Simon's Christmas

Simon’s Christmas

Lying there in the dusk of a winter afternoon I thanked my stars that I lived in the 21st century. And I wasn’t just collecting my thoughts for a class paper.

With five others I’d been absent from school for almost the whole of the autumn term (if you want to know where, and why, you can read about our adventures in “Made Safe”.) Returning, we were greeted with “Remember, you are now back at school”... We were also reminded of this in other ways, several times a day. Like having double PE on a Saturday morning,000 on the horizontal beam in the gym, “to wake us all up” they said.

The exercise, when Sergeant-Instructor Warren shouted “GO!” was: (1), sprint to the beam at an oblique angle; (2), place my hand on the top of the beam, (3), scissor-kick over the beam, (4), come smartly to attention on the far side, (5) sprint round to the rear of the squad and await my next turn. Okay in theory but it didn’t work out like that.

My wrists aren’t very strong. I can’t box, and the weakness hinders me in other ways, like now. I didn’t get a proper grip, and came down very hard with the beam between my legs, jarring my spine. The gym and everything in it went round and round, in violent reds and greens and purples. Unable to help myself I threw up on the floor. Sergeant-Instructor Warren tut-tutted, dismissed the class and went to the phone, to summon the janitor to clean up, and for Nurse to take me away, since I couldn’t walk without support.

Why are young horses, before training as steeplechasers or hurdlers, always gelded first? So that, if they come down on top of the jumps, they won’t be afraid of hurting anything. Well, at least I had the same advantage. I’d been “pruned”, just as they are. (Or I might have been taken to hospital where doctors would have had to fight to save my balls. What a sick joke that is!)

But there was a huge bruise at the top of my legs, turning all colours and spreading, and waves of pain were radiating and pulsing from the base of my spine. Nurse thought that an overnight stay in the infirmary would “do me the world of good”. Inevitably the first item in my stay was one of Nurse’s enemas and she went straight out to fill the bag and prepare the tube. Lying on my side on a plastic sheet with the nozzle up my bum, was usually something I hated, but today, as the warm soapy water flooded into my gut, it was somehow comforting. Perhaps Nurse had added something to the water. I almost drifted off to sleep.

Next, some analgesic cream all over the bruised area. It gave Nurse an excuse for feeling round my penis and the place – now just a patch of darker skin – where up to the age of 12½ I’d had a scrotum and balls. Finally a poultice, that was supposed to draw out the inflammation. This went between my legs and was held in place by a tape round my middle. It looked like, and was in fact based on, a girl’s old-style sanitary towel.

That had been about two hours ago. The clock on the wall said half-past one. I was already horribly bored. My mind wandered on to all sorts of things and I found myself thinking about Cecco.

When I was almost twelve, and being neutered was turning from a possibility to a certainty, I’d wondered what my future would be, when my balls were gone. It was then that I’d first seen the famous painting “Love Victorious” and been introduced to Cecco. From his cracked and discoloured canvas, Cecco’s chubby face, with its enigmatic smile, beneath his mop of tousled dark curls, had looked out at me across five centuries and seemed to say “It’s not too bad, you’ll get by”. For Cecco had been a boy-eunuch too. He'd gotten by, and so would I.

I just wasn't sure how right then, but I digress again.

A homeless orphan on the streets of Florence, Cecco had lived by his wits and when he was old enough by selling himself on street corners. The laws against sodomy were severe to put it mildly. Men were sent to the galleys for life, but the fate of their passive partners was different. They were added to the list of the ten thousand children castrated in Italy every year.

Cecco might have been disposed of to a visiting slave dealer and ended up somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. There was a limitless market for a pretty page who could with all safety be left alone with his master’s daughter or concubine, once he had been suitably “pruned” between his legs, his testicles removed and his spermatic nerves destroyed. Cecco was awaiting his operation when the artist heard about him and decided to take him on as a model.

Cecco was saved from a life of slavery but the artist, eyeing the boy’s rounded thighs and soft bottom, allowed his castration to go ahead: neutered, he would make a prettier model, and for much longer. The artist actually went along and sketched the boy on the barber-surgeon’s table together with all the gruesome clamps, irons and pincers used to turn a boy into a eunuch.

Castration of boys in the 1500’s was extremely common. With pre-pubescent youngsters, whose balls were still dormant, it was reckoned minor surgery. But the methods were borrowed from the farmyard. Cecco didn’t write about his operation, but another famous castrato of the time wrote simply “They cut off my testicles and cauterised the wound,” making it sound like something and nothing. If it sounds like that to you, remember that a lot of boys didn’t survive the operation. They succumbed to pain, toxic shock, or blood poisoning. Some just bled to death when the cords failed to close. But there was another cause too, I thought.

Many boys would have accepted it as I’d once done, out of curiosity, as an operation on my “privates”. It was dirty, therefore it was interesting. Besides that, people told me “Lots of boys have their balls pricked” and “You won’t be so restless and unhappy” and even “You won’t ever have to bother with those silly girls” and I’d accepted this until I realised fully what had been done to me. Then the shock hit me. I’d had my balls pricked so that I could never fuck girls, and besides that, my voice would never change, I’d never grow any body hair – in short I would never be a man. I’d cried myself to sleep- and that was three years ago.

Then at school, not many months before, our Music Director, the evil and perverted Dr Jolly, had been identifying orphan boys and getting them neutered at a rate of two or three a month. Some boys cried unconsolably, at the loss of something that not even a miracle could restore. Cried and cried and cried.. Some of Cecco’s fellow-sufferers, I’m convinced, died of a broken heart.

Cecco had survived; one of the lucky ones, if you look at it like that. I could scarcely begin to picture the agony of the knife and hot irons. In the painting he had big balls and a sturdy penis (hanging limp) but that was artist’s licence (whoever would want to see the great god Eros as a eunuch?). They had been painted-on! When he’d been sketched, on the point of being “done”, his cock and balls had in fact been as small as mine were at that age, although no one would know but me (because no one had sketched ME, having my balls pricked.) But I was thankful, like I said, to have lived in the 21st century.

From the remote past to the present, my thoughts turned to Roddy. A year before, the prospect of adolescence had hung over him like a black cloud. Getting neutered had transformed him. Externally his operation had been a total success, no trace left of balls or scrotum, and even a drastic circumcision a few weeks back (he’d somehow picked up balanitis) hadn’t distressed him. It left him with a small slender penis, more limp than mine, with a tip like a baby mushroom, peeking over a fold of puckered skin.

He hadn’t joined us on “Operation Made Safe” because I thought he wouldn’t concentrate enough on what we had to do. Besides that, he now had his own little circle, boys like Michael Banner and little Calum Hislop, Colin’s kid brother. Several senior boys were known to have a “crush” on Roddy but they got no encouragement either from Roddy or any of his mates. They had innocent pleasures and apparently no sexual longings whatever. Lucky them!

The truth was, Roddy concentrated on his new interests to the point of obsession. Quite a lot of weekends (his only free time during term) he was at the recording studio. Of that, more in a minute. When he wasn’t doing that, his latest thing was surveying: Uncle Carl had got him a theodolite. For most of the summer break Roddy had been mapping the headwaters of Lymington Haven, where his home was. He explored every creek, inlet and muddy ditch, and if ever I got a word out of him it would be “Simon, you know, the Ordinance Survey map is quite wrong at Reference so-and-so, you know, the Portsmouth road, the A 3”. I wondered what sort of company he’d be at Christmas – I might as well talk to a signpost!

Whilst thinking about that, steps sounded on the polished floor. I turned over and saw Mark. “Hello” he said. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you. How are you feeling?”

“Bloody” I said. “But it’ll pass. You’ve been elusive too. Where have you been?”

“With my trustees. And in court, also. Seeing off Auntie Freda. And that’s why I needed to see you. Can I come and stay for Christmas?”

“Of course! That’s a really, really cool idea”. I meant that. Finally the gods had smiled on me!

Mark’s face reddened. “What I really meant was, can I stay permanently? I can’t stay in Rustington any longer.”

Since losing his parents at age five or so, in a sailing accident, Mark had been in the custody of his Auntie Freda, his mother’s elder sister. When Mark wanted to get neutered, his Aunt had paid the bill. Other than board-and lodging Mark cost her very little: his school fees were covered by a choral scholarship. But Mark’s singing career had hit the big time, and his aunt had tried to muscle in on his new-found wealth.

“She got nowhere with the trustees” said Mark. “The what-you-ma-call-um, trust deed, gives her the right to board-and-lodging, period. The head trustee, that nice old Doctor Warburton, spelled it out fully. So she took her case to court. That got her nowhere, either. Her lawyers mentioned very costly surgical treatment and of course the Judge wanted to know what it was. Fortunately they gave him a paper to read so no one had to explain. So he read all about getting me neutered and do you know, his expression didn’t change at all! But, Simon, do you know what she paid?”

I shook my head.

“Three – thousand – pounds! All for a rotten little five-mil. of colourless liquid. Two-and-a half into each ball. Imagine!”

I said nothing. Bought over the Internet the stuff cost a tiny fraction of that. The true cost was probably pennies. Mark went on.

“The lawyers went into a huddle, and the Court awarded her the three thousand as a special case. When she’s paid their costs there won’t be much left, if anything. Then they went into a huddle again, and the Judge said in the pompous way Judges have, “it would be just and equitable if I changed my accommodation arrangements.” In short Auntie Freda wanted me out. So I agreed of course. My stuff’s all in the School stores”.

Mark was looking well. Some months before he’d been dangerously ill, but by the time some of us went away to help with “Operation Made Safe” he was so near to full recovery that I’d suggested he should join the party. In fact it did him good; wonderful food, plenty of rest, plenty of exercise and a doctor on site (a very odd fish, that doctor, but you can read about that somewhere else). What his Auntie was up to really made me angry - take the boy in, then ship him off to school, enjoy his successes with him, then toss him out on the street when something bad happened to him?! It was unthinkable. But just as Cecco had gotten by, so would Mark.

And so would I.
I rather enjoyed the thought that his Auntie wouldn't be getting ANYTHING of his earnings.

“Well of course you can move in, silly mutt!” I said. So that was OK. Only in one respect had Mark not recovered – his strange creaking voice, so unlike his usual clear tones – high pitched but never shrill. Sometimes he seemed to have a hard time just talking, lately.

“It’s quite alright with the studio” said Mark, when I asked about his singing. “You know how when Roddy and I cut “The Flower Duet” together, live, what a runaway success that was. Well, there’s a whole load of my earliest stuff, that was never released. “O for the Wings of a Dove”, “Bless this House”– all sorts of things like that - old ladies love them, but my solo versions weren’t particularly good... Well, the studio have got Roddy to do voiceovers on some of these and they’ve gone really, really well. “Exsultate, Jubilate” has had rave reviews. Roddy gets the lion’s share of the royalties because he’s doing all the work, and I don’t need the money”.

“After all” he finished “the studio knew my voice would change one day, sooner or later, though not in this particular way”.

“Any news on that front?” I asked, meaning, of course, his dream of getting his neutering operation reversed.

The truth was, if I’d had to make a bet on which one of us – boy-eunuchs I mean – had the best chance of being restored, as little Harry Ricketts had been, to becoming a fully functional male, I should not have put Mark at the head of the list. The odds seemed too long to bother about. My money would have been on Colin Hislop who had lost his balls not to Neutersol, but to a bad attack of the mumps. His penis remained more or less that of a boy before puberty although no one had ever seen him with a hard-on. Mark, though, was a different proposition.

Mark’s body was good to look at, a round bottom, sturdy thighs – but his penis had retracted right in as far as the glans. He couldn’t pee standing up and for a long time had worn girl’s briefs (not thong underwear like mine) instead of underpants. If ever there was a “safe” boy-eunuch, and by safe I mean unable to “do it” with a girl, Mark wasn’t a bad imitation.

Up to the age of ten years and five months, Mark had been an ordinary, nondescript little boy. But then he’d been discovered by his day-school as a boy-soprano having, for his age, a voice of surprising range and power. They put him in for a choral scholarship to our school, which he easily won. They also took a tape-recording of him and sent it to a well-known firm of music publishers. They auditioned him – and Mark was on his way.

One best-seller followed another. Mark got used to seeing himself, dressed in choirboy surplice and ruff, looking out from stacked CDs in record shops and supermarkets. He read reviews of himself: the everyday ones naming him as the successor to Aled Jones, the more learned ones comparing him to famous boy-sopranos of the past, like Ernest Lough. He knew that it was earning him money, though in what quantities he only found out much later. And it all went to his head.

He knew it wouldn’t last – that his voice would change, perhaps in no more than two years, three at the most. Then in an idle moment he read how choristers in Italy used to be “altered” to keep their voices high: saved forever by removing two little blobs of gristle between their legs,. Mark made his mind up to be “done”. The only thing that scared him was the fear that it might hurt. Loss of his future manhood didn’t bother him – then!

Then he learned that doctors knew how to prick a boy’s balls and inject a drug which made them dry up. The effect was just the same as having them cut right out. For the time being he kept this knowledge to himself. It was difficult to imagine now that between making his mind up, at age eleven, and getting neutered just a year later, he’d been seeing a girl, Wendy, and in spite of their young age he had screwed her fully (something I’d never experienced) and even had a dry orgasm inside her.

How Mark ever managed to square his new-found sex life and its thrills and pleasures with becoming a castrato, completely baffles me. He might possibly have read the First Eunuch’s Tale in the Thousand and One Nights (in this, the boy slave continues having sex with the girl, after being gelded, and there is an explanation how this might have been possible). Or on those days when he couldn’t get an erection, which happens after all sometimes, Wendy might have shown him other ways of giving her a nice time.

Mark’s homework stopped short of finding out all he ought to have known about the drugs used for neutering boys He missed those medical journals detailing the application of “Neutersol” – the best-known one - in Central America, where they have a lot of children employed in fruit picking and jobs like that. Scientists thought that if a boy had only a tiny penis and no balls at all, he would be stronger for work than if he was always playing with his penis and thinking about girls all the time.

The medical journals had photographs of some of the boys after treatment, their sturdy thighs, their vestigial scrotums and minuscule penises, like young, gelded horses, with none of their energy squandered on producing sperm or testosterone. “Neutersol” had the property of attacking and reducing hormone-bearing male tissue. But the idea was not just to make the boys sterile. “Neutersol”’s effects somehow went to the root of a boy’s penis, making it shrink and retract. As I knew to my cost, a boy who’d had his balls pricked would never be able to “do it” with a girl.

Somehow Mark sold his Aunt the idea that he had to be suitably “pruned” to further his singing career. How he managed this was another mystery. But anyway, Mark had had his balls pricked. Biked down to the clinic, dropped his shorts to be “done”, and afterwards biked home again.

But I’ve said all this before. Replying to “any news on that front” Mark nodded. “Good as far as it goes. The Prof. has got some cultures started but thinks it’ll be June before he can start compatibility tests”.

Mark’s treatment was breaking entirely new ground. It might go either way. “But what I’m most encouraged by” he went on “is that horse. No argument about him. A perfectly ordinary horse out of a riding school, gelded years and years before, he’s behaving like a stud stallion. Not clear if he’ll ever be fertile, but that’s something else”.

It was something else indeed. Mark was entirely missing the point. The horse’s gelding operation would have spared his erectile nerves. It was touch-and-go whether Mark’s could be reactivated. Which he knew – and I knew too.

Mark had to go. Before leaving he bent down and kissed my cheek. “’Bye now, Simon”. In return I squeezed his hand. “’Bye, Mark”.

I must have dozed off, because when I was next conscious of anything, it was getting dusk. There were few more boring places than the infirmary in the afternoons, and when I heard steps on the stairs I hoped for some more company. Even Nurse, wanting to give me another enema, would help to pass the time.

It was Nurse, but she wasn’t alone. She was bringing a boy into the ward and installing him in the far bed. When I saw who it was, I thought that solitude would have been preferable. It was Martin Mooney, the stupidest boy in the school.

Nurse came over. “Marty’s badly traumatised” she whispered. “Be nice to him!” She blew me a kiss and went back to her little sitting-room, surprisingly without proposing an enema for either of us.

There are degrees of dumbness but Martin Mooney gave it a whole new dimension. (The funny thing was, he had an elder sister, a stunning blonde, who was dating Alec McIntosh of the Upper School, captain of the 2nd XV. I think he fucked her too. But I digress). Mooney was a dayboy who lived locally. He was overweight, with an expressionless pink face and lank mouse-brown hair. Like all the dayboys he was “intact” but if ever a boy deserved to get neutered, to take his hopelessly inadequate make-up out of the gene-pool, it was him.

All the masters dreaded having Mooney in their classes, but above all, Mr Meredith who taught nature-study to the lower forms, and Mr Goldstein the art master. Mr Meredith still treasured a class paper handed in by Mooney after a field trip to Timberley Woods. In “Bird Life” Mooney had included “Rabbits” and another section “Species observed on the wing” included “Boeing Triple Seven”. The effort that had sent Mr Goldstein prematurely grey was a picture, supposedly of “A Police Car Chase”. Pride of place in this masterpiece was Mooney’s parents’ corner shop “MOONEY’S STORES”. The police were there alright, recognisable by their headgear – but they were armed with bows and arrows.

But I was supposed to be nice to him. I had no reason for being. Some long time before, he’d come up to me and with a leer, said “I know about you, Scott. Got somefink wrong with yer, ain’t yer?” This was unforgivable. It was accepted as a matter of fact that some boys had a full set of “privates” while others didn’t. No one ever suggested that boy-eunuchs had anything wrong with them. They were just – well – they just WERE. But anyway I made the effort of hobbling across, hampered by the poultice between my legs, which had turned wet and uncomfortable. Mooney turned his head and opened one eye. It was like the eye of a dead fish. “Scott” he whispered.

“What’s the trouble, Marty?” I enquired. (Now calling him that, really was an effort!)

His answer was a long time coming. When it did, it told me all I needed to know. One word. One name.

“Meggarty”.

Meggarty was the school steward. At least, that’s how he was referred to. In practice he did all the heavy work round the kitchens and dining halls, and collected supplies in a white FordTransit van. Aged about sixty, bald, squat, grey-faced, bristly, he wasn’t an attractive specimen.

We gave him a wide berth. For if you got within earshot he would bend down and in a hoarse voice and with a gust of foul beery breath, whisper “Like it up yer bum, do yer? Enjoy that, up yer bum, do yer? Har, har, har!”

So far he’d never interfered with anybody from the school. Away from school premises it was a different matter. He used to go to the cinema, whenever there was the sort of film that kids like, and sit next to a likely-looking boy. After a while he’d put his hand on the boy’s knee and up the leg of his shorts. Unless the boy pushed him away (and no doubt some did, with a loud whisper of “Fook off, yer dirty old booger”) you can guess how he went on from there.

In time, fiddling with boys’ cocks got him in trouble with the police. But nothing was ever proved. The only town boy who ever made a complaint was well known to the “men in blue” as a petty thief, joyrider and arsonist. No one was ever going to take him seriously. Dr Holroyd, the Headmaster, had a weakness for “giving people a second chance” so Meggarty kept his job.

“Marty, do you want to tell me what happened?” I persisted, though gently. Mooney lay inert, his mouth half-open. He seemed to be in some sort of trance. Then with an effort he gave me another one-word answer. “Sixfields”.

Well, I knew where that was. I’d passed it often enough on cross-country runs. Sixfields was about three miles off, at the foot of the Downs. Once a World War II fighter base it had been, in succession, a cross-Channel air ferry terminal, an airfreight depot, and when these all failed, the headquarters of a flying club. But the runway was too short, the approach roads too narrow and winding. The place was now semi-derelict, some of the buildings rented out for storage. Across the front of a brick building, fronting the road, were the words “SIXFIELDS AIRPORT”, faded and corroded, on either side of a big clockface with no hands.

But when trade moved out, wildlife moved in. Hares, pheasants and partridges could be spotted on the grass-grown runway. Foxes had gone to ground in the culverts. There was usually a skylark to be heard, and with luck, seen. The variety of butterflies was legendary. So Sixfields, unwanted, useless, on the way to nowhere, became a Mecca for junior boys doing nature-study projects.

They were, in fact, encouraged to go there. All they were required to do was to write their names in a book, with “time out” and “time back”. The book lived on a shelf in the school main entrance, where anyone could see it.

Persuading Marty to tell me what had happened took all the patience I’d got – like watching paint dry. But I got there in the end. In his form, the two periods after morning break were designated “Private Study and Projects”. Mooney decided on a trip to Sixfields, the fine sunny day making him forget it was December. He filled in the book and set off on his bike.

But the silly sod went alone. And almost immediately after arriving, his front tire had gone flat. For some reason, instead of returning to school, he’d pushed on into the old air-base. Then a white van had come along and stopped. He recognised the driver – old Joe Meggarty, who visited his parents’ corner shop sometimes. Meggarty had lifted his bike into the back, and helped him into the passenger seat.

But then Meggarty had driven, not to the exit, but to a dead end between buildings. He’d stopped the van and Marty had heard with mounting terror, “Want it up yer bum, do yer? Every boy likes it up ‘is bum”. Unable to speak or even move, still less resist, he’d let the old man pull his shorts and pants down.

“And did he?” I asked.

Marty nodded. “Right the way in. He’d got some grease in a tin. But it ‘urt, ‘urt somefink terrible. I fink I’m bleeding”.

The rape – for that’s what it was – ended with Meggarty dumping the traumatised and crying boy in the lane outside the base, and throwing his bike into the ditch after him. When at the start of afternoon school Marty was missed, Mr Meredith looked in the Sixfields book. Active for his sixty-three years he had quickly got up a search party, which found Marty slowly wandering along the road, wheeling his bike, talking to himself. He was clearly in deep shock of some kind, unable to respond to questions. The Infirmary seemed much the best place for him.

Marty had scarcely finished telling me his horrifying tale when Nurse came clattering up the stairs. “Well, now” she began, with a broad smile on her rather foolish face. “That’s all settled, Marty. Your parents will come and collect you after six, when they’ve had time to shut up the shop. So now I’m going to give you a lovely…..”

I didn’t give her time to say “enema”.
“Stop!” I cried. “Nurse, you mustn’t! Can I talk to you, please – now!” I was trying to sound authoritative but only became shrill. This often happens. I couldn’t let this stupid woman ruin everything with her obsession for enemas. For an idea was rapidly forming in my mind.

Nurse looked very surprised but allowed herself to be led to the tiny recess at the end of the ward, where she kept dressings and so on. Without letting her start again, I told her what Marty had told me. “And he’s probably bleeding down there” I finished.

“But this is appalling – dreadful” said Nurse helplessly. “I ought to telephone the police, at once!”

I shook my head. “No” I said. “That would do no good at all. First, just imagine what it would do to him, being questioned by policemen – who’d probably say he was making it all up – having an examination by a police surgeon, none too gently, I’d guess – and then, if it did come to court? He’s none too bright. Defence counsel would make rings round him. He’d be scarred for life. Think, please think, before you do anything”.

“But what can I do?” asked Nurse, looking all around, as if the furniture held the answer..

“There’s evidence” I said “which might be valuable, if it’s put with other evidence that we haven’t got yet. You must take a swab”.

“A swab” repeated Nurse. (Did I have to spell out where she was to take it from, or what it was intended to capture? Fortunately she nodded agreement and I went on.)

“Get it while you’re cleaning him up. Don’t let him use the toilet until you have. And don’t give him an enema. Don’t even think about it”.

“A swab” said Nurse again. Light seemed to have dawned! “Yes, of course. Now where’s that box I keep them in with the other stuff?”

While Nurse fossicked about, I returned to Marty and got it into his thick skull that he must not, on any account, tell his parents what really happened at Sixfields. The story was that he'd set off and along the way his tire had burst. He’d fallen off his bike and knocked himself silly. No one – but no one – at this stage should know, or needed to know, what really happened. That could keep.

Nurse, now that she’d cottoned on to what was wanted, did all the necessary things. I caught a brief glance at some of the things she was looking through, and it frightened me. The swab was then safely stored in the fridge. Marty was given a mild relaxant and settled down for the rest of the afternoon. At six, his parents collected him – I heard snatches of what Nurse was saying; “No excitement please……..soft foods………bed early,” and a strongly-accented local voice replying “Yerss. O’course, Nurse. Yerss”.

At seven, Nurse reappeared, but not with my supper. Not yet. Marty had escaped an enema at my insistence. I didn’t. Wearily I took my pyjama-bottoms off…….

After breakfast next morning I escaped – officially this time. It being Sunday, and me still being Head Chorister I had the chapel choir to organise. Mark was out of action, probably permanently, so I had to rely on Roddy, young as he was, to lead the Decani side. Discipline wasn’t Roddy’s strong point although he looked every inch the senior chorister. His beauty was almost girlish – but then again, it wasn’t. Boy-eunuchs are something apart.

Halfway through the service I noticed one of the newly-recruited trebles, called Paul Abbott, look up with a silly grin on his face. Obviously he had something on the shelf that wasn’t a prayer book. Abbott was a lively kid, brown-eyed, with a mischievous expression. He was also “intact”. I’d only once seen him with his clothes off, under the shower, and thought what a perfectly-shaped set of “privates”, a nicely-tapering penis, two inches when “down” (and according to him, he never got erections), creamy testicles just beginning to plump-up. Just the right age.

A year ago, in the reign of Dr Jolly, Abbott would have paid a quick visit to the neutering clinic. If he was going to stay in the choir he ought to get his balls pricked right away. I made a mental note to do something about it. Had he ever thought about getting neutered? I’d also have to speak to him about misbehaving in choir of course, but nothing too heavy. Then I could lead him round to the subject.

Here I go; not long ago I was going on about my own distress at nearly age twelve, finding myself made impotent and sterile. And now I’m plotting the same fate for a fellow creature. What’s happened to me? Could all eunuchs be alike in that way?

After service, when I’d got rid of my cassock and surplice I went to find Manchit. As a Hindu he was excused chapel and often holed-up in the library. I hauled him outside for a walk round the field and told him about Martin Mooney.

“But everyone knows about that horrible old Meggarty” protested Manchit. “Mooney’s not the first boy he’s attacked. Do you know Adam Logan? No? Well it doesn’t matter if you do or not. Only Meggarty had a go at him, not long ago, and fortunately he realised in time what was happening and escaped with just a torn shirt”.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

“I think we should involve your uncle” said Manchit. “The diplomatic one, with the car”.

"Which car?" I joked, as Uncle Carl traded cars faster than most boys in the School changed their underwear!

And that was all there was time for, because the bell went for lunch. The weekend was slipping away fast. Winter Sundays weren’t my favourite time. Dark at four o’clock and a long boring evening. Monday tomorrow and no chance of seeing Uncle Carl till next weekend. Unless I asked for leave-of-absence. And on what excuse?

I didn’t need to fabricate one. The first thing I saw, after lunch, parked next to the Head’s Mercedes, was Uncle Carl’s long, gunmetal-grey Aston-Martin. (So much for the Jaguar!) And the next thing, I was being sent for, to go to Dr Holroyd’s study at once. I did a quick tidy-up and went along.

“Ah, there you are, Scott!” said the Head with (I thought) enforced jocularity. “No need to introduce you to Lord Manningham, is there? Ha, ha”.

“Oh, Headmaster, Carl Scott, if you please!” protested Uncle Carl, while I slipped across and took his hand. “Hello, Uncle Carl”. (Uncle Carl was of course a viscount as I told you once before, but he didn’t broadcast the fact and hated being called Lord.)

“All this is about, Simon” said Uncle Carl “is that I’ve begun a new business venture and decided that you aren’t too young to be involved officially. I’ve suggested to your Headmaster, and he’s agreed, that we should go out and discuss it, possibly over tea, and I should get you back here for locking-up time or whatever it’s called.”

“Well, of course, Uncle Carl, I’d love that” I said. “Can I bring a friend or is it too confidential?”

I had more than one reason for asking this. First of course I wanted to bring Manchit so that we could sort out what, if anything, could be done about Meggarty. You may guess the second reason. Uncle Carl had seduced me more than once. The summer before last, in his hotel, he’d pulled my shorts down and gently stroked my penis and fondled my bottom till I was practically begging for it. Left alone with Uncle Carl, I had no doubt how the day would end. And, well, I just didn’t want it to.

To my relief he said “Bring a friend by all means. Do I know him?”

“He’s called Manchit” I said. “Manchit Khannah. He’s Indian”.

“Ah, young Khannah!” interjected Dr Holroyd. “A brilliant fast bowler. A wise choice for a friend, Scott”.

Originally the one thing that Manchit and I had in common was that we were both neutered. As a ten-year-old boy acolyte in an Indian temple, Manchit had had a horsehair tourniquet looped around his scrotum and tightened daily until his spermatic cords atrophied and his testicles withered away, making him a eunuch. I'd thought he'd actually been sliced up, until he'd pointed out that he was NOT a Hijra, and that there WAS a difference - the main one being that he still had a penis.
But we’d found a lot of other points of contact since then.

Manchit was sent for, and introduced, and we all said polite goodbyes to Dr Holroyd. “Right, shall we go?” said Uncle Carl, and led the way out to his car. Manchit sat in the front passenger seat of the DB 8 and I had the rear to myself. “Where shall we go for tea?” Uncle Carl called over his shoulder. “Heads, it’s the Grand, tails, it’s the Hilton Metropole”. I called heads. “The Grand it is” said Uncle Carl.

On the way down to Brighton Uncle Carl carried on a long conversation with Manchit, in what I afterwards learned was Telugu. Manchit had been enormously impressed. Uncle Carl had begun by asking him in Hindi whereabouts in India he came from, and on being told “up-country Andhra Pradesh, not far from Secunderabad” immediately switched to Telugu. “Your uncle is a great man!” Manchit said.

Somehow it didn't surprise me that Uncle Carl would be familiar with that area and even speak the language.

The huge seafront lounge of the Grand Hotel was nearly empty. Uncle Carl bagged an alcove with a window, where we could talk without being overheard. “Now, Manchit, if you’ll forgive us for a few minutes I’ve some family business to put to Simon” said Uncle Carl. “But there’s no harm in you hearing all about it”.

Uncle Carl had bought a derelict country house, just across the county border from Lymington Haven, and was going to reopen it as a country club and conference centre. It was to be called (imagine!) the Simon Scott Centre. “It has a sort of ring about it, don’t you think?” said Uncle Carl. “The order-book is already filling up and the renovation’s only half completed, so I’ve no doubt the market is there. Now, I want to allocate you a block of shares. You’ll get the dividend from those. And you are to have a regular income. Not enormous but enough to pay your own school fees and a bit over”.

Manchit’s eyes were shining. “Simon, you will be financially independent!” he said admiringly.

I was a bit taken. Of course, that solved the problem of my wondering what a modern-day boy eunuch was supposed to do for a living once he was out in the world!

“And of course you can stay there whenever you like, without charge” “Uncle Carl finished. “Now to more serious matters. Manchit’s been telling me about this brute at your school, raping a boy”. (Somehow, though I can’t explain it, there was all the difference in the world between what Meggarty did to Mooney, and what Uncle Carl had done to me, several times – although both were much the same, really. I said nothing.)

“This boy Mooney” said Uncle Carl. “Manchit tells me he’s very slow, and that’s why you’ve sidelined him”.

“He’s practically half-witted” I said.

“M-mm” said Uncle Carl. “I see what you’re thinking and I certainly agree with what you’ve told me – or rather what Manchit has told me. With a witness like that it’s most unlikely the Crown Prosecution Service would ever let it come to court, and even if it did, a barrister would make mincemeat of the poor kid. Oh, good – here comes our tea!

“Before we start, have you both got mobile phones, ones that work?”

We both had. “Well, what I suggest” began Uncle Carl again “Sorry, Manchit, did you want to say something?”

Manchit did. A great deal. And over tea we worked out the plan, in which, although Uncle Carl would pull many of the strings, Manchit would have a very central rôle, entirely of his own choosing. Before returning to school we all knew exactly what to do.

The success of the plan rested on the belief that Meggarty would use Sixfields again, as a safe cruising-ground to pick up boys, and that he would use the book to find out when any boys would be going there. I had to pick a time when Meggarty would be certain to look at the book, just after Manchit and I had signed it. Fortunately this was easy; Manchit had studied Meggarty’s movements and knew them well.

The day arrived. For getting to Sixfields we’d decided to use a local bus: bikes would be in the way and part of the plan was that we should appear to be stranded. From the entrance we sent the first phone call to confirm our arrival. We walked on. From inside my pocket my mobile rang.

“In position now”. This meant that Uncle Carl had concealed himself and the DB 8 in a side turning which was practically invisible from the main road.

On we went. At a place where the roadway forked, some firm had once tried to set up a display of garden sheds and summer-houses. Of these, only one remained, an eight-sided structure with shelves all round the inside. Most of the glass was broken but it would do for concealment- just.

This time, Manchit’s phone rang. “Van on its way”. A frightening message in its way, yet the one we wanted. Meggarty had fallen into the trap.

From my hiding place in the old summerhouse I couldn’t hear everything, but I heard the van slow down to a stop, the noise of the door sliding back, and then the unmistakable voice: “Want a lift back ter school, does yer?”

I couldn’t hear Manchit’s reply but I heard the door close again and the van move off. Not very far: a hundred yards at most. Five seconds crawled by. Ten. Then something I’d not expected. Someone screaming, or rather squealing. And it didn’t sound like Manchit. Unhitching my Polaroid camera from its pouch I ran like hell down the road.

For pictures “in flagrante” it couldn’t have been better. Manchit’s shorts and pants were round his ankles. There were blobs of sperm on his bottom and on his clothes, which would show up well – especially on his brown skin - in the photographs. Since he was facing downwards, I didn’t have to worry about showing the scar of his lost manhood.

Meggarty’s flies were undone. The man himself sat motionless and the squealing was coming from him, a thin unearthly tearing sound, very unnerving to listen to. I snapped away busily with the Polaroid, then with a roar of engines came the climax of this strange affair. First the huge, gunmetal-grey form of the DB 8. The second vehicle was a Range Rover, brightly patterned in blue-and-yellow checks, and conspicuous by the blue flashing light on its roof. No need to explain what that was, and almost immediately it was joined by another.

From the first Range Rover there emerged a uniformed police sergeant who told me rather abruptly to “stand clear, please”. I heard snatches of what he was saying “Joseph Arthur Meggarty, I am arresting you ………..do not have to say anything……………may harm your defence” and then two other policemen came from the second Range Rover and took Meggarty away.

The sergeant was a man of few words. He looked around the van, made notes, said “Right – I’ve seen all I need to. Get him dressed”. (“Him” was Manchit). A woman PC offered to help him but Manchit waved her away. For the first time the sergeant seemed to notice me, still holding the Polaroid. “What’s this for, then?” he demanded.

“I brought it when I came here, with my friend” I said “hoping we might see badgers”. (A silly choice, that, seeing that badgers only come out at night). The sergeant frowned. But then a big figure towered over him: Uncle Carl, large, tweed-suited, calm. “You can take his word for it, sergeant” said Uncle Carl. (His tone implied “You’d better!”)

“And you, sir, are…?” enquired the sergeant.

“My name’s Carl Scott. I’m a magistrate. In fact I chair the Hampshire Bench more often than not. You can check with the office in Winchester. Here’s my county court ID”.

The sergeant looked at it and sighed. “I think I need to get a few facts straight” he said, and took out his notebook again.

The Range Rover was too cramped for an interview room but somehow we all squashed in. We stuck to our pre-arranged story. Manchit and I had just happened to go to Sixfields to photograph wild life. Uncle Carl, who just happened to want to see me, arrived at the school but instead found us gone, and decided to follow. Arriving, he’d seen a white van cruising the trading estate in a suspicious manner and decided to summon help, “and in response, sergeant, you arrived soon afterwards. Unfortunately, though, not soon enough to prevent an offence being committed”.

The sergeant grunted. He scribbled away for a while, then read his notes back to us. They began “Acting on information received”, after which he jabbed a finger at my Polaroid. “I’ll need to take that” he said. “Could be given in evidence”. He gave me a receipt. (Weeks later I got it back) “Well, I needn’t keep you any longer” he said. The three of us extracted ourselves from the Range Rover, leaving just the woman PC who all this time had been squashed into the rear seat, not saying a word. I felt sorry for her. The sergeant started his engine and roared off.

“Whew, what a dull young man!” breathed Uncle Carl as we all got into the Aston Martin. “He was hard work! Still, we got what we came for. Better go and give the glad tidings to Dr Holroyd, I suppose”.

Manchit was very quiet. I was itching to know something – how he had reduced Meggarty to such a state of gibbering helplessness that he could only sit there and howl.

“It’s a thing I once learned” said Manchit. “A long time ago. How to make the man finish. It’s very quick, and I expect, quite painful”. (“A long time ago” referred to Manchit’s nighmarish time as a temple eunuch, when he’d had to sit naked on the temple steps and offer himself to all comers.) “But what, exactly, did you do?” I persisted.

“It’s just an Indian thing” Manchit replied. “You don’t need to know”. And that was that.

“Oh dear, oh dear!” sighed Dr Holroyd when we told him. “I don’t know what to tell the Governors. The strangest thing is, there’s no record of how we came to employ Meggarty. He seems to have, well, sort of happened, years and years ago. And he used to polish my car so nicely, too!”

Dr Holroyd had other troubles. Martin Mooney had gone a.w.o.l., and at that time no one knew where. Not till eight o’clock that evening was there any word, and then a police van – this time Transport Police – delivered him, snivelling, to the Headmaster.

Making the most of his half holiday, Mooney, true to his name, had gone mooning about at the train station. He hadn’t meant to get on the train, just sort of look inside, not get on it…..But get on he did. And as ill luck would have it, it was the one cross-country train of the day, the Holyhead boat train. When, finally, the ticket inspector cornered Mooney, the train was approaching Crewe.

Mooney would have made a hopeless police witness. Fortunately he was never called since Meggarty was persuaded to enter a plea of Guilty, and there was no trial. So the Polaroids were never produced in court (tho’ I didn’t get my camera back for months) and the swab, which I’d had such trouble persuading Nurse to get, ended up down the lav. Weeks later a few lines appeared in the local paper. Meggarty had asked for 28 other cases to be taken into consideration – town boys apparently. Unmoved by this contrition, the Judge called him a “dirty creature” and put him away for four years. It should have been longer.

And then, suddenly, end of term. House suppers, followed by the Carol Service, everyone in full dress – Dr Holroyd’s red MD robes making him look like an outsize garden gnome, Mr Trefusis’ more sober B Mus get-up turning him into a Cornish storm-crow. Roddy and the other castrato trebles looking – and singing – like angels. Next day, packed at last, down to the station – and away. Mark and Roddy were to follow by a later train.

It was a couple of hours later in my attic bedroom with the dormer window and the plaid rug on the bed, while I was getting unpacked, that I heard the sound of tires on the gravel and a spine-tingling scrunch of gears. I peered out of the window. Of course! There was no mistaking Melanie’s driving habits. The poor old Rover was still going, although I had no clue how!

Her feet on the last flight of stairs. Her hand on the door. And there she was. “Hello” I said. “I’ve missed you”.

“I’ve missed you too” she said.

And that was all we could think to say, before I pulled her to me, holding her close with one arm, while with the other I felt for the clasp at the top of her jeans. “Wait” whispered Melanie and released it herself, afterwards pulling her jeans down her legs and kicking them out of the way. She had on the lacy grip-tops again and, of course, her tiny black thong. I dropped to my knees and pressed my face against her thighs.

She smelled of hot sex and of the deodorant that all girls use on their fannies. Her thighs felt unbearably soft. It’s supposed to be impossible after neutering, but I swear my penis gave a twitch. Melanie ran her fingers through my hair. “I love you!” I moaned. Never, never was I so conscious of being what I was, impotent and sterile.

“Silly boy!” Melanie scolded. “Silly, silly boy! Here – let’s get properly undressed and on to that nice bed and have some fun. You can kiss mine and I’ll suck yours”.

On the narrow bed, I buried my face between Melanie’s thighs as she took my cock in her mouth. As she began to suck my penis and caress it with her tongue, I felt for the tiny button that gave Melanie so much sex-pleasure. I should have been content to go on doing that. But suddenly I remembered something and stopped. “Hey!” I said. Melanie started. “Whatever is it?” she demanded. “Just as I was beginning to really enjoy it!”

I began telling her about Paul Abbott, his mischievous expression, his snapping brown eyes. That he wasn’t a boy-eunuch – yet, but if he was going to stay in the choir he ought to have his balls pricked right away. I told her of Paul’s suspicion of impotence (“I’ve tried and tried, but I just can’t!”) This was a big mistake.

Melanie’s eyes had narrowed to slits. I’d seen that expression before. Twice. She began to speak, in a strange, dreamy voice, scarcely above a whisper.

“Oh, Simon! If only we could! It’s ages since we gelded a boy. Simply ages. Can’t you picture it – taking his pants off, getting a grip on his balls, so as to see where to shove the needle in, to geld him, so that he’ll never be able to “do it”! And if he can’t “do it” anyway, then he wouldn’t mind too much, losing his balls. Oh, Simon, Paul must have his balls pricked - he’d make a lovely gelding! Simon, please!” She was shaking all over.

Months before, just after Roddy was neutered, Uncle Carl had commented “You need to watch that young woman, before she gelds every intact male in the district”. He’d been quite right. The gelding operation, whether carried out on horses or boys, to make them impotent and submissive, was what turned Melanie on most, far more than straight sex. She loved to roll the words round her mouth “cut out his balls”, “have his balls pricked” and so on. By going on about Paul Abbott I’d woken that obsession.

“There, see what you’ve done” Melanie teased. “You’ve made me horny! So horny that I have to ride you, now, this minute. Go and get ready, quick!” She pushed me off the bed and towards the bathroom door. “Get ready” was a polite way of telling me to give myself an enema. I prepared a powerful soap-and-water mix, filled the bag, stuck the nozzle up my bum and waited.

“Hurry up!” called Melanie. “I’ve got a new thingie to try out”. Cursing the new thingie, whatever it was, I quickly emptied my guts into the lav., and wiped myself dry.

Melanie had stripped bare, all bar her stockings. Her boobs had filled out over the past weeks. I wanted to kiss them but she was more concerned to show me the new dildo she'd bought over the internet. "This thing is supposed to stimulate my clitty” she explained, pointing – “and this, of course, goes up your back-alleys. “Let’s try it”.

Melanie began to strap the thing on. Obedient as always I got down on all fours on the carpet. Melanie began very gently to push the dildo – pliant but firm – up my rectum. It felt enormous! Astride my rump, Melanie pretended to spur me into a trot. “Gee-up, Simon! C’k, C’k”.

On hands and knees I set off, with Melanie, the dominatrix, encouraging me, her submissive gelding, with more horsey noises, and squeezing me between he legs. With every stride (if you can call it that) the thing up my bottom seemed to go in further still. It was touching on something. In fact, a very great deal. There was a feeling I can’t begin to describe. It was something like the warm glow I felt, when I had my cock sucked, but far more intense: a wonderful feeling but at the same time rather terrible – something far bigger than anything I’d ever come across.

Melanie was on the very edge of her orgasm. But inside me, long-forgotten nerve-endings were jumping and jangling. No doubt about it this time – my penis actually twitched and my tummy-muscles went rigid. Melanie gave a squeal as she came. In the same instant I felt that the top of my head was coming off. I began to shake all over, violently. Something deep inside of me felt like it HAD to get out, but couldn't. My arms gave way, precipitating Melanie on to the floor. I followed her, sprawling, and we lay there in a tangle of arms and legs.

“Whatever’s the matter, Simon?” Melanie demanded. “You’re as white as a sheet!”

“I don’t know” I said, weakly. “I really just don’t know”.

But in fact, I knew all too well. I’d had my first-ever full orgasm. Something that is second nature to every intact boy – most of all if he’s uncircumcised. But for me! At age eight, grown-ups had decided I mustn’t be allowed to “fiddle with it”. Hours and hours of agony till my circumcision had healed up. And then, all chances of cock-fun taken away forever by two pricks of a needle.

It was in that moment that I came to a frightening realization: It seemed the only way I could get an orgasm was by having a penis – real or artificial – up my behind, and if that was so, then I never wanted to have another. The idea was confusing and terrifying.

Christmas morning…………………

I’d been prepared for a very quiet time, just myself, Roddy, Mark, and Uncle Carl in the background. But around ten o’clock there was a scrunch of tires on the gravel. Not Melanie this time, but a mini-bus. Looking outside I recognised many familiar faces: the Roebuck twins, Jack Elliott, Sandie Ross, Manchit, the Hislop brothers, and half a dozen others I only knew by sight.

It seemed that Uncle Carl had got together with Dr Holroyd, and arranged that all boys with nowhere to go except School, should join us for Christmas dinner. There was another common factor. As Jack Elliott had once said, there wasn’t a pair of knackers among the lot of us.

There was a gynormous present-giving session under an 8-foot tree. My own pressies (Uncle Carl again) were mostly clothes. I had very few clothes apart from school uniform, and cotton PE shorts worn over one of Melanie’s thongs are not ideal for winter weather (spare me the jokes about brass monkeys, please!) Roddy got a drawing board and a box of drawing instruments for his map-making craze.

Then Christmas dinner, all ordered by Uncle Carl from Fortnum’s. Three enormous turkeys and all the trimmings. For accompaniment, the older ones among us were introduced to Puligny Montrachet, and when the pudding came round in a blue blaze of burning brandy, to a glass of port. The younger ones filled up on Coke. As background music we had Roddy’s new Christmas album. Mark listened intently. His presents had all been music. What thoughts were going through his mind? I had a few ideas which I’ll keep to myself.

No doubt in a million homes across the country others were listening to the same DVD. How many teenage girls, eyeing Roddy’s angelic features above his choirboy ruff, and getting hot pants at the thought of what they’d like to do with him, would ever suspect that his singing voice had been achieved by being castrated and drastically circumcised– left with only a winkle between his legs? But now was not the time to dwell on that.

Replete and contented, several of the younger ones fell asleep. Later, Jack Elliott got up a “Monopoly” school, but found a formidable adversary in Colin Hislop, whose mathematical brain enabled him to win easily.

No intention of shipping all these somnolent youngsters back to school. No need either. There were several huge rooms, vacant since the Knight-Foxes moved out, where Mrs Hodges, the housekeeper, a motherly person – had contrived bunk beds, shake-downs, futons- where, in time, all bedded-down.

On Boxing Day, predictably, people came-to by slow degrees. Breakfast and lunch merged into one another, with turkey bits the main ingredient. In the afternoon Uncle Carl proposed that, for a breath of air, we should all go and look at the country house he’d saved from dereliction and was converting into a conference and leisure centre. It was a big sandstone building with a classical front. Contractors’ materials were all over the place and beneath the portico a family of cats were in possession. “The builders feed them” commented Uncle Carl, and led the way inside.

Over the imposing entrance door I noticed the words “THE SIMON SCOTT CENTRE” cut into the stonework and picked out in gold leaf. I didn’t point it out to anyone, though.

Downstairs the public rooms were taking shape, carpeted in a garish red-and-green tartan – the Scott tartan as I afterwards learned. I didn't even know there was one of those. But Uncle Carl led the way to an elevator. It was a small one and we had to go up in relays, to what felt like the top of the building. Here, Uncle Carl handed me a key, and pointed to a door.

“This is where you’ll sleep, when you stay here” he said. “So you can keep that key”.

The bedroom on the other side took my breath away. You sank to your knees in the carpet. Everything was very expensive-looking and lavish. “Gosh, Simon” murmured Jack Elliott “You’ll sleep like a king in here”. The bathroom matched, but this wasn’t what Uncle Carl had brought us up here for. “Try that door in the corner” he hinted.

The room beyond appeared at first to contain a vast irregular pile of rubble, but when the light came on, this resolved itself into an enormous model railroad layout, tunnels, forests, viaducts, everything. Uncle Carl crossed to a control panel and flicked a switch. There was a rumbling noise, and round a bend there appeared my big Burlington and Northern diesel, and freight cars, which I’d been given years before, and forgotten about. “Found that when having a sort-out” commented Uncle Carl.

I hadn't thought about that silly train in a long time, but seeing it again made me almost want to cry. Another one of those eunuch things, I suppose.

The big diesel disappeared into one of the tunnels, emerging later at a higher level. Sandie Ross was drooling. “Gosh, oh gosh” he kept saying. Sandie ran the school model railroad club, and I had a sudden idea. “Uncle Carl” I said. “Couldn’t the school model railroad club have the use of this place sometimes?”

“That’s partly the reason I had it done” said Uncle Carl. “I’ve spoken to the Governors already”.

Now I knew why the junior boys, opening their Christmas pressies, had all discovered passenger cars, cattle cars, tank cars and other bits of rolling stock. I couldn’t understand it at all. The train layout had cost a bomb, and as for my “suite” – for that was what it was – that must have run into thousands. And the name carved into the stonework over the main entrance. Why? If Uncle Carl had me in mind as a lover (and he’d had me enough times, heaven knows) he’d have arranged to have my room near his own, most probably adjacent with a communicating door.

Or was all this a sort of memorial, to the son he’d never had ? Was I the substitute? And if I was, why had he ever agreed – let alone been eager – that I should have my balls pricked? Which he was. Hadn’t I overheard him say to Auntie Jennifer – my guardian at the time – “It’s quite alright for a boy to be neutered, because although he loses his balls, he keeps his little “doodle”. (That a boy could retain strong erotic longings after castration, he was careful to omit). She’d bought the idea - and I’d had my balls pricked. Clearly there was a lot I didn’t know about Uncle Carl, and never would.

So Christmas came and went.

New Year’s Resolutions………

While looking for something else I found a crumpled piece of paper in my blazer pocket. Unfolding it I read this: “With young boys before puberty, who still have a small penis and relatively small testicles, the penis will be small enough not to interfere with your access to the testicles or otherwise get in the way of the castration.”

It was part of the instructions that came with the Neutersol pack, and I’d kept it for the website address. Melanie would wet her knickers if she got hold of this! I read on:

“Grasp the boy’s entire set of genitals, penis, scrotum and testicles, with the thumb and forefinger of one hand and stretch them so that the skin is tight over the testicles and that you can hold them steady as you work. That way you can easily stick the needles through the skin of the scrotum into each of the testicles.”

My New Year resolution was quite clear. For Melanie’s sake I needed to get Paul Abbott neutered. I’d need to work on him. How it went, you’ll have to wait till another time.

Weeks later, the mystery deepened. It was early April before I saw the Centre again, a day of spring sunshine. All the people attending courses were tucked away in their syndicate rooms. There was a hum of distant conversation but for the time being, there was no one wandering about to ask what I was doing. From the windows of the enormous dining room I saw that the terrace had been rebuilt, with a bed of rose bushes in the centre. And in the centre of that, something else. The life-size bronze figure of a slim, nude boy. He stood on a low plinth, one foot forward, raised up on his toes as though running, facing away from the window down the slope towards the lake. Curious, I went outside to get a better view: so far I’d only seen his back view and his bum.

There was no name on the plinth to say who it was meant to be. (I’d feared something twee like “Young England”) But seeing the bronze boy’s face I didn’t need any inscription. I recognised that round face with its over-short nose, and that quiff of hair in front. IT WAS ME! No doubt Uncle Carl had commissioned the work and had supplied the sculptor with a photograph. Bronze Simon looked down at me, and I looked up at bronze Simon.

But was it really me? Any likeness ended above the waist. At the meeting of the bronze boy’s thighs was a sturdy penis, and a well-filled scrotum, while his flesh-and-blood counterpart had a four-year-old’s “doodle” wagging uselessly between his legs – full stop.

I took a long, hard look at the bronze boy’s big – I almost said juicy - pair of balls. No chance of evening things up, except with a flame cutter. I remembered Melanie’s words, In the old days they used to burn out boys’ balls, to make them sing better. Not true historically, but appropriate.

Then there were those stone cherubs and putti, all over the chapel wall. Housed as they would have been in an overcrowded dormitory, their real-life counterparts would have been suitably pruned down there, to prevent them fiddling, or even buggering one another, left with neat inert little acorns and no more. But immortalised in marble they all had jaunty penises and outsize genitals.

They call it “artistic licence”. Now where had I come across that before?