The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy. Brian Aldiss
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it was inconclusive in a deeper sense. I knew from my limited experience that sex was pleasurable; I could not know that it was more pleasurable than I had experienced. Of orgasms, I comprehended nothing. William’s pleasurable writhings had no meaning; perhaps I regarded them as a kind of affectation on his part, a facet of his rather unpleasing character.
This record is predominantly sexual in its emphasis. In my life, and more especially in my childhood, it was not so. This truth, while it affects every page, cannot be repeated on every page.
Ann’s interest in sexual organs was as great as mine. She had not abandoned her plan for introducing her nasty school friend to our sessions.
Rosemary’s nastiness lay mainly in the eye of the beholder. She wore plaits with ribbons in and was somewhat pallid, but that was the extent of what Nelson and I had against her. At this period I was still undergoing my ‘girls are soppy’ phase. (Ann, as a sister, did not come within the girl category.)
Because her hold over me was firmer than her hold over Nelson, Ann managed to get me alone with her and Rosemary in her bedroom.
‘Show Rosemary your cock,’ she said. There was a lack of finesse in those days!
I brought it out, cradling it protectively in my open palm while the girls inspected it. Rosemary was an only child; she had probably never seen anything like it before. Although I was happy to assist in her education, it was irritating to submit to investigation. The two girls had been colouring some pictures. With a crayon, Rosemary prodded my prick, trying to make it turn over.
‘I’ll show you how to work it. Watch me make it grow big!’ Ann said. Kneeling down by me, she cradled and stroked my prick as if it were one of her guinea pigs. She whispered to it encouragingly, tickling and rubbing it underneath, enticing it, while Rosemary awaited the miracle. Under her stony stare, the pet would not come to life, and I slid it back into my trousers.
Only a few days after, Rosemary was playing in the house when I came home. I ran up to my bedroom to dodge her. She followed me in and said, ‘Can I get it out?’
‘Get what out?’
‘You know – your thing. Your little plonk. Please!’
‘You don’t like it,’ I said, sulkily.
‘I do like it. Really!’
‘I suppose you can, then.’ I wasn’t keen for her to do so, but it seemed uncivil to refuse. The parents had been careful to instil rules of hospitality in us.
I stood there while she clumsily unbuttoned my flies, looking down at her head and her plaits. She had a neat white parting, unexpectedly pleasing. Amateurishly, she felt in my trousers, fumbled gently to grope her way into my pants. Sensing her approach, my prick flipped up to attention.
She drew it forth. ‘It’s awfully big today!’
Admiringly, she traced round the rim of the glans penis with a finger.
‘You can rub it if you like,’ I said loftily. I showed her how to do it. She started, but Ann called her, and she ran away.
When she had gone I remembered how her parting had looked, and wished I had asked her to show me her crack. It never occurred to me to ask her another time.
Life went on. Nelson was now working hard for exams. He wore spectacles and was more remote from us. For all that, our wanking sessions were still held intermittently, more secretively; Nelson began to prefer Ann not to attend. He said it was ‘bad for her’.
He crept into my bedroom one morning and said, ‘Horace, boy, I can come!’ Opening his pyjamas, he showed me his penis, hanging large and limp; he had just masturbated. Above the root of it, downy hair was growing: not much of it, but decidedly hair! I had heard that what we then called spunk came out of the ends of full-grown penises.
‘Show me!’ I said. He began rubbing his organ, pressing it back and forth with his fingers until it struggled into an erect position. Then I took over from him, kneeling up on the bed to get at it properly.
‘Bathroom’s free!’ my father called, thumping on my door as he passed.
‘Just coming!’ I shouted back. Nelson jerked away at the sound of Father’s voice, but I grabbed hold of his prick and worked away excitedly, rubbing my own with my free hand.
‘Oh, here it comes!’ Nelson gasped, pressing his palms against his thighs. I redoubled my efforts with both hands. Bubbles appeared on the end of his prick, quite a few, nothing more.
‘There was more stuff last time,’ he said – but neither of us was disappointed. This was the first time I realized that sexual activity had a positive visible climax. Although I continued to rub myself when Nelson had left the room, nothing similar happened to me.
Over these years we children were left surprisingly much to our own devices, once we were over the stage when Mother took Ann out for a walk every afternoon. She returned to a round of committees and afternoon teas and card games while the maids saw Ann to and from school. Father was down in the bank, often returning only when it was time for us to go to bed.
The maids had almost as much freedom in the afternoon as we had. For most of my childhood we had a maid living in, another maid who was at the house all day, and a washer-woman and boot-boy who came only in the mornings. There was also a nurse-maid while Mother was slowly recovering from her still-born child. The maids wore uniform, which included little lace caps and aprons. If it all sounds very Victorian, the English provinces in the thirties were still labouring under the shadow of the old queen. My grandmother was still washing her painted wooden venetian blinds, her anti-macassars, and her bead-curtain while Hitler’s divisions were entering Prague.
If maids also feature largely in Victorian sexual anecdotes, well, such eminence was surely justified. Lucky the son whose family boasted a nice maid.
Beatrice was certainly interested in the whole matter of sex – painfully interested, one might say. At one time I had been rather violently interested in Beatrice. The maids shared a separate lavatory with the boot-boy, in the back of the house, next to the scullery and the boot-hole. I managed to dash in there several times and catch Beatrice with her knickers down, peeing. She was always furious, and the final crushing threat to ‘tell the Missus’ cured me of the habit.
That episode was a couple of years past by the time she caught me tossing myself off.
Our Beatrice was a bit of a spy. She was a quiet girl, with pleasant and rather flat features, small-built, and with a crop of brown hair which was generally worn done up in a bun. She put her quiet habits to good effect by creeping up on us unawares. Thus it was that she overheard Ann talking to Rosemary about what Nelson and I did together. She then kept watch to see what happened.
In the afternoons when Mother was out I was careless. This particular afternoon was in the summer, just before school broke up. I had been swimming with some other boys, and came back to find the house deserted, although I could hear Beatrice in the kitchen preparing tea. I went up into my bedroom and, without even bothering to shut the door properly, flung off my school uniform to change into other clothes.
Catching sight of myself in the long wardrobe mirror, I began to posture lewdly at myself. I stood on my hands and let my penis dangle down my stomach. I stuffed it between my legs and pretended I was looking at a girl. I tried to push it into a thin-necked vase. I embraced the mirror.
The object of my attentions raised its head. I started to rub it, drew up a chair and sat there, leisurely stroking it and gazing at it admiringly in the mirror, wondering why my parents had seen fit to rob me of my rightful foreskin.
When my prick was as stiff as a little rod, a noise made me turn my head. There stood Beatrice, looking mighty peculiar, her face telling me at once that she had been watching.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
‘I’ll tell your mother, you doing that to yourself!’ she exclaimed.
She came forward, almost despite herself.