The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (7 page)

All I had seen drove me absolutely insane with lust. Little juicy twots seemed to burst open inside my brain! I ran round the bungalow with my prick out, wanking furiously, barefoot, uncaring. Finally I flung myself on a pile of grass-cuttings and shot my bolt again, body heaving.

The misery was by no means over.

Beatrice made us a scratch lunch and we ate it on the balcony in a heavy and intermittent silence.

Afterwards, Nelson came to me with a clenched fist to set under my nose and said, ‘If you tell anyone what happened this morning I swear I'll brain you!'

I was overcome with anguish. How did he know I knew? Later I discovered that he had seen me rolling and wanking on the grass from his bedroom window, and divined what had driven me to that extremity. But I have wondered since whether, in fact, he had not noticed or at least sensed me at his window, and derived a certain amount of additional pleasure from showing off his capabilities to a younger brother.

I looked at him in a beaten way and said, ‘Let me do it with Beatrice, Nelson!'

‘You're too young. It isn't good for you.' He was kindly now. ‘Come on, I'll toss you off, if you like!'

‘Don't want you to!' But he was opening my flies, and whatever
I
felt, my little weapon was not adverse to the idea.

‘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.

I found myself crying and saying that he didn't love me and Mummy didn't love me, or they wouldn't send me away. He said that was entirely untrue; they loved me very much, and it was because they loved me very much that they were sending me away, because at boarding school I would learn much more than I did now, and so would be able to be a success in the world in later life.

Being a success in the world in later life sounded to me as repulsive as, and somewhat similar to, climbing out of one's grave and going to be judged on Judgement Day. I pleaded that I would do whatever they wanted, that I would work harder, that I would never have a temper fit again, and so on, if only I might be allowed to stay at home.

Father was much upset. He made me blow my nose and told me not to be a baby. He hates scenes; he hated to see his children sad; but he had already booked a place for me at a large grey public school up in the Peak District, not too far (so
he
said) from home.

It must have been in his mind that neither Nelson nor I were doing very well at school; nor had our grammar school a very high reputation. While it was too late for change in Nelson's case, there was still a chance for me to enjoy a better education. He loved us and wanted us to do well, just as he had done in his modest way.

To me, the matter looked very different. The fact that I was being sent away when my elder brother wasn't, told me enough. With my guilt-laden conscience I decided that they just could not stand me any more. Hadn't Mother always wanted to go away from me? Wasn't this just a clever way of detaching me? On this point I dared not confront her directly, but I made a direct assault on her emotions, weeping and sulking and being sick and having tantrums, and begging her not to let me go.

She was as patient and sweet as could be with me. But there was nothing she could do to alter the march of events. Daddy had decided it would be good for me to go to Branwells, and to Branwells I must go. I had better be a man about it. Once I got there, I should enjoy it. Besides, there would be lots of boys to play with …

The delights and horrors of English public schools have been thoroughly explored before now. Not that that would deter me from writing an account of my own experiences. But boredom confronts me at the whole prospect. The four years I passed, not too uncomfortably, at rainy, draughty Branwells in stony Derbyshire, were not a period of any real sexual development. Although I was never greatly ill-treated, and never greatly ill-treated anyone, the experience as a whole, in its negativity, had a depressing effect on me. So, except for one cherished episode, the whole period can be passed over in summary.

At first I was utterly crushed by the newness of everything: the newness, the size, and the discomfort of everything. There were three hundred boarders at Branwells, living a prison life without appeal to any code of justice. We were beaten, often violently, by prefects and masters. We formed little gangs among ourselves, we insulted each other, we cheated in class, wanked in the dormitories and fought in the corridors; only on the rugger fields did we play fair, because fairness was one of the rules of the game. Not until we reached the peace and sublimity of the sixth form was it possible to become a little civilized and form something like real friendships. By the time I got to that haven, Neville Chamberlain was flying about calming Adolf Hitler and we were digging useless trenches behind the sanatorium in case of air raids.

At first, I was almost glad of the relief from sex which the hectic school routine provided. This feeling wore off as term progressed. I only gradually became aware that there was a tremendous amount of furtive sexual activity in progress all round me.

Comparing notes later in life with other survivors of the public-school system, I realize that Branwells was a fairly humane institution. Sexual bullying was none. Nobody ever forced me to do anything I did not want to do; although a group of prefects once made me bare myself for inspection, and one of them stirred my little weapon with the end of a cane, they did not abuse me.

Sex activity was limited almost entirely to masturbation or mutual masturbation (known as ‘insurance' after the Mutual Insurance Company, who had an office near the school, to the general edification); sodomy and buggery never seemed to enter anyone's head, and would have been frowned on; fellatio was known, but it was regarded as almost as unmanly to be the sucked as the sucker. The code for behaviour in masturbation was also strict, and an interesting sidelight on British middle-class life it affords, for it may be expressed thus: one does not wank one's friends. Possible wankees were drawn in the main from three groups: one's neighbours or near neighbours in the dormitory, however poor or even hostile one's relations with them were during the day; one's neighbours in the form room, however poor or even hostile one's relations with them at other times; and the youngest boys.

Considering that almost everyone wanked someone, the amount of discretion involved in these activities was considerable. One's friends were not to be wanked; they might be used as repositories of wanking confidences; but strict followers of the unwritten code remained silent upon all vital wanking issues – that is, how often one wanked and when and with whom. To be caught in solitary masturbation was a disgrace.