Plender by Ted Lewis

every hollow, every track. We’d come here almost every weekend when we were kids. The perfect playground, for the games we played. I looked upwards, slightly to the left, trying to make out the wood at the quarry’s rim. We used to play in there too.
    Warm autumn sunshine flashed through the trees. Peter and I slowly crackled our way through the wood, not saying anything, just dawdling the morning away. I was quiet because I was happy and I was happy because Peter and I were on our own, away from his other friends and when he was away from them he was different, sometimes he seemed even as if he really liked me a lot.
    After a while we came to the fallen tree trunk where we always stopped and sat for a while.
    Nothing was said. I swung my legs, trying to dislodge a peeling piece of bark. Peter seemed wrapped up in his own thoughts. Eventually he slid his hand in his lumberjacket and pulled out a small rolled-up magazine.
    “Male Horsfall in 3L gave me this,” he said, passing it to me. “Him and Johnno bought it on the school trip to Paris.”
    I unrolled it and looked at the cover. It was called Paris Minuit. On the cover was a drawing of a woman bending over and looking over her shoulder. She was wearing a big hat and you could see up her skirt to her underwear. She was wearing black stockings and high heeled shoes. I opened the book and thumbed through it. There were photographs of women in their underwear, most of them in similar positions to the woman on the cover. Lots of them wearing hats and long black gloves, one even had a fur coat on. There were some jokes about women in their underwear as well. There was one where one girl was stretched out on the grass looking all puffed out with her knickers round her ankles and another girl who was dressed like a man standing next to a tree trunk carving a heart with an arrow through it and initials at the top and the bottom, below a number of other, similar hearts. There were stories, which judging from the accompanying drawings seemed to be about French gangsters beating up their girlfriends. I’d never seen anything like it before.
    As I progressed through the book I began to feel hot and excited but with Peter sitting next to me I felt embarrassed at my feelings, in case I showed him how I felt. So when I’d finished I pushed the book back at him as though it hadn’t had any effect at all.
    “What do you think of it?” said Peter.
    “S’all right,” I said.
    “Didn’t it give you the Horn?”
    I shrugged.
    “Did me,” said Peter, unbuttoning his trousers. “Look.”
    I looked and blushed and sort of smiled.
    “Let’s see yours, then,” he said.
    “Now,” I said, as though it was unimportant.
    “Didn’t you get one, then?”
    “Yes.”
    “Bet you didn’t. Bet you can’t get one yet.”
    “I can.”
    “Bet you can’t fetch.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “I can,” said Peter. “I can shoot three feet. Even Glegger in 4M can’t shoot that far.”
    “How do you know?”
    “How do I know?” he said scornfully. “They have a Wanking Club behind the pavilion, fourth formers. Haven’t you seen them?”
    I shook my head.
    “Every dinnertime,” he said. “They have competitions. Sometimes Beryl Marshbanks and Janet Smith do it for them.”
    I was shocked and I was excited. Beryl Marshbanks and Janet Smith.
    “I’m off to do it now,” said Peter. “Are you?”
    I shrugged again and shifted my position on the log.
    “You can’t, can you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Show us, then.”
    I had no choice. I unbuttoned my trousers. He looked at me. I was still soft.
    “Go on, then.”
    I began to do it. Peter sniggered.
    “Is that how you do it?”
    I blushed even more deeply and I began to feel sick.
    “No wonder you can’t fetch,” he said. “Look. Watch me.”
    I watched him and then started again.
    “You’re useless,” he said.
    He leant over and pushed my hand away and took hold of me and began to do it. I didn’t dare try and stop him