Brian Aldiss - The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

The nights were closing in. As the sun went down, blackouts went up.

I had begun to relish my melancholy, but hunger overtook me. In those days I was always hungry. Half-lost, pretending I was wholly lost, I stopped on my way towards my favourite pie shop and drank a cup of tea at one of those wooden tea-stalls on wheels which stood in Leicester Square, enjoying being among the down-and-outs. Only when I had finished my pie-and-peas-did initiative return to me.

Virginia had told me Josie’s surname. With luck, I would find it in the phone directory, and her number. I could ring Virginia; the next day was Sunday. We could meet again. Somehow I could persuade her that I was no part of the conspiracy she imagined to be building against her. I would make her see I was innocent.

Back at Lou’s, I borrowed her directory, found Josie’s number, and put through the call. I knew Virginia hated talking on the telephone; perhaps she thought of it as a sinister instrument; but this was a case of necessity.

Josie answered. I recognized her languid voice immediately.

Without thought, I said, ‘I have a present for Virginia. Tell her I must meet her at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. She must meet me, because I am then leaving London almost immediately.’ I named a church I had noticed near her house; church seemed a good canny idea.

It may have been the idea of a present; although I had never given her anything, I knew she would be childishly delighted by a present. As I was setting out to meet her that Sunday morning, I belatedly realized that I had indeed better take a present, just in case Virginia did turn up.

I had nothing to give her. I had no money with which to buy her anything. For a moment, I contemplated stealing a piece of Lou’s costume jewellery. Then I remembered that I had in my wallet the little silver holder to contain books of postage stamps which my mother had given me on my fifteenth birthday. The intention had always been to have my name engraved on it, but fortunately this had not been done. Virginia could have it.

Unthinkingly, I had chosen a time when a service was in progress in the church. Great sadness filled me as I stood by the wide deserted steps and looked across the faded prospect of Hyde Park, listening to the organ. In a way, I wanted this all to be a failure, wanted to lose Virginia, wanted everything to be spoilt and broken. That would be only just, and in tune with the dismal years that were past.

When I saw her coming I forgot all that and knew I had at least some strength to fight.

Such joy to see her again, worn and brave and small and half-nodding her greeting at me! I smiled and took her hand.

‘We’re late for the service, Virginia! Let’s have a walk in the park!’

‘Josie teased me and said it would do me good to go to church!’

‘Perhaps it might do us both good. We’ll try and make it next Sunday, shall we?’

‘Horry, I did not expect to see you again after what I told you yesterday. I can’t spare much time now, only I didn’t want you to be sad, so I came to see you.’

‘I’m not sad, Virginia. There’s something more I must say to you.’

‘More even than you said yesterday?’ She gave a painful smile.

We crossed the road and walked familiarly together, relieved for the moment not to have to talk.

When we were in the park she said, ‘Darling, I should not have come. But I am frightened. To tell you the truth, I am getting a bit frightened to remain in the house. There is a man in the street watching me – it’s not who you said it was, it’s another man. I’m sure he has a big gun in his pocket. I’m afraid they are going to kill me.’

I just did not understand that she believed what she was saying. Trying to laugh it off, I said, ‘You’re making it all up, darling!’

Perhaps she also had thought about the whole situation over-night. Perhaps she saw, through the veil of all that obsessed her, that I was no part of the conspiracy against her. Perhaps she had struggled against herself, and won, and come to me to give me another chance. I don’t know. But I should not have told her she was making it all up! By her expression, I knew I had committed a bad tactical blunder.

‘You don’t know my father! He’s a dangerous man! He would quite easily have my sister and me shot to inherit my grandfather’s money.’

I blurted out, ‘You haven’t got a sister, Virginia!’ Maybe I hoped shock therapy would work.

She began to walk on, talking rapidly, telling me I was getting involved in something I did not understand. Her gas-mask case rolled against her hip. Tagging by her side, I had to admit to myself that she was, after all, right; yesterday I had been innocent; today I was involved and no longer innocent. Perhaps she was correct to fear me because I was a part of her world, just as Britain had finally become involved in the far more squalid delusions of the man over in Berlin.

So I broke into what she was saying, and asked, ‘Tell me just one thing – tell me if you said you were married simply to save me further hurt. You aren’t really married, are you? I can’t believe it!’

We stopped under a tree and looked at each other. Her grey uncertain eyes were searching my face. I believe she was not married; that would have been too binding a contract for her elusive nature; and possibly what she said next was the nearest she could come to an admission it was so. Lowering her head, she said five heavy words:

‘He left me long ago.’

The words must have contained an inner truth – perhaps part of that secret truth of hers of which I had always been aware.

From a great distance I heard myself saying faintly, ‘If you are free, Virginia, I will marry you.’

And from a great distance she replied, ‘I shall never be free of him.’

They were words of farewell. I stood there, looking as she receded from me. I called to her, broke into a run, thrust my little silver token into her gloved hand. She walked on with it.

Circumnavigating bushes, dodging behind the park railings, I kept her in sight until her slight figure was obscured behind a building.

She walked off into the streets of London, those quiet grey Sunday streets, with her gas-mask swinging on her hip, and I never encountered her again. For a long while, when I had other girls, far more orthodox girls, when I was in uniform and they came and gaily went, I would recall Virginia – recall her dear lack of vividness with such vividness! – and fear for her in the double jungle: the real jungle of London and the equally real one that she had built in her own mind. For I understood by then how beyond help she was.

As she turned around, I saw part of her backside, leaned over and laid my face on it, crying about my broken drum; the evening sunshine made it all bright – how strange I should recollect that so clearly, but I have always recollected sunshine.

My Secret Life , by ‘Walter’

‘Cavaliers, and strong men, this cavalier is the friend of a friend of mine. Es mucho hombre. There is none like him in Spain. He speaks the crabbed Gitano though he is an Inglesite.

‘We do not believe it,’ replied several grave voices. ‘It is not possible.’

The Bible in Spain , by George Borrow

Table of Contents

Epigraph

Introduction

Book One

The Lair of the Monkey God

Book Two

The Old Five-fingered Widow

Book Three

God’s Own Country

Whilst writing The Hand-Reared Boy , I began to consider a further book, where we might meet with my Stubbs when adult. Taking the time scale into consideration, it seemed likely that young Stubbs would join the army. A Soldier Erect is wholehearted in its awfulness. Here is Horatio Stubbs again, fresh from his adventures in the first novel of the trilogy.