by Brian Aldiss
The Old Enigma gave me a waxworky look before her eyes slid to mum.
‘We’ve got an air-raid shelter too, you know,’ she said, in a tone suggesting she thought she was committing repartee. ‘I keep my collection of little vases in there, don’t I, mother?’
‘That’s right, dear.’ Smiling at me in elucidation. ‘She keeps her collection of little vases in our air-raid shelter.’
‘Mmm, I suppose that way they don’t get broken if there’s an air raid.’
‘That’s the idea,’ Henrietta said. She uttered a short laugh as if it was a prearranged code meaning NO SEX TONIGHT.
‘Let me re-fill your glass,’ I said. Dog’s urine or horse piss?
Ann was still working away at the gramophone, flipping the ten-inches on one after the other. She was swigging sherry with Sylvia and giggling. Jeremy Church was hovering about as if he fancied them both, while Mrs. Church listened in agony to the Mole aunt’s account of her bombing-out. Most of the records were the sentimental tunes that Ann adored. How Green Was My Valley, Room 504, Whispering Grass, You Walked By, My Devotion, Yours, and one that she kept slipping on in my honour, You Can’t Say No to a Soldier. Christ, she was the only one who had said yes to me; the other bitches here assembled did not even appear to know what the question was!
I evaded old Church, who was anxious to talk about The Agony of the Great War (‘You don’t remember it but things were very much harder then!’), and commenced to flirt with Sylvia again.
‘You didn’t have much luck with Henrietta then!’ she said, and she and Ann and I burst out laughing.
Her arms were rather spotty, but we were getting on quite well when I noticed Nelson preparing to slip out with Valerie. He winked at me, a slow thorough wink that must have bruised his eyeball. Dirty bastard! Jealousy seized me. Valerie wasn’t bad, a bit hefty owing to her involvement in the Women’s Land Army, but very cheerful – and everyone understood that Land Army girls needed it regular; the contact with agriculture made them that way. They would be going to the pub for a pint and afterwards Nelson would get her against our back wall for a knee-trembler. I knew this because he had told me about it in a humble but proud way. He claimed that knee-tremblers were the most exhausting way of having sex. I longed to have a try, longed to be really fucked out.
‘Like to come and see our air-raid shelter, Sylvia?’
‘What’s so special about your air-raid shelter? We’ve got one too!’
‘Ah, but has yours got hot-and-cold running water in it?’
‘No, and I bet yours hasn’t!’
‘It’s got a bit of a puddle in one corner! No, look, see, I keep my collection of small vases in there. You’d be interested.’
‘You keep your what?’
At that point, when the battle to get Our Syl into a suitable knee-trembling position might have gone either way, enter my father! He had finished his warden’s parade, looking for chinks in other people’s blackouts. He carried his gas mask and his torch, and was careful not to remove his steel helmet with the letters ARP on it until he was well into the room, so that everyone present was reminded of their duty. The helmet made him look more squat than ever. I noted that its rim barely came up to the most prominent bit of Henrietta Crane.
His entrance caused some confusion. The old Mole aunt interpreted it as a signal that she should take cover, and had to be restrained by the Moles and Mrs. Church from seeing the rest of the war out under our gate-leg table. In annoyance, father pretended he had noticed nothing (a favourite gambit), and went over to twitch severely at our own blackout, pulling the curtains three times, as if signalling to a drove of Dorniers circling overhead. Nelson and his pusher took the chance to sneak away, and I managed to manoeuvre Sylvia as far as the kitchen.
‘Let’s go out into the back garden and get a breath of air.’
‘I’m just going to have a smoke. Do you want a Park Drive?’ She offered her packet. ‘It’s all our local tobacconist has got and I don’t care for them all that much.’
‘Thanks. Let’s smoke them outside. You can’t hear yourself talk in there.’ Our hands touched as I lit her fag.
‘I was enjoying the music. Wouldn’t you say Artie Shaw’s the best musician there ever was?’
‘Look, please let’s go out! You can’t rely on the music – my mother may stop it at any moment and recite some poetry, if she thinks the thing’s getting out of hand. It only needs old Church to get a bit stewed and all hell will break loose in there!’
We were standing one on either side of the kitchen table, puffing our fags, staring at each other. She was looking more attractive all the time. Surely she must have had enough sense to know what I was after? Where was her patriotism? Desperately though I wanted to kiss her – just kiss her if nothing more was available – my whole upbringing prevented my telling her so directly. Everything had to be done according to a deadening set of out-of-date rules, rules so ill-defined that you could never be sure when you were set to move ahead. Or there was the more up-to-date but equally inhibiting way of tackling it, the cinema way, where everything had to be done romantically, where there had to be that look in her eye, and a moon in the sky, and Max Steiner laying on the violins … and then you both suddenly went soft and began saying witty tender self-mocking things: ‘I’ve never felt so young before tonight.’ ‘Why, you’re looking positively boyish!’ ‘It’s you, my darling, you bring out the adolescent in me.’ ‘Aren’t we all external adolescents!’ ‘Just for tonight we are!’ That sort of American approach was even harder to master than the Ancient British protocol but, once mastered, it gave positive results. The music came on strong, your hands touched, you were over the hump, flowers appeared, you were prone, your lips were touching, pelvic movements started of their own accord. Over our scrubbed kitchen table, nothing began to begin.
‘Will you think of me when I’m on Wake Island or some similar hell-spot?’
Then Ann in the next room put on her favourite record, everyone’s favourite record, of Len Camber singing That Lovely Weekend. We could hear the words in the kitchen, goading me on with their middle-class anguish at war and parting.
…The ride in the taxi when midnight had flown
And breakfast next morning, just we two alone.
You had to go, time was so short,
We both had so much to say.
Your kit to be packed, your train to be caught
I’m sorry I cried but I just felt that way …
‘I just love this old thing,’ Our Syl said. ‘There’s a chap at the office calls it That Dirty Weekend.’ She laughed.
‘It’s a ghastly song – reminds me of what I’m missing. Whipped overseas tomorrow, never to be seen again. Some far corner of a foreign field and all that …’ By this time, I had an arm round her waist and was smoking heavily against her left flank. She affected not to notice.
‘Whereabouts is your brother stationed?’
These days, you’d hit a girl across the chops if she asked you a silly question like that at a time like that. Eventually, I did coax her outside the back door and into the soft dark autumn air. You could tell she wasn’t too reluctant. Scrunching the Park Drive underfoot, I got an arm round her neck and muttered a few edifying remarks. I could smell her and she smelt pleasant. The night evidently encouraged her. She dropped the rest of her fag and looked up and smiled at me. She was mysterious, just about visible. A nice face, not a bit shifty. She put her hands up to my cheeks and kept them there.
‘I’m sorry you’re going,’ she said. ‘You’re nice.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back!’
‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone!’
‘Ah, but I’ve not gone yet, have I? Let me give you something to remember me by!’
We kissed and cuddled in closer. My system started to connect up with hers, going all warm and soft inside, while a fresh young erection nuzzled against her stomach. This was very much better! Sylvia was squeaking and saying ‘Oh darli
ng!’ in a way that even Ida Lupino would not have despised. Our mouths began to open as we kissed. She clearly had no objection to what she was rubbing against. Scarcely aware of what I was doing, I managed to wedge her in the corner between the garden wall and the air raid shelter where, with a bit of stooping on my part, a knee-trembler should have been perfectly feasible, provided I didn’t come my load before I got it in.
Still kissing her, I pulled my fly-buttons undone and lobbed it out. Sylvia knew perfectly well what I was doing. Without any mucking, she grabbed hold of it and squeezed it affectionately while I slid my hand up her skirt. I was just dipping the tips of my fingers into a soft and furry crack when the bloody kitchen door opened behind us.
‘Horatio!’ My mother in a stage whisper. What timing!
Sylvia let go of my prick as if it had turned into a sea urchin and shrank into the dark. Murder boiled up in my veins. Flipping the sea urchin away, I said ‘What do you want?’ Good question, really.
I could see her long thin form dimly outlined in the doorway. Father’s training was such that she had switched off the kitchen light before opening the door, so as not to spoil the blackout.
‘What are you doing out here, Horatio?’
‘I’ll be in in a minute, mother. For Christ’s sake, stop following me about as if I was a kid!’
‘I’m not following you! Why should I want to, since you obviously don’t want to talk to me, your own mother! Come in at once and look after your guests. They’ll think how rude you are not to talk to them.’
‘Look, I’m just getting a breath of fresh air. Okay?’
She sounded genuinely angry, and old reflexes of alarm that Sergeant Meadows could never have roused woke in me. ‘I know perfectly well that you have Sylvia there with you! Now, come in at once and behave yourself or I’ll fetch your father!’
So we went in past her, Sylvia blushing with shame, me a twenty-year-old infantryman, pride of the Royal Mendips, about to die for Old England, erections every night up to my armpits – sometimes you wondered what the fucking hell you were fighting for!
I was so bloody browned off that I stayed on the top of the chest-of-drawers for some while, idly doing a Tarzan act at myself in the mirror. I had so nearly got it in! I sniffed my fingers but even the scent had gone now, bugger it. After another shot at the crucifixion routine, I slid down to the floor head-first and writhed across the carpet. Gradually, with my head hanging brokenly between my shoulders and my tongue lolling, I ascended before the mirror. It was the third day. I was rising again.
I looked really idiotic. Saliva started dripping down on to my sock. I made my cheeks tremble and my forehead go purple.
‘Yoooooo are going Maaaaaaaad!’ I told my reflection, as I twisted one arm under my crutch and the other behind my shaking head. ‘Yoooooo. Err. Ger-wing. Blerdy. Ferking. MAAAAAAAAAAD!’
The temporary reversion to idiocy was amazingly refreshing. The Army offered no privacy and it was a treat to go through my old stress-relievers again in solitude. I kept working at the insanity thing until I succeeded in convincing myself that I was indeed going mad. Frightened and satisfied, I undressed and climbed into bed.
Visions of what could have been done to Sylvia assailed me. I’d actually had my fingers in the gorgeous place! ‘Come and see me tomorrow, if you have time,’ she had whispered; she was willing enough, given time and That Lovely Weekend. She had been opening up her legs before the reprise. Those 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 sometime
s. 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.