Good job really, as I wasn’t considered any kind of catch in our street and coming home from ‘that priest school’ didn’t help matters. God, it would’ve been great if my wife-to-be could’ve come to visit me, or vice-versa (but in those days the price of a train ticket, and the prospect of travelling to the North East all by myself meant she might as well have lived in Australia).
I could kill a lot of trees with pages and pages full of daft little details, routines and pals from my former life that I was dying to re-acquaint myself with. It was almost like the excitement of my homecoming had thawed out the kid in me after a long frozen winter of discontent. I had six weeks ahead devoted to real carefree fun, as opposed to merely making the best of things. Many of the Underlow lads were going off away on different holidays during the break. Some of them sounded pretty exotic, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to leave our house for any longer than it took to go to Metcalf’s for a sherbet dip.
When my dad arrived in the car I was practically banging the roof and shouting, ‘Go, go, go!’ like I’d just robbed a bank and the contents of my huge case were unmarked bills of assorted tens, twenties and fifties. Had I actually hit the car then something probably would’ve fallen off, so I opted to help Dad push-start it instead.
We jumped in as it hit the downhill gradient of the drive and I sat kneeling on the passenger seat with my chin resting on the back of it and watched Upholland College get small and insignificant in the rear-view window. The engine reluctantly coughed into action so I turned round in my seat, buckled up, smiled at my dad as he gave a relieved puff of his cheeks before smiling back at me saying, ‘Thunderbirds are go!’ With that we pulled out through the gates and headed home for the summer.
Some might say there’s now’t spectacular about the St Helens skyline, but Lowe House Church, Beecham’s Tower, Pilkington Glass’s old head office and their huge chimneys spewing out dodgy, multi-coloured smoke between twilight and dawn like fading Roman candles were all the wonders of the world to me whenever we crossed the border into Woolyback territory. In years to come, my art teachers would drill into us the importance of stepping back from your drawing so we could get a decent sense of perspective. I always felt that those few folk who slagged off their hometown of St Helens hadn’t spent the necessary time in exile to appreciate it.
I had, and I loved every single stone of the place. I’m not just paying homage to my hometown for sentiment’s sake. I’d missed it like an amputee might miss a limb. St Helens – and Thatto Heath in particular – were as much a part of me as my DNA.
God, it felt so good when I first got home. I indulged myself in all the privileges that being back provided. Mum seemed particularly chuffed to have me home again and made that kind of fuss that only mams can.
Other parish members did similarly, but the big difference being that my mum was pleased to have her own flesh and blood back where I belonged, whereas I felt they were just keen to check on their investment. Maybe I was being overly cynical. A seminary education’ll do that to you. They were all mad keen to compliment me on my progress. Apparently, I was such a lucky boy. A year ago I’d have been dumb enough to believe them, but I’d come a long way since the previous September.
‘Oh, it must be marvellous there. Your dad was showing us the photos.’
‘Has it been a year already? Hasn’t that flown by?’
‘You’ll be getting bored back here before you know it, won’t you?’
‘Your own private fishing lake? Blimey, you’ve the life of Riley there, haven’t you? Might have to sign up myself! Hang on though, I’m married aren’t I? Eh, now that’s not fair … ha ha ha.’
I remember thinking, ‘You lot don’t have a fucking clue, do you? If it looks so idyllic, how come you don’t live there?’ They were more naive than those boys back at the youth hostel!
If I was so special, why did most of the staff at Upholland treat me like shit on the bottom of their shoe? I had ceased to view the majority of its wardens as priests. They were – with the odd exception like Father Tony – bureaucrats, number-crunchers, academics, or monumental pricks; as morally corruptible as the rest of us, but a law unto themselves. I’d been to the coalface. I was living on the production line and understood why there were so many flaws in the finished product that this lot worshipped on a weekly basis.
I could have shattered their faith in all that they claimed to hold dear there and then. I could tell them all about life beyond its idyllic lakes and nine-hole wanking golf course. I had all the inside info on their precious belief system. I could pull back the curtain and reveal their Wizard of Oz. I could blow the lid on the whole sorry system. But I didn’t.
Photo from a rare family holiday during the Thatcher years. Mum, cousin Julie, moody me, Rob and Mark doing a damn fine impression of two no-nonsense detectives who get the job done and dad, their weary police commissioner.
My sister Catharine, Mike Fairclough and I on our bad taste fashion night out around St Helens. Before you ask, no, the girl on the right was not with us.
Faith was all some of these people had. No, they hadn’t been denied the basic privileges outlawed at the seminary, and yes, that meant they took a lot of what they did have for granted, but that’s the life they’d chosen. And I had chosen to go to that god-awful place. Me. I had dared to climb down that rabbit hole. So it would remain my dirty little secret as I nodded, smiled and answered all their questions politely.
Something was irreversibly different about me. I didn’t connect with all the kids in my street like I’d longed for. I felt like I had some contagious disease. It wasn’t a conscious indifference on their part, but a year away had stripped me of childish concerns. When some kids made the sign of the cross and comically genuflected in front of me, I wasn’t really bothered.
‘Ey up, it’s Father Penno!’
What killed me was the thought that I no longer had a single thing in common with them. All my suspicions from that night bunking in with those boys back at the youth hostel were confirmed. I was different, and all the kids back home somehow knew it. I was like Red in The Shawshank Redemption when he tries to adapt to life outside prison. It truly is an awful feeling when you accept that you’ve been institutionalised.
I tried playing out as much as I’d promised myself that summer, but I was like a ghost amongst my former childhood peers, the Betty Eccles of Hayes Street. Part of me actually fucking missed the acceptance of the lads back at the seminary. I hated the place and yet I could no longer function in the town that I had so painfully longed for and cried myself to sleep at night over.
Something inside me had died. I had left my childhood cake out in the rain and couldn’t for the life of me remember the recipe. I felt completely and utterly removed from who I used to be as I hid over Hankey’s Well, crouched in the long grass, weeping at the fact that there wasn’t a single soul on this earth who understood how shit it felt being me.
UPHOLLAND SECOND YEAR: ‘LOW FIGS’
Had that summer gone to plan, I doubt I’d have returned to Upholland. But it didn’t, and I just kind of drifted back to the place. There was no pomp or ceremony this time around: no big shop beforehand, just patch, mend and the letting down of my trousers by an inch or so. There were no hidden tears on my mum’s part, and none on mine either. Nor was there any big wave off to my mates in Hayes Street.
In fact, it was getting dark as we left and the summer evening buzz of playing out late had run its course for even the most devoted