Sucking Sherbert Lemons

by Michael Carson

  “About that stuff and the egg.”

  Eric started to giggle again and Benson gave him a kick in the pants.

  “What about that stuff and the egg?”

  Bruno had pushed himself back into his short pants and continued in his deep monotone, “Your mother’s got the egg and the stuff gets into her and swims up her and meets the egg and they grow and nine months later a baby comes out of your mother’s belly-button.”

  “How do they get the baby out of the belly-button?” asked Eric.

  Bruno had sighed the sigh of the teacher forced to cast pearls before plodders: “The doctor unties the knot, takes the baby out and then ties up the knot again.” Then he added with a gesture of frustration “Honestly!”

  Eric nodded.

  “But how does that stuff get to your mother’s egg?” asked Benson.

  “Your mum and dad sleep together. It gets there while they’re asleep.”

  “But how does it get through the pyjamas of your dad and the nightie of your mum?”

  Bruno did not reply.

  “How does it get into your mother and where does she keep her egg?” asked Benson, sensing Bruno’s growing discomfiture.

  Bruno had shrugged.

  “I think you’re making this whole thing up, Bruno. My mum and dad would never have done anything like that to get me. My mum and dad prayed for me like good Catholics and God sent me to them out of His beneficence.”

  Eric nodded. “I agree,” he said.

  Further encouraged by Eric’s backing and Bruno’s lack of response, Benson said, “You know, that may be the way heathen foreigners get their babies but it’s not the way we Christian Catholic English people get ours.”

  “Not Christian Methodist English people neither,” added Eric.

  Bruno started to sulk. He took his Fairy Cycle from where it was leaning against the wall of the garage and wheeled it to the door. He opened it, manoeuvred the bicycle through, and said flatly, “Mine’s bigger than yours and you can’t make stuff.”

  He disappeared and Benson turned to Eric. “Well, maybe we can’t make stuff but I’d rather be a good Catholic any day.”

  “And I’d rather be a good Methodist.”

  Then Eric and Benson had resumed taking pleasure in irregular motions of one another’s flesh.

  Tonight too the same thing happened. After initial remonstrations by a conscience-stricken Benson, the Rude Club meeting had got down to the business of the night.

  Eric was right. Bruno was getting bigger. Benson wondered where it would all end. His fingers could not fit around Bruno, and the peach-fuzz hair was darkening and thickening all around. This time the sight of Bruno reduced Benson to silence. He could not take his eyes off the other boy and became extremely irritated with Eric, who would insist on making childish comments all the time.

  In fact, that night Benson wished that Eric would go away and leave him alone with Bruno. He did not know quite why he wanted this, nor how things would be different and improved without the presence of Eric. But he did know that he wanted to concentrate on Bruno and on the part of him which was, every time he saw it, becoming more and more different from what he saw on himself, and which made Bruno, for all his paganism and pride, such an object of his abject admiration.

  The next day Benson woke up late. He had wet the bed again.

  Every night as part of his bedtime ritual Benson prayed that he would be able to stay dry through the night. His Guardian Angel, Tom, was the recipient of these prayers. Sometimes Tom listened and sometimes he didn’t. Tom was not to be relied upon; though, of course, Benson knew that Tom always knew what was for the best.

  This morning Benson did not have far to look for the reason why Guardian Angel Tom had turned a blind eye to his request for a dry bed. The meeting of the Rude Club must be the reason. If God and His Holy Mother had turned away Their faces from Benson then Guardian Angel Tom could not help but do likewise.

  He washed himself all over hurriedly and got dressed. He stared miserably at the large circular stain on the sheet as Mum called him to breakfast for the third time. There was nothing to be done. He was late and any plan of concealment was therefore doomed.

  Usually, if he woke and found his bed wet, Benson would strip the sheet off the bed, wash the wet part under the tap and put it back on the bed upside down, making sure that a dry face would present itself to Mum’s investigative feel during the morning.

  But today he did not have time. The bed-sheet mirrored his soul, and his sin would surely find him out.

  He ate his toast and drank his tea standing up. The clock ticked towards ten past eight, the latest time he could possibly leave the house and be sure of catching the twenty-two minutes past train, even if he ran as fast as his legs could carry him.

  “Bed OK, son?” Mum asked.

  “Er... “ replied Benson, tentatively.

  “I see,” said Mum curtly.

  “Where’s Dad?” asked Benson.

  “He left ages ago. Called out during the night.”

  “Anything important?”

  “Shouldn’t think so. They always call on your dad. Without your dad the whole police force would fall to pieces around us,” said Mum, speaking with a mixture of sarcasm and pride.

  “Yes. Expect so.”

  The wall-clock had reached eleven minutes past eight. He knew he would have to break all his previous records to make the train on time. He lurched into his blazer, picked up his lunch, crammed it into his satchel, kissed Mum and bolted out of the front door.

  Benson sprinted up the road, round the corner and down the half-mile hill that led to the station. His thighs, exposed below his short trousers, wobbled and rubbed together as he ran, and made a soft, swooshing sound which under normal circumstances made Benson acutely self-conscious. Today, however, he was too desperate to catch the train to worry about how his thighs either looked or sounded.

  “Sweet Jesus! If I get the train I’ll ... I’ll never never never ever go to the Rude Club again. I’ll ban it. I’ll do without cakes at Sunday tea and pray and sacrifice constantly for Bruno’s conversion.”

  His chest was tight and he felt that if he spat he would spit blood. Even in the cold of this February morning he was sweating profusely. His tie had worked itself round under his ear and the ends flew like a flag over his shoulder.

  “What if I miss the train!” he thought. “If I miss the train the evil man who said Pope Pius XII helped Hitler and didn’t help the Jews will become more and more famous and poison the minds of millions of people to the Church; Eric and I will be found taking wilful pleasure in irregular motions of the flesh and be banished to the outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; Canon McCarthy won’t be able to collect enough money to keep his orphan babies and they’ll have to go to Council orphanages; I’ll wet the bed every night until I’m eighty...”

  When he was still three hundred yards away from the station, Benson saw the train approach and draw into the platform. He was lost. They pulled a metal barrier across the entrance as soon as the train came in. He stopped running. It was quite pointless to continue. Resigned, he searched in his pockets for the fourpence-halfpenny return fare. By the time he got to the ticket office, the train had drawn away, leaving the platform empty.

  “Half return to Central Station. Second Class,” Benson said to the ticket clerk, between puffs.

  “You missed it!” remarked the ticket clerk, reaching for the ticket while he blew Woodbine smoke through the hole in the glass at Benson.

  Had the ticket clerk been Eric, Benson would have attempted a witty riposte of a sarcastic nature, something he had learnt from close attention to the Assembly speeches of Brother Hooper. But he just said, “Yes, I know,” and wandered on to the platform.

  There he read an advertisement: “Top People Take The Times!�
�

  Benson scowled, thinking it vain.

  “Good people take the Catholic Herald !” he told it.

  But Benson was not a good person. He stood on the bit of the platform where his favourite carriage always stopped, and thought about all the millions of innocent people he had failed by missing the train.

  Then, gazing down along the shining rails, he thought: “Those rails are parallel. They will never meet.” He squinted down the line to where the rails met in the distance. “It is merely an optical illusion. If the rails really came together then the train would fall off the rails and British Railways would be for it.”

  He turned his attention to the electrified rail that ran next to the shining rail. It was rusty-looking, an ugly sister beside the other rail.

  Benson had seen the connection, a pad like a carpenter’s plane, running along it and sparking as the train approached. But, despite all the evidence of his senses and warnings from posters and his Science teachers, he could not believe that the dull rusty rail was actually ‘live’.

  A year or so before, a boy from Benson’s school had been struck dead by such a rail while crossing the line to get his Frido football. Benson had gone to his funeral. He had given up sugar in his tea for the repose of the boy’s soul. But still he could not believe that something as really close to a boy’s life as a Frido football could cause death. No, there must have been something else.

  But Benson could believe that his soul was black, full of maggots and stench. And that somewhere unspecific but definitely real the Divine Being with the long hair and the gentle features had turned away from him and would not turn back until Saturday after Confession. Until then he must not take any chances. He could definitely not test his disbelief of the rusty rail.

  Benson dawdled through the park towards school. It was now his object to make himself so late that he would at least miss the line at Assembly and be able, with luck, to slip into Brother O’Toole’s English lesson in time for the attendance check.

  As he walked he stepped on every crack in the paving stones. Not one did he miss. Everything depended on his stepping on them all.

  Then Mr Plunkett’s blue Austin A40 passed him, slowed down and stopped. The car had a sign in the back window which said: “The family that prays together stays together! Support the Father Peyton Rosary Crusade!”

  Benson caught up with the car, and Mr Plunkett leaned across and opened the door for him.

  “Hop in, Benson.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Now he would definitely be in time to join the line of latecomers at Assembly. He did not wish to be ungrateful to Mr Plunkett but he did wish that he had left him to continue his dawdle to school unhindered.

  “Late too, Benson?” observed Mr Plunkett as he started the car up.

  “Yes, sir. The trains were late, sir,” lied Benson, without any feeling that it was a lie, so often had he used the excuse, and so much a part of his schoolboy survival kit had it become.

  “Those trains!” smiled Mr Plunkett. “They’re almost as bad as the bridge. The bridge is my excuse, Benson.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr Plunkett was the Art teacher and was very popular with everyone at St Bede’s College. He seldom if ever strapped, never raised his voice, was never sarcastic, and, inexplicably, never had the least problem with discipline. His favourite form of admonition was: “That’s not like you!”. His only remonstrance when faced with failed artwork: “Only observe! Use your powers of observation!”

  Benson was useless at Art but nevertheless tried to use his powers of observation for Mr Plunkett’s sake. He had been rewarded by having his potato-cutting of a Maltese Cross printed repeatedly on a twelve-inch handkerchief and mounted on the Art Room wall.

  Without any further conversation they reached the staff car park at St Bede’s. Mr Plunkett parked and wished Benson best of luck.

  “Thank you, sir,” Benson said dejectedly.

  Something in Benson’s voice must have melted Mr Plunkett’s heart, for he said, “Why not sneak in with me to the Art Room? You can help me fill the jam jars until they’re finished with Assembly. Then you can get to your first class.”

  Benson brightened. “Thank you very much, sir!” Then a thought struck him. “But what if someone catches me on the way to the classroom, sir?”

  “Then you just say that I was to blame, that’s all.”

  Benson cheered up immediately. He followed Mr Plunkett up the stone steps to the Art Room like a devoted puppy. Perhaps the day was not going to be such an unmitigated disaster after all.

  “Only one jam jar between two, Benson. We’re running short of them. I had Eddie Rudge yesterday. Kept back after school again. He managed to break half a dozen so we need to go a bit careful.”

  Immediately Benson stepped into the breach. “If you need jam jars, we’ve got piles at home.” He was dimly aware as he said it that he could get a halfpenny each for them if he took them back to the shop.

  “We do! We do! Thank you very much. As many as we can get,” said Mr Plunkett.

  Benson set about filling the jam jars with water from the sink in the corner of the Art Room. He paused to admire his potato cutting of Maltese Crosses as he passed it, and wondered what he would create to follow that triumph.

  When he had finished arranging the jam jars he said, “I’d better be going to class now, sir.”

  “Yes, You had. And thank you for your help, Benson.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  With confidence he walked along the top corridor of the long two-storey building, feeling safe and happy under the mantle of Mr Plunkett.

  He joined his classmates from the left as they were streaming in from the right. One or two of the other boys gave him funny looks but most seemed not to notice.

  He sat down at his desk and waited for his companion, Vincent Latos, to arrive. When he did, the two boys solemnly bade one another good morning by shaking hands. Then both opened their desks.

  Vincent was a recent immigrant from Poland and still had a lot of trouble with his English. No doubt this contributed to his stiff, rather distant attitude towards Benson. He did not say much at all to any of the other boys in the class, for in his first few days at the school it had been fashionable to reply to anything Vincent said with, “We had one but the wheel fell off.”

  Benson had protested to his classmates about this treatment of an exotic guest and had been punched in the stomach by Hepher for his pains. But this had not prevented him from taking Vincent Latos to his bosom at once. He was rewarded on a daily basis because Vincent brought wonderful complex sandwiches with him to school in an Oxo tin; sandwiches crammed full of succulent morsels which Benson had never seen before. And Vincent was always happy to share his lunch with Benson.

  Fat Benson and Foreign Latos kept a low profile at the back of 3B. Benson badly wanted to be liked, but, being fat and not good at anything in particular, found popularity to be a hopeless pursuit. He had to be nice to everyone merely to avoid being called ‘Wobbles’ and teased about his weight. He had to give his all in order to get even the minimum of civility in return. It was all very wearing and he was happy to be a peripheral figure at school, sat next to Vincent Latos who was fair and easy, if sometimes a little strict.

  He was strict, for instance, about the order of both his and Benson’s desk. Everything had to be just so inside and out. Benson was not so fussy about such things but took to the imposed discipline readily enough. Had the other boy only known, Benson would have gone to far greater lengths, endured far worse torments than tidiness, to keep his companion satisfied.

  Benson reached forward and nudged Drury, the boy in front.

  “What happened at Assembly?”

  “Nothing much,” replied Drury, “Hooper made Rourke cry about dinner money. What else?” Drury considered, while he rubbed the th
ick lenses of his spectacles, the bridge of which had been splinted with Elastoplast, on his blazer. “Someone from 4A has pinched something and 4A have to stay in tonight until he owns up. Oh yes. The Vocations Brother is coming tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” grinned Drury’s desk partner, Mellon, “that’ll be good. We could miss double Maths if he comes in time.”

  “You’re right, Mellon,” said Benson, “and we’ve got a lot of homework to do for Maths tomorrow. You done it?”

  “No,” replied Mellon.

  “Me neither,” said Benson. He wondered if he could risk not doing it in the hope that the Vocations Brother would come and give his talk at just the right time.

  The Vocations Brother came to St Bede’s every year to look for boys with vocations to be Brothers and who would go off to a place in Wiltshire for training. Benson had never paid much attention to his visits in the past, but it was the prospect of a talk taking up school time and, like a roulette ball, landing on a lucky subject hour, that warmed Benson. To think that there might be a chance of missing the frightening boredom that was Maths with Brother Wood!

  Benson nudged his books into tidy piles and worried about whether or not he should be worrying about something. He placed his bag of sandwiches in the left nearside of the desk which was where Vincent Latos always put his. No, there was no need to worry. The day got off to a tranquil enough start with double English. No homework due for that, and, anyway, Brother O’Toole often forgot about it even if homework was due.

  Brother O’Toole came in and the class stood up.

  “Good Morning, sir!”

  “Good Morning, boys! Be downseated,” said Brother O’Toole.

  The class downsat.

  Brother O’Toole patted the top of his bald head with his left hand as he waited for the hubbub to subside. This was the cue for the more brazen boys in 3B to do the same with their better-endowed heads. Left hands patted the tops of several heads. Brother O’Toole did not seem to notice. He never seemed to notice, though the custom had been going on at St Bede’s for the decade that Brother O’Toole had taught there.