The Day Of Judgement

One of the best things about my dad was that he gave Barbara and me plenty of what would nowadays be called ‘quality time’. He would take us for walks, read or make up stories, and play games, several of which could loosely be described as educational.

One of Dad’s favourite instructional games was called Day of Judgement, and involved his taking on the role of God, with Barbara and I as ourselves. We had to imagine that it was the Last Day, as popularly depicted in Christian myth, an impression my dad would seek to reinforce by blowing briefly on an imaginary trumpet (‘the last trump’) in order to summon the souls of everyone who had ever lived to gather before his throne (actually, a kitchen chair) and be judged. (Strictly speaking, it should have been an angel sounding the trumpet, and not God, but I pretended not to notice rather elementary faux pas.) You also had to imagine that Barbara and I were in the midst of an enormous multitude of dead souls (sic.), all awaiting their own individual hearings. I wondered to myself what mechanism God would use to determine who went first. Even if he decided to summon everyone in straight alphabetical order Barbara and I were destined for a wait of, oh, a couple of hundred years at least.

In the game of course, the two hundred year wait was ignored, and Barbara’s name was the first one called.

“Ah,” said God, kindly, as Barbara stepped forward, “I see that you are one of my precious little ones, and have yet to reach the age of reason. I see no sin in you, and so you can come and live forever with me in paradise.”

At this, Barbara climbed up onto God’s lap, and smiled beatifically down at me, her vagrant older brother, as I fought to contain a sudden surge of nervousness. The cause of my unease had been God’s mention of the age of reason, which was the age at which a person was deemed to be morally responsible for his or her sins. Moreover, once you had reached the age of reason, you were supposed to be capable of more or less any manner of wickedness. Given that the Catholic church had decreed that a child reached the age of reason at the age of seven, this meant that I now had a whole year of potential murder, highway robbery, grand larceny, adultery and attempted train derailment under my belt. There were other mortal sins, as well, some of which I might have committed without even knowing it (not that that would have been any excuse, of course).

Come to think of it, I was not entirely clear on what grand larceny and adultery, both of which Mrs Sindocic had mentioned during RE, were. For all I knew, I might already have committed both.

So there I stood, an eight year old grand larcenist and adulterer, not to mention attempted train derailer, awaiting the judgement of a God whom I was relieved to realise was actually only my father, and who could not really see into the innermost recesses of my depraved, sin-saturated soul.

“John Paul Devaney,” intoned the divine judge of all in a thick Liverpool accent, while my newly redeemed sister playfully tugged at the hairs issuing from one of his ears.

Half cautious, half amused, I shuffled forward to Face the Music.

“Hmm,” said God. “You, I see, unlike your sister, have already reached the age of reason, and although you have been a good boy on the whole you have nevertheless committed some sins – disobedience, lies, even one case of swearing.”

This last was in reference to the time a couple of weeks earlier when I had inadvertently let slip the word ‘bloody’, normally reserved for use when I was with my friends, in the delightfully astonished presence of my dad.

“I am afraid,” continued God, “that you are not quite ready yet to come and live with me in heaven, so I shall have to send you to purgatory for a while, so that you can be cleansed of your sin.”

“Oh, fuck!” I said spontaneously, then promptly clapped my hand to my mouth in horror.

If I was horrified, this was as nothing compared to the reaction of God, who appeared on the verge of an apoplectic fit. My sister meanwhile giggled appreciatively.

When God had finally managed to calm down, he asked, “Do you know what that word means?”

“Er,” I said, thinking quickly. “It’s a bit like flippin’ or bloomin’, isn’t it?” – citing a couple of the rather tame slang expletives favoured by my dad who, unlike my mum, never swore.

“No,” said God, sternly. “No – it’s not a bit like those words. It’s a very, very, very bad swear word, and you must never use it.”

“Is it?” I innocently asked, consciously assuming my most cherubic, choir-boy like facial expression. “But people use it all the time.”

“What people?”

“Mike and Jimmy used it,” I replied, which was certainly true. “And Mum, and you, and Mar-”

“When have you heard me use it? I never use it!”

“Don’t you? Oh, I thought you did.” (Actually, I knew very well that my dad never swore, but I could see no harm in endeavouring to cloud the waters a little.)

“No – I don’t – and neither must you. I’ll accept that you didn’t know how wrong it was, and I’ll let you off this once, but you must never, ever use it again. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said meekly, secretly delighted at the impact that the word, the meaning of which had only been taught to me a few weeks earlier by Aloysius, had had, and resolving to embellish my conversation – out of Dad’s hearing, of course – with it on a regular basis henceforth.

“Now, where were we?” mused the omnipotent one.

“You were just sending me to purgatory.”

“Oh, yes. I’m afraid your sins mean that you’re not yet ready to join me in paradise, and so I am going to have to send you to be purified in the flames of purgatory for a few thousand years.”

Once, on a mutual dare, Richard and I had poked our fingers into the flame of a lit match, which was an experience neither of us much cared for, and would be extremely unlikely to repeat. I tried to imagine the intense pain I had briefly experienced on a small part of my finger expanding to cover my whole body, and then going on, without abatement, for year after year after year.

And all for a few measly lies and a slightly less than optimal obedience record.

“Flames?” I said, disbelievingly. “A few thousand years?” God’s face was sympathetic; my sister was picking her nose. Ah well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “FUCK!” I yelled.