Exposure by Penny Frances
Image by Umanoide for Unsplash
Trigger warning: child sexual abuse
In from work, it’s a large G&T, news on the telly. Roll back the shirt sleeves to stand and watch.
An independent inquiry has been launched into historical Child Sexual Abuse, in response to the Jimmy Saville scandal, revealing widespread abuse…
You Don’t Say! Shout at the telly, pull out a fag and light it in my party-piece one-handed action. Take a slug of the drink.
…claims of abuse from decades ago by prominent media and political figures…
Well Fuck Me Backwards! Clink of ice as I raise my glass.
…reports of inadequate safeguarding by institutions responsible for child welfare…
Sweat pouring. Fucking windows are stuck – told the landlord I’d stick a brick through them if he didn’t fix them. Tosser thinks I’m joking. Fling the door open to the second-floor walkway. Kids shrieking, techno boom from a car radio below, zip of a Vespa. Always a Vespa in hot weather. Nod at Neighbour leaning back on the wall with a cold beer, watching his kids skateboarding the walkway. Fucking oven in here.
Pull the Venetians against the sun. The light cools to whiskey amber. Guy on the telly, all greyed out, head bent. Colin, not his real name, speaks for the first time of his abuse by a Church of England youth leader in the nineteen seventies…
Why are the victims always pixilated out like they are the guilty ones? Why aren’t they shouting the fucking roof down?
Swig my drink, puff at my fag. How is it news that child sex abuse was normal as flares and kipper ties? So normal, no one thought it worth a mention.
Wave of dizziness sends me to the sofa. Stare at the swirl of my drink. Flares and kipper ties were more controversial, thinking about it. You’d get more done at school for growing your hair below your collar than any sex thing, victim or otherwise. The all-male institutions the Illustrious Parents thought best for me: boys’ school, scouts, church choir. Everyone knew who they were, the ones not to be alone in a room with. If you could help it. Which half the time you couldn’t. We called them poofs, not paedos, and the boys they hooked up with, well they were poofs too. Mostly you got away with a one-off: a tongue rammed down your throat with your hand forced onto a bulging groin. But there were some who were different. Altogether worth hanging out with. And that’s how it was with MC.
Gulp at the air, forgotten to breathe. Wander into the kitchen for another G&T. Heart pounding as my thoughts meander. How it was with MC?
MC hanging about after church with us choirboys. Joining in our larking, exchanging crude jokes. Some thought he was creepy because of the scar down his left cheek. To me that was an intriguing secret history. Then MC offered me a Saturday job at the dental hospital where he worked as a technician. He developed x-rays of teeth and had me file them. There were mice in a cage that I got to feed. I was nine and he paid me more than a month’s pocket money. First time I blew it all on sweets, but then MC showed me pics of rotten teeth and taught me how to clean my teeth properly. No-one taught you that in the seventies either! Saved up and bought Donny Osmond LP instead, put the poster up in my room. Mum said she thought that was for girls, was she worried I was gay? Won her over when I told her I’d been educated about my teeth and cut out sweets. That’s alright, then, no questions asked. She was pleased, I was pleased. Life became 1000% more interesting.
Wander back to the telly. More shambolic ramblings from the pixilated.
This is what they never talk about. These pathetic silhouetted dishrags. Why does none of them ever say it: I was having a fucking ball!
Tap at the door, makes me jump. Neighbour: ‘do you mind shutting the door, mate, just, me kids are playing out?’
‘I was just shouting at the fucking news. I’ll turn it off, OK?’
Fucking wind-up this heat, who needs it? Hook up the laptop to the speakers for some music. Bowie mix, or When-You-Need-All-Your-Bowie-At-Once. Kicks off with Heroes. Roll a spliff, hampered by foot tapping. Top up the drink, open a pack of chip sticks. Sit back.
So, MC, how did it get from filing tooth pics and feeding the mice, to the full blown (ha ha) child sex experience? It was the dark room, of course, how predictable was that? That infra-red other worldness, everything in a pale blood wash, the glow of your scar. Watching as you developed the tooth pics, the blur of the image sharpening as you rippled the paper in the chemicals. And then that time, out of the blur, came an image I could barely register I was seeing. The face of a boy about my age, resting between a pair of naked legs and gazing on a massive erect penis. I can still feel the shock of it, unable to move my eyes. My first instinct to snort a repressed giggle, like when Andy and I huddled over the porn mag he’d found under his parents’ mattress. So funny, the ridiculous naked rawness. Bowie starting Under Pressure: weight of the memory tightening on my chest. The moment hangs, timeless. Then you take the picture out of the tray, peg it to the line next to the teeth, and turn your luminous scar to me.
I’m sorry, you say, I hope that hasn’t frightened you. Shake my head, can’t speak. You put your hand on my shoulder. Pressure.
It’s really not meant to be frightening. See the boy’s expression: he isn’t scared at all, you say. The picture hangs vertically now so the penis seems to float above the boy’s face. His expression is that of wonder, you say, of looking at something inexplicably beautiful. You can see that, can’t you? I look at the soft focus of the boy’s face, lips slightly parted, eyelids lowered. Funny feeling in my groin, wonder if I like it. Would you like to see more photos? I nod as I feel myself step away into a dreamworld forever soft and red.
Times after this blur into one. Still the Saturday job, the treats, walks around Soho, authentic Chinese restaurants. MC telling me I’m smart, unlike the dear parents’ litany of disappointment with the could-do-better school reports. Feeling special, feeling loved, the sheer novelty of that. And then going back to MC’s place, seeing more photos. Teaching me to masturbate. Becoming the subject of his arty child porn. That strange intoxication, like you’d had way too much sugar. Lightheaded, sickly, uncertain. People are too hung up about their bodies, you said. You know how beautiful you are, I can tell you like it when I touch you. It’s only what people think. It has to be our secret.
Feel the push of a fucking hard on. Do not want! Bowie sings Fame, shift straight to me and Suze, aged 17, fucked off our rocks, lying on my bed in the late afternoon, singing along full pelt. And then that time when we were splitting up, lying on the bed again. Lots of tears and stoned repentances, but a civilised heart to heart as well. Suze couldn’t cope with my volatile swings, my drinking, my raging about nothing. Never afraid to say sorry later. But it doesn’t stop, she doesn’t understand it. Neither do I, I tell her. I was sweet tempered as a child.
Suze starts telling me she thinks she might be gay, there’s this girl at college. We’re snuggled up, like best friends on a sleep-over. She wonders if I’ve ever felt that for another guy. Stomach twists but I’m coked up enough, so I tell her. I keep it light, like it was just about whether I was gay. I remember Suze, her stunned silence. Then I said how I’d lost my virginity, aged nine, on holiday with MC. Lost your virginity? she said. How can you talk about it like that? You were raped.
OK, Yes, I know she’s right! I shout. I knew this then. But I can’t use the word even now. How can you feel pleasure in rape?
MC always checked I felt OK, that gentle talking every step of the way. What were your parents thinking, Suze demanded, letting you go on holiday with a grown man? Well, they insisted I took a friend as well, as if poor Andy could be any protection, bribed with sweets and a portable TV to keep out of the way.
The pain of it as if it were someone else. Did you drug me, MC? How else would you allow a grown man to penetrate you and then think this was pleasurable?
Suze was the first, but I told a few more people since. I’m not like these who’ve kept it a secret for forty years. I’m not the secretive type: get close to me, it’s heart on sleeve time. I told all my girlfriends, that being honest about your sexual history thing. And a couple of guys who were mates of the moment, in drunken exchanges of confidences. But their stock reactions of Oh-My-God-You-Poor-Thing or Wow-Man-That’s-Fucking-Hardcore were an instant wind-up that I chose to blow apart by telling them. I Had A Ball. None of them know how to react to that. It’s like they want to understand, but it’s a bit beyond.
Fucking right, it’s a bit beyond! That and How Did Your Parents Not Know? How Did They Allow It?
So how, Illustrious Parents, does this work? After the holiday Dad catches me out when I say I’ve been for a bike-ride on the common. No mud on your tyres, Dad says. Somehow, I got back to MC’s place, desperate that Dad had found me out. MC gave me the perfect excuse. Tell him we were planning a surprise, a lovely photo of you for your mother at Christmas.
What was Dad up to, catching me out and then accepting this excuse? How was it not OK to go around the block to MC’s flat but fine to go on holiday with him? The mind boggles with the random inconsistencies of the parents’ thinking.
That Christmas MC took the parents to the theatre. They reported feeling uncomfortable, he would take no money for the tickets, drinks, and after-show supper. Christmas Day round the tree with the folks, there’s my special present to Mum of a soft-focus close-up of me, all blond-haired blue-eyed innocence, lying in the long grass on holiday. Then there’s MC’s present to me: A sumptuous box set of John Fucking Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Fucking Vespers that obviously cost more than anything the parents had given me ever. Mum glancing over at Dad, eyebrow raised, Dad looking away. Were the clues adding up, dear parents?
Don’t remember playing the Monteverdi ever, though I knew it from my visits to MC’s place. The very essence of Venetian flamboyance, he would explain, while I lay on the wine velvet chaise lounge with my dick out, eating grapes and cheese and gherkin on sticks, listening to MC as he stroked me. At home I stuck with the Osmonds: my Crazy Horses LP, warped in the sun, whacked up to 78 on my mono record player until it seemed the LP itself would fly off with little Jimmy Osmond into some equestrian otherworld.
How would the Monteverdi sound now? Grab the laptop to YouTube. Easy find. Hit Me With Your Venetian Flamboyance Stick. Opening with a lone rich tenor, but so far, it’s courtly but polite in the sepia light. Another drink: brandy better for this. Find the goldfish bowl glass and pour a stiff one. Halleluiah! Another spliff.
My Robbie Williams ringtone jars as it cuts across the choirboy duet. Grab the phone, it’s Pidge, my work buddy suprema.
‘Hey, just ringing to see if you’re OK,’ she says. ‘You know, after your meeting this afternoon…’
‘Couldn’t be better, Pidgkin Poo. Been having a shout at the news, then the Neighbour tells me to shut up, so I stuck some music on.’
‘Oh, I wondered after the meeting. You were shouting then.’
‘Was I? Gary told me to re-do the copy for the campaign. We’d fucking signed it off last week. Fucker.’
‘What’s made you shout on the news, then?’
‘Institutional child sex abuse in the seventies? They’ve just discovered this was a thing?’
‘Ah, the Jimmy Saville stuff,’ Pidge says, gently. ‘I did think of you.’
‘Great, see seventies child abuse and think of me?’
‘No, I didn’t mean…’
Aw, Pidge, of all the people I’ve told about MC, she tries the hardest.
‘Well, it’s sent me off down memory lane, so I’m hitting the brandy and Monteverdi.’
‘Monteverdi?’
‘Let’s say it was our backdrop, in the days.’ I turn up the music for the swelling chorus.
‘Are you OK, shall I come over?’
‘It’s fine, I’ll just drink it out of my system.’
Swill the brandy, take a gulp to massage around my mouth.
‘You know, you could put him away for years?’ she says, gentle as only Pidge does. ‘And expose that church lot who covered it up?’
‘Didn’t I tell you he’s already done some time? Suze found a news report on Google. Did a year of a two-year stretch in 2003 for two counts of buggery, eight indecent assaults, and possessing indecent photographs.’
‘A year? Crying out loud!’
‘Indeed.’ Take another slug of brandy. ‘You’ll notice how none of these offences mention children. They hadn’t invented child abuse in 2003.’
‘It’s outrageous.’
‘He was caught before that, in 1973, abusing boys in a prep school. They gave him a five-year ban from teaching, which is when he turned up round our way. Timing or what?’
‘Oh, God, I don’t know what to say.’
The music goes to tenor solo now, plaintive, almost oriental. MC sang tenor, course he did.
Big toke of the joint. I could put you away for a lot longer now, MC. Don’t think I wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t I?
‘I wish I could help.’ Pidge brings me back.
‘You do, you don’t judge me.’
‘Why would I do that, what have you done?’
‘Enjoyed myself.’
More choirboy harmonies, the men’s voices building the swell. That perfect paedos’ club. What about the time the choirmaster threatened to tell the parents about MC? (He was one to talk, with his own fucked-up little protégé. Paedo turf war, was it?) Any rate, the vicar stopped him. The vicar wasn’t a paedo, just a straight-forward nasty piece of work, specialising in withering sarcasm and cover-ups.
To me the parents knowing was the worst possible. Not just because MC could go to jail, but the spotlight that would shine on me to be avoided at all costs. The blame that would attach to me, increased surveillance, increased disappointment. Were you shying away from this too, dear parents? How can you possibly not have known? Shiver even now, with both of them dead, at the thought of confronting them. Through marriage and divorce, their growing older, I was never up for the emotional shitstorm that would follow, so I shouted about other stuff instead.
Did the MC story ever finish for me? Even when I was twelve and we moved to a different part of London, MC kept in touch for a while. But by the time I hit thirteen this had fizzled out. Did you ditch me, MC, for a more pre-pubescent model?
Did I even think about it? I can picture myself in my early teens, feeling trapped in a young boy’s body: smoking, drinking, hanging out with the rebels; constantly in trouble at school. Explosions of anger followed by maudlin depression: Bowie and nicking parental whiskey the only relief. I don’t remember thinking about MC.
Flash like a knife through my guts, a sudden image of that last time I saw him. Aged fifteen, spotting MC across the concourse at Victoria station. Ducked behind a news stand as he hurried to catch a train. I feel it now, through the mournful tenor duo: that pulsating wave of nauseous disgust for this man who could take me as a child for his ‘sexual partner’. Suddenly knowing that was not OK. Reach for the brandy – the only way to kill it.
Tenor duo slides into full textured chorale. Fucking hate fucking church music, always have. Smug, complacent shit. This music isn’t ‘flamboyant’, it’s pompous, wanked-up self-importance. Hit the laptop to turn off YouTube; want to scratch a stylus right across it. Truth is the MC story has never finished for me.
Sit down, head in hands. Face wet with tears I didn’t know I’d shed, then wrenching through me, the howling searing sob – My God, what have they done to me? How many times must I go through this?
Touch on my shoulder makes me scream. Look up to see Pidge as she folds her arms around me.
‘It’s OK, you can cry as much as you like.’
Rest my face on the cushion of her breasts and howl like a baby as she strokes my hair. Emerge in a ball of snot and she hands me a tissue. Wipe my face and grab my drink, smile weakly at her.
Her round moon face the picture of kindness in its halo of greying dark curls. She lights me a cigarette then strokes my hand as I smoke it slowly.
Sweet lovely Pidgeon Poo, straight as a die, my dearest friend. I turn back to face her. Held by the gentleness of those pale hazel eyes.
‘You know, after all the shouting…the noise to cover up the pain…confusion…all of it…’
I pause to stub out the cigarette.
‘I am ready to speak his name.’
Penny Frances (she/her) writes social realist fiction based on her own experience and the stories of people around her. She has been published in literary magazines and online, and her debut novel Riding the High Road was launched in 2023. Exposure was longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize 2023/24.
Visit Penny’s website / launch video