by Ray Connolly
James finished his little monologue with a mock curtsey, to which Michael applauded vigorously. James had looked very funny prancing around the room pretending to be an embarrassed Virgin Mary.
The applause was broken by a low cough from behind the blackboard. Both boys turned around. Brother Amedy, one of the young and saintly men who taught them, moved forward. At the sight of the black cassock the smiles left the faces of the boys.
‘Well, that’s something I never expected to witness in a good Catholic school,’ the teacher hissed.
James bit his lip to prevent himself from laughing. He could feel tears coming into his eyes. He looked at Michael, who was now standing up respectfully.
‘Sorry, Brother,’ said Michael.
9
In the modern pastel cell of his college room James sat on the edge of his bed. In front of him an early evening comedy show guffawed from the television, but he did not smile. His thoughts had no laughter in them.
The 706 Union. The name repeated itself like a loop in his brain, which dragged him back over twenty years to stolen afternoons for songwriting, and nonsense arguments in empty classrooms. Everything that had happened since had seemed in some way to be as a result of decisions made then, and was consequently less sharp in his mind. That year had been the watershed of his life.
He wished now that he had been quick enough to catch Michael before he left the college lobby. He could have run after him, and stopped him in the drive. But the past, and its memories, had arrested him.
It was the first time he had seen Michael as a priest. The uniform suited him. In his mind’s eye Michael had been frozen at the age of seventeen, but seeing him now in his late thirties had caused no shocks. He still looked young, almost untroubled.
The 706 Union: what a name to have chosen. Did this mean that Michael’s memories of their youth together were as impressed in his mind as they were in James’s? Had he been marked for life, too, by that summer in 1962?
He wondered what he should do? Should he just go away and forget he had ever seen the poster and the priest? He wished it were so easy.
A knock on his door pulled him out of his thoughts. Turning the television off he crossed the room and opened it. Sue, the girl from Birmingham, was standing there. She had changed and was now wearing a tight sleeveless vest and tight jeans. She looked provocative. She pressed her tongue against her teeth before she spoke. ‘It’s eight o’clock,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d come and fetch you in case you couldn’t find the way.’
‘I’m sorry?’ James’s thoughts were still marooned in 1962.
‘The party. It’s time,’ the girl said.
‘Oh yes,’ James had forgotten his promise completely. He searched his mind for a quick excuse. ‘Would you mind if I join you a little later?’ he said. ‘I have some work to do before I can allow myself out to play.’
The girl looked slightly suspicious. ‘Can’t it wait?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh well, okay. We’ll be waiting for you,’ she said at last, and with a flashing smile which left him in no doubts as to what she had in mind for the end of the evening, she walked away back down the long corridor of the hall of residence.
James watched her without ambition. He had known many other such girls in his life, had received many other such invitations to parties. Usually he had been only too glad of the opportunity for such an encounter. But not tonight.
He closed the door. His overcoat hung on a hook in front of him. ‘The 706 Union. Every Friday between 7.30 and 11.00,’ his memory told him. His mind was made up. He had no real alternative. If he did not go, did not talk to the man who had been a part of his life for so long, and whose memory still dogged him, he would spend the rest of his days regretting it.
Pulling on his overcoat he slipped out of the room, down the stairs and across the grounds to the main lobby. It was quiet now, most of the students having left for the weekend or gone off to one of the many Friday night parties or discos. Now that the decision was made he felt a strange excitement spreading through him, and having asked directions at the porter’s lodge he hurried off towards his car, anxious to act before this new mood left him.
He found St Joseph’s easily. Bickerston was small and the church lay on one of the exits routes from the town. Pulling off the road he edged his small Japanese sports car into the churchyard in a space vacated by an early-leaving, obviously disappointed, parishioner. Then he sat quite still and listened. From inside the hall came the sound of the band. He recognized the tune. It was ‘Be Bop A Lula’. He and Michael had played that many times. Over the amplifiers he heard Michael’s voice. It seemed hardly to have changed. Perhaps it was half a tone deeper, but he still sounded like Don Everly to James.
‘Be Bop A Lula’ was always the last song before the interval, and tonight Father Michael was hitting it in fine voice. When he had formed the band Nigel and one of the guitarists had said that if they were going to do a Gene Vincent song they ought at least to copy the Gene Vincent arrangement, but Father Michael would have none of it. ‘Be Bop A Lula’ was a song from his boyhood. Twenty years ago they had chosen to copy the Everly Brothers’ arrangement, and so it would be for him for the rest of his life. Finishing the song he, as usual, cut short the applause with an announcement. ‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘We usually have about a ten-minute break about this time to allow the band to phone their wives or whatever. When we come back we’ll go straight into this week’s star prize competition.’
Turning the microphone off he pulled his guitar off his shoulder and putting it down moved to the back of the stage. The band were already pushing their way through to the front of the bar.
‘Well, Paulie, what d’you think?’ The priest asked Paul, who was at his side sifting through the old forty-fives which provided the musical accompaniment to the interval.
‘Bo Diddley’s very popular, Father,’ said Paul politely, pulling a record from the pile.
‘Indeed it is,’ said the priest slipping it on to the turntable. ‘And while I remember I don’t think you need to keep calling me “Father”, especially not when I’m up here playing at being Wolfman Jack.’
Paul reddened with pleasure. ‘What should I call you then?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know, something macho. Ricky or Deke or Chuck, something like that’.
‘All right,’ Paul nodded, and returned to the records. Then he remembered a request. ‘My mother asked me to tell you not to forget to play “To Know Her Is To Love Her”.’
‘As if I would. How’s the coining going?’
‘Well, we haven’t found anything yet, but I keep trying.’
‘Good man. God loves a trier, you know,’ said the priest kindly. ‘Perhaps I’ll come and give you a hand some time.’
‘Will you?’ Paul shone with eagerness.
‘Just as soon as I get a free hour or two. Good heavens, look at that chap.’ The priest had turned and was looking down at the dance floor where a leather and denim extrovert, with a T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll’, was dancing by himself in an elaborate display of pelvic thrusts, heel kicks and toe pointing.
‘They call it solo bopping,’ Paul volunteered. He had heard Cathy talking about boys who behaved like this, but this was the first he’d seen it at the 706 Union.
‘I’ll bet they do,’ muttered the priest, as the bopper increased his tempo, fingers popping and feet stomping in rhythm to the glorious Bo Diddley. Thank heaven Father Vincent wasn’t in yet, he thought to himself, as the boy began a series of body grinds and twitches.
At the back of the hall Mary and her friends smiled between themselves.
‘Rites de passage,’ murmured Suzie’s father. ‘He’s obviously giving us an ostentatious display of a bloodless initiation ceremony. He’ll grow out of it.’
‘Ian didn’t, did you love?’ Brenda from the biscuit factory prodded her husband in his
belly. ‘You can do that, can’t you? Go on, get up on the floor and show them your gander goose. You do it at home often enough.’
Ian felt Mary’s eyes laughing. ‘It’s the duck walk, love,’ he growled at his wife.
In front of them Cathy and Suzie watched contemptuously: ‘What does he think he looks like?’ asked Cathy, as the boy bucked and pouted.
‘He thinks he looks good,’ said Suzie with as withering a disdain as she could muster. Her eyes fell on Father Michael watching from the stage.
‘You ever danced with the Rocking Reverend?’ she asked.
Cathy shook her head: ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen him though. He’s very good.’
‘I dare you to ask him.’
Cathy looked at the priest: ‘Wouldn’t I have to tell it in confession?’
Suzie grinned wickedly. ‘Only if he got a hard on,’ she whispered.
At that moment the record came to an abrupt mid-rhythm stop. There was a moan from those of the audience watching the solo dancer. Suddenly aware of himself once again, and robbed of his extrovert persona occasioned by the music, he crept timidly from the floor.
‘The fuse must have gone,’ said Father Michael as he and Paul examined the now soundless record player, and, taking out a Swiss Army penknife that Father Vincent had given him for Christmas, he began to unscrew the back of the amplifier. A maze of transistors and wires faced him. He had no idea where to begin. ‘You know, Paulie, the one thing they didn’t teach us in the seminary was to be conversant with advanced electronics. I don’t think you and I will ever get to be the Chirping Crickets unless one of us learns how to change a microchip.’
‘I’m going to be a priest, Father,’ replied the boy. This was the first time he had ever admitted his ambition to Father Michael. He had no idea what response to expect.
‘Now what have I told you?’ replied the priest, immediately avoiding having to respond to Paul’s admission. ‘It’s Deke, Chuck or even Wolfman when I’ve got my lurex socks on.’ And carefully he drew back his trousers to reveal a pair of glistening gold ankle socks. ‘Genuine fifties fashion these. Not bad, eh?’
James finally plucked up the necessary confidence during ‘Raunchy’, the first tune after the interval. Climbing out of his car he walked quickly up the church hall steps, paid the entrance fee and slipped into the back of the hall. On stage Father Michael and the group ripped through the riffs Bill Justis had written a quarter of a century earlier: on the floor the keenest of the dancers moved together, and at the bar and scattered around the periphery of the floor the vast majority of people waited for the competition.
James did not know what he had been expecting, but the sight of the priest fronting a rock and roll band surprised him. Sitting outside in the car listening to the singing he had imagined his old friend as he had last known him, a teenage boy in a smart new suit. The priests’ garb and leather jacket looked dramatic enough to be some kind of stage gimmick.
Stepping sideways across the hall he moved towards a table close to the door. He wanted to be ready to get away quickly should his nerve fail him. ‘D’you mind if I sit here?’ he asked an attractive woman, seated with a group of friends.
‘The chair isn’t taken, is it?’
‘Oh no,’ Mary smiled back, an instant, friendly welcome.
James sat down. Out of the corner of his eyes he could sense the group he had joined, including Mary, appraising him silently. He had forgotten how insular small towns could become.
‘Raunchy’ finished and the audience broke into a sporadic applause: ‘Who needs ginseng when you can have “Raunchy”?’ said a pretentious horn-rimmed man at the table. James smiled politely to John, then turned his attentions to Father Michael.
‘And now we come to tonight’s competition. Is everybody ready?’ The priest had taken off his guitar and was standing at the centre of the stage. There was a murmur of assent. ‘Right, well let me tell you that tonight’s star prize is a real beauty, because it’s a genuine mint pressing of The Very Best of the Fleetwoods, who I’m sure you all remember had that wonderful hit with “Come Softly To Me” …’
James’s eyebrows knitted slightly. That was a song Michael had always hated.
‘… and the prize will go to the clever person who can answer these four questions. Are you ready? Right. No conferring. One, who had the original American hit with “Pledging My Love” in 1953; two, name two American Top Forty hits by Ivory Joe Hunter; three, who had hearts of stone, and four, what was on the flip side of Elvis’s “Blue Suede Shoes”?’
Memories stirred inside James as he heard again the game they had played so often. Around him in the hall there were groans of distress.
‘1953? I bet even he wasn’t born then,’ complained Suzie.
‘Paul says he has books, encyclopaedias of rock and roll,’ explained Cathy. ‘He’s the weirdest priest in the world.’
Behind them the parents looked to Ian for assistance. He shook his head: ‘Sorry, I know what was on the back of Blue Suede Shoes, but that’s about it.’
‘It’s all too Delphic for me,’ grumbled John, Suzie’s father.
From the stage Father Michael observed the confusion he had caused with some amusement. He occasionally chose the most obscure questions so that no one would win. In that way he could make an expensive prize last for two weeks. ‘Come on,’ he chided, ‘someone must know the answer,’ and then ran through the questions for a second time.
Slowly a hand went up at the back of the hall. ‘I know. I know the answer,’ a man’s voice called out.
Father Michael looked across the faces. He didn’t recognize the voice.
The speaker stood up and began to make his way through the crowd and down across the dance floor: ‘The late, great Johnny Ace sang “Pledging My Love”, Ivory Joe Hunter’s hits were “Since I Met You Baby” and “I Almost Lost My Mind”, Otis Williams and the Charms did “Hearts of Stone” and “Blue Suede Shoes” was backed with “Tutti Frutti”.’ James stopped right in front of the stage and smiled up at the priest.
For a very long moment Father Michael did not speak. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he murmured finally, sinking to his knees at the edge of the stage.
‘How are you, Mike?’ James looked up at him, a smile breaking nervously across his lips.
The priest’s voice was hardly audible. ‘I can’t believe it. Jimmy, what are you doing here? I hardly recognized you.’
‘We’ve all changed,’ James tossed the conversation back up to the priest.
‘I should have guessed. Only another freak would have known the answer to those questions.’
‘So do I get the prize? The people are waiting to know,’ said James looking around at the semi-circle of people who were sharing in this reunion.
Becoming aware of his surroundings Father Michael pulled himself to his feet: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry if I seem a little confused. You see the winner of tonight’s star prize happens to be an old and very dear friend of mine. Come up here on stage and join us, Jimmy. Let the people see you.’
‘Oh no, if you don’t mind I think I’ll play the shrinking violet tonight, Mike,’ James backed away.
Turning to Paul, Father Michael took the record prize from him and passed it down to James. ‘On behalf of the 706 Union I’d like to present you with tonight’s star prize,’ he joked. ‘I hope you have many happy hours playing it.’
James looked at the cover: ‘The Fleetwoods?’
‘Well you don’t expect me to play them, do you?’ asked the priest. Suddenly he dropped to his knees again, as though unwilling to let this moment pass, oblivious to the impatience generating from the rest of the hall. ‘I still can’t believe it’s you. How did you find me? I was thinking about you only yesterday … today in fact.’
James grinned. ‘That’s nice. Look, I think we’d better leave the small talk till some other time. We could have a chat tonight. Are you free later?’
‘You bet I’m free.’
>
Alongside the priest Paul watched without understanding. He had never seen Father Michael so animated before, so excited. He had sensed it almost as soon as James had begun answering the questions. Suddenly Father Michael had leaned forward and screwed up his eyes, as though unable to believe his senses.
‘Paulie, meet Jimmy, the best friend I ever had,’ said Father Michael, and a thorn pierced Paul’s heart. ‘How long is it now, Jimmy?’
For a moment Paul was half-aware of a shade of bitterness. ‘All the best years, all the best. See you later,’ and with that James turned away and, pushing his way through the crowd, returned to his chair at the end of the hall.
‘There’s a chappie who knew a thing or two in his day, Paulie,’ said the priest.
Paul did not answer. His eyes stayed on James, who was now being congratulated by Mary.
The priest picked up his guitar. The audience had grown restless. ‘Okay now, let’s break up all these debating societies … let’s do the “Locomotion”,’ he called, and counted the band in.
Paul did not play. Something had gone wrong tonight, which he could only sense. At the back of the hall he saw his mother and her friends take to the floor to do the ‘Locomotion’, just like they always did. But tonight there was one man extra. His mother was dancing with James.
10
April 1962
‘ “There was a time when meadow grove and stream, The earth and every common sight to me did seem, Apparelled …” ’
‘A parallelogrammed … a plane, four-sided figure, the opposite sides of which are parallel and equal,’ broke in Michael and then giggled.
