Fragment 5: The Life & Times of a Social Experiment

Containing an account of an unusual rural activity and its resulting confusions.

Image copyright: James Hime / Shutterstock.com

Fragment 4 concluded with an attempted cliffhanger intro to the farmer’s son: at, I think, 22 years old, he was hard-working, talented and likable. A rare ray of sunshine in an otherwise dull world. And possibly a paedophile.

At weekends and during the school holidays, I liked nothing better than accompanying Gerald as he went about his tasks. My favourite thing was going out with him on the tractor. It was a Ferguson TE20, affectionately known as the Little Grey Fergie. This extraordinarily versatile machine was quite small, as shown by the photo above (the chap in the pic is, I assure you, an ordinary-sized person), but it is credited with making a major contribution to the recovery of British farming in the post-war period.

I would perch on the left-hand mudguard and hang on tight while he harrowed or ploughed or towed wagons loaded with crops. There was no cab, so we were totally exposed to the elements and on such a small machine it was a very cosy arrangement. In those days, little boys wore short trousers and my bare knees wedged against Gerald’s left thigh. These days, I’m sure, Health & Safety would have a screaming fit. Back then nobody seemed to bother.

One day, somewhere out in the fields, Gerald declaimed a piece of doggerel:

Big Dick and Hairy Balls
Went down to the waterfalls.
Big Dick couldn’t swim
So Hairy Balls pushed him in.

I had no idea what the words meant but it sounded funny: we both laughed and in no time were chanting the rhyme in unison. Then, Gerald asked me, “Do you know what a big dick is?” I shook my head. Gerald unbuttoned his flies and produced his penis. “That” he announced, “is a big dick.”

I looked at it in amazement. By comparison with my still immature version, it really was a big dick. And my immediate reaction? Embarrassment. Not only did he have a larger version than mine, but it pointed up, not down, so that he was able to waggle it about in a really showy-off way. I think I was worried that he might ask to see my tiny todger and I felt that I might die of embarrassment at being so conspicuously outgunned. But he didn’t. Neither then, nor on later occasions. It seems he got his rocks off simply by having me concentrate on him. Come to think of it, he might well have exposed himself even when out on his own but I’m guessing that having an audience added a certain piquancy for him.

Anyway, on this occasion Gerald reached over, took my hand and guided it to the aforementioned Big Dick where he rubbed it up and down a few times. I withdrew my hand. This was all very strange. Gerald drew my hand closer again, this time suggesting that I “Reach down a bit”. I intuitively knew that this was very naughty, but I was fascinated, too. When my hand went far enough Gerald shouted, “Hairy Balls, that’s Hairy Balls.” This whole exercise was accompanied, on his part, by gales of laughter. Then, of course, he got me to rub him until, at a certain stage, he took over and produced a fountain of stuff the likes of which I’d never seen before. 

What an education! I was fascinated and scared in equal measure. Gerald produced a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and calmly mopped himself up.

I recall one particularly surreal occasion when we were out ploughing. It was a rainy, blustery day and the tractor was making slow headway through heavy clay soil. The effort demanded of the machine was so great that the engine screamed, and the front wheels lifted off the ground, tilting the tractor at what must have been 20 or 30 degrees from the horizontal. This unnatural orientation and the slippery rain-wet mudguard made it very difficult for me to hang on. I did so with one hand on the mudguard and the other clinging on to Gerald’s shirt. And, all the while, with wind and rain all around us and the tractor’s nose pointing phallically upwards, he enthusiastically masturbated and, so far as I remember, never deviated from the correct furrow line even when, finally, the earth moved for him. There’s skill for you.

Now, as I say, I sensed that this activity, repeated on numerous occasions, was naughty and, therefore, not to be mentioned to anyone. The effect on me, so far as I recall, was complicated: I don’t think there was ever a specific instruction to me not to mention the incidents but there was a palpable sense that the activity definitely should not be talked about.

An imminent wank was always signalled by his launching into a rendition of Big Dick and Hairy Balls and concluded with the inevitable ejaculation of a few million sperms who were never going to find a fallopian tube, however vigorously or far they wriggled.

Nothing else happened. He showed no interest in anything other than my manual assistance for, and wide-eyed wonder at, his masturbation. He did not groom me any further than that into the role of a catamite. So, was I right to introduce him as a ‘possible paedophile’? I’m not sure. A dear female friend tells me that, in her opinion, he was a flasher and that a flasher is not necessarily a paedophile. But if a flasher performs his act in the presence of a child, does that make him a paedophile? Answers on a postcard …

As I’ve already mentioned, these goings-on gave rise to a mixture of excitement and apprehension in me, and I instinctively knew that the proceedings were ‘wrong’. But did it colour my life? Not in the long term, but there was a complication in the short term. It had to do with the religious atmosphere in which I was enveloped at home. Our isolated existence limited Nellie’s scope for chapel attendance but I was never left in any doubt that there was a God who watched over us and knew every single solitary thing that we got up to and even every thought that passed through our minds. This was a tad concerning. Was there really a god, or even God, who witnessed all these goings-on? If so, what did he (of course it was a ‘he’) think of it all? Would there somehow, sometime, somewhere be a sharp rap over the knuckles with a God-shaped ruler for participating, however passively, in such an activity? Did this make me a sinner, whatever one of those was?

If anything, with hindsight, I felt a tad upset that the attentions I received were of the homo-erotic kind. Why couldn’t they have been more like those experienced by the five- or six-year-old William Hickey (1749–1830) when he was tended to by Nanny Harris:

Every night when the servant had taken away the candle, she used to take me to her bed, there fondle and lay me on her bosom; nor shall I forget my sensations, infant as I was, at awaking one morning and finding myself snugly stowed between her legs, with one of my hands upon the seat of Love, where I have no doubt she had placed it, for she was as wanton a little baggage as ever existed.¹

That would have been preferable.

So, yes, my experience with Gerald must be accounted as abuse but I don’t think of it as having been of a hugely pernicious kind. Paedophiles, even ‘possible paedophiles’, like gods, it seems, come in different shapes and sizes, and definitely move in mysterious ways.

Mention of God and gods (what was the difference, I wondered) brings me back to Rupert (he of the “They shouldn’t have been allowed to adopt a cat” fame), not only because he was my godfather but also because he was a real, live, dog collar wearing minister in the Church of England. He was also a genuine fairy godfather in the sense that, when his car drew up from time to time outside the cottage, it was a racing certainty that he would be bearing gifts. The background to this goes thus and so ...

George, you may recall, had lied his way into the army underage in his mid-teens so, when WW2 broke out, he was already 31 years old. Earlier I explained that he remained a private because whenever promoted to corporal the added responsibility was sufficient to cause him to mentally crash and be demoted again. The private-corporal-private thing happened umpteen times. Rupert, in his role as regimental padre, recognized George’s mental fragility and really did keep an eye on him – including during a wartime period that George was posted to India. Yes, in its wisdom, the British Army posted a chap with known mental issues to a war zone where the fight was between us and some rather fanatical fellows who actually believed that their leader, the Japanese emperor, was himself a real, live god. Oh God!

Rupert provided pastoral care and because his support continued long after the war ended it was also of enormous benefit to me. As far back as I can remember Uncle Rupert, as I was instructed to call him, was part of my life. However, here was another oddity because George and Nellie carefully explained to me that, although I should call him Uncle, he was not actually my uncle. Confusing? You bet.

That aside, Uncle Rupert’s presence was always good news. I particularly remember the occasion when he turned up at the cottage with a wireless set, as they were then called. Radios back then were big valve-powered (vacuum-tube-powered, for any American readers) devices with dials and buttons to twiddle or press to select the various frequencies. After some fiddling, if you were lucky, coherent sounds came forth. This I thought miraculous, it really was a magic box that opened up a whole new world. I particularly enjoyed Children’s Hour, comedy programmes and some of the music that poured out.

Uncle Rupert continued to support us during the ensuing years. He paid for my school clothes and provided funds to enable modest holidays - usually the money to buy bus tickets to and from relatives in Devon, or to the retreat that he oversaw.

My favourite family trips were to the village of Horrabridge, near Tavistock in Devon. There lived the two eldest of Nellie’s sisters, Dorothy and Hilda, as anyone might have deduced from the name on their cottage - Hildor.

The house in the home counties where Rupert’s retreats were held was very different from Hildor. It was large with a substantial number of guest bedrooms, and situated in a lovely location with expansive gardens. Here, Rupert and his wife, Dr. Kathleen Bliss, and a lovely lady called Ruth, oversaw retreats and discussion groups. I caught snippets of some of these activities and was fascinated by them. I recall one occasion in particular when the discussion topic was good versus evil. Up until that point, it had never occurred to me that people might sit around discussing such issues, and George would scoff about it all, but I liked it.

Back on the farm, the isolated country life continued until the day it came to a dead stop. One afternoon, a year or so after Gerald’s first rendition of Big Dick, Nellie came into the cottage, distraught and crying. What’s the matter? I asked. Gerald, she told me, had had an accident – a serious accident. It turned out that he had been atop a machine - a threshing machine, I think - and slipped. The machinery was unguarded (do you begin to see a pattern of health and safety shortcomings here?) and Gerald’s right leg went down into the mechanism. Off came the leg, I was told, together with half his stomach. He was apparently alive when the ambulance arrived but died on the way to hospital. This was my first close experience of a death.

It was the detail that did it: reportage of the event was quite specific that the amputation extended right up to and including ‘half his stomach’. Young as I was, I had a sufficient grasp of the situation and of anatomy to realize that Big Dick and Hairy Balls may well have been included in the detachment.

The question that instantly sprang to my mind was, was this a punishment from God? Perhaps what I’d been told about the “immortal, invisible God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes” was true? Perhaps naughtiness really is punished by extreme measures? Perhaps the God-shaped ruler is very real?

Later, of course, I was able to work out that it probably had nothing to do with God and everything to do with human nature. I mean, just in the area of paedophilia, if God was involved, there would surely have been an epidemic of bizarre deaths of, among others, Catholic priests. “Catholic priest anally impaled on church spire.” “Catholic priest emasculated by AI-powered incense censer.” That sort of thing.

So, okay, yes, the life and death of Gerald did confuse me. At the time, it did concern me and make me wonder whether God might hold me accountable in some way or to some extent for the naughty goings-on. But I also wondered whether I had, myself, in some way or other, brought about Gerald’s demise: given that adoption made me ‘different’ from other children, did I have secret powers? Had I played some part in Gerald’s death?

Whatever, I’m pleased to say that it’s not something that haunted me in the long term. (Except, I suppose, the fact that I’m recording it here as one of the standout memories of my childhood must mean something!) Had he tried to involve me in more physical ways I might have felt differently or, I hope, told him to desist. However, it didn’t get to that.

Unsurprisingly, the death changed everything. Not least, it shattered Gerald’s parents, and it shattered any chance of the continuance of George and Nellie’s employment. It was inevitable that we would shortly be on the move again.

Approaching my ninth birthday, I was deeply confused. I had a mother and father who told me they were not my mother and father. I had an uncle who, I was told, was not an uncle. And only I (and perhaps God) knew that Gerald, who everyone had adored, did naughty things. The world, it seemed, was not always what it seemed.

1. Hickey, William. Memoirs of a Georgian Rake. Hickey composed the memoirs in 1808-1810 and they were first published between 1913 and 1925. My source has been a Folio Society edition of 1995. William Hickey’s name was co-opted as the title of a gossip column, from 1928, by British newspaper the Daily Express.