Dear Harry,
A postscript to the Philippe story. The year after the exchange with Flora that brought him to England for the summer and her (miserably!) to France with his parents, it was my turn to go. It was my first time there. Philippe and his father, Monsieur, came to pick me up at the airport, and I was hugely impressed, on arriving at their house in Maisons-Lafitte, just north of Paris, by his father’s genial ease with what, in our home, would surely have been an awkward embarrassment. They had just acquired a new kitten who was taking what was apparently its first poop in the front yard when we arrived, and Monsieur was delighted. “Eh, chérie,” he called up to his wife. “Viens voir la merde du chat.” Come see the cat’s shit. I knew I was in exactly the right place, a place where freedom for convention and English inhibitions reigned.
I was disappointed by one thing, though, that first night in France. I had been looking forward, secretly, excitedly in fact, to the opportunity to further pursue my sexual education with the expert guidance of Philippe. I had gained some experience in the intervening months and was expecting to be able to play more advanced games this time around. But Philippe showed not the slightest interest—not even a memory of what had been, for me, a momentous encounter the previous year. He had his own room, I had mine. He seemed even older, even more aloof. No more touching, no more stories. I felt quite bereft.
But—Harry, you’ll be relieved to know this—I did fall in love that summer in France. For the first time. With a girl.
Her name was Nicole. She was a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, golden brown-haired and irresistible thirteen year-old. She wore orange jeans and white blouses open at the neck. She had a beguiling smile that infatuated me when I first saw her. Her brother was Philippe’s best friend, Jean-Claude. I used to tag along with Philippe and Jean-Claude, whose favorite occupation now was making bombs and exploding them on a vacant lot, and always felt like the third wheel on a bicycle. But then Jean-Claude’s father called on his son to help out with the annual harvesting of the crop of green plums in their backyard and ready them for distillation into his home-brewed plum brandy.
Imagine, Harry, this deeply shy, deeply self-conscious and infatuated teenage boy and the amorous urgency he felt in standing close to the girl he so impossibly desired—I would not have known how to approach her, even if the occasion ever arose—fingers touching fingers as they stuff ripe plums into the dark bung-hole of the barrel in which they were to be left for many days to ferment.
As you can tell, Harry, the memory is still as fresh, as intensely, and as unrequitedly sexual as it was back then.
Your son, still in love, with tongue hanging out,
Peter
Monday, August 16, 2021
Saturday, August 14, 2021
14 AUGUST, 2021
Dear Harry,
I have a confession to make. I’m not sure at what age exactly I stopped enjoying your favorite summertime activity, but by my teenage years I’m pretty sure I hated it. Well, hate is perhaps too strong a word, but I was no longer sharing your enjoyment of the nomadic life.
I’m talking about the caravan. In the years immediately following the war (when petrol once again became more readily available) our caravan trips consumed most of the family time away from school during the summer holidays. As a little boy, I’m sure I went along with it unquestioningly. It was what we did. As I grew older I began to hate (that word again!) the hours spent in the back seat of your car with Flora; the daily search in the Caravan Club handbook for the next site where we could pull in and “put the legs down”; the arguments over the best routes between you and Peggy in the front seat; and the perfection you insisted on in leveling the caravan by cranking each of the four corner legs to your exacting requirements. I hated the Elsan tent (was that invented by you? Your brother Donald?) a tall, narrow tent with squatting room for one on the portable loo, held in place by a brace at one corner of the caravan. I was lazy. I wanted to spend my summer lounging around, escaping all the rules and impositions of school life. I was reaching an age where boys begin to sense the possibilities of freedom, and the last thing I needed was more constraints.
The one thing I did like was my little pup tent. It was easy enough to put up, a short way from the caravan, and it was my little private space. It was meant for one, but it could sleep two people at a push, and it was here I was initiated into the arcane knowledge of that thing between my legs whose purpose you had attempted to explain to me and which Mr. Ellis had inexplicably attempted to devour. Aside from its mundane application in the loo, however, (or, when camping, behind the nearest hedge) its more interesting behaviors continued to mystify me.
Remember Philippe? The French boy who came over to stay that summer when Flora first went to stay with his parents in France? We took him caravanning with us, remember? and every time we passed a Citroën on the road he would point and shout, delightedly, “Ah, ze car of my fazza!” That seemed to be the sum of his interest in the lovely English countryside.
Philippe was Flora’s age—a year and a half older than me; so, fourteen going on fifteen—and compared to myself he was physically strong, muscular, well-developed. He wore a tiny bathing suit and liked to show off his muscles. And he shared my pup tent…
We each had a sleeping bag and slept side by side, and one evening, shortly after bedtime, I could sense that something other than sleep was going on. Philippe, when he spoke, seemed a little breathless, husky: “’ave you done eet yet?” he asked.
Done what? I had no idea what his question meant.
“You know,” he said—but I didn’t—“done eet, veez a girl?”
Of course I hadn’t, and he realized at once that I was totally ignorant. Time to educate me. He reached over and slid his hand down in my sleeping bag to perform a manual investigation of my penis, hard already, but still quite small and skinny. “Ah,” he said sympathetically. “’ees still too small, you see? ’ere,” he added, with some pride: “feel zees.”
He took my hand and led it down inside his sleeping bag. I was amazed, first by the contact of my fingers with the mat of wiry hairs—I told you, didn’t I, that he was well-developed? I had only a soft down, as yet—and still more when he wrapped my fingers around his erection. It was not long, but fat, hard, and throbbing. Philippe was quite clearly very enamored of it. He said, “You see, one day ‘ee will grow big, like zees.”
So that was settled. He took care of his own need right there in the pup tent as he continued on to tell me the (perhaps fictional?) story of how he had already lost his virginity—“you poot eet up inside ‘er”, he explained—having been seduced by an older woman, the mother of a friend, and how he planned to resume their intimacy once he got back to France.
So, Harry, the caravanning holiday that year served an unexpected and for me revelatory purpose. What Philippe had to show me was soon, as I matured just a little further, to open the door to a pleasure that accompanied me through adolescence and beyond—the pleasure that you claimed to have denied yourself. The pleasure you disparagingly called “self-abuse.”
Your sinful son, Peter
I have a confession to make. I’m not sure at what age exactly I stopped enjoying your favorite summertime activity, but by my teenage years I’m pretty sure I hated it. Well, hate is perhaps too strong a word, but I was no longer sharing your enjoyment of the nomadic life.
I’m talking about the caravan. In the years immediately following the war (when petrol once again became more readily available) our caravan trips consumed most of the family time away from school during the summer holidays. As a little boy, I’m sure I went along with it unquestioningly. It was what we did. As I grew older I began to hate (that word again!) the hours spent in the back seat of your car with Flora; the daily search in the Caravan Club handbook for the next site where we could pull in and “put the legs down”; the arguments over the best routes between you and Peggy in the front seat; and the perfection you insisted on in leveling the caravan by cranking each of the four corner legs to your exacting requirements. I hated the Elsan tent (was that invented by you? Your brother Donald?) a tall, narrow tent with squatting room for one on the portable loo, held in place by a brace at one corner of the caravan. I was lazy. I wanted to spend my summer lounging around, escaping all the rules and impositions of school life. I was reaching an age where boys begin to sense the possibilities of freedom, and the last thing I needed was more constraints.
The one thing I did like was my little pup tent. It was easy enough to put up, a short way from the caravan, and it was my little private space. It was meant for one, but it could sleep two people at a push, and it was here I was initiated into the arcane knowledge of that thing between my legs whose purpose you had attempted to explain to me and which Mr. Ellis had inexplicably attempted to devour. Aside from its mundane application in the loo, however, (or, when camping, behind the nearest hedge) its more interesting behaviors continued to mystify me.
Remember Philippe? The French boy who came over to stay that summer when Flora first went to stay with his parents in France? We took him caravanning with us, remember? and every time we passed a Citroën on the road he would point and shout, delightedly, “Ah, ze car of my fazza!” That seemed to be the sum of his interest in the lovely English countryside.
Philippe was Flora’s age—a year and a half older than me; so, fourteen going on fifteen—and compared to myself he was physically strong, muscular, well-developed. He wore a tiny bathing suit and liked to show off his muscles. And he shared my pup tent…
We each had a sleeping bag and slept side by side, and one evening, shortly after bedtime, I could sense that something other than sleep was going on. Philippe, when he spoke, seemed a little breathless, husky: “’ave you done eet yet?” he asked.
Done what? I had no idea what his question meant.
“You know,” he said—but I didn’t—“done eet, veez a girl?”
Of course I hadn’t, and he realized at once that I was totally ignorant. Time to educate me. He reached over and slid his hand down in my sleeping bag to perform a manual investigation of my penis, hard already, but still quite small and skinny. “Ah,” he said sympathetically. “’ees still too small, you see? ’ere,” he added, with some pride: “feel zees.”
He took my hand and led it down inside his sleeping bag. I was amazed, first by the contact of my fingers with the mat of wiry hairs—I told you, didn’t I, that he was well-developed? I had only a soft down, as yet—and still more when he wrapped my fingers around his erection. It was not long, but fat, hard, and throbbing. Philippe was quite clearly very enamored of it. He said, “You see, one day ‘ee will grow big, like zees.”
So that was settled. He took care of his own need right there in the pup tent as he continued on to tell me the (perhaps fictional?) story of how he had already lost his virginity—“you poot eet up inside ‘er”, he explained—having been seduced by an older woman, the mother of a friend, and how he planned to resume their intimacy once he got back to France.
So, Harry, the caravanning holiday that year served an unexpected and for me revelatory purpose. What Philippe had to show me was soon, as I matured just a little further, to open the door to a pleasure that accompanied me through adolescence and beyond—the pleasure that you claimed to have denied yourself. The pleasure you disparagingly called “self-abuse.”
Your sinful son, Peter
Friday, August 13, 2021
13 AUGUST, 2021
Dear Harry,
That one time, then. When we talked about what happened with Mr. Ellis…
It was several weeks—several months?—later. Not more. Not years, I do know that. You knocked at the door of my bedroom at the Vicarage one morning. I think I was still in bed. The light was streaming in through the window that looked out over the front lawn, over the tennis court that no one ever used, over to the copse at the end of the garden. It was a small room, but a nice one, my private space, sandwiched between two other bedrooms, my sister’s and a guest room.
So there you were. That was a surprise. You hardly ever came into my bedroom, in fact I can’t remember a single other time. So this had to be important.
There was some awkwardness, perhaps on my part, because the occasion was so unusual, my father coming to my bedroom; perhaps on yours, because of what you had learned, what you had to tell me, what you had to ask me.
“It’s about Mr. Ellis,” you said. I think you sat down on the edge of the bed. There would have been nowhere else to sit. “I had a telephone call from Mr. Chris”—the headmaster at my boarding school. “He said there had been some trouble with Mr. Ellis, that they’d had complaints about him, um, interfering with other boys.” You paused, to give me a moment to process this. Then you said, “So I have to ask you… That time when you went to stay at Mr. Ellis’s house, did he… well, did he do anything he should not have done?”
I must have mumbled my confession that, yes, something had happened, because you said, “I suppose that was why you were not very nice to him, when I came to pick you up and drive you home?”
I remembered the occasion. I remembered you chiding me for not being polite enough when I said goodbye. I must again have mumbled my assent. I knew it was bad, what happened. But was it my fault? I was unable to express the feelings that I had in words. I was unable to identify them even for myself because they were so confused. There was guilt, for having allowed something so bad to happen to me and for the wicked thrill I’d felt, along with the knowing I’d done something bad. Something dirty, that was the word.
There was a long silence. Then you said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
And I said, “No.”
And you said, “Alright then. I’m sorry, Peter. I should not have let that happen.” And left the room.
That was the sum of it, as I recall. It was never mentioned, ever again, between us.
What I don’t understand, you see, is how you could have left it there, like that. You of all people, who understood the mind. Who insisted that trauma should not be ignored and buried, but remembered. Why you didn’t gently lead me into what I so much needed at the time but did not know how to ask for because I was so terribly embarrassed. Because you understood these things. You understood that people, even little children, need to talk about the things that hurt them. Need to be heard, even if they themselves don’t know it. Need to be forgiven. Need to be consoled.
Surely you knew that?
I know it’s too late now to ask it, but there’s something in me that still wants you to know, and still believes that somehow just the act of writing this letter can fulfill that need.
In any case, I could have used a hug. Had you known how to give one.
Silly me, that it still hurts, now that I’m an old man, older than any of us were back then. And I hope a lot wiser. But yes, strangely, it does.
With love—and thanks for listening, Peter
That one time, then. When we talked about what happened with Mr. Ellis…
It was several weeks—several months?—later. Not more. Not years, I do know that. You knocked at the door of my bedroom at the Vicarage one morning. I think I was still in bed. The light was streaming in through the window that looked out over the front lawn, over the tennis court that no one ever used, over to the copse at the end of the garden. It was a small room, but a nice one, my private space, sandwiched between two other bedrooms, my sister’s and a guest room.
So there you were. That was a surprise. You hardly ever came into my bedroom, in fact I can’t remember a single other time. So this had to be important.
There was some awkwardness, perhaps on my part, because the occasion was so unusual, my father coming to my bedroom; perhaps on yours, because of what you had learned, what you had to tell me, what you had to ask me.
“It’s about Mr. Ellis,” you said. I think you sat down on the edge of the bed. There would have been nowhere else to sit. “I had a telephone call from Mr. Chris”—the headmaster at my boarding school. “He said there had been some trouble with Mr. Ellis, that they’d had complaints about him, um, interfering with other boys.” You paused, to give me a moment to process this. Then you said, “So I have to ask you… That time when you went to stay at Mr. Ellis’s house, did he… well, did he do anything he should not have done?”
I must have mumbled my confession that, yes, something had happened, because you said, “I suppose that was why you were not very nice to him, when I came to pick you up and drive you home?”
I remembered the occasion. I remembered you chiding me for not being polite enough when I said goodbye. I must again have mumbled my assent. I knew it was bad, what happened. But was it my fault? I was unable to express the feelings that I had in words. I was unable to identify them even for myself because they were so confused. There was guilt, for having allowed something so bad to happen to me and for the wicked thrill I’d felt, along with the knowing I’d done something bad. Something dirty, that was the word.
There was a long silence. Then you said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
And I said, “No.”
And you said, “Alright then. I’m sorry, Peter. I should not have let that happen.” And left the room.
That was the sum of it, as I recall. It was never mentioned, ever again, between us.
What I don’t understand, you see, is how you could have left it there, like that. You of all people, who understood the mind. Who insisted that trauma should not be ignored and buried, but remembered. Why you didn’t gently lead me into what I so much needed at the time but did not know how to ask for because I was so terribly embarrassed. Because you understood these things. You understood that people, even little children, need to talk about the things that hurt them. Need to be heard, even if they themselves don’t know it. Need to be forgiven. Need to be consoled.
Surely you knew that?
I know it’s too late now to ask it, but there’s something in me that still wants you to know, and still believes that somehow just the act of writing this letter can fulfill that need.
In any case, I could have used a hug. Had you known how to give one.
Silly me, that it still hurts, now that I’m an old man, older than any of us were back then. And I hope a lot wiser. But yes, strangely, it does.
With love—and thanks for listening, Peter
Thursday, August 12, 2021
12 AUGUST, 2021
Dear Harry,
Okay, this is another one that’s hard to write. It’s time for us to talk about Mr. Ellis. We spoke about this only once, not long after it happened, and you never mentioned it again. Which is odd, because you always insisted that trauma needed to be remembered, not buried and forgotten. I remember, for example, that time that my son Matthew, your grandson, was run over by a car at the age of four—literally, the driver didn’t see him and the car backed right over him—and you told me I should help him to keep the incident in mind and not let it sink back into the unconscious, where it might to lasting damage. You worried that he might end up as a race car driver! (He didn’t. Thanks!)
The advice was based in a sound understanding of the workings of the human mind, I think. Which is why I find it odd that you neglected your advice yourself.
Here are the facts, at least as I remember them. I was about twelve years old. We had not yet had that chalkboard talk that I reminded you about when I last wrote, and I was still ignorant about anything having to do with sex. Mr. Ellis was the math teacher at the first boys’ boarding school you sent me to, and he had inherited from his uncle a property not far from where we lived—in Braughing, at the time. He let you know he would be happy to have me come for an overnight stay, if ever it was convenient, and it so happened you were due to attend a weekend ruri-decanal conference (I remember that term!) and thought it would be nice (I’m assuming, here) to take Peggy with you for the event.
So you dropped me off at Mr. Ellis’s, grateful for his kindness.
I have to say I’m surprised you could be so naïve. Or was it that you were so keen to have a nice weekend away with Peggy that you chose not to worry about Mr. Ellis’s motivations? We never had that conversation. And you never knew, never chose to ask about what actually happened. I don’t know why, but it feels important that I tell you.
After you dropped me off, Mr. Ellis was all charm for his twelve-year-old guest. He took me around the small farm, the chicken run, the duck pond, the pig sties. We ended up in a big barn with all kinds of interesting old stuff—lanterns and horse harnesses, antique pitchforks and gardening tools, a fully stocked shelf of ancient cans of oils and turpentines and other more mysterious liquids.
But the real treasure amongst all these treasures was the old motor car, a survivor of the days when cars still had brass lamps instead of headlights and horns you had to squeeze to produce a delightful farting sound. Mr. Ellis let me climb into the driver’s seat and pretend-drive this fantastical machine with its big wooden steering wheel and its knubby gear shift. For a boy of my age, this was the great treat of the afternoon.
The dusk was falling by the time we were done, and it was dinner time. Inside the house, the lights were dim and the furniture was sparse, as though no one had lived there for many years. Mr. Ellis made us dinner, which we ate together at the kitchen table, and it was soon time for bed.
I was already beginning to be spooked by the strangeness of the house and the rather strange solicitude of the man I knew only as my math teacher. Mr. Ellis was a short man with thinning grey hair and a friendly smile, and eyes that matched the friendliness behind his rimless glasses. He led the way upstairs and showed me the bed that was made up for me in the bedroom we were to share, and had me wash my face and clean my teeth. Perhaps he even had me say my prayers. Then helped me into my striped pajamas and tucked me up in bed.
How do I describe the feelings and sensations as I lay there, still awake and listening to Mr. Ellis’s own preparations for the night? I know there was a feeling of suspense, of something yet to come, of something like danger, perhaps… There was the feeling of being very alone, without you and my mother nearby, because this was the first night I can remember, except for the school dormitory, that I spent away from home. There I was, all by myself in that little bed. And it was cold.
It was a big old drafty house, and the bedroom was unheated. So yes, I felt cold as I listened to Mr. Ellis in the bathroom, getting ready to go to bed himself. Heard his cough, the quiet sound of clothes being shed and draped somewhere, the back of a chair, perhaps. Heard the squeak of springs as he climbed into the bigger bed, across the room from mine. Heard the strange sighs he made as he prepared, I thought, to sleep.
Then his voice: “Peter? Are you cold?”
Yes, I was. I was cold.
“Why don’t you come over here and we can warm each other up?”
It felt more like an order from my teacher than an invitation. I was scared, yes, but I thought I ought to do what I was asked. I climbed out of my own bed and padded across the cold, wooden floorboards to where he held the bedcovers open to welcome me. “There,” he said, “That’s better, isn’t it?”
I was terrified. My heart must have been beating wildly with the strangeness of it all. The strangeness of my body in bed next to my teacher’s. The strangeness of his breathing.
He was doing something. He was doing something down there, but I had no idea what that could be.
Then his head went down under the covers and he slid down, down to the level of my crotch. He felt his way in through the slit in my pajamas and pretty soon he was sucking at that strange, wonderful, irresistible part of me that I had only used, until then, to pee. And that strange, wonderful, irresistible part of me was responding in a strange and wonderful way. I knew this was wicked. I knew that you would never have approved. I was terrified, yes, and at the same time, in a strange way, thrilled. Thrilled in a way I couldn’t understand, in a way I knew was wicked, and I shouldn’t.
Mr. Ellis sucked and sucked and sucked and I could tell that something was supposed to happen, but I didn’t dare to let it. It felt like I was about to pee at any moment in Mr. Ellis’s mouth, so I held it back desperately, held on, refusing to let go. Then finally Mr. Ellis stopped. He came back up from under the covers and lay beside me, breathless, and I now felt something strange and hot and hard against me, down there, where he’d been, something I had never, ever felt before, it was so strange where it was pressed against me. And I knew that something strange was happening down there, something intense and urgent, but I didn’t know what it was.
Next thing I knew, Mr. Ellis breathed what seemed like a great sigh of relief, and he lay there a few moments longer, as if almost unaware that I was there. Then he turned to me and told me that I’d better to back to my own bed.
I did. I must have gone to sleep, finally. I must have woken in the morning, fearful that Mr. Ellis would be angry with me for the night before. That I’d done something wrong. But no, he was perfectly cheerful as he made me breakfast, as though nothing at all had happened. And then later you arrived, to pick me up, and had me say goodbye nicely, and thank you nicely to Mr. Ellis. And chided me in the car, on the way home, that I had not been nice enough.
That’s it, for now. I’ll need to talk about this some more. But for now, it feels like it’s enough to have told you what happened as exactly as it happened, more than seventy years later. Why do I need to tell you? Is it punishment? Revenge, after all these years? I have talked about it, written about it several times before, but you and I have never mentioned it, except for that one time, when you asked me if I wanted to talk about it and I said, No. But yes, I did need to talk to you about it. To you, specifically. And I never did.
More about this when I write to you next. In the meantime, please forgive my need to have shared this with you. With, specifically, you.
Your son, Peter
Okay, this is another one that’s hard to write. It’s time for us to talk about Mr. Ellis. We spoke about this only once, not long after it happened, and you never mentioned it again. Which is odd, because you always insisted that trauma needed to be remembered, not buried and forgotten. I remember, for example, that time that my son Matthew, your grandson, was run over by a car at the age of four—literally, the driver didn’t see him and the car backed right over him—and you told me I should help him to keep the incident in mind and not let it sink back into the unconscious, where it might to lasting damage. You worried that he might end up as a race car driver! (He didn’t. Thanks!)
The advice was based in a sound understanding of the workings of the human mind, I think. Which is why I find it odd that you neglected your advice yourself.
Here are the facts, at least as I remember them. I was about twelve years old. We had not yet had that chalkboard talk that I reminded you about when I last wrote, and I was still ignorant about anything having to do with sex. Mr. Ellis was the math teacher at the first boys’ boarding school you sent me to, and he had inherited from his uncle a property not far from where we lived—in Braughing, at the time. He let you know he would be happy to have me come for an overnight stay, if ever it was convenient, and it so happened you were due to attend a weekend ruri-decanal conference (I remember that term!) and thought it would be nice (I’m assuming, here) to take Peggy with you for the event.
So you dropped me off at Mr. Ellis’s, grateful for his kindness.
I have to say I’m surprised you could be so naïve. Or was it that you were so keen to have a nice weekend away with Peggy that you chose not to worry about Mr. Ellis’s motivations? We never had that conversation. And you never knew, never chose to ask about what actually happened. I don’t know why, but it feels important that I tell you.
After you dropped me off, Mr. Ellis was all charm for his twelve-year-old guest. He took me around the small farm, the chicken run, the duck pond, the pig sties. We ended up in a big barn with all kinds of interesting old stuff—lanterns and horse harnesses, antique pitchforks and gardening tools, a fully stocked shelf of ancient cans of oils and turpentines and other more mysterious liquids.
But the real treasure amongst all these treasures was the old motor car, a survivor of the days when cars still had brass lamps instead of headlights and horns you had to squeeze to produce a delightful farting sound. Mr. Ellis let me climb into the driver’s seat and pretend-drive this fantastical machine with its big wooden steering wheel and its knubby gear shift. For a boy of my age, this was the great treat of the afternoon.
The dusk was falling by the time we were done, and it was dinner time. Inside the house, the lights were dim and the furniture was sparse, as though no one had lived there for many years. Mr. Ellis made us dinner, which we ate together at the kitchen table, and it was soon time for bed.
I was already beginning to be spooked by the strangeness of the house and the rather strange solicitude of the man I knew only as my math teacher. Mr. Ellis was a short man with thinning grey hair and a friendly smile, and eyes that matched the friendliness behind his rimless glasses. He led the way upstairs and showed me the bed that was made up for me in the bedroom we were to share, and had me wash my face and clean my teeth. Perhaps he even had me say my prayers. Then helped me into my striped pajamas and tucked me up in bed.
How do I describe the feelings and sensations as I lay there, still awake and listening to Mr. Ellis’s own preparations for the night? I know there was a feeling of suspense, of something yet to come, of something like danger, perhaps… There was the feeling of being very alone, without you and my mother nearby, because this was the first night I can remember, except for the school dormitory, that I spent away from home. There I was, all by myself in that little bed. And it was cold.
It was a big old drafty house, and the bedroom was unheated. So yes, I felt cold as I listened to Mr. Ellis in the bathroom, getting ready to go to bed himself. Heard his cough, the quiet sound of clothes being shed and draped somewhere, the back of a chair, perhaps. Heard the squeak of springs as he climbed into the bigger bed, across the room from mine. Heard the strange sighs he made as he prepared, I thought, to sleep.
Then his voice: “Peter? Are you cold?”
Yes, I was. I was cold.
“Why don’t you come over here and we can warm each other up?”
It felt more like an order from my teacher than an invitation. I was scared, yes, but I thought I ought to do what I was asked. I climbed out of my own bed and padded across the cold, wooden floorboards to where he held the bedcovers open to welcome me. “There,” he said, “That’s better, isn’t it?”
I was terrified. My heart must have been beating wildly with the strangeness of it all. The strangeness of my body in bed next to my teacher’s. The strangeness of his breathing.
He was doing something. He was doing something down there, but I had no idea what that could be.
Then his head went down under the covers and he slid down, down to the level of my crotch. He felt his way in through the slit in my pajamas and pretty soon he was sucking at that strange, wonderful, irresistible part of me that I had only used, until then, to pee. And that strange, wonderful, irresistible part of me was responding in a strange and wonderful way. I knew this was wicked. I knew that you would never have approved. I was terrified, yes, and at the same time, in a strange way, thrilled. Thrilled in a way I couldn’t understand, in a way I knew was wicked, and I shouldn’t.
Mr. Ellis sucked and sucked and sucked and I could tell that something was supposed to happen, but I didn’t dare to let it. It felt like I was about to pee at any moment in Mr. Ellis’s mouth, so I held it back desperately, held on, refusing to let go. Then finally Mr. Ellis stopped. He came back up from under the covers and lay beside me, breathless, and I now felt something strange and hot and hard against me, down there, where he’d been, something I had never, ever felt before, it was so strange where it was pressed against me. And I knew that something strange was happening down there, something intense and urgent, but I didn’t know what it was.
Next thing I knew, Mr. Ellis breathed what seemed like a great sigh of relief, and he lay there a few moments longer, as if almost unaware that I was there. Then he turned to me and told me that I’d better to back to my own bed.
I did. I must have gone to sleep, finally. I must have woken in the morning, fearful that Mr. Ellis would be angry with me for the night before. That I’d done something wrong. But no, he was perfectly cheerful as he made me breakfast, as though nothing at all had happened. And then later you arrived, to pick me up, and had me say goodbye nicely, and thank you nicely to Mr. Ellis. And chided me in the car, on the way home, that I had not been nice enough.
That’s it, for now. I’ll need to talk about this some more. But for now, it feels like it’s enough to have told you what happened as exactly as it happened, more than seventy years later. Why do I need to tell you? Is it punishment? Revenge, after all these years? I have talked about it, written about it several times before, but you and I have never mentioned it, except for that one time, when you asked me if I wanted to talk about it and I said, No. But yes, I did need to talk to you about it. To you, specifically. And I never did.
More about this when I write to you next. In the meantime, please forgive my need to have shared this with you. With, specifically, you.
Your son, Peter
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
11 AUGUST, 2021
Dear Harry,
Let’s change the subject. Talk about something else that was close to your heart but impossible for us to talk about: sex.
You liked to think of yourself as open-minded, frank, unembarrassed, you loved to engage in sexual innuendo, flirt with Bletchley girls at the Rectory… but all I really learned from you about sex was the blush of the English schoolboy.
I would have been, what? Twelve? Thirteen? When I was summoned to your study at the Vicarage in Braughing. It was a tiny room, off the front hall, hardly big enough for your blond oak desk and matching chair and, as I recall, one comfortable leather easy chair.
On this occasion, when you called me in, you had a chalkboard set up on an easel. It was time to explain to your son the mysteries of sex, and if you were embarrassed, it was not half as much as I was.
Obviously, with the chalkboard, you wanted to make your lesson as objective as possible. All science and medicine. No mess or joy. You drew the outlines of the operative parts, male and female, with a piece of white chalk and explained how they could be merged in an act designed (by the good Lord, surely!) to create children. You explained about eggs and fertilization, about incubation and birth. You did your best to say what you thought needed to be said.
I did my own best to listen patiently and attentively, as I knew I should. But in actual fact—I tell you this now, so many years later, and after you are long gone from this world!—your explanations were superfluous, at least in theory: by what agency I no longer recall, I had a copy of Gray’s Anatomy in my bedroom and had explored its pages—and illustrations—on more than one occasion for this same information, trying to put it all together with the mysterious physiological effect that manifested in a region of my body I knew I was supposed to refrain from touching.
On multiple occasions, too, I had proved to myself that the required restraint was more than even a good boy could reasonably practice. The temptation was too great, the mysterious pleasure too hard to resist. But I was not yet well enough developed to take things further than the exploratory touch.
No matter how well intended, I’m afraid to say that your explanations did no more than add to my confusion. But there was soon another incident that I knew must somehow be related to all this, but was unable to fit in to the confusing picture. You heard about it later, didn’t you, not from me but from another source? But that deserves a letter all its own and I’ll write more tomorrow.
Meantime, Harry, I do know that you struggled with this. I can’t imagine how much harder it must have been for you to have this talk with Flora. But perhaps you left that task to Peggy? I’m curious, but must acknowledge this is something I will never know.
Your son, Peter
Let’s change the subject. Talk about something else that was close to your heart but impossible for us to talk about: sex.
You liked to think of yourself as open-minded, frank, unembarrassed, you loved to engage in sexual innuendo, flirt with Bletchley girls at the Rectory… but all I really learned from you about sex was the blush of the English schoolboy.
I would have been, what? Twelve? Thirteen? When I was summoned to your study at the Vicarage in Braughing. It was a tiny room, off the front hall, hardly big enough for your blond oak desk and matching chair and, as I recall, one comfortable leather easy chair.
On this occasion, when you called me in, you had a chalkboard set up on an easel. It was time to explain to your son the mysteries of sex, and if you were embarrassed, it was not half as much as I was.
Obviously, with the chalkboard, you wanted to make your lesson as objective as possible. All science and medicine. No mess or joy. You drew the outlines of the operative parts, male and female, with a piece of white chalk and explained how they could be merged in an act designed (by the good Lord, surely!) to create children. You explained about eggs and fertilization, about incubation and birth. You did your best to say what you thought needed to be said.
I did my own best to listen patiently and attentively, as I knew I should. But in actual fact—I tell you this now, so many years later, and after you are long gone from this world!—your explanations were superfluous, at least in theory: by what agency I no longer recall, I had a copy of Gray’s Anatomy in my bedroom and had explored its pages—and illustrations—on more than one occasion for this same information, trying to put it all together with the mysterious physiological effect that manifested in a region of my body I knew I was supposed to refrain from touching.
On multiple occasions, too, I had proved to myself that the required restraint was more than even a good boy could reasonably practice. The temptation was too great, the mysterious pleasure too hard to resist. But I was not yet well enough developed to take things further than the exploratory touch.
No matter how well intended, I’m afraid to say that your explanations did no more than add to my confusion. But there was soon another incident that I knew must somehow be related to all this, but was unable to fit in to the confusing picture. You heard about it later, didn’t you, not from me but from another source? But that deserves a letter all its own and I’ll write more tomorrow.
Meantime, Harry, I do know that you struggled with this. I can’t imagine how much harder it must have been for you to have this talk with Flora. But perhaps you left that task to Peggy? I’m curious, but must acknowledge this is something I will never know.
Your son, Peter
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
10 AUGUST, 2021
Dear Harry,
This might be a good moment for us to talk about money, because Peggy later told me, when I was old enough to understand a bit more about such things, that you took quite a cut in your annual stipend to make the move from Aspley Guise to Braughing. It struck me at the time, when she told me this, that she was none too pleased with the decision, but apparently you felt called by God to make the move.
God would have a hard time explaining to my satisfaction why Braughing needed you so much more than Aspley Guise. It was a smaller village. The Church was St. Mary the Virgin and the main pub was The Brown Bear. The main street was The Street. There were two fords where cars could cross the little stream—at least when it was not in spate. When that happened, once a year, perhaps, the stream became an unruly river for a day or two, often leaving relics from an ancient Roman encampment exposed, from the time when Braughing was a stop on the arrow-straight road that led from Londinium to the wild north. Your annual salary there was a handsome 250 pounds sterling. It might be that you added a few more pounds to that by taking on the parish of Westmill, just across the A10 highway that led up to Buntingford, the nearest small town. Peggy reminded me of this because she thought I should know what a huge financial sacrifice it was to send both Flora and myself to private boarding schools—even though the schools offered discounts to the clergy.
Anyway, leave God out of it, we made the move. Perhaps you had just done the work you needed to do at Aspley Guise. As we say in our vernacular over here, I can relate.
Money did not mean much to you. As Peggy always said—and warned Ellie about myself, your son in this regard—if you had it, you spent it. And you loved to spend. Your pleasure in indulgence was visible, almost palpable. You were, insofar as that small stipend would allow, quite profligate. Still, you were not impressed by people simply because they had it, nor did it worry you that you had relatively little. Your extravagances included, I suppose, those summer caravan trips you loved to take, the needs of your workshop, and your visits to the pub.
I learned to my surprise much later on that you did have other resources. Your father had left you and your siblings shares in Reyrolles, A. Reyrolle & Co., the electrical switchgear company that developed his invention, and those shares must have increased substantially over time. They enabled you to send us to school and eventually to buy the little cottage in Aberporth where you and Peggy spent many years following your retirement. Before your move to Braughing, too, Miss Stone, a lovely old spinster living down the hill from the Aspley Guise Rectory with her caregiver (Mrs. Bridgerton, if I recall? There was a Bridge in there somewhere) left you a respectable sum as an inheritance, I assume in honor of your friendship with her and your pastoral visits. She left you, too, a silver christening mug etched with her family name; I wonder what became of it? We children were invited over to her cottage from time to time. The gentle, silver-halo’ed Miss Stone seemed to take a special delight in having us for tea—wheeled into the drawing room on a trolley by the solicitous Mrs. B and served in elegant china cups and saucers, with scones and cake on tiny matching plates. Those visits required a special effort at politeness and special attention to the table manners.
You yourself, Harry, were scrupulously, meticulously honest when it came to money, and it outraged you when others did not meet your standards. We’ll talk more in due course about Barry Evans, an exuberantly bohemian artist who lived on subsistence earnings with his unruly family up the hill in Braughing; enough, for now, to note that one of the reasons he became your nemesis was your loan of sixty pounds to tide him over a tight spot—a loan he never bothered to return.
I should note that when you died, and Peggy after you, you left behind an estate that I found quite astonishing. As I recall, there was little in the way of money—but there was that nicely located seaside cottage, Glenview, on the attractive Cardiganshire coast in Wales and the proceeds from its sale, shared evenly with Flora, allowed Ellie and me to invest in a cottage on the attractive California coast in Laguna Beach. I was tempted to call it Glenview. But… no glen. We still treasure the view.
With love and gratitude, Peter
This might be a good moment for us to talk about money, because Peggy later told me, when I was old enough to understand a bit more about such things, that you took quite a cut in your annual stipend to make the move from Aspley Guise to Braughing. It struck me at the time, when she told me this, that she was none too pleased with the decision, but apparently you felt called by God to make the move.
God would have a hard time explaining to my satisfaction why Braughing needed you so much more than Aspley Guise. It was a smaller village. The Church was St. Mary the Virgin and the main pub was The Brown Bear. The main street was The Street. There were two fords where cars could cross the little stream—at least when it was not in spate. When that happened, once a year, perhaps, the stream became an unruly river for a day or two, often leaving relics from an ancient Roman encampment exposed, from the time when Braughing was a stop on the arrow-straight road that led from Londinium to the wild north. Your annual salary there was a handsome 250 pounds sterling. It might be that you added a few more pounds to that by taking on the parish of Westmill, just across the A10 highway that led up to Buntingford, the nearest small town. Peggy reminded me of this because she thought I should know what a huge financial sacrifice it was to send both Flora and myself to private boarding schools—even though the schools offered discounts to the clergy.
Anyway, leave God out of it, we made the move. Perhaps you had just done the work you needed to do at Aspley Guise. As we say in our vernacular over here, I can relate.
Money did not mean much to you. As Peggy always said—and warned Ellie about myself, your son in this regard—if you had it, you spent it. And you loved to spend. Your pleasure in indulgence was visible, almost palpable. You were, insofar as that small stipend would allow, quite profligate. Still, you were not impressed by people simply because they had it, nor did it worry you that you had relatively little. Your extravagances included, I suppose, those summer caravan trips you loved to take, the needs of your workshop, and your visits to the pub.
I learned to my surprise much later on that you did have other resources. Your father had left you and your siblings shares in Reyrolles, A. Reyrolle & Co., the electrical switchgear company that developed his invention, and those shares must have increased substantially over time. They enabled you to send us to school and eventually to buy the little cottage in Aberporth where you and Peggy spent many years following your retirement. Before your move to Braughing, too, Miss Stone, a lovely old spinster living down the hill from the Aspley Guise Rectory with her caregiver (Mrs. Bridgerton, if I recall? There was a Bridge in there somewhere) left you a respectable sum as an inheritance, I assume in honor of your friendship with her and your pastoral visits. She left you, too, a silver christening mug etched with her family name; I wonder what became of it? We children were invited over to her cottage from time to time. The gentle, silver-halo’ed Miss Stone seemed to take a special delight in having us for tea—wheeled into the drawing room on a trolley by the solicitous Mrs. B and served in elegant china cups and saucers, with scones and cake on tiny matching plates. Those visits required a special effort at politeness and special attention to the table manners.
You yourself, Harry, were scrupulously, meticulously honest when it came to money, and it outraged you when others did not meet your standards. We’ll talk more in due course about Barry Evans, an exuberantly bohemian artist who lived on subsistence earnings with his unruly family up the hill in Braughing; enough, for now, to note that one of the reasons he became your nemesis was your loan of sixty pounds to tide him over a tight spot—a loan he never bothered to return.
I should note that when you died, and Peggy after you, you left behind an estate that I found quite astonishing. As I recall, there was little in the way of money—but there was that nicely located seaside cottage, Glenview, on the attractive Cardiganshire coast in Wales and the proceeds from its sale, shared evenly with Flora, allowed Ellie and me to invest in a cottage on the attractive California coast in Laguna Beach. I was tempted to call it Glenview. But… no glen. We still treasure the view.
With love and gratitude, Peter
Monday, August 9, 2021
9 AUGUST, 2021
Dear Harry,
Aside from Hank, in particular, and the usual succession of pets—cats and dogs—in our household, you had an odd, rather touching relationship with animals. I remember especially the mini-farm we had at Braughing, the parish you took on after Aspley Guise.
We must have moved there pretty much immediately when the war was over. The Vicarage was a huge property—a Queen Anne house surrounded, in front, by an expanse of green grass, some of which had been tamed into a rather uneven tennis court while the rest grew long and wild, requiring only the occasional visitation with an industrial-sized mowing machine. At the bottom of the garden, downhill, to the right, there was what might be a large pond or a small lake, so completely choked with reeds that the water was no longer visible; and up the hill from there, to the left, a stand of trees large enough to be called a copse, if not a woods. Leaning up against the house, on one side, was a rather dilapidated greenhouse with a glorious old vine which did, in fact, surprisingly for the climate, produce grapes.
Behind the house was a large barn with stables that were no longer used for horses—definitely not your realm of interest!—and a cluster of small outhouses of undetermined use. And two pigsties. Which called for occupants, particularly in those immediately post-war years when rationing was still in effect and meat was in short supply. So in part our animal husbandry was public-spirited, to do our part in the recovery. I think Martha was the first arrival—a big old sow who gave birth to a succession of litters of piglets, all of which, or most of which, were sent off to the market at an appropriate age. One of them, Mary, was kept as another breeding sow. And one of the runt pigs, the littlest of the litter, was spared the fate of his siblings—I think because you took pity on the little guy and decided he should stay on at the Vicarage. His name was Harry. You were tickled by the namesake, of course, but he got his name because in that part of the countryside the runt of the litter is actually called “the harry pig.”
I don’t recall what became of Harry, but he lived with us for quite a while and became something of a family pet. You didn’t have the heart to send him off for slaughter. As for big Martha, she was the boss-lady and felt free to roam wherever she damn well pleased—even, on one occasion, into the house through the back door and through the dining room into the kitchen, where we caught her eyeing our dinner. She was quite indignant to be chased out, with the aid of broom handle from the cleaning closet.
And then there were Susan and Sarah.
They came to us originally as eggs—goose eggs, a gift to you from one of the local innkeepers, and intended for your consumption. There were three of them, three eggs, and Flora and I begged you not to eat them but put them, instead, under a broody hen to see if they would hatch.
Unpredictably, they did. At least two of the three. And, not knowing how to determine their sex, we called them Susan and Sarah. Sarah, it turned out, was a gander. Susan was a goose. They soon took over the run of the property, strutting around as though they owned the place—which undoubtedly they thought they did. And then one day we discovered that Susan was laying eggs in a straw nest at the back of one of the small outhouses. We soon counted eight of them—and we were thrilled.
News got around, as it does in small English country villages, in the usual way: in the pubs. (More on these favorite haunts of yours in another letter, but you frequented them in part, I’d like to think, as important centers for your pastoral duties). On this occasion you brought back home the sage opinion of the local farmers: never allow a goose to sit on her own eggs. She’s too lazy, too easily distracted. She’ll never stay with them. Put those eggs under a hen, if you ever want to see the goslings hatch.
You wouldn’t hear of it. Let nature take her course, was your philosophy. I’m not sure whether God had anything to do with. Perhaps not. But you insisted on Susan sitting on her own eggs.
And you were right. Improbably, all eight of the eggs hatched. All eight of the little birds survived, and were soon strutting around the garden all in a row, Susan following after Sarah---we never changed his name—who proudly led the way, and the eight goslings strung out in a line behind them. They did not restrict themselves, either, to the garden. On more than one occasion they felt entitled to stroll in through the back door of the Vicarage and out through the front, where a visitor might surprised by this pompous avian procession emerging from the house to greet them.
Cute as they were, they rapidly became a nuisance. They pooped everywhere. On the tennis lawn. On the gravel driveway outside the front door. In the greenhouse. And ten of these birds can produce an alarming amount of poop, especially once the goslings grow up into something more resembling adult geese.
Worse, though, Susan and Sarah and their flock soon became dissatisfied with what the Vicarage grounds could offer in the way of forage and found their way across the little trout stream that marked one boundary… and into the farmer’s field beyond. In no time, they were wreaking havoc with the farmer’s cabbage crop. He complained. Loudly. In public, in the pub. And you, good pastor, could not afford to alienate your parishioners.
What became of the rest of the flock I do not recall, but I do know what happened to Sarah. He was given to the farmer who had him plucked and feathered and trussed up to be given away as a whist drive prize (whist drives were the weekly village entertainments, the bingo of their day). The person who was required to ceremoniously give away the prize was you, Harry, Father, the Vicar of the parish. And you came home as close to tears as ever I remember you.
It was a different matter with that belligerent rooster. That was earlier, in Aspley Guise. It was my job to feed the chickens—my guess is that I was eight or nine years old—and this creature started to attack me every time I opened the gate to the chicken run. You mocked me when I told you I was afraid, and set out one morning to feed the fowl yourself, to prove me nothing but a chicken myself. Then the beastly bird attacked you, beak and talons flying. He ended up like Sarah, on the dining table. Ours. And we had no compunction about giving him the fate that he deserved.
Remembering all this nonsense, with love, Peter
Aside from Hank, in particular, and the usual succession of pets—cats and dogs—in our household, you had an odd, rather touching relationship with animals. I remember especially the mini-farm we had at Braughing, the parish you took on after Aspley Guise.
We must have moved there pretty much immediately when the war was over. The Vicarage was a huge property—a Queen Anne house surrounded, in front, by an expanse of green grass, some of which had been tamed into a rather uneven tennis court while the rest grew long and wild, requiring only the occasional visitation with an industrial-sized mowing machine. At the bottom of the garden, downhill, to the right, there was what might be a large pond or a small lake, so completely choked with reeds that the water was no longer visible; and up the hill from there, to the left, a stand of trees large enough to be called a copse, if not a woods. Leaning up against the house, on one side, was a rather dilapidated greenhouse with a glorious old vine which did, in fact, surprisingly for the climate, produce grapes.
Behind the house was a large barn with stables that were no longer used for horses—definitely not your realm of interest!—and a cluster of small outhouses of undetermined use. And two pigsties. Which called for occupants, particularly in those immediately post-war years when rationing was still in effect and meat was in short supply. So in part our animal husbandry was public-spirited, to do our part in the recovery. I think Martha was the first arrival—a big old sow who gave birth to a succession of litters of piglets, all of which, or most of which, were sent off to the market at an appropriate age. One of them, Mary, was kept as another breeding sow. And one of the runt pigs, the littlest of the litter, was spared the fate of his siblings—I think because you took pity on the little guy and decided he should stay on at the Vicarage. His name was Harry. You were tickled by the namesake, of course, but he got his name because in that part of the countryside the runt of the litter is actually called “the harry pig.”
And then there were Susan and Sarah.
Unpredictably, they did. At least two of the three. And, not knowing how to determine their sex, we called them Susan and Sarah. Sarah, it turned out, was a gander. Susan was a goose. They soon took over the run of the property, strutting around as though they owned the place—which undoubtedly they thought they did. And then one day we discovered that Susan was laying eggs in a straw nest at the back of one of the small outhouses. We soon counted eight of them—and we were thrilled.
News got around, as it does in small English country villages, in the usual way: in the pubs. (More on these favorite haunts of yours in another letter, but you frequented them in part, I’d like to think, as important centers for your pastoral duties). On this occasion you brought back home the sage opinion of the local farmers: never allow a goose to sit on her own eggs. She’s too lazy, too easily distracted. She’ll never stay with them. Put those eggs under a hen, if you ever want to see the goslings hatch.
You wouldn’t hear of it. Let nature take her course, was your philosophy. I’m not sure whether God had anything to do with. Perhaps not. But you insisted on Susan sitting on her own eggs.
And you were right. Improbably, all eight of the eggs hatched. All eight of the little birds survived, and were soon strutting around the garden all in a row, Susan following after Sarah---we never changed his name—who proudly led the way, and the eight goslings strung out in a line behind them. They did not restrict themselves, either, to the garden. On more than one occasion they felt entitled to stroll in through the back door of the Vicarage and out through the front, where a visitor might surprised by this pompous avian procession emerging from the house to greet them.
Cute as they were, they rapidly became a nuisance. They pooped everywhere. On the tennis lawn. On the gravel driveway outside the front door. In the greenhouse. And ten of these birds can produce an alarming amount of poop, especially once the goslings grow up into something more resembling adult geese.
Worse, though, Susan and Sarah and their flock soon became dissatisfied with what the Vicarage grounds could offer in the way of forage and found their way across the little trout stream that marked one boundary… and into the farmer’s field beyond. In no time, they were wreaking havoc with the farmer’s cabbage crop. He complained. Loudly. In public, in the pub. And you, good pastor, could not afford to alienate your parishioners.
What became of the rest of the flock I do not recall, but I do know what happened to Sarah. He was given to the farmer who had him plucked and feathered and trussed up to be given away as a whist drive prize (whist drives were the weekly village entertainments, the bingo of their day). The person who was required to ceremoniously give away the prize was you, Harry, Father, the Vicar of the parish. And you came home as close to tears as ever I remember you.
It was a different matter with that belligerent rooster. That was earlier, in Aspley Guise. It was my job to feed the chickens—my guess is that I was eight or nine years old—and this creature started to attack me every time I opened the gate to the chicken run. You mocked me when I told you I was afraid, and set out one morning to feed the fowl yourself, to prove me nothing but a chicken myself. Then the beastly bird attacked you, beak and talons flying. He ended up like Sarah, on the dining table. Ours. And we had no compunction about giving him the fate that he deserved.
Remembering all this nonsense, with love, Peter
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