Last night we watched My Left Foot, in which Daniel Day-Lewis plays the real-life Christy Brown, born to a family of thirteen in a Dublin slum with severe cerebral palsy. To his parents, it’s out of the question that he should be abandoned in an institution, but they cannot afford the home care and treatment that would help him. He can neither walk nor talk so is treated as a mental defective, till it dawns on them that he’s intelligent, and with his left foot can draw and write on the floor. Eventually he gets professional assistance, has a stormy adolescence and matures into a celebrated painter and writer.
Do you ever find that you don’t get round to reading a book, or watching a film, till the time is right for you? I was somehow frightened to watch this one till now. And here I am before five in the morning, finally inspired enough to continue my own memoir from where it left off a year ago. The various episodes comprising my birth to age fourteen are all in the archives of this blog, neither contiguous nor chronological, but never mind that for now. Each is written so as to be self-contained.
It was only today, more precisely at four in the morning, waking up in the silence of this cosy house, that I realized for the first time the significance of what happened when I was fifteen. I’d lived in a real family home for only a year, for till I was fourteen I lived with my mother in rooms in big rented houses, with or without a stepfather; or at boarding-school. Then at last the second stepfather got us a little house all to ourselves, from which I could walk each day to school, and I looked forward to being settled. As I say, it lasted a year, for at fifteen I left home, never to return.
I was sent to lodge in the country cottage of Mr & Mrs Jenkins. My mother knew Mrs J from the Spiritualist Church. Mr J had been an invalid since the first World War, when his lungs were half-wrecked by poison gas. His breathing was always laboured, and every so often he’d have to clear his throat with a cough that rattled eerily inside him; but he was a genial man, patient with his disability. Mrs J was capable and kind, but weighed down with work. She had to go out most days to earn their keep, and be housekeeper when she returned home.
I fitted in well to their routines. I was fed, my clothes washed, but I don’t remember details like that. My parents had done the business arrangements and I didn’t have to bother with rent. I must have had money for bus fare to school and so forth but don’t remember that either. I had a small downstairs room which I may even have kept tidy, for I had only my clothes and schoolbooks. In the evening I had homework to do, but I couldn’t do it in my room when winter came unless I used the portable paraffin (kerosene) stove which tainted the air and steamed up the windows. Essentially, the house had a single heat source: the kitchen range. Glowing logs formed the centre-piece on which a blackened kettle or cooking pots could be laid or hung; and there were oven compartments either side, more or less as in my illustration. Washing would be hung to dry around it, and we would find places to sit which balanced the chill draught from the door and the radiant heat from the range. The armchairs were well-worn, covered with hand-knitted patchwork and provided with extra cushions to fill the sagging parts. In the evening I would find a corner where I could write essays or read Shakespeare and Molière, or Professor Previté-Orton’s Shorter Cambridge Medieval History; or work out problems in differential and integral calculus. In the same room, Mr and Mrs Jenkins would receive their visitors who came round to play cribbage, a card game scored with a peg-board – they used match-sticks, and punctuated their play with expressions peculiar to the game like “and one for his nob”. The air was probably thick with tobacco, because I recall Mrs J having a yellow-stained moustache from her habit of leaving the lit cigarette between her lips. 
And every evening at 7 they would listen to The Archers on the radio, an agricultural soap opera that continues to this day as an “everyday story of country folk”.
The reason I had to leave home was that the home left us; and that was because my stepfather’s job had left him. He was made redundant and found no suitable jobs on the Isle of Wight so he got one near London, at a much lower salary, but then my mother got a job there too, so they were no worse off than before. I had recently taken my public examinations (GCE ‘O’ Level) a year early, with outstanding results. It wasn’t a good time to change schools, so my parents arranged for me to stay on the Island as I have described. In the holidays I had little alternative but to stay with them in their bungalow in Staines; but it was never home to me.
One day I was summoned to the Headmaster’s study. What had he found out? I was nervous that he might have found some of my writings and drawings lampooning him. He wasn’t a man for caning boys. He could quell them singly or en masse, with his sharp weapons of wit, scorn or silence. It was precisely because he awed us so instantly in face-to-face encounters that we had to make fun of him behind his back. In retrospect I’m sure that he wouldn’t have been offended by the lampooning: would have revelled in it, more likely. On this occasion he was in a genial mood. When we got to the main agenda, he looked me keenly in the eye and asked “What do you think of life?”
I was baffled, caught in his gaze with nothing to say, unaware of what he was getting at. He just kept repeating the question, till I got more and more uncomfortable. Was he asking my philosophy of life? As it happened, I had recently become interested in certain books, quite unconscious of any theme they might have had in common: The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Analects of Confucius, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and some commentary on St John’s Gospel. But I wouldn’t have known how to use any of that to answer his question, even if it had occurred to me. In the end I stammered something naïve like “I think one has to be as good as one can, and …” letting the words trail off into silence.
At last he was satisfied with my response: he who was a bard for Christ, always quoting some noble verse of Chaucer, Milton or Wordsworth, extolling the twin ideals of a disciple of Jesus and an English Gentleman-Warrior, a kind of St George perpetually slaying dragons.
So then we really got down to business. He mentioned discussions he’d been having with my parents, which had reached a satisfactory conclusion, namely, that he would award me a unique scholarship, to last until the end of my schooldays: offering me free tuition, my parents contributing for my board only. The deal was that I should go to the new junior boarding school at Swainston House, to assist the housemaster with looking after the boys there, specifically their games, outings, daily routines, detentions, Scouts, music and so on: anything outside the teaching curriculum. Each day I would be transported to the main School where I would continue to attend the Sixth Form as before. Was I prepared to take it on?
I was.
a wayfarer’s notes 
wow you had an amazing childhood! This makes me feel pretty deprived of intelligence and experience! But your experiences give me knoweledge. You should seriously consider publishing these memoirs one day.
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Yes most certainly I agree with YesMeNo. All this certainly needs to be stuck together into a book.
Looks like you have bounced back to good health, Vincent!
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Hereby I grant you copyright permission to use any of my comments, responses or anything in my blog (provided you acknowledge) in your book if you wish to and it fits in with the flow
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Deeply satisfying, Vincent. Now I begin to understand your spiritual qualities. I had studied a subject as deeply, and received scholarships for it, but unfortunately the favorite subject of my youth was making war.
Please indulge yourself further, and do take time if you want to dwell somewhat on your favorite books.
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fascinated with your revelation that you'd forgotten this until now… and wondering… what part was forgotten? That you did this deal in exchange for tuition? That you lived there at all? Or is the forgotten bit yet to be revealed?
memory is such a slippery thing…
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Hayden, I didn't forget anything! It is just that till the other day I did not realize that it was at age 15 that I left home. I had thought that my vacation visits to that parental bungalow in a strange distant town meant I still had a home till 21. A technical point, you might think, as to whether I considered it home or not.
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Thanks Marc. It’s very easy to indulge myself with all sorts of vividly-remembered details, but the Muse pretty much insists on a tight narrative structure that moves the story along with the circumstantial detail pruned to illustrate the nature of the journey through life. It takes a great deal of elapsed time to understand that, though when it gets going the process of remembering and drafting does reveal new insights. It is like rewriting one’s past as the shamans claim one can do (without falsifying it).
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Reading here gives me quite a new perspective!
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ahhhh, that makes more sense! thank you for clarifying….
interesting memoir….
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Some time ago, the book that made a considerable impact on my attitude to “communication” was “Skallagrigg” by William Horwood.
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Boy, Vincent, I catch your drift and how and feel the pull of a lee shore.
It's a matter of bread crumbs, trails, and just enough detail methinks. How to choose between what to dwell on. Blog posts are a luxury. In this post, for example, you used pictures of the like-stoves they had in where you stayed, and they convey everything to go along with the so-smart, honest, and well-meaning boy you were back then and still are.
And hey, you sent me off on a spiritual journey, made me take it up again, and it's great!
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again, Vincent, you write a fascinating post with so much to think about…
having recently moved and finding myself very out of sorts lately i am struck by this:
“It wasn’t a good time to change schools, so my parents arranged for me to stay on the Island as I have described. In the holidays I had little alternative but to stay with them in their bungalow in Staines; but it was never home to me.”
…it leaves me wondering about home…what makes us feel at home or that we are at home…i wonder what prevented this experience from feeling like home for you… was it simply an absence of those you loved? …a lack of welcoming on the part of those you stayed with? … something else entirely?
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Dear Joanne, you ask a very valid question and I must apologize for answering it evasively.
You have questioned what lies behind the badly-sculpted figleaf draped across part of my narrative. Ah, well you see it's not my intention to write a “misery memoir”, as they are known in the trade. We have a chain of newsagents/bookshops here called WH Smith, whose shelves include a genre they label “Tragic Life Stories” – usually exaggerated by their authors to cash in on the publishing phenomenon started by Dave Pelzer in the nineties.
I prefer the figleaf sometimes. Though not an expert in this form of sculpture, I can confess (this is a trailer for a future chapter, maybe) to having commissioned a figleaf for the celebrated statue of David by Michelangelo: the original, held in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence!
By way of validating this claim, I can tell you that the classic method of faking marble was used: plaster of Paris sandpapered smooth with olive oil rubbed in. A more modern method was used to hang it around the loins of David: a piece of nylon fishing line. Naturally we (the film-maker and I, his sole assistant) had to get permission from the curator. However, when I brought the sculptor along to measure the relevant parts in the first place, the museum attendants had not been warned and thought we were a pair of perverts, embarrassingly for me. They refused our request to climb up on a stepladder and examine David with a tape measure. My enterprising sculptor was undeterred. He measured David's big toe instead; then bought a postcard of this most famous of Renaissance art objects on the way out, to extrapolate the size he needed by simple arithmetic.
In this case of course the figleaf wasn't my idea. Leo Rogelberger of Coronet Films Chicago was following his script. He was producing a movie to be distributed to schools and explained that there might well be objections in the Southern USA to full frontal male nudity. To be on the safe side, we did two sets of takes, with figleaf and without (and had to do this filming at night when the gallery was closed). On another occasion, we had to spend the entire night locked in the Battisteria whilst filming the famous bare-breasted “Night” and “Day” reclining statues, and the statues of the various Medicis (Lorenzo and I think his father). We were locked in because we could not afford to hire attendants to watch over us and make sure we didn't steal anything.
So, I know about figleaves. They can be rough & ready, but it doesn't matter as long as they do their intended job.
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dear vincent,
excellent piece. i guess everybody has an interesting and magical childhood. the only thing that we lack is to transcribe it when we are adults. the fact that you are able to do it, speaks your love for the language and your happy memories of your formative years. will be waiting for more. good luck.
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..the perspective you create, from there to here and back, builds such an energy of appreciation..living resolve..
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Ghetufool, it's an astute observation to say that everyone has an interesting and magical childhood, though how can we know that it's true?
It is not easy to extract the happy memories, any more than it is easy to find metal amongst the mud and ore. There is a process of prospecting and extraction, and it takes much time.
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Brad4d, yes, “from there to here and back”. It takes that round trip to complete the appreciation. The past cannot be remembered except in the present. Remembrance is forever filtered. And therein lies a mystery.
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Davo, apologies for belated comment. have just checked out Skallagrigg and so understand your mention of it – on the day that David Cameron's 6-year-old son with cerbral palsy has died.
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[…] New School The school yard He was a veray parfit gentle knight Memoirs Continued – At Mrs Jenkins’ Head’s Sermon at St Thomas’ Church July […]
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