by Peter May
She was a real tomboy back then. Brown hair cut short, a white blouse beneath a dark-green pullover, a pleated grey skirt above grey socks gathered around her ankles, and heavy black shoes. I suppose I must have been about fifteen at that time, and she would have been a year or so younger than me, but I recall noticing that she already had sizeable breasts stretching her blouse. Though there really was nothing feminine about her. She liked to swear, and had the cheekiest grin I ever saw, and never took lip off anyone, even the bigger boys.
We were supposed to wear ties for going to school, but I noticed that first night that she had already discarded hers, and at the open neck of her blouse I saw a small Saint Christopher medallion hanging on a silver chain.
‘You’re papes, right?’ she said, straight off.
‘Catholics,’ I corrected her.
‘That’s what I said. Papes. I’m Catherine. Come on, I’ll show you how this all works.’
And we followed her to a table to retrieve wooden trays and queue up at the kitchen to be served our evening meal.
Catherine lowered her voice. ‘The food’s shit. But don’t worry about it. I’ve got an aunt somewhere that sends me food parcels. Keeps her from feeling guilty, I suppose. A lot of the kids aren’t really orphans. Just from broken homes. Quite a few get food parcels. Got to get through them fast, though, before the fuckers in here confiscate them.’ She grinned conspiratorially and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Midnight feasts up on the roof.’
She was right about the food. Catherine steered us to a table, and we sat among the hubbub of raised voices echoing around the high ceiling of the great hall, slurping at thin, flavourless vegetable soup and picking at green potatoes and tough meat swimming in grease. I found myself sinking into a depression. But Catherine just grinned.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’m a pape, too. They don’t like Catholics here, so we won’t be staying long.’ An echo of Mr Anderson’s words from earlier. ‘The priests’ll be here for us any day now.’
I don’t know how long she had been deluding herself with that thought, but it would be another year before the incident on the bridge finally brought a visit from the priest.
They didn’t like papes at school either. The school in the village was an austere grey granite and sandstone building pierced by tall arched windows set in stone dormers. Carved in the wall below the tower that held the bell which called us to lessons was a stone crest of the school board above a kindly lady in robes teaching a young student the wonders of the world. The student had short hair, and wore a skirt, and made me think of Catherine. Although I guess it was supposed to be a boy from classical times. It bore the date of 1875.
Being Catholics, we weren’t allowed in to morning assembly, which was a Protestant affair. Not that I cared a hoot about missing the God stuff. I didn’t find God till much later in my life. Strangely enough, a Protestant God. But we had to stand outside in the playground, in all weathers, until it was over. There was many a time that we would be let in, finally, soaked to the skin, to sit chittering at our desks in ice-cold classrooms. It’s a wonder we didn’t catch our deaths.
To make it worse, we were Dean kids. Which set us apart again. At the end of the school day, when all the other kids were free to escape into open streets, and homes with parents and siblings, we were made to line up in pairs, and suffer the barracking and catcalls of the others. Then we were marched back up the hill to The Dean where we had to sit in silence for the next two hours doing our homework. Freedom came only at mealtimes, and in the short periods of free time before we were forced early to bed in cold, dark dorms.
During the winter months, those ‘free’ periods were filled with Mr Anderson’s Highland dancing classes. Unlikely though it seemed, dancing was his passion, and he wanted us all perfectly drilled in the pas-de-bas and drops of brandy by the time the Christmas party came around.
In the summer months it was too light to sleep. By the time June came around, it stayed light until almost eleven, and restless soul that I was, I couldn’t lie awake in my bed with the thought of a whole world of adventure out there.
I discovered very early a back staircase leading from the ground floor of the east wing down into the cellars. From there I was able to unbolt a door at the rear of the building, and escape out into the falling dusk. If I sprinted, I could very quickly reach the cover of shadows beneath the trees that lined the park. From there I was free to go where I would. Not that I ever went far. I was always alone. Peter never had trouble getting off to sleep, and if any of the others were ever aware of me leaving they gave no sign of it.
My solitary adventures, however, came to an abrupt end on the third or fourth outing. That was the night I discovered the cemetery.
It must have been quite late, because dusk had given way to darkness by the time I slipped out of the dormitory. I stopped at the door, listening to the breathing of the other boys. Someone was snoring gently, like a purring cat. And one of the younger ones was talking to himself. A voice unbroken, expressing hidden fears.
I could feel the cold of the stone steps rising as I descended into darkness. The cellar had a damp, sour smell, a place mired in shadow. I was always afraid to linger, and I never did know what it was they kept down there. The bolt protested a little as I eased it back across the door, and I was out. A quick glance in each direction, then legs pounding across asphalt to the trees. Usually I would head up over the hill, then down again towards the village. Street lights reflected on the water there, where the wheels of ten or more mills had once turned. Silent now. Abandoned. Lights twinkling in a few of the windows of the tenements built for the millworkers, trees and houses rising steeply on either side below the bridge that spanned the river a hundred feet above it.
But tonight, in search of something different, I turned the other way instead, and soon discovered a metal gate in the high wall that bounded the east side of the garden. I’d had no idea that there was a cemetery there, hidden as it was from the view of The Dean by tall trees. As I opened the gate I felt a little like Alice passing from one side of the looking glass to the other, except that I was passing from the world of the living into the world of the dead.
Avenues of tombstones led away left and right, almost lost in the shadow of willows that seemed to weep for those who had gone before. Immediately to my left lay Frances Jeffrey, who had died on 26 January 1850, at the age of seventy-seven. I don’t know why, but those names are etched as clearly in my mind as they were in the stone that they lay beneath. Daniel John Cumming, his wife Elizabeth and their son Alan. How strangely comforting, it seemed to me, that they should all be together in death as they had been in life. I envied them. My father’s bones lay at the bottom of an ocean, and I had no idea where my mother was buried.
One whole length of wall had tombstones set into it, with well-kept oblongs of grass in front of them, and ferns growing around the foot of the wall.
I am amazed that I was not afraid. A cemetery at night. A young lad in the dark. And yet, I must have felt that I had much more to fear from the living than from the dead. And I’m sure I was right.
I wandered off along a chalk path, headstones and crosses huddled darkly on either side. It was a clear sky and the moon was up, so I could see without difficulty. I was following the curve of the path around to the south when a noise made me stop in my tracks. It would be hard now to say what it was I heard. It was more like a thud that I felt. And then somewhere away to my left a rustling among the grass. Someone coughed.
I have heard it said that a fox makes a coughing sound that is almost human, so perhaps that is what I heard. But another cough, and a movement among the shadows of the trees, much bigger than any fox could have made, stilled my heart. Another thud and I was off. Running like the wind. In and out of the moon-dappled shade. Almost dazzled by the patches of bright silver light.
Maybe it was only my imagination, but I could have sworn I heard footsteps in pursuit. A sudden chill in the air. Sweat turn
ing cold on my face.
I had no idea where I was, or how to get back to the gate. I stumbled and fell, skinning my knees, before scrambling to my feet and leaving the track, heading off among the shadows of brooding stones. To crouch now in the gloom, behind the shelter of a large tomb taller than myself, crowned by a stone cross.
I tried to hold my breath so as not to make any noise. But the pounding of my heart filled my ears, and bursting lungs forced me to suck in oxygen, before expelling it quickly to make room for more. My whole body was trembling.
I listened for the footsteps but heard nothing, and was just starting to relax and curse my overactive imagination, when I heard the soft, careful crunch of feet on gravel. It was all I could do to keep myself from crying out.
I peered out cautiously from behind the cross and saw, less than twenty feet away, the shadow of a man limping by on the path. He seemed to be dragging his left leg. A few more steps, and he emerged from the shadow of a huge copper beech into moonlight, and I saw his face for the first time. It was ghostly white, pale like my mother’s the day she told us our father was dead. His eyes were lost in the darkness beneath prominent brows, almost as if the sockets were empty. His trousers were torn and he wore a ragged jacket and grey shirt open at the neck. A small sack of belongings hung from his left hand. A vagrant seeking a place to sleep among the dead? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
I waited until he had shuffled off again to be swallowed up by the night, and I moved out from behind the tomb to see for the first time the name cut in the stone of it. And every hair on my body stood on end.
Mary Elizabeth McBride.
My mother’s name. I knew, of course, that it wasn’t her lying there beneath the ground. This Mary Elizabeth had been in residence for nearly two hundred years. But I couldn’t shake off the sense that somehow it was my mother who had guided me to that place of concealment. She had charged me with looking after my brother, but had taken it upon herself to watch over me.
I turned and fled, back the way I had come, heart trying to crack open my ribs, until I saw the black-painted metal gate standing ajar. I was through it like a ghost, and sprinting across the asphalt to the door at the back of The Dean. The only time in my life, I think, that I was glad to be inside it.
Back in my bed I lay shivering for a long time before sleep took me. I’m not sure when it was that I was wakened by Peter. He was leaning over me, caught in the moonlight that angled in across the dorm in elongated rectangles. I could see the concern in his eyes, and he was touching my face.
‘John,’ he was whispering. ‘Johnny. Why are you crying?’
It was Alex Curry’s fault that the adventure on the roof ended in disaster. He was a brute of a boy, older than the rest of us, and had been there the longest. He was about as tall as Mr Anderson, and probably stronger. He’d always been a rebel, the others said, and had his arse belted more often than anyone else at The Dean. But in three years he had developed to the point where his physical strength matched his rebellious nature. And that must have been pretty intimidating to Mr Anderson. Lately he had refused to cut his thick, black hair and grown it into an Elvis quiff and duck’s arse. I think that’s probably the first time that Peter and I became aware of Elvis Presley. We had barely been conscious of the world outside of our own. The belting of Alex had tailed off, and it was rumoured that he was to be sent to a hostel. He was too old for The Dean now, and far too much for Mr Anderson to handle.
Catherine had come to us the day before, with a wink and a smile and a conspiratorial tone. She and several of the other girls had received food parcels that week, and there was to be a midnight feast on the roof the following night.
‘How do we get on to the roof?’ I said.
She looked at me, eyes full of pity at my innocence, and shook her head. ‘There are stairs leading up to the roof from both wings,’ she said. ‘Go and take a look at your side. There’s a door at the end of the landing, and behind it a narrow staircase. The door’s never locked. The roof’s flat, and perfectly safe if you stay away from the edge. It’s the only time the boys and girls ever get to meet up without the bloody staff watching us.’ She grinned lasciviously. ‘It can get interesting.’
I felt an immediate stirring somewhere deep in my loins. Like a worm turning over. I had long ago learned to masturbate, but I had never so much as kissed a girl. And there was no mistaking the look in Catherine’s eyes.
I could hardly contain my excitement all the next day. School passed infuriatingly slowly, and at the end of the afternoon I couldn’t remember a single thing that we’d been taught. No one ate much at dinner that night, conserving their appetites for the midnight feast. Of course, not everyone was going. Some of the kids were too young, and others too scared. But wild horses couldn’t have kept me away. And Peter was fearless.
There were around ten of us who slipped out of the dorm on to the landing shortly before midnight that night. Alex Curry led the way. I don’t know how he had managed it, but from somewhere he had acquired a couple of dozen bottles of pale ale which he shared out among us to carry on to the roof.
I’ll never forget the feeling of emerging from that dark, narrow stairwell on to the wide open space of the roof, moonlight spilling freely across its tarred surface. It felt like escape. Even my later solitary outings never felt quite like that. I wanted to turn my face to the sky and shout out loud. But, of course, I didn’t.
We all met up in the middle, behind the big clock and to one side of the huge skylight that lit the upper floor. The girls brought the food, the boys had the beer, and we sat around in a loose circle eating cheese and cake and biscuits, and dipping our fingers into jars of jam. At first we spoke in the faintest of whispers, but as the bottles of beer got passed around, we grew bold and careless. It was the first time I had ever drunk alcohol, and I loved the kick I got from that soft, bitter liquid foaming on my tongue and slipping over so easily to steal away inhibition.
I’m not sure how, but somehow I found myself sitting next to Catherine. We were side by side, shoulders and upper arms touching, legs drawn up. I could feel her warmth through her jumper, and I could have breathed in the smell of her for ever. I have no idea what that scent was. But it always hung around her. Faintly aromatic. I suppose it must have been a perfume of some kind, or the soap she used. Perhaps something sent by her aunt. It was always arousing.
I was already heady from the beer, and finding courage I never knew I had. I slipped my arm around her shoulder, and she leaned in against me.
‘What happened to your folks?’ I said. It was a question we hardly ever asked. We were never encouraged to dwell on the past. She took a long time to answer.
‘My mum died.’
‘And your dad?’
‘It didn’t take him long to find someone else. Someone who would give him children, like a good Catholic. My mum had complications when I was born and couldn’t have any more kids.’
I was confused. ‘I don’t understand. Why aren’t you still at home?’
‘She didn’t want me.’
I heard the pain in her voice, and felt it too. It was one thing to lose your parents to death, it was another to be turned away, unwanted. Especially by your own father. I sneaked a glance at her, and was shocked to see silvered tears run down her cheeks in the moonlight. Wee, tough Catherine. The arousal I’d felt earlier dissipated, and all I really wanted to do was hold her, and comfort her, so that she would know she was wanted by someone.
Which was when I became aware of a commotion on the far side of the skylight. Someone had taken Peter’s bottle of beer off him, unopened, and several of the boys were throwing it from one to the other, tantalising him, making him run around in dizzying circles trying to catch it. It seemed that Alex Curry was the ringleader, bating and taunting, encouraging the others. Everyone knew Peter wasn’t quite the full shilling, and without me to stand up for him he was an easy target.
Of course, I was no physical match for Al
ex Curry, but I had the mental strength to stand up to anyone when it came to Peter. I had promised my mother, and I wasn’t about to renege on that.
I stood up immediately. ‘Oi!’ I almost shouted, and immediately everyone went quiet. The bottle-throwing stopped, and one or two voices shushed me in the still night air. ‘Fucking leave off,’ I said, sounding much braver than I felt.
‘You and whose army’s going to make me?’
‘I don’t need an army to kick your arse, Curry.’
I know whose arse would have got kicked that night if fate hadn’t intervened. Before Curry could respond, Peter lunged at him to grab his beer, and the bottle spun away through the air, knocked from the bigger boy’s grasp.
The silence of the night was shattered as the bottle broke through the glass of the skylight then fell through a moment of stillness to an explosion of glass and foam as it landed in the hall below. More glass showered down after it. It sounded as if a bomb had gone off.
‘Holy Mary, mother of God’ I heard Catherine whisper, and then everyone was up and running, shadows darting east and west across the roof in a panic, food and beer abandoned in haste and fear.
Bodies crammed together in the darkness of the stairwell, shoving and jostling in a rush to get down to the landing. Like rats we poured through the door of the dorm and fanned out towards our beds.
By the time the doors flew open and the lights came on, everyone was curled up beneath the sheets pretending to be asleep. Mr Anderson, of course, wasn’t fooled. He stood there, almost purple in the face, black eyes blazing. His voice, by comparison, was almost calm, controlled, and all the more intimidating because of it.
But it took him a moment or two to speak. He waited until pretend sleepy faces had emerged from their blankets, heads lifting from pillows, shoulders raised on crooked elbows.
