Authors: John Cornwell
T
HE WEEK BEFORE
Christmas we sat end-of-term examinations. A tense hush descended over the college. A day after the last exam the results were pinned on the noticeboard outside the refectory. My marks were average, even in Latin, and I rushed into chapel to give thanks to Saint Joseph of Cupertino. That afternoon I saw Father Browne for my last session of spiritual direction. He gave me a Christmas card with the legend in black: ‘
Puer natus est nobis: Filius datus est nobis.
’ ‘A child is born unto us: a son is given unto us.’ The words were printed beneath the Gregorian chant Introit of the third Mass of Christmas Day. He counselled me to pray even more during my holiday than during the term, to attend Mass and Communion every day. He told me about the need to practise ‘custody of the eyes’. On returning home I would be surrounded by lewd and suggestive images in advertisements,
newspapers and magazines, as well as the sight of women who failed to dress with due modesty. ‘We can control what we see,’ he said. ‘We can refuse to dwell on images that do not give glory to God.’
The following day was a holiday and much of the morning was spent packing our trunks and suitcases. I spent an hour in church before lunch and I saw other boys coming in to say private prayers, including Derek, James, Peter Gladden and Oliver Stack.
That afternoon we were allowed to talk in the dormitories, and we sat and lay on our beds gossiping. Father McCartie was nowhere to be seen. In the evening there was Vespers and Solemn Benediction celebrated by Father Doran. I felt especially devout as we recited the prayer known as the ‘Divine Praises’:
Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man…
Then Father Doran intoned the Te Deum followed by the Litany of the Saints. It was the last service of the year. As we walked in ranks to our supper we were conscious of enticing cooking smells coming from the kitchen and I caught a glimpse of the nuns through the open baize door. Amidst clouds of steam they were placing haunches of roast meat on to silver salvers as they prepared a Christmas feast for the profs.
After our own austere supper, just two ginger biscuits and an orange, Father Piercy, who was in possession of what looked like a glass of port, showed a film comedy,
Passport to Pimlico
, and we went up to the dormitories afterwards in a state of restrained excitement. Father McCartie did not put in an appearance. Some of the boys talked and laughed for a long time in the darkness, before falling asleep.
I lay awake, tense with anticipation at the idea of returning to the Peel. I grew tired, rehearsing all the things I wanted to
tell Mum and my siblings. Before I nodded off I felt somebody’s breath on my face, and a disembodied voice said: ‘Fru, it’s me!’
It was Charles. ‘Have a lovely Christmas, Fru, and don’t eat too much Christmas pudding.’ Then he felt my face with gentle fingers and plucked my cheek before disappearing in the darkness. I lay awake for a long time, thinking about Charles, my heart pounding.
When the lights came on in the morning, it was five o’clock, and most of the boys were dressed. Charles had already gone. Carrying overnight bags (our heavy luggage was due to be sent to our destinations by lorry and rail), James and Derek and I set off for the station at Oakamoor in the freezing air before dawn under a hard starlit sky. There had been a light fall of snow and the moon was brilliant above the tops of the pine plantation across the valley. A group of older boys, tenors and basses in the choir, caught us up and overtook us. They were singing the carol ‘
In Dulce Jubilo
’, their voices carrying down the valley and re-echoing back to us.
The steep and wild country around Oakamoor and neighbouring Alton gave way to a tamer landscape by the time the train reached Uttoxeter. It was dawn when we arrived at the industrial outskirts of Derby. Here the London boys including Derek and O’Rourke, together with James, who lived near Reading, boarded the express train bound for Saint Pancras. Standing on the platform I watched young women coming and going, transfixed by their legs in sheer stockings and made-up faces. What strange narcissistic creatures they seemed after so many weeks without so much as a glimpse of a woman save for our well-covered ‘witches’.
Staring out of the window, waiting for the train to depart from Derby station, I watched a girl come out on to the platform. She stood close to our carriage. She was about sixteen and had large dark eyes in a pale elfin face. She was slight of build and wore a well-cut navy blue coat and neat black shoes. Her dark
lustrous hair was cut short and parted in the centre of her head. She seemed to me the most beautiful, delicate creature I had ever seen, and I was surprised by my sudden sense of wonder. I thought: ‘I shall never forget this girl and this moment for as long as I live.’
I looked at James, who was sitting opposite. He had seen the girl, but now he had his nose in his
Imitation of Christ
and I felt a pang of guilt. The whistle blew and the train eased away, but the girl’s image remained in my mind’s eye.
M
UM MET ME
on the platform at Saint Pancras station and squeezed me fiercely, marvelling at how much I had grown. ‘Quite the young man,’ she said. I felt breathless on seeing her very own lips, her very own eyes, and hearing her distinctive voice. But her strong arms and the softness of her breasts filled me with sudden alarm as she embraced me hard with an overpowering whiff of dried lavender.
As we rode on the bus back to Ilford, at the front of the upper deck as usual, she regaled me with stories of her new job as a night-nursing orderly at Wanstead hospital. There were tales of laying out dead bodies; disagreements with ward sisters. She looked straight ahead, reliving her dramas, as we lurched along the scruffy streets of Bow, Stratford and Manor Park. I was saddened by the sight of so many drab, damp people hurrying about their worldly activities in the rain, oblivious of God. Secretly I uttered a word of praise to Jesus, and begged Mary for her help. But I was annoyed that Mum had no questions for me; that I was sitting in silence while she told one story after another.
The family was gathered for tea in the living room which
had been decorated with holly and coloured paper chains. There was a Christmas tree standing in a bucket bound with red and green crêpe paper. Dad, in his work overalls, blinked and put out his cheek for a kiss; my younger brothers stared. My sister, looking elegant, her hair perfectly coiffed, said: ‘Who’s this good-looking chap!’ My older brother was out doing last-minute Christmas shopping.
There was a surprise visitor, sitting in Dad’s chair – Grandma Cornwell, my Jewish grandmother. Since Granddad’s death she had been spending Christmas in turns with each of her sons. She was an overweight bespectacled lady dressed in black, with pure white hair done up in a bun under a black straw hat. Looking a little confused, she said in her pronounced cockney: ‘Bin to collidge there, Jack, ‘ave yer?’
Eventually Terry, who was now working at Plessey’s electronics factory, turned up with two laden shopping bags. He gave me a nod, and said sniffily: ‘All right? Nice journey? Mmmm…Got to see to this.’ Then he disappeared up to the boys’ bedroom to wrap his Christmas presents. Terry was as private and well-ordered as ever.
In the crowded living room, surrounded by cockney voices, I sensed a tension pervading the household. I felt vulnerable, and my spirits, so high that morning, had plunged.
L
ATE ON
C
HRISTMAS
E
VE
we walked to the Camp for an early first Mass of Christmas celebrated by Father Cooney. The arrangement relieved the growing numbers at midnight Mass in Saint Augustine’s. When I arrived Father Cooney was vested, eyes fast shut in an area beyond a makeshift curtain that served as a sacristy. Two other servers were already in cassocks and
cottas. When he opened his eyes he inclined his head gravely in my direction and whispered: ‘Wisswiss…’
By the light of hissing gas lamps Father Cooney prayed the Introit of the first Mass of Christmas Day in Latin that I could understand now without the translation: ‘
Dominus dixit ad me: Filus meus es tu, ego hodie genui te.
’ ‘The Lord hath said to me: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee.’
I had hoped to engage Father Cooney in conversation about Cotton at the end of Mass, but he fixed me with a stern eye and merely said: ‘Ah well, wisswiss…A happy and a holy Christmas to you and all your family!’
Miss Racine, who was standing in wait for me, crowed with delight as she took both my hands in hers, telling me how delighted she was to see me and how I must come to visit her.
The Cornwells walked in the frosty air past the cemetery filled with dead pets on our way back to the Peel. Dad had stoked up the fire and carved a ham for sandwiches; Grandma was already in bed. Drinking tea with a dash of whisky, excepting the little ones, we sat around the fire and exchanged presents. Terry had bought me a book about battleships; Maureen had bought me a new pen. For each member of the family I had made a set of rosary beads during Father Piercy’s Thursday afternoon handicraft sessions. Terry, cheerful on his alcoholic tea, chuckled as he opened the little box containing the beads. ‘Cripes!’ he said. Then he looked up brightly: ‘Come on then folks, who’s for Rosary?’ It hurt my feelings, but I laughed with the others.
Eventually we went up to bed. Grandma was already asleep in my sister’s room. My sister was to sleep with Mum, and Dad was to sleep in the boys’ bedroom. I was to share a bed with Terry. The bedroom was intensely cold as there was no heating upstairs. I went down on my knees before getting into bed. Terry, grumbling a little about five people taking all the oxygen out of the air, lay stiff and as far from me as he could.
Dad, who slept on a camp bed, was snoring the moment his head rested on the pillow.
I slept fitfully through what seemed an interminable night. Then, in the early hours before dawn, half-awake, half-dozing, I had a semi-conscious impression that I was stroking my penis which seemed to me in my dream state as hard and smooth as ivory. I had an irrepressible urge to stroke myself and a vivid impression of the girl on Derby station rose before me. Then I felt the pleasurable shock of release.
Climbing out of bed I padded to the door and into the bathroom, fraught with fear and curiosity. I stood for a long while in the bathroom, puzzling and thinking about the experience, which had been pleasurable in a way, and yet not entirely unexpected. I was thinking of what happened at South Kensington, and the larks of the big boys in the latrines at Saints Peter and Paul. I felt that I had done something forbidden. But what? I had no words for it. And why had the almost tangible presence of that girl been so vivid? Shivering with the cold I washed my hands and climbed back into bed. For a long time I lay curious and anxious. I slept for an hour or so; then I awoke, again needing to go to the bathroom.
What happened next was a conjunction of chance and for-getfulness. As I opened the door on to the landing, which was lit by a single low-watt bulb, I was greeted by a startling vision. Before me, swaying slightly, stood an ancient woman, half-dressed in a filthy gown which fell off her sallow shoulders exposing her breasts which sagged down on to her stomach, her eyes bloodshot, her mouth open, revealing toothless gums.
As I screamed, the old woman collapsed on the floor and let out a shriek to match my own. The little ones were screaming, my father was hollering, and Mum rushed out on to the landing.
The horrifying vision was just Grandma. She had made her way to the bathroom at the same moment as myself. She was dressed in nothing but her tattered unwashed nightgown and
was unrecognisable with her hair down, her false teeth absent, and without her glasses. As Mum picked up the shocked old lady, she yelled at me: ‘You blithering idiot! What did you want to do that for? Spoiling everybody’s Christmas!’
Overshadowed by my screaming fit, Christmas Day began, earlier than usual, in its time-honoured way. Dad insisted on us all taking a dose of Andrew’s Liver Salts, followed by a mountainous breakfast of fried eggs, bacon and sausages.
Then I set off for High Mass at Saint Augustine’s on my sister’s bike. I served as an acolyte on the altar, feeling troubled and exhausted, and knelt for a long time making my thanksgiving with a feverish mind. I returned home a long way round so that I could have time to think, turning over again and again the incident in the early hours which had almost been blotted out by my screaming fit. Had I committed a sin? Had I removed myself from God’s grace? Must I confess before going to Holy Communion? Cycling down the length of Claybury Avenue, this much I knew, even at the age of thirteen, that a sin required intention. The problem was recapturing my precise state of mind: was I awake, or asleep? Was the act deliberate? And what was the act?
I arrived home just as my mother was serving up Christmas lunch, the consequence of weeks of saving and hoarding. Eight of us sat down to plates piled high with turkey, ham, sausages, stuffing, roast potatoes and a pyramid of Brussel sprouts. I heard Terry muttering under his breath out of Mum’s hearing: ‘Where’s Gyp when we need him! How do we get through all this?’ Terry had once been in the habit of slipping Gyp, our much missed sheepdog, handfuls of unwanted food under the table.
Mum insisted that not a scrap should be left on our plates. She was also of the school of thought that children should not speak during mealtimes. We had by this stage a small hired television, acquired in time for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth earlier that year. The image was sickly green and
magnified with a thick piece of Perspex strapped over the screen. We watched the Queen’s speech, then a programme about other people celebrating Christmas around England. I worked my way through the food mountain feeling nauseous and detached. The family went to bed early and slept soundly, making up for the loss of sleep since the Mass on Christmas Eve.
The next day, Boxing Day, Mum and Dad were edgy. We were all crowded into the living room, and the windows steamed up as Mum prepared yet another huge meal. The radio was blasting the popular hit song of that Christmas: ‘Doggie in the Window’. My younger brothers joined in, adding their own ‘Woof! Woof!’ How I missed the music of the seminary: the nightly
Salve Regina
, the measured elegance of Gregorian chant.
After lunch I walked the streets. Eventually I found myself outside the church of Our Lady of Lourdes at Wanstead, several miles from home. The church door was open and I went in to pray. I knelt for a long time, my thoughts and conscience in turmoil. Just as I was getting up to go, an elderly priest came down the aisle. ‘Did you want to go to confession?’ he asked.
In the confessional I tried to explain what had happened, and he spoke to me soothingly for a long time. ‘Obviously you were not fully conscious of what you were doing in the early hours of the morning,’ he said. There were times, he went on, when it was perfectly natural to have this experience in one’s sleep. It was known, he said, as ‘a wet dream’. A boy should know, he said, that it was a serious sin in the sight of God to entertain impure thoughts and deliberately to stimulate one’s penis in order to ‘spill one’s seed or semen’. For this process of ejaculation, through God’s great providence, was how human souls were brought into the world. God in his providence had given man a special pleasure in the act in order to encourage him to produce children. But the act must be done responsibly and only within marriage.
The priest, whose name was Father Hemming, asked me about myself. He became especially kindly when he learnt that I was a junior seminarian. (How strange, it now occurred to me, that semen and seminarian derived from the same Latin word: seed!) I must ask our Blessed Lady, he said, for special grace to protect me from impurity. When he finished, he said: ‘Go now in the peace and the great love of Almighty God.’
I went out into the cold December air and walked all the way to Redbridge where Miss Racine lived. As I sat in her familiar cluttered room, warmed only by a paraffin stove, she asked me many questions about Cotton and listened with appreciation and fascination, I thought. In turn I listened to her religious prattle and drank her terrible tea as the fat marauding cats crouched on the kitchen surfaces. All the time, though, I was rejoicing inwardly to be reconciled with Jesus and in a state of grace.
When I returned to the Peel I came through the entrance to the sports ground feeling that my cup of happiness was full to the brim. Mum met me at the kitchen door, her face angry.
‘I watched you from the window coming in through the gates,’ she said. ‘Oh, you’re so cocky and pleased with yourself, aren’t you! Did you know that you walk proudly, your head high, your shoulders pulled back as if you’re so very grand? I thought that those priests would teach you some humility…’ She stood blocking my way at the door as if she would hit me. Then she turned away. I wanted to howl with rage and humiliation.