The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (6 page)

‘Show me!' I said. He began rubbing his organ, pressing it back and forth with his fingers until it struggled into an erect position. Then I took over from him, kneeling up on the bed to get at it properly.

‘Bathroom's free!' my father called, thumping on my door as he passed.

‘Just coming!' I shouted back. Nelson jerked away at the sound of Father's voice, but I grabbed hold of his prick and worked away excitedly, rubbing my own with my free hand.

‘Oh, here it comes!' Nelson gasped, pressing his palms against his thighs. I redoubled my efforts with both hands. Bubbles appeared on the end of his prick, quite a few, nothing more.

‘There was more stuff last time,' he said – but neither of us was disappointed. This was the first time I realized that sexual activity had a positive visible climax. Although I continued to rub myself when Nelson had left the room, nothing similar happened to me.

Over these years we children were left surprisingly much to our own devices, once we were over the stage when Mother took Ann out for a walk every afternoon. She returned to a round of committees and afternoon teas and card games while the maids saw Ann to and from school. Father was down in the bank, often returning only when it was time for us to go to bed.

The maids had almost as much freedom in the afternoon as we had. For most of my childhood we had a maid living in, another maid who was at the house all day, and a washer-woman and boot-boy who came only in the mornings. There was also a nurse-maid while Mother was slowly recovering from her still-born child. The maids wore uniform, which included little lace caps and aprons. If it all sounds very Victorian, the English provinces in the thirties were still labouring under the shadow of the old queen. My grandmother was still washing her painted wooden venetian blinds, her anti-macassars, and her bead-curtain while Hitler's divisions were entering Prague.

If maids also feature largely in Victorian sexual anecdotes, well, such eminence was surely justified. Lucky the son whose family boasted a nice maid.

Beatrice was certainly interested in the whole matter of sex – painfully interested, one might say. At one time I had been rather violently interested in Beatrice. The maids shared a separate lavatory with the boot-boy, in the back of the house, next to the scullery and the boot-hole. I managed to dash in there several times and catch Beatrice with her knickers down, peeing. She was always furious, and the final crushing threat to ‘tell the Missus' cured me of the habit.

That episode was a couple of years past by the time she caught me tossing myself off.

Our Beatrice was a bit of a spy. She was a quiet girl, with pleasant and rather flat features, small-built, and with a crop of brown hair which was generally worn done up in a bun. She put her quiet habits to good effect by creeping up on us unawares. Thus it was that she overheard Ann talking to Rosemary about what Nelson and I did together. She then kept watch to see what happened.

In the afternoons when Mother was out I was careless. This particular afternoon was in the summer, just before school broke up. I had been swimming with some other boys, and came back to find the house deserted, although I could hear Beatrice in the kitchen preparing tea. I went up into my bedroom and, without even bothering to shut the door properly, flung off my school uniform to change into other clothes.

Catching sight of myself in the long wardrobe mirror, I began to posture lewdly at myself. I stood on my hands and let my penis dangle down my stomach. I stuffed it between my legs and pretended I was looking at a girl. I tried to push it into a thin-necked vase. I embraced the mirror.

The object of my attentions raised its head. I started to rub it, drew up a chair and sat there, leisurely stroking it and gazing at it admiringly in the mirror, wondering why my parents had seen fit to rob me of my rightful foreskin.

When my prick was as stiff as a little rod, a noise made me turn my head. There stood Beatrice, looking mighty peculiar, her face telling me at once that she had been watching.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

‘I'll tell your mother, you doing that to yourself!' she exclaimed.

She came forward, almost despite herself. I shut my legs, stood up, put my hands over my weapon, and faced her, aghast, unable to say anything. The room seemed to be full of silence.

‘I'll tell your mother!'

She pulled my hands away. My prick was still standing at an angle, jutting out. She touched it. She gripped it.

‘If you've got that far, you'd better go on, Master Horace. Go on! Let me see you do it!' She insisted as I hesitated. Unable to bring myself to do it in her presence, I leant away from her.

She took hold of my prick again and began rubbing it, muttering, ‘Oh, you naughty naughty boy! You shouldn't rub it yourself! You shouldn't!'

Her other arm went round my back and she dropped on to one knee. She was working away, her face flushed. She held my prick, rather daintily between thumb and two first fingers, with her little finger cocked out straight, in the genteel fashion she observed while holding a tea-cup. I already had enough sense to know Mother would never be called. I was still speechless, but now with exaltation. Although I was still in my anti-girl phase, Beatrice was somewhat too old to be exactly classed as a girl, and the pleasure was exquisite.

‘Lay on the bed,' she said. As I did so, she closed the door. Then she climbed on with me.

For the first time, I was horizontal with a girl beside me.

We were both trembling. She lay half on top of me, still tossing me off, but now from a rather less advantageous angle. She kissed me at the same time. Without knowing what I was about, I was reaching up under her dress, sliding my hand up over her black cotton stockings, feeling her leg. Suddenly aware of what I was doing, I hesitated.

‘Go on!' she said. She pressed my hand right up into her crotch. I slid my hand under the leg of her knickers as she opened her legs – and there for the first time the genuine article lay fluttering in my grasp, damp and furry and indescribably exciting. Gripping it, I held on tightly while she rubbed away. Now a strange sensation overcame me, originating I knew not where, but slowly encompassing my whole body.

I lay back in a swoon, my hand slipping from her fanny, gasping, while she kissed my open mouth and tossed me off like fury. The feeling rose and flowered and burst magnificently, and my body seemed to churn into dozens of delighted particles. It was my first orgasm. Flinging my arms about Beatrice, I lay with my head on her breast; so we remained for a lingering interval.

The beauty of this event left me dazzled for a long while. There was awe in my attitude towards it, awe for my own hidden capacities, awe for the staggering generosity of women who could provoke such wonders, and a little awe left over for a world that allowed such clandestine glories to occur. I saw that England and its fair inhabitants might indeed be worth the contents of an Indian gold-mine.

Part of my wonder resided in the fact that what had happened was an unique event. Nor did I make any particular move to alter this state of affairs.

I had faith that such pleasures, such revelations, would recur. Unfortunately, Beatrice decided otherwise. Although she had been overwhelmed by lust when she saw me standing posturing naked before the mirror, in cooler blood, later, she must have been stricken by conscience to think she had seduced (if that was what she had done) a boy of twelve. She resolved she must not touch me again, and proceeded to evade me about the house.

When I realized this I was mortified. At the time it did not occur to me that she might see anything sinful in what we had done; if she avoided me it could only be because she did not much like me. I lay in wait for her, trying to catch her alone in the kitchen, or on the landing upstairs, once venturing desperately up the second flight of stairs to the servants' quarters, creeping into her little room, pleading with her – only to be turned away.

During this miserable period I masturbated myself for consolation, and Ann also did it to me, but there was no transcendence, although I now had orgasms on every occasion – still without ejaculating. I achieved higher feelings on my own, when I could create fantasies about Beatrice. It never occurred to me to try to excite Ann; seemingly, it never occurred to her that she could be excited.

The summer holidays came, I returned from school with an adverse report. Father said nothing about it; Mother told me he was very angry, and disappointed in me; but he always was being disappointed in me.

As usually happened, we went to our bungalow by the sea. Father drove us down and came to visit us at the weekends, living alone at home during the week, looked after by one of the maids. The other maid came to the seaside with us. On this occasion I was mournfully glad to find Beatrice was coming with us.

I wish I could remember more of that little darling. The real Beatrice has long since been obnubliated by the long years of my fantasies about her. Nothing comes back to me except the thrilling feel of her fanny between my fingers, elusive and plump. She could not have been more than nineteen. I adore her still!

She was forced to reach our bungalow by train and local bus, a journey involving half a dozen changes, because it would never have done to have had your maid in the car with you, even if you could have crammed her into your little hot black Rover.

Our family holiday tradition was wearing a little thin by this date. The bungalow was now rather cramped for us, although Father had had a large living room tacked on and had divided the old living room into two bedrooms. On this occasion it was raining dismally when we arrived. Nelson, too, was in sober mood. His School Certificate exams were looming over him, and he arrived armed with a parcel of schoolbooks to work at. In my wretchedness I had confided in him about the Beatrice affair; he had promised to speak to Beatrice on my behalf, but nothing had come of it.

That dull day of our arrival comes back to me well! I took my sister's hand and we ran down to the edge of the sea in our macs. She hunted for funny stones, calling in delight. I flung driftwood into the waves. More time passed than we knew, until heavier rain drove us back to the bungalow. Mother had lit the big oil lamps with their bulging white translucent shades, and everything looked homely and welcoming as Ann paraded her treasures on the table. Where was Father? I asked. Since the weather was so unpromising, he had had a cup of tea and started the drive home immediately.

And he had not thought to say goodbye to Ann and me!

As it happened, the weather improved the next day. It became bright and dry, with a little cold hard wind sneaking along the sands, entirely typical of the North Norfolk coast. Ann and I loved the wide beaches, and played on them contentedly all day. Ann could swim like a little dolphin; Nelson was a good diver; but I could swim farther than either of them, and farther underwater.

One morning, Mother decided she would buy herself a dress, and took Ann with her to King's Lynn for the day; Ann liked the train ride. Beatrice could look after the boys. By now, I was fed up with Beatrice, and ran off to the beach as soon as I had waved goodbye to Mother and Ann. I joined some brown and ragged boys in a game of cricket on the great expanse of sand. They were bigger than I, and tough, and to their chagrin I bowled them all out one by one, until they chased me savagely off the beach.

As I made my way back to the bungalow, some instinct made me go very quietly. I threw my gym shoes into the hedge and crept up the sandy path. Most of the windows were open – I must have caught the odd murmur of voices. Bumble-bees were in all the snapdragons by the front porch.

Gliding round to one of the big side windows, I stealthily raised an eye over the sill, heart beating heavily with presentiments of evil. This window had belonged to the old living room. A partition now divided it unequally in two. The large part lit my mother's bedroom, the smaller, the maid's room.

For reasons of comfort, Nelson and Beatrice had elected to lie on the double bed in my mother's room. They were between bouts. He was naked except for a flannel shirt, and had removed his spectacles. She still wore all her clothes bar her knickers, which had been kicked on to the floor. The rest of her clothes were bundled up around her breasts. He was kissing her stomach. I could not see Beatrice's face.

After a moment, Nelson moved so that I could see he bore a flaming erection. He opened her legs and knelt between them as if he was going to enter her, but she sat up and cupped his prick in her hands, staring at it deeply as if it were a crystal ball in which she could read her future. I thought, My God, she really likes it! with a sort of terror.

She lay back, and there was a lot of fumbling while he tried to get it in the hole. Unfortunately, I really could not see this part of the business at all. Somehow it wasn't right, or else they were both so amateur. Nelson went off heat slightly and rested beside her. They started rubbing each other and moaning slightly. Now I could see a little glimpse of pink under his fingers. It looked maddening – I must have been half-way through the window by now, my eyes nearly bursting from my head.

Nelson tried again, rolling on to her, and this time, pushing between them, he slid his prick up her, to general groans of delight, and began slyly to move his bum up and down, up and down, his legs straight between her opened and crooked ones.

Intense fevers obscured my senses. I slid away from the window, tumbling to my knees on the ground, falling among the flowers, discovering as I did so that, in my fascination, I had unknowingly dragged my penis from its lair and wanked it furiously, with inevitable results. I was somewhat vexed that it had happened without my being aware of it, and also scared in case anyone had seen me from the road; but there appeared to be nobody about and presently I picked myself up and peeped in the window again.

I saw their enviable climax take place, that thrilling twitching of limbs! Almost at once, Beatrice sat up and grabbed a towel to wipe herself – doubtless fearing the consequences of her love-making. To do this, she perched on the edge of the bed and opened her legs wide. From my position, I would have had a glorious view of all her secrets but, after one quick thirsty glance, I had to slide out of sight, since she would have looked directly at me had she lifted her head.