Brian Aldiss - The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

‘Fetch Beatrice!’ I begged.

‘Ssh! Get on the bed and I’ll give you a really good going.’

‘Oh, if you must!’

It was a flimsily constructed bungalow, and the speculative builder who put it up had not intended that it should keep secrets. Beatrice had been suspicious, or at least uneasy; she now appeared in the doorway, clutching a dishcloth.

The shock of seeing us in that incriminating attitude triggered off her ‘I’ll tell your mother’ threats; equally, the sight of a male organ drove her forward.

I ran squealing to her, prick in hand, offering it as lovers offer bunches of flowers. I begged her to let me do to her what Nelson had done, swearing I was not too young, that I would keep the secret.

Over my head, angrily to Nelson, she said, ‘You rotten little bastard, you told him!’

‘He saw us!’ Nelson said.

They stared at each other.

Anxious that they should concentrate on me, anxious to make as many concessions as possible, I said, ‘Please, Beatrice, please, at least do me once – I don’t mind if you do Nelson at the same time, please!’

‘I shall have to tell your father,’ she said wretchedly, seeing herself in too deep for anything other than violent extrication.

Nelson turned pale. He put an arm round her and an arm round me. ‘Don’t be frightened, Beatrice. You know Horace knows all about it – he’s growing up! He won’t hurt you. He won’t tell anyone if you just do it to him quickly, will you, Horace?’

Of course I protested that I would not tell a soul. We both began to work on Beatrice. I managed to get her to clutch my prick, which alone was balm, although my anxieties were such that I had lost my hard; she looked down at it in a puzzled fashion.

Between us, with protestations and persuasions, we managed to get her to sit on the edge of my bed. Nelson now unbuttoned; his prick was flying again; he brought it forth as if it were an additional prop to our argument. Possibly we both felt she could not resist the sight of two cocks; possibly we were right. Suddenly she made up her mind. Shrugging us away, she went off quickly and returned with her towel. Then she lay back resignedly on the bed and let us have our way.

When I lifted her skirts I discovered to my joy and surprise that she had not bothered to put on any knickers since her last encounter (I had no idea how easily knickers came off, suspecting they probably buttoned in obscure places, just as pants did in those days). So there was her curly-haired little cunt, smiling meekly up at me between her legs!

It delighted me, and it terrified me. When she opened her legs it did look incredibly large, the unknown made palpable. It also appeared somewhat complicated, lacking the simple classical lines of my own organ. But it felt good and welcoming, and as I touched it, my waning organ revived. I caught, too, just a scent of the quarry, putting me in mind of the smell I had sniffed on my fingers after my first meeting with this forbidden toy. That was all that was needed to add steel to the backbone.

Beatrice looked at me, sober and keen. Without ever having seen that expression before, I knew she was eager.

I was in a terrific hurry to get in. But she guided me, and I felt the lips of her vagina take and suck at my tip, and then I sunk into that devouring passageway. So much can be described in words; but of all the flooding inspirations which filled me it is impossible to speak. Secret compartments opened in my heart.

It vexes me now that I cannot remember more. I believe orgasm came just on that miraculous contact. For, as I rolled off, Nelson was still pulling himself towards ejaculation by the side of the bed.

During that holiday, and while we were still at the seaside, I had my thirteenth birthday, and Father came to a great decision.

I suppose I was a worry to my parents. I still had temper fits, I was not doing well at school, and now I had become very solitary and morose, and would hardly speak to Nelson.

My parents could not guess at the torments that raged in my being. I had imagined that once Beatrice allowed me to screw her, she would allow me to do so every day. Far from it. She and Nelson made it quite clear that that one and only time was my reward for keeping silent. I must expect no more rewards. It was unhealthy.

Jealousy corroded me. Every morning Mother would take Ann and me down to the beach. Nelson, pleading that he had to study, would be allowed to stay in the bungalow – where Beatrice was supposedly cleaning the house and preparing a picnic lunch to bring down to the sands. I knew what they were doing. Always before my eyes was a vision of them doing it, and the vision of how marvellous Beatrice looked with her clothes up by her armpits.

At the seaside, Ann seemed to have lost all interest in sexuality. She swam and ran and roamed the dunes and built castles, and forgot that she had ever tossed me off. No, once she did it to me as I stood naked among the dunes, flaunting myself; she put both hands round it, working from the front, tongue half-out, as when she was colouring a picture. But I was too mixed up to confide my problems to her.

Nelson hated me, seeing me as a threat to his enjoyment. He would not answer my anxious questions. On one occasion he did drop this hostile attitude when he discovered from Beatrice a piece of news so galvanizing, and at first so incredible, that he was forced to share it with me.

According to Beatrice, when we were all at the seaside my father screwed Brenda every day. Brenda was our other maid, an older girl who did not sleep in. How old was she? Ancient to us, but considerably younger than Father – probably in her late thirties.

It was not Brenda who interested us: it was Father. We had never considered him capable of screwing. We had no evidence at all (our own existence was so permanent a thing that we could not include it as evidence) that our parents knew anything about sex. And now, here was Father taking his trousers down and kissing … more than kissing … old Brenda … Amazing! If it was true …

So it was with a great deal of covert interest that I regarded my father when he appeared next weekend. Supposing it was true that he did it. Perhaps Brenda made him do it to her! Perhaps she had some secret hold over him! Perhaps she owed the bank an incredible amount of money, and had threatened not to pay unless he shagged her regularly every lunch hour. Or perhaps they did it in the evenings. Before or after high tea. I visualized it as a very formal affair, with neither speaking to the other. Sometimes I pictured them doing it in the bank, on top of the counter, bedding down on lumpy moneybags.

Father appeared much as usual. You could never tell with adults. He came down on to the beach with us, changed into his fierce black-and-red-striped bathing costume, and swam with us, and later drank tea out of our bakelite cups and ate squashy tomato sandwiches that tasted elusively of the greaseproof paper.

In the evening, when the oil lamps were lit, he took me into my bedroom, saying he wished to speak to me privately.

My heart somersaulted in my breast. Beatrice had told him of my sins! He was going to preach to me.

Or – far worse! – he was going to tell me what he had been up to with Brenda, man to man!

Or worse again. He was going to do both. ‘Young man, I know what you’ve been up to with one maid, so I’m going to tell you what I’ve been up to with the other. I’m going to tell you in such revolting detail that you will never look at a woman again. For a start, I don’t have a cock like your silly little thing. I have a much bigger one, made of flesh and cork, which I screw on …’

It was nothing like that. He had to tell me that he was going to send me away to boarding school next term. It was for my own good.