The old phantom idea of a war between generations is never far away in times when change makes the older generation appear obsolete instead of wise; for all that, it is a silly and distressing idea, in which both sides are losers. In 1939 that sense of division was particularly sharp.
My father volunteered for the Navy, in which he had served in the Great War (as he called it). He was turned down because he was too old. His generation was suddenly faced with the fact that they were ‘past it’. It was a generation, too, which thought of the new war in terms of the old. To men like my father, the war promised to be merely a stale repetition of the horrors of the previous conflict.
From ‘Uncle’ Jim Anderson, the war took on a different aspect I have mentioned this occasional visitor to our house. Nelson and I always suspected that there was ‘something going on’ between him and Mother. In the last days of that September everyone was changing, every relationship was changing; and ‘Uncle’ Jim, that uncertain man, was changing with the times.
He turned up one afternoon when Ann was at school, Father at the bank, and Mother on one of her walks. To my irritation, I had to make conversation to him. He marched about our living-room in the smart walking-out uniform of an infantry regiment; and my irritation was partly with myself for being impressed.
In a short while, as he talked, it dawned on me that he was not just talking to kill time until my mother returned, but was genuinely trying to communicate with me. I was too sunk into myself to respond; and I can have paid little attention to him, for, even a brief time afterwards I could not recollect what he spoke about, except that it was serious, and that he ended by saying, referring to the war, ‘I’ve wasted away my life so far – perhaps now I shall be able to make something of it!’
When he said goodbye to my mother she turned pale and ran upstairs.
Into everyone’s stagnant lives a current was circulating.
To us who were young, the air was vibrant with hopes and threats. The black on the map, by which Germany was represented, was a thrilling incarnation of evil, to which we were drawn despite ourselves. It represented a sort of liberty.
I tried to volunteer for service. I was turned down. The British Government had called up the eighteens to the forty-ones, and its hands were full organizing them. Looking back, I see it was typical of the Stubbs family that both Father and I should volunteer within a few days of each other – rather than go together and meet our rebuffs together!
Then came word from Virginia.
Sick and unsettled, I was desperately glad to hear anything. Her letter was written in her untidy scribble (‘that upper-class scrawl’, as I admiringly thought of it) on violet notepaper.
She said she had joined the Q.A.I.M.N.S. (or Q.A.R.A.N.C, as it now is) She was staying in London, in the Queensway district, with an old friend who was currently making a name for herself in a West End stage play; life was quite pleasant despite the war. She hoped I would come and see her some day before I went back to school.
Everything in that note made me at once happy and miserable. The greatest vexation was that its tone was only lightly affectionate – oh, Virginia’s tone to the life, as I realized, but what I wanted was meaty, heart-baring declarations of love!
And that bit about ‘hoping you’ll come and see me’ … She knew I had been to London only three or four times in my life, when Mother took Nelson and me down for a treat. Of course, I was gratified that Virginia asked me at all … but then there was the jibe, as I saw it, about being a schoolboy, which I no longer was.
Nor did she mention the three letters I had written to her c/o Union Street. Had she never received them? Had the young harridan grabbed them first, or had Virginia not bothered to read them? Or preferred to ignore them?
All of a sudden, my blood growing decidedly chilly, I decided that I would go down to London and see her. I would get a job near her. I could see her every day then. I would leave home. Nobody would care.
My mind was made up: I carried my resolution through. Although I have called myself timid, I have portrayed myself as acting boldly on several occasions. The two are not incompatible.
One of the mainsprings of my nature – which I was then trying ineffectually to understand – was a deep inferiority complex caused, as an anxious reading of the psycho-analytical shelf at the public library informed me, by my apparent rejection by my parents. When I once decided to do a thing I could only go through with it with the doggedness of a weak man – often to arrive at accomplishment without the wind in my sails to go further and press home the advantage I had gained. Until I grew beyond this stage I let myself in for many disappointments which cumulatively allowed me no chance to think well of my management of my own insignificant life.
Before I left home I went to say goodbye to Esmeralda. She and her mother were now alone in the big house. Esmeralda’s father had paraded through the town in dashing infantry dress uniform and then driven off to join his regiment. Esmeralda’s mother might have been alone, but she was not lonely; she made it clear that officers were welcome at her house provided they came in small parties and left in the same way. I heard Mother telling Father that she was no better than she should be; they were not keen that I should see Esmeralda, but by now I was somewhat independent and they did not like to issue direct orders in case they were disobeyed directly.
When I arrived at Esmeralda’s house a gramophone was playing. This was the fag-end of September. By now Brown would be up to his spunk-producing tricks in the dormitory, and the British Expeditionary Force was almost ready to move into France. Perhaps some of the officers present that night were due to go. Their presence only helped my schemes, because Esmeralda was sitting upstairs in her bedroom, rather sulky. Her mother did not want her downstairs – though she was all dressed up to go in and kill, given half a chance. She told me she liked kissing officers.
Dramatically, I told her that she could kiss all the officers she liked. I could no longer allow myself to feel jealous of what she did: I was off to London, and was going to join the war as soon as I could.
She had the grace to be prettily sad about this. We started kissing. Down below, the gramophone was playing ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk!’ and ‘Where’s That Tiger?’ We were all absolutely vulnerable to the passage of time.
Was it the music or the occasion? Suddenly I had a wild impulse. She had her little warm hand in my flies, but I broke away.
I began to confess to Esmeralda all the sexual stunts at school – not a word about Virginia, of course, but everything about the boys, and how Branwells was really nothing but a huge brothel. She sat there, staring at me. Once I started, I could not stop.
To this day, I do not know what provoked the confession. But the very word confession suggests that I laboured under a feeling of guilt for what had gone on. If so, this was not conscious. Nelson and I were lucky in that Father never lectured us on the perils of masturbation; he was far too reserved to do so. As I have said, I never suffered from the fears of blindness or backache or stunted growth with which some Branwells boys were afflicted. Partington – he who took so long to reach orgasm – told me once that his father lectured to him for an hour about it, made him uncover his cock, told him to read the Bible when he felt lust coming on; and Partington took the advice to heart so literally that on one occasion he had enclosed his rampant, sin-bound organ within the delicious India-paper pages of the Holy Book and frigged himself with it until he shot his roe in the middle of the Prophet Isaiah. He suffered miseries for that blasphemous act. Whereas I – who never looked on any sexual exercise as other than the use of organs there for the purpose – I never suffered mental or physical trouble on any occasion.
Perhaps my confession had a simpler prompting. Perhaps I just wished to be free of the shadow of public-school life for ever.
And perhaps I also hoped to make Esmeralda sexier than usual by telling her a spicy tale.
She was certainly interested. Trying to get similar confessions from her, I asked her if she had not done similar things and had similar things done to her.