think zinc

By the time the number seventeen drops me off at Bakers and Macey, it is almost lunch. And I can’t see the point of going to the warehouse. So, instead, I hobble up to soft furnishings to show Sophie my ankle. She is suitably concerned.

“Oh no, you poor thing,” she says. “Is it very painful?”

I nod bravely between gritted teeth. “Not too bad.”

She strokes my arm.

“Oh dear. It’s so unfair isn’t it. You poor thing.”

I look appropriately helpless.

“Are you taking some time off work?”

She seems slightly disappointed.

“Oh, I’ll be OK,” I say nonchalantly.

“Well, you be careful,” she says. “You can’t go carrying boxes around in that condition.”

“Honestly, it’s OK. I’m meant to keep if flexed anyway. Stop the ligaments seizing up.” (I’d read that in Runner’s World). “I was going to go into town actually, have a quick stroll. I wondered if you fancied coming along.”

She smiles. “If you’re sure you’re going to be OK. I don’t want you collapsing on me outside Top Shop.”

“Don’t worry,” I grin. “It’s not that bad. Just sore really.”

“Oh poor old you. I feel so sad for you. Just what you didn’t need right now.”

I shrug. Sophie goes to fetch her posh coat.

We make an odd couple walking out through the main entrance of Bakers and Macey and into the pedestrianised plaza in the centre of town. Since I’ve had my hair cut it has gone all spiky and punky. I am in my old black jeans and a dark green sweatshirt, both engrained with dirt from buses and warehouses, pubs and bedsits. And there is Sophie, looking like she’s just been dry cleaned. It’s like Mary Poppins walking out with Bert the chimey sweep. People who see us together must think she’s some young duchess doing charity work with the homeless.

“Actually,” I say, as we stroll through late March sunshine, “I was going to ask your advice.”

“Oh?” says Sophie.

“Nothing serious. I just thought I’d try being a vegan for a bit and thought you might be able to give me some advice.”

“Wow,” says Sophie. “You could try the health shop in Weyhill Lane, I know they do some vegan things. I’m not sure what kind of range they have though. It’s quite a big step to take.”

“Well,” I lied. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. How long have you been veggie?”

“Oh, about eight years,” she says. “I don’t think I could be a vegan though. No cheese or eggs. That’s quite a commitment.”

She seems slightly sceptical about my ability to stick to such a strict diet, which is fair enough. She has seen me stuffing my face with cheeseburger. And I do tend to change my mind about things every other day. I don’t like to tell her my dietary extremism is only for a week as a bet with Paul. Instead, I play my trump card.

“Carl Lewis was a vegan,” I say.

“Who’s he?” she says. “A singer or something.” I gathere she is not a major sports fan.

“You know,” I say, “the runner.”

She looks blankly at me.

“You must have heard of him?”

She shakes her head.

“Come on,” I say, “the guy who won all the gold medals at the Olympics - the greatest all rounder since Jesse Owens.”

Sophie pulls a snooty face like sport is a form of pornography and I am insisting that she must know the name of some dodgy ‘adult’ actor. Hey come on, you must have heard of Big Danny Cox, the one with the fourteen inch donger. You know the star of ‘Back Passage II - Return to Bangkok’.

I decide to reverse my way out of that conversational cul-de-sac by feigning a quick twinge in my ankle. I suggest that we sit down for a moment on a nearby bench, which is miraculously free of dossers and bank clerks.

“Oh well,” I say. “Maybe I am getting a bit obsessed with this training malarkey.”

“I think so,” says Sophie.

We sit for a while and watch the people wander past with their sandwiches and shopping bags.

“Are you doing anything tonight?” I ask.

“Why?” says Sophie.

“Oh no reason,” I say. “I just wondered if you fancied going for a drink. Maybe we could get a bite to eat?”

“Well we could,” she says. “But I’m not sure where we’d go.”

I assume she’s giving me the brush off again.

“Oh,” I say despondently.

“Well, I don’t know where you’d get anything vegan.”

“Good point,” I say. “I hadn’t thought of that.” I really hadn’t!

“Well maybe just a drink then,” I say.

“OK,” she says. “Where did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she laughs.

“All right, hold on.”

Shit, I haven’t planned this far ahead. I can’t imagine Sophie being impressed by any of the shitholes I normally drink in. Not that they really are shitholes. They’re just cheap. Cheap beer, cheap jukebox, cheap pool tables and, I would say, cheap women, but I’m clearly not that shallow. OK, then, I am that shallow. I am a cheap and tacky young man, living in a cheap and tacky world. But normally it doesn’t matter, because normally I’m not offering to take Sophie out. Oh, Christ.

“We better be getting back,” says Sophie.

“Hold on,” I says. “I’ve just thought of somewhere.”

Come on, Newton. Think, now think. There must be somewhere you can take her. Ah ha. The French place up by the University. A kind of bistro that all the Yahs go to. Yes, yes, yes. Smart but trendy, posh but casual. Perfect. No idea what the place is called. Cafe de something. A restaurant really. But there are tables at the front where you can sit and have a drink. Perfect.

“Do you know that French place up on Salisbury Green.”

“Oh yes,” says Sophie, “Cafe Marseilles. It’s nice in there.”

We get up and start to walk/hobble back to the shop.

“We could meet in there at about eight.”

“Why don’t I pick you up?” she says.

“Right. What about drinking? You know, driving and all that”

“It’s OK,” she says. “I’ll just have a glass.”

“OK.”

We walk without talking for a couple of minutes until we reach the entrance of the shop.

“Well if I don’t see you before, I’ll see you at my place at about eight then? It’s number forty eight.”

“OK,” says Sophie, and starts to head off. She suddenly stops and turns to look at me. My heart leaps into my throat.

“Sunflower seeds,” she smiles.

“What?”

“They’re full of zinc. Very good for you.”

“Oh right yea,” I say. “I’ll get some. Thanks.”

I give her a small wave, and hobble off to share my latest lateness excuse with Colin.

Café Marseille

Sophie picks me up at ten past eight. She looks sleek in a beige, almost flesh-tone, summer dress and a slightly darker cardigan that fits her like a sealskin. I’m glad I’ve invested in a new top from the third floor. The top isn’t anything spectacular, just one of those two-tone indie jobs - a bit like a sixties West Ham shirt, except the body’s dark blue instead of claret. Still, it’s fresh from the packet, rather than the laundry basket, and goes quite well with Sophie’s cardie.

There is plenty of room in Café Marseille. We sit on a small sofa near the window beneath an Art Deco poster from the Paris Underground (the Metro that is rather than a group of alternative artists). I nurse my second bottle of Kronenbourg and Sophie sips a medium white wine. I reckon she drinks at approximately one-tenth of the speed that I do, but despite my guzzling we are getting on all right, just chilling and chatting like we do in the canteen at work, enjoying the aroma of garlic mushrooms that wafts out from the kitchen door, where the waiters stand drinking and occasionally taking a lazy stroll among half-a-dozen customers - everyone savouring the evening’s peace.

It’s nice sitting side by side on the sofa, rather than facing each other. It is romantic, but not cliched. There is no feeding each other food across a candlelit dinner table. No risk of setting cuffs or hair alight. No nervously playing footsie, or finding excuses to touch each other’s hands, fingers reaching together for salt pots and salad bowls. No pressure. It’s just nice.

I would be happy to sit here on this sofa for a couple of months, just being with Sophie, perhaps occasionally getting up for another bottle of beer or a slice of garlic bread. But, of course, I am Newton ‘emotional crisis’ Driftwood. And nothing can ever be that simple.

We have been in the Café for the best part of an hour when Samantha Hughes comes in (she of the pink wallpaper, white thong and a none-too-distant encounter with my tongue). She doesn’t spot me straight away. She is with another couple of girls I don’t know, and they are all facing the bar. But I know, any moment, she is going to look round, and my heart sinks with a judder into the pit of my stomach. My body stiffens (although not in the way it did last time I saw her). This is a more generalised paralysis of the head to toe variety. It’s not long before Sophie senses something is up.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Oh, yea...yea.” I mumble.

I pray for the sofa to swallow me up, like some scene from a surrealist French film, Le Chaise Lounge Faim. But it evidently isn’t hungry.

I watch Samantha pull a pack of cigarettes from her bag. Then she tries her lighter. Flick, flick, flick. It doesn’t work. I know she is going to look around to see if there is anyone she can cadge a light off. I brace myself. Samantha turns. She sees me. She sees Sophie. She looks at me. She smiles scathingly and struts over poking out her chest, and waving her unlit fag about, like she wants to poke it in my eye.

“Hello Newton, how lovely to see you?” she says.

I stand up, and she kisses me exuberantly on both cheeks, and beams down at Sophie.

“Well, well. This is a pleasant surprise.”

I consider just running off. But I’ve been lolling on the low sofa too long, and my ankle has stiffened right up. I smile with nervous nonchalance.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” continues Samantha. “Not really your normal hunting ground is it?”

“Look, Sam...”

“No,” she shakes her head, and held her hand up, as if stopping traffic. “I don’t want to hear it. All you had to do is call. One phone call. Is that too hard for you? I wouldn’t have minded, if you’d told me you never wanted to see me again. But just to go like that. It’s so rude”

“I didn’t meant to...”

“No, you never mean anything do you Newton?”

She stared pityingly down at Sophie. “You just be careful.”

“I’m sorry my dad died. I...”

Samantha was unmoved.

“Well it obviously hasn’t cramped your style too much.” She glares down at Sophie, who gets to her feet, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She turns her face away and raises both hands like a film star fending off the paparazzi. “I’m going to have to go…”

“No,” I snap sharply. “You stay there.” I don’t mean to sound so harsh. I am just desperate for her not to leave.

Sophie looks really hurt.

“Oh, you have such a way with the ladies,” says Samantha. “Make us all feel so special don’t you. Melanie and Stephanie and me and, sorry I didn’t catch your name?”

Sophie leaves. I half-heartedly make a grab at her arm, but she pulls away. I hold my hands up half in apology, half in desperation. There is nothing I can say.

“Look,” I turn to Samantha. “It’s not like you think. Something always seems to happen. I don’t plan for things to be like this. Look, we can meet up some time and at least I can try and explain.”

Samantha laughs drily and shakes her head.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she says. “In fact it won’t be too soon if I never see you again. You selfish bastard.”

She whacks me with her hand bag and flounces off back to the bar, where her two friends applaud and then glare at me like they’d like to tear out my heart.

The waiters are all looking over at me. One of them gives me a look that is a mixture of incredulity and commiseration. I thrust a tenner at a passing waiter to pay for the drinks. Then not wanting to linger, I wander out down the street. I am so busy staring at the pavement, kicking through litter, I hardly noticed Sophie still sat in her Nova, a short way along the road, her face streaked with tears.

I knock on the window. She flinches slightly but continues to stare ahead. I gently open the passenger door and crouch down on the pavement.

“Can I just explain? Please, then I’ll go...”

Sophie shrugs. She still doesn’t look at me. She just sits there like a burst cushion.

I get into the car beside her, my feet half hanging out of the door.

“Oh, just shut the door,” she snaps.

I oblige.

“I’m really sorry about that,” I say. “She’s a girl I knew at college. We went out once - before I even started working at Bakers and Macey,” I lie. “It didn’t end very well, as you can probably tell, and... I don’t know... I really like you.”

I feel ashamed at the lameness of my explanation. I am like a seven-year-old making excuses to a teacher, desperate to avoid being banned from the school trip to the zoo.

“I really thought you were different,” says Sophie.

I snort.

“Oh, I’m different all right. That’s the whole fucking problem.”

“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself all the time.”

I am about to protest that maybe I have every right to feel down. But that’s bollocks.

Down is watching your family slowly starve to death in some African desert, after you’ve walked a thousand miles in search of food and peace. Down is working in some factory twenty hours a day for half-a-bowl of rice. Down is having to give thirty blow jobs a day to pay back the men who smuggled you across the North Sea to escape a land where you sons and husband were rounded up and shot, and you were routinely raped because your parents belonged to an ethnic group that happened not be in power. Down is an iron in the face, an iron on the ankles. Down is not a twisted ankle, an ignorance of how to handle relationships and the death of a dad you never fucking talked to anyway.

“I’m sorry. You’re right,” I say quietly.

Sophie turns to look at me.

“Why did you tell her about your dad?”

“How do you mean?” I shift uneasily on the passenger seat.

“Well you said you hadn’t been going out with her for months. But your dad died about two weeks ago. So why were you going to call her?”

Fuck me, I thought, that’s all I need. Miss bloody Marple .

“Oh, well I met her in a pub a few weeks ago. I said I’d give her a call. But, to be honest, then I met you.”

Sophie looks uncertain.

“How do you mean, you met me?”

“Well you know.”

“No, I don’t know? You never tell me how you feel. You just...”

I reach over to touch her hand. She pulls it roughly away.

“Look, I was only trying to show that...” My voice faltered. You can never win, can you?

Sophie turns the key in the ignition and starts to drive.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m taking you home.”

“Look you don’t have to give me a lift. I can walk. Well, actually I can’t walk. But you know what I mean.”

Sophie continues to drive. She stops the Nova outside my house and leaves the engine running, still looking resolutely ahead, eyes blurred with tears.

“Great evening,” I say.

Sophie says nothing.

“I’m sorry I had to drag you through all this shit.” Silence.

“OK,” I say. “Whatever...Look, I would ask you to come in, just so that I can explain everything properly. But I guess that isn’t really on.”

Sophie turns to me look at me properly for the first time.

“Don’t make your life any more complicated than it already is,” she says.

“Look, it’s not complicated. It’s simple. I really, really like you. I think you’re lovely...From the first moment I saw you, I...I don’t know...I know you probably don’t even fancy me...but I might as well say, I think I probably love you. So, there. Now you know. You can go. I’m sorry about tonight. But just so you know, I was actually happy for a few moments then, sat there with you. I probably didn’t show it. But I was really, really happy. Still, it doesn’t matter now does it.”

I get out of the car, but I don’t close the door. Sophie puts her hand to her face for a moment. Then she turns off the engine and pulls the keys from the ignition.

I apologise for the state of the house as Sophie follows me up the stairs.

“I wasn’t expecting guests,” I say.

We sit on the bed, about a metre apart.

“How long have you been here?” asks Sophie.

“About two or three months,” I say. “Since I got chucked out of college. It’s OK for now.”

“Couldn’t you move back with your mum for a while?”

I shake my head and laugh ruefully, as if she’d suggested I should go and live on Mars.

“I was only wondering,” says Sophie.

“Oh, we just don’t get on,” I say. “It’s OK in small doses, but it wouldn’t work out.”

We slowly edge together on the bed. Mainly because the mattress is soggy and dips down in the middle. Still, you can’t fight gravity. I put my arm around Sophie’s shoulder and give her a hug. Her shoulders are still stiff, but she doesn’t pull away. I slowly ease myself back onto the bed and she stiffly comes with me like a reclining car seat. After a couple of minutes I started to stroke her arm.

“Don’t,” she says.

We lie there for ages, like children not daring to move, hiding from carpet crocodiles and cupboards of grizzly bears. After half an hour my arm feels totally numb.

“Sophie,” I says. There is no answer. “Sophie,” I gently prod her.

I panic. I think she’s died. I actually lower my ear to her mouth to listen for her breathing. She snores. I smile. I gently swivel her legs round and fold the duvet over her like I’m making a giant fajita. Then I go downstairs for a glass of water.

Paul is watching TV with his door half open. He looks up as I sidle past and waves his spliff at me.

“Want a quick puff?” he asks.

“I’ve got company,” I say.

Paul grins. “Lucky bastard.”

“Yea, something like that.”

Back upstairs, Sophie looks likes she is staying for the duration, so I strip into my boxers and T-shirt and slip under the duvet beside her. I can’t sleep then, but eventually I drift off and when I wake up it’s about four or five. Sophie is lying with her back to me, and I realise she is awake as well.

She reaches back and starts to stroke the small of my back, her fingers delicately tracing patterns over my spine. I gently run my thumb across the soft skin on the underside of her forearm. Her hand reaches down to feel my bum, massaging my cheeks through my boxer shorts. Hardly able to breathe, I moved my hand slowly up to feel the shape of her breast through the beige dress. Shivers run up my arm and my heart quickens. She pushes her bum back into my groin, grinding it gently against my stiff cock. I can barely breath.

I turn Sophie gently in my arms to kiss her. She holds her head back, arching her neck like a dying gazelle as my tongue enters her mouth. I slip my hand down the front of her dress and beneath the edge of her bra, feeling her nipples stiffen beneath the palm of my hand. With my free hand I reach down to feel her arse through her knickers. They are silky and her bum feels just how I’ve imagined all those nights, warm and smooth and firm. I massage her more firmly, my fingers playing over the crevice between her cheeks. Her tongue hungrily explores my mouth.

We manoeuvre round so that I am lying flat on my back, the end of my cock peeking out through my boxers. She takes a little look down at it, then lifts the hem of her dress, spreads her thighs and eases herself down onto me, the hot dampness of her pussy rubbing through her knickers against my swollen tip. I look up. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are narrowed, as her hips move back and forth like she is tentatively cantering on some recently broken-in colt. I grip her bum more firmly and then move my hands slowly up the back of her dress, massaging her shoulder blades in rhythm with her gyrations.

As she rubs her slit up and down along the length of my hard cock, I lift her dress up over her head, slip her bra straps gently from her shoulders then bury my face in her breasts. I kiss them all over, then take the aureola inside my mouth and suck at her engorged nipples. We are both dripping with sweat and moaning like two asthmatics up a mountain.

She moves forward onto her knees and I reach between her thighs, slipping my hand down her knickers and across the soft fuzz of her pubic mound. I slide two fingers between her swollen labia, spreading them apart, and gently probe her wet pussy.

Pulling her breasts away from my mouth she sits back on my fingers, and starts to thrust up on down on them, reaching down to pull my cock right out of my boxers. She eases the foreskin right down and runs her fingers over the velvet head, shivering as she traces the shape of my violently swollen glans, then she grips the stiff shaft and starts to rub it up and down, as I finger-fuck her harder and harder.

Fearing that I might explode like a faulty hand grenade, I hurriedly slip my fingers from her and reach round to grip one of her bum cheeks in each hand. I drag her onto my face, pull her wet knickers to one side and push my tongue deep inside her. Sophie opens her thighs even wider and thrusts the base of her mound into my face. I lap at her clit more quickly and reach up to squeeze her nipples. She begins to thrust so fiercely, it feels like her pelvis is going to crash through my jaw. My tongue feels like it is being torn from the base of my mouth, but I kept on slurping away, spreading her juices all over my chin, as she reaches back to tug faster at my cock.

The excitement wells up inside like a runaway helter skelter, and we buck and thrust faster and faster, then just as we’re peaking she lifts away from me and, spreading her thighs over my face, she bends over to suck me off. As she slurps on the end of my dick I gaze up at her swollen wet pussy. I may be biased, but it is the prettiest one I’ve ever seen - no flapping ham or dried apricots - it is delicate, neat and well groomed. The outer labia are narrow and tight, like the pursed mouth of a women applying lipstick. The inner lips, are small fleshy discs, like some fresh mollusc pouting from a polished pink shell.

I reach up and spread the wet lips open - swooning at her intoxicating perfume. I caress her with a single finger, as if delicately tracing the rim of some priceless vase, then start to gently rub her clit as she continues to suck me off.

I feel the come start to boil in my balls, but as I’m about to explode into her throat, Sophie, sensing my excitement, releases my cock from her mouth and tightly grips the end of it as if stopping a leaking hose. The veins stand out on my shaft like a weight lifters neck and the swollen purple head throbs wildly. I think it’s too late, but Sophie has ‘taken the pan from the stove’ just in time, and I subside into her arms, with my juices still safely simmering.

I am slightly surprised when she starts to kiss me deeply. I taste the mackerel odour of my cock on her breath, but I don’t care. I have never experienced anything like this before. Maybe it is all that stored up testosterone unleashing vast surges of endorphines like hot syrup through my veins. Maybe it is just something about Sophie. Either way, she is taking me higher than I have ever been before.

Suddenly she pulls away from me.

“Have you seen my bag?” she whispers.

“Uhmm, I think it’s on the floor there.”

So this is it. She’s had enough. Maybe she thinks I’ve come. I feel a sudden wave of disappointment crash down on me. My cock starts to wilt.

Sophie returns, her naked silhouette looming through the semi-darkness, like the dancer at the beginning of ‘Tales of the Unexpected’. She slips back into the bed, clutching a condom. She reaches down between my legs and starts to stroke my cock. But nothing happens. Sophie tears open the packet and pulls out the condom. There is some fumbling as she tries to work out which way up the teat goes, then again she tries to roll it down my cock. But, it has shrunk to the size and consistency of a sea anemone at low tide.

“Are you OK?” she asks.

“Yea, yea” I lie.

She starts to gently roll my foreskin back and forth, but there is no reaction.

“This is strange,” she says.

“Look there’s nothing wrong with me,” I say.

“I didn’t mean...” she says. She caresses my shoulder in a comforting way.

But I roll away from her. I can’t believe it.

“Maybe you don’t really want this,” she says.

“Look,...” I begin to say.

“Really, it doesn’t matter,” she says. “It’s better this way. We’ve never been together like this before. I understand. There’s probably some emotion missing.”

“Not for me...”

“Well, there’s something bothering you?”

I shrug belligerently.

“What is it?”

I roll out of bed.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“To the bathroom,” I hiss.

I stumble downstairs and pour myself a glass of water. Then I take my cock in my fist, stand naked in the darkness of the kitchen and try to rub it back into life, but still nothing is happening. It’s like my brain has turned to concrete and I’ve got a scrotum full of crushed ice. I tease my nipples erect and start to pull at them like some Swedish porno kitten. There is a slight surge of blood to my cock, but still nothing you could hang a hat on. I catch sight of my reflection in the kitchen window and I feel like putting my head through the glass. But I trudge wearily upstairs.

Sophie is lying with her back to me in the foetal position. I slip into the bed beside her and reach between her thighs. She pushes my hand away.

“Sleep,” she says.

I lie with my flaccid cock against the cheeks of her arse, the warmth of her pussy, both comforting and cruel.

I feel like I am about to explode. You know when you can’t remember a name, and it’s just on the tip of you tongue, but the harder you think, the more elusive it becomes, like there’s some blockage in your head. Well that’s what my search for stiffness feels like. Only a million times more frustrating. I just lie there staring at the wall, and start to feel really, really down.

I being to list in my head all the crap things that have happened to me since age zero. Every fuck-up, every failure, every tiny embarrassment and romantic rejection. As you might imagine, it takes some time. But when I’ve reached age fourteen (round about fuck-up four thousand, five hundred and thirty seven) suddenly I start to think of a couple of girls I was at school with, who me and Michael used to hang out with. I suddenly remember how we used to play this game where we would dare each other to do things. The game started off with us tossing a coin to see who had to kiss who, and finished up with them pulling their knickers down behind the metalwork block and showing us their open cunts. Suddenly my cock is so long and stiff you could fly several flags from it.

I’m not sure if Sophie is awake. And I have this creepy urge to just stick it inside her. But I’m not like that. So I reach round and start to kiss her gently on the mouth.

“Oh Newton,” she grumbles, sleepily.

But then she suddenly becomes aware of the swollen rod lying between her cheeks. She reaches back to feel it.

“My God, it’s as thick as my wrist,” she tuts. I feel like the King of the Universe. I slip my hand between the lips of her pussy, and start to spread her juices over her clit from behind. She moans and pushes her bum back against me, opening her thighs as I guide my swollen head into her pouting pussy. I ease myself gently in and out of her entrance a few times, slowly opening her inch by inch and then push my stiff shaft all the way up, feeling her tighten around me. She emits a small shriek of pleasure. And we start to move together slowly and gently.

The feeling is like nothing I have experienced before. It’s like my body and brain are turning inside out, as if we have fused, become Siamese lovers, our skins, our flesh, our organs melded together into one slowly writhing organism, some totally new creature that has never existed before. We are dolphins beneath the ocean, seabirds soaring on hot air, and then we start to thrust faster and faster, just fucking and fucking, the sheets sodden with my sweat and her juices, until we finally come together, our bodies slowly flooding with molten gold, and we lie fused like a statue cast from a single mould.

three weeks away

When I was about ten, my mum shipped me off to stay with my Auntie Pat for three weeks during the school summer holidays. I didn’t really want to go. But, my mum said she couldn’t manage all three of us, and Ben had been the year before, so now it was my turn.

Auntie Pat lived in a small seaside village called Whitstone Cove, about 15 miles south of Westing. She didn’t have children of her own, so she had no idea how to treat me. She either spoke to me like I was five or like I was thirty-five. However, she did live right on the edge of the beach and was quite happy to let me wander off for a couple of hours by myself each afternoon.

“Don’t talk to strange men,” she said. “Don’t go too far into the sea and stay away from the dunes.”

With a nod of reassurance, I would trot off in my little blue Adidas shorts that doubled as swimming trunks, clutching fifty pence for a drink or an ice cream.

The first couple of days I was happy enough to look in rockpools, sit on the sand and run into the sea. But when the novelty had worn off, I just felt terribly alone. Everywhere I looked there were families sheltering together behind windbreaks, sharing picnics. I hovered wistfully around groups of older boys playing football and cricket on the beach. I positioned myself where I knew the ball would roll in my direction, and waited eagerly for every opportunity to kick or throw the ball expertly back to them. But they never invited me to join in their game.

The only person who ever talked to me was the boy who helped out in the ice cream van. He was about fifteen or sixteen I guess, and he was always smiling and laughing with all his customers. The mums and kids all loved him, and there was often quite a queue at the van in the early afternoon. I would always wait until later when it was quieter, so that I could go and chat with him.

“All right there trouble,” he’d say with a wink. “What you up to today?”

I’d shrug sadly. “Just on the beach.”

“You playing football with your mates today?” I’d nod, even though I knew he could see me just sitting there watching the game. “Oh well, you need some extra energy then,” he’d say and he’d give me a double sized cornet with three flakes in it.

I’d offer him my fifty pence and he’d give me forty pence in change.

“I think you’ve given me too much,” I’d say.

“No that’s right,” he’d say, and he’d wink again and grin.

“Thanks,” I’d say.

“See you later then trouble. Be good...and if you can’t be good, be careful.”

My chat with the ice cream boy would cheer me up for a couple of minutes. And I would feel quite happy as I trotted over to the cafe to spend part of my change on a can of Fanta. But when the drink and the ice cream were finished, I’d sit miserably by myself, throwing pebbles into the sand, until at three o’clock I would drag myself back to my Auntie Pat’s bungalow, where each afternoon she would ask:

“Did you have a nice time on the beach?”

“Yea,” I’d mutter.

“Did you have any change?”

“Naa,” I’d lie, having amassed a sizeable stash of ten and five pence pieces, which I planned to put towards a skateboard.

For the rest of the afternoon, I’d loll around her bungalow, which contained nothing of any interest to children. I was bored out of my skull. My main preoccupation was trying not to irritate her dog, Trixy, a miniature long haired terrier who would jump four feet in the air to try and bite my face, and chewed all the rubber from my Green Flash pumps.

To ease my boredom, Auntie Pat would give me paper to draw on. The paper was bumpy and headed with the logo and address of the Westingshire Woodlands Trust, and the pencils were all hard and blunt. So, I didn’t do any drawing. Instead I invented my own version of the FA/World Cup in which Stoke City played Uruguay and Bristol Rovers beat Germany 11-3 away.

I meticulously wrote down the scores for each qualifying group, and occasionally I’d screw a sheet of paper into a ball to act out the games using the legs of furniture for goalposts, until Tricky or my Auntie Pat intervened. When all the games were complete I would tally up the points and goal difference in each table, working out who had qualified for the knock-out stages (revising scores with the aid of a rubber, when favoured teams failed to get through). That was the joy of the imaginary football cup - I had total control over what happened.

On the Tuesday afternoon of the last week, when I went for my ice cream an older man was serving. He gave me a miserable little cornet and charged me the full fifty pence. As I traipsed across the beach to where the boys were playing football I felt a forearm grab me around the neck. I shrieked and hurled my ice cream up into the air. Bits of it landed on people’s bags and backs. They scowled and cursed. The arm let go and I turned round. It was the ice cream boy. He laughed.

“All right trouble?”

“My ice cream.”

“I’ll get you another. You stay right there, OK.”

He strode back to the van and returned with his largest cornet yet, four flakes poking out like the legs of an upturned chocolate chair buried in an avalanche of ice cream.

“There you go trouble,” he said, handing it to me.

We watched the other kids playing football.

“You any good at that?” he asked.

“I’m in my school team,” I said.

“Yea? Which position do you play?” He sounded genuinely interested.

“Midfield.”

“You from the village?”

“No, Westing.”

“Down with the folks is it?”

“No staying with my Aunt. She lives over there.” I waved vaguely towards the houses that lined the beach.

“How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“I’m Sean,” he said, and offered me his hand in a very grown up way.

“Newton,” I said, “like the scientist,” and I shook his hand. His fingers were big, but his grip was gentle. He looked me up and down in my shorts, and scrawny tanned torso, which had earned me the nickname “Pol Pot” at school, on the basis that I resembled a Cambodian refugee.

“Have you got a girlfriend?”

“Yea.” I said.

“What’s her name then?”

I paused as I thought of the best girl in our school. Her name was Lucy. She had curly brown hair, wore eyeshadow and wrote stories about ponies. Her dad was a second-hand car dealer, and each day he would pick her up in a different motor. Lucy wasn’t interested in any of the boys at our school, let alone me. Her boyfriend was in the second year at Arthur Harrington. He played football for Westingshire Schoolboys and had already done trials for Southampton and Brighton.

“Lucy,” I told him.

“Is she good looking?”

I nodded. I could appreciate she was somehow desirable, without really knowing why.

“Sexy?” asked Sean.

I blushed and nodded again. Actually, I had no notion of what sexy was. At that age, my penis was still like a maggot. I’d never even had an erection.

“You done it with her?” asked Sean.

I nodded.

Sean started to walk back across the sand towards the dunes. I followed.

“You a fast runner?” he asked.

“Yea.” I said.

“Come on then.”

He started to hurtle up the dunes. I followed, struggling to keep up, skinny legs slipping through the soft shifting sand until I reached the top of the dunes. I followed Sean away from the beach, down the sandy paths where the marram grass gave way to bracken and scrubby trees, deeper and deeper into the dunes. I wasn’t supposed to go there. But I was with Sean. I felt safe.

I caught him up by a small pond. He pointed to a fallen tree stump.

“There’s an adder lives in there.”

I peered into the stump.

“Can you see it?”

“No.”

“Look closer, under that bit here.”

I knelt down and got closer to the stump. Suddenly I felt something on my knees. I looked down and saw something beige and brown moving across my thighs. I recoiled violently with a shriek. But it was only Sean flicking a decayed bracken stalk at me.

I got up and started to run off, feigning fright. Sean laughed and chased me, bringing me down with a rugby tackle a short distance away. We lay in the sand panting and laughing. He left his arm around me. I thought he was being friendly.

“Show me how you kiss your girlfriend then.” I pursed my lips vaguely. “No show me properly.” He pushed his face close to mine. I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Ahh,” he said. “You ain’t even got a girlfriend have you? I bet there ain’t even a girl called Lucy at your school.”

“There is.”

“Show us how you kiss her then.”

I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I was ten. I guessed it was OK if Sean said so. I pursed my lips again.

“You don’t know how to do you?” he said. “Here I’ll show you.”

I looked uncertain.

“Hey come here,” he said, like he was doing me a huge favour. He put his arm round my shoulder and pushed his tongue into my mouth. It felt like someone shoving an eraser between my lips. I couldn’t breathe and started to struggle. He laughed, as I pulled away.

“Not bad,” he said, “for a beginner.”

He left his arm around me, and I didn’t move away. It felt good to feel the warmth of another body against mine. Don’t get me wrong, it was not a feeling of excitement. I was still sexually immature at the time, and I don’t find men attractive. In fact, I’ve never really liked men at all, always much preferring the company of women. But no one had hugged me like that for years. Not my mum. Certainly not my dad. And I enjoyed the intimacy of that contact, too young to understand what was really going on.

“I’ve got to go home,” I said. “My Aunt will be coming for me now. I’m supposed to stay on the beach.”

Sean nodded and released me.

“See you tomorrow matey.” I smiled and ran back towards the cafe.

When I arrived at Auntie Shiela’s bungalow she was slightly worried.

“Didn’t you remember to wear your watch?” she asked.

“Sorry I forgot the time. I was with some other boys on the beach,” I lied. “Playing football.”

“Oh well,” she said. “It’s good you’re finally making friends.” I could see she had me down as a bit of a loner, even by her standards. “You do seem a bit happier today.”

I nodded. I was happy. I actually looked forward to seeing Sean the next day. I felt a warm glow as he led me to the dunes and held me again. There was no kissing this time, just a lot of caressing and talk about the kind of things that you could do with girls. I felt truly privileged and male, like an apprentice garage mechanic being initiated into the wonders of a heterosexual wonderland, relishing the warmth of his brotherly touch. Well, I wasn’t to know, was I.

The next day. Sean said he had something to show me. He took me to a beach hut...

The huts are still at Whitstone Cove - more battered and weathered, but still there. I know, because when Sunday dawns clear and bright, I suddenly decide to cycle the fifteen miles down there. As I stand by the beach, straddling grandad’s racer, the huts seem much smaller than I remember. In fact, the whole place seems much smaller. The beach, which I’d always pictured as miles of golden sand, is actually a short stretch of pebbles. Over the last sixteen years, the dunes have been decimated by bad storms, high tides and diggers - tons of sand ruthlessly scooped up into trucks and driven to more popular resorts on the other side of the bay, in the days before environmental awareness spread to the wilds of Westingshire.

Like the dunes, the village has dwindled in the last decade. The sea wall has partly collapsed, and the cafe, where I used to buy my Fanta, is derelict. The beach huts are all that really remains - a cruel reminder of that summer.

I can’t make out which hut was the one that Sean led me to. But I can vividly recall every last detail of it’s interior. The bleached red striped bucket. The old fishing rods. The tattered blankets and frayed deck chairs.

“Does your girlfriend Sophie ever touch you there,” Sean asked. He put his hand down the front of my shorts and grabbed my maggot like penis. It felt strange. But Sean had this commanding manner, a bit like a teacher or a doctor. It was comforting in a way, as if I was receiving some special treatment.

“Oh yea,” I lied.

“Show me what she does,”

He pulled down his trunks and showed me his own penis. It was like a model I’d seen on a visit to the Natural History Museum, thick and hairy like a grown man’s.

“Go on,” he said.

I felt like I had to demonstrate my manhood. Show how good I was with the girls. Bizarre, I know. But you have to remember I was ten and innocent in the extreme. I gripped his dick like it was the handlebar of a bike. It felt like an uncooked sausage. But then it started to grow harder. Startled I let go. I was confused.

“Does Lucy kiss you there?” he asked.

Twenty minutes later I left the hut, feeling guilty and sick. But, even after what he’d just made me do, I still craved the warmth of his arm around my shoulder. The feeling of being held by another human being - that special attention.

“You’re early,” said my Aunt, when I got back to her bungalow. She sniffed. “Have you been eating mussels?”

“No,” I said.

“Are you all right? You don’t look at all well. Are you sure you don’t have heat stroke?”

“I’m OK.” I said and pulled stroppily away from her.

“Newton. What’s got into you?” she said. I looked down at my feet.

“Oh well. At least you’ll be out of the sun tomorrow. I’ve got a little surprise for you. As it’s your last day.”

I said nothing.

“Well don’t you want to know what it is?”

“One of the boys asked if I could go to his house tomorrow.”

Sean had invited me round. Promised to show me how you did it with a girl. The real thing. I don’t know quite how I imagined he would manage this. Although, in hindsight, I realise (with a shudder of horror) only too clearly what he had planned. My Aunt bit her lip.

“I’m sorry Newton, I’ve arranged for us to go to the Butterfly Farm at Padstock. And then as a special treat I thought we could go on the Padstock Light Railway. You might even get to help drive the engine.”

“Why do you always speak to me like I’m a little kid,” I screamed. “I’m ten years old.” I burst into tears

“Newton,” she said. “What has got into you?”

I sobbed, as she held me in her arms and blamed the sun.

I’m so glad now she took me to see the butterflies. So glad it was my last day and I never went to the beach again.

I suppose it’s no big deal really. What happened to me is trivial compared to what happens to some kids. In the slums of Asia six-year-olds get sold to brothels for a few dollars. They’re locked away and forced to give yum-yum and boom-boom, to busloads of British and Japanese tourists. And no one does fuck all about it. So, I guess I shouldn’t get my own sorry tale out of proportion. But...

As I sit here astride the bike, a strapping twenty-five-year-old watching the milky grey sea lap ever closer, I still felt the shame and anger inside me like a cold sore on my soul. I have this horrible feeling that Sean will suddenly emerge from behind the huts, with that same beguiling smile.

I hope he is dead, or at least locked up somewhere. More likely, he is the assistant manager of some children’s home, a school caretaker, or a priest. Good old Sean. So very dedicated. How lucky the kids are.

I read this story in the paper once, about this seven-year-old girl in a wheelchair who was abused by a neighbour. He had a long history of offences against children, and had painstakingly befriended the family with the express intention of sexually assaulting the little girl. He was given a two year sentence and served about twelve months.

When the neighbour got out of prison, they let him move back into his old house in the same street where the girl in the wheelchair lived. Every day the neighbour taunted the little girl’s father, until finally he broke and beat the shit out of the neighbour. The father got three years.

Now, I’m not saying the criminal justice system is always a complete waste of time, and that all judges and lawyers are total wankers. However, I do understand why people might want to emulate Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, and take it into their own hands to ‘clean up the streets’.

I swear, if I had a gun and Sean walked round the corner now, I wouldn’t think twice about blowing his fucking face off. I really wouldn’t. In fact, wherever Sean is, he should be careful.

Bad things sometimes happen to people who mess with me. And that’s not some kind of clumsily veiled threat. It’s the way it is.

All fiction on this site is © Copyright Roger Frederick 2005 All Rights Reserved