Cock and Bull

Cock and Bull Read Free Page A

Book: Cock and Bull Read Free
Author: Will Self
Tags: Fiction
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the subsequent friction between them. Carol stopped Drinking (with a capital ‘D’) herself, and she stopped tolerating the Mates on the futon divan.
    In the mornings she lay rigidly in bed while Dan, in the
en suite
bathroom, irrigated his head under the avocado faucet. The tepid water flowed over him and into the avocado bowl.
    ‘We never fuck any more,’ she said. And watched while Anne Diamond straightened her skirt on the television.
    ‘Whozzat?’
    ‘We never fuck any more. You’ve always got brewer’s droop.’ In moments of tight emotion Carol regressed to the tropes and figures of urban Poole, such as they were.
    ‘Don’t be vulgar,’ said Dan, and he involuntarily hawked, as if to illustrate what was prohibited.
    ‘You’re always pissed.’ She pursued him. ‘We used to get tipsy and even pissed pissed for fun, to be sociable. We did it as a means…[and here perhaps
were
some of the meagre fruits of Llanstephan]…not as an end in itself.’
    ‘I still drink to have fun,’ was Dan’s pathetic rejoinder. ‘Why else would I drink?’
    There, you have the measure of the man. And when she pressed him further, he said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ and left. Which, when Carol came to think about it, had always been his stock response when anything between them that smacked of emotion veered away from a treacly gooey-goo love sentimentality, or the good companionship of hail-fellow-well-met mates.
    Not that Carol longed for the two of them to sit down opposite one another and dissect their relationship together—as if it were a fish dinner. Everything in her own upbringing—and nature for that matter—cried out against such a course. This was not the Poole way. The Poole way with ‘relationships’ was a turgid misunderstanding, leading perhaps to an evening in the allotment shed shouting, or an extra valium. So Carol let it ride.
    She got another caged bird, a mynah this time.Beverley, who hadn’t been in touch for over two years, arrived in Muswell Hill unannounced. Dan was out drinking with Gary. After an edgy evening watching a repeat of
Columbo,
Beverley had her way with Carol on a pile of Dan’s work shirts, which were stacked on the half landing, freshly ironed and en route for storage.
    This was quite different to Llanstephan nights. Beverley had brought a dildo with her, or a lingam, as she called it. She had been instructed in its use by a flat-faced Tamil woman who lived in Shrewsbury. It was a ghastly little knobkerry of ironwood. But despite that, with it inside her vagina Carol could feel a potential for pleasure in the internal contemplation of its ongoing rigidity; its failure to wilt, its determination to stay just as it was. If it wasn’t for Beverley’s horrible face, the schoolgirl myopia and cartoon curls (and that sour cream smell: was it sweat, or worse?), Carol could perhaps have unslipped the surly bonds of her meagre restraint and flown off into orgasmic orbit.
    Carol’s head thudded against the skirting board. The lingam thudded into her. Beverley’s thumb thudded against Carol’s perineum. Dan thudded on the door to the maisonette. ‘Let us in, love,’ he called, ‘I’ve lost me key.’
    He’d also lost Gary in the John Logie Baird on Fortune Green Road. However, in the Bald-Faced Stag in East Finchley, he had acquired Derek; a lapsed Methodist and fervent member of the British National Party. For good measure, by way of possessing a trinity of attributes, Derek was also a stinking piss artist.
    As he came into the main room of the maisonette Derek took in the dangling strap of Beverley’s bib ’n’ braces with fanatic eyes, from under a dead straight fringe that must have framed a million commercial handjobs. He had them sussed. Later, when several more cans had been circulated he tangled with Beverley; calling her first a commie, then a Jew and only latterly a dikey cockteaser. Carol thought she might have to call the constabulary, and feared for

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