Anyway, in the middle of Mum balancing her books, this furious force of ecclesiastical nature condemned us all to eternal damnation. Had it been him in Footloose, instead of John Lithgow, he’d have broken Kevin Bacon’s legs with his own ghetto-blaster in the opening credits, before pouring quick-setting cement in his ears.
We were used to our local priest’s ‘softly, softly’ approach. But this White Bull in our chaste little china shop was promising us now’t but the fires of hell. There was no carrot at the end of his schtick. According to him, none of us would ever be good enough for heaven – even his own soul was in constant jeopardy. And yet, rather than scare me, he left a great impression. It was the first time I’d seen someone in a pulpit and thought, ‘If he’s that bothered, then he must be on to something.’
It didn’t just feel like he was going through the motions: ‘Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible so you can make the pub, or get yer roasties on!’ The grown-ups were getting it in the neck just as much as us young offenders. Unilateral guilt! Like a controversial but brilliant stand-up he was both shocking and mesmerising, with 100 per cent conviction in what he said. Imagine Sam Kinison in a white cassock and you’re still not quite there. He wasn’t coaxing the crowd, he was tearing ’em apart with his zealous conviction, forcing them to question the pious comfort zone they’d previously taken for granted.
But still, it wasn’t enough to make me take my own self-proclaimed vocation seriously, even though back then in St Helens religion was a massive part of our lives.
We got stick – sometimes at school, but mainly at our local youth club – for going to church. We were called ‘God squadders’, and the fact that my dad wore a crucifix openly around his neck made for even more grief. We even had to go to BENEDICTION. It wasn’t even a proper mass! I understand it’s about the veneration of the host, the body of Christ, but come on! When you’re young and in the middle of a big game of three pops in ... it felt like Lineker being dragged off the pitch by that turnip at the European Championships when my dad announced it was time to go to Benediction.
Lay-kids understood that Sundays involved some form of commitment as a God-botherer. Even glueys sometimes attended midnight mass – pissed, more probably tripping, but present at least. But nobody – no other kids, not even the majority of parishioners – went to Benediction. It was God’s way of screening for any potential Ned Flanders.
I actually liked us being a church-going family. There was a real sense of community. It had all the ambition of the middle classes, but with a god that didn’t abandon you at the first sign of a fiscal fuck-up. You were encouraged to love thy neighbour, not block their extension because you didn’t want your garden overseen.
There was strength to be drawn from faith, which I witnessed first-hand through my parents. The death of my nan, Mary, had a devastating effect on my mum. It’s an awful thing to see the heart of the family suddenly start to falter as Nan’s had. Mum was always the pragmatist who soldiered on no matter what, but for months afterwards the fight had gone, there was no wind in her sails, and she just appeared to be drifting aimlessly from day to day. Grief, depression, apathy, call it what you will, it’s agonising watching someone you love drowning in sadness but not having the strength of will to come up for air.
Every week, she would sit in church after mass staring into space, or sobbing, head in hands, as we looked on helplessly, ’till Dad ushered us outside. She had things to say to God, to her deceased mum, things she perhaps could not articulate to anybody else. When the fog eventually lifted, Mum would always attribute her emotional survival to her faith. That was what saw her through her darkest hours.
When Dad was made unemployed and every penny coming into the house mattered (although my parents did their best to shield us from this fact), it was his faith that stopped the pride-crushing struggle to make ends meet from getting the better of him. One hot summer’s day, when he’d dragged a huge chunk of scrap metal for what felt like miles on the back of a homemade trolley Uncle Joe had built – taking me along for company despite the fact that all I did was obsess over the ice cream he’d promised me from the profits – I could see the soul-sapping anguish as we got to the scrap-metal yard, only to find it was shut.
It was the point where most folk would be forgiven for quitting, for ranting, cursing and shaking their fist at the sky shouting, ‘Why me, eh, why? What more can I do to do right by those I care for? How much more do you need me to suffer before you’ve proved your point, eh?’ That’s definitely my default setting. But as my dad hung his head in what I thought was surrender, he was actually allowing himself a little prayer time. And when he eventually looked up, I could see his cheery determination was still intact, despite my stupid determination to point out the blatantly obvious.
‘It’s shut, Dad!’
‘I know.’
‘So what are we going to do?’
‘Well, I’m not carting it home, that’s for certain.’
‘So you’re just gonna leave it here?’
‘I am.’
‘But won’t someone else cash it in?’
‘Most likely, but who’s to say their needs won’t be greater than ours, eh?’
‘So, no ice cream?’
‘No, not today, kiddo.’
‘Bit of a wasted trip, then?’
‘Do you see that hill over there?’
And Dad walked me home via a massive detour telling story after story about him, my uncles and my aunties growing up. It turned into one of my fondest memories ever, and we still laugh about it to this day whenever we pass that way in the car. It was Dad’s faith that turned the day around, so why wouldn’t I grow up hoping that I’d inherit that same peace and inner strength?
True, a lot of religion was dogma at that stage, but I presumed faith would come through maturity, like a kind of theological puberty, and that one day the once barren landscape of questions would be full of fluffy answers to all of Life’s great mysteries, trials and tribulations sprouting up all over the place.
Making your first Holy Communion was a really big deal. It was taken for granted that I’d follow my brothers in becoming an altar boy afterwards. Which I did. And there’s no denying there were definite perks to the job.
For starters, you got out of school assembly to serve at morning masses and feast days. It was a free pass to wag off school with the added bonus of spiritual kudos, but it came at a cost. The position tended to carry more weight with the adults as eight-year-old lasses didn’t tend to dig altar boys. Any dormant uniform fetishes at that point would’ve been limited to fire-men, policemen, cowboys, astronauts, and maybe the occasional train driver: your basic run-of-the-mill fancy dress stalwarts and stuff of naive junior-school-career fantasies. There were no Pink Ladies, and we sure as shit weren’t no T-Birds. No room for wanna-be young nun equivalents to ‘dig’ where we were coming from.
There were some blokes well into their autumn years still trapped in time as altar ‘men’. They wore red under-cassocks as opposed to our black ones. They’d earned their position in their own quiet way, and deserved our respect, yet they felt more like a cautionary tale instead of aspirational figures – like kids held back at school year after year, until the only job they were capable of was caretaker.
So why do it? Yes, the hours were good, and yes, it meant we got a head start on racking up brownie points with old St Peter sitting up there at those blessed Pearly Gates, but the potential payday from a well-served funeral service was even better!
It’s an unpleasant truth to confess, especially to those of you who’ve buried someone dear via a Catholic service, but funerals were a big potential ‘Ker-ching!’