Here’s the scene: it’s the mid-19th century, the bleakest of bleak Indiana winters. A French priest, Father Edward Sorin, accompanied by seven brethren, is trekking along the path of the Wabash River. Eventually, their destination is reached. The property consists of a shed, a clapboard building and a log cabin. The ground is icy, the topography, like Norfolk, very flat. Anyone else would go straight home.
But they stay, and build what has become the University of Notre Dame, an institution embracing two harmoniously coexisting religions: American football and Catholicism. It’s a monument to Gothic architecture, a paean to perfection in its immaculately maintained campus. My husband has taught history here for the last 15 years.
I often think of Fr Sorin’s travels to this empty part of the Midwest. The approach now to a modern traveller seems no less rigorous. The journey from Chicago, after a long flight, feels interminable. The toll road, dull and rutted, inspires cries of “Are we nearly there?” in the most grown-up of adults. The miles never appear to decrease, and desperation descends.
And then, suddenly – almost too suddenly – the exit sign to Notre Dame looms, and one inevitably misses it. Driving through darkened nothingness, there is the distinct impression of being a long way from anywhere. I’m used to American campuses – Northeastern, Brown, Tufts – but Notre Dame is quiet, contemplative, sepulchral. Except on game days.
In a moment of madness, encouraged by low property prices, we purchased a duplex apartment overlooking the campus. It cost the same as a small garage in London, and has four bathrooms, which, unlike our English plumbing, work perfectly, except when the man above us empties his tropical-fish tank. The development was intended for members of faculty who, like my husband, considered anything longer than a ten-minute walk to work too long a commute. But his colleagues seem to prefer life in outlying towns, or even Michigan, a 15-minute drive away, and an hour behind.
Our neighbours turned out to be almost all Notre Dame alumni who have made good. In some cases, extremely good. They fly in on private jets for a few weekends a year for a football game and a party, and the rest of the time their apartments remain empty. But when they arrive, boy, do they party. One moment, it’s as quiet as the grave, the next it’s like a Downing Street lockdown gathering on speed.
It’s a beer-fuelled cacophony of hotdog excess. Games of any sort are not really me, and I know nothing about football of the American kind, so I sit on my balcony observing this mayhem. I feel I am, rather like the tropical specimens in the apartment above, a fish out of water.
Once, a neighbour kindly asked me to a pre-game party. But it was like one of those nightmares where you dream you are invited to a wedding and find yourself sitting naked in church. For starters, I should have known that a raccoon-trimmed cashmere sweater was the wrong garment. I had selected it that morning from my wardrobe, imagining it was an homage to the frontier spirit of the states.
Everyone else was in Notre Dame sportswear, emblazoned with esoteric slogans in big, confident lettering. I stood forlornly in the corner. I attempted small talk with other partygoers but was mortified when they continued to scroll through their phones. A man asked me if I’d like a drink. White wine would be lovely, I replied. No wine, he said, only beer.
Ah. Then he asked me what soccer team I supported back home. He liked the English game, he said. I struggled, then remembering a sign I had seen while driving though south-east London, replied, “Millwall.” “Really?” He exclaimed, then walked away. Finally, a small girl approached.
“You’re English, right?” she asked. “What school in England teaches you how to be a princess?” “What an interesting question,” I said, patronisingly. I paused, then thinking of HRH the now-Princess of Wales, suggested Marlborough. “Where?” she queried, her eyes narrowing. I adopted a US pronunciation in order to aid better understanding: “Marlboro.” “Huh,” she said knowingly, “That’s just a cigarette brand.” And she walked off, too. I left the party, dispirited, and returned home, clearly a social failure.
But no experience should ever be wasted in life, and in an unusual case of precocity, my first novel is to be published this year, a few months before my 68th birthday. Away Weekend is, I hope, a comedy of manners, a tale of the differences between the Americans and the English. And it’s partially set in a mythical, football-playing Catholic university in Indiana: All Saints, founded by Brother Pepe many years ago. Any resemblance to actual places is entirely coincidental, of course.
Away Weekend is published by Quadrant Books on 21 March.
This article first appeared in the March 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our multiple-award-winning magazine and have it delivered to your door anywhere in the world, go here.
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