The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [14]
It’s often hard these days for the clergy not to think of God as a little old-fashioned and Father Jolliffe was no exception. So if he was going to object it wasn’t on grounds of taste or decorum but simply in order to cut the service short. But what he really objected to was the condescension of ‘padre’ (and even its hint of a sneer) so this made him feel he couldn’t object on any grounds at all without the young man thinking he was a ninny.
‘No, I’ve no objection,’ he said, ‘except’—and he looked boldly down at this small-headed creature—‘I think what we’re talking about is love. Clive’s love life.’ Then, thinking that didn’t sound right either, ‘His life of love.’
That sounded even worse and the young man smirked.
Treacher sighed. Jolliffe had been given an opportunity to put a stop to all this nonsense and he had muffed it. Had he been in charge he would have put the young man in his place, got the congregation on their knees and the service would have been over in five minutes. Now there was no telling what would happen.
As an indication that the proceedings were descending into chaos Treacher noted that one or two men in the congregation now felt relaxed enough to take out mobile phones and carry on hushed conversations, presumably rearranging appointments for which the length of the service was now making them late. The young man in front pocketed his cigarettes and lighter and strolled up the aisle to slip out of the West door where he found that two or three other likeminded smokers had preceded him. They nattered moodily in nicotine’s enforced camaraderie before grinding their fags into the gravestones and rejoining the service at the point where the question about her nephew’s sex life had at last got through to Miss Wishart and her neighbour was able to announce the verdict to the congregation. ‘His aunt doesn’t mind.’
There was a smattering of applause to signify approval of such exemplary open-mindedness in one so old, but since the question Miss Wishart thought she’d been asked was not to do with her nephew’s sex life but with his next life, her tolerance hadn’t really been put to the test.
‘I JUST THOUGHT,’ said Carl standing on the chancel steps, ‘that it would be kind of nice to say what Clive was like in bed?’ It was a question but not one that expected an answer. ‘I mean, not in detail, obviously, only that he was good? He took his time and without being, you know, mechanical he was really inventive? I want,’ he said, ‘to take you on a journey? A journey round Clive’s body?’
Treacher sank lower in his seat and Geoffrey’s smile lost some of its benevolence as Carl did just that, dwelling on each part, genitals for the moment excepted, with the fervour if not quite the language of the metaphysical poets.
Though it was a body Geoffrey was at least acquainted with, Carl’s version of it rang no bells and so he was reassured when he saw one or two in the congregation smiling wistfully and shaking their heads as if Carl had missed the point of Clive’s body. Still, Geoffrey hoped nobody was going to feel strongly enough about this discrepancy to offer up a rival version as, however fascinating this material was, he felt there was a limit to what the congregation would stand.
‘Do we really want to know this?’ a senior official in the Foreign Office muttered to his wife (though in truth he knew some of it already and unbeknownst to him, so did she).
Actually Geoffrey was surprised at Carl’s forbearance in omitting the penis, an intimate survey of which he was obviously capable of providing did he so choose. Perhaps, Geoffrey thought, he was saving it up but if so it was to no purpose as it was while Carl was en route from the scrotum to the anus that suddenly it all got too much and a man was bold enough to shout out: ‘Shame.’
Carl rounded on him fiercely. ‘No, there was no shame. No shame then and no shame now. If you didn’t understand that about Clive, you shouldn’t be here.’
After which, though there were no more interruptions, the