Arthur McCann Read online

  'It's not Danny,' I muttered sullenly.

  'Hush,' she warned sweetly. She propped herself up on one elbow to look around me at the others in the room. They still slept, but the action brought her half way from the sheet. The moon brushed her neck and flooded the indolent mounds inside the front of her nightdress. She saw my transfixion, reached for my hand and blatantly laid it against her skin. My sweat began to cascade inside my best suit. That lovely, swollen, soft, piece of Rose. And I was touching it.

  She levered her feet from the bed. It was a long silk nightdress and big and statuesque as she was she reminded me of the picture of Britannia which we had on the wall at school. Or Boadicea, whichever it was. She took my hand, and glancing around the room again, made for the door. We went out into the soft night of the park and trod gleefully across the dewy grass to the somnolent barrage balloon.

  We hardly bothered to look towards the sentry post. She pulled me down into the silver folds of the balloon and hugged me to her.

  'You've got a collar and tie and long trousers on,' she whispered.

  ‘It's my best suit,' I said.' I thought I'd look nice if I was coming to see you.'

  ‘Let's take it off,' she giggled.' You'll get it all screwed up sitting down here.'

  She helped me out of my clothes, just like my mother used to do when I was a few years younger, making the same little clucks as she did so, then folding the clothes up in a careful pile at our side. I had taken everything off except my underpants and I told her shyly I wanted to retain them, at least for a while. Underneath that wretched uncontrollable spike was up to its tricks again. Why wouldn't the bloody thing behave? I could see her looking at the tent it made in my underpants and felt myself blush.

  ‘I don't know what to do,' I said because she was just kneeling and watching me.

  'Come and have a rest down here,' she replied, turning and stretching herself out along the loose folds of the balloon. She was flat, laid out in her nightie, like Mrs Hughes was when she died and everybody in the street was allowed to go and have a look at her. Up to then Mrs Hughes was the only woman I had seen lying down in a nightie and she couldn't compare with Rose, not for a moment. Not only was she dead, she was a lot older.

  I stood, for a moment, hesitating, not sure what to do, how to launch myself, just as I had once stood at the top of the slide in the park playground, childishly frozen before the first descent. Rose's confident fingers encouraged me. She crooked one from each hand mischievously towards me and then reached out and held me behind my trembling knee with her strong but exquisite hand.

  I went to her, buckling at the knees, then going head first as I would into the Newport municipal swimming baths. She gave a short grunt as I landed on her and I muttered an apology. I had no time or room or words for anything else.

  For in a moment I was involved in a situation so exotic, so erotic, so incredible, that though I have known many women since, and varied positions and techniques, I have never again captured the pure joy of that first sensation. For me, ever since, it has been my sexual lost chord. All childhood vanished in a moment, my fears and barriers, my unawareness, my doubts, my joyless loneliness. I wallowed in her. That is the only word, wallowed. It was like swimming on a warm and wavy ocean. It was all I could do not to throw my arms into an exultant freestyle stroke. Her arms were hugging me with great, lovely enjoyment and, somewhat to my astonishment, she had my ear in her mouth. I've never had very attractive ears; they project and at school the others say they can see the light through them. But that's what Rose was doing. She liked my ears.

  She began to groan and mumble while she was still doing this with my ear and I had to pull my head away from her and my ear out of her mouth before I could comprehend what she was saying, for the total effect was to render me half deaf and her half dumb. It was only my name: 'Arthur, Little Arthur.' Her forearms went around my sweating head and then I was all but smothered in her voluminous breasts. My face kept slipping all over the place for we were both very wet, up and down the slopes, into the middle and up and over again.

  She steadied me strongly and more or less forced my mouth to the middle of her left breast until I had my lips around it, something I had not done since babyhood. I was conscious, despite all this, of my sharp knees sticking into the broad parts of her thighs, my hips tucked inside hers and my naked belly on the hot silk of the night dress. Several times I thought I was going to fall off, but she held me tight.

  All this. But we had done nothing yet. That was coming. Rose, when roused, became excessively violent, as I learned from the beginning. Her hand swooped down and came away with my tattered underpants which, well washed and old as they were (underwear, like other clothes, was in short supply in wartime), more or less disintegrated at her powerful grab. I heard them rend and I made some forlorn move ment to save them, but they shattered before I got my hands even to their vicinity.

  I don't know exactly how the next few minutes felt for her and much worse, I cannot now remember exactly how they felt for me. The years have worked on the edge of the memory and all I now know is that I loved it, by God how I did; loved it much more than anything I can ever remember either before or after. I was still scrabbling all over the place in my unaccustomed eagerness and once I actually did tumble off. She pulled me on again with eager tenderness and then, using those splendid hands, guided my body until it was going to and fro in some regular movement, like a steam iron.

  Trying to recall it now is, of course, very difficult but I remember that I loved it and I loved her because although she was so powerful she was very kind to me. She even stopped for a few moments in her grown-up passion to let me get my breath back. I had a good idea, from my own experiments, conducted despite the scoutmaster's curdled brain warnings, what happened at the climax. But when it actually occurred I realized that I had only been a boy riding a rocking horse.

  We lay quietly against the balloon afterwards, letting the night air cool our bodies. My bum began to get cold and I wished she had not ripped my pants like that. I began to worry about my pants, because my mother knew exactly how many pairs I had and one missing would soon be noticed.

  ‘Rose,' I whispered.

  'Yes, love?'

  'I don't suppose there's any chance of you sewing my underpants together again is there?'

  She was still lying beneath me and she began to laugh a breathless little laugh, turning her face away from me as though she realized I would not understand. She let her hand search about and she found my pants. She held the tatters up and even with my poor knowledge of sewing I knew that nothing could ever be done to renovate them.

  'I'll buy you some more,' she said smacking my cold buttocks.

  'That's no good,' I argued softly. 'She'll notice they're new and how will I tell her?'

  What occurred because of this caused me all that pain and shame at school; so much that even now I feel myself shiver and blush at the recollection. After years I could not face my sister without burning with embarrassment and she, just like her, has never forgotten, even though she married and has boys of her own, who have probably tried on her knickers anyway.

  But Rose and I were in the deepest love all that autumn. At least I was and I told myself that she felt the same, although I often wondered who Danny was. There were two Dannys on the camp and I didn't like the thought of either of them having been in the vicinity of the places I had been.

  She taught me everything she knew, which was a lot, and of course I grew spiritually far out beyond the other boys of my age. They still talked unknowingly about it in the lavatories and went into war whoops when one had claimed to have had a full feel of Betty Pring, a half-mad, spotty girl at the post office. But I was aloof from all this. I kept silent, of course, but no one would have believed me in any case. I felt myself walking high above all of them, above all the people in the district, in the town, in the world.

  I used to go down to the balloon in the middle of the night about three times a week
and we nearly always did something or other. At that age I did not understand all the things she wanted me to do but I did them and learned and enjoyed every moment. And it was not all just bare sex. Sometimes she liked me to lie against her, my head on her shirt, the warm stuffing underneath comforting me, making me feel happier than I had ever known until then, and, in many ways, happier than I have been since.

  The trouble was I was exhausted by these unexpected calls upon my untrained body. I had never been very big for my age (in fact until I was beyond my Mrs Nissenbaum period I grew very slowly, although I made up for it afterwards. I always felt that Mrs Nissenbaum must have triggered off something in my tardy growing cells and started them working energetically for the first time in my life). Often I staggered home like a drunk from my night meetings with Rose in the park. I frequently lolled off to sleep in class and once collapsed from exhaustion in the school lavatory, falling forward until my head rested against the door, only rousing when they were actually breaking in to get me. Since this was after the incident of my sister's knickers there were all manner of nasty interpretations put on it.

  Naturally my mother worried over my fatigue. She took me to the doctor who looked at the pouches below my eyes, felt my scrotum and told me frankly that if I did not pack up what he said he knew I was doing then my brain would go to curds and I'd get a rupture as well. Fortunately he did this when my mother was not in the surgery. He told her that I ought to get more fresh air, that I should do some digging in the garden. Then I would sleep. My father, of course, agreed and I had to do a stint of digging in his lousy vegetable patch and as well as tending to my Rose, and this sapped my energy more than ever.

  In late October I went to the park one night and found my Rose sitting alone in the little hut where the telephone switchboard was operated. When I crept up outside, standing in the big blotchy shadow of the balloon, I could see her comforting form, leaning a little forward over a magazine in the margarine coloured light. I gave my low Otter Patrol scout whistle and she saw me in the dark and laughed and called me over. That was the night we really ought to have left each other alone. She was replacing somebody on switchboard duty and it would have been better if I'd just kissed her a few times or fondled her breasts or did something, anyway, which did not interfere with the conduct of the war.

  But she was much worse than I. I loved to explore all the large inches of her well-nourished body, but she went mad with desire over my bony, boyish frame and its minor appendages. Once she began to touch me, my trousers, the back of my legs, even my bum, there was nothing would stop her. She was overcome with need.

  It was, as I have indicated, not a very well run camp, and nobody was ever moving at that time of the night. The sentry box and the guardhouse were at the extreme perimeter and the occupants were reliably asleep.

  'Go through to the little room, darling,' she whispered to me. ‘It's nice and warm in there. I'll just make sure that nobody is on the prowl, and then I'll be in.'

  ‘But it's against orders, surely Rose,' I said in my worried way.

  ‘It's bound to be,' she replied cheerfully.’But never mind. Go through, love.'

  I went into the little room behind the switchboard area. It was warm as a burrow, with a single bunk and a home made table with a kettle, a teapot and some cups squatting on it. I liked it in there. I lay on the bunk and waited for Rose to come to me. She wasn't long. 'I don't suppose England will miss me for half an hour,' she giggled. ‘If the Germans invade they'll have to excuse me.'

  'Are you sure you won't get into trouble, Rose?' I said anxiously. She was moving near to me and predictably unbuttoning her blouse. She always wanted me to do that first.

  'I will if they find out,’she said vaguely. 'Shot at dawn. But they won't. And if the phone rings I'll hear it.’Then she came on to the bunk with me. She took up most of the room, but it did not stop us. Indeed because of our relative sizes, she formidable going on towards large, me thin and small, we were able to get up to a variety of tricks in many positions which would have been painful if not thoroughly dangerous for two people of matching proportions.

  There was one thing, I remember, where I used to hang on to her like I have seen since a koala bear cling to the Australian gum tree. She would be standing, her soft but sturdy legs apart, and I would be hanging on in that fashion. Then she would gradually ease back until I was jockey style on her front. She liked this very much and so did I and we often performed it together. This, our last night, although, of course, we did not know it, was high-lighted, so I remember, by a protracted manoeuvre of this nature.

  In its way I am certain it looked poetic as well as erotic for her movements were strong and controlled, like a weightlifter, and one hand, supporting me underneath, enjoyably massaged that tender section of my lad's anatomy.

  Unfortunately, while we were thus immersed a fire was raging in the next room. In her hurry to get to me she had left a cigarette burning idly through her magazine - having folded over the cover on it. It ran quickly through the wooden furniture around the switchboard, but, as the dividing door was closed, we knew nothing about it apart from a decided rise in the temperature which, eventually, could not be attributed to our own exertions.

  ‘It's very hot for October,' she murmured into my neck.

  'Rose,' I whispered, staring over her shoulder. 'Rose, there's smoke coming under the door.'

  She jumped with a movement that very nearly incapacitated me for life, and screamed when she saw the tongues of vapour oozing beneath the wood.

  But she kept her head and did not open the door. There was a fragile window in the bunk room and she had it out of the frame with one frenzied pull and push of her north country hands.

  ‘Grab your things, love,' she urged. ‘Grab them quick.'

  I caught up my clothes, being careful to include my underpants and like some circus performer, she hoisted me through the window. I fell on to the ground outside and heard and saw men running towards the fire. Naked, Rose came tumbling out like a bundle of laundry. She fell directly on top of me, knocking every whiff of breath from my thin body.

  ‘Run, darling,' she said, kissing me briefly. ‘Run like mad.'

  I did. Bare and white as a nymph I made for the hole in the perimeter hedge. Out in the road I tried madly to get dressed but I had only put on my socks and my vest when the balloon exploded with a muffled woof, like a big dog,

  and a glow of light that lit the road like a stage. I fell over and when I picked myself up a policeman was regarding me with disbelief.

  Four

  'Helping Hitler,' my father said. 'Oh God, that a son of mine should be helping Hitler!'

  He was in my room and I was trapped in my bed.

  ‘But I didn't,' I protested.’I didn't know it was going to happen.'

  'And with a woman! Big, fat cow. Old enough to be your mother.'

  'She's not!' I howled. 'She's not fat and she's twenty-five.'

  He came towards me and I thought he was going to hit me. I cautiously retreated in the bed.

  'Women!' he snarled again. 'At your bloody age. And, mister, I heard about you at the institute tonight. Wearing girl's underwear to school! There's a sodding fine thing for me to be told at my club, I must say.'

  'Who told you that?' I trembled. God, how I hated this bastard of a father. Who would tell him things like that? My face felt set and cold.

  'Never mind who told me, ‘he said nastily. 'All I know is that your sexual oddities are being broadcast around this town. How do you think I feel being pointed out as the father of the kid who wears girl's knicks, has intercourse with airwomen, and sets a barrage balloon alight?'

  'I didn't do that,' I protested. 'I didn't set it alight. It was an accident.'

  'Well, it won't be an accident when they shoot you for it!' he shouted. ‘That will be a nice disgrace, won't it. Having you shot for helping the Germans.'

  He genuinely frightened me. 'They wouldn't do that, would they?' I pleaded hoarsel
y. 'I'm only a boy. How could they shoot me?'

  'Put you up against a wall and do it,’he said with malicious simplicity.' The police and the balloon officer said that's what will probably happen. I'm expecting a letter about it tomorrow. You and that woman. Shot.'

  'Rose,' I trembled. 'Oh, Jesus Christ.'

  'Don't you "Jesus Christ" in this house, mister. And what about those woman's drawers you were wearing at school. What a fine little bugger you've turned out to be.'

  ‘I was cold,' I said miserably. 'I took them from Audrey's bedroom.'

  'Your sister,’he breathed. 'Your sister's personal knicks.'

  'I was cold,’I repeated. 'Nobody would have known if the boys hadn't debagged me, the bleeders.'

  'Watch your language, my boy.'

  'Well, nobody would have known,’I whispered.

  'Where were your own pants? Why didn't you have them on?

  'They got lost. Well, damaged. I wouldn't have worn anything at all, but it turned frosty, dad, and I was cold. They just picked on me that day for debagging. They're always doing it to somebody.'

  It was no use telling him about it, of course; the hideous tribal attack on the lone boy, the throwing him down on the asphalt playground and the savage pulling away of his trousers. Looking up at all their primitive faces, terrified by their violence but much more by what I knew they would discover. On the outside of the ring girls were screaming and other kids were running from all directions to see the fun.

  Oh, the bald terror of those few minutes. Fighting, fisting, wriggling, kicking, feeling the scratches and the blood on the mouth, ears full of the vicious laughter and the screams and the faces ringed over me. There was that girl, Mary Winters, who was supposed to be my girl in class (although we never did anything but wink and smile). She was there, looking down with the rest. Then they got my trousers away, just part of the way first and they saw the pea green of my sister's knicks. What a howl and a screech went up. They jumped on me again like hounds on a floored fox, tearing at me, pulling away the rest of my covering until there I lay shivering and crying in those ridiculous saggy things. They jumped and hooted, and then they pulled those from me too and went around the playground waving them like a flag, while I was left sobbing and bleeding against the school wall.