I have always been a year younger than people who are the same age as me. Or to put it another way, my contemporaries are, in the main, older than myself. This may sound strange to anybody with a minimum grasp of mathematics, so let me explain. At the end of my first year at junior school, because I was bright, I leapfrogged the next class, which was Standard Two, and went straight into the third year. It was fairly common practice in those days, but I don’t recommend it, as it resulted in my scraping through exams later on by the skin of my milk teeth. At St Mary’s when all the class sat for the scholarship exam at the age of eleven, I was only ten and, though bright for a ten-year-old, I was in a class of bright eleven-year-olds.
After the test I felt that I’d not done as well as I should have and waited nervously for the results. As a family we believed in miracles, and a bottle of Lourdes water was always on hand to turn throat cancer into laryngitis and malaria into a nasty cold. On one occasion I was rushed into Waterloo Hospital with appendicitis and spent the night dreading the operation the following morning. But prayer and Mum’s last-minute application of the holy water cleared up the symptoms and I was out of hospital in the afternoon. Perhaps this might explain my fondness some years later for medicinal compound and Lily the Pink.
You see, it’s no use being a Catholic if you don’t take full advantage of the perks on offer, one of which is insurance. So when the scholarship results were due I began making a novena, which involves going to mass and communion for nine consecutive days; before going to school, I’d be in church at seven o’clock, bleary-eyed and praying: ‘Please let me pass the scholarship and I’ll never commit any sins, especially those involving immodest actions, whatever they are.’ Eventually the day of reckoning arrived. It was a Thursday, I remember, the eighth day of the novena, when Mr Keating read out the names of those boys who had passed. My name was not on the list. At four o’clock I dragged myself home, my heart in my satchel, to break the news to my parents. They would have been gutted, but tried not to show their disappointment. ‘You can try again next year,’ said my dad.
That night I went to bed wondering if I should bother completing the novena. What’s the point? I’d made the sacrifice of getting up early and saying prayers that hadn’t been answered. ‘Perhaps there’s no one up there,’ I thought, but decided to finish it anyway. ‘Maybe my small failure’, I thought pompously, ‘is part of God’s great plan.’ So I got up at six again the following morning and went to mass as promised. ‘Thanks anyway, but if you could see your way next year …’ Then I went home. As I was letting myself into the house through the back door, I heard the clunk of the letter box at the front. To this day I can remember the shafts of golden light that filled the hallway, the faint strings of a harp, the distant chorus of seraphim. On the lino lay a brown envelope from the Lancashire Education Department with the news that I had been awarded a scholarship that would come into effect when I reached the age of eleven. Hallelujah!
Whenever my examination results have not been up to scratch I have always excused myself on the grounds that I was a year younger and, deep down, have blamed the fact that I leapfrogged over Standard Two for many of life’s failings: not getting that teaching post in Sweden, not being offered the Laureateship, singing off key, premature ejaculation and more, many more. As a matter of strange fact, whenever I’m in a group of people I always think that I’m the youngest, so it becomes a coping mechanism for me, as if my failings will be excused on the grounds of diminished ageing.
At fifteen I sat for the GCE exams in June and failed Latin and Maths, and had to resit them in September. One morning the following month Brother Murray breezed into the classroom, said excuse me to Mr Boggiano who was taking the French lesson and looked around the class. ‘I have in my hand the O Level results,’ he said, holding up a sheet of paper. ‘How many of you scoundrels had to resit the examinations?’ Five of us put up our hands nervously. ‘Stand up.’ We did exactly as we were told. The suspense was palpable and he was revelling in the power he held over us. Adding fuel to the angst, he looked at the paper as if to clarify the results. ‘Mmmm …’ Even Mr Boggiano was shifting nervously in his desk. ‘I’ll not keep you in suspense any longer, all of you who resat Latin and Mathematics at O level have’ – he smiled – ‘have failed.’ A gasp from us all. Then he said, ‘Ah, I was only joking … you’ve all passed.’ We let out a sigh of relief. Brother Murray was as pleased as punch with his little joke which would been perfect, cruel but perfect, except for one small thing. He looked at Batty – a sad, unattractive youth – and said, almost as an afterthought, ‘Except you, Batty.’ He nodded to Boggiano and swept out, as Battybus collapsibus on the deskalorum.
At seventeen, I scraped three A levels and went to Hull University, and it goes without saying that had I swanned through Standard Two I would have swanned into Trinity College, Cambridge and ended up with a Double First. Instead of PPE, I followed a joint Honours course in French and Geography, and when the final results were posted I was over the moon with my Pass degree. As fellow graduands fainted and burst into tears because they’d only got a 2.1 instead of a First, I was straight to the bar in the Students Union, buying the drinks. After all, I reasoned, a pass at twenty probably equals a 2.2 at twenty-one. Cheers!