A Young Man's Passage

by Julian Clary

  I loved church, the smells and the bells and the seriousness of it all. I had complete faith in the power of prayer and would close my eyes and press my mouth against the bitter dark varnished wood of the pew, reciting ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’ over and over under my breath, dedicating one each to my parents, my sisters, cats and guinea pigs.

  Christenings, first holy communions and confirmations were big family affairs. I had a pale blue rosary kept in a clear plastic case and a prayer book with a picture of a saintly-looking boy kneeling in prayer on the cover, who I thought looked a bit like me.

  When I was ten I became an altar boy and, of course, it altered me.

  I took my duties very seriously. The priest at the Sacred Heart Church was Canon Moore, a delicate, elderly man with kind, watery eyes. I loved lighting the big candles on the altar, reverently passing him the water and wine, and wafting around in my boy-size cassock and surplice.

  There were a selection of these in the sacristy, and as you never quite knew how many boys were going to turn up, I made sure I got there early. There was nothing worse than being left with an ill-fitting cassock. Just an inch above floor length was what you wanted, although I would rather have it too long than too short. I didn’t mind having to lift my ‘dress’ from the knee as I went about my holy business, rather like a well-to-do lady in an old-fashioned film. If the cassock was too short in the arm and stopped unceremoniously halfway down the calf, you felt a bit of a fool and tried to move about with slightly bent knees to disguise things.

  To be given the task of ringing the hand-held gold bells during the transubstantiation was a thrilling responsibility. This is the climax of the mass, the moment the priest raises the Eucharist and says, ‘The Body of Christ.’ This isn’t just ritual: the true Catholic knows that a real transformation has taken place, signified by the bells.

  None of this drama was lost on me, and the special effect of the bells, if timed correctly and gently shaken with the merest ripple, could greatly increase the potency of the congregation’s spiritual experience, sending shivers down their collective spine.

  Nowadays the nearest I get to that sensation is the transformation scene in my annual production of Cinderella, when the Fairy Godmother turns rags into a ballgown and a pumpkin into a glittering coach. Light this moment properly through some gauze, add plenty of dry ice, some bad-tempered miniature ponies and a click-track of session singers ooh-ing and ah-ing ethereally, and you are indeed transported once again.

  I went to confession regularly and once asked Canon Moore to pray for Hildebrand. She’d had an abnormally large litter and one was dying each day despite my mother’s best efforts with an alarm clock and an eyedropper full of milk.

  ‘And who is Hildebrand, my son?’ he asked.

  ‘A guinea pig,’ I said.

  I blushed furiously the next Sunday, mortified to hear the story repeated at the end of his sermon as an amusing anecdote. What of the confidentiality of the confessional? The holiness of the sacraments? Nevertheless I started weeding the priest’s garden once a week for half a crown. It was mainly shrubs and very overgrown, but a rich source of dandelion leaves, which I proudly presented to Hildebrand and Patch. Their eyes glistened and their jaws swivelled.

  MY LAST FEW years of primary education at the Sacred Heart School were stress-free. I skipped over the road to school and rode my bicycle round Bushey Park. ‘Never on the roads!’ was one of my mother’s rules, and I persisted in riding on the pavements until I was 16, oblivious to the angry old ladies forced to flatten themselves against privet hedges in order to let me past.

  I continued to be fascinated by animals. I joined the RSPCA and various wildlife organisations, avidly read Joy Adamson’s books about Elsa the ‘Born Free’ lion and wept buckets over the fate of her various cubs.

  My mother and I continued to amuse each other, developing secret catchphrases, nudging each other during mass if we spotted someone wearing an unflattering hat. My father made a good straight man, and didn’t seem to mind being the fall guy, although he’d get a bit cross if he fell asleep in front of the TV and my mother poked a knitting needle down his ear.

  Years later I had a similar relationship with my pianist Russell Churney. He’d fall fast asleep in the tour bus and I’d use his open mouth as an ashtray.

  I slowly caught up with my reading and writing, thanks mainly to an inspiring teacher called Mrs Lang. Petite and energetic, she had red hair but I liked her even so. She was patient with me and seemed genuinely thrilled when I got something right. I wasn’t exactly backward – I just did things back to front. The next year I was in Miss Lomax’s class. She was thin and powdery and didn’t take much notice of me so I fell behind a bit.

  I was a bit in love with a girl called Catherine and gave her a Valentine’s card.

  Once a week I cycled to Hampton Wick to have piano lessons with Mrs Keable, who had a vase of dusty plastic chrysanthemums on display in her front window winter and summer. Each lesson cost a very reasonable half a crown, but she used to secretly give me sixpence back. Already in her eighties, she was a patient teacher and would demonstrate the correct way to play ‘The Moonlight Sonata’ despite the fact that her arthritic fingers made it impossible. I smiled politely.

  Progress was slow, though. The mirror-writing problem resurfaced when I read music, and I somehow managed to play backwards. I finally mastered a piece called ‘Swans on the Lake’, from Book One. Simple and sedate, it became a family joke when a year later it was still the only thing I could play.

  One week I turned up and the plastic flowers had gone. So had Mrs Keable, her bereaved daughter informed me. She had passed away during the week and there would be no more piano lessons.

  As I hadn’t displayed any shining talent as a pianist, no new tutor was sought, but we had an old upright at home, all candlestick holders and ivory keys, and I continued to thump out ‘Swans on the Lake’ whenever the fancy took me.

  A few years later, when I had every intention of becoming a famous pop star, I waited till everyone was out and wrote what I thought were fabulous songs on the now out-of-tune piano.

  Then one day I came home from school and saw my father having one of his weekly bonfires. It wasn’t until I wandered into the dining room and saw the empty space against the wall that I realised what he was burning. My piano.

  ‘What are you doing? I play that!’

  ‘No you don’t,’ he said.

  As no one had heard me play, my story that I was writing the hits of the future wasn’t very persuasive. At any rate, it was too late.

  Always ready to cast myself as the wronged heroine, I salvaged a few keys from the pyre and flew up to my room in tears. I still have them somewhere, and about once a year I bring up the subject of the piano-burning. The fact that I didn’t develop into the next Elton John we can put down to that needless incineration.

  For my final year in primary school I was in Miss Ronson’s class. A big-boned woman with a manly round nose and a booming voice, she lived locally in a bungalow opposite the shrew-like Miss Leeming. Neighbours watched to see if there was light on in both homes at the same time. . .

  ‘He’s come on leaps and bounds!’ she informed my mother at the parents’ evening.

  Secondary school was looming and although Broom Road comprehensive school for boys was the obvious local choice, the select few could apply for a grant to St Benedict’s, part of Ealing Abbey in west London, and suggested all those years ago by Julian Stoner.

  My mother asked if this was worth considering for me.

  ‘Oh Mrs Clary!’ guffawed Miss Ronson. ‘I said he was coming along, but I don’t for a moment think he stands the remotest chance of getting in there. He won’t even pass the eleven-plus!’

  If only she’d been right.

  TWO

  “Will you walk a little faster?” Said the whiting to the snail

  “There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.”

&
nbsp; ‘THE LOBSTER QUADRILLE’, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, LEWIS CARROLL

  I PASSED THE exam. This uncharacteristic flash of academic success I put down to my ‘lucky pants’, which my mother had bought for me a week before from Marks and Spencer. They were red tartan Y-fronts with a light blue trim and I wore them for any future exams or special occasions for the next ten years. My first boyfriend was to pick them up one day and read the label. ‘Ages 9–11?’

  If I hadn’t gone to St Benedict’s, it would all have been so different. It was the unholy monks who taught me the rudiments of glamour, alternative living and brutality. Until I walked through the gates of St Ben’s on that fateful day in September 1970, I was a naive, uncomplicated, albeit slightly eccentric eleven-year-old, anxious to please, interested in guinea pigs, local gossip and church.

  When I made my exit seven years later I was a languid, head-flicking teenager determined to avenge myself.

  But we had better stick with the facts, and their consequences.

  Everyone, especially me, was flabbergasted when the letter arrived saying I had passed the entrance exam and was accepted into St Benedict’s. I think I probably did better in the interview than the exam. I was a perky, well-spoken boy and I had explained in some detail to the bemused panel of monks how to tell the sex of a baby guinea pig. My pedigree as an altar boy, not to mention my job as Canon Moore’s gardener, also stood me in good stead. My mother was particularly pleased.

  I felt a sense of achievement that was new to me, and I was very glad I didn’t have to go to Broom Road as I’d encountered chaps from that school and they were rough and tough – characteristics in a boy I had not yet learned to appreciate.

  St Benedict’s was a public school, though, and the fees were more than my parents could afford, but we filled out forms and applied to Richmond Borough Council for a grant, which was duly given.

  Barry Jones had also been deemed acceptable and during that summer holiday we played with our guinea pigs, cycled round Bushey Park and wondered what life would be like at our new school.

  There was quite a lot of correspondence over those weeks, letters typed on quality notepaper, always headed with the school crest and Latin motto: A Minimis Incipe. One Saturday my mother took me to Peter Jones in Sloane Square to kit me out with what was required: not just a school uniform but a summer blazer, house tie, cap, cricket whites, cricket jumper, two rugby shirts, socks, shorts, boots, satchel, fountain pens – on it went. A lot of this was a waste of money, of course. I played rugby twice a week but it was a matter of personal pride to me that I never once touched the ball. I didn’t understand the rules, for one thing. Shirt, shorts and socks were pristine from one week to the next, laundry not required. With one exception. Shivering on the sidelines, the ball landed in my arms as I hugged myself against the cold. Jolted out of my quiet contemplations by people screaming my name, I ran towards the goal and put it down at the spot I’d noticed over the months was of great importance. I turned expectantly, expecting congratulations, but none were forthcoming. Apparently I’d run to the wrong end, scoring for the opposition.

  Some summer reading was also recommended, hair length specified and a copy of the school rules supplied so I could learn them and adhere. It was all a bit daunting.

  As was getting there. I’d been used to simply crossing the road to get to the Sacred Heart, but now I had to get to Ealing by 8.50 a.m. and not be late. That was one of the rules. From Teddington this involved walking to the station, catching a train to Richmond, getting on the 65 bus to Ealing Broadway, then the E2 to Eaton Rise. For my new life I’d have to leave home at 7.20 a.m. My mother would lay the table the night before, partially segmenting my half grapefruit with a sharp knife and turning it upside down in a cereal bowl so it wouldn’t dry out. In the winter she would make me porridge, standing at the stove in her dressing gown.

  At the time this was deemed worth it because St Benedict’s was considered to be such a special school and I was lucky to be going there. I did this for seven years, was rarely ill or late, and it never occurred to me to play truant.

  Unlike my sister Beverley, who left for school every morning for a whole term but then went around to her friend’s house and hid in their loft all day. She was only rumbled when the parents’ evening rolled round and her form teacher said, ‘Beverley who? I’ve never heard of her.’

  Her rebellious nature manifested itself in another curious way; when told to go and have a bath she would lock the bathroom door and sit on the windowsill smoking, swishing the water round occasionally in case anyone was listening. She’d then wet her hair in the sink and come downstairs supposedly bathed. Unfortunately she had no slippers on and my mother noticed the tell-tale dirt between her toes.

  So, one September morning in 1970, I arrived at the big, red Victorian mansion in Eaton Rise, London W5, that was St Benedict’s middle school. Here I would stay for two years until graduating to the upper school, a rather forbidding mix of old and new buildings just down the road, teeming with big boys with deep voices.

  The middle school was a kinder, gentler place, lots of lino and polished banisters leading to the very top of the house where lino gave way to carpet, where the headmaster’s office was. The classrooms, three for each year, were on the lower two floors, and to the side of the playground was a 1960s prefab building where school assemblies and PE classes were held.

  Each year was streamed, which meant clever boys were assigned to 3(a), average boys to 3(1) and the least bright to 3(2). I was in 3(2). After the initial shock of being named and shamed as the bottom of the pile, I decided we were the boys who had the most fun: at least, if you’re counting laughs per minute.

  Not all of us were stupid; some were just naughty, asking inane questions just to annoy the teacher, humming quietly to make others laugh or even, if you sat next to the right boy during French (when the lights were dimmed and the blinds drawn to facilitate the instructive slide show), given to undoing their flies and guiding your hand inside. I’m sure that kind of fun didn’t go on in 3(a), where they were all far too busy being bright and brilliant.

  All boys were known by their second names only, which took a bit of getting used to. Especially if they had names like Noonan, Lavarini, Girenas or Pecko, which sadly some of them did. At that age I couldn’t get my mouth round Pecko even if I tried.

  At the end of the first term, Smith, Spragg and Nutt were promoted to 3(1). This was a bit like entering a new social stratum and peer pressure demanded friendship be replaced with disdain.

  I quickly made new friends with my own kind. One boy invited me to sleep over at his house and plied me with cider. We then embarked on a curious game of strip poker that meant I had to remove an item of clothing whatever the cards said. When I continued to lose despite having nothing left to shed, he said, ‘Ah, that means I get to do whatever I want to you.’

  And so he did. I didn’t really know what was going on, but it would have been churlish to stop him. A few weeks later I was invited to go one Saturday to the Science Museum by another boy. As we travelled home on the tube he whispered in my ear, ‘I’ve heard about you. I can’t wait to get you home . . .’

  So I was a kind of boy-scout version of a gangster’s moll, passed around like a bowl of cheesy balls.

  Our headmaster, Father G, was kind and paternal. Late forties, tall with a ruddy complexion and big yellow teeth. His eyes twinkled with wit and warmth. He taught us Latin and geography twice a week, and I looked forward to his lessons. He had a dry sense of humour and would send up his own authority by making mock-angry-headmaster announcements. If he asked a question my hand always shot up, even if I didn’t know the answer, because we always had a bit of banter between us whatever the outcome.

  The ordeal of the long bus journey home was eased somewhat when I discovered the benefits of sitting downstairs. The top deck was always the preserve of schoolboys and smokers. When the bus got nearer Kingston, the workers from the Hawker Siddeley factory got on and
came upstairs, smelling of oil and carrying tartan zippy bags containing their now empty Tupperware lunch boxes.

  One day it was full upstairs and that’s when I discovered the joys of sitting downstairs betwixt and between the women, who of course talk more intimately to each other than the men, who are too busy coughing and rolling their own.

  Once I heard a woman say to the stranger beside her: ‘I’ve got three children you know, and a husband on a machine . . .’

  I told the story at the dinner table that night and so enjoyed the laugh I received that thereafter I used to travel downstairs deliberately, the better deck for eavesdropping on elderly ladies going to or from the shops.

  Other tantalising snippets I recall overhearing were:

  ‘Don’t mind me, I’ve got skin cancer.’

  ‘The morning isn’t the same without a sausage.’

  ‘Shut up, Julie, you’re nothing but a fucking foulmouthed cow.’

  ‘Stop dribbling, Doreen!’

  And my all-time favourite:

  ‘But there ARE no motorbikes in Harlesden . . .’

  BEING A ST BENEDICT’S boy, I would obviously stand if the seating was limited. It was a school rule: ‘All boys shall offer their seat to people on the bus.’ How times have changed.

  About half our lessons were taught by monks; the remainder were taught by real people. My favourite lesson was English language and my best teacher was Mr Moore. He was dramatic and a bit fey, but a brilliant and inspirational teacher. Once a week we did Exciting Writing, where we could make up our own stories, usually on a topic we’d discussed beforehand. Once, as soon as he entered the classroom, a volatile boy called Heinz flew at him, shouting and screaming incomprehensibly for a couple of minutes. This boy was always in trouble and had been beaten by Father G several times in his carpeted office. We all froze. When Heinz stopped as suddenly as he’d begun, Mr Moore calmly told us to open our exercise books and write down our reaction to the staged drama we had just witnessed.