Seminary Boy (18 page)

T
HERE WAS
, as it happened, a perennial and licit distraction that stirred the emotions of many boys at Cotton. As the autumn days shortened an elite set of rugby-football players, boots well-oiled, sports gear crisply laundered, became the focus of our attention as they ran self-consciously up to top field for coaching sessions. They were not necessarily the most athletic of their peers; but they had been selected early and coached to a high level of skill from the age of eleven. The best of them became the unique corps that formed the ‘first fifteen’ team chosen to play in away matches against other Catholic colleges around the Midlands. Those who had come late to Cotton, and from schools which had no tradition of rugby, like mine, were seldom considered for training: our role was to watch, to admire and to eat our hearts out.

The rugby gods made an easy fit with the wholesome, manly, clerical culture of the Cotton priests. Most of the profs had
made it into the first fifteen team as boys, and enthusiastically coached their successors, refereeing games and accompanying away matches with Father Gavin, who had played rugby for Ireland (a fact deplored at the time, we had been told, by Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin). Our priests were eager even in the midst of class to be diverted into discussion of tactics and highlights of big matches.

Special treats, bacon-and-egg teas, and pub visits, figured large for the rugby gods. I heard a prim sixth former speaking with glittering eyes at table one day about the highlight of an away match in Burton upon Trent. ‘We won by a single point. We were late back but we pleaded with Father Gavin to stop at a pub before we reached Cotton. So he asked the driver to stop at the Cricketers Arms. Over our beer he relived every pass, every scrum, every tackle. By the time we got on the bus we had replenished our glasses three times! Three times!’

One notable exception to the hallowing of rugby football was Father Armishaw who, Peter Gladden told me, loathed the game as much as he deplored the ‘mindless blather of the rugger morons’. Even so, Gladden went on, Armishaw was capable of boasting on occasion about his own boyhood triumphs and how in one ferocious match he had saved the day against the ‘mollycoddled sissies at Ratcliffe College’.

I had no prospects of being a rugby god, and I resented my sneaking feelings of envy. I thought many of them soft, compared with the toughs at Saints Peter and Paul in Ilford, even though they could handle a ball. I sometimes fantasised how I would tackle such a one and such a one in boxing gloves. Yet there was another agreeable alternative to rugby which promised to allay my fear of monotony.

Country walks were not new for Cotton boys, but they had traditionally been desultory strolls, supervised by a reluctant sixth former. In the year I arrived at Cotton Father Doran had appointed a sixth former called Michael Swan as ‘head of walks’. Swan was a gangly youth with a reputation for high
intelligence and studiousness. He was about six foot five and his clothes were too small for him. He wore very large, thick-lensed spectacles patched together with sticky tape. It was said of him that Father Doran allowed him to read the previous day’s
Times
fourth leader so that he could translate it into Latin, employing a different style to order – Cicero today, Tacitus tomorrow, Plautus the next. He was lofty in every sense of the word.

I opted to go on Swan walks which were taken at a cracking pace for ten or twelve miles. The aim was not so much vigorous exercise as scenic variety. Swan led from the front with Ordnance Survey maps, dictating the speed and the direction which was at times complicated when we struck across open country. Sometimes we were so late back we staggered on to Top Bounds after dark, having missed tea.

Usually we walked in twos and threes, but I walked alone. I became lost in my thoughts as we trudged through woods and secluded dells, and over hillsides. As I walked it filled me with delight to look from high ground towards a distant prospect, fading into green mistiness. I loved to see the rapidly changing contrasts of cloudscapes and weather, especially when the summits were in shadow, while the valleys shone bright and clear after a passing shower of rain. What I treasured most were wooded dells, deep green in the early winter weeks. We would grow quiet as we entered these mysterious sanctuaries with their heady scent of pine needles and the echo of rushing waters. Best of all was the ascent of our own valley on the last leg home, following the steep, foaming torrent until we reached Faber’s Retreat where I would make a silent prayer.

When we arrived back at the college after a long walk, I was excited by the contrasting ambiance: our sacred and civilised enclave in its wild and remote setting. I would go straight to the church to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, conscious of the wind in the lime avenue outside and the grousing crows as they returned to roost in the elms around the swimming
pool. Walking the countryside around Cotton seemed to deepen my sense of the sublime in the world, and in the real presence of God in the Eucharist.

One of the keen walkers was a boy called Paul Moreland. Moreland had a reputation for being a swot and an oddity. He was seldom visible around the college. He had a womanish beauty: a large head and thick charcoal-black hair, full lips, a wide mouth. His sapphire blue eyes fixed on people with crazy, unfocused intensity. There was something radiant about the expanse of his pale forehead and his thick arched eyebrows. His cheeks were of a high colour, as if feverish. He generally walked alone with rapid short steps and a slight limp, as if he had one leg slightly shorter than the other. There were hints of my father’s affliction in him. Sometimes I saw him in earnest conversation with Swan; which was unusual, for Swan did not regard other boys as his equal. He and Swan would quarrel loudly, attempting to shout each other down. Once I heard them shouting at each other in what I thought to be German, before they both burst out laughing. But mostly Moreland was a loner.

One day, on a rest during our walk, Moreland came over to where I was sitting on a drystone wall. I was looking out towards a lantern sky created by a break in the clouds towards the Weaver Hills. He stood between me and my view, looking intently into my eyes.

‘Has anybody ever told you,’ he said eventually, ‘that you have a beatific aura?’

I had never heard the word ‘beatific’ pronounced, and I thought he had said ‘terrific’.

So I said: ‘What do you mean, “terrific aura”?’

He laughed, a delightful sincere laugh, and his face lit up. ‘No, no, no, Fru:
beatific, beati-fic.
’ He twice imploded the ‘b’ with his full lips, and made a flowing circle with one hand around my head like a magician. ‘I can almost touch it,’ he said. ‘You are a blessed person, Fru. A holy person.’ Then he walked away.

His remark, which I took to be wholly sincere, disturbed and excited me. Moreland struck me as an extraordinary spirit.

We seldom met a soul on our walks, still less a passing vehicle. But one afternoon as we trudged uphill towards a place called Waterhouses, a grimy village close to a quarry that had eaten deeply into the neighbouring hill, we passed a crocodile of about forty girls, walking two by two. They were from a nearby reform school for young female criminals. Their hair was uniformly cut short and they were dressed in grey raincoats, long grey stockings and sturdy black shoes. There were four burly female minders in attendance. I saw a comic parallel between our predicaments as we passed each other: like members of two juvenile monastic orders. I was fascinated by them. Some appeared embarrassed, as if ashamed to be seen in public; others had defiant expressions. Then one shouted at me: ‘Who are you looking at? Cunt!’ In my bad-boy days I would have had a ready answer, reflecting on the misfortune of her ill-favoured looks. But I exercised custody of my tongue and, too late, custody of the eyes.

I
F
I
HAD
a special friendship in the aftermath of Charles, it was one that carried not the slightest danger of romance or unruly passions, except nervous, painful laughter. It was innocent to the point of being childlike. Ever since Father Doran’s talk after the departure of Charles and the others I had become more friendly with Derek Hanson. Derek had a comical Irish face: ruddy complexion, wild blue-grey eyes, cheeks and forehead ravaged with acne. He was timid by nature, a great hater of sports, and at heart very serious and dedicated to his vocation. Yet he had a nervous quirky sense of humour and
would erupt in hysterical paroxysms of giggles at a word or a look, his whole body and his potato-shaped head shaking.

Walking up and down Top Bounds after breakfast together, and only when alone, we invented a private language game. We adopted pious facial expressions while uttering homiletic phrases in solemn, stately tones. Mostly we stole the phrases from books of ascetical theology in the library, and learnt them by heart for the purpose.

‘Cornwell, you will avoid vain curiosity…’ Derek would start.

‘Hanson, if it be lawful and expedient to speak, speak only of such things as will edify…’

‘Cornwell, let curiosity alone, and read such books as turn the heart to compunction, rather than entertain the mind…’

‘Hanson, refrain from superfluous talk and idle visits…’

As we came out with these ludicrous imperatives we would attempt to outstare each other with baleful looks. The game was to make the other laugh first. When the dam burst we would become helpless, incapable of breathing, howling with laughter as we staggered along Top Bounds.

Other boys sometimes watched us curiously. Sometimes a boy would come over to join us. But Derek had developed a defence mechanism against intrusion, which was also part of the game. The moment we looked like being approached he would say under his breath: ‘Let’s be serious.’

Then Derek would begin to talk about a saint called Rupert.

‘Saint Rupert,’ he would say, now including the newcomer, ‘was the bishop of Worms…he had a sister called Ermintrude…his coat of arms was a barrel of salt, and many churches near Salzburg which, incidentally, is a district famous for its salt mines, are dedicated to him…’

It was my task now to say: ‘Is that so? That’s so interesting, Hanson…do tell me more…’ Sometimes I was so overcome that I would make my excuses and dash from Top Bounds before collapsing.

We never met or spoke from after lunch onwards, and it would have been unthinkable for us to catch each other’s eyes in church or during mealtimes. Our friendship had rules and we kept to them religiously.

There was another diversion that was to bring me into brief contact again with Paul Moreland. After his Sunday homily, Father Grady, the priest with Gregory Peck looks and a nervous little cough, announced that a layman was coming to speak to us about a movement known as the League of Christ the King: LOCK. The League, he told us, was a means of spreading Catholic action at ‘grass roots’ among the young while promoting our prayer life and loyalty to the Pope. Anyone who wanted to learn more should come to his room after Rosary the next day.

The balding young man who was ensconced in one of the visitors’ rooms had a hole in one sock. James, who had encouraged me to come along, was there, and so was Derek. Father Grady made his excuses, explaining that this was something we had to decide for ourselves. Just as we were about to begin, Paul Moreland slipped into the room.

The young man said that Communists were attacking Christianity not only behind the Iron Curtain but in the free world, seeking young recruits in schools and in the workplace. LOCK advocated the formation of cells in English schools to spread Catholic activism. We should be ‘watchmen’ against the dangers to come. He stressed this word ‘watchmen’ a number of times. The motto of the movement, he said, was ‘
Pro eis sanctifico meipsum
’, ‘I sanctify myself for others.’

As he spoke, I had the impression that he was enthusing us all, except Paul Moreland who looked bemused and occasionally frowned and shook his head. When the man invited questions, James Rolle asked whether it was considered right to actively seek recruits in the college. The visitor was all for active recruitment. Derek, blushing self-consciously, wanted to know whether one could be thrown out of the league for failing
to live up to its ideals. ‘Oh, yes,’ said the man. ‘High standards, set by you and the movement, must be met.’

Moreland began to speak. He said that the Church already had its cells, which were called parishes. LOCK, he went on, his face bright with emotion, seemed to him a threat to Catholic parish life. As for bringing the league into Cotton: would it not threaten our community, creating divisions among us?

Then he stood up. ‘It was so nice to meet you,’ he said, holding out his hand to be shaken. ‘But I do not think that I want to join this movement.’ And he left the room. The visitor sat silent, evidently ruffled. I felt sorry for him, as did the others I thought. So we professed ourselves interested in forming a cell of LOCK. When Father Grady returned he seemed pleased. We could use his room on Sunday evenings after supper, he said, as he would be away most weekends travelling the diocese promoting vocations to the priesthood.

Afterwards I asked James what he thought of Moreland. ‘Moreland is clever,’ he said, ‘but Moreland, I hate to say this, is as nutty as a fruit cake as well as singular. He has visions, you know.’

When LOCK got going at Cotton, the movement developed two cells: one named after Dominic Savio (the saintly seminary boy of Turin), the other after Aloysius Gonzaga (the saintly Jesuit youth) both of whom died young. I was in the Savio group which turned out to be more conservative than the Gonzaga group. The two groups soon clashed and for a time the separate members refused to speak to each other. My decision to join LOCK stemmed from a hunger for something different, something zealous: what could be more brave than combating the Communists! Yet like some of the others, I was less interested in the religious dimension than being a member of a club with the prospect of sitting by Father Grady’s fireside on Sunday nights as winter drew in.

One day Paul Moreland came up to me on a walk. ‘I’ve been thinking about LOCK and you watchmen,’ he said. I stared at him. Then, his voice rising, he cried out: ‘Saint Gregory the Great says who do you think you are, pretending to be a watchman when you don’t stand on the hilltops of action but cringe in the valleys of weakness. If you love God, says Saint Gregory, he will give you all the power you need to conquer your enemies.’

Before I could say anything, he grabbed me around the neck in a kind of embrace. ‘You don’t want LOCK, Fru. This is what you need – a head lock!’ For a boy I took to be ‘womanish’, he was amazingly strong. For a moment I felt his cold cheek pressed against mine. Then he released me and walked off. The incident, it occurred to me, showed that Moreland, for all his erudition and brilliance, was still just a boy.

Somebody nearby who had watched the encounter, touched his temple with his forefinger. ‘Moreland is completely mad,’ he said. ‘I hope you realise that, Fru.’ But with a stomach-churning feeling I could have knelt at Moreland’s feet.