CAUTION. This chapter contains references to rape and torture/kind of a particular kind. If not suitable, I am happy to send a plot summary by PM to anyone that wishes.

CHAPTER 11
The next day we put Em’s plan into operation, and after rushing through our dinner we were soon walking hand in hand down Lawson Street to the library. I had to stop a couple of times, just to do some proving, and as we walked in I got a raised eyebrow from Sid and a grin from Karen. She was chuckling at my automatic blush.

“Someone’s been busy, I see!”

Emily took my arm in a very clear ‘hands off---MINE!’ signal, which obviously tickled my goddess’ sense of humour. Sid was gentler.

“Who’s this, then, Steve?”

“My girlfriend, Emily” I announced to anyone that hadn’t worked that one out.

“Pleased to meet you, Emily. Are you a fan, too?”

“Sorry?”

I butted in. “He means do you read science fiction, Em. No, Sid, she reads those Mills and Boon things”

Karen was leaning against the counter, skirt tight against her wonderful thighs —no, put those thoughts away. She was laughing happily.

“That’s one over on you, Sid! This one’s mine, mine I tell you, mwahaha!”

She looked down at me and smiled gently. “He gets to play with all the SF readers, and I get almost nothing for me except women whose parts dried up before I was born. Emily, you are a godsend! I get a new reader to spoil at last! Come into my parlour, said the ginger spider to her new fly”

They disappeared off to the ‘romance’ shelves and I took the opportunity to fill in Sid on the events before and after the visit to Mitchell.

He muttered very quietly, but I still heard the ‘fucking cunts’

“Steve, you have to understand a few things here. You know which way I swing, OK? You might not realise that until just five years ago what I might want to do with a friend in private would land me in prison. Look, I saw you looking at Karen’s thighs…it’s OK, it’s what they are there for! She likes to tease. Now, I am sure that put ideas into your head, and when you are snogging Emily you probably get the same ideas. Imagine that if you were seen kissing her, it might get you arrested. That is where I was, five years ago. If I did anything about finding someone to love, to love me, I would end up in prison having the shit kicked out of me every day. Can you imagine that?”

Oh yes, I could imagine that. I had lived through that same hell every day in Anthorn, so, yes, I knew exactly what Sid feared.

“But…if they changed the law?”

“People still think the same, Steve, despite any law they talk about ‘morality’, ‘sin’, ‘depravity’. Oh, sod it, I could go on all day about it, but that’s not why you are here.”

I suddenly felt very adult. “No, Sid, you listened to me, it’s my turn now”

He sighed. “OK, then, you asked for it. People like me used to get…treatment, a screwed up idea of medical care. Sometimes they would do operations on us. They actually used to cot into the brain to ‘cure’ us, or there would be shock therapy, with ice baths…”

He was drifting away as he spoke, and I realised this gentle man had something awful in his dreams. “I had those, Steve, and then…then it was the ECT. That nearly pushed me over the edge, and it was only when I learnt to act the part that I got out”

“ECT?”

He looked really sour, then, directly at me. “Electro-convulsive therapy, son. They dope you up, put a rubber block between your teeth and wire your head up to the mains. It’s supposed to cure people like me, as if I am some sort of disease. All it did was lose me a lot of my past, and make me a much better actor”

He was trembling, now. “They said it was to help with my depression, but it was being in that place that made me depressed. Being raped does that to you”

“Shit….”

“Yes, Steve, they are all big straight men there, no puffs, no queers, so they prove it by raping the fairies. That’s when the doctors aren’t shocking them, or doping them, or cutting their balls off to stop them committing acts against fucking nature”

He was crying, now. “That is when they did me, Steve, when I was still out from the shocks, unable to fight in any way, and I’d wake up sore and bleeding, and one of them would be smirking, and some time later they would shock me again…enough, enough, I’ll give you nightmares. Here, let’s see what books we can find and then off to school with your girlfriend.”

He closed the conversation down with an almost audible snap, wiped his eyes and led me over to the racks.

“Here, a recent Simak, ‘Out of Their Minds’, it gets silly in places but you’ll enjoy it. Now, go and grab Emily or you’ll be late back. Karen can talk soppiness for England”

After looking round for other customers, I left the sad, gentle, horribly abused man with a hug that clearly surprised him, and an initial stiffness gave way to a rib-crushing return. Grabbing Em’s hand, we were off to school again, for maths and history.

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The maths was sort of OK, but it was history that drew me in. In Singapore, I had studied from a book that had a timeline that still showed the Piltdown Man as being real, and contained various references to ‘advanced types’ such as the Athenians, who were apparently somehow completely different from the Athenians (modern), who were ‘debased’, and the ‘primitive’ Africans. We were taught away from those parts of the book, but they were still there, festering in the relic of Empire.

The history we were getting now was different. We still had dates to remember, and Kings to list, but a lot of what we were asked to do consisted of using imagination and logic. Mr Calvert, our teacher, was fond of attacking sources.

“So, what do we know of the Battle of Hastings?” he would say, and when a few answers had been collected, he would address the source.

“Why was this man writing? What axe did he have to grind? Forster, did you see the game at Carlisle on Saturday?”

“Aye, sir”

“How did the game go?”

“They lost, sir, ref was blind”

“Would he have been blind if you had won?”

“Well….”

“So the other supporters, the other team thought he was clear-sighted”

“I suppose so, sir”

“That’s the thing in a nutshell, there is a saying that history is written by the winners. The trick is to look past what’s written down and try and work out what the agenda, the bias, of the writer is. On that note, homework. I would like a side and a half on what bias is obvious in the Domesday Book, and I will give a bonus mark to anyone who can explain why it doesn’t apply to the North of England. Ready for our next class”

I walked Em home after school, and we found a few spots to share some saliva while Iain ostentatiously looked away and made retching sounds, and after I left her door he asked me what I was doing.

“She’s a girl, Stevie!”

“I noticed, my dear observant brother, I noticed”

“But Mam says you’re a puff! Holding hands and that with blokes!”

“Do you think I’m like that, Iain? Really?”

“Oh, Stevie, I don’t know, I keep hearing Mam talk, when she’s at the gin, and she talks about getting you cured of it, and then you’re snogging some spotty lass as if you mean it, and…you’re not a puff, are you?”

“No, not at all. Em is who I like”. And Karen, of course.

“So why is she always talking to that doctor bloke?”

“He’s not just a queer doctor, Iain, he’s sorting my growth out, helping me get bigger. Hey, Mr Robson wants me to run for the school. Think how much faster I’ll be with longer legs!”

“Yeah, yeah, big head. Race you home?”

“Dear big little brother, you are a mere sprinter, while I shall be racing over the 5,000.”

I grinned at him. “As it’s only a hundred yards to the door, you’d beat me!”

At which point I took off without warning. He came past me like a train. Bloody footballers.

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I was off to Nana’s that Friday again, with my rock-climbing book and a head full of questions. She met me from the Ratty as always, and smiled approvingly when I showed her I had packed my running kit. I showed her the book, and she smiled again.

“Ah, thy dad’s name was famous in climbing round here. The Only Genuine Jones was about last century, and a lot of his routes are still seen as hard ones”

“Only Genuine?”

“Owen Glynne. I’ll take thee up by some of his crags, and tha can have a look. Unless tha fancy having a go…tha’d need someone with thee who knaas what’s what. Promise me that: no scrambling around by thesen, reet?”

“But I could have a try?”

“Aye, I’ll have a word with Arthur, in the Inn, he knaas a bit about it”

True to her word, she took us out for a meal in the Inn, a pie and mushy peas, and as she sipped her Guinness she talked through my interests with Arthur.

“Aye, lad, there’s some folk who come up here regular, from the South, for the cragging. A bit posh, like. But there’s still the lads from Manchester and that to keep the common man in the act. We have a couple of the posh lads here tonight; the Lancs lads all camp up Wasdale Head wi’ the midges”

He wandered over to serve a customer, and after a while a tall man came over to our table.

“Hello, are you Steven and Ada? My name’s Simon Worrell, the barman says this young fellow has an interest in climbing”

And that was our evening filled. Simon called over his friend, Roger Houston, and as Nana nursed another couple of bottle of Guinness and the men downed what seemed like a gallon of Jennings, they answered questions and told hair-raising stories of exposed leads, poor protection, benightment on Alpine ledges; it was wonderful. I keep using that word, but here it was true. I was full of wonder at their stories, and they were charm incarnate. I fell about with laughter when they explained the significance of Kipling Groove on Gimmer Crag, and it was my first real insight to a world beyond what most people saw. Roger was passionate about it.

“Imagine it, Steve. You are there, on the Slabs, in the middle of Tennis Shoe. The climbing just there is so easy you don’t have to think, and you are of the elite. Nobody can get to that spot without climbing, and you are one of those people who can climb. It feels truly special. Or when you are laybacking the Great Flake on CB, and there is no room in your head for anything but the rock and the next move, and all the little irritations of the day disappear”

Simon chuckled. “Apart from the midges, of course!”

“Well, yes, but you can never get away from those little buggers…sorry, Ada”

I was a truly great evening, that I treasure to this day. We said our good nights, and ambled happily back to the cottage.

“Be careful around those two, lad”

“Why, Nana?”

“Lang time sin ah have seen such obvious shirtlifters. They may just fancy a bit of fun”

Even my own grandmother, it seemed.

I fell asleep dreaming of long drops, and scratching at my chest.