CATHOLIC SCHOOLBOY

The following account is extracted from preliminary drafts of Schettini's memoir, The Novice.

We were waiting for a long-overdue teacher to arrive for class. The longer we waited, the noisier we got. After ten or fifteen minutes it had become complete bedlam. Suddenly a warning went up: “McGuire! McGuire!” Dark robes suddenly billowed outside the window and within moments the full six-foot-six frame of Father McGuire – senior dean of discipline – filled the doorway. He was a master of intimidation, corpulent but not soft – the only teacher for whom no nickname would do.
    There was no hesitation, no time to breathe. Like everyone, I was desperately trying to get back to my place, straighten my tie and tidy my books. Without raising his voice in the least he cut through our clatter like a knife through butter. “What’s the meaning of this?”
    His eyes darted from one face to another. There was no hiding from McGuire. We stood to attention, eyes down. When the last speck of dust had settled he evaporated from the doorway and reappeared at the master’s desk, repeated in the quietest voice imaginable, “What is the meaning of this?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question. He would provoke one of us to say something – anything – and then use it against us. He was a brilliant interrogator.
    I felt the blood drain from my head. It became ice cold, as if it no longer belonged to me. McGuire walked right up to me. “You look pale, Schettini. Are you ill?”
    I wondered how long I could stay standing. McGuire was well-known to pick on one boy and make an example of him. “Thank you Father. I’m a little … I’ll be all right.” A cold sweat moistened my forehead.
    He stared right into me, as if I were trying to make a fool of him. But he just said “Hmm,” and carried on walking, up and down each aisle, stopping systematically to bore into each boy’s eye sockets.
    Once b ack at the master’s desk he asked, as if he didn’t know, “For whom are you waiting?”
    Some brave soul said, “Mr. Hayward, Father.”
    “Mr. Hayward has been unexpectedly called away,” he said. “I shall conduct this class.”
    For the first time he looked irritated, went to the window and scanned the empty grounds. He turned back to us and said, “Sit.”
    At last, the blood returned to my head, making me warm and dizzy.
    His idea of conducting a class was harder on us than on himself. “You will all write one hundred lines,” he said, picking up a piece of white chalk and writing the line with unerring legibility on the blackboard: “I shall wait quietly and patiently in between periods.” With any other teacher the word ‘period’ would have provoked instantaneous schoolboy sniggering, but now there wasn’t even a shared look of complicity. “I will read each and every line, and they will all be legible. Do you understand me?”
    We spoke in clear, strong unison: “Yes Father.”
    He rubbed his hand on the front of his habit, leaving behind a dusting of chalk. We took out exercise books and pens and got down to it.
    “I shall return,” he said ominously. On his way out he stopped in the doorway, turned and whispered, “If this disgraceful behaviour is repeated I shall personally cane each and every one of you.”
    We stood up and said in unison. “Yes Father. Thank you Father.” We breathed, carefully.

Stephen's 1964
School Report

The uniform (above) and its enforcer,
Father McGuire (below)