We took off our shoes and socks and waded among the rushes surrounding the hidden, scalloped bay where the stream draining the ornamental pond near the house splashed down to the loch, a hundred metres up the shore from the old boat-house. We were allowed to take the boat out ourselves by then as long as we wore life-jackets and we thought we might do that, later; get in some fishing or just some pottering around.

We climbed the low hills northwest of the loch and lay in the long grass under the pines and the birch, looking out over the small glen to the forested hill on the far side where the old railway tunnel was. Beyond that, over another wooded ridge, unseen and heard only on occasion when the breeze veered from that direction, was the main road north. Further beyond that, the Grampians" southernmost summits rose green and golden-brown into the blue sky.

Later that evening we were all going into Pitlochry, to the theatre. I wasn't too impressed with this — I'd rather have seen a film — but Andy thought it was all right, so I did too.

Andy was fourteen, I'd just turned thirteen and was proud of my new status as a teenager (and, as usual, of the fact that for the next couple of months I was only a year younger than Andy). We lay in the grass looking up at the sky and the fluttering leaves on the silver birch trees, sucking on our reed stalks and talking about girls.

We were at different schools; Andy was a boarder at an all-boys school in Edinburgh and came back only at weekends. I was at the local high school. I'd asked my mum and dad if I could go to a boarding school — the one in Edinburgh Andy was at, for example — but they'd said I wouldn't like it and besides it would cost a lot of money. Plus, there wouldn't be any girls there, didn't that worry me? I was a bit embarrassed about that.

The comment about the cost confused me; I was used to thinking of us as being well-off. Dad ran a garage and petrol station on the main road through Strathspeld village and Mum had a wee gift and coffee shop; Dad had been worried after the Six-Day War when they'd introduced the fifty-miles-an-hour speed limit and even issued fuel-rationing books, but that hadn't lasted very long and, even though petrol cost more nowadays, people were still travelling and using cars. I knew our modern bungalow on the village outskirts overlooking the Carse wasn't as grand as Andy's mum and dad's house, which was practically a castle and stood in its own estate: ponds, streams, statues, lochs, rivers, hills, forests, even the old railway line passing through one corner of it; one big garden in effect and vast compared to our single acre laid to lawn and shrub. But I'd never thought of us as really having to worry about money that much; certainly I was used to getting more or less what I wanted and had come to think of this virtually as a right, the way only children are apt to if their parents are anything other than actively hostile to them.

It never occurred to me that other children weren't spoiled as a matter of course, the way I was, and it would be years — and my father would be dead — before I understood that the expense of sending me to a boarding school was just an excuse, and the simple, sentimental truth was that they knew they would have missed me.

"You have not."

"Bet you I have."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not."

"Who was it?"

"None of your business."

"Ah, you're making it up, you little tramp; you never did."

"It was Jean McDuhrie."

"What? You're kidding."

"We were in the old station. She'd seen her brother's and she wanted to see if they all looked like that and she asked me so I showed her mine, but it was only if she'd show me hers and she did as well."

"Dirty wee rascal. Did she let you touch it?"

"Touch it?" I said, surprised. "No!"

"Ah! Well, then!"

"What?"

"You're supposed to touch it."

"No, you're not, not if you just want to look."

"Of course you are."

"Rubbish!"

"Anyway, what did it look like; was there any hair on it?"

"Hair? Ugh. No."

"No? When was this?"

"Not long ago. Last summer maybe. Maybe before. Not that long. I'm not making it up, honest."

"Huh."

I was pleased we were talking about girls because I felt this was a subject where Andy's two extra years didn't really count; I was effectively the same age as him, and maybe I even knew more than he did because I mixed with girls every day and he only really knew his sister Clare. She was away shopping in Perth with her mother that day.

"Have you ever seen Clare's?"

"Don't be disgusting."

"What's disgusting? She's your sister!"

"Exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't know anything, do you?"

"Bet I know more than you do."

"Crap."

I sucked on my hollow reed for a while, staring up at the sky.

"Have you got hairs on yours, then?" I said.

"Yeah."

"You haven't!"

"Want to see?"

"Eh?"

"I'll show you it. It's pretty big too because we've been talking about women. That's what's supposed to happen."

"Oh, yeah; look at your trousers! I can see it! What a bulge!"

"Look…"

"Ah! Ugh! Wow!"

"That's called an Erection."

"Wow! God, mine never gets that big."

"Well, it's not supposed to. You're still young."

"Charming! I'm a teenager, do you mind?"

I watched Andy's cock, huge and golden and purple and sticking out of his fly like a gently curved plant, some sweet exotic fruit growing into the sunlight. I looked around, hoping there wasn't anybody nearby, watching. We were only visible from the top of the hill where the railway tunnel was, and usually nobody went there.

"You can touch it if you like."

"I don't know…"

"Some of the guys in the school touch each other's. It's not the same as being with a girl, of course, but people do it. Better than nothing."

Andy licked his fingers and started to stroke them up and down over the purple bulge of his cock. "This feels good. Do you do this yet?"

I shook my head, watching the saliva on that full, taut hood glisten in the sunlight. There was a thickness in my throat and a tight feeling in my stomach; I could feel my own cock throbbing.

"Come on; don't just lie there," Andy said matter-of-factly, leaving his cock alone and lying back in the grass, putting his arm behind his head and staring up at the sky. "Do something."

"Oh, God, all right," I said, tutting and sighing, but really my hand was shaking. I pulled up and down on his cock.

"Gently!"

"All right!"

"Use some spit."

"Good grief, I don't know…" I spat into my fingers and used them, then found his foreskin was loose enough to be rolled back and forth over the head, and did that for a while. Andy breathed hard and his free hand went to my head, stroking my hair.

"You could use your mouth," he said, voice shaky. "I mean, if you want."

"Hmm. Well, I don't know. What's wrong with — ah!"

"Oh, oh, oh…"

"Yuk. What a mess."

Andy took a deep breath and patted my head, chuckling. "Not bad," he told me. "For a beginner."

I wiped my hand on his trousers.

"Hey!"

I put my face up to his. "I've seen Clare's," I told him.

"What! You —!"

I jumped up and ran laughing down through the grass and the bushes, down into the glen. He jumped up too, then cursed and hopped about, struggling to get his fly shut before he could chase me.