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From: HMS Victor Victorian <victorvictorian@hushunomail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.prettyboy
Subject: Prologue
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:23:29 -0700
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Prologue
In Which We Meet Our Protagonist
Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love-Isaac-and
go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering
on a mountain I will show you." Genesis 22:2
For a seven year old boy, Nigel Macmillan could be astute beyond his
years about some things, yet unbelievably ignorant about many other
things, common sense things that most little boys his age had
straightened out by the time they were toddling about.
In this, his most serious deficit was his unwavering faith in the
misunderstanding of some kind. As a result, he was accepting and
trusting to a fault.
Nigel would have realised, if he'd studied religious philosophy, his
matter Protestants and Catholics and Jews and Muslims and pretty much
be chiseled and flogged into goodness. There was certainly no lack
of evidence to support that view. Television, radio, the newsreels
and the movies and the newspapers daily excreted a morass of human
depravity. Yet against this storm Nigel's simplistic philosophy
remained impervious. It all rolled off him like water off a duck's
back.
Nigel's great innocence was partly the fault of his parents, Roger and
Angela Macmillan. In that, they were typical parents. Grownups
generally agreed that innocence in children was a good quality.
Indeed. It defined the very notion of Childhood, and mothers and
fathers high and low went to great lengths to protect its sanctity.
So Nigel's parents might perhaps be forgiven for sheltering him. They
might even be pardoned for teaching him (in their own haphazard way)
Angela and Roger knew that given reality, Nigel might in the end be
disappointed. It was all very well, yet their boy seemed at times so
hadn't over done it a bit.
Simply put, Nigel was as innocent and unoffending as a cup of warm
cocoa.
This is not to say Nigel was ignorant. He knew many things other
little boys didn't know. He knew that cave men never hunted dinosaurs
and that toy soldiers were once made of lead and that little boys
be naked, but nobody thought so because Adam and Eve had broken one of
God's rules. He even knew about the one thing that, of all things,
grownups felt was the most destructive of a child's innocence.
Nigel knew about sex.
And he knew about it in a rather detailed way. He knew where this was
and what that was, and what goes in here and what one does with it
when one's got it in, and how it feels, and how a baby is made and
where a baby comes out, and all of that simply through his own
persistence. If Nigel had been a naked Mehinaku boy of Brazil,
grownups there wouldn't have been in the least bothered, for Mehinaku
children knew about such things. But Nigel wasn't a little Mehinaku
boy. He was little British boy, of old Scottish Catholic stock, and
grownups would have been horrified to know that such a fine, pale,
freckled son of Scotland had had his innocence so soon sullied.
In truth, knowing about the sex act hadn't dirtied Nigel's innocence
in the least. Sex could be scandalously funny, of course. After all,
he was a seven year old boy. But Nigel hadn't ever had a single
sordid, shameful or guilty thought about sex. He accepted it in the
same innocent way he did about having ice cream topped with
butterscotch, while watching the tellie with Mummy and Daddy after
supper.
But that, alas, would change.
HMSVV 2011
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