13. To St Edwards

During the next two years I spent the nine months from March to December in St Edwards school in Milsington, then a suburb of Simla. In old age, trying to puzzle coherency out of jigsaw-piece memories, the first, unprompted images I recover are not of particular events, scenery or people, but intense sensations that seem to capture particular periods of my life, - memorial equivalents of complex and distinctive background smells. I think that memory theorists, like myself, have failed to discuss how we can have an intense, diffuse awareness of a particular time-period before we are able to drag particular images, events or people into mind. Thickets of neurons in our brains store billions of particular images of our past lives but, at any moment, we may fail to focus our spotlight of consciousness on any single, specific scene, person or happening. While we try to remember any defined thing, we also seem to activate penumbrae of associated information that we experience as the characteristic flavour, or aroma of a particular time. I can re-live the diffuse feeling of being 32 or 55 before I focus on any particular place, person or event from these periods. My awareness of my time at St Edward’s is of year-scapes that I sense, but do not see, like a sailor out of sight of land, recognising smells of winds, flowers, foliage, guano, smoke and industrial waste, characteristic of an invisible familiar place

Linear time is possibly the most trivial dimension that we use to package, and so unwrap, our past lives. My global awareness of my time at St Edwards is a miasma of densely packed boys with notes of curried sausages and gravel-dust. The first details I see are two rectangular, identically grey, pebble-dashed four-story building blocks facing each other across a paved yard. One is stacked classrooms, the other stacked living space. On the top floor of the living block the Irish Brethren have their private rooms and there is a small chapel. The two floors below are child dormitories and washrooms and the lowest floor is two halls, one where we eat and the other for homework and indoor loafing. Between the buildings is a concrete yard and, around and below this are steep slopes broken by fields for hockey, cricket and football. These are large, rectangular, surfaced with knee-lacerating gravel and penned by tall, child-proof wire-net fences. The living block has a sloping roof with a concrete cross set in a circle sticking up at one end. The top right hand sector of this circle has broken off. Even in full sunshine all of the walls are grey. As my mind turns upwards I see more steep hillsides covered in huge, dark-green conifers and, above these, sky rinsed to faded Virgin-Mary-mantle blue.

The first particular memories I can evoke are of people, and the most significant of these are the Irish Brothers who were our keepers. They are uniformed in white robes, but without dog collars, and I see them in tough agricultural working shoes rather than meek apostolic sandals. All seem self-assured, some grimly alert and a few cosy and avuncular. Congeniality is deceptive because, like Wild-West gunslingers, each carries a weapon at his belt – a personal leather strap like the grey-brown tongue of a Komodo Dragon, only longer, thinner and welted with heavy stitching.

Punishment-straps feature in all memoirs of Irish Brother schools, such as those by James Joyce and Brendan Behan. Jocularly called “pandybats”, they are crafted to inflict significant, but not outrageous, pain. Thousands of Christian Brothers billeted all over the world each owned, and daily used, at least one such strap. It follows that designing , crafting and selling them must have been a thriving little business. Were they advertised in brochures in order of price, style and effect? (choices of “The Bruiser”, “The Stinger” and “The Tingler”). Like canes that used to be purpose-made for use in English public schools these are tools, intelligently crafted to hurt children in considered ways using clinical violence rather than impulsive slaps or battery with random objects such as rulers, books or blackboard erasers.

Individual Brothers’ strapping styles reflected their personalities. Brother Gleason spent every day teaching my class all that we learnt at St Edwards about Latin, Maths and Roman Catholicism; (other belief systems were not discussed because they were heretical and so irrelevant nonsense or evil wickedness). Every evening Gleason would set us homework to be done in our downstairs indoor living area and, first thing next morning, he would run through all of it with each of us in turn. Those who made mistakes were told to stand against a classroom wall and to remember the totals of their errors. When Gleason had questioned all of us he would draw his strap from its hook on the belt of his robes and we would come up to him, one at a time, in a friendly way, and remind him how many mistakes we had made so he could hit the palms of our hands, alternately left and right, once for each error. He worked patiently and seriously, like a craftsman using a mallet, so that all strokes were equal and not very hard. This routine meant that he would hit each of us at least once a day. If asked, we would have said that although we would rather he did not do this it was no big deal. Brother Gleason’s workmanlike composure left us no more resentful of him than he was angry with us.

Gleason’s indifferent strapping stung our hands but not our spirits - but he was exceptional. Boys delight to provoke people in charge of them because making adults lose control achieves a tiny advantage. Brothers who realised this began to wish to cause, pain and then to begin to crave, inflicting it to counter small provocations. . Scripts for unhappy interactions could become very complicated. Fooling and giggling in Dormitory before lights out was usually normal, tolerated behaviour but, one night, I became over-excited and noisy. I had no thought of provoking Brother R, who was in charge, but he grabbed me, thrashed my buttocks as if he were in some way relieving a desperate need, and made me stand, stinging, by my bed as an example. A friend passed by and sympathized but this kindly error made me suddenly so sorry for myself that I released tears I that had been proudly suppressing. This was not the last move in a strange game. Next day Brother R was on playground duty and I sneaked up to him and humbly apologised for my bad behaviour. He was visibly, and deeply embarrassed and I was maliciously delighted to see this. The dynamics of aggression are at least as complicated as those of affection.

The boys were aged from 9 to 17, older than those in Naini Tal and mostly affable. I do not remember that we bullied each other but noted an odd phenomenon recorded in diaries of men shut up for long periods with unchanging company as in Antarctic bases or in submarines. Pairs of individuals helplessly fall in hate for no reason that either can explain. These unhappy passions might drag on for months while they loomed for consummation in a physical scuffle. Physical climaxes were predictable by all onlookers and so were well spectated but, when they happened they were quite dull because the Haters did little damage to each other. I remember that a pleasant boy, Sanjiv Gupta, and I fiercely hated each other for weeks until a moment when we at last gained enough spirit to scuffle and were separated and fitted with boxing gloves before being allowed to go on trying to hurt each other as best we could. We tried our clumsy best but pathetically failed, to general derision by the few onlookers. It was a surprise that Sanjiv began to cry. Afterwards he explained that this was because nobody watching had cheered him on. We were all embarrassed.

As the Christian Brothers School Prospectus promised, Roman Catholicism was the core of the school experience, and so also of my memories. The Catechism book from which we were taught was bigger than the one the nuns had used, but had many of the same illustrations. The one I best remember showed four souls, drawn as cosy ovals. The first, in the top-left of the page, gleamed bright with sinlessness as an advertisement for a holy detergent. It belonged to an unaware infant, or to an older child who, incredibly, had led an entirely sinless life or, most probably, it belonged to a seasoned sinner who had just had it laundered by making a Good Confession without subsequently pausing for even a single impure thought. The next, on the top right, was only slightly speckled by minor or “venial” sins: a few motes of envy, spots of lust and a smudge or two of mild pride. On the third, at the bottom left, masses of venial sins had merged to almost solid black with only tiny islands of white – like an ominous X-ray image of a terminal, progressive pathology. Even this severely sullied soul was not doomed to Hell; a few millennia in Purgatory could scorch it clean for Heaven- Check-In. The bottom-right soul was something quite else. It had been completely steeped in black by a single Mortal Sin. Mortal sins are quite hard to manage: an impulsive murder would not be enough. In your frenzy, as you slashed or battered away, you would also have to consciously realise, not only that this was a very bad thing to be doing but also, and most specifically, that God did not like it at all and that you cared nothing for his pain or even relished his discomfort. Moreover, having achieved these insights, you would have to be aware of them and to deliberately ignore them. At this point, unless you could achieve a lightning swift solitary “Act of Perfect Contrition”, or race to find a priest and gabble a good confession, sudden death could instantly jerk you into Hell without quibbling or reprieve.

Sin explained to children (from Pinterest) https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/341499584223808297/

Worse even than Fornication (which we did not clearly understand but which got an enticingly attractive write up) was an obscurely pedantic sin that seemed to be no fun at all. On the authority of St John the Divine the ultimate transgression “The Sin Against the Holy Ghost” as we understood it, cannot, anyhow, be forgiven. Fortunately it is very complicated and intellectually demanding. It requires a legalistic mind and remarkable determination: full acknowledgement of reality of inspiration by the Holy Spirit while consciously rejecting, or even mocking this revelation. Even now I worry, poignantly, that 75 years after Brother Gleason first warned me, that by writing as I now do I am committing this ultimate, unforgivable lapse.

This view of the Universe was extremely scary because, at any moment a random accident could force death of a body housing a soul that was, albeit only momentarily, disgustingly blemished, and hurtle it into torture beyond the end of time. The only way to dodge this horror was to be scrupulously aware of, and precisely enumerate all one’s transgressions and formally repent them so that tallies become positive rather than negative markers. This process of earnest self-criticism was called “examining your conscience”, and the most cowed of us would do this diligently, earnestly recalling, and regretting, every single transgression that we could remember so that, if and when a distinguished moment found us - as in the end it certainly must - we would make our final soul-trips with fresh, clean, self-authenticated Passports to eternal happiness. I do not think that any of us were unaffected by this friendly advice, or neglected precautionary cleansing at least once a day. The downside of spiritual hygiene was permanent guilt throughout every day of your life. If you were not sure whether particular self-discoveries were spiritually lethal it was wiser to err, safely, and briefly, than to be abruptly and unaware hurtled into eternal agony. This routine was called “ examining your conscience”, and although ceaselessly doing it might make you as miserable for all others as for yourself well….. surely depressive anxiety throughout a transitory life is a trivial burden compared to a choice between the alternatives of eternal agony or a five-star eternity?

This conscientious soul-searching that the catechism recommended also made us wonder what sins the Irish Brethren managed to commit and what, if any, questionable jollies they might squeeze into their constrained lives? We thought certainly Impure Thoughts and possibly even Masturbation; perhaps even seizures of Envy and Pride. Did the Brethren, in their private living-rooms at the top of the dormitory- block, fall into helpless hatreds with each other like school-boys in dormitory fights or the monks in Browning’s bitter Soliloquy of Spanish Cloister-Phobia? Did they abandon themselves to mutual passions, hugging each other’s hairy, brotherly bodies and lovingly flailing each other with their personal punishment straps? Since my un-aware childhood more than seventy years of media exposures have suggested that child abuse was the delinquency of choice among the world-wide Irish Brethren but we experienced only weak hints of this.

The sunny side of the Catechism was the marvellous advantage that it explains the entire Universe and, given some dubious assumptions, also makes it seem acceptably fair. There is no such thing as Divine injustice. The rules are clear and everyone gets precisely the rewards or punishments they deserve. Present inconveniences are contemptibly transient and, however unpleasant and unfair your brief life may seem, you have a good chance of a prize in the Glory Sweepstake. In which case your current discontents are trivia and, if Paradise allows memory failures, you will forget them within an aeon or so.

The Catechism-Universe has the further attraction that it describes a very social totality of being, such as Bonobo chimps would understand and relish, and it completely resolves awkward questions about the Meaning of Everything. We live in Middle Earth, from which we, and everybody we know, and may possibly love, must die and disappear. All of our “disappeared” are, nevertheless, still in closer contact than they ever were in life because they remain not only eternally conscious, but alert to monitor our brief lives with a new depth. Now that they are dead they can be perfectly and completely aware of all of the embarrassing delinquencies that we would love to hide from them. Some sources believe that the dead can even register our most private thoughts. Having your dead Grandmother continuously aware of the details of your impure or aggressive fantasies is not a trivial social constraint. So, we can continue to communicate with the dead, in our minds, as effectively as we once did with hands, tongues and throats. If they are scorching in Purgatory, (and the odds are high that they are) we can bribe their favourable regard by offering prayers to earn them early-release. Surely, at any hour of the day or night? So death does not end communication with everybody you have ever known. Indeed it makes it more unremitting, complete and intense - though, sadly, mainly one way. For all your earthly life you continue to pile up emotional obligations to other humans, just as when you were tiny.

Some hints that the Brethren accidentally dropped suggested that they suffered the same trivial, but potentially literally soul-rotting, boredoms as we did. During one of our rare supervised week-end walks into Simla town one of us found, on a road-side, a cast-off bit of automobile electric equipment. We had no idea what this dirty object had been, or how it could be adapted for any amusement, but its enigma suggested that it might have play-potential. I bought it for two bananas, kept it under my pillow although it stained the sheets, and twiddled with it uselessly until I was spotted by Brother Gleason who was thrilled to identify it as a cast-off motor-car-engine alternator and, very politely, asked me if he could have it. His civility appeared to leave this option open but I could not refuse and, since I had become bored with enigmatic uselessness I handed it over. He carried it away, smiling happily, to begin his own futile fiddling.