Brian Aldiss - The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

We founded this club on the second night of term. It lasted for almost six weeks, until half-term, when a flu epidemic gave us an excuse to forget it. It was enjoyable enough; four fine able weapons were involved; the one snag was that it took so long to make Partington come that we got bored at his bed. The rest of us were comfortably quick about it. Rivers needed only a few strokes to send him off, especially at first.

This club was good for me, because I was somewhat shy of the whole business at first, but our form of ‘insurance’ permitted the relationships to be totally impersonal. No affection was involved.

It also allowed me to reopen my investigation of uncircumcised penises, since it happened that the other three members of the club were all endowed with what I had not. That extra piece seemed to me an extraordinary luxury. It drew back so sumptuously, and was juicy underneath, not unlike Beatrice’s fanny. Smith’s foreskin peeled back on its own accord, as his penis swelled to erection. Partington had inches of it, and could only draw it back with difficulty; he liked to be manipulated with his foreskin up, whereas Rivers preferred it with his drawn right back. This variety fascinated and troubled me.

One reason why it troubled me sounds laughable now, although it was far from laughable at the time.

Although I said that Ann was uninterested in sex while we were holidaying at the seaside, this was not entirely the case. She had been keeping alert. When Father changed on the beach to come swimming with us, Ann watched very carefully while pretending to be playing with the sand, and discovered – or told us she had discovered – that the end of his penis was covered with skin.

So why, I asked myself, had he taken Nelson’s and my foreskins away? It seemed an unfriendly thing to do. I worried about it, and much of my masturbation at this time was directed towards massaging the skin in the hope it might grow back again.

Most of the sexual activity at Branwells took place after dark. But it survived vigorously during the day, behind playing-field hedges, behind buildings, in changing rooms, in baths, in class, in the laboratories, in the school chapel, in corners, in the library.

Harper Junior was particularly fond of the library for his form of exhibitionism. He certainly had something to exhibit; it would have been a pity to have wasted it on the hours of darkness.

The younger Harper brother was in many respects a complete nonentity. His eyes swam behind pebble glasses, he suffered from a painful series of boils, he was flat-footed. He was no good at games, no good in class. The only thing that redeemed him – and that splendidly in our eyes – was his mighty weapon.

The male organ comes in two kinds. There is the sort such as I possess which is tiny when in a state of quiet but expands enormously when erect; and there is the kind that looks very large when limp but does not expand greatly when erect. Of whichever kind, almost all penises are between six and eight inches long when on the alert. Harper Junior’s prick was eleven inches long when limp and a foot long when erect. Or it could have been a foot long when limp and thirteen inches erect. I know a foot came into it somewhere. And this was before he reached puberty and acquired what were always termed ‘ball-hairs’ at Branwells.

Harper Junior’s prick was famous throughout the school. Chaps came from other houses and other forms to view it. They never tired of looking. Harper Junior never tired of flashing it, day and night. Day and night he was besieged by people begging him to let them have a wank at that fine cylindrical object.

My turn came behind a padded leather arm-chair in the library. It rose before me in all its glory, the foreskin not quite long enough, so that a glimpse of the knob was temptingly revealed. I began to move the flesh almost reverently up and down. Harper Junior watched it and me craftily.

‘Do you want to suck it?’ he asked.

‘No. Why?’

‘Lots of them like to suck it. I can suck it. Look!’

He bent forward, opening his mouth, and took the end in easily, sucking with great relish.

‘You can finish me off,’ he said generously, in a minute.

I did.

Sister caught Harper Junior naked in the dormitory once, flapping his prick against his stomach.

‘Put that thing away at once, Harper!’ she said, and passed on unperturbed.

She was the only female allowed in the dormitories, a small hard plump military figure that even the most randy senior boy could never hope or wish to seduce. Sometimes she marched through the changing rooms where dozens of boys were stark naked and nobody paid any more attention than if it had been the gym instructor, an old army sergeant.

Some might say that more attention should have been paid to the gym instructor. But I never recall any cases of boys being seduced by masters or staff – had it happened, the news would have spread round the school at once. Mutual masturbation was rife, but homosexuality was virtually non-existent; perhaps the elaborate codes guarded against it. Certainly the codes, with their embargo on emotion, helped to damp down affectionate attachments that might lead to later disturbances; on the other hand, they tended to promote coldness of temperament and concentration on the organ, as they did in my case. For all that, within the insane context of a public school, I believe they acted to protect the maximum number. Of course, they could not protect the oddity like Harper Junior. I’m sure he came to a bad end – a bad but, from his point of view, probably enjoyable end.

The negative aspects of public-school life extended their influence into the holidays. Holidays were brief in comparison with term-time and this formed a barrier to making friends for anyone who tended to be shy, as I increasingly found myself to be. Relationships with old girl friends like Hilda and Sheila were difficult to establish. The casual ways of childhood had been lost.

One holiday, in desperation, I approached Margaret Randall, the kindergarten stripper, who now wore high heels and worked in the branch of F. W. Woolworth’s just opened in town. I took her to the cinema to see a sloppy film of her choosing, and held her hand in the darkness. Afterwards, when I tried to kiss her, she told me to clear off. I never had the nerve to remind her I had once seen her flashing her pretty little cunt on top of the schoolroom table; probably I should have done; it might have worked wonders.

Some interfering idiot saw me with Margaret and reported it to my mother. She was very sweet and gentle with me, while making it clear to me that in ‘our position’ I must not be seen out with a girl who worked in Woolworth’s. She did not really like my going into Woolworth’s at all. It was a cheap place. And besides – well, I was a bit young for girl friends, wasn’t I? Why didn’t I try and be better company for Ann?

Okay, if she wanted it that way. I let my sister toss me off again, although by now I felt this was slightly childish. One morning I made her do it three times straight off, which greatly impressed her. With Nelson I was more contained. He was very withdrawn now, studying for an endless succession of exams that lay between him and his chance of being an architect. He was courting a very dull girl called Caroline Cathcart, whom I thought as stupid as her name. Happily, she did not last too long. Nelson and I entered into no confidences about her sexual proclivities. Naively, I wondered if Nelson had forgotten about sex; something in the forbidding aspect of Caroline Cathcart encouraged this illusion.

‘Are you still bashing your bishop?’ I asked him once, but he told me not to be cheeky. As for the maids, Beatrice was engaged to be married, and Brenda had left. According to Ann’s report, Brenda left without any rows or dramatic disclosures, so we never knew whether Father had been lucky there.