by Ray Connolly
It was the first day of cricket practice of the summer term, and James and Michael were lying in the grass behind the nets, while the school’s sportsmen demonstrated their style. Neither boy liked cricket and they were taking the opportunity to do some half-hearted revision of Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’, taking it in turns to recite while the other held the text.
James looked witheringly at Michael but carried on with his recitation: ‘ “Apparelled in celestial light.” Your turn, creep.’
Michael passed the book of poems to his friend sneaking a quick look at the next few lines as he did: ‘ “The glory and the freshness of a dream, it is not now as it hath been of yore …” ’
‘Your what? Rather yore than mine.’
‘ “Turn whereso’er I may, By Night or day …” ’
‘ “… You are the one, only you ‘neath the moon, or under the sun.” ’
Michael refused to be thrown: ‘ “The things which I have seen, I now can see no more.” ’
‘Very good,’ said James as a cricket ball broke through the net and skidded away past them, ‘but do you know what he was saying?’
‘Sounds like a long winded way of telling us that heaven lies about us in our infancy to me.’
‘Such scholarship! Your mother must be very proud of you.’
Getting up Michael tossed the cricket ball back to the chaps in white flannels. ‘I’m not a complete idiot, you know,’ he said good naturedly.
‘No, of course you’re not.’
They lay back on the grass and enjoyed the sun, a breath of summer at the beginning of spring. ‘What about the Prefects?’ asked Michael after a minute.
‘Too disciplinarian. Sounds like the Contours,’ said James, shaking his head.
For a week they had been struggling to find a stage name for themselves. Tonight was their first gig, a ten-minute spot in the local youth club, the prospects of which had terrified them for a week since they had accepted Brother Amedy’s invitation to perform. ‘What about the Sixth Formers?’ James suggested.
This time it was Michael’s turn to disagree. ‘We’d sound like a couple of schoolkids for the rest of our lives,’ he said.
James’s eyes ran around the playing fields. It was a pretty wooded place on the edge of the small town where they lived. Years earlier they had gone seeking conkers in the horse chestnut groves which lay in the private estate beyond the fields, and been chased by a ratty old lady. ‘What about the Conkers then?’ he said.
‘Or the Acorns … or the Nuts?’ came back Michael.
There was a silence. Another ball bounced out of the nets, but this time they both ignored it.
‘I know.’ James suddenly sat up. The talk of trees had started a train of thought. ‘The Holly Berries. That’s what we should call ourselves. Holly, after Buddy Holly, and Berries because of Chuck.’
‘The Holly Berries,’ Michael repeated. ‘The Holly Berries. Yes, I like it,’ he said, and putting his hands to his mouth made the shape of a megaphone. ‘And now for the first time on coast to coast television we have that dynamic, harmonic duo, the Forever Youngs themselves … the Holly Berries.’
James laughed and whistled and cheered so loud that one of the worthy chaps wielding a cricket bat in front of him turned to discover who was the joker. ‘Do put a sock in it, you two,’ he moaned with the sportsman’s derision for the aesthete.
‘Sod off,’ Michael shouted back.
James paid no attention. ‘The Holly Berries,’ he repeated several times to himself. ‘The Holly Berries. It’s a great name. There’s nothing can stop us now, Mike. Nothing at all.’
Michael pulled a piece of grass and stuck it into his mouth. ‘Of course there isn’t,’ he grinned.
James saw Maureen first. He had arrived at the youth club early to check on the sound equipment (a single microphone and speaker) and been disturbed to discover that the younger boys there did not relish the idea of giving up their table tennis while the Holly Berries performed. A small revolt had seemed likely until a dark-haired, beautiful girl had suddenly waded into the leader of the table tennis players and promised a terrible retribution if he and his pals did not desist from ping pong while James and Michael played.
‘Thanks,’ said James, as the girl then shooed the boy and his pals away. ‘We need all the help we can get.’
‘Little brothers have to be bullied sometimes,’ said the girl. ‘That’s the only perk in being a big sister.’
James looked at her with instant adoration. She was beautiful, grey-eyed, fresh and wholesome, as is the way with girls who have stayed too long at school, and by the time Michael arrived James had already begun his campaign of chatting her up.
Her name was Maureen McMahon and she was the unofficial leader of the youth club by virtue of beauty and brains. Neither James nor Michael had ever bothered to visit the club before, preferring to spend all their free time solely in each other’s company, but they had heard about Maureen from other boys, who had looked but dared not touch this small town madonna. She, too, was a sixth former studying at the local Notre Dame convent school where she was head girl, but she had a sophistication which was foreign in a schoolgirl.
Not that James and Michael knew much about schoolgirls. Neither had a sister and the avenues for social intercourse between the sexes were strictly discouraged in both the boys’ school and convent. Such relationships were considered distracting, and when grey-uniformed boys were spotted dallying with blue-uniformed girls at bus stops or in the local coffee bar severe reprimands were in order. The youth club, a recent innovation, was the only approved meeting place, but even here Brother Amedy patrolled, ever vigilant for behaviour which might have been unseemly in young Catholics.
The gig was a great success, although the speaker howled when they got too close to the microphone, and the Holly Berries were more nervous than at any time in their lives. They chose to sing ‘When Will I Be Loved’, ‘So Sad’ and ended the set with ‘Locomotion’, to which some of the girls did an improvised dance which they believed to approximate something one of them had seen on television. Maureen, and her best friend Alison, sat out and watched the boys.
That night saw the beginning of two important new changes for James and Michael. Their music, always private, was now public. The other development was their discovery of girls, albeit at a late age, although not unusually so for boys in similar predicaments. Since childhood they had only ever had time for each other, and other boys who had attempted to intrude into their lives had been quickly frozen out. Girls could not be cast aside so easily.
During the following few weeks a new pattern to their behaviour emerged, as the two boys took to double dating with Maureen and Alison. Sometimes they would play tennis together, and sometimes just sit in the forbidden coffee bar and play the giant Wurlitzer. And on Saturday evenings they would go to the local cinema, sitting alongside each other, and snogging unpassionately whenever the film became boring.
But while James’s infatuation with Maureen grew with each successive meeting Michael’s interest in Alison always lacked fire. She was a pretty enough girl and he certainly liked her and enjoyed the cosiness of the double seats at the cinema and the goodnight kisses under the laburnum tree around the corner from her home. But his emotions were never aroused beyond a tepid friendliness.
And so April ran into May and the examinations drew nearer. Quickly the foursome became an accepted part of the youth club, as did the playing by the Holly Berries, whose reputation grew with each successive gig. By mid-May they had even collected their own small fan following, largely made up of school friends of Maureen and Alison it was true, but fans nonetheless.
‘Look at that, real fans,’ grinned Michael one Friday evening as a group of about twenty girls broke into spontaneous squeals of congratulations as the Holly Berries finished their weekly performance. ‘They love us.’
‘They’ve got good taste,’ laughed James. Then his eyes found Maureen at the
centre of the crowd. She was smiling up at him, proud, he thought, and looking wonderful. ‘Isn’t she marvellous?’ he called to Michael as the applause continued, and cries for more began to build into a chant.
Michael looked at Maureen. ‘She’s all right,’ he said grudgingly.
‘All right? She’s wonderful. I’m in love,’ said James with a sudden vehemence.
‘What?’ Michael looked again at Maureen and then at James.
‘I am. I mean it, Mike. I’m in love. This is it.’
Michael considered Maureen. She was certainly a very beautiful girl. And for the first time in his life he felt jealous of his friend.
11
Father Vincent stood at the bar, a glass of Guinness in his hand, and moaned. ‘I don’t suppose I’d find it quite so disagreeable if there were any variety to it, instead of doo-doo-doo-doo all the time. It makes a metronome sound melodic. He’d turn the sacristy into a discotheque if he got half a chance. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t prefer him reading The Sporting Life and going to the races all the time like all the others.’
Bert the barman nodded sagely: they were two elderly men who by virtue of their age had earned the right to complain about everyone and everything younger or newer than themselves.
James pushed his way to the bar and ordered two glasses of wine. Bert looked at him curiously, recognizing a stranger and, no doubt, wondering what kind of a man ordered wine to drink for himself.
Behind them at a corner table Mary waited alone. When James had asked her if she would like a drink she had not expected him to insist that they move to a table by the bar to drink it, thus separating her from her friends. And she had been aware of the raised eyebrows as she and the newcomer had made their way down the hall into the alcove where the bar had been set up. She looked back at the stage, where Father Michael was singing ‘Lonely Avenue’. Paul was now directly at his side, as though anxious to get close to the man he idolized.
James returned with the drinks and, putting them down on the table, sat down alongside her.
‘Thank you,’ said Mary. ‘You were very good on the questions.’
‘I spent a lot of time studying the answers,’ he replied.
‘With Michael?’
‘Shouldn’t it be Father Michael?’
‘He doesn’t like to be formal with friends,’ said Mary. ‘I thought you were a friend.’
‘We used to be. We were at school together. Six to seventeen. We were inseparable.’
‘And have you kept in touch, or …’
James broke in: ‘No. This is the first time we’ve seen each other for over twenty years.’ He looked at the priest on stage. ‘He’s very good, isn’t he? Are you a fanatic, too?’
Mary laughed. ‘You mean a rock and roll fanatic? Oh, no. It was before my time. I was more interested in the sixties. The children enjoy it more than I do. My son is the boy on stage who can’t play his guitar.’
James’s eyes fell on Paul, who stared straight back at him. He turned back to Mary, aware that the child was continuing to watch him. ‘It’s a funny thing for a priest to be doing, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ asked Mary. She had become so used to Father Michael that nothing he did seemed peculiar any more. ‘Didn’t he always believe in making everything fun?’
For a moment James went quiet. ‘He always believed, I suppose. He must have done.’
‘And don’t you?’
‘I believe in now, “no hell below us, above us only sky”.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Mary couldn’t quite follow.
‘Sorry. That was a line from John Lennon. Remember? “Imagine”?’
‘Oh I see,’ said Mary, not at all sure that she did.
James looked at her. She was an open attractive woman, all the more so because of the lack of effort she had gone to for this Friday night dance. And then he thought about the silly little pouting hussy who had wanted him to go to the party back at the college. He was glad he hadn’t. Mary was supremely female in a way that that girl would never understand. ‘What about your husband?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t he come down here?’
Mary shook her head: ‘I’m separated.’
‘Separated?’ That was a state of affairs that could mean all kinds of situations.
‘I mean I’m not divorced,’ said Mary. ‘I don’t believe in divorce. Well, I didn’t. I’m not really sure that it matters very much any more. An awful lot of the things I was brought up to believe in seem rather unimportant nowadays.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said James.
Suddenly Mary became aware of a presence at her side. It was Paul. ‘What is it, Paul?’
‘Nothing,’ said the child.
For some reason which she could not quite understand Mary felt embarrassed. ‘This is my son … Paul,’ she said to James.
‘Yes, we’ve already met. My name’s Jimmy,’ James nodded a welcome to the boy.
‘Hello.’
‘All right, on your way then, Father Michael will be wondering where you are,’ said Mary ruffling the boy’s hair, anxious to be rid of him.
Without a word Paul wandered away, back towards the stage. Mary watched him go. ‘He was just checking up on me. Children can be worse than gaolers sometimes. Have you got any?’
James shook his head. ‘No, no children. Noties …’ He paused, and then smiling looked her straight in the eyes: ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
She told him. And then she told him about her job. And then he asked her to dance. It was her request number, ‘To Know Her Is To Love Her’, and Father Michael’s glitter ball spun above them as they danced, sending speckles of light across their faces and bodies and those of the other dancers. It was, Mary thought, the first time the 706 Union had taken on the illusion of a ballroom of romance. And she thought it was wonderful.
‘You see all human life in the casualty ward,’ she chattered, as they danced slowly around. It was important to her, dancing with the stranger there in front of her children, her friends and her priest, that she keep up a lively conversation, in case any of them should get the wrong idea.
‘I can believe it.’ James seemed reluctant to talk.
‘What about you?’ asked Mary.
‘Oh, I suppose I put the icing on the pies in the sky.’
‘What?’
‘I’m a teacher … a lecturer, actually, in English literature. I’m taking a year out at the moment to write a book. I’m only here for two weeks, taking part in a seminar on English romantic poets. They’re my specialty.’
Immediately Mary felt aware of her lack of further education. She had left school at sixteen, and begun training to become a nurse immediately. She always felt left out, and at a severe disadvantage in the presence of those who had been to university. It was the one regret of her life. She thought desperately of something intelligent to say, so that she might be able to show that she did at least know who the romantic poets were. But nothing came to her mind. ‘That sounds … interesting,’ she murmured lamely, and immediately wished she hadn’t said it.
‘Interesting?’ smiled James, instantly aware of her embarrassment. ‘It can be, but not very often, I’m afraid. You should come along sometime. You might like it. There are several evening lectures.’
Mary’s mind flew into a panic. She had never been to a lecture before, not a university lecture. She was sure she wouldn’t know what to do. ‘Oh, I don’t think …’ she began. ‘… I mean I’m busy most nights.’
James was persistent. ‘But not every night. I can’t believe that.’
‘Well …’
‘Come on, say you’ll come …’
‘Well, I can’t promise,’ said Mary weakly.
‘Don’t promise, just come,’ said James, and then went silent as he listened to the music.
‘This was always one of my favourite songs,’ said Mary. ‘He always plays it for me.’
‘To know, know, know her, is to love, love, love her …’ murmured James, a
long with the priest’s singing. ‘We used to do it twenty years ago. We called ourselves the Holly Berries. We were great. Really great.’
‘And what happened?’
James was silent for a long moment. ‘What happened?’ he repeated eventually. ‘I don’t know. Life happened, I suppose.’ And then he went silent again and they danced on.
At the side of the hall Cathy and her friend watched closely. ‘Well now I’ve seen everything,’ said Suzie smacking her lips wickedly. ‘Your mum smooching with a tall, dark stranger.’
Cathy looked at her mother. She didn’t like the tone in Suzie’s voice. It made her mother sound cheap. She moved to her defence. ‘She’s hardly smooching,’ she said loyally.
‘Oh but she would be if we weren’t here,’ said Suzie, with an expression which said ‘I know about these things.’
Cathy didn’t answer. She had never seen her mother in the arms of a stranger before, never seen her behave like a single woman.
On the small stage the song went into the final chorus. The band played it every week, but tonight had they been looking they would have noticed a new anxiety creasing Father Michael’s features, as his eyes returned again and again to the couple in the centre of the floor, Mary leaning back in James’s arms, looking suddenly years younger. And James, a little plumper, a little greyer than when he had last seen him, but still the best friend he had ever had.
Down there on the floor together they looked suddenly right together. They matched each other, he thought. A good looking couple, some might say. And looking at Mary again he wished James had never come back.
Paul did not speak on the way home. As soon as the evening’s music was over he had quickly replaced his guitar in its case and without even bothering to say good night to Father Michael had hurried to his mother’s side.
‘It’s been very nice dancing with you,’ he had overheard James say.
‘I’ve enjoyed it, too,’ Mary had said, slightly flushed with the heat of the hall, and the awareness that eyes were upon her.
‘I hope I’ll see you again then.’ James had smiled, and then moved away to see Father Michael.