A Soldier Erect: or Further Adventures of the Hand-Reared Boy. Brian Aldiss
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glorious mobile buttocks … I felt my old man perking up again at the memory. Oh no, not that! I had to be up early tomorrow morning, and then a long journey before I got back to the depot at Aldershot. Was it never content? It was worse than a baby with the wind, always crying out for attention. What the hell was wrong with the bloody thing? In loathing, I put my hand down the bedclothes and felt it. Just to check its pulse, as it were.
It was hot, dry, and stiff, like a corpse stored in an oven, and gorged with blood – all head and neck, a sodding vampire giraffe! Oh God, oh Sylvia! ‘Come and see me tomorrow, if you have time!’
The natural law which insures that once you’ve clutched hold of it you can’t let go of it came immediately into force. The thing is your master. The tail wags the dog.
As I started to pacify it by fair means or foul, fantasies crowded in on me. It was next morning. I had woken very early, was dressed, climbed out of my window and down over the dining-room bay into the street. Everyone still asleep, only a vanishing milkman in sight. Round to Sylvia’s place, up her drainpipe, tap on her window. She comes to window, hot from bed, frowsy, wearing flimsy nightdress, scratching crutch. Opens up, eyes gleam at sight of randy young soldier. He jumps in, embraces her, closes window. On bed immediately. You had to go, the time was so short. Little to say. Fanny swimming with juice, slurps when touched. Marvellous tits, delicious underarms. Roll her over, lovely bum, super expanse of back. She mad for it. Groans in delight. Slip it in from rear …
At that point, I remembered Nelson who, probably at that very moment – the moment of reality not dreams – was enjoying another knee-trembler with Valerie against our fence! That’s what I should have had with Sylvia if bloody mother had not stuck her nose in! Cancel last fantasy. Instead, open air-raid shelter door, hurry in with her. Lock the door. No interruptions. Syl writhes against me. Lips together, my tongue in her mouth, hand right up, leaning on each other against the damp wall …
It’s getting pretty urgent. I grab a handkerchief and hop out of bed, still rubbing the vampire giraffe that possesses me. Standing against the bedroom wall, I clench my fists one on top of the other and penetrate them slowly with the gorged head of the beast. A knee-trembler-substitute. This time it’s really you, Sylvia, my little beauty. I clutch her buttocks, pull her against me. She’s half-fainting with excitement.
Overhead, waves of Dornier bombers are going over, disturbing the fantasy. Heading for Birmingham again, third night in succession, throb-throb-throb. As they come over the chimney-tops, I come over my fists, and stand alone panting in the dark, resting my head against the wall, listening to the bastards fly through the fucking night, on and on.
No time for Sylvia next morning. Everything hurried and perhaps just as well. With a light tap on the door, Mother came waltzing into my bedroom as in days of yore, before I could even get my eyelids unstuck. She carried a khaki shirt she had ironed. I knew at once she was tearful, even as I sat up hurriedly and looked across the room to see if there were any telltale stains on the wallpaper. The Phantom Wanker Strikes Again! All okay, luckily. Now to avoid her weeping.
‘Crikey, it’s late! I’d better jump up straight away!’
‘Nonsense, darling, you’ve plenty of time. Your father’s come out of the bathroom and there’s quite a nip in the air – you’d think it was autumn already. Wasn’t old Auntie Mole funny last night? I’m sure she’d had a bit too much to drink! It was a lovely party, wasn’t it? I – suppose you have no idea where your unit will be going overseas, have you?’
‘I told you, nobody ever knows. Sergeant Meadows says it could be Burma!’
‘Oh dear, not Burma, I hope! It’s such a dreadful place. Don’t they call it The White Man’s Grave or something? Does your nice Captain Gore-Blakeley think you will be going to Burma?’ She sank down on the side of my bed, absently picking up my dressing-gown and fiddling with it. ‘I’ve been a bad mother to you, Horry, dearest!’
‘You know that’s not true.’ But my reply rang as hollow as her statement. She and father had never quite forgiven me for running away from home to live in London, just as I had never forgiven my father for not coming down to find me. All that was four years ago, but memories stay ever fresh in family matters.
‘I will write to you, Horry. I hope you’ll write to me. I know you’re no longer my little boy, but that’s how I think of you always in my foolish old heart.’ Perhaps it was her way of apologizing for stopping me getting it with Sylvia. She took hold of my hand and said, ‘Think of your poor loving mother sometimes. You won’t have her always, you know, and some day you’ll be old and decrepit yourself.’
‘Go on with you! You always say that! You’re as fit as a fiddle!’
Tears near the surface again. ‘I’m not … I’m not well at all, really – not that it matters to anyone!’ I had a premonition that she would die while I was overseas; or perhaps it was just guilt that made me imagine it. She was startlingly thin – ‘a bundle of nerves’, as she put it. Ann told me that she often disappeared nowadays, going on her long compulsive walks. Perhaps she would be knocked down and killed by one of the American Army convoys now plunging through the countryside.
We had done this to our parents. We had failed them in some way. We assaulted them just by growing big and strong and sexy while they shrank, year by year, into minor roles, making do with their old clothes and curtains. Ann was talking about joining the ATS – the last of the fledgelings to fly, leaving the Stubbs nest not without shrill cries of relief.
All one could do about all this was to be inarticulate. There were tears running down Mother’s cheeks. The more she staunched them, the more they flowed. I put an arm round her thin shoulders, a greyhound’s shoulders, and her tears came faster. She shuddered and exclaimed between sobs about what a wretched parent she had been. Despite my muttered protests, I was inclined to agree – in those innocent days, I did not realize how rare successful parents were.
‘You’ll be all right, Mum! Dad’ll be here to look after you, and there’s all your friends …’
‘I haven’t got any freh-hends! Only you three …’
‘Well, cheer up, we’ve knocked the Italians out of the war and the whole business will be over before so long.’
‘I’m so afraid you’ll get i-hih-hih-hih-hinjured!’ She jumped up and ran from the room, as if to dump her grief elsewhere. I gave my bloody kit bag a swift kick as I headed for the bathroom.
More of the same sort of thing occurred in a minor key during breakfast as wincingly we tucked into bacon-and-egg and toast. The gift of speech is a curse on such occasions. Nelson regaled us with an account of the gas course he was on in Edinburgh and Ann essayed a few jokes.
‘Did you hear what the British and the Americans said about each other? The British said that there were only three things wrong with the Americans – they were oversexed, overpaid, and over here!’
‘I don’t want to hear that word in my house, girl!’
‘And the Americans replied that there were only three things wrong with the British – they were under-sexed, under-paid, and under Eisenhower!’
Nelson and I laughed loyally although we had heard it before. We laughed a trifle uneasily: we knew Ann had been out with an American G.I. Probably she had got the joke from him. We hoped she got nothing else – the joke lay painfully close to the truth. The Americans had sex relations; we just had relations.
Clomping about in my boots, I gathered my kit together and rammed my forage cap on to my head so that it clung just above the right ear, its two shining brass buttons hanging over the right eyebrow. I answered repeated inquiries about whether I had packed safely the apples they had given me off our one tree. The time had come to leave. This was it. Farewell, England, home, and beauty! Bus to the station, then away.
‘See you in Berlin, mate,’ Nelson said, as we shook hands. I kissed Ann and gave her a big hug, wordlessly did the same to mother, who just sobbed and patted my shoulder. We all looked round at each other