I don't think so, because the singer/narrator is describing "the girl" too objectively. The first two verses (especially the first) sprang from an unpleasant confrontation Costello had with a young British soldier. Costello himself seems to be the "I." The latter two verses are, indeed, about an estranged brother and sister -- he's gone into the Army, while she poses for soft porn and sleeps around, and it's implied she drinks heavily or worse. In the last verse, the brother does not want to reveal to his fellow soldiers that the pin-up they're ogling is his sister ("His family pride was rising up"). A common misreading of the final verse is that it describes a gang rape, but "pinned up upon the barracks wall" is clearly about a picture, not a person. If I were trying to tie it together, I would say that Costello had an unpleasant encounter and tried to find compassion in his imagination; he gave a rude real-life soldier a poignant back-story that exists only in this song. The brother is still protective of his sister, while the sister is unconsciously drawn to a one-night stand because he resembles her brother.
I don't think so, because the singer/narrator is describing "the girl" too objectively. The first two verses (especially the first) sprang from an unpleasant confrontation Costello had with a young British soldier. Costello himself seems to be the "I." The latter two verses are, indeed, about an estranged brother and sister -- he's gone into the Army, while she poses for soft porn and sleeps around, and it's implied she drinks heavily or worse. In the last verse, the brother does not want to reveal to his fellow soldiers that the pin-up they're ogling is his sister ("His family pride was rising up"). A common misreading of the final verse is that it describes a gang rape, but "pinned up upon the barracks wall" is clearly about a picture, not a person. If I were trying to tie it together, I would say that Costello had an unpleasant encounter and tried to find compassion in his imagination; he gave a rude real-life soldier a poignant back-story that exists only in this song. The brother is still protective of his sister, while the sister is unconsciously drawn to a one-night stand because he resembles her brother.