On 5 November 1962, my father, a retired naval commander, wrote to my headmistress.
Dear Mother Shanley,
I am disturbed at Elisa’s continued bad conduct. I have no doubt that you are justified in stopping her going out, but it does not seem to have much effect. She writes that she is to be fined £5 for climbing on a roof. I really don’t see the point of this punishment: it means that her parents will have to pay, and in my view it is the responsibility of the convent to devise a suitable punishment to deter the child from breaking the rules.
She appears to be taking her religious duties in a very flippant manner, and my wife (a communicating member of the Church of England) is even more worried about it than I am. On the other hand, the child is obviously happy and particularly enjoys the Literature and French lessons. My wife is away on a cruise on Cretan waters at the moment but returns on the 15th of this month. She was much impressed with Rhodes and the old auberges of the Knights of Malta.
Yours sincerely,
Willy Segrave
I was 12, and was at a Society of the Sacred Heart school as a weekly boarder. I was enjoying myself being naughty with my three best friends. We would devise ways of missing Benediction: once we hid in a haystack, another time in the gym. But now two of us had been caught on the school roof, which was serious.
Dad’s letter had accused me of being flippant about religious duties, but he had set a peculiar example. He took us to Mass every Sunday but was often in a bad temper. He called the huge plaster Hand of God dangling over the altar in our modern church “a ruddy great slab of meat”. He strode with us to the front and gave my two younger brothers orders such as, “Strike your breast, damn you!” at the Confiteor and, “Bow your head, you little fool!” at the Consecration.
He seemed furious that one parishioner, who taught my brothers French, was always first up to Communion. He referred to “Holidays of Obligaggers” – his mother, when he was a midshipman, would apparently always remind him of these – and he even told a joke about a telegram to the Pope: “Cancel Easter, we have found the body.” But when he died at 64 he had a Requiem Mass at the same Uckfield Catholic Church he always took us to.
Nevertheless, it was a surprise when my youngest brother, who died in November 2021, left instructions for a Catholic Requiem Mass. He had been expelled from Ampleforth for selling cannabis to sixth-formers while he was in the fifth, and as far as I knew he wasn’t particularly devout. My Jewish sister-in-law and her Irish Catholic friend went with me to my local priest to arrange the Mass. My sister-in-law wanted “Jerusalem”, and “I Vow to Thee My Country” sung, and also a Keats poem – “To Sleep” – which my brother had read to her; I chose a recording of “Ave Maria”. There would be eulogies by me, and by my son who was fond of my brother. Fr Jonathan would read out the eulogy written by my sister-in-law. In his house, where we discussed it all, he seemed handsome and dashing – like the priest in the The Thorn Birds. He was imaginative and adaptable about our requests.
On the day, two non-Catholics were so impressed by the service they considered converting and a lapsed Catholic was tempted to return. Fr Jonathan was pleasantly surprised to see literary celebrity Julian Fellowes and his wife, Emma, and puzzled by four burly security guards – was a famous politician coming incognito? No – alas – my brother had become a cocaine addict and was out of his depth; the guards had been employed towards the end of his life to stop predatory drug dealers coming to his house and happened to have liked him.
These days I often go to Mass with my son near where he lives, and then to coffee afterwards. There is a welcoming atmosphere; he has Asperger’s and doesn’t have many friends. One lady, like me, was at a Sacred Heart school. We agree that nowadays nuns get a bad press thanks to scandals such as the Magdalene Laundries, but we have good memories of the nuns who taught us. She tells me there are 25 different nationalities in the parish and I see that the church is always full.
My son, who never met my father but idolises him, has some of his eccentricities: glancing ostentatiously at his watch during Mass; turning around if a child pipes up; wearing a Russian hat till I remind him to remove it. Often I imagine I am standing again beside my father and my brothers as once I did each Sunday – I was 24 when he died; my last brother was 19.
Dad didn’t have to pay the £5, by the way. Instead, I was gated that weekend and missed the première of Lord Jim to which another school friend – whose aunt knew its star, Peter O’Toole – had invited me.
Elisa Segrave is the author of The Girl from Station X: My Mother’s Unknown Life
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