Brian Aldiss - The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

When I arrived at Esmeralda’s house a gramophone was playing. This was the fag-end of September. By now Brown would be up to his spunk-producing tricks in the dormitory, and the British Expeditionary Force was almost ready to move into France. Perhaps some of the officers present that night were due to go. Their presence only helped my schemes, because Esmeralda was sitting upstairs in her bedroom, rather sulky. Her mother did not want her downstairs – though she was all dressed up to go in and kill, given half a chance. She told me she liked kissing officers.

Dramatically, I told her that she could kiss all the officers she liked. I could no longer allow myself to feel jealous of what she did: I was off to London, and was going to join the war as soon as I could.

She had the grace to be prettily sad about this. We started kissing. Down below, the gramophone was playing ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk!’ and ‘Where’s That Tiger?’ We were all absolutely vulnerable to the passage of time.

Was it the music or the occasion? Suddenly I had a wild impulse. She had her little warm hand in my flies, but I broke away.

I began to confess to Esmeralda all the sexual stunts at school – not a word about Virginia, of course, but everything about the boys, and how Branwells was really nothing but a huge brothel. She sat there, staring at me. Once I started, I could not stop.

To this day, I do not know what provoked the confession. But the very word confession suggests that I laboured under a feeling of guilt for what had gone on. If so, this was not conscious. Nelson and I were lucky in that Father never lectured us on the perils of masturbation; he was far too reserved to do so. As I have said, I never suffered from the fears of blindness or backache or stunted growth with which some Branwells boys were afflicted. Partington – he who took so long to reach orgasm – told me once that his father lectured to him for an hour about it, made him uncover his cock, told him to read the Bible when he felt lust coming on; and Partington took the advice to heart so literally that on one occasion he had enclosed his rampant, sin-bound organ within the delicious India-paper pages of the Holy Book and frigged himself with it until he shot his roe in the middle of the Prophet Isaiah. He suffered miseries for that blasphemous act. Whereas I – who never looked on any sexual exercise as other than the use of organs there for the purpose – I never suffered mental or physical trouble on any occasion.

Perhaps my confession had a simpler prompting. Perhaps I just wished to be free of the shadow of public-school life for ever.

And perhaps I also hoped to make Esmeralda sexier than usual by telling her a spicy tale.

She was certainly interested. Trying to get similar confessions from her, I asked her if she had not done similar things and had similar things done to her.

‘Not by other girls! Girls don’t do such things!’

‘They do! They are called lesbians, after a famous Greek woman who used to do it.’

‘Greek women, perhaps! But not English girls!’

‘But you sometimes do it to yourself, Esmeralda, don’t you?’

‘Well … that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’

‘How often?’

‘Don’t ask rude questions! How often do you do it?’

‘About once a week.’ I daren’t tell her the truth.

‘Let me see you do it!’

We had an argument about that. I was willing but shy, and needed to be talked into it. Eventually, I brought out my penis, which was well inflated by all the discussion, and began to rub it, on the understanding that she would finish for me. There was a perverse and unexpected delight in doing it boldly in front of her, and thus perhaps breaking down a barrier in her mind as well as my own. So I did it slowly and lasciviously, pulling down my pants at the same time, so that she could see me naked, and my balls and everything.

Esmeralda began to tremble. Her eyes gleamed, her lips parted. Her hand stole up her skirt as if without her knowledge, and at the sight of it, I came in a swoon, sending the semen scattering over her carpet. She was annoyed and excited. I was still excited myself. We began kissing violently. With her help, I eased down her knickers and commenced to frig her wet and slopping little organ. Insensibly, it changed to fucking, and she was oh-ing and ah-ing feverishly. This was the first time I had gone into her. It was the greatest delight to thrust into her just as far as I could get. Downstairs, the gramophone was pounding, and she flopped back gasping under me. The movement dislodged me – just as well, because as I came out, all red and be-juiced, the orgasm was on me and I pumped my roe against her chubby thighs.

‘Oh,’ she said, and we just lay there. ‘Oh God!’

After a bit she took hold of my little organ and kissed me on the lips. She slid her tongue into my mouth, starting very slowly to massage life back into the sausage in her clutch.

Into my ear she whispered hotly, ‘You told me one of those boys did it to you three times straight off. Now your sexy Esmeralda is going to do it to you three times straight off, and I won’t take no for an answer!’

She was, I’m happy to say, as good as her word.

Leaving home was more taxing than I had expected. The truth was, I still loved my mother dearly; her inability to understand anything about the way I thought or felt had caused me to build a layer of indifference over my feelings for her. But when she wept as I went and said she did not know what to do without me now that both her boys had forsaken her, I was deeply mortified and disturbed to think that I had been unfair to her.

Home was sadly depleted. Ann now had a boy friend of her own, a younger brother of my old enemy Barrett. She clung to me and wept before I left; childhood was ending for her too. We no longer had a maid living in; Beatrice was married and came only in the morning from 8.30 to one. My father was coping with increasing regulations and dwindling staff at the bank.

Filled with mixed emotion, I went and loitered about by the bank on one of those last evenings, hoping to say something to Father that would enable him to speak to me in the way I always knew he could.

Although it was daylight yet in the street, a light burned in the bank; above the frosted section of the glass I could occasionally see father’s head and that of the chief cashier. I recalled the times when I had stood here as a small boy, waiting for him to come out, check the door to see that it was securely locked behind him, take my hand, and lead me home. That was no more expected. Now I was grown up, and he might like me better if I behaved like a man.

The chief clerk came out of the side door. I hid round the corner so that I did not have to speak to him. I went back to the side door of the bank, standing there smiling as my father came out.

‘Hello, Dad!’

‘Hello, Horatio! What are you doing here? Are you waiting for me?’

With an effort – ‘Yes, Dad, I was, really. I thought perhaps we could – well, you know I’m off on Friday – I thought perhaps we could go and, you know, have a sort of farewell drink!’

‘A drink?’ He frowned at me, not at all unkindly. ‘Here, you’d better come home with me. What do you want a drink for? At your age! I don’t want you hanging about the public houses and I hope you won’t when you’re in London.’

‘No, I won’t, Dad.’

‘Well, I don’t want a son of mine seen in a pub. I know Nelson has been in one a time or two, but we hope he’ll grow out of that. You know your mother’s upset enough at your going to London – I don’t know what she’d do if she thought you were going into public houses. It’s the downward road, my boy, make no mistake of that.’