Читать книгу Seminary Boy - John Cornwell - Страница 26

ON A LATE September Sunday morning of cool breezes and brilliant sunshine I served Father Cooney’s Mass for the last time. In the sacristy he handed me a parcel and told me to open it. It was a new leather-bound Roman missal in dual Latin–English translation. The pages were gilt-edged and there were sumptuous silk markers, purple, red, green, white and gold. I could smell the warm scent of the leather and the sweet aroma of the delicate rice-paper. I was moved to tears, realising the expense of the beautiful object. I attempted to thank him, but he interrupted me: ‘Wisswiss…Very good! Run along now!’ As I left the sacristy he called out: ‘And keep the Faith!’

As I made my farewells at home, Terry, my elder brother, was terse: ‘Now I’ll be able to breathe at night.’ My sister, immaculately groomed, and approaching her fifteenth birthday, gave me a quick dry kiss on the cheek. She had a knowing gleam in her eye. Not for one moment, she appeared to be telling me, was she taken in by my devout pretensions. The youngest two, aged ten and seven, stood gaping, incredulous that any of us should be escaping from the Peel. Dad came in from the field. He was blinking with nervous excitement. He lifted my bags. ‘Gawd awlmighty!’ he said. He sang a bar of ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag’, then he lowered his face towards mine for a kiss. Accompanied by Mum, wearing her purple coat, I set off through the gates of the Peel, my arms almost out of their sockets with the suitcases I insisted on carrying by myself. In my unyielding new black shoes I just made it to the bus-stop.

We had lunch in the cafeteria of Saint Pancras mainline station. Mum ordered steak. It stuck in my stomach. She nevertheless ordered treacle suet pudding, urging me to finish every morsel. Her boy was not going to depart unfortified.

The station was a like stage set for the commencement of my spiritual journey: incense steam clouds, amplified pulpit-voice announcements, grand cathedral arches, shafts of lantern-light. I leant out of the window as Mum walked, then trotted alongside the carriage, her eyes suddenly reproachful and gazing into mine. She stopped at the end of the platform, a purple figure frantically waving a handkerchief. Then she was gone.

I sat hunched forward, still suffering from lunch, looking out at the passing immensity of the aged and filthy city wartorn from Hitler’s bombs. Taking The Imitation of Christ from my pocket I read the passage I had marked weeks earlier with a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour:

It is no small matter to dwell in a religious community, or congregation, to converse therein without complaint, and to persevere therein faithfully unto death. Blessed is he that there lived well, and ended happily.

Opposite me sat a smartly dressed woman. She smiled, her broad lips thick with orange lipstick. But I avoided her eyes and watched the factory buildings and terraced houses slipping by. In glimpses between tunnels and high embankments, the countryside finally opened out to the horizon. I felt a delicious sense of sadness as the train sped on, carrying me farther and ever faster away from Mum and the family, from Father Cooney, from the huge, bruised city of London. From the World.