A Soldier Erect: or Further Adventures of the Hand-Reared Boy

Visions of what could have been done to Sylvia assailed me. I’d actually had my fingers in the gorgeous place! ‘Come and see me tomorrow, if you have time,’ she had whispered; she was willing enough, given time and That Lovely Weekend. She had been opening up her legs before the reprise. Those glorious mobile buttocks … I felt my old man perking up again at the memory. Oh no, not that! I had to be up early tomorrow morning, and then a long journey before I got back to the depot at Aldershot. Was it never content? It was worse than a baby with the wind, always crying out for attention. What the hell was wrong with the bloody thing? In loathing, I put my hand down the bedclothes and felt it. Just to check its pulse, as it were.

It was hot, dry, and stiff, like a corpse stored in an oven, and gorged with blood – all head and neck, a sodding vampire giraffe! Oh God, oh Sylvia! ‘Come and see me tomorrow, if you have time!’

The natural law which insures that once you’ve clutched hold of it you can’t let go of it came immediately into force. The thing is your master. The tail wags the dog.

As I started to pacify it by fair means or foul, fantasies crowded in on me. It was next morning. I had woken very early, was dressed, climbed out of my window and down over the dining-room bay into the street. Everyone still asleep, only a vanishing milkman in sight. Round to Sylvia’s place, up her drainpipe, tap on her window. She comes to window, hot from bed, frowsy, wearing flimsy nightdress, scratching crutch. Opens up, eyes gleam at sight of randy young soldier. He jumps in, embraces her, closes window. On bed immediately. You had to go, the time was so short. Little to say. Fanny swimming with juice, slurps when touched. Marvellous tits, delicious underarms. Roll her over, lovely bum, super expanse of back. She mad for it. Groans in delight. Slip it in from rear …

At that point, I remembered Nelson who, probably at that very moment – the moment of reality not dreams – was enjoying another knee-trembler with Valerie against our fence! That’s what I should have had with Sylvia if bloody mother had not stuck her nose in! Cancel last fantasy. Instead, open air-raid shelter door, hurry in with her. Lock the door. No interruptions. Syl writhes against me. Lips together, my tongue in her mouth, hand right up, leaning on each other against the damp wall …

It’s getting pretty urgent. I grab a handkerchief and hop out of bed, still rubbing the vampire giraffe that possesses me. Standing against the bedroom wall, I clench my fists one on top of the other and penetrate them slowly with the gorged head of the beast. A knee-trembler-substitute. This time it’s really you, Sylvia, my little beauty. I clutch her buttocks, pull her against me. She’s half-fainting with excitement.

Overhead, waves of Dornier bombers are going over, disturbing the fantasy. Heading for Birmingham again, third night in succession, throb-throb-throb. As they come over the chimney-tops, I come over my fists, and stand alone panting in the dark, resting my head against the wall, listening to the bastards fly through the fucking night, on and on.

No time for Sylvia next morning. Everything hurried and perhaps just as well. With a light tap on the door, Mother came waltzing into my bedroom as in days of yore, before I could even get my eyelids unstuck. She carried a khaki shirt she had ironed. I knew at once she was tearful, even as I sat up hurriedly and looked across the room to see if there were any telltale stains on the wallpaper. The Phantom Wanker Strikes Again! All okay, luckily. Now to avoid her weeping.

‘Crikey, it’s late! I’d better jump up straight away!’

‘Nonsense, darling, you’ve plenty of time. Your father’s come out of the bathroom and there’s quite a nip in the air – you’d think it was autumn already. Wasn’t old Auntie Mole funny last night? I’m sure she’d had a bit too much to drink! It was a lovely party, wasn’t it? I – suppose you have no idea where your unit will be going overseas, have you?’

‘I told you, nobody ever knows. Sergeant Meadows says it could be Burma!’

‘Oh dear, not Burma, I hope! It’s such a dreadful place. Don’t they call it The White Man’s Grave or something? Does your nice Captain Gore-Blakeley think you will be going to Burma?’ She sank down on the side of my bed, absently picking up my dressing-gown and fiddling with it. ‘I’ve been a bad mother to you, Horry, dearest!’

‘You know that’s not true.’ But my reply rang as hollow as her statement. She and father had never quite forgiven me for running away from home to live in London, just as I had never forgiven my father for not coming down to find me. All that was four years ago, but memories stay ever fresh in family matters.

‘I will write to you, Horry. I hope you’ll write to me. I know you’re no longer my little boy, but that’s how I think of you always in my foolish old heart.’ Perhaps it was her way of apologizing for stopping me getting it with Sylvia. She took hold of my hand and said, ‘Think of your poor loving mother sometimes. You won’t have her always, you know, and some day you’ll be old and decrepit yourself.’

‘Go on with you! You always say that! You’re as fit as a fiddle!’

Tears near the surface again. ‘I’m not … I’m not well at all, really – not that it matters to anyone!’ I had a premonition that she would die while I was overseas; or perhaps it was just guilt that made me imagine it. She was startlingly thin – ‘a bundle of nerves’, as she put it. Ann told me that she often disappeared nowadays, going on her long compulsive walks. Perhaps she would be knocked down and killed by one of the American Army convoys now plunging through the countryside.

We had done this to our parents. We had failed them in some way. We assaulted them just by growing big and strong and sexy while they shrank, year by year, into minor roles, making do with their old clothes and curtains. Ann was talking about joining the ATS – the last of the fledgelings to fly, leaving the Stubbs nest not without shrill cries of relief.

All one could do about all this was to be inarticulate. There were tears running down Mother’s cheeks. The more she staunched them, the more they flowed. I put an arm round her thin shoulders, a greyhound’s shoulders, and her tears came faster. She shuddered and exclaimed between sobs about what a wretched parent she had been. Despite my muttered protests, I was inclined to agree – in those innocent days, I did not realize how rare successful parents were.

‘You’ll be all right, Mum! Dad’ll be here to look after you, and there’s all your friends …’

‘I haven’t got any freh-hends! Only you three …’

‘Well, cheer up, we’ve knocked the Italians out of the war and the whole business will be over before so long.’

‘I’m so afraid you’ll get i-hih-hih-hih-hinjured!’ She jumped up and ran from the room, as if to dump her grief elsewhere. I gave my bloody kit bag a swift kick as I headed for the bathroom.

More of the same sort of thing occurred in a minor key during breakfast as wincingly we tucked into bacon-and-egg and toast. The gift of speech is a curse on such occasions. Nelson regaled us with an account of the gas course he was on in Edinburgh and Ann essayed a few jokes.

‘Did you hear what the British and the Americans said about each other? The British said that there were only three things wrong with the Americans – they were oversexed, overpaid, and over here!’

‘I don’t want to hear that word in my house, girl!’

‘And the Americans replied that there were only three things wrong with the British – they were under-sexed, under-paid, and under Eisenhower!’

Nelson and I laughed loyally although we had heard it before. We laughed a trifle uneasily: we knew Ann had been out with an American G.I. Probably she had got the joke from him. We hoped she got nothing else – the joke lay painfully close to the truth. The Americans had sex relations; we just had relations.

Clomping about in my boots, I gathered my kit together and rammed my forage cap on to my head so that it clung just above the right ear, its two shining brass buttons hanging over the right eyebrow. I answered repeated inquiries about whether I had packed safely the apples they had given me off our one tree. The time had come to leave. This was it. Farewell, England, home, and beauty! Bus to the station, then away.

‘See you in Berlin, mate,’ Nelson said, as we shook hands. I kissed Ann and gave her a big hug, wordlessly did the same to mother, who just sobbed and patted my shoulder. We all looked round at each other with pretty ghastly expressions, as I hefted my kit-bag on to my left shoulder. At the front door, we milled about sadly, touching each other. Then I began the walk down the street with father; he was coming as far as the bus stop with me before going on to the bank.

My boots seemed to make an awful row on the pavement. There were only plain, middle-aged women and old men about; no Sylvia. Familiar street, all but empty. Old cars, a dog or two. Mid-August, and a leaf or two blowing in the gutters. Neglect. The fag-ends of old fantasies. There’s no way of saying good-bye to people you love; you just turn and look back, carefully so that your forage cap does not fall off, and you grin and wave inanely. You are already separated: a few feet, a few seconds, but enough.

‘You’ll find it won’t be too bad,’ Father said, speaking with a wavery jauntiness. The kit-bag dwarfed him as he walked beside me. ‘By gosh, if I were a bit younger, I’d be proud to join up myself and be marching beside you.’

‘You did your lot last time, Dad.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I said you did your lot last time.’

‘All I hope is that they don’t send you out to the Far East. It’s a horrible place to have to fight a war. Europe’s not so bad. The Middle East’s not so bad … You can get back home from there … I don’t know what’s to become of us all, I’m sure.’

‘Let’s hope it’ll all be over soon.’

‘Birmingham got it again last night. You just don’t know where it’ll all end …’

We reached the bus stop. Two old men stood there, not speaking, hands in pockets, staring ahead down the road as if watching for the Wehrmacht. I fell in behind them and Father started to talk about the Great War. Like Mother, he was feeling guilt. He was missing something. He was growing old. As the station bus rolled up, he thrust a five pound note at me, mint from the bank, and said – did he really say, did he really bring himself to say, ‘Be a good lad and see you don’t go into any brothels’, or did I imagine it? I was never sure, my emotions clouded my perceptions.

All I remember is swinging the kit-bag on to the platform of the bus and clutching his hand. Ting-ting went the bell. The bus swept me away from him. He stood where he was, one hand raised in salute, a brave gesture, staring at me. As I stared back, I began to recall all sorts of loving things I meant to say to him only a few seconds previously.

Whatever you may think, Dad, I do love you, even if you never came down to London to look for me. I do love you, and I’ll try not to go into any brothels …

Wartime is much like peacetime; it is just peace brought to a crisis. In wartime, all one’s feelings about chance and luck crystallize. Your fate is decided by whether your name falls last on List ‘A’ or first on List ‘B’. You become sure that you are being moved about with intention, but randomly, like a shuffled pack of cards in a conjurer’s hands.

In and out of countless uninviting offices, wartime lists were continually on the move. Sure as snipers’ bullets, one would eventually break through into reality and settle your hash. It was one such list, a tyrant of the species, which determined that the First Battalion of the 2nd Royal Mendip Borderers (CO, Lieutenant-Colonel William Swinton), one of the three battalions of 8 Brigade, arrived on the troopship Ironsides at Bombay, late in October 1943, to join the other units of the 2nd British Division already in India, to which our brigade had been attached by the courtesy of a yet more despotic list. A subordinate list had determined that I should be present, leaning goggle-eyed over the rail of the Ironsides, together with my mates in No. 2 Platoon, listed as one of the three platoons in ‘A’ Company.

India was a world away from the UK (the pair of initials to which England had now shrunk) and connected with it only by a thin and peevish stream of orders and lists. Bombay was an embodiment of the exotic.

Long before we could see the harbour from our deck of the troopship, we could tell that land lay ahead. The sea transformed itself into many different colours, the blues of the wide ocean giving way to swathes of green, yellow, red, and ochre. A low line of shore materialized. Strange flavours floated on the breeze, pungent, indescribable, setting the short hairs crawling with more than sweat.

As the Ironsides moved forward, little trading boats rowed out to meet us, manned by natives intent on getting in their kill first. The boats were loaded with rugs and carpets and brass vases and leather goods of all kinds. Brisk bargaining started as soon as the traders were within earshot, with the wits of Ironsides calling down harshly to the brown faces below them. Wally Page and Dusty Miller distinguished themselves as usual. Some of my mates were being jipped before we ever touched land.

For miles round, the sea was punctuated by the thirty vessels of our convoy. We had sailed from Southampton eight weeks ago, with a four-day break in Durban. The hellish Ironsides had become our home – so much so that I had developed one of the neuroses that home breeds: desperate till now to get off the hated boat with its hated routines of exercise and housey-housey, I was suddenly reluctant to leave the shelter of a familiar place.

About India, there was nothing familiar. It took your breath away. It swarmed, rippled, stewed, with people. The docks were packed with coolies; as we moved in single lines down the gangplanks, loaded with rifles and gear and respirators and wearing full tropical kit complete with solar topees, we were surrounded by crowds of Indians. NCOs bellowed and struck at them as we formed up smartly into platoons, dripping sweat on to India’s soil.

After an hour’s wait in the sun, we were marched off through the town to the station, with the regimental band going full blast.

‘Heyes front! Bags of bullshit! Show these bloody Wogs they’ve got the Mendips here!’

It was impossible madness to keep eyes front! We were on an alien world and they didn’t want us to see! – it was another example of military insanity!