Sucking Sherbert Lemons

by Michael Carson

  They continued eating in silence. When the rhubarb and custard had been eaten Benson volunteered to wash up and took the dirty plates to the kitchen sink.

  “H–O–M–O. Homo. I know what a homo is,” he said to himself. “I’ve seen it in the dictionary.”

  Benson had often whiled away an idle hour by looking up such words in his Collins Gem. ‘Bottom’, ‘breast’, ‘circumcision’ and ‘penis’ yielded their meanings to his research. Hepher had once called Benson a homo because he had caught him looking at him in the showers after games. The name had caught on and a number of the rougher elements at St Bede’s called him that whenever he fumbled a rugby ball, read out in class or pleased a teacher.

  “A homo interfered with a kid last night.” Benson informed the washing up. And suddenly it struck him. “I interfered with Eric and Bruno last night! I took wilful pleasure in irregular motions of the flesh! Maybe Eric confessed and his parents called the police! Maybe Bruno confessed! Maybe I’m the homo they’re looking for!”

  He stopped washing the dishes and listened to see if Mum and Dad were talking about it – but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was only when he recommenced scouring the burnt stew pan that he heard:

  “Buggered in Albert Park ... You know. He was ... S–O–D–O-M-Y!”

  “Poor kid! Where is he?”

  “Hospital.”

  “And you’ve been with him?”

  “And with his parents.”

  “Poor kid!”

  ‘Sodomy’ rang a bell with Benson – a faintly prurient bell:

  Question: “What are the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance?”

  Answer: “The four sins crying to heaven for vengeance are: 1. Wilful murder. 2. Oppression of the poor. 3. Defrauding labourers of their wages. 4. The sin of Sodom.”

  He had learnt it in his Catechism. He still remembered the time that O’Gorman had asked Brother McNulty: “What’s the sin of Sodom, sir?”

  Brother McNulty had given O’Gorman a look of complete contempt and passed on to the next question.

  Then Benson heard Mum’s next question:

  “Do we know the boy?”

  “Yes, we do. Bruno Tencer. That big boy with the little bike. Remember I told him he was a danger on it just last week on the way back from Mass?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, him.”

  Benson froze. Then he burned. There could be no mistaking it! A homo had got Bruno and done something to him that cried to heaven for vengeance. Now he was going hot and cold in rapid succession. He felt faint. He felt sick. He must be the homo. No, he couldn’t be the homo. Then who was the homo? His dad had said that Bruno was in Albert Park when it happened and now he was in hospital. Surely something else must have happened after the meeting of the Rude Club! Or perhaps Bruno was just putting it on. He had left the garage in a temper. Maybe he had gone home and told his dad everything! If he had told his dad everything then the police would have come for him and taken him away! But maybe Dad knew and was not saying.

  He saw himself being taken into the lounge by Dad:

  “Do you know Bruno Tencer? I ask you that in my capacity as a police inspector. You must forget that you are my son and I am your father. Do you know Bruno Tencer?”

  “I ... er ... I ...”

  “Do you?” This in a voice of thunder.

  “Yes.”

  “And were you with him in the Jenkins’ garage at seven o’clock on the night of February the eleventh?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you commit a sin crying to heaven for vengeance with Bruno?”

  “No ... Yes ... I ...”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  It would be no good trying to find out what the sin that cries to heaven for vengeance could be. He had fiddled with Bruno’s parts on more occasions than he cared to recall. Was that, then, the sin of Sodom?

  Voices came from the garage crying vengeance to the heavens overhead. Archangels in nighties wielding great swords swept down to exact retribution from the sinners in the Jenkins’ garage. No quarter! No mercy! His miserable soul would be picked up, plucked out of the garage, carried for a few blessed moments through the cool air of Earth and then plunged headfirst into an eternity of fire, boiling oil, prodding forks, laughing devils and bad company.

  “Yes!”

  Benson imagined himself hanging his head and admitting his sin.

  “I disown you! You’re no son of mine! No son of mine can be a homo! You’re disgusting and you’ve brought shame on your family, your school, your country and your Church! We’d have had more children but your mum couldn’t as you know. But even though you’re the only one, better no son at all than a homo for a son!”

  Then Benson saw himself led off in a police car. Mrs Brown looked out from behind her curtains but did not wave. He was going to where homos go.

  But nothing of the sort happened.

  Half an hour later Benson found himself sitting in the lounge watching ‘Criss Cross Quiz’.

  He was still completely distracted, however. The devils of damnation had had no trouble at all in following him to the lounge.

  Mum was answering all the questions as usual.

  “Leonardo da Vinci!” Mum shouted at the television.

  “Michelangelo,” said the contestant, whom Mum had rightly decided was as thick as two short planks from the moment the curtains had parted to reveal him to the world.

  “No, I’m sorry! You’re wrong! It was Leonardo da Vinci!” gurgled the quizmaster.

  “You’re not answering tonight, son,” remarked Mum.

  “No.”

  “Not feeling well?”

  “I’m all right.”

  Benson forced himself to concentrate on the next question.

  “Manchester United,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “Manchester United,” said the contestant.

  “Manchester United is the correct answer!” exclaimed the quizmaster.

  “I could do his job with one hand tied behind my back,” thought Benson.

  “Well done, son!” exclaimed Mum. ‘Look! They’re changing the subjects,” she added, as the noughts and crosses board rolled to the next round.

  “Famous Names. You’re usually good at that.”

  The question was asked but Benson could not answer. Mum, after a decent interval, said: “Clementine!”

  Answer from the contestant came there none.

  “Clementine!” exclaimed the quizmaster.

  “Stumped both of you, didn’t I?” Mum cooed happily.

  “I’m just going into the dining room to listen to some music, Mum,” he said as the advertisements came on. He left the room with “The Esso sign means happy motoring” sung to the tune of ‘The Toreador’s Song’ ringing in his cars. He scowled when he heard it. He was unable to bear the Toreador’s Song without thinking of the Esso jingle. He felt it was an insult to great music somehow.

  He put ‘Coppelia’ on the gramophone but it did not fit his unsettled state at all. So he changed the record and put on ‘One Fine Day’ from ‘Madame Butterfly’.

  At once Benson became the tragic Japanese heroine. He darted away from the mirror to grab his Maths exercise book from the table. This he turned into a fan which wafted a breeze from the sorrowful sea over his features, quickly orientalised by the stretching of his skin tightly across his forehead – which made his ears waggle – and narrowing his eyes. Then, thinking of John Wayne in a sea captain’s uniform, he sang his own translation of the aria along with the record:

  “One fine day I’ll find you!

  At the seaside with the sun behind you!

  Oh, how happy we shall be!

  We’ll have Pop and Jap Fancies for tea!”

  It would have been a hard h
eart indeed who could have resisted Benson’s passionate appeal for the return of his lover. The audience, silent for a long moment, erupted in a burst of applause the like of which the dining room had never before witnessed. Benson acknowledged the rapture with modest, matter-of-fact bows.

  Cheered by his tumultuous reception, he turned the record over and tried an aria from ‘La Traviata’, but he and his audience soon lost interest. It was too sloppy by half. He changed the needle and carefully put on ‘Serenade’ from ‘The Fair Maid of Perth’, Dad’s favourite record.

  For this he merely rested his bottom against the window sill like Perry Como might were he singing in the Bensons’ dining room, and sang at the mirror with little movement or drama: “Hear the voice of one who adores thee, Who now implores thee ... lores thee ... lores thee ... lores thee ...”

  The record had stuck and broken the spell. Was it his fault? Dad was always telling him that records didn’t grow on trees. Once again, fear and guilt swept over him like an oil slick up a beach. Once more he saw so many reasons why he should be anxious and feel damned.

  Dad was in the greenhouse, where he usually went for some peace and quiet. But would he talk to him about Bruno when he came in?

  Benson took the record off the gramophone and wiped it on his shirt-cuff. Sighing, he opened the curtains wide, turned off the light and left the room.

  He jittered in the hall for a moment, then dawdled into the kitchen to make himself a glass of lime juice. As he filled the glass with water he saw, in the light spreading outwards from the greenhouse, Dad talking to Mr Jenkins over the garden fence.

  “Jesus! Mary! Joseph! Another accuser!” thought Benson, the lime juice turning to vinegar on his tongue.

  He washed the glass guiltily, thinking of wet sheets and Mum. He put the glass back on its shelf and fled to the safety of the lounge, where Mum was watching a play starring Gwen Watford.

  Benson liked Gwen Watford, second only to Rosalie Crutchley. Gwen Watford was always nervous and upset, and he found it therapeutic to see how bad other people could get.

  Benson and Mum watched the play for about fifteen minutes. Once a television camera passed the window just as Gwen Watford had turned away from it, having said as she looked out over Florence: “We are all dying, you know. Oh, not at the same time or in the same way; but slowly and surely, we are all dying.”

  The audience in the lounge giggled, then laughed, as a boom microphone appeared in the top of the picture.

  “If I worked in television,” asserted Benson, “that sort of thing would not be allowed to happen.”

  “Maybe,” agreed Mum, “but I bet the director of the play doesn’t wet the bed, First things first, son.”

  Benson directed his ‘that was uncalled for’ look at Mum and turned back to the play.

  There was Gwen Watford in bed with her television husband. Benson felt a well-known wave of embarrassment shoot through him.

  “Maybe we should turn it off before there’s any sloppy weather,” Mum said.

  “They’re only talking, Mum.”

  “Yes, but as sure as eggs are eggs, it’ll be sloppy weather any minute now.”

  And, sure enough, Gwen Watford stopped talking and clinched with her television husband, almost as if she were determined to upset the audience in the lounge.

  At that moment Dad came in. Benson sat frozen. Mum said nothing. For a moment Dad stood, hands in pockets, surveying the television. Then, quite suddenly, he strode across and turned it off. “We don’t want that rubbish in this house,” he said.

  Then he looked hard at Benson, not making a move to sit down in the easy chair as he usually did. Benson looked back at his father and thought, “I am not his son! I am adopted! I am really the son of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, left here with the nuns when they finished at the Playhouse!”

  Dad glanced at Mum and Mum said, “I’m going to see how the towels are doing. It’ll be suppertime soon.”

  Only when Mum had left the room did Dad sit down. But he did not sit down as he usually sat down. He did not take possession of the chair and engulf it. Instead he lowered himself gingerly as though he feared the chair might collapse under his weight. Then he laced his fingers together in front of him, gazing intently at them.

  Benson feared the worst.

  “You haven’t had a talk from me for a long time,” began Dad.

  That was true. The last time Benson remembered a serious talk with Dad was in the year he had taken his Eleven Plus. Then Dad had said that, were he to fail the examination, he would have to go to the Secondary Modern. He could not afford to pay for him at St Bede’s. The Secondary Modern was for rough, common boys; it was a fate worse than death as far as Benson was concerned. He had told Dad then that he would do his best not to fail, and, wonder of wonders, he had not. He still remembered clearly the morning the results had come. He had woken up to find Mum and Dad around his bed with an opened letter:

  “Congratulations! You’ve passed!” They gave him a Brownie 127. It had been the happiest day of his life.

  “Do you know a boy called Bruno?” asked Dad.

  “Yes, he’s a friend of me and Eric,” replied Benson.

  “Well I’ve got some bad news to tell you about him. Last night on his way home a man interfered with Bruno in the park. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Er ...”

  “Well, do you know where babies come from?” Dad sat back in his chair, but not comfortably. It was as if a book the size of a family Bible shared the seat with him.

  “They come from Mum,” said Benson tentatively.

  “Well, yes. But do you know how Mum comes to have them?”

  Just as Dad could hardly bring himself to ask the question, so Benson could not even attempt a reply. He gazed at the rug in front of the fire and pulled faces at it.

  “Well,” continued Dad rapidly, “you’ve got that thing between your legs. Apart from letting you go for a wee-wee it also produces seeds which go into Mum and help her to have a baby.”

  Benson nodded.

  “Well, what has happened to Bruno is this: there are some men who, instead of liking ladies and marrying them and having babies, lust after people of their own sex. These people are called homosexuals. Well, last night one of these men took Bruno to Albert Park and committed a very serious sin with him. I’m telling you this for two reasons. First of all, it is important that you be careful yourself and do not go anywhere with strangers. Secondly, you are Bruno’s friend and must be very kind to him from now on. He has had a very bad time and you must do your best to be nice to him.”

  Benson nodded. He was relieved to know that it was not he who was being accused of being a homo. But Dad’s words, combined with the catcalls of “Homo!” from school, made him certain that he was indeed a homo. It was just that he had not been exposed this time. It was looking at other boys, and Bruno in particular, that made Benson want to make stuff and made him feel sick and well and faint and excited. He had not been caught this time. That was the only difference.

  And it was not over; indeed, it was far from over. Either Bruno or Eric could still spill the beans on him. It had not happened yet. But it could. There was still plenty to worry about.

  Dad had now started to talk about his garden. Benson decided that he would take the unusual step of getting up at six-fifteen and go to seven o’clock Mass. Before it started he would press the Confession bell and make his Confession. He could not go on like this until Saturday.

  Mum came in with the supper. There was milky coffee and scones for her and Dad; just scones for Benson.

  He announced that he would be getting up for Mass in the morning. Dad said very good and Benson basked in the thought that Dad probably thought that he was going to pray for Bruno.

  He kissed Mum and Dad and went up to bed.

  There he wondered
what on earth he would say to the priest in Confession. How would he put it? In the past he had said he had taken wilful pleasure in irregular motions of the flesh, and left it at that. But that would not do any more. To conceal a grave sin was a still graver sin and negated the rest of the Confession. All serious sins had to be confessed along with all relevant details. Benson, by the use of tortuous catechetical euphemisms, had managed to cloud the seriousness of his sins.

  But tomorrow he would have to add, “By myself and with others, Father.” The ‘with others’ stuck in his throat. The prospect of further delving from the priest filled him with fear. Would the priest shout? Would he lecture?

  But whatever happened it was worth going through in order to make his soul white again and remove the weight which was oppressing him. He just had to get out from under that weight. And Confession was the only way out.

  He set his alarm clock for six. Before switching off the light, he watched the hen on the face of the clock pecking for grain in time to the passing seconds. Then he switched off the light and lay back on his pillow, seeing the memory of the hunter’s moon light bulb filament before him in the dark. As it faded he closed his eyes, but this seemed to activate the shape again. He rubbed his eyes, and countless stars appeared. Then he tried to relax, waiting for sleep to come.

  But sleep did not come. And Benson found that his hands were below the covers, languidly stroking himself. He did not try to stop. He would just have to cross out three and put in four in Confession.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It is one week since my last Confession, Father. I have taken wilful pleasure in irregular motions of the flesh by myself and with others four times, Father... “

  Yes, he thought, that should be enough. If his luck held he might get Canon Preston, and he couldn’t hear a thing anyway. “Please, God, let Canon Preston be saying Mass tomorrow!”

  Benson folded his legs, knees against chest. He crossed his ankles and slowly rocked backwards and forwards. It was nice. It was cosy. But he knew he needed a story. He searched around for one, dismissing a story about Bruno because of the unfortunate circumstances.

  In the middle of Albert Park there was a private house and in the house lived an elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Grace. Mr Grace had once pinched Benson and told him that he would like to take a few steaks off his rear and eat them for supper. Mr Grace’s no doubt jocular remark had sent a strange sexual shiver through Benson which had resulted in a new direction for his solitary sexual adventures.