Melanie starts.

I don’t use the f*** word a lot. But just then, I was saying it like a dozen times a minute – loudly too, so that an old lady walked away from me, tut-tutting. So, hey, why the language? Listen and I’ll tell you.

When Simon first moved into the Centre, a few months back, it wasn’t long before I moved in with him. Whilst this was a great arrangement in so many ways (you can guess what!) it also had its “down” side. The Centre was in an isolated spot: no village, no shops. This meant that every time I needed girly things, like knickers, tampons, K-Y gel and so on, I had to go into the city centre. There was a patchy bus service, the Route 21D, which stopped at the main gate. There was no other public transport at all, and Simon always had the car….

It was one of those afternoons. Somehow it got later and later, so that when at long last I returned to the bus depot, it was to see the green-and-yellow rear end of the Route 21D disappearing round the corner. The next one wasn’t for another two hours….

To cap it all it had started to rain. Nothing for it but to drop into the “Lemon Tree”. Not that I went there much anymore, and their “specialité de la maison” – a tea compounded of fresh lemon and lemon grass – was a bad joke. Still, in I went, and ordered a slice of carrot cake – naughty but nice – and a double expresso.

While eating my carrot cake and reading a copy of “Hello” the sound of brakes grinding on indicated the arrival of a train at the nearby station. Minutes later, the door was pushed open and a man came in, shortly followed by another. Both went to the counter; each ordered a cappucino and then sat down – at separate tables. Clearly they’d not been travelling together.

However, they didn’t stay separate for long. One of the two men – a thick-set, bald-

headed guy in his late 50’s, looked up and spoke to the other. “Excuse me, but is it possible we’re both heading the same way?”

“Southdown Hall?” replied the other. He was younger – about 45. He had dark hair flecked with grey. And one of the hardest faces I’d ever seen, with a mouth like a rat-trap.

“Exactly!” said the first man. He moved across and stuck his hand out. “My name’s Plater – Ernest Plater”.

“Nigel Mumford” the younger man responded, taking Mr Plater’s hand. “Didn’t you

recently have an article in the Times Ed ? Fascinating stuff! I agreed with everything you said, two hundred per cent!”.

“Is that so? Tremendous! I can see we’ve a lot in common.” The man, Plater, smiled broadly, showing a gleaming set of dentures. “Well, we mustn’t keep the good Doctor waiting, must we?”

Both finished their coffee and went out. Neither had given me so much as a glance, although I was wearing a very short dress (which Simon adored!) with black stockings, and showing a lot of leg. Evidently these were two new members of staff . Did Simon know about them? Well, whether he did or not, something about the pair and especially Mumford, gave me a creepy feeling. They seemed, like, more than a bit “iffy”.

I swallowed the last drops of my expresso – cold by now – and abandoned my wait for the 21D. Instead, I joined the growing queue for the next Route 1 – to Southdown Hall School.

Twenty minutes later

No sign of Simon anywhere. As a last resort I tried the boarders’ dayroom. Simon wasn’t there either; in fact the room was empty apart from Jamie Roebuck who had his head deep in a magazine, which he tried to hide the moment he saw me.

I went across to Jamie, meaning to ask if he’d seen Simon. The magazine – in fact a mail-order catalogue – was in full view beneath his chair. It was open at the underwear section: picture after picture of models wearing thongs and brazilian knickers, the sort that are designed, first and last, to show off the shape of girls’ fannies (I wear those sort of knickers myself so I should know).

Jamie looked up at me, a blush deepening across his freckled face. He had lovely grey eyes, the sort that often go with ginger hair. “I was only looking, Melanie. Just looking – that’s all”. All boys try to look up girls’ skirts for a glimpse of their fannies whenever they get the chance. Jamie never met any real live girls – discounting me - but he had this obsessive need to look at pictures of girls in their knickers.

My heart went out to him. “Looking” was all that Jamie would ever do. I gently touched his cheek. “You poor boy” I murmured. “You poor, poor boy”.

Jamie’s chin had begun to wobble and I was afraid he was going to cry. I knew Jamie’s story from Simon. Orphaned in one of the Gulf states, he and his twin brother Jon had been raised in a state orphanage. On their twelfth birthday both had been neutered – something to do with the local laws about inheritance. Only weeks later, relatives of their parents had traced them and taken them home.

Too late, though, to save their balls. Pediatricians examined the boys’ private areas and shook their heads. Jon and Jamie would have to learn to live as geldings. (Sorry, I know the proper word is eunuchs, but I’m a horsey sort of girl – I’ve been riding since I was six – and “gelding” is the name we give to boy-horses in Jamie’s condition- when they’ve had their balls removed to make them into nice well-behaved gee-gees, and so that, whether horses or boys, they are unable to make babies.)

On a sudden impulse I took hold of Jamie’s hand and pulled him to his feet, propelling him to a door in the far wall – a door that said “Staff Only”. Jamie looked wildly round. “Hey, why are we going in here, Melanie?”

The room on the other side of the door – little more than a cubbyhole – was used by the night-duty janitor. It was just large enough for a shelf for the phone, and a single bed. I quickly dropped the catch and…….

(Skip this bit if you don’t like wacky sex!)

…..pulled my dress over my head, unclipped my bra to take my boobs out, slipped off the little black thong I usually wore, turning to face Jamie in the altogether – apart from my black stay-up stockings which I kept on. Jamie stared, his eyes growing wider and wider.

“There, do you like me?” I asked. “It’s very nice” Jamie replied in a voice that was hardly above a whisper. (“It”, you’ll have noticed – not “You”. I knew what he meant). He was shivering violently and not with cold….

I reached for the waistband of his shorts and pulled them down to his ankles. The stuff they inject into a boy’s privates when they neuter him, besides destroying his balls, also does something to his cock, making it impossible for him to get hard. Over time, the boy’s cock shrinks. Jamie was true to type. Between his legs he might have been taken for a six-year-old. Of his balls and scrotum there was no visible trace.

I lay down on the narrow bed and pulled Jamie on top of me. Spreading my thighs as far apart as possible to open my fanny-lips, I took hold of his limp little penis and poked the tip inside my love-hole, afterwards clenching my muscle to keep it well in. I clasped my hands behind his bottom, holding him tight. “There, now” I said in a soothing voice “you’re fucking me, aren’t you” Jamie murmured something I couldn’t hear and tightened his arms behind my neck. I clasped my legs behind his back and pulled his mouth down on to mine, so we didn’t have to talk any more.

I didn’t come – and of course Jamie couldn’t, but in spite of that, I enjoyed myself. When at last I unclasped my legs and let Jamie go, he was glowing and trembling all over with new-found pleasure. For the first time in his life, his cock was wet with a girl’s love-juices.

Simon continues

Well, of course Melanie told me! Angry with her – no; why should I be? She was doing a kindness, the darling. Not sure if she really had Jamie Roebuck weighed-up, though. She’ll have been misled by his tiny penis and mild good looks.

It wasn’t a sign of weakness. When an intact boy hits puberty a whole lot of energy – disproportionate you might say – goes into giving him a big penis and balls, a hairy ass, producing sperm and testosterone and all the rest. With Jamie and his twin, all that energy, far from being squandered, now went to making them lethal in martial arts. (If you want a few examples read “Simon’s Revenge”).

At the time that she’d been trying to find me I’d been in the indoor pool, helping to supervise the Robin Hood swimming. Keith Howieson had taken the first half hour and the second half was up to me. The bat-like squeaks of twenty little boys echoed round the enclosed space. At last the hands of the clock reached the top of the hour. “Alright, everybody – out of the water and get dressed” I called. Off they went to the open-sided changing area. Nude bathing in groups had become the rule…….

“And as I walked along the changing area, I saw a row of little ball-less rosebuds” I told Melanie when at last she found me. “Not a pair of balls in sight. Guess what had happened? Matron, bless her, had sent out a letter in the summer holidays saying “Where boys have not yet been neutered, please ensure that the procedure is carried out at least three weeks before the autumn term begins”. Everyone who read that letter might have assumed that neutering was compulsory here”. (Which it wasn’t – not quite).

“Good old Matron” said Melanie with a nervous little laugh. Melanie was a very sexy girl – make no mistake – but castration, whether of horses or boys, was a big turn-on: the highlight of her year was the autumn round-up of the New Forest ponies, when teams of vets were on hand to geld all the young colts before they were sold on. Melanie made no secret of the fact that she often used to wet her knickers at the sight of a pony having his balls cut out.

As for Matron, it was well known that she found un-neutered, intact boys unattractive. Those like me, or Roddy, or Ricky, or any of the others, were much more amenable. Her one-and-only foible was a belief that a boy lost control of his bladder when once his balls were removed, and she had a drastic and rather painful way of dealing with that – a tight elastic band twisted round the boy’s penis.

We walked on for a bit. “At least” Melanie continued – referring to the prep-school boys again – “they won’t know what they’re missing.”.

I nodded . In the last year or two there had been a lot of correspondence in the medical press about the right age for a boy to have his balls out. Five years ago when I was “done”, sexologists were unanimous that it should be between the ages of eleven and twelve, about a year before puberty kicked in. At that age a boy would be interested in sex, but not yet old enough to be a nuisance with girls.

Or perhaps he might be like I’d once been, more than interested - desperate! (At eleven-and-a-half my two inches of boy-flesh had been permanently rampant. Not any more!)

After his procedure, the neutered boy would get a lot of counselling about his new life,

and more particularly how he could not have sex with girls, however great the temptation. And temptations there certainly were. Girls like Wendy, who wasted no time in taking a boy to her bedroom and pulling her knickers down – only to find that the boy had already been to have his balls pricked and was unable to “get it up” A great disappointment for Wendy but a relief to her mother to know that her daughter’s hymen would stay unbroken for a while yet.

Wendy! Recollection of that embarrassing afternoon, five years ago and more, resurfaced in vivid detail. The sluttish twelve-year-old, her legs wide apart to show her white knickers, egging me on, and my voice, shrill with exasperation “But I can’t, Wendy! I’ve had this operation that boys have, and I just can’t!” Then, being made to slip off my shorts for Wendy to inspect my pathetic little “doodle” and her jeering chant of “Simon’s had his balls pricked, Simon’s had his balls pricked!”

But I digress. Just one of my many failings.

But the most recent consensus was that neutering ought to be done between seven and ten. At that age the procedure could be passed of as something that “just happened”, like an MMR jab - and it might be quite a long time before a boy realised what it meant to have no balls.

Melanie then told me of her visit to the Lemon Tree that afternoon, and her impression of the two characters, Mumford and Plater. I’d heard nothing about any new appointments. Later that day I went in search of one my two sources of imformation.

For anything I needed to know about the district round the school, and even further afield, Harry Brotherton had it all at his fingertips. But for the much more shadowy world ‘out there’ – the cyberworld – my money was on Jan Raxworthy.

Jan was something of an enigma. He spoke little of his early life before coming to Southdown Hall. His sex life was probably a blank page, although he’d been known to refer, once or twice, and rather wistfully, to a Cornish girl, Tamsin, whom he’d known long ago, before the visiting nurse at the orphanage, where he’d been raised, got to work on his privates, making him unable to “do it” with Tamsin or indeed with any other girl. I ran him to earth in the little study he shared with Jack Elliott – only Jack was out, doing some macho thing, no doubt.

“How’s it coming along, Rax?”

“Okay, thanks, Simon. A bit itchy still”.

Jan had been for a minor procedure at the clinic, one that was long overdue. After a boy has been castrated, his empty scrotum is at first a loose fold. Sometimes this just dries up and rubs off. Much more often it grows out, as the boy gets bigger and puts on weight, becoming just a patch of skin of a different colour. But Jan’s reduced genitals bucked all the trends. His scrotum seemed to be growing with him – a useless untidy pouch. eSo he’d taken himself down to the Greenview clinic and got it all trimmed off. They did a very neat job on him and you would never have thought he’d ever had balls.

“So, Simon, what’s the latest? Got a problem?”

“Apparently there are to be two new additions to the teaching staff – at least I presume they are teachers. One is called Mumford and the other is called Plater. I’d no idea they were coming. The boss hadn’t said anything, but then that was last term and he may have arranged it since. So, Rax, usual questions. Not “when” – we know that; they’re here now. But “who”, “what” and “why” would be useful to know”.

Jan gave me one of his quiet smiles. “Should be easy. It’ll be on the School’s own website I should imagine. Not the bit that Joe Public sees, though – the other bit”.

“There’s just another thing, Rax. They share strong views about something or other – I’d

like to know what it is. Of course it may be bird-watching or something quite harmless, but since the man Plater had a piece in the Times Ed, it’s more likely to be teaching methods. Will you have a go?”

Jan would. I left him to it.

That was on Thursday. It wasn’t till Sunday afternoon when I was watching the sports news, and admiring Melanie’s alluring black-stockinged thighs, where she sat on the sofa opposite with her dress pulled up, when Jan called me on my Blackberry. I turned the sound up so she could hear.

“Simon, like I thought, most of what you want to know was on the school website.

Mumford appears as an M.A. of Selwyn College Cambridge and is to take over the Classical Fifth from that bloke who retired – Dawson – Dawkins – can’t remember, doesn’t matter anyway. Plater is a physicist – London University – and is to join the team who take the Science Sixth”.

“Both Upper School then, so we won’t see much of them”.

“Well, yes and no. They’ve both got other duties. House Master and House Tutor of Ellerslie Lodge”.

“The new place, where the second-year and below, are being put”.

“Yes”.

Big though it was, the Archdeaconry had been outgrown by the increase in school numbers. Over the summer holidays the Governors had acquired an elderly persons’ residential home, one that had gone out of business, with all the fixtures and fittings. Conveniently for the school, Ellerslie Lodge was in a quiet residential road backing on to the school field, and a new roadway, quickly laid, meant that the boys could go to and from the main buildings without going into the road.

I hadn’t been sorry when I heard of this move. At times, the junior boys had seemed to

monopolise the place, with the noise they made, the mess they created, their habit of taking over the bathroom just when I wanted it myself……..

“Okay, Rax, that’s a help. How about this newspaper article?”

“Sorry, nothing yet. I’m still searching”.

On that note we left things for the time being. A bit later, leaving Melanie immersed in “Hello” magazine I had to get dressed for evening chapel. From my seat in the front row of the choir stalls it was easy to identify the newcomers from their academic dress (Dr Holroyd liked all masters to wear the full rig-out in chapel). That must be Mumford, in the austere black-and-white of a Cambridge MA, and there sat Plater, in the more jaunty yellow-and-black of a London B.Sc. H’m……

But later, back at the Centre, Jan Raxworthy called me again and he sounded worried.

“Simon, I’ve trawled through the Times Ed. Index for the past three years without finding anything. I then thought I’d try a few libraries. Same story wherever I looked. At June 21st last year, there’s a gap. There’s a jump from the 14th to the 28th. It looks to me as if all copies of the article have been suppressed”.

---oOo---

But for the time being, the two newcomers dropped off my radar, and I didn’t give them a thought till one afternoon, two weeks into the start of the autumn term.

These days I had some say in the selection of the First XV in which I still played. However, on this afternoon, I stood – unusually – on the touch line watching a practice match, and in particular, how the Number 14 was shaping up. That position was usually Roddy’s – no one could match him for speed. But Roddy had a music career which regularly took him to London, and I needed to find a credible substitute. And I believed I might have done so – in the shape of C-R.

C-R came into our lives two summers ago – a purely chance encounter in the Black Forest (Read “Simon in the Black Forest” for the full story). He’d been inveigled into joining a travelling ballet troupe (actually a cover for a far more sinister organisation).The proprietress of this outfit, subjected him to a “medical” on his arrival, and although his sex-package was no more than of average size for his age (in fact smaller than most) she insisted that C-R should be castrated.

He had nice little balls (she said) but they would have to come out. He would be dancing with girls in revealing costumes, and the temptations to misbehave might become too strong. She didn’t want him appearing on stage with a rampant erection showing through his tights…….

C-R’s grandparents couldn’t have cared less whether he kept his balls or not, so he went for the necessary alteration. No painless Neutersol injections, though, for C.R. To make him safe with girls he was sent to a local medico, who might have held the minimum qualification to practise as a GP, or maybe not. Either way he was no expert in castrating boys. C-R, to suit him for a mixed-sex dance troupe, was suitably pruned between his legs the traditional way, and not very expertly. When Roddy and I caught up with the dance troupe a few weeks later, C-R was in some distress: his incisions hadn’t healed properly and had become infected. To cap it all, he was still getting half-hard much of the time.

Prority Number One, when we got him home, was to organise a visit to the clinic. The specialist team tidied up his scrotum and spermatic cords and completed what the quack-doctor had left unfinished - burning out his spermatic nerves, putting an end to those distressing half-hard erections. With these neutralised, C-R’s penis shrank to a neat little rosebud. Melanie would have liked to kiss it! Hidden away under a sports thong, C-R’s private area might have been a girl’s.

A year on, C-R had gone from strength to strength. Not, of course, in the knicker department, for he’d lost any ability to fuck girls. But on the playing-field his talents came to the fore. Though as I said, he couldn’t outpace Roddy, C-R had a genius for exploiting gaps in the opposing team’s defences. I had just watched him score a brilliant try, when a big burly figure loomed up. Mr Carter!

“Shaping up alright, isn’t he, young Milsom” Mr Carter observed, gesturing towards C-R, who was picking himself up off the turf.

For a moment I did a double-take. No one ever used C-R’s surname: it was too like Milne, and as you know, doting parents had had him baptised Christopher Robin, names he loathed and detested. But I pulled myself together. “Yes, not bad, sir, not bad at all”.

For a few minutes neither of us spoke. But then I noticed, down at the far end, the by-now unmistakable figures of Mr Mumford and Mr Plater, apparently deep in talk. Now, surely, there was an opportunity to find out more! “I see our newcomers are taking an interest, sir”. I pointed – discreetly – at the two men.

“Huh? Oh, yes – yes, indeed”. Mr Carter took a pull at the huge pipe which he only ever smoked out-of-doors. “Mind you, I’ve not had a lot to do with them, not yet”.

I thought he’d clammed-up, but then he went on. “I’m told that before coming here, they were both on the staff of a boarding prep-school in Budleigh Salterton”.

As soon as I could, I slipped off back to the Centre and looked up Budleigh Salterton on the internet. It turned out to be a small coastal town in South Devon, between Exmouth on the west and Sidmouth on the east. But on the subject of boarding prep-schools there was nothing at all. Someone would have to go and sniff around.

“Melanie!” I called. She appeared from her bedroom wearing a black satin dressing gown. “Would you care for a day at the seaside?”

“We’re almost on the coast right here, aren’t we?”

“Yes I know, but I need someone to go to Budleigh Salterton”. I briefly explained why.

“So where’s Budleigh Salterton and how do I get there?”

“Well, if it was me, I’d take a train that stopped at Redhill and catch a connection to Reading. From there I’d go to Basingstoke and …..”

Melanie tweaked my nose. “I asked ‘how did I get there’ silly! Not how to spend all day playing trains”.

“The alternative is to pop up to town and get a fast train from Paddington to Exeter. There’s no station at Budleigh Salterton – used to be but there isn’t now”.

“Okay. You could have told me that in the first place. You aren’t sending me on my own, are you?”

I did a quick think. “Take Jamie Roebuck. He deserves a day out and he’d love it”.

Melanie gave me an old-fashioned look. “Jamie it shall be. Buy the tickets, will you?”

So that was decided upon.

Two days later. Jamie Roebuck continues.

It was far better than any mail-order catalogue!

Because it was mid-week and a quiet time of day, Melanie and I had the train carriage to ourselves. She had been watching me for a while through half-closed eyes, as if she was plotting something.

Then with a quick deliberate movement she put one foot on the seat, giving me a view right up her mini-skirt: a view of the tops of the black hold-up stockings she always wore (lucky Simon!) a few inches of her bare thighs, and between them, the curving vee of black nylon – almost transparent - which was all there was between me and her fanny-lips. I could see enough to tell she was shaved clean, like all modern girls. But of course I knew that already.

There I was, looking right up Melanie’s love-hole, and my pathetic little doodle gave never a twitch. Neutersol destroys not only the boy’s balls, but also the nerves that control a boy’s erections, just like cutting the wires to a telephone. You can ring and ring, but there’s no response.

My thoughts drifted from one thing to another. Suppose I’d never been traced – me and Jon that is – but left parentless in the Middle East. Without a doubt I’d have been separated from Jon and I could barely imagine that. I’d have been bought by some well-to-do Arab, as one of his domestic eunuchs. European or American boys were much prized, I knew, and exchanged hands for large sums of money once they’d had their testicles removed so they couldn’t “get it up”. And since I’d already had my balls taken out, it seemed a safe bet that I’d have ended up like that.

There would be a daughter of about fifteen, perhaps a younger one too. So I’d have been made to strip off for examination, to make sure I’d already been suitably pruned ”down there” and couldn’t misbehave. At bath time the girls would take off the flowing dresses they wore (did Arab girls wear underwear and if so, what ?) They would have skins the colour of milky coffee.

I, too, would have stripped down to my nothings. By contrast, having a fair skin and a lot of freckles, in hot climates I soon get to resemble a strawberry icecream.

The younger girl would probably be sexually innocent, though she might spare a curious glance at my shrunken little knob. The older girl would already know how all slave-boys of my age had an operation to make them unable to do what, given the opportunity, she’d have been gagging for a boy to do to her. It was part of the culture.

But what else might she make me do, I wondered, to amuse her in those long empty days? I pictured myself wearing a pink plastic strap-on dildo, kneeling between the girl’s legs……

All in all it might be a pleasant life, if rather boring.

So the journey passed, and before I knew it, the train was slowing down for Exeter. “Come on” said Melanie, making for the door.

We climbed down on to the bare sunny platform. People were pouring through the booking hall and the PA system was blaring out “Plymouth, Liskeard, Lostwithiel and all stations to Penzance”. But Melanie was looking at a piece of paper given to her by Simon, explaining where the bus terminus was.

The bus journey to Budleigh Salterton was very slow and tedious. Although there was a perfectly good main road, the driver kept turning off to small villages. But we arrived at last, and were set down in a long road overlooking the sea: Coastguard Hill. To one side the Channel sparkled in the sunlight. On the other, the neat villas of elderly couples who had retired to this out-of-the-way spot.

We hadn’t the first clue where to start looking. But then we saw a sign to an Information Centre and followed that.

The woman was most helpful. At least, if you count being told that Budleigh Salterton had no independent schools at all, nor had there ever been any. We turned to leave, when she asked, could we possibly mean St E********’s?

Yes, possibly we could. Where was it?

It turned out to be, conveniently, in one of the villages we’d passed through on the bus. And as we had to get on that bus to return to the train station, that would save a lot of time.

It was the same bus we’d arrived on, and the same driver. He gave us a funny look but asked no questions. On we got, and were on our way almost immediately.

Arriving at the village, St E********’s School was signposted, just off the village green. But the big painted sign at the entrance was peeling, there were torn, flapping “For Sale” notices, and the tall iron gates were chained and padlocked.

To one side of the gates was a bench, which was being monopolised by two old men. Two very old men, in cloth caps, boots, and very shabby, very shiny blue suits – possibly their Sunday best. They ignored us completely, being immersed in other matters altogether.

“And do ‘ee tell Oi so!” said the first old man. “And do ‘ee tell I so!” He broke into a soundless chuckle showing a dreadful collection of broken teeth.

“Excuse me” Melanie began politely.

“Ooh! Ah! said the second old man. “Powerful girt pigs. There niver were such, come I were a lad. True it is!”

“Excuse me” Melanie tried again. “St E*********’s School”.

The second old man – he of the ‘poweful girt pigs’ now became aware of us, and through heaven knows what went on in his brain, what it was we wanted to know. He jerked his thumb at the locked gates. “A turrible haunt of wickedness that were” he said.

His companion assented. “Ar! Turrible it were!” To reinforce this, he spat very hard, missing Melanie’s foot by inches. “I be goin’ home-along” he added.

“Ar, home-along” echoed the second. That was all we were going to get from them. They were old, old men, gone at the knees and elbows. Suddenly with unbelievable speed they both rose as one from the bench and shuffled away towards a pair of dilapidated cottages that we hadn’t noticed till now.

Nothing remained but to go home. I was reminded of those terrible double-decker problems in algebra, which were solved – as often as not, when X, the unknown quantity, was shown to equal 0. We hadn’t solved the problem by today’s outing. If anything we’d compounded it, adding a Theta and perhaps a Phi to the original equation. But the value of the unknown quantity X was as far off as ever.

Simon would not be impressed.

The homeward journey was a silent affair. Melanie even kept her legs crossed.

An interlude from Ricky

If you ever read to the end of the story of my adventures in the U S A a year ago you’ll remember that my grandparents – Judge Benson and his wife Lib, lovely old people – decided to accept Simon’s offer of the house at Lymington Haven. They had now been established there for some months. The Judge still kept up his connections with the West Chester baseball league, and before the summer was over, he invited Coach Sherwood for a visit. Coach Sherwood duly arrived bringing his son Michael.

(Michael, you may recall, was the pitcher/catcher of the “Mustangs” baseball team, and had a good singing voice. To preserve it, he had been castrated on his twelfth birthday by Dr Geller. He’d never wanted to be a castrato, and he’d cried a good deal, both before and after having his balls cut out).

Naturally I got the job of showing Michael around Southdown Hall. As he’d been kind enough to explain to me the ins and outs of baseball, I took him along to the rugger-ground one fine afternoon, finding him a good seat in the stands. I was playing, myself, at No 10 – the house matches having just started.

The match over, with a win to Nelson over Farragut (all our houses are called after admirals) and with the mud washed off, I went to collect Michael. His first view of Rugby Union had shaken him rigid, especially the tangle of bodies, arms and legs that is variously known as a loose scrum, or ruck.

“And you do all that with no protection!” Michael exclaimed – American football being very different in that respect.

“Some people wear scrum-caps to protect their ears from getting torn off” I replied. “But it’s not encouraged”. (It wasn’t necessary to mention that we wore no protection below the waist. Michael had worked that out for himself.)

Michael just couldn’t get his head round Rugby Union at all. “Anyway” I said “School’s over for the day. Let’s go and find Simon”.

The next shock to Michael’s system was his first sight of the Simon Scott Centre. He gazed up at the classical pediment. “Say, but this is a palace!” he breathed. You’re telling me this place is Simon’s home? Simon’s a great guy I know, but is he a Sir, or a dook, or something like that?”

“Nothing like that” I laughed. “The building belongs to a corporation. It’s run as a management study centre. Simon is the head of the corporation and the majority stockholder. He gets the use of a flat, which he shares with me and two others”.

Simon, as you know, enjoyed a pretty good life-style. In fact you might say that although he wasn’t a duke, he lived like one. Once inside, Michael gazed around, gobsmacked by everything. It was all a long way from West Chester. But once dinner (seared scallops, filet be boeuf, crepe Suzette) was cleared away, West Chester was very much on the agenda.

“Say, you guys” began Michael, introducing the subject. “You know that Neutersol drug, that you used on young Stevie (read “Ricky visits America part 5) “well, it’s caught on in a big way since you left. There’s been a change in Federal law and parents get big tax breaks if they have their boys neutered. Two buddies of mine, Benjie and Sam, were “done” a while back, in the summer, and one of their uncles made a DVD. I’ve brung it with me. You wanna see it?”

All of us did, especially Melanie, who was wearing one of her sexiest outfits. It was ironic to think that of all four boys there, not one was able to fuck her.

Simon fired up his DVD player and we all sat back and watched his big wall-mounted TV screen. The credits came up, then some music, and then the figure of a boy appeared. He had short brown hair and a child’s face. He was dressed in a T-shirt with the logo of the local baseball team, and rather short cotton shorts. His legs were bare.

“Hi, I’m Benjie” said this boy in a high-pitched voice. “Welcome to my neutering party!” More music, and the scene shifted to the back garden, or yard we should say, of a suburban family home. On the deck a table had been laid with cans of Budweiser, bottles of wine, and food. There were 6 – 7 adults sitting around and one of the men, in a butcher’s striped apron, was at the barbecue cooking burgers and spare ribs.

The camera now turned to the back door, from where a party of four was emerging:

Benjie and, for the first time, Sam. Sam was a lot smaller, and contrasting with Benjie’s rather babyish good looks, had a pinched little face. Both boys were naked, and being shepherded into the yard by their Moms. Sam was whining “But Mommy, I don’t wanna have my balls pricked” and his Mom soothing him: “Hush, Sammy! You know it’s got to be done some time”.

Shouts from the deck: “Hey, you two! Don’t keep us all waiting” and the camera caught an “aside” from one of the women about ‘cute little boys having to be ‘done’ before they’d ever had a chance to go with a girl”. Someone else said “But intact boys can get so-o-o tedious!” A small child’s high-pitched voice “Mommy, what are they going to do to Benjie and Sam?” and the reply “Hush, dearest! You’ll understand when you are a bit older”.

And then a new scene, the one we’d been waiting for.

In full view of the deck was a low table, empty apart from two enamel trays and a carton clearly labeled “Neutersol Plus” and the maker’s logo. By this table, sprawling on a lounger, were two 15-year-old girls. These were Benjie’s sister Kay-Anne and her buddy, who was also Sam’s sister, called Cassie. They were topless. Kay-Anne had on a pink thong, Cassie a white. Neither had ever had the opportunity to prick a boy’s balls before, and clearly they were over-anxious, fidgeting all the time.

Benjie came first. He sat on the edge of the table and opened his legs wide, as he’d been told. Kay-Anne stepped forward with a tray. She placed it on the bench next to Benjie. From the tray she took out a surgical glove and put it on her left hand. She then reached between Benjie’s legs and gave his testicles a squeeze. “Feel anything? she asked. Benjie shook his head. “Well, then, little brother” replied Kay-Anne with a self-satisfied smirk “you’ve had your very last hard-on”.

Kay Anne hooked her thumb and forefinger around Benjie’s scrotum, pulling it down to stretch the skin over his balls. With her free hand, she reached into the carton and took out a syringe. Smoothly and gently, she pressed the needle into Benjie’s right testicle. Benjie winced slightly as the drug was injected. This done, Kay-Anne took out another syringe from the box and repeated the procedure with her brother’s left ball. It was all over very quickly.

“Now you, Sammy” said his Mom, giving his behind a little slap. Still whingeing, Sammy sat on the table and opened his legs. Cassie neutered him in the very same way, while Benjie watched, nervously fingering his penis. Sammy scrambled down off the table and there was loud applause from the deck.

The rest of the afternoon proceeded as a typical yard party. The boys remained naked. Everyone enjoyed beer, wine or soft drinks, burgers, hot dogs and fried onions, cake and icecream. There were no presents or mementoes, and there was no resemblance to a birthday at all. After all, Sam was only eleven while Benjie’s parents had left it rather late: he was nearly thirteen. No one mentioned what had been done to the boys, but they, while they said nothing, knew that within three or four weeks their balls would have softened and dried up, their spermatic cords withered away, their empty scrotums reduced to a fold of skin.

Just as Kay-Anne had said, they would never be able to get their cocks stiff, to be able to shove them up a girl’s fanny. Benjie and Sam were boy-eunuchs just as much as if their balls had been cut right out, like Michael’s – or mine.

But the DVD wasn’t over yet. Benjie’s face appeared again on the screen. “Well, that’s how it was, folks” he said. “And – you guys that haven’t been done yet – a few things you should know. First, it doesn’t hurt! But – and it’s a big but, you can expect some changes. Like me! Before, whenever I saw girls, like on the beach or by the pool, the sight of their boobs and butts made my hip-hop feel like it was tying itself in knots, going to burst, it got so hot and hard.

“Not any more, though! That’s all, folks. See ya”. Benjie gave a wave and the screen went blank.

Melanie laughed – her one reaction till now. “I loved him calling his thing his hip-hop” she giggled. “I’ve never heard it called that before”.

Michael gave a sheepish grin. “I’ve known Benjie since we were both little kids” he said. “Way back then, whenever Benjie got a hard-on, his cock used to jerk and jump about. So he called it his hip-hop because that was what it did. I guess the word just slipped out”.

“Funny thing, isn’t it” he added a minute later. “If these population-control laws had been around when our Dads were kids, we wouldn’t even be here! And now we are here, just as we’ve gotten used to having balls, they get taken away so we can’t make babies”.

No one had anything to say to that.

“More drinks, anybody?” asked Simon. While he was serving them, Michael had more to tell us. That not all boys were “done” at yard parties like we’d just seen. At his local church where he still sang, boys with good voices were selected by the pastor, the Reverend Davidson, and neutered in his back parlour. They had also had a visit from a choir from another city, in which all the boys had been “done”. They were billed as a boys’ choir, but to demonstrate that they were no longer entirely male, they came on stage wearing white blouses, navy mini-skirts and black panti-hose. The audience were fascinated!

So we whiled the evening away with drinks and listening to music. Michael fell asleep and between us we helped him to one of Simon’s guestrooms, where in unaccustomed ducal splendour, he slept the clock round.

Sorry everybody. I know this was nothing to do with the plot, but it had to be recorded somewhere!

Simon resumes.

Ricky, thank you for that!

Term ambled on for the next three weeks. With no idea of how to solve the conundrum of our two newcomers I shoved it to the back of my mind. Until one rainy afternoon.

I was deep in the “National Geographic” reading about the Upper Amazon eco-system, (at Mr Carter’s suggestion) when my mobile phone rang. “Simon?” it asked, in Matron’s voice. “There’s something I’d like you to see. Can you come now?” I said I could, and set off for the sanatorium.

“Mr Meiklejohn sent him over in the middle of afternoon school” said Matron, indicating a stolid second-year boy. I recognised him at once. It was George Arthur. Some months before, I’d had to escort him to the clinic to get his balls pricked. He hadn’t said a word, either before, during or after – not even “Ouch!” He’d filled out a bit since then, as neutered boys often do with the change in their hormones. (I did!)

I hoped he would be more talkative now.

“He was sitting in a pool of blood” said Matron. “It could be one of several things, and I need to see what. But there’s a problem. He won’t show me”.

“I think he’ll show ME” I said, and in my severest voice said “Arthur! Take your shorts off, at once!” The twelve-year-old’s eyes filled with tears but he did as he was told.

At once, though, there appeared another problem. George’s tee-shirt was sticking to his bottom. I attempted to pull it free, and he yelled with pain.

“Warm water, I think” said Matron. With his tee-shirt moistened with warm water Matron was able to gently peel it off George’s behind. The crease of his bottom was caked with old blood – perhaps more – but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Across George’s buttocks was the pattern of a five-bar gate – only this pattern had clearly been made by a cane. Four parallel weals and one diagonal. Whoever had beaten George hadn’t held back. The cuts had been laid on very hard indeed – enough to break the skin: the tears had oozed, sticking his shirt to his backside.

I looked at Matron, and Matron looked at me. We both thought the same thing. Beating with a cane had been banned in independent schools since the 80’s and in State schools for much longer. In fact corporal punishment of any kind was now outlawed. Dr Holroyd, as one of the principal educators in the country, had obtained a Home Office dispensation for himself, personally, on the grounds that for some offences the “short sharp shock” treatment was the one-and-only effective punishment. He used it very rarely indeed, and never more than three strokes.

Dr Holroyd had never delegated this privilege to any of his assistant staff – though wallopings with outsize PE shoes were not unknown. Historically – I mean in the Tom Brown’s Schooldays tradition, Upper School prefects had used the cane freely. Dr Holroyd had no intention of putting the clock back.

Which meant……….

“I think our patient may have a fistula” said Matron, recalling herself to the here-and-now. “Why he should have, I’ve no idea. But I’ve everything I need for his treatment. I’ll keep him here. If it’s a fistula he’ll need a special diet for a few days”.

“Quite right” I said. “We need to keep the lid on this for the time being” – indicating George’s bottom. “Till we know who did this. Just keep me up to date with how he gets on”.

“Meantime, he needs a wash” said Matron, rolling up her sleeves and putting rubber gloves on. For the first time I noticed how grubby the young boy’s legs and feet were.

“Give me all his clothes, I’ll get them sent to the laundry” I said. “And his blazer is scruffy, it could do with a clean”. There was a rank smell to George’s things – one I couldn’t place. Not the usual b.o., at all.

Matron shoved all the things into a hospital bag. She got George to his feet and set about washing him all over. I got a glimpse of his genitals as I let myself out, his shrunken little penis, his dried-up scrotum. His procedure had gone according to the book. George would never shove his prick up a girl’s love-hole. Would never know the joy of shooting his hot white drops into her, and giving her a good time.

Any more than I would.

Weeks went by and October had given way to November before there were any more moves. I was crossing the quad with Jack Elliott – we’d been putting up notices about the afternoon’s fixtures – when a big figure loomed up. Who else but Mr Carter!

“Would you have any use for coffee, you two?” he greeted us.

We both would – it was a damp foggy morning. In Mr Carter’s study we all sat down while the coffee-machine did its stuff. Mr Carter reached for his pipe, remembered where he was and put it down again.

“Now” Mr Carter began. “I’ve really brought you here to tell you a riddle”. He looked at us through half-closed eyes while he chose his words carefully. “Here’s a second-former. Not brilliant but no stupider than the general run. No paragon of cleanliness but again, no scruffier than most. Get the picture?” We both nodded.

“Now” he went on “take the same boy. Does very little work and what he does turn in, isn’t worth the paper it’s scribbled on. More than once I’ve come upon him in corners, just quietly crying to himself – no apparent reason. Another thing, he’s become the worst little snitch in the Lower School – always running to me with “Sir! Sir! Do you know what So-and-So did?”

He took a gulp of his coffee. “I said a moment ago that he was no dirtier or scruffier than the general run of second-formers. But these days he’s a very good imitation of a rag-bag. His clothes look as if he sleeps in them and worst of all he’s beginning to smell.”

“Do you think he wets himself, sir?” put in Jack.

Mr Carter smiled. “No, Elliott, I don’t think he does. It’s not a smell of wee (and if it were, the School has a very good, very humane way of treating enuresis). No, it’s something else altogether. A sour smell – sort of vinegarish – I can’t place it at all”.

I decided to jump in with both feet. “Who are we talking about, sir?”

Mr Carter finished his coffee with a single swallow. “Young Peter Cardew. Know him?” We nodded again. Both Jack and I had known Cardew from when he was a new boy. When the time came for him to have his balls pricked, Ricky had taken him along (see “Ricky and the Mad Professor”). “He comes to me for French” Mr Carter was saying. “While he’ll never be a linguist, someone, or something, has got at him till he’s little better than an imbecile.

“So I can leave it to you to have a nose round? Surreptitiously of course!”

On that note we left him with a pile of marking. Surreptitious was to be our watchword, while we wrestled with a whole lot more unknowns and intangibles. Among them, a peculiar smell, just imagine!

Over the next day or two I took a hard look at any Ellerslie House boys who came my way. It was true that most looked scruffy and untidy (which is nothing unusual for second-formers). I didn’t get close enough to see if they smelled peculiar or not. At the same time a small number were very well-groomed. Their faces fairly shone with well-being. None of this made sense. And though I particularly wanted to see Peter Cardew for myself, of him there was never a sign.

But it must have a connection with Ellerslie House, somehow. On an impulse I sat down at the computer and logged on to Google Maps.

The school estate as I told you once, is very large indeed, and is on the border between town and country. On the landward side, the original mansion (now the Upper School) and parkland rising towards the old canal, and then open country. The Archdeaconry was on the town side, with a belt of trees as a buffer. Ellerslie House was closer in still. I keyed in the Ellerslie House postcode and waited.

The satellite view showed Ellerslie House flanked by between-the-wars terraced houses with a few workshops and small businesses dotted about. There was one gaunt-looking 4-storey structure that caught my eye. It looked decidedly out of place. Only one person would know. Harry Brotherton! I called him up.

Harry arrived sooner than I expected and in a smart new van, as yet unmarked. “Got a new motor, Harry?” I greeted him as he shambled in.

“Yus. T’ old ‘un were clapped out. Las’ Sat’d’y I went out in it, got it in the neck straightaway. The ‘ooter bust the first time I did it, accelerator were dud, footbrake likewise, an’ when we ran up against a hill the engine as good as conked out”.

“So, good riddance to bad rubbish” I agreed, then pointed to the screen. “Harry, I’m sure you’ll know. What’s that building?”

Harry peered through his pebble-specs. “That were Pilkington’s old factory. Been empty for years”.

Then, as I hoped, he opened up.

“Old Mr Pilkington, ‘e built Ellerslie ‘Ouse as ‘is family home, so’s to be near the Works. An’ where all them ‘ouses are now, that used to be all market gardens, fruit ‘n veggies, to supply the factory.”

“What did they make, Harry?”

“Plum-an’ apple jam, an’ also pickles, condiments, ‘orseradish sauce, stuff like that. My Gran used to say, when they was doin’ pickled onions, ‘orseradish sauce, the smell of vinegar would knock you over. An’ they do say……”

Vinegar! Light suddenly began to dawn, blinding light flooding in. “Harry, you idiot!” I yelled at him. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Which was most unfair of me, seeing that I’d never asked him. So I sat Harry down and poured him a beer, and told him my plan. For the sight of his new van had given me an idea.

Two mornings later, a smart white Berlingo van drew up outside Ellerslie House and three workmen in bib-and-brace overalls got out. Harry was the boss – he was the only one of us who could pass as a local – which after all, he was. Jack’s Geordie accent was far too memorable. As for me, I’m tall, but I have a child’s voice especially if I get

excited.

So Jack carried a clipboard, and I typecast myself as the gas-fitter – the horny-handed man of action - and carried a box of tools borrowed from Harry’s Dad. All three of us wore badges, the product of a happy hour with desktop publishing and a laminating-machine. The mug-shots on the badges were,in fact, identical – they were of one of Harry’s uncles. We gambled on the chance that no one would look.

Harry rang the bell. Somewhere near the back of the house a TV set was going full blast, and not surprisingly he had to ring twice more before anyone came. The door was opened by a fat, slatternly, ugly woman.

I recognised her – we all did. She was called Mrs Blatch, and her face had been in the local papers some months before, when she’d got the sack from the school kitchen. Employed as a catering assistant, she’d been in trouble for chain-smoking at work, and things came to a head when she left a dog-end in the potato chips. So she’d been fired. But Mumford or Plater, not knowing her background, had evidently taken her on.

“Yus?” said this woman.

Harry was prompt with his spiel. “Southern Gas Board” he said, shoving his badge into Mrs Blatch’s face. “We’re upgradin’ meters. You’ll have got our circular”.

The fat woman shrugged. “Maybe we did, maybe we di’n’t. No one tells me nuffink. Any’how, you’d best come in. Know where to go, do yer?”

“Yes, bin’ere before” Harry lied.

“Leave yer to it then” mumbled Mrs Blatch. “See yerselves out, will yer?” And with that she shuffled off back to her frowsty sitting room and blaring TV.

We stood in the passageway, on a carpet with a pile so thick, our feet sank into it. To our right a door opened into a dining-room, rather sumptuous, with tables set for the next meal. The thing was, there were places for no more than about twelve.

“Jack, who got transferred across here from the Archdeaconry at the beginning of term?”

“Adams, Barraclough, Brunskill, Cartaret, Chisholm……..”

“No, not their names, you mutt! How many?”

“Thirty-eight”.

“I thought so. Harry just slip upstairs and take a look round – no, not those stairs – use the back ones”.

Harry quickly vanished upstairs and just as quickly returned. “On the first floor, four small rooms, three beds in each – all hunky-dory. But on the second and third floors, nothing – they ain’t even furnished!”

Jack and I looked at each other.

“Where now, Simon?”

“No idea. Come on, there’s all the rest of the building”.

Carpeting gave way to vinyl as we pushed on into the “below stairs” regions. Beyond the kitchen we found another dining-room, or rather, a room where meals were taken. This was the reverse of sumptuous. Four six-foot folding tables, bare wooden tops, rather dirty, a hard wooden bench on both sides of each one. A box of old cutlery. Nothing else.

So the remaining twenty-six ate here, but where the hell did they sleep? I thought, furiously. “Harry, Jack – if you lived here and owned a factory only a short distance away, and you wanted a nice, private all-weather way to work, how would you fix it?”

“A covered way” said Harry. “A path, but roofed-over, like”.

“Jack?”

“A tunnel” said Jack, with no hesitation.

“My money’s on a tunnel, too” I said. “Now, that door looks like it might be a cellar. Let’s take a look”.

Our guess was right. At the foot of the cellar steps there were two doors. One led into the cellar itself, the other gave on to a corridor, and to darkness.

“Torch, please, Harry”.

“They’re in the toolbox, Simon”. And of course they were. In we went. The floor was of stone slabs, the walls plain brick. The tunnel was about fifty meters long and ended in another door. It wasn’t locked. Beyond it was another flight of steps, and a smell…..

A smell like old stale pickled onions.

The smell that Mr Carter had noticed when dealing with Peter Cardew.

The smell of George Arthur’s dirty clothes that I’d taken to the laundry.

Up the stairs, and into a large, very bare room. There were two rows of old iron bedsteads; they might have come from an army-surplus store. On each of these was a straw palliasse and a single grey army blanket. There wasn’t anything else. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of prison-camps in the Second World War.

There was another smell – a disgusting smell. Through an archway we found the “bathroom” – or rather a single, very old sink, with a cold tap. A filthy towel hung on a nail. To one side were two toilets, one of them blocked, and the stench was coming from there.

“God!” muttered Jack. “What a horrible hole!” He paused, then “Listen – I think there’s a cat trapped in here somewhere”.

I listened. At first I could only hear a drain running. But Jack was right. There was another sound, a sort of high mew. It seemed to be coming from that dark corner, where there was another door…..

Beyond that door was total darkness. There were rows of rusty pegs – it might once have been a storeroom. A few oddments of clothing hung on these pegs, and something else.

Peter Cardew was hanging there by his wrists. He was just able to touch the floor with his toes if he stretched his legs…..He was stark naked. Someone had gagged him with a tea-towel, and, for what reason I couldn’t begin to imagine, tied a tape very tightly round his penis.

Very gently Jack and I lowered Peter to the floor. “Blanket, Harry!” I ordered. Harry jumped to it and caught up a blanket from one of the beds. I wrapped it round Peter who was shivering from cold, then unpicked the knots that secured his gag. Jack was grinding his teeth and growling about “Dorty ould buggors” to himself.

The gag proved to be holding a cake of soap in Peter’s mouth. Harry now earned bonus points by going across to the tap and returning with his cupped hands full of water, for Peter to swill his mouth out.

“Harry, do you know where we are?” I asked.

“’Course I do. Back of Beamish Street”.

“Right. Go and get your van. When you’ve got it, take Peter straight along to the Greenview clinic. Private room. All charges to the Simon Scott centre. And get hold of Dr Laing -–Dr James Laing. Okay? Then go!”

While we waited for Harry to return, I held Peter close to my chest, mainly to keep him warm. He looked up at me. “Hello, Mummy” he murmured. “You’ve been such a long time. Is it time for my medicine?” “Hush, old chap” I said. “You’re safe now”.

He gazed at me, eyes wide. His chin began to wobble. “I want my woolly bunny!” he pleaded. “Please give me my woolly bunny!” Then to my dismay and Jack’s horror, the twelve-year-old dissolved into a storm of inconsolable sobs.

A scrunch of tires outside indicated the return of Harry. With Peter on his way to safety, one more thing remained. On our way to the kitchen I’d noticed a room that was evidently a study, or office of some kind. To this place we – Jack and I – retraced our steps. With Jack on guard I turned on the computer, logged-on to “Word” and cranked-up the font to 72 point. This done, I typed:

YOUR PREMISES HAVE BEEN SEARCHED AND YOUR ACTIVITIES DISCOVERED.

Then it was time to leave.

---oOo---

Simon continues

A day later I was sitting in Dr Holroyd’s study, on the wrong side of his desk. There was silence, apart from the steady ticking of the grandfather clock. Dr Holroyd was reading from the printouts I’d given him. His lips moved as he took in the enormity of the words before his eyes…

But I’m going on too fast. It had been a frenzied twenty-four hours. On our return to school I’d got the team to trace and sidetrack each and every one of the Ellerslie House boys. I’d arranged for a coach company to pick them up at the end of afternoon school and take them straight to the Simon Scott Centre. My Head of Housekeeping, the precise, Edinburgh-born Miss Faichney, wasn’t at all put out by having to find beds for 38 little boys. We had, she reminded me, annexes for people on outdoor pursuits, Outward Bound and courses like that…..

Then to the Greenview Clinic, where Dr Laing trosebud penisd at me over his glasses. “He’ll do fine” he said – meaning Peter Cardew. “Just fine. And he’ll keep everything”. The trosebud peniss faded. “What he has left, that is”. Dr Laing had very mixed feelings about the rights and wrongs of castrating boys. “That tape, though” he mused. “Amazing, what they get up to at that age”. (Did he imagine that Peter had tied a tape round his penis himself?)

They let me see Peter, who was awake, though drowsy. “It hurts, down there” he whimpered. “They’ve put a tube in me, to wee through”.

“I’m sure they’ll take it out soon” I said. “It’s part of the treatment. You didn’t want to lose THAT as well, did you?”

Peter said nothing. Emboldened, I went on. “ Can you tell me what happened?” I asked. “Why were you in the cupboard?

“The man – Mr Plater – wanted me to pull my knickers down and – and do things with him. He wanted me to..”

(What Plater wanted is too disgusting to repeat just here so I’ll leave it for later. Peter’s pathetic reference to pulling his knickers down was a literal truth. Like many circumcised boys after being neutered, his penis had retracted into his body as far as the glans. He had taken to wearing girls’ briefs and to sitting down to wee.)

“And when I said I didn’t want to, he said I was a bad boy and I had to stay in the cupboard till I changed my mind”.

“All over now” I said. “Try and sleep. I’ll come again soon”. I kissed his cheek and left, wondering what in hell possessed Peter’s parents to abandon him like this. I made a mental note to buy a woolly bunny.

I didn’t get much respite. Late that evening Mr Carter rang.

“Hello, Scott! Your two mystery men have done a runner. The Head came to me in a rare old taking, asking if I could shed any light on it. I said he could hardly do better than talk to you, and he said “Scott! I might have guessed!” The upshot was, will you go and see him at nine tomorrow morning, if convenient?”

If convenient indeed! I said Yes, of course I would – only too pleased.

For half an hour before, I’d got hold of everything I needed.

One of Jan Raxworthy’s greatest talents – and he has a lot – is the ability to go on automatic pilot. Jan never abandons a job. He just keeps plugging away until he comes up with the answer. Before now I’ve come across him at the most unearthly hours, tap-tapping at his keyboard, in the night, when there’s nobody there.

The apartment doorbell had rung, I’d answered the door, and there he was, a happy smile lighting up his pasty face. “Simon, you’re going to be pleased with this, I think!” He pushed some sheets of A4 into my hand. A few lines showed me he was absolutely 100% spot-on. Good old Rax!

Rax had located the elusive magazine article in a branch library in – Northumberland! Here the librarian, ordered to destroy all copies, figured that the article might have scarcity value one day and had kept it on his hard drive. God alone knows where Rax had got some of the other stuff, though.

I read it all through carefully. It told me all I needed. I made several phone calls – and then went to bed – with Melanie. Neither of us had anything on. This was normal for us.

Forward then to nine the next morning – to being shown in to the well-remembered study by the impassive Croker. There sat the Head, gowned, magisterial. He didn’t get up. This wasn’t Dr Holroyd seeking my advice. This was the Head Master dealing with a student who had stepped way out of line.

“Sit down, please, Scott.” I sat down, and it began.

“Scott, that you should in some way have been behind the precipitate departure of two of my colleagues is one thing. That you should have totally excluded me from the picture – so to speak – is something else entirely, which I owe to myself not to overlook”.

He paused. Oh dear, I thought.

“Scott, in all the time I’ve known you, you have done a number of extraordinary things. In all of this, however, you have never told me an untruth, nor have you ever acted without good reason. Now, two masters of this school, respected and academically distinguished men, have suddenly left my employment, leaving only a message with my secretary that they had been obliged to leave at short notice. Now, Scott, why? And, while I’m about it, have you actually met either of these gentlemen, may I ask?”

I wanted to tell him that his respected and academically distinguished men were a couple of dangerous perverts, who had gained employment by soft-soaping themselves into the confidence of the Governors and himself, and were perfectly capable of telling God knows what lies, to be able to justify their degenerate and sadistic treatment of innocent little boys. But I didn’t. Any more than I told him that I didn’t need to meet these ‘gentlemen’ to know them for what they were – vicious and depraved.

“Sir” I began “I think it would help if you read this”. And I handed him the first of Jan’s printouts – information that Jan had worked tirelessly to obtain, that exposed Mumford and Plater for what they were.

The clock ticked on. The Headmaster’s lips moved silently. Finally he laid the paper down. His face was pale. “Mr Mumford – a pathological sadist! Scott- I can scarcely believe it!”

Mumford was, in fact, genuine – up to a point. He really was a Cambridge MA. But he hadn’t come to Southdown Hall from St E********’s School, for by then, St E*********’s had closed down.

St E********’s had been started by a consortium of local businessmen and landowners, who had formed a trust and bought the land and buildings. The boarding-prep-school was to cover its operating costs from school fees. Mumford was not an assistant master: he was the first and only Head.

The trustees were men of the old school. Boys at boarding school had always been walloped – always would be. So if they got six-of-the-best from time to time, so much the better – do them good! What they didn’t know was that Mumford got his rocks off by beating boys. The whole school would be made to assemble in the hall, the miscreant summoned to come out. They would be forced to stay there and listen while Mumford hauled the boy off to an adjacent room and beat him till he screamed, his bottom a mass of blood.

Until, one day, he beat the wrong boy – or rather, a boy with the wrong parent. Sir Edwin Sibthorpe, (Bt) was not one of your run-of-the-mill country landowners. He had campaigned tirelessly for the abolition of beating in schools. So when young Jeremy came home for the weekend, unable to sit down, unable to take a shower, even – the solids hit the fan.

Parents began withdrawing their kids in shoals. The Trustees’ money was all in the estate; whether there was a school there or not was immaterial. So they closed the school down. By the time that Mumford heard about the Southdown Hall vacancy, he had been out of a job for some weeks. But he had kept a key to the school mailbox and was able to retrieve letters sent to him. He was thus able, when the Southdown Hall Governors took up his references, to send them a forged reply from a fictitious address…..

“Sir” I said “there’s more”. I handed Dr Holroyd another page of A4.

Plater, by contrast, was a phoney, and not only that – he had “form” as the police say. He did have a degree, but it wasn’t B.Sc (Lond). And his name wasn’t Plater, but Swann. He was a cunning bluffer. His teaching career went back quite a few years, but it was at a boarding prep school near Duffield, in Derbyshire, that his penchant for sex with pre-teen boys really surfaced. However, nothing was proved, and he moved on.

He appeared again in the Chislehurst area in another boarding prep school, where he’d become Mr Wilson. This time he was less successful in covering his tracks, and police enquiries were pending, so he had to lie low for a time. Until, that is, he saw the job-vacancy at Southdown Hall. His application and CV, in the name of Plater, were works of fiction, but science teachers (as he pretended to be) were like gold dust. The Governors didn’t bother to take up his references at all……

Dr Holroyd had been pale before, but now he was white to the lips. He put his hands up to his face, making little moaning sounds. I reached across and touched his hand. “Not your fault, Headmaster” I said. “It was the Governors’ decision, not yours. You are only their appointee”. (Partly if not wholly true. Dr Holroyd had the casting vote when new appointments were made, and you’ll remember, along the way there had been two real bum appointments: Hipkin the serial paedophile, Jolly the perverted charlatan.)

Dr Holroyd looked at me and gulped – which may have been a sign of appreciation. “Thank you, Simon” he said at last. “Is there any more?”

Third and last was the elusive article from the Times Ed. Supp. It’s rather long so I’ll only give you the main points, which should be enough to show what a sick perv. Plater was:

a) A teacher should inculcate, in the child, blind unquestioning obedience.

b) The child’s spirit needed to be broken, like that of a dog or horse being trained.

c) There were several ways of achieving this. One was by withdrawing ‘privileges’ – the use of a mobile phone, the right to sleep between sheets, to wash in hot water, and so on. The other was by the unrestrained use of corporal punishment.

d) The child must obey the adult instantly and with no question whatever about what he/she was told to do.

The full horror of what Plater and Mumford had been doing only came to light over a period of some days. But this is a convenient place to set it down, so I will.

Plater was without doubt the more evil of the two. He must have believed that the second millennium had dawned. An isolated house; absolute authority over 38 preteen boys, and a colleague who was only too ready to cow the boys into submission by the savagery of his beatings. Terrified into silence, one after another succumbed to becoming partners – slaves rather – in the obscenely filthy practices to which Plater was addicted.

It clearly fascinated Plater that a high percentage of Southdown boys were neutered. At Ellerslie House, he made it the norm. The remaining half-dozen or so intact second-formers were “done” before the term had run three weeks. A nurse from the Greenview Clinic had come round, bringing her equipment in a van. The boys had been lined up and sent in, one at a time, and told by the nurse to pull their shorts down so they could have their balls pricked.

On admission to Ellerslie House the boys entered a state of “helotry” as Plater’s notes described it. Their mobile phones were confiscated; they took their meals in Spartan conditions and they slept in the old pickle factory. When Peter Cardew was well enough to recount his experiences, he explained that Plater himself used to tape the boys’ penises. They were deprived even of the facility of going for a wee in the night. From this existence they could be promoted to the comfort of the well-appointed dorms and dining rooms by becoming Plater’s “minions”.

Sodomy – I need hardly say - was the passport to becoming one of these favoured few. We found a sketchbook among Plater’s private papers. A caption below a drawing read “Make the dear little boy get down on all fours and open the cheeks of his bottom”.

As part of the induction, boys had their anuses stretched with outsize butt-plugs and dildos. There was a risk, as shown by little George Arthur, that the boy’s anus might burst.

The Head read through the paper and put it down carefully as if it might explode. “Simon” he said at last “This is too horrible! I never dreamed…..”

“None of us did, sir” I said “until we’d seen for ourselves, and I think you should see it too”. So I ran Dr Holroyd round to the old pickle factory and let him see for himself – the grim prison-camp-like sleeping area, the filthy washroom with its overflowing toilets. He said nothing until we were both back in his study. Croker appeared with coffee on a tray.

“The question is, Simon” the Head began slowly “the question is, what do we do now?”

He sat staring into space. I got up and went to the corner cupboard, knowing that in it I would find a bottle of whisky and glasses. I poured out a good big dollop of Glen Morangie and put it in Dr Holroyd’s hand. He drank it down in one gulp, so I poured him another, which went the same way. “What do we do now, Simon?” asked the Head. “What do we do now?”

As if in answer the phone rang. The Head took it, then handed the receiver to me. It was an Inspector Lendrum, saying that Mumford's car had been found abandoned at Dover Western Docks, from where a small yacht had been reported stolen. Did we want to go to Dover and follow things up?

Dr Holroyd gave me a feeble smile. “We do, Simon, don’t we?” He looked, and sounded, quite squiffy. “In that case, it’s only a question of, your car or mine?”

The Head’s car was an ageing Rover 75 and I doubted his ability, in the state he was in, to get us to Dover in one piece. “Mine, sir, I think”.

So that was decided upon. I swilled down my cup of coffee, and since the Head hadn’t touched his, I drank that as well.

It was a fine blowy day at the Kent coast. We were shown into the office of a big fat man with a pronounced Devon accent and three gold rings on his sleeve. This was Mr Tomson, the chief coastguard for the region. He took us into his operations room, and pointed to the radar screen.

“That’s where our friends are” he said, pointing to a small dot, about ten miles off Beachy Head. “Taken ‘em all day, it has, just to get that far. Wind’s south-by-east, light to variable. Not ideal for a run across the Channel, not by any means. Times, they’ve tried to go about on t’other tack and found themselves in irons, right away.

“There’s one of our patrol helicopters watchin’ ‘em. And we’ve radioed Dieppe and Honfleur to keep a look out for ‘em. If they get that far” – he chuckled.

“Why don’t they use their engine?” inquired Dr Holroyd.

“No fuel, likely. Or maybe it just won’t start”.

“I never thought of that”.

For a while we watched the almost motionless dot. There were many other dots on the screen – Dover Straits is, as everyone knows, the busiest seaway in the world. “Some big stuff around” remarked Mr Tomson. “That, there, now” (pointing at the nearest dot to the yacht) “That there’s the “Global Victory”, one of the Global Petroleum Company’s fleet. One hundred fifty thousand tons, supertanker, outward bound for the Gulf, in ballast – that means “empty”. And that one’s the “Billy” – dam’ silly name for a vessel that size. She’s even larger. Container-ship. Inward-bound for Felixstowe. Registered in Panama, owned by a consortium in Bermuda” He shrugged his shoulders to express his opinion of consortia based in Bermuda.

“If I were skipper of that yacht” Tomson continued “I’d put back into Newhaven and wait for the wind to shift a few points. There’s some nasty tidal currents where she is. But look at that now – he’s trying to go about again.”

The dot had almost imperceptibly changed direction. Then “Hoy!” Tomson shouted. “Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!”

The Tannoy burst into life with an incomprehensible babel of noise. Impossible for us to see, the helicopter crew had a front-row seat at the drama that was being played out below them. Their report appeared on the front row of the evening papers. The yacht, in trying to go about, had come up under the lee of the towering cliff-like side of the empty supertanker, spilling what wind she had. She was plunging in the wake of the tanker when the tide-rip caught her, dragging her stern-first…..

It will never be known if the container-ship had anyone on the bridge or not. In any event they could have done nothing to avert what happened next. The huge bulbous bow smashed the yacht in two; the turbulence dragged the wreckage beneath the hull, where the monstrous propeller, acting like the blades of a liquidiser, did the rest. The helicopter circled the scene a few times, signalled “No survivors” and returned to base.

Later, in the car, Dr Holroyd repeated his question of a few hours before. “What do we do now, Simon? What do we do now?”

I had no feelings – none whatever – for the two men who, not so long ago, had been reduced by the container-ship’s propeller to a kind of purée, drifting down-Channel with the pulverised remains of their boat. “All we have to do, Headmaster, is to say that Mr Mumford and Mr Slater lost their lives in a sailing accident. There’s really no need to say anything else”.

I drove on in silence for a while, then “Do you know, Simon” the Head replied “I really do believe you’re right”.

My feeble little brain had proved superior to the Doc’s mighty intellect – because that was exactly what he did. The Press reported a sailing accident – and that was that.

Ricky finishes off

Well, of course I wasn’t there for all the excitement – but we’re nearly at the end of the story, and I know as well as most people what happened in the days that followed.

Problem No 1: a boarding-house that wasn’t fit for human habitation, and 38 second-year boys occupying the Outward Bound accommodation at the Simon Scott Centre. Simon and Dr Holroyd went into a huddle – as I learned, and came up with the following. Since the boys were there already – in the Outward Bound wing – they might as well stay there – and do Outward Bound!

So that was easily decided on. All day long the boys were out in the fresh air canoeing, orienteering, exploring forests. They returned to delicious food, lashings of hot water, warm comfortable beds, and for the time being, no homework.

Melanie was down there every day, being a big sister to one and all. Some of the younger boys had little idea what their procedure had been for. They knew there was some connection between balls and babies, but that was all, and some were starting to experience feelings they couldn’t understand, as their testosterone supply ran down. Others, more street-wise, knew they couldn’t ever get hard anymore, and the awareness of their lost virility was driving them frantic. For all of these kids, Melanie had advice and comfort. (As one 11-year-old said to another, betraying his Wessex origins as well as his affection for Melanie, “She’m GOOD!”.

Those second-years were only babies when all’s said and done. Among other things, Simon allowed them the run of his train-layout room, provided someone was in charge to avoid wrecks. This job usually fell to me, and I’d sit at the console before an array of miniature levers labelled “Up Distant” “Loop with main line” “Down Outer Home” and so on.

One little boy watched me intently for a long time, then squatted beside me and slipped a confiding hand into mine. And then:

“Home signals are the best signals of all, aren’t they? They’re VERY nice!”

See what I mean?

Changing the subject, I told you a bit ago about Michael Sherwood’s visit. Michael had flown home now, but had been so impressed by everything he saw, that he and his Dad had gone to see the Principal of Michael’s grade school. The upshot was a letter to Dr Holroyd, and agreement that there should be an exchange between fifteen boys of Michael’s school and fifteen from Southdown Hall, for the remainder of the school year. Why fifteen? So that Michael’s school could be indoctrinated into the mysteries of Rugby Union!

Simon has provisionally chosen Jack Elliott as team-leader. We’ll all miss Jack with his salty humour, his inimitable accent, his “Ah, get awee, mun!” in reply to just about everything. C-R will be going, also Peter Cardew. From the States, we are to expect as many members of the Mustangs baseball team (aka The Geldings) as Michael can rustle up, with a few others to make up the numbers. Benjie and Sam are to be included.

By the end of term, Ellerslie House had been utterly transformed, inside and out. The old factory had been demolished and the site turned into an all-weather play area with astro-turf. The underground tunnel, scene of so many nightmares, was filled in, leaving no trace. And it was no longer called Ellerslie House, but – Jackson’s!

For Dr Holroyd had made one of the best appointments of his long career, in appointing Mr Jackson to be Housemaster – an appointment that had eluded him for three decades and more. Mrs Jackson, a very kindly person and the soul of efficiency, was to run the domestic side of things personally. All of this is to start from the beginning of the January term. Plus one more thing. A Housemaster is entitled to a House Tutor as second-in-command. Mr Jackson had unhesitatingly chosen the 67-year-old Mr Meredith, whom everybody knew and liked.

We were discussing this over Christmas dinner. All of us approved of old Merry, who was kindness itself – a substitute uncle, and more so. He for his part had been delighted to be called out of retirement, just as we were to see him again.

“I expect he’ll want to read the boys “Swallows and Amazons” at bed-time” remarked Roddy, who hadn’t spoken before.

“After their experiences of the last few months, “Swallows and Amazons” will be a welcome change” retorted Melanie. “Now, who would like some more pudding? Brandy sauce, anyone?

UNKNOWN QUANTITY

Melanie starts.

I don’t use the f*** word a lot. But just then, I was saying it like a dozen times a minute – loudly too, so that an old lady walked away from me, tut-tutting. So, hey, why the language? Listen and I’ll tell you.

When Simon first moved into the Centre, a few months back, it wasn’t long before I moved in with him. Whilst this was a great arrangement in so many ways (you can guess what!) it also had its “down” side. The Centre was in an isolated spot: no village, no shops. This meant that every time I needed girly things, like knickers, tampons, K-Y gel and so on, I had to go into the city centre. There was a patchy bus service, the Route 21D, which stopped at the main gate. There was no other public transport at all, and Simon always had the car….

It was one of those afternoons. Somehow it got later and later, so that when at long last I returned to the bus depot, it was to see the green-and-yellow rear end of the Route 21D disappearing round the corner. The next one wasn’t for another two hours….

To cap it all it had started to rain. Nothing for it but to drop into the “Lemon Tree”. Not that I went there much anymore, and their “specialité de la maison” – a tea compounded of fresh lemon and lemon grass – was a bad joke. Still, in I went, and ordered a slice of carrot cake – naughty but nice – and a double expresso.

While eating my carrot cake and reading a copy of “Hello” the sound of brakes grinding on indicated the arrival of a train at the nearby station. Minutes later, the door was pushed open and a man came in, shortly followed by another. Both went to the counter; each ordered a cappucino and then sat down – at separate tables. Clearly they’d not been travelling together.

However, they didn’t stay separate for long. One of the two men – a thick-set, bald-

headed guy in his late 50’s, looked up and spoke to the other. “Excuse me, but is it possible we’re both heading the same way?”

“Southdown Hall?” replied the other. He was younger – about 45. He had dark hair flecked with grey. And one of the hardest faces I’d ever seen, with a mouth like a rat-trap.

“Exactly!” said the first man. He moved across and stuck his hand out. “My name’s Plater – Ernest Plater”.

“Nigel Mumford” the younger man responded, taking Mr Plater’s hand. “Didn’t you

recently have an article in the Times Ed ? Fascinating stuff! I agreed with everything you said, two hundred per cent!”.

“Is that so? Tremendous! I can see we’ve a lot in common.” The man, Plater, smiled broadly, showing a gleaming set of dentures. “Well, we mustn’t keep the good Doctor waiting, must we?”

Both finished their coffee and went out. Neither had given me so much as a glance, although I was wearing a very short dress (which Simon adored!) with black stockings, and showing a lot of leg. Evidently these were two new members of staff . Did Simon know about them? Well, whether he did or not, something about the pair and especially Mumford, gave me a creepy feeling. They seemed, like, more than a bit “iffy”.

I swallowed the last drops of my expresso – cold by now – and abandoned my wait for the 21D. Instead, I joined the growing queue for the next Route 1 – to Southdown Hall School.

Twenty minutes later

No sign of Simon anywhere. As a last resort I tried the boarders’ dayroom. Simon wasn’t there either; in fact the room was empty apart from Jamie Roebuck who had his head deep in a magazine, which he tried to hide the moment he saw me.

I went across to Jamie, meaning to ask if he’d seen Simon. The magazine – in fact a mail-order catalogue – was in full view beneath his chair. It was open at the underwear section: picture after picture of models wearing thongs and brazilian knickers, the sort that are designed, first and last, to show off the shape of girls’ fannies (I wear those sort of knickers myself so I should know).

Jamie looked up at me, a blush deepening across his freckled face. He had lovely grey eyes, the sort that often go with ginger hair. “I was only looking, Melanie. Just looking – that’s all”. All boys try to look up girls’ skirts for a glimpse of their fannies whenever they get the chance. Jamie never met any real live girls – discounting me - but he had this obsessive need to look at pictures of girls in their knickers.

My heart went out to him. “Looking” was all that Jamie would ever do. I gently touched his cheek. “You poor boy” I murmured. “You poor, poor boy”.

Jamie’s chin had begun to wobble and I was afraid he was going to cry. I knew Jamie’s story from Simon. Orphaned in one of the Gulf states, he and his twin brother Jon had been raised in a state orphanage. On their twelfth birthday both had been neutered – something to do with the local laws about inheritance. Only weeks later, relatives of their parents had traced them and taken them home.

Too late, though, to save their balls. Pediatricians examined the boys’ private areas and shook their heads. Jon and Jamie would have to learn to live as geldings. (Sorry, I know the proper word is eunuchs, but I’m a horsey sort of girl – I’ve been riding since I was six – and “gelding” is the name we give to boy-horses in Jamie’s condition- when they’ve had their balls removed to make them into nice well-behaved gee-gees, and so that, whether horses or boys, they are unable to make babies.)

On a sudden impulse I took hold of Jamie’s hand and pulled him to his feet, propelling him to a door in the far wall – a door that said “Staff Only”. Jamie looked wildly round. “Hey, why are we going in here, Melanie?”

The room on the other side of the door – little more than a cubbyhole – was used by the night-duty janitor. It was just large enough for a shelf for the phone, and a single bed. I quickly dropped the catch and…….

(Skip this bit if you don’t like wacky sex!)

…..pulled my dress over my head, unclipped my bra to take my boobs out, slipped off the little black thong I usually wore, turning to face Jamie in the altogether – apart from my black stay-up stockings which I kept on. Jamie stared, his eyes growing wider and wider.

“There, do you like me?” I asked. “It’s very nice” Jamie replied in a voice that was hardly above a whisper. (“It”, you’ll have noticed – not “You”. I knew what he meant). He was shivering violently and not with cold….

I reached for the waistband of his shorts and pulled them down to his ankles. The stuff they inject into a boy’s privates when they neuter him, besides destroying his balls, also does something to his cock, making it impossible for him to get hard. Over time, the boy’s cock shrinks. Jamie was true to type. Between his legs he might have been taken for a six-year-old. Of his balls and scrotum there was no visible trace.

I lay down on the narrow bed and pulled Jamie on top of me. Spreading my thighs as far apart as possible to open my fanny-lips, I took hold of his limp little penis and poked the tip inside my love-hole, afterwards clenching my muscle to keep it well in. I clasped my hands behind his bottom, holding him tight. “There, now” I said in a soothing voice “you’re fucking me, aren’t you” Jamie murmured something I couldn’t hear and tightened his arms behind my neck. I clasped my legs behind his back and pulled his mouth down on to mine, so we didn’t have to talk any more.

I didn’t come – and of course Jamie couldn’t, but in spite of that, I enjoyed myself. When at last I unclasped my legs and let Jamie go, he was glowing and trembling all over with new-found pleasure. For the first time in his life, his cock was wet with a girl’s love-juices.

Simon continues

Well, of course Melanie told me! Angry with her – no; why should I be? She was doing a kindness, the darling. Not sure if she really had Jamie Roebuck weighed-up, though. She’ll have been misled by his tiny penis and mild good looks.

It wasn’t a sign of weakness. When an intact boy hits puberty a whole lot of energy – disproportionate you might say – goes into giving him a big penis and balls, a hairy ass, producing sperm and testosterone and all the rest. With Jamie and his twin, all that energy, far from being squandered, now went to making them lethal in martial arts. (If you want a few examples read “Simon’s Revenge”).

At the time that she’d been trying to find me I’d been in the indoor pool, helping to supervise the Robin Hood swimming. Keith Howieson had taken the first half hour and the second half was up to me. The bat-like squeaks of twenty little boys echoed round the enclosed space. At last the hands of the clock reached the top of the hour. “Alright, everybody – out of the water and get dressed” I called. Off they went to the open-sided changing area. Nude bathing in groups had become the rule…….

“And as I walked along the changing area, I saw a row of little ball-less rosebuds” I told Melanie when at last she found me. “Not a pair of balls in sight. Guess what had happened? Matron, bless her, had sent out a letter in the summer holidays saying “Where boys have not yet been neutered, please ensure that the procedure is carried out at least three weeks before the autumn term begins”. Everyone who read that letter might have assumed that neutering was compulsory here”. (Which it wasn’t – not quite).

“Good old Matron” said Melanie with a nervous little laugh. Melanie was a very sexy girl – make no mistake – but castration, whether of horses or boys, was a big turn-on: the highlight of her year was the autumn round-up of the New Forest ponies, when teams of vets were on hand to geld all the young colts before they were sold on. Melanie made no secret of the fact that she often used to wet her knickers at the sight of a pony having his balls cut out.

As for Matron, it was well known that she found un-neutered, intact boys unattractive. Those like me, or Roddy, or Ricky, or any of the others, were much more amenable. Her one-and-only foible was a belief that a boy lost control of his bladder when once his balls were removed, and she had a drastic and rather painful way of dealing with that – a tight elastic band twisted round the boy’s penis.

We walked on for a bit. “At least” Melanie continued – referring to the prep-school boys again – “they won’t know what they’re missing.”.

I nodded . In the last year or two there had been a lot of correspondence in the medical press about the right age for a boy to have his balls out. Five years ago when I was “done”, sexologists were unanimous that it should be between the ages of eleven and twelve, about a year before puberty kicked in. At that age a boy would be interested in sex, but not yet old enough to be a nuisance with girls.

Or perhaps he might be like I’d once been, more than interested - desperate! (At eleven-and-a-half my two inches of boy-flesh had been permanently rampant. Not any more!)

After his procedure, the neutered boy would get a lot of counselling about his new life,

and more particularly how he could not have sex with girls, however great the temptation. And temptations there certainly were. Girls like Wendy, who wasted no time in taking a boy to her bedroom and pulling her knickers down – only to find that the boy had already been to have his balls pricked and was unable to “get it up” A great disappointment for Wendy but a relief to her mother to know that her daughter’s hymen would stay unbroken for a while yet.

Wendy! Recollection of that embarrassing afternoon, five years ago and more, resurfaced in vivid detail. The sluttish twelve-year-old, her legs wide apart to show her white knickers, egging me on, and my voice, shrill with exasperation “But I can’t, Wendy! I’ve had this operation that boys have, and I just can’t!” Then, being made to slip off my shorts for Wendy to inspect my pathetic little “doodle” and her jeering chant of “Simon’s had his balls pricked, Simon’s had his balls pricked!”

But I digress. Just one of my many failings.

But the most recent consensus was that neutering ought to be done between seven and ten. At that age the procedure could be passed of as something that “just happened”, like an MMR jab - and it might be quite a long time before a boy realised what it meant to have no balls.

Melanie then told me of her visit to the Lemon Tree that afternoon, and her impression of the two characters, Mumford and Plater. I’d heard nothing about any new appointments. Later that day I went in search of one my two sources of imformation.

For anything I needed to know about the district round the school, and even further afield, Harry Brotherton had it all at his fingertips. But for the much more shadowy world ‘out there’ – the cyberworld – my money was on Jan Raxworthy.

Jan was something of an enigma. He spoke little of his early life before coming to Southdown Hall. His sex life was probably a blank page, although he’d been known to refer, once or twice, and rather wistfully, to a Cornish girl, Tamsin, whom he’d known long ago, before the visiting nurse at the orphanage, where he’d been raised, got to work on his privates, making him unable to “do it” with Tamsin or indeed with any other girl. I ran him to earth in the little study he shared with Jack Elliott – only Jack was out, doing some macho thing, no doubt.

“How’s it coming along, Rax?”

“Okay, thanks, Simon. A bit itchy still”.

Jan had been for a minor procedure at the clinic, one that was long overdue. After a boy has been castrated, his empty scrotum is at first a loose fold. Sometimes this just dries up and rubs off. Much more often it grows out, as the boy gets bigger and puts on weight, becoming just a patch of skin of a different colour. But Jan’s reduced genitals bucked all the trends. His scrotum seemed to be growing with him – a useless untidy pouch. eSo he’d taken himself down to the Greenview clinic and got it all trimmed off. They did a very neat job on him and you would never have thought he’d ever had balls.

“So, Simon, what’s the latest? Got a problem?”

“Apparently there are to be two new additions to the teaching staff – at least I presume they are teachers. One is called Mumford and the other is called Plater. I’d no idea they were coming. The boss hadn’t said anything, but then that was last term and he may have arranged it since. So, Rax, usual questions. Not “when” – we know that; they’re here now. But “who”, “what” and “why” would be useful to know”.

Jan gave me one of his quiet smiles. “Should be easy. It’ll be on the School’s own website I should imagine. Not the bit that Joe Public sees, though – the other bit”.

“There’s just another thing, Rax. They share strong views about something or other – I’d

like to know what it is. Of course it may be bird-watching or something quite harmless, but since the man Plater had a piece in the Times Ed, it’s more likely to be teaching methods. Will you have a go?”

Jan would. I left him to it.

That was on Thursday. It wasn’t till Sunday afternoon when I was watching the sports news, and admiring Melanie’s alluring black-stockinged thighs, where she sat on the sofa opposite with her dress pulled up, when Jan called me on my Blackberry. I turned the sound up so she could hear.

“Simon, like I thought, most of what you want to know was on the school website.

Mumford appears as an M.A. of Selwyn College Cambridge and is to take over the Classical Fifth from that bloke who retired – Dawson – Dawkins – can’t remember, doesn’t matter anyway. Plater is a physicist – London University – and is to join the team who take the Science Sixth”.

“Both Upper School then, so we won’t see much of them”.

“Well, yes and no. They’ve both got other duties. House Master and House Tutor of Ellerslie Lodge”.

“The new place, where the second-year and below, are being put”.

“Yes”.

Big though it was, the Archdeaconry had been outgrown by the increase in school numbers. Over the summer holidays the Governors had acquired an elderly persons’ residential home, one that had gone out of business, with all the fixtures and fittings. Conveniently for the school, Ellerslie Lodge was in a quiet residential road backing on to the school field, and a new roadway, quickly laid, meant that the boys could go to and from the main buildings without going into the road.

I hadn’t been sorry when I heard of this move. At times, the junior boys had seemed to

monopolise the place, with the noise they made, the mess they created, their habit of taking over the bathroom just when I wanted it myself……..

“Okay, Rax, that’s a help. How about this newspaper article?”

“Sorry, nothing yet. I’m still searching”.

On that note we left things for the time being. A bit later, leaving Melanie immersed in “Hello” magazine I had to get dressed for evening chapel. From my seat in the front row of the choir stalls it was easy to identify the newcomers from their academic dress (Dr Holroyd liked all masters to wear the full rig-out in chapel). That must be Mumford, in the austere black-and-white of a Cambridge MA, and there sat Plater, in the more jaunty yellow-and-black of a London B.Sc. H’m……

But later, back at the Centre, Jan Raxworthy called me again and he sounded worried.

“Simon, I’ve trawled through the Times Ed. Index for the past three years without finding anything. I then thought I’d try a few libraries. Same story wherever I looked. At June 21st last year, there’s a gap. There’s a jump from the 14th to the 28th. It looks to me as if all copies of the article have been suppressed”.

---oOo---

But for the time being, the two newcomers dropped off my radar, and I didn’t give them a thought till one afternoon, two weeks into the start of the autumn term.

These days I had some say in the selection of the First XV in which I still played. However, on this afternoon, I stood – unusually – on the touch line watching a practice match, and in particular, how the Number 14 was shaping up. That position was usually Roddy’s – no one could match him for speed. But Roddy had a music career which regularly took him to London, and I needed to find a credible substitute. And I believed I might have done so – in the shape of C-R.

C-R came into our lives two summers ago – a purely chance encounter in the Black Forest (Read “Simon in the Black Forest” for the full story). He’d been inveigled into joining a travelling ballet troupe (actually a cover for a far more sinister organisation).The proprietress of this outfit, subjected him to a “medical” on his arrival, and although his sex-package was no more than of average size for his age (in fact smaller than most) she insisted that C-R should be castrated.

He had nice little balls (she said) but they would have to come out. He would be dancing with girls in revealing costumes, and the temptations to misbehave might become too strong. She didn’t want him appearing on stage with a rampant erection showing through his tights…….

C-R’s grandparents couldn’t have cared less whether he kept his balls or not, so he went for the necessary alteration. No painless Neutersol injections, though, for C.R. To make him safe with girls he was sent to a local medico, who might have held the minimum qualification to practise as a GP, or maybe not. Either way he was no expert in castrating boys. C-R, to suit him for a mixed-sex dance troupe, was suitably pruned between his legs the traditional way, and not very expertly. When Roddy and I caught up with the dance troupe a few weeks later, C-R was in some distress: his incisions hadn’t healed properly and had become infected. To cap it all, he was still getting half-hard much of the time.

Prority Number One, when we got him home, was to organise a visit to the clinic. The specialist team tidied up his scrotum and spermatic cords and completed what the quack-doctor had left unfinished - burning out his spermatic nerves, putting an end to those distressing half-hard erections. With these neutralised, C-R’s penis shrank to a neat little rosebud. Melanie would have liked to kiss it! Hidden away under a sports thong, C-R’s private area might have been a girl’s.

A year on, C-R had gone from strength to strength. Not, of course, in the knicker department, for he’d lost any ability to fuck girls. But on the playing-field his talents came to the fore. Though as I said, he couldn’t outpace Roddy, C-R had a genius for exploiting gaps in the opposing team’s defences. I had just watched him score a brilliant try, when a big burly figure loomed up. Mr Carter!

“Shaping up alright, isn’t he, young Milsom” Mr Carter observed, gesturing towards C-R, who was picking himself up off the turf.

For a moment I did a double-take. No one ever used C-R’s surname: it was too like Milne, and as you know, doting parents had had him baptised Christopher Robin, names he loathed and detested. But I pulled myself together. “Yes, not bad, sir, not bad at all”.

For a few minutes neither of us spoke. But then I noticed, down at the far end, the by-now unmistakable figures of Mr Mumford and Mr Plater, apparently deep in talk. Now, surely, there was an opportunity to find out more! “I see our newcomers are taking an interest, sir”. I pointed – discreetly – at the two men.

“Huh? Oh, yes – yes, indeed”. Mr Carter took a pull at the huge pipe which he only ever smoked out-of-doors. “Mind you, I’ve not had a lot to do with them, not yet”.

I thought he’d clammed-up, but then he went on. “I’m told that before coming here, they were both on the staff of a boarding prep-school in Budleigh Salterton”.

As soon as I could, I slipped off back to the Centre and looked up Budleigh Salterton on the internet. It turned out to be a small coastal town in South Devon, between Exmouth on the west and Sidmouth on the east. But on the subject of boarding prep-schools there was nothing at all. Someone would have to go and sniff around.

“Melanie!” I called. She appeared from her bedroom wearing a black satin dressing gown. “Would you care for a day at the seaside?”

“We’re almost on the coast right here, aren’t we?”

“Yes I know, but I need someone to go to Budleigh Salterton”. I briefly explained why.

“So where’s Budleigh Salterton and how do I get there?”

“Well, if it was me, I’d take a train that stopped at Redhill and catch a connection to Reading. From there I’d go to Basingstoke and …..”

Melanie tweaked my nose. “I asked ‘how did I get there’ silly! Not how to spend all day playing trains”.

“The alternative is to pop up to town and get a fast train from Paddington to Exeter. There’s no station at Budleigh Salterton – used to be but there isn’t now”.

“Okay. You could have told me that in the first place. You aren’t sending me on my own, are you?”

I did a quick think. “Take Jamie Roebuck. He deserves a day out and he’d love it”.

Melanie gave me an old-fashioned look. “Jamie it shall be. Buy the tickets, will you?”

So that was decided upon.

Two days later. Jamie Roebuck continues.

It was far better than any mail-order catalogue!

Because it was mid-week and a quiet time of day, Melanie and I had the train carriage to ourselves. She had been watching me for a while through half-closed eyes, as if she was plotting something.

Then with a quick deliberate movement she put one foot on the seat, giving me a view right up her mini-skirt: a view of the tops of the black hold-up stockings she always wore (lucky Simon!) a few inches of her bare thighs, and between them, the curving vee of black nylon – almost transparent - which was all there was between me and her fanny-lips. I could see enough to tell she was shaved clean, like all modern girls. But of course I knew that already.

There I was, looking right up Melanie’s love-hole, and my pathetic little doodle gave never a twitch. Neutersol destroys not only the boy’s balls, but also the nerves that control a boy’s erections, just like cutting the wires to a telephone. You can ring and ring, but there’s no response.

My thoughts drifted from one thing to another. Suppose I’d never been traced – me and Jon that is – but left parentless in the Middle East. Without a doubt I’d have been separated from Jon and I could barely imagine that. I’d have been bought by some well-to-do Arab, as one of his domestic eunuchs. European or American boys were much prized, I knew, and exchanged hands for large sums of money once they’d had their testicles removed so they couldn’t “get it up”. And since I’d already had my balls taken out, it seemed a safe bet that I’d have ended up like that.

There would be a daughter of about fifteen, perhaps a younger one too. So I’d have been made to strip off for examination, to make sure I’d already been suitably pruned ”down there” and couldn’t misbehave. At bath time the girls would take off the flowing dresses they wore (did Arab girls wear underwear and if so, what ?) They would have skins the colour of milky coffee.

I, too, would have stripped down to my nothings. By contrast, having a fair skin and a lot of freckles, in hot climates I soon get to resemble a strawberry icecream.

The younger girl would probably be sexually innocent, though she might spare a curious glance at my shrunken little knob. The older girl would already know how all slave-boys of my age had an operation to make them unable to do what, given the opportunity, she’d have been gagging for a boy to do to her. It was part of the culture.

But what else might she make me do, I wondered, to amuse her in those long empty days? I pictured myself wearing a pink plastic strap-on dildo, kneeling between the girl’s legs……

All in all it might be a pleasant life, if rather boring.

So the journey passed, and before I knew it, the train was slowing down for Exeter. “Come on” said Melanie, making for the door.

We climbed down on to the bare sunny platform. People were pouring through the booking hall and the PA system was blaring out “Plymouth, Liskeard, Lostwithiel and all stations to Penzance”. But Melanie was looking at a piece of paper given to her by Simon, explaining where the bus terminus was.

The bus journey to Budleigh Salterton was very slow and tedious. Although there was a perfectly good main road, the driver kept turning off to small villages. But we arrived at last, and were set down in a long road overlooking the sea: Coastguard Hill. To one side the Channel sparkled in the sunlight. On the other, the neat villas of elderly couples who had retired to this out-of-the-way spot.

We hadn’t the first clue where to start looking. But then we saw a sign to an Information Centre and followed that.

The woman was most helpful. At least, if you count being told that Budleigh Salterton had no independent schools at all, nor had there ever been any. We turned to leave, when she asked, could we possibly mean St E********’s?

Yes, possibly we could. Where was it?

It turned out to be, conveniently, in one of the villages we’d passed through on the bus. And as we had to get on that bus to return to the train station, that would save a lot of time.

It was the same bus we’d arrived on, and the same driver. He gave us a funny look but asked no questions. On we got, and were on our way almost immediately.

Arriving at the village, St E********’s School was signposted, just off the village green. But the big painted sign at the entrance was peeling, there were torn, flapping “For Sale” notices, and the tall iron gates were chained and padlocked.

To one side of the gates was a bench, which was being monopolised by two old men. Two very old men, in cloth caps, boots, and very shabby, very shiny blue suits – possibly their Sunday best. They ignored us completely, being immersed in other matters altogether.

“And do ‘ee tell Oi so!” said the first old man. “And do ‘ee tell I so!” He broke into a soundless chuckle showing a dreadful collection of broken teeth.

“Excuse me” Melanie began politely.

“Ooh! Ah! said the second old man. “Powerful girt pigs. There niver were such, come I were a lad. True it is!”

“Excuse me” Melanie tried again. “St E*********’s School”.

The second old man – he of the ‘poweful girt pigs’ now became aware of us, and through heaven knows what went on in his brain, what it was we wanted to know. He jerked his thumb at the locked gates. “A turrible haunt of wickedness that were” he said.

His companion assented. “Ar! Turrible it were!” To reinforce this, he spat very hard, missing Melanie’s foot by inches. “I be goin’ home-along” he added.

“Ar, home-along” echoed the second. That was all we were going to get from them. They were old, old men, gone at the knees and elbows. Suddenly with unbelievable speed they both rose as one from the bench and shuffled away towards a pair of dilapidated cottages that we hadn’t noticed till now.

Nothing remained but to go home. I was reminded of those terrible double-decker problems in algebra, which were solved – as often as not, when X, the unknown quantity, was shown to equal 0. We hadn’t solved the problem by today’s outing. If anything we’d compounded it, adding a Theta and perhaps a Phi to the original equation. But the value of the unknown quantity X was as far off as ever.

Simon would not be impressed.

The homeward journey was a silent affair. Melanie even kept her legs crossed.

An interlude from Ricky

If you ever read to the end of the story of my adventures in the U S A a year ago you’ll remember that my grandparents – Judge Benson and his wife Lib, lovely old people – decided to accept Simon’s offer of the house at Lymington Haven. They had now been established there for some months. The Judge still kept up his connections with the West Chester baseball league, and before the summer was over, he invited Coach Sherwood for a visit. Coach Sherwood duly arrived bringing his son Michael.

(Michael, you may recall, was the pitcher/catcher of the “Mustangs” baseball team, and had a good singing voice. To preserve it, he had been castrated on his twelfth birthday by Dr Geller. He’d never wanted to be a castrato, and he’d cried a good deal, both before and after having his balls cut out).

Naturally I got the job of showing Michael around Southdown Hall. As he’d been kind enough to explain to me the ins and outs of baseball, I took him along to the rugger-ground one fine afternoon, finding him a good seat in the stands. I was playing, myself, at No 10 – the house matches having just started.

The match over, with a win to Nelson over Farragut (all our houses are called after admirals) and with the mud washed off, I went to collect Michael. His first view of Rugby Union had shaken him rigid, especially the tangle of bodies, arms and legs that is variously known as a loose scrum, or ruck.

“And you do all that with no protection!” Michael exclaimed – American football being very different in that respect.

“Some people wear scrum-caps to protect their ears from getting torn off” I replied. “But it’s not encouraged”. (It wasn’t necessary to mention that we wore no protection below the waist. Michael had worked that out for himself.)

Michael just couldn’t get his head round Rugby Union at all. “Anyway” I said “School’s over for the day. Let’s go and find Simon”.

The next shock to Michael’s system was his first sight of the Simon Scott Centre. He gazed up at the classical pediment. “Say, but this is a palace!” he breathed. You’re telling me this place is Simon’s home? Simon’s a great guy I know, but is he a Sir, or a dook, or something like that?”

“Nothing like that” I laughed. “The building belongs to a corporation. It’s run as a management study centre. Simon is the head of the corporation and the majority stockholder. He gets the use of a flat, which he shares with me and two others”.

Simon, as you know, enjoyed a pretty good life-style. In fact you might say that although he wasn’t a duke, he lived like one. Once inside, Michael gazed around, gobsmacked by everything. It was all a long way from West Chester. But once dinner (seared scallops, filet be boeuf, crepe Suzette) was cleared away, West Chester was very much on the agenda.

“Say, you guys” began Michael, introducing the subject. “You know that Neutersol drug, that you used on young Stevie (read “Ricky visits America part 5) “well, it’s caught on in a big way since you left. There’s been a change in Federal law and parents get big tax breaks if they have their boys neutered. Two buddies of mine, Benjie and Sam, were “done” a while back, in the summer, and one of their uncles made a DVD. I’ve brung it with me. You wanna see it?”

All of us did, especially Melanie, who was wearing one of her sexiest outfits. It was ironic to think that of all four boys there, not one was able to fuck her.

Simon fired up his DVD player and we all sat back and watched his big wall-mounted TV screen. The credits came up, then some music, and then the figure of a boy appeared. He had short brown hair and a child’s face. He was dressed in a T-shirt with the logo of the local baseball team, and rather short cotton shorts. His legs were bare.

“Hi, I’m Benjie” said this boy in a high-pitched voice. “Welcome to my neutering party!” More music, and the scene shifted to the back garden, or yard we should say, of a suburban family home. On the deck a table had been laid with cans of Budweiser, bottles of wine, and food. There were 6 – 7 adults sitting around and one of the men, in a butcher’s striped apron, was at the barbecue cooking burgers and spare ribs.

The camera now turned to the back door, from where a party of four was emerging:

Benjie and, for the first time, Sam. Sam was a lot smaller, and contrasting with Benjie’s rather babyish good looks, had a pinched little face. Both boys were naked, and being shepherded into the yard by their Moms. Sam was whining “But Mommy, I don’t wanna have my balls pricked” and his Mom soothing him: “Hush, Sammy! You know it’s got to be done some time”.

Shouts from the deck: “Hey, you two! Don’t keep us all waiting” and the camera caught an “aside” from one of the women about ‘cute little boys having to be ‘done’ before they’d ever had a chance to go with a girl”. Someone else said “But intact boys can get so-o-o tedious!” A small child’s high-pitched voice “Mommy, what are they going to do to Benjie and Sam?” and the reply “Hush, dearest! You’ll understand when you are a bit older”.

And then a new scene, the one we’d been waiting for.

In full view of the deck was a low table, empty apart from two enamel trays and a carton clearly labeled “Neutersol Plus” and the maker’s logo. By this table, sprawling on a lounger, were two 15-year-old girls. These were Benjie’s sister Kay-Anne and her buddy, who was also Sam’s sister, called Cassie. They were topless. Kay-Anne had on a pink thong, Cassie a white. Neither had ever had the opportunity to prick a boy’s balls before, and clearly they were over-anxious, fidgeting all the time.

Benjie came first. He sat on the edge of the table and opened his legs wide, as he’d been told. Kay-Anne stepped forward with a tray. She placed it on the bench next to Benjie. From the tray she took out a surgical glove and put it on her left hand. She then reached between Benjie’s legs and gave his testicles a squeeze. “Feel anything? she asked. Benjie shook his head. “Well, then, little brother” replied Kay-Anne with a self-satisfied smirk “you’ve had your very last hard-on”.

Kay Anne hooked her thumb and forefinger around Benjie’s scrotum, pulling it down to stretch the skin over his balls. With her free hand, she reached into the carton and took out a syringe. Smoothly and gently, she pressed the needle into Benjie’s right testicle. Benjie winced slightly as the drug was injected. This done, Kay-Anne took out another syringe from the box and repeated the procedure with her brother’s left ball. It was all over very quickly.

“Now you, Sammy” said his Mom, giving his behind a little slap. Still whingeing, Sammy sat on the table and opened his legs. Cassie neutered him in the very same way, while Benjie watched, nervously fingering his penis. Sammy scrambled down off the table and there was loud applause from the deck.

The rest of the afternoon proceeded as a typical yard party. The boys remained naked. Everyone enjoyed beer, wine or soft drinks, burgers, hot dogs and fried onions, cake and icecream. There were no presents or mementoes, and there was no resemblance to a birthday at all. After all, Sam was only eleven while Benjie’s parents had left it rather late: he was nearly thirteen. No one mentioned what had been done to the boys, but they, while they said nothing, knew that within three or four weeks their balls would have softened and dried up, their spermatic cords withered away, their empty scrotums reduced to a fold of skin.

Just as Kay-Anne had said, they would never be able to get their cocks stiff, to be able to shove them up a girl’s fanny. Benjie and Sam were boy-eunuchs just as much as if their balls had been cut right out, like Michael’s – or mine.

But the DVD wasn’t over yet. Benjie’s face appeared again on the screen. “Well, that’s how it was, folks” he said. “And – you guys that haven’t been done yet – a few things you should know. First, it doesn’t hurt! But – and it’s a big but, you can expect some changes. Like me! Before, whenever I saw girls, like on the beach or by the pool, the sight of their boobs and butts made my hip-hop feel like it was tying itself in knots, going to burst, it got so hot and hard.

“Not any more, though! That’s all, folks. See ya”. Benjie gave a wave and the screen went blank.

Melanie laughed – her one reaction till now. “I loved him calling his thing his hip-hop” she giggled. “I’ve never heard it called that before”.

Michael gave a sheepish grin. “I’ve known Benjie since we were both little kids” he said. “Way back then, whenever Benjie got a hard-on, his cock used to jerk and jump about. So he called it his hip-hop because that was what it did. I guess the word just slipped out”.

“Funny thing, isn’t it” he added a minute later. “If these population-control laws had been around when our Dads were kids, we wouldn’t even be here! And now we are here, just as we’ve gotten used to having balls, they get taken away so we can’t make babies”.

No one had anything to say to that.

“More drinks, anybody?” asked Simon. While he was serving them, Michael had more to tell us. That not all boys were “done” at yard parties like we’d just seen. At his local church where he still sang, boys with good voices were selected by the pastor, the Reverend Davidson, and neutered in his back parlour. They had also had a visit from a choir from another city, in which all the boys had been “done”. They were billed as a boys’ choir, but to demonstrate that they were no longer entirely male, they came on stage wearing white blouses, navy mini-skirts and black panti-hose. The audience were fascinated!

So we whiled the evening away with drinks and listening to music. Michael fell asleep and between us we helped him to one of Simon’s guestrooms, where in unaccustomed ducal splendour, he slept the clock round.

Sorry everybody. I know this was nothing to do with the plot, but it had to be recorded somewhere!

Simon resumes.

Ricky, thank you for that!

Term ambled on for the next three weeks. With no idea of how to solve the conundrum of our two newcomers I shoved it to the back of my mind. Until one rainy afternoon.

I was deep in the “National Geographic” reading about the Upper Amazon eco-system, (at Mr Carter’s suggestion) when my mobile phone rang. “Simon?” it asked, in Matron’s voice. “There’s something I’d like you to see. Can you come now?” I said I could, and set off for the sanatorium.

“Mr Meiklejohn sent him over in the middle of afternoon school” said Matron, indicating a stolid second-year boy. I recognised him at once. It was George Arthur. Some months before, I’d had to escort him to the clinic to get his balls pricked. He hadn’t said a word, either before, during or after – not even “Ouch!” He’d filled out a bit since then, as neutered boys often do with the change in their hormones. (I did!)

I hoped he would be more talkative now.

“He was sitting in a pool of blood” said Matron. “It could be one of several things, and I need to see what. But there’s a problem. He won’t show me”.

“I think he’ll show ME” I said, and in my severest voice said “Arthur! Take your shorts off, at once!” The twelve-year-old’s eyes filled with tears but he did as he was told.

At once, though, there appeared another problem. George’s tee-shirt was sticking to his bottom. I attempted to pull it free, and he yelled with pain.

“Warm water, I think” said Matron. With his tee-shirt moistened with warm water Matron was able to gently peel it off George’s behind. The crease of his bottom was caked with old blood – perhaps more – but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Across George’s buttocks was the pattern of a five-bar gate – only this pattern had clearly been made by a cane. Four parallel weals and one diagonal. Whoever had beaten George hadn’t held back. The cuts had been laid on very hard indeed – enough to break the skin: the tears had oozed, sticking his shirt to his backside.

I looked at Matron, and Matron looked at me. We both thought the same thing. Beating with a cane had been banned in independent schools since the 80’s and in State schools for much longer. In fact corporal punishment of any kind was now outlawed. Dr Holroyd, as one of the principal educators in the country, had obtained a Home Office dispensation for himself, personally, on the grounds that for some offences the “short sharp shock” treatment was the one-and-only effective punishment. He used it very rarely indeed, and never more than three strokes.

Dr Holroyd had never delegated this privilege to any of his assistant staff – though wallopings with outsize PE shoes were not unknown. Historically – I mean in the Tom Brown’s Schooldays tradition, Upper School prefects had used the cane freely. Dr Holroyd had no intention of putting the clock back.

Which meant……….

“I think our patient may have a fistula” said Matron, recalling herself to the here-and-now. “Why he should have, I’ve no idea. But I’ve everything I need for his treatment. I’ll keep him here. If it’s a fistula he’ll need a special diet for a few days”.

“Quite right” I said. “We need to keep the lid on this for the time being” – indicating George’s bottom. “Till we know who did this. Just keep me up to date with how he gets on”.

“Meantime, he needs a wash” said Matron, rolling up her sleeves and putting rubber gloves on. For the first time I noticed how grubby the young boy’s legs and feet were.

“Give me all his clothes, I’ll get them sent to the laundry” I said. “And his blazer is scruffy, it could do with a clean”. There was a rank smell to George’s things – one I couldn’t place. Not the usual b.o., at all.

Matron shoved all the things into a hospital bag. She got George to his feet and set about washing him all over. I got a glimpse of his genitals as I let myself out, his shrunken little penis, his dried-up scrotum. His procedure had gone according to the book. George would never shove his prick up a girl’s love-hole. Would never know the joy of shooting his hot white drops into her, and giving her a good time.

Any more than I would.

Weeks went by and October had given way to November before there were any more moves. I was crossing the quad with Jack Elliott – we’d been putting up notices about the afternoon’s fixtures – when a big figure loomed up. Who else but Mr Carter!

“Would you have any use for coffee, you two?” he greeted us.

We both would – it was a damp foggy morning. In Mr Carter’s study we all sat down while the coffee-machine did its stuff. Mr Carter reached for his pipe, remembered where he was and put it down again.

“Now” Mr Carter began. “I’ve really brought you here to tell you a riddle”. He looked at us through half-closed eyes while he chose his words carefully. “Here’s a second-former. Not brilliant but no stupider than the general run. No paragon of cleanliness but again, no scruffier than most. Get the picture?” We both nodded.

“Now” he went on “take the same boy. Does very little work and what he does turn in, isn’t worth the paper it’s scribbled on. More than once I’ve come upon him in corners, just quietly crying to himself – no apparent reason. Another thing, he’s become the worst little snitch in the Lower School – always running to me with “Sir! Sir! Do you know what So-and-So did?”

He took a gulp of his coffee. “I said a moment ago that he was no dirtier or scruffier than the general run of second-formers. But these days he’s a very good imitation of a rag-bag. His clothes look as if he sleeps in them and worst of all he’s beginning to smell.”

“Do you think he wets himself, sir?” put in Jack.

Mr Carter smiled. “No, Elliott, I don’t think he does. It’s not a smell of wee (and if it were, the School has a very good, very humane way of treating enuresis). No, it’s something else altogether. A sour smell – sort of vinegarish – I can’t place it at all”.

I decided to jump in with both feet. “Who are we talking about, sir?”

Mr Carter finished his coffee with a single swallow. “Young Peter Cardew. Know him?” We nodded again. Both Jack and I had known Cardew from when he was a new boy. When the time came for him to have his balls pricked, Ricky had taken him along (see “Ricky and the Mad Professor”). “He comes to me for French” Mr Carter was saying. “While he’ll never be a linguist, someone, or something, has got at him till he’s little better than an imbecile.

“So I can leave it to you to have a nose round? Surreptitiously of course!”

On that note we left him with a pile of marking. Surreptitious was to be our watchword, while we wrestled with a whole lot more unknowns and intangibles. Among them, a peculiar smell, just imagine!

Over the next day or two I took a hard look at any Ellerslie House boys who came my way. It was true that most looked scruffy and untidy (which is nothing unusual for second-formers). I didn’t get close enough to see if they smelled peculiar or not. At the same time a small number were very well-groomed. Their faces fairly shone with well-being. None of this made sense. And though I particularly wanted to see Peter Cardew for myself, of him there was never a sign.

But it must have a connection with Ellerslie House, somehow. On an impulse I sat down at the computer and logged on to Google Maps.

The school estate as I told you once, is very large indeed, and is on the border between town and country. On the landward side, the original mansion (now the Upper School) and parkland rising towards the old canal, and then open country. The Archdeaconry was on the town side, with a belt of trees as a buffer. Ellerslie House was closer in still. I keyed in the Ellerslie House postcode and waited.

The satellite view showed Ellerslie House flanked by between-the-wars terraced houses with a few workshops and small businesses dotted about. There was one gaunt-looking 4-storey structure that caught my eye. It looked decidedly out of place. Only one person would know. Harry Brotherton! I called him up.

Harry arrived sooner than I expected and in a smart new van, as yet unmarked. “Got a new motor, Harry?” I greeted him as he shambled in.

“Yus. T’ old ‘un were clapped out. Las’ Sat’d’y I went out in it, got it in the neck straightaway. The ‘ooter bust the first time I did it, accelerator were dud, footbrake likewise, an’ when we ran up against a hill the engine as good as conked out”.

“So, good riddance to bad rubbish” I agreed, then pointed to the screen. “Harry, I’m sure you’ll know. What’s that building?”

Harry peered through his pebble-specs. “That were Pilkington’s old factory. Been empty for years”.

Then, as I hoped, he opened up.

“Old Mr Pilkington, ‘e built Ellerslie ‘Ouse as ‘is family home, so’s to be near the Works. An’ where all them ‘ouses are now, that used to be all market gardens, fruit ‘n veggies, to supply the factory.”

“What did they make, Harry?”

“Plum-an’ apple jam, an’ also pickles, condiments, ‘orseradish sauce, stuff like that. My Gran used to say, when they was doin’ pickled onions, ‘orseradish sauce, the smell of vinegar would knock you over. An’ they do say……”

Vinegar! Light suddenly began to dawn, blinding light flooding in. “Harry, you idiot!” I yelled at him. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Which was most unfair of me, seeing that I’d never asked him. So I sat Harry down and poured him a beer, and told him my plan. For the sight of his new van had given me an idea.

Two mornings later, a smart white Berlingo van drew up outside Ellerslie House and three workmen in bib-and-brace overalls got out. Harry was the boss – he was the only one of us who could pass as a local – which after all, he was. Jack’s Geordie accent was far too memorable. As for me, I’m tall, but I have a child’s voice especially if I get

excited.

So Jack carried a clipboard, and I typecast myself as the gas-fitter – the horny-handed man of action - and carried a box of tools borrowed from Harry’s Dad. All three of us wore badges, the product of a happy hour with desktop publishing and a laminating-machine. The mug-shots on the badges were,in fact, identical – they were of one of Harry’s uncles. We gambled on the chance that no one would look.

Harry rang the bell. Somewhere near the back of the house a TV set was going full blast, and not surprisingly he had to ring twice more before anyone came. The door was opened by a fat, slatternly, ugly woman.

I recognised her – we all did. She was called Mrs Blatch, and her face had been in the local papers some months before, when she’d got the sack from the school kitchen. Employed as a catering assistant, she’d been in trouble for chain-smoking at work, and things came to a head when she left a dog-end in the potato chips. So she’d been fired. But Mumford or Plater, not knowing her background, had evidently taken her on.

“Yus?” said this woman.

Harry was prompt with his spiel. “Southern Gas Board” he said, shoving his badge into Mrs Blatch’s face. “We’re upgradin’ meters. You’ll have got our circular”.

The fat woman shrugged. “Maybe we did, maybe we di’n’t. No one tells me nuffink. Any’how, you’d best come in. Know where to go, do yer?”

“Yes, bin’ere before” Harry lied.

“Leave yer to it then” mumbled Mrs Blatch. “See yerselves out, will yer?” And with that she shuffled off back to her frowsty sitting room and blaring TV.

We stood in the passageway, on a carpet with a pile so thick, our feet sank into it. To our right a door opened into a dining-room, rather sumptuous, with tables set for the next meal. The thing was, there were places for no more than about twelve.

“Jack, who got transferred across here from the Archdeaconry at the beginning of term?”

“Adams, Barraclough, Brunskill, Cartaret, Chisholm……..”

“No, not their names, you mutt! How many?”

“Thirty-eight”.

“I thought so. Harry just slip upstairs and take a look round – no, not those stairs – use the back ones”.

Harry quickly vanished upstairs and just as quickly returned. “On the first floor, four small rooms, three beds in each – all hunky-dory. But on the second and third floors, nothing – they ain’t even furnished!”

Jack and I looked at each other.

“Where now, Simon?”

“No idea. Come on, there’s all the rest of the building”.

Carpeting gave way to vinyl as we pushed on into the “below stairs” regions. Beyond the kitchen we found another dining-room, or rather, a room where meals were taken. This was the reverse of sumptuous. Four six-foot folding tables, bare wooden tops, rather dirty, a hard wooden bench on both sides of each one. A box of old cutlery. Nothing else.

So the remaining twenty-six ate here, but where the hell did they sleep? I thought, furiously. “Harry, Jack – if you lived here and owned a factory only a short distance away, and you wanted a nice, private all-weather way to work, how would you fix it?”

“A covered way” said Harry. “A path, but roofed-over, like”.

“Jack?”

“A tunnel” said Jack, with no hesitation.

“My money’s on a tunnel, too” I said. “Now, that door looks like it might be a cellar. Let’s take a look”.

Our guess was right. At the foot of the cellar steps there were two doors. One led into the cellar itself, the other gave on to a corridor, and to darkness.

“Torch, please, Harry”.

“They’re in the toolbox, Simon”. And of course they were. In we went. The floor was of stone slabs, the walls plain brick. The tunnel was about fifty meters long and ended in another door. It wasn’t locked. Beyond it was another flight of steps, and a smell…..

A smell like old stale pickled onions.

The smell that Mr Carter had noticed when dealing with Peter Cardew.

The smell of George Arthur’s dirty clothes that I’d taken to the laundry.

Up the stairs, and into a large, very bare room. There were two rows of old iron bedsteads; they might have come from an army-surplus store. On each of these was a straw palliasse and a single grey army blanket. There wasn’t anything else. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of prison-camps in the Second World War.

There was another smell – a disgusting smell. Through an archway we found the “bathroom” – or rather a single, very old sink, with a cold tap. A filthy towel hung on a nail. To one side were two toilets, one of them blocked, and the stench was coming from there.

“God!” muttered Jack. “What a horrible hole!” He paused, then “Listen – I think there’s a cat trapped in here somewhere”.

I listened. At first I could only hear a drain running. But Jack was right. There was another sound, a sort of high mew. It seemed to be coming from that dark corner, where there was another door…..

Beyond that door was total darkness. There were rows of rusty pegs – it might once have been a storeroom. A few oddments of clothing hung on these pegs, and something else.

Peter Cardew was hanging there by his wrists. He was just able to touch the floor with his toes if he stretched his legs…..He was stark naked. Someone had gagged him with a tea-towel, and, for what reason I couldn’t begin to imagine, tied a tape very tightly round his penis.

Very gently Jack and I lowered Peter to the floor. “Blanket, Harry!” I ordered. Harry jumped to it and caught up a blanket from one of the beds. I wrapped it round Peter who was shivering from cold, then unpicked the knots that secured his gag. Jack was grinding his teeth and growling about “Dorty ould buggors” to himself.

The gag proved to be holding a cake of soap in Peter’s mouth. Harry now earned bonus points by going across to the tap and returning with his cupped hands full of water, for Peter to swill his mouth out.

“Harry, do you know where we are?” I asked.

“’Course I do. Back of Beamish Street”.

“Right. Go and get your van. When you’ve got it, take Peter straight along to the Greenview clinic. Private room. All charges to the Simon Scott centre. And get hold of Dr Laing -–Dr James Laing. Okay? Then go!”

While we waited for Harry to return, I held Peter close to my chest, mainly to keep him warm. He looked up at me. “Hello, Mummy” he murmured. “You’ve been such a long time. Is it time for my medicine?” “Hush, old chap” I said. “You’re safe now”.

He gazed at me, eyes wide. His chin began to wobble. “I want my woolly bunny!” he pleaded. “Please give me my woolly bunny!” Then to my dismay and Jack’s horror, the twelve-year-old dissolved into a storm of inconsolable sobs.

A scrunch of tires outside indicated the return of Harry. With Peter on his way to safety, one more thing remained. On our way to the kitchen I’d noticed a room that was evidently a study, or office of some kind. To this place we – Jack and I – retraced our steps. With Jack on guard I turned on the computer, logged-on to “Word” and cranked-up the font to 72 point. This done, I typed:

YOUR PREMISES HAVE BEEN SEARCHED AND YOUR ACTIVITIES DISCOVERED.

Then it was time to leave.

---oOo---

Simon continues

A day later I was sitting in Dr Holroyd’s study, on the wrong side of his desk. There was silence, apart from the steady ticking of the grandfather clock. Dr Holroyd was reading from the printouts I’d given him. His lips moved as he took in the enormity of the words before his eyes…

But I’m going on too fast. It had been a frenzied twenty-four hours. On our return to school I’d got the team to trace and sidetrack each and every one of the Ellerslie House boys. I’d arranged for a coach company to pick them up at the end of afternoon school and take them straight to the Simon Scott Centre. My Head of Housekeeping, the precise, Edinburgh-born Miss Faichney, wasn’t at all put out by having to find beds for 38 little boys. We had, she reminded me, annexes for people on outdoor pursuits, Outward Bound and courses like that…..

Then to the Greenview Clinic, where Dr Laing trosebud penisd at me over his glasses. “He’ll do fine” he said – meaning Peter Cardew. “Just fine. And he’ll keep everything”. The trosebud peniss faded. “What he has left, that is”. Dr Laing had very mixed feelings about the rights and wrongs of castrating boys. “That tape, though” he mused. “Amazing, what they get up to at that age”. (Did he imagine that Peter had tied a tape round his penis himself?)

They let me see Peter, who was awake, though drowsy. “It hurts, down there” he whimpered. “They’ve put a tube in me, to wee through”.

“I’m sure they’ll take it out soon” I said. “It’s part of the treatment. You didn’t want to lose THAT as well, did you?”

Peter said nothing. Emboldened, I went on. “ Can you tell me what happened?” I asked. “Why were you in the cupboard?

“The man – Mr Plater – wanted me to pull my knickers down and – and do things with him. He wanted me to..”

(What Plater wanted is too disgusting to repeat just here so I’ll leave it for later. Peter’s pathetic reference to pulling his knickers down was a literal truth. Like many circumcised boys after being neutered, his penis had retracted into his body as far as the glans. He had taken to wearing girls’ briefs and to sitting down to wee.)

“And when I said I didn’t want to, he said I was a bad boy and I had to stay in the cupboard till I changed my mind”.

“All over now” I said. “Try and sleep. I’ll come again soon”. I kissed his cheek and left, wondering what in hell possessed Peter’s parents to abandon him like this. I made a mental note to buy a woolly bunny.

I didn’t get much respite. Late that evening Mr Carter rang.

“Hello, Scott! Your two mystery men have done a runner. The Head came to me in a rare old taking, asking if I could shed any light on it. I said he could hardly do better than talk to you, and he said “Scott! I might have guessed!” The upshot was, will you go and see him at nine tomorrow morning, if convenient?”

If convenient indeed! I said Yes, of course I would – only too pleased.

For half an hour before, I’d got hold of everything I needed.

One of Jan Raxworthy’s greatest talents – and he has a lot – is the ability to go on automatic pilot. Jan never abandons a job. He just keeps plugging away until he comes up with the answer. Before now I’ve come across him at the most unearthly hours, tap-tapping at his keyboard, in the night, when there’s nobody there.

The apartment doorbell had rung, I’d answered the door, and there he was, a happy smile lighting up his pasty face. “Simon, you’re going to be pleased with this, I think!” He pushed some sheets of A4 into my hand. A few lines showed me he was absolutely 100% spot-on. Good old Rax!

Rax had located the elusive magazine article in a branch library in – Northumberland! Here the librarian, ordered to destroy all copies, figured that the article might have scarcity value one day and had kept it on his hard drive. God alone knows where Rax had got some of the other stuff, though.

I read it all through carefully. It told me all I needed. I made several phone calls – and then went to bed – with Melanie. Neither of us had anything on. This was normal for us.

Forward then to nine the next morning – to being shown in to the well-remembered study by the impassive Croker. There sat the Head, gowned, magisterial. He didn’t get up. This wasn’t Dr Holroyd seeking my advice. This was the Head Master dealing with a student who had stepped way out of line.

“Sit down, please, Scott.” I sat down, and it began.

“Scott, that you should in some way have been behind the precipitate departure of two of my colleagues is one thing. That you should have totally excluded me from the picture – so to speak – is something else entirely, which I owe to myself not to overlook”.

He paused. Oh dear, I thought.

“Scott, in all the time I’ve known you, you have done a number of extraordinary things. In all of this, however, you have never told me an untruth, nor have you ever acted without good reason. Now, two masters of this school, respected and academically distinguished men, have suddenly left my employment, leaving only a message with my secretary that they had been obliged to leave at short notice. Now, Scott, why? And, while I’m about it, have you actually met either of these gentlemen, may I ask?”

I wanted to tell him that his respected and academically distinguished men were a couple of dangerous perverts, who had gained employment by soft-soaping themselves into the confidence of the Governors and himself, and were perfectly capable of telling God knows what lies, to be able to justify their degenerate and sadistic treatment of innocent little boys. But I didn’t. Any more than I told him that I didn’t need to meet these ‘gentlemen’ to know them for what they were – vicious and depraved.

“Sir” I began “I think it would help if you read this”. And I handed him the first of Jan’s printouts – information that Jan had worked tirelessly to obtain, that exposed Mumford and Plater for what they were.

The clock ticked on. The Headmaster’s lips moved silently. Finally he laid the paper down. His face was pale. “Mr Mumford – a pathological sadist! Scott- I can scarcely believe it!”

Mumford was, in fact, genuine – up to a point. He really was a Cambridge MA. But he hadn’t come to Southdown Hall from St E********’s School, for by then, St E*********’s had closed down.

St E********’s had been started by a consortium of local businessmen and landowners, who had formed a trust and bought the land and buildings. The boarding-prep-school was to cover its operating costs from school fees. Mumford was not an assistant master: he was the first and only Head.

The trustees were men of the old school. Boys at boarding school had always been walloped – always would be. So if they got six-of-the-best from time to time, so much the better – do them good! What they didn’t know was that Mumford got his rocks off by beating boys. The whole school would be made to assemble in the hall, the miscreant summoned to come out. They would be forced to stay there and listen while Mumford hauled the boy off to an adjacent room and beat him till he screamed, his bottom a mass of blood.

Until, one day, he beat the wrong boy – or rather, a boy with the wrong parent. Sir Edwin Sibthorpe, (Bt) was not one of your run-of-the-mill country landowners. He had campaigned tirelessly for the abolition of beating in schools. So when young Jeremy came home for the weekend, unable to sit down, unable to take a shower, even – the solids hit the fan.

Parents began withdrawing their kids in shoals. The Trustees’ money was all in the estate; whether there was a school there or not was immaterial. So they closed the school down. By the time that Mumford heard about the Southdown Hall vacancy, he had been out of a job for some weeks. But he had kept a key to the school mailbox and was able to retrieve letters sent to him. He was thus able, when the Southdown Hall Governors took up his references, to send them a forged reply from a fictitious address…..

“Sir” I said “there’s more”. I handed Dr Holroyd another page of A4.

Plater, by contrast, was a phoney, and not only that – he had “form” as the police say. He did have a degree, but it wasn’t B.Sc (Lond). And his name wasn’t Plater, but Swann. He was a cunning bluffer. His teaching career went back quite a few years, but it was at a boarding prep school near Duffield, in Derbyshire, that his penchant for sex with pre-teen boys really surfaced. However, nothing was proved, and he moved on.

He appeared again in the Chislehurst area in another boarding prep school, where he’d become Mr Wilson. This time he was less successful in covering his tracks, and police enquiries were pending, so he had to lie low for a time. Until, that is, he saw the job-vacancy at Southdown Hall. His application and CV, in the name of Plater, were works of fiction, but science teachers (as he pretended to be) were like gold dust. The Governors didn’t bother to take up his references at all……

Dr Holroyd had been pale before, but now he was white to the lips. He put his hands up to his face, making little moaning sounds. I reached across and touched his hand. “Not your fault, Headmaster” I said. “It was the Governors’ decision, not yours. You are only their appointee”. (Partly if not wholly true. Dr Holroyd had the casting vote when new appointments were made, and you’ll remember, along the way there had been two real bum appointments: Hipkin the serial paedophile, Jolly the perverted charlatan.)

Dr Holroyd looked at me and gulped – which may have been a sign of appreciation. “Thank you, Simon” he said at last. “Is there any more?”

Third and last was the elusive article from the Times Ed. Supp. It’s rather long so I’ll only give you the main points, which should be enough to show what a sick perv. Plater was:

a) A teacher should inculcate, in the child, blind unquestioning obedience.

b) The child’s spirit needed to be broken, like that of a dog or horse being trained.

c) There were several ways of achieving this. One was by withdrawing ‘privileges’ – the use of a mobile phone, the right to sleep between sheets, to wash in hot water, and so on. The other was by the unrestrained use of corporal punishment.

d) The child must obey the adult instantly and with no question whatever about what he/she was told to do.

The full horror of what Plater and Mumford had been doing only came to light over a period of some days. But this is a convenient place to set it down, so I will.

Plater was without doubt the more evil of the two. He must have believed that the second millennium had dawned. An isolated house; absolute authority over 38 preteen boys, and a colleague who was only too ready to cow the boys into submission by the savagery of his beatings. Terrified into silence, one after another succumbed to becoming partners – slaves rather – in the obscenely filthy practices to which Plater was addicted.

It clearly fascinated Plater that a high percentage of Southdown boys were neutered. At Ellerslie House, he made it the norm. The remaining half-dozen or so intact second-formers were “done” before the term had run three weeks. A nurse from the Greenview Clinic had come round, bringing her equipment in a van. The boys had been lined up and sent in, one at a time, and told by the nurse to pull their shorts down so they could have their balls pricked.

On admission to Ellerslie House the boys entered a state of “helotry” as Plater’s notes described it. Their mobile phones were confiscated; they took their meals in Spartan conditions and they slept in the old pickle factory. When Peter Cardew was well enough to recount his experiences, he explained that Plater himself used to tape the boys’ penises. They were deprived even of the facility of going for a wee in the night. From this existence they could be promoted to the comfort of the well-appointed dorms and dining rooms by becoming Plater’s “minions”.

Sodomy – I need hardly say - was the passport to becoming one of these favoured few. We found a sketchbook among Plater’s private papers. A caption below a drawing read “Make the dear little boy get down on all fours and open the cheeks of his bottom”.

As part of the induction, boys had their anuses stretched with outsize butt-plugs and dildos. There was a risk, as shown by little George Arthur, that the boy’s anus might burst.

The Head read through the paper and put it down carefully as if it might explode. “Simon” he said at last “This is too horrible! I never dreamed…..”

“None of us did, sir” I said “until we’d seen for ourselves, and I think you should see it too”. So I ran Dr Holroyd round to the old pickle factory and let him see for himself – the grim prison-camp-like sleeping area, the filthy washroom with its overflowing toilets. He said nothing until we were both back in his study. Croker appeared with coffee on a tray.

“The question is, Simon” the Head began slowly “the question is, what do we do now?”

He sat staring into space. I got up and went to the corner cupboard, knowing that in it I would find a bottle of whisky and glasses. I poured out a good big dollop of Glen Morangie and put it in Dr Holroyd’s hand. He drank it down in one gulp, so I poured him another, which went the same way. “What do we do now, Simon?” asked the Head. “What do we do now?”

As if in answer the phone rang. The Head took it, then handed the receiver to me. It was an Inspector Lendrum, saying that Mumford's car had been found abandoned at Dover Western Docks, from where a small yacht had been reported stolen. Did we want to go to Dover and follow things up?

Dr Holroyd gave me a feeble smile. “We do, Simon, don’t we?” He looked, and sounded, quite squiffy. “In that case, it’s only a question of, your car or mine?”

The Head’s car was an ageing Rover 75 and I doubted his ability, in the state he was in, to get us to Dover in one piece. “Mine, sir, I think”.

So that was decided upon. I swilled down my cup of coffee, and since the Head hadn’t touched his, I drank that as well.

It was a fine blowy day at the Kent coast. We were shown into the office of a big fat man with a pronounced Devon accent and three gold rings on his sleeve. This was Mr Tomson, the chief coastguard for the region. He took us into his operations room, and pointed to the radar screen.

“That’s where our friends are” he said, pointing to a small dot, about ten miles off Beachy Head. “Taken ‘em all day, it has, just to get that far. Wind’s south-by-east, light to variable. Not ideal for a run across the Channel, not by any means. Times, they’ve tried to go about on t’other tack and found themselves in irons, right away.

“There’s one of our patrol helicopters watchin’ ‘em. And we’ve radioed Dieppe and Honfleur to keep a look out for ‘em. If they get that far” – he chuckled.

“Why don’t they use their engine?” inquired Dr Holroyd.

“No fuel, likely. Or maybe it just won’t start”.

“I never thought of that”.

For a while we watched the almost motionless dot. There were many other dots on the screen – Dover Straits is, as everyone knows, the busiest seaway in the world. “Some big stuff around” remarked Mr Tomson. “That, there, now” (pointing at the nearest dot to the yacht) “That there’s the “Global Victory”, one of the Global Petroleum Company’s fleet. One hundred fifty thousand tons, supertanker, outward bound for the Gulf, in ballast – that means “empty”. And that one’s the “Billy” – dam’ silly name for a vessel that size. She’s even larger. Container-ship. Inward-bound for Felixstowe. Registered in Panama, owned by a consortium in Bermuda” He shrugged his shoulders to express his opinion of consortia based in Bermuda.

“If I were skipper of that yacht” Tomson continued “I’d put back into Newhaven and wait for the wind to shift a few points. There’s some nasty tidal currents where she is. But look at that now – he’s trying to go about again.”

The dot had almost imperceptibly changed direction. Then “Hoy!” Tomson shouted. “Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!”

The Tannoy burst into life with an incomprehensible babel of noise. Impossible for us to see, the helicopter crew had a front-row seat at the drama that was being played out below them. Their report appeared on the front row of the evening papers. The yacht, in trying to go about, had come up under the lee of the towering cliff-like side of the empty supertanker, spilling what wind she had. She was plunging in the wake of the tanker when the tide-rip caught her, dragging her stern-first…..

It will never be known if the container-ship had anyone on the bridge or not. In any event they could have done nothing to avert what happened next. The huge bulbous bow smashed the yacht in two; the turbulence dragged the wreckage beneath the hull, where the monstrous propeller, acting like the blades of a liquidiser, did the rest. The helicopter circled the scene a few times, signalled “No survivors” and returned to base.

Later, in the car, Dr Holroyd repeated his question of a few hours before. “What do we do now, Simon? What do we do now?”

I had no feelings – none whatever – for the two men who, not so long ago, had been reduced by the container-ship’s propeller to a kind of purée, drifting down-Channel with the pulverised remains of their boat. “All we have to do, Headmaster, is to say that Mr Mumford and Mr Slater lost their lives in a sailing accident. There’s really no need to say anything else”.

I drove on in silence for a while, then “Do you know, Simon” the Head replied “I really do believe you’re right”.

My feeble little brain had proved superior to the Doc’s mighty intellect – because that was exactly what he did. The Press reported a sailing accident – and that was that.

Ricky finishes off

Well, of course I wasn’t there for all the excitement – but we’re nearly at the end of the story, and I know as well as most people what happened in the days that followed.

Problem No 1: a boarding-house that wasn’t fit for human habitation, and 38 second-year boys occupying the Outward Bound accommodation at the Simon Scott Centre. Simon and Dr Holroyd went into a huddle – as I learned, and came up with the following. Since the boys were there already – in the Outward Bound wing – they might as well stay there – and do Outward Bound!

So that was easily decided on. All day long the boys were out in the fresh air canoeing, orienteering, exploring forests. They returned to delicious food, lashings of hot water, warm comfortable beds, and for the time being, no homework.

Melanie was down there every day, being a big sister to one and all. Some of the younger boys had little idea what their procedure had been for. They knew there was some connection between balls and babies, but that was all, and some were starting to experience feelings they couldn’t understand, as their testosterone supply ran down. Others, more street-wise, knew they couldn’t ever get hard anymore, and the awareness of their lost virility was driving them frantic. For all of these kids, Melanie had advice and comfort. (As one 11-year-old said to another, betraying his Wessex origins as well as his affection for Melanie, “She’m GOOD!”.

Those second-years were only babies when all’s said and done. Among other things, Simon allowed them the run of his train-layout room, provided someone was in charge to avoid wrecks. This job usually fell to me, and I’d sit at the console before an array of miniature levers labelled “Up Distant” “Loop with main line” “Down Outer Home” and so on.

One little boy watched me intently for a long time, then squatted beside me and slipped a confiding hand into mine. And then:

“Home signals are the best signals of all, aren’t they? They’re VERY nice!”

See what I mean?

Changing the subject, I told you a bit ago about Michael Sherwood’s visit. Michael had flown home now, but had been so impressed by everything he saw, that he and his Dad had gone to see the Principal of Michael’s grade school. The upshot was a letter to Dr Holroyd, and agreement that there should be an exchange between fifteen boys of Michael’s school and fifteen from Southdown Hall, for the remainder of the school year. Why fifteen? So that Michael’s school could be indoctrinated into the mysteries of Rugby Union!

Simon has provisionally chosen Jack Elliott as team-leader. We’ll all miss Jack with his salty humour, his inimitable accent, his “Ah, get awee, mun!” in reply to just about everything. C-R will be going, also Peter Cardew. From the States, we are to expect as many members of the Mustangs baseball team (aka The Geldings) as Michael can rustle up, with a few others to make up the numbers. Benjie and Sam are to be included.

By the end of term, Ellerslie House had been utterly transformed, inside and out. The old factory had been demolished and the site turned into an all-weather play area with astro-turf. The underground tunnel, scene of so many nightmares, was filled in, leaving no trace. And it was no longer called Ellerslie House, but – Jackson’s!

For Dr Holroyd had made one of the best appointments of his long career, in appointing Mr Jackson to be Housemaster – an appointment that had eluded him for three decades and more. Mrs Jackson, a very kindly person and the soul of efficiency, was to run the domestic side of things personally. All of this is to start from the beginning of the January term. Plus one more thing. A Housemaster is entitled to a House Tutor as second-in-command. Mr Jackson had unhesitatingly chosen the 67-year-old Mr Meredith, whom everybody knew and liked.

We were discussing this over Christmas dinner. All of us approved of old Merry, who was kindness itself – a substitute uncle, and more so. He for his part had been delighted to be called out of retirement, just as we were to see him again.

“I expect he’ll want to read the boys “Swallows and Amazons” at bed-time” remarked Roddy, who hadn’t spoken before.

“After their experiences of the last few months, “Swallows and Amazons” will be a welcome change” retorted Melanie. “Now, who would like some more pudding? Brandy sauce, anyone?