Brian Aldiss - The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

‘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. I shut my legs, stood up, put my hands over my weapon, and faced her, aghast, unable to say anything. The room seemed to be full of silence.

‘I’ll tell your mother!’

She pulled my hands away. My prick was still standing at an angle, jutting out. She touched it. She gripped it.

‘If you’ve got that far, you’d better go on, Master Horace. Go on! Let me see you do it!’ She insisted as I hesitated. Unable to bring myself to do it in her presence, I leant away from her.

She took hold of my prick again and began rubbing it, muttering, ‘Oh, you naughty naughty boy! You shouldn’t rub it yourself! You shouldn’t!’

Her other arm went round my back and she dropped on to one knee. She was working away, her face flushed. She held my prick, rather daintily between thumb and two first fingers, with her little finger cocked out straight, in the genteel fashion she observed while holding a tea-cup. I already had enough sense to know Mother would never be called. I was still speechless, but now with exaltation. Although I was still in my anti-girl phase, Beatrice was somewhat too old to be exactly classed as a girl, and the pleasure was exquisite.

‘Lay on the bed,’ she said. As I did so, she closed the door. Then she climbed on with me.

For the first time, I was horizontal with a girl beside me.

We were both trembling. She lay half on top of me, still tossing me off, but now from a rather less advantageous angle. She kissed me at the same time. Without knowing what I was about, I was reaching up under her dress, sliding my hand up over her black cotton stockings, feeling her leg. Suddenly aware of what I was doing, I hesitated.

‘Go on!’ she said. She pressed my hand right up into her crotch. I slid my hand under the leg of her knickers as she opened her legs – and there for the first time the genuine article lay fluttering in my grasp, damp and furry and indescribably exciting. Gripping it, I held on tightly while she rubbed away. Now a strange sensation overcame me, originating I knew not where, but slowly encompassing my whole body.

I lay back in a swoon, my hand slipping from her fanny, gasping, while she kissed my open mouth and tossed me off like fury. The feeling rose and flowered and burst magnificently, and my body seemed to churn into dozens of delighted particles. It was my first orgasm. Flinging my arms about Beatrice, I lay with my head on her breast; so we remained for a lingering interval.

The beauty of this event left me dazzled for a long while. There was awe in my attitude towards it, awe for my own hidden capacities, awe for the staggering generosity of women who could provoke such wonders, and a little awe left over for a world that allowed such clandestine glories to occur. I saw that England and its fair inhabitants might indeed be worth the contents of an Indian gold-mine.

Part of my wonder resided in the fact that what had happened was an unique event. Nor did I make any particular move to alter this state of affairs.

I had faith that such pleasures, such revelations, would recur. Unfortunately, Beatrice decided otherwise. Although she had been overwhelmed by lust when she saw me standing posturing naked before the mirror, in cooler blood, later, she must have been stricken by conscience to think she had seduced (if that was what she had done) a boy of twelve. She resolved she must not touch me again, and proceeded to evade me about the house.

When I realized this I was mortified. At the time it did not occur to me that she might see anything sinful in what we had done; if she avoided me it could only be because she did not much like me. I lay in wait for her, trying to catch her alone in the kitchen, or on the landing upstairs, once venturing desperately up the second flight of stairs to the servants’ quarters, creeping into her little room, pleading with her – only to be turned away.