Читать книгу Becoming Johnny Vegas - Johnny Vegas - Страница 12

I would have ended that year a model example of an Underlow student had it not been Upholland’s centenary, and had they not celebrated by putting a decanter of sherry on every single table during a commemorative lunch one day.

This was a big mistake.

We sat there waiting for somebody to realise and come to clear it away, but they didn’t. So I decided to try a glass. I offered it around but there were no other takers at the table. No seniors noticed as there was so much going on in the hall that day – there was a big top table with special guests and religious dignitaries tucking into the good grub they’d put out to mark the special occasion.

I drank the first glass fast and gagged slightly at the bitterness, but then felt a warm glow in my tummy like liquid Ready Brek. Still everyone else was face down, focused on their plates. So I poured another and took my time with this one. I started to feel a bit light-headed after that, and uncontrollably giddy. Anything that was said by the lads at the table seemed absolutely hilarious, and my new-found sense of humour made them laugh in return. Then they egged me on to have another glass, which I did.

The rest of that meal is a bit of a blur, but I remember realising that the decanter was empty, and that the world was a really fucking funny place. I was giggling through all of the speeches – with my arms folded and my head buried in there trying to muffle the laughter – and clapping way too enthusiastically at the end of them.

I might have got away with it if I’d just gone up to the dorm and slept it off, but a priest came to our table and announced that there was a centenary round of golf to be played and they were looking for a student from each year to represent the college versus our visitors. Without any hesitation I stuck up my hand.

‘I’ll do it!’

‘Do you play, Pennington?’

‘I’m brilliant at it, honest. The golf course here is the main reason I joined the seminary.’

I’d never played golf before in my life. But I was peaking in the drunken bravado department and figured how hard could it be?

‘Don’t be smart. Be by the quad entrance at 4 p.m. Do you have your own clubs here with you?’

‘No, they’re at the cleaners.’ I thought I was hilarious.

The look the priest gave me told me he wasn’t amused.

‘No, I don’t, Father.’

‘Well, we’ll have to see if we can rustle some up for you. Don’t forget, four o’clock.’

In the time between then and four o’clock I went from being ridiculously happy to absolutely smashed, and my smart-alec remarks were replaced with barely comprehensible slurring. Father Cunningham, our science teacher, gave me his old set of clubs to keep. They were pure Antiques Roadshow, and actually made from bamboo cane. Still, it was incredibly decent of him, but in my drunken state I might have overdone it a bit on the old gratitude front.

The would-be golfers were broken up into groups of four. For the most part it was two guests, a student and one of the seminary’s priests. We were to play a round of nine with no handicaps. (Which meant absolutely sod all to me – though I had a booze-induced handicap of my own to contend with. Plus, on top of that, there was the fact that I couldn’t actually play golf.)

A priest and I were up against a bishop and some other guy. I wasn’t really bothered because my head was swimming. This was a really bad idea.

They must’ve thought it was the weight of the clubs making me stagger so haphazardly behind them heading to the first tee. My balance was completely banjaxed, and I just wanted to lie down on the grass and watch the sky until the bouts of queasiness passed.

Whenever anyone spoke to me my head would do this 360-degree bob before coming to rest at an angle that suggested a broken neck. ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ were the only words I was capable of forming. When it was my turn to tee off I couldn’t even place the bleeding ball. There were two of everything and whenever I leaned forward I thought I was going to be sick. I know you’re meant to swing the club, but leaning on it was the only way I could stop myself falling arse over tit.

If this had been a movie we would have now cut to a montage of the absolute worst round of golf you have ever, and would ever, see again. They weren’t divots I was whacking up that day: I was like a JCB earth mover out on that course. Not a single clear strike of the ball! And my putting was no better. If you could have followed the line of the ball from an aerial view it would’ve resembled an angry doodle done by a three-year-old high on Calpol.

The bishop and his guest were doing their best to be polite as everyone else played around us. ‘I’m sure he’ll settle down soon. It’s just a matter of getting your eye in, isn’t it, Michael?’

‘Tighten your grip but relax with your swing.’

Getting my eye in? I could see bugger all. Then the last glug of sherry kicked in and I couldn’t even feel my own hands. Half the time I didn’t know if I was holding the club or not, and when I was, it tended to go further than the ball. You could sense the fear whenever it was my go and my group retreated to wherever they prayed I wouldn’t manage to throw the club. I swore a couple of times too, when the fog briefly lifted and I really tried to concentrate on a shot, but luckily I wasn’t coherent enough for them to make it out.

My team partner – Father something-or-other – wasn’t quite so supportive. In fact, he was furious. He kept growling at me whenever the other two were out of earshot.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ or ‘Next time, just pick it up and throw it, do you hear me?’

What finally did it for him was my staggering off like a town centre drunk to have a pee against the bushes. I was bursting and way too gone to worry about golfing etiquette, and it was a crap game, anyway. His gritted teeth could barely contain his anger. He reminded me of the Jack Russell dog on That’s Life that used to say ‘Sausages.’

‘You … grrr … are an absolute disgrace. Just wait till … we get back … grrrrrr.’

Apparently it was a small course by club standards and everyone else finished in an average of around an hour and a half; we arrived back almost four hours later. I was green to the gills and sent straight to bed as apologies were made on my behalf to our patient fellow competitors. The day finished more like a stag party than a centenary celebration for me: I slept in my clothes and possibly peed in the linen closet during the night.

Surprisingly, I felt pretty robust when I was summoned to Sammy’s office the following day (again!). I actually think they realised it was their mistake giving out booze to kids because the bollocking seemed pretty tame considering my behaviour. No fire and brimstone, just a lot of fluff about my being an ambassador for the college at all times, and how I conducted myself was a direct reflection on Upholland itself.

‘Yeah, well, you gave me a big jar of sherry, and I drank it and got drunk!’ Now, obviously I didn’t say that, but I’d have been well within my rights to do so. I think it’s what the law would call ‘a technicality’.

Sammy had to get his pound of flesh somehow, so he confiscated my clubs. According to him, it would be selfish of me to keep them for myself when they might be made available for the whole of Underlow to use. And so they went into storage under his supervision and were never played with again. It felt petty, and a wee surge of my old resentments started rising again. After all, they were a gift given to me. Their fate wasn’t his to decide! But then I remember thinking, ‘I fucking hate golf, anyway. Let the baby have his rattle.’ Plus I had been expecting to get suspended or, worse still, expelled, so all in all I got off lightly.

And then the summer holidays finally arrived. Back at St Austin’s, there would be a buzz at this prospect, but at Upholland it felt more like Mardi Gras. I don’t know if I’ve ever been quite so excited at the prospect of packing a suitcase – like a toddler going to Disney World, my mind was racing with things I wanted to do once I got back.

The simplest things, the home comforts I’d longed for, felt like eye-popping, upcoming attractions at a theme park. Cups of tea, my mum’s homemade quiche, my bunk bed that Dad had built, watching telly whenever I wanted, staying up late, our fridge, Barton’s pop, playing out over Hankey’s Well, or playing ‘Kerbie’ in the street until it got too dark to see the kerb properly.

The Fords, the Leylands, the Croppers, the Barnets and the Rodens. Alan Hale. Bryan Davies. Martin Hurley, and of course my cousin Dimon. I would play out with all of them, even the girls, despite considering myself officially spoken for.

Good job really, as I wasn’t considered any kind of catch in our street and coming home from ‘that priest school’ didn’t help matters. God, it would’ve been great if my wife-to-be could’ve come to visit me, or vice-versa (but in those days the price of a train ticket, and the prospect of travelling to the North East all by myself meant she might as well have lived in Australia).

I could kill a lot of trees with pages and pages full of daft little details, routines and pals from my former life that I was dying to re-acquaint myself with. It was almost like the excitement of my homecoming had thawed out the kid in me after a long frozen winter of discontent. I had six weeks ahead devoted to real carefree fun, as opposed to merely making the best of things. Many of the Underlow lads were going off away on different holidays during the break. Some of them sounded pretty exotic, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to leave our house for any longer than it took to go to Metcalf’s for a sherbet dip.

When my dad arrived in the car I was practically banging the roof and shouting, ‘Go, go, go!’ like I’d just robbed a bank and the contents of my huge case were unmarked bills of assorted tens, twenties and fifties. Had I actually hit the car then something probably would’ve fallen off, so I opted to help Dad push-start it instead.

We jumped in as it hit the downhill gradient of the drive and I sat kneeling on the passenger seat with my chin resting on the back of it and watched Upholland College get small and insignificant in the rear-view window. The engine reluctantly coughed into action so I turned round in my seat, buckled up, smiled at my dad as he gave a relieved puff of his cheeks before smiling back at me saying, ‘Thunderbirds are go!’ With that we pulled out through the gates and headed home for the summer.

Some might say there’s now’t spectacular about the St Helens skyline, but Lowe House Church, Beecham’s Tower, Pilkington Glass’s old head office and their huge chimneys spewing out dodgy, multi-coloured smoke between twilight and dawn like fading Roman candles were all the wonders of the world to me whenever we crossed the border into Woolyback territory. In years to come, my art teachers would drill into us the importance of stepping back from your drawing so we could get a decent sense of perspective. I always felt that those few folk who slagged off their hometown of St Helens hadn’t spent the necessary time in exile to appreciate it.

I had, and I loved every single stone of the place. I’m not just paying homage to my hometown for sentiment’s sake. I’d missed it like an amputee might miss a limb. St Helens – and Thatto Heath in particular – were as much a part of me as my DNA.

God, it felt so good when I first got home. I indulged myself in all the privileges that being back provided. Mum seemed particularly chuffed to have me home again and made that kind of fuss that only mams can.

Other parish members did similarly, but the big difference being that my mum was pleased to have her own flesh and blood back where I belonged, whereas I felt they were just keen to check on their investment. Maybe I was being overly cynical. A seminary education’ll do that to you. They were all mad keen to compliment me on my progress. Apparently, I was such a lucky boy. A year ago I’d have been dumb enough to believe them, but I’d come a long way since the previous September.

‘Oh, it must be marvellous there. Your dad was showing us the photos.’

‘Has it been a year already? Hasn’t that flown by?’

‘You’ll be getting bored back here before you know it, won’t you?’

‘Your own private fishing lake? Blimey, you’ve the life of Riley there, haven’t you? Might have to sign up myself! Hang on though, I’m married aren’t I? Eh, now that’s not fair … ha ha ha.’

I remember thinking, ‘You lot don’t have a fucking clue, do you? If it looks so idyllic, how come you don’t live there?’ They were more naive than those boys back at the youth hostel!

If I was so special, why did most of the staff at Upholland treat me like shit on the bottom of their shoe? I had ceased to view the majority of its wardens as priests. They were – with the odd exception like Father Tony – bureaucrats, number-crunchers, academics, or monumental pricks; as morally corruptible as the rest of us, but a law unto themselves. I’d been to the coalface. I was living on the production line and understood why there were so many flaws in the finished product that this lot worshipped on a weekly basis.

I could have shattered their faith in all that they claimed to hold dear there and then. I could tell them all about life beyond its idyllic lakes and nine-hole wanking golf course. I had all the inside info on their precious belief system. I could pull back the curtain and reveal their Wizard of Oz. I could blow the lid on the whole sorry system. But I didn’t.

Photo from a rare family holiday during the Thatcher years. Mum, cousin Julie, moody me, Rob and Mark doing a damn fine impression of two no-nonsense detectives who get the job done and dad, their weary police commissioner.

My sister Catharine, Mike Fairclough and I on our bad taste fashion night out around St Helens. Before you ask, no, the girl on the right was not with us.

Faith was all some of these people had. No, they hadn’t been denied the basic privileges outlawed at the seminary, and yes, that meant they took a lot of what they did have for granted, but that’s the life they’d chosen. And I had chosen to go to that god-awful place. Me. I had dared to climb down that rabbit hole. So it would remain my dirty little secret as I nodded, smiled and answered all their questions politely.

Something was irreversibly different about me. I didn’t connect with all the kids in my street like I’d longed for. I felt like I had some contagious disease. It wasn’t a conscious indifference on their part, but a year away had stripped me of childish concerns. When some kids made the sign of the cross and comically genuflected in front of me, I wasn’t really bothered.

‘Ey up, it’s Father Penno!’

What killed me was the thought that I no longer had a single thing in common with them. All my suspicions from that night bunking in with those boys back at the youth hostel were confirmed. I was different, and all the kids back home somehow knew it. I was like Red in The Shawshank Redemption when he tries to adapt to life outside prison. It truly is an awful feeling when you accept that you’ve been institutionalised.

I tried playing out as much as I’d promised myself that summer, but I was like a ghost amongst my former childhood peers, the Betty Eccles of Hayes Street. Part of me actually fucking missed the acceptance of the lads back at the seminary. I hated the place and yet I could no longer function in the town that I had so painfully longed for and cried myself to sleep at night over.

Something inside me had died. I had left my childhood cake out in the rain and couldn’t for the life of me remember the recipe. I felt completely and utterly removed from who I used to be as I hid over Hankey’s Well, crouched in the long grass, weeping at the fact that there wasn’t a single soul on this earth who understood how shit it felt being me.