I tried reading, which I loved. Had they allowed me a lamp I’d have happily read throughout the night, but ‘lights out’ meant lights out. I was eleven at the time, and getting to grips with George Orwell’s 1984. Now, I can understand why that book might have been considered subversive in a seminary setting – in there the anti-regime rhetoric felt like a true God-send – but nobody ever bothered to ask me what it was that was holding my attention so successfully. Their only concern was the fact that I was reading when I shouldn’t be.
Deprived of light and the relative sanity of gifted authors, my head would embark on an evening of relentless self-interrogation. 1984 had been light relief in contrast to the tortures my own mind would concoct. Orwell’s words were my silent lullaby, with thoughts of rats gnawing through a victim’s cheek providing sweet relief and the chance to dupe my wired brain to sleep.
I’ve heard people use the phrase a lot since, but that was the only time in my life that I actually devoured books. I read Animal Farm in the same year that I heard whoops and hollers from the quad because FUCKING MARGARET THATCHER had got back into power. I knew that my dad would be knackered for another four years as a result, and we were stuck with the clown-mobile for the foreseeable future.
As spring dragged into summer, I made the most of the natural light. I read The Road to Wigan Pier; Orwell’s sense of social injustice struck a real chord with me. And although much of the book might’ve gone over my head, I still felt this overwhelming frustration. Why did things at that place – much like in this bloke’s books – have to still be the way they were, just because someone, at some point, had said so?
Christ never mentioned telephones in the Bible. So why were we not allowed to call home and talk to the people we loved? Why? Because God needed anguish to prove that we loved him? How could it be that they had misinterpreted his message so badly? Where was the love? Had they just flicked through the Bible and missed the bits concerning compassion?
By claiming it was all about God and his will, ‘they’ had squeezed him out of the moral equation altogether. The desire for free speech, the notion of debate, was treated like a sickness, and the place felt more like a Victorian asylum for the ‘treatment’ of emotional and spiritual awareness. It was all about stripping away your individuality to make you unthinkingly accept a regime that entirely contradicted my upbringing (my Catholic upbringing! That was the irony of it).
What Upholland tried to drum into us was that it wasn’t our place to question such fundamental issues. They wanted blind obedience, and that flew hard in the face of my natural inquisitiveness. In so many sermons I’d heard of awakenings, of folks’ eyes being opened to the wonder and glory of the Lord. So why, in training to become his representatives here on earth, were we being taught to close our eyes tight shut and ignore these nagging doubts?
I got quite pally with some of the sixth-formers, partly to see how they were dealing with these tricky issues, but mainly because one of them was a St Helens lad, Mousey, who knew my family back home. They soon realised that I was up for the craic and didn’t blub, so they rolled me down four flights of stairs in a bin one day, just to see if I’d puke. Trust me, it wasn’t bullying. They dunked me in a bath and threw me into choir practice sopping wet, but I was laughing as they did it. I remember enjoying the notoriety of getting a detention for dampness.
Detention? It was pointless! We did two hours of forced silent study in the prep hall every weekday anyway! I’d finish my ‘not-at-homework’ in twenty minutes and doodle. Nothing they made us do made much sense. I didn’t need to study under duress: I was up there in the top two of our year, grade-wise. It was like they were punishing you with further silence for being bright. I missed comics, so I drew my own. It was mainly sci-fi stuff, inspired by 2000 AD – a comic I had maintained a healthy obsession with since an early age.
The sixth-form block was a no-go area. But they had a payphone: telecommunications and a private room were their privileges for sticking it out that long. I would go without my weekly chocolate fix and use the money to call home instead. Now, if you got caught, you were knackered. Some of the sixth-formers took a sadistic pleasure in policing it, but that just involved a slap. The greatest threat was a passing priest.
Still, I’d sneak in there and ring my mum. For the most part nobody bothered with me. I’d call and tell lies about how everything was fine. I just wanted any news regarding home life. The trick was being able to cry instantly if a priest came striding down the corridor.
I soon learnt to sob on demand. It wasn’t hard: as soon as I heard my mum’s voice I’d have a huge lump in my throat, anyway. I was bloody convincing. I would start blubbing and pretend that I was unaware of the priest’s presence. Ordinarily they’d put this down to homesickness and yank you off the phone. The trick was the delivery of the line, ‘I can’t believe she’s dead!’ Cue more fake sobs.
Mum was used to these random outbursts as she was in on the scam. She’d talk about how bingo had gone while I put in an Oscar-winning performance on the other end of the phone. The priest would think better of interrupting me, and walk away. The amount of imaginary relatives I lost during my time there, you’d think the Black Death had struck St Helens.
They were just daft ways of bucking the system, but they were still important to me. They helped me deal with my growing discontentment. Like an escape committee in a POW camp, I felt that any disruption to the routine was worthwhile.
It was only my jam-butty hips that stopped me digging a tunnel.
THE VATICAN DIDN’T STAND A CHANCE FROM THAT MOMENT ON
Once I managed to blag a cigarette from a fifth-form lad. I can’t remember if it was Elliot or Enzo – they were two Italian twins who were a great laugh and only too happy to oblige. They had even less fondness than me for Wooster the sausage thief, and loved the fact that I had gone toe to toe with him. I remember them telling me how their dad had caught them smoking and made them eat a packet of fags, so their only stipulation was that I had to say ‘the fag fairy gave it to me’ should I get caught.
The handover felt suitably dangerous and over-dramatic. I had agreed to meet another Underlow, Peter, to smoke it in the linen cupboard down in the basement wash-room. There was a push-up plywood flap in there that gained you entry to a tiny annexe, like a mini attic.
The intention was to kick back like a couple of stoners, but we actually smoked it in record-breaking time. We were bricking ourselves. Four flushes later the last bit of evidence was gone. We washed our hands, brushed our teeth and made our way back to the common room. We hadn’t got through the door before Sammy called our names from outside his office in a tone that told us we were busted.
Apparently, we were the only first-years to get caught smoking in Upholland’s hundred-year history. Somebody must’ve grassed us up, but I couldn’t work out who; Sammy wasn’t telling, he was enjoying the interrogation too much. And there was no point in denying it when those eyes were scanning you. I could do nothing but nod and pull my best ‘regret’ face.
Peter seemed quite chuffed at being charged with a seminary first. Maybe it was just a nervous grin, but Sammy wasn’t impressed. I was determined not to tell him where I’d got the coffin nail from, but he didn’t actually bother to ask. It was more about us letting down the principles on which the college was founded, letting ourselves fall victim to a heinous and harmful temptation and blah blah blah. It was only when he asked us what our parents might think when he told them that my arse completely collapsed.
I’d been juggling my quiet contempt