gangly like
her offspring, loping down the street, her mouth open and a
vacant expression on her face, absently wiping her nose.
Permanent nose drip ran, if you'll pardon the lame pun, in the
Plug family. Plug's nose ran like the proverbial glass-blower's
arse.