Though my membership in Father Seymour’s Number turned out to be every bit as time-consuming as I had expected, it was far less demanding, mostly because, as I soon discovered, I was a member in name only. Right from the start, Father Seymour seemed to regret having accepted me into his Number. Each boy in Father Seymour’s Number engaged in two of the three disciplines – mine, he said, would be boxing and singing, since he doubted, from what he had heard about the way I played goal, that I could ever learn to dance. It was possible, he said, that since I played goal like someone who was not wearing goalie pads, I might tap-dance like someone who was.
As for the boxing, it was soon evident that he was afraid to let me box for fear of what my mother would think if I went home with both eyes blackened. He told me that, since there was no chance that I would be good enough by next March to take part in the tournament, he would take his time bringing me along. (The boxing tournament came a couple of months after the Christmas concert, which made sense when you thought about it. It wouldn’t have done for the members of a choir to look all beaten up while singing ‘Ave Maria’, or to have black eyes while dancing.) It might be best, he said, if I simply used the time until Christmas to get in shape and to ‘observe’ the other boys, at which point he would find me a sparring partner. I spent each afternoon wandering more or less unsupervised about the gym, doing laps and pushups with the other boys but never sparring with them, ‘observing’ them as they boxed.
Even in the gym, Father Seymour dressed in black, black undershirt, black shorts, black socks and sneaker boots. It was strange to see him in such an outfit, with his chest and his arms and legs showing, covered in hair that was so black it might have been part of his habit, some basic layer that covered his whole body, even those parts still hidden by his clothes. He walked about the gym, going from one pair of boxers to another, telling them what mistakes they were making, exhorting them to work harder. ‘C’mon boys,’ he roared. ‘We fight United in the spring. We better be ready.’
He was always on the lookout for boys who were not practising or were otherwise misbehaving. There were frequent strappings, and always an embarrassing, somehow shameful interval while Father Seymour unlaced the boxing gloves of the boy he was about to strap. The boy would stand there, holding out his gloves for Father Seymour to unlace, Father Seymour doing so quite calmly, as if being strapped was just a routine part of learning how to box. So close in height was he to some of the boys, he had to rise up on his toes to strap them properly, rise up to increase the distance the strap had to travel before it hit their hand. He rose with each blow, up on his toes, then down again, the sound of grit beneath his boots always just preceding the sound of the strap hitting the boy’s hand. He always maintained a kind of joviality with the boy whom he was strapping, as if the whole thing was somehow inevitable, a kind of time-honoured tradition that he and the boy were acting out, as if it was part of a boy’s essential nature to be strapped, and part of a priest’s to do the strapping. He seemed to admire especially those boys who took their punishment in this spirit, regarding the strap, their stinging hands with a kind of wry amusement. After he had finished strapping them, he was always quite solicitous, helping them put their stinging hands back into their boxing gloves, then, just as slowly and calmly as he had unlaced them, lacing them up again.
He spent most of his time with the older boys, teaching them how to move, how to throw and block punches. The younger boys, the boys from age ten down, he left more or less to themselves, so that they engaged in furious, if unskilled slugging fests all afternoon, running back and forth from the bathroom with bloody noses. I was advised to pay special attention to one of these younger boys, to ‘observe’ him especially closely. Unlike the other boys his age, he boxed instead of brawled; in fact, he boxed, and quite routinely defeated, boys who were years older than he was. The boy whom Father Seymour referred to as Young Leonard was the star of the Number. He was the only boy in Father Seymour’s Number allowed to train in all three disciplines. Father Seymour was always pointing to Young Leonard, making him an example for the rest of us.
Not only was Young Leonard the best boxer and the best dancer, but he was one of only four soloists in the choir. Unlike many of the others, he looked like a choirboy. When I first saw him, I doubted that he could dance, let alone box, so thin were his arms and legs. His boxing gloves looked like great weights that someone had attached to him to keep his arms forever at his sides. It was obvious that Young Leonard thought very little of someone who had not earned his way into Father Seymour’s Number. ‘So you’re half an orphan,’ he said. I realized that Father Seymour must have repeated Mary’s joke. ‘An orphan from the waist down,’ he said, ‘or from the waist up?’ I felt like telling him that, given his height, it might be more appropriate to say that he was half an orphan, but I thought better of it.
When it came to singing, it was not so easy for Father Seymour to get me out of his hair. The problem was the promise he had made to my mother to have me in the chorus by Christmas. He gave me the standard audition he gave would-be members of Father Seymour’s Number, then informed me that I had failed it miserably. He assured me that I would do far more damage with my singing than with my boxing – as much as I might dread sparring with Young Leonard, so would Young Leonard dread singing with me. Perhaps, he said, instead of swinging at my sparring partner after Christmas, I should try singing at him, putting him down for the count with a combination of shrieking off-key notes. I tried to imagine it, Young Leonard, his ears covered with his boxing gloves, fleeing from me as I chased him round the gym singing ‘Ave Maria’ more horribly than it was ever sung before. ‘Remember,’ Father Seymour said, ‘when the bell rings, come out singing.’ The other boys roared with laughter.
It soon became apparent that I would not be ready even to sing in the chorus by the time of the Christmas concert. On top of that, he said, my voice would throw off the others. Perhaps it would be best if I no longer practised with the choir. I could practise on my own, he said, and he would help me, when he had the time. He made me promise not to tell my mother or Aunt Phil about it. I was more than happy to oblige. I’d have done anything to get out of choir practice. I had to continue to attend, he said, so that neither my mother nor Aunt Phil would wonder why I was coming home from school so early, but I no longer had to sing.
Each afternoon, I went to the hall, and Father Seymour had me sit down at the back where, as he put it, I could make myself useful. My usefulness consisted of answering yes or no when asked if I could hear properly what the other boys were singing. This should be their goal, he told them, to make themselves heard to Draper Doyle. Could I make out the words? he asked me. When I assured him I could, he would have me recite them back to him. ‘Sad are the men of Nottingham,’ I said, my voice echoing throughout the hall. ‘Sad are they who toil for the king.’