Читать книгу Becoming Johnny Vegas - Johnny Vegas - Страница 11

Once I managed to blag a cigarette from a fifth-form lad. I can’t remember if it was Elliot or Enzo – they were two Italian twins who were a great laugh and only too happy to oblige. They had even less fondness than me for Wooster the sausage thief, and loved the fact that I had gone toe to toe with him. I remember them telling me how their dad had caught them smoking and made them eat a packet of fags, so their only stipulation was that I had to say ‘the fag fairy gave it to me’ should I get caught.

The handover felt suitably dangerous and over-dramatic. I had agreed to meet another Underlow, Peter, to smoke it in the linen cupboard down in the basement wash-room. There was a push-up plywood flap in there that gained you entry to a tiny annexe, like a mini attic.

The intention was to kick back like a couple of stoners, but we actually smoked it in record-breaking time. We were bricking ourselves. Four flushes later the last bit of evidence was gone. We washed our hands, brushed our teeth and made our way back to the common room. We hadn’t got through the door before Sammy called our names from outside his office in a tone that told us we were busted.

Apparently, we were the only first-years to get caught smoking in Upholland’s hundred-year history. Somebody must’ve grassed us up, but I couldn’t work out who; Sammy wasn’t telling, he was enjoying the interrogation too much. And there was no point in denying it when those eyes were scanning you. I could do nothing but nod and pull my best ‘regret’ face.

Peter seemed quite chuffed at being charged with a seminary first. Maybe it was just a nervous grin, but Sammy wasn’t impressed. I was determined not to tell him where I’d got the coffin nail from, but he didn’t actually bother to ask. It was more about us letting down the principles on which the college was founded, letting ourselves fall victim to a heinous and harmful temptation and blah blah blah. It was only when he asked us what our parents might think when he told them that my arse completely collapsed.

I’d been juggling my quiet contempt for the place with a glowing trainee-priest presentation to my mum and dad. And while our Mark had made smoking cool and anti-Establishment, I didn’t want to break my parents’ hearts. Smashing the system was one thing, but bringing shame on those you loved by fucking up like this was a different matter altogether.

I stood there back in that office like a junkie desperate not to do hard time. I begged Father Sammy not to phone my mum. And that’s when he knew he’d found my weak spot – he even had his hand poised over the phone, the devious git. In the space of a few moments I went from cocky rebel to desperate witch at Salem screaming for mercy. He had me just where he wanted me. It was more an initiation than a bollocking: standing in his office pleading with him, I became a dues-paid, card-carrying member of the please-don’t-tell-the-outside-world brigade.

‘Please, please, please don’t tell my mum!’

My parents’ love and respect was all I had to help me get through my time in this horrible place. I desperately didn’t want him to tell them I’d become a bad kid. I felt lost and ill at the prospect of being morally abandoned. They had replaced the Church in my private sense of worship. They were all I had faith in. If he called home and dropped this bombshell, he would shatter my belief system.

‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again, I promise. Please don’t call my mum and dad. Please.’

In the end, he didn’t call them, but not because my begging had swayed him. Instead, he held that threat over me for months. Sammy had found the chink in my armour. I actually prayed that he’d have a stroke and be rendered speechless. I tried to imagine him shaking his head in my dad’s direction on a visiting Saturday as I silenced him with big fat spoonfuls of yogurt . . . yogurt I’d peed in, after eating a field-full of asparagus.

We earned ourselves a mention at evening prayers in the main chapel. Well, a very obvious reference to the evils of tobacco, and a couple of hundred heads turning to stare in our direction. The old me would’ve thrived off of the kudos had Sammy not found my Achilles heel. Still, beyond my personal fears, I couldn’t care less about the silent moral outrage of the rest of the college.

I think that Peter, being a lay-student with no desire what-soever to go into the priesthood, actually enjoyed the notoriety of our scandalous behaviour. He was just a naughty boy. I was the future head of a parish and therefore should know better. I always felt sad for lay-students. I mean, us students who’d heard the call to do God’s work had put ourselves in that place. I don’t think I could’ve forgiven my parents had they sent me there to get myself a ‘proper’ education.

Maybe that was what gave Peter such an obvious sense of satisfaction, maybe not. Still, God love him, he sat through evening prayers with the same big fixed grin that he’d had in Sammy’s office.

As summer came, things improved at Upholland: there were more outdoor activities available; it stayed light till much later so I could read more in the evenings; and the whole building warmed up and the trudge downstairs to wash in the morning was a much more pleasant exercise. I’d got to grips with the day-to-day routine and had settled into the idea that this was my life from now on. Anger gave way to a faint hope that I could make a go of this priesthood lark.

The poster boy for the next generation of clergymen!

I had made a really good friend in Simon, a Geordie lad in Underlow. He was a bright kid and great craic. I think his dad worked away and his mum couldn’t always make the home visiting days, so he would come back to St Helens with me on those precious Saturday afternoons out. We’d nick off over the field for a fag with our Mark and eat our own body weight in whatever treats my mum had got in. Simon was ‘proper’ working class in my eyes. We were both from backgrounds that didn’t have a great deal in terms of money, but made up for it in pride.

I could never understand why pride was considered a sin. It’s what gave most folk I knew back home the strength to endure through difficult times. And, under the Thatcher government, it was the worst of times.

We liked to dress smart, even in the absence of lasses to impress. I took to wearing shirts with tiepins in them. Burton’s finest. God, to think I thought them so smart. I’d hit that age where I wanted clothes for my birthday: Slazenger jumpers were the epitome of cool as far as I was concerned. It was the time that I was first becoming aware of gaining weight, and I think dressing to impress was a way of combating my growing self-consciousness. My burgundy Slazenger helped hide a multitude of sins, but others proved more difficult to conceal. Puberty was upon me, and you couldn’t be in a worse place when those hormones started raging than a seminary.

My first interview day at Upholland! You can see in the background they’re going all out to pitch the place as an upmarket Butlins.

You see, ten-year-olds sitting their entrance exams don’t tend to think in terms of long-term consequences. It had seemed perfectly acceptable that marriage was banned within my future career. Sex wasn’t on the agenda then. Back home at St Austin’s Junior School, I had wanted a girlfriend as a status symbol, but there were no real base urges involved beyond snogging, so what big sacrifice was there in celibacy? How was I to know that within the space of a year, the fairer sex would be dominating all my waking thoughts (not to mention my nightly indiscretions)? Ten was a crazy age to seriously consider going celibate.

In the last few months before I’d left for Upholland, I’d started to fall prey to random and demanding ‘stiffies’. I had to relieve myself. I couldn’t discuss it with anyone because I was plagued with guilt. It felt so damned good, it had to be wrong. Either that, or I was a unique medical phenomenon, because why else would nobody have ever thought to forewarn me of this? If this was normal, then surely somebody would’ve taken the time to explain to me that the contents of my Y-fronts would turn into the orgasmic equivalent of Blackpool Pleasure Beach?

I actually thought I could be a freak of nature who might be paraded around medical seminars the world over should my dirty revelation ever come to the attention of others. Or maybe I’d invented it? Just like Darwin, I was torn between my responsibility to disclose one of mankind’s greatest ever discoveries and my fear of incurring the wrath of The Mother Church.

I kept telling myself, ‘This can’t go on. When you get to Upholland, it’ll have to stop.’ Before leaving for the seminary, I went hell for leather to get it out of my system. One night, I threw my penis what can best be described as a wild going-away party, and beat the poor thing half to death in the process.

I actually thought I’d broken it. I had a panic attack, convinced that I’d done some permanent damage. I sat downstairs with it resting on a bag of frozen peas, terrified in case anyone else got up in the night. I was a wanna-be lover, not a fighter, so how did my genitals end up looking like Sly Stallone at the end of Rocky II?

I sat there into the early hours, too ashamed to pray for help, and too embarrassed to dare think of seeking medical assistance. I eventually went back to bed, slept a little on my back with legs akimbo, and left for school the next day walking like a chimpanzee that had just had a vasectomy.

But even that terrifying ordeal didn’t manage to purge me of the urge. You’ll never have a more guilt-ridden moment than your first ‘self love’ session at a seminary. You’re waiting for sirens to go off and a gang of priests in riot gear to come charging in, restraining you with a tight bed sheet like that scene from Full Metal Jacket, before smacking you with multiple bars of Pope-on-a-rope soap wielded in towels.

Occasionally, on a Saturday, the priests would take us out of the seminary for a swimming trip. They’d leave us at Skelmersdale Baths, but we’d wait for the minibus to leave and then go straight out to the shopping centre to follow girls around. (We’d wet our hair later in the sinks so as not to raise suspicion when they collected us.)

We were so socially inept, but, temporarily free from our all-male environment, we were desperate. It must have been terrifying for those girls to be followed around Topshop by a group of eleven-year-old trainee priests, capable of nothing more than gawping at them, slack-jawed, eyes burning with wonder and desire, desperately storing up memories of the female anatomy for our respective wank-banks.

I apologise to any of my unwitting fantasy co-stars, but anything was better than the night I found myself ‘getting off’ over thoughts of the seminary’s dinner lady. She must’ve been in her sixties at least. No offence to her, she was a sweet old gal, but it was the adolescent masturbatory equivalent of drinking your own urine when cast adrift at sea with no fresh water. And it was an agonisingly slow walk of shame taking my plate back to the kitchen hatch the following day.

If I wasn’t lying awake at night feeling homesick, I was busy exorcising my unholy urges. And I was genuinely worried that this might impede my chances of making a half-decent priest one day. Was there a technique for keeping your hands north of the elastic pyjama border, which they would share with us at a later date? This was a basic instinct that was growing in its intensity whilst they just seemed to expect us to ignore it.

I tried going cold turkey, but then wet dreams kicked in – and my subconscious had a far filthier imagination than me. Up to that point, my indiscretions had been low-budget Dogmeinspired short movies. My wet dreams were multi-million-dollar summer blockbusters with an A-list line-up and a supporting cast of hundreds. I was damned if I did, and damned when I didn’t.

That’s why I was so excited when Father Cornforth, who had been a parish priest local to Simon’s home town, but who was now teaching at the seminary, offered to take him and a friend away for a night at an orienteering hostel. A school from his old parish were there on a trip, and he was going to go and say mass for them as there was an upcoming Holy Day of Obligation. Simon nominated me to go along with him, and not only would we get away from Upholland for two days, but girls would be there too!

You can’t know what a mind-blowing proposition that was for two wanton overnight escapees from God’s borstal. I packed my coolest jumpers and my tiepin with the over-tie chain. We were so excited driving down there. Tony – Father Cornforth was cool enough to let us drop the ‘Father’ title during the journey – was great fun. He didn’t stand on ceremony and talked to us like we were young men, not Underlows.

There was nothing pious about the guy and he didn’t have that underlying bitterness that a lot of the other priests seemed to have. I always imagined Tony was one of those at constant loggerheads with Church bureaucracy; he was a different breed who seemed to understand the need to connect with students rather than throw the rule-book at them. He was also proof that you could serve God and still have a sense of humour. Plus he taught judo, so he was also kick-ass. The man could do no wrong in my eyes. I can honestly say that I might be sitting here writing Sunday’s sermon right now had Upholland had more priests like him.

We got to the hostel in time for the evening meal. The other boys there must have thought us soft arses, but Simon and I were in seventh heaven sitting in amongst a gang of girls talking away to them. God, it was great! We were a bit of a novelty item and got bombarded with questions about life at the seminary. I felt so normal, despite our minor celebrity status, and that was the lovely thing about it. The other lads didn’t seem to have a clue what they were missing out on, so there was zero opposition. Then the question of girlfriends came up. There was one girl in particular who seemed astonished at the idea of no relationships with the fairer sex.

‘Not even kissing? But you’re not actually priests yet!’

‘I know, it’s rubbish, innit?’

‘Not at all?’

‘Not even on your birthday, or really sunny days!’

Her name was Lynne. She had this gorgeous, tight bubbleperm and a real cheeky smile to her. And she was the easiest lass to talk to. Attitude-wise, she was classic tomboy, but nonetheless beautiful for it.

It might sound corny, but chatting away to her I felt like I’d known her for years. She was so matter-of-fact and there was no awkwardness with her. I loved the way she seemed to understand my frustration with life back at the seminary. It was a killer when we had to break it up and go to our respective rooms. I didn’t want that evening to end.

The room with the boys’ bunks in it proved itself an odd revelation: while it was a real novelty for them to be spending a few nights away from home, for Simon and myself it was the unfortunate norm. They thought it great fun, chatting away till their teacher would stick his head around the door and rollock them.

‘Now this is your last warning. Settle down and get some sleep! Try taking a leaf out of these boys’ books.’

He was referring to me and Simon, of course. We were roughly the same age as the other boys, and they were a decent enough mob, but there was a massive intellectual gap between us and them. I felt like I was umpteen years their senior – not in any condescending way, but I just couldn’t get rid of a nagging suspicion that they knew nothing about the bigger world beyond their front door. All the things they were slagging off, everything they thought was lame or unfair, I yearned for on a daily basis. It was the first time that I realised my childhood was slipping away from me at an alarming rate. I lay there feeling cheated of something. I wanted to not give a shit, just like the other lads in that room, but I couldn’t.

I was 11 going on 40. I had lost the innocence that they all so rightly took for granted. I could’ve cried, but how embarrassing would that have been? Instead, I turned my thoughts to the beautiful tomboy and fell asleep smiling at a daft dream that I was heading back home to their school with her the next day. And there was no stiffy. Suddenly, I was all about the romance.

We went down for breakfast the following morning and the girls had reserved us spots on the benches next to them. This place was a dry dream come true! We ate and talked and already I was dreading leaving later that day.

My bubble-permed beauty and her friend asked if Simon and I wouldn’t mind nicking off for a wee while, as they wanted to show us something outside. They made it sound very matter of fact and harmless.

‘Yeah, ’course.’

Would I mind? I’d have shown my arse to the archbishop if that gorgeous gal had asked me to.

We excused ourselves from the table with a demeanour as studiedly casual as Jeffrey Archer hooked up to a lie detector. Not that we actually thought we were going to get up to anything, but because just the four of us left, it felt almost like a mini double-date.

We left by a side door and then Lynne actually took my hand and led me around to the back of the big stone building. There was a rickety doorway leading into a small lean-to where muddy shoes and wet coats were kept. I turned around to say something to Simon but the other lass had led him around the far side of the structure. My heart was thumping nineteen to the dozen.

‘Listen, Michael. We’ve been talking, yeah? And we’ve decided that it’s not fair that you don’t get to kiss anybody.’

I could barely speak but just about managed to croak, ‘Um, yeah, like I said, it’s, erm, it’s a bit rubbish.’

‘Well then, now’s your chance.’

And with that, Lynne put her hands either side of my face and kissed me. I mean she properly kissed me. Full lips and open mouthed.

The Vatican didn’t stand a chance from that moment on.

My head swam with all these new incredible sensations. I raised my hands and let my fingers hang in the soft, tight curls of her perm. Our noses rubbed gently together as we switched sides mid-kiss. I’d never, in my entire life up to that moment, experienced anything as wonderful as those lips.

For all my dummy-runs late at night back at the seminary, I was not prepared for this. And I’d have never dared go in for a kiss myself. But, thankfully, Lynne had initiated it, and she definitely knew what was she was doing. She made reciprocating that beautiful gesture just as easy as talking to her.

That first kiss seemed to go on for ever. I can remember to this day the waves of pleasure as she stroked her thumbs across my cheeks. I was trembling slightly from the adrenaline rush and thought my legs might give out at any point from swooning.

It was the greatest payback for what had, in fairness, been the crappiest year of my life.

I couldn’t tell you how long we’d been kissing for, and I doubt it would have gone any further than that, but we’ll never know because that sublime moment was brought to an immediate and incredibly embarrassing end when a teacher suddenly appeared and bellowed, ‘And just what in God’s name do you two think you’re doing?!’

Simon and his new friend were standing behind her looking sheepishly at their feet. I froze on the spot and couldn’t think of a word to say that might answer her question.

We were marched back into the communal dining room that was now being cleared for mass. She motioned to the girls. ‘You two sit there and don’t move! I’ll deal with you later. Now, you two, come with me.’

My partner-in-kissing-crime actually winked at me as we were dragged off to see Father Tony. She’d had a bit of a smirk on her face since we’d been busted. Lynne was great. It felt just like the smoking incident back in Sammy’s office. I mean, this was a serious misdemeanour, but my heart now ruled my head and I was already rehearsing my ‘I regret nothing!’ speech.

Tony was dressing for the service as the teacher stood there telling him all about our scandalous behaviour. She really did go on and on, so I think it was relief for all three of us when she finally said, ‘I don’t know about you, Father, but I’m at a loss for words.’

I wished!

‘It’s disgraceful behaviour. You must be so disappointed with them.’

Tony looked at us briefly.

Sod the speech, my face said I regretted everything.

But then something absolutely brilliant happened. He turned back to the teacher, and in a very matter-of-fact manner said, ‘Nah, not really. I’m proud of them for getting stuck in!’

I’d pay anything for a photograph of the smiles that broke out across my and Simon’s face at that moment. And, thank God, for the first time words did fail her as he continued, ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a mass to prepare for.’

That was Tony’s way of dismissing all three of us (and there’s no denying that as pay-off lines go, it’s a killer). Simon and I strode out of that room like studs. The teacher followed on, still in shock. I even managed a wink back in Lynne’s direction as we were seated on a bench as far away from the girls as possible.

Word had travelled quickly and the other boys were already having snide digs at us for snogging lasses. Unlike the night before in their room, I now enjoyed feeling ten years or so their senior.

We had come to that place as boys, but Simon and I would be leaving as men.

After mass, the kids were going off to do an orienteering session and we were preparing to head back to the seminary. The teacher was watching us like a hawk, but my resourceful co-conspirator still managed to slip me a bit of paper with her address on it. ‘Here, you can write to me if you like.’

And with that, Lynne winked at me one last time before running back to her giggling mates and walking away down a steep hill nearby the hostel. ‘Write to you?’ I thought. ‘I’m gonna bloody marry you!’

The whole drive back I kept replaying everything over and over in my head. Father Tony never once mentioned our fall from grace, but we couldn’t wait to get back and tell the rest of Underlow about our star-crossed lovers’ escapade. Oh yeah, following girls around the shopping centre was for amateurs – you were now looking at the professionals!

I wrote to my initiator into the pleasures of kissing the very first day after we got back. I had a slight panic going to Sammy’s office to buy the stamp out of my pocket money as I wondered if he might fix me with that gaze of his and somehow know that this was a letter full of forbidden love: a symbol of everything he had taken an oath against; a passion that I was supposed to turn my back on in favour of a life spent in servitude to Jesus Christ our Lord.

He just asked me if I wanted first or second class, and so the epistolary romance of the century began.

I lived for those letters. I loved receiving any mail whilst I was at Upholland, as anything connected with the world outside that place helped keep me going. My heart would sink at breakfast if there wasn’t an envelope with my name on it plonked on our table. I even took to writing to random companies for literature concerning their products, just to know that somebody, somewhere, was aware that I was here.

Car manufacturers always gave good mail, as did Scotch whisky distillers, funnily enough. I can’t remember why I chose to start writing to them, but they went out of their way to send tons of stuff. I suppose requests like mine were few and far between. Anyway, they didn’t seem too concerned that an 11-year-old trainee priest was taking such an ardent interest in their product. I don’t know, maybe they just thought I was getting a head start on my drink problem? Perhaps their post-bag was busting at the seams with letters from the clergy wanting to look into alternatives to altar wine? Whatever their reasons, they were more than happy to send label samples, brochures and breakdowns of the distilling process. Had I stayed on at Upholland, then I’d have had all the necessary know-how for building my own still and brewing up some kind of moonshine, which would’ve appealed to the other students. Sammy could’ve played Eliot Ness and eventually busted me for calligraphy tax evasion.

But nothing meant more to me than a hand-written letter from home, or especially from Lynne. I would read them over and over and over again. They were my most treasured possession at Upholland. It’s probably why I still write letters to this day, and take so much pleasure in receiving them. I don’t care that an email is a trillion times faster and costs you nothing: there’s no soul to them. A hand-written letter or card tells a person they matter. And I desperately needed to know that someone cared enough to make me feel that way.

I actually started making the most of seminary life towards the end of the summer term. I had what I considered to be a girlfriend (calling us ‘pen-pals’ didn’t do justice to how good she made me feel), and I was still coasting it, grade-wise.

I was also in the fishing club – an activity I’d really missed, and I even offered to captain our tennis team in an upcoming match with another school. It was a quiet back-up plan of mine to turn pro and one day win Wimbledon for my mum. That would be the only way I could make it up to her for abandoning my parish to marry a girl I’d met at a youth hostel at the age of 11. After that, all I had to do was drop four stone and win the Grand National to get Dad back on side. Simple! What a difference a kiss makes.

But my opponent was less than dazzled when I stepped onto the court and delivered a wanky 10mph underarm serve. It was a whitewash. But you know what? I wasn’t bothered. For the first time in what felt like an age, I wasn’t carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I didn’t even kick up a fuss when they took my life-sized cardboard cut out of ET off me. My sister Catharine had swiped it from a promotional display at Argos, and I was the envy of the dorm for the brief time that it was displayed there. However, it apparently represented ‘a false idol’ and wasn’t ‘in the image of Christ our Lord’. I remember mumbling a few words of protest as it was carried away but, to be honest, my heart was no longer in it as far as rebelling was concerned.

Just like Fletch in Porridge, I was happy to do my stir and keep my head down. The summer holidays were coming up and I’d have six full weeks of tea, proper mashed potato and kicking back with the Hayes Street mob. I’d come a long way since sobbing myself to sleep the previous September. I was now the new poster boy for the priests of tomorrow. Soon, I would take my case to Pope John Paul, explain to him why vicars had it sussed when it came to loving both one woman and God simultaneously, and return with reading lamps for all.