the loose chain, or mending multiple punctures in the decaying inner tubes.
I also gained first-hand experience of the amorous antics of the grocer and his assistant manageress. She was a buxom pretty woman, her peroxided hair piled high on her head. In the storeroom at the back there was a high desk at which the grocer stood doing his paperwork while eating chocolate. He would rip off the foil and bite into the chocolate bar as if it was a slice of toast. She would come up silently behind him and poke two fingers between his buttocks. Then they would go into a clinch, with a lot of tongue kissing, breast and testicle squeezing, moaning and giggling: all as, in sight of them, I attempted to fill my cardboard boxes with orders of tinned baked beans, trays of eggs, bacon, cheese, margarine, jams and marmalade. Their behaviour intrigued and yet repelled me. I prayed for them both every morning at Mass.
Two weeks before I was due to depart for Cotton College, I was fired from the job after crashing the bike while evading a dog that hurled itself at my front wheel. The dog’s owner stood smirking down at me. ‘That happened to me once,’ he said. Then he added: ‘You must have frightened him.’
The bike was a write-off, and I was concussed. The money I had earned, less compensation for broken eggs (four dozen of them were spread over the incline of Clayhall Avenue), paid for football boots and a new black blazer. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t make you pay for a new bike, you clumsy little bleeder,’ said the manager as I made my farewell.
Suffering a fever, which Mum insisted was due to homesickness in anticipation, I was unable to travel on the appointed day of the new academic year in the third week of September.For several nights I lay weeping, convinced that I was unworthy and therefore fated never to depart for Cotton. But the Very Reverend Father Doran wrote a revised travel schedule, informing Mum that a car would be waiting at Oakamoor station and that I should arrive at the college in time for Compline, Benediction and supper.
20
O N A LATE September Sunday morning of cool breezes and brilliant sunshine I served Father Cooney’s Mass for the last time. In the sacristy he handed me a parcel and told me to open it. It was a new leather-bound Roman missal in dual Latin–English translation. The pages were gilt-edged and there were sumptuous silk markers, purple, red, green, white and gold. I could smell the warm scent of the leather and the sweet aroma of the delicate rice-paper. I was moved to tears, realising the expense of the beautiful object. I attempted to thank him, but he interrupted me: ‘Wisswiss…Very good! Run along now!’ As I left the sacristy he called out: ‘And keep the Faith!’
As I made my farewells at home, Terry, my elder brother, was terse: ‘Now I’ll be able to breathe at night.’ My sister, immaculately groomed, and approaching her fifteenth birthday, gave me a quick dry kiss on the cheek. She had a knowing gleam in her eye. Not for one moment, she appeared to be telling me, was she taken in by my devout pretensions. The youngest two, aged ten and seven, stood gaping, incredulous that any of us should be escaping from the Peel. Dad came in from the field. He was blinking with nervous excitement. He lifted my bags. ‘Gawd awlmighty!’ he said. He sang a bar of ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag’, then he loweredhis face towards mine for a kiss. Accompanied by Mum, wearing her purple coat, I set off through the gates of the Peel, my arms almost out of their sockets with the suitcases I insisted on carrying by myself. In my unyielding new black shoes I just made it to the bus-stop.
We had lunch in the cafeteria of Saint Pancras mainline station. Mum ordered steak. It stuck in my stomach. She nevertheless ordered treacle suet pudding, urging me to finish every morsel. Her boy was not going to depart unfortified.
The station was a like stage set for the commencement of
I also gained first-hand experience of the amorous antics of the grocer and his assistant manageress. She was a buxom pretty woman, her peroxided hair piled high on her head. In the storeroom at the back there was a high desk at which the grocer stood doing his paperwork while eating chocolate. He would rip off the foil and bite into the chocolate bar as if it was a slice of toast. She would come up silently behind him and poke two fingers between his buttocks. Then they would go into a clinch, with a lot of tongue kissing, breast and testicle squeezing, moaning and giggling: all as, in sight of them, I attempted to fill my cardboard boxes with orders of tinned baked beans, trays of eggs, bacon, cheese, margarine, jams and marmalade. Their behaviour intrigued and yet repelled me. I prayed for them both every morning at Mass.
Two weeks before I was due to depart for Cotton College, I was fired from the job after crashing the bike while evading a dog that hurled itself at my front wheel. The dog’s owner stood smirking down at me. ‘That happened to me once,’ he said. Then he added: ‘You must have frightened him.’
The bike was a write-off, and I was concussed. The money I had earned, less compensation for broken eggs (four dozen of them were spread over the incline of Clayhall Avenue), paid for football boots and a new black blazer. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t make you pay for a new bike, you clumsy little bleeder,’ said the manager as I made my farewell.
Suffering a fever, which Mum insisted was due to homesickness in anticipation, I was unable to travel on the appointed day of the new academic year in the third week of September.For several nights I lay weeping, convinced that I was unworthy and therefore fated never to depart for Cotton. But the Very Reverend Father Doran wrote a revised travel schedule, informing Mum that a car would be waiting at Oakamoor station and that I should arrive at the college in time for Compline, Benediction and supper.
20
O N A LATE September Sunday morning of cool breezes and brilliant sunshine I served Father Cooney’s Mass for the last time. In the sacristy he handed me a parcel and told me to open it. It was a new leather-bound Roman missal in dual Latin–English translation. The pages were gilt-edged and there were sumptuous silk markers, purple, red, green, white and gold. I could smell the warm scent of the leather and the sweet aroma of the delicate rice-paper. I was moved to tears, realising the expense of the beautiful object. I attempted to thank him, but he interrupted me: ‘Wisswiss…Very good! Run along now!’ As I left the sacristy he called out: ‘And keep the Faith!’
As I made my farewells at home, Terry, my elder brother, was terse: ‘Now I’ll be able to breathe at night.’ My sister, immaculately groomed, and approaching her fifteenth birthday, gave me a quick dry kiss on the cheek. She had a knowing gleam in her eye. Not for one moment, she appeared to be telling me, was she taken in by my devout pretensions. The youngest two, aged ten and seven, stood gaping, incredulous that any of us should be escaping from the Peel. Dad came in from the field. He was blinking with nervous excitement. He lifted my bags. ‘Gawd awlmighty!’ he said. He sang a bar of ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag’, then he loweredhis face towards mine for a kiss. Accompanied by Mum, wearing her purple coat, I set off through the gates of the Peel, my arms almost out of their sockets with the suitcases I insisted on carrying by myself. In my unyielding new black shoes I just made it to the bus-stop.
We had lunch in the cafeteria of Saint Pancras mainline station. Mum ordered steak. It stuck in my stomach. She nevertheless ordered treacle suet pudding, urging me to finish every morsel. Her boy was not going to depart unfortified.
The station was a like stage set for the commencement of
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