Road to the Dales, The Story of a Yorkshire Lad

by Phinn, Gervase

  Her caustic comments on other people's appearance were legion: 'He's like a streak of tap water'; 'She's a face like a parish oven'; 'He comes in here like a sack of spuds, tied up ugly'; 'She's no oil painting herself, I can tell you'; 'He looked as if he was dragged through a hedge backwards'. It occurs to me now, looking back on my days in the tripe shop, that three words come to mind - 'pan', 'kettle' and 'black'. There were expressions the proprietor used which made no sense to me at all: 'She's all kid gloves and no drawers'; 'There are more ways to kill a cat'; 'I've not sat down since I got up.' A frequent turn of phrase, if she was told some interesting news, was, 'Well, I'll go to the bottom of our stairs!' The proprietor of the shop was a mistress of the non sequitur: 'He wants to get down on his knees and thank God he's still standing up,' she would announce, or 'Nobody ever goes there these days, it's too crowded.' Such vibrant, colourful use of English was a paradise for the connoisseur of the colloquial, and I enjoyed the constant patter. Here was the precursor of Norman Evans's gossipy neighbour, 'over the garden wall', and Les Dawson's wonderfully comic characters Cissie and Ada, with their sharp observations, dry humour, deadpan delivery and amusing banter, all accompanied by expressive facial contortions.

  I would often enter the shop at some crucial part of a story: 'Of course, if she'd have tied it up with a piece of string, it wouldn't have happened'; 'And I said to him, if you think I'm doing that with my bad back, you've got another think coming'; 'When the police finally arrived, you will never guess where she'd put it'; 'I'll tell you, if it was me, I'd give her a piece of my mind, and no mistake.'

  Ailments, operations, confinements, illnesses, medical problems, all were discussed in graphic detail and inquests held. I heard about surgical removals and diseases, hernias and gallstones, arthritis and lumbago, tennis elbow and water-on-the-knee. If it was 'a woman's problem' or something she didn't want little ears to hear, the proprietor would lower her voice to a confidential whisper, ending with a tantalizing silence when she mouthed the particular condition or observation.

  One story I remember well was when she related a visit to see her daughter in Listerdale Maternity Unit. The woman in the next bed was huge. 'Like a mountain she was. It's a wonder the bed didn't collapse under her. She lay there like a beached whale, heaving and puffing and moaning. "You'll feel a lot better, love," I told her, "when you've had your baby." "I've had it!" replied the woman. I wanted the floor to open and swallow me up.'

  Another time a woman was foolhardy enough to complain about the tripe she had bought the previous week. 'I had to give it to the dog,' she announced in a loud voice for all those in the queue to hear.

  'Is that so?' said the virago behind the counter. 'Well, I'll tell you this, if the Queen herself and the whole of the royal family were to visit Rotherham, they'd come here to this shop for their tripe and buy the bloody lot!'

  Looking back to my childhood I reckon I was unusual in this interest I had in adults and their conversations. I was gifted with a fertile imagination and a good memory and soon became a keen observer and a dedicated listener, fascinated by people and by the language they used. I can still see in my mind's eye that large woman in the tripe shop, in her white nylon overall with her fat pink hands, holding forth to her customers and putting the world to rights.

  One wet Saturday morning I was sent to buy Dad's tripe as usual but on the way out of the shop I dropped the parcel. It went splat on the pavement. Now dogs love tripe, and there was always some mangy beast hanging around near the entrance. On this particular day a bristly little mongrel shot out from behind me and snapped up the tripe, paper and all. I chased the dog, shouting and waving my arms, and finally managed to get the tripe back but not before it had been chewed and had rolled into the gutter and picked up a fair bit of dirt.

  'Sorry, love,' said the tripe shop owner, when I returned to the counter hoping for a replacement. 'I can't be doing that. You'll have to buy another piece.' I explained to her that I had no more money. 'Well, it will teach you to be more careful with your tripe, won't it?' she told me, before resuming a conversation about the state of the public urinals in the town centre.

  When I arrived back home I had already devised a plan. If I explained to Mum what had happened she would, no doubt, send me back to the shop, which was the last thing I wanted. I was keen to meet my pals at Herringthorpe playing fields that afternoon. So before Mum could take the tripe from my hands I shot up the stairs and into the bathroom.

  'Have you got your Dad's tripe?' came her voice up the stairs.

  'Yes,' I shouted back, 'but I'm desperate for the toilet.' I then washed the tripe thoroughly under the cold water tap.

  Mum cooked the tripe, Dad ate it, and I watched with a screwed-up face.

  'Delicious,' said Dad, licking his lips when he had finished. 'Best bit of tripe I've had in a long while. You must mention it, Pat, the next time you go into the shop,' he continued. I gulped and prayed Mum would do no such thing.

  23

  I was brought up in a devout Roman Catholic family and religion played a prominent part in my childhood. Most of the small Catholic minority in Rotherham (as indeed in the rest of the country) were of Irish working-class stock and could be best described as timorously conservative. The laws of the Church were to be obeyed and the priest's word was law. There was a certainty in the belief, for, after all, Catholics had a monopoly on the truth and others were out of line. Ours was the one true church, founded by St Peter, defended and preserved by his successor, the Pope, who was infallible.

  It wasn't so much the practice of attendance at Mass and Confession that had the greatest influence on me, it was the pervading deep conviction of my parents that the best course in life was, as Jesus exhorted, to do unto others as we would wish them to do unto us, to treat people with kindness and compassion. This guiding principle was ever present in my life, and should I do something of which my parents disapproved, I would get the stock question: 'Would you have liked someone to do that to you?'

  Each Sunday all of us children would be scrubbed and combed and dressed in our best clothes to attend Mass at St Bede's Church at Masborough, a strongly traditional parish. This was before the Vatican II Council when Pope John XXIII, son of an Italian peasant and third of thirteen children, reinterpreted the Catholic faith in the light of modern circumstances and unleashed within the Church a liberalization which many found disquieting. Within three months of taking office in January 1959, the new Pope summoned the General Council of the Church and things began to change, including the use of the vernacular, rather than Latin, in the services. I was thirteen at the time.

  The whole family, all in our Sunday best, would walk down Wellgate through Rotherham town centre, with its great red sandstone church of All Saints, on past the dark weather-blackened buildings and row upon row of endless back-to-back terraces, over the rusting bridge that spanned the greasy green canal, with the pungent smell of industry and the taste of dust in the air.

  On the exterior, St Bede's was an ugly dark stone church, but inside it was another world. It was in this church that I had my first introduction to indoor beauty, of ornament, ostentation, spectacle, sacrament and mystery. It was like entering a magical world, a world of burnished metal, gilt, stone and polished wood. As a small child I would sit on one of the hard wooden pews in the shadowy interior, the smell of candles and incense in the air, the rain beating against the windows outside, and look at the bright plaster tablets lining the walls depicting the 'Stations of the Cross'.

  Christ's passion and death fascinated me - it was a violent, colourful, exciting story full of interesting characters. The places he visited had irresistibly attractive-sounding names too: Palestine, Jerusalem, Galilee, Jericho, Bethlehem and Gethsemane. Here was a compelling saga indeed. From humble origins this son of a carpenter attained exceptional power and influence, transforming so many people's lives, and he did it not by telling people that they were worthless and evil, by haranguing and disparaging, but by tel
ling them little stories about a man who fell among thieves, a spendthrift son and a poor widow who gave her last coin.

  Without any advantages of brute force, money, status or useful connections, he managed through his personality, his example and his oratory to put across his teachings so effectively that 2,000 years later they are still being followed. There were in Jesus the qualities of tolerance, compassion, innocence and courage which demanded my admiration. Jesus I never feared, for he was always to my mind the mild, caring man like the one depicted in my children's Bible and he gave his life for others. He was the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God. His was the statue with a sacred heart, the outstretched hands and the gentle face. It was easy to love such a person. I wasn't so sure about God, though. He was a more mysterious, less forgiving figure, rather fearsome, like a white-haired, long-bearded headmaster who was forever watching me. He saw what I got up to and knew what I was thinking.

  I never found going to Mass burdensome. I loved the words, the pageant, the imagery and the rhythms of the strange language intoned by the priest and chanted by the congregation. I would wait in anticipation for High Mass to begin. It was theatre. The thundering organ would fill the church, the choir would raise its voice and then would come the procession from the rear of the church and down the central aisle. The senior server, holding before him a great golden cross, would be followed by four altar boys, dressed in scarlet and white and bearing lighted candles, and the solemn-faced priest in shimmering green silk swinging the censer. Clouds of sweet-smelling smoke would fill the air. In the sixth form I visited my first Protestant church, a Nonconformist chapel, and was amazed at the contrast. Where were the sweeping colours, the heady smell of incense, the stained-glass windows, the pictures and statues to which I had become accustomed? There was no mystery here in this dark and spartan building. It was as chilly and dimly lit as a cellar and about as unattractive, with its rows of long hard pews, pale plain walls, exposed heating pipes down the side, liver-coloured floor tiles, windows high and mean with plain glass and metal grilles. At the front was a wooden lectern above which, writ large, was the lettering: 'Fear the Lord.' This was a place of penance, not praise, cold, colourless, unwelcoming; it didn't seem to me to be the sort of place in which God would feel at home.

  At St Bede's there were great brightly coloured plaster statues staring down serenely from their plinths, a flickering red light hanging in a casket of gold above the tabernacle, heavy wooden pews redolent with lavender polish and camphor, rows of shining candles, and the great high altar draped in white linen with the huge brass candlesticks and an ornate golden cross. Then there was the lingering smell of the incense and the chanting of the Latin, which for a child were so mysterious, so magical. I learnt all the Latin responses by heart - 'Dominus vobiscum', 'Credo in unum deum', 'qui tollis peccata mundi', 'miserere nobis' - without understanding very much, but I derived great pleasure from the sound of the words.

  Children have a need for certainty in an uncertain world, and in Catholicism there was a real certainty. Nothing was left to doubt, there was no discussion. The stability of this highly structured but simple supportive faith gave me great solace. Everything was explained in the little blue-backed penny catechism which every Catholic child was given and required to learn, and for those prepared to conform and repent of their wrongdoings the 'one, true Catholic Church' was a comfortable haven, offering salvation.

  I was brought up to believe that Catholics had the 'one true faith'; ours was an orthodoxy that had been passed down for centuries from Jesus and St Peter. There was heaven for those who had lived unblemished lives and eventually, after a period in Purgatory, for those who were truly sorry for their sins and sought forgiveness. Heaven was somewhere in the sky above the sun, in the clouds, where everything was light, happiness and peace. The great golden gates opened on to a paradise where God, like a genial old man with a white beard, sat on his heavenly throne. On His right was Jesus and on His left the Blessed Virgin. Hovering above were the angels, saints, the cherubs and seraphim. Deep below in the bowels of the earth was Hell, where an eternal fire raged and where the Devil, the fallen angel, held sway. Evil people, whose souls were damned, were in perpetual torment and denied the sight of God. In between there was Purgatory, where the not-toobad people were purified of their sins before being promoted to Heaven to join the angels and saints. Then there was Limbo, full of grave-faced babies who hadn't been baptized.

  Father Hammond, the parish priest, was a small, severe-looking man with a pinched mouth and dark heavy hooded eyes and reminded me of a hungry blackbird. I guess he wasn't really like that, but as a child that is the memory I have of him. Some people I have spoken to about him found this priest a difficult and intransigent cleric but others have a very different memory. In a recent St Bede's parish magazine one parishioner remembers him as a kindly man with a great sense of humour. I don't recognize this latter picture. For me he was a dour, uncompromising and serious-minded man who applied the letter of the law and not the spirit. He was intolerant of anything he considered disrespectful in church - noisy children, latecomers, those who were inappropriately dressed. Once he refused Communion to a young woman wearing bright lipstick.

  My mother fell out with Father Hammond over my education. As a school nurse she had a very good overview of the teaching and learning which took place in the town's schools. She was fiercely ambitious that I should succeed, and felt that Broom Valley Infants (a state school), five minutes' walk away from our house, would be more appropriate for me than St Bede's, the Roman Catholic school, and decided to send me to the former. Father Hammond was not best pleased and told my mother in no uncertain terms that she had a clear duty to provide me with a Catholic education. My sister Christine, who sat in on the discussion, remembers him sitting in the front room, with cool immutable gravity, straight-backed, his lips drawn together in a tight thin line when my mother told him her mind was made up. He had refused a cup of tea and sat with his biretta on his knee, head on one side, fingertips pressed together. It was clear that few in his congregation challenged his authority. My mother clearly did not take to his harsh sermonizing tone and told him, in a polite but firm way, that she would do as she thought best for her own children. She was adamant that I would attend Broom Valley Infants. To question the priest in the 1950s was tantamount to sacrilege, and he was very displeased. Father Hammond warned her of the consequences and left. He then did something singularly cruel. He forbade my mother Communion. He refused to give her the sacrament and told her he would continue to deny her so long as her child was at a non-Catholic school. It hurt her deeply and she felt the injustice but she did not change her mind about my schooling. I find it surprising now that she obeyed the priest's directive and never received the sacrament at all until my schooling was over.

  One Saturday my mother caught the train to Leeds to petition the Bishop. Bishop Heenan, later Cardinal Heenan, was an exceptionally able, kindly and sympathetic man and listened quietly to my mother's cri de coeur, but he refused to intervene on her behalf. His response was that it would be 'unwise' for him to 'undermine' the parish priest. The Bishop informed my mother that the only way of preserving the faith in children was to ensure that they received a good sound Catholic education. That was the motivation of her parish priest in taking such a hard line. My mother assured the Bishop that she would ensure that I was brought up in the Catholic faith, I would go to Confession, be confirmed and attend Mass regularly, but the Bishop declined to intervene. My mother thanked the Bishop for seeing her but informed him that, in her opinion, the priest was wrong to deny her such a precious thing. Her idea of the priesthood was that the priest, a servant of God, lived a blameless life and that he was a mediator between God and man, both by example and ministration. Being a priest demanded that the principles of justice and charity be translated into action. This was what Jesus stood for. I suspect the Bishop found it hard to deal with this thoughtful, strong-minded and determined woman who knew her B
ible, and I guess he would have been quite taken aback when she reminded him of the words of Jesus: 'Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Don't be a judge of others, and you will not be judged; do not condemn or you will be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven.' There was, she felt, little justice, mercy and charity in Father Hammond's diktat.

  'Your priest may very well be wrong,' Bishop Heenan told my mother, 'and for that he will, as we all will, have to answer to God.' So the Bishop would not overrule his priest and for thirteen years my mother never approached the altar rails at Communion.

  Father Hammond was certainly on the solidly conservative wing of the Church, and we only felt the rustle of a reforming breeze following Vatican II with the arrival of a new young and enthusiastic curate, Father Delaney. When Father Hammond processed down the central aisle at High Mass, draped in coloured silk and preceded by the servers and altar boys, I always felt slightly afraid of him. I wasn't alone. On one memorable Sunday, Father Hammond, at the conclusion of the Mass, picked up the chalice draped in a small square white cloth, donned his biretta with priestly precision and slowly descended the altar steps. Seeing the priest heading for the side door, a group of men clustered at the door at the back of the church made their move. They would be heading for the Catholic Club for a few pints prior to lunch. Father Hammond, catching sight of them, stopped in his tracks and shouted the whole length of the church, 'The Mass has not ended until the priest has left the altar!' The men froze in their tracks like a group of recalcitrant schoolboys told off by the headmaster.