Free In the Wolf's Mouth by Adam Foulds

mechanical, implausible and disgusting talk of his brother andfriends, and in movies the disembodying swerve of a camera away from a kissing couple up into the sky or to a scene of playing fountains. Well, he would know soon enough. They were through a door, handing over money, walking upstairs as other soldiers walked down.
    While Coyne and Randall chattered, George was quiet. Ray wondered if he was disgusted and wouldn’t take part but that didn’t turn out to be the case. Frowning, as if at a bad headache, George entered the whore’s room before Ray and the others, even despite Randall’s obscene objections. He emerged ten minutes later drying his forehead with his handkerchief, making Ray wonder what on earth went on in there. ‘She’s a good girl,’ George said, taking out and lighting a cigarette. ‘Don’t you all be scared now. And act like the gentlemen you aren’t.’
    Ray was scared. The fear had drained the swagger and abandon out of him and left him with an unwieldy, unwanted drunkenness that he felt trapped inside. Too soon it was his turn inside the room. He entered, struggled to fix his eyes on the girl and to take in the dim surroundings. The girl was small, plump, tired, with loose black hair, lipstick, tin rings on her short fingers. She wore two large pieces of black underwear that she must have replaced between each visitor. There was a basin where she rinsed herself. A large crack forked across the wall over the plain crumpled bed where she had laid some sort of towel or protective cloth to keep the sheets clean. On the wall above the bedstead, Ray saw that she had tacked a picture postcard of some mountains with snow on them.
    She looked at Ray standing there. She nodded at him, her mouth hanging open, and reached behind her back to unfasten her brassiere. ‘Yes, Joe,’ she said. ‘Happy time now.’ The garment loosened and slid from her shoulders, revealing two large, soft, unevenly sized breasts that ended with startling nipples of dark brown. Their haloes were textured with little bumps. The bits that stuck out were dented in the middle. Ray stared at them, grimacing. Significant, female nipples. So many facts in the world, so much he didn’t know. Briefly, he thought of the Germans in the trench wilting down into their own blood, the people emptying out of the bodies. The prostitute came forward, seeing him stuck there, and kept coming until the weight of her was pressed against him, her breasts shaping like dough against his chest, her smell floating up and enclosing him. She reached down and undid his belt, opened him up and put her bare hand directly on the nerves of his penis. Ray shivered. He took hold of one of her breasts and tried to kiss her on the side of her forehead as she pulled at him, pulling him out from his centre, unravelling him. Then abruptly she stopped, walked over to the bed, pulled down her drawers and lay down. Ray looked at her, at the breasts spilling off her chest, then he glanced down between her parted legs but was frightened by the dark, split, complicated shape inside a messy tuft of black hair – it had an awful kind of leer to it – and he jerked his gaze away. He decided to close his eyes, to go by sensations. Carefully, he climbed on top of her with his pants round his knees and she touched him again, arranging him in position to push which he did andfound he could push still further and then his penis was inside her body, was covered with her, gripped all around. He pushed again, testing. It was fine. She didn’t seem to mind. This was it. This was doing it. He kept pushing and looked down at her face, staring at her dark eyes until he noticed that she was looking back at him. He saw her looking out from inside herself. For a moment they saw each other then Ray hid his face in the damp hair around her neck. He decided not to be ashamed and to try and screw her like a man, to go at it with vigour, but almost as soon as he started he was helpless