I was not looking forward to this particular interview. I was unnerved at the prospect and not at all clear in my own mind as to how to handle the matter. Obviously it would have been singularly inappropriate for Elizabeth Horrocks to attempt to have dealt with the matter herself and, as Ian's housemaster, it naturally fell to me.
"You must say something to the boy, Edwin," she had urged me earlier after dinner. "It is really quite distracting the way it lollops about as he walks, and he seems altogether unaware of the effect he is creating."
I knew she was right. I had seen something similar to what she had described whilst watching a house match, and had even had a word with the games master about the advisability of compelling the wearing of athletic supports for the boys. He had dismissed the idea, however, saying they were only another item for boys to lose along with the rest of their kit.
A tentative knock at my study door arrested me in mid thought.
"Come!" I called absently, turning to see who was to be admitted at my order. There stood Ian, a nervous grin upon his open boyish face.
"You sent for me, Sir?" he enquired, clearly concerned that he might be in trouble.
"Yes, I did, Podmore. It's perfectly all right; nothing to get alarmed about. Come in, come in and sit down. I want to have a word with you, that's all."
Looking much relieved, the boy turned and closed the door behind him before moving further into the room towards the chair across my desk. I turned off the Channel Four news and moved to join him on the same side of the desk, upbraiding myself almost guiltily as I allowed my eyes to drop to the hem of his shorts whilst taking up my position.
"Congratulations upon your three tries for the house in Sunday's match, by the way," I began as an icebreaker. "It was an outstanding effort!"
He blushed appealingly and murmured polite and pleased thanks.
"I know the chaps used to call you Ipod'," I remarked jocularly, " and after your efforts on the field I assume, I hear they now call you Tripod'!" I chuckled.
Scarlet in the face now, he threw me an anxious and even wounded glance. Sensing there was something the matter, I leant forward.
"What is it, Podmore, old chap? Something wrong?" I asked in a concerned tone.
"N-n-no, Sir," he stammered, staring into his lap and nervously tugging on the hems of his trouser legs. My eyes took in his fine brawny rugger player's thighs lightly dusted with fine golden hairs.
"To be honest, I'm still not exactly sure what an Ipod is," I desperately attempted to lighten the atmosphere. "Something to do with computer downloads of that appalling cacophony you young fellows call music – I know that much . . ." I began tentatively feeling my way. ". . .And I took it for granted the nickname was turned into `Tripod' after those three splendid tries that won us the match?"
He refused to meet my eyes and his silence told me I was wrong in my assumption.
Inadvertently I had hit upon a sore topic, just as I had strived to find an easy opening to what I considered to be a far more ticklish subject I was about to broach with the boy.
"Well, enough of that anyway," I went on, nervously plucking at and brushing away invisible specks of lint from my grey flannelled thighs as I crossed my legs. "I wanted to have a quiet word with you on a rather personal matter, and I hope you will forgive me if what I have to say embarrasses you; it certainly isn't my intention. Please believe me when I say I am acting from the very best of motives in this matter."
I cleared my throat nervously. The lad was not giving me the slightest help in the matter. He just stared glumly into his lap. Poor fellow – he probably hadn't the least inkling of what I was on about.
"Uniform regulations are, at times, perhaps a little too strictly adhered to at this establishment," I began, leaning back and studying my ceiling, lightly tapping my finger tips together, my elbows resting on the padded leather arms of my chair. "After all, all our boys are not uniform in shape or size, and allowance should be made for these differences, don't you think?"
I suddenly became aware that perhaps Ian Podmore was with me after all – indeed, perhaps he was even ahead of me. Now it was my turn to blush a little foolishly.
"Whilst it is a longstanding tradition for all boys to spend their whole time here proudly wearing grey flannel shorts as a symbol of masculine hardiness, on the taller boys the uniform can accentuate a certain gangliness or legginess of the developing boy." I cleared my throat a trifle nervously. "Boxer shorts, whilst eminently sensible and comfortable for boys as a whole, are perhaps less than satisfactory when one is an early developer, and needs a little extra support and control."
The silence, which met my tentative remarks, was deafening and I stole a glance at Ian who remained impassive.
"I was talking to Mr Whittaker over tea after Sunday's match. I was saying I think some of you bigger chaps could do with jockstraps, don't you know? Preventing all sorts of embarrassing fallouts, you see?"
It was the young man's turn to clear his throat and squirm a bit in his chair. I glanced down at him, my eyes attracted even lower and then widening as I caught sight of a shiny plum sticking out of the left leg hole of his grey flannel shorts. I stared hypnotically mesmerised by it as it grew and slid further down his thigh.
"Likewise, perhaps . . . briefs . . . might offer the bigger lad greater – er – privacy," I ventured, fascinated by the fast engorging member with an apparent mind of its own and to whose growth the eighteen-year-old owner seemed strangely impervious. It began to rise from where it lay pressed along his thigh, and as it did so it caused the material of his shorts to pull back thereby causing more of its hard and rampant shaft to be exposed.
"I'm awf'lly sorry, Sir," he whispered, his pale blue eyes both hot and wet searched my face desperately. He looked absolutely mortified as he struggled hopelessly to force his tumescence back up the now too tight leg of his shorts.
I tore my eyes away just as a dewdrop of clear viscous liquid appeared on the crimson tip of the boy's appendage.
"It – er – can't be helped, my dear chap," I faltered. "These things happen in the best regulated – erm . . ." Words failed me as I stared openly in horrified fascination.
By now his fully erect member was on open display and as I gawped foolishly a testicle flopped out of the stretched leg hole of both shorts and boxers alike. Not one given to exaggeration, I have to confess that considering the boy had barely passed his eighteenth birthday he was sporting the largest erection I had ever seen – not that I had seen a lot, you understand. Without a word of a lie it cannot have been any less in length than ten inches, and a vivid, glossy crimson in colour, made all the more colourful in contrast to his pale blond pubic hair. With increasing discomfort and concern, I became alarmed to realise that the sight of such an open display of sexual excitement was having an effect upon my own reproductive system. I uncrossed my legs and changed my position somewhat in an attempt to conceal the fact from Ian Podmore – not that he was in the mood to look about him, I feel sure.
"Well, now things are out in the open, so to speak," I began again, feeling less inclined to wrap up what I had been about to say, "my feelings are that, in your case, we can relax the underwear regulations and permit the wearing of Y-front briefs under your grey school shorts as a means of preventing further embarrassment for you – and, indeed, Mrs Horrocks also."
Podmore's penis bucked two or three times and he grasped at it as his whole scrotum was exposed to my view.
"Oh sir, it was awful," he moaned, his eyes filled with tears. "I can't help it, honestly, sir! She made me go out to the front and read, and it just came over me, Sir, and everyone could see – including her. There was nothing I could do to prevent it, and as you can see, once it comes out of my shorts and stands right up, there's no getting it back until it goes down again."
"Yes, I see your dilemma," I murmured, staring in fascination at the boy's truly magnificent equipment, rather like a rabbit in headlights. Was it my imagination, or was it in fact steaming?
"That's why I'm called Tripod, sir. The lads say it's not a cock; it's a third leg!"
I watched in enthralment as a silver thread of liquid spider silk began to slowly descend from the tip of the boy's phallus, succumbing to the pull of the Law of Gravity. Glancing up at Podmore, I could see that he was silently cursing his own fecundity.
As I attempted to stealthily put myself in a more comfortable position, unobserved, only too aware of an embarrassing emission of my own to conceal, I wondered if the wearing of Y-fronts alone would be enough to solve this poor young man's dilemma?