The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (4 page)

The sea air was supposed to ‘do me good'. I suffered much from bilious attacks at the time, greatly to the bafflement of our family doctor and my parents. Nelson called me a dirty beast, but I was always scrupulous about never being sick anywhere but in the right place.

It is clear enough to me now what ailed me. I was emotionally upset by my mother.

She was no disciplinarian. Father would take a stick to Nelson and me when we were naughty; it was a painful punishment that left no after-effects – only Father's habit of insisting I shook hands with him directly afterwards, as if to absolve himself from guilt, faintly annoyed me. But Mother's way of inducing goodness into us was altogether more deadly. She threatened that she would not love us any more, and that she would run away from home, taking Ann with her.

Perhaps such threats would mean nothing to an insensitive child, if there is such a thing. To me, who had experienced separation from my mother at birth, they loomed enormous. I was frequently sick because that would keep Mother at home; she pampered me marvellously when I was ill in bed. (At the time, of course, I had no inkling of my own thought processes.)

My mother was capable of actually carrying out her threats. On one occasion, when Nelson and I had done something of which she did not approve, she put Ann into her coat, hat, and leggings, stuffed her in the push-chair, and was off. We had the terrible mortification of seeing her from our bedroom windows, heading for the market place, Ann howling with apprehension as she went. If my memory serves, this was the last occasion on which I saw Nelson cry. We cuddled together against the bed and wept, ‘She'll never come back! We must try to be better boys!'

No doubt Mother's treatment of us had much to do with her mysterious nerves, which the seaside was expected to alleviate. Sometimes, Grandfather and Grandmother came down with us for the day, to look after the children while Mother went for one of her walks along the beach. In covert misery I used to watch her tall figure dwindle in the perspectives of the shore, wondering whether she meant to return, or whether something mysterious and terrible would happen to her as soon as she was out of my sight.

Sometimes she would take one of these seashore walks with ‘Uncle' Jim. Uncle Jim Anderson was a smiling man with cold red hands who made rare and ambiguous intrusions into our family life. He and Father were always very hearty with each other. When Uncle Jim appeared at our bungalow he would bring amazing things to eat at picnics – game pies and pineapples, I remember – and was welcome on that account. But he would also accompany Mother on her long walks; then Nelson and I became strangely uneasy and refused to swim, even when Grandfather shouted at us.

‘Do you think he and Mum are up to something?' Nelson asked. We suspected they were, although we had not the vaguest idea what people did when they were up to something.

When Nelson was going to grammar school he became more remote from me. In my own little animal world I formed a tentative pact with Ann. Although Mother mothered her vigorously, Ann was by no means her slave, as I felt I would have been had I received such smothering kindness. Ann reserved her independence. This meant that she was not entirely a reliable ally; anything I did which she disliked was reported at once, and loudly, to Mother. Yet she plotted against Mother in her own right and, of us three children, she was the most subversive. She was a clever and inventive child, and together we used to stray far from home over the common. Once we saw an old tramp take his trousers down and shit under a gorse bush, which embarrassed us both greatly.

We invented a fascinating and perilous game in the back garden. It began, I believe, after Mother took us all to the circus in Nottingham and we had seen some acrobats, performing.

Ann and I were tightrope-walkers. The clothes-line lay on the lawn, and we walked along it, pretending to sway perilously and occasionally fall off. Later we acquired a length of thick rope. With Nelson's aid, this was stretched tightly between two apple trees, a foot or so above the ground. Ann and I soon learnt to walk along this with our shoes off, so that we were able to raise the height of the rope.

At its most developed, this game became quite professional.

The rope was stretched from the corner of the garden shed to our biggest apple tree, perhaps a yard above the ground. Sometimes we were in the jungle, escaping from wild animals, but more often we were kings, tightrope-walking above England; we could have as much of it as we could walk over without falling off. This must have presaged a later and more megalomanic game to be mentioned in due course.

Despite the gloomy predictions of our parents, I cannot recall that Ann and I ever hurt ourselves at this game, except on the final occasion we played it. We had tied one end of the rope to a vertical drainpipe running down the side of the shed; the drainpipe came away from the brickwork when I was on the rope. Falling, I did no more than graze a knee.

The craze was over, just another of the crazes of childhood, like marbles or hoops. I cannot recall ever trying to tightrope-walk again. Other attractions claimed me; among them was Hilda.

In my last year at the kindergarten I was in love with Hilda. She was my age, pretty and slender, with curly brown hair. Her father was a hairdresser; he also ran the local amateur dramatics group with his wife. The theatrical streak lay in Hilda also. She would tease me, but captivatingly, and dance for me. Her mother was always buying her pretty dresses, of which I thoroughly approved.

Hilda and I spent a lot of time together. She cured me of my final Red Indian craze. We used to go and play with a pallid boy-cousin of hers, Ronnie, because Ronnie lived in a huge house with lots of agreeably derelict outbuildings. We could always scare Ronnie by pretending we had seen a ghost in the stables. On the other hand, Ronnie could scare
us
by saying he saw ghosts in the house. I've often wondered about this interchangeability of roles, which occurs in adult life too, for our characters are by no means as fixed as we like to think. In this particular case there was an immediate explanation: Hilda and I knew the stables were not haunted, but we suspected the house was, and were easily alarmed by anything that tended to confirm that suspicion. Ronnie, knowing the house to be haunted, would naturally expect ghosts in the outbuildings.

But I have seen boys at school, miserably bullied one term, turn into tough little bullies the next; and the sloppiest soldiers, given a stripe, are transformed into bullshitting corporals. Cowards turn into heroes, heroes into cowards, according to circumstance rather than nature.

Hilda and I turned into lovers. We used to kiss each other a lot, though I never kissed her as much as I wished. Kissing her was absolute delight; I never wished for anything better. When we had scared Ronnie we would walk in the dead passages or climb into the old lofts, playing our tiny games. Once, I was taken to see her perform on the stage. She sang two songs: ‘An Apple for the Teacher' and ‘Little Man, You've Had a Busy Day' (only she sang, ‘Little Girl, You've Had a Busy Day'), and I clapped furiously.

We inspected each other's bodies and rather politely kissed each other's behinds. The look of her body was a delight to me. But we did not know what to do except look. I stood against her, touching her, but I believe that was only once or twice. We used to watch each other pee.

It was Margaret Randall, however, who gave me my first erection.

Miss Unwin divided her flock into Little 'Uns and Big 'Uns, or Little Unwins and Big Unwins, as we said. The Big 'Uns went into an upstairs classroom. Margaret Randall was one of the biggest of the Big 'Uns, due to leave at the end of term; I myself had only a couple of terms to go. On this momentous occasion, when Miss Unwin was momentarily out of the room, Margaret locked the door of the classroom, jumped on to the table, called to us all to gather round, and began stripping off her clothes.

Children take things for granted. We enjoyed the show without being surprised. Margaret had an attractive face, with big blue eyes and long eyelashes. A nice girl, good with the Little 'Uns. As she pulled her knickers off, we saw with delight – surprised perhaps at the inevitability of it! – the crisp black hair that seemed to curl from between her legs.

She danced seductively on the table, making her small breasts bounce. I was entranced; I believe we all were. As she leaned backwards, legs open, I saw the pink inner lining of her vagina. For the first time I fully realized the thing would open, and my flesh gave a flip of delight. The wee-wee was giving place to the penis.

There was furious hammering at the door as Miss Unwin tried to get into the classroom and failed. Margaret gave one final waggle of her hips, jumped off the table and climbed back into her clothes. I forget what explanation was offered to the headmistress; I was far too preoccupied with what had happened.

Margaret Randall left at the end of term. Soon I also left and went to the grammar school, an old and crumbling building where lessons at first came very hard. Nelson was far above me in the school and embarrassed by having his kid brother hanging about waiting for him every afternoon. He thumped me a good bit, to prove to his pals that he was no cissy. I was punched in the stomach by a boy called Ian Barrett, whom I thenceforth feared and loathed.

Worse was in store. Hilda had to have her adenoids and tonsils out. After the operation she became rather fat. She went to a new school and became terribly lady-like. Her cousin Ronnie, too, was becoming less chicken-hearted, and insisted on looking when Hilda undressed. I was cross about this, particularly as Hilda obliged for him with no sign of ill will. I remember he once asked me to take my trousers down for him. I refused.

So I ceased actively to love Hilda. We had grown apart.

At home, things were no better or worse. I still hoped that my mother might grow to love me. The more she said she did, the more I doubted it.

There was reason. Mother had many acquaintances with whom she was always taking tea or playing whist, including Molly Hadfield, whose husband owned the town's biggest grocery. Before meeting Molly, Mother would be all complaints about her and how awful she was. As soon as they met, Mother was sweet as pie – just as she was with me when in good humour – and paying Molly all sorts of compliments. Molly, liking this treatment, would respond with all the scandal. I cannot remember a word she said, being merely a captive audience and bored with the whole visit. After she had gone, Mother would instantly tell whoever was about – Ann or me, if nobody else was there – just what a nasty, back-biting, insincere little piece-of-goods Molly Hadfield was. Nelson, Ann, and I heard this so often, and winced when Mother went into her charm act before other people. She did it to the end of her days. It never ceased to be painful to me.

Home-life, however, was not all bad. A child's life, in any case, is more compartmented than an adult's. My bilious attacks were now fading out, giving way to fits of anger, which frightened me almost as much as they did everyone else. I was regarded as ‘a difficult child', and my father became even more distant than before (which probably intensified the anger fits if they were, as one might suppose, signals for help). Poor Ann had to bear most of the brunt of these fits – most, that is, after the furniture – but this in no way altered our somewhat sporadic affection for each other.

We had a new game in which Nelson occasionally joined. We had found a huge gold-mine in India (my grandfather had spent several years in India) and, with its contents, Ann and I had bought England and shipped it somewhere else. I'm not quite sure
where
, and wasn't at the time; the details were deliberately left vague. Everyone in England was on our side and adored us. Everyone else in the world was against us, and kept trying to steal the country from us. We were so famous and so loved that motion-picture cameras were trained on us all the time, even when we went to the lavatory; these films were rushed to cinemas all over England, to appease the population, who sat in the cinemas most of the time, gloating over our
niceness
in the dark, cheering when we beat off the crooks or farted or waved to the cameras. (A new cinema had just opened in town.)

I was getting good at cricket too. Every game, I was playing for England, nothing less.

God knows to what lengths this self-aggrandizement might have gone. But we found another game, a sex game.

Nelson was thirteen when he got me in the garden and showed me how to masturbate. It was extremely interesting. Later, he showed me again in the bedroom, where we could get a good look. Although I had seen his penis for years, without thinking it of any particular account, I now observed how well it had developed. He urged me to try rubbing my prick; with the promise of similar development, I tried there and then, with no effect. Was the sensation even pleasurable? I forget.

Memory is an elusive thing. It stores episodes well, but misses out intervening passages of time. Some months must have passed before I was tempted to try again. With Nelson's help I was then more successful.

This episode took place in Ann's bedroom, which doubled as playroom, Ann being out at the time.

Nelson's contribution to our England game was to build huge and strange edifices out of Ann's and our old building bricks. The fantasy was that we inhabited these palaces. They were his first flights as an architect, elaborate structures as high as Ann, which incorporated old boxes and bits of toys; sometimes they had Ann's dolls imprisoned in their rooms and staring helplessly out of windows. When we had built one of these fine erections between us we went on to the wanking game. He brought his penis out, made it stand, and made me produce mine. He worked at it, and it also became erect.

What excitement and delight!

At once I wanted to bring Ann in on the new game. Nelson was more cautious, recalling that she ‘will only tell Mum'.