The Hand-Reared Boy. Brian Aldiss
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was there – just what a nasty, back-biting, insincere little piece-of-goods Molly Hadfield was. Nelson, Ann, and I heard this so often, and winced when Mother went into her charm act before other people. She did it to the end of her days. It never ceased to be painful to me.
Home-life, however, was not all bad. A child’s life, in any case, is more compartmented than an adult’s. My bilious attacks were now fading out, giving way to fits of anger, which frightened me almost as much as they did everyone else. I was regarded as ‘a difficult child’, and my father became even more distant than before (which probably intensified the anger fits if they were, as one might suppose, signals for help). Poor Ann had to bear most of the brunt of these fits – most, that is, after the furniture – but this in no way altered our somewhat sporadic affection for each other.
We had a new game in which Nelson occasionally joined. We had found a huge gold-mine in India (my grandfather had spent several years in India) and, with its contents, Ann and I had bought England and shipped it somewhere else. I’m not quite sure where, and wasn’t at the time; the details were deliberately left vague. Everyone in England was on our side and adored us. Everyone else in the world was against us, and kept trying to steal the country from us. We were so famous and so loved that motion-picture cameras were trained on us all the time, even when we went to the lavatory; these films were rushed to cinemas all over England, to appease the population, who sat in the cinemas most of the time, gloating over our niceness in the dark, cheering when we beat off the crooks or farted or waved to the cameras. (A new cinema had just opened in town.)
I was getting good at cricket too. Every game, I was playing for England, nothing less.
God knows to what lengths this self-aggrandizement might have gone. But we found another game, a sex game.
Nelson was thirteen when he got me in the garden and showed me how to masturbate. It was extremely interesting. Later, he showed me again in the bedroom, where we could get a good look. Although I had seen his penis for years, without thinking it of any particular account, I now observed how well it had developed. He urged me to try rubbing my prick; with the promise of similar development, I tried there and then, with no effect. Was the sensation even pleasurable? I forget.
Memory is an elusive thing. It stores episodes well, but misses out intervening passages of time. Some months must have passed before I was tempted to try again. With Nelson’s help I was then more successful.
This episode took place in Ann’s bedroom, which doubled as playroom, Ann being out at the time.
Nelson’s contribution to our England game was to build huge and strange edifices out of Ann’s and our old building bricks. The fantasy was that we inhabited these palaces. They were his first flights as an architect, elaborate structures as high as Ann, which incorporated old boxes and bits of toys; sometimes they had Ann’s dolls imprisoned in their rooms and staring helplessly out of windows. When we had built one of these fine erections between us we went on to the wanking game. He brought his penis out, made it stand, and made me produce mine. He worked at it, and it also became erect.
What excitement and delight!
At once I wanted to bring Ann in on the new game. Nelson was more cautious, recalling that she ‘will only tell Mum’.
Ann did not tell Mum, however. She enjoyed the game too much. I introduced the idea rather carefully, when we were both getting dressed one Saturday morning and running between each other’s bedrooms. Producing the mystery object from my pyjamas, I held it in my hand and invited her inspection; it gave her the traditional pleasure females derive from the sight.
We persevered. Soon it would stir and rise at her touch. The idea of rubbing it came naturally to her.
Life also had its less enjoyable side. I was involved in fights at school, mainly desultory punch-ups on the way home in the afternoon. One day, however, I again fell foul of Ian Barrett. He ganged up on me with a crony of his, jostling me in the lane behind the school. I hit him and he hit me back, on the nose. I lost my temper in the same wild way I did at home. I waded into him, swiping wildly, entirely out of control. Barrett’s crony ran for it. At first, Barrett punched back, but I was too enraged to be stopped by pain. He fell over. I kicked him and then fell on him, still punching, yelling, and snivelling.
A group of boys came up and dragged me off, staring at me in awe. Barrett just lay there.
I ran away, half-believing I had killed Barrett.
My nose was bleeding. The blood was all over my clothes. I did not dare to go home in that state: Mother would have deserted us for good and all. Miserably, I slunk along side streets full of hostile houses and windows, crossed the railway, and made my way over the common to a pond on which we used to slide when it was ice-covered in winter. It was the only place I could think of where I might wash unseen.
As I cleaned up, shame came over me. That Barrett was bigger than I, and older, I could not accept as an excuse. I was also sorry for myself, feeling I ought to be able to run home to sympathetic and even admiring parents. Wretchedness overcame me as I mopped my clothes, knees, and face. Yet a saving streak of humbug allowed me also to glory in my wretchedness.
Cold and dread finally drove me home, bespattered now with mud as well as blood. Mother was frantic with worry. I was sent straight up to my room, told to await my father. Ann and Nelson stared at me as I stumped upstairs. Neither dared even wink at me.
When my bedroom door opened, it was Beatrice, the maid. She had brought me a slice of cherry cake in her hand. I grabbed it, and the door quickly shut again. I was too miserable to eat the cake, and hid it under my pillow.
When Father came up he looked very stern, closing the door behind him and standing against it as if he were facing a firing squad.
‘Mr. Barrett phoned me. Ian ran straight home and told him what you have been up to, fighting like a common little guttersnipe. Mr. Barrett was furious.’
‘He hit me first, Dad!’ And the little sniveller had blabbed! But at least he was not dead, as I had feared.
‘That’s no excuse. Mr. Barrett was furious. You have got to get cleaned up and then go round and apologize to him, and to Ian.’
‘I won’t! I won’t! And you aren’t going to make me!’
‘We’ll see about that, my boy!’
Time-honoured exchanges! But my father did not see about it. Even as I defied him, I comprehended that inwardly he was on my side. Mr. Barrett might have alarmed him, but I had won his sympathy.
Relenting slightly, he said, ‘Well, let’s get you cleaned up first. You are in a mess! Look at your clothes!’
I started shivering and blubbering. He helped me out of my filthy little suit and came with me to the bathroom to supervise a general sponging-down. We discovered several cuts and bruises under the dirt. On to these my father dabbed iodine – an ordeal in its own right.
Eventually I was allowed downstairs, feeling very small. My mother was taken to one side and spoken to, while Nelson and Ann gazed at me.
‘You really bashed old Barrett up,’ Nelson said.
‘Yeh.’
I could hardly eat high tea. But nothing more was said about going round and apologizing to Barrett or his horrible father.
My world seemed greatly to have changed. Curiously enough, at home and at school, things went on as ever. Nobody realized how gravely I had scared myself by completely losing control of my emotions.
Nelson and I now held regular wanking sessions. Soon we took it as a matter of course that Ann should be present. She insisted on being present, threatening to make a fuss if we would not have her – for I had not long been able to resist telling her that Nelson had an even bigger one than I.
At first she was content to watch. Later she began to insist on doing it to one or other of us. We had to admit that this was more enjoyable than doing it to ourselves.
She also did it to us both at the