The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy Read online

  ‘Not a fucking MacPherson among the bloody lot! Thik-hai, Ali Bugger-Off, you guard my gharri till I get back, malum? And if anybody so much as lays a finger on it, I’ll have your guts for garters, okay?’

  We walked off, leaving Ali Baraf in charge.

  Di looked thoughtful. ‘Five chips is a lot of moolah, Jock, man.’

  Jock stared at him incredulously. ‘A lot of moolah, is it? You don’t think we’re going to pay the puir wee bastard, do you, ’cos if so you’ve got another think coming!’

  ‘You should keep your word to the lower races or they will never respect you.’

  Jock threw back his head and laughed. ‘You fucking ignorant Welsh git, you! Don’t tell me that puir wee bastard expects to get paid! – He’s guarding that truck for the privilege of it, nothing more. He knows as well as I do that if he makes a fuss when we get back, I’ll kick his arse right out of his fucking dhoti!’

  The state of Indore was one of the Princely States; in some of the more independent ones, like Hyderabad, the Army was almost entirely banned; here, it was allowed only on sufferance, and we saw few troops. Bold as brass, we marched up the middle of the crowded street, calling and laughing – much like the people round us, only they were less pugnacious about it.

  Trees grew on either side of the road. Goats were tied to many of them, nibbling at the bark so vigorously that it was a wonder the trees survived. Trams clattered by, packed with people, decked with people, sending their blue sparks among the leaves of the trees. Insects bumped about the hanging street-lights, to splash at our feet. Beggars with heroic deformities lay juddering in the gutter, men peed against walls, hawkers shouted their wares. The universe was crammed with life, bursting from the foetid loins of Brahma.

  ‘Dirty buggers! It’s worse than Sauchiehall Street on a fine Saturday – ye canna hear yourself speak!’

  ‘Cardiff was never like this!’

  A man ran up and tried to sell us a carpet. Jock dismissed him and turned down a side street. It was darker here, and more barbarous. A hotel stood on one side, a balcony above its main door.

  ‘We’ll sit up there!’ Jock said, pointing.

  ‘Looks pretty full,’ I said. The balcony was crowded with black faces.

  ‘They’ll make room for us. I know the proprietor. I’ve been here before. Just you let old Jock take care of you.’

  So we barged in, into a crowded and shabby little dining-room. Jock started roaring for service and the manager came up. He was huge and ungainly and wore a light blue Western-style suit. His crumpled brown face lit with delight at the sight of Jock.

  ‘So, you escape from the detention again, Mr. Jock!’

  ‘Och, then, you’re still here, you fucking robber! They haven’t cut your throat yet! Have you chucked out that dirty manky beer you poisoned me with last time I came?’

  ‘We keep some special beer to finish you up this time.’

  ‘Getting your own back on the British Raj, eh?’

  ‘Yes, yes, ha ha, I get my own back on the British Raj! I kill all men with the filthy Indian beer!’

  ‘Kill the officers first, that’s all I ask.’

  ‘We kill the officers first and the Scotchmen last.’

  Jock roared with laughter, and he and the proprietor clumped upstairs, patting each other on the back – quite a feat, since Jock was almost a yard smaller than the Indian. Di and I followed.

  ‘Get a few beers inside us, Stubby,’ Di said. ‘Then we’ll tackle these bibis. Don’t be impatient. Get yourself fortified properly.’

  ‘I need a woman.’

  Jock heard my remark. To his Indian friend he said, ‘Our young Sassenach pal here, he’s fair desperate to get the dirty water off his chest! Are you selling your daughter again tonight?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I sell my daughter. Very much recommend.’

  ‘You tried her out last night yourself, eh, you old sod, you! Bring us some beer first – and this time, don’t fucking piss in it in the kitchen, eh?’

  ‘No, no, tonight I not piss in the beer! Next time you come I do it.’

  ‘You try it and you’ll get a bunch of fives right in your clock!’

  Laughing, he showed us on to the balcony – crowded, as I had observed from the street, mainly with portly Indians eating snacks or drinking local hooch. The proprietor went over to one table and, with a multitude of gesture, persuaded the four men sitting at it to leave. They rose reluctantly, frowning in our direction.

  ‘Don’t you pull your bloody faces at me!’ Jock exclaimed. ‘Come on, speed it up, jao, we haven’t got our own back for the Black Hole of Calcutta yet, and don’t you pack of babus forget it!’

  ‘Seems a bit hard when they’re enjoying their evening,’ Di said.

  ‘A bit hard? Are you out your fucking mind, Di? These bastards sit here getting fat drinking their bastard todi, and if it wasna for the British they be kissing some fat Japanese arse by now, wouldn’t they? They should be fucking grateful. Away with you, you miserable foreign gits!’

  We sat down. A waiter rushed to bring bottles of beer, sloshing the liquid quickly into three glasses.

  ‘Ahh! Gnat’s piss!’ exclaimed Jock, drinking deep. ‘More beer, you slack bastards! Keep it coming! Dinne stop till you see it spurt from my ears!’

  An hour later, we were still there drinking. It was pleasant on the balcony. The mosquitoes were not biting too much and the beer – despite my haunting suspicion that the proprietor had surely pissed in it – was tolerable. Jock had quietened down now that all his wants were being attended to and was telling us some unlikely stories; Di and I had to do no more than supply a sort of chorus.

  The next time Jock called for another round, I said, ‘No more for me, Jock. There are other things I want to be doing.’

  ‘No more beer? You canne be full already, sonny! Have another drink like a man! Waiter, ither ao, three more beers, jhaldi – and for Jesus’ sake make it three that haven’t been standing in the sun all fucking day. You’re like all the fucking English, Stubby, you canne take your liquor! Why, you’re no’ even smoking seriously!’

  ‘Oh no? Then where the fucking hell do you think most of this twenty packet of Wog Players has gone? Up my arse?’

  ‘You don’t call that smoking, do you? You’re just an amateur at it, isn’t he, Di? I tell you, I was smoking before I was weaned. Aye, I was! Smoking before I was weaned! My ma couldna afford to feed me, so she kept me at the tittie until I was three years old, by which time I was filching Woodies off my older brothers. Now get this beer down your throat and don’t piss about.’

  ‘I don’t want any more beer, fuck it, I want some fucking intercourse – get that through your sodding thick Glaswegian head!’

  ‘This is the sort of tricky bastard we were up agin at Bannockburn!’

  ‘Let’s go over to the whorehouse, Jock – we can have another drink afterwards,’ Di said.

  ‘Are you two ganging up on me? I havene started drinking!’ But he poured the beer a little faster down his throat and finally scraped his chair back. I rose in relief and found that the weak beer had a certain effect.

  The proprietor came hurrying, flexing every crease in his blue suit. The business of paying went more smoothly than I had expected. It appeared that Jock had some money, after all. As he settled up, the manager called a boy to run round to the brothel and announce our coming.

  ‘Come on round with us, man – nobody will pocket the silver!’

  ‘No, no, I must decline. You go and enjoy the girls.’

  ‘The girls? No’ a one under fifty! I’ll watch it I don’t get stuck into your daughter or the teeth will be rotting out of my head in a week!’ With such pleasantries, we staggered down the stairs and into the street.

  ‘You friend very funny man!’ the proprietor said, flashing a golden smile on Di and me. He ducked back into the hotel and closed the door.

  We were surrounded by touts and ponces, all calling to us. The urchin dispatched to the br
othel had undoubtedly called our business loudly down the street, and now every pimp in town was out to waylay us.

  ‘Dear Lord, but it’s a terrible depraved country!’ Di exclaimed, making a lot of his clicking noises, as bargain bunk-ups were pressed on us from all sides. ‘If my poor missus could see me now, she’d throw herself down the nearest well!’

  ‘If mine were here, we could all have a free bash!’ Jock roared, striking out at the nearest ponces.

  The brothel was only a few houses down from the hotel. Full of excitement and anxiety, I followed the other two in through its battered double doors. A mournful old man sitting in a dim vestibule pointed upstairs. Up we went, Jock first, then Di, then I, our boots clumping on the bare stairway. With my face almost in Di’s arse, I nevertheless saw visions of lustrous naked maidens.

  Dim lighting revealed a landing with a corridor off it. The landing had been converted into a sort of two-woman laundry. Cramped into small space, two old crones sat on the floor repairing sheets. Most of the illumination came from a street-light hanging outside the window. Another old crone appeared and nodded at us.

  ‘Hello there, gran! What do you do? Gobble? Where are the birds? We want three as are fit enough to stand a gude shafting.’

  We became involved in a haggle. The rules of the house seemed to dictate that we did not even see the girls until we had paid something. Then it would be ten rupees each, short time. Jock argued fiercely against this arrangement; I grew impatient with him, and would have paid; but eventually he won the day, and we pushed forward to the corridor. Jock flung open the first door.

  I pressed for a look in over his shoulder.

  ‘Christ, you randy bugger! Don’t crowd me! This is my choice – try your luck in one of the other doors!’

  As I passed on, he cried, ‘Come out, you bag, and let Jock have a shufti at you!’

  As my eyes grew used to the gloom, I saw that the other doors were all open, or at least ajar. Eyes were watching us. At the end of the corridor, a man was lurking. Of course, he could have been another customer. A fear of being knifed rose in me. I remembered – now of all times – that there had been riots in Indore only the month before.

  Still, here we were. My visions had yielded to a sordid and ill-smelling reality, but here we were, and Di was pushing into another door, so I also went forward.

  It was extremely dark. The first thing I made out was that all the corridor doors opened into the same long room, which was divided by curtains. Standing up, I could see over the top of the curtains. The only light came from outside, a yellow light sliding obliquely through filthy panes. Ahead of me was a bed covered by dark bedding. Joss sticks were burning, filling the air with drowsy smoke. A girl stood by the door, and thus almost against me.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart!’ she said.

  ‘Hello! What’s your name?’

  ‘Hello, sweetheart. You like jig-jig?’

  ‘That’s the idea. Let’s look at you first.’ I took hold of her shoulder and tried to lead her over to the ray of light. She said something – she spoke almost no English. All we had in common was the word, the call-sign, ‘jig-jig’. Di and Jock were going through the same routine close by on either side of me.

  I heard Jock’s voice roaring away. ‘Och, girl, let’s have a fucking dekko at your clock. Stand bloody still, will you? I’m no’ going to hurt you, not unless you keep wriggling about.’ He struck a match. Good idea, I thought.

  When I struck a match, I saw that one of the old crones from the landing had followed me in and now stood close behind me, waiting. I took in the filth on the ceiling, the tears in the partition-curtaining, and then I turned to my beauty. She put her hand up to her face. The match, being an Indian one, failed and went out.

  Jock was still audible. ‘Away with you, you old bag of bones, I’m no going to grind my pizzle to a point in ye! Away and fetch your grand-daughter! … Oh, that’s better … ah … yon’s no’ a bad body ye have there, considering it’s been around since Mafekin …’

  ‘How’re you doing, Jock?’ I called, striking another match.

  ‘You’ve led me into temptation, sonny! She’s an ugly old nelly, but she loves me. Besides, you don’t look at the mantlepiece while you’re poking the fire …’

  My bibi pushed my matches away and began to cling to me. The old crone behind me was muttering advice or encouragement. The girl started to feel my balls, trying at the same time to get me down on the bed. I imagined it swarming with bedbugs and resisted, angry but at the same time increasingly excited. She had my flies open and was now tugging at my tool in a fairly urgent way. This had no effect, since I could feel how gnarled her hand was. I was convinced she was a century old. Disgust and lust struggled in me. Lust was winning by a short head, my tool was stirring in blind response to treatment, when the old crone by the door misjudged her moment and came forward to sell me a french letter for two rupees.

  ‘Fuck off, you ancient whore!’ I roared and she retreated without argument. I stood there unresisting, letting the bibi try to rouse my reluctant member, and listening to what Di was doing.

  It sounded to me as if he was already on the job, having his bunk-up, as he called it. He was making clicking noises with his tongue, as if disapproving of his own activities. What a man! It was hard to visualize that inch of candle – now no doubt stretched to three inches – working away in some greasy groove; equally, it was difficult to imagine the quiet god-fearing Di Jones in a posture so different from the one he assumed in Bethesda every Sunday at home. Sex was the most amazing activity!

  Unlikely though it seemed, I now had a hard-on: seven-and-a-half inches of broad-minded gristle. I sat on the fearful bed. The woman started to fawn over me. There was no question of being able to establish any sort of communication with her. We should never discover twin souls in each other’s eyes. Stiff as my prick was, the rest of my flesh crawled with disgust at her touch.

  I was still resolved to see her. I struck another match and grabbed her wrist before she could put her hand to her face – in a gesture of shame?

  ‘Look at me, you bitch!’ She turned her head away. I twisted her wrist. With a silent cry, she looked cringingly at me, over the flame of the match.

  She was not young. Nor was she ancient. She was not pretty. Her face was puffy and shapeless, appearing yellow in the light of the flame. Her hair was done into pigtails. Her teeth looked good. On her upper lip were the first lashes of a putative moustache. She stared at me with an unfathomable expression, and then the match went out.

  What had I been expecting a moment before? Horror or beauty? Only half-aware of what was happening, I let her press me back on to the bed: it was the best way to avoid being kissed by her, something I very much wanted to avoid. The sounds of Di, the roar of Jock, came to me, as I submitted to this treatment. The crone was standing closer, sod her guts, still bloody muttering instructions.

  My bibi – my bibi, already worn and degraded by hundreds of foul drink-and pox-ridden sods! – swarmed over me, reaching up to stroke my hair and undo my shirt buttons, to stroke my chest and feel into my armpit.

  ‘There’s no fucking money up there,’ I told her. ‘Get on with it, damn you!’

  My cock was in no state of indecision. It gave a throb as it felt her breath, her poisonous breath, on it. Its knob swelled, and it was engulfed by her lips, raked deliciously along the rough palate of her mouth and brought to rest luxuriously against her epiglottis. Her teeth and her tongue teased it. You had to say that for the bloody woman: she was practised at her trade. I sprawled there, staring down at her dark anonymous head as she worked the trick.

  A little later, we were staggering back down the street, singing loudly, and laughing to think of the bollicking we were going to give Ali Bugger-Off when we got back to Jock’s truck.

  We did an hour’s square-bashing after parade next morning. My years at public school had taught me quick responses and slavish obedience, if nothing else, so that I usually avoid
ed trouble. This morning, I was in trouble all the time, constantly being bawled out by Sergeant Meadows.

  On the one hand, I was vexed and disappointed that the contact with the bibi had been so commercial, so perfunctory – why, I had not even seen or touched her snatch; on the other hand, I had been gobbled for the first time in my life, an undoubted step towards maturity. On the one hand, that gobble had been so debasing: the hunching of her body over my belly had expressed degradation in every line, and so I also had been degraded; on the other hand, wow, the sheer sensation of it as her tongue had teased the last jolt of power from my nerves – hadn’t I been so abandoned that I had buried my face in the stinking blanket?

  It had all been so killingly mercenary! I was still groaning when the old hag was demanding paisa from me. Jock had a haggle over money, claiming he was being charged too much. And as I emerged on to the landing, four drunken British squaddies – not from the Mendips – were getting ready to take our places, as if it was a fish-and-chip queue.

  What could have been more squalid? And yet part of me was thrilled, privileged, to be part of such degradation. For wasn’t this what went on over most of the globe – not in England, maybe, but almost everywhere else? As Di Jones put it, ‘You couldn’t explain to anyone at home what conditions is like out here.’

  Squalid as it had been, it had been something else besides. A vile disappointment, yes – yet I was moved by the memory of that plain face lit by match-flame, so close to me, so defenceless! It plagued me that I could never know anything more about her, how she lived, how she suffered, where she had been born, how she had come to this dreary pass, shut in a stuffy room, sucking as many stinking yards of cock as came her way.

  No wonder I was never in step on the parade ground that morning! I was thinking of my father, looking up at me as I jumped on to the bus platform. ‘Be a good boy and don’t go into any brothels’ – had he really said that? And his face receding, anxious, ever anxious, as the bus rolled away down the road. Or perhaps he had said, ‘Don’t go emptying too many bottles.’