Seminary Boy

by Cornwell, John

  ‘It was for you, and only for you, to apply to your bishop to be accepted as seminarians. You heard your vocation in your hearts. But once your bishop accepted you to be educated by the diocese for the priesthood, then your situation changed.’

  The judgement as to whether we had vocations, he was saying, was a matter not only for us individually but for the Church. It was the Church that called us to the priesthood, not our interior voices, and it was for the Church in the person of our religious superior to release us from our vocations. The obligation for a boy to consult with his superior before leaving the seminary, he went on, was not trivial. ‘Over the years there have been boys who left this place without consultation. In every case the consequences have been devastating, even fatal.’

  He now set before us the fates, one by one, of those who had abandoned their vocations down the years without seeking permission. There was the boy who left one year and developed a brain tumour the next. The youth who absconded and was killed weeks later riding a bicycle. The boy who went mad and was locked up in a lunatic asylum.

  Before he finished he said in a low voice: ‘I need hardly tell you the moral of this desertion today: the influence of bad company; the forming of cliques and undesirable particular friendships. Avoid those companions who would attempt to draw you into secret meeting places and conspiracies to break the rules of the house. Of these fellows who have left us today, I fear for them from the bottom of my heart.’

  59

  I WAS TROUBLED by Charles’s departure and Father Doran’s talk. It made me more aware of a shadowy corner of anxiety in my soul. Charles had awakened me to intense and irresistible feelings. I had felt intensely, ecstatically alive. Now that he had gone, I began to wonder about my ability to resist the temptation to give in to those feelings, should they occur again.

  The answer, as it had been suggested in spiritual direction, was the avoidance of ‘special friendships’. But I remained anxious. At my next visit to Father Owen, I raised my fears with him. Once again, he talked about ‘sublimation’. His voice filled uncharacteristically with emotion as he said: ‘If it happens again, pour all your unbidden feelings, the stew pot of your passions, into your love of Our Blessed Lady. Transform those unbidden feelings by offering them to her, who is your true mother and the only intimate human being in your life.’ He gave me a card with a prayer called the Memorare. He assured me that this prayer had ‘extraordinary efficacy’ over every need in our lives:

  Remember, O most loving Virgin Mary, that it is a thing unheard of, that anyone ever had recourse to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, and was left forsaken. Filled therefore with confidence in your goodness I fly to you, O Mother, Virgin of virgins. To you I come, before you I stand, a sorrowful sinner. Despise not my poor words, O Mother of the Word of God, but graciously hear and grant my prayer.

  Something about the prayer worried me. Memorare: remember! It assumed, absurdly, that the Virgin Mary, like some absentminded flibbertigibbet, was likely to forget my needs unless reminded. Yet perhaps the petition was no more than an acknowledgement of our own childlike insignificance, our need to plead with a mother who knew our needs only too well. But no sooner had I eliminated this difficulty than it began to dawn on me, in a niggling, insistent scruple, that our spiritual lives involved not real feelings for real persons, but invented feelings for imaginary persons. The reflection disturbed me so much that I wondered whether it was not a whispered suggestion of the Devil himself, the Father of Lies. For if we were inventing our joys and our struggles, our light and our darkness, if we were inventing our relationships with Jesus and Mary, were we not therefore dwelling in a world of make-believe? Against this creeping temptation to Faith I argued with myself that there was nothing necessarily wrong with imagining the world of the spirit. After all, the spiritual, the supernatural, lay beyond the veil of mere appearances. There was a sense in which our imaginings were a means of connecting with a deeper reality than this world of passing vanities. And yet, and yet. On the night that I had been beaten for studying under the bedclothes it had not been the Virgin Mary nor my Guardian Angel who came to comfort me, but Charles, the cynical, vain, absconding Charles. More than this, for all his capriciousness Charles had made me feel with an intensity that had devoured me. For the first time in my life I had been utterly besotted with another human being. I had been kissed, and had kissed in return. Being with Charles, short-lived as it was, had been worth every single passing moment. According to Father Owen, though, I should have taken those intense feelings and directed them towards Our Lady.

  I surely spent a great deal of my everyday life speaking to Our Lady! I prayed to her constantly and fervently, with frequent invocations and routine prayers such as the Angelus, the Rosary, and the nightly Salve Regina. Yet Mary was, I had to admit, a figment, an amalgam of all the images of the Virgin I had venerated through my life, from the statue on my mother’s dressing table, to the image of Our Lady of Fatima in Saint Augustine’s, Barkingside, to the stained-glass Immaculate Conception in the church at Cotton.

  My relationship with the person of the Virgin Mary, as it happened, had been subject to a gradual and troubling transformation. Since I came to Cotton I had begun to experience a confused, disturbing association between the Virgin Mary and my own mother. I could not think of my mother without remembering her violent, sometimes gratuitous, beatings, her rash and hurtful comments. Hence I could not think of her as associated with the Mother of God and vice versa. Yet the association had been encouraged by the awestruck reverence expressed for ‘motherhood’ by the profs and many of the boys. Devotion to the Mother God coalescing with love of our natural mothers was quietly and constantly fostered. The profs spoke of ‘your esteemed mothers’, and they made it known that like most diocesan priests they spent their free days or afternoons travelling considerable distances across the diocese to visit their own ‘dear mothers’. Many of the boys received lengthy letters from their mothers each week as well as parcels containing items of clothing in which treats had been hidden. There was a spiritual counsel that swept aside all these anxieties. Was it not better to quash all emotions entirely, the better to avoid the quagmire of feelings? Saint Francis de Sales did not write of sublimation. If we would promote ‘perseverance’ in the religious life, he advised, we should distrust and reject all feelings, even in our everyday prayer. But then I asked myself: would I have the strength to resist an upsurge of feeling for another person, another infatuation, if it should occur again? I would build up the strength of resistance, I told myself, by rejecting and distrusting all feelings, even spiritual feelings. I would resist feelings: resist, resist, resist.

  60

  THERE WAS, as it happened, a perennial and licit distraction that stirred the emotions of many boys at Cotton. As the autumn days shortened an elite set of rugby-football players, boots well-oiled, sports gear crisply laundered, became the focus of our attention as they ran self-consciously up to top field for coaching sessions. They were not necessarily the most athletic of their peers; but they had been selected early and coached to a high level of skill from the age of eleven. The best of them became the unique corps that formed the ‘first fifteen’ team chosen to play in away matches against other Catholic colleges around the Midlands. Those who had come late to Cotton, and from schools which had no tradition of rugby, like mine, were seldom considered for training: our role was to watch, to admire and to eat our hearts out.

  The rugby gods made an easy fit with the wholesome, manly, clerical culture of the Cotton priests. Most of the profs had made it into the first fifteen team as boys, and enthusiastically coached their successors, refereeing games and accompanying away matches with Father Gavin, who had played rugby for Ireland (a fact deplored at the time, we had been told, by Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin). Our priests were eager even in the midst of class to be diverted into discussion of tactics and highlights of big matches.

  Special treats, bacon-and-egg
teas, and pub visits, figured large for the rugby gods. I heard a prim sixth former speaking with glittering eyes at table one day about the highlight of an away match in Burton upon Trent. ‘We won by a single point. We were late back but we pleaded with Father Gavin to stop at a pub before we reached Cotton. So he asked the driver to stop at the Cricketers Arms. Over our beer he relived every pass, every scrum, every tackle. By the time we got on the bus we had replenished our glasses three times! Three times!’

  One notable exception to the hallowing of rugby football was Father Armishaw who, Peter Gladden told me, loathed the game as much as he deplored the ‘mindless blather of the rugger morons’. Even so, Gladden went on, Armishaw was capable of boasting on occasion about his own boyhood triumphs and how in one ferocious match he had saved the day against the ‘mollycoddled sissies at Ratcliffe College’.

  I had no prospects of being a rugby god, and I resented my sneaking feelings of envy. I thought many of them soft, compared with the toughs at Saints Peter and Paul in Ilford, even though they could handle a ball. I sometimes fantasised how I would tackle such a one and such a one in boxing gloves. Yet there was another agreeable alternative to rugby which promised to allay my fear of monotony.

  Country walks were not new for Cotton boys, but they had traditionally been desultory strolls, supervised by a reluctant sixth former. In the year I arrived at Cotton Father Doran had appointed a sixth former called Michael Swan as ‘head of walks’. Swan was a gangly youth with a reputation for high intelligence and studiousness. He was about six foot five and his clothes were too small for him. He wore very large, thick-lensed spectacles patched together with sticky tape. It was said of him that Father Doran allowed him to read the previous day’s Times fourth leader so that he could translate it into Latin, employing a different style to order – Cicero today, Tacitus tomorrow, Plautus the next. He was lofty in every sense of the word.

  I opted to go on Swan walks which were taken at a cracking pace for ten or twelve miles. The aim was not so much vigorous exercise as scenic variety. Swan led from the front with Ordnance Survey maps, dictating the speed and the direction which was at times complicated when we struck across open country. Sometimes we were so late back we staggered on to Top Bounds after dark, having missed tea.

  Usually we walked in twos and threes, but I walked alone. I became lost in my thoughts as we trudged through woods and secluded dells, and over hillsides. As I walked it filled me with delight to look from high ground towards a distant prospect, fading into green mistiness. I loved to see the rapidly changing contrasts of cloudscapes and weather, especially when the summits were in shadow, while the valleys shone bright and clear after a passing shower of rain. What I treasured most were wooded dells, deep green in the early winter weeks. We would grow quiet as we entered these mysterious sanctuaries with their heady scent of pine needles and the echo of rushing waters. Best of all was the ascent of our own valley on the last leg home, following the steep, foaming torrent until we reached Faber’s Retreat where I would make a silent prayer.

  When we arrived back at the college after a long walk, I was excited by the contrasting ambiance: our sacred and civilised enclave in its wild and remote setting. I would go straight to the church to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, conscious of the wind in the lime avenue outside and the grousing crows as they returned to roost in the elms around the swimming pool. Walking the countryside around Cotton seemed to deepen my sense of the sublime in the world, and in the real presence of God in the Eucharist.

  One of the keen walkers was a boy called Paul Moreland. Moreland had a reputation for being a swot and an oddity. He was seldom visible around the college. He had a womanish beauty: a large head and thick charcoal-black hair, full lips, a wide mouth. His sapphire blue eyes fixed on people with crazy, unfocused intensity. There was something radiant about the expanse of his pale forehead and his thick arched eyebrows. His cheeks were of a high colour, as if feverish. He generally walked alone with rapid short steps and a slight limp, as if he had one leg slightly shorter than the other. There were hints of my father’s affliction in him. Sometimes I saw him in earnest conversation with Swan; which was unusual, for Swan did not regard other boys as his equal. He and Swan would quarrel loudly, attempting to shout each other down. Once I heard them shouting at each other in what I thought to be German, before they both burst out laughing. But mostly Moreland was a loner.

  One day, on a rest during our walk, Moreland came over to where I was sitting on a drystone wall. I was looking out towards a lantern sky created by a break in the clouds towards the Weaver Hills. He stood between me and my view, looking intently into my eyes.

  ‘Has anybody ever told you,’ he said eventually, ‘that you have a beatific aura?’

  I had never heard the word ‘beatific’ pronounced, and I thought he had said ‘terrific’.

  So I said: ‘What do you mean, “terrific aura”?’

  He laughed, a delightful sincere laugh, and his face lit up. ‘No, no, no, Fru: beatific, beati-fic.’ He twice imploded the ‘b’ with his full lips, and made a flowing circle with one hand around my head like a magician. ‘I can almost touch it,’ he said. ‘You are a blessed person, Fru. A holy person.’ Then he walked away.

  His remark, which I took to be wholly sincere, disturbed and excited me. Moreland struck me as an extraordinary spirit.

  We seldom met a soul on our walks, still less a passing vehicle. But one afternoon as we trudged uphill towards a place called Waterhouses, a grimy village close to a quarry that had eaten deeply into the neighbouring hill, we passed a crocodile of about forty girls, walking two by two. They were from a nearby reform school for young female criminals. Their hair was uniformly cut short and they were dressed in grey raincoats, long grey stockings and sturdy black shoes. There were four burly female minders in attendance. I saw a comic parallel between our predicaments as we passed each other: like members of two juvenile monastic orders. I was fascinated by them. Some appeared embarrassed, as if ashamed to be seen in public; others had defiant expressions. Then one shouted at me: ‘Who are you looking at? Cunt!’ In my bad-boy days I would have had a ready answer, reflecting on the misfortune of her ill-favoured looks. But I exercised custody of my tongue and, too late, custody of the eyes.

  61

  IF I HAD a special friendship in the aftermath of Charles, it was one that carried not the slightest danger of romance or unruly passions, except nervous, painful laughter. It was innocent to the point of being childlike. Ever since Father Doran’s talk after the departure of Charles and the others I had become more friendly with Derek Hanson. Derek had a comical Irish face: ruddy complexion, wild blue-grey eyes, cheeks and forehead ravaged with acne. He was timid by nature, a great hater of sports, and at heart very serious and dedicated to his vocation. Yet he had a nervous quirky sense of humour and would erupt in hysterical paroxysms of giggles at a word or a look, his whole body and his potato-shaped head shaking.

  Walking up and down Top Bounds after breakfast together, and only when alone, we invented a private language game. We adopted pious facial expressions while uttering homiletic phrases in solemn, stately tones. Mostly we stole the phrases from books of ascetical theology in the library, and learnt them by heart for the purpose.

  ‘Cornwell, you will avoid vain curiosity…’ Derek would start.

  ‘Hanson, if it be lawful and expedient to speak, speak only of such things as will edify…’

  ‘Cornwell, let curiosity alone, and read such books as turn the heart to compunction, rather than entertain the mind…’

  ‘Hanson, refrain from superfluous talk and idle visits…’

  As we came out with these ludicrous imperatives we would attempt to outstare each other with baleful looks. The game was to make the other laugh first. When the dam burst we would become helpless, incapable of breathing, howling with laughter as we staggered along Top Bounds.

  Other boys sometimes watched us curiously. Sometimes a boy would come ov
er to join us. But Derek had developed a defence mechanism against intrusion, which was also part of the game. The moment we looked like being approached he would say under his breath: ‘Let’s be serious.’

  Then Derek would begin to talk about a saint called Rupert.

  ‘Saint Rupert,’ he would say, now including the newcomer, ‘was the bishop of Worms…he had a sister called Ermintrude…his coat of arms was a barrel of salt, and many churches near Salzburg which, incidentally, is a district famous for its salt mines, are dedicated to him…’

  It was my task now to say: ‘Is that so? That’s so interesting, Hanson…do tell me more…’ Sometimes I was so overcome that I would make my excuses and dash from Top Bounds before collapsing.

  We never met or spoke from after lunch onwards, and it would have been unthinkable for us to catch each other’s eyes in church or during mealtimes. Our friendship had rules and we kept to them religiously.

  There was another diversion that was to bring me into brief contact again with Paul Moreland. After his Sunday homily, Father Grady, the priest with Gregory Peck looks and a nervous little cough, announced that a layman was coming to speak to us about a movement known as the League of Christ the King: LOCK. The League, he told us, was a means of spreading Catholic action at ‘grass roots’ among the young while promoting our prayer life and loyalty to the Pope. Anyone who wanted to learn more should come to his room after Rosary the next day.