I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, TS Eliot
At 16, I was in trouble with the police. Quite a lot of trouble. There was a court case and my friend, and I made it to the front pages of the local newspaper. His mum blamed me, my mum blamed him. It was probably me.
Dave was one of the most popular kids in our class. We all wanted to sit next to him. He and I were into motorbikes and a lot of my youth was spent pushing bikes around fields, trying to get them to start and riding around in the mud. They had to be British bikes because they were the best – BSA, Norton, Greaves – despite obvious evidence to the contrary. They never worked for long.
I left school with no qualifications. In the 5th form, I was absent over 70% of the time. I would leave the house, go up to the ‘waste’, a scrub piece of forest that overlooked our house and watch mum go to work. Then I’d go back home and half an hour later, Dave would turn up on his FS1E and we would listen to Black Sabbath and drink cider.
At almost the same time everyday Mr Biggs, the ‘skive-man’, would pay us a visit. We would turn the music off, wait for him to turn up, knock and then, when he’d gone – continue with our day. He was spectacularly unsophisticated.
Fast forward 4 years and Dave is killed in a motorcycle accident. He hadn’t fastened his helmet properly. I still have dreams where he turns up, some mistake, warm hugs – the man he was meant to be but never was and wake with tears in my eyes and loss all over again.
It is another catalyst in my life. The people I meet as a result change it forever.
When I was five, my brother (who is 14 years older than me) became involved in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Soon mum, dad, and my grandfather join-up too. Mum, brought up by a God-fearing protestant firebrand, was easily swayed. She had the fear of nobodaddy beaten into her and it never left. I clearly remember the last Christmas I ever had. I remember too the last time my father dragged me from under a hedge and forced me, aged 14 to go to the Kingdom Hall. It was the last time he tried.
A painting by my friend resonated so hard with this episode that I pestered him to sell it to me. A highly reticent artist and private man, it was almost impossible until one day, he turned up and gave it to me a present. I treasure it highly.
Whether as an act of a massive rebellion or I felt genuinely I had found God, I got involved with the Catholic Church and eventually converted. [The priest who oversaw my entry was eventually uncovered as a major pedophile and is still in prison.] I was involved with a lot of Catholic youth events, people, priests. Here was a sense of belonging I’d never had before.
After a year or so, I decide that I want to become a Priest. A friendship I developed with a guy we shall call The Watson, had led to a mutual interest in the clergy. He was about to be indentured to the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA). Augustine – he of the the very apt quote:
Lord make me holy, but not yet…
He liked the ladies.
I shopped around too. There are few blog posts’ worth of stories from that time and the characters that the Watson and I met. I liked the Augustinians too and he would be a friend in place. The problem was that I had no education and needed at least 5 ‘O’ levels to be able to enter the Seminary. It’s a degree in Theology: you need some basic education.
I return home and go to the local college to enrol for some O levels. They look at my previous attainment and recommend three as a starter. The next week I join the ‘Pre-Nurse’ stream that prepares, mainly young women back then, to continue their education and enter nursing.
At about the same time I became a regular visitor to a residential centre in the Derbyshire hillsides. It was run by a charismatic priest, Fr John. A short, hearty man from Kerry who tolerated me being at the centre but often put me to work mowing the lawns or working in the kitchen. I was mostly there at weekends but the quaire-fellow always thinking about his costs, would eye me as I tucked into lunch.
Working at the centre were three other people of a similar age to me: Laura, Megan and Gareth. Laura had just finished a degree at Oxford Poly, Gareth Law at Cambridge and Megan was a local girl from a Nottinghamshire mining town. Gareth was doing youth work, Megan was the centre’s cook and Laura the priest’s housekeeper.
We would hang out at the weekends and developed a great humour around Catholicism and its rituals. Fr John was a constant fascination to us all. Also at the centre was Fr Doyle. He was the radical compared to Fr John and far more intellectual and numbered Terry Eagleton amongst his close friends. Eagleton was later to become an idol of mine as I studied English literature, Marxist literary criticism and cultural studies.
Laura was a little chubby, with thick blonde-mousey hair, full lips and an easy smile. Her eyes sparkled and wrinkled when she laughed. I liked her instantly. She was from such a different world than mine: Middle class, university education. I was an ex-biker from a mill-town with no education and a wild aspiration to join holy orders. I felt that gap acutely, would talk to Gareth and Laura about it. They didn’t care. Gareth in particular. He and Megan ended up getting married. It was a heavy mis-match of background and intellect. But they adored each other, at least for a while.
I have told this story so many times. As I write it now, the details of its beginning are hazy. Laura had a tape of Van Morrison that she played a lot: Veedon Fleece. I loved it and still do. Fair Play is a desert island disc for me. The album became the soundtrack to a weekend that remains monumental in my history.
In my usual telling, I position myself as ‘going to become a priest until I ended up on the sofa with the Priest’s housekeeper’. It always gets a reaction. Whilst this is technically correct, it is just one angle on what happened.
Over the period of that weekend, Laura and I become close and eventually start to kiss. I remember her mouth even now – full. I see her face close to mine, flushed. We are on the sofa and doing what people getting ready to take things further are doing. Laura suddenly stops me. She can’t, mustn’t. Why?
I have a boyfriend!
I pull away from her, tucking in my shirt. Laura explains that she has a boyfriend, still at university. He is coming to visit her next week. What?! Wait… I feel outclassed and confused.
It’s my fault. I’ve always been too physical with people, she says
My feelings for her had developed over the previous weeks. I liked her a lot. She was caring, warm, compassionate, smart, funny. She wrote to me and I loved her cursive writing. Fountain pen. Blue ink.
I don’t know what to do. We talk and I realise that she has quite a committed relationship with the boyfriend. They are lovers. What did she see in me and why? I don’t know the answers. Pitifully, I try to persuade her to at least continue with our intimacy without any sexual element. But she has reversed out of the emotional garage we found ourselves in. I stand there alone, looking at the oil patch of a love that had started to develop but don’t know how to clean up. We argue. I am angry. She is sorry.
Sunday night, I drive home. I too am sorry. I’m going to be a priest, I shouldn’t be fiddling with attractive young graduates. The next day I find a church and go to confession.
Ah, not to worry, says the priest
Just proves everything is working fine
But Father, I’m going to be a priest, I blurt
A disapproving blast of silence hits me through the confessional box grille.
The penance is hefty.
The following weekend, I am back at the residential centre. I hang out with Laura. She is expecting the boyfriend. I am distracted and unhappy. Eventually, he arrives and they embrace. Angry, I get into my car and I see her look back at me, worried. I slam it into gear, gravel spitting as I careen away.
That is the last time I ever see Laura. I had fallen quite in love with her and felt cheated out of a chance to have my first girlfriend. She was lovely, kind, and bold and wanted to solve the world’s food problems through farming.
A few weeks later, I’m off to Harborne in Birmingham to spend time at the Augustinian Priory there. I enjoy it greatly – a whirr of births, deaths, marriages, rushing to the hospital to administer the last rights. The priests are there for all the important moments of life – overseeing the unction of faith and its ceremonies.
After 10 days, I go to their Priory in Clare, Suffolk. It is a beautiful place, a riot of pink render. The settlement dates from the 13th century and the fathers who run it in late middle and old age. The contrast is raw. I am bored, spend time reading western novels and putting up bookshelves. The only trips are to the Sue Ryder HQ where the oldest priest says Mass. I take communion and the saliva of the old lady before me lingers on his fingertips.
A day trip to Sudbury, the nearest town to Clare, it is Beaujolais Nouveau day. For some reason, Britain’s middle class has embraced the race to get its hands on the sour grapes of new growth. Next to the wine merchant is a record shop. I go inside and start flipping through the covers. When I get to M, there are a few Van Morrison albums and suddenly, Veedon Fleece. I don’t have much money but I buy it instantly.
I return home disillusioned. Thoughts of Laura hover at the front of my mind. We exchange letters, her cursive writing on the envelope pricks my heart. I imagine her writing them, hair dripping forward over the page, cheeks pink. Slowly though, the correspondence dies.
Maybe I have a note or a single letter in my archive box in the loft. I’m hesitant to look. I try to find Laura multiple times over the years. I’ve no doubt she married the boyfriend. The Watts knows people who know her, confirms it. Come the internet I try again and come-up blank.
Some 40 odd years later, I am a member of a Facebook Fountain Pen page. It is geeky, supportive, full of genuine people. A regular contributor posts a sample of her handwriting. It looks just like Laura’s – an involuntary spasm of memory and am instantly flushed with the past.
I search Facebook again and the first result yields Laura. I am surprised to see a woman in her 50s (what did I expect – aspic?). I look through her profile and stumble across a picture of her from when I knew her. I break down, another involuntary spasm. I imagine a different life, one where she chose me. Would it have lasted – an inverse to Gareth and Megan?
It wasn’t really a choice. It was an ill-advised dalliance. Maybe something that made her realise how much she cared about the boyfriend: “Always too physical.” For me, the memory has persisted, been part of my internal and external narrative. Laura plays a pivotal role in my life. I’d never have made it as a priest – too much like Augustine. I liked the ladies too.
It takes a couple of months to summon the courage to send Laura a message. Eventually, I do and early the following morning, after a workout in the garden, I see a response. I’m not used to exercise and the new regime frequently leaves me emotional after the exertion – often for no apparent reason. Seeing a message from Laura pulls a big trigger on my emotions and I break down. We chat for a short time, exchange brief life stories. She tells me I’m a good storyteller. l’m keen to tell ‘our story’ but know that for her it’s a non story.
For me though it had been an inflexion point. Cosmologists propose the theory of a multiverse – a place where all parallel universes exist together. In one of those realities, maybe a version of me found a different path with Laura. I hope so.
Old Dutch, Bonnie Light Horsemen
I wanted to see you
I wanted to be where you are
But I got lost chasin your wild heart
Wildflower in the meadow
I’m pullin the petals off
Do you love me? Do you love me?
Or love me not?
I wanted to see you
But I couldn’t even look you in the eye
And I got a feelin
That I couldn’t shake if I tried
You know that you move me
You know that you threw a spark
You lit a flame and let a wildfire start
Wild horse on the prairie
Can’t tell if you’re scared or what
Are ya runnin to or are ya
Runnin from my love?
You know that you move me
You know that you move me and I don’t know why
And I got a feelin
That I couldn’t shake you even if I tried
I wanted to see you
But I couldn’t even look you baby in the eye
And I got a feelin
That I couldn’t shake you even if I tried
I wanted to see you…
You know that you move me…
Yeah and I got a feelin
Yeah and I got a feelin
Yeah and I got a feelin
Yeah and I got a feelin…Songwriters: Josh Kaufman
Old Dutch lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
A Liminal Life 
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