GOING DOWNHILL
GOING DOWNHILL
The start of my downfall was that Friday with Maureen McEvoy. She was eight years old and I was eight and a half, she standing on my desk when teacher not looking, and curious me looking up her billowing tartan skirt.
”Ye can look up me skirt for a ha’penny,” she said .
I paid up fast and took the permitted look. She immediately ran and reported my activity to the teacher. I was hauled in front of Miss O’ Dowd and stood next to Maureen while the teacher gave me one of her strict sermons.
“Maureen McEvoy, you go back to your seat right now and do your work.”
“Briggs, that was a disgraceful thing to do - you should be ashamed of yourself. But I might have expected it from the likes of you. Well, now that you’ve made your First Confession you know you’ll go to hell for that unless you go to confession again on Saturday. Now sit down and do your work.”
Me and Kevin discussed the ha’porth of newly discovered knowledge extensively at play time. Try as I might I did not feel any shame, nor had I any notion of going to hell. Maureen kept running up to us and sticking out her tongue at me, and yelling,
“Ye’ve got to gan to confession, ye’ve got to gan to confession !”
She kept the money of course - a budding professional. It was she who a month later egged me and Kev on to practise peeing over the wall between their open air toilets and ours. Kevin won the distance/height competition.
“You two again, Briggs and Henderson. I should have known. This is very bad behaviour, you two are simply not trained how to behave properly. You are both going downhill.”
In the summer, Panis Angelicus school wasn’t too bad, but in winter I hated it. And, oh my God, this was another bad day. Walking to school along Rawling Road in Bensham on a Tuesday in January was awful. The wellies flapping against the bare eight year old legs wore a red ring around the calf which stung at every step. A slight powder of snow at school yesterday had been transformed into ice-slide trails on the sloping tar of the playground. Brian Briggs 's turns at run-and-slide had brought him two sore elbows and a scraped knee from falls. But sore as the legs, elbows and knees were, the worst part of today would again be the Black Babies collection.
Collecting money for the Black Babies was a yearly class ritual at the school. We all thought it was actually buying a baby. Each child in Miss O' Dowd's class was given a card to collect stamps for every penny raised. On Tuesday morning, everybody was hushed so that Miss O’ Dowd could collect. It reminded me of payout time at the bookie’s where Uncle John worked.
Brian nudged Kevin and whispered, “How many ye got Kev?”
“Three.. . .how many ye got?”
“Only two....I’ll be in trouble again.”
As the cash was brought to Miss O' Dowd's desk every Tuesday for six weeks, stamps would be stuck to the card from a booklet kept in her top drawer. Each Tuesday she would announce the name of someone who had filled a card and class applause would be encouraged. At the end of the six weeks, Brian's card held only two stamps, a poor showing compared with the full or nearly-full cards with their serried ranks of blue and red stamps belonging to most of the other children.
Each stamp showed a rhino and a peacock and three poor black African babies, uncared for and unwanted by the unfeeling Africans, but being cared for and wanted by the deeply-feeling white missionaries sent out by mother church. The ranks of stamps on the better-off children’s cards showed what good, caring and charitable people these children had for kith and kin. And his limited array of blue and red peacocks also showed by implication what a set of good-for-nothings Briggs had. Henderson too. And it was Miss O' Dowd's opinion that a card with only two stamps (held aloft with class amusement and laughter encouraged) was, after all, no surprise, for which pupils in the class were always regular mass attenders on Sunday? And which members of the class were not?
“Were you at mass last Sunday Briggs ? No, I thought I didn’t see you. ....And the previous Sunday, and the one before that?”
Brian couldn’t think af any acceptable answer. He couldn’t tell that he always went to the Presbyterian jumble sale on Sundays, consorting with non-catholics who we all going to hell in any case .
“And when was your last confession?”
That question really floored him. He had no idea, but vaguely thought that the First Confession was also his last.
“And when did the sacred wafer of Our Lord’s body last slip onto your tongue ......hmmmm? Can't remember?! Not surprising.”
It was no good lying, Brian felt. The evidence was there in the Black Baby card with two stamps. This woman seemed to have the complete dossier on him and his family. She knew when everyone had and had not been to mass. It was certain Brian was going to burn forever in the fires of hell, along with his kith and kin. And no bad thing either, was the implication of her last hurrumph before sending him back in shame and disgrace to his desk. Brian hated those babies and those peacocks.
“Never mind Brian,” said Kevin
“Ye were all right, at least ye’d been at mass.”
“Yeah, only cos me mam dragged me....I wanted to gan to the jumble sale with ye.”
“Oh well, Miss O’ Dowd doesn’t like me anyway,” said Brian, trying to mentally gear up for the red hot pitchforks.
“Stop talking there, Briggs and Henderson. Sit down and get out your excercise books for arithmetic.”
The days dragged endlessly, spiced only by an occasional “borrowed” pet. Now and then on the way home, Brian would find a neighbour’s friendly cat, haul it into his house and make it comfortable in a closed drawer, hoping to play with it later. When his mam found it, to her shock and surprise, he would be in trouble, but at least not hellfire trouble, just a slapped leg.
The only break from school was if he fell sick . One time he was sick with tonsilitis and a particularly severe infection. His mam took him to Dr. Godlove, a local small-scale GP whom she had known personally for years.
Dr. Godlove said, “You must get him to the hospital for an injection, Mrs. Briggs. Ah no, wait five minutes because I’m going that way myself and I’ll give you a lift in my car. It’ll be quicker than waiting for an ambulance.”
There were not many cars about in those days. I had rarely seen one except for weddings and funerals in our street. This was my first ride ever in a car and I was impressed by the speed
and the comfort, which was definitely superior to the trams on Bensham Bank. One thing amazed me - the seats were padded with leather-covered sponge and they had been ripped extensively.
He said casually, “Oh, it’s me dog. I leave him in for an hour while I’m at the surgery and he bites the seats.”
I said, “Hungry dog? He’s probably always in trouble? ”
He replied rather amused, “Bad behavior. Badly trained, more like it.”
Miss O’ Dowd and the other religious zealots at school would have the dog consigned to the heat below too, I imagined. I could just see her saying, “That dog is going downhill.” Somehow it got fixed in my mind that all cars probably had half-eaten seats.
Religious training at the Panis Angelicus primary school was an informal subject so we just kinda picked up bits and pieces through casual visits by the parish priest to school on special occasions. At length, the lessons of English grammar, spelling, arithmetic and religion ended. At long last we left that school because me and Kevin both passed the 11 plus examination which meant we would be going to St. Mulbert’s grammar school a long way across the river, in Newcastle, - with new uniforms. I had a new blazer but Kev was wearing his older brother’s hand me down. Still, he had a cap and I had none. He was given a satchel for books - and I had a real cool rucksack.
The initial interrogations at St. Mulbert’s went like this,
“Briggs what church do you normally go to?”
“The catholic church, sir.” (Laughter in class.)
“No, you silly boy, I mean the actual name of the church.”
So I rattled off the name of Panis Angelicus church.
“Where is that, Briggs?”
“In Bensham, sir.” Titters of laughter.
“Oh dear, well. . . what’s the name of the parish priest there?”
“I dunno, sir.” (Laughter in the class.)
“Obviously you don’t go very often ....hmmmm. Find out for next week, or you’ll be in trouble.”
Religion at St. Mulbert’s grammar school was taught in a coherent programmed way, often by priests who were real teachers. So I discovered a whole new range of sins for which I was to burn. I never really knew anything of the complexity of religion until the grammar school. Everybody else seemed to know the answers to impossible questions except me and Kev. What the hell were First Fridays? Novenas? Lent? Advent? October Devotions? Not only did me and Kev not know, but nobody else we asked in Bensham knew either.
In the first year art class we had to learn how to draw all the paraphernalia related to the altar and mass - items called paten and pall and prie dieu. Again, no normal human being in Bensham would know such stuff. They knew relevant stuff like what was the favourite horse in the second race at Ascot. Uncle John knew that very well, and so did I from my trips to the headquarters office of the bookie in Newgate Street that Uncle John worked for.
In general, the grammar school was ok, with free dinners and fish on Friday. The journey to St. Mulbert’s was longer than to Panis Angelicus, and more exciting with two or sometimes more buses. And me and Kev could ramble around Newcastle city centre from time to time, usually after our sausage rolls.
On Wednesdays we got a half-day after the benediction and rosary. At the appropriate point in the ceremony, the lads all whipped out their rosary beads. I never had any - which made me a marked man immediately. Some eagle-eyed teacher would spot me.
“Forgot your rosary Briggs? If it happens again you’ll find yourself in trouble.”
It was usually a junior priest who did benediction, but the head master (also a priest) with his large hooked nose and showing not one ounce of compassion for anyone, Catholic,
Presbyterian, Church of England, or other, was always at one side, standing aloof like Nero’s armpit smeller.
To end the ceremony, we were always made to sing the school song, which was boring enough until one week when the top ten pop music charts had Johnny Preston singing ‘Running Bear’. The first line of the lyrics was very similar to the first line of the school song so me and Kev sang ‘Running Bear’ instead, our voices hidden under the groaning crescendo of the 700 St. Mulbert’s fervent singers of the school song. We cheered up a dirge-like song and enjoyed the foot-tapping drive of Preston. “On the banks of the river....” led us into the tale of pretty Little White Dove rather than aged Baeda, sage divine.
After ‘Running Bear’, we raced out of the school gates and crammed onto trolley buses to the city centre. We headed straight to Newgate Street, which I knew well enough from trips to the bookie with Uncle John. Moore’s (later Presto’s) supermarket was there with its circular counters where we could buy sausage rolls. We carried our two sausage rolls to the two check -out girls and listened, giggling, to their chat, always about boys they had been out with,
“So he says what about goin to the pictures - and we’ll get a bottle of beer and two bags of crisps?”
“So what did ye say, like?”
“ I says what kind of a girl do ye think I am?! I want a fish and chip supper and a cup of tea in a cafe .”
“Ye’re only right, Mavis”
“So then he says well what about a pizza and we can go watch tele in me cousin’s house?”
“I says go to hell and don’t waste my time any more……..”
Turning to me momentarily, she added in a sing-song voice,
“Er, them sausage rolls’ ll be sixpence ha-penny please…..”
I was jerked back to reality and paid up. Something about her reminded me of tartan skirted Maureen four years previously.
Outside Moore’s we munched on the rolls and just watched the street people. Kev nudged me and jutted his chin in a direction to my left,
“Hey, do you see Santa in his summer job?”
I followed his gaze and we both split our sides laughing. Santa’s summer job . . . an old guy with a magnificent white beard selling balloons on Newgate Street in June, three sheets in the wind, having just come out of the “The Gatehouse Arms”. He was having severe difficulty controlling the balloons in the breeze.
Kev asked me, “Hey, I was just thinkin - is Santa a catholic or not? Maybe he’s Presbyterian or Church of England?”
“Dunno….why?”
“Cos if he’s not, he’s in trouble. It means he’s going to hell !” We both roared with laughter.
“Well, he’s goin downhill all right, but least we’ll see him there then !” I guffawed, spilling sausage roll pastry down me shirt front in another outburst of laughter.
( 2 336 words - end of story )…
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