At My Mother's Knee (22 page)

'That's right,' my ma replied airily, as if money were no
object.

'Then let's hope they don't have to wait as long for their
money as I do for the paper bill,' Eileen crowed.

My mother remained cool in the face of such heavy gunfire.

'Oh, thanks for reminding me,' she said sweetly. 'I've had
such a lot on my mind, what with Paul's new school, that I
completely forgot about the trivial little things like the paper
bill.'

Picking up a tin of marrowfat peas, she ran her gloved finger
absently round the top, examining it for dust. 'Business
must be bad if you're making such a fuss over a few coppers
on a paper bill.'

She put the tin back and fastidiously rubbed her hands
together, glancing pityingly around the tatty little shop as if she
were in a refugee camp. 'I'd like to cancel the papers if you
don't mind. To be honest they're not worth reading, the only
thing you can believe in them these days is the date, and
besides, that paper lad of yours is sooo dilatory, delivers them
sooo late, we often get the
Echo
just as we're going to bed –
that's if we get it at all.'

'It's nigh on impossible to find a paper lad who's reliable.
You wouldn't believe the riff-raff and lazy little ne'er-do-wells
I've had to deal with in the past,' Eileen sniped back venomously,
looking straight at me.

'Never mind, it's only a backstreet grocer's after all. We customers
can't expect too much in the way of service, I suppose.'
My mother spoke in a way that was meant to convey that she
was used to regular and prompt deliveries from Fortnum's, her
gay, tinkling laugh, however, laced with undertones of menace.
Eileen gave a snort of disgust.

'What exactly is that?' my ma enquired politely, pointing to
a lump of meat in the refrigerated cabinet.

'It's roast beef,' Eileen said curtly, still stunned from the
assault on her shop. 'And your paper bill comes to more than
a few coppers, it's eight bob actually.'

'It's a very funny colour of roast beef,' my mother went on,
ignoring her and counting the change out of her purse on to the
counter. 'If you don't mind me saying, it's got a sort of unnatural green tinge, a bit like a bluebottle's wing. Are you sure it's not
off?'

'That beef' – Eileen's voice was beginning to shake – 'that
beef, I'll have you know, has not only been cooked to perfection
by my George but has also been properly hung.'

'Well, you want to watch your George doesn't end up being
properly hung himself at Walton nick for selling dodgy meat
and poisoning half the neighbourhood,' my mother replied.'If
the public health man saw the colour of that he'd close you
down, and then where would we be?' she added, smiling
kindly before making her exit, leaving Eileen to closely examine
the accused under the fluorescent strip light, cursing my
mother angrily to herself.

I think I was the only child that morning who went to school
on the bus. All the other kids were dropped off by Mummy or
Daddy in the car. I said goodbye to my ma at the gate and
made my way into the building by the side entrance, as
directed by a Christian Brother.

This part of the school had formerly been the kitchens of the
great house but now, years later, had been reduced in rank to
the cloakrooms. After hanging up our coats we shyly weighed
each other up as we congregated to sit cross-legged on the floor
of the large assembly hall, waiting to be allocated our classroom.
Within minutes, one of the Brothers had dragged a boy
up from the floor and given him a vicious slap with a leather
strap across the back of his legs.

'No talking,' he barked, dangling the shocked victim by his
arm as an angry welt developed across the back of the boy's
leg, 'unless you want to feel the strap.'

As well as the Brothers there were a few lay teachers, notably
Mr Smith, a stereotypical
Daily Mail
reader in cord trousers
and highly polished brogues, whose well-worn strap hung
from his belt and down the side of one hip, the end peeping out
from beneath the hem of his tweed jacket. Another teacher who stands out in my memory was an effeminate bully. Highly
unpredictable and prone to sudden outbursts of fury, he'd lay
into boys who had displeased him with his strap, a terrifying and
yet compelling spectacle to watch from the safety of your desk.

St Anselm's was a male-dominated society not at ease in the
presence of women, which perhaps explains why there was
only one woman on the teaching staff. This solitary female
was called Miss McGee, known to every boy behind her back
as 'Lulu'. She'd been at St Anselm's since the year dot, and
expected everyone, Brothers included, to treat her as if she
were royalty.

She was as miserable as sin. A grim woman whom I don't
think I ever saw smile, she'd sit behind the grand piano picking
away at the keys like a chicken in a talent show, her face
set into a permanent sulk. There were fussy feminine touches
about her: a lace handkerchief tucked under the watchstrap on
her wrist, the overpowering smell of lily of the valley which
made you sneeze if you got too close, and the seed pearls round
her neck with which she toyed coquettishly when talking to
any male in the school who wasn't wearing short trousers. Her
cold and distant attitude towards the rest of us made it perfectly
clear that she hated little boys, and unlike Miss Edwards
and even the Bolger back at St Joseph's she was totally devoid
of any warmth.

We dreaded Lulu's classes. Since her repertoire was severely
limited, we spent most of the torturous hour practising endless
rounds of scales, loo-loo-looing our way up and down the
octaves, hence her nickname. After a session of this we'd
launch into 'Hearts of Oak' or 'Kitty of Coleraine', the latter
enabling us to infuriate her by singing 'as Kitty was stripping'
instead of 'as Kitty was tripping'. 'Enunciate!' she would
scream, glaring over the lid of the piano. 'And
Paul
O'Grady,
go and stand at the back of the group. You're deafening
me.' Each music lesson with Lulu ended with a rousing chorus of 'Rule Britannia', but the Kids from
Fame
we were not.

Once a week Lulu took us for elocution. The majority of the
class were well spoken, and one or two were so frightfully
affected that they sounded like juvenile Lord Haw-Haws. I was
one of the flies in her eloquent ointment.

'Mary has fair hair.'

'Maireee 'as fer'rair.'

She cracked me in the end, though, and after months of
weekly brainwashing sessions I became 'awfully posh'. My ma
was ecstatic and would nearly wet herself with glee whenever
someone remarked in the street how 'beautifully spoken' I was.
My brother and cousins would send me up and sit on me and
punch me. With hindsight I can't say I blame them; St Anselm's
was turning me into a snotty, pisselegant little snob.

The final straw for my brother was when I corrected him for
saying budgie with an imperious 'It's not a budgie, it's a
budgerigar' and he kicked me down the stairs.

'New boys form a line and follow me.' A bullet-headed, wiry
little Irish Brother was showing us to our classroom; I stood in
line waiting to go upstairs, uncomfortably aware out of the
corner of my eye that the fat kid next to me was desperate to
grab my attention. Ignoring him, I suddenly became engrossed
in an uninspiring painting of a lake hanging on the wall,
hoping that he'd get the hint and realize that I didn't want to
be his little friend. Staring at the picture was a bad move; it
gave Violet Elizabeth Bott a perfect opening line.

'I went there with my parents last year,' he said nonchalantly,
as if we were gathered at a smart conversazione. 'It's an oil of
Lake Como seen from the Villa Serbelloni on top of Monte San
Primo. Have you been there?'

I opened my mouth to speak but all I could manage was a
strangled 'ungh' sound which could have meant anything.

'My father is a doctor and very senior at British blood transfusions,' the monster prattled on. 'What does your father do?'

'He works in oil.'

'Oh. Texas?'

'No, Ellesmere Port.'

Despite the fact that I had virtually nothing in common with
most of these kids – our lifestyles were poles apart – I never felt
underprivileged in any way. Quite the opposite, in fact. It
didn't bother me that their folks picked them up from school
in the car and that their summers were spent on the Italian
riviera. My dad had a moped that didn't work and, providing
she was on speaking terms with my mum, we rented Rose
Long's caravan for a week in August or went to Ireland. Apart
from being used as an occasional substitute for a punch bag by
the Brothers, I was happy with my status quo.

The bullet-headed Brother was our form teacher. His name
was
Brother Kearney
and he couldn't have been any older than
his late twenties. At first I was prepared to like him as when he
leaned over my desk to slap the boy in front of me across the
head for talking he smelt reassuringly like my dad – a familiar
whiff of whisky and cigarettes.

Brother Kearney was a man's man: he favoured the boys
who were bright and competitive and excelled at sports. 'The
emphasis in my class is on achievement,' he used to
say. The boys who didn't come up to his high expectations he
tortured. My inability to grasp even the basics of his arithmetic
lessons unleashed the sadist in him. He would slowly drag me
round the classroom by the hair of my temple, much to the
Schadenfreude of the class, repeatedly asking a question that I
had no answer to. Lifting me by the hair so I was forced to
walk on tiptoes, he would twist it tighter and shout in my face,
'You're a cretin, O'Grady. What are ya?'

'A cretin, sir.'

'Now for the last time before I take the strap to ya – divide
sixty-eight by nine and then multiply by two.'

You try working that out with the Marquis de Sade of the
Christian Brotherhood tearing your scalp off with his bare
hands. Enraged by my total incomprehension of anything
mathematical, he would drag me to the front of the class, tell
me to hold out my hand and hit me three or four times with
his strap. The pain wasn't instantaneous. It kicked in as you
walked back to your desk, head down, determined to stem the
flow of tears dangerously welling up behind your eyes.

It was Brother Kearney who gave my mother her favourite
quote about me. He was the one who said that I was 'born to
trouble as the sparks fly upward'.

'Job, chapter five, verse seven,' my mother had replied, completely
knocking the wind out of his sails.

My mother read her Bible and could quote chunks of it ad
nauseam when the occasion warranted, but she had an aversion
for the Bible-bashers who would knock on the front door
at least once a week.

'You go to your church in peace and I'll go to mine,' she'd
say to them. 'Just don't stand on my doorstep battering the
door down to bloody well tell me about it.'

Every morning we took religious instruction. This involved
learning the highly convoluted and seemingly meaningless
answers to a series of cryptic questions set out in the
Catechism.

'What is purgatory?'

One could say it was the perfect way to describe a day at St
Anselm's, but fortunately I was able to answer: 'Purgatory is
the state of those who die in God's friendship, assured of their
eternal salvation, but still have need of purification,' etc.,
etc.

I didn't really understand what any of it meant at the time,
but since my memory was sharp I was able to learn it fairly
quickly and recite it parrot fashion. Those who failed to get the
answers right were given the strap, so I was word perfect in
the hated Catechism very quickly. I never questioned anything that we were taught in religious instruction. I'd learned that
lesson when I'd innocently asked Brother Kearney what the
Holy Ghost looked like.

I'd always imagined that it was the archetypal wailing white
bedsheet complete with a couple of holes for eyes, a pair of
wings and a halo. I was given the strap for being blasphemous
and disrespectful so I never found out. I still think that the
Holy Ghost looks like that. From that day I was a model
Catholic child: we were to accept the doctrine of our Church
without question and I never asked a single one.

Monday afternoon was devoted to sports and we'd hike
across Oxton to the school playing fields at the end of Beryl
Road in Noctorum. We played football or rugby regardless of
the weather, although when I say 'play' I mean that I spent the
duration of the game hanging around the edge of the pitch,
managing to avoid any contact with the ball while pretending
to look interested at the same time. I always returned to the
changing room with my kit as gleaming white as when I'd left
an hour earlier. The playing fields made way for a housing
estate later on and I can't say I shed a tear.

In retrospect, I'd say that the three years I spent at St
Anselm's were a waste of time and my parents' hard-earned
money. I learned virtually nothing from the Brothers, apart
perhaps from a degree of low cunning necessary for survival.
Each Monday morning Brother Kearney would ask which
mass we had attended the day before.

'Who went to seven o'clock mass then?' he'd ask. A couple
of hands, each belonging to a goody-two-shoes of the class,
would shoot up. Most of us went to the ten o'clock. 'Good,'
Brother Kearney would say, smiling, preparing himself for the
kill. 'Who didn't go to morning mass at all and went in the
evening instead?' A few incredibly naive hands would go up.
Kearney's mood would switch from benign little Brother to
Chief Inquisitor. 'Come up front,' he would roar. 'Lazy boys who can't be bothered to get out of bed in the morning to
attend holy mass need to be taught a lesson. Hands out.' And
the bemused offenders would be given six of the best.