Forever Young

by Ray Connolly

  In truth she did not enjoy Sundays, especially not those on which she had to work, and an hour spent at mass was beginning to seem to her like an hour that might have been more entertainingly and usefully passed in the home. She stifled a yawn. She would not have allowed herself such thoughts just a few years ago. She looked down at Cathy at her side. She was making the responses with the energy that only a schoolgirl could summon, and Mary felt guilty that she should be so shown up by her daughter.

  Since Friday evening there had rarely been more than a few waking minutes when James had not crossed her mind. She was sensible and old enough to tell herself not to read too much into his interest, but she was young enough to wish to disregard this advice. She smothered another yawn.

  Outside in the street she became more practical as daydreams were vanquished in the hurry to get to the hospital.

  ‘Don’t forget, put it on the middle shelf and switch the oven on to 200 at about four thirty,’ she said, as she, Cathy and Suzie made their way out of the churchyard. Although Cathy had been turning the oven on for the Sunday joint for some time now, Mary still liked it to be spelled out.

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ said Cathy with the patience teenagers reserve for parents. Suzie raised her eyes to heaven.

  They walked on in silence, unaware of the sports car that had begun to shadow them along the road.

  ‘Isn’t that … you know?’ It was Suzie who became aware of the car first, just as James was lowering the electric window.

  ‘Hello … remember me?’ he called to Mary.

  Mary’s heart sank as she heard him. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform, complete with little envelope hat. It was truly the most unflattering outfit she could possibly have been caught in. ‘Oh yes, hello,’ she smiled rather vaguely as she peered into the car.

  Suzie and Cathy exchanged glances, although Cathy instantly felt a pang of sympathy. She knew how her mother felt about that uniform.

  ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’ James was leaning across the front seat. Behind them in the street a couple of elderly lady parishioners exchanged comments. Mary greeted them with her Sunday smile. Turning back to James she said: ‘Oh, no thank you, it’s all right, I’m only going to work.’

  ‘Great, I’ll take you there.’

  ‘Persistent bugger, isn’t he,’ murmured Suzie to Cathy.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Mary turned to Cathy: ‘Now don’t forget…’ she began, but stopped when she saw the mirth in the face of her daughter. Very delicately she eased herself into the sports car and swung her legs around in front of her, just like the girls did in the advertisements. And as Cathy and Suzie broke into fits of giggles she slammed the door.

  ‘I nearly didn’t recognize you,’ said James as he pushed the car into first gear.

  Mary tried a wan smile and straightened her skirt which had ridden up slightly. ‘I don’t think my mother would recognize me dressed like this,’ she said.

  James laughed and the car sped along the road. It was smaller inside than Mary had imagined, and she wondered whether this was a sign of her age. When she had been younger she had thought sports cars the most dashing thing in the world. Now she felt too close to the ground, and the suspension was bumpy beneath her bottom.

  ‘It was nice, dancing with you the other night,’ James was forcing the conversation along.

  ‘Yes, I enjoyed it, too.’

  ‘Have you thought any more about coming to one of my lectures?’

  ‘Well, no, you know how it is, I usually like to help Paul with his homework in the evenings.’

  ‘Tuesday’s is early. Six o’clock. It’s only an hour. You could be home by eight. Tell me you’ll come.’ James was indeed persistent.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Come on. Be a sport. Come and watch me showing off.’

  Mary capitulated. ‘Well, it’ll have to be straight from work. I’m afraid I’ll be in my uniform.’

  James stopped the car at the hospital gates. ‘That’s all right. I like uniforms. They make me feel secure.’

  ‘Right then, see you Tuesday, and thank you for the lift.’ Mary opened the door and struggled out.

  ‘Good morning, Sister.’ A couple of young nurses greeted her, peering in at the sports car as they did.

  Mary recovered the appropriate amount of dignity. ‘Good morning,’ she said sternly, and strode away to the casualty ward.

  As James watched her go he was aware of a feeling of admiration for her. She was convulsed by insecurities in his presence, he could see that, but he could also see the simple strengths which were hers in abundance, and he contemplated, not for the first time, upon how much more attractive a woman and mother in her thirties was than some young, androgyne flippety-gibbet of twenty like those silly girls at the college.

  Although hardly in any state to drive he had insisted upon taking his car home in the early hours of Saturday morning following his long drunken conversation with Father Michael. Luckily his slow and over-careful driving had not been spotted by any passing patrol cars, but his entry into the college had been less fortunate. As he had stiffly climbed the stairs of his residential block he had heard his name called in that jokey flirtatious way young people assume when imagining themselves on familiar terms with their seniors.

  ‘Dr Martin … Dr Martin, where’ve you been all night then?’ Even in his drunkenness James had recognized the undulations of tone of the girl from Birmingham. A lifetime’s teaching brought her name to his lips.

  ‘Ah, yes, Sue. I’m afraid something cropped up. I met a very old friend. Someone I hadn’t seen for twenty years. You know how it is.’

  ‘Not really I don’t. I’m not twenty myself yet,’ the girl had said. She was standing in the passageway blocking his way to his room.

  ‘I’m sorry to have missed the party,’ James had tried again, trying to edge his way past her. She had stood her ground.

  ‘Oh that’s all right, I saved some wine for us both.’

  At that moment James had realized that she had purposely not given way when he had tried to get past her and her body had been pushed into his. He had backed off slightly, but she had followed him, leaning forward against him. It had struck him then that she was probably as drunk as he was.

  ‘Look I’m really feeling very, very tired,’ he had said, hoping that his speech would assume the inflections of the responsible adult.

  ‘You know you’ve got lovely eyes,’ the girl had said. Her face was about six inches away from his. He could smell what must have been a liberal dousing of scent on her body. She was certainly very pretty, he had thought, and then he had wondered why her attractions held no magic for him.

  ‘I think you are forgetting that I am your teacher,’ he had said in as quiet and unpompous a way as he could manage. It was not an excuse he was in the habit of using.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she had said. ‘No one round here bothers about that any more. I thought that was why boys became lecturers, anyway, so that they could get the best perks.’ And she had giggled to herself and pushed her head against his chest. James had remained unyielding, his hands hanging loose at his sides.

  The girl had not been so easy to put off. But while drink had made her forward and anxious to share the rest of the night with someone else, it had quite deprived James of any feelings of conviviality or desire. He had wanted to be rid of her, to fall into bed and to dream about what might have been.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry I missed your party,’ he had said finally, ‘but I think you’ll regret your behaviour tomorrow if you don’t go to bed now, and I’m certain I will. So if you don’t mind I’ll say good night to you,’ and giving her a sharp push he had walked on down the corridor.

  ‘Well, soddin’ ‘ell, he’s a pouf,’ he had heard her say as he opened the door to his room. Had he not been drunk, had he not had his mind impaled on memories of other times, he might have returned to debate that is
sue with the girl. But he hadn’t. Going into his room he had filled his washbasin and pushed his head deep under the ice cold water, as much to wash away the smell of scent from the girl as the memories which trailed across his mind. And then crossing to his bed he had lain down and fallen asleep, giving his unconscious mind the opportunity to make sense of the maze of conflicting emotions which had tormented him while awake.

  15

  June 1962

  The examinations came in the middle of a heat-wave with a suddenness which, anticipated though they were, surprised. For months the boys had had the dates circled in their diaries and had been revising more or less to a plan. But nothing had prepared them for the sudden squeezing of time and elasticism of work undone which occurred as the examinations approached. It was a glorious summer when the tar on the roads melted, chemists experienced a run on hay fever cures and Elvis sang ‘Good Luck Charm’.

  For James and Michael it had been foreseen as their last summer of childhood, and they were determined to enjoy it. In October they would be in London, having both elected to read English at University College, an establishment chosen, not for its academic reputation, but because the possibilities in their chosen profession were obviously greater there than anywhere else. University for James and Michael was envisaged only as a hobby, a part-time thing to keep their parents happy and provide them with living expenses, while they pursued their dreams in the clubs. They had no doubts about their inevitable eventual success. Their will to succeed forbade them even considering failure. And they were good. They were bright enough and self-critical enough to recognize their one great strength. Together they were greater than the sum of their two individual talents. They were two equals, always hypercritical of their own work and that of their partner. And, because they saw themselves as complete equals, out of that criticism grew wonderful plaintive harmonies, songs of love, folk songs and fragments or rock and roll. It was Michael’s job to remember the tunes and to scribble down the chords, but since everything came so easily to them he was frequently neglectful of this duty. So it was often left to James, who scribbled the lyrics down in the back of his English poetry file, to write the guitar chords in red biro over the words.

  The attractions of Maureen were not discussed again following the evening at James’s home, as if both boys had recognized the dangers to their friendship which had surfaced that night. To survive together there could be no rivalries, they both realized that. So they pushed girls to the back of their minds during the weeks of examinations. Both Maureen and Alison were working for their own A-levels at the girls’ school, and those being the times when everything seemed possible for those who worked to achieve, none of the four were tempted to ruin their futures by romantic dallyings.

  They met again in late June on the afternoon following the history paper. Maureen and Alison had finished their exams three days earlier and were waiting for Michael and James as they swanned into the only coffee bar in town where there was a juke box. It was a giddy afternoon. All four had now left school, and weeks of pocket money was quickly consumed by the wonderful Wurlitzer 100 and its plastic plates of romance and rhythm. It was one of those days when they could almost taste their youth, all tanned from lying in their gardens swotting, and each one of them imbued with a feeling of satisfaction that they had worked hard and done their best. But more than that their youth was both unhurried and unworried. Although they would all look for some kind of holiday job during the long summer that would be purely for pin money. Their parents had all known tougher times in the thirties and forties and, in common with many people of the same age, were anxious that their children should not have their youth stolen from them by fears of the dole queue or the threat of war. The youth that James and Michael and the girls were presented with in the summer of 1962 was a careless time of simple enjoyments. Growing up was something which could follow when the sunny days had gone.

  So that afternoon the four plotted the good times they were to have together, the games of tennis to be played and the parties and barbecues to be attended. And then Alison mentioned the cricket club dance. ‘My brother wanted to know if you’d like to play during the interval,’ she said. ‘They’ll pay you.’

  ‘What?’ James looked at Michael. ‘Real money?’

  ‘How much?’ asked Michael. This was the first time anyone had actually offered them money to play.

  ‘He asked me to find out how much you want,’ she said. ‘Will you play? Can I tell him yes?’

  Michael sucked in between barely parted teeth. ‘I dunno,’ he said, looking towards James. ‘Shouldn’t we talk to our agent before we agree to anything. If we aren’t careful we’ll find ourselves tied for life to the cricket club and all our worldwide royalties will go into paying for a new roller or to have the pavilion re-painted.’

  ‘You haven’t got an agent,’ scoffed Maureen.

  ‘Yes we have. I’m his, and he’s mine,’ came back James. ‘That way we can always be sure to protect ourselves.’

  James threw a friendly arm around Michael’s shoulders, the way he had seen brothers do in American films. American men always seemed more demonstrative of their affections for each other than did Englishmen, and he envied them for it. ‘If I can’t trust Mike, and he can’t trust me then we’ve just thrown away ten years friendship,’ said James.

  Michael pushed James’s arm from his shoulders, but nodded his agreement at the same time. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘I’d trust him with my life, not just my money. We’ll always be together.’

  ‘Always?’ teased Alison.

  ‘Always,’ confirmed James.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be married to either of you two then,’ said Alison.

  ‘Don’t worry, there doesn’t seem to be much danger of that happening,’ came back James with a quick look to Michael.

  Silently and thoughtfully Maureen stirred her straw in her glass of lemonade.

  16

  Paul sucked the ends of his fingers of his left hand. He had been playing his guitar for nearly an hour and deep grooves had appeared in the flesh where he pressed the strings against the neck. The tip of the thumb of his right hand now had a small permanent protection of hardened skin.

  ‘You aren’t tired yet, are you, Paul?’ Father Michael chided. He was sitting alongside the boy also nursing a guitar.

  Paul shook his head, not ready yet to admit defeat, and began to pick out once again the plaintive ‘Spanish Romance’ theme. He played slowly and faultingly, but the simple beauty of the melody compensated for his unscored punctuations.

  The priest listened attentively, tapping the music sheet which was perched on a high chair in front of the boy, whenever a mistake was made and uncorrected. This had long been a favourite of his since seeing the movie Jeux Interdits one summer while taking a party of Glasgow schoolboys on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. It had been his first visit to Paris and he had slipped away from his charges for a couple of hours to enjoy the ambience of the city without having his ears forever molested by the outrageously uncouth suggestions of the youths. But it had started to rain too heavily for sightseeing, and he had eventually sought refuge from the weather in a small cinema in Montparnasse which was devoted to showing classic old movies.

  Paul stopped again. Guitar lessons were, Father Michael could have admitted, particularly hard on the fingers of young children, but he would never tell Paul that. He did not like to foster the making of excuses. Instead he encouraged by example. Taking up the melody where Paul had stopped, and adding runs and riffs, he finished the tune for him, before going into a heavy rock and roll break in the style of Chuck Berry.

  ‘ “All over St Louis and down in New Orleans, Everybody wants to dance with sweet little sixteen,” ’ he sang as Paul laughed.

  A loud hammering on the door brought his impromptu performance to a sudden end: ‘If you don’t mind, Father …’ The indignant voice of his superior reminded them both of the soberness of the Church conservative.

&nb
sp; ‘Sorry, Father.’ The younger priest deferred politely to age.

  Paul giggled. He loved his visits to the priests’ house for his lessons, even though invariably Father Vincent would complain whenever they. became too boisterous. This was the one time when Paul was certain of having Father Michael all to himself and he cherished every minute. Sometimes, he would think, it was almost like having a real father.

  ‘I’m afraid my colleague doesn’t share our enthusiasms, Paulie. We’d better get back to Rodrigo.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Paul, looking for an excuse not to have to start playing immediately.

  ‘He’s the chap who played it in the film I was telling you about. He’s blind and very famous in Spain. It was a traditional folk song which he adapted. He’s very old now. Even older than Father Vincent so he probably doesn’t like Chuck Berry much either.’

  ‘I hope I don’t have to live with someone old when I’m a priest,’ said Paul.

  ‘You’re still set on the idea then, are you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  For a moment Paul didn’t appear to understand the question. This was an area that Father Michael had previously avoided discussing with him. He had no wish to influence the boy.

  ‘Why?’ Paul repeated the question.

  ‘Yes. Why d’you want to be a priest?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because I want to. Why does anyone?’

  Why does anyone, thought the priest, and then pushed the question away. ‘What does your mother say?’ he asked instead.

  ‘She says to wait until I’m older. Twenty-one. After I’ve been to university.’

  ‘She’s a very wise woman.’

  Paul was thoughtful for a moment. Outside in the garden Father Vincent’s sheep were grazing. He watched them idly. ‘Why did you become a priest?’ he asked at last.