AVOWED SILENCE

I’ve never put much faith in the permanent security of the world, any worlds. And yet, create a world in miniature and you may dream up some measure of control. I didn’t realize that till I was thirteen when my father took me for a week’s break to Copenhagen. What I most remember from that trip is the Central Railway Station, where a huge model railway was laid out near the entrance . . .

In a blur and whiz of movement and colour, they are still there, extant: turntables, sheds, trains orange and cream, stone cottages with lattice windows and Romanesque red-brick church with tall medieval tower, trains whizzing by or bunting along at slower speeds, wheeling off in diverse directions, suddenly shooting out from green baize tunnels – you still hear the scream – and sweeping round on an inside rail in a beautiful quarter curve beneath a bosky embankment and shuttling over trestle bridge, steam trains pistoning, arrowhead bullets veering off, clacking at breakneck . . . was it himself that wheezed? Or sighed?

The sharp, dry smell of engine oil twitches his nostrils; coal dust half-imagined. All platforms are devoid of passengers, likewise all carriages. Hey, that’s weird. But he hadn’t even noticed, for he assumes it that way, must like it that way. And the thick blocks of wood painted green locked together with a grey band of road running through their heart, a veritable roadstead, along which you could push (gently, now!) your black and white Volvo Politi or yellow Citroen Postvaesen or blood-red Dyreambulance or Trifolium oil tankers . . .

But not if the trains were running.

Oh, a single solitary passenger was standing on one of the platforms, quite static, possibly lost, with no luggage. With no baggage.

2

Memory, a fragment: four years old, he was. A party at the house of a friend, no, a classmate he cannot remember. From preparatory school. Presumably not the boy whose cap he’d thrown way over the hedge whose mother scolded him at the front door, until his own mother, Iris, had boxed him about the ears up and down the hallway before the complainant’s satisfied gaze. Remember that darkened room, the merest light filtering from the sitting-room that he cannot remember, save the shrieking hubbub of youngsters at play, then the shadowy presence of the hostess breaking into his wondrous new-found orbit, an island of space, laid out on a grand table, the loops and swirls of a model roadway holding him in thrall, mesmerized, till slowly the urge to dare, with nervy fingertips making delicate pinches to the sides of these little toy cars so perfectly lifelike to really steer them, caress them over humps and around the contours of roadway in the whisper of light dampened, such detail and scale of the models so vivid, greens and reds, sky blue, the sense of utter absorption, of losing oneself in the magic of touch, the invention of the mystical and exotic, the whole hushed world away from the ramshackle stir next door.

‘Simon, would you like to come and play with your friends in the lounge?’ a woman’s voice, someone’s mum, scarcely broke the spell. ‘Your friends would really like you to.’

‘No thank you,’ came the meek reply.

‘Don’t you want some nice birthday cake with marzipan?’

‘Please can I stay here?’

Did you really say that? You were never a brave little chap. In those early photographs, you don’t raise a smile, only timidity. Was your shyness so whelming? You look awfully bewildered, rather than cheerful, resistant to life, uncertain, even fearful. I remember no other details of that loud, lively, laughing party.

Begins the dream of some enchanted never-never, a space of silence unadulterated, on which a template is imposed, a projection of imagination. Or a subconscious quest to flee this noxious world.

3

One evening, he must have been nine or ten, his father brought home a mongrel sheepdog, thick curly hair, black and white and full of bounding zest. Simon called him Flipper because his Dad called him ‘a flippin’ nuisance’. He would always remember the tear-away pup racing across the horizon of green bracken, yellow flowers of gorse and mauve heather, socks lathered in mud, ears pinned back, tongue flopping out with love of the chase. The more he idolized Flipper’s madcap escapades, the more his father referred to ‘that bloody nuisance’.

One Saturday night his father, out of work and roiling in one of his black funks, detected a pair of Simon’s shoes, scuffed and dry-muddy. ‘Christ Almighty, your best school shoes! How many times have I told you not to play football in your best shoes? We’re not made of money.’ And flung the offending lace-ups down at the boy’s feet. ‘Get out of my sight! You make me sick!’

Wary of his father’s burst of temper and dreading another volley of ugly words, Simon was obstinate enough to take him at his word. That would teach the miserable old blighter! Waiting until his father settled himself in front of the TV with a mug of beer and packet of Players, he slipped Flipper’s lead on, shook a few pennies from his Mickey Mouse moneybox and sneaked out the back door into the frost-spangled evening already dark with purpose.

For once Flipper was cowed, scrambling upstairs on the bus, panting hard and whimpering down on Simon’s feet under the front seat, a spreading puddle trailing behind.

Simon’s grandparents were taken aback at the sight of an awkwardly shy young chap and his pup on the doorstep, his Gran particularly worried, listening to the lad’s brief, downcast account, shocked that her Stan had yelled, ‘Get out!’ at her favourite. Grampa, weighing matters calmly behind a fug of pipe smoke, decided that Stan had to be informed at once in spite of Simon’s whining pleas and walked over the road to the telephone box.

‘Stan’s called the police in,’ said Grampa on his return. ‘They’ve been searching the woods.’ To Simon he added, matter-of-fact, ‘Your father’s very worried. He will come and collect you tomorrow. Mum too.’

When he jogged home from school two weeks later, Simon grew alarmed. The garden stood silent, deserted, lifeless. Why wasn’t that ball of energy launching himself at the front gate with wild excitement? Confounded, he scurried round the diamond flower beds to the back lawn and bushes. ‘Flipper!’ he yelled in desperation. ‘Flipper!’ A sickening sense of panic wrenched at his insides. Don’t say he’s jumped the fence! He’s run away! Dad said he always threatened to and was bound to cause an accident. No, he never would have!

At that time his father was working as a brickie.  He'd cycle home in his black beret and donkey jacket, his hands red-raw and blistered from stacking up the hod and uploading it somewhere up the scaffolding.  Soon as his father got home, shifty-eyed and irritable, Simon rushed up to him, accusingly. ‘Where is he, Dad? Please tell me!’

‘Where’s who?’ But already he’d looked across to Iris, his anxious wife, busy re-heating the rabbit and bacon stew.

‘You know who! Flipper, of course!’

Finally, ‘On a farm,’ mumbled his father, a man of few words where his son was concerned.

‘Why?’ When’s he coming back?’

‘He’s gone somewhere more suitable. He’ll be safe enough there.’

‘You’ve killed him, haven’t you!’

Stan’s eyes started at the outburst. ‘Course I ain’t killed him. Don’t be so bloody daft. He’s much better off on a farm where he can run around. Our garden’s far too small. Any rate, it’s too much for your mother to keep washing him in the sink when he’s covered in mud. He’s such a bloody handful for her to manage. It’s unfair on her, it’s unfair on the dog. And that’s the end of it.’

Hands clasped before her pinnie, Mother said nothing, gazing down at the dull brown lino with an anxious twist of the mouth.

For several days Simon would rush home from school at four o’clock, hoping against dread that his beloved Flipper would come romping home, badgering his mother for any news.

‘I hate him, Mum! I could kill him!’

‘Who, darling?’ She sounded worried.

‘That horrible man. He’s put Flipper down, hasn’t he? Hasn’t he?’ he repeated more loudly.

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, chewing her lip.

4

I can still feel his fingers suddenly on the back of my head, twirling wisps of my hair, not roughly like my clumping divinity teacher, but surreptitious as a sea breeze, a sickening sensation. Then a hot flush waved over me.

He was a gentle man, that priest. Soft-spoken, early twenties, slim, short and shiny black hair neatly kempt.

We were quite alone in the church. It was Saturday morning before the pictures. I usually tagged along with my best friend Micky Ryan, who was a couple of years older and bigger in every way. Ryno we called him, leader of our street gang, but I always saw him as rhino, armour-plated, a labourer’s muscly arms, until one day he landed in hospital after falling out of the tallest tree on the back common. I used to accompany him to the church in the high street because his parents were Catholic and wanted him to learn something of the teachings of the faith. That was a joke because Micky was no scholar, more of a happy-go-lucky adventurer. I didn’t know what I was, but my family saw no harm in it.

So now the priest was sitting next to me, whereas Micky and I together would sit opposite him. Every now and again the priest would ask Micky, ‘Why did Jesus die on the cross?’ Of course, he never knew the answer, any answer, but could only offer a stupid beam of a smile, as if this whole business was crazy.

I was busting to say, ‘So as our sins may be forgiven’, even though I hadn’t much of a clue what this actually meant.

Never once did I think of telling my parents about this bizarre, uncomfortable incident of the priest stroking my hair. Perhaps I was still re-living the Roy Rogers film or Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan or chuckling over Buster Keaton chauffeur-driven in a huge saloon car from one side of the street to the other to propose to his girlfriend.

We used to sing, reluctantly or, when urged, mock-heartily, We come along on Saturday morning/Greeting everybody with a smile. Not that morning, I didn’t.

I banked on not having to attend church the following Saturday, as Ryno was still lying in hospital. But Mum seemed pleased I’d been attending and glossing over the coloured pictures in my Bible and encouraged me to go along by myself.

5

Footsteps hesitant. The smell of that creepy sombre stone interior hushed, a mixture of that noxious incense and dry old wood polished up. I could scarcely breathe as I loitered in the aisle toward the usual triangle of chairs. The father was nowhere to be seen. My immediate reaction was to scarper. I could get my three pennorth of sweets and grab me a good seat in the stalls early. Then I heard the rustle of his soutane as he approached from a side door behind me. His smile was natural, his voice reassuringly warm and soft.

The lesson was about honouring your father and mother and respecting your elders, not vexing them. Learning you achieved by listening to the father of the righteous. Or words to that effect. For many years after that final meeting, I scrubbed that text from my foul mind.

‘In conclusion, I shall give you my blessing. For that, you kneel down before me.’

Pleased to be so close to leaving, I obeyed. Wasn’t obedience to your elders an important means of getting wisdom?

I must’ve started when I felt his hand settle on the crown of my head. ‘You may close your eyes,’ he murmured.

Foolishly, I did so, very tight, waiting tremulously for the blessing. I heard his chair scrape on stone. Too nervous to listen to his gabble, I sensed his breathing quicken in my face, heard a moaning sigh, Silentium Amoris. If only I had found the strength to escape his clutch, for it was then that I felt my legs penned inside his and his warm breath on my cheek.

Dreadfully scared, I opened my eyes. Already, he was reaching out, one hand round the back of my neck applying some pressure and the other shakily sliding up my knee.

Whimpering in alarm, teeth clenched, bracing back, I broke into dumb animal anguish.

‘It’s all right, my pretty angel. It’s all right.’ He was caressing the nape of my neck with the palm of his hand. ‘Just don’t call out, that’s all. Just relax. I’m not going to harm you.’

In those days I never called out, never willingly drew attention to myself, never once confessed to Mum and Dad if I got the ruler across the back of my legs at primary school. I was that ashamed, fearful of losing their respect.

Father Donnellan’s efforts to fondle were clumsy. I was wriggling frantically and bleating with fear. ‘Stop squirming, then I won’t hurt you.’ Irritation roughed up his voice. Wide-eyed those eyes that strayed around and back at the big wooden door, even up at the gallery.

He must’ve heard something or spied the Virgin Mary watching over him, for abruptly he let me go, stepped back like I were a leper, smoothed himself down with snappy briskness and began noisily stacking the chairs as if nothing weird had happened. ‘It’s time for you to go and catch your film,’ he said, his voice strangely stern, not looking at me, and coughed to clear his throat. ‘And listen: best not say anything to anyone. Do you understand?’ he added, finally giving me an uncertain stare. ‘All right?’

Tears never sprang easily from my eyes, a snivel occasionally. Even at my Grampa’s funeral I only pretended to cry with a few loud sniffs.

‘It might be awkward for both of us.’

Tugging down my jacket and sweater, I reeled away in a smog of confusion, not once uttering a word, distraught, aware only of the need to scratch at an outbreak of tics all over my loathsome body. Then and not for the next forty years did I open my mouth about what I later came to understand as sexual assault.

6

At grammar school in the 1950s, talking in class was severely frowned upon. Ratty, 3B’s teacher of divinity and history, once pounced on Simon for the slightest of fleeting smiles when his best friend showed him a photo of a porker and whispered ‘Ratty’. Without uttering a word, Ratty lunged across, seized Simon’s left ear and struck him such an almighty thwack across the right cheek. Startled, stung and wickedly shamed, Simon didn’t open his mouth, clenched down his tear ducts, stared straight ahead at the blackboard, deadpan, like nothing untoward had occurred, as the portly figure with swishing gown rustled across his glazed eyes and slashed at the cheek of his friend. At the end of that term, Ratty summoned Simon to his chair on the dais, baffled that his marks had badly fallen away. ‘Why did you scamp the work, lad? This is not like you.’ Simon’s lips remained sealed.

His maths teacher, Buster Brown, he of the booming voice and bulging belly, enforced a reign of terror with a joker’s humorous antics. If you spoke unbidden in class, you could choose your own method of punishment. Stacked in neat rows in his cupboard was a range of ‘slippers’, old plimsolls, with names like George or Fred or Archie and you could choose which one. If you made a mistake working out a problem on the board, he’d throw a hail of slippers at your back. Buster, unlike most teachers, seldom made use of his collection of canes, but every so often he would make a point of taking one out, swish it through the air and test the still-vibrating tip. When Buster summoned you in his lieutenant’s booming voice, you mounted the dais with legs already trembling. In his quieter, more intimate murmur, he would place his hand inside the back of your trousers. Simon fought hard against the trembles but knew the sensation of ‘spine-tingling’. Throughout this ordeal of institutionalized bullying, you never dared tell your parents. If you did, you would die of shame. Besides, they would have believed the punishment merited. After all, bullying was part of a boy’s rite of passage.

7

In his desperate search for inner calm, Father Donnellan turned to the possibilities of meditation. Not to dwell in the presence of God. How could he now? He had failed his most important trial disastrously. Scarcely could he participate in the sacraments, so mired, so hypocritical did he feel. If only he could flee from the greasy corruption of language, the crudeness of the physical body, the impurities of the human mind! So where could he find some release into the non-verbal world, a place to quiet his sense of guilt?

One day he came across a verse in the Song of Solomon: A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.

He was certainly feeling sealed up, both physically, in that he felt tricked and trapped by his insane impulse that was so utterly out of character, and also by the restraint and retreat of his own spontaneous nature. Now he was compelled to watch his own behaviour, guard those base instincts, be more chary of his outgoing manner towards his parishioners. In effect, he was dwindling into a dry old stick, a brittle ego, years before his time.

The enclosed garden, the hortus conclusus, a motif that came into favour in the early fifteenth century, suggested an inner space whereby he might regain a semblance of serenity. In his mind’s eye he created an intimate garden protected from sin by a wall, but after planting emblematic objects of the Immaculate Conception, such as the tall cedar, a fountain, the well of living waters, the rosebush, he allows his mind to wander away from the confinement of religious allegory to a more amorphous jungle of outrageously exotic excrescences and a bestiary almost comical in its curious harmlessness that Douanier Rousseau might have conjured up. There in his own free-falling, dreamed-up garden, his mind could drift untrammelled.

It was while poring over some art books that he found himself moved by the work of Renaissance artists, in particular the radiant beauty of the frescoes by that pious painter- monk, Fra Angelico. Henceforth, he would find some solace in the visual representation of the Biblical stories, such as The Annunciation.

8

Iris: Even as a young boy he was a very private person, painfully so. He would shut himself up in his room for hour after hour. I always felt obliged to knock on his door when I brought him a cup of tea. If he’d be living by himself, I’m certain he’d forget to eat. No, he didn’t confide in me about personal issues, but seems to brood a lot as a teenager. Like me, he found the world a very disturbing place, but unlike me he couldn’t shut these fears out, somehow. He was an avid reader, though. From three years of age he was fascinated by colourful illustrations that left an indelible impression on his senses.

At his secondary school the only teachers are male. He scarcely mentions them. Apart from his geography master who terrifies him, standing over and watching for a mistake. Simon was always a very shy boy. I don’t think he has a girlfriend, but I don’t know that he’d let me in on his feelings, especially if that relationship proved short-lived. He’d feel very foolish in front of the family as well as hurt by what he’d surmise as betrayal by the young lady concerned. Yes, we get along pretty well. But he can get shirty with me if I make too much fuss of him. Which I tend to do because he’s such a loner. You see, my generation never had much guidance on bringing up children. Also, but I don’t like to admit it, he relies on me as an ally against his father, with whom he has little in common. To be frank, he despises his father. Which is unfair, given that Stan had his sensitive side bludgeoned out of him by the war, then spent several years afterwards queueing up at the labour exchange looking for work. Simon never forgave his father for taking away his sheepdog, Flipper, without offering any explanation to him. Simon refused to speak to him for days, was always on at me to find out where Flipper had gone. I didn’t know myself. Stan said he’d arranged for Flipper to go to a farm. I was kept in ignorance. Simon was convinced Stan had Flipper put down.

After the war both Stan and I tried to protect our son from the dark side of life. We didn’t, just couldn’t open up about those dreadful things we’d witnessed in those dark days. That’s possibly why he resented us. For not opening up to things he desperately wanted to know, however dark.

9

In his narrowly circumscribed life, Father Donnellan was unsure of what steps to take that might demonstrate sincere penitence. He pondered at some length on the wisdom or efficacy of asking a brother priest, familiar or completely unknown, to hear his confession and absolve him. He was beginning to hear whispers about increasing numbers of young people being sexually violated in the Church, but these claims were hushed up or dismissed as ‘one-offs’. So he was not the only culprit, God help us, though he blenched at the ugly lexicon staring out in bold newspaper headlines – perverts, pederasts, child molesters, predators, paedophiles, sexual deviants . . .

But could he bring himself to confess his vile sin to a fellow priest? The shame would be excruciating. He would doubtless sink into a severe depression. Surely he would never contemplate suicide. That would constitute another grievous sin. Besides, it was too heavy a consequence for a once-off folly, wasn’t it? Yet isn’t confiding at once in someone who understands the temptation for young celibate priests a better course of action than waiting for the National Enquiry into Abuse by Catholic churchmen? With a shiver of horror, he wondered whether that boy, whose name, Simon, was seared across his mind, now presumably a family man of mature years, would make a submission. And, Heaven help me, expose me.

Now suppose his choice of confessor proved to be gay. Wouldn’t such a revelation demean the merits of his own confession?

In any case, with the ongoing public debate on mandatory reporting, the archbishop did his best to put up an argument that the confession was sacrosanct and inviolate, but conceded that this principle might give way to the law of the nation. Which means his confessor would then have to dob him in.

It now seemed only a matter of time before he’d find himself bailed up in prison, spat upon and slapped around by hardened crims, who might try to humiliate him sexually, could even attempt homophobic rape.

10

In those days at the grammar school, masters, especially those giving instruction in languages, deemed it essential to bestow an appreciation of cultural awareness on their charges. The French master might mention that Jean Marais was playing the role of Nemours in the film version of Madame de la Fayette’s seventeenth century novel La Princesse de Cleves. You wouldn’t necessarily dash off to the library to borrow a copy, but you would be expected to familiarize yourself with the actor and author and remember the approximate era of composition. A French novel was part of your own cultural tradition, whether you enjoyed it or not. If Quinze Contes was a prescribed text, then you’d dip into Guy de Maupassant’s other stories and perhaps a novel, say Boule de Suife. Unlike today, where students demand to know what aspects of the syllabus are likely to be set on the exam paper, otherwise forget it! Or you’d be asked to learn for homework the opening soliloquy of Shakespeare’s play, Richard III: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent . . .’ And thereby learn the function of language itself, to create another world through the use of metaphor and simile, symbol and rhythm, a world of sounds and pictures that flooded your imagination with colour. The sublimation of aesthetics inferred.

11

His father had never been one for overseas travel, not since the war. Nor was there any spare money. Until Stan’s Pop was carried away by lung cancer within six months. His only son was given a small bequest and all of a sudden was planning a trip with much agitation and excitement to Copenhagen, of all places. Into the bargain, he would take Simon and make a determined effort to understand his difficult son.

‘Why Copengagen, Mum? Were the old man’s ancestors Viking ogres?’

‘Who knows?’ she simpered. ‘Just before the war broke out, your father spent a week near Copenhagen at some scout jamboree. He’s been itching to get back for some time.’

Simon would much have preferred France and knew nothing about Denmark, but was suspicious that his volatile father was bending over backwards to ingratiate himself. The first day they strolled along Stroget, getting their bearings, chuckling at the street performers, listening to the buskers and jazz musos. His father suggested they visit The Little Mermaid. Simon thought the offer was patronizing, this nodding reference to a literary figure. But when he clapped eyes on the forlorn statue sitting on the rock, he was touched by the melancholy expression of a beautiful woman languishing in solitude. His father’s true feelings emerged with an impatient, ‘What’s all the fuss about? The statue’s only four foot high.’

After lunch, rissoles and potatoes, a mug of beer and snaps for Stan, an open sandwich on dark rye with chicken salad and a glass of milk for Simon, after the boy had turned up his nose at the marinated herring, they stopped by the Central Railway Station for Stan to make a phone call. Simon drifted over to the huge model railway and gazed incredulous upon the layout with such strange yearning.

Gradually he became absorbed by the architecture of the old town, especially on their way to the Carlsberg brewery. The double-arched gateway with the diagonal pattern of red and glazed tiles was exquisite. Then there were the magnificent four elephants of white granite supporting the tower on their backs. The old brewery itself was picturesque with its walls like mosaics and roof-line of statues and towers. His father, of course, was far more interested in the process of beer-making, the huge display of bottles of various beers and drinking a couple of glasses of the stuff.

By the time they entered the Tivoli Gardens, Stan was in an unusually cheerful mood. ‘Christ, look at all those flowers! And over there, that must be the Chinese Tower. Mate, why don’t you run along and enjoy yourself?’ reaching into his jacket pocket for some kronor notes. ‘You can have a spin on the dodgems or there’s that roller coaster or you can take out a dragon boat on the lake. I’ll meet you back here in about forty-five minutes by this Ferris wheel.’

‘So where are you going?’

‘I have to meet an old friend. Strictly business,’ he added hurriedly to allay Simon’s puzzlement. ‘Got enough money?’

‘I suppose so.’ With that, his father headed off quite briskly.

Simon had always taken great delight in the rare chance to race the dodgems, especially the nifty dodge to twist the wheel violently to reverse and slam into the nearest cars. There’s nothing like the shrill laughs of breathless surprise jarred from your victims. Although the cars were old-fashioned with wooden seats, he soon launched himself into a series of flashy bumper manoeuvres.

So thrilled was he, he’d lost track of time, but his father had not turned up at the Ferris wheel, so he wandered over to the roller coaster. And there, roaring down the steep gradient he caught a flashing glimpse of his father, laughing as he’d never seen him before, helplessly, hugging tightly as if life depended on it a smartly dressed woman, middle-aged, a maroon scarf flapping away, who was screaming frantically. So stunned was he, Simon couldn’t move from the spot.

When the roller-coaster climbed down to rest and the car was opened, Stan helped the giddy woman find terra firma but still held onto her, both reduced to minor fits of giggles. From amid the watching crowd, they were joined by a teenage girl, timidly offering a smile, who could have been a couple of years older than Simon.

My god, he thought. My father has a secret life.

12

Much to his parents’ bitter disappointment, Simon was stubbornly resolved to walk out on school at the earliest opportunity, which at that time was sixteen. The senior master suggested a career in banking or insurance. His parents, who had been overjoyed and incredulous that he’d won a scholarship to a grammar school at the eleven-plus exam, were doubtful whether he was capable of doing anything, not even in sales because he was so naturally reserved and could be stand-offish to the point of aloofness, even apparent arrogance. And yet as much as he hadn’t taken delight in the teaching of English, theoretically one of his strongest subjects but now so dry and dependent on rote learning without discussion, his alternative reading for pleasure threw up a surprise opportunity.

From the age of three he had turned a wondrous eye to the mesmerizing colour plates in his first basic readers but also his mother’s library of classics from the 1930s, with beautifully rendered illustrations of fairy tales or the death of King Arthur or the glinting silver sword of Excalibur thrust up from the depths of the satiny blue lake. The illustrators themselves had names almost as magical, perhaps due to his mother’s sighs whenever they bobbed up in conversation: Arthur Rackham, with his sinuous, sensuous lines; Edmund Dulac’s starry enchantment; Heath Robinson quirky and comical. As much as he devoured books, his imagination was spellbound by the visual feast that hard-covered tomes provided in those sombre, drab days following the war and through to the 1950s. It was reading matter that magnetized his senses, from the 9d 64-page World Classics, picture-book texts of Quo Vadis, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the highwayman Paul Clifford. Dear old Gran treated him to a subscription of three per month, which fuelled his fascination with historical and literary personages, different eras and various cultures rendered exotic by evocative illustration that opened his inner eye.

Such an impetus was compounded by an awareness of cigarette cards, or fag cards, as lads called them. For someone whose earliest nightmares were characterized by vicious Nazis threatening bayonets and lobbing hand grenades from the bottom of his own garden, he was, surprisingly, visually seduced by the series of Indian soldiers in their bizarre but lavish uniforms and striking clash of colours: all those variegated, striped turbans, the green jacket across which ran a bold broad red sash and gold braid, knee-length leather boots, dress sword and white gauntlets. Or, incredibly, those mauve trousers with red jacket and even the basic beige uniform with soldiers mounted on horse or camel.

Thus when by chance his eye fell upon a small advertisement for a trainee research assistant in matters historical, he sent off an application with much trepidation and scant self-confidence, and, unbeknown to his parents, an expression of interest. To his surprise, he was taken on for a month’s trial by a company manufacturing toy soldiers. His task was to research the correct uniform colours and weapons or other embellishments for the soldiers to be painted. Long before the advent of the internet, it was obligatory to visit museums and libraries to meticulously check for historical accuracy. You had to certify the difference between a regiment officer and Tommy Atkins, a sapper and a signaller, a Black Watch Highlander of 1916 and the 78th Highland Regiment of Foot in 1869.

The growth of the hobby had steadily progressed from cut-out cardboard figures and buildings to literary and historical dioramas: D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers in their flourishing hats and blue tunics; Custer’s Last Stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn; the Charge of the Light Brigade; Napoleon’s retreat through the bitter snow from Moscow burning; slaughter of the Scottish Highlanders by the Redcoats in the heather of Culloden; Richard the Lionheart’s Crusaders bombarding the Saracens at the Siege of Ancre. Not to mention war games enacted by two or more opponents, usually adult.

Castings of metals were more frequently hand-painted, lead-free or pewter. Accessory buildings were seldom constructed in unconvincing Meccano but realistic polystone. The scale of models was a more uniform 1:30. Before the take-over by digital appliances, Simon was already immersed in a virtual reality of his own. He loved the solitude of his research work.

13

Father Donnellan was studying the face on the television screen. It was that of his archbishop. An inscrutable face set in stone, cold and detached and unmoving. And at last his apology: ‘I am sorry . . . ‘ delivered in such a flat, mechanical, matter-of fact curtness that Father Donnellan saw not a shred of pity for the innumerable victims of sexual abuse committed by the brotherhood. He knew that his eminence had dismissed, stalled over and concealed claims of sexual abuse for years, and only recently damned the media for exaggerating the scale of abuse whilst claiming that his Church had already bestowed on the victims ‘due procedure’ and ‘inner complaints’ . . . Words, words, words.

Father Donnellan cursed his birthright, for he too couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge his own sexual impulses that lured him onto temptation’s path. It certainly wasn’t the heinous unnamable crime that so tore at Fletcher Christian’s soul; rather, the aesthetic yearning for something beyond himself, a transcendental experience of perfection and beauty in God’s Creation that Gerard Manley Hopkins had striven for in his poems. ‘Glory be to god for dappled things,’ he muttered to himself. And wasn’t it Hopkins who stated something like, ‘More beautiful than the beauty of the body and the mind is the beauty of character’? Alas, I can no longer pretend to have a ‘handsome heart’.

He had to admit that in spite of his moral self, his sacred vows, his position in loco parentis, he was impelled to face up to the distasteful fact that he had sought solace in human flesh. How could God implant the double-edged seed that bore fruit in the reaching out with a compassionate hand and the taking back with a sinful hand? O the horror of a tormented soul masquerading beneath a cassock that represented love for the Holy Spirit, yet at the same time cloaked the instinctive lust of the flesh! Of course, he was bitterly, bitterly sorry, but fear and shame had bitten his tongue.

14

Detective Constable CID’s Report: The suspect approached us on foot at the site of the discovery of a female body. He betrayed little emotion, but he seemed sullen or tired about the eyes. He could have been disturbed about our methods of searching for evidence. One of our officers singled him out. He appeared not to heed her presence. More than once did she ask him what his business was, what did he know about the brutal abduction, how familiar was he with this area, had he seen anything suspicious in this copse recently?

Each question he answered in the negative with a murmured ‘No’ or ‘Nothing’, as if completely distracted, yet his eyes were fixed on the crime scene. ‘Nothing at all? Are you quite sure?’ Then there was a flicker of recognition. ‘There was a truck with a trailer drove slowly by. You hardly see any vehicle but a tractor up here on the moors.’

Psychiatrist’s Report: The suspect is narcissistic, a loner, an outsider who spends too much time by himself, acting out infantile fantasies. The quality of relationships with others is poor and he lacks empathy, understanding and patience. He reluctantly engages in ‘small talk’, even polite civilities; in effect, rarely articulates at any length. In a social setting he does not fit in or even wish to belong to a group. Even his family feel he is a misfit, though his mother makes out he is auto-didactic. As a consequence, they no longer know how to handle him. In fact, they give him too much free rein to prevent incurring his wrath or bouts of cold-shouldered silence, thus giving him an excuse for aggressive or anti-social behaviour. I can see there is residual anger there.

His attitude toward women is ambivalent. While he can confide in his mother, he also despises her inability to call a spade a spade, to confront a situation head on, rather than dance around it with soft generalizations. She can be squeamish and gloss over the stark reality. When describing her own father’s death, she whispered the word ‘cancer’; when she spoke of a cousin’s suicide, she whispered ‘took his own life’. However, the pained and twisted expression on her face spoke volumes.

My hunch is this young man has some grievance against his mother and cannot come to terms with it.

15

Iris’ Statement to the Police: Simon wouldn’t hurt a fly, but stopped, sucked in her cheeks, bit her lip. There was a time when she spied him stamp relentlessly on a nest crawling with ants, perhaps he was four, and then as an early teenager watching for wasps buzzing out from their nest in the brickwork of the back wall of the house and stunning them with the hoe before grinding their bodies into the concrete. Generally, though, he was a highly sensitive boy, an avid reader, which he gets from his mother, and usually immersed in some solitary activity. He likes to teach himself things.

Yes his father would take the copper stick to him for swearing. Mind you, I’m fairly sure Simon was ignorant of the meaning of those revolting words he occasionally used. But it wasn’t excessive. Certainly not after the lad won a scholarship to the grammar school. Stan’s not a harsh man, but his own parents were strict. For all his bluster, Stan never once made Simon cry. The boy might have trembled on the edge of tears, but didn’t allow himself to give way to them. Call him downright stubborn, if you like, but it was more that he was extremely conscious of being embarrassed or even shamed. As far as I know, he doesn’t share his life with anyone.

16

Stan’s Statement to the Police: To be blunt with you, guvnor, he would never let me get close to him. When me and the missus come into a bit of money, I treated him to a few decent things, a new bike, a brand new Seiko watch, but nothing I bought him was good enough. He always turned his nose up at everythink I done for him. Ain’t that no good neither, I’d say, almost pleading, like. I tried to be mates, but he even detested the word ‘mate’. Grammar school turned him into a right old snob.

Yes, I did try to knock some sense into him, but it weren’t no good. Nah, he never listened to me. An’ if he did, it was only to mock me to my face. He could be a sarky bugger.

If you ask me, it’s that grammar school that’s swollen his head, even shunning his mates on the estate. Thinks he knows it all. You can’t tell him nothing, without getting a bit of lip. He talks to his mother, but she does everything for him, spoils him rotten. He’s an oddball, that one. Beats me where he gets it from.

Look at it this way. When my old Dutch saw me making sparks with a red-hot poker, she made a grab for me, seized my bloomin’ hand and shoved it in the bloody flames. ‘That’ll teach you to play with fire!’ she said. She didn’t stand no nonsense, Mum. I definitely learnt my lesson. What’s more, I won’t have no son of mine growing up a spoilt whatname.’

17

Iris’ Second Statement to the Police: You have to remember that Stan volunteered for the army in 1939. It was a horrifying nightmare that changed him from a bit of a lad, a debonair, good-looking charmer, outgoing, to a broody, secretive father. He never meant to be so harsh on his son, but his nerves were shot. I’ll never forget the time when he was driving his father’s Morris 8. He’d bought a crayfish for us as a treat. The fishmonger removed the crustacean from a tank of seawater and placed it in our pot of fresh water with a lid on top. Stan told Simon to sit in the back seat and carefully hold the pot tight and on no account remove the lid. We set off again, but it wasn’t long before Simon spoke in a wheedling manner:

‘Dad, the crayfish keeps bumping against the lid. Can I take the lid off now?’

‘No, you can’t, boy. You heard what I said. I shan’t tell you again.’

Simon was obviously agitated. ‘But Dad –‘

‘You heard what I said.’

Simon fretted about this while the crayfish was desperately fighting for some air. He couldn’t refrain himself any longer: ‘Dad, the crayfish can’t breathe. I’d better take the lid off.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ replied Stan in a menacing voice. “Or I’ll wallop you one.”

‘But it’ll drown,’ Simon whined.

‘That’s the idea,’ insisted Stan, impatient with tedious explanation, ‘so we can cook it. You take the lid off and we’ll have to boil the bloomin’ thing alive. How would you like that, eh?’

Simon was jittering on the edge of tears, frowning puzzled. As usual, I found myself stepping in.

‘Will you stop interfering, woman! No wonder he’s such a softy. Can’t you see what your smotherin’s done to him?’

Perhaps I was the one who was to blame for how Simon turned out.

18

The menace of the ordination of women in the Catholic Church demanded silence. Now in his chastened seventies, Father Donnellan was perturbed by this vow, angered indeed. The bishop had reminded his priests that the female body cannot channel the masculine energies of Christ. But how could his eminence know that? On what concrete evidence are female priests unable to enact the sacraments? In any case, he was a Doubting Thomas about his own masculine energies. He certainly didn’t feel hypocritical about his warmth of feeling for his parishioners. In fact, those feelings were more likely to have emanated from his feminine aspect. His occasional sensual thoughts that used to well up unbidden still made him feel wretchedly guilty, but in terms of compassion he couldn’t help but contrast himself with his archbishop’s unconvincing televised performance of saying sorry for priestly violations of both genders.

Yet if he broke silence now, preaching against the teachings of the Catholic Church on women’s ordination, he would be summarily excommunicated, dismissed, cast out and shamed amongst the laity. They can dismiss me, but they cannot rid themselves of the thorn in their side – the question of gender inequality. In accepting the papal decree, cardinals and bishops must have a cast in their own eye, for the push for gender equality is founded on social justice and human dignity. The Catholic priesthood professes that God created men and women of equal worth, yet at the same time it claims that the call to the priesthood comes from God alone. How can men insist that our call from God is authentic, while denying God’s call to women? How hypocritical and smugly holier-than-thou is that? Even Saint Paul himself makes no distinction between men and women in his Epistle to the Galatians: ‘For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus; and again, ‘For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.’

Yes, I confess to having erred in my own moral behaviour and now I err in matters of belief. It is evident that the Holy Spirit no longer speaks to me, nor am I capable of divining the Holy Spirit. Clearly, I have lost the sensus fidei, I have lost my moral compass.

19

There were six of them on stage, wretches every one, with hangdog expression, shoulders slumped, you could imagine them twirling limp as tired sacks on a hanging-tree. Not only did they have to confront the audience, but face the inquisition.

Hopefully unobtrusive in the back row, Simon was cringing just to look at them and smelling his own fear. Even at the introduction on day one when the fifty participants were strongly advised that they were not to leave the building until the end of each day’s session. Nor were they permitted to quit the week’s course. But when this coolly confident, if not downright cocky participant was called out for not keeping still during meditation, Bazza, what was that all about? Why aren’t you facing up to the source of your problem? Simon felt himself liable to be pounced on for some casual slip of the tongue or revelation of sexism. They were bound to charge him with being a latent murderer in his heart due to represed anger. He felt like that teenage kid he once was forty-odd years ago when the police were putting the hard word on him about that poor girl’s dreadful murder on the moors. This wasn’t the first time he was tiptoeing across eggshells, ideally towards the exit, scarcely breathing.

‘We’ve been observing you, Bazza. You were very restless during the meditation. What’s going on there? Why did you choose to come on this course? So what was your issue? No, that wasn’t the real reason, was it? But you haven’t got anything out of the course. Why not? The real reason is that you’re shit-scared. So we want to help, we really do. But you have to take responsibility for yourself, for your own growth as a human being. Do you understand? Speak up, we can’t hear you. Yes, look up. Look around at your friends here. We’re all here to support you, to save you from yourself. Listen, this may be your last chance to break through, your last chance to kill off your personal demons. We’re here to help you exorcise it, your cancer of pain.’

But this final late-afternoon wrap-up loomed as a major climactic if not cathartic moment. These six pathetic persons on stage had been bawled out by the leader for some reason, like scapegoats, meek lambs for the slaughter or like bit parts in the Chorus. Yet the whole chastened audience was in lock-down.

20

‘Your last chance for happiness, Marie.’ Gary was still grinding blood from a stone. ‘What is it that’s bugging you? What do you mean, you don’t know? Do you want me to tell you what I think it is? Do you? In fact, I know what the problem is. And so do you, don’t you? I think you do, Marie. You were molested by one of your parents, Marie, weren’t you?

Mouth pouting miserably, Marie starts shuddering with tears and buries her chin in her upper chest. For some reason she can’t use hands to hide her shame.

Simon himself is feeling fidgety, feeling anxious, feeling afraid, dry in the throat. Supposing the leader should call him out. After all, he hasn’t volunteered to mount the stage and fess up either. At the same time he’s also sickened by the leader and his team of sharp-eyed observers to have the gall, the presumption, the smug self-righteousness to assume that their shocking and relentless interrogation, their pitiless diagnosis, their triumphant exposure is undeniably correct.

And then inevitably it was Simon’s turn to lie on the mattress to imagine he was terribly angry with his father and to simulate a scene and let rip with the emotion, yes that was the crucial factor, ‘Let it all hang out,’ said Gary. ‘Let’s not pussyfoot around.’ Yes, he was able to yell out at the taunts of his peers and the sneering, thick-set bloke he’d chosen to play the part of his crude, ignorant father. And he must have convinced the shrewd eye of one of the disciples, for she called an end to Simon’s red-faced, pulsating performance and swiftly laid her hand on his lower spine to check whether the vibration was sufficient to dispel the bile.

Simon knew then he’d successfully faked anger. More importantly, he realized his own degree of moral cowardice, his Achilles heel, an inability to speak out against the violation of his own body. Or was it the violation of his own mind?

Now in the twilight he sensed that he had regained possession of his self, whatever that was, more at ease with himself, his shortcomings, quietly content with his displays of 1950s Dinky Toys, library shelves of de luxe Folio Books, both sets in mint condition, as well as his beloved CDs of pop favourites from the mid-fifties to the sixties and array of classical music. If he hadn’t cultivated too many gardens of interest like Montaigne, he was more accepting of his stance of observer, even as life passed him by. In these times of social networking, exhibitionism and the cult of celebrity, he was way out of step. Lonely? Sometimes, but he was an observer endlessly curious about human nature and observers need to keep their distance.

November 28, 2012 - January 5, 2013