Sucking Sherbert Lemons

by Michael Carson

  At first Benson did not know who it was, and, thinking it might be the Provincial, was about to veer to the left, to pass on the other side, ashamed. But then he saw that the shape was Brother de Porres.

  Benson looked at the Brother and tried to smile. Brother de Porres grinned at him and pushed a square parcel wrapped in newspaper under the arm that carried the suitcase.

  “Go with God! Be happy!” whispered Brother de Porres.

  Benson opened the heavy door and, through his tears, saw his father standing by the car.

  Part Three

  Moses

  “Go on, Bob! Read it again. It’s a real hoot!” shouted Brother Wood across the crowded staffroom at St Bede’s.

  Bob Stone held Benson’s exercise book out in front of him and, pushing his glasses higher up his prominent nose, opened his mouth wide to start reading. But then he stopped and shook his head. “No, Brother, I’ve already read it once. That’s enough.”

  Brother Wood poured water over his coffee powder and weaved his way towards the easy chair that Bob Stone invariably found for himself in the staffroom. He sat on the arm and reached for the exercise book, “Give us a look.”

  The Brother’s hairy hand – Bob Stone did not think he had ever seen a more hairy hand – seized the book. He started to turn the pages slowly, smiling, then guffawing.

  “Be Jesus! He puts ‘Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam’ at the top of all his compositions. Isn’t he the pious one? Are they all like the one you read us, Bob?”

  “More or less.”

  “The idjut!”

  “That Benson’s a religious maniac, that’s what he is,” said Brother Fitzgerald, who was sitting at the staffroom table marking Maths books angrily. He went back to scrawling huge red crosses on an exercise book and added: “It’s not natural.”

  Brother Wood smirked. “Sure, there isn’t much that’s natural in that Benson. He’s as queer as a four-leaf shamrock. That’s why the Brothers wouldn’t keep him.”

  Bob Stone took the exercise book back from Brother Wood, “Well, I wouldn’t know about that but I do know that he doesn’t stand a chance of getting A Level English if this work is anything to go by.”

  The bell rang for the end of the break. Bob Stone sighed and pulled himself out of the armchair.

  “What that lad needs is a good boot up the backside,” said Brother Fitzgerald with conviction.

  “It’s worth trying, I suppose,” replied Bob Stone, steeling himself for a double lesson with the Lower Sixth.

  Benson had spent the lunch-hour alone in a corner of the playground. He had been reading the short aphorisms of the Spanish founder of Opus Dei, a group of secular religious who, while living in the world, practised the religious life and took vows. The book was small and red. It fitted his pocket easily and had cost him two weeks’ pocket money. It had, he reckoned, been worth every penny, for it gave him lots of advice to guide him through the adversity he was encountering back at St Bede’s.

  Nearly all the boys in the Lower Sixth were a year younger than Benson. Those of his contemporaries from 3B who had managed to struggle through their O level examinations had now attained the heady heights of the Upper Sixth. Vincent Latos was now deputy Head Boy. It was rumoured that he was going to win a scholarship to Oxford. Always polite to Benson, he was, however, monosyllabic and had not shown any signs of becoming his friend again.

  Mercifully, Eddie Rudge and O’Gorman had disappeared from St Bede’s, following ignominious failure in O levels. Hepher, the one contemporary of Benson’s to be in his class – having taken an extra year to pass the required number of subjects – said that Eddie was being detained ‘to give Her Majesty pleasure’. He had held up a post office with a water-pistol that leaked. O’Gorman had fulfilled all Brother Hooper’s predictions on the destiny of boys in 3B by becoming a trainee-manager at British Home Stores.

  Now Benson sat alone at the back of the class. His copy of Hamlet lay open on the desk at the appropriate page. Next to it, an exercise book was ready for note-taking. He had unscrewed his Osmiroid and placed it in the penholder at the top of the desk. He sat watching his classmates. Their behaviour did not edify him. Hepher was holding Scott’s flask out of the window and threatening to let go. Scott was saying, “Ar ay Heph! Don’t be daft.”

  The flask had a map of the world around it.

  “Who’s gonna stop me, ay?” sneered Hepher, a bully and the best rugby player in the school.

  Scott just said, “Ar ay!”

  Nobody dared take on Hepher, Hepher could do what he liked. Even the teachers overlooked it when he made one of his snide comments. He was invulnerable.

  “I’ll let you off this time,” conceded Hepher. He threw the flask at Scott, who fumbled it. It dropped to the floor with a dead plop.

  “Ar ay, Heph! Now I’ll have to get me mum to buy me a new inside,” whined Scott, trying desperately to keep an edge of sweetness in his voice to mask his anger.

  “‘Snot my fault you dropped your fucking flask.”

  Hepher’s henchmen laughed and bayed as they invariably did.

  Benson found this sort of behaviour extremely distasteful. He knew he should stand up and protest. But then he had done that once and his back still ached from the push Hepher had given him. Instead he crouched down in his desk and tried not to attract attention.

  Mr Stone came in carrying the class’s compositions. The class settled down in their desks while the teacher sorted through the exercise books. Benson noted with alarm that Mr Stone was holding his. He knew because its cover was the same as the wallpaper in the lounge at home, where he now wished he was.

  “Right, then,” began Mr Stone, still looking down at Benson’s exercise book, “I’ve marked your compositions. Now, for your edification and instruction, I’d like some of you to read out their efforts to the class. Benson first, I think.”

  He threw Benson’s exercise book across the room. It turned in mid-air, pages akimbo, and the cover fell off and fluttered to the ground. The exercise book continued on through the air.

  Hepher reached up and caught it neatly, his arms above his head. Without turning he threw the exercise book over his head, saying, “Catch, Moses!”

  Benson fumbled for the book but missed it. It fell to the floor next to him. With a heavy heart he picked it up. Brogan handed him the cover.

  “Come On, Benson. We’re impatient for your insights!”

  Benson stood up and read:

  “Compare the characters of Hamlet and Laertes

  “This question is easily answered. In short: Hamlet has a bad character and Laertes has a good one. Now why do I say this? I say this because Hamlet’s behaviour throughout the play falls far short of the sort of behaviour one has a right to expect from a Christian prince... “

  The class had started to snigger. Hepher was imitating Benson’s voice as he invariably did. Benson tried to ignore it.

  “...In the first act of the play his father’s ghost tells Hamlet to seek revenge for his death. In my opinion it is unlikely that a soul in purgatory would be so silly as to demand revenge. That soul is in purgatory to atone for the actual sin committed on Earth. It is not likely that such a soul would be full of vengeance. That Hamlet does not see this, does not appreciate that the Ghost is probably a temptation of the Devil, says much for his woeful ignorance of the tenets of the Catholic Church.”

  Somebody farted.

  “Er ... We can only stand by horror-struck as Hamlet breaks the fourth Commandment (Honour thy Father and thy Mother) at every turn. He is invariably rude and callous to his stepfather, Claudius, and, in the bedroom scene, treats his mother despicably in language more fit for the tavern than the classical theatre. On top of this he kills Polonius, the great and good father of Laertes, while he is acting as a Guardian Angel to Gertrude behind her arras. He leads Ophelia from the path of recti
tude and must be at least partly culpable for her unfortunate suicide. Suicides, we all know, and Hamlet must have known, go straight to hell. Hamlet’s melodramatic display of mock affection in her grave is the most hypocritical behaviour I have ever had the misfortune to read. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are also treated very badly and get killed off-stage.

  “When Hamlet finally gets killed he has managed to kill two whole families, his own and the family of Laertes, along with other unfortunates. To say that, given this, Hamlet’s death is in any way ‘tragic’, is enough to make one laugh. If ever there was a case for damnation, Hamlet is it.”

  The class was merry now. Benson had to interrupt his thesis constantly to allow the laughter to fade. He was helped in this by the fact that nobody in the class wanted to miss Benson’s next pearl so that they could break up into further laughter. The reading of his essay became like a Rosary in which Benson supplied the first half of the prayers while the class responded. Mr Stone stood at his desk wearing a slight smile on the lower half of his face, while the upper half frowned knowingly. Benson’s voice quavered as he went on to analyse Laertes.

  “Laertes is everything that Hamlet isn’t. He respects his parents. However, one wonders who could not be moved to respect by the advice given to him by Polonius, his father. It would be a poor son indeed who failed to be moved by such sound advice. This advice could well be framed and hung on the wall of every good Catholic household. (I’m sorry I cannot quote it. I have forgotten my book. Sorry.)

  “In his turn, Laertes advises his sister, Ophelia, well. He tells her to stay away from bad company. If she had heeded her brother’s advice she would still be with us at the end of the play. (Assuming, of course, that Hamlet had not found some other way of disposing of her!!) The one bad thing about Laertes is that he gives way to his passions and seeks revenge on Hamlet. However, I would defend him because he was tried by Hamlet past enduring.

  “So, to come to a conclusion, there is little to compare in Hamlet and Laertes. Hamlet is bad through and through. Laertes is vice versa.”

  Benson sat down feeling faint, but relieved that he had at least managed to stumble through his essay.

  “Well done, Moses!” shouted Hepher.

  “That’s enough of that,” countered Mr Stone. Then he turned his attention to Benson. “That just won’t do, Benson.”

  Benson said nothing. He had heard it all before.

  “How old are you, Benson?”

  “Seventeen, sir,” replied Benson, wondering what that had to do with anything.

  “Seventeen! I wish I were seventeen. But, look, Benson, you must learn that the Joint Matriculation Board are just not interested in a Catholic commentary on Hamlet. They want something a little more universal.”

  Benson shot back from a sitting position, “The word Catholic means universal, sir!”

  At once he regretted his answer. Mr Stone exploded, “Will you leave all this Catholic talk for the Religion lesson, Benson? God I’m tired of you and tired of marking your sanctimonious essays! Let me tell you, young man, that until you learn to separate your faith from your studies, until you stop rendering to God the things that are Caesar’s and to Caesar the things that are God’s, you’ll be in trouble and silly fools like Hepher will laugh at you.”

  Hepher, who had indeed been laughing, stopped then and looked sullenly at Mr Stone.

  “I did not notice a composition from you in the pile, Hepher,” said Mr Stone.

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t feel like it, Sir.”

  “You didn’t feel like it. Well at least Benson did his work. Yet you were able to muster nothing but ignorant mirth. If you had half Benson’s ability I wouldn’t mind. But you’re thick, Hepher. You’re thick and will get nowhere.”

  “I’m going into my dad’s business, sir,” Hepher responded.

  Mr Stone sighed, “Well I wish you’d go into it now instead of wasting our time.” He motioned Hepher to sit down and called on another boy to read.

  Benson kept his head down and wondered what to do. He could not go on like this for two years. That was certain. He was trying to succeed at his studies. He worked for three hours every night, refusing to respond to the blandishments of the new seventeen-inch television next door. But, when faced with his English compositions, nothing came. He had no idea how to write things that would please. What he did write he wrote because that was how he saw things. At least that was how he was trying to see things.

  It was now eight months since he had left St Finbar’s. Because he had left in March he had not been able to go back to St Bede’s until the following September. He had filled in the time pleasantly enough, following a programme of reading to get him ready for the Sixth Form. As summer came he spent great swathes of time walking and reading in the open air.

  Quite often, hurrying past the back of the Prom – now much changed, the gun emplacement having been removed in his absence and the whole area landscaped into dull, undulating greensward – he would find himself on the seashore. There, where the estuary curved round into the Irish Sea, he walked and meditated on the wonders of creation.

  When the tide was out he walked for miles towards the faraway sea. His footsteps took him directly away from his town and across the sandbanks. The sea, like a mirage, could be discerned in the distance, but he was never able to reach it. It always seemed enticingly close, and on some days when the south-west wind blew up breakers, and dark dragon-shaped clouds scudded in from the Irish Sea in hot pursuit of some long gone St George, he would gaze at it and imagine that he could see a white town hovering where the sandbanks ended. Then he would turn back to look at his own town, set on its sandstone outcrop, and it too was insubstantial. Turning and turning on the sand, he could not make up his mind after a while which town was real, which imaginary.

  And, like the two towns he saw from the solitary vantage point of the sandbank, he had trouble discerning which part of his life was the real one and which the mirage. Memories of the Novitiate were stronger than his day-today present life at home. The circumstances which had caused him to leave preyed on his mind. He knew that he had not done anything to deserve his ignominious dismissal from the Order, but knew just as certainly that he had perversely engineered it. A part of him felt that he deserved what had happened and deserved to return a failure to St Bede’s. Between March and September his main dread, apart from the great fear of falling into his old ways, had been returning to school. For in school the Brothers would surely know everything.

  The sandbanks provided him with a private, silent place where he could go to calm himself and try to think. He would sit or lie looking out to sea and engage in one-sided conversations with God. These centred mainly on what he should do with his life, how he should serve Him. Sometimes the monastic life still beckoned, but a kind of religious life which did not lead towards the classroom. Rather, in these moods, Benson imagined himself a silent Trappist tending a garden for the greater glory of the Lord. The Great Silence would last his whole life long, and from this silence would spring a new Benson, a Benson detached from the things of this world and ready only for union with the Eternal Bridegroom in the next life.

  He had stumbled on the poetry of St John of the Cross and thought that that would do nicely. Gerard Manley Hopkins too, though not the easiest poet to understand, seemed to point the way to him. He tried to see Christ as the ideal Man, as ‘Dearest Him’, and he tended to see Him as swarthy and profoundly masculine.

  He now heartily disapproved of the Holy Picture Christs with their long, lank hair and soft faces. Benson’s Christ was a different kind of man altogether, a man who was tender but always strong; who would enfold Benson in his arms and carry him off to paradise. The Christ’s muscles bulged as He expelled the money traders from the temple. His strong features, a cross between President Nasser and Brother de Porres, were exot
ic and breathtaking in their maleness.

  He had not forgotten Brother de Porres. As the pain and humiliation of his leaving of St Finbar’s slowly blurred, the memory of the last kindness by the black Brother remained strong. He played the Brother’s gift, a recording of ‘Missa Luba’, every day on the new Dansette record player he had bullied Mum to bully Dad to buy. Mum liked ‘Missa Luba’ but Dad didn’t.

  Dad saw it as the start of the rot. “That music is the start of the rot. You mark my words,” he said whenever he heard it.

  That was blasphemy to Benson, who doted on the music both for its associations with Brother de Porres and its beckoning promise of a life of giving in a hot country far away.

  For when Benson was not thinking of a life of silence in some isolated monastery, he was imagining himself, in some role yet to be revealed, ministering to the sick in the company of men like Brother de Porres. The problem was that he could not see how he was to serve. That he wanted to serve was definite. But his calls for help from the Strong Man in the sky had not been answered. Ahead lay two years of study for his A levels, surrounded by fellow-pupils who thought him a Holy Joe and called him Moses. And, after that, a sandbank with an indefinite vision.

  “President Kennedy’s been shot,” Mum told Benson when he came in that evening.

  “How do you mean?”

  “It was on the news. He was in a car with his wife and someone shot him.” Mum bent down to take the cottage pie from the oven. Benson could see the studs and bumps on the heavy corset she wore underneath her polka-dot dress.

  “He isn’t dead, is he?”

  “I don’t think so but it looks bad.”

  Benson went into the back room and turned on the television. It was time for the news but it seemed to take an age to warm up. The newscaster said that President Kennedy was dead. Benson said an ‘Eternal Rest’ for him. Then he watched, frowning, as Harold Macmillan said how sad he was and how the President’s death was a great loss.