In the daytime, Upholland presented itself as a near-magical kingdom – a castle full of potential for jolly japes and Boy’s Own fun. At night, though, it was just the most imposing structure you could imagine, especially for an 11-year-old from a cosy three-up, three-down terrace. Walking through its huge doors and down its harsh grey stone or dark-stained hardwood corridors for the first time, I was terrified.
I felt completely overwhelmed. There was a feeling of nausea in the pit of my tummy, but the urge to retch was subdued by a tight panic in my chest. My dad was carrying my heavy luggage up endless stairs to the dormitory. My mum waited in the car. We’d said goodbye outside. I don’t think she’d have allowed me to unpack had she taken a single step inside that place. And, looking back, I would have begged her to take me home.
My dad was talking away, trying to keep things upbeat, but I didn’t really listen to a single word he said. All I was aware of was the awful realisation swimming around my head – like a panic-stricken cat in a washing machine mid-cycle – that was going, ‘Oh God. Oh, no. I’ve made a terrible mistake!’ And that’s when the catastrophic difference between my first visit there, and that evening, really kicked in: I wouldn’t be going home this time.
I was filled with utter dread. But my dad seemed so bloody pleased for me and I reckon that’s the only thing that helped me hold it together just long enough to say goodbye without breaking down. That’s why Mum – knowing she’d crumble, and thinking she was doing right by me – had opted to stay sobbing in the car.
I have never felt (and doubt I will ever feel) quite as alone as when my dad waved goodbye and closed the dormitory door behind him.
I sat on my bed, drew the useless little privacy curtain across, and cried as quietly as I could into my jumper. There were other new boys crying, but quietly too, as nobody wanted to appear a sissy, I suppose. The buzz of activity, of unpacking and finding a place for everything within our tiny allotted living spaces, was replaced with muffled sobs and snotty noses being wiped on damp woolly sleeves.
Of course it was acute homesickness: all I could think of was the fact that I wanted to go back to St Helens. All those memories, good or bad, had become instantly cherishable. Even the thought of the worst telling-off I ever got suddenly made me yearn for my mum and dad – ‘Bollock me every day if you like, but please, please come and take me home.’
One lad decided that there definitely was a going back, and he made a run for it shortly before lights out. They spotted him running round the corridors looking for a payphone, then chased him down the long driveway that led to the front gates.
The diary might be a fake, but not the sentiment contained within.
They brought him straight back to the dorm, even though he was demanding that a taxi take him home. Years on, I still can’t watch that scene from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest when Martini’s character is dragged away kicking and screaming: ‘I want my cigarettes now, Nurse Ratched, now, do you hear me?’ without thinking of him.
We all made friends quickly in our year. We had to. There was no getting through the school day then playing with your street mates. Besides, there were only eleven of us. ‘Underlow’ was our collective name. They didn’t mess around when it came to putting us in our place.
Over the next few months I didn’t find myself praying for spiritual enlightenment or world peace, but rather for the daily home comforts denied us in some misguided pious belief that it would make us better priests one day. We would wake up and have to go and wash in a stone-cold basement with no warm water. It was long, dank and dark, with a row of twenty or so taps. There were a small number of cubicles with baths in them, and warm water available later in the day, but unless you had spare time during the weekends, the strict Monday–Friday regime meant that you could only really use them later in the evening.
If you did risk a bath at that time, someone might spot you taking the long walk from the dormitory with your robe and wash-bag, wait, and then throw cold water over the top. Or, more likely, lock the main doors and turn out all the lights. The same would happen if you dared to use the toilets at the far end of the cellar in the evening, and it was a bloody scary room to be trapped in when pitch black.
It took years of rehabilitation before my bowels stopped going into lockdown along with the setting sun, because the only alternative was a toilet at the end of our dormitory, slap bang underneath the hatch leading to the bell tower. And legend had it that Betty Eccles, a former resident of the building (I know, she sounds like a bun, but we were only 11, for God’s sake!) hung herself in that tower and haunted our dorm. There was even a Betty Eccles night when Upholland legend had it that she left the tower and visited any poor soul situated in one of our dormitory’s ‘horse-boxes’ (these were the beds spaced in the unfortunate position without a window because of a supporting arch, which had no direct natural sunlight as a result).
When that night arrived, along with bedtime, we moved like a Spartan regiment in tight formation up the stairs to our dormitory. We might’ve looked the part, but lacked the bravery of the original 300. And, as we opened the door to the dorm, this bloody thing sprang at us, howling hysterically.
Eleven kids screamed in pure, abject piss-your-pants terror and tried to leg it at the same time. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a wide enough staircase for a mass escape, so obviously there were casualties. I know I trampled and stamped on my new mates and I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t want to die.
The ‘thing’ screamed again, but none of us dared turn back. Despite it being dark, I was seriously considering taking my chances jumping through the gap between the banisters. (If you ever find yourself on a flight with me and you notice that I have blagged the extra leg-room by sitting next to the emergency exit over the wings, then it’s only fair to let you know now that in the case of a real emergency I would be absolutely bloody useless.)
On this occasion, I used my foot and another kid’s head (I think his name was Gerard) as a pivot to prise myself free from the rest of the group. I flew into the wall and was already turning on a tuppence to jump the next full flight of stairs when I heard somebody laughing loud and hard. My instinct to leap was postponed just for a moment: I wondered if maybe ‘it’ had caught someone and was now temporarily sated in its blood-lust – your brain tends to work bloody quickly in those life-and-death situations.
I had a slight head-start so dared to waste time looking back to see who had bought the farm at the hands of Betty Eccles. Turning around expecting to see a fellow Underlow being dragged back through the door, kicking and screaming (hopefully with a little bit of piss running down his leg too), what I saw instead was a fucking fifth-year lad peeling off a rubber ‘old woman’ mask while doubling-up with laughter.
‘You wankers! Ha ha ha!’
I actually pissed myself a bit more at this point out of sheer relief. I couldn’t say anything back though, because my heart was doing a damn good impression of my arse.
‘You should’ve seen your faces! Ha ha ha!’
I couldn’t – I was stepping on most of them making my cowardly escape.
‘Tossers! Now go to bed and get ready for the real thing! Ha ha ha!’
It actually would’ve been funny if you were in on the joke, but I had a damp crotch, and my bed was right next door to a horse-box, so I was in no mood for laughter. It sounds awful, but I still can’t remember who my neighbour was. I just wished that they would satisfy the ghost and she wouldn’t come looking for a chubby dessert.
Jesus, what kind of night