The Innocence of Youth

 

                              Chapter 1

                        Was just about ready to get on my way
                        When I had some bad news that nearly made me stay
                        But picked myself up and got on the boat
                        And so for the start of this story I wrote  …….

                                                                        1

The breeze made the heat bearable. It was barely mid-morning but the temperature must have been over 90 degrees. Of course that was the scale in those days; Fahrenheit we called it. It seems somewhat useless nowadays. The breeze was due to the movement of the boat as it sped from Tangiers to Algeciras but we were tired as sleep had not come easy with three of us in a mini Morris; out of Belfast. I was the driver so I was stuck behind the steering wheel for most of the night before we embarked and my neck was feeling the pinch so to speak.

Spain looked hot and bleak; more of a yellowy tinge and not like the emerald green of Ireland that we were used to.

‘Come on,’ shouted my friend John. ‘It’s time to get the car,’ he stated in a lower voice as I got closer.

‘O.K.’ I mumbled. ‘Hold on to your knickers or whatever you call that grey piece of material that hides your balls.’
Well I am not at my best in the morning. I suppose you could call me a night owl though John never did. I think ‘nite shite’ was as close as he got.
‘You all set?’ I asked Eddie.

Eddie was a kinda cool guy or so John and I thought. He had a girlfriend which was a big plus in our eyes. He also carried around a book, “Lord of the Rings”, although neither John nor yours truly actually observed him reading it. We even asked each other that question. No, neither of us had. Not that it was such a big deal. To own any book, never mind such a thick one, was also a plus. Eddie had long, stringy, unkempt, light brown hair. It may have been a different colour but as it had not been washed for some time, it was difficult to tell. Eddie was English with pale coloured skin which never saw the sunlight. ‘I would burn up in ten minutes,’ he told us once. He never bathed in the sea but luckily he slept in a different tent. He told us he was from a town called Trowbridge. I had never heard of Trowbridge and assumed he had made it up after reading a Thomas Hardy novel.

We met him in Gibraltar. It was 1969 and Franco had decided to be over enthusiastic about getting the rock back on the Spanish side of things. He had ordered the gate between Gibraltar and La Linea closed and had even gone so far as to construct a sort of monolith in the sea to give air passengers and pilots heart attacks as the aeroplanes they were in tried to take off and land. The average for this little feat was six times.  Fun to watch; not fun to participate!

Eddie got into the back of the mini, John joined us in the passenger side and as it was my car, I got behind the wheel.
‘All set for Spain?’ I asked all and sundry.
There was no reply. Well we were all too tired to think of something clever. John was clever but not even he could think of any suitable repost.
   So I drove down the ramp feeling good as we had a full tank of very cheap petrol on board, courtesy of tax free Gibraltar.
A customs officer was at the bottom of the ramp and after a look at our number plate, he directed us to one side where two police men (later on I was to learn they were called Guardia Civil) began to search the car for items of interest. They seemed to know what they were looking for and after ten minutes, when they had just about given up, they found a small size packet on the dashboard near where Eddie had sat the previous day.  The guy who found it immediately blew his whistle and drew his revolver and motioned me to get out of the car.   Suddenly we were surrounded my five or more Spanish policemen; all with their guns drawn. Not a sight you want to see, even in your dreams. I was immediately handcuffed and manhandled into a van. John had the foresight to threw in a duffle bag which contained my toothbrush and a small notebook but little else.  I looked back from the back of the van and there they both were, looking very dejected but perhaps not as disconsolate as me. This was going to be an experience I had the feeling that I could well do without!

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                                                  2

          It was a sunny spring day in Ireland for a change and I found myself playing with caterpillars. I was fascinated by their efficiency. They could devour most of a nasturtium leaf in a few hours. I used to catch them in an old basket but by morning they always seemed to have escaped. A jam jar proved to be better for observing purposes. I lived just outside a small village called Shrigley; a small Northern Irish village in County Down. It was famous (well not really famous) for its tannery. It had a large chimney in the factory although I never once observed smoke coming out of that funnel. It kind of reminded me of a picture I once saw of the Titanic, although the latter had four of these funnels of course. I was ten years old, and my father had died five months previously. My granny followed him into the same site two months later. My granny had brought me up as my parents both worked as teachers. I had been in their classes. Not a great experience for any of the three of us.  I had slept with my granny until three weeks before she departed for good.   I missed her at night especially when a year later I left home for boarding school. My first night there is still etched on some part of my brain; not to be recalled even here.  
     My mother and I had to leave that home shortly after and we moved into digs in the bigger town called Killyleagh.  The digs were quite close to the primary school I attended and of course where my mother taught also. Even though she was a brilliant mathematician, she obtained the job of teaching the four-year-olds; grade one or kindergarten it might be called nowadays. My first day there was quite an experience; sharing my mother with forty-two other kids was not that easy and I failed at it miserably, ending up with lots of tears.
    Six years later I was better equipped to deal with similar events; just.   My current teacher was much more to my liking; he played football with us after school. I took up sport when I was very young, more to drown out my misery for a few hours than to be a great athlete which I wasn’t.
          Grown-ups at that time had a way of teasing you although I suppose they did not mean it. For example, my mother mentioned to me that the staff had mentioned that I was very fond of a girl in the school.  Now there were two classes of children in that school. The majority were from working class parents and the others were middle class. The latter were more refined. I belonged to that group. There were two boys and three girls in my class that fitted that description. Jacqueline was slim but not that attractive neither in personality nor in looks.  She was quite aloof, and the thick glasses did not help the look on her face.  Elizabeth on the other hand was very sympathetic and kind. I found out later that most girls with the kind of shape that Elizabeth had were always easier to get on with and easier to relate to.
    Doris was the best looking of the bunch but not so easy to get to know. Which one was the staff teasing me about according to my mother? I assume it is obvious. Yes Elizabeth. She was easily the friendliest and it took me a while to realise what they found so humorous.  It was then I decided to get to know Doris a little better. Now how was a ten-year old boy going to go about that? As I mentioned before she was rather self-centred, and my first advances were met with derision.  The next day I still had little success. This was proving more difficult that I had expected.  After school that day I tried again. OK, I was not sure what I was doing. I think on reflection she was teasing me along and so I followed her towards her home but gave up halfway. I happened to meet one of my friends and we played marbles along the side of the road until we reached a spot where I could see the house at which my mother and I were residing.  To my horror I saw a car parked outside where no car should be. My sixth sense told me that it was not parked there to bring any good news. I did not know to whom it belonged but if I had to guess (I did not want to guess) it might, just might be the car belonging to Doris’ father.
     I certainly was not going to go in to confirm my suspicions. So, I took myself of for an unplanned walk hoping that the car would be gone when I returned some twenty minutes later. It was. But my mother had that look on her face when I slipped in the door, and I realised she was waiting for me.  The questions began.
“Where were you?”
“What were you doing?”
“Who were you with?”
“Do you know a girl called Doris?’
This was a stupid question really. Everyone in the school knew just about everyone else especially if they were in the same class. I suppose it was a long time since my mother had taught anyone in Year 7.
“Did you know that Doris’ father came to see you?”
I stupidly nearly answered that one.
“What were you thinking of?”
                   I never found out what her father had accused me of. Difficult to think it was sexual harassment at that age. Anyway, I was sent to bed to think about it. I did but needless to say I came up with no solution to a problem I didn’t know I had if you get my meaning.  Seemly being ten years old was no excuse.
     I never once talked to Doris after that.  We both passed the qualifying examination or the eleven plus as it was sometimes called. She went to Down High in Downpatrick; the local high school. I went to the Methodist College Belfast as a boarder.
    I met her during the initiation day at Queens University some seven years later. She had not changed, nose still in the air. I ignored her and we never met again.

 

 

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                                                            3

My uncle collected me from where my mother and I had lodged for nearly two months.  Mum had packed a very large trunk for me with all sorts of items I did not know what they were to be used for.  I was on my way to a boarding school and I had this strange feeling that life was never going to be the same again. It was not.

   Not that life at home was any way enjoyable. My father had been very strict as was the fashion in those days. ‘Little boys should be seen and not heard,’ was one of his favourite sayings and I was often sent to a corner when visitors arrived for speaking ‘out of turn.’ Thank God we did not have too many visitors.  As mentioned before, my father had died five months before and I had a guilty conscience about the event. He had this heart complaint you see which had been misdiagnosed. The valve in the aorta was weak which restricted him following his past times; sport and carpentry were his favourites. He became depressed with life and like a lot of Irishmen at the time, found another hobby, drink. He had had too many the night of his death and he became argumentative. My mother was patient with him but there is a limit. I felt completely helpless so I prayed to God that it would all end. It did. Ten minutes later he hit the floor and Mum told me to run down to the neighbours and ask Sean to cycle to Killyleagh to fetch the doctor. I learned later that he was probably completely gone before Mum had got to the word “run”. The doctor arrived about a half hour later.

  The day of the funeral was not a great deal of fun.
‘Go and say goodbye to your father,’ my Mum said just before they came to collect the coffin. Well to be honest, I was still frightened he would wake up and blame it all on me. I walked into the bedroom which had a smell I had never experienced before; polished oak wood I was to learn later.  I said a quick goodbye; silently.
A few hours later we set off on the twenty mile journey to the grave yard. In those days, in Ireland, women did not attend funerals but of course a ten year boy could. I went; fairly unwillingly I might add but no one asked me of course.
I went again two months later when my eighty-two year old grannie followed him. She was very close to me and indeed up to the time of her death I had slept in the same bed.
I was not a happy little boy to say the least, peering into the six feet hole dug slightly to one side of where my father lay.
            So let’s say I was a bit delicate about leaving home for the first time even though we had moved out of the rented family home and were lodging with some friends of Mum’s.   My uncle was shown to a long room (dormitory) and I followed closely behind where we emptied my trunk into a locker. The smell was getting to me. I suppose it was the polished wooden floor that did it.  A few of the inmates shed a few tears that night and I remember being very scared about the unknown future ahead. I eventually got to sleep.

A bell woke me up as it would do for the next seven years. I gingerly walked to the sink where I was promptly shoved out of the way, so I did not get to wash that morning. I could already tell I had a lot to learn. Getting dressed was quite an event; shirt, shorts, socks, shoes and of course a tie (which took me for ever to knot my windsor) and a blazer. Breakfast was pretty average and you had to be careful that no one ate your one slice of bread; the porridge? Well you couldn’t even give it away. Then we had to report to the main school where we were joined by over one thousand day students.
I felt like a pebble on a beach full of rocks.

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                                                  4

 

      Well I had five years of French at that school and I still could not speak much French. I had about five words in Spanish. Two of those were Bobbi Charltonne which I had picked up in a small bar in a small village somewhere near Jerez (pronounced Hereth) which we pronounced Jerres which of course confused the locals no end. Bobby Charlton of course was a world renowned soccer player.

After I was arrested I was finding it hard going to follow the various commands given to me. We had stopped off at a small studio which I soon learned was to take my photograph and finger prints. After that, we proceeded to the ‘Franco Hotel’ in Algeciras. Not a place you would want to stay if given the choice. I wasn’t given the choice needless to say.
     I had to hand in my scout belt (a prize possession of mine), a small penknife and of course my passport, an old watch that sometimes told the correct time, a pen (old) plus a few minor items which happened to be in my pocket at the time.   Then I was told to strip which did not take long as all I had on was a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops which I have since heard are also known as thongs.   I was then stood in a shower area and like any caged animal I was given a shower with a high pressure hose. It probably would have gotten rid of any lice if any had been present.   If that proved unpleasant, the next part was even more so. Through yelling and various sign language gestures I got the idea I was to show him my posterior where he began to search for any items I might have hidden up my anus. Eventually he was convinced that there was nothing to worry about in that region and I was able to restore a little dignity when I got to put on my meagre amount of clothes again.
   I was marched to a line of cells. They opened up the bars and gestured for me to enter. The first cell seemed to be occupied by an inmate but I could not see him as he was hidden under a blanket.  The cell bars were closed with a bang and it was probably the first time I realised I had completely lost my freedom which after seven years in a boarding school, I appreciated and valued very much.

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                                                            5

    After breakfast, I somehow found out that I was to report to a large room in the middle of the school where about one hundred and eighty new boys were assembled.  About one hundred and forty names were read out before they got to me. I was to be in J1 E.  Apparently, although passing, I had not done so well in the qualifying exam and the school had access to the results.  By the time they discovered I was a lot brighter than my peers, it was too late.
‘Sorry son,’ they told me, you should be in the B set but they studied Latin for a term and we believe it would be too difficult to catch up.’  It wasn’t a question and my informant seemed to be quite upset that I answered even if it was only ‘Yes Sir!’
    I never did get around to telling my mother about this; not that it would have made any difference. She would have assumed the school was doing the right thing by me. Not always the case as may become apparent.
      The J1E group was sent to classroom C5 where we were given a diary which we had to fill in with various teacher names and different classrooms. I had already spotted that my History teacher had the same name as my boarding housemaster.  A big man he was but then when you are eleven years old, all of the men and most of the women seemed tall and foreboding. Of course it was the same person and he sent the shivers down my spine because of his very loud voice. I wondered had my father come back to get some sort of revenge.
    I had a difficult time at first. There were a lot of things I could not do. Ride a bicycle for example. I learned fast. Ability to swim was another. I learnt even faster as I was pushed into the deep end after wandering out of the changing room on my first visit to the school outdoor pool. I just about made it to the side and clambered out exhausted. I was really on a fast learning curve.  Now singing I could do a bit. When I was grabbed by a prefect and taken to their special room, I was ordered to stand on the table and sing. They were very kind. They gave me a choice. I could either sing or accept six of the slipper on the rear end. I sang.   Later on I would have accepted the second option as I was to receive the latter many times over the next three years that I became fairly immune to it. Still, not something you look forward to and needless to say it was not with an actual slipper but a rather large gym shoe!

After a week of mostly misery, I realised I would have to change drastically to survive in this place. My mother was not on the phone and I was not to see her for around four weeks, so I knew there would be no comfort in that direction. Over that first year, various boys in the dormitory (there were twelve of us) invited me to visit their parents on the weekends. I learned to fit in. Most of the boys came from rich families. Briggs was one of them. Yes we were all called by our surnames at that time. No Alan which was what I called him. Anyway, the Briggs family had a snooker table. I had never seen one much less played. No one showed you how to do things in those days. You either did it or you didn’t. I had a go but was useless. 
        Patton or Jonah as I knew him took me to the family farm. Show jumping horses were their thing.
‘Can you ride a horse?’ they asked me. I answered in the negative and that was the end of that. They also played tennis and bad something which I later learned was like squash although at the time, I did not know what squash was either.
      Hall’s (Rodger) father was in the R.A.F. He got me interested in building model aeroplanes.  Hall was like Axiotes (Nicholas) who came from a place I had never heard of; Bahrain. I suppose he had a bit of Greek in him. I had never met any foreigners before. They were a bit more advanced than the rest of us. They knew about girls and something they called sex.  In the end, it took me a year at university to learn how to pull a girl. Not for want of trying I might add.
     That first year was quite a nightmare. We were often slippered for being out of bed or just for having fun.  You dare not show you were happy or one of the prefects or teachers would make sure you were not happy for the next half hour at the very least.
I made quite a few mistakes at this time. I sought out a bit of sympathy when my peers asked what my father did. Sympathy was not on their list of behaviours. For the next few weeks they called me ‘Dusty’ as this made me unhappy and I struggled to hold back the tears.  Dusty was short for ‘Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust,’ to remind me of a certain day in my recent past. I eventually learnt not to show any reaction and they forgot the nickname.
     I wet the bed once at this time but luckily I got off without anyone noticing the after effects of that event. I was becoming expert at dealing with this kind of thing although I became paranoid of losing any article as I could never replace it!
   The toilets at the school were kind of different for me. Ever since I was three I had trouble with ‘moving my bowels’, as they called it.  A nurse would arrive regularly to shove enema up my anus. I used to look out the window and see her coming but it was useless to run away as I would be in for other things to hit my rear end after she had left.   Strangely my parents never once asked me why I did not visit the toilet when required. Well, if they had, I would have told them that I was absolutely terrified of the small shed which we used about thirty metres from the house. There was no light in it and it stank for obvious reasons. The object which I had to sit on was too high for me to reach in comfort when I was three and I was scared shitless, so to speak, of falling in and never getting out.   I never once sat on a seat at that school or anywhere else for that matter until I had my appendix out in the U.S. during my university career.

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