Leaving in the small hours, I’d picked up a Paris-bound Eurostar at Ebbsfleet. The first part of my journey took under three hours. A French TGV, in less time than that, took me as far as Clermont-Ferrand, but there it all started coming apart. There was a four-hour wait for a local train – actually a very noisy railcar – to the small town that was some 5 – 6 miles from where I wanted to go. Arriving there, the timetable promised me a bus at four-thirty. Four-thirty came and went, and no bus. I looked at the timetable again. The bus ran on Mondays to Fridays – for schoolchildren. Today was Saturday.

So I set off on foot in new trainers that rubbed my heels, and along the way I picked up a stone. Worse was to come.

I should have had a pee before leaving the train station, and now I was getting desperate. So far, houses all along the road gave me no opportunity to slip behind a hedge or tree, but at a crossroads there was a public toilet - something very rare in a French country town where usually you need to find a café if you need to “go”. In I went…

The place was filthy beyond description; there were graffiti from gays scribbled all over the walls, and on the floor were puddles, which I hoped were only rainwater. An inner door gave on to a tiny, grubby cell with one of those horrible porcelain troughs set into the floor. Impossible even to think of squatting over the stinking hole – but I was bursting. I pulled my pants down, and with finger-and-thumb tried to aim the inch of limp boy-flesh that served me for a penis…Ah, that felt better…

As I finished, and was squeezing the last drops out, there were footsteps on the floor behind me and then a coarse husky voice, ending in a snigger: “Quel beau derriere! Quelles jolies fesses!*”

I pulled my pants up and turned. The speaker was an undersized, scruffy specimen in his fifties, in dirty blue overalls and a beret. He was grinning at me, showing disgusting broken decayed teeth. I might have a cute butt with nice cheeks, but I didn’t want some creepy old French git eyeing it up. With a vocabulary I hadn’t picked up from any of the French songs I’d recorded, I gave him a mouthful. “Tas de merde, va-t-en, fous le camp!”

Muttering “Je vais, je vais, je vais**” the heap of shit turned and fucked off, as directed. I guess he’d been picked up before, trying to waylay children on their way home from school, and that he wanted no further trouble.

Have you got me in focus yet? Yes, I’m Roddy. Here at school I’m just Fisher of Form IIIa. But in another existence I’m Roddy Fisher, the acclaimed boy-soprano. The two need to be kept very strictly apart. While I was barely into my teens my singing career took off, making me seriously wealthy. My agent – a lovely woman – deals with all that side of things and with the volumes of fan mail that arrives by every post.

With my hair nicely brushed, my face appears on a thousand CD and DVD cases: looking like an angel after the make-up artists have done their stuff. Only I’m no angel, and in musical terms I’m strictly speaking, not a boy-soprano at all. I’m a castrato. My voice will never change, because I’ve no balls. Because I’ve no balls, I have only a tiny penis, that never gets hard, and I can’t “do it”.

Funny, therefore, to talk of fan mail, but - there’s tons of it. Mainly from girls but some from batty old women. My agent has composed some standard replies. The one she most often has to use is “I was thrilled to get your knickers – I shall treasure them always,” closely followed by: “It was sweet of you to want to have my babies, but just now I’m working too hard for that kind of relationship”. If those girls once saw me in the nude, though, with my boy-parts reduced to a pink jellybean peeking between my thighs…

How do I feel about that, in today’s world?

There are a lot of stories you can read, often set in antiquity: stories told by Greek or Roman slave-boys or Italian choristers, spelling out all the thoughts that passed through their minds while being gelded. I can’t add any thoughts of my own (read Simon and Melanie Part 2 if you are curious to know why) but I don’t believe any of it. Does anything go through a boy’s head while he is being gelded, except OUCH?

But I’m wrong of course, because I’m forgetting Ricky, who next to Simon is my best and closest friend. We’ve been through a lot together. Ricky, of the golden hair and cornflower-blue eyes…

Believing he had no choice about being castrated, (this was totally untrue but he didn’t know) Ricky handed himself over to a doctor who was an expert in operating on boys’ private areas. He did a braver thing than most of us could ever imagine. Propped up on pillows he watched his own procedure - start-to-finish. The doctor quickly got to work emptying Ricky’s scrotum. Two squeezes of the écraseur on Ricky’s spermatic cords and it was safe to snip out his balls, separating the golden-haired boy from the unknown joys of teenage sex and from his future manhood.

Now a boy-eunuch, Ricky watched the final stages of his operation, gazing wide-eyed, as the doctor burned out his erectile nerves, making him permanently impotent, beyond all possible help from HRT – but he didn’t learn that till much later.

Here I am going on about Ricky, who doesn’t come into this story at all, when I should be telling you about me. You really ought to read Simon and Melanie Part 2 for the full background to my life and why I’m a castrato. But anyway - I’m an orphan. My birth certificate says “Parents Unknown”. The State-run orphanage that took me in as a baby, had me baptised Roderick Fisher under some arcane system of their own. Probably like in “Oliver Twist” – they needed an “F” name for that day and drew “Roderick” out of a hat.

For two-three years before I met Simon and his friends, and got admitted to Southdown Hall School, I’d been fostered – and later adopted by – a well-off family with a son of their own. It should have been a happy arrangement, but I was wretched beyond belief. Malcolm – my foster-brother - if that’s the right term - bullied me unmercifully and forced me to have unprotected sex with him at least once a day. You can never begin to imagine the filthiness of it – and the pain.

I’m blond-haired with brown eyes, and at thirteen I had fair skin, and a sort of peaches-and-cream complexion. There was a dusting of light golden down on my forearms and shins – no more than that. You are dying to know, aren’t you, what I was like “down there”? Well, I had a slender penis, tapering to a point, and two robin’s eggs in a little bag. Sometimes, but not often, I got hard, about two inches at most. But I liked what I had – and what I was.

By contrast, my tormentor was fifteen-plus and well into puberty. He had a greasy complexion with a crop of pimples and blackheads, an incipient moustache, hairy legs and horrible rough hands. He always smelt sweaty and his breath was terrible. Was I going to get like that? Already I was starting to get strange feelings “down there” now and then; it couldn’t be many months now. The dread of adolescence settled on me like middle-aged people’s dread of cancer. Uppermost in my mind was the thought I don’t want to hit puberty – not ever!

Ironically, if I’d been fostered and adopted later, I’d have had no such problem. Nowadays, boys admitted to State-run children’s homes get to be neutered on arrival, if they’ve not been “done” already. Many of these kids are traumatised and hyperactive. Getting neutered calms them down, make them more docile and amenable to institutional life, and of course it prevents them being a nuisance with girls. But I was still intact just then, for what it was worth…

To get back to where I was. Several things happened at once, as if in answer to a prayer. To spell them all out in full would be boring. My adoption was cancelled and my tormentor taken out of circulation. A change of scene brought into my life the two people who have influenced me most: Simon Scott and his girl friend Melanie.

I quickly adopted Simon as my rôle-model. Whatever Simon set out to do, it was an instant success. And not only in school. In the wider world, Simon had a reputation for getting involved in all kinds of - I can only call them exploits, though that sounds a bit like Scouting for Boys. And – and this is the point – Simon was already a boy-eunuch, unable, ever, to “do it” with a girl.

This I discovered the first time we took a shower together at my old house, where he was staying temporarily. It was my first sight of a neutered boy. Simon was a well-built fifteen-year-old, with a body that was good to look at, but his penis was like a four-year-old’s and he had no trace of balls or scrotum. Shyly I asked him if it was the result of an illness. Simon told me without hesitation about the growing practice of neutering boys. Only no one spoke of “neutering” or “castration”. Instead, an increasing number of boys, of whom Simon was one, “went to have their balls pricked”.

Simon quickly put me wise about this process. It seemed that in the past couple of years a wonder-drug had been released on to the market. (That is, it was a wonder-drug to doctors who specialised in castrating boys). Whilst you can read about all kinds of so-called chemical castration procedures, “Neutersol” – the name of this drug – was different. It was designed to be injected directly into a boy’s balls, and in the course of some 3 – 4 weeks the balls dried up. The effect was just the same as having them taken right out. The process was very quick, all over in minutes, it was painless, and there was no post-op care needed. The boy just pulled his pants up again and went back to classes.

Simon confided, laughingly, that he’d been “done” at age 11½ for being sexually precocious. The adults in his life took such a serious view of what he’d been up to, that at one time Simon might actually have been heading for a spell in Youth Custody. But not all boys went to have their balls pricked as a deliberate way to make them unable to fuck girls.

As an example, a close friend of Simon’s, Mark Maitland, had already embarked on a successful singing career, which he was determined not to interrupt when his voice changed. He had arranged his own procedure at the local clinic, afterwards biking back home after having his balls pricked and his treble voice saved.

It was through meeting Mark, a while later, that I started my own singing career. His own is now over (but that’s another story entirely) while in terms of success, measured by record sales, I caught up and passed Mark long ago.

Learning all of this I became quite determined: I had to get my balls pricked. I knew that, afterwards, I should never be able to fuck girls or even enjoy a quiet wank. But I never had fucked a girl, or been anywhere near it, and after two attempts that did nothing for me, I’d stopped trying to wank either – and what I’d learned about other forms of sex didn’t appeal to me very much. There’s a scientific name for my condition but I forget it.

How I got “done” you’ll have to read for yourself. The procedure was entirely successful. By about a month afterwards my scrotum had clumped up into a fold of puckered skin. At last that unwanted and treacherous part of my body was being brought under control! Where the drug left off, Mother Nature took over. My penis had at first just hung limp between my thighs, but as my erectile nerves withered and disappeared, it retracted into my groin leaving just over an inch, mostly foreskin. (I’ve had to be circumcised since then but that’s another story. How many times have I said that? Never mind).

I didn’t feel the least bit freakish. I was now a boy-eunuch but so were Simon, and his friend Mark – and many others I was soon to meet. A recent change in the law made it possible for foster-parents and guardians who didn’t want the hassle of bringing-up a recalcitrant teenager, to have his balls taken out with no questions asked. Even a few natural parents followed suit; if they already had a son who could carry on the family name they might neuter the younger ones.

It’s been said so often that it’s hardly worth repeating, but it was well known that without the distraction of those troublesome balls, boys were more attentive in class and studied harder. In more instances than not (I was one!) they were able to sing more sweetly. Besides this, neutered boys were very popular with the mothers of girls on mixed-sex sleepovers: any fooling-around in the dark hours would be strictly limited. However over-heated the girls were in the knickers department, their virginity was safe!

What has this got to do with my standing on a French roadside, looking up the avenue of the Château Beauséjour St Martin (that isn’t its real name) wondering whether to go on or go back? Actually it’s got everything to do with it, so just listen.

Somewhere the question has been asked “What does Roddy do during the school summer holidays?” Usually the question was superfluous – I’d be recording, or filming on tour, or being interviewed, or seeing my agent, every other day. But even recording studio people have to take a break sometime, and so I found myself in the last week of July, with the holidays only five days off, with nothing to do.

It wasn’t supposed to have been like that. A bit earlier I’d fixed to spend some time with the Roebuck twins, whose aunt and uncle (the same aunt and uncle who’d rescued them from servitude in the Middle East) had a holiday cottage on the side of Coniston Water. The Roebucks were outdoor types: there would be climbing, swimming, fishing, and above all, sailing, which I’d learned to do in Lymington Haven and was good at – good enough to hold my own with the Roebucks. Then the blow fell. Lake District cattle developed a foot-and-mouth epidemic; Lake District sheep developed bluetongue. Coniston was off-limits to visitors.

This I learned from Jamie Roebuck, who shamefacedly broke the bad news after breakfast. Ten o’clock found me between first and second lesson, kicking stones along the roadway and wondering what the hell I was going to do all the summer. I gave a large pebble a particularly vicious kick, sending it spinning into the roadway, where by ill-luck it hit the back of a car, that was drawing into the kerb. The driver got out, but he wasn’t raving – he was smiling!

“Hello, Fisher! I hoped I’d find you”. (No mention of the stone). It was Mr Carter, by far the nicest of all the staff. “Can you spare me a few minutes? What’s your next lesson?”

“It’s with Mr Butler-Yeates, sir” I replied, “We’re just reading a play, round the form”.

“Mr Butler-Yeates” mused Mr Carter. “Oh well, I don’t suppose he’ll miss you, assuming he even knows you by name”. (The gentleman referred to was a red-faced young Irishman, doing a term’s school-practice). “Look,” Mr Carter went on “I suppose you’ve got your summer holidays all fixed up, haven’t you?”

I explained about the foot-and-mouth epidemic in the Lakes, and that on the contrary I was at a loose end.

“Well, in that case I’ve something to tell you that you might be interested in,” said Mr Carter. “Shall we sit in the car?”

Ensconced in the back, Mr Carter began. “Have you ever fancied yourself as a page-boy?”

I somehow couldn’t picture myself dressed in silk tights and satin slippers, with a little fur-edged jacket and a big velvet hat with a feather. Somehow restraining a silly grin, I told Mr Carter, no, I never had.

Mistaking my mood Mr Carter said, “I gather you wouldn’t be keen, then”.

“Oh no, sir, no, not at all – I mean yes,” I gabbled. Whatever it was, it was bound to be better than nothing.

Mr Carter smiled. “This enquiry – for that’s what it is – was made to the Head, from Lord Manningham. You know him, don’t you?”

I nodded. Strictly speaking I only knew of Lord Manningham – I’d seen him with Simon a few times but that was all. To Simon he was always “Uncle Carl”. He was undeniably a Peer of the Realm, and reputedly in the diplomatic service in some shape or form. This should have made him impeccably respectable – if it hadn’t been for hints dropped by Simon from time to time. There was clearly more than met the eye, about Uncle Carl.

“Well, then,” Mr Carter went on. “Lord Manningham was approached by a French countess – her name slips my memory for the moment – with an estate in central France, the Auvergne or thereabouts. There’s no Count, or if there is, he doesn’t seem to be involved, but there’s a daughter aged fourteen – about your own age in fact. She has a page already, but for some reason he’s leaving. Shall I go on?”

I nodded again, and he continued. “I’ve seen the countess’s letter – or rather a copy – and though she uses the French word “page”, it seems that the job – for it is a proper job – is more that of a companion than an attendant. I hesitate to tell you what the terms are, but I’m sure you won’t be insulted. One hundred euros a month and all found”.

A hundred euros was very small change indeed but I didn’t need the money. Mr Carter knew that.

“The offer is only open,” said Mr Carter, after a slight pause “to boys like you”. He looked away, as if embarrassed.

If he was embarrassed, I wasn’t. I knew exactly what he meant. In the close-knit circles of the French landed aristocracy, arranged marriages were still the rule, and a girl’s virginity was a highly marketable commodity – one that could be sold to the highest bidder. Pageboys therefore had to be boys like me. Boys like me were not driven by testosterone urges. Boys like me had harmless little winkles. Boys like me could not fuck girls. For boys like me, pussy was off the agenda – for good.

There was another, longer pause. “Shall I put your name forward?” asked Mr Carter.

“Oh, yes, sir, please sir” I stammered. (After all, nothing might come of it, and I’d be none the worse).

“Right then” said Mr Carter. “I’ll let the Head know, and we’ll see what happens”.

I got out of the car, and Mr Carter drove off.

Minutes later, there was a squeal of tyres behind me. I turned and saw a battered-looking Landrover Discovery. If I hadn’t recognised the registration number (which I did) I couldn’t have failed to spot the uniquely awful driving of Simon’s girlfriend Melanie, who got out of the cab and hurried towards me.

“Hello Ricky,” she greeted me. She appeared to have come straight from the stableyard, as she wore jeans and wellies – not her usual get-up at all. She looked worried. “Ricky, I need to find Simon,” she said. “Any idea where I can find him? He’s not answering his mobile”.

“You won’t find him here today,” I said. “His form are all on an outing to London – to the Law Courts”.

“Oh damn!” exclaimed Melanie. “Damn, damn, damn, damn!” Her face puckered and for an instant I was terrified she was going to cry. But then she pulled herself together. “Anyway, Roddy,” she managed to say, “How are you? Nearly the summer holidays! Got anything lined up?”

I told her about my frustrated plans for the Lakes, and then my conversation with Mr Carter. Her jaw dropped. “You’re telling me, Roddy, that you are going to be companion to – to a girl? Do you know anything about girls? Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

I told her I knew next to nothing about girls and as for having a girlfriend, she knew the answer as well as I did. Melanie’s eyes grew wider and wider.

“Roddy, you poor boy!” she exclaimed. “This is terrible! Here, get in the car!”

She dragged me towards the Landrover, pushed me into the passenger seat and ran round to the driver side. With a spine-tingling crunch from the gearbox and a fearsome jolt as she let the clutch in, we were off. “Here, where are we supposed to be going?” I protested. “I’m supposed to be in school!”

Melanie said never a word. Gripping the steering wheel, she gunned the Landrover out of the school gates and up the main road towards the city bypass, heading west. “Where are we going?” I asked again.

No answer. Melanie’s mouth was set in a hard line. There was nothing to be done except look out of the window and admire the Sussex countryside………..

Half an hour later Melanie turned off the road through some gates. The Landrover scrunched along a gravel drive. Outside a big detached house Melanie pulled up and switched off. “This is home,” she said, adding by way of further explanation “Mum’s out. Come on”.

In the porch she kicked her boots off and unlocked the front door. I looked around the hall, but had no time to take in anything as Melanie half-pushed, half-pulled me up the stairs and into what I assumed was her bedroom. “I think you need a crash course on girls,” was all she said, before drawing the curtains. To my amazement she then began taking off her clothes.

Her denim jacket came off first, followed by her yellow T-shirt. “You can look, but don’t touch” she admonished, unclipping her bra and giving me my first-ever look at a girl’s naked boobs. “All girls like having their nipples kissed,” was Melanie’s first piece of advice. I stored this away in my memory, with an image of Melanie’s very nice boobs, as she began unzipping her jeans. These fell about her ankles and she kicked them out of the way.

Melanie stood before me in her knickers. They were tiny pink briefs with a little bow at each side, pulled up tightly between her thighs, showing the shape that is like no other – the curving vee of a girl’s sex. This was what drove intact boys wild. This is what made them look up girls’ skirts on the school bus, crazy for a glimpse of it, speculating whether the colour of a girl’s knickers indicated her level of sex experience. But I wasn’t given time to speculate. With a quick deft movement Melanie slipped her pants off and got on to the bed.

So, this was the very first time I saw IT, close to. The sight of a girl’s fanny is supposed to make a boy-eunuch feel a tug in the place where his ball-cords once were. But as I told you earlier, I have a very low sex-drive and the only feeling passing through my mind was curiosity. My penis gave never a twitch.

Melanie passed her hand over the dimpled mound. Down there she was just as hairless as I am, which was strange. “All modern girls shave off,” she explained. “I’ve had mine waxed, too; I go twice a month. It’s much cleaner like that”. (Well, I had wondered. In some of the pictures of nude girls that Simon used to show me, you could see nothing but hair.)

Lesson One concluded, Melanie opened her legs, for Lesson Two. “Under that bone” she said, parting her love-lips “is the way inside a girl. It’s where I put my dildo in”. (Or where an intact boy puts his penis in, I thought.) “The first little bit is very sensitive. If you are going to finger a girl, that’s one of the places where you concentrate. Don’t bother putting it right inside”.

Me, finger a girl? I wondered, but said nothing. The lesson wasn’t over yet. Melanie was showing me a tiny pink swelling, almost hidden by the folds of flesh. “Now here” she was saying “is my joy-button. At least that’s what I call it. Its proper name is ‘clitoris’ – clitty for short. That’s where all of a girl’s sex-pleasure is concentrated – just in that little bump. Just get the tip of your tongue on that, and the girl won’t be able to think of anything but sex. Of having your big rigid cock up her fanny, rumpy-pumpy, rumpy-pumpy, filling her full of………………oh!

She broke off, her hand up to her mouth. Suddenly it had flashed upon her, who it was she was talking to, and that I might be hurt by her artless talk of a “big rigid cock”. She sat up with a jerk, drawing up her knees. “Oh Roddy!” she breathed, her face crimson. “I’m – I’m so sorry! I never meant to…” Her chin began to wobble, and her body began to shake, convulsed with sobs.

There was nothing I could say to reassure her, still less do. Very quietly I left the room, tiptoed down the stairs and left the house in search of a bus. I should miss the lunch break but with any luck I’d make it in time for the beginning of afternoon school. Though to tell the truth I’d had enough lessons for one day.

I never told Simon about this little episode, and he never mentioned it to me – so I guess Melanie kept it to herself.

Mr Carter was as good as his word. Early next day he sent for me again. “The Head’s Secretary is doing all the travel arrangements,” he said breezily. “It’ll all be paid-for up front, so no need to worry about your homeward journey”. (In the event there was a very great deal to worry about, but you’ll come to that if you keep on reading).

There was more. “The girl in the equation” he added “goes by the name of Vicomtesse followed by a whole string of names, Berthe Victorine Claudette Solange Véronique. Seemingly she only uses the last one and likes to be called Nicky for short, so I believe you’ll find she’s human”. (Silently I hoped so). “So if I don’t see you in the meantime, bon voyage”.

Whether the “voyage” was “bon” or not, you’ll have read right at the beginning. Which is where we came in, with me gazing down the avenue of the Château Beauséjour St Martin, wondering whether to go on or go back.

Although there was washing on the line, there seemed to be no one at home at the gate-lodge, so I set off for the main house. The grass in the park was waist-high and a man on a scarlet-painted tractor was busy mowing it. I waved to the tractor-driver and he waved back, which made things seem friendlier, so I plodded on.

Twenty minutes’ walking brought me within hailing distance of the main house, which resembled all the pictures of French chateaux I’d ever seen, very large, very symmetrical, built of pale grey stone and with a pepperpot turret on each end. I counted a row of twelve windows from right to left. All those at ground floor level were shuttered-up, and the first-floor ones had heavy curtains drawn.

A bit further still, and I came up against a ha-ha wall. Clambering up this, backpack and all, I found I’d come to the back of the house, not the front, since there wasn’t an entrance to be seen. But an overgrown gravel path led me round the side of the house and to a door, with a bell-push. I pressed the knob and waited. Nothing happened, so I pressed it again.

Footsteps sounded indoors and someone with a high voice, surprisingly speaking English, called out “Alright, alright, wait a minute, can’t you?” The door then opened. Facing me was a boy of about my own age. He had a mop of red curly hair over a freckled face and was dressed – I was relieved to see – not in mediaeval pageboy costume but in T-shirt, shorts and trainers. He looked me up and down, then spoke again.

“Zim-zim bamble-boozle!”

“I beg your pardon?” I said.

In response I was treated to the same gibberish a second time, but with a little dance routine:

“Zim-zim bamble-boozle, zim-zim bamble-boozle, spin, spin, clap-clap-clap…”

I cut him short. “If you’ve quite finished,” I said “I’m Roddy Fisher; I’ve come about a job, and I want to know if I’ve come to the right place. If I haven’t, then can you spare the time from acting like a bloody idiot, to pointing me the right way?” I was very tired and near tears – I daresay it showed in my tone of voice – shrill and a bit weepy.

“Alright, keep your hair on!” said the redheaded boy. “You’ve come to the right place alright. In fact you’re expected. You’d better come and meet Yvette, the housekeeper. This way”.

He led me into a passageway, that had last seen a paintbrush about thirty years earlier. “I’m Jeremy Shortice,” the red-haired boy introduced himself. “You’ve been ‘cut’, haven’t you? I can tell from the way you speak. I’ve been ‘cut’ too.”

I didn’t respond to this. It was nothing to do with him. Round a corner we went, and up a narrow stairway to a landing, with a single door. Jeremy knocked, and called out, in English, “Yvette, it’s me – with the new boy”.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the other side. The door opened – but not to let anyone pass. The figure before me filled the doorway totally – a huge, grim-faced woman, with iron-grey hair, and dressed entirely in black. She must have stood six-foot-two in her black lisle stockings. She eyed me for a second or two, then seized my shoulder in a grip of iron, drawing me into the room. “Toi, attends au-dehors,” she snapped at Jeremy before closing the door on him.

I’d scarcely time to register where I was – it seemed to be a sort of sitting-room – before Yvette was at it again. “Et toi!” she rapped out. “Baisse ta culotte! Dis donc, dépêche-toi!”

However, I took my time over lowering my shorts. With my pants down to my knees I looked Yvette full in the face, as if to say “And now, what?” The horrible old woman sized me up, head to toe, but dwelling a tad too much I thought, on the gap at the top of my thighs. “Un joli garcon,” she murmured at last “et un garçon bien châtré!"

I might have been a horse! Once upon a time Melanie, whose mind ran on horsey matters much of the time, used to call me “her sweet little gelding” (Simon was “her great gelding”) but there was no need to cram it down my throat in this way. But having decided the essentials – that I was good-looking and properly castrated, Yvette had more in store.

She signed to me to pull my pants up. “Allons, allons! Madame la Comtesse veut te regarder! Viens donc!”

Oh, she wants to look at me, does she, I thought to myself, as I followed Yvette along more passageways, to a part of the house where the interior decoration was a tad less tatty, though not much. We came to a sort of hallway that had once been elegant, if you ignored the faded wall covering and peeling paint. Yvette knocked on one of the doors that opened off it. A voice from the other side bade us come in.

I could barely see across the room we entered, for the thick cloud of cigarette smoke that invaded every corner of it. It was all I could do not to choke. My streaming eyes at length made out a raddled-looking blonde woman reclining on a couch. Her fingers, brown with nicotine, held a lighted cigarette. On a little table that might have been Louis Quinze beneath the torn magazines and other rubbish, was an ashtray brimming over with cigarette-ends. Even without the Vodka bottle on the table, I’d have guessed that the tumbler of clear liquid in the woman’s other hand wasn’t water.

To my immense surprise Yvette dropped this woman a curtsey! “Madame la Comtesse,” she said in a low deferential voice. “J’amène le nouveau garçon”.

The Countess – for it was indeed she – looked at “the new boy”. Did she ask my name, or if I’d had a pleasant journey? She did not. She looked at me without a single word. It was a scary look – so totally lacking in interest in anything or anybody. Then she looked away again. “Is he satisfactory?” she asked Yvette.

“Oui, mais certainement, Mme la Comtesse,” replied Yvette. (She knew what the Countess meant – was I ball-less?)

The Countess waved a hand towards the door, and returned to last year’s “Paris Match”. The interview was closed.

Yvette bundled me out. In the hallway the wretched Jeremy had been hovering. Yvette spoke to him in a torrent of French, then went clattering off somewhere. “She says she’s very busy and can’t spend any more time with you” he said. “I’m to take over and show you where everything is”.

It was all I could do not to burst into tears. “Look,” I managed to say “this place sucks. I’ve been treated like some sort of animal by that ghastly old witch you call Yvette, and that cow in there (I jerked my thumb at the closed door of the “salon” hasn’t even the manners to say “Hello” or ask my name. Look, I’m starving! I got a coffee and sandwich on Eurostar – that was early this morning – and before leaving Paris I managed to grab a cheeseburger. If I don’t get something to eat – like now, this minute – I’m going home – if I have to walk all night!”

Jeremy stared at me – I was beginning to sound weepy again. “You are in a bad way, aren’t you?” he said, not unsympathetically. “Meals are a bit irregular round here, but I’ll see what I can do. Come with me”.

More corridors, leading at length to a more utilitarian part of the house. Jeremy showed me into a sort of breakfast-room, where he said he took his own meals. He disappeared for a short while, returning with a plateful of pieces of assorted sausage and other cold meats, a tomato and a hunk of French bread. In his other hand he brought a pewter mug of cider. “That’s all I could find, in a hurry,” he said

I thanked him and began wolfing the food down. “When do I get to meet the Vicomtesse?” I asked, through a mouthful.

“Oh, leave that till tomorrow,” replied Jeremy in an offhand way. “Leave it till ten or even later. She won’t be up till then. Her rooms are in this end of the house by the way, by the swimming pool – you can’t miss them”.

“Why, won’t you be here?” I asked. (I’d supposed we’d have a day or two together till I’d learned the ropes.)

“No, I’m leaving tonight” he replied. “I’ve actually got a lift to the station – in fact I’ll have to go in a few minutes”.

“Where are you making for?”

Jeremy named a school in the Midlands, which I knew only by name, no more. He’d been sent to this extraordinary house and its extraordinary inhabitants, as part of a “Modern Languages Project”. I guessed his teachers had done little or no homework on what the “project” might involve.

His parents had divorced, and the court granted custody of him to his grandparents. In most respects they were kindly and loving. But one day, Jeremy’s grandmother caught him playing with himself in the bath. His grandfather, consulted, said, “If he’s going to be like that, he’d better be neutered right away”.

Which was a decision he was within his rights to make. A recent change in the law made it possible for foster-parents and guardians who didn’t want the hassle of bringing-up a difficult child, to have his balls taken out, to make him more docile and easier to manage.

“I was just eight years old,” Jeremy finished. “I had to take two weeks off school till I’d healed up, down there. I can’t feel anything now”.

(Sounds like, I thought to myself, he’s learnt to live without balls. Like so many more of us.)

“Anyhow,” said Jeremy, changing the subject “I’d better go or I’ll miss my lift. I’ll wish you luck”.

There was a lot more I wanted to ask him but there wasn’t time. With Jeremy gone, I began to explore my immediate surroundings. A door in the far wall of the room where I’d had my cold snack opened into a bedroom, small but clean: the sheets on the bed were pristine. Another door, beyond that, opened on to a shower-room with a toilet. It wasn’t hotel standard, but could have been worse.

Burping cider, I unpacked my small backpack and looked for somewhere to put my things. There was a large sliding-door cupboard. When I opened this I found it wasn’t totally empty. There were about a dozen white silk shirts, as many pairs of shorts, also silk, and on a lower shelf, a pile of lacy thongs. (Mine were all sports-pattern and elasticated cotton). Also, hanging up, there was a girl-ballerina’s tutu, leotard and tights.

I hoped no one had any ideas about making me wear that. There had been an article on the Internet about some school in Eastern Europe where ballet training was the main discipline, and boys and girls dressed alike in tutus and tights. The boys all had their balls removed at age seven or soon after. At that age what you’ve never had you don’t miss. But… I’d just have to see.

I happened to catch sight of my watch – it showed ten to ten – and I’d been on the go since four. Enough was enough for one day. I kicked my trainers off, switched off the light, and without bothering to undress, lay down on the bed, dragging the quilt over me. Like I said, enough was enough…

A long time afterwards, I woke in broad daylight. My watch showed quarter-past-nine. Back at school, I thought, I’d have already been up for two hours and starting to get ready for morning chapel. I yawned and stretched, and gave myself a few more minutes before getting out of bed.

At least the lav was all mine – at school I’d be queuing-up on the landing, most likely. Finished here, I pulled my remaining clothes off and got under the shower. Ooh, that felt better. I revolved under the jet, luxuriating. Because peeing in the shower was a serious offence at school, I peed in this shower, just for the hell of it. I seemed to remember that in renaissance Italy sculptors used to collect boys’ pee to create an artificial patina on bronzes. Redheaded boys’ urine for some reason was thought to be more efficacious.

What would today bring, I wondered.

The first thing it brought was the sound of the door of the outer room opening and a voice calling “Y a du café!” and a thump. I dried myself and with a towel round my middle, went to investigate. There was coffee alright, a large bowl of the stuff – I was meant to drink it two-handed apparently – about half a baguette, some butter and some dark red jam which proved to be gooseberry – not my favourite but you can’t have it all ways.

Breakfast over, I dressed myself in some of the finery from the cupboard (though I drew a line at the lace thongs), tidied my hair and went to investigate. Turning right as Jeremy had indicated there was another length of corridor, some stairs, and then a door leading outside. Here I found a patio, a 22-metre swimming pool, and beyond the pool, a clay tennis court. Most important of all, I found a girl of about 15, sprawling on a lounger, reading or pretending to read “Bliss” magazine. She was dressed as for tennis in T-shirt and shorts, and she wore Ray-Bans. She looked up as I came across.

“Hello” she called. “Who are you? I’ve not seen you before”. She didn’t sound unfriendly. More to the point, she had scarcely any French accent.

“I’m called Roddy,” I answered. I decided to jump straight in, no messing about. “Am I allowed to call you Nicky?” I asked “Or do I have to say Mademoiselle la Vicomtesse all the time?”

The girl laughed. “No of course you don’t. Everyone calls me Nicky, except Yvette and Xavier. You’ve met Yvette? Of course you have. She really runs things around here – she’ll have brought your breakfast by the way. She’s rather sweet really despite appearances. You won’t have met Xavier; he’s a sort of odd-job man. Then there’s the cook, Axelle, who’s brilliant at her job but totally deaf and has a speech impediment, so no one understands a word she says. Here, do come and sit down.”

She made room on the lounger by moving her feet. I perched on the end of it. “Who else have you met?

“Jeremy, when I arrived – only he’s left already”.

“Yes, thank God. He couldn’t go soon enough for me. He was terribly childish”.

Remembering zim-zim bamble-boozle I agreed: childish was the word. “Yvette took me to meet your mother – the Countess”.

“What did you think of her?”

I sought hard for the right words, picturing the raddled drunk in her smoke-filled salon. Nicky got there first. “You don’t need to apologise. Mamma is a mess. It’s a toss-up, which gets her first – lung cancer or cirrhosis. Her problem is, she’s never been trained to do anything, and she’s bored out of her mind.”

“How about the Count – your father?”

“Oh, he’s been dead for years. Mamma remarried soon afterwards – a businessman from Paris. He hardly ever comes here. He spends his money as he thinks he will – like sending me to school in England (Nicky named the best-known girls’ school in the Southern Counties), the tennis court, the swimming pool – but not a cent on keeping the house in repair. There are parts of the top floor that can’t be used at all, the roof leaks so badly”.

“So your Mamma is all alone, apart from you?”

“Yes. And as time has gone on, she’s got more and more peculiar. For her, it’s as if the Revolution never happened. The aristocracy have to have their way, and everyone else counts for nothing.”

Nicky paused for a moment. “Do you know, a few months ago she tried to get the gardener to have one of his children, you know, have an operation, made like you are…”

“The word is ‘castrated’,” I interrupted.

“Yes. Before the revolution it was part of the culture. I know all about it! In some parts of the world, good-looking boys, the sort of boys that girls love, have to have their balls drilled out when they become slaves, by some sort of keyhole surgery, to keep their penises small and limp. They can love the girls as much as ever but are not able to fuck them.

“In families like ours the pageboys were all castrated. It kept their faces smooth and pretty, there were no tell-tale bulges in the front of those silk tights they had to wear, and most of all, the daughters’ virginity would be safe. That’s a laugh to begin with. Mamma has no idea what a whore I’ve been, while I was away at school.”

This was an eye-opener. “Go on with the story about the gardener,” I said.

“Well, not surprisingly the gardener refused, and Mamma then gave him the sack, for insolence. That’s the way she is. Her word is law, or she thinks it is – and when she finds it isn’t, she reaches for the vodka”.

It began to drop into place, everything I’d seen so far. But what did Nicky mean by “what a whore I’ve been”? Had she lost her cherry despite going to a single-sex girls’ school and apart from that, only meeting boys like me? But she was speaking again.

“That’s enough about my peculiar family, for the present. What shall we do? Go on, you’re supposed to entertain me!”

I thought hard. “What about tennis? You’re already dressed for it. Care for a game?”

“Yes, alright. The rackets are over there in that locker. Best of three?”

“OK”.

We never reached three. I beat Nicky six-two, six-love, and she packed it in. “You’re too good for me,” panted Nicky. “Where do you practise?”

“School,” I said. “I’m in a coaching team, that helps one of the neighbourhood schools, one that’s less fortunate”. I told her a bit about St Anselme’s.

We reached the side of the pool. “I’m hot!” declared Nicky. “I’m going in!” She stripped off her shirt and shorts, revealing a sports bra and thong. I wasn’t slow in doing the same (though without the bra).

“Come on, I’ll race you!” Nicky declared. “Two laps!” Without waiting for me she dived in, and began a rather splashy crawl. Now racing dives are one of my things, though I say so – and my crawl isn’t bad either. We touched the far-end rail, and turned, more or less at the same instant. On the second lap I had the advantage, and finished when Nicky was still splashing along some three lengths behind.

“You’re way above me,” Nicky confided as we got our breath back. “Let’s go and get dry”.

She led the way back indoors, to a room I’d not been in before – Nicky’s bedroom. Our wet thongs hit the floor simultaneously.

The first thought that went through my mind was that Melanie had been quite right: all modern girls shaved off “down there”. Nicky’s love-mound was as smooth as a peach. What was going through Nicky’s mind when she saw the pink blob between my legs? I was soon to know. Nicky grabbed both my hands and began to speak excitedly, the words tumbling out of her.

“Oh Roddy, I’m feeling so horny! Can’t you get a hard-on – just a little one?” I told her I couldn’t, not even a little one of any sort. Her face fell.

“You poor boy! You can’t get a hard-on, not even a little one! But it’s so sweet! Just like a rosebud. I want to kiss it!”

She knelt and took my penis in her mouth and began to suck on it like a lollipop, bringing it out of hiding with the warmth of her mouth. I had to confess that I felt good, having a girl suck my penis, and I became bolder. “Now that I’ve let you suck mine,” I whispered “you must let me kiss yours”.

In place of an answer Nicky got on the bed and opened her legs.

In the next few moments the question uppermost in my mind was whether all girls were made the same. With my mouth pressed against Nicky’s soft mound I felt with my tongue for the tiny bump where – Melanie had said – all of a girl’s capacity for sex pleasure was concentrated. From Nicky’s sudden quick intake of breath it seemed I’d found it.

“If you are enjoying what I’m doing to you,” I whispered, “squeeze my head between your legs”. I embraced her thighs with both arms and again pressed my mouth to her sex, using my tongue to give her a nice time. It didn’t take very long before Nicky’s tummy muscles went rigid and she tugged at my hair shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Her love-mound thrust up into my face; she gave a last shuddering moan and was still.

I came up for air. My ears were crimson where her thighs had gripped them, and my chin was wet with her love-juices. Nicky gave me a smile, seemingly of sheer affection. For a time neither of us spoke.

Afterwards we lay on the bed for a while. Nicky fondled my penis and explored the patch of darker skin where my empty scrotum had “grown out” as I got bigger. “No scars?” she inquired. I explained about Neutersol – how it was injected into a boy’s privates, and how it made the balls dry up, without surgery and also destroyed the boy’s erectile nerves, which is why I could never get hard.

“You’re such a clever loving boy,” Nicky murmured. “You’d have made a wonderful lover, you’re so gentle”.

Again I felt like a horse: Prince is such a lovable fellow, it’s a shame he was ever gelded. I might have said, “Boy, do I agree!” but like I said some time ago I have a low sex drive and just smiled at her.

We showered together and pulled a few clothes on. Nicky told me a bit about her school life: how, several times a year, “proms” were held, to which boys from two nearby schools were invited. There was a lot of indiscriminate shagging at these; Nicky had lost her cherry at one of them and not long afterwards had sex with three different boys the same evening without knowing any of their names. Staff at the school let it be known where free condoms (she called them Durexes) could be found…

Condoms. I never would, never could, be able to use one. I’d sometimes come across used ones and was amazed by the size of some boys’ erections.

Nicky never explained why, this summer, she had returned home a month before the end of term. It had been to find the abject Jeremy already in residence. A week had been enough for her to decide that she’d go mad if he stayed any longer. He was childish, unattractive - even his gelded genitals were unattractive. With the majority of neutered boys, once the balls have softened and disappeared, the empty scrotum shrinks and eventually grows out, like mine. The boy’s penis retracts to an inch or so – some can even look quite pretty! But Jeremy’s scrotum hung down in a fold of loose skin, his penis dangling lifelessly…

And so the bright day ambled along. At half past one a clattering of dishes along the passageway indicated that Yvette had brought us some food: half a cold chicken each, “frites” and fresh fruit to follow. At any rate I wasn’t going to starve here.

The afternoon was very low-key; at one point we used the swimming pool again, but for the most part we just lazed around. Nicky wanted to know about Southdown Hall. I told her about Simon and how he’d become my rôle-model and changed the course of my life; about the Roebuck twins and all the others - and how they, and about a hundred others, were all boy-eunuchs.

“If they are anything like you,” said Nicky “I’d just love to meet them! The boys I used to meet were rather a nuisance sometimes”.

Early evening brought another, more elaborate meal, with a carafe of the local wine. As she put the dishes down, Yvette spared me a wintry smile. “She likes you already” confided Nicky after Yvette had left the room. “That’s worth something, believe me!”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted Yvette’s approval or not, or why, after only a few minutes’ acquaintanceship, she should like me. So far her assessment was based on the fact of my being a nice-looking boy, and having had (so far as she knew) my balls cut right out. An altogether suitable boy, impotent and sterile! Still, if Nicky said so… I kept these thoughts to myself and said nothing. The wine made us both drowsy; the evening drifted along: listening to music, talk of this and that, more wine, more music, more talk. Some time after ten, sleep beckoned too strongly to be ignored.

I was just climbing into bed when there came a quiet knock on my door. Nicky stood there, dressed only in a long T-shirt under which she obviously wore no knickers. “I felt lonely,” she said artlessly. “Can I stay with you?”

And so we fitted ourselves into my none-too-wide bed, Nicky nestled her bare behind into my lap; my arm went round her with my hand cradling one of her boobs. Like that, we both fell contentedly asleep and it was many hours later when I was aware of her tiptoeing back to her own room.

So, “there was evening and there was morning, one day” as the book says. How had it worked out? In short, better than I could ever have hoped, and I don’t just mean the sex. Nicky and I were getting on extremely well, which was important by itself. Though the sex was interesting on two counts. For me it was a “first”. Besides this, I knew now, though I could never have asked, what it was that bound Simon to Melanie and Melanie to Simon. A boy could give a girl a nice time even after losing his reproductive “bits”.

(At one point Nicky asked me whether I’d thought about “replacements” some time in the future. Well, I had and I hadn’t. There is, I know, an organ-donor scheme which arranges for transplants of hearts, kidneys and other things, but I’d never heard of boys’ balls being on the organisation’s wish-list.)

I won’t say that the first day set a pattern, because there were no patterns. Sometimes Nicky had to go off with Mamma to be shown off to friends or relatives nearby. Mamma used to drive the family car – a big old Renault Safrane – though how she escaped being run-in for drunk driving I shall never know.

On days like these I was left to my own devices, and made some interesting discoveries. One morning I encountered Xavier for the first time, tidying up what had once been the stableyard.

“Ça va?” Enquired Xavier, without taking the Gauloise out of his mouth.

Xavier was a stocky, weather-beaten-looking individual in his fifties. I assured him, “Yes, thank you – it went very well”. Then I ventured to ask him about something that intrigued me. Not far from the front gate of the château, a building stood, fronting the road. It was boarded-up and didn’t look used. The name of the château was painted across the front, and the letters were beginning to peel.

“Ça, c’est la vieille gare,” said Xavier. He went on to say that in its heyday the château could be reached by through carriage all the way from Paris; in the 1800’s the then-Count had been a director of the PLM company that built the line, and it was he who had the service laid on, entirely for the convenience of his family. Though the old station no longer functioned, the rails, said Xavier, were still there for the vegetable trains.

Curioser and curioser, I thought. I asked what the vegetable trains were.

Xavier laid his yard-broom down, took the Gauloise out of his mouth and favoured me with a long explanation. The district round about was famed for farm produce of all kinds: in spring asparagus, in the early summer, strawberries and other soft fruit, in August, peaches, apricots and plums, later still apples and pears, potatoes and sugar-beet. When the farmers and growers were ready, they would arrange for boxcars to be shunted along the old line. When loaded, the boxcars would be attached to the overnight train and go direct to the fruit-and-vegetable market right in the middle of Paris.

I thanked Xavier, for his “explication très intéressante”. Xavier resumed his Gauloise and picked up his broom. But he in his turn had a question.

“Enfant doux, hein? Comme tous les autres?”

I knew what he meant. ‘Enfant doux’ was a French euphemism for what I was. (The Italians did just the same, going to any lengths not to call castrati ‘castrati’). In France they invented the myth that castrated children became placid and sweet-natured – ‘doux’. How many became vicious and spiteful, history doesn’t relate.

“Oui, bien sur” I replied. Xavier nodded and turned away.But what about all the others? Who were they? I never did find out the answer to that question.

Towards the end of my first week, there was a wet day. Nicky showed me over the rest of the house – excepting only the part that Mamma still used. At one time there must have been dozens, if not hundreds – of servants to keep a place of this size running. The stable-block didn’t consist of stables alone: the upper floor was a whole series of little apartments for coachmen, grooms, ostlers and so on - now all out-of-use and shut-up.

In the main house there were corridors of bedrooms on the first floor, some with a few sticks of furniture, some just dust and emptiness. Above these, the servants’ bedrooms – just attics under the roof. Here and there, the rain dripped from the stained plaster of the old ceilings into tins placed there to catch the drops. Nicky had told me that most of this top floor was unusable – the roof was in such poor condition.

Standing at one of the grimy windows I looked out over the overgrown garden, neglected since the sacking of the gardener who refused to have his child castrated. Beyond the garden, lacklustre meadowland falling sharply away to a belt of trees, then rising again. On the further hill stood a village. Just beyond the trees I could see the turrets of another house.

“The village is St Benoit-la-Riviere” said Nicky. “There’s a centuries-old feud between the villagers there, and those here, over water. The house you can see is called Bel Manoir. It’s old – much older than this – it dates back to Louis XI’s time. No one lives there now; the owner has got a flat in Lyons and he says he’ll let Bel Manoir fall down rather than sell it to strangers”.

(France has no equivalent to English Heritage or Historic Scotland, so there’s nothing to prevent a building from the 1400’s being allowed to fall down, if that what the owner wants).

I said I thought it was a pity. Nicky just shrugged.

That day will always stick in my memory for what happened much later. We were in Nicky’s room, sprawled on her bed. Neither of us had spoken for some time when Nicky put an arm around my shoulders, her face very close to mine. “Roddy, you darling boy,” she breathed. “I want to try to make you come”.

I was gobsmacked! At first I didn’t know what to say, but slowly pulled myself together. “I don’t think you ever could” I said, and told her about Neutersol. How it not only destroys the boy’s testicles but also the nerves that control erections.

“This is different,” whispered Nicky. Going to a drawer, she brought out a pink plastic object, shaped like a hen’s egg but smaller, and with one end thinner than the other. A wire dangled from the fatter end, leading to a switch-box. I’d never seen anything like it, and said so.

“It’s a pleasure-egg,” said Nicky. “It’s supposed to work on boys as well as on girls, front or back”.

The penny dropped. Instinct told me to tell her to put it away again. Because of what I went through with my adoptive parents’ appalling son, I don’t much care for having things up my backside, even after two years at Southdown Hall, where Matron’s thrice-weekly enemas are legendary. That, and having been raped (read Simon’s Revenge) and left for dead had made me just a bit skittish about the whole ‘anal idea.’

Curiosity, however, drove me on. I nodded to her. Nicky fairly purred with delight. “Pull your pants down, quick!” she ordered. “Thinking about this is making me horny!”

I’m just going to give you a hint of what went on in the next few seconds, by what Nicky said to me and what she made me do. If you can’t picture the scene you shouldn’t be reading this.

“Lie on your back, so. Now, push your knees up so I can…”“Hmm! Nice butt!”“Now, this is just ordinary cold cream…”“Just relax and let it go in”.

Her soft gentle fingers eased the thing inside me, pushing it right in. I felt it touch something.

“Now I’m going to switch it on!”

When I was at the orphanage, aged about eleven, other boys told me about jerking off – that it was nice and I ought to try it (this was before new admissions routinely had their balls pricked.) That it was nicer still if I imagined I was pushing my willie inside a girl. So night after night, in bed, I tried flicking my foreskin up and down my little rod of flesh. Well, it did feel nice, I admit it – but the pleasure ended there. The nice feeling faded as soon as I took my hand away; I never came anywhere near having an orgasm, and as for imagination – forget it.

This was totally and utterly different.

From the moment Nicky switched on, I felt that all of my private area was going to burst. Though it’s impossible for me ever to get hard, my penis became very red and began twitching. I can’t describe the sensation because I’ve nothing to compare it with- but the feelings grew more and more intense. “Stop it!” I heard myself saying. “Stop it!”

But Nicky didn’t stop it. She watched me as I writhed and tossed about, in the grip of sensations I didn’t understand and couldn’t control. I couldn’t bear much more. “Help! Help!” I cried. Suddenly, another feeling – I was falling, falling, falling.

My penis stopped throbbing and the sensations ebbed away. “Wasn’t that nice?” Nicky asked, confidingly. But I had no words and just smiled at her.

“I’m still feeling horny,” she whispered. “Would you like to pull my knickers down?”

A short time later, with my face buried between her soft thighs, I brought Nicky to her own shuddering climax, crying out with the joy of it. I didn’t mind how often I did it to her. Nor, for that matter, did she. But as for the other thing, I made her promise never, ever, to try it again. I didn’t understand those feelings or where they might lead.

The next day on which I was left to my own devices wasn’t long in coming, and it proved a turning point.

I had been intrigued by “Bel Manoir” - the medieval mansion that was being allowed to fall into dereliction. With a free day ahead of me I determined to go for a look-see, perhaps take a few photos with the digital camera Melanie had made me bring along, just as soon as Nicky and her Mamma were safely off the scene. Slipping through the overgrown garden I jumped down the ha-ha wall and into unknown country.

To begin with, this was meadow, a bit rough and thistly. Here and there, a few horses were grazing. One of these, a bay, more inquisitive than the rest, came trotting towards me. As he got nearer, I saw that we – the horse and I – shared something in common. He’d had his balls cut out.

“Hello, fella!” I greeted him. “We’re two of a kind. No little fillies for you or for me”. He looked at me for a moment, the way horses do, then made a noise like “Harrumph” through his nose, turned and trotted away again.

Now the ground sloped sharply downwards. Looking back, only the rooftops of the chateau could be seen. In front of me was the wood. Compared to the beautifully managed forests of the Weald where I’d spent many summer afternoons, this wood was a mess: there were fallen branches, holly-bushes, and all sorts. But I managed to keep more or less in a straight line. (Holly may be nice at Christmastime, but just try walking through it!)

Suddenly the trees ended. The high wall of Bel Manoir, windowless and of dark grey rough hewn stone, was only a short distance ahead. Between the wall and me was another barrier – a thick growth of the rampant weed called Himalayan Balsam. The stems were six feet tall in places.

Before entering this jungle I put down a marker, bending and partly breaking a low twig on a tree at the edge of the wood, to show me the way back. Then I plunged in, elbowing my way through. The tough stems sprang back behind me. I was making good progress when my feet suddenly ran away with me down an abrupt little bank and there, a few inches from my nose, was the castle wall.

I was in the moat – fortunately dry or very nearly. Underfoot was damp soil. I put down another marker where I’d come down the bank – an old bottle up-ended on a stick. Faced with a choice of two directions I turned left – I don’t know why. The high windowless wall was giving no secrets away. Then, after I’d ventured a few yards I found a short flight of steps and at the top of these, a door.

The door was thickly studded with iron nails in the best tradition of castle doors, and there was a big keyhole with a rusty surround. But it was a very old door, neglected and forgotten, and many of the iron nails were falling out. I dislodged a few more and the outermost plank of the door came loose. I pulled at it and was rewarded by the big old-fashioned lock, its wood casing eaten away, falling to the floor. Grinding on its hinges the door swung open. I peered inside. There was a passageway as dark as the bottom of a well. It smelt of damp earth and decaying wood.

I had no torch, but in my shorts pocket there was something that would answer just as well – a reel of cotton. If you ask why I was carrying one I’ve only this for an answer – I ALWAYS DO. I tied one end securely to the broken hasp on the doorpost and set off onto the darkness, letting the thread unwind.

My foot struck against the beginning of a low flight of steps. At the top of these, chinks of light from a heavily-shuttered window revealed a sort of scullery with a row of stone sinks. Horrible smells arose from these and I gave them a wide berth – many disgusting things were rotting in there.

Still unwinding the thread, I climbed another, much longer flight of stone stairs. A door at the top, unfastened, led into a sizeable room, where there was the much more agreeable smell of cooked food.

Once again, light filtering through cracks in the shutters cast a dim twilight, enough to see that on the deal table in the centre of this room was an oil lamp- the kind with a glass chimney. I patted this, finding it cold. Whoever had used it last, it was some time before.

There was a box of matches there too. I struck one and lit the lamp, meaning to have a good look round, but first I carefully put the cotton-reel where I could easily find it.

“Oo’r you?”

I nearly jumped out of my pants.

The voice seemed to come from the corner of the room. In that corner there was another door. The upper part of this was cut into an aperture, barred with an iron grille, and behind the grille was a small white face. I went across. “And who are you?” I asked in my turn.

“We’re the Smiff bruvvers,” said the little face. “I’m Pe’er, and tha’s me bruvver Jack – me twin,” I peered in more closely. The speaker was a pinched little specimen – he looked about ten. Beyond him there was another little figure, crouched in a corner.

“Well, Peter Smith,” I said, trying to sound cheerful- which I didn’t particularly feel, “how come you’re locked in here?”

The little boy told me a frightening story – of a sort not wholly unfamiliar. His school, in south London (you’ll have guessed!) had a twinning arrangement with a French school in the cathedral town of Bourges. There had been a school visit to Bourges, two weeks earlier. The boys had been walking in crocodile formation in the old part of the town, the Smith brothers right at the end of the column. A car had suddenly drawn up and the door flung open, blocking the narrow sidewalk and cutting the Smiths off. They had been dragged into the car, and a pad with some strong-smelling chemical held over their mouths and noses. Both had lost consciousness, awaking to find themselves imprisoned in this old larder – for that is what it was.

“We fought you was the bloke wot brings our food – the old bloke, not the small nasty one,” was Peter Smith’s next contribution. It sounded as if “the old bloke” was some sort of caretaker who lived at Bel Manoir, while letting it fall down about his ears, and the small nasty one, who was, in addition, “a black bloke” was the prime mover behind the boys’ kidnapping.

“Your brother doesn’t say much,” I observed.

“Nah, ‘e’s not very well. It’s ‘is privates,” replied Peter, raising more questions than he answered.

“What’s wrong with his privates?” I asked.

“It’s wot they did to us, while we was still out for the count,” said the boy. “Put our balls in a sort of big pair of pincers and squeezed. I was OK, just a bit bruised and I’m better now. But Jack, ‘e’s in quite a bad way”.

“Let’s have a look at you, Jack,” I said. The other boy came over. In the fitful light of the oil lamp I saw that his scrotum was turning black, and I caught a whiff of suppurating flesh. From the words “big pair of pincers” I guessed that an attempt had been made to castrate the boys with a burdizzo. This was a stockyard implement, designed chiefly with bull-calves in mind. It worked by crushing the spermatic cords.

Before Neutersol, there had been a move by paediatricians to use the burdizzo castrator on boys, as a less invasive procedure than total removal. This had now been outlawed by doctors in Britain and also in the States. More often than not, the boy’s spermatic cords were merely flattened, and like Peter’s, they soon recovered. But if, as in little Jack’s case, the cords were cut through, the severed testicles tended to become septic, leading to blood poisoning or worse.

“Me willie ‘urts,” said Jack. I was quite sure it did! His eyes looked dull and feverish - he was clearly running a high temperature.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I said. Already the faint outlines of a plan were beginning to form in my head.

“ ‘Ow can you?” Asked Peter. “There’s thick forest all round, and wa’er on three sides – it’s impossible”.

“There’s no such thing,” I said. “There’s a few trees, that’s all, and certainly no water. I came that way and I ought to know”.

The child’s face puckered up. “I’m scared,” he grizzled. “The bloke – the small nasty one - said if we tried to escape, he would burn out our eyes with red-hot irons and send us to a foreign country where we’d never be heard of again. He said he’d done it several times already”.

Hearing this was like a kick in the guts. The threat – to burn out their eyes – belonged to the time of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, or perhaps the Byzantine Empire – but – I knew that it still happened. Not long before, I’d been reading a travel book – an account of a journey by Land-Rover across Turkey and Iran, and I remembered the following passage: “They brought in a small blinded boy, good-looking but with a corrupt, knowing air about him. Abdul dragged him into a cupboard and locked the door. Nasty muffled sounds from the other side drove me from the room”.

Blinded and gelded, used for unmentionable perversions, and then left to die from disease and neglect – it didn’t bear thinking about. That was enough. The larder door wasn’t locked – only fastened by bolts top and bottom. I drew these back and opened the door wide. “Come on out of there,” I ordered. “We’re leaving – like now. Where are the rest of your clothes?” (If it’s not obvious by now, both children were nude below the waist.)

“”’E took ‘em away” said Peter. “The old guy. And our shoes. Dunno where ‘e took ‘em”.

“Then you’ll just have to go in bare feet and bare bums,” I said, desperately. I re-bolted the door and put out the lamp, but not before I’d put the cotton into Peter’s grubby little hand. “Just follow the thread,” I told him. “Don’t pull it or it’ll snap.” I pointed him towards the door I’d come in by.

Down the steps they went, their bare feet pattering on the cold stone like two little mice – or were they more like little sewer-rats? Through that stinking scullery, down the next flights of steps to the lowest passageway of all. The slats of the broken door glimmered in the darkness. I gathered up the cotton, bundled the boys through the door and pulled it to. “That way,” I said, pointing. “Hurry now”.

Through the balsam jungle and into the wood, where with many Ooo’s and Owww’s the boys pricked their feet on the holly-leaves that lay concealed in the mould. Out at last, with the roofs of the chateau in sight. “It’s all grass from here on,” I told them. “Now, run!”

Peter broke into a shambling trot, but Jack had picked up a thorn in the wood, and was very weak generally, besides which, it was now uphill. I got an arm round Jack’s middle and half-dragged, half carried him through the meadow (this time, the bay gelding ignored us.) At the garden wall I saw someone at a window and waved frantically.

Nicky met us at the door. “We came back early,” she said. “Mamma’s gone to her sitting-room with a new full bottle of Stolly, so she’s off the scene. I’d been looking for you. Who are these?”

“This one’s Jack,” I said, holding him out – “and the other one’s Peter. They’re starving, they’re sick, they’re terrified, and they’re in great danger. Can you find them somewhere to rest – somewhere safe? I’ll fill in all the details in just a minute.”

Nicky looked a bit shocked, but not much – as if her pageboys brought in bang-up strays all the time?

The room Nicky led us to, was perfectly suited to the needs of the moment. It was comfortably furnished with twin beds, a basin with running water and a big cupboard. Most importantly the only window looked on to the stableyard, which was a fortress in itself, when the big gates were shut.

“I’ll go and find Yvette,” said Nicky, and hurried out. Peter looked around him. “Cor, but ain’t this the place!” He marvelled. “Do you live ‘ere? And oo’s she? Is she your girl-friend?”

“No,” I said. “She’s my employer”.

“Cor!” Said Peter again. After a pause he had another question. “You do talk funny,” he said. “Like a girl. Are you really a boy or are you a girl dressed up in boy’s clothes?”

“What do YOU think?” I replied in quite a stern voice. He shut up after that.

Nicky soon returned with Yvette, who was carrying two large bowls filled with some kind of stew. It smelled irresistible. “It’s Axelle’s game casserole,” Nicky explained. “I think she makes it twenty-four over seven, because it’s always available even when there’s nothing else to eat. I believe it’s mostly pheasant and rabbit, but we don’t ask”.

It was Yvette’s first sight of the boys, their filthy and forlorn little bodies, Jack’s damaged genitals. Apart from “Les pauvres petits,” she said little in words, but her expletives might have been a lesson in French vowel-sounds: “Aaaaah!” “Oooooh!” And (I swear) “Euuuuuh!”

Meanwhile the “poor little ones” were eyeing the bowls hungrily. “While they’re filling their faces with that,” Nicky went on “go and run a bath. The bathroom’s through there (pointing). The water’s hot, I’ve just checked, so use plenty of bubble bath. We need to get all that dirt off”.

And in truth the boys were filthy, mostly from their fortnight’s incarceration in Bel Manoir where among other things, toilet arrangements had been a bucket in the corner of their cell. Their scramble through the woods hadn’t helped; their hair was tousled and ornamented with the odd leaf or two. I got busy with what I’d been told to do, and meanwhile Yvette collected the bowls – which the boys had emptied in record time – and gone to fetch other necessary things.

The boys were regaling Nicky with tales of their imprisonment when Yvette returned with a small trolley piled high with all kinds of first-aid material, rolls of bandage, pads of gauze, tins of Band-Aid, a bowl of hot water, Dettol, and in a dish, a heap of brown crinkly stuff.

“Qu’est que c’est que ça?” I enquired. “C’est de la mousse irlandaise,” replied Yvette with a faint smile. Irish moss? Of course, sphagnum! The Romans knew its healing powers and here, as in other country districts, the old knowledge lived on.

The last item on the trolley was a dusty-looking bottle of some pale golden liquid. “It’s Mamma’s cognac,” said Nicky. “The oldest I could find. I doubt Mamma knows that we still had any, so she won’t miss it. It’s about a hundred proof,” And on the open market, probably priceless, I thought.

Towelled and spotless from their bath, the children had come padding back into the bedroom. “Wot’s that bottle?” asked Jack, pointing. “Booze? ‘Cos I’ve ‘ad plenty of booze, Bacardi Breezers an’ all sorts.”

“It’s more than booze,” said Nicky. “It’s magic, and you’re going to have some.” Into a tumbler that stood on the bedside table she poured about three fingers. “Now take a deep breath and try to swallow it all down in one go”. Sitting on the bed she cradled the boy’s head in the crook of her elbow and held the glass to his mouth. Spluttering and choking, Jack gulped the fiery stuff down. “Cor, fair burned me froat, that did!” Was all he could manage to say. His eyes were popping out of his head.

“Can I ‘ave some too?” His brother asked in a plaintive voice.

“Don’t worry, yours is coming,” replied Nicky, pouring it out.

Jack was already becoming wavery as the almost-pure spirit took hold. Peter wasn’t far behind. Yvette had gone into the bathroom and returned with two large bath sheets which she spread on the beds. “Help me get them on the bed,” said Nicky. We took hold of the now insensible Jack and laid him on his back.

“Alors, laissez-moi,” grunted Yvette. So we left it to her, as she bent over Jack. From her apron pocket she took a small curved knife. Nicky clasped my hand as with quick, deft movements, the old woman cut away the blackening remains of Jack’s scrotum. After bathing the area with Dettol, she fashioned a dressing with gauze and sphagnum-moss, securing it with Band-aids to the boy’s groin. Jack would never be able to fuck girls, but he’d live.

“Et maintenant,” said, Yvette under her breath, turning to the other bed.

I turned to Nicky. “But there’s not a lot wrong with Peter,” I protested. “Leave her!” Hissed Nicky. “She knows best”.

Ten minutes later, both the Smith brothers were ball-less. Brought up on a farm before she entered service with the Count’s family, Yvette looked on all young male animals as the same – and young male animals all had to be castrated.

I couldn’t believe it. Peter would very probably have recovered from the botched Burdizzo job, as he was hardly even bruised, and now this mad woman had castrated him proper!

“They’ll sleep now,” Nicky said as we tucked the boys in. Yvette had taken her trolley away. “Will you bring these few bits and pieces? I’ll see you in a few moments”.

By the time I reached Nicky’s room, she was already stripped down to her half-cup bra and tiny black briefs, which she began to pull down as I came into the room, facing me with open thighs and knees slightly bent…

A week slipped by. Peter and Jack reacted well to their gelding operation. They healed very quickly, thanks to various herbal decoctions that Yvette herself applied. They had lost the pinched look they’d had when I first saw them. Jack in particular had visibly started to put on weight. Melanie would no doubt have had some horsey explanation about their testosterone running down. For myself I doubted whether it had much to do with losing their balls, and was more the result of all the delicious food they were getting.

Neither ever mentioned their operation. In the world we lived and moved in, some boys got to keep their balls, and a lot did not. From being among the “haves”, they had moved across to the “have-nots”. It was no big deal either way, and they seemed to know it.

Meanwhile, I was becoming concerned for the boys on two counts. Once they’d started to heal “down there,” Nicky had gone to a street-market and bought them jeans and trainers, to replace those that had been taken from them by their captors. The boys were getting restless and bored, but we dared not let them go outside the building for fear of being spotted – possibly from the air.

Not that there was much risk – if any – of anyone on the chateau giving their presence away. “No one from St Benoit,” said Nicky “would dare to come over to this side of the valley. People round here have long memories, and intruders would never get out alive”. As for the servants: “It’s part of the culture among servants like Yvette,” Nicky explained, “that their employers – however horrible they are – can do no wrong. If anyone came to the door asking if the boys were here, they’d be told in no uncertain terms that they were NOT here, and anyway that it was no business of theirs".

The other thing that bothered me was the thought that, without doubt, the boys’ disappearance would have been reported by now – that they would have been posted as Missing Persons. I doubted whether the French police would be ordered away from the front doorstep as easily as Nicky supposed.

No, the boys had to be got away unseen – and thanks to my early lessons from Xavier a bit back, I knew how it was going to be done. “Nicky,” I asked “if we want a box-car for farm produce to be shipped out, what do we have to do?”

“Just telephone SNCF,” replied Nicky in a surprised voice. “Why, do we need a box-car?” I explained why. Nicky’s eyes grew rounder and rounder as I outlined my plan, and she went straightway to find Xavier. Meanwhile I took out my mobile phone and rang Simon.

Simon had been out all day on some ploy, and was full of it. It was a few moments before I could get a word in edgeways. “Simon, for heaven’s sake shut up and listen to me,” I said. That did the trick: Simon heard me out and promised to ring back in a quarter of an hour.

He was as good as his word. All I needed to do was to get Peter and Jack as far as Paris. Once there, they were to make their way to the consulate and ask for Charles Chambers (“Got that? Charles Chambers!”) who would be expecting them and who would arrange repatriation under secure conditions. Yes, the boys had been posted as missing but the details hadn’t gone to Interpol yet, and Simon’s contacts would de-fuse the situation. By this point, I was beginning to wonder about Simon’s many contacts…

The following day, farm lorries and trailers of all descriptions converged on the old station, where the boxcar had arrived very early, and was now being loaded. Around seven p.m. one of the last loads included two shapeless bundles done up in Hessian. These were put on board, wedged in place between some baskets of green figs, some sweet corn and the first of the new season’s crop of Reine Claude and Mirabelle plums. Soon after this, the sliding doors were pulled to, and the pin dropped through the hasp. At eight, the shunting engine arrived; the boxcar was hooked on, and with a departing hoot from the engine, went clattering off up the line.

I had no doubt that Peter and Jack would be all right finding their way to the consulate – they were streetwise town boys and anyway I’d given them enough Euros for a taxi fare. I’d also equipped them with clasp-knives to cut themselves free from their Hessian disguises, and Xavier had provided them with a hook of stiff wire, to pull up the pin on the box-car door, so they could slide it back and slip away unseen. But Nicky was apprehensive about something else and said so. “I hope they don’t wet themselves. It’ll be a long time before they’ll be able to get to a bathroom”.

I’d anticipated this and prepared for it in a very traditional way. Long ago, at the major festivals of the church, like Christmas and Easter, choristers would have to be on their feet for as much as four hours continuously. It was a long time to have to wait to empty their bladders and some didn’t make it. A clever choirmaster, whose name hasn’t survived, designed an ivory ring just the right size to slide over some chubby-bottomed soprano’s emasculated penis, and compress his pee-pipe. (The same kind of ring can also be used to stop intact boys getting erections, but that doesn’t really come in to it).

Neutered boys notoriously suffer from bladder weakness and I haven’t escaped the general trend! I had been thankful, on many occasions, to use this ancient method of guaranteeing I’d be leak-proof. I’d had a couple of “spares” in my sponge bag and saw the boys put them on. However much they wanted to wee, they would not be able to pass a drop until they slid the rings off.

Two hours later Xavier took me in the pick-up truck down to the station where I watched the boxcar – our boxcar – attached to the overnight stopping train to the capital. A railwayman with a post of paste stuck a big label on the boxcar door with the destination: PARIS – HALLES. The boxcar would be detached from the rear of the train just short of the Gare de Lyon – the passenger terminus – and be shunted round the belt-line to the underground spur leading to the wholesale markets. As the red taillight of the train disappeared round a bend I sent Simon a text-message, Consignment has left, 23.50.

But the boys never reached Paris.

I was on edge all next morning waiting for Simon, or someone, to confirm that everything had gone according to plan. When Simon’s call at last came through it was to explain that there had been a modification. Charles Chambers – evidently a consular official of some kind - had not wanted to leave anything to chance. At Melun, two stops before the Gare de Lyon, he had the boxcar opened, and with a lot of fuss and publicity, two stowaways were removed and marched off to a police-van.

The van took them to a secret location, from where they were airlifted to – Southdown Hall! Specially selected policewomen were, even at that moment, asking them about their captivity and the men involved.

And there we’ll leave Peter and Jack for the time being.

A week later, the pick-up truck was again down at the station, in time, as before, for the departure of the 23.50 for Paris. You might have noticed a teenage girl saying a long farewell to a young nun. The nun wore the white cowl of a postulant – that is, a sort of probationer nun. Goodbyes over, the nun went to the ticket-office and bought a 2nd class one-way ticket to Paris. The ticket clerk addressed her as “Sister”.

Two old ladies politely moved out of the way as the nun entered their compartment and took the corner seat by the window. Only then might you have seen that she had trainers on her feet instead of the heavy black shoes, with toecaps, that nuns usually wear, and you might also have wondered why she was lugging a back-pack by its carrying-handle, instead of a much more convenient grip or valise.

Yes, it’s me again! With Peter and Jack safely out of the way, there might still have been unhealthy curiosity in the village – and, much worse, beyond the village – about who I was and what I was doing. One of the problems was, you’ll remember, that my face had become pretty familiar to large numbers of people. I, too, had to disappear unseen.

It was Nicky who had the idea of dressing me as a nun, more particularly as a postulant. Postulants are often to be seen visiting family and friends, before taking their final vows and withdrawing from the world. Very few people would address a nun directly, and fewer still would look directly into the face of a nun. Even if they did, my complexion would pass as a girl’s any day. The cowl and habit had come out of the dressing-up closet.

“I’ll miss you,” she’d said, after she’d put the finishing touches to my get-up. “Will you write to me? Please!”

“If you want me to,” I’d replied. “You’d better use this address”. I gave her that of Southdown Hall.

“I’ve been so lucky, meeting you,” Nicky sighed. “I know who you are, you see”.

And then, too soon, it was time to go.

On the train I sat quietly in my corner pretending to read a book about St Bernadette of Lourdes, but in fact daydreaming about Nicky. After all, being a boy-eunuch didn’t bar me from having a girlfriend; Simon had his Melanie, and Simon’s friend Mark also had a girlfriend. So why not me?

In the end I dozed off, and never heard the old ladies leave, at one of the twenty-odd stops that the train made in the night. At La Roche-Migennes I woke to find myself alone. In the privacy of the toilet I took off the nun’s cowl and habit and made it into a parcel to mail to Nicky, who wanted it back, and dressed once again a boy, in jeans, returned to my now-empty compartment.

Dawn broke as the train drew in to the Gare de Lyon. I slipped unnoticed into the crowd making for the Metro and went straight to St Lazare, where I jumped on to a fast train for Dieppe, arriving mid-morning. I could see as soon as I arrived that Dieppe wouldn’t do, for what I was intending – too big, too busy, and worst of all, too many Brits arriving by the ferry or waiting to catch it. Like I said, I have a distinctive face and appearance: only a matter of time before somebody caught hold of me and said “Hey, look who’s here! A crowd would gather…

So what was I intending? Wait and see.

My map, an old one, showed a train service westwards along the coast. The timetable, a new one, showed that SNCF had replaced this by a bus, so I got on that, and journeyed along a coastline of low chalky cliffs. When the bus reached the end of the line I found another, and continued westwards.

At times the railway line ran close to the road but there were no trains, and the tracks looked to have become a dump for old freight cars, waiting for their turn to be cut up. As the bus slowed for its next stop I saw a row of rusty funnels – a locomotive graveyard. I had a sudden idea, and got down. The bus drove off, leaving me in a completely empty road, silent except for the crying of seagulls.

No one had been near the place for years. Simon, who has a passion for old trains, would have adored it. Between me and the row of old engines there was a nasty-looking hedge of barbed wire and old brambles, and then a barrier of stinging nettles. Fortunately I’d put jeans on to travel in, in place of my usual shorts, so I avoided scratches and stings. The first of the locomotives had an iron ladder at the rear, and I clambered up on to the water-tank and looked out. Below the cliff-top I could see the roofs of a village, and the masts of a small harbour.

Descending from this perch I climbed another, shorter ladder into the locomotive’s cab, and sitting on the engineer’s foldaway seat, began to munch some rather dry and salty brioches that I’d bought on Dieppe train station. While eating I had a good think. I could hide out here for days – I’d noticed a food shop a bit back, and the weather wasn’t in the least cold – but that wasn’t my object in coming here.

My object was somewhere over that grey horizon that I could just see through the cracked and filthy cab side-windows: in other words, home.

On my side I had two “plusses”. First and most important, I was a good – in fact a bloody good, small-boat sailor. The second, I had, as they say, the technology. Packed in the side pocket of my backpack was a ballpoint pen, a “freebie” from the record company way back. It was no ordinary pen: it could change colour from red to blue to green. In the cap was a tiny compass, and the compass could light up.

On the minus side I would need to beg, borrow or steal a boat, and the third option was the only one available. Last and most important of all, there had to be a favourable wind. Without that, the best of boats would be useless. It was now four o’clock in the afternoon. I decided to go down to the harbour for a look-see. Just at that moment it began raining. Good; the rain would keep people indoors. I pulled a cagoule on, and set off.

A wandering path led me to a road, descending steeply towards the fishing village, but there was a flight of steps avoiding the village and going directly to the harbour. Within five minutes I’d identified exactly the craft I needed: a twelve-footer, part of the bows decked-in to form a locker. The open part of the boat was protected by a canvas cover, and the sail was bundled along the boom. She didn’t look as if she’d been used for a few days, and unlike the fishing boats moored nearby, she might not be missed for a while.

Having sorted that out, I started back towards my lair in the old engine, stopping on the way at the food store, where I got dried fruits – apricots and raisins – and four litres of bottled water (only just enough as it turned out). As if in answer to a prayer, the wind had got up, blowing, so far as I could tell, from the southwest.

Back in the cab of the old locomotive, the rain drummed on the iron roof as afternoon turned to evening. Towards half-eight, with the dusk deepening, I shouldered my backpack and returned to the harbour by the way I’d come. Lights showed in the bar by the harbourmaster’s office, but there were no other signs of life. I clambered down the iron ladder fixed to the harbour wall, pulling the boat towards me, unclipped the cover and got on board.

The last of the daylight was showing between the pier-heads as I clawed past the other moored boats to the harbour entrance. Time to get under way: I undid all the tiers, loosing the sail from the boom, took hold of the halyard and gave a heave. The peak of the sail began to climb up the mast. Another heave, and another, and one more, and I made fast the halyard. The sail began to flap; I grabbed hold of the tiller and paid out the sheet. The sail filled, and I was on my way – I hoped – to Britain.

You can put my confidence down to the inborn love affair with the sea that most of us Brits have from birth. To anyone else, what I was attempting was sheer lunacy. I faced about 150 miles of the busiest waterway in the world, in an open boat, with a toy compass and no navigation lights. I should have been run down by a container ship. Tides and currents should have swept me down-Channel, past Land’s End and into the Atlantic, where I’d have died of thirst if I weren’t swamped by giant waves. At the very best I should have been picked up on the coastguards’ radar and towed back to port.

Somehow, none of these things happened. I had no chart of the English coast, but a course of nor-nor-east and a bit east felt about right, so I just held on to that. At times I managed to doze off for a few minutes. The southwest wind continued to blow steadily…

Late in the afternoon on the second day I met up with a small fleet of fishing-boats. The registration numbers painted in their bows began WH, which I knew meant Weymouth. They weren’t able to take me in tow, but the skipper of one of them handed me down a mug of hot tea and said I was about ten miles off the Dorset coast.

It was then that the wind began to fail, blowing erratically in puffs, so that it was long after dark when the bows of my boat scrunched into a shingle-bar, which I learned afterwards, was Chesil Beach. I climbed stiffly out on to dry land, stamped the mooring-pin into the stony ground, and lay down under the boat-cover for a few uncomfortable hours, until it got light. At daybreak I stumped off up the beach to find a road. Where there was a road there would be a bus, and a bus would get me back to school.

Once again shouldering my backpack I set off. Somebody would find the boat and report it. It might even get back to France somehow. But before catching a bus, or anything else, I needed a wee.

Hey, isn’t this where we came in?

New entrants include – surprise, surprise, the Smith twins. The Police tried to restore them to the bosom of their family – but their own father rejected them – he wasn’t having any “faggots” under his roof – pretty rich that, coming from the tenant of a City Council tower block flat. The Police took their troubles to Dr Holroyd. He, bless his heart, turned the twins over to the Carters to be bathed and fed until term started, and then with his usual originality enrolled them, with others of their own age, in a Reception class. They’ve settled in very well.

Nicky and I write to each other at least once a week. I’ve got a lot of pictures of her on my hard drive. In some she’s wearing a mini-skirt and fishnets, in others just a bra and thong, and in some she, well, isn’t wearing anything. I close my eyes and try to imagine her soft thighs pressing on my face…

She sends me press cuttings sometimes. I read in one that the miserly owner of Bel Manoir, who was prepared to let the place fall into ruin, had died. His relatives, less hard-boiled, had sold the old house to a developer who was converting it into a hotel and country club. The medieval kitchens and sculleries were to be made into a fitness-centre. Fluorescent lighting, and the puffing and panting of fat businessmen, will replace smoky oil-lamps and the whispers and sobs of terrified little boys.

Nicky is to have her in-house pageboy. The gardener, unemployed for over a month, finally agreed. By the time any of you get to read this, the chateau garden will again be immaculate, and Jean-Marie, a stolid tow-haired child of eleven going on twelve, will have had a night’s stay at the polyclinic in Clermont, having his all-too-chubby balls cut out. From Mamma’s point of view, Nicky’s virginity is now safe. If only she knew!

I’ve kept the most important item till last. You remember that the Smith boys had two jailers, and they referred to one of them as “the small nasty one, a black bloke”. Knowing this you might not see the relevance of the newspaper report of a fatality on a farm in the district. Charred human remains were found in the ruins of a storage-shed. An inquest recorded a verdict of accidental death, identifying the victim as a casual farm worker. No further action was proposed.

Nicky knew the full story; how, I’ve no idea and don’t intend asking. A pedlar – a Senegalese – had been travelling the neighbourhood, trying to sell leather goods door-to-door. When he moved on, it was found that four boys from local families had gone missing – though in a country area where children run wild much of the time, their disappearance wasn’t immediately noticed. The Police failed to come up with anything.

Then came a breakthrough. One of the boys turned up hundreds of miles away in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne. He had been sold to a rich Algerian pederast. Disgusted by the revolting things the filthy pervert made him do, the child made a bolt for it. A friendly truck-driver gave him a ride partway home; a sympathetic policeman heard his story. Exhaustive searches located the other three boys, in the Marseilles area. All had been crudely neutered.

Enraged by the abduction and mutilation of their boys, the villagers organised a manhunt. They ran the Senegalese to earth in nearby Ardeche, and brought him back to St Benoit where they locked him in a storage shed. After the minimum of deliberation they decided on an appropriate punishment for the dirty creature, whose crimes, you may remember, may have included the blinding of innocent children. They piled brushwood and broken pallets round the shed where the man was confined, and burned him to death.

That’s about all really, for the time being, though for a brief moment – an instant only – I thought there were further ramifications. Dear old Simon – I should have known better!

Simon never tired of hearing about my time in France, though for obvious reasons I edited-out some of the action. But one day last week- as we were waiting for the bell for lunch, I was in the middle of telling him the story of my arrival, and how I’d been greeted with “Zim-zim bamble-boozle.”

Simon’s jaw dropped. “He said WHAT?” He said in a strained voice.

“He said ‘Zim-zim bamble-boozle,’ I replied.

“You idiot!” exclaimed Simon. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that before?

“Why?” I faltered, thoroughly confused and rather frightened. “I didn’t think it was important”.

I looked into Simon’s grey eyes. He held his stern expression for a few seconds, then his round good-natured face broke into a broad grin.

“Only kidding, you silly mutt,” he said, and slapped me on the shoulder. “You deserve a medal for all you did. The bell’s gone, so come on – let’s both get something to eat!”