The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘If you get fucking home!’

  ‘Yeah, if I get fucking home.’

  All the pretensions had gone. The complexities of middle-class life, designed to hide what one was really hoping, feeling, enjoying, suffering – all bowed to the Army code. The Army code was designed to be so simple that the thickest intellect could grasp it; it could be summed up in a classical five-word apothegm: ‘Do what you’re fucking told!’ with its unspoken rider: ‘And get away with what you can.’

  We did our night march. Apart from the fact that we should have been asleep, it was wonderful to breathe the night air, so much more alive and mysterious than England’s air. We hardly needed a compass to find the next village – you could smell it half-a-mile away.

  Gor-Blimey was leading our section during this exercise. I followed behind him, humping the wireless set. We moved into a large stone house set in its own grounds on the edge of the village. It was temporary HQ, and there were already other troops there. I had to stay with the captain and raise Brigade HQ while the other lucky sods settled down for a brief kip.

  I sat on a balcony upstairs, passing useless messages. Someone brought us up mugs of tea. India was out there – never silent even at three in the morning. Jackals were yelping and unidentifiable night-birds called.

  ‘Wake up, Stubbs! Get me Dog Five again, will you.’

  ‘Yessir.’ Here we go again. ‘Hello Dog Five, hello Dog Five. Report my signals. Teapot to Dog Five, over.’

  The faint hiss of static and meaningless things, and then a bored voice I recognized as Handsome Hanson’s, coming from perhaps half-a-mile away. ‘Hello Teapot, hello Teapot. Receiving you Strength Five, over.’

  I handed the microphone to Gor-Blimey. After some frigging about with the pressel-switch until he got things right, he spoke to Blue Spot. I sat staring out into the night.

  There was no chance of anything as worthwhile as a good screw that night. Bloody Gor-Blimey had really got his teeth into the role of Teapot and was working it for all he was worth. Not until after five was I allowed to slink into a corner of a room and stretch out on a length of matting. No mosquito net, no chance of removing boots and puttees. The flies woke me at seven-thirty.

  There was Gor-Blimey, striding about as fresh as ever, enjoying himself, radiating confidence. He was a solid man with a heavy face and a little button-nose, Eric Gore-Blakeley. His manner was quietly authoritative, though he could bellow like a bull when he judged the occasion called for it. My mother had once set eyes on him from afar and conceived a great admiration for him. In 2 Platoon he was considered to be a bit dodgey.

  It was mid-day before I staggered back into our Mesopotamian tent. Wally Page was lying luxuriously on his charpoy smoking, his hands clasped behind his neck.

  ‘How long have you been there, you cushy bugger?’

  ‘You want to get some service in, Stubbs! I’ve been here on my arse the last two hours. Had a shower and got straight on with the charpoy-bashing.’

  ‘You’re a jammy sod! I’m going to get an hour’s kip in before dinner. Old Gor-Blimey kept me on the hop all night – I never got my head down at all.’

  ‘You ought to have made your set go dis, same as I did. You want to use your bloody loaf, Stubbs, or we’ll never win this war the way you’re carrying on.’

  ‘Shit in it, Page – go and do yourself a mischief!’

  ‘And you! Do you want to get that dirty water off your chest? I know where there’s a woman here. Ginger Gascadden told me. Apparently all of No. 1 Platoon’s been through her.’

  ‘A woman in this bloody dump? You’re going puggle, Page, that’s your trouble! Too much tropical sun.’

  He sat up and appealed to Charley Cox who was slumbering in the end bed. ‘Isn’t that right, Charley? Didn’t Ginger Gascadden say he’d had a woman down by the lake?’

  ‘He said she was a proper smasher,’ the lance-corporal volunteered.

  Wally laughed. ‘Yes, well you wouldn’t know much about that, Charley, would you now? You prefer sheep or goats, don’t you? Little boys, sheep and goats!’

  ‘Fuck off, Page!’

  ‘Fuck off yourself!’

  ‘Where is this woman, anyhow?’ I asked.

  Cox told me. ‘According to Ginger Gascadden, she turns up at that little ruined basha down by the lake every evening, with a Wog with her to collect the money – her husband, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  As I peeled my puttees off and sank on to the bed, I asked, ‘Is she any good, Charley? I wouldn’t mind a go.’

  ‘You can’t keep away from it, you young lads! They’re none of them any good,’ Cox said. ‘Rotten with syph. Even the bloody ground’s rotten with syph here – that’s why nothing grows. Take the advice of an old soldier, Stubby-boy, and keep off ’em. Fuck your fist, same as I do, and you’re safe. Honeymoon in the hand.’

  Wally laughed. ‘Yes, but you’ve got Wankers’ Doom, cock, you have! Don’t care if I do go blind … Mrrhhhh, nothing wrong with me, sergeant, it’s just the old Doolally Tap.’ Trembling and juddering, rolling his head to one side in imitation of someone in the extremes of deterioration, Wally began to sing:

  Fifteen years you fucked my daughter,

  Now you gone and stopped her water –

  O, Doolally sah’b! O, Doolally sah’b!

  Cox and I bellowed to him to be quiet, and I crawled under my mosquito net to catch some sleep before dinner. After last parade, I promised myself, I would go down to the lake and see for myself if anything was happening there. Clutching my prick affectionately, I sank into elusive dreams.

  After tiffin, I took a stroll which led me to the shores of the lake. I had combed my hair and washed my face and shaken off Geordie, saying I would meet him at the canteen.

  In my mind, I saw it all. The girl stayed in the hut and I had to pay the bloke first – a hard financial transaction! My mystery girl had cost me ten rupees; outdoors, it should be cheaper. Once I stepped into the hut, all would be right. Our eyes met. She was beautiful – demure and rather shy, brown and shining, with slender legs and a bracelet round her ankle. Without speaking, we established a sort of rapport. I took her in my arms very gently, we kissed, and I learnt for the first time how to remove a sari. Then we made love outside in the sand, while a silver moon rose over the lake.

  But reality was a poor crude thing – no wonder so many refuse to accept it! I grew more nervous as I moved round the lake. The realization dawned on me that there might even be a queue for her. What was that about all of No. 1 Platoon having her? Also, the edges of the lake weren’t always too enjoyable. I had to make a long detour round a thicket, and cross over a bed of dried mud in which water buffaloes had left hoof-prints and droppings.

  Eventually, I had in view the basha Charley Cox had mentioned. It stood under a few ragged trees nearby, where gaunt goats nibbled. By the water’s edge, a man squatted, looking ahead at nothing. I had no realization of the lengths to which people could be driven by poverty; all I could think of was Ginger Gascadden’s verdict that he was selling his wife. How sinful he looked, squatting there by the water while his wife was being shafted by some dirty big Mendip only a few feet away! What a country this was!

  Preoccupied by gloomy thoughts and gloomy lust in equal quantities, I was taken by surprise by a small boy who materialized at my elbow. He was a beautiful child, perhaps ten years old, wearing old khaki pants and a ragged vest, and he said brightly, ‘You want fuck girl, Johnny?’

  ‘No.’ I didn’t know. It was all so ghastly. To take but one point, could I even do it, knowing her husband and – her – her son, was this? – were within earshot? How could I face them after? ‘No, thanks, no girl.’

  He smiled and gestured at my flies. ‘You like gobble, Johnny? I give you nice gobble? Two rupee, very lovely, very quick.’

  I knew how the monkey god felt, tearing himself apart. Life seemed to be crushed between the grindstones of earth and sky.

  ‘How much the girl?’


  ‘Short time ten rupee, Johnny. If she like you, eight rupee. You come see! My sister. Very pretty lovely girl of pale face.’ He took my hand and I went along the path with him. My impulse was to say to him, ‘We don’t do this sort of thing in England’, but it was not the place for small talk; also, I was burningly curious to see the girl. Just curious. It was such a foul set-up. Perhaps we should have let the Japs take over running the country.

  The man at the water’s edge rose now and stood still, watching us approach. There was activity at the hut too. A man emerged, ramming a bush hat on to his head, a bulky man in trousers, puttees, and boots, wearing no shirt. I watched eagerly to see if the girl would come out after him.

  As the other Mendip and I were about to pass each other, I saw that it was Rusk, the cook. His identity discs were bouncing between his fat hairy breasts. He gave me a dirty grin.

  ‘So you’re getting a bit of service in at last, then, Jack, are you? Get in there, it’s your birthday! I’ve warmed her up proper for you!’

  As he passed, I could smell his rancid body. The boy was still half-tugging me along. I got almost to the hut, and then I could go no further. The thought of fucking anything after Rusk had been at it was too much for me; I couldn’t do it. Lust had fled – I just wanted to go back and take a shower. I did not even want to see the cow.

  ‘No fuck,’ I said.

  ‘Gobble, Johnny? Super quick time!’ He reached for my flies.

  ‘Fuck off! you little bastard! Jao!’

  ‘You fuck off! And fuck off fucking you!’ He jumped away, spitting anger, waving his fist at me, backing towards the old man, who still stood motionless at the water’s edge. I turned and ran.

  The misery of it! Sex was as squalid as everything else here. Directly I was away from the basha, the filthy images hovered about my head again like shite-hawks. I had never seen the bibi. Of course she was a raddled old whore … yet the image of rutting, of depraved acts, of the total degradation that seemed to creak out of the parched soil had me in its grip. A torment of lust overcame me.

  How could I relieve it except by wanking? Oh, Virginia! Oh, Christ! And there wasn’t even anywhere in this wilderness where you could enjoy a decent sensuous wank – certainly not in the tent or the latrine. Nowhere.

  There was the lake. Possessed by a sort of fury, I trotted along its bank until I was well-concealed from the camp. In the water, I could always pretend I was bathing – there was no law against that! I flung my clothes off and trotted into the water. It was muddy and unpleasant underfoot, so that for a moment I felt squeamish.

  Looking down at my cock, I took heart – not that it didn’t need more than I could give it. At least I could bash it fervently and privately under water.

  The water was slimy but warm. Even when one is hell bent on ejaculation by the shortest possible means, water is not the ideal element for sensuous experiment; it conducts away the heat too fast. Fevered though the pictures were that I drove through my brain, it took a long while, as I lay with just my head above water, to work up any sensation at all. Slowly, slowly, persistence began to win the day.

  ‘That man!’

  I looked round. The solid figure of Sergeant Meadows stood on the bank. Hastily, I took a stroke or two of a different kind to make believe I was swimming.

  ‘Hello, sergeant!’

  ‘Stubbs? What do you think you’re doing in there, man? Come out here! That water is loaded with all kinds of filthy diseases!’

  Instead of pointing out that we had swum through worse waters frequently since coming to Vadikhasundi, I said, feebly, ‘It’s okay just here, Charley!’

  ‘Get out at once and come here!’

  Was there an Army regulation against wanking in public lakes? Dismayed, I jumped up, standing in two feet of water. A hasty look down: swollen, yes, pretty gorged with blood, yes, but not erect. I splashed to dry land. Charley Meadows was not standing by my clothes, so I had no option but to parade naked before him, at the ’shun except for my hands over my cock instead of at my sides.

  He scratched his head and looked baffled. ‘I can never make you out, Stubbs. You are bright enough. You were a sergeant once yourself. Yet you will keep on as if you were immature. What were you playing at in there? Were you trying to drown yourself?’

  ‘No, I was just having a bit of a swim. I didn’t get any sleep last night, so I thought a swim might tone me up.’

  ‘Tone you up! In that filthy pond, up to the eyes in buffalo shit! You’re a regular, Stubbs, you should know better than that! How do you reckon we’re ever going to win this war if responsible blokes like you keep playing the fool?’

  ‘I wasn’t playing the fool! I was having a swim. I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.’

  He sighed. ‘Didn’t know you was doing anything wrong! You’re in trouble, my lad. I’m taking you up before Captain Gore-Blakeley, right away. Get yourself dressed!’

  The captain was orderly officer. As I stood before him, he showered captain’s questions at me – questions, Army-style, at once stupid and sarcastic. Not only what was I doing and what did I think I was doing, but had I ever seen anyone else swimming in that filthy pond, did I imagine I had been brought out to India at Army expense just to swim in a filthy pond, had I never heard of tropical diseases, did I know what bilharzia was, I didn’t think it was the name of an Indian tradesman, did I, and so on?

  When this catechism had reduced me to a red-faced silence, Gor-Blimey and Charley looked at each other.

  ‘Sar’nt!’

  ‘Sar?’

  ‘Put this man on picket duty every night until we leave Vadikhasundi.’

  ‘Sar!’

  ‘Signaller Stubbs, you must learn to have some respect for the dangers of an alien environment. We want to get you to Burma fit and well, not crippled with elephantiasis or something equally unpleasant. Understand?’

  ‘Wharr!’ This syllable, only pronounceable with the body rigid, the chest fully extended and the throat firmly clamped down under the jaw, was uttered towards a point some two feet above Captain Gore-Blakeley’s head.

  I was marched out of the presence. Outside, Charley said, ‘You got off light, Stubby, as well you know. You’d better report to the MO in the morning and tell him I sent you. Tell him you were swimming in the buffalo pool.’ He eyed me hard and not unsympathetically. ‘There’s a touch of the tarbrush about you, Stubbs.’ Resuming a more formal manner, he drew himself up – a gesture I at once copied – and said, ‘Signaller Stubbs, di-hiss-miiiiiss!’ Right turn, pause, smartly away, ep ri’ ep ri’ ep …

  And to think that all of 1 Platoon had been having it in – and getting away with it!

  As I headed over the red desert to find myself a couple of beers at the canteen, I prepared my face and shuffled the facts of what had happened into a story that would help me to emerge creditably from the incident. As matters stood, they did not do me much of a favour. Failed fucker, failed wanker was an inglorious double billing. But, in the Army, everything can be arranged to suit the occasion; the pecking order is so steep, the pecks so frequent, that the truth is never as eagerly received as a story that shows one’s superiors in a comic or ridiculous light. The discomfiture of friends has to take second preference to the discomfiture of officers and NCOs. Everyone feeds on fantasy, and my story could be arranged not too fancifully to make me show up better than Charley and Gor-Blimey.

  There was still half-an-hour to sunset. Shadows of tall trees stretched across the old marquee tent that housed the BORs’ canteen. The canteen had only just opened and there were comparatively few Mendips inside.

  An old mate of mine, Di Jones, who had been with me at Prestatyn, was sitting drinking char with another Welshman from 1 Platoon, Taffy Evans. I bought myself a beer and went over to join them.

  ‘Wotcher, Di! Wotcher, Taff!’

  ‘You’re looking proper brassed off, mucker, isn’t he, Taffy?’

  ‘Proper chokka,’ agreed Taffy. ‘How many more yea
rs you got to serve?’

  ‘Too fucking many. I’ve just been nicked by Charley Meadows.’

  Both men were immediately sympathetic, and Di made a lot of clicking noises like a shorting Morse key. ‘Your sergeant’s got more balls than brains, if you ask me. What did he nick you for, Stubby?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a long story. You wouldn’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Here, have a fag, Horry lad, and tell us the worst.’ Di brought out a tin of Indian ‘Players’ and offered me one.

  ‘Thanks, Di, I don’t mind if I do … Well, I suppose you know that there’s a bibi down by the lake, charging five chips a time?’

  As I spoke, I remembered what serious and chapel-going men these two were, and paused, burying my face in the beer glass.

  Di Jones looked grave. ‘We heard all about that bibi from Ginger Gascadden. You want to stay away from Indian women, Horry, really you do. I know you’re a lusty young lad with the fires of creation in your crutch, but you’d do best to stick to the old hand-shandy – wouldn’t he, Taff?’

  But they exchanged winks. Taffy was agreeing vigorously with Di, advising me to stay married to my fist. ‘What happened about the bibi anyhow?’

  ‘Oh, I just thought I’d go and have a shufti at what was going on – look, let me get another beer. Can I buy you two a round? That bloody char does you no good, you know!’

  They agreed to drink some beer. While I was up at the counter waiting for it, and gazing round to see the day depart, in ambled Geordie. He always looked lost when he was on his own and the idea was growing in me that one day Geordie was going to be told to piss off and hang about someone else – but on this occasion I felt glad to see him.

  I gave him a cheery hail, grabbed a fourth beer, and welcomed him over to our table.

  ‘I bet you’ve been over with that bibi, Geordie, haven’t you?’

  ‘Me? No, I wouldn’t fancy – you know me better than that, mucker! Anyroad, they’ve sort of got the Redcaps, like, down there, like, to send her packing before she gives the whole bloody unit a dose of the clap, like. So I was hearing – I don’t know if it’s true. Did you see her?’