Whole Numbers

I notice, getting older, that blokes I've known most of my life have no hesitation in lying about their sexual histories. I overheard Deacon, an Old Boy, in the pub after a Meeting of the Association, say to one of the younger Members, “Oh yes, we used to meet them (girls from St. Theresa's) round the back of the Japanese Garden most afternoons and . . .” He went on to describe in considerable detail the goings on. Deacon was a year behind me, this was the end of the 50s, and I'm pretty sure morals hadn't changed that much since I'd last been “round the back”.

Sure we met the girls often enough at the Japanese Garden, in the village, up by the tennis courts, on the buses into town, even at formal dances twice a year. First a summer do at the Convent and then a Christmas Ball at school. After one such winter affair, my last, a girl I shall call Stephanie let me touch her left breast “inside”. We were waiting in a dim corner of the quad for her parents to collect her. I vividly recall the tiny shudder that shook us both when, inadvertently, my finger pinged her nipple. I was pretty surprised to find it was so, well, rubbery. We stopped kissing, and I was even more surprised when she lit up. A Peter Stuyvesant. I'll never forget it.

Deacon keeps wicket for the O.B.A. 2nd 11. He bats at five, bit of a crafty scorer, all thin leg glances and swiped off cuts. Sometimes both teams met up in the Royal Oak when we played locally and he could always be heard describing his conquests. I saw him the other day, in Covent Garden, telling anyone who would listen what he'd been up to at the Conservative Party Conference. Apparently the bright young things are a pushover if you know the right people. Well, Deacon knows everybody. Only mention Mark Hunter, he says, and you have to fight them off with a stick. Oh yes, he says, he's had them all in the back of his Daimler Sovereign, he wasn't the senior car pool driver for nothing,