Wolves by Simon Ings Page B

was nearly dark by the time we got going and still Dad was hunting for words, the right spell to lock down whatever he’d seen, or learnt, or been told. No lid he tried seemed to fit. ‘The camp’s got your Mum pretty messed up.’ The form of words he picked – ‘your mum’ in place of ‘Sara’ – was a measure of the trouble we were in. He was trying to establish something. He was trying to set this down. To be clear. ‘She’s upset.’
    They’d wanted his signature.
    ‘Signature for what?’
    He hadn’t signed.
    ‘For what? Dad?’
    ‘She’s upset.’
    ‘Dad.’
    He pulled the car to the kerb. We were nearly home; halfway through the housing estate. It was Dad’s usual short-cut, he knew the way. There was no need for us to stop. He rubbed his hand across his eyes, faking a headache, thinking that I could not see his tears.
    ‘Please Dad.’
    Dad undid his seatbelt and put his arms around me and held me. It was horrible. Unbearable. I was pinned by my belt. I couldn’t reach to undo it. I couldn’t hug him back. I was stuck there – his object. And here he was, holding me, shaking like an injured dog, faking everything, telling me everything was going to be all right, pretending (this was worst of all) that it was him who was comforting me.
    The town I grew up in was a friendly place. At least, it was friendly to us. Because of the hotel, we were known to people – a local business, a source of summer jobs. Women fussed over my father. Febrile with a late and hopeless heat, they imagined they could save him from his ‘impossible’ wife. While Mum remained in hospital under psychiatric observation, they steeped us in sympathy and relationship teas. We whiled away hours like that, separately and together, in strange sitting rooms, breathing stale desire.
    Some of those women tried to get to Dad through me. One in particular, distracted from her main purpose by what she called my ‘charm’, decided to pull up her top and get her tits out. They were very large but her nipples were tiny. Sucking one was like rolling a sugar cake decoration around in my mouth.
    She helped me with her hands and tongue. She was quite rough. She took my hands and placed them on the back of her head. I wound my fingers in her hair and dared to pull her onto me. She made a little moan and slid me right down her throat. I rocked against her. After a minute of this she gagged and pulled away. ‘There are condoms in that drawer when you’re ready.’
    I had never handled a condom before. I couldn’t make it unravel. Maybe it was inside out. I turned it round. That wasn’t right either.
    ‘Give it to me.’ The moment she leant over me I began to wilt. She wiggled me about and took me into her mouth again but it didn’t do any good.
    ‘Do you mind if I wank for a bit?’ she said, trying to turn me on.
    ‘No, I don’t mind.’
    She laughed. ‘You’re such a gentleman.’
    This is the sort of thing you say to a child.
    I moved around the bed, curious to see her put her fingers inside herself, but all she did was fiddle. It reminded me of Dad worrying at a grease mark on our immaculate bar top. I ran my feet along the insides of her thighs, and she seemed to like that. She took hold of my foot and rested it against her sex. She rubbed my toes against her, making them wet.
    At last she took pity on me. ‘Well,’ she said, gathering her clothes, ‘that was naughty.’
    I used her bathroom. Her medicine cabinet was full of products she had brought back from overseas trade fairs; pharmaceuticals with names unsuited to the domestic market. Polysilane Upsa, Neo-Angin. Smecta. Spassirex. The shower looked fancy, but it wasn’t up to much. I remember the whine of the pump, and a sound in the pipes like a child draining juice from a carton.
    The way home from her house led me beside the river, along the track I took to school. Its bark-chip surface had worn away, and the ground was soft after days of rain. I should have