“Then this will be no trouble for you at all,” she replied. “Sidney will help you take off your clothing.”

Mrs. Vaisey had to call Sidney to attention, for his thoughts were far away, that is as far as prison. He felt he was about to inflict on this boy who appeared so trapped and helpless what the prisoners, the serious criminals, had so often inflicted on him so many times in the toilet and the shower and which he had wanted to tell Vance about, but Vance, who always appeared white-­robed and immaculate, as in a church choir, had forbidden him to speak.

“Sidney!” Mrs. Vaisey’s concerned voice, coming, it seemed, from miles away, brought him back to the present. “What is it, Sidney . . . ?”

She had come over to him and put her arm about him. “I can take over, you know,” she spoke more soothingly to him than she had to her son. “You look so distressed . . .”

“No whispering over there at my expense!” Gareth’s angry voice rose from the bed, where he lay completely disrobed by his own hands.

“Perhaps if you left the room, Mrs. Vaisey, it would be better this time . . .”

She gave Sidney a peculiar searching look. She turned her eyes slowly to Gareth, then gave one last glance at Sidney, and went out the door. But she returned almost immediately. “The warm water is here,” she pointed to a huge basin sitting on a table, “ready to be put in the bag. I’ll remain directly outside should anything more be needed.”

“I would just go downstairs if I were you,” Sidney advised her. He was entirely in possession of himself now.

“Very well, then, if you say so,” she agreed. She avoided looking at Gareth again.

Sidney waited until he heard her footsteps descending the stairs.

“Now then, Gareth, you won’t mind me, I know.” He put his hand on the sufferer’s forehead.

“Hands like a cake of ice,” Gareth remarked as he watched the new “caretaker” with dilated pupils.

Sidney rubbed his hands vigorously to warm them while never taking his eyes off his charge.

“Now let me, Garey, and don’t fight it.” As he said this his lips almost grazed those of the patient. “Turn over and we’ll soon be done.” Gareth flopped over petulantly.

As he inserted the tube in him, Gareth responded with angry beastlike cries and clenched and gnashed his teeth. A cold sweat had broken all over his back and he shivered almost like a person in a paroxysm.

“Tell me when you’ve taken all the warm water you can . . . Gareth, do you mind me? . . . Tell me when you can’t hold no more.”

Sidney could not resist touching his lips to the firm pink pair of buttocks, which caused his charge to thrash angrily and as a result the tube caused him pain. He howled.