Simon and the Chinese Connection

February. A cold, foggy day. Matron was in one of her moods.

“Have you been today, Scott?”

“No, Matron”.

All School Matrons seem obsessed by “regularity” as they call it. I guess it’s something they have to learn about when they qualify. This one was certainly true to type. “When did you go last, Scott?”

“Can’t remember, Matron”. Hey, as if I’d ever put in my diary - “Tuesday 12th, 10.30, went to the bathroom”. What a sick idea.

Matron sighed. “Well, you know the routine, Scott. Over there, please – shorts and pants down”. She pulled on her rubber gloves and reached for the tray with the enema syringe.

At least this Matron used warm,soapy water. At my first school after coming to Britain, the enema tube was connected to the cold tap above the sink. Even now, as the nozzle was poked up my lubricated behind I braced myself for the icy gush into my bowels. It was habit. By contrast, today’s warm water was even soothing in an odd kind of way. Matron’s practised hand pumped it in with firm squeezes of the bulb. At least she used a bulb and not a hose; I still think the old Matron was trying to see if she could 'burst' someone.

After I'd held it for the specified time, she said, “Alright, Scott. Go through there and get rid of it. And try to be more regular in future”.

“Yes, Matron”.

Matron saw me with my pants down once a week, as she did all of the junior boys. But she was concerned only with my back view. At fourteen I was kind of tall for my age and in all respects but one, well-made. But I’d been neutered at eleven-and-a-half. On my front view - the penis of a four-year-old and no balls or scrotum - she never commented. Or on my high voice – though if worried or tired I tended to sound shrill sometimes.

Being neutered was supposed to make me better behaved. The year before last, I’d been taken to a clinic. A nurse had said, “Another dear little boy to be neutered,” and proceeded to give me a massive enema, before putting me into a sort of reclining chair that held my legs apart. The nurse held my shoulders firmly down so I could only look at the ceiling. Meanwhile a doctor injected a drug called Neutersol into my balls that made them dry up. The effect was just the same as if they’d been cut off. But you can read all about that in my story “Simon Tells It Like It Was”.

Sorry for wandering off although my being a boy-eunuch (my girlfriend – yes, I have one, you can read about that too – calls me her ‘gelding’!) was bound to crop up sometime. Besides, I wrote about it for a class paper too and got a great mark on it.

A little later I stood outside another door, with a brass plate on it that said “Dr A.D. Jolly, D Mus., MA." I knocked. From inside a deep rich voice said, “Come in”. Dr Jolly was the School music director and Choirmaster. As Head Chorister I was supposed to report to him on Friday afternoons to discuss any special arrangements for the week’s services. But these meetings were not wholly concerned with music.

I should probably mention that at the other school that Matron did the enema sessions on a Sunday afternoon - not Friday evenings.

Dr. Jolly was a big stout man in his 50’s. Today, off duty, he was wearing an old grey jumper and flannels, but dressed in a black or brown habit with a rope round his middle he might have been taken for a mad monk instead. His head was completely bald except for a ring of shaggy brown hair. He had prominent grey eyes set in a fat face, behind gold-rimmed glasses. He was beaming with pleasure, or as I knew, anticipation.

“Ah, Scott!” he said as I entered. “Come in, dear boy, come in!” He dropped his voice an octave. “Shall we watch the film?”

To tell the truth I was thoroughly hacked-off by the film which I’d seen several times. Dr. Jolly only had the one, and it was mercifully short. He went to the video machine and started it. Into a garden there came a very good-looking young boy of Oriental appearance, and a teenage youth of about 18, both without any clothes on. The camera, zooming close in, showed that the younger boy had been castrated, clearly not long before, because his empty scrotum showed neat diagonal scars where his testicles had been taken out. His penis was intact also. He had an unbelievably cheeky expression and I thought what a little devil he must have been before losing his balls.

The teenager showed exceptional muscular development and had an enormous hard-on. They fondled one another for a time, till the younger boy crouched down on all fours for the teenager to rub the knob of his penis between his buttocks. You can guess the rest. The young neutered boy’s face registered nothing but pleasure. His eyes seemed to say “Hi! Life’s a bundle of fun – come and join in!”

While this was showing, Dr. Jolly had his hand on my bare knee and was trying to work it up the leg of my shorts to reach my cock. He was shaking all over. When the video ended he said in a hoarse whisper, “Everything you’ll need is through there, dear boy," for Dr. Jolly was very fond of boys – in a particular way. These meetings in his rooms were timed to follow my enema-sessions with Matron, which really wasn't a surprise. At my old school, it had been senior boys; here, it was Dr. Jolly.

“Through there” was his bedroom, and “everything I’d need” was a large jar of Vaseline. I took off my shorts and pants and put a good smear of Vaseline in and around my bum-hole. Dr. Jolly came in soon afterwards. I had bent over the arm of a chair – the position he liked to take me in – and didn’t look at him. I heard the sound of his trousers falling to the floor, felt something hard and hot between my bum-cheeks.

I should probably mention, if you'll recall, that I don't like being a bum-boy. I had hoped those days were over, but Dr. Jolly had other ideas, and there wasn't much I could do about it.

Mercifully he was always very, very quick. He didn’t talk, or play with my cock, or try to kiss me. In a few moments he was kneeling on the floor, panting and puffing as if he’d run a half-marathon. Wordlessly he motioned me towards the bathroom to clean myself up.

I seem to have had more than my fair share of getting sodomised. For some boys it’s a nightmare, though not for me. Perhaps that’s because everyone who has done it to me, did it properly. At the same time it doesn’t do anything for me. Some people think that once a boy has had his balls pricked, and his active sex life destroyed, all of his erotic feelings are turned inside out and he will eagerly become a passive sex-partner. I don't think that’s true and in any case I was used as a bum-boy long before I got to be neutered, as I mentioned. While it wasn't painful, it wasn't something I looked forward to, either.

What about the men or boys who did it to me? They did it, most of them, because like Dr Jolly they were too old and ugly to attract a woman. For the boys, I guess, it was because of lack of available girls. But at least if old Jolly was doing it to me, it was distracting him from some of the younger ones, who might have been traumatised by the experience. Or so I believed – wrongly as it happened, but I'll get to that.

Anyway, to return. I gave myself a good wash down there and was pulling on my shorts and pants when Dr. Jolly called out “And now we’ll have a nice cup of tea while we discuss choir business”. (His teas always included éclairs. It almost made the preliminaries in his bedroom worthwhile). We’d hardly begun before there was a knock on the door. Surprisingly, because I’d believed this to be a private tea party, Dr. Jolly called “Come in!”

When no one did, he went to the door and opened it. A small figure stood there hesitating. A small voice said “Oh, very sorry, sir, you busy, I come later, yes?”

“No!” boomed Dr Jolly. “Come in, Tommy, come in!” The newcomer did just that, and I made the connection between the funny accent and the name “Tommy”.

Tommy Chow Bing Wah (no one ever used his Chinese given name) was a newly-arrived probationer. I’d never spoken to him because he was in Mark’s half of the choir, the Decani side, and anyway he was in the second form, barely twelve years old. His slanting brown eyes and jet-black hair, well stiffened down with scented oil in the Chinese manner, but above all his expression, made him uncannily like the boy in Dr. Jolly’s deplorable video. His was a face that registered only fun and enjoyment. I felt a bit uneasy, knowing Dr. Jolly’s liking for boys’ bottoms. But things took a different turn.

“Now, Tommy, you know Simon Scott, don’t you?” Dr. Jolly said coaxingly. “He’s come to listen to you singing”.

“Oh yes!” the youngster replied. “Scott, Head of Choir, very important person”. (Tommy’s L’s were all R’s and his R’s all L’s but I won’t try to put that on paper. That I should be a judge of his singing was a bit odd. Dr. Jolly should discuss that with Mark, not me. Though I was Head Chorister I was only responsible for the boys on the “Cantoris” side. The “Decani” side was Mark’s job.

Dr. Jolly was bending over the CD player. A tune began – a Chinese song. Strange to relate I knew it. In the Knight-Fox household the Wing-Commander had a stack of old 78’s dating from his RAF days, and one day with nothing to do I’d looked them over and played one or two on their ancient radiogram. One had the unbelievably soppy title “Rose, Rose, I love you!” and in brackets and smaller print “Flower of Malaya”. A Chinese girl had sung in a high squalling voice, followed by a lot of men singing English words – I guess nothing to do with the original, all about going home to Blighty, and leaving their Chinese girlfriends for ever.

The tune was the same. But Dr. Jolly, crafty old sod, had produced – or at any rate got hold of – a karaoke version on CD, with the original vocals edited out. Tommy was to give us a voice-over. “Now, Tommy, when I drop my hand” said Dr. Jolly, and put the CD on.

Without doubt this kid could sing. His tone was clear and he hit and held all his top notes to perfection. But whether a simple Chinese song was any guide to whether he’d manage the twiddly bits in Stanford in A or Merbecke, I wasn’t prepared to say.

On the other hand, Dr. Jolly was. “That was splendid, Tommy, quite splendid,” he rumbled. “Off you go now. I’ll talk to you later”. The boy went out. Old Jolly turned to me, eyes shining behind his glasses. “Did you hear that, Simon? The clarity! The brilliance! The verve!" (I’d no idea what the last word meant but nodded wisely. I'd look it up later and think, no, verve was not a good word to use.)

I was lost for words. The kid hadn’t been all that good. Old Jolly mistook this look on my face for rapt attention. “I have a dream!” he was saying. (At the ghastly triteness of this it was all I could do not to fall about laughing). “Think of it – the whole baroque repertoire: Cherubini, Scarlatti, Palestrina...” (he added a lot more names I’d never heard of). “To bring all this back to life! To revive the lost operas of Handel!”

The lost operas of Handel were lost because they were un-singable. The major parts were all scored for eunuchs, and no counter-tenor had the range of a castrato. When they were written there hadn’t been a problem. In Italy they used to neuter about three thousand children a year. The hope was that, if a boy had the cords of his balls snipped through, as the practice was then, he would automatically sing like an angel. Enough fulfilled this hope, to keep up the supply. The majority, excluding those who died from blood poisoning, went through life as discontented olive pickers and ploughboys, unable to fuck girls – or to sing.

Conventions in Handel’s day demanded that “heroic” parts required a high voice. So you would have the hero on stage singing in a high soprano about his undying passion for the heroine, when in reality, like me, he couldn’t even penetrate the girl’s pubic hairs.

Old Jolly was still going on. “To have forty boys accomplished enough to sing all that! The glory of it! That is my dream. And you, Simon, dear boy, are to be a part of that dream. And Mark, of course. And now I’ll let you into a great secret. Tommy is to be included! Oh, the parts I have in mind for him!” He reeled off a lot of names in Italian.

I’d been puzzled to know what he was getting at, but his next words brought me up with a jolt. My tummy gave a lurch and it felt as if my minuscule penis retracted a few more millimetres. “You heard that voice. To think that in two or three years it would be lost – lost for ever! It must not happen! It must not!”

He was looking me full in the face now, his eyes glittering and hard behind his glasses, his mouth set in a line. “Simon, you above all people, know exactly what I mean. I look to you for the solution. I expect your full co-operation and support. Good afternoon”. Next moment, still clutching a half-eaten sandwich, I found myself bundled out into the corridor.

So that was it. Dr. Jolly wanted Tommy neutered so that his voice wouldn’t change. I’d suspected for a while that he was up to something. Boys – third formers mostly – had been vanishing for odd days, reappearing as second trebles. Seen in the shower they showed all of the signs of having had their balls pricked – scrotums shrunk to a fold of skin, penises retracted right in, no odd erections then and now, etc. In the choir, all the vacancies were being filled by newly-neutered boys. But Tommy hadn’t been neutered - yet. I decided to talk to Mark next morning.

In morning break, before I could find Mark, he found me. He had a bit of paper in his hand and seemed on the edge of losing his temper. “I suppose this is your doing!” he fairly spat at me. “At your tea-party with old Jolly. Go on, look at it. The kid hasn’t been here five minutes”.

The piece of paper was a note to Mark from Dr. Jolly saying that Tommy Chow was to be promoted to first treble, over the heads of about a dozen more senior boys. At face value it was crazy. But knowing that Dr. Jolly was besotted with Tommy, and his perverted dream of a choir of forty boy-eunuchs, I could make sense of it – of a kind.

“Hey, Mark, believe me,” I said, “I had nothing to do with that”. Mark clearly didn’t believe a word of it. All sorts of things were going through my head. I decided to set him a test. "You have a weekly meeting with Dr. Jolly, too, later on Fridays, to sort out any problems with Decani. That video of his is pretty boring, isn’t it?”

(If Mark said “What video?” I’d say something like ‘The one of the Vienna Boys’ Choir on tour’ and that would be that.)

But Mark said, “You mean the one of the two boys in a garden”. That was the trap. Mark had seen the same video that I had, and without doubt he was old Jolly’s bum-boy just as much as I was.

“Right”. I said. “And after the boring vid, I can imagine what he does to you in his bedroom, after he’s pulled your knickers down”.

(Mark had been circumcised as a baby, and his neutering had left him with a tiny acorn of a penis, so small that he’d taken to wearing a girl’s white nylon briefs instead of underpants; he found them more sensible).

Mark was blushing crimson. “He made me do it,” he mumbled. “He said he’d cancel my scholarship if I didn’t. He’s mad, of course. Out of his mind. The old pig!”

“Well, now we’ve both agreed that,” I said “Stop pretending, and just listen a minute. On Decani side how many new second trebles have there been since Christmas?"

Mark thought. “Sandie Ross – the chubby one with very fair hair. And...”

“I know what they look like. Go on. Who else?”

“Peter Forster. And little Harry Ricketts. One other: brown hair, thin face, can’t remember his name”.

“Foulkes,” I supplied. “I can match your four with five on Cantoris,” I said. And I’ll tell you something. There’s a pattern. None of them have parents within reach, they’ve all got guardians or something. And they’ve all – ALL - had their balls pricked in the last few weeks. Harry Ricketts was the last one, did you know?"

“Maybe they wanted to,” said Mark. “I did, after all”.

(Mark had found at age 12 that his own superb singing voice had commercial possibilities, and getting neutered was the only way of prolonging his singing career. He’d made a LOT of money, which a trust was presently looking after. But then again, Mark was exceptional but couldn't use the money yet but for a small bit).

“Ricketts didn’t, for starters,” I said. “He cried for days, afterwards. He had wanted to go into the Army, as soon as he could get a cadetship – they take them at sixteen – and they won’t have you, with that part of you gone. Anyway you’re missing the point. You see Tommy’s weekly letters home. Who does he write to – parents?”

“Not parents,” said Mark. “Some sort of uncle”.

“Uncles are just fine,” I said. “But the sub-species “sort-of-uncle” sucks. I’ve had 'sort-of-uncles' since I was ten or eleven. One of them introduced me to buggery and placed me in a school where they carried it on. The second one organised my neutering operation, chiefly to satisfy the 'sort-of-aunt' I was living with. He went on to screw my horrible cousin, after making sure I never could, and after that, he left me with a family who had a Neanderthal for a son. So if Tommy has a 'sort-of-uncle', I’d say he fits the pattern perfectly”.

Mark nodded. “So Tommy Chow is the next on the list to get his balls pricked. The law’s on old Jolly’s side, of course”.

This was true. My own neutering had become possible through a legal loophole. I’d overheard my 'sort-of-uncle' discussing it. He’d said, “The legal experts will slip an enabling clause into the Bill, and it’ll be possible to get a young boy’s balls taken out with no questions asked”.

“And getting him 'done' is down to me,” I said.

Mark just gaped.

I left him, wondering what the hell to do next. Had Tommy Chow any idea what Dr. Jolly had in mind for him – or was his head turned by the attention he’d been getting? How would a Chinese boy react to the idea of getting neutered? They had an ancient tradition of court eunuchs but that had been centuries ago.

Later that day, in the school library for something else, I found an English-Chinese dictionary. No one had removed it for years. I turned up “eunuch”. There were two Chinese characters in heavy type and a few lines of smaller text. I took it back with me to the day-room. There was one other person there, the last I expected to see just then. Tommy Chow.

“Please, Scott, Dr. Jolly say I am to see you.” said Tommy. “He say, you have something important to say to me?”

Okay, I thought. In we go, feet first, right into the deep end. I opened the dictionary I was carrying and showed Tommy the entry under “eunuch”. Tommy’s face lit up. “Ah, Chinese!” he said.

“Do you understand this, Tommy?” I asked.

“I understand this, yes,” he began. “Long time ago my country (he meant China, not his adopted country which was Singapore) was ruled by an Emperor. These people (pointing at the page) were slaves who guarded the Emperor’s women. They had a very private operation. You know 'Clouds-and-rain', yes?”

'Clouds-and-rain' was the Chinese euphemism for sexual intercourse. “Yes,” I said.

“For these slaves, clouds-and-rain not possible. The operation, much cutting, cut EVERYTHING off, much blood, very terrible, some die”.

This was not at all the way I wanted Tommy to think about a neutering operation. For a few seconds I floundered. Then the door opened and someone came in that I wasn’t at all sorry to see. Roddy.

Roddy had been neutered the summer before. His operation had been a total success: he was the boy-eunuch of classical tradition, slim, pretty, blue-eyed and fair-haired. Tommy recognised him at once. Right, I thought. “Roddy, I’m taking Tommy to the practice room. Would you come along for a few moments?”

We didn’t go to the practice room. Once outside I led them across to the cricket pavilion. The cricket season was months away, but athletics were to start in March and all the kit was stored in the pavilion. If anyone saw us, which they didn’t, they would register that the Head of Under-15 Athletics (that is, me) had co-opted a couple of juniors to check over the kit in a perfectly normal way.

At the pavilion I led the way straight to the changing rooms. Tommy Chow followed like an inquisitive small dog. “Scott, why are we going in here?” asked Roddy in a nervous voice. “You’ll see,” I replied out of the corner of my mouth.

I closed the changing room door. Apart from ourselves, the pavilion was deserted. I mouthed to Roddy, “Take your shorts and pants off!” Roddy blushed but did as he was told. I dropped my own shorts and pants at the same time. “Tommy, look at us!” I commanded.

Tommy’s eyes stretched wider and wider, as he saw all there was to see, or rather, all that there wasn’t. “Wahhh!” he said under his breath. He walked round us as if we were statues. He would have been able to see that Roddy, who’d never been circumcised, had a recognisable boy-penis, though very short; my own just as short but more stubby, like a thimble and beginning to look I'd never been circumcised either. Roddy still had the vestiges of a scrotum, but in time the loose skin would grow out and become smooth, as mine had done.

“So small!” Tommy murmured. “And no boy-things”. “Feel if you like!” said Roddy. How I admired him for his courage in playing along. Tommy cautiously put out a hand and touched Roddy where his balls had been, then he looked at me, his whole face a question. “You?” was all he said, and to Roddy “You too?”

“This is what happens to boys in the West,” I said. “Usually like Roddy and me, to make us sing better. We’re not the only two, Roddy and me. Ask Maitland, Elliott, Ellison, Roebuck Major, Raxworthy (I reeled off a few more names). All the first trebles have had it done and a lot of the seconds.” I paused to let this sink in, for Tommy to get the message that he was in line for the same treatment: to qualify as a first treble he must first say goodbye to his balls.

“How it done, this thing?” asked Tommy, looking relieved, which I couldn't understand why.

“You understand ‘injection’?” I asked. Tommy nodded. “Like typhoid fever, yes? Shots?”

“Just the same. By injection into your privates. There’s no cutting, no blood, and no pain. Look, next week is half term. Why don’t you spend half term with Roddy at his home and he’ll tell you all there is to know.”

"No blood?" Tommy asked, and we shook our heads.

"You get to keep penis, I see," he stated. Well, that explained why he was relieved - he must have known a lot about Chinese eunuchs.

This was all agreed at once. Roddy and I got dressed and we all went back to the school building. For the look of the thing I gave Roddy and Tommy a bundle of flags and bunting to carry. I’d have to smuggle it back again another time. But I’d moved a few steps forward towards getting Tommy neutered, and half term would give me a chance to see Melanie.

A few days later the three of us – Roddy, Tommy and myself – got off the bus at Lymington Haven and walked to Roddy’s home. It was a huge house for a thirteen-year-old on his own (Uncle Carl was overseas again) but a perfect place for Roddy to have a long session in private with Tommy and calm his fears about getting neutered. Not that he was that scared - he was still in 'penis relief', you might call it.

Meanwhile, I went to the well-remembered boathouse, bailed out the rowing boat and sculled across to meet Melanie, as arranged, in the loft above the old tack-room, where I’d first learned her secrets – and she, mine.

“How’s my favourite gelding?” Melanie had asked, as she kissed my cheek.

“He’s all the better for seeing you,” I said.

For a long time I couldn’t understand Melanie’s fascination for a castrated boy who could never give her full sex. Today I was more bold. “Have you ever done it properly?” I asked. “I mean, all the way in?”

Melanie nodded. “Summer before last, with a boy I met on the beach. I can’t say I enjoyed it much. It was perfectly safe of course, he used one of those rubber things. But he didn’t make me come. He always seemed to finish before I’d even got started."

“But you!” she went on. “You can go on for ever!”

And that’s all the time we had for talk. Melanie lifted her skirt, and in that gesture which – if I’d been capable – would have given me an instant hard-on, opened her legs. The vee of the tiny black thong she had on, stretched over her love-mound, had been haunting my most erotic dreams (yes, a boy-eunuch can have them!) She motioned me to take my shorts and pants off, while she stripped off her bra and thong. Her boobs had grown some since I saw her last but her love-mound was smooth, all the fuzz removed with some kind of depilatory cream.

I wanted to kiss it but Melanie got there first, rolling back my truncated foreskin – a relic of a circumcision that wasn’t done fully, before taking my penis in her mouth – it seemed not a lot bigger than her own stiff nipples – and beginning to suck. Her tongue caressed my glans, around and around………. A boy-eunuch can’t reach orgasm, but a rosy glow spread from my cock, all over my body, blotting out every thought except the ecstasy of what Melanie was doing.

Yes, it still feels good, in case you wondered.

“There!” she whispered after she’d been sucking me for a while. “And you didn’t pee in my mouth!” (This was an old joke we shared.) “Now you can kiss mine”. She spread her legs and seconds later I was lost between her soft adorable thighs, in that blissful world full of the strange perfume of a girl’s sex. My tongue probed between her love-lips, found her joy-button and brought her wriggling and squealing to a massive orgasm. Too shattered to say much, we got dressed.

“Are you down here, kind of on your own?” Melanie asked, on our way back to the house.

“No. Roddy’s with me. And a boy called Tommy. He’s Chinese. Just now, Roddy is telling him all about what it’s like to get his balls pricked. Because he’s in line for the same, to save his voice. Our music director’s just crazy about him. For some reason I can’t work out, he’s dropped that little job in MY lap.”

“And?” Melanie prompted.

“I had hoped you might help”.

Again that strange gleam in Melanie’s eyes, that I’d first seen when, together, we’d pulled back Roddy’s bed-sheets and she’d seen his plump scrotum and small, perfectly-formed boy-penis. She drew in her breath. “I can’t wait!” she said. “I just love the thought of neutering a boy’s balls”.

As we entered the house Melanie asked “Is there anything special about Chinese boys?”

“Well, they haven’t got square balls if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said. “Any more than a Chinese girl’s sex runs east-west”.

Melanie laughed. I guessed she was thinking about that night when, with Roddy’s balls between her finger and thumb, she’d go so excited that she’d flooded her pants. I reminded her of this and she laughed again. “I’ll use a pant-liner,” she said. “And just to make sure I’ll put a Tampax in”.

Melanie would order a Neutersol home-castration pack online, as we’d done before. It could be delivered to Roddy’s home. With so much mail for Uncle Carl, one more package wouldn’t be noticed.

She also came up with a brilliant idea for a place to “do” Tommy. Her father’s firm – Hamilton Holdings – had an account with a business hotel in Portsmouth, and his visitors frequently stayed there. Allowing time for the castration pack to arrive Melanie would phone the hotel and book a room for a Mr. Jenkyns, and later, go to the hotel with a package of confidential papers (the castration pack in reality) and take them up for Mr. Jenkyns to look at when he arrived. They knew her very well at the hotel – she’d had to do this before. All I had to do “on the day” was to arrange leave-of-absence for Tommy and myself.

After hearing how Mark had been blackmailed by Dr. Jolly I must confess I’d begun by having mixed feelings about getting Tommy neutered. But they vanished the following Sunday.

We were nearing the end of the “sung” part of Morning Service. We’d finished the Psalm for the day. Dr. Jolly (I’ve mentioned before that he was a lousy organist) played a few chords that might have been anything, and the Chaplain intoned, “We praise thee, O God…”

Oh no we don’t, I said to myself. Not on the first Sunday in Lent.. I looked across at Mark and saw that he had also registered the howler. By singing as loudly as we could, we got the rest of the choir doing the Benedicite, and by Verse 4 the congregation were following.

All except little Tommy Chow. He stuck to the Te Deum right to the end.

Later that day (after my usual pants-down session with Dr. Jolly, and after the enema session with Matron) Tommy came to see me. He was grinning in a rather insolent way.

“Dr. Jolly say, he very pleased with me,” he said. “Him say, in Chapel he hear me above everybody else”. (As his arrogance increased, his English went to pieces.)

“Well, that’s lovely, Tommy, isn’t it?” I said, forcing a smile. (Of course he heard you, I thought; you were singing the wrong canticle altogether.)

“I think,” said Tommy “after I have my operation, you no more Head of Choir. Dr. Jolly, him make me Chief Chorister. Bye-bye, Simon?"

When you’ve had your operation, I said to myself, you may at last realise who’s the boss. People have known that from the dawn of history – once a boy’s balls have gone, he does what he’s told. That was sort of an epiphany, then, too. I realised that I was guilty of that. But in a flash I also realised that the little horror had been feeding old Jolly’s perverted fantasy. He’d let old Jolly bugger him. Myself (my bum still tingled from earlier), Mark, and Tommy – that made three. How many more had he been using?

As things turned out I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

There’s little to say about the following week. Everything went according to plan. The leave-of-absences were signed. I found out the hotel’s phone number and left it with Mark in case of emergency. On the Saturday, I took the slow train with Tommy to Portsmouth. Usually so talkative, he never said a word all the way, but looked out of the carriage window. What was he thinking – perhaps that he would go to Portsmouth as a boy, but when he returned he would be a eunuch ?

The non-existent Mr. Jenkyns had played his part, and Melanie was waiting. We were hardly inside the room before she was organising Tommy into stripping off. I could see at once that this was going to be very simple. Tommy’s genitals were perfectly formed but very small. “Just the right age,” I murmured to Melanie, who nodded a reply and reached for the Novocaine to inject into Tommy’s groin. We waited for him to numb-up. Then it happened.

“It’s no good, I can’t do it, it’s too much,” she wailed, her eyes staring. She was shaking all over and looked to be on the verge of a fit!

“Just hold Tommy’s shoulders, then,” I said. “I’ll do the rest. (I knew that the Neutersol hypodermics were idiot-proof and I’d studied the diagrams of how to insert them into a boy’s balls.)

“Now Tommy,” Melanie said soothingly “just look up. Look at the fan going round. Try and count the blades”. I had a good look at Tommy’s genitals, the slender penis, the translucent skin of his scrotum - then took hold of Tommy’s left testicle and pulled gently downwards. It felt like a small grape between my fingertips. I nodded again to Melanie who pressed on Tommy’s shoulders. “Watch the fan” she said again. I judged the angle and pushed the needle in. Tommy didn’t so much as flinch as I injected the drug.

His other testicle was just as easy. I pressed the plunger down and that was that. Tommy was neutered. His balls would dry up, his cock would shrink and he’d never be able to fuck girls.

“Rest now, Tommy,” I said. “Try and sleep for a while”. Then, to Melanie, “Hey, whatever happened just now?”

“Just thinking about him, and what he might be in 2 or 3 years from now, in between a girl’s legs, straining and straining, trying to get it in, and not being able to! I started having an orgasm – it was terrible! And I’ve wet my pants again!” (This in spite of wearing a pant-liner and having a Tampax in.)

I shook my head. If having an orgasm did that to someone, I was somewhat glad that I couldn't have one.

While Melanie went to the bathroom to clean herself up, I watched Tommy, who seemed to have dozed off. However, he wasn’t allowed to rest for long. The telephone began to ring. “Jenkyns here,” I said when I picked it up.

“What? Who?” came Mark’s voice at the other end. “Hey, Simon, if that’s you, stop fooling about and get your ass back here for a call-over. There’s been one hell of a bust-up. I can’t say any more just now”.

I left Melanie to clear up, roused Tommy and hurried him, groggy as he was, to get the first possible train. He slept most for most of th ride back. When we arrived, I found the whole school assembling for call-over in the big hall. Once this was over and all four-hundred-and-eighty boys accounted for, everything went quiet. But everyone knew one thing for certain: Dr. Jolly had gone.

Some days went by before the whole story came out. Somebody had blown the whistle on old Jolly, and the somebody who’d had the guts to do it was one whom you’d least expect - little Harry Ricketts.

Harry had come to the school believing he’d get a good grounding for the examinations that would enable him to pass into the Army. Instead, he’d been repeatedly sodomised and then neutered. His life became a nightmare; I’d found him crying more than once. In his misery he remembered the address of the lawyers, Farland, Farland & Co. who dealt with his school fees, and paid them a visit. It was only a short bus-ride away.

Mr. Farland (senior) listened to Harry’s pathetic story and decided at once that it was genuine and called his own doctor. Harry’s father was stationed abroad in Military Intelligence; his ex-wife (they were divorced) lived in London. Mr. Farland contacted them both and also the county police. Colonel Ricketts, with Harry’s mother and plain-clothes police, descended on the school like avenging Furies.

Initially the police had taken Dr. Jolly away. Under interrogation he’d admitted to 21 instances of anal sex with underage boys. (Hey, I thought, you can add another nought to that, since he had me every week.) This got into the newspapers with some speculation that the scandal might force the school to close. But at a high level, wheels had been turning. There turned out to be something funny with Dr. Jolly’s papers. He wasn’t UK-born, his name was really Joli, and he had no right of domicile. So instead of doing a long stretch as a serial paedophile, Dr. Joli was deported, and was never heard of again. The newspapers soon found other stories to print.

Within the first few days after this there were two sequels. First, a notice instructing all first-and second-trebles to assemble in the big Practice Room. In charge of the meeting was Mr. Trefusis, the deputy head of music, a dark-complected, unsmiling young Cornishman. At once he got down to business.

“Now, you lot,” he began. “All you trebles are, for the time being, out of a job. You’ve been losing too much school work and some of you, frankly, have been getting spoiled rotten.” (You can say that again, I thought).

“Singing in a choir isn’t just about being in the Top Twenty (this to Mark) or being Lord High Everything Else (this to me). “Listening to some of you, I can’t understand how you were ever selected. You sound like tom-cats that have just been to the vet”.

No one laughed. This was too near the truth. But it showed up something much more important. Mr. Trefusis had no idea what had been going on.

“And so, for the time being,” he continued, “we shall make do with a Male Voice choir only – that is, only tenors and baritones. But I shall be conducting tests in musical theory for everybody in this room. Those who pass can be re-admitted to the choir if they want. If you fail, well, sorry, but it’s goodbye”.

“And another thing. There’ll be no Firsts and Seconds, no Heads of this and that, none of this mullarkey about promotions. Only one person will say what’s to happen – me! Got it? Good. Away you go then!”

The second sequel involved little Harry Ricketts, with happy consequences. Harry’s neutering operation had been early in the New Year, as his father had now discovered. There was nothing illegal about it: under the amended law it was possible to get a young boy’s balls taken out with no questions asked. But eunuchry was not what Colonel Ricketts had in mind for HIS son. Harry disappeared for several days, for a consultation in New York, with a Dr. Niemann, and when he came back he had a very strange story to tell.

Dr. Niemann was a leading genito-urologist who had pioneered several new techniques. One of these involved the total removal of a boy’s testicles during cancer treatments, storing them in deep-freeze, and afterwards re-connecting the cords and blood vessels. It was like a castration/uncastration. Dr. Niemann was a world-class expert, not in destroying boys’ balls, but in saving them. He knew all about Neutersol and its powers.

The action of Neutersol is totally painless (I knew that personally!) but little Harry had suffered, sometimes severely, ever since his injections. That explained a lot of his crying. Dr. Niemann found, in Harry, a rare aberration: Harry’s body tissue was trying to reject the drug. His testicles had not withered away, but instead retreated into his body. Dr. Niemann injected him with a cocktail of hormones, enzymes and what-have-you's – and the inflammation died away.

Harry showed me, not without pride, that his balls had reappeared in his scrotum and were on the mend. Dr. Niemann had been confident that they would develop normally– meaning that in time he could fuck girls, wank, and more importantly - there was no reason now – provided he passed the exams – why he shouldn’t go into the Army, as he’d always wanted to.

I thought to myself that Neutersol wasn't quite idiot-proof after all. But then it came to me that little Harry's case was probably the one-in-a-million exception. Still, I was happy for him...and perhaps just a tiny bit jealous, but I digress.

The rest of the Easter term passed off quietly. In the last two weeks Mr. Trefusis held the examinations in musical theory. Some days later, when the holidays had begun, the three of us – Melanie, Roddy and myself, were back in the New Forest. Melanie greeted us as “her little gelding,” i.e. Roddy, and “her great gelding,” – me.

Some time later we were in the sailing dinghy on one of the very best sort of Spring days: warm sunshine and a light wind, hardly enough to give us steerage way. I was steering. Melanie was sitting on the centre thwart, her legs sprawling, knickers showing, looking at me with half-closed, dreamy eyes. Was she regretting that I’d had my balls pricked and could never, ever, do what she longed for?

We’d been talking about the musical theory test results. Mark had passed comfortably. I’d scraped through. There were two surprises.

Roddy had earned a Distinction – the best ever! Knowing that the tests were in the offing, in his usual quiet way he’d read it all up. I made a mental note to have Mark introduce him to his recording people. After all, if Aled Jones could do it, then Roddy was a sure-thing.

The other surprise was Tommy Chow. He’d failed to answer a single question. “And so,” I’d been saying “there was really no need for Tommy to be neutered at all, for all the good it did him. Anyway he’s gone now”. (Tommy had left at the end of term).

Roddy had been sitting in the bows, trailing one hand dreamily in the water. Until now he’d made no comment. “And that,” he now put in, “would have been a waste of an opportunity. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say”.

Which might have referred to Tommy Chow’s balls or to Tommy himself.

Roddy had had the last word.