Johnny Cigarini Read Free Page B

family of regular holidaymakers had two daughters: one my age, of eleven or twelve, and the other about nineteen. I liked the younger one and she was my friend, but the elder was rather odd to me. She’d tart herself up each night and go out on the town. One Monday, while the séance was happening underneath my room, she came in. I was busy at the time, eating my chocolate and reading my
Beano
. She closed the door behind her and approached me – weirdly she was not too interested in the Bash Street Kids or even Billy Whizz, but rather in something else and she began to touch my penis. I was very naive at the time, and what with my comic book reading to get on top of, the timing was all wrong. I told her if she didn’t stop it, I would shout to the séance for help. She left the room in a huff. I continued reading.

    *

    By now, the town council had appointed a child protection officer to keep an “eye on me”. She was a nice lady called June Jolly. When I was twelve, she introduced my family to the chaplain of the public school, St. Lawrence College, in Ramsgate. His name was Revd Kenneth Senior. He was married to a doctor and had a young family. He took an interest in my well-being and paid frequent visits to the house. He taught me how to drive in an empty field and how to swim, but sadly the Revd Kenneth Senior had an ulterior motive. With the approval of Granny, he offered to teach me about the birds and the bees – something Granny considered a man’s role, and one less job she had to do. It seems incredible these days, but at that time, and at the age of twelve, I was completely unaware of sex. He explained to me about procreation and taught me how to masturbate. Of course, he taught me by demonstrating it on me. Revd Kenneth Senior was a paedophile, although that was not a term in common use in those days. They were called child molesters or perverts, but whatever they were called, he was one of them.
    He never did manage to molest me again, but that was not for want of trying over the years, which is harassment in itself. He would try at the swimming pool and on trips. He begged me to let him have “his fun”, like when he took me to Cambridge where we spent the day trainspotting – my passionate hobby in the days of the steam trains. I liked the Stanier and the Fowler, such terrific sounds. When a steam train came in, my entire body would shake. It was to me the most exciting thing in life. Watching old films that capture the deep whistle of the train – the chug chug – it was just as it was. I remember talking to one budding trainspotter there in Cambridge, as we watched one locomotive finish its scheduled turn of work – it was now due its clean-through – and asking him what was happening when the fireman stepped down from the train and entered the shed beside the track. The man had a moustache and a bowler hat, too.
    â€œHe’s come to report the engine. The reporting clerk will then tell the footplate man where to leave the train in the yard. Its firebox, tubes and boiler will need to be cleaned, or the engine steams poorly and burns more coal than is necessary.”
    I really did love those steam trains and thinking back now, it was really anything that had an engine. Maybe it was that tin-plate model car with working headlights that my father had given me that had sparked the love – something that I slept next to each night and sometimes even took with me on trips.
    When we got to Cambridge, after I had got undressed for bed, Revd Ken Senior tried to molest me again, but I wouldn’t allow him. I was resistant and stubborn. I had obviously led him into a false sense of opportunity, what with my fondness for the steam trains and the trip away, but I was only twelve and wasn’t to know the mind tricks I was then playing on the man. He became angry and raised his voice, something quite terrifying to me at the time, and all I wanted