The Hand-Reared Boy. Brian Aldiss
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Table of Contents
I was once travelling on a London bus. The young woman sitting opposite me was reading a book. It took me some time to realise it was my novel she had in her dainty hands!
Such occurrences are rare – rare and startling. You are never sure that real people will read your books. On another occasion, I was travelling with my children on a ferry to Gothenburg in Sweden. The boys discovered there was a chap with his girlfriend sitting on the upper deck reading Hothouse. The girl kept talking to him, breaking his concentration. My sons were genuinely cross with her!
This girl on the bus was about to get off the bus. I followed her and tried to strike up what one might call an acquaintance. She would have nothing to do with it. All the same, I realised the connection between real people, the real world, and the books I wrote.
… Later, I met a young woman who preferred masturbation to actual intercourse.
Although I have received many abusive – if not self-abusive – letters from readers, I felt and still feel I had hit upon a popular and real hobby in The Hand-Reared Boy.
Recently an American reader remarked that ‘If God had not wanted us to masturbate, he would have given us shorter arms.’
‘Extremely funny, genuinely erotic,’ was the verdict of the TLS to The Hand-Reared Boy. With that, I tended to rest my case.
The protagonist is key, and the name Horatio Stubbs held resonance for me. Was it quintessentially English? Horatio, fine – as in Horatio Nelson. As for Stubbs, Professor Stubbs was the editor of many old English charters, while one of the painters I most admired was George Stubbs, the 18th-century artist with a preference for painting horses.
Who could be more English than that?
Brian Aldiss,
Oxford 2012
On the one occasion that Sister Traven came to tea with us we were all in confusion beforehand, and my mother was the organizer of the confusion.
She darted here and flounced there, using what she called The Light Touch to bring me or Beatrice to heel – that is, saying in a Tone of Charm something more acceptable delivered in an ordinary voice. ‘No, Beatrice, dear, I think we won’t have our ordinary serviettes, if you don’t mind. Let’s have some of the special ones, shall we, the paper ones, out of the bottom drawer of the sideboard. Or I’ll get them, shall I? I’d better get them!’
Beatrice was not ruffled. She had been our maid for several years and was used to Mother’s ways. She was now married and no longer ‘living in’, but she still came in the mornings, when an older married sister looked after her increasing number of children. Today she was obliging and coming in the afternoon also, as she did on these special occasions. Among the alarms of setting the tea table I watched her with interest. A rather ordinary girl – not bad!
How faithful I am, I thought. Here I’m seventeen and she’s got two awful brats and must be at least twenty-five, and I still fancy her a bit!
‘Darling, have your found your tie? You’d better hurry up, or she’ll be here, won’t she?’
‘Do you think she’ll mind if I haven’t got my tie on, Mum, really?’
She surveyed me, smiling hard. ‘She must have seen lots of little boys without ties, and without more than that, Horatio! But, after all, she is your guest, and I think you might try and help me just a little.’
The ‘little boy’ grated as much as she must have known it would.
‘You wanted her round here, Mum – I didn’t!’
‘Sweetie, try not to be too aggravating just at this moment when I’m trying to help you and Beatrice and Ann. You know we’ve asked her for your sake. She’s your friend, isn’t she? And perhaps one day she’ll ask us up to Traven House to have tea with her, and her family.’
As I sneaked upstairs to look for my tie, I passed my sister going down.
‘That’s all she thinks about – that Sister Traven will ask us all out to her place to tea.’
‘I’m not going. I can’t find my dratted shoes,’ Ann said. She was then thirteen, one of the classic shoe-losing ages.
Even when I was in my bedroom I could hear her shouting at Mother. She was far more vociferous than I.
When I was dressed, tie and all, I sat on the edge of my bed, tentatively reading a magazine. Thus Mother found me when she came upstairs.
‘Ready, darling? Well, why don’t you go downstairs and be prepared for your guest? Wouldn’t that be nicest? I’m going to do my hair again – I must look like nothing on earth! I feel absolutely exhausted before she’s even arrived. I do hope she isn’t too fussy! I wish Daddy’d been able to fix the blackout properly in that room.’
‘You look fine, Mum.’
‘Thank you, darling.’ She came nearer to me and hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘You’re a good boy, darling, a very good boy. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to grow up, will you? Let me just put your tie a bit straighter. So glad you found it. I wish I’d borrowed Auntie Nell’s tea service.’
‘Why? Is ours broken?’
‘You know how cracked and chipped it is.’ She stepped back and surveyed my tie critically. ‘Your collars never look right. I bet they have really lovely tea services at Traven House, don’t you? You did say her father was an admiral, didn’t you?’
‘Rear-admiral.’
‘Good. Now you go downstairs, darling, and I’ll just tidy my hair and be down in a minute. And, Horatio …’
‘Yes, Mummy?’
‘Do try not to talk too Leicestershire!’
‘I’ll try, Mummy.’
‘Watch those long “u”s then.’
Rolling the magazine and cramming one end into my pocket, I went downstairs and glumly joined my sister. We sat one either end of the sofa. She did not blame me for our present constraints, for which I was grateful. She was playing chess with herself, as Father had taught her.
Like me, Ann was munching a cachou. Mother ladled them out to us on such nerve-racking occasions as the present, when we were about to be presented to someone of importance. Perhaps they effectively heightened our charms, though I have no recollection