Wheels Within Wheels (10 page)

Next day I asked, ‘What is philosophy?’ as Pappa and I were walking back from our morning bathe in the Blackwater. My father would undoubtedly have taken this question as the jumping-off point for an outline of the various schools of Western thought. But Pappa simply said, ‘It’s the study of how to live contentedly and how to die peacefully!’

From my point of view our annual summer holiday in some secluded seaside cottage was redeemed only by Pappa’s presence. I enormously enjoyed our weekend trips to the sea, but I detested being away from home for an entire month. These cottages were never anywhere near a public library and, from 1940 on, petrol was rationed and I dreaded running short of books. There was little room for luggage in the Ford Ten with five passengers – including Old Brigid or her successor – and Parnell the all-black sheepdog, and Sibelius and Delius the cats, and my mother’s bath chair on the roof. My personal baggage allowance was one large suitcase and to make the most of this I wore all my clothes, including two pairs of pyjamas, on the journey to the coast. But a single suitcase of books seemed meagre fare for a month, even if one chose only volumes that could stand rapid rereading.

However, it was the removal from my natural habitat that I minded most. Amidst the fields and woods and rivers and hills around Lismore I could enjoy myself as nowhere else. Already I wanted to travel to distant lands, so I might have been expected to welcome the substitute thrill of exploring remote stretches of the Irish coastline. But already, too, I had clear-cut ideas about
how
I wanted to travel. I wanted to wander alone, taking each day as it came, and even at the age of nine or ten it was impossible to pretend that a month in the domestic cosiness of a seaside cottage was any sort of substitute for such adventuring.

The autumn of 1940 was marred by a bizarre psychological affliction. Or perhaps it was a ‘normal abnormality’, given my keen interest in sexual equipment and the inhuman puritanism of the Irish Catholic Church. Because I had long been in the habit of closely observing mating animals I one day became convinced that my soul was permanently laden with mortal sins. This conviction rapidly spread, like a sort of mental
septicaemia
. Soon I felt that to wash above the knees or below the navel must also be a mortal sin. And so must chancing to see a male baby having his nappy changed, or noticing a cat feeding her kittens or a dog sprinkling a lamppost – or even hearing, at the other side of the partition that divided the school lavatory, the hiss of little boys urinating into the stinking gutter. At this stage my having long since given up masturbation was unfortunate. Something as tangible as that to worry about might have saved me from fancying myself corrupt right through because a dog peed in my presence.

What puzzles me now is the extent to which, during those months, school influences temporarily overcame home influences. On trivial issues small children will naturally follow school fashions, on important matters parental attitudes generally prevail. Moreover, at no other period of my life have I been prone to unhealthy – or even, some would say, healthy – guilt. Yet throughout this nightmare period I was half-crazed by shame and self-disgust.

The approach of puberty, combined with an incident which had occurred during the previous summer holidays, may have been partly responsible for this anxiety-state. Physically I was unusually mature and my mother had explained that my budding breasts must now be kept covered. But I so relished the feel of the sun and the wind on my body that I often ignored her directive and wore only brief shorts when playing alone on the deserted beaches near our holiday cottage. Then one day three adolescent boys appeared abruptly from behind a rock, shouted obscene remarks and threw several well-aimed pebbles at my indecently exposed torso. And my eyes were opened, and I knew that I was naked …

A better balanced child would merely have been incensed by this tiny incident, or at worst slightly alarmed. But in an instant it made me see human sexuality not just as an example of nature’s ingenuity but as something apart from the rest of life and capable of assuming ugly, obscurely threatening shapes. I told my mother about the incident by way of exorcising it, though the telling involved a confession of
disobedience
. Her reaction, as always, was steadying – ‘People can be unpleasant. But their unpleasantness needn’t infect us if we don’t want it to.’ Nevertheless, I now began to think about sex in a new, personal, speculative way (though I have no recollection of experiencing at the time any sexual sensations) and this made me much more vulnerable at school.

The reader may well wonder what methods were used by my teachers to unhinge me so disastrously. In fact sex was never mentioned: eight of the ten commandments were commented on in detail, but the other two were ignored. At the same time the impression was given that these were the most important of all, though the vices they forbade were too evil to be analysed as one could analyse the comparatively minor sins of murder, theft, slander and idolatry. It is remarkable, and quite sinister, that this message, stressing the incomparable heinousness of sexual sin, could be got across wordlessly. Somehow we were made hyper-aware of the horror and revulsion with which such sins must be regarded and in the process a horror of sex itself was deeply implanted in many a child’s mind.

All this left no lasting mark on me though it profoundly affected the world in which I grew up. Behind the popular image of the gay, feckless, hard-drinking, charming, belligerent, eloquent Irishman lies an amount of muted yet intolerable suffering – which is shared by the victims’ wives. The Irish incidence of mental disease and alcoholism is amongst the highest in the world, Irish people marry later than most others – if at all – and the Irish male is noted for sexual immaturity. The Catholic Church has always been the obvious scapegoat here, yet it does not deserve all the blame. Our puritanism is peculiarly Irish rather than peculiarly Catholic; one finds it operating equally strongly among Northern Irish Protestants.

Members of celibate communities are often assumed to be unbalanced,
tense, frustrated and generally unsuitable as educators. Yet many priests and nuns seem, to those who know them best, exceptionally balanced, relaxed and fulfilled. However, when celibates do go dotty they go very dotty indeed, frequently in rather nasty ways, and one of my teachers – not Sister Andrew – should never have had anything to do with children. She regularly interrupted our history, geography or arithmetic lessons to gratify herself by terrorising us. Obviously she believed in her own fevered descriptions of Hell and the Devil and the conviction with which she spoke made her harangues all the more blood-curdling.

I was unsettled not only by this poor creature’s words but by the evident sick satisfaction she obtained from frightening us. I recall one of her sessions with particular vividness because I was sitting in the front row just below her desk. She had a high-pitched voice which became little better than a squeak when she was enraged or excited and on this occasion, as she spoke, fine beads of sweat broke out on her hairy upper lip. She was telling the ‘true’ story of a ten-year-old Co Waterford girl who one day committed a filthy mortal sin (the adjective told us that it was sexual) and next day fell into a stream and was drowned. Because she had not been to confession, or made an act of perfect contrition, the Devil promptly dragged her soul down to Hell where she was doomed to an eternity of tortures which Sister X assured us were indescribable though this did not deter her from attempting to describe them in considerable detail. None of us thought to ask our mentor the source of her information on this case. It was a cruel coincidence that I came under the influence of such an unstable woman during the unhappiest phase of my childhood.

At noon every Saturday I went to confession with my classmates, as was the custom. We sat in restless rows near the three confessionals, examining our consciences and memorising our sins while awaiting our turn to enter the stuffy, anonymous darkness of the box. During my guilt period I used to envy my companions whose rapid reappearances, following the muffled drone of the absolution, indicate their freedom from moral problems. It made me feel doubly depraved to think of the innocent content of their confessions, which I knew would go something like this: ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It’s one week since my last confession. I forgot to say my morning prayers three times. I was
distracted at Mass on Sunday. I stole five sweets from my brother. I told three lies to the nun. I was disobedient nine times. I hit the girl next door. That’s all, father.’ Then they would be given three Hail Marys for penance and would cheerfully emerge to commit the same crimes – more or less – during the week ahead.

I always chose to confess to Father Power. The other curate too plainly conveyed the extremity of boredom to which juvenile misdeeds drove him and the parish priest was eighty-five, stone deaf and apt to confuse ‘impure thoughts’ with adultery. While in the confessional most Catholics regard their confessor not as the neighbour who calls for a chat but as an impersonal representative of God. Therefore it was easy for me to put Father Power in the picture. But his calm reassurances and careful explanations achieved nothing. Like any mentally deranged person, I was isolated in a private world of my own, beyond reach of common sense. Father Power repeatedly urged me to confide in my mother, but this was no help as my inability to do so was an integral part of my disease. I was so far gone that I feared losing her love if she discovered my vileness. When I explained this to Father Power he again tried unsuccessfully to make me see the absurdity of my terrors; had he not been bound by the seal of the confessional he himself would certainly have warned my mother of her daughter’s pathetic state. More acceptable was his advice to confess only four times a year instead of once a week and to stop keeping a tally of my sins in the copybook I had specially set aside for the purpose. But unfortunately even this counsel did not reach to the root of my obsession – though it came near enough to it. However, it stimulated an enjoyable argument with Sister X who furiously asked if I wanted to ‘lose my soul’ when I told her that in future I would not be joining my class at confession time. I declined to explain that I was acting on Father Power’s advice; why should I divulge to her what went on in the confessional? Besides, I was delighted to have a chance to deflate her single-handed. I did not then clearly recognise her contribution to my problem, but I disliked her more than anyone else I had ever known. (And indeed, now I come to think of it, I have never since met anybody I disliked as much.)

Sister X had a very long nose, with a ludicrously thin tip, and her angry flushes always began at this tip and radiated outwards like a spreading
wine stain on a yellowing tablecloth. ‘I’ll be looking for you tomorrow!’ she squeaked threateningly as I watched her nasal indicator turning crimson. ‘Mind you’re here at a quarter to twelve sharp with the rest! You should be ashamed of yourself, even thinking of rejecting God’s grace! It’s the Devil is putting such wickedness in your mind – he wants your soul for himself – and at this rate he won’t be long getting it!’

Such a challenge to do theological battle made me briefly forget that this was my own current belief. I replied that no Catholic was bound to confess more than once a year and that if I were forced to confess by anyone else the sacrament would be invalid. This final point took Sister X right out of her depth, as it was meant to do, and she sounded like a fork on a plate when she exclaimed – most unconvincingly – ‘I’ll report you to the Canon for this!’ (The Canon was our parish priest, a saintly old gentleman who was known to abhor the very mention of Sister X’s name.) As she swept from the schoolroom giggles erupted among my classmates and in an instant she was back to give us all an hour’s detention. But I knew that she knew that she had been beaten. And vengefully I rejoiced. She brought out the very worst in her pupils – apart from turning them into nervous wrecks.

Years later my mother told me that by the end of November she had begun to worry about my being so obviously off form. She mentioned her concern to Father Power, who at once suggested a mother-daughter conference on the relevant commandments.

The day before my ninth birthday I woke early and tried to read but could not concentrate. At that age birthdays have an epochal significance and I felt that if my tenth year began as inauspiciously as my ninth was ending this misery must continue for every day of the next twelve months. As I lay in bed, staring unhappily at the grey-brown damp stains on the ceiling, I heard my father coming upstairs – but instead of going straight into the bathroom to shave he came to my door and said that my mother wanted to see me. As she did not usually encourage me to enter her life before breakfast-time – rather the reverse – I went downstairs reluctantly, expecting a lecture on some newly discovered misdemeanour. But no; she was in a very gentle mood and invited me into her bed for a snuggle. And then she asked directly, ‘What’s making you so unhappy?’

For weeks I had known, deep down, that a conference with my mother was the key to freedom if only I could bring myself to take the risk of using it. Now that key had been put in my hand – and I did use it.

I shall never forget my mother’s laughter as I lay there with my arms around her neck and my face buried in her hair. She had a deep, rich laugh and soon I, too, was laughing – dazedly, scarcely able to believe that within moments my tragedy had been transmuted into comedy. When I returned to my room to dress I felt just as one does on wakening from a complicated nightmare: elated by the simplicity of reality.

My mother’s amusement had been perfectly genuine, but beneath it she was gravely disturbed by my account of Sister X’s mental torturings. Already she was weary of another aspect of school life; every afternoon, before I could safely be admitted to the house, she had to supervise the fine-combing of my hair over a basin of Lysol outside the back door. So now it was decided that a combination of head lice and faulty theology sufficiently justified my removal from Lismore school.

While debating what to do next, my mother taught me – an
arrangement
which I favoured. She used teaching methods not then fashionable in Irish national schools. Instead of presenting knowledge neatly cut up into small bits she showed me how to go about collecting my own information and so made learning seem fun. Yet even she could not reconcile me to the German language. Nor could I cope with Irish or French, which my father had been inflicting on me since I was born. Latin was the only language for me. That I enjoyed, and was good at, knowing I would never be expected to make a fool of myself by speaking it.

Many nine-year-olds would have missed the social side of school life, but this loss never worried me. Apart from Tommy, and a girl with the unlikely name of Charity, all my primary school relationships were superficial. For a time I felt that I should have several friends, because children in books usually had, but I soon found that promising to meet for play at a certain time unduly restricted my private life of reading and roaming. Had the choice been wider I might have felt otherwise; I was overjoyed when Charity joined our class and revealed that she, too, was enslaved to Hugh Lofting, Arthur Ransome and Richmal Crompton. Soon I had got her a special pass to visit the library whenever she liked
and for the next six months we were Best Friends. But then her army father was posted elsewhere and thus ended my first close friendship, as distinct from the sort of tribal comradeship I had enjoyed with Tommy.