Seminary Boy. John Cornwell

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       9

      In the years before I became devout and felt called by Jesus to follow Him, I had been as wicked as was possible for a child washed in Christian baptism. Sister Paul informed Mum that I had a ‘black streak’. I was physically strong for my age, demonically restless and sudden to anger. My childhood agitation was like a fever. It was as if I was permanently waiting, on edge, for the sound of the old wartime sirens; hankering for a heart-stopping explosion.

      I suffered the stigma of one ‘lazy’ dim-sighted eye, just like Mum’s. When I was tired my eye turned inwards as if straining to see inside my brain. It provoked taunts from other children, who would imitate my affliction to my face until they knew me better. My knuckles would be covered in their blood. The nuns called me ‘sly-boots’, commanding me to look them ‘properly in the eye like a dacent fellow!’ When I looked at myself in a mirror I could see what they meant. My shifty myopic eyes were at war with each other, swivelling and blinking in a restless head. Mealtimes at home were the worst. Through poor hand–eye coordination I tended to make scraping noises, knock over cups, miss my mouth and spill food down my front and on to the floor. Eyeing me from on high, fork-hand trembling, as if at any moment she would skewer and devour me, Mum would struggle to maintain her patience. Crying out between her new false teeth, she would throw down her cutlery and set about me.

      Yet Mum herself was no less clumsy. Dishes leapt from her hands, needles pricked her fingers, the stove burnt the porridge, and our cat, despite Mum’s training regime, peed on the kitchen floor. We all of us, including the porridge, felt the avenging Egan hand. As for the cat, I have seen our poor drop-kicked Moggy, paws pedalling frantically, crash-land on the yard fence with a scream.

      After a visit to an optician I was made to wear an evil-smelling black bakelite ‘colluder’ on a pair of wire spectacle frames to blank out my good eye and so to encourage the weak and wayward one, now assisted by a lens as thick as a magnifying glass. I was always taking off the colluder. I hated the comments it evoked: ‘ ‘Ere comes Punch’s sore-eyed dog,’ quipped Uncle Mike, ever the creative and well-meaning genius of the Egan vulgarism. So Mum took to covering the good eye with a large square of sticky plaster. Since the sight in my lazy eye provided no more than peripheral vision, I was always walking into trees and lamp-posts. I would rip off the plaster, a prelude to retribution.

      Desperate for companionship, reckless of punishment and danger, I became an under-aged thug. I trailed a gang of older lads, haunting bombed-out houses and tenements. Others had been there before us, but there was always something to smash. The blasted staircases and sagging floors, especially on the higher storeys, were terrifying. My talent for atrocious mayhem earned me the respect of my elders. One day, at my prompting, four of us struggled to place an iron girder on a railway track, aiming to derail an express train bound for Liverpool Street Station. Our attempt at mass murder was fortunately spotted. I was chased by police and railway workers for throwing bricks at the windows of passing trains, thrashed by a builder for setting fire to a house he was rebuilding, hit by a car as I ran away from a shop where I had stolen a pack of cigarettes. I did a lot of hitting myself. I nearly killed the boy next door by whacking him over the head with my elder brother’s cricket bat. He had contradicted me. I lied to the nuns to get a goody-goody boy into trouble, alleging he had misbehaved on the bus. With vicious associates I assaulted a girl in a disused bomb shelter, putting our grubby hands down her knickers. She was in my class at school and she had earlier shown a liking for me. She looked at me in silent sorrow as I urged the others on.

      Was there no one in my childhood who calmed me with tokens of affection? My Aunt Rose, Tommy Cornwell’s wife, was a vivacious young cockney woman with thick blonde hair, a smoky voice and a husky laugh. She had two children of her own, Sylvia and young Tommy, but all children were her own children, and she seemed in a state of tearful, permanent wonder at their lovable natures. Her voice, full of heartfelt affection, filled me with joy. She was the light of my life, but she appeared all too seldom.

      And what of my uncles? Mum’s six brothers were garrulous egotists who loved to put children down. Only Uncle Mike, Mum’s youngest brother, displayed an affectionate interest in us. He told us jokes and would sing popular songs in a pleasant crooning voice. Dad’s three brothers were in the Royal Navy. They would appear briefly on occasional leave, smart in their spotless uniforms. They were hard men and talked with nose-blocked accents. When angry they would screw up their lips in a silent whistle. Uncle John, a submariner, could be spiteful. He had a wife, our Aunt Edie, who wore a wig, but they had no children.

      Uncle John: ‘How would you like a tasty bar of chocolate, Jack?’

      ‘Yes please, Uncle John.’

      ‘Well, I can’t give you one see Jack ‘cos I ain’t got none!’

      Then he would hoot with laughter, looking down on me with a mad gleam in his eye.