Seminary Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

wrestler’s hold: ‘You are never going to die,’ she said with a certitude that brooked no contradiction. ‘You will grow up and live for years and years…so many years that it will seem like for ever.’
    Ever since I could remember, Mum had kissed us in bed every night with the dire instruction: ‘Cross your arms and pray for a happy death.’ After the incident in the bedroom, she discontinued this gloomy utterance.

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    A FTER THE WAR Dad became a grounds keeper on various sports fields. Eventually he became the chief grounds keeper at the Peel playing fields in Barkingside, a working-class suburbat the outer reaches of London’s East End. The sports facilities – a twenty-acre field and clubhouse – were used by the employees of several companies including the Plessey electrical engineering factory in Ilford. After a succession of temporary lodgings we had come finally to settle in a whitewashed box of a dwelling by the gates of the place we were to call ‘the Peel’. The house faced a highway lined with houses and blocks of flats. In one direction the road headed out towards the industrial wastes of the Essex estuary; in the other it merged into London’s North Circular Road. Frowning down on the district from a far hill was Claybury Hospital, the principal mental asylum for the East End. Claybury was a byword for lock-up wards, a threat not infrequently employed by Mum against Dad and each of us when we failed to live up to the standards of behaviour she set for us.
    There was one habitable living room which contained a gas stove and sink, a built-in larder, and space for a small dining table and chairs. We had two uncomfortable armchairs lined with canvas, purchased from the Cooperative Society after the war. A corresponding room on the ground floor, where theold piano was situated, was too damp for habitation through much of the year. Upstairs there were two bedrooms and a ‘box room’ where my sister would sleep.
    Living on the sports ground gave us an unusual sense of outdoor freedom. To the delight of my sister the former grounds keeper had bequeathed us Gyp, a shaggy sheepdog the size of a small pony. Maureen took over this lolloping animal, taking it for walks around the field. I once saw her clutching an umbrella in the pouring rain as Gyp dragged her towards the filthy, fast-running drainage ditch. For my brother Terry, the Peel was paradise. When the summer came around I watched with growing admiration as he bowled for hour after hour in the cricket practice nets. To my tearful disappointment, he would not allow me to even fetch the balls. He was on the way to becoming a demon bowler and sometimes managed to break a stump in two.
    Dad tried hard to make something of the Peel, but when it rained there were gull-infested lakes where the pitches should have been. Despite his handicapped left leg, he managed to drive the pre-war tractor, working the brake and clutch like a gymnast. He became an expert on grass and spent hours gazing at seed catalogues. In 1951 he laid out lawns and flowerbeds at the entrance to the grounds to celebrate the Festival of Britain Year: the theme was strident red, white and blue. He earned five pounds a week, with free rent, and I remember his wry announcement that his pay had been increased by one penny an hour after he had agreed to squeeze another sports club on to the fields. He tried to make a few shillings on the side, bounding with his balletic stride out to the wealthy suburbs to do private gardening jobs.
    At weekends Mum managed the cafeteria in the clubhouse, preparing drifts of Spam sandwiches and pyramids of cakes. Mum’s cakes hardened on cooking to the consistency and taste of baked mud. We called them ‘rock cakes’. When bad weather turned the cricket pitches to miniature lakes, and the matcheswere cancelled, we would be eating stale Spam sandwiches and rock cakes all week.
    There was never enough money, and every household bill was attended by