SIMON AND HIS CONSCIENCE UNDER THE EARTH

Sandie Ross. What a loser!

You couldn’t be in the same room as Sandie Ross, without being irritated to screaming pitch by his staccato “I – I mean to say……..sort of…….kind of…..stuff like that” and his high-pitched giggle as he told some inane story which he – and possibly he alone- found amusing.

The funny thing was, there had been a time, a few years ago now, when I’d sought Sandie’s friendship, believing him to be a kindred spirit. Like me, he was in the school choir; I was a good alto, he was a good treble; like me he’d been neutered, but not just to keep his voice high. Like me he had been caught “doing it” with his girl cousin, and his guardians had determined to stop him ever doing it again. So, like me, Sandie had had his balls pricked. He was now a boy-eunuch, unable to “do it” with a girl, unable to wank, unable even to enjoy a wet dream……

But the resemblance ended there, and as time went on I came to hate the sight and sound of him.

I’m not sure if I ever told you Sandie’s full story. Aged nine or thereabouts, his parents had dumped him on an aunt and uncle, his legal guardians, who had a daughter of their own, the sort of girl you long to meet when you are first experimenting with sex – a precocious little brat. It had all begun with playing “Boyfriends and girlfriends” – a game that consisted of climbing into bed with no clothes on and fooling around.

The girl – her name was Allie – encouraged Sandie to feel between her thighs and put his fingers inside her “love-hole” while she felt his tiny cock and hard little balls, rousing his two-inch erection. Time passed by, and things moved on from there until one night, when they were both between eleven and twelve, things took a giant leap forward. Sandie had described the scene, as he wistfully remembered it:

“There she was, in a lovely little shortie nightdress, just covering her bum. Underneath she had on just a tiny pair of white panties. I was going mad for her – my cock was like iron……”

Allie didn’t disappoint. She pulled her pants off, got on the bed and spread her legs. “Put it in, Sandie” she whispered “and then do something inside – just a drop, just a little drop, that’s all- then I’ll be a woman!”

Sandie, shaking all over with excitement, did exactly as he was told, right down to the “little drop” – and in that position Allie’s mother found them. When I’d been caught trying to “do it”, my guardian, Auntie Jennifer, had gone ape – screaming and shouting, lashing me with the strap of her handbag. Sandie’s aunt, by contrast, had been icily calm. Ordered to get dressed, the girl had been whisked off to her grandparents’ home, and from there to a boarding prep-school, where she would be kept in purdah – at least in term-time.

That afternoon had marked the beginning of Allie’s sex life. Doubtless she’d go on to have sex countless more times. But not Sandie. A phone call was made, and Sandie was taken down to the clinic the same day, to be neutered. Three weeks later his balls had shrivelled away, leaving him just the fold of skin that had been his scrotum. And this was not the only consequence of two pricks of a hypodermic……………....

What the books call “penile shrinkage” varies a lot. In my case, once my balls had gone, my cock just stopped growing: it looks much the same now as six years ago - but with Sandie, as with other very fair-skinned boys I’d known, the results were more decisive. He had been circumcised as a baby, and now his penis retracted into his body right up to the glans, making a sort of button between his chubby thighs. Do you remember Jason Johnson, the American boy who used to talk of having his balls "stung out?" His was another typical case.

On all fours Sandie might have been mistaken for a plump girl, one whose boobs were just starting to come. He would never get an erection, ever again, and he was unable even to pee standing up, except in the shower! In medieval times he’d have made the perfect page-boy-eunuch, in a little jacket, a big hat with a feather, satin slippers and silk tights. Beautiful – and sexually harmless.

Castration affects boys’ natures in different ways. I never lost my interest in girls – if anything I felt it more intensely, desperate to “do it” now I was unable to. But in Sandie’s case,losing his testosterone source began, initially, by making him a bit girlish and giggly. Then his sex urges slowly turned upside-down until they were wholly passive. Some people said Sandie might have been classed as a she-male. I don’t agree. All the pictures I’ve seen of she-males showed lovely girls with D-size boobs, big erected pricks and full sets of bollocks. Sandie by contrast was – well, you know what Sandie was. All ways about, he was a puzzle…

Sex-starved prefects – all intact of course – saw a blond-haired, pink-cheeked second-former, and turned away muttering “What wouldn’t I give for a night with him!” They haunted the swimming pool and changing-rooms in the desperate hope of seeing Sandie with no clothes on, displaying his curvaceous backside and neutered boy-parts. Their lust for the castrated boy was so palpable you could cut it with a knife, and Sandie played up to them, fluttering his eyelashes at any senior boy who looked at him. He began to make conquests, earning him the well deserved reputation of being the “house tart”. His bedside locker was a hiding-place for three-packs of rubbers and a tube of K-Y gel.

Then he set his cap at Ian MacVittie, his dorm. captain. Most nights we could hear the padding of Sandie’s bare feet on the uncarpeted floor, on his way to Mac Vittie’s curtained-off bed-space. Usually Sandie stayed in MacVittie’s bed till morning, the wiry sub-prefect’s rigid penis thrusting up into his bowels. Ultimately, though, Sandie grew careless and there was an almighty row, culminating in the segregation of neutered boys into an entirely separate wing of the school – as it still was. (Read “Simon’s Summertime Adventures” if you want the details).

If Sandie Ross wanted to be a serial bum-boy that was fine by me. I’d been that way, after all – although for me those days were over. No. My dislike of Sandie was something else entirely. As you know, I’ve been around quite a bit, for one reason or another (read “Simon in the Orient” for starters). Sandie decided I was the Head’s favourite, allowed to bunk off whenever I felt inclined. Returning from these forays I could usually expect, before long, to run into Sandie and to be greeted in his high, facetious voice with “What ho, Scott! Been skiving off again! Bermuda this time, was it?”

Not long ago, goaded beyond endurance, I’d unhooked a fire-bucket from the wall, emptied it over Sandie’s head and then made him mop it up- my only regret that I hadn’t added a bucket of sand as well. But today I was furious with him for a different reason – he wasn’t there!

It was now six o’clock on an early September evening – time for tea. The boss, Dr Holroyd, whom we’ve met many times, had never formally appointed any of us to be prefects, in our section of the school. Instead, there was an informal roster of half a dozen or so of the most senior boys, to carry out various administrative chores. Today it was my turn. All afternoon I’d been supervising the junior boys’ games-room, to make certain no one started a fire or something, and now it was time to do evening call-over. I had got as far as the R’s.

“Raxworthy?” “Here, Scott”; “Renishaw?” “Here, Scott”; “Rippingille?” “Here, Scott”; “Ross?” “Ross?” Silence.

“Does anyone know anything about Ross?”

“Scott, please – Ross tell me, he going to go Bateman’s”.

The speaker bore the very last name on the roll – beginning not with Z, but believe it or not, with two Z’s - Zyglon Zabludowski. The plump, tow-haired, neutered child of Polish immigrants, he’d put on weight in the last six months after his procedure. But he’d been neutered as a result of a mistake. His parents’ command of English was even worse than the boy’s own – and they had been led to believe that the procedure was mandatory. Young Zabbo had been taken to get his balls pricked and would not be carrying on the family name.

“Bateman’s, you say, Zabludowski?”

Now Bateman’s was the name of a country house in the far east of the county – almost in Kent. It had once been the home of Rudyard Kipling. What on earth was Sandie Ross doing over there? While I chewed this question over, another voice broke in, a husky voice, a voice I knew well: the voice of Harry Brotherton. Why Harry was ever at boarders’ tea I have no idea, but I was pleased he was there.

“Simon, the Batemans that Zabbo means, that’s the old mines!”

“Didn’t now there were any. What old mines, Harry?”

“You go to the far end of the school field, cross the old canal by the footbridge, through Stanlow Woods, and on up. Nasty place, it is”.

Sandie fooling around near old mines – and Harry knew? At any other time I’d probably have kicked Harry for keeping such a dangerous secret to himself. But I was tired, cold and bored. I wanted to get back to the comfort of my flat at the Simon Scott Centre, and Melanie’s calming presence. I longed to get her on the bed, to feel her soft thighs squeezing my face as I tongued her clitty and brought her to orgasm.

This reverie was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Sandie, wet through and filthy beyond description. “Ross!” I shouted across to him. “Go and clean yourself up – like this minute – and then straight into tea”.

Sandie gave me a look that meant as plainly as words could have said “Up yours, sunshine”. Mud on his shoes and also on his face, he went straight to the servery and a moment later was tucking into a large helping of beans-on-toast.

I was on the verge of tears with frustration, but just then my vigil ended with the entrance of the duty master, Mr Jackson. (His given name, amusingly, was Sid – and of course we never used it.)

“Good evening, Scott. Anything to report?”

I took a deep breath. “No, sir, nothing to report”. (I’d let him discover Sandie’s insanitary state for himself).

“Alright, I’ll take over from here. Off you go then”.

“Good night, sir”.

“Good night, Scott”.

---oOo---

The Downs are made of chalk, as everybody knows. But in the wooded country of the Weald, ridges of harder rocks can be found -–perhaps in pre-history they were volcanic islands rearing up out of the shallow tropical sea. When the first humans appeared in Sussex, they discovered that these rocks were rich in all kinds of metals. And so in time the Sussex iron industry was born, surviving among the trees that fed the furnaces till the 1700’s, when coke supplanted charcoal, and iron-founding moved northwards to the coalfields of the English Midlands.

Then the Victorians discovered lead-ore alongside the exhausted iron-ore seams, and they developed a totally new industry to exploit this new find. They ran long adits into the hillside in search of the lodes, and they built crushing mills and smelteries, stately arched buildings like cathedral cloisters. Lead-mining and production was a roaring industry till the 1850’s when cheap imported ore killed it off. Very little now remained above ground. But the adits were still there, leering like black mouths out of the undergrowth.

It was the search for these mines that brought me into the Weald the next weekend. The thought uppermost in my mind was, were the mines dangerous – so dangerous that they had to be declared off-limits? If Sandie Ross were to break bounds after such a restriction then he would get a thrashing from Dr Holroyd and that would be that. (As a general rule, caning in schools was illegal, but the boss enjoyed a dispensation.)

With me I’d brought – as you’d expect – Harry Brotherton. Yes, Harry was a bore in many ways but he knew every inch of the County, and that was what mattered. We’d looked at the OS map together. Sure enough, Bateman’s Mines were shown, as an “ancient monument” - also a wavering footpath from the school, leading as Harry had put it, over the old canal and “on up”. But the OS map also showed a winding lane to the mines from the main road, and as I didn’t fancy a long walk in threatening rain, I’d put Harry in the passenger-seat of the Aston.

There were gates across the lane at intervals and in its furthest reaches the tarmac surface gave way to stone blocks – doubtless just as the Victorian engineers had built it. Eventually even this petered out into a wider area where, at one time, wagons would have been loaded. Brambles were encroaching on it. But here and there, wavering paths had been made through the scrubby growth. I parked the car and we both got out.

Before us, the hillside reared up like a wall. Pushing through the brambles for a few yards brought us to an arched entrance with “LEVEL 5” chiselled into the stone in beautiful Roman capitals. “Got the torch, Harry?” I asked – and of course Harry had.

Now as a general rule I detest tunnels. I’d have given my right arm not to go inside this one. But it seemed less repellent than some, so in we went. The passage was high, wide and dry. It was also very short, ending after ten yards or so. Ahead was just bare rock. Either the wrong sort of rock for lead ore, or perhaps the money ran out just then.

We turned to go. Just inside the entrance lay the bones of some small mammal – rabbit or hare. There was also a used condom, only a day or two old, heavy with sperm. That made me think of Melanie again, and how, not long after we’d met in the old tack-room by the river, she’d confessed her sex-life up to then. She had been fourteen, no more, when she’d pulled her knickers down and opened her legs for a boy in the deep green of a midsummer meadow.

A boy called Barry – or possibly Gary, or Bryn, or Glyn….. He had put a rubber on, and she had opened her legs for him to shove his big rigid penis into her love-passage and burst her hymen. He had shot his load inside her, and left the condom, heavy with sperm, in the long grass. And all this, not because Melanie fancied the boy, but so that she could use tampons and be able to go swimming during her periods………..

I forced myself to stop thinking about Melanie. Outside the tunnel we prospected further and soon found a similar arch, Level 4. Our exploration of Level 4 was even shorter. The entrance was barred by a stout iron grille, very rusty but firmly cemented in. Peering into the gloom beyond, I caught a whiff of the tunnel’s dank breath – a breath from the past, a past of secrets, trapped in impenetrable darkness.

We never did find Level 3. At least, not that afternoon. But we found something more interesting. The overgrown path we’d been following suddenly dipped downwards, becoming an incline, built of the same stone blocks as the place where I’d parked. We followed this downwards. The ground at the foot of the incline was damp, with here and there runnels of rusty, slimy brown water streaked with iridescence. The path levelled out, and before long we were looking into the mouth of another tunnel. It looked to be part of some much older workings.

What caught my eye, though, were prints in the muddy ground – both footprints and bike-tyre tracks. Sandie had a bike; was this the place where he’d been messing about? I made a mental note: the footprints looked like Nike trainers, the tyre tracks like Michelin. Easy enough to check up. Meanwhile, though, had the little fool ventured inside, where reddish-brown ooze lay in puddles on the tunnel floor? “Put the torch on, Harry” I called to him – he was already a yard or two inside.

This tunnel was a tad smaller than the abortive Level 5. It was, however, very wet. Moisture streamed down the walls which were coated with green spongy growth. Underfoot, the remains of a plateway made the going treacherous – several times I stumbled against hidden objects – ties or rails, I couldn’t see what. Obviously this had been a working part of the mine once.

The last glimmers of daylight from the entrance faded, leaving us with just the wavering light of the torch to guide us. Presently it showed us something I’d not expected: the tunnel forked. “I’ll take this one” shouted Harry. Left to myself I’d have stopped and prospected, but Harry had already disappeared from view. Then came a thud – and a cry of pain.

“Harry, are you alright?” I called. And mercifully he replied.

“Yeah, I’m OK, but I’ve twisted me ankle”.

Could have been a lot worse, I thought to myself, and followed where he’d gone, into the right fork of the tunnel. It was a little drier in there, and thankfully when Harry fell, the torch hadn’t been damaged. I helped him to his feet and left him propped against the wall, while I went on a little way.

Then I stopped abruptly. Just in time.

Above me there was no longer the arched roof of the tunnel, just empty space, reaching up and up into blackness, whilst a metre before my advancing feet- no more – there was no floor either.

I raised the torch and shone the beam straight out. It illuminated bare rock. Between me, and that rock wall, was a vertical shaft. I picked up a piece of shale and dropped it over the edge. Far, far below I heard the splash as it fell into black, unseen water, God only knew how far down.

“What is it, Simon” Harry had come tottering over on his damaged ankle. I gripped him round his middle as he peered into the abyss. Reeling backwards so that both of us nearly fell, he came out with a stream of invective and filth that he could never have learned in his placid home-background (“The Handy Stores”, in case you’d forgotten.) “Oh Jeez! Oh fookin’ ‘ell” were the only ones repeatable. Then he slumped against the wall and threw up.

When he’d pulled himself together I got an arm round his shoulders, and with infinite difficulty and slowness, got him back to the car. “Harry, what on earth” I began, as I started the engine “what on earth has come over Sandie Ross, that he has to come buggering about in this ghastly place?”

“Why, isn’t it obvious?” retorted Harry.

“No, it’s not, you big chump. What’s the attraction?”

Harry’s eyes glinted behind his pebble spectacles as he uttered a single word.

“Gold!”

Up to a point – a very limited one – it made sense. I’d heard or read that lead ore was sometimes found together with precious metals, most commonly silver, although in a few places small quantities of gold had turned up as well. But inwardly I groaned at Harry’s remark. Among other things I’d now have to explain to the boss – Dr Holroyd – that one of his protégés was on the point of starting a gold-rush.

---oOo---

I got back to the Centre around five. Roddy and Ricky were away on some ploy of their own. Melanie met me at the door. “You smell!” was her greeting. “Where’ve you been?” I told her about the mines, omitting the abyss.

“Come and I’ll give you a shower” she commanded. In the bathroom Melanie peeled off the slinky red dress she liked to wear, her black bra and stay-up stockings and tiny little thong. When we were both nude she turned on the shower, and we both stood under it, soaping each other and letting the warm water flow all over us.

When I was clean again Melanie led me back to the bedroom, for me to give her an orgasm in the way she loved best. Afterwards we lay side by side, while I caressed her small neat bottom and shaved love-mound, and her gentle fingers played with my thimble of boy-flesh.

“Poor, poor Simon!” sighed Melanie. “Life’s just one long frustration for you, isn’t it. It’s a shame you were ever gelded”. (Melanie always used the “horsey” word “gelded” – never ‘neutered’ or ‘castrated’). “It’s alright for a lot of boys, but not you”.

Boy, did I agree!.

---oOo---

Dr Holroyd, his hands behind his back, gripping the folds of his gown, paced up and down. “Oh dear, oh dear, Scott” had been his first reaction. “I really don’t believe in putting places off limits. I much prefer to let boys use their common sense. Are you quite sure about this?”

Dr Holroyd had a brilliant academic mind. He was also a first-class leader and organiser. His chief failing – the one that showed here – was to persist in looking for the good in people, where there was none to start with. (Witness his selection of some really atrocious members of staff). The problem here was – obviously – that boys who ventured into the old mines were totally lacking in common sense.

“Absolutely sure, sir” I replied. Initially I’d not said very much about my visit to Bateman’s and what I found there. But now I laid it on thick, especially the black hell-hole where Harry Brotherton had so nearly come to grief, saved only by tripping over and twisting his ankle. This time I could see I was making an impression.

“Which of our boys has been to the mine, Scott? Do you know?”

“Ross, sir, for certain. He may have taken others with him.”

“Ross? Oh, yes, of course. Sandie Ross. Such a SILLY little boy”. Dr Holroyd lapsed into silence, eyes downcast, absorbed in his own thoughts, recollecting Sandie’s particular brand of “silliness”. At length he looked up, with a sigh.

“Alright, Scott. I’ll announce it at morning assembly tomorrow. Bateman’s mines are strictly off-limits on any pretext whatsoever. Now I expect you ought to go – where does the call of duty take you next?”

“Supervision of free time in Robin Hood, sir”. I glanced at my watch. “In fact I’m a bit overdue. Jack Elliott will be wondering where I’ve got to”.

“Off you go then”.

The reference to “Robin Hood” won’t mean anything to you so I’ll explain. Boys entered Southdown Hall (Lower) at the age of eleven. But in the last year, Dr Holroyd had opened a pre-prep department, in response to pressure both from staff members with children of their own, partly from parents with boys already at the school. Dr Holroyd charged a hefty fee for these children, who were popular with the older boys and useful in school plays, as pixies, bunny-rabbits and so on.

In the Lower School the “houses” were named after distinguished Admirals, but for some arcane reason Dr Holroyd had begun a separate series for the under-11’s, beginning with Robin Hood. Rumour had it that as and when the numbers increased, the next house would be called “Friar Tuck”. The more cynical of us supposed that if – by some stretch of the imagination, the pre-prep department ever went “co-ed”, the little girls would be conscripted into Maid Marian, and if we all lived long enough, we might get as far as Will Scarlett and Allan-a-Dale one of these days. And if they ran short of names, how about Guy of Gisburne?………Perhaps not.

The pre-prep department had cosy quarters in what had once been a stable-block. The tack-rooms had been knocked into one, making a generous-sized recreation room with TV, table tennis and a pool table.

“Awee, the lads!” was Jack Elliott’s inevitable greeting, when I appeared. “Thought you’d never come, mun”.

“Sorry, Jack. I got involved with the boss. I’ve been getting Bateman’s Mines put off limits. One of our thickoes has been playing around up there and possibly going into the old workings. One step in the wrong place might be dangerous – perhaps fatal”.

“Who was it?”

“Sandie Ross”.

Jack made a face, showing his disgust. “Ah, that bum-boy!” (His disapproval of the kind of sex practised by Sandie and his kind, was legendary). “Good riddance to bad rubbish, I’d say. Well, I’ll be off. See you”.

I made myself comfortable in the large chair set aside for supervisors. I had a big thick book on the mining industry in Sussex, to see what, if anything, it said about gold deposits. But presently my attention began to wander. Very little boys – and some of those in the pre-prep department were no older than seven – have very intrusive voices and I soon became aware of what they were talking about.

They had learned about getting neutered.

Not all paediatricians got involved in castrating boys. Among those that did, the majority held that twelve years was the best age for a boy to have his balls out. At that age a boy is just beginning to develop a sex-drive, just before puberty kicks in, and that is the time to make sure he can’t become a nuisance with girls. (Take me for instance).

At that age we were all too aware that after being “done” life would never be the same. Little groups of second-formers who’d recently been neutered would hold meetings in the woods, slip off their shorts, feel one another’s softening balls, and examine whether they could still get hard enough (this ability usually disappeared after about a week) to be able to interest girls.

But a minority of specialists thought that it was preferable to neuter boys at a younger age – say eight or nine. Children are used to vaccinations and inoculations – MMR and all the rest. One more needle – even “down there” which was unusual – could be easily passed off. Since the injection was entirely painless it would be quickly forgotten. Eight-year-olds aren’t sexually active, and the boys might not even realize that they had been castrated until during a nude bathing party, or on a sleepover, someone pointed out that they had no testicles.

Little by little the shrill voices broke in.

First boy It’s nothing new, Clark. All Jewish boys have the ends of their peter-johns snipped off. It’s part of our culture.

Second boy Oh you are a dimbo, Goldman. We’re not discussing Jewish boys, or getting circumcised. This is quite different.

Third boy (in a pronounced Middle West accent) My sister says…………..

Second boy Oh shut up about your sister, Johansen. No one wants to know what girls think.

Third boy Well you’re wrong there, Clark. My sister has a friend, a bit older. She says that her Mom won’t allow boys in the house for sleepovers, unless she’s sure they’ve been “done” and can’t get the girls pregnant.

(I smiled at this. Not long before I’d read on a US website, a message saying “Get your kids spayed or neutered” – referring to the high rate of teenage pregnancies resulting from sleepovers).

Fourth boy Tell us about it, Jonno.

Third boy My sister, she’s called Colleen, has a friend, Emily. They hang out with a bunch of boys who have all been “done”, – over there they call it “having their balls pricked”. Well, Emily fancied a boy called Josh – fancied him so much that she wanted him to put his cock in her pussy…..

Second boy You mean, do it to her, like they were starting a baby.

Third boy. Yes. Well, they planned to do this when Josh came over on a sleepover. Only Josh had had his balls pricked three weeks before and couldn’t get a hard-on anymore. Emily was ever so disappointed.

First boy How do you mean, had his balls pricked? With a pin or something?

Third boy No, stupid – with a hypodermic. They inject something into a boy’s balls and they go soft and dry up, and he can’t get the horn anymore, however hard he tries…..

(I’d heard quite a lot about the castration culture in small-town America from Ricky, who’d spent a long vacation with his grandparents some months before. Among other things he’d been pressganged into the local baseball team. He, and Roddy, who had gone with him, were very apprehensive about being exposed as ball-less wonders. But once inside the locker-room all these fears were dispelled. The name of the team was the “Mustangs” but a more appropriate name would have been the “Geldings”. The only pair of balls in the park were: one, the ball they were to play baseball with, and two, the spare. All Ricky’s team-mates were boy-eunuchs and with one exception, they had all been “cut” as Ricky himself had been.

Two of the older boys had been the subject of complaints from the mothers of girls, and had opted to be neutered as an alternative to being put into youth-custody (it’s called “Juvi” over there). At the other end of the spectrum was a sturdy nine-year-old, whose Mom promised him that after having his balls taken out, he would always be “Mommy’s darling little boy, and have fun!” I ask you!

Some parents made the castration of their boys an excuse for a party. They’d get the barbie going, eat a lot of party food, drink a lot of chilled wine, laugh and joke, while the recently-neutered boys (these were neighbourhood affairs), wandered about in the nude, wondering why everyone was so pleased they’d had their future manhood taken away when they were just beginning to look forward to it..)

“Jonno” was continuing to regale his listeners with tales of neutered boys in his home town, and they were getting interested as now became obvious:

Second boy. My willie’s stiff, talking about this.

Fourth boy. So’s mine! I hope I don’t have my balls pricked.

I felt we’d been this way before. “Too much noise” I called out. “You’re supposed to be doing prep”. There was instant silence! And I continued to read about 19th century mining in Sussex, although my mind kept wandering off onto other things, like the way things were in Southdown Hall….

Dr Holroyd never took sides. While some said “Neuter!” and others, “Don’t neuter!” he left those decisions to other people, accepting that in this 21st century, some boys would be left to experience the pains, perils and pleasures of adolescence, and others would not. But at the same time, he had famously written in a medical journal:

“Whenever, and wherever, neutering is carried out, it should be kept strictly low-key. Other schools of thought advocate a sort of bar-mitzvah, where relatives and friends come to celebrate the occasion. There has even been promotion of party-packs, fancy dress and all kinds of trappings. This seems wholly inappropriate. Young boys who are shortly to be neutered should be encouraged to pass it off as something of little account, that just happens."

And strictly low-key it was still, at Southdown Hall, as I can show from an afternoon a few days later.

In an unguarded moment I’d given Matron my mobile-phone number. I was finishing my lunch at the Centre (lobster Newburg) when it rang. “Simon Scott? Where are you?”

I told her – having my lunch. She was unimpressed.

“Who’s on clinic duty?”

“I am, Matron”.

Matron often referred those she called “the sick, lame and lazy” to the new clinic if she wasn’t able to deal with their complaints herself. A senior boy was rostered to collect Matron’s “patients” from her little consulting room, see that they kept their appointments on time, and more importantly, that they came straight back again and didn’t wander off into the town in search of buns and ice-cream.

“Oh good” said Matron. “I’ve got someone here for the snip. George Arthur, second year. Can you come and collect him? Can you come now, please? He’s due at one-forty-five”. (Matron always referred to the neutering procedure, scarcely an operation, as “the snip”) She rang off. Cursing Matron and all her works, I swallowed the last of my lobster and tore back to school.

George Arthur turned out to be a slim child, with curly light-brown hair and grey eyes. Without saying he was plain, which wasn’t true, he had the most deadpan expression I’d ever seen – totally without any emotion whatever. I can also tell you that he didn’t utter a word, the whole time he was with me.

Off we set. “Better not be late” I remarked over my shoulder to the lagging boy. No reply came.

“Alright, are you?”

Nod.

“Not nervous? Because there’s no need to be. I know!”

A slow shake of the head.

And then we were there. The practice nurse, brisk and efficient, welcomed us. “Hello Simon. Haven’t seen you for a bit. And this is little George, is it?” She smiled down at him, but got no response. “Alright, Simon – you know what to do. Into one of those (indicating a cubicle); shoes off and clothes off below the waist. I’ll call you when I’m ready”. She vanished through a doorway.

I steered George into the cubicle. “You heard what Nurse said – shoes off, put them on the rack – quick now – then take your shorts and pants off and hang them on one of those hooks”.

George did as he was told. His penis was small and slender, like a piglet’s tail. It was also, I was glad to see, limp. (Some boys got rampant erections at the last minute, as if Mother Nature was protesting at what was about to happen.) Neat little balls completed his sex-package.

Hardly had George got his kit off than the door was flung open, and in bounced a busty blonde girl in the pink overall of a care-assistant. I’d encountered her before – a silly girl called Polly. “Hello, Geoffrey” she said, addressing George. “Alright, are we? We’ll soon have you fixed up” – which is not the way to talk to a frightened twelve-year-old who is convinced that he’s just about to suffer torments.

“Just a little spray, that’s all” she continued, brightly. With that she directed the hypo spray at George’s groin and pressed the plunger. George winced as the freezing stuff hit his boy-parts. “Soon be done” chirruped the infuriating girl. “Nurse is nearly ready”. And out she went.

Nurse appeared seconds later. “Ready for Stage One!” she said in a very cheerful voice. Her right hand concealed the hypodermic with the local anaesthetic. I knew that in spite of the hypo spray, this was the uncomfortable part. “Look up, George!” I said in a commanding voice. “Look up! Never mind what Nurse is doing!” In less time than it takes to tell, she had emptied the contents of the big needle into the vein at the top of George’s leg. He winced, but said nothing. “Stage One over” said Nurse to George, and to me “You know what to do, Simon”.

This was to make sure that George’s private area was properly numbed-up before Nurse attempted to give him Stage Two – the two injections of Neutersol that would destroy his testicles. George sat passively on the bench, neither speaking nor moving. I timed three minutes by my Rolex, then gently took one of his balls between my finger and thumb and gave it a firm squeeze. To my question “Do you feel anything, George?” I got a slight shake of his head which I took to mean “No”.

I put my head round the door to indicate that George was as ready as he would ever be. Nurse showed us into the tiny operating area she used for minor procedures like this. “Up on the couch, George” she beckoned, giving his backside a playful slap. “Now, open your legs. That’s right”.

I’d seen Nurse do it all before – the little elasticated belt with a loop to hold George’s penis out of the way while she worked: the swab of surgical spirit around his boy-parts. With quick deft movements Nurse looped her index finger and thumb around the base of the boy’s scrotum to stretch the skin tightly over the two testicles. The Neutersol needles were ready in a kidney-tray. Nurse glanced at me; I gave a barely perceptible nod. It wasn’t down to me to refuse.

With George properly positioned and ready to be castrated, Nurse stuck the Neutersol needles into both of his testicles, first one, then the other. The empty syringes clinked into the waste bin. George was a boy-eunuch. His little penis would remain limp, for as long as he lived.

“All done, Nurse?” I enquired – though I knew it was. “Yes, all done” Nurse replied. “Back to school, George”. And this of course was the main selling point of Neutersol – that the newly-castrated boy could go straight back to whatever he’d been doing.

While George got his pants on again I signed Nurse’s appointment book. It only remained to get George back to school. Apparently unfazed by what he’d been through, he trotted along beside me. “That wasn’t too bad, then was it?” I asked. In reply he neither shook his head nor nodded, but looked up at me with a half-smile.

I watched him as he disappeared through the big archway into Lower School, with the growing feeling that this was all wrong. Perhaps little George’s guardians had told him –omitting the consequences – that he was just the right age for “a little procedure that all nice boys have”. Did he even know what “fucking girls” meant?

I compared him with myself, or with boys like Jack Elliott (Jack had been cunt-crazy at that age, although his ferocious sex-drive ebbed away with the loss of his balls). Would this diffident child ever have led girls astray? Perhaps not, but then, girls might have led HIM astray, which comes to the same thing in the end.

The next few days saw the start of the rugby-union season, with a series of “friendlies” against local schools. On one of those blue-and-gold afternoons, so typical of early autumn, we drew against St Anselme’s. I’d part-expected this match to be an easy win. Once the pack, under the control of Jack Elliott at No 2, had got the ball out, then the combination of Ricky at No 10 with his unerring sense of direction, my own long loping stride at No 12 and then Roddy out on the wing at No 14, was usually unstoppable.

But St Anselme’s had been developing some up-and-coming players of their own. In particular they had a new winger, Euan Howieson, who could almost – not quite – match Roddy’s speed. Castrated soon after his eleventh birthday, as his elder brother Kenneth had been, Euan said he thought he could now run much faster than before he lost his balls – he felt more free between his legs!

Big brother Kenneth was in the St Anselme’s pack, their No 8. Away from the rugger field Kenneth excelled in field-events like hammer-throwing. His surplus energy, now that it wouldn’t be squandered in producing sperm and testosterone, had all gone into muscle, mainly in his thighs and buttocks

It was while we were all swapping notes and enjoying a shower in St Anselme’s expensive new pavilion that I heard some disturbing news. Michael Banner had come storming in shouting “Hey, heard the latest?”

On the far side of the city was the Alameda Walk, an avenue of trees planted as a war-memorial about 1800. That part of the city was no longer fashionable, the Regency villas replaced by council flats. Neglected now and overgrown in places, Alameda Walk had gone downhill, becoming the local lovers’ lane for teenagers, and a cruising ground for the local gays.

As an incidental, the goings-on in Alameda Walk provided hours of entertainment for 77-year-old pensioner and widow, Mrs Jessie Gallagher. The window of her 6th-floor flat was 100 yards from the Walk, but Mrs Gallagher had treated herself to some second-hand binoculars.

One uneventful afternoon Mrs Gallagher was seated at her window, when there came into view a nondescript man (as she later described him to her neighbour) and a schoolgirl with long blonde hair. She knew her for a schoolgirl from the clothes she wore: maroon blazer and tie, white blouse, very, very short maroon skirt, thigh-high black stockings and strapover sandals: the uniform of South Sussex High School, as modified by most girls over 14.

Mrs Gallagher reached for her binoculars and adjusted the focus. The man had begun fondling the girl: “intimately” was the word she used when re-telling the story. This continued for some time, till the man appeared to ask the girl a question. In response they both moved away from the path, but still visible. Believing herself to be concealed from view, the girl lifted her skirt and began to pull down the white knickers she had on underneath. Fascinated, the old lady waited for what was to happen next.

Also watching the scene with great interest, but for a totally different reason, was Police Constable Sally Whatmough at County Police headquarters. Since Alameda Walk was sometimes the scene of muggings and other violent crimes, the Police had replaced some of the street-lamps with cameras. Alameda Walk and all who used it were on view in Police HQ, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. PC Whatmough and her mates watched the monitors for anything that needed any action being taken.

Sally watched the couple, up to the point where the schoolgirl pulled her knickers down. Sex in a public place with an underage girl was definitely on the Prohibited list. “Guv” she called to her sergeant “I think you’d better take a look at this”.

And so it was that seconds later, “panda” cars stopped at either end of Alameda Walk, and four patrolmen closed in on a couple, apparently about to have sex in the doggie position. The man tried to make a break for it, but, hindered by the jeans round his ankles, was immediately caught. The girl stood up, and revealed, not a girl’s shaved pubic mound, but A TINY PENIS – and no balls. One of the officers decided to investigate further.

The long blonde hair came away in his hand. A wig.

The “schoolgirl” was Sandie Ross.

---oOo---

Of course they didn’t know his name straightaway. Sandie had a busy time in the next 2 – 3 hours. The police took him to retrieve his school clothes from the empty flat where he’d stashed them, and then to Headquarters for a long interview. Only when they were satisfied he’d told them all they needed to know, did they deliver him back to school, to a distraught Dr Holroyd.

Where, in all this, does Mrs Gallagher figure?

Independent of the goings-on in Alameda Walk, there had been problems with vandalism in the block where Mrs Gallagher lived. Another woman PC conducted door-to-door enquiries, and in due time asked Mrs Gallagher whether she had seen anything”.

“Yes, I certainly have!” responded the old lady. She kept the PC busy taking notes for most of the next hour – and not about vandalism.

To return to school……….

Dr Holroyd had spent an exhausting two hours trying – and ultimately succeeding – in keeping the identity, not of Sandie alone, but that of the school as a whole, out of the papers. Sandie might be the immediate victim, but so, by association, were the 780 other pupils of Southdown Hall, of both sexes and aged from 7 to 19. Ultimately, with the aid of a barrister whom he knew personally (we’ve met him before in “Simon Under Suspicion” – Alistair Grant QC) Dr Holroyd got the Press to agree to refer in their reports only to “the pupil of one of the local schools, whose name cannot be divulged for legal reasons”. That, he hoped, would keep the lid on it.

As I said some pages ago, Dr Holroyd always believed that everyone had some intrinsic good in them. At the same time, Sandie Ross’s behaviour was an enigma, especially the cross-dressing. And as he sometimes did, when he couldn’t work out the answer for himself, Dr Holroyd sent for me. “Ah, there you are, dear boy” he greeted me, as the impassive Croker showed me in. (The words were predictable!) “Now, then, the boy Ross! I’m uncertain what to do. This cross-dressing business is all rather strange…….”

He embarked on a résumé of a conversation he’d had with his barrister-friend, Grant. He – the barrister – had learned the story that Sandie’s “client” was sticking to – a man named Cartwright, already known to the police and on the sex-offenders’ register. This was, that he’d taken Sandie for a working girl, i.e. a town prossie, who liked to dress as a schoolgirl to attract men. He had been on the point of having sex with the girl when the police interrupted them.

“Sir” I responded “I don’t think it was like that at all. Knowing Sandie, he wouldn’t have left the man in any doubt that he was a boy”.

“Oh dear!” said Dr Holroyd.

I began thinking fast. “Sir” I ventured “do we know what charge Cartwright is being held on? The Police must have charged him with something, or they have to let him go”.

“Alistair says the charge is gross indecency, based on Cartwright’s story that he thought he was dealing with a prostitute and hadn’t actually committed any act. But they are intending to get evidence of something more serious.”

“In that case” I said “we must persuade Cartwright that it’s in his best interests to plead guilty to the “gross indecency” charge” .

“Whatever for, dear boy?”

“Sir, don’t you see? Whatever charge Cartwright is found guilty of, he goes straight back to prison, to complete his five years, for breaking the terms of his parole. If he pleads guilty it’s a mere formality, over in minutes. But if the police try to put together a case to show that he had sex – or attempted to have sex, with an underage boy, that will mean a full-dress trial, with witnesses. If he’s found guilty, Cartwright’s five years may increase to ten, or even more, but think of the cost to us – to Southdown Hall”.

Dr Holroyd listened. I’d touched a raw nerve.

“The Prosecution will put Sandie in the witness box, and defence counsel will take him apart. Sandie isn't ashamed of what he is – he’s proud of it. So, defence counsel will show the court – and the media, and the public at large, that Sandie is the sort of boy who enjoys having men’s penises shoved up his bottom……..”

“Oh Simon! Do you have to?”

“Men’s penises up his bottom” I persisted “combined with cross-dressing. Defence will have a field day”.

Dr Holroyd had turned white. I moved in to finish off.

“Sir, can’t you see the headlines? ‘Southdown Boy Exposed as T-Girl’ . Pictures of Sandie Ross across the front page!”

Then I hit him with it.

“Pictures of YOU, Headmaster!”

Dr Holroyd clapped his hands to his ears. But I’d said all I was going to. I rose to go, but Dr Holroyd motioned me to stay where I was. He reached for the phone and keyed in a number.

“Mr Grant’s chambers? Is Mr Grant there, please? Oh. No, I’d prefer to wait.”

A long pause, when the slow ticking of the grandfather clock was the only sound. Then-

“Is that you, Alistair? Oh good. Listen, I’ve had a thought……..”

And he told the QC everything I’d been saying, word for word. There was another long pause while he listened to Grant’s reply.

“Thank you for that, Alistair. Thank you very, very much indeed. Yes, I take your point. Yes, I’ll certainly pass that on. No, that’s all for the present – I’ll leave it in your hands. Thanks again. Goodbye”. He rang off, and turned back to me, his face strangely calm.

“Alistair Grant agrees totally with your recommendations. He’ll approach the CPS and that will be all we’ll ever hear of it. Only for the next few days Sandie Ross must be kept incommunicado. We don’t want him shooting his mouth off to anybody – anybody at all.

“He can move in here. He’ll be sleeping in my spare bedroom. I’ll have the bed made up. Croker will see that he doesn’t go wandering off. Will you find Ross, dear boy, and see that he gets himself and his belongings over here, right away? Then I’m sure you have things to do – I’ve kept you long enough.”

Again I turned to go. But Dr Holroyd called me back. “I forgot to pass on Grant’s message to you. And the message was, ‘If young Scott is capable of thinking like that, he should consider reading for the Bar!”

I never had, but it might be a way of earning a living.

That night it began to rain.

---oOo---

Unlike the Cartwright case, which never made the papers, to everyone’s satisfaction, the rainfall in the last week of September became part of history. A month’s rainfall fell in 72 hours. Too wet for rugger matches, the Fifteen spent their afternoons in practices of various kinds - for the mid-field this usually meant belting up and down the field, passing the ball to one another.

It was a Thursday afternoon and it had rained all day. After an hour’s practice we called it a day. The idea of hot showers and dry clothes became very attractive as we trudged off the field.

A short time afterwards as I luxuriated under the shower, rather beautiful singing began to be heard from the next shower-stall:

“Come, my dearie, darkness is falling,

“Shadows gather round the ben,

“Come, my dearie, come to my calling,

“Calling the cattle into the glen”

The voice had a very sweet quality and that meant it could only be Ricky. I turned my shower off, and he turned his off, at the same time.

Ricky with his slim figure reminded me of a figurine that my late unlamented Uncle Carl used to have on his chimney-piece. It was called Young England, and might have been Ricky in miniature, apart from the features – and the fact that the figurine had a full set of genitals. (Read “Dr Geller goes into partnership” for the story of how Ricky was castrated, leaving him with a cherub’s penis, an empty scrotum, and a sneaking regret that he’d never done much with girls, before meeting the doctor who cut his balls out.)

“What’s all this, Rick? Scottish songs aren’t your usual line”.

Ricky grinned. “It’s Mr Meiklejohn. He’s got the idea that there should be a St Andrew’s Night celebration, and that’s only two months off. He wants a lot of Scottish songs sung that evening, and he’s getting up classes for the Dashing White Sergeant”.

“Who’s he, when he’s at home”

“What do you mean?”

“This sergeant you mentioned”.

“It’s a dance, you mutt. And you need to look out – anyone with Scottish connections will be expected to dress the part”.

Well, my name’s Scott and there is a Scott tartan. I supposed I’d have to hire a kilt – though I haven’t the figure for it – too long and lanky. “What about you, Rick? If you’re singing, will you have to dress up?

Ricky made a face. “Is the Pope Catholic? The answer’s Yes, though so far as I know I haven’t a drop of Scots blood in me. What am I supposed to do about it?”

“I’ve read somewhere that all loyal subjects of the Queen are eligible to wear the Royal Stewart”.

Many Scottish people will consider this to be nonsense. In any case Ricky considered himself to be American. But before we got into a debate, the locker room door crashed open. Once again it was Michael Banner.

“I say, you guys! Heard the latest? Sandie Ross has gone AWOL”.

“Banner, come here!” I commanded him. Banner came over to me and tried not to notice that I hadn’t a stitch on. “What do you mean, gone AWOL?”

“Well, you know he’s been under house-arrest at the Head’s house all week”. (That was supposed to be a secret, for God’s sake!) “The Head’s man came to call him for lunch and he wasn’t there”.

“But” ….I began; however, Banner hadn’t finished. “Thursdays, the second year finish early. A dayboy going home – he lives at a farm over the back of beyond – found Sandie’s bike abandoned by a river”.

“How did he know it was Sandie’s bike?”

“Label tied on to the saddlebag”.

“By a RIVER?”

“Somewhere the other side of the old canal”.

“Lend me your bike, please. Now”.

I pulled my clothes on, thinking hard. The only two rivers in the locality – the Adur and the Arun – didn’t fit the description of “over the old canal”. But that gave me the general direction, and there was only one way that was feasible by bike: the winding footpath, bridleway or what-have-you, that took off from the top-side of the School estate, heading vaguely northwards, towards Stanlow Woods, the Wealden hills – and Bateman’s mines.

Banner’s bike was a bit small for me. My knees almost hit the handlebars as I pedalled furiously along, bumping over the rough ground. The pathway rose on an even gradient to the banks of the canal – and to a brand-new wooden bridge. In the last year or two, a restoration group had obtained rights-of-way on the old canal and had started to rebuild the broken-down locks. As a consequence the canal bed, dry for decades, was now full of water, usually crystal clear.

But today it was thick and opaque, the colour of tomato soup. Over the new bridge I went. To the left of the pathway, as I biked grimly on, was a wide ditch, filled to the brim with the same gloopy liquid.

On and on, through the rain. The ditch ran straight as an arrow. But it wasn’t till the first bushes and small trees appeared, the outliers of Stanlow Woods, that the truth dawned. There was an abandoned “tub” by the side of the path, upside-down and lacking wheels. This was no ditch, but the bed of another old plateway. One end had been at the canal, where no doubt there had once been a landing stage. The other end, therefore…………..

When I reached the other end, I knew. Where the cycle track ran out of the woods there was a clearing. A jeep-track came in here, and there were several parked cars and vans. Clearly I’d been late in the day in hearing of Sandie’s disappearance, because I recognised many of the people immediately: Jack; the Roebuck twins, to name just three.

All eyes were turned to one spot. The water-filled ditch here ran in a short cutting, and this terminated at its further end in the side of a hill- and in a black semicircular opening. Red-brown water was swirling out of this, coming up halfway to the top of the arch. Lumps of masonry lay in the water, which eddied around and over them, in a menacing, ugly way.

“It has been sealed up till now” said a thoughtful voice behind me. “There must have been a stupendous weight of water pent-up inside the hill, to burst the wall down, don’t you think?”

I turned and faced a tall, spare figure, wearing an old gabardine raincoat and tweed cap. The face was middle-aged and lined, a face I knew well – the face of Mr Jackson!

Mr Jackson had always seemed a rather colourless figure. He taught unglamorous subjects like Advanced Mathematics. He was a stickler for discipline and had a poor sense of humour. Why he was here I could only guess. But he was speaking again.

“The Head’s over there, Scott, talking to the Fire and Rescue chappie. He doesn’t look happy. Let’s go and see if we can help”.

Dr Holroyd was standing nearest to the tunnel-mouth, talking, or rather listening, to a thick-set individual, dressed from head to toe in yellow hi-viz waterproof overalls. Even his boots and his big helmet were yellow. Stencilled across his chest was the name BURRIDGE. He was gesticulating as he spoke.

“Naow, I’m not sending anybody in theer. See for yourself- look at the current! Look at the depth! We'd never get the inflatable along”.

“What do you suggest?” ventured Dr Holroyd.

The man shrugged. “Wait till the level drops back. ‘Course, that could be any time – days p’raps”.

“Days!” repeated the Head, almost to himself, thinking as I did, Sandie would be dead by then.

“’Course” the fire-and-rescue man went on “theer’s nothink to say your boy’s in the mines at all. You found ‘is bike, but so what? ‘E couldn’t ‘ave got in by that entrance (jerking a thumb at the dark arch behind him) ‘cos that were blocked up till yes’day. And if ‘e got in any other way, then wheer is it?”

This was too much. “That’s not the point!” I burst out. “It doesn’t matter how Sandie got in. The question is, how are we going to get him out?”

Mr Jackson had been listening to the fire-and-rescue man and was clearly unimpressed. “Headmaster, if I might have a word?”

Dr Holroyd now turned and saw Mr Jackson for the first time. “Sid?” he said, questioningly.

“Headmaster, at the risk of talking out of turn, I agree totally with Scott. If the Fire and Rescue service are not going to help us, then we must help ourselves”.

I looked at Fire Officer Burridge, who looked as if he was about to burst. By contrast, the boss was perfectly calm.

He was silent for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind. “Thank you, Mr Burridge, for coming, and thank you also for your opinion. However, what you say is totally unacceptable to me. I don’t think we need detain you further. Good afternoon”.

Burridge opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and stumped off to his bright-red van. Moments later he drove away.

“Well” said Dr Holroyd “I hope that doesn’t leave us high and dry”. (High and Dry hardly described things, I felt).

Mr Jackson was equal to the situation. “Headmaster, I am quite serious in what I propose – we must help ourselves. I have, you see, come prepared for this eventuality”. He unfastened his raincoat and showed us he was wearing a wet-suit.

“Sid!” exclaimed Dr Holroyd in quite another tone. Mr Jackson permitted himself a quiet smile.

“Headmaster, when you came to this School ten years ago, you inherited me, along with several of the older staff. You could not possibly have known that as a young man, my hobby was caving – you might say caving became an obsession with me. I am fifty-eight years old, but I have kept up my skills. The local caving club have even done me the honour of making me their President for this year”.

Dr Holroyd was – unusually for him – lost for words. Mr Jackson continued.

“You may also not have known, Headmaster, that I served in the Territorial Army for some years, as a non-combatant – a stretcher-bearer in the Royal Army Medical Corps. I know something about moving wounded men around. Indeed, I have myself been moved to safety, without any aids other than human hands. My left leg, below the knee, is not my own, as you will scarcely have failed to notice”. (Well, we had noticed he had a bit of a limp, but an artificial limb- no way had we guessed that).

“And so-“ the Head began, but Mr Jackson interrupted. “And so, Headmaster, the remark that the fire-officer made, about not being able to use the inflatable, made no sense. Presumably they intended to float the casualty out on it. We need no inflatable. Which brings me on to what we do need”. He paused. Everyone was listening.

“I should delude myself – and you – if I told you I could do this on my own. To do so would be rash as well as stupid. I am capable of directing operations – in fact I insist on doing so – but I do need a couple of volunteer helpers. They need no previous experience – all I ask is that they should be physically fit”.

Then it came. “How about you, Scott?”

I told you a while back that I had a blind fear of tunnels. I don’t even care much for them on the railway, and as for a canal-boat trip I’d once done with Uncle Carl, when we were underground for about 45 minutes, that was a nightmare experience I never wanted to repeat.

“How about you, Scott?”

The scene before me changed. Gone were the bushes and trees, the people, the parked cars. Instead through a mist I seemed to see- Sandie Ross.

Sandie sneaking out of school at night. Biking to this deserted spot. Finding his way into the mines by some entrance that only he knew about. Sandie finding his way in that labyrinth of tunnels with only a pocket torch.

Then the rumble of falling masonry and the roar of pent-up water. Sandie finding himself cut off, hurrying back down the tunnel, losing his way…….

Time passed. Sandie’s torch was running out. He had had neither food nor water. Weak with hunger and thirst, and terrified, he sat down where he was, in the black dark. He closed his eyes and drifted off into an uneasy sleep, a coma, only a hair’s breadth from death……

There, alone, Sandie died where he lay. His skin turned a livid white, then green, then black. More time passed and the black shape in the tunnel had become unrecognisable – a horrible decayed THING.

Over time, the flesh rotted away, leaving a human skeleton. The skull grinned up at me from the tunnel floor. It spoke in Sandie’s voice. “I waited, but you didn’t come; you abandoned me. You could have come, but you didn’t. You left me here to die”.

I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t abandon him. Not even a creep like Sandie Ross.

“Scott?”

The voice recalled me to my senses. The mist cleared and again I was standing in the rain, with everyone staring at me. “Oh, sorry. I was thinking about something else. Yes, of course, count me in. You did say two volunteers – would three be too many?”

“No, I don’t think so. Who were you thinking of?”

I knew who I wanted. I wanted Jon and Jamie. “The Roebuck twins, please, sir”.

They were, of course, right beside me, as everyone was – Roddy, Jack, Ricky, Jan Raxworthy – the whole gang.

“Are you on, you two?”

“Sure thing, Simon” – this from Jon.

“No problem, Simon” – this from Jamie.

Mr Jackson now became businesslike. “You’d better get kitted-up right away”. He waved at one of the parked vehicles, an old black Landrover. The door opened and a middle-aged lady got out and waved back. “My wife acts as the Club’s storekeeper” explained Mr Jackson. “You’ll find she has everything you are going to need, I think. Off you go now”.

We went. “Sid, I had no idea you were married” remarked Dr Holroyd.

Mr Jackson permitted himself another of those wintry smiles. “Headmaster, you never asked me whether I was married or unmarried. And since it might not have interested you in the first place, I never saw fit to tell you”.

To which the boss had no reply!

While this conversation was going on, Mrs Jackson was fixing the three of us up with wet-suits, boots, and helmets with powerful lamps. Additionally there was a length of nylon rope – no risk of anyone getting separated from the main party. Thus accoutred we returned to the tunnel-mouth where Mr Jackson was already in the water. It came almost to his chest, I saw.

“Simon, you’ll go in front, to let us know if there are any places where we oughtn’t to put our feet.” (like vertical shafts going down to infinity, I thought, but didn’t say.) “Jon and Jamie next. I’ll bring up the rear, then I can field any mishaps. Right, get roped-up and pass the loose end to me”.

“And by the way” he added “the colour of this water is only due to iron-ore. Quite harmless, but you’ll all look very rusty when you come out”.

When we come out………..

And then there was nothing for it but to jump in. Besides being rusty-red the water was horribly cold, coming as it did from inside the hill, where no sun ever shone.

The tunnel mouth was just in front of me. In I went and was almost bowled over by the current. Just in time Mr Jackson called out “Lean into it, Scott! One step at a time. Take it steady!”.

The tunnel was five feet high, I’m five-eight in my socks. I had enough to do to avoid banging my head on the roof, and staying upright, to worry about much else. Mr Jackson, though he had a middle-aged stoop, was about six-two, and had an even worse problem.

For the first fifty yards or so the tunnel was brick-lined, reinforced by old rail-lines bent into a horseshoe shape. For this stretch I had these to hang on to. When the rail-lines ended there was only the rock wall, left rough by the miners as it had been a century and a half earlier.

“Keep it moving, Scott!”

God, I’m doing all I can, I thought, and added to myself “It’s alright, Sandie, we’re on our way”.

What, I suppose, we’d feared most, was the water coming right up to the roof so that we had to turn back. What we found was something different. It was towards the end of the brick-lined stretch that I began to hear a sort of roaring noise, which got louder. As I pushed on, the current became more turbulent. A bit further still and I could see where the roaring noise was coming from. Halfway up the opposite wall – I was keeping to the right – a culvert emptied into the tunnel, and water was cascading into the tunnel in a solid mass and ricocheting off the right-hand wall. The culvert was only two feet high – at least we didn’t have to try going in there!

“Just keep going, Scott”. I kept going. It felt as Niagara Falls must do if you’re daft enough to try swimming under them…..

We were rewarded. Not far beyond the cascade the floor began to rise and the water to become less deep. It was waist-deep, knee-deep, ankle-deep……

Then there was none, just the damp floor with the remains of the old plateway.

Not far ahead we came to a T-junction. The left arm was blocked by a collection of derelict “tubs” left there when the mine was abandoned. The right-hand arm proved more rewarding, for there we found - Sandie!

He was alive, but he stank. Of what, you can use your imagination. It wasn’t his fault. Terror does that to people’s guts, and Sandie had had more terrors than he’d been able to cope with. By him, on the ground, the very faintest glow showed from his almost-exhausted pocket torch. He must have kept it there as a sort of comfort, though it was less light than a glow-worm.

Sandie blinked in the light of our head-lamps. “Hello, old chap!” said Mr Jackson, in a very gentle voice. Terror seemed to have deprived Sandie of speech. “St – st – st” was all he could say at first.

“What are you trying to tell us, Sandie?”

“St- stairway. Couldn’t – find – stairway”.

“I’ll look this way” said Jamie, hurrying off to the left, past the broken-down tubs.

“And I’ll look along here” called Jon, already making off in the opposite direction. Almost at once he shouted back “It’s here!”

The entrance to the stairway was very narrow and it wasn’t surprising that Sandie, with an almost dead torch, had missed it. Jon and Jamie got him on to his feet. He winced as he stood up. “Hurt my foot” he whimpered. In the same order as before, but with Sandie between the two Roebucks, we set off towards – we hoped – safety. The steps were rough-hewn out of the rock and quite shallow. Our progress was very slow indeed, and I had every opportunity of counting the steps.

There were a hundred and fifty-three.

The stairway ended at last, not in the open air, but in another gallery. But there was a difference. From one direction there was a strong draught. Making towards this we all saw – with no doubt at all – a dim light. With a shout we all made towards it, the Roebucks half-pushing, half-carrying Sandie, and burst through a growth of brambles that half-blocked a stone archway – the elusive Level 3 which Harry and I had missed that first afternoon.

I recognised the place – the little copse of pines and birches. For a moment the four of us flopped on to the wet grass, scarcely able to believe in the lavender glare of the now-ebbing daylight, the welcome that was in the everyday rain. But Mr Jackson was already making a call on his mobile phone, and this done, he leaned against a tree and lit a cigarette- something we’d never, ever, seen him do. In his gaunt figure I could picture the young soldier of thirty years earlier, enjoying a quick drag between assignments.

Powerful engines throbbed overhead and an air-ambulance helicopter landed a short distance away. Two paramedics emerged at the double, bundled Sandie on to a stretcher and took him away. In the deafening blast of noise as it took off, we saw, but could not hear, the arrival of two cars – Mrs Jackson in the caving-club Landrover, and Mr Carter’s old Volvo, with two bikes – Sandie’s and Banner’s – on the roof rack.

Mr Jackson stubbed out his cigarette. “Right, we’re done here” he said. “Let’s all go home!”

Ten o’clock the same night.

I watched the last vestiges of rusty-red water swirl down the plug-hole. The mines had been slow to give up their trademark: I’d been stained reddish-brown from head to toe including my intimate bits, such as they were – I’d scrubbed and scrubbed but it had been slow to shift.

Then my mobile phone rang. “Simon? Matron here. There’s something I want you to see”. I gave up my idea of an early night and got in the car.

Matron met me at the door of the sick bay in a froth of newly-laundered aprons. “I thought you’d want to know” she said with a smile. “I’ve got Sandie here. The hospital said there’s nothing wrong with him organically – all he needs is peace and quiet.

“So I’ve given him a good bath and hair-wash and a mild sedative, and now he’s sleeping. Do you want to take a look?” (Well, I could at least return Sandie’s precious torch, in which I’d already replaced the battery).

In the sick-bay Matron had turned the lights down. Sandie looked very peaceful: his hair was still damp, and the roses had returned to his cheeks. Matron gently pulled the covers down. Sandie wasn’t wearing any pyjamas. Totally smooth and hairless “down there”, he might have been only twelve.

“He’s so small” whispered Matron “that I had problems putting the band on. But I didn’t want him to wet the bed and spoil the mattress”. (“So small” didn’t refer to Sandie himself but to his half-inch of boy -flesh).

Not even after his bloodcurdling experience had Sandie been spared one of Matron’s routines – having a tight elastic band twisted over his penis. She was obsessed with the idea that neutered boys had no bladder control, which was untrue. I’d had to put up with it countless times!

Matron covered Sandie up again. “But what I really wanted you to see” she said “was this. His fist was clenched around it so tightly that I couldn’t take it from him till he fell asleep”.

“This” was a small white plastic box, which had once held paracetamol. I shook it; there was a sound like sand being shaken. I got the top off and poured some of the contents into my hand. It was the consistency of fine grit.

But in the lamplight the particles glowed in a very special way……Very softly I put the box in Sandie’s outstretched hand. His fingers closed round it, holding it tight.

Epilogue

I said, once, (“Simon takes stock”) that nothing much happens in the autumn term.

The local papers got hold of the story and one morning the front page headlines read “War Hero in Mines Rescue”. There was an unflattering mug-shot of Mr Jackson with the caption “Sidney Jackson MC, Falklands veteran”. This, seemingly, was true. Mr Jackson really had been a stretcher-bearer in the RAMC and had been at the notorious battle of Goose Green. Here he had untiringly rescued wounded men from the battle area even after a bursting shell had mangled his left leg. For this, he’d been awarded the Military Cross.

There was a sort of précis of the rescue of Sandie who was referred to as “a pupil at a local school”. And there it ended. Mr Jackson wasn’t the sort of man to encourage or attract a following. There was no rush to transfer to his Advanced Maths classes.

Fast forward to November 30th.

Mr Meiklejohn’s entertainment for St Andrew’s Night was billed as a “ceilidh”, which it wasn’t, quite – since a lot of the action was to be up on the stage. For accompaniment he’d engaged a 3-piece band, the Billy Flaherty Trio (fiddle, squeeze-box and piano) and the final line of the poster read “Come Highland or don’t come at all”.

So one afternoon found Ricky and myself up in Town at The Scotch House, hiring the necessary attire. I said a while ago that there was a Scott tartan. Could The Scotch House provide it? Yes they could – and did: a hideous confection of red-and-green checks like a travelling rug. A short tweed jacket completed the ensemble, after which Ricky got himself fixed up in the scarlet-and-multicolour of Royal Stewart.

The evening arrived. It was astonishing how many of those attending claimed some kind of Scottish connection. There were not many kilts, but many of the women wore ankle-length tartan skirts, and a few – a very few – the traditional long white dress with a tartan stole. Even the Headmaster, whom I showed to his special reserved seat in the centre stalls, had abandoned his evening-dress trousers in favour of Black Watch tartan trews.

As chief usher I was assisted by Roddy and Jack. Roddy was barred from performing by his contract with the record company. His only concession to the night’s on-goings was a tweed jacket. Jack had assumed the black-and-white checked “Shepherd’s Plaid” – the traditional dress of old Northumbria – “the Debatable Lands”. He’d volunteered to sing the well-known onld Geordie comic song “The Lampton Warm” (= Worm) but this had been rejected as un-Scottish.

Meiklejohn himself in his rôle as MC was in the fullest fig of Highland costume: dress kilt, velvet jacket with lacy bits, and hung about enough silverware to rival a Christmas tree. Item No. 1 was himself, in a powerful baritone, singing the introductory number “Come in, come in, it’s guid tae see ye” followed by a few well-chosen words of welcome, and then by “Hey Johnnie Cope” in which the audience supplied the chorus with such vigour and gusto that Prince Charlie himself would have been roused to finish off what he left incomplete in 1745.

More songs – then it was dancing time. I’d sought a quiet corner but was speedily discovered and hauled out by Matron. (Her name was Fraser: I should have known better and avoided her). Up on the stage she dragged me, to partner her in the Eightsome Reel. Suffice it to say that I managed OK, since Matron was blessed with a strong wrist, and gave me ample warning of what I was meant to do next. At last the dance finished with the Grand Chain – and the interval.

In the second half, mellowed with whisky and other beverages, the audience were treated to such gems as “The sheep are on the side, Of the hills beyond the Clyde”; “Walking to the kirk on Sunday morning” and more of the same. At length Ricky appeared, for the last number but one: his “Loch Leven Herding Song” – last heard in the locker room. For this he was cheered to the echo, and as soon as he could make himself heard, he gave us “Ca’ the yowes tae the knowes” as an encore. As he left the stage Meiklejohn re-appeared to lead the closing chorus “We’re no’ awa’ tae bide awa!” which brought the ceilidh to a close.

As the audience shuffled out, two women in front of me were talking about Ricky. “That little fair boy! He’s got the voice of an angel. How does he get to sing like that?”

Had it been visible, the gap at the top of Ricky’s thighs would have given them the answer. Or that his snipped-off ball-cords could speak for themselves……

---oOo---

Last of all, Bateman’s mines remained firmly off-limits, but for one person they were far from being forgotten.

Because I’m the boss of the Scott Group, I’m on the mailing list of all sorts of outfits in, or connected with, the London money market. Most of them go in the shredder unread. But one morning in late November there was a circular from an investment bank – which shall be nameless – which seemed vaguely familiar – or rather the heading did: this was

SUSSEX MINERAL EXPLORATION COMPANY LIMITED

It went on, “We, Thomas Robertson Ross and Elspeth Agnes Macgregor Ross, being the Trustees for Alexander Anderston Ross, a minor, hereby declare…….

Alexander Anderston Ross? What a mouthful. Sandie for short!

The upshot of it was, Sandie had persuaded some people in the City to fund a company to explore gold deposits in the Wealden hills. He had an entry in the Registry of Companies at Companies House.

I wondered how long it would stay there.

FINIS