The backyard was not only my Lord’s, my Oval and my Old Trafford, but my cathedral. Long before it became the Kirkstall Lane end, the back wall of the house was the chancel of the church and the windowsill my high altar. I would get my little sister Brenda, and as many tame kids as I could dragoon, to dress as deacons and servers, while I would wrap a white sheet round my waist to make do as an alb and, for the chasuble, put a large towel over my shoulders. The household was a bit short on golden chalices but ran to a pair of brass candlesticks and an old pewter tea service that came in handy during the offertory. My acolytes would lead me out into the yard, where I would celebrate mass with all the solemnity a five-year-old could muster.
Although it was all make-believe, there was no irony or poking fun in our rituals. There was no television in those days and no theatre for the likes of us, so a church was where all the drama took place. The bright colours of the vestments, the incense, the stained glass, the candlelit stage and the singing provided the sensory experiences that at times overwhelmed me. In fact, I fainted in church during mass more than once, a practice not uncommon in those days, having more to do with the compulsory twenty-four-hour fast before receiving communion than to any spiritual paroxysm. The Latin, too, was sonorous and mysterious, and I could recite all the prayers before I could understand their meanings. I must admit that when English eventually replaced the Latin, much of the mystery and the poetry disappeared. ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea minima culpa.’
I became an altar boy at the age of nine at Star of the Sea church and carried on serving until I was fifteen. It was a social activity as much as anything else, for all my closest school friends joined up as well, and for High Mass and feast days the cast would have numbered about eighteen. There were three priests in charge. The parish priest was Father Timoney – devout and cantankerous, he struck the fear of God into us, but on the plus side he could say mass in fifteen minutes flat. The other, younger priests like Father Flynn, Father Hughes and Father Healey helped run the youth club and organised the annual trips to Galway, the reward for us hardworking, unpaid servers. It was hard work, too, especially if you were on the early shift, which meant leaving the house at 6.30 in the morning to be ready for the seven o’clock mass.
‘Without breakfast, the little chap runs through the mean, cobbled streets, the gas lamps spluttering and dying, as the first shafts of sunlight, edging their way over the smoke-blackened factory walls, find reflection in his eager National Health spectacles.’
I felt happy about doing it all, though. Making sacrifices and doing good works for no worldly gain, other than for the grace I would be storing up: my own little reservoir of creamy, sparkling stuff that I could dip into in later life. A spoonful to be taken now and again when I was feeling down. ‘Grace, the proven existential cure for all known ills.’
I’m not particularly proud of this, but I have always been what they used to call a snappy dresser. I don’t know where I got it from and I wish I were above such trivial peacocking, but even as an altar boy I remember always choosing the whitest surplice trimmed with the most lace. Most lads went to the cupboard in the sacristy, grabbed the nearest and slung it on, often back to front, but not me. And you should have seen me as a Boy Scout. We wore those khaki hats that Baden-Powell introduced from the Boer War and I wore mine with the rim of one side turned up, like I was a bush ranger or a soldier on leave from Burma. I fooled nobody. As for badges, I loved them. Artist’s badge, Pathfinder’s, Swimmer’s, Potato peeler’s, Pooh-sticker’s, Spitter’s, I wore them all with pride. If I could wear my CBE medal every day on my hoody I would. And the polished oak chest and decorated scroll that the Lord Mayor of Liverpool presented to me on being given the freedom of the City is something I will always treasure, but where, oh where, is the big gold badge? What is the point of the D.Litt. and Honorary Fellowships if you can’t swan around Tesco’s in the velvet cap and silken robes?
Our school uniform consisted of an unsnazzy maroon blazer and a cap that had to be worn with the peak pulled down over the forehead. Some hope. What is the point of training a Brylcreemed quiff or a Tony Curtis if nobody interesting gets to see it? So once past the prefects on inspection duty at the school gates, the cap would either be whipped off and stuffed into the satchel, or shoved to the back of the head and worn like a misshapen yarmulke. Come to think of it, it was probably the insouciant quiff and devil-may-care wearing of the cap that first took Joan Taylor’s breath away.
These post-war years were not notable for high fashion. Demob suits, trilby hats, belted gabardine raincoats … and that was only the girls. Then, overnight, or so it seemed, there were teenagers. How I longed to be a Teddy boy. Unless you were young at the time you can’t imagine the impact they had on us all. Standing at a bus stop next to a gang, I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes off them. Into a world of beige, brown and grey, aliens wearing outrageous suits of scarlet and midnight blue with velvet collars and bootlace ties seemed to have landed from the planet Rainbow. And the haircuts, usually a DA (or duck’s arse, so called because the hair was cut thick at the back and combed into a line from the crown to the nape of the neck to resemble a duck whose arse had been brushed and Brylcreemed). As a sixteen-year-old I didn’t hanker after the loose-lipped sullenness, the drooping fag, even the rock’n’roll, it was the tight trousers.
There was a catch-22 situation, however, involving the Teddy boy mystique, for unlike teddy bears there was nothing cuddly about them. Although they dressed in a way that might cause an innocent passer-by to pause and stare, staring would often cause offence. For many of them were nutters in fancy clothing and, like mods, rockers, skins, punks and professional footballers, prone to acts of violence.
It was a Sunday evening jive night at Star of the Sea parish hall where we locals bopped happily and innocently to 78s played on a Dansette record player. Tonight’s DJ? None other than the Reverend Father Flynn. The girls, wearing either floral dresses with cardies on top, or black taffeta skirts worn with elastic waspie belts and white blouses, collar up, were dancing demurely in a group, waiting for a couple of us lads to pluck up the courage to move in. Then the Teds arrived. We had our own local Teddy boys, peacocks who preened outside the Ball Hall (snooker rooms) on Bridge Road and would have been horrified to get a speck of dirt on their powder-blue drapes. But these guys seemed like aliens. Gangs from the Bullring and the Dingle would occasionally pop out of town for a spot of bloodletting, and where better to limber up, get the juices flowing, than at a youth club out in the sticks?
They reeked of violence (a mixture of sweat and fear) and their suits with elongated jackets and skin-tight jeans seemed almost a parody of the fashion. They were dirty and I’d never seen hairstyles quite like theirs: black and sculpted. They looked as if their faces were being swallowed by large cockroaches. My instinct was to go right over to them and explain that this was a dance for parish members only, and would they be kind enough to leave. Fortunately, Captain Cautious talked me out of it, and just as well he did. Like something nasty spilled on the floor and spreading, they moved among the couples, mainly girls, who were dancing. Some refused huffily and raced off to the Ladies, but most of them put on a brave face, trying to convince themselves that you can’t judge a book by its cover, however dodgy-looking. The ploy of these godless apes was to whip up the yokels into paroxysms of jealous rage at the sight of them pawing our Catholic virgins. But we thought, oh, well, never mind … can’t be helped … soon be over … no harm done … and other phrases useful for self-preservation that we’d picked up over the years. One lad, though, new to the area, made the mistake of looking at one of the invaders dancing. And boy, could he dance (and here I’m ashamed to admit that Rita seemed to be really enjoying herself, the brazen hussy). He stopped jiving and, leaving Rita in mid-twirl, said: ‘Who are you looking at?’
This is a deceptively loaded question beloved of psychopaths because it brooks no answer.
If the reply of your choice is: ‘You, yer twat, worra yer gonna do about it?’ He will show you, with gusto. However, you might choose to say: ‘You, actually, I was seriously admiring your dancing skills.’ Or, you might opt for ‘Your good self, I mean that’s a mighty fine haircut, could you recommend a good barber, or in your case, a good entomologist?’ I’m sorry, but whatever answer you give will be the wrong one. The one to release the coil that has wound him up.
I don’t know which answer the boy opted for, but he was head-butted before being dragged outside by the gang. Girls were screaming. Father Flynn rushed out to calm things down while one of the mothers phoned for the police. We all went out into Elm Road, hoping that a show of force might deter the inevitable. The gang had formed a tight ring round the lad and were kicking, according to local parlance, seven shades of shit out of him. Then the bicycle chains appeared, and they thrashed and flailed him with such hatred and force, it’s a wonder he wasn’t killed. A police siren sounded and they scattered in all directions.
‘Bastards!’ we shouted, ‘Come back here and fight!’
One of life’s minor tragedies is desperately wanting things when young that you can’t afford, and by the time you’ve grown and are able to afford them, you don’t want them. By the time I could afford to buy an expensive Teddy boy suit they were long out of fashion and I had no wish to dress like a colourful flashback. Adrian Henri, painter, poet and bon viveur, claims that the first time he met me was when I stopped him in the street and asked him where I could buy a pair of winkle-pickers. I must say, I don’t remember this and really wonder if he was the sort of person I would have stopped in the street to enquire about winkle-pickers. Perhaps the shoes were just a ploy, an opening gambit on my part so that I could find out more about Cannonball Adderley, Kurt Schwitters et al. Also, despite his bulk, Adrian too was something of a snappy, if eccentric, dresser, for this was the man who could alternate between two jackets, one leather, one satin with his poems stitched on the back by nimble-fingered fans.