Scribble

An Excerpt from My Memoir The Vatican of The Hollies (thevaticanofthehollies.com)

Two weeks into our first term, classes brimful of playful boys assembled in the school chapel in B-Block. The chapel brought back to me fond memories of The Old Church of the Holy Plaster Shower. The pews were thick with wax and names and more wax on top; there were no hearts: Saint Malachy’s – an all-boys Catholic school – was not known for its public expressions of love. Not publicly. There were the smells of a history of incense and sacraments ingrained on the chapel’s creamy-grey walls; the wood was dark; and there was a golden tabernacle front and centre, behind a gilded curtain, like a good tabernacle should be, all square and holy and looking holy, and it appropriately hidden. The chapel felt and looked comforting and dark and rich and smoky.

“Okay, you young men,” said a priest unknown to me at that time, him walking slowly the aisle of the church, classes of boys sitting on each side. “As many of you know, Saint Malachy’s is a seminary, and it’s here that we teach this land’s future priests and scholars. You do know this, don’t you?” A quiet ripple of acknowledgement passed over the congregation. “Okay then. Good. What I want you to do now is take out a pen while we pass around some paper.” As we fumbled for pens in the dark recesses of our schoolbags, the priest had a couple of altar boy helpers pass out thin slips of paper.

“In silence, boys, and without looking at what’s going on around you, I want you to write on your sheet of paper your name, your class, and if you’re interested in studying for the priesthood. Remember, do not look around yourselves while you’re doing this.”

Cupping my paper in my palm, and holding it so near to my chest that my pen hit my chin as I scribbled, I wrote that I was interested in the glory of the priesthood, to be the purveyor of wisdom, to have the luxury of working, really, only one day a week, and to have a breakfast laid before you by the woman the bishop assigned to you, as she got to her duties of making sure your smocks and socks were warmed and readied.

“Boys, when you leave here today you are not to speak about what you were asked to do, or talk with your friends about what you wrote, okay?” We agreed, humbly. I folded my strip of paper as instructed and passed it along to the end of the row. Altar boys collected them there, and I watched to make sure no other eyes read what I had written, although for me there was no shame in this admission – that I wanted to be a priest of all things – and I felt the secrecy to be somewhat unsettling.

We left, chased out the door with a vow that the priests would be in touch. “Oh yes, you can be sure of that, boys! You can be sure of that!”

As I left the chapel, keeping my secret to myself, I wondered why we needed to be so furtive. Surely, I thought, wanting to be a priest was something to be proud of, not something that had to be admitted to secretly on small scraps of paper in smoky chapels, admissions that a priest hurriedly shoved into the big pockets of his black robe, all the while warning us not to breathe a word to anyone else?

Mum, Dad and Aunt Margaret – my father’s sister – cooed over the thought of having another Father McKay in the parish, there having been a PP of the same name previously, and whose memory they obviously cherished as they reminisced on how he attended to the needs of the parish in days long past, during the sepia times, and wouldn’t it be great if the next one was someone from our own family, God bless him?

“I hope you’ll come back to see us in Carrickfergus, and you don’t forget all about us when you become a fine priest,” pleaded my aunt time and again. I nodded and grinned and felt the flush of this fantasy. But I remember feeling increasingly uneasy after that morning in the chapel. The furtiveness. The secrecy. Why was this necessary?

The life of a priest did indeed look so fine, and I eagerly anticipated the day I could start training in Saint Malachy’s very own seminary, the newest building on the grounds and the one closest to the canteen, and the exit.

As a priest in the eighties, in our parish, you got a house given to you by Bishop William Philbin, or William as he would be to you then, maybe even Bill around a dinner table, you swishing your whiskey and water, him on his third brandy and brimstone, an orange, spitting, fizzing concoction that makes your nose hairs stand to attention.

And maybe he was even Bill the Bish behind his back, after your one whiskey and water too many, after you and your housekeeper have had to put him to bed after his brandy and brimstone bender.

As a priest you had a new car bought for you every time the old one looked dirty, or the model no longer looked priestly enough. And if you didn’t get for yourself a new car, you could pay willing volunteers to clean to death your old one. And the very bishop himself supplied you with that fine asexual Catholic woman, broad in heart and shoulders, her hands rugged and chapped after years of doing the work of The Lord. And you kept her with you in your fine house, her sole reason for breathing being to feed you fine food, to do your laundry, to open and sort your mail, to heat your socks.

And the people of the parish gave you money just for saying mass, the bloody eejits, for this was something Bill paid you to do anyway, so you were doubly rewarded for doing the work of God. And then moments such as deaths, and funerals, and weddings and invites to wakes and receptions and drinking and gluttony would come your way every week, sometimes many times a week, and the rota be damned. You – Father – you are the fucking rota! Every week was your week; death and weddings were your constant companions, as were the riches that followed.

And then there was the golf in Florida a couple of times a month or so, when you could leave your flock in the capable hands of colleagues like Fathers O’Hagan and Patton.

Who in their right mind would have refused the chance to live the life of a priest?

But also, who needed to ensure that this was a boy’s dream that warranted being hidden from others, a wish scribbled furtively on a scrap of paper in a dark, mournful place, it then hidden quickly in the dusty depths of a cassock pocket, beside the breath freshener mints, a Kleenex, and a knotted Rosary?