At My Mother's Knee (20 page)

Still, I got a ride back to school in the headmaster's car, a
rare treat as no one we knew owned a car. I did my maraca
impression all over again when I was deposited back into class.
The Bolger gripped my shoulders, digging her bony fingers into
me, and shook me violently, promising me that next time I
tried any tricks it would be the cane. Nowadays if a teacher hit
a small child with a wooden stick they'd end up in court – if
the pupil hadn't got to them first and stabbed them. In 1960 it
went unquestioned and was considered a perfectly acceptable
way to
discipline
a child.

In all the time I was at St Joseph's I was only caned
once and that was for hiding my underpants behind the
radiator and stinking the class out after a sudden accident one
day while playing with the ubiquitous blue (or rather, by now,
grey) plasticine with
Deirdre Walsh
. The next school I
attended,
St Anselm's, Redcourt
, was a very different story. It
was a place where the teachers and
Christian Brothers
positively relished beating young boys with leather straps.
Strappings were so frequent that they should have been part of
the curriculum.

I was happy at St Joseph's and had progressed from the
Bolger's class to the care of
Miss Edwards
, who wore lots of perfume and marked your work with an orange pencil. I was
the class joker, a highly overused term that I'm loath
to repeat, but since no other springs to mind it will have to
suffice.

I'd make light of our group inoculations as we waited in our
vests outside the school office, temporarily transformed into
the doctor's surgery, by cracking gags and acting the fool, an
approach to life's unpleasant moments adopted by various
family members that I'd absorbed as I grew up. Uncle Al told
me about a convicted killer who, as he was being strapped in
to the electric chair, wisecracked and joked as if he were about
to have a haircut instead of a few thousand volts. This was the
attitude I admired and tried to emulate, and it has stood me in
good stead on more than one occasion.

My school work was promising. I was no genius or 'child
prodigal' like Eileen Henshaw's son, but I enjoyed learning and
was enthusiastic about most subjects, and at this early stage
my teachers held out great hopes for my passing the elevenplus.
So, encouraged by my school reports and prompted by an
advertisement in the
Birkenhead News
for St Anselm's,
Redcourt, a fee-paying preparatory school for boys between
the ages of eight and eleven that had a record of getting boys
through the elevenplus and into the main college, my ambitious
mother decided that I was to be taken out of St Joseph's
and 'privately educated'. She couldn't wait to drop that little
bombshell next time she was in Henshaw's buying two ounces
of corned beef and a small loaf.

After sitting down and doing his sums, my father agreed that
they could just about manage the school fees at a push, and
applied for me to sit the
entrance exam
.

I thought that I wouldn't want to leave Joey's; it was an easy
pace, I liked my teachers and I'd miss my friends, especially
Franny, whom I'd grown very protective towards. We'd walk
home from school together each day and I'd tell him
stories
. Since we went our separate ways at the corner of Derby Road,
these tales became a neverending serial to be continued the
next afternoon.

Franny was easy pickings for the school bullies. I always
found the best approach, when Franny was in the grip of a
headlock and having his scalp severely rubbed by Billy Boggins's knuckles, was to wade right in from behind and
deliver a side punch to the assailant's face while jumping on to
his back and dragging him to the floor. Once he was down it
was wise to sit on him, stick two fingers up his nostrils and pull
hard, then hope and pray that the Bolger would hear the
commotion and abandon her break-time cup of tea and biscuit
and come to the rescue.

Billy Boggins
lived down the hill on Sydney Terrace and
apart from his unpredictable bouts of violence we were good
friends. His mother
Pat
was a good-natured, warm-hearted
woman from Northern Ireland who was mad on the telly, in
particular
Bewitched.
Kicking off her shoes, she'd sit on the
sofa with her arms folded across her heavily pregnant belly,
surrounded by kids, and roar laughing, even though she said it
was sinful to believe in magic or witches as they were the work
of the devil.

Franny wasn't keen on Billy. He was always a bag of
nerves when the bigger boy was around, waiting for the
moment when Billy would pounce and give him a knuckle-rub
or, even worse, the dreaded Chinese burn. Billy couldn't help
himself, though. He couldn't resist picking on Franny, whose
size and colouring ('like a little ginger weed who's been grown
in the dark' as Aunty Chris described him) attracted bullies like
moths to a flame. He was often the butt of jokes and taunting
in the playground, when his anger would slowly build up until,
swearing at his tormentors through clenched teeth, he'd rush at
them, pinching and kicking with the rage of a malevolent elf.

He lived with his parents and two brothers and sister above a shop that sold gravestones. Franny's mum cleaned that shop
and when we got the chance we'd sneak in and I'd wrap myself
in a dust sheet and stand in the window next to one of the
headstones, eyes downcast, hands joined in prayer, pretending
to be an angel, while Franny stood by the door panicking in
case his mum came down and caught us. Later on the premises
were taken over by Servoheat, a company that sold heating
appliances. Boilers and loft insulation didn't have the appeal
that gravestones had and so we stopped playing there.

Franny's parents were strict. His dad was handy with the
belt if the boys stepped out of line. I couldn't believe it when I
called for Franny one Saturday morning and
Mr Mooney
told
me that he couldn't come out until he'd finished his chores.
Spoilt as I was, I'm ashamed to say that I never even made my
own bed. I felt sorry for Franny, having to wash dishes and
hoover, but Franny didn't seem to mind in the least and as soon
as he was free we'd run for the Saturday morning kids' matinee
at the
ABC
. If we didn't have the entrance fee we'd try to bunk
in through a side door, but usually we'd begged and cadged the
money from somewhere.

Inside, it was pandemonium. It was also slightly dangerous,
since the kids in the balcony would pelt those in the stalls with
sweets and bottles. They also had spitting competitions in
which the aim was to see who could hawk up the biggest
'golly' and then score a direct hit on some unsuspecting child
below. In view of this, it was a good idea to get there early and
bag a seat somewhere near the front, out of the range of fire.

The one and only time I joined in the balcony kids' terrorist
activities I got carried away and thought that instead of spitting
it would be a hoot to pee over the edge. This proved to be
a trickier manoeuvre than I'd anticipated, entailing standing on
tiptoes and remembering to lean back so that the stream of wee
would arc over the balcony instead of soaking me. I got caught
in mid-flow by an angry usherette and frogmarched to the manager's office, where I was given a clip over the head and
banned from attending ABC Minors for a month.

That cinema manager must have hated Saturday mornings.
He had to get up on the stage before the film started and
through gritted teeth welcome a horde of unsupervised kids
with a cheery 'Hello ABC Minors!', only to be greeted with a
deafening chorus of cheers, catcalls and whistling. If it was any
of the kids' birthday they'd be invited up on to the stage and
presented with a bag of sweets in front of the rest of us. I never
got up; I would rather have died than walk down the aisle and
up on to the stage and stand there in the spotlight, cheeks
burning with shame, clutching a bag of sweets and cursing
inwardly while everyone sang 'Happy Birthday'.

At last the lights would dim and the cinema would shake as
we stamped our feet and cheered. The screen would spring into
life and the words to the ABC Minors' anthem would appear,
complete with a bouncing ball underneath each word, not that
we needed prompting. We knew the song by heart and would
sing along to the tune of 'Blaze Away':

'We are the boys and girls well known as
The minors of the ABC,
And every Saturday we line up
To see the films we like and
Shout aloud with glee.'

The programmes we liked usually began with a serial,
inevitably an ancient print of Zorro that was scratched and
blurred in places and had a tendency to jump on to the next
scene at crucial moments. We'd boo when this happened and
shout abuse up at the projectionist. An army of usherettes
would then appear, scanning the rows of kids with their
torches like prison officers looking for an escapee and trying to
restore law and order with a few kind but firm words, like 'Sit down and shurrup, you little shit, or I'll kick yer arse and
chuck you out!' The Zorro stories always ended on a
cliffhanger with our hero dangling over a bottomless drop or
trapped inside a burning building with half a ton of dynamite
strapped to his chest. If you didn't manage to get in the next
week to see the next instalment you hung around outside waiting
for someone you knew to come out and tell you what
happened.

The serial was followed by a few Disney cartoons and then
came the main feature, always a hoary old black and white
relic, but as long as it contained a degree of violence involving
gangsters or cowboys and Indians and no kissing of heroines
we didn't care and brought the house down cheering for the
good guy and booing the villain. Afterwards we'd re-enact
what we'd just seen on the screen in Mersey Park. If the day's
offering had been a cowboy epic then we'd canter along the
paths slapping our hips and holding up imaginary reins to
show that we were riding a horse.

'Hurry up, you.'

'I can't.'

'Why?'

'Me 'orse has got an arrow in its hoof.'

If you got bored with running around the park and slapping
your arse you could always stop dead in your tracks and hurl
yourself to the ground. This implied that your horse had
encountered a rattlesnake and, having reared up in fright,
had thrown you. Bad luck if the Injuns caught you as you
would be taken to their encampment and tied to a tree. No
actual rope was used; you just sat on the grass with your arms
behind you, wrapped round the tree. You wouldn't dream of
moving from this position until one of your comrades sneaked
up unseen by the Injuns and set you free by severing your invisible
bonds with the deadly bowie knife he kept down his
boot. To a passing observer it might have looked like an ordinary lolly-ice stick that had been shoved inside a grubby
regulation grey school sock, but it wasn't. In our eyes it was a
genuine, pearl-handled, ten-inch, razor-sharp bowie knife
nestling inside a hand-tooled, custom-made, ass-kickin'
cowboy boot, just like the movies.

St Anselm's
, Redcourt, was a big redbrick building that had
once been, before death duties crippled the gentry, a rather
grand private house. Situated in a leafy road in elegant Oxton,
it was considered one of the best boys' schools on the Wirral,
and was run by the Christian Brothers, a body of mainly Irish
men, who conducted themselves as if they were the SS of the
Roman Catholic Church.

The day of the entrance
exam
, we were shown around the
school by one of the Brothers, who had my mother eating out
of his hand. 'We have a wide and varied curriculum,' he was
saying. 'The arts, sciences, sports and languages plus the benefits
of good strong religious
education
.'

My dad was nodding in agreement. He'd pulled all the stops
out today and was wearing his best suit. My mother, who was
almost unintelligible so strong was the halfcrown voice she
was putting on, was asking the Brother if it mattered that my
maths was a little weak.

'Not at all,' the Brother reassured her, rubbing his hands and
smiling at me. 'We'll soon knock him into shape.' I didn't realize
he meant it literally.

Outside the classroom where we were to sit the exam was a
lifesize statue of Our Lady complete with a plaster effigy of a
suitably pious St Bernadette kneeling at her feet. It was set in a
grotto in the wall adorned with gold stars and wouldn't have
looked out of place at the pleasure beach in Blackpool.
Nevertheless I dutifully blessed myself and said a quick Hail
Mary for luck, prompted by a dig in the back from my dad.
Our Lady must've been in a beneficent mood that day as I passed the entrance exam. Only by a hair's-breadth, but it was
enough to convince my well-meaning parents that I was
destined for a college
education
.

The list of requirements for a St Anselm's boy before he
could set foot in the building was extensive. Apart from the
school
uniform
(short trousers only), there were rugby, football,
PE and cricket kits to buy, a satchel for books and a duffel
bag for the sports kits. Everything had to be paid for: textbooks,
writing materials, the works. I'm surprised they didn't
charge for the toilet paper. Selfishly oblivious of the expense of
it all, I spent a glorious day in Rostance's of Grange Road West
shopping for this elaborate wardrobe, made financially
possible by the weekly terms of the Provident Cheque
Company. Perhaps blinded by the glamour of a royal blue
blazer piped in yellow with matching cap, and a rugby kit with
shiny boots destined to remain as pristine as the day they were
bought, such was my total lack of enthusiasm on the pitch, I
left St Joseph's without a backward glance and looked forward
to joining the elite.