James showed me the library, which smelt of beeswax floor polish. There were deep windows with views of the valley and an expanse of tall shelves. A few boys were sitting at the tables reading. Through a far door was another library with oak panelling and stained-glass windows which, James whispered to me, was the sixth form library. He pointed out a periodicals table with several magazines from other schools and seminaries on display. A single copy of the Illustrated London News lay on the table. ‘There are no newspapers,’ he said, ‘and we’re not allowed to listen to the radio.’
He explained that from among the boys in the final two years at Cotton were recruited the college monitors, house captains and their deputies: they were known as the Big Sixth and had the power to have boys punished by sending them to the Prefect of Discipline or the Prefect of Studies. The teaching staff priests, he said, were known as ‘the profs’.
We finally emerged into the chill morning air, descending by stone steps known as the Bounds Steps into an area James called Little Bounds, a yard large enough for two tennis courts. Little Bounds formed a kind of level platform or stage looking out over the panorama of the surrounding countryside, bathed that morning in early autumn sunshine. Several boys were staring like prisoners in a cage through the wire fence that bordered the yard. James and I joined them. The high fence marked the boundary, James told me, between the boys’ domain and the lawns and gravel pathways strictly for the use of ‘the profs’.
Immediately below these gardens a drystone wall bordered the lush meadows, ending abruptly at a wood that descended into the valley. Beyond the closest canopy of the woods, a mile or so away, rose a corresponding series of meadows on the opposing flank of the valley. An ancient stone cottage stood in one of the meadows, a wisp of smoke rising from its chimney. This was the only human habitation visible in the landscape. To the left of the pine wood was a sheer drop and the distant countryside opened out in a succession of gentle shoulders and folds, each softer and more hazy than the last, until the final ridge melted into the skyline. As I stood there my heart leapt with the immensity of the scene and the bracing air.
James now led the way to a second level by way of a wide sloping path up to the cinder yard he called Top Bounds, where I had been deposited the previous evening. Boys were walking up and down in threes and fours, hands in pockets. James said: ‘Shall we take a few turns?’
As we walked we were joined by another boy with severe acne and untidy hair who introduced himself as Derek Hanson from Southend, Essex. He too was a seminarian from the diocese of Brentwood. He skipped about a little as he walked, turning towards me, then suddenly turning away. He was describing the eccentricities of his parish priest at home, while occasionally giving vent to nervous ripples of laughter. After one more fit of the giggles he said: ‘Watch out for Father Armishaw.’ Then he blushed and excused himself, hurrying down towards Little Bounds.
‘Derek is very nice,’ said James, ‘but he has taken a sort of vow never to talk after mid-morning break.’ James seemed to consider the matter for a few moments. ‘I do think that his behaviour is rather singular,’ he added. It was the first time I had heard the term ‘singular’, and I was not sure what it meant. (I was soon to discover that it was an important watchword in our spiritual lives, meaning any behaviour that was deemed showy.) Then he informed me that ‘Armishaw’ was Father Vincent Armishaw who taught English. ‘He’s a character, a bit ferocious, but he’s not too bad. Derek has a crush on him; and he’s not the only one.’
AS WE WALKED in Top Bounds a boy came up and asked me to accompany him to Father Doran, the headmaster. His office was situated on a corridor with a highly polished linoleum floor in the old hall. The boy rapped hard on the door. When a muffled voice called out: ‘Come!’ he left me to enter by myself.
Father Doran, a thin, slightly stooped man in a caped cassock, was leaning on the mantelpiece in a room filled with light from a set of bay windows that went from floor to ceiling. There was a desk covered with papers, and glass-fronted bookcases. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with tobacco.
He was busy with a penknife and a pipe, attempting to extract burnt-out tobacco into an ashtray at his elbow. At the same time he occasionally looked down on me with penetrating grey eyes through flashing gold-rimmed spectacles. His ash-fair receding hair was brushed back flat on his head and his thin lips were firmly set in a long pale face. He looked about the same age as my father. He stopped fiddling with his pipe, snatched a cigarette from a Senior Service pack and lit it with an almost petulant movement.
‘I prefer to smoke a pipe,’ he said, the cigarette wobbling up and down on his thin lips. ‘But whenever the reverend mother comes in from the sisters’ community, I have to put it down. You see, it’s never done to smoke before the sisters. Then it’s such a business to light it up again.’ He took a deep drag and held the cigarette between his fingers as he blew out a long column of smoke. ‘She’s just been in this morning, wanting to discuss kitchen business and here we go again – down goes the pipe,’ he said. ‘So I think to myself: “Oh bother, I’ll just have a cigarette, it’s much less trouble.”’
He stopped to inspect me. ‘You don’t smoke, do you, John Cornwell?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, just make sure you don’t. In any case, you’ll need to save all your puff for cross-country running, especially when you’re sprinting up and down the valley here.’
I smiled, but he was observing me without a hint of humour. He began to talk about the history of the school. He told me that Cotton was the oldest Catholic college in England. Most boys were sent here, he said, by the Archbishop of Birmingham, who was the official owner of the school, but there were also a number of students from my own diocese, Brentwood, which had no minor seminary. A minority of the boys, he added, were ‘lay students’ who had not dedicated themselves to the priesthood, and whose parents were therefore paying for their education. ‘You must understand,’ he said with gravity, ‘that your bishop has been put to considerable expense to place you here, and that your fees are paid for out of the charity of the people of your diocese. So you will do your very best to make the most of this opportunity.’ He said that fourteen former pupils of Cotton had been ordained that year. ‘That is your aim,’ he went on. ‘To become a priest…Just keep your sights on that and you can’t go wrong.’
Father Doran now walked over to the bay windows which had an unhindered view across the valley. He beckoned me to join him. ‘Splendid, isn’t it,’ he said. ‘Aren’t we lucky to be enjoying all this?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, avoiding the use of the word ‘Father’. I found myself thinking of the ‘aunt’ at the home in Sussex, and how I had described the beautiful countryside as ‘shitty’. I was eager to let him know that I was impressed by the view.
‘Well, enjoy it now to the full,’ he said, ‘because one day you’ll probably be trapped in a city where there’s not a single tree, let alone grass and cows.’ For the first time he gave a husky laugh, and I smiled back at him with relief as he took another deep drag on his cigarette.
Now that I was here, standing at Father Doran’s windows with the great panorama of the valley below, I had the confidence to say: ‘I’m glad that I’m here, Father.’
‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Sir! not Father!’ Then he announced with an air of grandeur: ‘For the purposes of competitive spirit all the students in the college belong to one of three groups or houses, named after the great founders of the Catholic archdiocese of Birmingham. You have been placed in Challoner House, which commemorates Bishop Richard Challoner who founded the college in secrecy in 1763 when Catholics were still being persecuted by the Protestants for their Faith.’ Bishop Challoner, he went on, was a wonderful man. During one of the anti-Catholic riots in London a Protestant mob threatened to burn down his house.