Tomorrow Has Yet To Come — by Duleek5
- Read
- Back Cover
- Review
One
September 1972. Monday morning.
Cathy had been looking forward to this day for a long time. She was four years old and it was about to be her first real day at St. Patrick’s School. She had met with her teacher Miss Spencer the previous week and she had been very kind to her. Cathy had liked her immediately. She was about to enter Junior Infants, the youngest class in all of the Irish National School system.
Cathy’s mother, Mary, was against her daughter attending a national school. She wanted her to attend the Little Sisters on the Hill. Somehow, Cathy’s father, Jimmy, managed to persuade his wife to give St. Patrick’s a chance. It was only down the road and actually a very good school. There was no need to fork out large fees for private schooling, not just yet. His daughters’ basic education would be catered for adequately within the portals of St. Patrick’s.
When Mary was a little girl growing up in rural Ireland, a fancy education was regarded as a bit of a waste for girls. Generally, the overall opinion was that girls should be married before they were 20 and starting a family of their own.
Mary married Jimmy when she was 18 and was determined she was not going to have any sons at all. Two daughters and that was definitely that. Quite a difficult task to have set herself, especially since contraception was not permitted according to the Catholic Church, abstinence was supposed to suffice, although husbands were not to be denied their rights either. It was all very confusing, under no circumstances was Mary going to give birth to hordes of children. Her small family would be given all the advantages she had not been allowed to enjoy as a child.
Jimmy wasn’t long out of his apprenticeship from the Electricity Supply Board when he decided that working for an employer all his life was not for him. Why make handsome profits for someone else? He applied and obtained a loan from the local bank and started up his own small enterprise, Corway’s Electrical Ltd.
When they were first married, they lived in the small flat above his electrical shop; it was comfortable as well as convenient for both of them. But as soon as Cathy was born, they knew they would have to move as there was no garden and it was also situated on the main street, not an ideal place to rear a young child. Mary thought that a house by the sea would be ideal and Jimmy agreed wholeheartedly.
Jimmy’s business was young and sound and as he had developed a good reputation from the outset, the bank had no problem in granting him a mortgage.
Excitedly, they searched high and low for their first home, and eventually, a house in Newville Road just below the foot of Bray Head came on the market. It was a bit run down and slightly above their price range, but they both thought it had great potential and if they lived sensibly, they could manage the repayments.
Three months later, when all the red tape had been taken care of, the family moved in. It was a red brick, four-bedroom house, approximately 30 years old, situated in a quiet and respectable area in the upper part of Bray.
The garden was a shambles but Mary would fix that up in no time. Jimmy had the place completely rewired and they redecorated with the help of Mary’s older and favourite brother Thomas who was a painter and decorator by trade.
The kitchen was large and commanded a beautiful view of Bray Head. When they were at home, they spent most evenings in the kitchen planning a wonderful future together. At the time, they didn’t have much furniture so they only used the basic rooms.
The bedrooms all had fireplaces just like the rooms downstairs. Mary wanted to remove the fireplaces in the bedrooms because she didn’t like the idea of lugging coal up and down the stairs, but Jimmy was reluctant to brick them up, as he liked an open fire. He saw Mary’s point and assured her he would do the lugging of the coal when it was necessary.
These minor points didn’t really matter, as they were happy. They had their first real home and they loved it.
The big day arrived, Cathy’s mother deposited her in a classroom filled to capacity, children everywhere, some of them crying bitterly, and others laughing alongside wistful and pull-yourself-together mothers all feverishly worrying about separation anxiety.
General mayhem surrounded her. Her eyes tried to take in everything. Books, jigsaw puzzles, building blocks with letters on them, small blackboards with chalk, paints, crayons, and a huge table that had many strange items on it. This, she was told was the nature table. To Cathy, it was a wonderful and fascinating array of objects, some she had never seen before. A great treat for her young inquisitive mind.
Large lettering depicting the ABC’s adorned the walls, battling for space with equally large pictures of numbers. A huge blackboard dominated the wall behind Miss Spencer’s desk, and what a desk! It was filled with oodles of clutter, just like Cathy’s little desk in her bedroom at home, and apparently, Miss Spencer was allowed to be untidy. It was just too much to take in all at once.
The mid-morning break provided more thrills when little cartons of milk and orange juice were dutifully passed around, along with sticky currant buns. Somehow, they tasted yummier than the ones Cathy ate at home.
No swapping of lunches brought in by the pupils was permitted at all, but Cathy saw many little hands trading things around under the tables. No one noticed or seemed to care. School was fun. She was a big girl now.
The morning passed in a flurry of excitement, meeting new children, remembering new names, distributing reading books, spelling books and of course, the endless trips to the toilet, which always had a queue waiting.
However, St Patrick’s was not to last long in the life of Cathy Corway – a little over five hours to be exact.
At the end of the school day, the bell rang loudly and all the children were told to line up in single file and walk, not run into the playground and wait by the gates.
When the gates were unlocked, a host of relieved mothers gathered up their little fledglings with great gusto, delighted they were still in one piece.
As there had been long queues in the toilets earlier, Cathy was bursting to go so Mary took Cathy’s hand firmly, crossed the road and they arrived home in no time at all where she shot up the stairs like a bullet and happily sitting on the loo, uttered five words loudly. “This is called a piss.”
Cathy’s father got an ear full that night, on and on about I told you so and a crowd of hooligans. She would not be attending St. Patrick’s again. It was decided: The Little Sisters on the Hill was to be the school that Cathy would attend from now on.
Fearful questions arose in Cathy’s young mind. Were nuns real women? To her mind, nuns always wore long dresses and long veils that covered them from head to toe. They always seemed to have a prayer book welded to their hands and big wooden rosary beads straddling their middle bits. They didn’t seem to have a waist, everything just suspended itself with some kind of helpful divine glory and they always seemed to look sad; a far cry from Miss Spencer’s smiling face.
Cathy never asked for answers to these questions, not yet anyway. Something made her keep quiet; she thought she had caused enough trouble already.
Mary made all the arrangements with the Little Sisters on the Hill and Cathy would start the following Monday. Beforehand, she had to accompany her mother on a long bus trip into Dublin to get her convent uniform, as no pupil would be allowed to attend classes without The Uniform.
The whole affair involved the fitting of gymslips (that were far too big) with the assistant saying, ‘Sure she would grow into them in no time at all.’
There was a red sash for the waist, which troubled Cathy, as she was concerned it might transform itself into wooden beads in later years. And white long sleeved shirts, which were to be worn at all times with the school tie.
A blazer, also too big, with the school emblem heavily embroidered on the breast pocket. This seemed to have no other purpose but to show off what looked like two large birds having a very unpleasant argument.
Then there was one heavy grey wool winter coat with a belt and buckle, and one grey beret with the same but smaller embroidered emblem of the fighting birds on the front, grey knee socks and the regulation black outdoor and indoor shoes.
They also had horrendous grey school knickers with enough elastic in the waist and legs to hold up the Golden Gate Bridge for a year!
Sport was mandatory, even for the youngest pupils. The nuns insisted hockey and tennis were necessary to keep body, mind and soul healthy. These sports had their own set of regulation garments.
For hockey, there was a grey wool skirt complete with an odd dividing piece dangling in the middle (probably to keep the grey knickers firmly closeted within their folds never to be glimpsed, even by accident) along with a grey shirt and the embroidered fighting birds on the sleeve.
Shorts were not permitted for tennis, but rather a white divided knee length skirt and a matching cotton blouse sufficed. No embroidered birds.
The final touch to this uncomfortable ensemble was the school uniform veil. It looked like a small section of net curtaining with elastic attached to it. This was worn while the young ladies were marched into chapel once a day, every day.
Along came the feared Monday morning, Cathy’s first day at the Convent on the Hill. Mary cordially waited in the visitors’ drawing room with her now petulant daughter clad in an ill-fitting grey mountain of woollen garments. The fighting birds perched in the correct places.
A short while later, Mother Anastasia Superior swept into the hallowed visitors’ drawing room in a flurry of black and white robes, clanking keys, wooden beads and a huge armful of terribly uninteresting looking books. She was to remove Cathy from Mary’s care and take her to her new classroom, to meet her new teacher.
Maybe there would be another Miss Spencer waiting for her, Cathy thought, as she knew the teachers in the convent were not all nuns.
For the first time since the episode in the loo the week before, Cathy laughed to herself and came to the conclusion that nuns were not actually real women. They were just different – different like big floating penguins.
Cathy’s father had read her a bedtime story the previous night about penguins. In it, they delivered the post, did little odd jobs, and were generally agreeable little characters altogether.
Two
Cathy tried to skip along the corridor beside the Mother Superior. She had never been so close to a nun before and she had questions to ask, a lot of them. That was her first mistake.
The head nun informed her that she was to walk quietly at all times. She was to speak only when spoken to, and under no circumstances was she to run or skip anywhere.
Young ladies walked, ruffians ran.
3B Junior Infants.
Behind this door, 23 little minds were gathered. Their teacher, Miss Helen, told them they had a new little girl starting today so they were all to be nice and friendly and her name was Cathy Corway. Immediately all the pupils started asking questions.
“What’s the new girl’s name?” Patricia Ferguson asked.
“Patricia, her name is Cathy Corway,” Miss Helen answered patiently.
“Miss Helen, why didn’t she start on the big orien… orien… orientation day like we did?” Belinda Connell asked in a slightly confused voice.
“Cathy has attended another school, however, she has decided she would prefer this one instead,” Miss Helen explained even more patiently.
That sounded important, this new girl must be special. None of them were new girls any more; they had been in school for a whole week already.
“Miss Helen, I heard my mammy say that Cathy Corway went to St. Patrick’s and she did something pro ... pro ... profane. It wasn’t her fault, but what does profane mean? Mammy wouldn’t tell me, she said I wasn’t to concern myself with such matters,” Fiona Murphy bellowed.
Miss Helen felt the stirrings of a tight knot fasten itself to the inside of her head. She enjoyed her job as a teacher and she thoroughly loved children. She had been educated in the same convent and she didn’t want to smother her pupils. Miss Helen believed in opening up a child’s mind, not closing it with draconian rules and regulations.
She believed every child was born with a blank tape that was continually recording and she wanted to fill those young recordings with happy memories. It was imperative to her that her students developed pleasant records from their school days. Quite a few of the nuns agreed with her, but the head nun definitely did not. Mother Superior was a staunch nun. She did everything in the same way as it had been done since she joined the order as a young woman many years ago.
The classroom door suddenly opened and instantly there was a stunned silence. Mother Superior marched in with Cathy Corway in tow. Cathy Corway the profaner.
“Miss Helen, here is your latest charge, Cathy Corway. Cathy, this is Miss Helen, your teacher.” Mother Superior turned and briskly marched herself and her wooden beads back out again.
All eyes riveted on Cathy. Miss Helen walked up to her and took her gently by the hand. She had nice soft hands, hands Cathy didn’t want to let go of. Everyone started speaking at once.
“What’s your name?”
“How old are you?”
“Where do you live?”
“Do you want to sit with me?”
“Miss Helen, the new girl should sit beside me. I’m the eldest in the class you know,” Pauline Dutton informed her teacher.
Miss Helen just smiled and asked Pauline to tidy up some of her clutter so Cathy could actually share the seat and table space beside her. Hastily, Pauline scooped up her belongings that were as usual scattered around her and piled them to one side.
“Cathy, would you like to sit beside Pauline?” Miss Helen asked her quietly.
Without answering her new teacher, Cathy moved across the small classroom and sat down slowly beside Pauline, cautiously taking in her surroundings. Room 3B was different to Miss Spencer’s classroom. There was no nature table. Miss Helen’s desk was immaculately tidy. Immaculate, Cathy had learned that particular word that day, it was the way her mother had told her to keep her school uniform; she was to keep it immaculately neat and tidy.
The walls had pretty pictures of the ABC just as Miss Spencer’s had. There were low shelves, which held storybooks. Other shelves displayed many different cardboard boxes, piles of paper, big fat crayons, and for some reason a tray with little white candles all neatly packed.
In one corner there was an altar to the Virgin Mary; it had a small red light in front of it, flickering gently. In the opposite corner, there was a smaller altar, which Cathy thought held a statue of St Francis. This one had no red light but it did have a vase of roses positioned to one side.
The blackboard wasn’t black. It was green. Was she to call it the green board? All the tables and chairs looked like Miss Spencer’s had but they were all the same colour, green. Green board, green tables, green chairs. Cathy felt a little green herself.
The morning passed without any real disturbances. Without any real excitement either. There had been some strange noises in the passageway outside. At the time, Pauline whispered to Cathy, “That’s only old Sister Bernadette. She’s just chasing her pretend dog outside and his name is Scruffs. She thinks he’s a bit naughty so she doesn’t allow him indoors during the day.” Cathy and Pauline just giggled.
The two girls had struck off together on a good note, much to the relief of Miss Helen. Earlier on, she had been a little unsure who to assign Cathy as a ‘first day partner’ but Pauline had taken on that role herself and Cathy seemed more than happy with Pauline’s self organised arrangement.
During the morning, Miss Helen watched the pair huddle together like a newfound secret society and she knew that a strong friendship was being forged. Uncannily, she also knew that the friendship would deepen and last for many years to come.
As it turned out, she was not wrong.
Three
1975
Junior Infants first term passed and so did the second and third. Senior Infants came and went and the new school year was about to commence. This year the girls had a new classroom and a new class name as they were now in First Class. They were no longer the babies of the school but they were not the seniors either. Nevertheless, First Class was an important class; it was the First Communion Class. This meant they had to learn the Catechism in preparation for their First Confession and First Communion.
Cathy thought it was all quite boring really. The other girls avidly looked forward to wearing a beautiful white dress and a wonderful white veil with a flowering wreath attached, not just elastic.
Cathy didn’t particularly like dresses or veils and her mother had given up trying to persuade her to dress nicely, to dress like a little girl should. Under no circumstances would she wear the girlie stuff her mother was so enthralled about.
The Communion Day was a day Cathy would not easily forget. Mother Superior was not impressed either. Father Muldoon was indifferent and old Sister Bernadette enjoyed herself enormously.
Special times had been organised for the girls in the school and town church. Lots of practising commenced, such as learning to genuflect in a ladylike fashion. Little girls had to learn to genuflect without showing any knickers. Knickers had taken on a new meaning to Cathy. They were something only her mother could see, and then only if absolutely necessary.
The Catechism was studied from cover to cover. They knew how to recite the Hail Mary and the Our Father backwards as well as forwards. The Commandments were forever imprinted in their young and impressionable minds. They spent what seemed like endless hours sitting in St Luke’s Church while each and every one of them learnt how to confess their sins properly in a dark confessional booth.
Of course, there was never a priest in the confessional on the practice runs; he would not be there until the ‘real’ confession which was held a week before Holy Communion day.
A good job too, because Sheila Keating shouted a lot. The complete church and surrounding areas heard how Sheila had accidentally murdered the family goldfish and blamed her sister. She also confessed that she told her brother to feck off.
One rule that had to be adhered to before any child received the Blessed Sacrament (according to Mother Superior) was enforced the night beforehand. No good Catholic could be allowed to receive Communion unless he or she had been fasting from midnight. It was this rule that caused the problems, Cathy and Pauline convinced themselves of this.
The day was bright and sunny. A total of 24 pretty girls, parents and relatives arrived at St Luke’s for the ceremony. A long Mass in Latin commenced. Hymn after hymn was sung with shrieking but beautiful young voices, and nearly one and a half hours later, they lined up in pairs in the aisle. Each child carried a spray of flowers, rosary beads and a little white candle. This was quite a lot to ask little, nervous young hands to handle.
‘Ave Maria’ thundered out from the church organ, and two by two, the Little Brides advanced towards the altar, where Father Muldoon was waiting for them. Each child genuflected without a pair of knickers in sight. Everything was going as planned and the whole congregation knelt down again.
Father Muldoon was about to give the first little girl her Blessed Sacrament when he was interrupted by a loud exclamation, “Jesus, Mary and Holy St Joseph, Bridie my Bridie she’s on fire.”
Sniff, sniff. Yes, there was a whiff of smouldering lace combined with a lot of unscheduled commotion coming from the altar.
Mrs Clark (a very large woman) thrust herself forward. She grabbed a huge vase of flowers and promptly emptied the lot over her daughter’s head. Maybe it was the shock of the cold water. Maybe it was the congregation turning every which way they could to help, as almost every person in the sanctuary was hysterical.
Mother Superior deftly separated her charges, only to find Mrs Clark in tears bent over her daughter Bridie who was lying flat out on the floor unconscious, her knickers visible for all to see!
Dr Blake was summoned from somewhere at the back of the church to attend to the now bewildered Bridie (her knickers had been quickly hidden), divine intervention again? Then, Father Muldoon just disappeared. He was later found propped up at the bar in Flemming’s pub.
Eventually the head nun decided that all the girls should go back to the convent until the unfortunate situation was sorted out and she deposited them in the school chapel with instructions to pray quietly. They were not a happy bunch of girls at all. They should be having the Communion breakfast in the nuns’ dining room and visiting relatives. They shouldn’t be back in the school chapel praying.
Pauline and Cathy were starving because neither of them had eaten anything since before midnight. They knew the customary Communion breakfast was ready and waiting for them in the nuns’ dining room, so why waste it? Hunger took over from better sense and they both left the chapel not bothering to ask any of the other girls along and slipped quietly into the dining room and shared a very pleasant breakfast with old Sister Bernadette and her imaginary dog Scruffs.
The old nun was very glad to see them; she had been waiting for quite some time for the Communion class to arrive. She wasn’t able to cope with a large bunch of girls any more so she was delighted that only two of them had turned up. During breakfast, she told them that Scruffs was old now so she permitted him to stay indoors most of the time.
Most of the girls would say hello to Scruffs when they encountered him with the old nun in the corridors. They weren’t bothered that he was invisible; he was just another part of convent life. They respected Sister Bernadette. She was too old to teach any more, but she was a fundamental part of their lives.
The girls who remained in the chapel tried to get on with what they were supposed to do pray. Sheila Keating did pray. She prayed very loudly, but it did not resemble anything like what the Catechism held between its covers. Belinda Connell decided there and then she was going to be a pilot and quiet little Macy Thompson convinced herself she was going to be a missionary of note. Fiona McLoughlin was just plain miserable.
Their day had not gone to plan and had been ruined, but they were children and children forget quickly. Three weeks later, a somewhat subdued group of girls’ received the Blessed Sacrament in a much less crowded St Luke’s, without any mishaps as this time, they were minus the candles.
Four
1978
Cathy and Pauline hated school sports. They were now lively adventurous ten year olds and had other pastimes in mind. For some time they had shared a collective passion for ponies and horses. Cathy wanted to learn to ride, it was her dream. When she first approached her mother with her request for riding lessons her mother was horrified. She told Cathy that sometimes the goings on outside the local betting shop were very distasteful indeed. She had visions of her daughter, in later life betting her savings away on some three-legged nag. She kept these imaginings to herself and was adamantly against the idea from the word go.
Cathy always knew she could twist her father around her little finger when she wanted to, so she turned to him for help. Jimmy liked the idea of his daughter learning to ride; he liked the idea very much and he set about explaining to his wife that it would be good for Cathy. She would be out in the fresh air and it was good exercise as well. Murphy’s Stables had a very good reputation and it was well within their budget.
Mary objected further on the grounds that Cathy might hurt herself. Jimmy reassured her she would be fine, carefully reminding her that Pauline had been riding for over a year already, and she hadn’t hurt herself even once. Eventually, Mary reluctantly gave in; Cathy was allowed to attend the beginners’ riding class at Murphy’s Stables. She was over the moon with happiness and phoned Pauline to tell her the good news.
Pauline was thrilled. She had actually fallen off on quite a few occasions when she first started, but Cathy’s mum didn’t need to know that. Mary would have preferred Cathy to spend more time in her ballet classes, which she had started when she was five.
Nothing comes without compromise and it was decided between the families that Pauline should attend ballet classes also. Ballet would be excellent for her deportment. She would be exposed to a milder and more refined way of life. Poor Pauline, she was continuously labelled a rebel without a cause, and Mary was sure it had something to do with the riding nonsense.
Much to Jimmy’s annoyance Mother Superior had to be consulted because with all the lessons, there wouldn’t be enough time to pursue the sports set down by the convent. Cathy was his daughter and he didn’t understand why the head nun should have any say in this matter.
Surprisingly, the nun agreed that learning to ride was a good idea. Physical education was important to her and she conceded that Cathy and Pauline would have only one hockey or one tennis lesson a week, as there was only a certain amount of hours in a day. Not great news to the girls’ ears, but better than nothing.
From then on, twice a week, Cathy joined Pauline at Murphy’s Stables and Pauline joined Cathy at Miss Smith’s Dancing Academy.
Cathy adored the soft whinnies she received from the ponies when she approached them. They nuzzled her with sweet hay filled breath and the conversations she had while grooming them, were beyond description. Her twice-weekly visits to Paddy Murphy’s stables were the highlight of her life.
To Cathy’s surprise, she started to master the art of riding very well. Miss Smith, her ballet teacher, wasn’t too happy about the idea of one of her pupils learning to ride horses, but she welcomed her new pupil Pauline Dutton, horse rider or not, with open arms.
Initially, Pauline helped Cathy with her riding as much as she could, and Cathy tried to help Pauline with her ballet. Unfortunately, Pauline was like a thundering elephant in that area. It didn’t bother Pauline, so it didn’t matter.
Pauline’s mother Celia Dutton was convinced that her rebel daughter would someday blossom into the next Dame Margot Fonteyn. She thought that ballet was exactly what was needed to develop a bit of refinement in her only daughter.