It has been claimed - though the actual authority is never quoted - that most men have a brief sexual thought every six seconds. This means, of course, that there must be at least five seconds when they’re not having a sexual thought. For the smokers’ club of the Upper Fifth at Damian College - not so. They thought about sex all the time. Constantly. Even when doing maths, it was sex. English - sex. History - double sex. Physics - more of the same. None of the members had actually had it. Full sex, that is. Though Nobby Nodder claimed to have got very near it with a girl called Ronnie in the Regal cinema.
At dinner-time, the six foundation members of the club - Billy, Robin, Titch, Nobby, Oscar and Oily - plus the more recently accepted Pottsy took their daily constitutional through the back alley adjoining the school. They lit up their fags - Park Drive on a poor day, Lucky Strike if Billy or Robin had struck lucky at the American Red Cross. The topic of conversation was the same each day and they took a prurient interest in examining the numerous condoms left behind from the previous night’s copulations.
‘Just look at all these Durexes,’ said Oscar, poking the
abandoned contraceptives with a stick. ‘There must have been a lot of shagging going on down here last night.’
‘Well, the Government is always saying there should be mass production,’ said Nobby.
‘Mass seduction’s more like it,’ said Oscar. ‘There are so many bags, they must have had the pros lined up against the wall - like an assembly line.’
‘And why not?’ said Oily. ‘Didn’t Herbert Morrison say, “Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job.” Did you know that over ten million a week are sold in Britain?’
‘Half of them seem to be here,’ said Pottsy, ‘judging by all these Durexes.’
‘Surely,’ said Billy, the Latin scholar, ‘the plural of Durex is Durices. It goes like radix - radices - and matrix - matrices.’
‘As far as I’m concerned,’ said Titch. ‘They’re just bags.’
‘That’s a very oversimplified view,’ said Robin. ‘There are subtle differences between them. The Yanks call them “rubbers” and they claim their models are ten inches long.’
‘Oh, come, come,’ said Nobby, ‘that’s stretching it a bit far.’
‘Why do they have little teats on the end?’ asked Pottsy.
‘You mean you don’t know, Pottsy?’ asked Oscar.
‘No, honest.’
‘Then you must ask one of your sisters,’ said Robin.
‘I don’t think they’ll know,’ he said. ‘We’re not allowed to say the word S-E-X in our house. It’s taboo.’
‘Not many people know this,’ said Oily. ‘The erect penis varies in length from five inches to ten inches.’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t know that,’ said Pottsy.
‘Some African tribes,’ Oily continued, ‘make their young boys go about with weights hanging from their things to make them longer.’
‘I trust/ said Oscar, ‘that they take them off when they’re adults and are on the job.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Billy, ‘for the sake of their womenfolk.’
‘I read,’ said Nobby, not to be outdone in the display of sexual knowledge, ‘that they have now begun manufacturing different coloured bags.’
‘Green for beginners, maybe,’ said Pottsy.
‘And, I suppose, red, white and blue for the patriotic,’ added Titch.
‘Red for hot sex,’ said Robin.
‘The nearest I’ve ever got to hot sex,’ said Oscar, ‘is having a wank in the bath.’
‘That’s a very dirty way of doing a clean thing,’ said Titch.
‘Or a clean way of doing a dirty thing,’ added Billy.
‘Hey, fellas, I was told by a GI,’ said Robin, ‘that you can now buy banana-flavoured bags as well.’
‘What next?’ commented Pottsy. ‘How does the woman get to taste it, I wonder?’
‘Use your imagination, Pottsy,’ said Oily.
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Pottsy.
‘But the woman does,’ said Oscar lecherously.
The Upper Fifth studied nine subjects and the curriculum of the school was heavily weighted towards formal academic teaching. The boys did their utmost to make the dry educational programme more entertaining by introducing witty, comical comments. With some masters this was well-nigh impossible, as they interpreted these attempts as challenges to their authority.
One such was Brother Sebastian - the geography master - who developed an immediate antipathy towards Billy from the word go. The brother walked into the classroom