Part 1. Story begun by Ricky Silva, Eurasian boy-eunuch, aged 15. Had full surgical castration at 13 years old.

Though I’m beginning this story, my part in it is a lot less important than that of somebody else, whom you’ve barely met before. Here he comes now.

“Silva? Roebuck? Can you spare a second?”

We were sitting in our corner of the 3rd-year common room, I and the Roebuck twins, Jon and Jamie. I was doing a sketch, from memory, of some broken-down sluice gates on the little river Arun, as a Geography project. Jon was listening to something on his I-pod. Jamie was deep in a mail-order catalogue – the underwear pages. Pictures of bare pussy didn’t interest him, but those of girls in their knickers held him spellbound. I’m not sure why. (If one of them had stepped down from the page, pulled her panties off and opened her legs, none of us could have done anything!)

“Silva? Roebuck? Can you spare a second?”

I looked up at the frightened little voice, and saw - Peter Cardew.

Before I go on, I need to place Cardew for you. It’s a long time since he cropped up in these stories and you won’t have remembered from so far back. (He gets a brief mention in “Simon Toes the Line” and an even briefer one in “The Horrible Hotel” )

Up until a few months back, if you’d asked who was the stupidest boy in the school I’d have named two contenders. First there was a day-boy, Martin Mooney. For sheer gormlessness Mooney had no equal. It was Mooney who, in an art competition, painted policemen armed with bows and arrows. Mooney who in Nature Study included a Boeing Triple 7 in “Specimens seen On the Wing”. Mooney who when trainspotting needed a pee, and did he use the station toilet? He did not. He used the toilet on a train standing at the platform, which he’d supposed to be stationary. The train started off immediately and was non-stop to Crewe, 150 miles away………

Mooney had left now. Dr Holroyd had suggested to his parents in the kindest possible way that he’d be happier at another school. And that left only one contender, a fat unattractive second-former called Selwyn Cox. Cox’s stupidity was of a different sort – inherent cack-handedness. If you handed him a glass of water he’d drop it on the floor. If he bounced a ball against a wall, it would fly up and break a window. Also he was unbelievably slow on the uptake, deliberately (it seemed) misunderstanding anything you told him. Whoever took the decision to have Selwyn Cox neutered, and his sluggish genes taken out of circulation, did a service to humanity!

It was a surprise to everyone when this lump of a boy palled up with someone so unlike himself as to be scarcely believable. Peter Cardew was small and weedy, with little round ears and a turned-up nose. He made me think of a puzzled, plaintive little teddy-bear. There was another way in which he differed from Selwyn Cox.

Cardew was intact. Or rather he had remained intact till now. If he’d lived with his parents he might have remained intact indefinitely. But they were overseas, planting rubber, growing tobacco, mining tin – or whatever parents do, overseas. Consequently Cardew lived with a sort-of aunt and uncle. Aunts and uncles are fine. The sub-species “sort-of”, however, sucks.

The little boy stood there tongue-tied, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Come on, Peter” I said. “Spit it out. What’s bothering you? And word by word Cardew began to stammer out his story – and a wretched story it was, too.

Those good people, his sort-of aunt and uncle – for no doubt they were good by their own standards – decided, as they were entitled to under the existing law, that young Peter should be neutered. No doubt they’d been advised by their Doctor that twelve years was the best age for a boy to have his balls out. At that age a boy is interested in sex, maybe very interested, just before puberty kicks in, and that is the time to make sure he can’t become a nuisance with girls.

So they told him he was getting to be a big boy now and he was going to have “that operation that all boys have”. Curious about what this might mean, at the first opportunity he confided in his boon companion Selwyn Cox. And the fat fool filled the credulous child’s ears with horror stories.

Jamie, who’d been listening all the time, laid his catalogue aside. “I’ll thrash that little squirt one of these days” he said, gritting his teeth. “You see if I don’t”. Then in a quiet matter-of-fact voice he told Cardew about the procedure which all boys refer to as “getting your balls pricked” and which the Roebuck twins had experienced first-hand.

How you go to a clinic, where a nurse gets you to pull your shorts and pants down, and she then gives you a hypo-spray all across your private area. Then, and this was the only uncomfortable bit, you got a big needle right at the top of your leg. This was a local anaesthetic. When you were completely numbed-up there were two more injections, one on each side. You didn’t feel anything.

“And for the time being, that’s all” concluded Jamie.

Jon had switched off his I-pod. “We’d both been having a game of 5-a-side football when we were called indoors to be “done” , he said. “Afterwards we just pulled our pants up and went on playing”.

“No pain?” whispered Cardew, his eyes wide.

“A lot of itching next day, and the day after” said Jon. “But then it passes off and you forget all about it”.

“But afterwards, what then?” the little boy asked. For Jamie hadn’t elaborated on what happens afterwards: how your balls dry up and your penis shrinks and never gets hard anymore. Peter looked from one of us to the other and back again. “Silva?” he said at last.

I was expecting the question. If you’ve troubled to read “Dr Geller goes into Partnership” then you’ll know my story first to last. But to have told it “like it was” would have sent out the wrong signals. Instead I went along with the game of treating it all as something-and-nothing.

“Oh, they weren’t taking any chances with me!” I said, with what I hoped sounded like a happy laugh. “My private bits were a bit too chubby. I had them taken right out. I watched the doctor while she did it”.

“You – watched?” the little boy said, with an incredulous catch in his voice.

“Of course! If I was going to have something done to me, so that I could never get married or have children, never have sex with a girl or even a quiet wank, then I wanted to know what it was, OK? Like I said, the doctor took them right out. They came out quite easily. It was all done in about twenty minutes”.

“Gosh” was all he could find to say.

“Anything else bothering you?” asked Jon. “There’s really nothing much more I can say. You’ll probably find you’ll go through a growth-spurt. Two years from now, say, you’ll be a big strong boy with lots of muscle; the only thing is, you’ll never be able to “do it” with a girl. But you’ll feel ever so much better, once those troublesome balls have been seen to, and without all those hormones sloshing around”.

(This, I felt, was just flattery. If Peter Cardew’s minuscule gonads produced even a suspicion of testosterone I’d have been surprised).

“If you want to see how you might change “down there” added Jamie “come and look round the locker-room some time. We all look much the same”.

This was only true up to a point. Neutered boys’ penises vary quite a lot. Jon’s and Jamie’s were like those of any pre-teens, though of boys a good deal younger than the twins’ real age: say six- or seven-year-olds, and (of course) permanently soft. (Though I believe they had quite big penises before they were “done”.) Roddy who had had to be circumcised some time after getting his balls pricked, had a sweet little pink rosebud between his legs. Mine by contrast, after hanging limp for a while following my operation, had clumped itself up into a sort of knot, which in cold weather used to give me problems pee-ing: too little and too often. (If you want to know how this problem was finally cured, read “Ricky Visits America”.)

Empty scrotums, too, come in all shapes and sizes. Roddy, my closest friend, who had a very fair skin, had a pinkish area behind his penis, where the skin, loose at first, had tightened and become smooth as Roddy grew bigger and filled out. I had a gap at the top of my thighs and just a funny little ridge, and by searching I could still find my scars. Most unfortunate was Jan Raxworthy, whose scrotum hung down in a loose fold; big enough, you’d have thought, to insert replacement balls – plastic of course – if he’d wanted to.

Cardew was still looking uncertain. I took his hand and pulled him towards me. “Don’t worry about it” I whispered. “Find out when you’re going to be done, and I’ll take time off and come along too, and be with you when they do it. Alright?”

“Gosh, thanks, Silva!” the child replied. Then his face puckered up. Blinking back the tears that would come, he trotted out. Clearly I had become a bit of a hero in his eyes, if I wasn’t already (if you don’t know what I’m referring to, read “Ricky Goes to School”.) I watched him as he went out of the door: such a small player, but destined to be star performer before long.

Part 2. Narrated by Jan Raxworthy, boy-eunuch. Cornish, neutered in orphanage.

Our part of the school, “The Archdeaconry” has the main school field on one side. On the other, there is a bit of a park, with big trees, between the school and the main road. They are very fine trees and I was upset, one afternoon when returning from the city centre, to see that one of them had been infected by big shelf-fungi growing near the base. Looking round, I saw two more trees infected in the same way.

In the second year, “fungus forays” led by members of the school staff, had taken place regularly and I’d learned a lot about the different species, which could be cooked and eaten, which were dangerous. But the big shelf-fungi were horrible, in the way they killed trees from the inside. I used to think it was as though the tree had cancer; there was no remedy, and in the end the tree would die and have to be burned.

I knew about cancer: it had killed both my parents, my mother when I was only eight, my father three years later. Since I had no other living relatives I was sent to the children’s home in Launceston.

About the first thing that happened to me after being admitted was to have my balls pricked, as all the boys were. This was to stop us being a nuisance with the girls (the home admitted girls too). Though they slept in a separate wing of the building, they shared the refectory and common room with the boys. They often flashed their knickers to tease us, knowing we couldn’t do anything to them with our tiny limp penises – which was unkind of them.

On my first night in the children’s home, lying in my hard little bed, I thought what a strange unfair world it was: a mere ten minutes to have my testicles destroyed after I’d just got interested in them. I’d even begun to think I might, one day, find some Cornish lass of my own age, for love and sex. But that wasn’t going to happen now – not the sex anyway.

I was pretty miserable at the village school. Most of the boys were rough town types and I collected the unpleasant nickname “Baggy” because my empty ball-sac looked like a little leather purse (mercifully the name hasn’t stuck). However, the head-teacher of the village school, Mr Polmear, thought that I was a bit brighter than some of his charges. He’d also read, in “Schoolmaster” magazine, an article by Dr Holroyd explaining his theories about the education of boy-eunuchs. The Doctor considered that boy-eunuchs were a third sex, with attitudes and emotions quite different from intact boys’, and particularly different from those of adolescents. More interestingly, there were bursaries available for “deserving boys from deprived backgrounds”.

It’s a long way from Sussex to Cornwall, so Mr Polmear sent for the bursary exam papers and I sat the exam by myself in his office – and passed! So, goodbye Launceston children’s home and hello Southdown Hall Boarding and Day School for Boys 11 – 18.

It was a kind thought of Mr Polmear to have me admitted to the house of Mr Trefusis, who was also Cornish, although to me (I come from Newlyn) the seaside town of Bude, which was Mr Trefusis’ home, is almost in Devon and hardly counts as Cornish at all. Mr Trefusis greeted me on the doorstep as “Well now, me ‘andsome” (which is the Cornish equivalent of “Hi ya, fella!) and I felt at home at once. Later, I learned he was researching into folk music and I filled him in with a lot of Newlyn songs, about fishing, that he didn’t know.

At Southdown Hall I wasn’t the least embarrassed about being ball-less, because most of the other boys already were. At the centre of things I discovered an absolutely brilliant bunch of guys, with a fabulous leader called Simon Scott. Simon himself had had hair-raising adventures in the Far East, while his friends had carried out a daring rescue of an injured boy from the top of a derelict water tower; they had uncovered organised crime, smashed a paedophile ring – I could go on and on.

Simon and his circle were brilliant at all sports, and in addition some of them, Simon himself, Ricky Silva and Roddy Fisher - had singing voices like angels. Apart from darts which I’m good at, though it’s only a pub game, I’m not very sporty (I’m too short and dumpy) and my singing voice is thin and reedy. Boys are supposed to sing better after losing their balls, but the procedure hasn’t done the same for me! But Simon found out I was interested in computers, and encouraged me to learn all there was to know. I determined to do just that. I learned quite a bit about VHF radio as well.

Here I am going on about myself and missing the point of the story. You’ll remember I was on my way to the school, crossing the park, towards the Archdeaconry, and then I got side-tracked, talking about fungi.

The Archdeaconry was a Victorian building, and a mish-mash of styles, part Gothic, part 18th century, part Tudor. On one corner there was a tower, one of the Tudor bits, with half timbering. It had once held a bell, now removed, and it still housed a clock, which didn’t work.

As I came towards the building, the tower appeared to move.

When I was within easy sprinting distance – say twenty-five yards, there was no doubt. The tower was moving, moving and swaying. One thing to do and one only. I made a dive for the front porch, smashed the glass and set off the fire-alarm.

There was a strict rule about this: if you heard the fire alarm you dropped everything and got outside – immediately! The discipline seemed to work: there was a clatter of feet on the stairs and boys began streaming out through the door. The fire-bell rang on and on, and a larger figure appeared in the doorway – Mr Trefusis. The first thing he caught sight of was me, waving my arms and yelling “No, not that way – this way!” as I tried to guide people away from that side of the building where the tower stood.

Or rather, where it had stood. Mr Trefusis’ mouth was open but whatever he was trying to say, or shout, was drowned by a thunderous crash as the tower collapsed into the yard.

No one was hurt and there was no damage apart from an old banger that Manyweathers, the janitor, had been hoping to sell. Not now he wouldn’t. The old car was reduced to a heap of scrap.

The pile of rubble that had once been the tower was roped off, but when I got the chance I crawled under the barrier and took a look. The corners of the tower were huge beams, nine inches square or more. I saw that at the base of the two outermost beams, the timber had been eaten away by something, leaving only the outer coating of many layers of paint. A hollow square with the thickness of, what? An eggshell? Not far off.

It was a warm September and over the next few days I noticed the number of fairy-rings of toadstools that were coming up, not only in the park but in the school lawns also, where there had never been any before.

It all made you think!

Part 3: narrative resumed by Ricky.

Peter Cardew’s appointment came a fortnight later and true to my promise I went along with him to the big new clinic, not far from the school, which had been opened by the local NHS Trust. Here the GP’s had their consulting rooms, and there were facilities for doing minor surgery like ingrowing toenails. And for neutering boys.

Peter was going to be neutered not by a doctor, but by the practice nurse. She showed us into the waiting room. Ahead of us was a child of about eight or nine, with his mother, clearly on the same errand. The child was crying softly.

“What a wimp! I whispered to Peter. “Anyone would think he was going to lose his arms and legs, not just his balls!” Peter giggled nervously. I suppose eight is a bit young.

The nurse made no objection when I said I wanted to stay with Peter during his procedure, but she made him strip and put on a surgical gown first – a bit OTT, I thought, but there you are. At least he was spared having an enema. Then into the room where the procedures were done.

The nurse helped Peter up on to the operating table. First thing to do was to pass an elasticated belt around his middle, and slip his little penis through the loop, which held it out of the way. It was the modern-day equivalent of the clamps that barber-surgeons used to use, when choirboys were being “done” to preserve their soprano voices, all those years ago.

“Look up” I whispered to Peter when I saw the nurse reach for the hypodermics pre-loaded with Neutersol. “Just keep looking up”. With practised fingers the nurse grasped the little boy’s hairless sex-package, pulling it downwards to stretch the skin over his testicles. She injected one side, then the other, her thumb pressing the plunger down, forcing the drug into the soft tissue. The empty syringes clinked into the bowl and it was all done. Peter Cardew was no longer a boy; he was a boy-eunuch. His voice would never change, he would not need to start shaving, and he would never, ever, fuck girls.

While Peter went to get dressed, I had a chat to the nurse. “No enemas, then?” I commented. The nurse laughed. “I can see you know all about it! No, no need for enemas here. But at the children’s hospital where I worked a few years ago, it was quite different. Operations were done on a conveyor-belt principle with only a few minutes between each one, and if you’d got a child all prepped-up and ready for theatre, and it suddenly wanted to do No 2’s, it would have thrown the whole day out. Mind you, there wasn’t time for enemas either. I used to use ordinary household soap, cut into sticks. I’d pop the soap up the kids’ behinds and the irritation made them want to “go” in a few minutes”.

“Cool” I said, although I didn’t mean it. My dislike of having things shoved up my behind is legendary.

“Anyway” the nurse went on “why are you here? Are you that little boy’s elder brother or something?”.

“No, I’m no relation” I said. “I’m just a friend, and a sort of (I searched for the word) “a sort of mentor”.

“Well if you’re looking after him” the nurse went on “you’ll be able to explain to him what to expect – what will happen to him “down there”. I used Neutersol Plus which works fairly fast. There shouldn’t be any immediate side-effects but if he feels sore or gets headachy, give him an Ibuprofen. His testicles will begin to feel quite soft after about a week and he may get brown stuff in his wee; that’s quite usual.

“In three weeks they should have just about disappeared; they normally don’t take much longer. The rest of the effects are more gradual, he’ll lose the ability to get erections pretty well immediately, but penile shrinkage takes four to six months to be complete. He’s been circumcised so there’s no foreskin problem, and these days there’s a treatment to dry up the scrotum if it doesn’t shrink by itself. I can’t think of anything else just now. Oh, here he is! Time to go home, Peter”.

Cardew had emerged from the locker where he’d been dressing. No doubt he’d been examining his privates to see if his procedure had left any traces. We said goodbye to the nurse and started back towards school.

On the short walk back, he seemed thoughtful and quiet. But some while later he sought me out again.

“It’s a funny thing” he said “but I’d been thinking about girls quite a lot lately. I’d love to meet the sort of girl that lets you feel round her tits, and perhaps put your hand up her skirt”.

“ You’ll have no problem” I said. “All girls like boys to do that to them. And if you don’t keep on at her to do the thing that may start a baby (and you won’t of course, because you can’t, and she knows you can’t) you could find yourself quite popular”.

He brightened up at this. But he hadn’t finished with me yet. “Now I’ve been done” he said shyly “I can try to be like you - or Roddy Fisher, or – or Simon”.

“Don’t worry about that” I said. “Just be yourself. You’ll be OK”.

He looked up at me, eyes shining with admiration. I felt ten feet tall!

Part 4. Jan Raxworthy resumes.

September became October.

On Sunday mornings when he wasn’t officiating in the school chapel as Head of Choir, Simon often used to invite some of us round for a late breakfast. At this time as you may remember, Simon was living at the Simon Scott Centre, and Ricky and Roddy had moved in with him. Breakfast was in Simon’s own apartment but was provided by the main kitchen where there was a French chef and consequently very good indeed.

More often than not, we were joined by Simon’s girlfriend Melanie, who used to drive over from Lymington Haven to spend the weekend with Simon. Generally she appeared rather late, after we’d all sat down, wearing a silk dressing-gown underneath which she obviously had nothing on at all- not even a thong. It was strange to think of Simon, a boy-eunuch like ourselves, being able to satisfy a sexy girl like Melanie, but clearly he managed it somehow!

On this particular Sunday I was the only guest for breakfast. As I walked into the flat

I saw that Simon had got two new posters in his hallway. The first showed two happy boys shooting down a snow-covered hillside on a sled, their faces glowing with the cold and with winter sunshine. The uppermost boy – for they were lying one on top of the other – was dark-haired, the one underneath was blond. But the caption said “Combining pleasure with pleasure!” You saw then that the blond boy had his jeans pulled down off his bottom, and that he was being bummed by the boy on top.

I looked at the second poster. A trio of boys: two tikes of about thirteen and a younger one of about ten. The younger boy was on all fours between the two older ones, and while they were laughing out loud, he had a puzzled expression. As well he might: he was being made to suck one boy off, while the other boy had his penis up his bottom………..Just harmless fun! (At least Simon thought so. I was in two minds about it).

Simon appeared. “Come on in, Rax!” he called out. (Most people call me Rax, feeling that Jan sounds a bit strange, and so it does outside Cornwall). “Get yourself something to eat”. There was lots to choose from, and I did.

“Actually” Simon said a bit later, through a mouthful of toast “it’s a good thing you’re here. Something’s wrong with our telly”.

“But I don’t know anything about telly repairs” I protested.

“For what my opinion’s worth” put in Roddy “it’s being jammed by something. Some rogue frequency or other”. Roddy did a lot of recording and often spoke about “frequencies” as if he knew what he was talking about.

Breakfast over, Simon turned on his big flat-screen TV. For a time the picture was OK, then it broke up into blocks and squares of colour, and the sound signal was lost amid squeals and pops. “Certainly sounds like jamming” I said, after the set had done this three or four times. “Shouldn’t be difficult to find where it’s coming from” I added. “Trouble is though, I need some of my gadgetry to do it with”.

“I’d really like you to have a go” said Simon. “Couldn’t you get someone to bring your stuff over? What about Harry Brotherton – he’s got the use of a van. Yes, go on, ask Harry over for lunch, and then we’ll all go out and have a look”.

I rang Harry, told him where I kept my stuff, and persuaded him to bring it . He arrived nearly an hour later, his father’s Berlingo van having no great turn of speed, and he wasn’t alone.

“Hullo, who’s this?” asked Simon of the diminutive figure that followed Harry into the room.

“Please Scott, I’m Peter Cardew - Form II c” said the little boy shyly.

“’E was all at a loose end, like” said Harry in his good-natured way. “I thought ‘e’d like ter come along for the ride, like”.

“Quite right too” agreed Simon. Ricky and Roddy both nodded. Simon, always the efficient host, rang the kitchen and told them that there would be two more for lunch. “Hope you all like chicken Kiev” he asked. (We all did.) By now, Melanie had appeared, in a slinky red outfit with black tights and a very short skirt. “Drinks, everybody?” called Simon. The Sunday lunch routine had begun. It was a brilliant lunch, as it always was.

The meal over, we all trooped outside. I rode with Harry in the van, to operate the tracking equipment and to point Harry in the direction where the oscillations were strongest. Everyone else, less Melanie, who said it was too cold, piled into the Aston, and away we went. The van had a top speed of about forty; Simon, ploughing along behind, must have been mentally tearing his hair out, keeping the big V12 in check.

Through Storrington we went; through Pulborough, over the Arun, through Fittleworth, just a cluster of cottages round a crossroads, The oscillations were getting stronger and stronger. “Left, Harry” I told him. “Now right. Left again……”

It was in deep country, just fields and the odd farm, where the narrow lane we were on became a cart-track and then just stopped. We got out. A few yards back the Aston, rocking and rolling on its big coil springs, stopped too.

“Rax, you look like a Christmas tree!” laughed Simon. I suppose I did. I had a head-set on, a back-pack and other bits of gubbins on a belt round my middle. It was footwork from here on, and the oscillations were deafening.

At first the going was over rough tussocky grass. Then the ground grew hummocky. As we picked our way over the ups and downs, two things happened in succession.

First, the fog came down. The afternoon had begun misty, but now the thick white vapour swirled round us in sheets. Before it became too dense I noticed a cottage some way ahead. It didn’t look like the sort of place you’d get radio interference from but you never knew.

The second might have been disastrous.

A little way ahead there was a line of straggly bushes and a rickety-looking post-and-rail fence. It was now that Ricky decided to show off. He took a run at the fence, grasped the top rail and vaulted over. There was a wild scream, the bushes waved to and fro – and then silence.

We all rushed to the fence and peered over. The relief when we saw Ricky’s white face looking up was beyond words. “Are you all right, Ricky? called Simon in a nervous voice.

“I’ve got a lot of scratches but that’s all” Ricky replied. (He was about 20 feet down, but thick brambles had caught his clothes and let him down lightly). “Thing is though, this place has a brick wall and I can’t get up it – nothing to hold on to”.

“I got a tow-rope in me van” said Harry. “Good long one”.

“There’s another in the Aston” said Simon. “Give me your key, Harry, I’ll get them both”. He ran off. A while later we heard the squealing of the Aston’s alarm system as Simon used the centre-locking key to locate the car in the fog. It was at that moment that I thought I saw a man standing some way off – a very large man. But then a swirl of fog hid him from sight.

At length Simon returned, festooned with ropes. With these it was only a matter of minutes to rescue Ricky. As he said, he was badly scratched and bleeding, but nothing was broken. He told us what he’d seen. “It looked like an old tunnel, or perhaps only a long bridge” he explained. “At least, there was a big arch, all bricked up, with a door in it. And another thing, above the arch only a bit back, a big shiny thing, like a big funnel. You can’t see it from here”.

“Could have been a tunnel” said Simon. “There used to be a line here once; it started at Pulborough and went on to Petworth and Midhurst. Hasn’t run for years”.

Despite Simon’s passion for old railways and the fact we’d still not found where the interference was coming from, none of us felt inclined to explore further. All of us were cold, and Ricky needed dressings on his cuts and scratches. Little Peter Cardew, who hadn’t said a word the whole time, being too much in awe of these godlike people he was with, was visibly shivering. The thought of hot buttered crumpets in Simon’s flat, before returning to school for evening chapel, was very tempting. Even the hard passenger seat in Harry’s van, as I climbed back in, seemed a luxury.

Though we didn’t know it, we’d got away from Ricky’s “big shiny funnel” not a minute too soon.

Part 5. Narrative continued by Simon Scott. Boy-eunuch since the age of 11 years and 7 months, Simon is now 17).

After the fiasco so graphically described just now by Rax Raxworthy, nothing happened for a few days. I learned to live with the interference on the telly: after all, it didn’t do it all the time.

Then one Monday morning, just a week later, as I was just getting ready to take the three of us to school in the Aston, I was stopped on the doorstep by Veevers, one of the groundsmen. His face (not very well shaved) was ashen. “Mister Simon, sir” he blurted. “I think you’d better take a look, sir”.

There, just inside the main gates, we found him. A boy in his early teens, roughly dressed. Without doubt he was dead – dead and cold, for flies were buzzing round him despite the early hour. Small wonder, too. The poor kid stank of diarrhoea – it was all over the lower part of his legs, blood as well. From his staring eyes and wide-open mouth he must have died in some sort of convulsion.

I phoned 999 and not long afterwards, an ambulance team gingerly lowered the dead boy into a body-bag and took him away.

I got a letter summoning me to the Coroner’s Inquest which was to be in Horsham on the Friday following. Veevers had to go too, and he was so apprehensive that anyone might have thought he was going on trial for his life at the Old Bailey. I assured him that all he’d have to do was to give his name and occupation, state the time and place he’d discovered the body and whether he’d ever seen him before or had any idea who he was. Which was precisely what happened.

Then it was my turn to take the stand. The Coroner, a sour-faced old git in his late 60’s, took a dislike to me on sight. We had a verbal sparring-match which went like this:

- Your name, please?

- Simon Scott.

- Your address?

- The Simon Scott Residential Centre for Management Studies.

- And is that your permanent address?

- Yes.

- In what capacity do you live there?

- As Executive Chairman of the company that owns the Centre. Accommodation is provided for me in that capacity.

- (rapping on the desk) Be careful, young man! This is a solemn occasion. I will not tolerate frivolity in my Court. Once again, in what capacity do you live at the Centre?

- I’m not sure what you want me to say, Your Honour. I’m the majority shareholder, and as such I am Chairman of the Company. You might almost say I own the Centre.

Well, the old boy turned purple in the face! I thought he’d have a fit or something. But then the clerk of the court went over and whispered something to him. The old Coroner looked at me as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, but adopted a more reasonable tone. I confirmed the evidence of my employee Veevers and like him, said I’d never set eyes on the dead boy before. Having delivered myself of this I was permitted to “stand down”.

Next to take the stand was the Home Office pathologist who was introduced as Dr Thomas Huxtable, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Forensic Medicine and a holder of many other degrees. Dr Huxtable’s evidence was brief and to the point and the Coroner let him get on with it, without too many interruptions:

Dr H. The deceased is a Caucasian male, intact, aged about 14 – 15. When I first saw him the upper part of his legs was encrusted with dried-on blood and faeces, possibly the symptoms of a violent onset of dysentery or enteric upset of some kind.

Coroner. Describe your examination, please, Dr Huxtable.

Dr H. I began by examining the anal and rectal area because there had been localised bleeding around the anus and there were lesions inside the rectum.

Coroner. But these conditions were not life-threatening?

Dr H. Of course not, but combined with traces of Vaseline or similar lubricant around the boy’s anus, the lesions indicated that anal intercourse had been taking place, both recently and over an extended period. This being so, I had to include, in my examination, evidence of sexually transmitted disease. This might be relevant or again it might not.

Coroner. I understand. Go on, please. (Here he made rapid notes on his pad, possibly concerned that there was evidence of a serious criminal offence.)

Dr H. I opened the abdomen. The condition of the internal organs was healthy with the exception of the large bowel, which was heavily ulcerated, to the extent that liquid faeces had been leaking into the abdominal cavity in several places. Most recently of all, peritonitis had occurred.

Coroner. Peritonitis is often fatal, is it not?

Dr H. Yes, and in this case I should state unhesitatingly that peritonitis was the cause of death. But it leaves further questions. In one so young, peritonitis is hardly ever spontaneous, and I suspect that it may have been triggered in this case by micro-biological activity of some sort.

Coroner. Can you be more precise?

Dr H. Not just yet. In conditions like these, a wide variety of organisms will be active, including those normally present in the gut, aiding digestion. I am currently isolating these from other and less innocent organisms. As I said earlier, there might be proof of an STD, perhaps more than one.

Coroner. Thank you, Dr Huxtable. (Dr H. leaves the witness stand).

What the Doctor did not say, was that the boy must have died in agony!

The last witnesses provided the information we had all been longing to hear – who was the missing boy? The Police had not been idle, and had traced a family of “travellers”, Jake and Sarah Benwell, who had immediately identified the boy as their son Toby, who had gone missing the previous day. They came across as drop-outs rather than traditional Romany stock.

The Benwells’ lifestyle involved them in migrating around the country in a convoy of elderly vehicles. Besides Jake and Sarah there were four other children, and Sarah’s unmarried sister Emma. Three days earlier they had overnighted in the Midhurst area. Early next day Toby had gone off “on the scrounge” - which seemingly he often did. In the country he sometimes returned with a basket of fruit, sometimes a chicken. He was good at it!

In towns he often returned with money - £50 or more, sometimes. Didn’t the Benwells guess he was a freelance rent-boy or didn’t they care? And the boy still had his balls – he was not a eunuch.

Some time after returning from his “scrounge” in this event empty-handed – Toby complained of feeling poorly. Several times he had asked his parents to stop the caravan so he could go off into the bushes. On the evening before he was found dead, he was in such a poor way that they dropped him off along the way, so that he could relieve himself, arranging that they should wait for him in a caravan-park on some waste ground near Shoreham. It was a place that Toby knew, and could easily reach by bus, as soon as he felt better.

When after 48 hours Toby didn’t show up, the Benwells were about to contact the police (old Romanies, not trusting the police, would have gone back to search for him) but in the event, the police came to them first.

That would have wound things up, except that Sarah Benwell indicated she had something more to say. The Coroner encouraged her to “speak up and not to be afraid”.

“It’s like this, your Worship” Sarah Benwell began. “That sort of sickness, it falls from the air”.

“From the air, you say” remarked the Coroner, and noted it down.

“Yes, your Worship. I looked up and I seen it. Shining like silver it were”.

“And what do you think it was?

“I think – ‘twas the arrow that flieth by noonday”.

“Well, thank you for that. You may stand down”.

Sarah’s remarks were noted by the clerk, but quotations from the Psalms didn’t really add very much. The Coroner stated that the Court would record the cause of Toby’s death as “multiple internal lesions”. The local Press duly repeated this, adding that the boy’s internal organs were “liquefied” – which wasn’t in the medical evidence at all. This had consequences we couldn’t guess at.

Part 6. Narrative continued by Ricky Silva.

Fast forward a few days to a Saturday afternoon. The afternoon had been blustery and rainy, and since there’d been no good reason to go out, the three of us (Simon, Roddy and I) had stayed indoors, reading books, playing computer games, listening to music. Five o’clock came, decision-time: what should we do about tea – stay in or go out?

Then the front door-bell rang.

“Who do you suppose that is? asked Simon, talking more to himself than to us. “I’m sure we haven’t invited anybody. Let’s go and see” (hauling himself to his feet).

The bell rang again, insistently. “Alright, alright, I’m coming” said Simon. The front door, when opened, admitted a distraught Harry Brotherton, who half-staggered, half-fell into the room. His eyes were wild behind his glasses, his hair all over the place; all in all he looked terrible.

“I’ve lorst ‘im” were his first words. “’S my fault, I never did ought to have took ‘im there”. He began sniffling: Harry, who was generally so calm, on the verge of tears.

“Lost who, Harry?”

“Little Peter Cardew. ‘E wanted ter go back to that place, you know, where we all went that foggy day, where you fell down a ‘ole (this to me). Insistent, ‘e was’ just kept on arskin’ till I said yes. But I never ought ter ‘ave took ‘im”.

“Tell us exactly what happened.”

“Well, we arrived there-“

“What time was that?

“Quarter past free. I stopped the van, and Peter got out, and ran off across the grass and I lost sight of ‘im, you know what that place is like, all ups and downs, bushes and all sorts. Well, I followed, thinkin’ I’d catch up wiv ‘im, but there wasn’t any sign. I found that place where you fell down, Ricky, but ‘e weren’t down there ‘cos I looked, and there weren’t nowhere else ‘e could ‘ave got to. I shouted and shouted, but ‘e never came”. Harry covered his face with his hands and sobbed uncontrollably.

This was horrible. Simon, however, was equal to the occasion.

“I’ve got my suspicions about that place. Time for a few phone calls. And, Harry, do try to calm down, crying’s no help to Peter. The best thing you can do is go home”.

“I don’ wanna go ‘ome” gulped Harry.

“Alright then, stay here, only do stop crying”. Simon pulled Roddy by the sleeve. “Get him a stiff drink. I don’t care if he likes it or not – make him drink it.”

Roddy went to the cabinet and sloshed some of Simon’s best liqueur brandy into a tumbler, which he held to Harry’s mouth, forcing him to swallow the contents. Harry choked and spluttered but became quieter.

“First thing, I suppose” said Simon quietly “is to update the Old Man”. He rang Dr Holroyd’s number. The conversation was a very short one.

“What did Dr Holroyd say, Simon?” I enquired timidly.

“He said ‘Do just as you see fit, dear boy’ said Simon, with a smile.

Living off-site gave Simon far more independence than he’d ever have had when a boarder. Not only this, but the exposure of Lord Manningham (Simon’s Uncle Carl) as an international criminal, a trafficker in child slaves and many other outrages, had shattered all Dr Holroyd’s long-held beliefs about who must be trusted implicitly, because of who and what they were. Castles had come tumbling down, Uncle Carl had paid the price, and the days when Simon had needed to go cap-in-hand to the Head and ask permission to act, had long gone.

“And now we’ll get down to business” said Simon. He keyed-in another number and waited.

Dr Holroyd was still an influential person, with a wide network of valuable contacts. But a crisis like this required not specialist skills, but muscle, and it was muscle that Simon was calling up now.

Another very brief conversation followed. Simon put the phone down. In a remarkably short time the front doorbell rang again.

Roddy and I followed Simon to the front door. There on the step stood a tall, young-ish, fair-haired man in a smart grey suit. His tie was ornamented with miniature parachute-wings: Airborne Division. Simon looked him up and down, with evident disappointment. “Major Harris?” Simon asked.

The young man laughed. “No, I’m not Major Harris – if you were expecting him. I’m Captain Harrison- not so exalted as Alan Harris, though we’re always getting mixed up. Can I come in?” Flustered, Simon led Captain Harrison into the flat.

“First of all, call me Gavin” said our visitor. “Next, not to waste time, just fill me in with a few details, one of you. Which of you was there when - who was it? Peter Cardew- disappeared, apparently into thin air?”

Amid sniffles, Harry Brotherton identified himself.

“And exactly where do you say this happened?

Seeing that I’d fallen down a hole at that very place, I spoke up next.

“H’m” said Captain Harrison. “That more or less squares with what I have”. (In wardly I gulped: how could he possibly know already, and from what source?)

Gavin Harrison’s voice broke in on these thoughts. “Right. Wait one”. From his pocket he fished out what I took to be a cellphone, but which proved to be something more military. He began to speak. “Hello Tango Foxtrot leader, come in Tango Foxtrot leader, Sunray here….affirmative…..affirmative…..affirmative……RV as previously………roger so far….over and out.” Good, that’s all arranged. They’re on their way”.

He turned back to me. “Right, you’re coming with us, since you know exactly where we’re going. And Simon, I suppose it’s no use trying to stop you, so consider yourself one of the party too. And you can’t possibly come like that” (we all had school uniform on) “so I’ll give you some denims.”

He hurried out to his Landrover, returning with a khaki bundle which he thrust at us. “Get them on, and something heavier for your feet, hiking boots if you’ve got them. We rushed off to our bedrooms and did a lightning change , emerging in denims and knitted cap-comforters. As I laced my boots up, the air began to throb and the windows to rattle. The noise got louder and louder.

“They’re here” said Gavin Harrison, rather unnecessarily. “Away you go, you two. We’ll talk later. Hurry up now”. He pushed us towards the black bulk of the Puma helicopter that had landed on the lawn outside.

Part 7. Peter Cardew fills in some gaps.

“Shan’t be long, Harry” I called over my shoulder. “Leave the engine running if you like”. Harry waved back in response.

I ran on and soon reached the broken ground that we’d explored that afternoon, when Simon had been with us. I was desperate to see where Ricky had disappeared from sight. What was there down there? I just had to know. I was in among the bushes now, and couldn’t see Harry or the van anymore. There it was! That bit of fence where Ricky had vaulted over. I’d just go take a look. It was only just after three – plenty of time to do that and still be in time for tea.

I craned right over and peered down. As I did so I felt, rather than heard, heavy footsteps right behind me. A huge hand clamped over my face, pressing something to my mouth and nose, with a strong chemical smell: my head began to swim, and I blacked-out……

I don’t know how long it was before I came-to. I was in total darkness, lying on, what? It felt like sacking. The next thing I knew was that my captor, or somebody, had taken off all my clothes. I was bare-naked except for my wrist watch and I couldn’t see that.

I waited in the dark for another age. Then without warning a door was flung open and light flooded into the room. In strode a huge man, the biggest I’d ever seen. He must have stood six-foot-six, perhaps more, and built like an ape. With a grunt this individual scooped me up – literally, carted me out of the room like a bundle of old rags, and into another chamber, very brightly lit. Here he dumped me down. I scrambled to my feet and found myself facing another man, but what a contrast!

He was sitting in a wheelchair, with a plaid rug over his knees. His hands, old withered hands were folded in his lap. I looked into an equally old, withered face, with a ring of white hair surrounding a bald pate. His eyes, the only bright thing about him, sparkled behind gold-rimmed glasses. He addressed me in grave tones.

“Good day to you. My name is Webster – Professor Oscar Webster at your service”. (He gave me a slight nod). “Forgive me if I don’t get up. I’m seventy-five, and the trouble from which you see, I suffer, keeps me confined to this chair. My leg muscles do not function any longer”.

“But as you see” he went on “I have no need of muscles when I have Drachmann”. He indicated the huge man, who stood like a statue by the doorway. “Drachmann is my butler, cook, valet, nursemaid – and bodyguard. Besides this, he is a deaf-mute; he cannot hear what we are saying, and he will not interrupt us. He is incapable of speech”.

“But come” the old man continued. “Our time together will be very short. I need to get to know you better. Come a little closer”.

I edged a bit nearer the wheelchair. The old man looked me up and down, and I was very much aware that he was looking intently at the space at the top of my thighs, where a few weeks ago there had hung my grape-sized balls in their little bag. (They had withered and disappeared much sooner than the three weeks they’d told me about; more like ten days).

The old man looked into my face. “Well, well!” he said, in a bantering tone. “What have we here? It seems our young friend has had a gelding operation. Is he preparing himself, perhaps, to serve as a pageboy to a beautiful young princess? No, that seems unlikely in these days. And there are some boys, very beautiful boys, who are gelded to preserve that beauty. No? Then perhaps he is a chorister. Gelding a boy – cutting out his little balls - is a sure way to make a boy sing better, I’ve been told. So, my little gelded boy, sing me something!”

I was too scared not to obey him. I began the first thing that came into my head, a French nursery rhyme we’d had to sing in form. (It goes to the tune of ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ if you want to know).

“Quand trois poules vont au champ

La première va devant.

La seconde suit la première

La troisième est la dernière.

Quand trois poules vont au champ

La première va devant.”

The old man clapped his hands. “Bravo, bravo! Something more, please”. I gave him two verses of “Le bon roi Dagobert”. By the end of Verse 2 he seemed to be getting restless, so I stopped singing. There was only one thought uppermost in my mind – to get out of this weird place. “Can I go now, please?” I asked. (Though how I was going to get anywhere I couldn’t imagine. Harry would surely have given up on me long before.

“Not so fast! Not so fast!” was his answer. “I have much to tell you, and so little time”. He pressed a switch on the arm of his chair. A spotlight came on, illuminating some big wall-charts. “Do you know what those are?” he asked.

“Yes, of course I do. Mushrooms – mushrooms and toadstools”.

“Mushrooms and toadstools. Quite so. They are more than that: they are my little friends and allies!”

What could he be talking about?

“They are wonderful things. Some sit innocently on the soil, but are packed with the most lethal poisons known to science. Some feed upon the timber of houses, reducing it to powder. Others feed upon living trees, converting solid heartwood to mush. But I – Professor Webster – I have developed a combination of species that devour – FLESH!

He smiled at me as he said the last word – exposing a row of gleaming dentures. It was a horrible smile, that sent shivers down my back. But he hadn’t finished. He pointed to a door at the far end of the chamber. “Through there is my laboratory. And in my laboratory I have a machine which – with the aid of my little friends the mushrooms – will make me master of the universe!”

“I knew I was on the right track not long ago. Drachmann takes me for outings in my chair. No one thinks anything of it – just an old man going to the village shop for a half-pound of peppermint humbugs. But every time I saw a dead bird, or a dead chicken, or a dead sheep, I knew that success was not far away. And then – and then that boy came to the door”.

A faraway look came over the old man’s face as he re-lived that moment. “An impertinent, rude boy, who came to the door and asked for a drink. I gave him a cup of tea. Oh yes! A cup of tea. He had no idea what I had mixed in it. And after he had left, he became ill – very ill indeed. It was all in the papers, how he died. His internal organs had liquefied! I had succeeded!

“Now I could develop my master-plan. My machine is programmed to discharge rockets. They will orbit over towns and cities, releasing a deadly hail of fungus-spores. No one who ingests that dust will be spared. They will all die, like that silly rude boy”.

The old man gave me his ghastly smile again. “They took that boy’s body away. But then you and your interfering friends came nosing around – Drachmann lets me know everything, in his strange way. I guessed one of you would return. And now you are here, you will take that boy’s place in my master-plan.”

“I’m not going to drink anything” I said defiantly. “You can’t make me. I shall spit it all out!”

“No, I shall not make you drink anything” the old man answered. “There is a much more direct way to a boy’s insides than down his throat. Look here now!”

From beneath the rug that covered his withered limbs he drew a large syringe, the sort used to give horse-enemas. “This will go up your bottom and right into your bowels. At first you will only feel the liquid being pumped in. After a little while you will begin to feel discomfort, and then the discomfort will turn to pain – such pain as you could never have imagined in your worst nightmares! You will scream your life away! Death when it comes, will be a merciful release”.

Was I hearing any of this? Well, it seemed I was, and he hadn’t finished either.

“When you are dead…..”

When I’m dead? Me? I’m only twelve!

“When you are dead, your body will be an empty shell. A mere husk! And it will be my bargaining counter, with those I summon to appear before me. I shall drive the hardest bargains of all time, because I hold all the winning cards. I can eliminate cities, whole regions even, if I choose to do so. I can demand gold, diamonds, lands, titles! I can direct the fate of nations! I, Oscar Webster, shall be Master of the World!

The old man’s eyes had closed as he visualised the delicious scenes where he would hold centre stage. But now they snapped open. They were hooded, like those of a bird of prey. “Boy, your time is up! Prepare yourself!” He beckoned to the hulking figure in the doorway. “Drachmann!” The giant came lumbering over.

“NO!” I screamed as loudly as I could. In the confined space it sounded like a train whistle. Then everything started to happen at once.

Hardly had my scream died away than there came the clear sharp bang of a small detonation, followed by the whoomph of something heavier. The old man’s mouth dropped open in astonishment; the enema syringe fell to the floor, abandoned. Drachmann strode to the further door and flung it open. He had a revolver in his hand and I heard the shots as he emptied the magazine. In answer there came a burst of assault-rifle fire.

Losing interest in me, the old man turned his wheel-chair and propelled himself into the further room. I heard him asking indignantly “Who are you, bursting into my house?” followed by a wailing “My machine! You’ve smashed my machine!” Through the hazy smoke that obscured the room beyond the doorway I could see figures moving about. Then the old man’s voice, again, speaking so quietly I could barely hear him, then rising to a scream "No! Not that! No! No! No!” followed by inarticulate screeching.

Then two of the dim figures came nearer. They wore woollen caps and their faces were covered in some sort of dark-coloured paint. I’d never seen them before. But when they spoke, their voices were distinct enough: Ricky Silva and Simon Scott. The only thing that bothered me was, I had no clothes on! What would they think?

Then with one thing and another, I blacked out.

Part 8. Extract from the report of Sergeant-Major Smith, a warrant officer of the regular forces, attached to Military Intelligence.

……..arriving at the agreed RV at 1900 hours. Patrol consisted of: self, Troopers Carden C, Norton W, Sheridan P, medical orderly Pte Mackonochie A, RAMC, technical support Craftsman Tonkinson E, REME, photographer Signalman Bartram T, Royal Signals. Attached to the patrol were two civilians, Scott S and Silva R, who possessed detailed knowledge of the location of the objective.

Reached forming-up point at 1915 hours, map reference 015176. Identified objective. Gained access by means of a charge of PE attached to doorpost and detonated remotely…….

Part 9. Ricky fills in yet more gaps.

The helicopter seemed full to bursting with enormous men. In charge was a grim-faced Sergeant-Major, named – unusually – Smith. (My joke). The soldier nearest to me, who was called Ted Tonkinson, showed me how to cover my face with camouflage-cream, then handed the tube to Simon. White faces are very conspicuous at night, he said. The flight that followed was very noisy and very cold, but fortunately it was also very short. In no time at all we were tumbling out of the Puma in the tussocky, hilly place I recognised from that foggy Sunday.

For a very few moments I led the way to the gap in the fence where I’d fallen over and couldn’t get back. No chance of a repeat performance tonight, though: all of the soldiers had abseiling ropes attached to their belts by loops. Two of them went on ahead to the iron door I’d seen that day. They tried to open it by destroying the keypad with a small charge, and when that didn't work they just blew the whole door

down.

“Careful now” growled the Sergeant-Major. “The place may be booby-trapped”.

There was a strong mushroomy smell. It came from rows and rows of shelving, with trays of compost on them. But these were not proper mushrooms, they were toadstools, some of them brightly coloured, some livid and horrible – the sort you tread on and squash. Through here we went, arriving at a place where the ways divided. To the right, a passageway led up a ramp. “Could be an alternative way out” said Sergeant-Major Smith. “We’ll check it out presently”. (He did, and it proved to lead to the cottage on the hillside).

Right in front was another door, which wasn’t locked. The room beyond was very brightly lit, and there were many things to be seen. A shelf of sealed glass jars of greyish-brown powder. (“Careful of those” directed the Sergeant-Major. “Might be anthrax germs – they look a bit like that”) A computer, with many leads, connected to a strange contraption made of stainless steel, against which there was piled a stack of plastic tubes, about as thick as the down-spouts you get on houses, and of a silvery colour. The contraption pointed towards a shutter in the roof, that could be opened by a chain. One of the soldiers, some kind of technician, was ordered to start to take this apart. “You can smash the monitor” said the Sergeant-Major. “That won’t be needed”.

The crash of breaking glass as a rifle-butt smashed the monitor was followed by a loud scream somewhere in the distance – it sounded like “NO!” Then a door was flung open, and an enormous man barrelled into the room, making grunting sounds. Now Raxworthy said he’d seen a very big man on the hillside – though none of the rest of us had. He must have been right.

The man had a revolver and began shooting, but his shooting was wild - no attempt to aim, and his shots went all over the place without hitting anybody. But one of the soldiers brought his assault rifle to his shoulder and fired a burst, hitting the big man in the chest. He gave the most horrible ugly groan – I never want to hear another like it – and collapsed to the floor with blood pouring out of his mouth.

For a very brief moment there was a pause, before another figure appeared in the doorway, this time a very old, wizened man in a wheelchair. At first he tried to bluster: “Who are you, to burst in like this? How dare you” and more of the same, to which one of the soldiers replied “Ah, fook off, Grandad!” The old man tried to advance further into the room but his wheelchair ran up against the prostrate body of the big man, lying in a pool of blood.

“Drachmann?” said the old man enquiringly, and again “Drachmann?” Then his gaze fell upon the remains of the monitor and on Ted Tonkinson who was busy demolishing the stainless-steel gizmo. “My machine!” wailed the old man “You’ve smashed my machine! My machine! My machine!”

Then he saw ME.

His face turned a dirty white and his eyes started from his head. “You! he hissed. “You!”

I took a pace towards him. At once he hid his face behind his withered hands. “No, no! he wailed. “Not you! No, not that! No, no!”

I moved a little closer. He raised one arm as if to ward off a blow – though I’d no intention of hitting him. His wailing became incoherent, dissolving into gibberish. At one point he peered at me again with terrified eyes, then began gibbering again. He was beginning to foam at the mouth.

“He’s having a fit of some kind” muttered Sergeant-Major Smith. “Mackonochie, get him out of here and give him something to quieten him down”. “Sir!” replied the medical orderly, a very silent Scot – the first words he’d uttered till now – and with that, he trundled the old man away, still moaning and gibbering.

“Right, let’s get this lot cleared up” continued the Sergeant-Major. “ Tonkinson, ain’t you finished yet? Get a move on! Road transport should be ‘ere by now. You two, Norton, Carden, get ‘im out the road and go and check” (“’im” being the body of Drachmann.)

Simon and I found ourselves surplus to requirements. The same thought was occurring to both of us – Peter Cardew! Where was he, and had he ever been here? Were we –had we always been – on totally the wrong trail, perhaps. But both of us had heard that scream, that sounded like “NO!”

And as you know by now, we found him in the room beyond, stark naked, his hands secured behind his back, but outwardly unharmed so far as we could see. Simon told me to find Peter’s clothes. These were not in the room, so I tried the further door. Only naked electric bulbs here, and the walls were black and sooty-looking; Simon had plainly been right in guessing the place was an old unused rail tunnel.

Peter’s clothes I found dumped in a corner and I took them straight back. “Time to get dressed and go home, Peter” Simon said cheerfully. “Hello, Peter, it’s me – you’re safe now!” I added. Peter looked up, seeming to recognise our voices, but whatever the brutes had said or done to him during his ordeal had robbed him of speech for the moment. He seemed to have slipped into a kind of trance, half asleep and half awake. Between us we got him dressed and helped him outside to the waiting trucks.

There followed a long freezing interval. Sergeant-Major Smith’s party finished what they had to do, and left by helicopter, but their orders didn’t include taking us with them. By now a lot more men had arrived and were taking the place apart. I spoke to a corporal, whose truck was on the point of leaving, and persuaded him to take Peter back to school- which the truck had to pass anyway. Peter seemed a little brighter now. I saw the soldiers giving him a hot drink – I could have done with one too!

Finally at nearly eleven o’clock there appeared a Landrover, and out got Captain Harrison, immaculate as ever. “Well, it’s been quite a day!” he greeted us. “Alright, are we? Then I think we’ll make ourselves scarce, before the firework display starts”.

He waved his hand towards a small convoy of trucks, with red-painted fenders, which bore the emblem of the bomb-disposal section. From these a second-lieutenant appeared and saluted.

“All cleared away inside, Jonathan? Everyone out?”

“Sir!” replied “Jonathan”. We never knew his name.

“OK then. Over to you. Blow this place to kingdom come”. Then to us “Into the car, you two”. He jumped in himself and gunned the engine. As we lurched down the track the hillside erupted in a sheet of flame. The Landrover rocked on its wheels.

“I’m taking you back to barracks” said Captain Harrison over his shoulder. “Simon, I know you once held commissioned rank, even though only temporarily, and in a rather irregular way. Still, I say, once an officer, always an officer, so you’re entitled to a bed in our Mess. And Ricky, you can sleep there too, as Simon’s guest”.

So I did!

Part 10. Captain Harrison explains: narrative concluded by Simon.

Dr Holroyd had called a Council of War in his sitting-room.

A week had gone by and a lot had happened. Peter Cardew, returning to school, had been immediately lionised, and with this reception he’d become talkative – too much so! The account of his ordeal at the hands of a crazy old Professor had been repeated again and again, and on the well-known principle of Chinese Whispers, the story had grown more and more exaggerated.

Inevitably the local paper got hold of it. One of Peter Cardew’s classmates (for his own sake it was as well he was never discovered) had blabbed. The paper ran an article which read like second-rate sci-fi, about spaceships laden with deadly flesh-devouring organisms, orbiting over Sussex – perhaps over all the world!

It was time, thought the Head, to set the record straight, and he invited Captain Harrison over. We were only a small gathering: myself, Ricky and Peter Cardew were there for obvious reasons, Rax Raxworthy because he’d been involved early on, Harry Brotherton because no one had told him to stay away. Lastly, Melanie was there because wherever I go, she goes.

“Some of you, I know” began Gavin Harrison “were surprised – disappointed even – when I told you at the outset that we – Military Intelligence that is – were aware of funny airwaves emanating from somewhere in the Pulborough-Petworth area. That’s because it’s the business of M.I. to be one jump ahead of the opposition. In fact we get to know about ALL rogue airwaves. The clever boys at Caversham tell us where they’re coming from and the clever boys at Shrivenham tell us what they are saying – that is, if they are saying anything at all, and don’t just come from an unsuppressed farm machine or something. By the way which of you is Raxworthy?

Rax shyly put his hand up.

“The Caversham boys picked you up too. Quite handy as it turned out”.

Rax blushed!

“For the most part these airwaves are totally harmless. But even where we have our suspicions, we can’t just jump in in the expectation of finding a terrorist cell or whatever. The Civil Liberties lobby, the Human Rights freaks, the Freedom of Information merchants – would have a field day. That’s why, young Peter, you deserve a medal for leading us to the man Webster – although I’m sure you would have preferred it not to have happened quite like that”.

Peter Cardew glowed with pleasure!

“Now, the man Webster – I won’t call him Professor because he’s no more a Professor than the rest of us” -

Dr Holroyd raised his hand to interrupt. “I hold several honorary Professorships” he said faintly.

“Of course you do, sir, of course you do” replied Gavin Harrison, and hastily continued. “Webster’s a strange man. He came of a good family, went to a well-known public school, but wasted all his early opportunities. He never got to University, but picked up some kind of engineering diploma and got a job as a draughtsman, which he held down for the next 35 years. That funny stainless-steel thing we took away – more about that in a minute – was all his own work, quite good too as these things go.

“The point I’m making is that Webster wasn’t a rocket scientist, and still less was he a mycologist, and it’s very important to remember that. What he’d become in the years following his retirement, was a receiver and distributor of Class A drugs. Our people found a stash of E-tablets, and other things, sufficient to keep all the teenagers of the twin cities of Brighton and Hove ecstatic for a very long time – no pun intended. At this point he teamed up with the character Drachmann – or maybe it was the other way round. I’ll come on to him in time.

“The money he got from trading in drugs was enough and more than enough to buy the old railway tunnel and get it converted into a very cosy little underground hideaway. But down there, away from the real world, he became more than a little bit loony. He got obsessions about fungi. More than that, he began to fantasize in the way that a lot of little men do. Once in several lifetimes, one of the little men sees his fantasies right through, and then you get an Adolf Hitler or a Pol Pot. But for every one of those, you get a thousand Walter Mitties. Webster was one of those.

“He began to read pseudo-scientific books and convinced himself that with the aid of fungus-spores he could become master of the world. All he had to do was launch them into orbit and let them rain down over towns and cities and let them do the rest. In his mind’s eye he saw whole populations wiped out.

“Not long before he abducted young Peter here, he believed he was almost there. You see, that stainless-steel gadget is, in fact, a mini-rocket launching device, controlled by a simple computer program run from an everyday desktop PC. Most of the stuff anyone can buy on the Internet or from model aircraft magazines, the plastic tubing, radio controllers and all the rest. The computer discharged one of the rockets up the shaft at set times (you just missed one that Sunday afternoon, and poor Sarah Benwell actually saw one in flight) and old Webster just sat playing with his computer and kidding himself he was making the rocket orbit over Chichester or Horsham or wherever, and incidentally upsetting all the local TV.

“Webster – and I hate to disillusion anyone – never was the smallest threat to national security or world peace – that was just wishful drooling on his part. His rockets ascended a few hundred feet, a time fuse blew them open to scatter the contents, and then, plastic being flammable, they burned away. We might have found remnants if we’d ever looked. And as to the contents, well! Webster had planned to stuff his pathetic fireworks with fungus-spores, but he hadn’t reckoned on the fact that a billion spores will barely fill a teaspoon. So instead, he substituted dried pulverised fungi of various species, and any vacant space was filled with expanded polystyrene – also flammable of course.

“However, on his little excursions with Drachmann he would see the occasional dead hen, dead bird – even dead sheep aren’t so uncommon- and convince himself that his rockets really were having an effect. And when that poor wretched boy was found dead, and some journalist, God bless him, wrote that his insides were ‘liquefied’, then that put the tin lid on it. He became over-confident, dropped his guard – and we all know what happened next.

“Tell us, Captain Harrison, how did that boy die?” inquired Dr Holroyd – his only question so far. (As an Honours MD it was the sort of thing he was interested in).

“From a combination of things but none of them related to fungi. He’d led an unhealthy life; his insides held a cocktail of nasty bacteria, and roundworm-eggs were also identified. Incidentally he was also HIV-positive, poor kid. But the cup of tea, laced with pulverised fungi, possibly the last drink the boy ever had, certainly didn’t kill him. It may have tasted rather queer but was about as harmful as mushroom soup”.

(And Peter Cardew, I thought to myself, was about to get a mushroom enema pumped up his bottom, so that wouldn’t have harmed him either!)

“You mentioned Drachmann, a.k.a. the Incredible Hulk” ventured Simon. Gavin smiled.

“Yes, I did. A nasty piece of work. He was originally from Belorus and his name was Dragomirov. The Russians kicked him out and next thing he turns up in Romania as one of Ceaucescu’s plug-uglies. After Ceaucescu’s execution he went on the run to Germany – to the former DDR. Here he changed his name to Drachmann. (By the way he really was deaf and dumb.) How he got to Britain is anyone’s guess. He was here illegally of course, but it’s difficult to deport a stateless person – no one wants them! Anyway he’s dead now, which saves us the trouble. Anything else? Yes, young man?

Raxworthy had his hand up again. “Sir! Sir! If the rockets were harmless, why are there so many mushrooms and toadstools this year?”

“You have my assurance, Mr Raxworthy, that there is absolutely NO connection between the two. There’s only one force behind this year’s crop of fungi and it isn’t Oscar Webster, but Mother Nature herself. Every few years the conditions appear to be absolutely right, and then we get a flush of these strange growths. If you read the right books you’ll find that 1947 was a famous year for fungi, also 1976. Perhaps later editions will add 2008 to the list”.

“But the tower, sir! What about the tower?”

It was Dr Holroyd who fielded that one. “Raxworthy, the architect’s report shows clearly that the collapse of the tower was due entirely to old age”.

That might have been the end of matters, but there was one more question, and it came from Ricky.

“Sir, why was the Professor – I mean, Webster – why was he so terrified when he saw me? He seemed to lose his mind!”

Gavin Harrison paused for a moment.

“To answer that, Ricardo, I believe you must go back to the early 50’s, to the “emergency” as the war in the Malayan jungle was, and still is, called. Among the many ghastly and horrible scenes of that war, one stands out clearly.

“One evening, in up-country Selangor state, a party of rubber-tappers came home to their little kampong – village to you – to find a scene of hideous carnage. Their homes had been flattened, their womenfold lying dead, seemingly having been used for target practice, and worst of all they found the burnt-out shell of the school bus. The children, or what was left of them, were clutching at the windows, all of them burned to death”.

“This outrage was at first believed to have been carried out by Communist bandits – it was their sort of style. But then a woman came forward. She had been left for dead but in fact had only slight flesh wounds, and had hidden in the jungle for a day or two. She made a statement to the Malay police, that the burning and shooting had been carried out by a British patrol, and their officer had, himself, fired a flare-pistol into the petrol tank of the school bus, having previously locked the door so that escape was impossible.

“Army records showed that there had indeed been a British patrol in the area that day, and the patrol commander had reported “All quiet”. His name was – Second Lieutenant Oscar Webster. He was then nineteen.

“They whitewashed him at the court-martial. His defence was that all the huts were flying the flag of Communist China; that the village was outside the curfew-zone and therefore illegal, lastly that the fact of all the men being away at the time was the clearest possible indication that they were all terrorists who had taken to the jungle. As to the bus, he produced witnesses who swore that it had caught alight accidentally. So Second Lieutenant Webster completed his national service with his commission intact.”

“You should realise that in a conscript army, such as existed then, there were some very rough elements. You still find them in our cities: roughnecks, corner-boys. Many of them believed the slogan “Wogs begin at Calais” and where so-called “wogs” are concerned, the rules of humanity don’t apply. “Wogs” are fair game, and anything goes. Flattening that village would have been on a par with destroying a rats’ nest, to people of that mentality. In today’s army, thank God, we’ve eradicated it totally.

“Now I can answer your question, Ricardo. If I dare say so, you have very distinctive features” (He means Chinese, I thought). “Also your face was blacked-over. Webster was already beside himself at the collapse of his little world. With his mind wandering and his eyesight not of the best, you appeared to him as a ghost out of his guilty past. The ghost of the murdered children”.

Gavin Harrison paused again, to let the horror of this story sink in. I held Melanie’s hand; she was crying softly. Someone had to weep for those kids, long ago and far away though it all was.

“What will happen to him now, Captain Harrison?” inquired Dr Holroyd.

“Where MI is concerned, nothing” Gavin replied. “He is of no further interest. Where the civil police come in, well, that’s a different ball game, at least on paper. They will try to follow up any leads they can find on the drug-trafficking. In other circumstances they might have charged him with abduction and indecent assault. In practice, though, they are unlikely to bring any charges, since Webster is totally unfit to plead. Presently he is in Rampton”.

“Rampton!” I exclaimed. It was the name of a huge fortress-like Victorian mental hospital, where the most dangerous mentally-ill criminals were confined, usually for the rest of their lives.

“The only place for him. He became extremely violent after we removed him that night – you’d hardly believe it, of someone so old and frail-looking. Since being placed in Rampton, he seems to have shed any vestige of humanity he once had. He won’t wear clothes, he moves about on all fours, he gobbles his food from a bowl. His hygenic habits – no, I won’t go into that, it’s pretty disgusting.”

For a while there was silence, broken at last by the sound of the door quietly opening, and a voice we most of us knew – that of the impeturbable Croker, Dr Holroyd’s butler.

“Headmaster, luncheon is served”.

----oOo---

Epilogue: Ricky resumes.

With November, things settled down.

Outside in the park, the diseased trees were felled, and a series of colossal explosions interrupted Mr Jepson-Turner’s discourse on “Samson Agonistes” as the stumps were dynamited. Already, builders had been swarming over the roof for days, repairing the damage caused by the collapsing tower, and the noise of the machines they used had driven the staff crazy.

The local newspapers had forgotten the story of strange military operations in the night near Midhurst. Instead they were publishing the juicy story of a middle-aged Vicar arrested in the toilets of the multiplex movie theatre, where he had been enticing boys into the cubicles, making them pull their pants down, and committing “grave offences”………

Within the School, too, things became more normal. Three second-years went to the clinic to get their balls pricked. (This time I didn’t have to go with them to hold their hands!) Jon Roebuck, who kept an unofficial eye on the second-years, told me that they used to go off to the locker-room, drop their shorts and allow the other boys to inspect them. They were only able to get hard for two or three days afterwards.

However, the major event was a rugger match, the regional final of the Colts’ challenge cup. (For readers unfamiliar with the term, boys’ teams in Rugby Union are termed Colts when they reach the age of 16. The name was wholly inappropriate at Southdown Hall, where of the whole Colts side, only three players were intact, all of them dayboys. But there you are.)

Our opponents were Arthingworth College, a school near Haywards Heath. At the start of the match they had come thundering out of the pavilion and on to the field, all hairy balls and testosterone, and their captain had said, all too audibly “Right, you fellows, let’s get tore in to these fairies”.

That was the signal to the Southdown Hall side to clinically take their oafish opponents apart. Which we did. There was one awkward moment when Jack Elliott, wearing the number 2 jersey, lost his temper with the Arthingworth scrum-half and clouted him right in front of our goal-posts, earning, for himself, a red card and being sent off; for the opposition three easy penalty points (their kicker couldn’t miss, and didn’t) and for our side, having to play one man short.

Harry took over as hooker and play resumed. It was a rainy day, clearly not Arthingworth’s preferred conditions. They floundered about, clumsy, fumbling, and undisciplined. During the game they conceded two penalties to our one. What our pack lacked in weight they made up for in sheer bloody-minded determination, and in the mid-field we out-ran and out-played Arthingworth from the word go. The final score was 27-3. Of the three converted tries, two were scored by Roddy (winger, 14) who could out-run anybody, and one by Manchit, (fly-half, 10). A day-boy, Keith Howieson (full back, 15) converted all three.

Meanwhile, what of Peter Cardew? Just wait a bit and I’ll tell you!

It was early December and there was an end-of-term feeling in the air. It was also the season for amateur dramatics: each year contributed something for the end-of-term concert.

Ever since Simon moved out to live at the Centre, he very rarely visited the residential side of the school. It was a surprise to see him soon after lunch one day, pounding up the stairs towards the dormitories. Following him, I found him flinging open lockers, looking under beds. “Come and help me search” he said to me over his shoulder. “What are we supposed to be looking for?” I asked.

“My mouse-ears. The First Year asked to borrow them for their play. I expect I forgot to pack them when I moved out. I must find them; they’ll be here somewhere”.

I could understand the mouse-ears being rather precious. They were a memento of a time four years earlier: Simon and Melanie had just become an “item” and had paid a visit to Eurodisney, where the ears had been bought (Simon had been photographed wearing them). We’d moved our search to the second floor when I heard a scuffling sound on the floor above.

We traced the scuffling to Dorm 8, right upon the top floor, and there we found our two miscreants. Selwyn Cox and Peter Cardew – who else.

Selwyn Cox was altogether in the nude, Cardew just the opposite. He had on a girl’s nylon slip, bright sugar-pink in colour, a hair-ribbon and satin slippers of the same vile colour. Besides this, he had applied lipstick and eye-shadow, not very expertly. He was a parody of a teenage girl, till you saw the pathetic little acorn at the top of his thighs, which was glistening from something……

But - on his head were the missing mouse-ears!

On the floor between the boys was a jar of cold-cream. They had, very obviously, been fondling each other’s penises, attempting to get hard (which, and I needn’t explain why) they would never be able to do.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” shouted Simon in a rage.

“Ain’t doin’ nuffin’” Cox mumbled.

“Where did Cardew get that ghastly outfit? “

“Borrowed from Barclay Minor’s sister”.

“ See she gets it back. And what about my mouse-ears?”

“Found ‘em at the back of a drawer”. (This was probably right).

“Now look” Simon went on. “I know what you’ve been doing, but listen. You were castrated so as to prevent you doing that sort of thing. All that will happen, if you carry on like that, is that you’ll get more and more frustrated. Let’s hear no more about it. Now then, both of you get your running kit on – and clean your face first, Cardew, you look bloody ridiculous – and then, twice round the main school field – in opposite directions! Now, move!”

“My God!” Simon exclaimed as we watched their retreating figures. “You’d think he’d learn, wouldn’t you, after experiences like he’s had?” He pocketed his mouse-ears. “But perhaps that sort never do. Come on, let’s go and play squash”.

RICKY AND THE MAD PROFESSOR

Part 1. Story begun by Ricky Silva, Eurasian boy-eunuch, aged 15. Had full surgical castration at 13 years old.

Though I’m beginning this story, my part in it is a lot less important than that of somebody else, whom you’ve barely met before. Here he comes now.

“Silva? Roebuck? Can you spare a second?”

We were sitting in our corner of the 3rd-year common room, I and the Roebuck twins, Jon and Jamie. I was doing a sketch, from memory, of some broken-down sluice gates on the little river Arun, as a Geography project. Jon was listening to something on his I-pod. Jamie was deep in a mail-order catalogue – the underwear pages. Pictures of bare pussy didn’t interest him, but those of girls in their knickers held him spellbound. I’m not sure why. (If one of them had stepped down from the page, pulled her panties off and opened her legs, none of us could have done anything!)

“Silva? Roebuck? Can you spare a second?”

I looked up at the frightened little voice, and saw - Peter Cardew.

Before I go on, I need to place Cardew for you. It’s a long time since he cropped up in these stories and you won’t have remembered from so far back. (He gets a brief mention in “Simon Toes the Line” and an even briefer one in “The Horrible Hotel” )

Up until a few months back, if you’d asked who was the stupidest boy in the school I’d have named two contenders. First there was a day-boy, Martin Mooney. For sheer gormlessness Mooney had no equal. It was Mooney who, in an art competition, painted policemen armed with bows and arrows. Mooney who in Nature Study included a Boeing Triple 7 in “Specimens seen On the Wing”. Mooney who when trainspotting needed a pee, and did he use the station toilet? He did not. He used the toilet on a train standing at the platform, which he’d supposed to be stationary. The train started off immediately and was non-stop to Crewe, 150 miles away………

Mooney had left now. Dr Holroyd had suggested to his parents in the kindest possible way that he’d be happier at another school. And that left only one contender, a fat unattractive second-former called Selwyn Cox. Cox’s stupidity was of a different sort – inherent cack-handedness. If you handed him a glass of water he’d drop it on the floor. If he bounced a ball against a wall, it would fly up and break a window. Also he was unbelievably slow on the uptake, deliberately (it seemed) misunderstanding anything you told him. Whoever took the decision to have Selwyn Cox neutered, and his sluggish genes taken out of circulation, did a service to humanity!

It was a surprise to everyone when this lump of a boy palled up with someone so unlike himself as to be scarcely believable. Peter Cardew was small and weedy, with little round ears and a turned-up nose. He made me think of a puzzled, plaintive little teddy-bear. There was another way in which he differed from Selwyn Cox.

Cardew was intact. Or rather he had remained intact till now. If he’d lived with his parents he might have remained intact indefinitely. But they were overseas, planting rubber, growing tobacco, mining tin – or whatever parents do, overseas. Consequently Cardew lived with a sort-of aunt and uncle. Aunts and uncles are fine. The sub-species “sort-of”, however, sucks.

The little boy stood there tongue-tied, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Come on, Peter” I said. “Spit it out. What’s bothering you? And word by word Cardew began to stammer out his story – and a wretched story it was, too.

Those good people, his sort-of aunt and uncle – for no doubt they were good by their own standards – decided, as they were entitled to under the existing law, that young Peter should be neutered. No doubt they’d been advised by their Doctor that twelve years was the best age for a boy to have his balls out. At that age a boy is interested in sex, maybe very interested, just before puberty kicks in, and that is the time to make sure he can’t become a nuisance with girls.

So they told him he was getting to be a big boy now and he was going to have “that operation that all boys have”. Curious about what this might mean, at the first opportunity he confided in his boon companion Selwyn Cox. And the fat fool filled the credulous child’s ears with horror stories.

Jamie, who’d been listening all the time, laid his catalogue aside. “I’ll thrash that little squirt one of these days” he said, gritting his teeth. “You see if I don’t”. Then in a quiet matter-of-fact voice he told Cardew about the procedure which all boys refer to as “getting your balls pricked” and which the Roebuck twins had experienced first-hand.

How you go to a clinic, where a nurse gets you to pull your shorts and pants down, and she then gives you a hypo-spray all across your private area. Then, and this was the only uncomfortable bit, you got a big needle right at the top of your leg. This was a local anaesthetic. When you were completely numbed-up there were two more injections, one on each side. You didn’t feel anything.

“And for the time being, that’s all” concluded Jamie.

Jon had switched off his I-pod. “We’d both been having a game of 5-a-side football when we were called indoors to be “done” , he said. “Afterwards we just pulled our pants up and went on playing”.

“No pain?” whispered Cardew, his eyes wide.

“A lot of itching next day, and the day after” said Jon. “But then it passes off and you forget all about it”.

“But afterwards, what then?” the little boy asked. For Jamie hadn’t elaborated on what happens afterwards: how your balls dry up and your penis shrinks and never gets hard anymore. Peter looked from one of us to the other and back again. “Silva?” he said at last.

I was expecting the question. If you’ve troubled to read “Dr Geller goes into Partnership” then you’ll know my story first to last. But to have told it “like it was” would have sent out the wrong signals. Instead I went along with the game of treating it all as something-and-nothing.

“Oh, they weren’t taking any chances with me!” I said, with what I hoped sounded like a happy laugh. “My private bits were a bit too chubby. I had them taken right out. I watched the doctor while she did it”.

“You – watched?” the little boy said, with an incredulous catch in his voice.

“Of course! If I was going to have something done to me, so that I could never get married or have children, never have sex with a girl or even a quiet wank, then I wanted to know what it was, OK? Like I said, the doctor took them right out. They came out quite easily. It was all done in about twenty minutes”.

“Gosh” was all he could find to say.

“Anything else bothering you?” asked Jon. “There’s really nothing much more I can say. You’ll probably find you’ll go through a growth-spurt. Two years from now, say, you’ll be a big strong boy with lots of muscle; the only thing is, you’ll never be able to “do it” with a girl. But you’ll feel ever so much better, once those troublesome balls have been seen to, and without all those hormones sloshing around”.

(This, I felt, was just flattery. If Peter Cardew’s minuscule gonads produced even a suspicion of testosterone I’d have been surprised).

“If you want to see how you might change “down there” added Jamie “come and look round the locker-room some time. We all look much the same”.

This was only true up to a point. Neutered boys’ penises vary quite a lot. Jon’s and Jamie’s were like those of any pre-teens, though of boys a good deal younger than the twins’ real age: say six- or seven-year-olds, and (of course) permanently soft. (Though I believe they had quite big penises before they were “done”.) Roddy who had had to be circumcised some time after getting his balls pricked, had a sweet little pink rosebud between his legs. Mine by contrast, after hanging limp for a while following my operation, had clumped itself up into a sort of knot, which in cold weather used to give me problems pee-ing: too little and too often. (If you want to know how this problem was finally cured, read “Ricky Visits America”.)

Empty scrotums, too, come in all shapes and sizes. Roddy, my closest friend, who had a very fair skin, had a pinkish area behind his penis, where the skin, loose at first, had tightened and become smooth as Roddy grew bigger and filled out. I had a gap at the top of my thighs and just a funny little ridge, and by searching I could still find my scars. Most unfortunate was Jan Raxworthy, whose scrotum hung down in a loose fold; big enough, you’d have thought, to insert replacement balls – plastic of course – if he’d wanted to.

Cardew was still looking uncertain. I took his hand and pulled him towards me. “Don’t worry about it” I whispered. “Find out when you’re going to be done, and I’ll take time off and come along too, and be with you when they do it. Alright?”

“Gosh, thanks, Silva!” the child replied. Then his face puckered up. Blinking back the tears that would come, he trotted out. Clearly I had become a bit of a hero in his eyes, if I wasn’t already (if you don’t know what I’m referring to, read “Ricky Goes to School”.) I watched him as he went out of the door: such a small player, but destined to be star performer before long.

Part 2. Narrated by Jan Raxworthy, boy-eunuch. Cornish, neutered in orphanage.

Our part of the school, “The Archdeaconry” has the main school field on one side. On the other, there is a bit of a park, with big trees, between the school and the main road. They are very fine trees and I was upset, one afternoon when returning from the city centre, to see that one of them had been infected by big shelf-fungi growing near the base. Looking round, I saw two more trees infected in the same way.

In the second year, “fungus forays” led by members of the school staff, had taken place regularly and I’d learned a lot about the different species, which could be cooked and eaten, which were dangerous. But the big shelf-fungi were horrible, in the way they killed trees from the inside. I used to think it was as though the tree had cancer; there was no remedy, and in the end the tree would die and have to be burned.

I knew about cancer: it had killed both my parents, my mother when I was only eight, my father three years later. Since I had no other living relatives I was sent to the children’s home in Launceston.

About the first thing that happened to me after being admitted was to have my balls pricked, as all the boys were. This was to stop us being a nuisance with the girls (the home admitted girls too). Though they slept in a separate wing of the building, they shared the refectory and common room with the boys. They often flashed their knickers to tease us, knowing we couldn’t do anything to them with our tiny limp penises – which was unkind of them.

On my first night in the children’s home, lying in my hard little bed, I thought what a strange unfair world it was: a mere ten minutes to have my testicles destroyed after I’d just got interested in them. I’d even begun to think I might, one day, find some Cornish lass of my own age, for love and sex. But that wasn’t going to happen now – not the sex anyway.

I was pretty miserable at the village school. Most of the boys were rough town types and I collected the unpleasant nickname “Baggy” because my empty ball-sac looked like a little leather purse (mercifully the name hasn’t stuck). However, the head-teacher of the village school, Mr Polmear, thought that I was a bit brighter than some of his charges. He’d also read, in “Schoolmaster” magazine, an article by Dr Holroyd explaining his theories about the education of boy-eunuchs. The Doctor considered that boy-eunuchs were a third sex, with attitudes and emotions quite different from intact boys’, and particularly different from those of adolescents. More interestingly, there were bursaries available for “deserving boys from deprived backgrounds”.

It’s a long way from Sussex to Cornwall, so Mr Polmear sent for the bursary exam papers and I sat the exam by myself in his office – and passed! So, goodbye Launceston children’s home and hello Southdown Hall Boarding and Day School for Boys 11 – 18.

It was a kind thought of Mr Polmear to have me admitted to the house of Mr Trefusis, who was also Cornish, although to me (I come from Newlyn) the seaside town of Bude, which was Mr Trefusis’ home, is almost in Devon and hardly counts as Cornish at all. Mr Trefusis greeted me on the doorstep as “Well now, me ‘andsome” (which is the Cornish equivalent of “Hi ya, fella!) and I felt at home at once. Later, I learned he was researching into folk music and I filled him in with a lot of Newlyn songs, about fishing, that he didn’t know.

At Southdown Hall I wasn’t the least embarrassed about being ball-less, because most of the other boys already were. At the centre of things I discovered an absolutely brilliant bunch of guys, with a fabulous leader called Simon Scott. Simon himself had had hair-raising adventures in the Far East, while his friends had carried out a daring rescue of an injured boy from the top of a derelict water tower; they had uncovered organised crime, smashed a paedophile ring – I could go on and on.

Simon and his circle were brilliant at all sports, and in addition some of them, Simon himself, Ricky Silva and Roddy Fisher - had singing voices like angels. Apart from darts which I’m good at, though it’s only a pub game, I’m not very sporty (I’m too short and dumpy) and my singing voice is thin and reedy. Boys are supposed to sing better after losing their balls, but the procedure hasn’t done the same for me! But Simon found out I was interested in computers, and encouraged me to learn all there was to know. I determined to do just that. I learned quite a bit about VHF radio as well.

Here I am going on about myself and missing the point of the story. You’ll remember I was on my way to the school, crossing the park, towards the Archdeaconry, and then I got side-tracked, talking about fungi.

The Archdeaconry was a Victorian building, and a mish-mash of styles, part Gothic, part 18th century, part Tudor. On one corner there was a tower, one of the Tudor bits, with half timbering. It had once held a bell, now removed, and it still housed a clock, which didn’t work.

As I came towards the building, the tower appeared to move.

When I was within easy sprinting distance – say twenty-five yards, there was no doubt. The tower was moving, moving and swaying. One thing to do and one only. I made a dive for the front porch, smashed the glass and set off the fire-alarm.

There was a strict rule about this: if you heard the fire alarm you dropped everything and got outside – immediately! The discipline seemed to work: there was a clatter of feet on the stairs and boys began streaming out through the door. The fire-bell rang on and on, and a larger figure appeared in the doorway – Mr Trefusis. The first thing he caught sight of was me, waving my arms and yelling “No, not that way – this way!” as I tried to guide people away from that side of the building where the tower stood.

Or rather, where it had stood. Mr Trefusis’ mouth was open but whatever he was trying to say, or shout, was drowned by a thunderous crash as the tower collapsed into the yard.

No one was hurt and there was no damage apart from an old banger that Manyweathers, the janitor, had been hoping to sell. Not now he wouldn’t. The old car was reduced to a heap of scrap.

The pile of rubble that had once been the tower was roped off, but when I got the chance I crawled under the barrier and took a look. The corners of the tower were huge beams, nine inches square or more. I saw that at the base of the two outermost beams, the timber had been eaten away by something, leaving only the outer coating of many layers of paint. A hollow square with the thickness of, what? An eggshell? Not far off.

It was a warm September and over the next few days I noticed the number of fairy-rings of toadstools that were coming up, not only in the park but in the school lawns also, where there had never been any before.

It all made you think!

Part 3: narrative resumed by Ricky.

Peter Cardew’s appointment came a fortnight later and true to my promise I went along with him to the big new clinic, not far from the school, which had been opened by the local NHS Trust. Here the GP’s had their consulting rooms, and there were facilities for doing minor surgery like ingrowing toenails. And for neutering boys.

Peter was going to be neutered not by a doctor, but by the practice nurse. She showed us into the waiting room. Ahead of us was a child of about eight or nine, with his mother, clearly on the same errand. The child was crying softly.

“What a wimp! I whispered to Peter. “Anyone would think he was going to lose his arms and legs, not just his balls!” Peter giggled nervously. I suppose eight is a bit young.

The nurse made no objection when I said I wanted to stay with Peter during his procedure, but she made him strip and put on a surgical gown first – a bit OTT, I thought, but there you are. At least he was spared having an enema. Then into the room where the procedures were done.

The nurse helped Peter up on to the operating table. First thing to do was to pass an elasticated belt around his middle, and slip his little penis through the loop, which held it out of the way. It was the modern-day equivalent of the clamps that barber-surgeons used to use, when choirboys were being “done” to preserve their soprano voices, all those years ago.

“Look up” I whispered to Peter when I saw the nurse reach for the hypodermics pre-loaded with Neutersol. “Just keep looking up”. With practised fingers the nurse grasped the little boy’s hairless sex-package, pulling it downwards to stretch the skin over his testicles. She injected one side, then the other, her thumb pressing the plunger down, forcing the drug into the soft tissue. The empty syringes clinked into the bowl and it was all done. Peter Cardew was no longer a boy; he was a boy-eunuch. His voice would never change, he would not need to start shaving, and he would never, ever, fuck girls.

While Peter went to get dressed, I had a chat to the nurse. “No enemas, then?” I commented. The nurse laughed. “I can see you know all about it! No, no need for enemas here. But at the children’s hospital where I worked a few years ago, it was quite different. Operations were done on a conveyor-belt principle with only a few minutes between each one, and if you’d got a child all prepped-up and ready for theatre, and it suddenly wanted to do No 2’s, it would have thrown the whole day out. Mind you, there wasn’t time for enemas either. I used to use ordinary household soap, cut into sticks. I’d pop the soap up the kids’ behinds and the irritation made them want to “go” in a few minutes”.

“Cool” I said, although I didn’t mean it. My dislike of having things shoved up my behind is legendary.

“Anyway” the nurse went on “why are you here? Are you that little boy’s elder brother or something?”.

“No, I’m no relation” I said. “I’m just a friend, and a sort of (I searched for the word) “a sort of mentor”.

“Well if you’re looking after him” the nurse went on “you’ll be able to explain to him what to expect – what will happen to him “down there”. I used Neutersol Plus which works fairly fast. There shouldn’t be any immediate side-effects but if he feels sore or gets headachy, give him an Ibuprofen. His testicles will begin to feel quite soft after about a week and he may get brown stuff in his wee; that’s quite usual.

“In three weeks they should have just about disappeared; they normally don’t take much longer. The rest of the effects are more gradual, he’ll lose the ability to get erections pretty well immediately, but penile shrinkage takes four to six months to be complete. He’s been circumcised so there’s no foreskin problem, and these days there’s a treatment to dry up the scrotum if it doesn’t shrink by itself. I can’t think of anything else just now. Oh, here he is! Time to go home, Peter”.

Cardew had emerged from the locker where he’d been dressing. No doubt he’d been examining his privates to see if his procedure had left any traces. We said goodbye to the nurse and started back towards school.

On the short walk back, he seemed thoughtful and quiet. But some while later he sought me out again.

“It’s a funny thing” he said “but I’d been thinking about girls quite a lot lately. I’d love to meet the sort of girl that lets you feel round her tits, and perhaps put your hand up her skirt”.

“ You’ll have no problem” I said. “All girls like boys to do that to them. And if you don’t keep on at her to do the thing that may start a baby (and you won’t of course, because you can’t, and she knows you can’t) you could find yourself quite popular”.

He brightened up at this. But he hadn’t finished with me yet. “Now I’ve been done” he said shyly “I can try to be like you - or Roddy Fisher, or – or Simon”.

“Don’t worry about that” I said. “Just be yourself. You’ll be OK”.

He looked up at me, eyes shining with admiration. I felt ten feet tall!

Part 4. Jan Raxworthy resumes.

September became October.

On Sunday mornings when he wasn’t officiating in the school chapel as Head of Choir, Simon often used to invite some of us round for a late breakfast. At this time as you may remember, Simon was living at the Simon Scott Centre, and Ricky and Roddy had moved in with him. Breakfast was in Simon’s own apartment but was provided by the main kitchen where there was a French chef and consequently very good indeed.

More often than not, we were joined by Simon’s girlfriend Melanie, who used to drive over from Lymington Haven to spend the weekend with Simon. Generally she appeared rather late, after we’d all sat down, wearing a silk dressing-gown underneath which she obviously had nothing on at all- not even a thong. It was strange to think of Simon, a boy-eunuch like ourselves, being able to satisfy a sexy girl like Melanie, but clearly he managed it somehow!

On this particular Sunday I was the only guest for breakfast. As I walked into the flat

I saw that Simon had got two new posters in his hallway. The first showed two happy boys shooting down a snow-covered hillside on a sled, their faces glowing with the cold and with winter sunshine. The uppermost boy – for they were lying one on top of the other – was dark-haired, the one underneath was blond. But the caption said “Combining pleasure with pleasure!” You saw then that the blond boy had his jeans pulled down off his bottom, and that he was being bummed by the boy on top.

I looked at the second poster. A trio of boys: two tikes of about thirteen and a younger one of about ten. The younger boy was on all fours between the two older ones, and while they were laughing out loud, he had a puzzled expression. As well he might: he was being made to suck one boy off, while the other boy had his penis up his bottom………..Just harmless fun! (At least Simon thought so. I was in two minds about it).

Simon appeared. “Come on in, Rax!” he called out. (Most people call me Rax, feeling that Jan sounds a bit strange, and so it does outside Cornwall). “Get yourself something to eat”. There was lots to choose from, and I did.

“Actually” Simon said a bit later, through a mouthful of toast “it’s a good thing you’re here. Something’s wrong with our telly”.

“But I don’t know anything about telly repairs” I protested.

“For what my opinion’s worth” put in Roddy “it’s being jammed by something. Some rogue frequency or other”. Roddy did a lot of recording and often spoke about “frequencies” as if he knew what he was talking about.

Breakfast over, Simon turned on his big flat-screen TV. For a time the picture was OK, then it broke up into blocks and squares of colour, and the sound signal was lost amid squeals and pops. “Certainly sounds like jamming” I said, after the set had done this three or four times. “Shouldn’t be difficult to find where it’s coming from” I added. “Trouble is though, I need some of my gadgetry to do it with”.

“I’d really like you to have a go” said Simon. “Couldn’t you get someone to bring your stuff over? What about Harry Brotherton – he’s got the use of a van. Yes, go on, ask Harry over for lunch, and then we’ll all go out and have a look”.

I rang Harry, told him where I kept my stuff, and persuaded him to bring it . He arrived nearly an hour later, his father’s Berlingo van having no great turn of speed, and he wasn’t alone.

“Hullo, who’s this?” asked Simon of the diminutive figure that followed Harry into the room.

“Please Scott, I’m Peter Cardew - Form II c” said the little boy shyly.

“’E was all at a loose end, like” said Harry in his good-natured way. “I thought ‘e’d like ter come along for the ride, like”.

“Quite right too” agreed Simon. Ricky and Roddy both nodded. Simon, always the efficient host, rang the kitchen and told them that there would be two more for lunch. “Hope you all like chicken Kiev” he asked. (We all did.) By now, Melanie had appeared, in a slinky red outfit with black tights and a very short skirt. “Drinks, everybody?” called Simon. The Sunday lunch routine had begun. It was a brilliant lunch, as it always was.

The meal over, we all trooped outside. I rode with Harry in the van, to operate the tracking equipment and to point Harry in the direction where the oscillations were strongest. Everyone else, less Melanie, who said it was too cold, piled into the Aston, and away we went. The van had a top speed of about forty; Simon, ploughing along behind, must have been mentally tearing his hair out, keeping the big V12 in check.

Through Storrington we went; through Pulborough, over the Arun, through Fittleworth, just a cluster of cottages round a crossroads, The oscillations were getting stronger and stronger. “Left, Harry” I told him. “Now right. Left again……”

It was in deep country, just fields and the odd farm, where the narrow lane we were on became a cart-track and then just stopped. We got out. A few yards back the Aston, rocking and rolling on its big coil springs, stopped too.

“Rax, you look like a Christmas tree!” laughed Simon. I suppose I did. I had a head-set on, a back-pack and other bits of gubbins on a belt round my middle. It was footwork from here on, and the oscillations were deafening.

At first the going was over rough tussocky grass. Then the ground grew hummocky. As we picked our way over the ups and downs, two things happened in succession.

First, the fog came down. The afternoon had begun misty, but now the thick white vapour swirled round us in sheets. Before it became too dense I noticed a cottage some way ahead. It didn’t look like the sort of place you’d get radio interference from but you never knew.

The second might have been disastrous.

A little way ahead there was a line of straggly bushes and a rickety-looking post-and-rail fence. It was now that Ricky decided to show off. He took a run at the fence, grasped the top rail and vaulted over. There was a wild scream, the bushes waved to and fro – and then silence.

We all rushed to the fence and peered over. The relief when we saw Ricky’s white face looking up was beyond words. “Are you all right, Ricky? called Simon in a nervous voice.

“I’ve got a lot of scratches but that’s all” Ricky replied. (He was about 20 feet down, but thick brambles had caught his clothes and let him down lightly). “Thing is though, this place has a brick wall and I can’t get up it – nothing to hold on to”.

“I got a tow-rope in me van” said Harry. “Good long one”.

“There’s another in the Aston” said Simon. “Give me your key, Harry, I’ll get them both”. He ran off. A while later we heard the squealing of the Aston’s alarm system as Simon used the centre-locking key to locate the car in the fog. It was at that moment that I thought I saw a man standing some way off – a very large man. But then a swirl of fog hid him from sight.

At length Simon returned, festooned with ropes. With these it was only a matter of minutes to rescue Ricky. As he said, he was badly scratched and bleeding, but nothing was broken. He told us what he’d seen. “It looked like an old tunnel, or perhaps only a long bridge” he explained. “At least, there was a big arch, all bricked up, with a door in it. And another thing, above the arch only a bit back, a big shiny thing, like a big funnel. You can’t see it from here”.

“Could have been a tunnel” said Simon. “There used to be a line here once; it started at Pulborough and went on to Petworth and Midhurst. Hasn’t run for years”.

Despite Simon’s passion for old railways and the fact we’d still not found where the interference was coming from, none of us felt inclined to explore further. All of us were cold, and Ricky needed dressings on his cuts and scratches. Little Peter Cardew, who hadn’t said a word the whole time, being too much in awe of these godlike people he was with, was visibly shivering. The thought of hot buttered crumpets in Simon’s flat, before returning to school for evening chapel, was very tempting. Even the hard passenger seat in Harry’s van, as I climbed back in, seemed a luxury.

Though we didn’t know it, we’d got away from Ricky’s “big shiny funnel” not a minute too soon.

Part 5. Narrative continued by Simon Scott. Boy-eunuch since the age of 11 years and 7 months, Simon is now 17).

After the fiasco so graphically described just now by Rax Raxworthy, nothing happened for a few days. I learned to live with the interference on the telly: after all, it didn’t do it all the time.

Then one Monday morning, just a week later, as I was just getting ready to take the three of us to school in the Aston, I was stopped on the doorstep by Veevers, one of the groundsmen. His face (not very well shaved) was ashen. “Mister Simon, sir” he blurted. “I think you’d better take a look, sir”.

There, just inside the main gates, we found him. A boy in his early teens, roughly dressed. Without doubt he was dead – dead and cold, for flies were buzzing round him despite the early hour. Small wonder, too. The poor kid stank of diarrhoea – it was all over the lower part of his legs, blood as well. From his staring eyes and wide-open mouth he must have died in some sort of convulsion.

I phoned 999 and not long afterwards, an ambulance team gingerly lowered the dead boy into a body-bag and took him away.

I got a letter summoning me to the Coroner’s Inquest which was to be in Horsham on the Friday following. Veevers had to go too, and he was so apprehensive that anyone might have thought he was going on trial for his life at the Old Bailey. I assured him that all he’d have to do was to give his name and occupation, state the time and place he’d discovered the body and whether he’d ever seen him before or had any idea who he was. Which was precisely what happened.

Then it was my turn to take the stand. The Coroner, a sour-faced old git in his late 60’s, took a dislike to me on sight. We had a verbal sparring-match which went like this:

- Your name, please?

- Simon Scott.

- Your address?

- The Simon Scott Residential Centre for Management Studies.

- And is that your permanent address?

- Yes.

- In what capacity do you live there?

- As Executive Chairman of the company that owns the Centre. Accommodation is provided for me in that capacity.

- (rapping on the desk) Be careful, young man! This is a solemn occasion. I will not tolerate frivolity in my Court. Once again, in what capacity do you live at the Centre?

- I’m not sure what you want me to say, Your Honour. I’m the majority shareholder, and as such I am Chairman of the Company. You might almost say I own the Centre.

Well, the old boy turned purple in the face! I thought he’d have a fit or something. But then the clerk of the court went over and whispered something to him. The old Coroner looked at me as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, but adopted a more reasonable tone. I confirmed the evidence of my employee Veevers and like him, said I’d never set eyes on the dead boy before. Having delivered myself of this I was permitted to “stand down”.

Next to take the stand was the Home Office pathologist who was introduced as Dr Thomas Huxtable, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Forensic Medicine and a holder of many other degrees. Dr Huxtable’s evidence was brief and to the point and the Coroner let him get on with it, without too many interruptions:

Dr H. The deceased is a Caucasian male, intact, aged about 14 – 15. When I first saw him the upper part of his legs was encrusted with dried-on blood and faeces, possibly the symptoms of a violent onset of dysentery or enteric upset of some kind.

Coroner. Describe your examination, please, Dr Huxtable.

Dr H. I began by examining the anal and rectal area because there had been localised bleeding around the anus and there were lesions inside the rectum.

Coroner. But these conditions were not life-threatening?

Dr H. Of course not, but combined with traces of Vaseline or similar lubricant around the boy’s anus, the lesions indicated that anal intercourse had been taking place, both recently and over an extended period. This being so, I had to include, in my examination, evidence of sexually transmitted disease. This might be relevant or again it might not.

Coroner. I understand. Go on, please. (Here he made rapid notes on his pad, possibly concerned that there was evidence of a serious criminal offence.)

Dr H. I opened the abdomen. The condition of the internal organs was healthy with the exception of the large bowel, which was heavily ulcerated, to the extent that liquid faeces had been leaking into the abdominal cavity in several places. Most recently of all, peritonitis had occurred.

Coroner. Peritonitis is often fatal, is it not?

Dr H. Yes, and in this case I should state unhesitatingly that peritonitis was the cause of death. But it leaves further questions. In one so young, peritonitis is hardly ever spontaneous, and I suspect that it may have been triggered in this case by micro-biological activity of some sort.

Coroner. Can you be more precise?

Dr H. Not just yet. In conditions like these, a wide variety of organisms will be active, including those normally present in the gut, aiding digestion. I am currently isolating these from other and less innocent organisms. As I said earlier, there might be proof of an STD, perhaps more than one.

Coroner. Thank you, Dr Huxtable. (Dr H. leaves the witness stand).

What the Doctor did not say, was that the boy must have died in agony!

The last witnesses provided the information we had all been longing to hear – who was the missing boy? The Police had not been idle, and had traced a family of “travellers”, Jake and Sarah Benwell, who had immediately identified the boy as their son Toby, who had gone missing the previous day. They came across as drop-outs rather than traditional Romany stock.

The Benwells’ lifestyle involved them in migrating around the country in a convoy of elderly vehicles. Besides Jake and Sarah there were four other children, and Sarah’s unmarried sister Emma. Three days earlier they had overnighted in the Midhurst area. Early next day Toby had gone off “on the scrounge” - which seemingly he often did. In the country he sometimes returned with a basket of fruit, sometimes a chicken. He was good at it!

In towns he often returned with money - £50 or more, sometimes. Didn’t the Benwells guess he was a freelance rent-boy or didn’t they care? And the boy still had his balls – he was not a eunuch.

Some time after returning from his “scrounge” in this event empty-handed – Toby complained of feeling poorly. Several times he had asked his parents to stop the caravan so he could go off into the bushes. On the evening before he was found dead, he was in such a poor way that they dropped him off along the way, so that he could relieve himself, arranging that they should wait for him in a caravan-park on some waste ground near Shoreham. It was a place that Toby knew, and could easily reach by bus, as soon as he felt better.

When after 48 hours Toby didn’t show up, the Benwells were about to contact the police (old Romanies, not trusting the police, would have gone back to search for him) but in the event, the police came to them first.

That would have wound things up, except that Sarah Benwell indicated she had something more to say. The Coroner encouraged her to “speak up and not to be afraid”.

“It’s like this, your Worship” Sarah Benwell began. “That sort of sickness, it falls from the air”.

“From the air, you say” remarked the Coroner, and noted it down.

“Yes, your Worship. I looked up and I seen it. Shining like silver it were”.

“And what do you think it was?

“I think – ‘twas the arrow that flieth by noonday”.

“Well, thank you for that. You may stand down”.

Sarah’s remarks were noted by the clerk, but quotations from the Psalms didn’t really add very much. The Coroner stated that the Court would record the cause of Toby’s death as “multiple internal lesions”. The local Press duly repeated this, adding that the boy’s internal organs were “liquefied” – which wasn’t in the medical evidence at all. This had consequences we couldn’t guess at.

Part 6. Narrative continued by Ricky Silva.

Fast forward a few days to a Saturday afternoon. The afternoon had been blustery and rainy, and since there’d been no good reason to go out, the three of us (Simon, Roddy and I) had stayed indoors, reading books, playing computer games, listening to music. Five o’clock came, decision-time: what should we do about tea – stay in or go out?

Then the front door-bell rang.

“Who do you suppose that is? asked Simon, talking more to himself than to us. “I’m sure we haven’t invited anybody. Let’s go and see” (hauling himself to his feet).

The bell rang again, insistently. “Alright, alright, I’m coming” said Simon. The front door, when opened, admitted a distraught Harry Brotherton, who half-staggered, half-fell into the room. His eyes were wild behind his glasses, his hair all over the place; all in all he looked terrible.

“I’ve lorst ‘im” were his first words. “’S my fault, I never did ought to have took ‘im there”. He began sniffling: Harry, who was generally so calm, on the verge of tears.

“Lost who, Harry?”

“Little Peter Cardew. ‘E wanted ter go back to that place, you know, where we all went that foggy day, where you fell down a ‘ole (this to me). Insistent, ‘e was’ just kept on arskin’ till I said yes. But I never ought ter ‘ave took ‘im”.

“Tell us exactly what happened.”

“Well, we arrived there-“

“What time was that?

“Quarter past free. I stopped the van, and Peter got out, and ran off across the grass and I lost sight of ‘im, you know what that place is like, all ups and downs, bushes and all sorts. Well, I followed, thinkin’ I’d catch up wiv ‘im, but there wasn’t any sign. I found that place where you fell down, Ricky, but ‘e weren’t down there ‘cos I looked, and there weren’t nowhere else ‘e could ‘ave got to. I shouted and shouted, but ‘e never came”. Harry covered his face with his hands and sobbed uncontrollably.

This was horrible. Simon, however, was equal to the occasion.

“I’ve got my suspicions about that place. Time for a few phone calls. And, Harry, do try to calm down, crying’s no help to Peter. The best thing you can do is go home”.

“I don’ wanna go ‘ome” gulped Harry.

“Alright then, stay here, only do stop crying”. Simon pulled Roddy by the sleeve. “Get him a stiff drink. I don’t care if he likes it or not – make him drink it.”

Roddy went to the cabinet and sloshed some of Simon’s best liqueur brandy into a tumbler, which he held to Harry’s mouth, forcing him to swallow the contents. Harry choked and spluttered but became quieter.

“First thing, I suppose” said Simon quietly “is to update the Old Man”. He rang Dr Holroyd’s number. The conversation was a very short one.

“What did Dr Holroyd say, Simon?” I enquired timidly.

“He said ‘Do just as you see fit, dear boy’ said Simon, with a smile.

Living off-site gave Simon far more independence than he’d ever have had when a boarder. Not only this, but the exposure of Lord Manningham (Simon’s Uncle Carl) as an international criminal, a trafficker in child slaves and many other outrages, had shattered all Dr Holroyd’s long-held beliefs about who must be trusted implicitly, because of who and what they were. Castles had come tumbling down, Uncle Carl had paid the price, and the days when Simon had needed to go cap-in-hand to the Head and ask permission to act, had long gone.

“And now we’ll get down to business” said Simon. He keyed-in another number and waited.

Dr Holroyd was still an influential person, with a wide network of valuable contacts. But a crisis like this required not specialist skills, but muscle, and it was muscle that Simon was calling up now.

Another very brief conversation followed. Simon put the phone down. In a remarkably short time the front doorbell rang again.

Roddy and I followed Simon to the front door. There on the step stood a tall, young-ish, fair-haired man in a smart grey suit. His tie was ornamented with miniature parachute-wings: Airborne Division. Simon looked him up and down, with evident disappointment. “Major Harris?” Simon asked.

The young man laughed. “No, I’m not Major Harris – if you were expecting him. I’m Captain Harrison- not so exalted as Alan Harris, though we’re always getting mixed up. Can I come in?” Flustered, Simon led Captain Harrison into the flat.

“First of all, call me Gavin” said our visitor. “Next, not to waste time, just fill me in with a few details, one of you. Which of you was there when - who was it? Peter Cardew- disappeared, apparently into thin air?”

Amid sniffles, Harry Brotherton identified himself.

“And exactly where do you say this happened?

Seeing that I’d fallen down a hole at that very place, I spoke up next.

“H’m” said Captain Harrison. “That more or less squares with what I have”. (In wardly I gulped: how could he possibly know already, and from what source?)

Gavin Harrison’s voice broke in on these thoughts. “Right. Wait one”. From his pocket he fished out what I took to be a cellphone, but which proved to be something more military. He began to speak. “Hello Tango Foxtrot leader, come in Tango Foxtrot leader, Sunray here….affirmative…..affirmative…..affirmative……RV as previously………roger so far….over and out.” Good, that’s all arranged. They’re on their way”.

He turned back to me. “Right, you’re coming with us, since you know exactly where we’re going. And Simon, I suppose it’s no use trying to stop you, so consider yourself one of the party too. And you can’t possibly come like that” (we all had school uniform on) “so I’ll give you some denims.”

He hurried out to his Landrover, returning with a khaki bundle which he thrust at us. “Get them on, and something heavier for your feet, hiking boots if you’ve got them. We rushed off to our bedrooms and did a lightning change , emerging in denims and knitted cap-comforters. As I laced my boots up, the air began to throb and the windows to rattle. The noise got louder and louder.

“They’re here” said Gavin Harrison, rather unnecessarily. “Away you go, you two. We’ll talk later. Hurry up now”. He pushed us towards the black bulk of the Puma helicopter that had landed on the lawn outside.

Part 7. Peter Cardew fills in some gaps.

“Shan’t be long, Harry” I called over my shoulder. “Leave the engine running if you like”. Harry waved back in response.

I ran on and soon reached the broken ground that we’d explored that afternoon, when Simon had been with us. I was desperate to see where Ricky had disappeared from sight. What was there down there? I just had to know. I was in among the bushes now, and couldn’t see Harry or the van anymore. There it was! That bit of fence where Ricky had vaulted over. I’d just go take a look. It was only just after three – plenty of time to do that and still be in time for tea.

I craned right over and peered down. As I did so I felt, rather than heard, heavy footsteps right behind me. A huge hand clamped over my face, pressing something to my mouth and nose, with a strong chemical smell: my head began to swim, and I blacked-out……

I don’t know how long it was before I came-to. I was in total darkness, lying on, what? It felt like sacking. The next thing I knew was that my captor, or somebody, had taken off all my clothes. I was bare-naked except for my wrist watch and I couldn’t see that.

I waited in the dark for another age. Then without warning a door was flung open and light flooded into the room. In strode a huge man, the biggest I’d ever seen. He must have stood six-foot-six, perhaps more, and built like an ape. With a grunt this individual scooped me up – literally, carted me out of the room like a bundle of old rags, and into another chamber, very brightly lit. Here he dumped me down. I scrambled to my feet and found myself facing another man, but what a contrast!

He was sitting in a wheelchair, with a plaid rug over his knees. His hands, old withered hands were folded in his lap. I looked into an equally old, withered face, with a ring of white hair surrounding a bald pate. His eyes, the only bright thing about him, sparkled behind gold-rimmed glasses. He addressed me in grave tones.

“Good day to you. My name is Webster – Professor Oscar Webster at your service”. (He gave me a slight nod). “Forgive me if I don’t get up. I’m seventy-five, and the trouble from which you see, I suffer, keeps me confined to this chair. My leg muscles do not function any longer”.

“But as you see” he went on “I have no need of muscles when I have Drachmann”. He indicated the huge man, who stood like a statue by the doorway. “Drachmann is my butler, cook, valet, nursemaid – and bodyguard. Besides this, he is a deaf-mute; he cannot hear what we are saying, and he will not interrupt us. He is incapable of speech”.

“But come” the old man continued. “Our time together will be very short. I need to get to know you better. Come a little closer”.

I edged a bit nearer the wheelchair. The old man looked me up and down, and I was very much aware that he was looking intently at the space at the top of my thighs, where a few weeks ago there had hung my grape-sized balls in their little bag. (They had withered and disappeared much sooner than the three weeks they’d told me about; more like ten days).

The old man looked into my face. “Well, well!” he said, in a bantering tone. “What have we here? It seems our young friend has had a gelding operation. Is he preparing himself, perhaps, to serve as a pageboy to a beautiful young princess? No, that seems unlikely in these days. And there are some boys, very beautiful boys, who are gelded to preserve that beauty. No? Then perhaps he is a chorister. Gelding a boy – cutting out his little balls - is a sure way to make a boy sing better, I’ve been told. So, my little gelded boy, sing me something!”

I was too scared not to obey him. I began the first thing that came into my head, a French nursery rhyme we’d had to sing in form. (It goes to the tune of ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ if you want to know).

“Quand trois poules vont au champ

La première va devant.

La seconde suit la première

La troisième est la dernière.

Quand trois poules vont au champ

La première va devant.”

The old man clapped his hands. “Bravo, bravo! Something more, please”. I gave him two verses of “Le bon roi Dagobert”. By the end of Verse 2 he seemed to be getting restless, so I stopped singing. There was only one thought uppermost in my mind – to get out of this weird place. “Can I go now, please?” I asked. (Though how I was going to get anywhere I couldn’t imagine. Harry would surely have given up on me long before.

“Not so fast! Not so fast!” was his answer. “I have much to tell you, and so little time”. He pressed a switch on the arm of his chair. A spotlight came on, illuminating some big wall-charts. “Do you know what those are?” he asked.

“Yes, of course I do. Mushrooms – mushrooms and toadstools”.

“Mushrooms and toadstools. Quite so. They are more than that: they are my little friends and allies!”

What could he be talking about?

“They are wonderful things. Some sit innocently on the soil, but are packed with the most lethal poisons known to science. Some feed upon the timber of houses, reducing it to powder. Others feed upon living trees, converting solid heartwood to mush. But I – Professor Webster – I have developed a combination of species that devour – FLESH!

He smiled at me as he said the last word – exposing a row of gleaming dentures. It was a horrible smile, that sent shivers down my back. But he hadn’t finished. He pointed to a door at the far end of the chamber. “Through there is my laboratory. And in my laboratory I have a machine which – with the aid of my little friends the mushrooms – will make me master of the universe!”

“I knew I was on the right track not long ago. Drachmann takes me for outings in my chair. No one thinks anything of it – just an old man going to the village shop for a half-pound of peppermint humbugs. But every time I saw a dead bird, or a dead chicken, or a dead sheep, I knew that success was not far away. And then – and then that boy came to the door”.

A faraway look came over the old man’s face as he re-lived that moment. “An impertinent, rude boy, who came to the door and asked for a drink. I gave him a cup of tea. Oh yes! A cup of tea. He had no idea what I had mixed in it. And after he had left, he became ill – very ill indeed. It was all in the papers, how he died. His internal organs had liquefied! I had succeeded!

“Now I could develop my master-plan. My machine is programmed to discharge rockets. They will orbit over towns and cities, releasing a deadly hail of fungus-spores. No one who ingests that dust will be spared. They will all die, like that silly rude boy”.

The old man gave me his ghastly smile again. “They took that boy’s body away. But then you and your interfering friends came nosing around – Drachmann lets me know everything, in his strange way. I guessed one of you would return. And now you are here, you will take that boy’s place in my master-plan.”

“I’m not going to drink anything” I said defiantly. “You can’t make me. I shall spit it all out!”

“No, I shall not make you drink anything” the old man answered. “There is a much more direct way to a boy’s insides than down his throat. Look here now!”

From beneath the rug that covered his withered limbs he drew a large syringe, the sort used to give horse-enemas. “This will go up your bottom and right into your bowels. At first you will only feel the liquid being pumped in. After a little while you will begin to feel discomfort, and then the discomfort will turn to pain – such pain as you could never have imagined in your worst nightmares! You will scream your life away! Death when it comes, will be a merciful release”.

Was I hearing any of this? Well, it seemed I was, and he hadn’t finished either.

“When you are dead…..”

When I’m dead? Me? I’m only twelve!

“When you are dead, your body will be an empty shell. A mere husk! And it will be my bargaining counter, with those I summon to appear before me. I shall drive the hardest bargains of all time, because I hold all the winning cards. I can eliminate cities, whole regions even, if I choose to do so. I can demand gold, diamonds, lands, titles! I can direct the fate of nations! I, Oscar Webster, shall be Master of the World!

The old man’s eyes had closed as he visualised the delicious scenes where he would hold centre stage. But now they snapped open. They were hooded, like those of a bird of prey. “Boy, your time is up! Prepare yourself!” He beckoned to the hulking figure in the doorway. “Drachmann!” The giant came lumbering over.

“NO!” I screamed as loudly as I could. In the confined space it sounded like a train whistle. Then everything started to happen at once.

Hardly had my scream died away than there came the clear sharp bang of a small detonation, followed by the whoomph of something heavier. The old man’s mouth dropped open in astonishment; the enema syringe fell to the floor, abandoned. Drachmann strode to the further door and flung it open. He had a revolver in his hand and I heard the shots as he emptied the magazine. In answer there came a burst of assault-rifle fire.

Losing interest in me, the old man turned his wheel-chair and propelled himself into the further room. I heard him asking indignantly “Who are you, bursting into my house?” followed by a wailing “My machine! You’ve smashed my machine!” Through the hazy smoke that obscured the room beyond the doorway I could see figures moving about. Then the old man’s voice, again, speaking so quietly I could barely hear him, then rising to a scream "No! Not that! No! No! No!” followed by inarticulate screeching.

Then two of the dim figures came nearer. They wore woollen caps and their faces were covered in some sort of dark-coloured paint. I’d never seen them before. But when they spoke, their voices were distinct enough: Ricky Silva and Simon Scott. The only thing that bothered me was, I had no clothes on! What would they think?

Then with one thing and another, I blacked out.

Part 8. Extract from the report of Sergeant-Major Smith, a warrant officer of the regular forces, attached to Military Intelligence.

……..arriving at the agreed RV at 1900 hours. Patrol consisted of: self, Troopers Carden C, Norton W, Sheridan P, medical orderly Pte Mackonochie A, RAMC, technical support Craftsman Tonkinson E, REME, photographer Signalman Bartram T, Royal Signals. Attached to the patrol were two civilians, Scott S and Silva R, who possessed detailed knowledge of the location of the objective.

Reached forming-up point at 1915 hours, map reference 015176. Identified objective. Gained access by means of a charge of PE attached to doorpost and detonated remotely…….

Part 9. Ricky fills in yet more gaps.

The helicopter seemed full to bursting with enormous men. In charge was a grim-faced Sergeant-Major, named – unusually – Smith. (My joke). The soldier nearest to me, who was called Ted Tonkinson, showed me how to cover my face with camouflage-cream, then handed the tube to Simon. White faces are very conspicuous at night, he said. The flight that followed was very noisy and very cold, but fortunately it was also very short. In no time at all we were tumbling out of the Puma in the tussocky, hilly place I recognised from that foggy Sunday.

For a very few moments I led the way to the gap in the fence where I’d fallen over and couldn’t get back. No chance of a repeat performance tonight, though: all of the soldiers had abseiling ropes attached to their belts by loops. Two of them went on ahead to the iron door I’d seen that day. They tried to open it by destroying the keypad with a small charge, and when that didn't work they just blew the whole door

down.

“Careful now” growled the Sergeant-Major. “The place may be booby-trapped”.

There was a strong mushroomy smell. It came from rows and rows of shelving, with trays of compost on them. But these were not proper mushrooms, they were toadstools, some of them brightly coloured, some livid and horrible – the sort you tread on and squash. Through here we went, arriving at a place where the ways divided. To the right, a passageway led up a ramp. “Could be an alternative way out” said Sergeant-Major Smith. “We’ll check it out presently”. (He did, and it proved to lead to the cottage on the hillside).

Right in front was another door, which wasn’t locked. The room beyond was very brightly lit, and there were many things to be seen. A shelf of sealed glass jars of greyish-brown powder. (“Careful of those” directed the Sergeant-Major. “Might be anthrax germs – they look a bit like that”) A computer, with many leads, connected to a strange contraption made of stainless steel, against which there was piled a stack of plastic tubes, about as thick as the down-spouts you get on houses, and of a silvery colour. The contraption pointed towards a shutter in the roof, that could be opened by a chain. One of the soldiers, some kind of technician, was ordered to start to take this apart. “You can smash the monitor” said the Sergeant-Major. “That won’t be needed”.

The crash of breaking glass as a rifle-butt smashed the monitor was followed by a loud scream somewhere in the distance – it sounded like “NO!” Then a door was flung open, and an enormous man barrelled into the room, making grunting sounds. Now Raxworthy said he’d seen a very big man on the hillside – though none of the rest of us had. He must have been right.

The man had a revolver and began shooting, but his shooting was wild - no attempt to aim, and his shots went all over the place without hitting anybody. But one of the soldiers brought his assault rifle to his shoulder and fired a burst, hitting the big man in the chest. He gave the most horrible ugly groan – I never want to hear another like it – and collapsed to the floor with blood pouring out of his mouth.

For a very brief moment there was a pause, before another figure appeared in the doorway, this time a very old, wizened man in a wheelchair. At first he tried to bluster: “Who are you, to burst in like this? How dare you” and more of the same, to which one of the soldiers replied “Ah, fook off, Grandad!” The old man tried to advance further into the room but his wheelchair ran up against the prostrate body of the big man, lying in a pool of blood.

“Drachmann?” said the old man enquiringly, and again “Drachmann?” Then his gaze fell upon the remains of the monitor and on Ted Tonkinson who was busy demolishing the stainless-steel gizmo. “My machine!” wailed the old man “You’ve smashed my machine! My machine! My machine!”

Then he saw ME.

His face turned a dirty white and his eyes started from his head. “You! he hissed. “You!”

I took a pace towards him. At once he hid his face behind his withered hands. “No, no! he wailed. “Not you! No, not that! No, no!”

I moved a little closer. He raised one arm as if to ward off a blow – though I’d no intention of hitting him. His wailing became incoherent, dissolving into gibberish. At one point he peered at me again with terrified eyes, then began gibbering again. He was beginning to foam at the mouth.

“He’s having a fit of some kind” muttered Sergeant-Major Smith. “Mackonochie, get him out of here and give him something to quieten him down”. “Sir!” replied the medical orderly, a very silent Scot – the first words he’d uttered till now – and with that, he trundled the old man away, still moaning and gibbering.

“Right, let’s get this lot cleared up” continued the Sergeant-Major. “ Tonkinson, ain’t you finished yet? Get a move on! Road transport should be ‘ere by now. You two, Norton, Carden, get ‘im out the road and go and check” (“’im” being the body of Drachmann.)

Simon and I found ourselves surplus to requirements. The same thought was occurring to both of us – Peter Cardew! Where was he, and had he ever been here? Were we –had we always been – on totally the wrong trail, perhaps. But both of us had heard that scream, that sounded like “NO!”

And as you know by now, we found him in the room beyond, stark naked, his hands secured behind his back, but outwardly unharmed so far as we could see. Simon told me to find Peter’s clothes. These were not in the room, so I tried the further door. Only naked electric bulbs here, and the walls were black and sooty-looking; Simon had plainly been right in guessing the place was an old unused rail tunnel.

Peter’s clothes I found dumped in a corner and I took them straight back. “Time to get dressed and go home, Peter” Simon said cheerfully. “Hello, Peter, it’s me – you’re safe now!” I added. Peter looked up, seeming to recognise our voices, but whatever the brutes had said or done to him during his ordeal had robbed him of speech for the moment. He seemed to have slipped into a kind of trance, half asleep and half awake. Between us we got him dressed and helped him outside to the waiting trucks.

There followed a long freezing interval. Sergeant-Major Smith’s party finished what they had to do, and left by helicopter, but their orders didn’t include taking us with them. By now a lot more men had arrived and were taking the place apart. I spoke to a corporal, whose truck was on the point of leaving, and persuaded him to take Peter back to school- which the truck had to pass anyway. Peter seemed a little brighter now. I saw the soldiers giving him a hot drink – I could have done with one too!

Finally at nearly eleven o’clock there appeared a Landrover, and out got Captain Harrison, immaculate as ever. “Well, it’s been quite a day!” he greeted us. “Alright, are we? Then I think we’ll make ourselves scarce, before the firework display starts”.

He waved his hand towards a small convoy of trucks, with red-painted fenders, which bore the emblem of the bomb-disposal section. From these a second-lieutenant appeared and saluted.

“All cleared away inside, Jonathan? Everyone out?”

“Sir!” replied “Jonathan”. We never knew his name.

“OK then. Over to you. Blow this place to kingdom come”. Then to us “Into the car, you two”. He jumped in himself and gunned the engine. As we lurched down the track the hillside erupted in a sheet of flame. The Landrover rocked on its wheels.

“I’m taking you back to barracks” said Captain Harrison over his shoulder. “Simon, I know you once held commissioned rank, even though only temporarily, and in a rather irregular way. Still, I say, once an officer, always an officer, so you’re entitled to a bed in our Mess. And Ricky, you can sleep there too, as Simon’s guest”.

So I did!

Part 10. Captain Harrison explains: narrative concluded by Simon.

Dr Holroyd had called a Council of War in his sitting-room.

A week had gone by and a lot had happened. Peter Cardew, returning to school, had been immediately lionised, and with this reception he’d become talkative – too much so! The account of his ordeal at the hands of a crazy old Professor had been repeated again and again, and on the well-known principle of Chinese Whispers, the story had grown more and more exaggerated.

Inevitably the local paper got hold of it. One of Peter Cardew’s classmates (for his own sake it was as well he was never discovered) had blabbed. The paper ran an article which read like second-rate sci-fi, about spaceships laden with deadly flesh-devouring organisms, orbiting over Sussex – perhaps over all the world!

It was time, thought the Head, to set the record straight, and he invited Captain Harrison over. We were only a small gathering: myself, Ricky and Peter Cardew were there for obvious reasons, Rax Raxworthy because he’d been involved early on, Harry Brotherton because no one had told him to stay away. Lastly, Melanie was there because wherever I go, she goes.

“Some of you, I know” began Gavin Harrison “were surprised – disappointed even – when I told you at the outset that we – Military Intelligence that is – were aware of funny airwaves emanating from somewhere in the Pulborough-Petworth area. That’s because it’s the business of M.I. to be one jump ahead of the opposition. In fact we get to know about ALL rogue airwaves. The clever boys at Caversham tell us where they’re coming from and the clever boys at Shrivenham tell us what they are saying – that is, if they are saying anything at all, and don’t just come from an unsuppressed farm machine or something. By the way which of you is Raxworthy?

Rax shyly put his hand up.

“The Caversham boys picked you up too. Quite handy as it turned out”.

Rax blushed!

“For the most part these airwaves are totally harmless. But even where we have our suspicions, we can’t just jump in in the expectation of finding a terrorist cell or whatever. The Civil Liberties lobby, the Human Rights freaks, the Freedom of Information merchants – would have a field day. That’s why, young Peter, you deserve a medal for leading us to the man Webster – although I’m sure you would have preferred it not to have happened quite like that”.

Peter Cardew glowed with pleasure!

“Now, the man Webster – I won’t call him Professor because he’s no more a Professor than the rest of us” -

Dr Holroyd raised his hand to interrupt. “I hold several honorary Professorships” he said faintly.

“Of course you do, sir, of course you do” replied Gavin Harrison, and hastily continued. “Webster’s a strange man. He came of a good family, went to a well-known public school, but wasted all his early opportunities. He never got to University, but picked up some kind of engineering diploma and got a job as a draughtsman, which he held down for the next 35 years. That funny stainless-steel thing we took away – more about that in a minute – was all his own work, quite good too as these things go.

“The point I’m making is that Webster wasn’t a rocket scientist, and still less was he a mycologist, and it’s very important to remember that. What he’d become in the years following his retirement, was a receiver and distributor of Class A drugs. Our people found a stash of E-tablets, and other things, sufficient to keep all the teenagers of the twin cities of Brighton and Hove ecstatic for a very long time – no pun intended. At this point he teamed up with the character Drachmann – or maybe it was the other way round. I’ll come on to him in time.

“The money he got from trading in drugs was enough and more than enough to buy the old railway tunnel and get it converted into a very cosy little underground hideaway. But down there, away from the real world, he became more than a little bit loony. He got obsessions about fungi. More than that, he began to fantasize in the way that a lot of little men do. Once in several lifetimes, one of the little men sees his fantasies right through, and then you get an Adolf Hitler or a Pol Pot. But for every one of those, you get a thousand Walter Mitties. Webster was one of those.

“He began to read pseudo-scientific books and convinced himself that with the aid of fungus-spores he could become master of the world. All he had to do was launch them into orbit and let them rain down over towns and cities and let them do the rest. In his mind’s eye he saw whole populations wiped out.

“Not long before he abducted young Peter here, he believed he was almost there. You see, that stainless-steel gadget is, in fact, a mini-rocket launching device, controlled by a simple computer program run from an everyday desktop PC. Most of the stuff anyone can buy on the Internet or from model aircraft magazines, the plastic tubing, radio controllers and all the rest. The computer discharged one of the rockets up the shaft at set times (you just missed one that Sunday afternoon, and poor Sarah Benwell actually saw one in flight) and old Webster just sat playing with his computer and kidding himself he was making the rocket orbit over Chichester or Horsham or wherever, and incidentally upsetting all the local TV.

“Webster – and I hate to disillusion anyone – never was the smallest threat to national security or world peace – that was just wishful drooling on his part. His rockets ascended a few hundred feet, a time fuse blew them open to scatter the contents, and then, plastic being flammable, they burned away. We might have found remnants if we’d ever looked. And as to the contents, well! Webster had planned to stuff his pathetic fireworks with fungus-spores, but he hadn’t reckoned on the fact that a billion spores will barely fill a teaspoon. So instead, he substituted dried pulverised fungi of various species, and any vacant space was filled with expanded polystyrene – also flammable of course.

“However, on his little excursions with Drachmann he would see the occasional dead hen, dead bird – even dead sheep aren’t so uncommon- and convince himself that his rockets really were having an effect. And when that poor wretched boy was found dead, and some journalist, God bless him, wrote that his insides were ‘liquefied’, then that put the tin lid on it. He became over-confident, dropped his guard – and we all know what happened next.

“Tell us, Captain Harrison, how did that boy die?” inquired Dr Holroyd – his only question so far. (As an Honours MD it was the sort of thing he was interested in).

“From a combination of things but none of them related to fungi. He’d led an unhealthy life; his insides held a cocktail of nasty bacteria, and roundworm-eggs were also identified. Incidentally he was also HIV-positive, poor kid. But the cup of tea, laced with pulverised fungi, possibly the last drink the boy ever had, certainly didn’t kill him. It may have tasted rather queer but was about as harmful as mushroom soup”.

(And Peter Cardew, I thought to myself, was about to get a mushroom enema pumped up his bottom, so that wouldn’t have harmed him either!)

“You mentioned Drachmann, a.k.a. the Incredible Hulk” ventured Simon. Gavin smiled.

“Yes, I did. A nasty piece of work. He was originally from Belorus and his name was Dragomirov. The Russians kicked him out and next thing he turns up in Romania as one of Ceaucescu’s plug-uglies. After Ceaucescu’s execution he went on the run to Germany – to the former DDR. Here he changed his name to Drachmann. (By the way he really was deaf and dumb.) How he got to Britain is anyone’s guess. He was here illegally of course, but it’s difficult to deport a stateless person – no one wants them! Anyway he’s dead now, which saves us the trouble. Anything else? Yes, young man?

Raxworthy had his hand up again. “Sir! Sir! If the rockets were harmless, why are there so many mushrooms and toadstools this year?”

“You have my assurance, Mr Raxworthy, that there is absolutely NO connection between the two. There’s only one force behind this year’s crop of fungi and it isn’t Oscar Webster, but Mother Nature herself. Every few years the conditions appear to be absolutely right, and then we get a flush of these strange growths. If you read the right books you’ll find that 1947 was a famous year for fungi, also 1976. Perhaps later editions will add 2008 to the list”.

“But the tower, sir! What about the tower?”

It was Dr Holroyd who fielded that one. “Raxworthy, the architect’s report shows clearly that the collapse of the tower was due entirely to old age”.

That might have been the end of matters, but there was one more question, and it came from Ricky.

“Sir, why was the Professor – I mean, Webster – why was he so terrified when he saw me? He seemed to lose his mind!”

Gavin Harrison paused for a moment.

“To answer that, Ricardo, I believe you must go back to the early 50’s, to the “emergency” as the war in the Malayan jungle was, and still is, called. Among the many ghastly and horrible scenes of that war, one stands out clearly.

“One evening, in up-country Selangor state, a party of rubber-tappers came home to their little kampong – village to you – to find a scene of hideous carnage. Their homes had been flattened, their womenfold lying dead, seemingly having been used for target practice, and worst of all they found the burnt-out shell of the school bus. The children, or what was left of them, were clutching at the windows, all of them burned to death”.

“This outrage was at first believed to have been carried out by Communist bandits – it was their sort of style. But then a woman came forward. She had been left for dead but in fact had only slight flesh wounds, and had hidden in the jungle for a day or two. She made a statement to the Malay police, that the burning and shooting had been carried out by a British patrol, and their officer had, himself, fired a flare-pistol into the petrol tank of the school bus, having previously locked the door so that escape was impossible.

“Army records showed that there had indeed been a British patrol in the area that day, and the patrol commander had reported “All quiet”. His name was – Second Lieutenant Oscar Webster. He was then nineteen.

“They whitewashed him at the court-martial. His defence was that all the huts were flying the flag of Communist China; that the village was outside the curfew-zone and therefore illegal, lastly that the fact of all the men being away at the time was the clearest possible indication that they were all terrorists who had taken to the jungle. As to the bus, he produced witnesses who swore that it had caught alight accidentally. So Second Lieutenant Webster completed his national service with his commission intact.”

“You should realise that in a conscript army, such as existed then, there were some very rough elements. You still find them in our cities: roughnecks, corner-boys. Many of them believed the slogan “Wogs begin at Calais” and where so-called “wogs” are concerned, the rules of humanity don’t apply. “Wogs” are fair game, and anything goes. Flattening that village would have been on a par with destroying a rats’ nest, to people of that mentality. In today’s army, thank God, we’ve eradicated it totally.

“Now I can answer your question, Ricardo. If I dare say so, you have very distinctive features” (He means Chinese, I thought). “Also your face was blacked-over. Webster was already beside himself at the collapse of his little world. With his mind wandering and his eyesight not of the best, you appeared to him as a ghost out of his guilty past. The ghost of the murdered children”.

Gavin Harrison paused again, to let the horror of this story sink in. I held Melanie’s hand; she was crying softly. Someone had to weep for those kids, long ago and far away though it all was.

“What will happen to him now, Captain Harrison?” inquired Dr Holroyd.

“Where MI is concerned, nothing” Gavin replied. “He is of no further interest. Where the civil police come in, well, that’s a different ball game, at least on paper. They will try to follow up any leads they can find on the drug-trafficking. In other circumstances they might have charged him with abduction and indecent assault. In practice, though, they are unlikely to bring any charges, since Webster is totally unfit to plead. Presently he is in Rampton”.

“Rampton!” I exclaimed. It was the name of a huge fortress-like Victorian mental hospital, where the most dangerous mentally-ill criminals were confined, usually for the rest of their lives.

“The only place for him. He became extremely violent after we removed him that night – you’d hardly believe it, of someone so old and frail-looking. Since being placed in Rampton, he seems to have shed any vestige of humanity he once had. He won’t wear clothes, he moves about on all fours, he gobbles his food from a bowl. His hygenic habits – no, I won’t go into that, it’s pretty disgusting.”

For a while there was silence, broken at last by the sound of the door quietly opening, and a voice we most of us knew – that of the impeturbable Croker, Dr Holroyd’s butler.

“Headmaster, luncheon is served”.

----oOo---

Epilogue: Ricky resumes.

With November, things settled down.

Outside in the park, the diseased trees were felled, and a series of colossal explosions interrupted Mr Jepson-Turner’s discourse on “Samson Agonistes” as the stumps were dynamited. Already, builders had been swarming over the roof for days, repairing the damage caused by the collapsing tower, and the noise of the machines they used had driven the staff crazy.

The local newspapers had forgotten the story of strange military operations in the night near Midhurst. Instead they were publishing the juicy story of a middle-aged Vicar arrested in the toilets of the multiplex movie theatre, where he had been enticing boys into the cubicles, making them pull their pants down, and committing “grave offences”………

Within the School, too, things became more normal. Three second-years went to the clinic to get their balls pricked. (This time I didn’t have to go with them to hold their hands!) Jon Roebuck, who kept an unofficial eye on the second-years, told me that they used to go off to the locker-room, drop their shorts and allow the other boys to inspect them. They were only able to get hard for two or three days afterwards.

However, the major event was a rugger match, the regional final of the Colts’ challenge cup. (For readers unfamiliar with the term, boys’ teams in Rugby Union are termed Colts when they reach the age of 16. The name was wholly inappropriate at Southdown Hall, where of the whole Colts side, only three players were intact, all of them dayboys. But there you are.)

Our opponents were Arthingworth College, a school near Haywards Heath. At the start of the match they had come thundering out of the pavilion and on to the field, all hairy balls and testosterone, and their captain had said, all too audibly “Right, you fellows, let’s get tore in to these fairies”.

That was the signal to the Southdown Hall side to clinically take their oafish opponents apart. Which we did. There was one awkward moment when Jack Elliott, wearing the number 2 jersey, lost his temper with the Arthingworth scrum-half and clouted him right in front of our goal-posts, earning, for himself, a red card and being sent off; for the opposition three easy penalty points (their kicker couldn’t miss, and didn’t) and for our side, having to play one man short.

Harry took over as hooker and play resumed. It was a rainy day, clearly not Arthingworth’s preferred conditions. They floundered about, clumsy, fumbling, and undisciplined. During the game they conceded two penalties to our one. What our pack lacked in weight they made up for in sheer bloody-minded determination, and in the mid-field we out-ran and out-played Arthingworth from the word go. The final score was 27-3. Of the three converted tries, two were scored by Roddy (winger, 14) who could out-run anybody, and one by Manchit, (fly-half, 10). A day-boy, Keith Howieson (full back, 15) converted all three.

Meanwhile, what of Peter Cardew? Just wait a bit and I’ll tell you!

It was early December and there was an end-of-term feeling in the air. It was also the season for amateur dramatics: each year contributed something for the end-of-term concert.

Ever since Simon moved out to live at the Centre, he very rarely visited the residential side of the school. It was a surprise to see him soon after lunch one day, pounding up the stairs towards the dormitories. Following him, I found him flinging open lockers, looking under beds. “Come and help me search” he said to me over his shoulder. “What are we supposed to be looking for?” I asked.

“My mouse-ears. The First Year asked to borrow them for their play. I expect I forgot to pack them when I moved out. I must find them; they’ll be here somewhere”.

I could understand the mouse-ears being rather precious. They were a memento of a time four years earlier: Simon and Melanie had just become an “item” and had paid a visit to Eurodisney, where the ears had been bought (Simon had been photographed wearing them). We’d moved our search to the second floor when I heard a scuffling sound on the floor above.

We traced the scuffling to Dorm 8, right upon the top floor, and there we found our two miscreants. Selwyn Cox and Peter Cardew – who else.

Selwyn Cox was altogether in the nude, Cardew just the opposite. He had on a girl’s nylon slip, bright sugar-pink in colour, a hair-ribbon and satin slippers of the same vile colour. Besides this, he had applied lipstick and eye-shadow, not very expertly. He was a parody of a teenage girl, till you saw the pathetic little acorn at the top of his thighs, which was glistening from something……

But - on his head were the missing mouse-ears!

On the floor between the boys was a jar of cold-cream. They had, very obviously, been fondling each other’s penises, attempting to get hard (which, and I needn’t explain why) they would never be able to do.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” shouted Simon in a rage.

“Ain’t doin’ nuffin’” Cox mumbled.

“Where did Cardew get that ghastly outfit? “

“Borrowed from Barclay Minor’s sister”.

“ See she gets it back. And what about my mouse-ears?”

“Found ‘em at the back of a drawer”. (This was probably right).

“Now look” Simon went on. “I know what you’ve been doing, but listen. You were castrated so as to prevent you doing that sort of thing. All that will happen, if you carry on like that, is that you’ll get more and more frustrated. Let’s hear no more about it. Now then, both of you get your running kit on – and clean your face first, Cardew, you look bloody ridiculous – and then, twice round the main school field – in opposite directions! Now, move!”

“My God!” Simon exclaimed as we watched their retreating figures. “You’d think he’d learn, wouldn’t you, after experiences like he’s had?” He pocketed his mouse-ears. “But perhaps that sort never do. Come on, let’s go and play squash”.