This plunged me again deep into a nightmare that made intelligent thought and connected speech impossible. I muttered over and over with increasing violence, “I can’t tell you anything” or “I will NOT go to school today,” which alarmed them. Nell, the youngest, pled with me and wept, whereupon Nan said loudly and sternly, “Very well! You will NOT go to school today as usual, but you WILL come to school and see the headmaster with us!”
She had never spoken severely to me before. I could not argue back and later, sick at heart, walked drearily school-ward between them. On one side Nell attempted some feeble, encouraging chirps but Nan stayed grimly silent, gathering her forces for a conflict whose nature she could not even guess.
The headmaster had always been remote from boys he did not punish, always austere with those who were not good at sports. He greeted my aunts with grave politeness, leaving his office desk to do so and offering them chairs before it. I was not greeted at all and left standing. He sat down and told them, “I am sorry I have had to ask you here. We have never had trouble with John before, but he has now done something that the mother of a fellow pupil brought to my attention yesterday, denouncing it as downright wicked. She provided me with such evidence that I was reluctantly forced to agree.”
He paused. Nan said coldly, “What evidence?”
From a drawer in his desk he produced and laid on top Health and Nudism with its cover photograph illustrating the Eves on Skis article, and a number of Sheena the Jungle Girl with Sheena on the cover in a state that made me shut my eyes tight. I heard him explain that according to Mrs Doig, Stewart always told the truth when confessing his sins before going to bed, and had confessed that John Tunnock had led him into temptation and had thrust these vile publications upon him. The dreadful silence following these words was broken by Nan asking crisply, “John gave these as a present to poor Stewart Doig?”
“Yes, John persuaded Doig to accept this unmitigated filth.”
“Is that all?” cried Nan in a voice so loud with gladness and relief that I opened my eyes wide and saw her lean forward and lift Health and Nudism. After glancing quickly inside she put it back saying, “My dear sir, when we received your letter this morning John became so speechless with shame and horror that I feared he had made a girl pregnant, or been discovered in some act of adolescent homosexuality, or had publically exposed his genitals. Do you really believe pictures of undressed female bodies are unmitigated filth?”
“Of course not, but trading in pornography is filth.”
“John did not trade in these publications. You admit he gave them as presents.”
“It is no mitigation for a rich boy to gain no money while deliberately using his own to corrupt a very poor boy!”
“My dear man, you are in charge of a teaching establishment founded in Queen Victoria’s reign but this is 1954. You surely know that boys over the age of twelve have adult sexual organs and appetites. My nephew John is thirteen. In a tribal society he would be earning his living and selecting a mate in a year or two. Civilization makes that impossible. Our schools must fit young adults for modern life by suppressing their natural instincts, but you cannot expect to completely suppress them, especially when they are outside your school.”
She paused and stared grimly at the headmaster who sat with hands clasped tightly on the desktop, frowning and chewing his under-lip. A short silence was broken by Nell saying faintly, “In France, I believe …”
“Yes, be quiet Nell,” said Nan. “In France until recently brothels were licensed and kept free of disease by medically-qualified municipal inspectors, so unmarried youths with some cash could easily obtain sexual relief, often with parental approval. In modern Britain, alas, most adults are still too Victorian to teach their children the facts of sex. Nell and I are examples. We read Marie Stopes and D. H. Lawrence yet were too shy to tell our nephew John about the act of penetration and use of contraceptives. Your science teachers are equally reticent. I entered this office today fearing the worst and am glad to know John has only been purchasing aids to masturbation. Every woman who washes teenage boys’ underwear knows how often they masturbate. You must have done so when you were that age. There is no point discussing something so commonplace or making a fuss about it. Modern doctors now know it does not induce blindness or soften the brain.”
This speech made me realize there was some connection between the pale grey jelly with which I stained my underpants four or five times a week and the phenomenon of birth. After quite a long silence the headmaster pointed to the two magazines and in a distant-sounding voice said, “You think these aids to masturbation should be openly passed around among my pupils?”
“No. It was silly of John to trust poor Doig with them, but please bear in mind that this was on Saturday when the boys were not legally under your administration. He will not give such publications again to Stewart Doig or anyone else — will you John?”
“No! No! Never!” I almost shouted.
“Mr MacRae, I sympathize with the dilemma Mrs Doig has forced upon you. Her complaint cannot be ignored, yet a big fuss about it will be bad for the school. You know that last week a daft Church of Scotland minister made a story for the Glasgow Evening News by denouncing pupils of Glasgow Girls’ High School for conversing with boys during lunch hour in a Sauchiehall Street espresso café. A gutter journalist could keep such a story running (as they say), if he heard of this equally innocuous Hillhead Secondary boy’s misdemeanour. He would tell easily shocked clergy and parents about him and quote their reactions under headlines with shock and sex and horror in them. He would pester you for an opinion and if you did not say you had dealt with John by savagely punishing him you would be accused of being permissive — a cant word now current in the gutter press.”
“That,” said MacRae grimly, “is what I mean to prevent.”
“But you cannot possibly use the tawse on such a good, obedient, hard-working pupil as John who has never defied his teachers and the Hillhead rulings in any way at all. We have told John that if any teacher so much as threatens him with the belt he must walk out of the school and come home. If he does so we will send him to Kilquhanity33 — a really permissive school — what a tit-bit for journalists that would be. I expect you will write to poor Stewart Doig’s mother saying you have taken firm steps that ensure John will never again lead Stewart or anyone else into temptation. That is all you need do. Let us now agree to forget this sorry business. Please treat these publications on your desk as waste paper for their sexual aroma is not open or clean. John has never brought material like that to Hillhead Secondary and won’t give it to anyone else. You have taught him a lesson he will not forget.”