The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

by Brian W Aldiss

  With the allaying of this anxiety, and such minor and common anxieties as to whether my organ functioned as well as, or was as large as, other people’s, I began to lose interest in pricks, although not in masturbating; that remained a never-ending pleasure. But the fantasies connected with masturbating became increasingly preoccupied less with Beatrice and more with Sister Traven, as gradually I managed to win what seemed like her friendship.

  In my fantasies Sister sometimes changed shape and became Esmeralda. I had written to Esmeralda and she wrote back, somewhat to my surprise. Her letters were never very long, but they gave me a delight out of all proportion to their length or content. I was none too sure that I did not love Esmeralda.

  Did I also love Sister Traven? It must have been some such kind of madness that made me hope to make love to her; or perhaps that is an egocentric view, because many boys at Branwells also dreamed of her in their hard little beds. Not only was she fairly attractive; she was safely inaccessible; and, supposing she were attained, then she was safely old enough to play her role in a motherly way.

  She definitely took notice of me individually, I told myself. It needs terrific effort to make yourself individual to an outsider when you are just one of a herd of boys. Overcoming my shyness, or, rather, battling with it all the way, I trotted some of my water-colour sketches along to show her. She actually recognised where one or two of them were supposed to be.

  ‘Do you paint in the holidays?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes, pretty often.’ I had never touched a paintbrush since I was about six.

  She asked me where I lived. I told her. She was pleased. Pleasure always caused her to raise her eyebrows slightly, as if her pleasure somewhat amazed her.

  ‘I don’t live too far from you. Have you heard of Traven House? Perhaps you’d like to come sketching with me some time? I could get the chauffeur to come and pick you up in the car. We have some lovely views in our grounds.’

  Confusedly, I said it would be lovely. She asked me what my father did. I said he was a bank manager, adding defensively, ‘And he belongs to the Rotary Club.’

  She told me her father was a rear-admiral. But he had been retired from the Navy at an early age because of some disgrace in the China seas. Now he was a press magnate. Not that I knew what that was.

  Learning to distinguish between facts and fantasies is one of the most vital arts that separates childhood from adulthood. Some people – politicians, actors, the mentally sick – never acquire the art.

  Crisis-time for breaking from the childhood world where fact and fantasy intermingle comes in adolescence. In the next school holiday I was tortured by this crisis.

  Sister had promised she would come and take me out to sketch with her. But was she just playing a game? Something in her demeanour, that half-jesting expression of hers, suggested that she was.

  On the other hand, I had a strong faith in the unlikely. The stately home, the chauffeur, and no doubt the Rolls-Royce, were much more probable and acceptable to me than the whole formidably unlikely organization of Branwells, which, possibly because I had been sent there at a relatively late age, I could never take for granted.

  The one bit of unlikeliness with which I could not come to terms was that this sophisticated woman could love me, or be at all interested in me.

  That proved to be fact and not fantasy. She did duly arrive to take me out, although the episode developed in a way I had not expected. My parents did not refuse to let me go out with Sister at the last moment, as I had dreaded they would. Ever since Nelson said jokingly, ‘So you’ve started chasing older women, eh?’, I feared my father would read my amorous intentions in my expression and stop everything.

  He did not. Nor did Beatrice get Sister on one side and tell her ‘what he is really like’. Nor, for that matter, did Sister turn up in a Rolls-Royce. Nor did the Rear-Admiral accompany her!

  My relations with Mother were still painful. Although she had by now abandoned the device of threatening to leave us if we were bad, she had developed another tiresome device. If we did anything that pained her, she would cover her eyes and pretend to cry, often actually did cry, and shriek that she was the most miserable of women.

  We saw through this at once. Her little darling Ann saw through it first – it was, after all, something of a feminine ploy. Without being taken in, we would nevertheless go boredly to comfort her, since that was the easiest way to silence her and have the embarrassing behaviour out of the way. I believe we held precisely this condescending attitude to her ever since Ann was seven. As this meant that we dropped whatever we were doing that offended her, she thus got her way, and so the situation was self-perpetuating.

  That was only a minor tyranny. On the subject of girls, Mother was more difficult. I used to look hungrily at them in the street, the half-challenging, half-inviting stare of the shy man. If they returned the stare, Mother would say, ‘Huh, she must be a cheap little bit, giving anyone the glad-eye on the street like that! You want to look out for that kind, my boy – they’ll only get you into a lot of trouble!’

  When the enemy threatened to materialize into the shape of Sister, she was nonplussed. For this wasn’t an ordinary girl friend. This was a member of the staff of Horatio’s school, a school official. It was unthinkable that she could – or that he could – well, it was unthinkable. But she had considerable qualms about the outing, and the more I artlessly stressed the painting line, the more Mother seemed to worry. Father was just sarcastic.

  ‘She’s a bit old for you to be going out with, isn’t she?’

  So she bloody well was. But it just happened that she happened to show a bit of personal interest.

  Sister changed the arrangement once or twice, each time to my alarm. But the date held up, though I imagined her saying to the old Admiral over a cocktail, ‘It’s an absolute bore, Daddy, but I must take the spotty little blighter out, since I promised to do so in a weak moment. Noblesse oblige and all that!’

  She dropped me a note to say when she would be round to the house to pick me up. Panic! I was the first to panic! Supposing that my mother guessed how much I fancied Sister when she saw us together! Or – supposing Mother and her affectations put Sister off! Supposing the house put her off! Supposing the smell of beer in the living-room put her off!

  In my anxiety and general uncertainty I failed to let Mother know when Sister was calling for me until a couple of hours before she arrived – and then Mother was thrown into panic.

  ‘I’ll have to change my frock! We’d better have lunch early. Ann and Rosemary will have to play in the back garden. You might have warned me, darling! And you say she’s one of the Travens of Traven House? What posh circles you move in, Horatio! I’ve passed Traven House going north – you can just see it between the trees. She’s going to take you there?’

  ‘Yes, so she said.’

  ‘Lovely! You’d better wear your best suit. I wish you’d had your hair cut! You will speak up if the Admiral talks to you, won’t you? I’ll give you ten bob, darling, just in case you need it. We’ll have to have her in here – I hope she doesn’t get the whiff of beer or she’ll think your mother’s a secret drinker!’

  We were still running in circles, and Ann had no shoes on, when Sister arrived; she was her usual quiet self, with that gentle smile which invited you to be friendly – a ‘distinguished’ smile, Ann called it, for even she was impressed.

  ‘But she was so nice!’ Mother said several times afterwards, astonished that it should be so. ‘Do you think she’d like to come to tea one day?’

  It was cheering to know that Mother and Ann admired her (though what would they say if they guessed how I felt?). And it was cheering that Sister appeared not to notice the aroma of beer as she stood for a moment, small and individual, in our drawing-room before we left.

  The car proved to be, not a Rolls-Royce, not even a flashy little two-seater, but a battered old Ford. Sister said something about the other cars not being available. And we w
eren’t going back to Traven House. She felt like a drive to Grantham instead.

  None of that worried me in the slightest; I hardly heard what she said. The great triumph was to be with her, and in the holidays at that! I sat beside her blushing scarlet from head to navel; for I saw that she had not bothered to bring along any paints at all. On the back seat of the car were not sketching pads but cushions. Clear evidence she was going to drive me somewhere and seduce me!

  There I sat, feverishly clutching my own sketching block and paints, and now and again feeling the one French letter in my pocket – the remaining one of the two left over from the Esmeralda affair; I had used the other for tossing off into, and lent it out at school for the same purpose. Now the unused one was to be put to a real test, and I was scared at the prospect.

  To my relief and disappointment, Sister intended no seduction. We ate lunch together and strolled round gazing at the shops. We passed an Army Recruiting Centre; she put her arm through mine and asked, ‘Which service will you join if there’s a war against Germany?’

  We went to the cinema. I held her hand and nestled against her. And she responded! That night, safely home again, I bagged an old exercise book from Nelson and started what I boldly headed ‘A Virginia Journal’. It is before me now, my first essay in love, and two pages of immature handwriting are devoted just to the period in the pictures, when I had the joy of holding her hand.

  After the cinema we went for tea to a little teahouse that I uneasily felt did not befit an admiral’s daughter. There was nothing flashy about it at all. But she was entirely at ease, so sweet, so smiling, so easy to talk to. She poured my tea for me. I passed the cakes to her. Our table was in one corner, and there were three steps up from the rest of the café to the small room in which we sat.

  She told me tantalizingly little about herself; and it was a condition of my life that I could not ask, for fear of seeming rude (had I not always been told ‘It’s rude to ask questions’?).

  She had a big sister whom she adored. I forget her name now, but I know she could ride like the wind.

  What’s more, she – and Sister – rode in Africa. They had a great gaunt black Zulu as servant for the two sisters. His tongue had been cut out in childhood, and he always carried a spear, but the girls adored him. Their father loved Africa best of all the continents.

  She said why didn’t I call her Virginia in the holidays? She hoped we could meet again. I grasped the opportunity and asked her if we could meet again the next week. Well, she was going to have to go to London for a few days, but she’d drop me a note.

  I thought it was the brush-off. She clutched my hand under the table, drew it on to her knee, smiled lovingly at me, said that she really would write. ‘Don’t you believe I will?’

  ‘I do believe you will.’

  ‘Honestly I will, love. But I have to go up to London to appear in court – one of my best friends is involved in a divorce case, and I am a star witness.’

  ‘You lead such an exciting life, Virginia!’

  ‘Divorce is not exciting – it’s just cruel. What’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever done, Horatio?’

  I told her about the time Nelson and I had been chased by hornets at Hunstanton, and how we had jumped into the sea with all our clothes on to escape from them. Virginia and I both laughed greatly. She was wonderful company.

  When she drove me back to our front door, again the agony of crisis. I stared at her. She kissed me fleetingly, just brushing her lips against mine. ‘See you soon!’

  They asked to look at my sketches as I hurried up to my bedroom.

  ‘I left ’em at Traven Castle,’ I said.

  My last term at Branwells, although I did not know it then: Summer term, 1939. I thought I had another year to go and Higher School Cert before me. It was the only term I went back eagerly. I knew I was going to see Virginia.

  Our second meeting had miraculously come off. She had been as good as her darling word. We had done much as the first time, and had even managed a brief sort of half-cuddle and a long kiss before parting. Virginia had kissed me! Virginia Traven had kissed me!

  At Branwells she seemed only a little more distant, but I realized that if we were going to be lovers, then both sides must exercise caution.

  I was made prefect at the beginning of term. This gave me extra freedom. It meant that one could walk about the school on one’s own without being questioned, an unheard-of luxury. It also meant that one had a study of one’s own in what was called Prosser’s Row – a privilege that gave one many sexual advantages, although it is fair to say that few of the prefects took advantage of this, or not very often. We agreed that we were much more civilized than the louts who had been prefects when we arrived as new boys, so long, long before.

  Frank Richards was now put behind me. Greyfriars had palled at last. I had talked with Nelson and a friend of ours at home about socialism – somewhat to my surprise, they both declared themselves to be socialists – and Nelson was going out with a girl who called herself socialist (his engagement to Catharine had been broken off or, more accurately, had faded into thin air). I read all about socialism and the less boring bits of politics in the school library. I also happened on Keats and other poets – splendid fellows, I now discovered, who threw a few sidelights on what was happening between Virginia and me. In short, I was becoming civilized.

  I was also working hard for School Cert. All that nightmare, the outward climax of one’s school career, is so dead now that I have no intention of reviving it here. I passed it creditably, and that was the end of it. It was a bore at the time; it bores me now. Whereas Virginia still interests me.

  It should not be imagined that the favourite school interest was dead to me. The cess-pit was still on the boil, as one might say. I now had the pleasure of finding that Brown slept only a few beds away from me in the dorm – to Webster’s comic jealousy: ‘I’ll see they get you, old man, on that glorious day when the bloody revolution dawns!’

  Brown had his adventure to relate. He claimed that in the holidays the gardener caught him trying to toss the family chow off in the asparagus patch, and had taken him into the potting shed, there inducing him to try the same tactics on what Brown described as a very large Hampden indeed.

  Such tales, some true, some partially true, some wishful thinking, some downright lies, went the rounds at the start of every term; the lies sank and were forgotten, the truths survived and were welcome. Drury described how he had screwed his sister. We knew Drury screwed his sister; we had heard it from him before; he always came up with a wealth of detail, and there was not a boy did not envy him. Harper Junior claimed that his mother had got drunk and had sucked him off. We ignored Harper Junior.

  I found I was growing secretive. Whereas, before this term, I had made much of my intentions towards Virginia – Sister Traven, as she again became during term – I now affected lack of interest in the whole matter, or I affected interest of a lewd and joking kind, to cover my real feelings. This acting role I had adopted at home, to protect myself from derision; it worked so well and for so long that I was eventually hard put to it to drop it, or even to determine my real feelings myself.

  Similarly, I said nothing to anyone about Esmeralda, except once to Brown, when I told him he manipulated me almost as voluptuously as she did (for the knack of voluptuousness, or gift if it is that, never comes to some men or women; indeed, I believe it is a rarity, at least in northern Europe). Esmeralda and I had reached a truce, and a very agreeable one it was. We were both put off actually going all the way with each other, but on several occasions in the holidays we had got together and frigged each other in the friendliest way.

  After her first burst of generosity in letting me have a good look at her fanny, Esmeralda was inclined to be much more frugal. ‘It isn’t supposed to be stared at,’ she said.

  I was, however, in a good bargaining position. Esmeralda wanted to see exactly how I worked.

  Our favourite positio
n was lying on our sides on her bed with Esmeralda behind me, looking over at my prick as she tossed it off, cunningly varying the pace, until I groaned and came into my outspread handkerchief. All this while, I had a hand clamped between her chubby legs. I would then roll her on to her back, make her spread wide her legs, and give her a reciprocal frigging.

  She always came very quickly. The perfume of her private parts was beautiful to me; later in life, when I was more experienced, I would not have resisted the impulse to indulge my sense of taste as well as smell. At the time it was enough to enjoy her friendly animal company, and see her, satisfied, lie back and smile, and perhaps put a finger gently on her clitoris, to relish the last lingering feeling there.

  Given the chance, I was a loving person. Sharing sexual experience with anyone always made me feel great affection for them; undoubtedly, I would have been absolutely crazy about Esmeralda, had it not been for the fateful attachment I felt for Sister. And I suppose a base general law was operating: Esmeralda had yielded, whereas Sister still promised …

  Only a few months earlier, the intimacies with Esmeralda would have been the peak of bliss. In many ways they still were; and for several days after term had begun I still kidded myself I could smell her blessed scent under one fingernail; but my love for Sister Traven was a higher peak.

  Fortune sides with you if you give it a chance. My chance came early in the term. I was down to play with the first eleven against North Malverton, old rivals of ours. It was my first game in the first eleven, and I was conscious of the honour.

  When the day came, I awoke feeling horribly ill. Whatever I had, it had been coming on for the two previous days. I told Page, the team captain, but he would not drop me. As long as I was on my feet, he preferred me to Bellarmine, who was twelfth man.

  We fielded first. It was a hot day for May. I stood at square leg, and the field swam about me. I seemed to be talking to myself.

  The Malverton captain – I forget his name now, but he had a moustache – had put himself to bat first. His score stood at forty-eight, and no wickets had fallen, when he hit the ball in my direction. I saw it coming, on its erratic course through the air, a nasty little red thing, growing, growing, eluding any attempt to catch it. It caught me smack on the forehead, above the left eye. They told me afterwards I made no attempt to lift my hands to it at all. Field, cricketers, sky – all spun away into blackness.