Seminary Boy (8 page)

T
HE MORNING PASSED
in abrupt initiations and lessons, punctuated by an unrelenting routine of church visits and religious rituals. I was shown my desk, a capacious box with an oak lid, situated in the lower fourth’s area of the study place, a room which ran the length of one of the stone wings and contained more than a hundred such desks. I was summoned to ‘the bursary’, a room stacked with bars of soap, stationery and clothing, where Father William Browne, a sad-looking overweight priest, issued me with sports gear. I was told to attend ‘the dispensary’ where the matron prodded and poked me all over. When she had finished inspecting my tongue and poking my ribs she murmured: ‘Ah well! Let’s be thankful for small mercies.’

Lunch, which followed the visit of the whole college to the Blessed Sacrament, was a dish of tasteless greasy mincemeat, which the boys called ‘slosh’, accompanied by boiled blemished potatoes, which they called ‘chots’. Within minutes of lunch ending, a bell rang and the boys were hurrying to the dungeon wash places to change into sports gear for a cross-country run. Being under fourteen I was assigned to the ‘easy’ three-mile course.

We streamed up a footpath between drystone walls, greenedged with age, heading for the summit of the valley. I stumbled along, buffeted by a stiff wind. Ahead was a wood of stunted trees; to our right miles of uplands dappled in sunlight to the horizon. To the left was a view of barren hills, their soft green sides broken with outcrops of rock. I was
breathless, my legs failing. James hung back, looking sympathetic. We were now the very last of the runners, and the rear was taken up by an older boy who prodded me forward gently with soft little punches in the small of my back. At length we were running on level terrain. Silent woods alternated with swampy open land and we were up to our ankles in the black brackish water that lay below the turf. We clambered over yet another drystone wall and plunged into a pig farm where we were up to our shins in stinking swill and mud.

The college was below, nestling around the church steeple. By the time James and I reached the wash places, most of the boys had doused themselves in cold water and changed back into their day clothes.

The lesson schedule on that first afternoon introduced me to Father Gavin’s special class for Latin beginners. My attention kept wandering to the foliage of the trees at the head of the valley while the lesson unfolded quickly and confusingly with explosions of laughter, jokes and Latin nicknames as Father Gavin drove us on, attempting to explain the mysteries of conjugations and declensions.

Afterwards we were guided to Dr Warner’s remedial class for Greek beginners. Dr Warner was dressed in an ancient grey suit patched with poorly sewn strips of black leather. His face was sallow and faded, his bald pate deeply wrinkled. After setting the others an exercise on the board, he came to sit next to me. Sighing a little as if weary to the heart, he showed me how to form the Greek letters of the alphabet. He smelt of boot polish and his breath was rancid. As I attempted to copy the letters by myself, he hummed a monotonous little tune: ‘
Alpha…beta…gamma…delta…
’

James met me on Little Bounds to take me in to afternoon tea. He said that Dr Warner was known as Lazarus, or Laz, but his real first name was Leslie. Laz Warner, James said, was a deacon who had studied for the priesthood at the Venerable English College, the seminary for England and Wales in Rome.

On the day before his ordination he decided that he was not worthy to be a priest after all. But his diaconate status had left him committed to celibacy. He came to Cotton where he had remained ever since. Laz was a man of immense learning, said James, but he and his strangely patched suit were unfortunately the butt of many jokes. ‘He is,’ said James, ‘like an old bridegroom who changed his mind on his wedding day.’

A
S MY FIRST
week passed, the rhythm of the day, punctuated by a huge jangling bell rung by the school captain, settled into a routine of classes, study periods, manual labour, runs, drill
and hurried meals. But religious devotions dominated: meditation before the early morning Mass; Low Mass celebrated every day of the week, followed by private thanksgiving; with High Mass in addition on Sundays and feast days. There was a homily, known as ‘conference’, after High Mass; prayers before and after each lesson, and Angelus recited twice daily. There was grace before and after every meal, community prayers before lunch, spiritual reading after tea, Rosary after supper, and night prayers before bed on weekdays; Compline on Sunday evenings. Confessions could be heard each evening after supper. There was private spiritual direction on Thursday afternoons when confessions were also available. Many boys spent time in church during their scarce leisure periods.

On my second day, coming out of the refectory after tea, I was accosted by Father Anthony Owen. He was a stiff-necked man in middle age with thinning sandy hair and remarkably bowed legs, hence his nickname, ‘Bowie Owen’. He understood, he said, that I could read music and wanted to test my voice for the choir. We walked to the choir practice room where there was an upright piano.

After taking me through several scales, he said: ‘You’ll make an excellent alto, but open it out! Let yourself go!’ Choir practice, he said, was every day after tea. ‘But there are advantages, Cornwell. Outings, special treats.’

Suddenly the door was flung open and boys of all ages began to enter. Father Owen distributed music sheets for Mozart’s ‘Missa Brevis’. The youngest boys jostled in friendly horseplay while the older ones – the tenors and basses – affected a sense of disdain.

Father Owen, standing at the piano, took each of the four voices separately. Then he turned to face us as he conducted us in harmony with minimal gestures, closing his forefingers and thumbs at the dying fall of a bar in a gentle pinching gesture. At one point, looking at me directly, he put his hand to his ear as if to indicate: ‘Let it out!’ When we had finished
the Gloria, he bowed and implored us not to be late for practice the next day.

As I was leaving, he took me by the arm and drew me back into the room. ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it, Cornwell,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll be a useful member of the choir. But let’s hope that your voice doesn’t break too soon.’

Until then I had never given any thought to the fact of my voice breaking.

T
HE PROFS WERE
always and everywhere in evidence: at the side altars saying their Masses in the morning, in the classrooms, and on the playing fields. There was a priest, sometimes two or more, present at every juncture of the day to scrutinise us. We were watched from morning until night, and even through the night, it seemed, by Father McCartie.

Father Tony Piercy made an immediate impression. Built like a boxer, and known as ‘Tank’, he was to be seen hurrying about the buildings and across the Bounds, propelling himself forward in a flurry of cassock and gown with a springy half-walk-half-run, shoulders squared. He had a head of unruly, wiry hair and his nose appeared pinched at the end, which gave him a strangely fastidious appearance, as if aware of an unpleasant smell about him. He taught mathematics and he was a tireless handyman, James told me, a ‘general factotum’ around the college, who would cure the ailing plumbing, rebuild a broken desk, mend a boiler, or service Father Doran’s car. Beneath his cassock he wore scuffed army boots caked with mud, and invariably carried a variety of tools in his capacious cassock pockets.

Two days after my arrival at Cotton, Father Piercy introduced
me to ‘manual labour’. This involved digging ditches in a scheme to level and drain the playing fields above the college. The drains were constructed by digging down four feet and laying limestone-grit boulders along a channel two feet wide before replacing and levelling the soil. Boulders from disused drystone walls had to be fetched, sometimes from a mile distant. They were heavy and it was easy to tear one’s hands on the jagged edges.

James encouraged me to join Father Piercy’s ‘Workers’ Union’, as the ditching teams were called. ‘Ditching,’ he murmured, ‘is, of course, an opportunity for self-denial.’ We wore rubber Wellington boots, with rugby shorts and shirts over our second-best clothes to protect us from the mud. Father Piercy, dressed in a filthy blue boiler suit and army boots, leapt in and out of the ditches, directing operations. He never spoke to us directly, nor even looked at us, but appeared to focus his attention inches away from the end of his pinched nose as if he was trapped inside a protective bubble.

On the afternoon of the first Thursday after my arrival I attended Father Piercy’s handicraft session. Thursdays were a half-day holiday from games, lessons and manual labour, but boys were expected to do something constructive. One could choose between reading in the library, attending confession and spiritual direction, or handicraft. And it was possible to do all three. The projects in Father Piercy’s workshop included the making of rosaries, the cutting and binding of leather cases for missals and prayer books, the carving of crucifixes, or construction of pipe-racks. He set me to work making a case for my missal, Father Cooney’s gift. He moved from boy to boy at the work benches, demonstrating techniques for cutting leather, sewing, binding, making the hooks for rosary beads, and carpentry. He spoke in a quiet, barely intelligible, rapid nasal voice, and appeared to be working his mouth nervously.

Another striking prof was Father Armishaw whom Derek had mentioned blushingly when we were walking on Top
Bounds. Father Armishaw taught English literature to the fifth and sixth forms. He was over six foot with broad shoulders, and dressed in a caped cassock, and an MA gown when he was teaching. He could be seen making his way across Little Bounds, a book under his arm, walking with a self-confident rolling gait. He had a swashbuckling posture; but such was his powerful physique and piercing look, it seemed natural rather than boastful or proud. He was also famous for owning a large gleaming motorcycle with a dark green petrol tank. Several times in my first week I saw him flying along the lane at the back of the school, the flaps of his leather flying jacket open to the wind.

I encountered Father Armishaw when I went up to the top corridor in the old hall to deliver an exercise I had written out for Dr Warner. He lived on a passageway known as ‘Creepers’, as boys were expected to go on tiptoe so as not to disturb the priestly inhabitants. The first door on the left stood wide open; as I glanced in I saw Father Armishaw at his desk in the middle of the room. There was a bed in one corner with a white coverlet like the ones in our dormitory. There were two simple armchairs, and bookcases running from floor to ceiling around the walls. The books, many hundreds of them, were carefully arranged, their spines all evenly regimented and displayed. Everything about the room was neat, and the polished surfaces reflected the light of the coal fire in the grate. On a table beneath the open window was a gramophone playing a piece of music. The priest sat slouched at his desk, a smoking cigarette between his fingers. He had strong, well-proportioned features; jet black wavy hair, strong and glossy like the coat of a healthy animal. He looked up from a book he was reading and stared back, his mouth a little open, his lips slightly curled as if he were mocking me.

‘What are
you
gawping at?’ he said in a low voice. I was rooted to the spot. Then he said evenly: ‘Well, if you don’t want anything, bugger off!’

I had never heard a priest swear or utter a vulgarity, and I was shocked. I moved along the corridor and left my exercise book outside Dr Warner’s door as I had been instructed. When I returned, Father Armishaw had come to lean up against the door jamb of his room, all his weight on one leg. He was watching me, smiling. ‘And who might you be?’

When I told him my name, he made a gesture with his head as if to show that his curiosity was satisfied. ‘You’re one of those Brentwood types, aren’t you?’

Then he nodded into his room towards his gramophone. ‘Listen to that…’

Filling his room and resounding into the corridor was the sound of a violin backed by an orchestra. The music was entering its finale, and the priest stood watching me in silence, nodding his head in time with the rhythm. When it had finished, he said: ‘Do you know what that was?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Mozart…second violin concerto. Not bad, eh!’

I stared at him, speechless.

‘One day, perhaps, I’ll play it through from beginning to end for you. In the meantime stay out of trouble.’

As I turned to go, he added: ‘And mind you don’t take life too seriously.’

The incident excited me. I felt that the priest had engaged me rather than kept me at bay like the others. The following day, walking up and down Top Bounds after breakfast, I reported the encounter to James, and James reported it to Derek when he joined us as he usually did. Derek was avid for every detail and chortled and danced around with glee.

I
N THE SECOND
week my name appeared on the Mass roster to serve Father Piercy. There was no hint of emotion or devotion in his voice or gestures. At Saint Augustine’s I had emulated Father Cooney’s slow and devout voice; kneeling beside Father Piercy, I found myself trying with difficulty to pace my responses with his rapid recitation. Father Cooney would take almost an hour over Mass, whereas Father Piercy said his in twenty minutes.

Day by day the choir prepared for the Sunday High Mass. On that first Sunday we sang the Mozart Mass, and Victoria’s ‘
O Sacrum Convivium
’ during the Offertory. The rest of the service, involving the whole college, was sung in Gregorian chant. The long, complicated Mass was celebrated by three priests robed in green vestments and beskirted with lace albs. The pillars of exorbitant incense smoke (Father Cooney would have been scandalised) rose high to the rafters. In their distant
side aisle I could see the nuns, some twelve of them, following the Mass with rapt attention.

As I found my feet at Cotton in those first days, struggling with the early lessons, keeping up on runs, shivering under cold showers, and attempting to wolf down the tasteless meals, I realised that the single most important focus of our routine was the sanctuary, where we created a daily pageant of music, precise rituals, and rapid rhythmic prayer. The tabernacle on the high altar, where resided the real presence of Jesus Christ, was the centre of our lives. And yet, I was conscious of another presence, in the wild panorama of the woods and hills and sky outside. I sometimes found myself gazing through a window in the cloister, fascinated by the sight and sound of the blustering winds and the racing clouds. The wild disturbance of the countryside seemed to echo an unfamiliar and troubled excitation in my soul.

I went for confession and spiritual direction to Father Browne, the bursar, who also acted as parish priest for the small community of Catholic farmers who lived in the locality of Oakamoor. Father Browne saw boys in his sitting room off the church cloister. He was a heavy man, with sleepy eyes, pale flaccid jowls and wiry grey hair. He appeared slow of movement, as if he was weary. He smelled of incense and the bars of soap in his bursar’s shop. There was something gentle and soothing about him, almost motherly. His hands were very white and plump.

He asked me to sit opposite him on a corresponding chair and began by asking about the family and my home parish. Occasionally, moving his head languidly, he would look out of the window at the valley scene where low clouds were rising, trailing rain squalls over the canopy of the woods.

An important first step in the pursuit of the devout life, he told me, was the daily, or, better still, twice daily, examination of conscience. ‘I want you to get into the habit of reviewing your behaviour,’ he said gently. ‘Have I thought unkindly of
anybody today? Have I thought less of them? Have I envied anybody?’

He asked me about my spiritual reading. When I told him about
The Imitation of Christ
, he replied: ‘Yes, a lot of boys here read the
Imitation
.’ He said that excellent as it was, the work was written for enclosed monks and nuns. Had I not heard, he asked, of the greatest model of parish priests, Saint John Vianney? ‘He was known as the
Curè d’Ars
,’ went on Father Browne. ‘You’ll find several books about him in the college library.’

That afternoon I took down from the library shelves a book entitled
A Saint in the Making: The Story of the Curé d’Ars.
In the frontispiece was an engraved portrait: the saint’s cheeks were hollow and his eyes looked upwards towards the heavens. Sitting in the library with its glowing mahogany shelves and dramatic views down the valley I started to read. The historical setting of the famous priest’s life, I learnt, was France in the years after the Revolution: the persecution of bishops, priests and nuns; the suppression of seminaries. John Vianney inherited a parish sunk in drunkenness and fornication and made it a model of sanctity. He was convinced that the root of evil in his village was dancing, since it led to girls and boys touching and exposing themselves to sexual temptation. He was intent on eliminating ‘occasions of sin’; he even had the apple trees cut down in his orchard to deprive the village boys of the temptation to go scrumping. John Vianney disdained to sleep in a bed; the floor was sufficient for him, without pillows or blankets. He rose in the middle of the night and went to his church to lie full stretch on the stone flags. For food he would cook a pan of potatoes once a week, hang them in a wire basket and eat them till there were none left. The final potatoes were always rotten and wormy. He wore a hair shirt and flogged himself. What seized my imagination far more than his ‘thirst for souls’ were his heroic prayer life and self-mortification.

I realised that John Vianney’s heroism was impracticable, but I was determined to emulate the saint in so far as I could. Like other more pious boys I had begun to spend regular time in private prayer in church during mid-morning break, and between outdoor activities in the afternoon and first lessons. I had also begun to wear a hairy knitted sleeveless pullover under my vest which chafed my skin – a kind of junior hair shirt. Before going to sleep I pinched myself hard on the legs and on my waist. I was refusing sugar on my porridge at breakfast.

During my next session with Father Browne, I told him of my self-mortification. I wanted to be more like John Vianney, I said, but I could not see how that would be possible until I became a priest. Father Browne nodded sleepily. He said that my frustration was a good sign, because it meant that I was ready to consider what Saint Thérèse of Lisieux called her ‘Little Way’. It was not necessary to perform unusual mortifications, such as whipping oneself or wearing a hair shirt, or fasting. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘you should take sugar on your porridge as you need all the energy you can get to grow strong and healthy.’

Extricating a book from the pile on the table next to his elbow, he said: ‘I want you borrow this for the rest of the term. You’ll find that Saint Thérèse made heroic sanctity out of the small everyday routines of convent life.’ He told me how she knelt in front of a nun in chapel who rattled her rosary beads. ‘She could have quelled the annoying behaviour with a single look; instead she chose to endure the irritation.’ At times, he said, Thérèse was so distressed as she struggled to resist the temptation to rebuke the nun that she would break out in a sweat.

Father Browne, in his calm motherly voice, asked me to read the book slowly and thoughtfully. It was a fat, dark green book with gold lettering:
Soeur Thérèse of Lisieux: An Autobiography.