imagine it being slapped from my hands and being told in a loud and angry voice that this was a place for learning.
I have a very clear memory of that first day. I was to be taken to school by the older sister of one of Kevin’s best friends. Her name was Mary and she lived about three hundred yards from our house. Her mum, a small, dark, sharp-featured woman from Northern Ireland, my mother’s friend from St Gregory’s church, ran a clothing catalogue whereby people could order clothes and pay for them in weekly instalments. Every Monday night I was dispatched to pay our instalment, or the ‘club money’ as it was called. Her dad was usually there, ensconced in his armchair in front of the television. He was from Southern Ireland and was much older than his wife; where she appeared harder in both accent and attitude, he was soft and gently spoken. When I was very small he would take me on his knee and tell me stories of fairies and elves and enchanted horses, in a dark, dramatic voice that could make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but he would always end in a burst of laughter and a rough, bristly cuddle.
I loved these Monday nights; I would be sat down in front of the television and given tea in a china cup and saucer, plus a piece of fruit cake, while I watched Bonanza , a Western series about an improbable family. I don’t remember their own children, of which there were three, being there very much; they were that much older than me and were most probably either off out having a life or in another room doing their homework. In fact I can remember feeling disappointed if any of the children were there because their mum and dad might have been distracted from their pampering of me. They were a couple whose emotional dynamic was similar to that of my parents, except that they seemed to have more time and were less stressed.
Mary was their middle child, about seven or eight years older than me, with an older sister and a younger brother, and she was a pupil at the senior school, next door to the prep. She was a pretty girl with long dark hair and a massive amount of good sense. The journey to school consisted in part of a fifteen-minute bus ride down towards the city centre. On that first morning I was just about to step down from the bus at the stop by the school when, with a sweep of her arm, Mary pushed me aside and leapt from the bus. Then with one foot still on the platform and the other on the kerb, and the palm of her hand pressed firmly into my chest to stop me getting off, she stood in the path of a speeding bicycle, thus preventing what might have been a rather nasty collision. Instead she struck a pose like Super-woman, straddling the space between bus and pavement, while the cyclist, with a long skid and a squeaking of brakes, ended up with the unseemly parking of his front wheel between her legs and his handlebars pressed hard up against her tightly belted, regulation, navy-blue, gabardine mac. I can still see his head and shoulders shoot forward with the force of stopping so suddenly, causing his Brylcreem-laden quiff to flop down, in what looked like slow motion, over his forehead. Mary then held the cyclist there, their faces just inches apart, while she waved me and several other passengers safely off the bus behind her. Words were exchanged between her and the young man but I cannot remember what they were, except that his were said with an angry scowl, culminating in ‘Fuck off!’ What I do know is that, without a doubt, she came off best.
After this act of bravery I was in complete awe of her. She was a heroine, a person in whose company I was not fit to be, and I rarely dared to speak a word to her on our subsequent journeys. On many an occasion, I even put up with her spitting on her handkerchief and then roughly cleaning my face with it, enduring the unpleasant smell of dried spit until I could get to a tap to wash it off, rather than hint that I might prefer her not to do it. So
I have a very clear memory of that first day. I was to be taken to school by the older sister of one of Kevin’s best friends. Her name was Mary and she lived about three hundred yards from our house. Her mum, a small, dark, sharp-featured woman from Northern Ireland, my mother’s friend from St Gregory’s church, ran a clothing catalogue whereby people could order clothes and pay for them in weekly instalments. Every Monday night I was dispatched to pay our instalment, or the ‘club money’ as it was called. Her dad was usually there, ensconced in his armchair in front of the television. He was from Southern Ireland and was much older than his wife; where she appeared harder in both accent and attitude, he was soft and gently spoken. When I was very small he would take me on his knee and tell me stories of fairies and elves and enchanted horses, in a dark, dramatic voice that could make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but he would always end in a burst of laughter and a rough, bristly cuddle.
I loved these Monday nights; I would be sat down in front of the television and given tea in a china cup and saucer, plus a piece of fruit cake, while I watched Bonanza , a Western series about an improbable family. I don’t remember their own children, of which there were three, being there very much; they were that much older than me and were most probably either off out having a life or in another room doing their homework. In fact I can remember feeling disappointed if any of the children were there because their mum and dad might have been distracted from their pampering of me. They were a couple whose emotional dynamic was similar to that of my parents, except that they seemed to have more time and were less stressed.
Mary was their middle child, about seven or eight years older than me, with an older sister and a younger brother, and she was a pupil at the senior school, next door to the prep. She was a pretty girl with long dark hair and a massive amount of good sense. The journey to school consisted in part of a fifteen-minute bus ride down towards the city centre. On that first morning I was just about to step down from the bus at the stop by the school when, with a sweep of her arm, Mary pushed me aside and leapt from the bus. Then with one foot still on the platform and the other on the kerb, and the palm of her hand pressed firmly into my chest to stop me getting off, she stood in the path of a speeding bicycle, thus preventing what might have been a rather nasty collision. Instead she struck a pose like Super-woman, straddling the space between bus and pavement, while the cyclist, with a long skid and a squeaking of brakes, ended up with the unseemly parking of his front wheel between her legs and his handlebars pressed hard up against her tightly belted, regulation, navy-blue, gabardine mac. I can still see his head and shoulders shoot forward with the force of stopping so suddenly, causing his Brylcreem-laden quiff to flop down, in what looked like slow motion, over his forehead. Mary then held the cyclist there, their faces just inches apart, while she waved me and several other passengers safely off the bus behind her. Words were exchanged between her and the young man but I cannot remember what they were, except that his were said with an angry scowl, culminating in ‘Fuck off!’ What I do know is that, without a doubt, she came off best.
After this act of bravery I was in complete awe of her. She was a heroine, a person in whose company I was not fit to be, and I rarely dared to speak a word to her on our subsequent journeys. On many an occasion, I even put up with her spitting on her handkerchief and then roughly cleaning my face with it, enduring the unpleasant smell of dried spit until I could get to a tap to wash it off, rather than hint that I might prefer her not to do it. So
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