|
SIMON TOES THE LINE I always knew when I was in trouble with Uncle Carl. Uncle Carl had a briar pipe. He didn’t bring it out often. But when he wanted to tear a strip off me, the routine was always the same. He used to smoke at me. That is to say, he’d sit in his big chair, puffing at the briar pipe in a thoughtful sort of way, and transfixing me with those piercing blue eyes of his, before saying anything. It wasn’t a nice experience. He was doing it now. He’d asked me, the day before, to come over to the Simon Scott Centre (named after me!) “to discuss business matters”. Eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning found me in his private sitting room, behind his office (a further door led to a bedroom also.) It was a luxurious room, furnished with every possible comfort, the windows looking out over miles of forest. Above the ornate fireplace hung a reproduction of Uncle Carl’s favourite painting: Caravaggio’s “Love Victorious”. The model was the artist’s 12-year-old boy-lover, an urchin called Ceccino. There he stood or rather sprawled, full-frontal nude, his shoulders sprouting unconvincing eagle’s wings, his plump rear-end planted against a heap of symbolic junk. His face wore a somewhat wistful expression and I knew why. Locked away in the safe was another picture – original and probably priceless, though the subject-matter made it unsuitable for public display. It was a red chalk sketch, drawn from life, of Ceccino having his balls taken out, the fate of several thousand young boys every year in renaissance Italy. More often than not it was to preserve their soprano voices, though a good proportion were destined to become pages to the spoilt daughters of wealthy magnates, once they were suitably pruned “down there” by the barber-surgeon and made safe. Ceccino was an exception. While his balls were still in, he had been a boy-prostitute before becoming an artist’s model, and got the standard punishment for being caught “in flagrante” with a man. In the big oil painting the artist showed him intact, but that was only a convention. Who would accept the great god of love represented by a boy-eunuch? But, as usual, I digress. There sat Uncle Carl, tweed-suited, impassive. So far our discussion of business matters hadn’t amounted to more than a dozen words. Then, out of the blue, after more puffs at his pipe, the bolt came. “I saw Marcia during the week” said Uncle Carl, and puffed at his pipe again. The mention of Marcia made me hot and cold all over. Taken by surprise I did the stupidest possible thing. I tried to bluff. “Marcia – do I know her? I don’t think I, I………” Uncle Carl frowned and I broke off, stammering. “Don’t come the innocent, Simon” he said, sternly. “Marcia told me all about it, and it wasn’t the least bit innocent. So stop being a fool and listen”. (He was quite right about my encounter not being innocent. If you’ve not been keeping up with things lately, Marcia had appeared – unexpectedly – in my room, dressed, or rather undressed, in a way that might have come straight off the pages of a girlie-magazine: thong underwear, black stockings – the lot. Teased beyond endurance I did what she wanted me to do – all, in my condition, that I could do. I had buried my face between Marcia’s thighs and did vigorous “oral” on her till she climaxed. Afterwards a sort of mutual revulsion set in. Marcia had never seen a boy-eunuch close up and the reality horrified her. For my part I had a sudden wave of self-disgust and kicked her out. All of which was now known to Uncle Carl. “It would be a pity, wouldn’t it” he went on “if Melanie got to hear about your little tryst with Marcia. I don’t think she’d care for it at all. In fact I shouldn’t wonder if she gave you your marching orders”. I did a second stupid thing. “How might she find out?” I asked. “I might feel obliged to tell her” replied Uncle Carl. “Melanie is my niece, in case you’d forgotten”. It was the reply I deserved. Thinking about it I got a pricking behind my eyes. Melanie was so special. I couldn’t believe she would ever dump me. I didn’t think she was capable of it. Once and only once she had come near to upsetting me – the time she told me of her one-and-only sex experience with an intact boy “to break my cherry so I can use tampons” as she put it. She spared me no detail: the boy was well into puberty, experienced enough to know he needed to roll a rubber on. He had tried her doggy-fashion, missionary position, this angle, that angle, till he succeeded in bursting her hymen and putting his penis right up her vagina But, she said, the experience had done nothing for her. She preferred me, just as I was, without balls: “her favourite gelding”. I pictured all our times together, which always ended the same way with Melanie pulling off her jodhpurs and the tiny black thong she always wore underneath, whispering, as she opened her legs: “You can kiss mine, and I’ll suck yours, only don’t pee in my mouth!” Remembering all this, the pricking feeling intensified and before I knew it, I was weeping, copiously and helplessly. I’d never felt more wretched. Without Melanie I might as well be dead, I thought. I began to picture myself slipping away down to the railway line, taking a deep breath, grasping the overhead wire – that surely would be quick. Oh Melanie, Melanie! Through my fog of misery I heard Uncle Carl’s voice. “When I want something done, there’s only one way of going about it. Mine!” “What do you want me to do?” I managed to say, through sobs. “You can start by going through there” said Uncle Carl, indicating the bedroom door. “Clean your face, and when you’ve done that, take your clothes off. I want to take a good look at you”. His face was set in a curious little half-smile, rather unpleasant to see. I did as I was told. “A good look” meant, of course, something altogether different. The big bath-towel spread on the bed told its own tale of what this might be. Uncle Carl wasn’t a paedophile. He was more like those old Roman senators that had sex with women in order to get children, but for pleasure they preferred young castrated boys – like me! It wasn’t by any means the first time that Uncle Carl had made me have sex with him so I knew what he expected - and liked. Since my first time, when I was only about eleven, men had made me have sex in different ways. Some liked to take me on all fours with my shorts round my ankles, riding me like beasts. As often as not, the man only got the knob of his penis up my bottom before coming off. But Uncle Carl liked me spreadeagled on the bed, stark naked. He would screw me like a girl, going deep, with long thrusts of his powerful shaft……… I stripped right off and lay face-down on the bed, first giving my butt a good dollop of KY jelly. I heard Uncle Carl come into the room and close the door. I heard him getting undressed. Unwilling to look at him I pressed my face into the pillow. It smelt very clean, like lavender, straight from the laundry. I felt Uncle Carl climb on to the bed. Then I felt his weight on me. Ouch, but he was heavy. I felt his heavy breathing on the back of my neck, then something hard and hot between my buttocks. He wasn’t using a condom and I had not had an enema. Well, that was his problem if his penis stank when he pulled it out again. I tried to think about something else, not what was being done to me. Not easy, when he was right in, with his pubic hairs, harsh as wire-wool, scraping my bare bottom. Then it happened. I’d only experienced it once before, ever. But I knew when it began to happen. That sensation like, yet unlike, a roller-coaster ride, leaving my stomach behind. The intense feeling that ripped through my body to my fingertips. Then other things. My penis jerked – something it never did. My back arched, my tummy-muscles went rigid, and those inside my butt went into a spasm. In an involuntary movement I yelled out, bit the pillow and my fingernails clawed at the quilt. In that instant, Uncle Carl finished: I felt his cum shooting into my bowels. He rolled off me, sweating. I felt his heavy body move down the bed, sensed him sitting at the foot of it, slumped over his knees. “My God!” he was muttering, and again, “My God!”. A few seconds ticked by, and he seemed to partly recover himself. “Go and take a shower” he said, in a dull, emotionless voice. “You go first. I’ll follow”. His face wore a shattered look, as if from some deep emotional shock or trauma. I closed the bathroom door behind me. The shower-cabinet matched the rest of the place for luxury; enough fittings and controls for a submarine, several sorts of shower-gel and designer-soap. I selected Roger and Gallet sandalwood, found a comfortable temperature and gave myself a thorough wash, taking care to remove any traces of K-Y. And anything else. When I came out again, Uncle Carl rose heavily from the bed. He had wrapped the bath-sheet round his waist. He didn’t look at me as he passed. A few moments later, as I tidied myself up, I heard splashing. By the time Uncle Carl finished in there, he seemed to have pulled himself together. “We’ll go and have a spot of lunch” he proposed “and then we’ll talk business”. Somehow, I said to myself, I’ve heard the last of the Marcia episode. I can stop worrying. He took me to lunch in the main restaurant, where he had a table permanently reserved. The room was fairly busy, not the place for confidences. Uncle Carl was polite, almost deferential, making no objection when I ordered a burger not Steak Diane, or when I said I’d prefer Coke to Meursault. His early “I’m the boss round here” manner had evaporated, at least for the moment. Lunch over, we returned to his sitting room, and here, at last, I learned what he had brought me here for. It was all about St Anselme’s School. To give it to you line-by-line would be difficult as well as boring, so I’ll try to summarise. Some months earlier, Roddy Fisher, one of my closest friends and quite a hero in several ways, had been attacked and beaten unconscious in the town. The culprits had been traced to St Anselme’s. This school was then nominally controlled by the Catholic diocese for the region, but having lost any reputation it once had, it had become a “sink” school, attracting undesirables from miles around. The scandal over Roddy caused widespread dismissals and Uncle Carl used all his “clout” to become Chair of Governors. One of his first actions had been to buy the school out from Diocesan control. (Noticeboards with the title “St Anselme’s Catholic Upper School” were hurriedly altered and the papal tiara removed from the school crest). Uncle Carl then proceeded to appoint an entirely new Board of Governors, businessmen, financial advisers, local politicians. Funds came flooding in from all quarters. Then began the long haul to turn the place around. The boarding wing – out of use these many years – was reopened. The chapel – a very nice one with a good organ, I’d been there to sing a few times – was refurbished on a non-denominational basis. The form of service rotated week to week: Catholic, United Reformed and so on. The worst of the rough elements were purged out. (Among other things the Home Office had used the school as a dumping ground for Youth Custody inmates on pre-release. This was quickly stopped). Old incompetent teachers – many of them appointed on the old-boy basis by the previous – very corrupt – Board, were dismissed. Uncle Carl sought active young replacements who were not only academically bright but were able to give a lead in coaching sports and games. Being a pariah school for so long had sent standards through the floor and no other school would admit them to leagues or joint fixtures. On paper, everything was now looking up at St Anselme’s. One thing, Uncle Carl said, was lacking. It was sufficient numbers of boys like me! Boys without the bits they were born with. When Uncle Carl first arranged for me to go to Southdown Hall School, just neutered at the age of hardly twelve, it was in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be alone, as I would have been at my previous school. I quickly met several more boy-eunuchs, who had been neutered at about the same age as myself. Three of them, Mark Maitland, Jack Elliott and Sandie Ross, had actually experienced sex with girls before being “done” and it’s a fair bet that most of the others – like me - had been more than a little bit interested in that possibility! (For my all-too-short sex life read “Simon Tells it Like it Was”). The Indian boy, Manchit Khannah, had a different history – he’d been a temple eunuch until rescued by Westernised relatives. The Hislop brothers, Colin and Calum, had not been neutered but might as well have been: they had lost their future manhood to mumps. Of the quiet, self-effacing Roebuck twins I knew very little, but you’ll hear more of them in a minute. Not long afterwards, we began to be joined by other boys. Newcomers, as often as not, were adopted children whose adoptive or foster-parents found it inconvenient to have an intact boy in the family – moreover one who was no blood-relation, and had decided to bring him up as a eunuch. With Neutersol now available over-the-counter, more or less, there was nothing easier. Roddy, my great friend, was an exception. He had looked into the future and found it a hell’s kitchen. The merest thought of puberty, “having hairy legs and a hairy ass” drove him frantic. If you want to read about his castration you must turn up “Simon and Melanie Part 2”. He once said, some time afterwards, that losing his nuts was the best thing he’d ever done. So Southdown Hall School was particularly attractive to boy-eunuchs who knew they would find more of their own kind there, but about a year later the boy-eunuch population began to shoot up out of all proportion. This was during the evil reign of Dr Jolly, then the School music director. His aim was to have a Chapel choir that was one-hundred-percent castrato in the soprano and alto departments. For some months, boys were getting neutered at a rate of one or two a week, till there were about forty new boy-eunuchs. I only knew about a quarter of them by name. When they weren’t singing, Dr Jolly intended to use them as sex-slaves. After Dr Jolly had been unmasked, things quietened down. But outside the school there had been a culture change. Till now, before a boy had his balls pricked, there had to be a good reason shown – that he was hyperactive, uncontrollable, or a nuisance with girls, that he went around with a permanent hard-on: something of that sort. But now, doctors were advising that neutering could be done much earlier “to obtain maximum health benefits”. At the age of seven or eight, neutering could be passed off as something altogether commonplace – something that just happened, like a triple vaccination. By that age a child would have had inoculations in his arm, in his bum, at the top of his leg. Having it done “down there” could be trivialised as something that all boys had done. Sisters, too, accepted neutering as “that operation that boys have”. More than that, when these boys came to the school they would have been eunuchs for some time, without realising they were different. It would take some time to notice that some boys had balls and others not. Longer still to understand what a difference it made. It seemed very likely that the boy-eunuch population was now being augmented, as it were, by the backdoor, much lower down the age range – in the second and even the first years. It had been in the lunch-hour, some weeks before, that this was brought home to me, forcibly. The arrangement in the refectory was that the tables, each seating eight with a table-monitor in charge at the head, were not strictly arranged by year but dotted about. Consequently the table I always used was only a few feet away from one that was occupied by second-years. I was helping myself to more chips when I caught the words “my balls pricked”. The speaker was one Selwyn Cox, a fat unattractive eleven-year-old, who always looked as if he was growing out of his clothes. Whatever Cox attempted turned into a disaster. If he threw a ball it went through a window. If he picked up a pile of books they slipped from his hands. He was the adopted child of a Vicar and his unmarried sister. If he had been referring to himself just now, I guessed that his adoptive parents had had him neutered on arrival, just as they would a tom-cat. At least it took his sluggish genes out of circulation. “It’s true!” he went on. “All boys get to have their balls pricked”. He was supported by another child, called, if I remember, Cardew. “Yes” this youngster piped up. “And all boys get the ends of their peter-johns cut off!” “That’s quite different” protested Cox. “This is called ‘having your balls pricked.’ When boys have their balls pricked, they dry up – their balls I mean – and their willies don’t grow any more, and they can’t do rude things with girls”. “You shouldn’t talk about such things at meal-times” said Timms, the table-monitor. But now the opposition showed itself, in the person of Roger Mortimer, a fiery red-head from the Welsh borders. “Shut up, Cox!” snapped this individual. “If you can’t help talking rubbish, don’t talk at all!” “But it’s true, Morty!” protested Cox. “All boys have their balls pricked and…..” “No they don’t. And don’t call me Morty”. “They do, then”. “No they don’t”. “Yes they do”. White with anger, Mortimer left his place. I heard him swear “Iesu Mawr” under his breath, as he took hold of the water jug and with a quick deliberate movement, tipped the contents over the fat boy’s head. Cox began wailing, and the unfortunate Timms had to leave his lunch (cottage pie) to take the blubbering creature to Matron for a change of dry clothes. At the top table the master-in-charge made a note in the register. Today it was Mr Vane-Percy, a colourless man who took the Classical Fifth in the Upper School. Mortimer would be up for a thrashing later. If anything my sympathies were all with the Welsh boy, even though he was mistaken. Sorry about that, but it proved the point. At Southdown Hall more boy-eunuchs were – probably - appearing by the day. By contrast, at St Anselme’s, there were – at the time of writing – probably none at all. When a bunch of us had infiltrated St Anselme’s to discover who had attacked Roddy (for that you should read ‘Simon’s Revenge’) we had found just four. All of those had come from a Home Office-sponsored orphanage, and with the recent clear-out they had no doubt been moved on to some place else. The difference, for some deeply-felt reason, was getting to Uncle Carl. “You see the difficulty, don’t you, Simon?” he was saying. “I can’t leave things like this. In any group of boys there are some, certainly, who can be left as they are. But there are others who should definitely be neutered. Usually for the good of the society we live in. Others should be neutered for their own good. They benefit by it. Take yourself for instance”. This was a reference to the talking-to I’d had from Uncle Carl almost three years before. At that time he’d said that my developing sexual curiosity was heading for serious trouble – he hinted at Youth Custody. The option was to be neutered. I’d been told by Uncle Max what this involved and it didn’t sound too frightening – just a needle in each side. According to Uncle Carl, it would put an end to the urges that, at the time all this happened, were driving me frantic. In return for the loss of my balls I was to have a new PC and a trip to Disneyworld. Three years on I still had the PC, by now pretty obsolete. The Disney visit happened months later and was to Paris, not Orlando. And the urges? Oh boy! Of all the thumping lies Uncle Carl ever told me, that was the worst. Oh to have six inches of rampant prick, to shove it right up a girl’s fanny……….. He was speaking again now. “Well, Simon, I’m sure you see my problem. I’m going to leave you to come up with a solution, because I’m sure you can.” He looked at his desktop clock. “And now you’d better be heading back to school. I’ll give you a lift – there are a few things I need to do in that neighbourhood”. I wasn’t averse to getting a lift in the Aston Martin. It was far quicker than the bus. In fact the journey took forty minutes only. Uncle Carl said nothing, except “Keep me posted” when he dropped me off at the gate. I needed somebody else to share the problem with, so I went off to the junior dayroom, and there I found four people in possession. I was pleased, first of all, to see the ginger heads of the Roebuck twins, Jon and Jamie. It’s been a while since we met them, so they had better be reintroduced. Jon and Jamie, as little boys, had lived in one of the Gulf states, where at the age of seven or eight they had lost both parents in a sailing accident. Having no other means of support they had lived in a state-run orphanage for the next few years. Local law required that orphan boys were to be neutered at the age of twelve if no one came forward to claim them. The day following their twelfth birthday they had been taken to a Red Crescent clinic to get their balls pricked. If you’re curious to know whether this was any different in the Middle East, the answer is no. Red Crescent nurses were just as skilled at destroying a boy’s balls as their opposite numbers in the West. It was ironic that enquiries made by their parents’ relatives actually ran the boys to earth a few weeks later – too late to save them from castration, but in time to rescue them from the usual fate awaiting young neutered boys. This, as often as not, was to become the eunuch slaves to the daughter of some Gulf oil baron. Jon and Jamie were a quiet pair who got on with things in their own way. Extremely fit, not to say wiry, they excelled at all kinds of gymnastics, and in unarmed combat they ran away with all the local prizes. If testosterone is supposed to make a difference, the Roebucks got on very well without any. Sex? They led uncomplicated lives so far as I could tell, although I knew that Jamie could spend hours and hours gazing at advertisements showing girls in their knickers. Not that he could have done anything about it, if one of those lovelies had suddenly stepped down off the page. He couldn’t have penetrated the girl’s pubic hairs. Like his brother he had a four-year-old’s penis, and only a fold of skin showed where his balls had once been. Losing his testosterone source had certainly made a difference to the third of the quartet, Sandie Ross. It had made him silly and giggly – I nearly said girlish, only that the girls I’d come across never giggled. I didn’t expect much help from Sandie. The fourth was Michael Banner. He was one of the young castrati whose operation dated from Dr Jolly’s evil reign (if you want to know more about that, read “The Chinese Connection”) There were only two things that I knew about Banner. First that by the time he got to be neutered, the Neutersol Corporation had developed a plastic clamp. This made things easier for the practice nurse by holding the boy’s penis out of the way while the needle was being put in. Also, nowadays, they advised that a small dressing, like Band-Aid, should be applied to the needle-pricks to prevent leakage. The earliest formulation of Neutersol had been a gel, but the later one, Neutersol Plus, was much more liquid. Banner was one of the first boys to have this used on him. (If the injection leaked away it might have to be done all over again). The second thing was that at one time he’d developed an unhealthy crush on Roddy. Whether things had ever got beyond trying to fondle Roddy’s bottom in the showers, I’d no means of knowing. Roddy, I knew, found the whole thing a bore and gave him no encouragement. The Roebucks were deep in a chess problem so it was Sandie who greeted me in his usual facetious way. “Well, well!” he began. “Here comes Big Business. How was the board meeting? Did you clear your throat and launch into resounding oratory?” Banner sniggered. “It wasn’t a board meeting” I replied. “It wasn’t like that at all”. And I gave him a run-down of what Uncle Carl had said. “I don’t see what I can do” I finished, helplessly. “I can’t force them to go and get themselves neutered”. “Well, I don’t think I can help much” said Sandie, with a nervous laugh. “I’ll leave it to you horny-handed men of action”. He picked up his books and left, whistling. “We are not men” said Banner, under his breath – his only contribution, and followed him out. Jon and Jamie had been pretending not to listen, but now they looked up. “You can’t force them” Jon said “but you can influence them. Inspire them, even”. I looked blankly at him. “Put it like this” he went on. “I can’t tell what I’d have been like if I’d kept my nuts, but I know what I’m like without them. And I’m not too unhappy with that”. “Me neither” echoed Jamie. When had I heard that before? From Melanie of course. She’d once said that I might have made a good stallion but I’d turned out to be a fantastic gelding! But that didn’t get me very far. I still looked blank, so Jon outlined the idea that had formed in his mind. The three of us – we might recruit one or two others – had become extremely good at various sports and games as I mentioned a bit ago. We ought to arrange – it would have to be approved by the staff – to go to St Anselme’s as coaches on a one-to-one basis. We should win the admiration of the St Anselme’s boys. It wouldn’t take them long to find out that we were eunuchs! Then, perhaps……….. Whether it made any kind of practical sense, only the staff could say. So while the idea was still hot, the three of us set out to find Mr Carter, the Head of Games for the lower school. Mr Carter was unmarried and had a bachelor-pad tucked away at the rear of the main building. He had had a fried egg for his Sunday tea; the remains were still on his table. He’d been reading the monthly magazine “Athletics” and didn’t seem surprised to find us on his doorstep. Jon volunteered to be spokesman. He’d been thinking it out some more, during the short walk from the day-room. He began outlining the sports that the three of us were good at, adding that others might be brought in at other seasons: Manchit to coach fast bowling, Roddy – easily the best winger the school had had for years – the art of passing a rugby ball at speed. To most of these Mr Carter gave a nod. Just one exception. “You did say Scott would coach boxing, did you, Roebuck? I should have thought…..” In a sense Mr Carter was right to be diffident. Learning self defence at Southdown Hall was compulsory up to the third year. In the ring I had plenty of speed, and with my height (I was now nearly five-eight) a good reach. The problem was that if a glove landed on my face I used to burst into uncontrollable tears. Just one of those eunuch things. When a boy’s strings of courage – the cords to his balls – have been severed he gives up all pretence at being a man, and mine were shrivelled up…… “It’s the theory that matters, sir” Jon interrupted. “When it comes to theory, there’s no one better”. “M-mm” mused Mr Carter and became silent. Then “Oh, alright – I daresay you know best. I’ll give St Anselme’s a call, now. There should be somebody there, at this hour of the evening”. There and then, Mr Carter spoke to his opposite number – a no-nonsense Ulsterman called Peter Gilchrist. As we’d all hoped, Mr Gilchrist jumped at the idea. And so it was that the following Wednesday (Wednesdays had been selected for these coaching sessions) found the three of us at St Anselme’s, and me in particular at the ring-side, shouting encouragement at a couple of eleven-year-olds. One of these was a stolid Northerner called John Clegg. The other was slight, fair-haired and blue-eyed, with a lilting Welsh Valleys accent. He was called Owen Roberts and, I thought, had much more potential. “Go on, Roberts!” I yelled. “You’re supposed to be trying to knock him down, not patting him on the cheek! Hit him, you owl – HIT him! (At this point the Northern boy landed one of his rare hits and the Welsh child staggered back). “There, serve you right, you missed your chance”. And more of the same till the pair had gone three rounds and got out of the ring to make way for others. The locker room is always a place to socialise in. Evidently our trainees thought so, because when the three of us called it a day and went for a shower, several of them were still there. Jamie Roebuck slipped out of his shorts and vest and turned the water on. For a time he rotated under the jet, luxuriating with his eyes closed. When he opened them, it was to find he had an audience, young Owen Roberts. The youngster had his gaze riveted on Jamie Roebuck, his wiry muscular body, his tummy-muscles that curved away down to a tiny penis with no balls or scrotum. He plucked up courage to speak. “Was it an illness?” he asked shyly. (Colin Hislop was not the only boy to have lost his future manhood to mumps). “I’ve been neutered” replied Jamie in a matter-of-fact voice. “Some boys are. My twin brother has been, and our friend Scott, and a lot of our other friends. We call it ‘having had our balls pricked”. The young boy’s eyes grew rounder and rounder. From the next shower-compartment, Jon continued. “It’s done before you have the chance to go with a girl”. “And to prevent you going with a girl” I put in. “But it makes you a lot stronger for work” went on Jon. “Except afterwards you can’t get married or have children, and your voice stays high”. “Gosh!” breathed the St Anselme’s boy. “Oh, golly-gosh!” He sounded extremely Welsh. This conversation, carried on in not-too-quiet voices, had attracted a number of other second- and third-years, who came to have a good look. Clearly we had made a hit, though of what kind, or what the results might be, it was impossible to say. Roberts wandered off. We might do something there, I thought, and I didn’t mean boxing. There was something of Roddy in the Welsh child’s somewhat luminous good looks. My mind wandered back to that summer night, long ago; how we – Melanie and I, had drawn back the bed-clothes, showing Roddy’s perfect body. I saw Melanie’s strong fingers stretching the skin of Roddy’s scrotum, putting in the hypodermic, destroying his balls….. Owen Roberts would make a wonderful boy-eunuch! I could scarcely wait for next Wednesday to come round. But when it did, he wasn’t there. Owen Roberts just wasn’t there! I had taken off my blazer and hung it up in the locker-room, and was just about to exchange my shoes for boxing-boots, when I heard a lot of whispering outside the cubicle, and caught the name “Roberts”. Quickly going outside I recognised two of my protégés from the week before. “I smell a mystery” I said. “Where’s Roberts?” “Please, sir, he isn’t here” replied Clegg, the stolid one. “I can see that, silly! And don’t call me sir, my name’s Scott. Where do you think he is?” “Please, Scott, we don’t know. He didn’t sleep in his bed last night, and he wasn’t at breakfast this morning”. “But what about call-over? Didn’t anyone ask where he was?” “Please, Scott, there isn’t any call-over”. This was madness. Small boys can vanish for 101 reasons. They may have been abducted. They may just have got locked in the lav. But all are worth investigation. My brain was running on. “What does Roberts like doing, I mean, in his spare time?” “Please, Scott, he’s very interested in birds”. “A bit young for that isn’t he?” Oh, you mean birds. Birds! Where does he go to bird-watch?” “All over the place. Usually he goes on his bike. Only this morning his bike’s not in the shed”. Some inspiration prompted my next question. “Show me where he sleeps”. I was taken to a rather cosy room: three divan beds with bright tartan rugs for bed-spreads, a small locker and bedside table by each. Roberts’ bed-space had, on the adjoining wall, a Welsh flag, a red-and-white striped scarf and a big aerial photograph of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. I looked in the locker. On the shoe rack was a pair of bedroom slippers and a pair of black school shoes. Extremely dirty shoes, in need of a clean. It was difficult to see how they could have got quite so dirty. I picked them up. They were coated with a greyish-white dust. I wiped some off, on to my finger. Cement powder. Where might a small boy go, to watch birds, where he’d come in contact with cement powder? A builder’s merchant? Hardly. It had to be somewhere out in the country. Now, who was the fount of all local knowledge? Harry Brotherton. Praying that Harry would be there, I dialled his number on my mobile. He was. “Harry, is there a cement works within easy biking distance? One in a quiet spot?” “Yes there is. Or rather there was. At West Clayton. It closed several years ago, but…..” “Doesn’t matter about it being closed. How do you get there?” “By bus. The Haywards Heath service. Goes every hour, on the hour”. “Thanks for that. See you”. I looked at my watch: it was ten to three. I rang off and rushed back to the gym, to find the Roebucks. A very short time later a bemused Mr Gilchrist stood open-mouthed as the three of us, his only-just-arranged coaches, tore out of the gym, down the school main drive, to flag down the green-and-yellow bus which even then was rounding the corner into the main road. The bus served a lot of villages and took half an hour to cover ten miles. But half-three found us getting down at the little-used request stop at the entrance to the Blue Circle works at West Clayton. Harry Brotherton had been quite right. The barrier to the works roadway was padlocked shut, the gate-lodge boarded up and deserted. But in a patch of mud beyond the barrier there showed the print of a bike tire. I pointed this out to Jon, who nodded. The roofs of some tall buildings came into view. The South Downs as everyone knows are made of chalk, which is processed to make cement powder. There were drifts of the greyish-white stuff everywhere. The works was built on a hillside.Whatever faced us in the search for Owen Roberts I prayed it wouldn’t be tunnels. Tunnels into the hill, rusty tramlines, water dripping from the roof. Tunnels were one of my weak spots. What we found was nearly as bad. The roadway came into a big open space where lorries had once turned. To one side of this stood a water-tower. It was made entirely of steel, now very rusty, an immense cylinder, broadening at the top, where the tank was. It looked, standing below it, a thousand feet high. (In fact I suppose it was about a hundred). That the water tower was the object of our search was quite clear. Roberts’ bike was propped against the foot of it. From where the bike stood, a spiral stairway led upwards. The first three steps were broken off, also the handrail. But on the broken-off end of the rail, where it started again, there were some strands of grey wool. The St Anselme’s junior school uniform included a grey wool jumper. “Up we go” muttered Jon, swinging himself on to the first step. Jamie followed. I brought up the rear. We embarked on the first of the many turns that this horrible stairway made, on its way to the top of the tower. Several of the iron steps were cracked; some were missing altogether. The stairway had been secured to the tower with rivets and a lot of these were loose, causing the stairs to sway ominously as we passed. About halfway to the top, there was a gap. Both stairs and handrail were missing, for about four feet. I tried not to look down. Jamie, meanwhile, gauged the distance, leant forward and grasped the ends of the hand-rails in front of him, then put his feet between his outstretched arms and with a spring pulled himself upright on the first step, where the stairway continued. He might have been on the parallel bars. Jon followed without a word. Somehow, not knowing how, I managed to copy the same movements and landed safely. On we went, still spiralling upwards. It wasn’t clear what would happen when, if ever, we reached the top, where the vast tank overhung the tower like the top of a huge mushroom. When we got to the top, we knew. We emerged through a rectangular hole on to a walk-way that encircled the tank. Or rather, had once encircled. We turned first to the right, but after a short distance were brought to a halt by a barrier of rusty barbed wire. Beyond that, the walk-way wasn’t there – only a void. Back we went. To one side there was a balustrade, but like the stairway, bits had broken off. The other side was the water-tank, about eight feet high. At intervals there were short iron ladders leading to inspection covers, to allow workmen to get inside the tank to do repairs. Only the last repairs had been done a very long time before. One of these inspection covers, I noticed, had been opened. Then we heard it. A feeble cry of “I’m here!”. Roberts was sitting, or rather slumped, against the tank side. He was filthy, his face was tear-stained and his clothes were torn in several places. “Been here all night” he mumbled. “I didn’t think anyone would ever come”. “But whatever are you doing here, you mutt?” asked Jon, not unkindly. “Well, I was here before, a week ago” replied Roberts, sounding a bit more animated “and I saw a barn-owl. I thought she might have a nest up here, perhaps young ones. So I decided to come back for a closer look”. “You might have got killed” said Jamie (not exaggerating; I’d felt the same several times during this escapade). “What about that gap in the stairs?” “Yes, I know. It’s horrible. But I got across it somehow”. By a miracle, I thought, and then “What did you do next?” I asked. “Well, I got to the top, and couldn’t see the owl but I supposed the nest might be hidden. So I got into the tank and……..” “You…got into the tank?” I couldn’t believe my own ears. “Yes, there are ladders to help you get in. But I couldn’t see anything, so I began to climb out. There are ladders on the inside too. Only this one was all broken. I fell down several times, but in the end I got to the top. Only in climbing out, I came down hard on the edge. I cut myself, I know, I’m not quite sure where. Somewhere at the top of my leg I think”. “Why didn’t you come down again at once?” “I felt sort of giddy and swimmy, and couldn’t face that gap. Also I was bleeding rather a lot, and whenever I moved it seemed to make it worse. It hurt like anything. Then I think I must have fallen asleep”. Passed out, more likely, I thought grimly. It’s only by a fluke we haven’t got a corpse to deal with, instead of a terrified and exhausted 11-year old boy with unspecified injuries. “We must get you away from here, quickly” I said. “Can you walk at all?” Roberts said he could. Very gingerly we returned to the head of the stairs. By now the weak sunshine of the December afternoon had drained away and we began descending into darkness. I’ve never hated anything so much as that stairway. We spread ourselves out so as not to concentrate too much weight on any one place. Even then, sections where the supporting bolts were loose or missing would groan and wobble in a terrifying way, as if they must surely break off. Jon went in front, about ten steps ahead. I followed with Roberts, easing him down one step at a time. Some distance behind, out of sight, Jamie brought up the rear. Then we came to the gap. Jon was waiting. “You’ll never get him across as he is” said Jon. “Wait here a bit. I remember seeing something that might help.” He turned and began climbing down the stairway as quickly as he could. We heard his feet clattering on the iron treads, fading away into silence. We waited in the dusk. Roberts whimpered pitifully. After some time we heard Jon returning, more slowly, and as well as his footfalls on the stairs there was a scraping and thudding. He brought with him a six-foot length of scaffold board and a strong-looking, if rusty, sheet of corrugated iron. Jamming this between the uprights, above and below the gap, and with the plank underneath it, Jon and Jamie contrived a sort of chute. I made Roberts sit on the upper end and stretch out his feet. Jamie took his hands. Between them, they slid Roberts over the gap – and to safety. Now there was only me. Think about something else, Scott. Yesterday’s art class when we were supposed to paint some ghastly flower. A stout green stem. The centre of the flower, a sort of tight yellow sponge. Long, thin purple petals. Long, and thin, and purple. I held my breath and went for it. A sort of hop, step and jump……….. I was over, but the motion dislodged our chute. The top end came loose and the whole contrivance fell into space. An age later I heard a tremendous banging clatter. That might have been me, at this moment lying dead with my bones all smashed…….. Kneeling on the rusty treads I leant over the low handrail and threw up. “Are you OK, Simon?” came Jamie’s anxious call, from some way below. I replied that I was. And so, some minutes later, we reached the bottom. With his knees banging the handlebars, Jon rode off on Roberts’ bike, down to the gateway, to make a 999 call on his mobile phone and get an ambulance. The Welsh boy was all-in, so Jamie and I linked wrists and hands to make a 3-handed seat, to carry him down the roadway to where Jon was waiting. Jon had got through after a bit, but had had problems convincing the ambulance depot that he was making a serious call, not “larking about”. There followed a long freezing interval, while we waited for it to arrive. Roberts moaned fitfully. At last, headlights in the distance indicated the approach of the ambulance. Jon stepped out into the road and stopped it. The depot had sent, not a paramedic, but a male nurse. Jon and Jamie shared the driver’s bench seat. I went in the back to keep Owen Roberts company. The bike was hoisted on to the roof rack, and we were off. The male nurse made certain that Roberts needed neither oxygen nor a saline drip, and made him as comfortable as possible on the stretcher-bed. “Needs ter see a doctor, ‘e does” the nurse commented. “Sooner the better”. He made a vague gesture and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Pore little blighter”. The interior of the ambulance was very well lighted. I could now see, for the first time, that the Welsh boy’s pants were not only red with rust, but stiff with clotting blood. My own hands were stained brown with it. I helped the male nurse to fill in his paperwork: who Owen Roberts was, who I was, phone numbers, next-of-kin and all the rest. There was no point in the three of us (Jon, Jamie or myself) going on to the hospital, so we were dropped off at the school gate. We were long overdue for callover besides being filthy dirty. Here we walked straight into the arms of the new porter, whose name was Manyweathers. A year ago, almost, Manyweathers had replaced a horrible old man called Meggarty, who was notorious for taking unsuspecting boys into his van, driving to a remote spot and “browning” them. Meggarty was now behind bars. Manyweathers, an obliging sort of guy, tried to smuggle us in by a side door but there were too many staff around and we were spotted almost at once by a master who was the least likely to be sympathetic. Mr P. Hipkin, BA (Cantab), usually known as Pipkin, was one of the School’s bad jokes. People said that the Headmaster, anxious to get away for the weekend, had appointed him at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. He was a weedy young man of about 24 with mouse-brown hair and a straggly moustache, who taught Engineering Drawing in the Upper School and Advanced Maths (which I didn’t take) in the fourth year. Pipkin spoke almost entirely in conditionals and subjunctives (“I may” “I might” “I’d have thought that”) so it was surprising he ever decided anything at all. He had several silly mannerisms like rolling his R’s, that were meant to be frightening. Worst, from his own point of view, was the fact that his ideas about boy-eunuchs – that they were shy nervous beings – had all been stood on their head. Every day he met boys like me and my friends who were not only very good at a wide range of things, but who stood up to him and his blustering ways. This bothered him. It was this character who now bore down on us. “And who have we here, may I ask?” he began. “I might have known it. Roebuck One, Roebuck Two and Scott S. What do you mean by it, eh? What do you mean by it?” He was getting into his stride now. “You’re filthy, all three of you, you’ve missed tea, and you’ve missed call-over. It’s disgr-r-r-aceful! It ought not to be allowed! It’s- what? What? What?” Pipkin had been interrupted in full flow by the sudden appearance, large, and impeturbable, of Mr Carter. “Steady on, Percy” he said (this was our first intimation of Pipkin’s name and it suited him). “These three are my responsibility and I want to hear what they’ve got to say”. (Which was as good as telling Pipkin to get lost!) “Now then” resumed Mr Carter. “Take it from the top. You first, Scott”. I’d been expecting this but it was not to be. Jon stepped forward. Mr Carter found himself looking into Jon’s steady grey eyes. “Sir!” said Jon. (Whatever funny ideas Pipkin had about boy-eunuchs, Jon had lost none of his self-assurance when losing his balls.) “Well, Roebuck? Do you prefer to be spokesperson?” “Sir, it wasn’t Scott’s idea at all. It was ours. Scott merely came along”. “Well, you’d all better come along to my study, and since you’ve missed tea I’ll try and arrange something specially”. Reinforced by chocolate cake and many cups of tea, we told Mr Carter of our doings that afternoon. Or rather, Jon told the story with a lot of interruptions from Jamie. I decided to say as little as possible. “M-mm” said Mr Carter when Jon had finished – his usual retort. “I won’t say that the rescue might not have been done any differently, but it seems to me that it could hardly have been done any better. And now I’d better make my peace with Mr Gilchrist. There’s been consternation and monkey-house over at St Anselme’s all afternoon, first when they discovered, rather late, that one of their boarders was AWOL, and secondly when the three of you were seen running hell-for-leather out of the School grounds. Nobody guessed there was any connection”. He phoned Mr Gilchrist there and then. Our rushed departure, it seemed, had largely been forgotten in the wake of the news that Owen Roberts had been found, safe, if not very well. The hospital had phoned St Anselme’s not long before, to say that Roberts had been taken to Theatre an hour earlier and was still there. “You’d better clean yourselves up” said Mr Carter, dismissing us. “And then report to evening prep, p.d.q”. For the time being, that was that. Of course there were a lot of questions from nosey people, all of which we ignored – and they knew better than to persist. But behind the scenes much was going on. The following afternoon I was on my way to the sports store when I heard a scrunch of car tires behind me on the gravel. It was Mr Carter. “Scott, I’ve just been to have a look at your water tower” he said. “It’s horrible!” Well, I could have told him that. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say. “I walked all round it. I didn’t dare trust my weight to those stairs” (too right he dared not, he was all of 230 pounds). “But I saw that there’s a great gap halfway up. How did you get across, and more to the point, how did you get back?” I gave him a blow-by-blow account of that, and in particular of Jon’s makeshift bridge and how it had collapsed. “Whew!” said Mr Carter. He moved to walk away but turned on his heel. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Young Roberts is asking for you. The hospital have discharged him, and he’s in our infirmary. It seems the St Anselme’s one isn’t operational. Go in your next free period”. Smiling, Mr Carter got back into his car and drove away. So, promptly on three o’clock I presented myself at the infirmary. Nurse, of course, was an old acquaintance. “You again, Simon!” she greeted me with a smile. “What can we do for you? Is constipation the problem again?” (She was always on the lookout for an excuse to give enemas to her charges, and I’d had more than my share). I explained I’d come to visit Roberts. “Oh, that pretty Welsh boy!” Nurse exclaimed. “He’s in Bay 3. I’m just off for a tea-break but you know where to go”. With a swirl of blue-and-white striped cotton she hurried out. I went straight to Owen’s bed. He looked up at me shyly. “I’ve had two units of blood!” were his first words. “You must have lost a lot. But you’re better now?” “Yes, lots. Look, I’ve something to show you”. The infirmary was overheated – it always was – so that Owen was covered only by a single sheet and light cellular cotton blanket. Pulling these back I saw that he was still wearing a hospital theatre gown. With a quick deliberate movement he pulled this above his waist. He had, I remembered, injured himself in trying to climb out of the derelict tank, and I now saw how they had repaired him – if that’s the word. On his left thigh there had been a four-inch gash, now neatly stitched. But higher up, between his legs, just below a neat little penis, there was a gauze dressing, held in place by micro-porous tape. Where you might have expected a bulge of scrotum, the dressing was completely flat. I looked a question. Owen wasn’t slow to answer. “The doctor said they’d become sep-tic, see, and if he left them in, then I’d most like-ly get blood-poisonin’ (he was becoming more Welsh by the minute) “and I might not get bet-ter. “So I said to take them right out.” I nodded. “The doctor said, I understood what it would mean, didn’t I? I said yes, but a lot of my friends – meanin’ you, and those others - had it done and I wasn’t afraid. “It’s done on the ponies at home, on my uncle’s farm, and they can’t shag the mares afterwards, but apart from that they seem alright ”. His eyes were shining now. “You’ve been very brave” I said. “and very mature.” As from this morning, I thought, the stock of Welsh pony-geldings increases by one. I must tell Melanie. Melanie! I dragged myself out of a sudden daydream in which Melanie was stripping off down to her bra and knickers. “Has Nurse given you an enema yet?” I asked Owen. “An enema? Oh, you mean soap and water up my bot-tom. Yes, twice. No big deal, that. My auntie does that to me when I’m at home on the farm”. I bent over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll call round again soon” I said. “Try and sleep now”. Owen Roberts was now a boy-eunuch, one who had been gelded the old-fashioned way, his balls cut right out! I wondered whether Nurse, when changing his dressings, would fondle his penis and whisper, as she’d whispered to me, about him growing up into a big strong boy who couldn’t “do it” with a girl. Which was true. That neat little penis of his, probably three inches when it was “up”, would never go stiff again. On the way out, I passed a cupboard which Nurse had carelessly left open. It was full of medical stores and I immediately recognised the logo on some of the cartons. A big capital N, like the Napoleonic crest. No mistaking it. Neutersol! What was Nurse doing with about fifty home-castration packs? The answer to that would have to wait. Meanwhile, over the next few days there were several spin-offs. First of all, the junior school noticeboard blossomed overnight with a large press cutting with the caption “West Sussex loses an eyesore” and a picture of the water tower being dynamited. The text below said that the tower could have fallen in the next westerly gale. The next event was a summons from Dr Holroyd, the Headmaster, no less, to make ourselves available, in our Sunday best, on the following Wednesday morning – myself and the Roebuck twins. That was all. Reporting to his office that day, we were shown out to a waiting taxi, which already held Mr Carter, and taken to the train station. No one said anything about our destination. All we could get from Mr Carter was the information – interesting but irrelevant – that in happier times the trains to Victoria would have been made up of Pullman cars – some superior sort of diner we gathered – and he could have ordered coffee and buttered toast or little cakes. Arriving in London we all went by taxi to a place called the Connaught Rooms near Holborn. This seemed to be a complex of syndicate rooms and banqueting suites. We were directed to one that had been booked by ROSPA – the Society for the Prevention of Accidents. This was a large and rather sumptuous room set out with rows of chairs and a small platform at one end. It looked as if we were there to listen to a lecture. Neither the Head nor Mr Carter would let on, however, and the three of us – Jamie, Jon and myself - settled down to face a boring morning. But then a sort of official appeared. Dr Holroyd and Mr Carter were shown to one lot of seats, and then this man said “Award-winners over here, please!” and we were directed to some other rows, nearer the platform. Last of all, Jamie and I were allowed to sit together but Jon had to sit somewhere else. Curioser and curioser! The place began to fill up. Clearly there was some sort of presentation about to happen, but what for and what with? Then all of a sudden the official called out “Be upstanding, please” and the platform party came in. Another official-looking person introduced the Guest of Honour, one of the minor Royals, Her Royal Highness Princess Somebody of Somewhere. (I was feeling pretty uncomfortable on rather a hard chair and didn’t notice). Then the presentations began. To start with it was little children getting certificates for rescuing kittens from trees and puppy-dogs from ponds. Then things moved up a gear. The Chairman outlined the Society’s awards scheme and how it reflected the bravery of the people called to attend the day’s ceremony. A list of names was read out, and people filed up the platform steps, where Her Highness pinned the Society’s medal, a silver-gilt thing on a pink ribbon, on each one. The Chairman got up again and began talking about more conspicuous acts of gallantry, and then to our surprise began to outline our adventure on the old water-tower. He read out our names and everyone applauded! Called up to the platform Jamie and I found ourselves each the proud recipients of the Society’s Silver Cross: heavy and plain, on a royal-blue ribbon, with our names engraved on the back. “And now” said the Chairman “among any group of award winners, there is always one who is head and shoulders above the rest”. Again he returned to the saga of the water-tower, and conjured up a picture – all too vivid – of that horrible black void with the rusty broken stairs sagging over it. It was Jon who had skipped over the hole as though it didn’t exist, Jon’s clever contrivance that had made it possible to get Roberts over it; Jon who had faced down the snide operator at the ambulance depot. If it comes to that it had been Jon’s energy that had made certain we’d succeed. There was thunderous applause as the Chairman called on Jon to come forward. Blushing through his freckles Jon climbed to the platform where HRH pinned on his school blazer the Society’s highest award – the Bronze Cross. She said a few words to him, which none of us could hear – and afterwards Jon said he couldn’t remember! The Bronze Cross was, in shape, like the VC, but the ribbon was different, with thin alternate stripes of royal blue and scarlet. More thunderous applause as Jon returned to his seat. The Chairman said a few closing words which I didn’t listen to, as I needed a pee – and then it was over. Dr Holroyd appeared, beaming. (I learned, later, that he was a leading light in the Sussex branch of ROSPA and our awards were all on his recommendation). “There’s a buffet in the next room” said Dr Holroyd “but I expect you three would prefer something a bit more substantial”. There were a lot of eateries nearby. An Italian one looked the most attractive, and not so long afterwards all five of us were demolishing mounds of assorted pasta. Mr Carter proposed a bottle of Chianti and I tried a tentative glass, finding it rather rough, not up to Uncle Carl’s standard. Jon and Jamie stuck to Coke, which meant that Mr Carter and Dr Holroyd had the Chianti to themselves and fell asleep on the train – Mr Carter snoring rather loudly. First job on returning was to go and look-up Owen Roberts in the san. I found him in pyjamas and dressing gown, sitting in his bedside chair, with some school books, and Nurse nowhere to be seen. “She’s over at St Anselme’s” Owen explained. “She goes over there for an hour, morning and afternoon, to deal with the walk-ing woun-ded, as she calls them”. I didn’t attach any importance to this. I was more interested in what Owen went on to say. “They are going to take my stitches out tomorrow” he said. “And Nurse says, when I’m prop-erly healed down there, I ought to be thinking of different underwear. She said I should talk to you about it – that you’d know”. In reply I slipped my shorts down. “That’s a girl’s thong you’ve got on” exclaimed Owen. “My cousins wear them, I’ve seen them in the wash”. It was Nurse who, months before, had bought me my first thong, and showed me how well it fitted over my gelded genitals. (The fact is, that once a neutered boy’s testicles have disappeared and penile shrinkage, as the doctors call it, is complete (in other words when the boy’s willy is permanently limp and can be made to concertina in on itself) the contours of his crotch closely resemble a girl's. Many boy-eunuchs have therefore abandoned underpants in favour of wearing girls' knickers which feel more comfortable.) “I’ve worn one for years” I said. “That’s what Nurse meant, I’m sure. Once you’re properly healed, you may find a thong more comfy”. Owen nodded. “There’s another thing” he went on. Your Mr Trefr – trefy…” “Trefusis?” I suggested. “Yes, him. He’s going to give me a voice test”. I nodded. All Welsh kids can sing a bit, and with his balls gone, Owen’s voice could only get better. “That’s fine, then” I said. “It’ll be nice having you in the choir”. Owen’s eyes went misty. “You’re good to me, aren’t you?” he murmured. “A real friend”. I bent over and kissed his cheek, then hurried out. Any more, and I’d have been crying too. Next Sunday Dr Holroyd stage-managed a wonderful piece of PR. The place was the St Anselme’s school chapel which had been built on more sumptuous lines than our own. It being the third Sunday in Advent Mr Trefusis, the music director, had anticipated Christmas and laid on a service of lessons and carols. Everyone was in their best, the masters in full academicals, the full kaleidoscope of colour, from Dr Holroyd’s puce-and-crimson robes, right down to the wretched Pipkin’s black bombazine edged with a bit of white fur. The choir, into which, as I guessed, Owen Roberts had been admitted after his voice test, were immaculately turned out: spotless surplices and ruffs, faces shining angelically in the lamplight. As we filed in, singing the introit hymn “Hills of the North, rejoice” and each carrying a large candle, fat old Mrs Kelly, the St Anselme’s head cook (and some added, bottle-washer) let out an all-too-audible “A-a-ah!” For this she was loudly shushed by the two ushers. These were no less than the Roebuck twins, dressed in cassocks for the occasion and wearing their new decorations. (Mine was pinned on my surplice). On my way to the choir stalls I overheard a woman say, of these, “They get those crosses for singing, you know”. She too was “shushed”, and it was as much as I could do not to lean over and say “No, they don’t, you fool”. The two highlights came towards the end of the programme. First a rumbustious rendering, by the tenors and basses of the Upper School, of “Torches”, with a rousing organ accompaniment – many growls on the pedals - by Mr Trefusis. The next, and last, was “Lullay myn lyking” – the Terry version – performed by a trio: myself, Roddy, and – Owen Roberts! After a limpid introduction on the organ, Roddy and Owen each sang a verse, and I came in on the refrain. This proved to be a show-stopper. A review in the school magazine described it as “liquid drops of pure sound, cascading into a pool of melody” – a bit over the top, but I believe the congregation would have applauded if they’d been allowed. That was it. The chaplain said a blessing, Mr Trefusis played the introduction to “Christians Awake!” – the recessional hymn - and the choir filed out. Owen Roberts was still putting heart and soul into it. He had a very sweet voice of remarkable power: perhaps it was my fancy, but remembering how it had affected me, I should say that his castration was already having an effect. Roddy would have to look to his laurels in a year or two. And then, the last day of term. Christmas only a week off. And as far as I could tell, I was going to spend Christmas totally and completely alone. The Roebuck twins lived with their aunt and uncle in a small flat in Carlisle, so that was out. Roddy and Mark had been invited by Mark’s publishers to attend some choir festival in Vienna. They’d already gone. I would be rattling round the Lymington Haven house on my own with only Mrs Hodges the housekeeper for company, and it wasn’t a cheerful prospect. It was that wretched hymn at assembly that did it. The last verse started “Shout as ye journey home, songs be in every mouth!”. There’d been plenty of shouting, and a bit of singing too, as people collected train tickets, bus passes and journey money. Cars and taxis had come and gone, till by one o’clock the place was almost deserted. As ye journey home, indeed! I didn’t even have a home to journey to. I didn’t know if I still had parents living. Or if I had, did they ever remember they had once had a child called Simon, whom, aged ten and a half, they had packed off to boarding school in the UK and barely contacted since? Would they have minded, if they had known that I’d come into the hands of one control-freak after another, and then been castrated, so I could never have a family of my own? Besides this, like many boys who are neutered from twelve onwards, I’d retained very strong sexual longings which I could never satisfy, because I could never get a hard-on. I began to wallow in self-pity, never a good thing. I was beginning to feel really sorry for myself when I heard a phone ringing. It was in the staff common room, normally off-limits, but the door was wide open and I could see the room was empty, so I went in and picked the receiver up. “Simon Scott speaking” I said. It was a very bad line with a lot of background noise. Through the atmospherics came a voice that seemed familiar. “Simon? What on earth is going on – why aren’t you here?” “Who’s that speaking?” “It’s Melanie of course. Didn’t you get my message? Melanie! “No, I didn’t” I managed to say, after a deep breath. Then “ Where are you calling from?” “Gatwick Airport. Get over here quickly. Check-in’s at two”. She rang off. It was now quarter past one. A big figure filled the doorway: Mr Carter. “Hello, Scott” he said. (Not a word about my using the staff phone). “Got a problem?” “I’m supposed to be at Gatwick at two o’clock, sir” I said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get there”. (There was a train service but it was no use at all). Mr Carter looked up at the wall clock. “Shouldn’t be a problem” he said. “Go and get your stuff and meet me outside”. In as much time as it takes to tell I’d rushed up to the dorm., grabbed my washing things and the boxer-shorts and T-shirt I usually slept in, by a miracle found my passport too, and rushed downstairs to where Mr Carter was waiting in his car. This was a dark green convertible with a very long bonnet. I jumped in to the passenger seat, my things in an untidy roll. With a throaty roar we were off. Fortunately the M 23 was quiet apart from the car, which made a lot of road noise, but Mr Carter told me, shouting above the din, that his unusual vehicle was a replica of a 1930’s SS 100, but with a V8 Jaguar XJ engine in place of the old straight-six, and modern electrics. Whatever it was, it got us to Gatwick in 25 minutes flat. The concourse was like an ant-hill but I had no difficulty finding Melanie. She introduced me to two lean, rather leathery-looking people, her parents. John Hamilton, Melanie’s father, was some sort of Company chairman. However it was through her mother, the Honourable Selena Scott Hamilton – Uncle Carl’s sister – that Melanie and I were related. (Melanie had once said that if I still had my balls, we might have got married and had mentally-defective children.) “Very pleased to meet you, Simon” said her father. “So glad you could make it, Simon” said her mother. And then conversation had to stop, in the hurly-burly of checking-in. It was fortunate that when we took our seats on the plane, Melanie and I sat next to each other with her parents some way off, out of earshot. “What’s all this about? Where are we going?” I asked, as soon as I got a chance. It was an Iberian Airways flight, destination Alicante, but beyond that I knew nothing. “Didn’t you get my invitation?” Melanie asked. “I rang you twice”. “No, not a thing” I said. “Whom did you get through to?” “One of your staff. He had a name like Nipkin, or Napkin”. P Hipkin BA! “I know him” I said. “He’s a tosser. Absolutely useless. No, I didn’t get any message from him. Good thing you rang a third time”. (I made a mental note to be really rude to Pipkin when I next saw him). And then the stewardess brought some rather awful plastic food on a tray and it wasn’t till we were over the Spanish coast that I was able to speak again. It was only then that I found out our destination. Melanie’s parents had borrowed a villa from friends, for the Christmas period. The villa slept four, so they’d asked Melanie if she wanted to invite a friend. The darling asked me! Seemingly I owed nothing towards the flight, it was all covered by her father’s “air-miles”. Melanie’s mother had been delighted when she learned that Melanie wanted to invite a boy. “Only, I didn’t let on, of course” said Melanie. I don’t think I’ll bother you with a day-by-day account of that holiday. There are quite enough pictures of Spanish seaside villas for you to get the scenario. John Hamilton spent most of his days at the golf course. He once tried to talk to me about South Africa, where he made frequent business trips, to Johannesburg mostly, but was disappointed to learn that I’d left the RSA at the age of ten and in any case I’d never been outside Cape Town. Mrs Hamilton (the Hon. Selena in case you’d forgotten) spent most of her days, between meals, reading and sunbathing. I once heard her remark to her husband “Isn’t Simon’s voice high” but I didn’t hear what he replied. So Melanie and I were left on our own much of the time. And we were very, very good! That includes sleeping in our own rooms and our own beds. Sex was never even mentioned. Until one afternoon. We were enjoying a wander along the beach, finding shells and odd-shaped bits of driftwood. It being winter there was no one about. “Tell me more about this boy Owen” she demanded, after we’d been silent for some time. I’d told her very little about Owen Roberts up till then. So it seemed a good time to fill in all the missing details. How Owen had learned that at Southdown Hall School there were any number of boy-eunuchs, and how this had influenced him when he’d had to lose his balls following his accident on the water tower. Melanie’s eyes took on a glazed look. “How did they do it?” she asked in a faraway voice. “Mostly, I know, they just prick a boy’s balls and they dry up, like they did to yours”. “Owen had them taken right out” I said. “To stop him getting blood poisoning. They had gone septic and there was no chance of saving them.” “Simon, that’s so, so marvellous!” Melanie breathed. “To have them cut right out, just like a randy young colt! Tell me more about it. Much more”. The problem was that I didn’t know “much more”. I had to improvise. “He used to be very nicely shaped down there” I said. “Not a trace of hairs, of course, but a good plump ball-sac. I should say he was maturing fast. And a nice little penis, one that tapered to a point, like Piglet’s tail. He’ll make a lovely little eunuch. They were all of two hours cutting out his balls………..” Melanie was shaking all over. “I’m getting wet” she whispered. “Do it to me. Do it to me now”. So there and then we took our pants down, got down in the soft grey sand and “did it”. my face between Melanie’s thighs and my penis in her mouth. Her fanny smelled of fish but I didn’t mind; I sucked and sucked, and took her love-juices in my mouth, till she climaxed, crying out with the joy of it. We rested there for a bit, then began to wander back, hand in hand. “Tell me” said Melanie, after we hadn’t spoken for some time. “How do you like to have me?” “I don’t follow” I said. Whatever was she talking about? Melanie squeezed my hand. “What I mean, silly, is would you like me to wear stockings and a garter-belt, and stuff like that, when we do it?” As she spoke I remembered a conversation with a boy at school – a real tearaway, he wasn’t there now. He’d said “I like them in black underwear with nice white tits and good clean fannies”. Then another thought. Could Melanie have possibly heard about Marcia? “I like it just as you are” I said. Melanie pecked my cheek. “I hoped you’d say that” she said. “I couldn’t wish for a nicer boy. Sometimes I think I’m falling in love with you”. And there’s not much future in that, I thought, but didn’t say anything. So the moment passed, and clearly Melanie knew nothing about Marcia. New Year came and went. The senior Hamiltons asked a few friends round, but riotous Hogmanay parties were obviously not in their line. The following day we flew home. Term started on the third, which left a day to kill. Melanie wanted me to stay but common sense told me to distance myself from the senior Hamiltons. Gritting my teeth I decided in favour of staying at the Simon Scott Centre, even though it meant reporting to Uncle Carl and telling him that the boy-eunuch population of St Anselme’s had increased to the enormous total of one – and that scarcely of my doing. (By the way I’d had a letter from Owen Roberts to say he’d healed up very nicely and was getting used to his new life.) Do you know, he – Uncle Carl I mean – wasn’t there! He left me a note saying he’d been called away on a mission in South-East Asia, with Uncle Max as colleague. What shady mission called for those two to team up, I hated to think. Something too disreputable for the Diplomatic Service and even for MI 6. It might give Uncle Max some scope for indulging his liking for young Chinese boys’ bottoms. But at least I could keep to my room, complete a holiday essay on Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel” – a stupid book if ever there was one, and enjoy the food which was very good and cost me nothing. The Lent term began very quietly. It usually did. Two weeks went by before Mr Carter sent for me, to say that the joint coaching sessions at St Anselme’s were to recommence the following week. Only this term I should be coaching not boxing, but diving (for my prowess in the swimming pool you should read “Made Safe”). It was whilst I was getting ready for the first lesson in the series that everything dropped into place. The St Anselme’s pool had a row of changing-cabins along one side. Unlike most of the installation, on which thousands had been spent in the last few months, the cabins were old and made of matchboarding. I was getting into my swimming trunks and the cap and goggles I always wore, when I heard the next-door latch click. “Oh, hello” said a voice. (Evidently there had been one occupant of Cabin 79 already).There were sounds of clothes being taken off and hung on pegs. Then it happened. “When were you “done”? “Week before Christmas. And you?” “Last Wednesday”. This sounded interesting. The matchboarding, as I said, was old. Old enough for me to be able to see through one large crack with no bother at all. The two boys using Cabin 79 were typical third-years, similar in many ways. They differed only below the waist. The second boy’s scrotum was decorated with the telltale Band-Aid, put on to stop the Neutersol fluid leaking out again, necessitating a second application. Already his penis had shrunk beyond the point when it would interest any girl. By contrast, the first boy’s penis was a little button, and his scrotum much the same colour and size as one-half of a walnut shell. Keeping my eyes open for the rest of the afternoon (and it wasn’t difficult, seeing that showering-off after swimming was mandatory) I counted another ten. Which probably meant there were twice as many. Now it made sense. All those home castration kits in Nurse’s cupboard. The fact of her going to St Anselme’s every afternoon to deal with “walking wounded”. Nothing succeeds with boys like a craze. Even when the craze is for getting their balls pricked. When I gotback to school I went in search of writing paper, to report to Uncle Carl. |