Sucking Sherbert Lemons

by Michael Carson

  “We’re not talking about birth control or civil rights or sexual deviation today, young man. We’re talking about patron saints.”

  Clitherow put up his hand. The priest nodded to him. “I think we should be talking about birth control, Father,” he said. “At St Damien’s Church yesterday a Catholic doctor who has started a birth control clinic near here was refused Communion by the parish priest. I was there. He went up to the altar rails and knelt to receive the Host. When Father Coe saw him, he just passed him by, leaving the doctor with the communion plate in his hand. That is what we should he talking about.”

  The priest reluctantly began to talk about the Church’s policy to artificial methods of contraception. Benson whispered to Clitherow, referring to the withdrawal of Communion from the doctor. “It was a case of Eucharistus interruptus.”

  Clitherow exploded with a sneeze of laughter.

  The priest stopped. He looked at Clitherow hard. Then he picked up his books and left the room.

  The class remained silent, wondering what would happen next. A long five minutes passed. Then the priest returned with Brother Hooper. He pointed to Clitherow and Benson, saying, “Those two. Every time I take this class, those two disrupt it. I’m tired of it!”

  Brother Hooper, stony-faced, pointed to them. “Come with me, you two,” he said.

  Clitherow and Benson followed Brother Hooper along the bottom corridor of St Bede’s to his office.

  He sat at his desk while motioning Clitherow and Benson to stand across from him. He looked at them closely, distastefully. Then he sighed, and, fondling a paper-knife, said, “This is not the first time I have had complaints about you two. Brother Wood came to me some time ago to tell me that you, Benson, had refused to answer Catechism questions and insulted him at the same time.

  I decided to let that pass because Brother Wood had already administered his own form of punishment to you.” He turned to Clitherow. “You, Clitherow, I am very disappointed in. You should know better than to behave as you have just behaved. It is up to you to give a good example to the other pupils... “ and he turned his gaze back to Benson. “... pupils who may not be as gifted as you are. You must understand that, while you may be able to handle these problems of faith and still come up smiling, it is not given to all so to do. You may be the cause for them to fall into disbelief.”

  Clitherow said, “But, sir, I was only trying to talk about issues which are important.”

  “And I know what that issue is! But this is a Catholic institution. You have been sent here by your parents to receive a Catholic education. That is the given. To question that faith in the way that you do is just not acceptable. I warn you both that if this occurs again I shall strap you both in front of the whole school.”

  “But, sir...” began Clitherow.

  “Keep silent!” shouted Brother Hooper. “I shall strap you both in front of the whole school and then you will be suspended to encourage the rest. Never in all my years in education have I come across a year like this one! It is a poor future for Mother Church if it is chaff like you that she will inherit.”

  They stood silent in front of Brother Hooper. Benson had adopted his ‘do your worst’ look. The headmaster noticed it, opened his mouth to remark, but, instead, waved his hands at them dismissively. “Get out of my sight!”

  They walked back towards the classroom.

  “Did you notice how he played with that paper-knife?” remarked Clitherow.

  “Not really, why?” asked Benson.

  “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, it beats me why they’re called Brothers,” said Clitherow.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because they’re not like any fucking brothers that I’d be prepared to acknowledge,” replied Clitherow.

  Turning the corner of the corridor Clitherow gave a V-sign to the statue of the Founder of the Order. The statue, taking Clitherow’s rebuff in the right spirit, continued to smile seraphically.

  “I’m feeling iconoclastic,” Clitherow announced.

  “How do you mean?”

  But Clitherow could not reply, as they had reached the classroom door.

  Quietly and modestly they took their places in time to catch the priest telling the class that the patron saint of skin diseases was St Marculf.

  That Friday Clitherow invited Benson to come to his home the following day to have tea, stay the night and ‘do something iconoclastic’. Benson said he would be delighted and told Mum. Mum said she was pleased he had made a friend.

  He had found Mum sitting in the lounge when he got home. She was not reading or doing anything else that Benson could discern. She looked a bit tired to him.

  “You OK, Mum?” he asked her.

  Mum smiled and nodded. “Yes, a bit tired, that’s all.”

  “Can I make the tea?” Benson asked.

  “That’s nice of you, son, but I’ve made a salmon salad. It’s less work.”

  Benson nodded and retired to the other room. There he got down to doing all the homework he had for the weekend in order to leave himself free for fun and intellectual stimulation with Clitherow. He disposed of his work without much difficulty and set about writing a poem.

  Then, carrying a small suitcase and a copy of his poem, Benson went back into the lounge to say goodbye to Mum.

  “Be a good boy,” she told him, as she always had done. Then she added, “You going to give your mum a kiss?”

  Benson had been about to protest that he was too old for that sort of thing but thought better of it. He darted across the room and planted a dry kiss on Mum’s cheek.

  “Well, it’s better than nothing I suppose,” Mum observed.

  “Right-ho, Mum. Bye!”

  He rushed out of the house and ran up the road.

  Half an hour later he was walking with Clitherow from the bus-stop near Clitherow’s home. Clitherow had been waiting there for him.

  “I’ve got a surprise for you!” he exclaimed as soon as Benson was off the bus. “How do you fancy going to an orgy?”

  “How do you mean?” asked Benson.

  Clitherow sighed: “How do you mean?” he mimicked. “You always say that! Such a cliché! Look, an orgy is an orgy. One of my homo acquaintances has fixed us up. There’s a house he knows not far from here. You go there and pay some money and strip off. It’s all dark and you have an orgy.” Then, seeing Benson’s miserable expression, he added, “Or you can drink beer or talk or look at dirty pictures. It’s up to you.”

  “Where is this place?” asked Benson.

  “Near,” replied Clitherow, guardedly.

  “Isn’t it expensive to get in?” asked Benson hopefully.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll pay.”

  “When are we going?”

  “This evening. After tea. We’ll say we’re going to the pictures.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Benson.

  “Look, it’s about time I found out what it’s all about. You had a good time with that chap in the cemetery. You said it was the best feeling you’d ever had. Now I want a go.”

  Benson regretted that he had ever told Clitherow about Andy and what he had done to him. It had seemed right at the time because Clitherow had been telling stories of his adventures with women. He had told him that he had cornered a girl who worked at Woolworths behind the settee at a party. The girl had let him put his hand down her dress and up her skirt.

  “I want to try everything, Benson! I want to open myself up to every experience, and drink deep!” Clitherow shouted, startling a pair of old ladies they were passing. Benson tried to smile at the old ladies reassuringly.

  “Life is for living, Benson! You and I, we have spent too damned long seeing life as a preparation for death, as a vale of tears! We’ve got to get out of that bog-Irish attitude to life! The only sin, Benson, is not to live! The only s
in is to turn away from experiences! We must read every book! See every country! Use our time well! We must not merely ‘measure out our lives in coffee spoons’ ... have you read Eliot yet?”

  “No, not yet,” replied Benson. In truth he had tried but had thought it all a bit lengthy. He had turned page after page after page and kept sighing to be confronted with a seemingly never-ending wasteland of words leading nowhere.

  “Well maybe you aren’t ready for him yet. Everything to its season, my friend. An orgy! I can’t wait!”

  But Benson was already wondering whether his towel would be big enough to go round him and cover his nakedness during the orgy and whether he would be able to put one leg in front of another when in such a stressful situation.

  But he said nothing and soon they had turned into the long drive that led up to Clitherow’s house.

  The house had been built for cotton brokers in retreat from the city and had a commanding position over the estuary. The garden was huge but largely untended.

  “What do you do with all these rooms?”

  Clitherow shrugged, “Live and partly live.”

  There was a black Rover outside the front door. Benson and Clitherow went round the back and into a huge kitchen with a stone floor. An Aga took up a lot of the floor space and a grey-haired woman sat on a stool by the cooker reading the ‘Tablet’. The woman looked up.

  “Hello, young man,” she said. “You must be the friend I’ve been hearing so much about.” She turned to Clitherow. “Show him to his room and then bring him down here straight away. I want to hear about his time with the Brothers.”

  “He’s trying to forget it, Mother,” said Clitherow, laughing.

  “Well, as soon as he’s told me all about it he can forget it.”

  “I’ll be glad to tell you anything I can,” said Benson helpfully.

  “Good lad.”

  Clitherow took Benson up a carved, curving staircase to his room. There were old paintings of ships on the panelled walls. Benson’s room looked out over the sea. He could see the funnel of a ship sitting on the horizon.

  “Gosh, this is super!” he exclaimed. “If I had a room like this I’d never want to leave it.”

  Clitherow shrugged and said, “The view does have a ‘certain seedy appeal’. That’s Auden.”

  “Is it?”

  They went back to the kitchen where a tray of tea and some scones awaited them. As Benson ate, Mrs Clitherow quizzed him about the Brothers.

  “Were they very hard on you?” she asked.

  “Well, it wasn’t easy, Mrs Clitherow. But then it wasn’t supposed to be easy.”

  Mrs Clitherow nodded. “It’s always seemed to me that they’re a sadistic lot. Did you find that?”

  Benson munched on a scone while considering a reply. At last he said, “Some are and some aren’t. There are good and bad everywhere.”

  “But it isn’t a natural sort of life. Don’t you get a lot of perverts there?”

  “Er,” said Benson.

  Mrs Clitherow continued. “I expect you do. You must have been lucky. I’m of the opinion that sex really cannot be sublimated. What do you think?”

  “Well, er, I think you’re probably right. They do say that cold showers... “

  “I must get you to have one every day,” she said to Clitherow.

  Clitherow winced. “I don’t intend to sublimate anything.”

  “No, we Clitherows are not good sublimators. I’ve got ten children, did you know that?”

  “No, I knew it was a big family but...”

  “He’s the last,” she said, pointing to Clitherow. “Totally unplanned. A bit of a shock, I can tell you. I thought I was well past the age. He just slipped through. Lucky to be here, the young rascal.” She winked at her son and Clitherow pulled a clown’s face at his mother.

  Benson thought what fun it must be for Clitherow to grow up with this mother. She was as sharp as a razor. There seemed to be nothing Clitherow could not say to her. Gosh, that must be marvellous! And all the books everywhere! How wonderful, he thought, to have intellectual parents with a house overlooking the sea.

  Then Dr Clitherow came in. Benson was introduced and called him ‘Doctor’, but he just said, “Call me Paddy.”

  Paddy did not talk as much as Mrs Clitherow. He sat listening sagely to everything that was said, a smile on his face, a pipe just like Jean-Paul Sartre’s in the corner of his mouth.

  Clitherow was explaining why they had laughed during religion.

  “So he said ‘Eucharistus interruptus’ to me and I just burst out laughing.”

  Doctor and Mrs Clitherow laughed hard and long. “Sure that’s a good one!” laughed Dr Clitherow. “That reminds me of the one about Jesus walking through the wilderness and coming on this woman tied to a stake. There was a big crowd of people all around and the Pharisees came up and said to Jesus, ‘This woman is an adulteress and the law says that she must be stoned to death. What do you have to say about that?’ Well, Jesus had a look at the woman and then had a look at the crowd and then he bent down and started writing in the sand. He said, ‘He who is without sin cast the first stone!’ There was a silence and then a big red brick was lobbed through the air from somewhere back of the crowd and biffed the poor woman tied to the stake on the bonce. Jesus stood up and peered over the crowd to see where the brick had come from. Then he frowned and said, ‘Mother! Really!’ “

  The kitchen rocked with a gale of laughter. Benson, shocked and delighted, laughed louder than the others, amazed and full of wonder that the Clitherows could share such a joke. He wished for a moment that he could be adopted by the Clitherows and spend his life in this kitchen talking.

  “Still, it is wicked what’s happening to that doctor over his clinic,” said Mrs Clitherow. “It can’t be long before the Church sees the light over contraception. Until they do I shan’t darken the doors of St Damien’s. That Father Coe is a reactionary bugger.”

  “The Church will never change,” said Clitherow.

  Dr Clitherow took his pipe from his mouth and looked hard at the bowl as he spoke. “It’s a pity. The Church has so many beautiful qualities. It’s a great institution, but seriously flawed.”

  “Look at Papal infallibility!” exclaimed Benson, confident.

  Dr Clitherow nodded.

  “I mean they made it a doctrine in, was it 1870, and the only thing they can find to be infallible about is the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. It as if they want to put stones on the path to trip everyone up.”

  “Yes, the Assumption is an assumption,” said Clitherow, unfairly, Benson thought, because he had told that one to Clitherow.

  Much laughter again, and the laughter and good talk lasted through tea, with Benson confessing about Brother Michael and P. F.s and even his own feelings, though he was careful to place all dubious revelations in the past tense.

  They left the house at six and took a bus to get to the house where the orgy was.

  Benson had not wanted to leave, and had had to be prised out of the kitchen by Clitherow.

  “They like you. I can always tell.”

  “Do they really?” asked Benson, immensely flattered. “I like them too. Gosh, you are lucky!”

  “I suppose I am. They’re not bad all in all.”

  “Not bad! They’re wonderful! There’s nothing you can’t say to them. Oh, I wish they were... “

  He did not finish the sentence. He had been going to say that he wished they were his parents. He did too but it seemed like a betrayal of Mum and Dad at home.

  “Do they like Bob Dylan?” he asked instead.

  “Mum does but Dad can’t stand the voice. But they both dote on Joan Baez.”

  “Gosh!” said Benson.

  They sat on the top deck of the bus in the very front seat and watched the scenery.


  “Cigarette?” asked Clitherow.

  “I don’t mind if I do.”

  Benson only became apprehensive again when the bus left them in a leafy street and Clitherow led the way saying, “It should be the first street on the left.”

  Five minutes later they turned into the drive of a house rather like Clitherow’s. Clitherow went straight up to the door and rang the bell.

  A middle-aged man dressed in PT kit came to the door.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Yes. Tim Edgar said we could come.”

  “You know Tim Edgar well?” asked the man in a simper like Andy’s.

  “Yes. Very well.”

  “Come in then.”

  Benson followed Clitherow into the hall of the house. There were piles of clothes on the floor.

  “That’ll be twenty-five shillings, please.”

  “For both of us?” asked Clitherow.

  “Each.” The man saw the look of surprise from Clitherow and added, “Look, if I had my way, dear, chickens like you would be let in for nothing, but rules are rules. Still, it covers the price of two beers. Everything else is free.”

  Benson had been about to whisper, “Let’s go!” but didn’t, because Clitherow took out a five pound note and handed it to the man who gave them each a towel. “You leave your clothes here. Don’t worry, I’ll be here to take care of them.”

  They started undressing. As they did so, an old, fat man passed through the hall. He was naked and the flesh fell around him like bags of flour. He pursed his lips when he saw them and said, “Hello boys!” Then he disappeared through the door on the right.

  Clitherow looked at Benson and snorted.

  Benson put his towel round him before he took off his shirt and vest. This was his custom and he was mildly shocked to see Clitherow strip himself bare and put his towel nonchalantly over his shoulder. Benson noticed that Clitherow was very well built and had black, straight pubic hair. It occurred to him that he had never even had a glance at Clitherow in the nude before.

  Clitherow watched Benson taking his socks off while keeping the towel around himself. He reached over and ripped the towel away, revealing Benson in an erect state.