The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

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.

As soon as it was lights-out in the dormitories, an intense but resonant silence fell. It was not considered good form if one allowed one’s bed-springs to creak, although there were a few unfortunates with bad beds whose springs always creaked; these boys invariably lost face, or took to exercising their rampant genitals at other times of the day. There was none of that free-and-easy camaraderie that exists in certain barrack rooms in the Army, where the lance-corporal, as he switches off the lights, yells jovially, ‘Pricks – Atten-shun! Take up wanking positions! On your marks, ready, steady – go! Them as can’t wank go through the motions.’

To the meretricious Branwells’ rule of absolute secrecy in the midst of absolute activity there were occasional exceptions, when more than two or three boys were simultaneously involved, or when everyone went on a sex-jag.

The most communal of such occasions was the Maginot Line. This took place in the dormitories, usually as a celebration after the school had won a sporting event. It consisted of a line of chaps, forming up between the beds, catching hold of the prick of the man on his right; and rubbing when a signal was given. Sometimes, an element of competition was added by seeing who could make whom come first.

A ritual which had more of the element of a trial in it was the solitary pilgrimage, when one member of the dormitory (which might hold up to forty boys) would decide to go round to each bed in turn, administering a tossing-off at each.

This was a rather pleasant ritual. The production-line effect of the proceedings relieved them of any embarrassment they might have for the shyer members of the dormitory. A pilgrimage also permitted the more horrid boys (those considered too obnoxious to be wanked by others) to get their share of the general sexual charge, since it was a point of honour on good pilgrimages to include everyone; no refusals were expected or allowed. The pilgrim finished his sacred round with a painfully stiff penis. He was then allowed to give himself relief, or to choose anyone he liked to do it for him.

‘Insurance’ clubs also flourished. In my second term I was voted into such a club in our corner of the dormitory. My bed was the penultimate along one end of a line of beds; the chap in the end bed, I, and the next two along, formed a club of four. We took it in turn each night to creep out of bed and toss off each of the others; we could do ourselves simultaneously, or let the others help, but the rota had to be filled each night. Neither wanker nor wanked was allowed to back out of his duty under any pretext, unless he was playing in a house or school game next day, in which case he was allowed to conserve his strength.

We founded this club on the second night of term. It lasted for almost six weeks, until half-term, when a flu epidemic gave us an excuse to forget it. It was enjoyable enough; four fine able weapons were involved; the one snag was that it took so long to make Partington come that we got bored at his bed. The rest of us were comfortably quick about it. Rivers needed only a few strokes to send him off, especially at first.

This club was good for me, because I was somewhat shy of the whole business at first, but our form of ‘insurance’ permitted the relationships to be totally impersonal. No affection was involved.

It also allowed me to reopen my investigation of uncircumcised penises, since it happened that the other three members of the club were all endowed with what I had not. That extra piece seemed to me an extraordinary luxury. It drew back so sumptuously, and was juicy underneath, not unlike Beatrice’s fanny. Smith’s foreskin peeled back on its own accord, as his penis swelled to erection. Partington had inches of it, and could only draw it back with difficulty; he liked to be manipulated with his foreskin up, whereas Rivers preferred it with his drawn right back. This variety fascinated and troubled me.

One reason why it troubled me sounds laughable now, although it was far from laughable at the time.

Although I said that Ann was uninterested in sex while we were holidaying at the seaside, this was not entirely the case. She had been keeping alert. When Father changed on the beach to come swimming with us, Ann watched very carefully while pretending to be playing with the sand, and discovered – or told us she had discovered – that the end of his penis was covered with skin.

So why, I asked myself, had he taken Nelson’s and my foreskins away? It seemed an unfriendly thing to do. I worried about it, and much of my masturbation at this time was directed towards massaging the skin in the hope it might grow back again.

Most of the sexual activity at Branwells took place after dark. But it survived vigorously during the day, behind playing-field hedges, behind buildings, in changing rooms, in baths, in class, in the laboratories, in the school chapel, in corners, in the library.

Harper Junior was particularly fond of the library for his form of exhibitionism. He certainly had something to exhibit; it would have been a pity to have wasted it on the hours of darkness.

The younger Harper brother was in many respects a complete nonentity. His eyes swam behind pebble glasses, he suffered from a painful series of boils, he was flat-footed. He was no good at games, no good in class. The only thing that redeemed him – and that splendidly in our eyes – was his mighty weapon.

The male organ comes in two kinds. There is the sort such as I possess which is tiny when in a state of quiet but expands enormously when erect; and there is the kind that looks very large when limp but does not expand greatly when erect. Of whichever kind, almost all penises are between six and eight inches long when on the alert. Harper Junior’s prick was eleven inches long when limp and a foot long when erect. Or it could have been a foot long when limp and thirteen inches erect. I know a foot came into it somewhere. And this was before he reached puberty and acquired what were always termed ‘ball-hairs’ at Branwells.

Harper Junior’s prick was famous throughout the school. Chaps came from other houses and other forms to view it. They never tired of looking. Harper Junior never tired of flashing it, day and night. Day and night he was besieged by people begging him to let them have a wank at that fine cylindrical object.

My turn came behind a padded leather arm-chair in the library. It rose before me in all its glory, the foreskin not quite long enough, so that a glimpse of the knob was temptingly revealed. I began to move the flesh almost reverently up and down. Harper Junior watched it and me craftily.

‘Do you want to suck it?’ he asked.

‘No. Why?’

‘Lots of them like to suck it. I can suck it. Look!’

He bent forward, opening his mouth, and took the end in easily, sucking with great relish.

‘You can finish me off,’ he said generously, in a minute.

I did.