Free Cock and Bull by Will Self Page B

wife.
    Carol could do that to a man. As I have said before she had the kind of cramped, mean, English provincial prettiness that could encourage even a buffalo as long in the tooth as Ted Wiggins to dare imagine that he might place his scrawny shanks inside her scrawny shanks.
    But Ur-Carol’s concern at the disappearance of Dan and her namesake was far more straightforward still. In anarea where fading gentility segued with the new health consciousness, the Dans of this world were easily her best customers. Give Ur-Carol an alcoholic in a pac-a-mac, a Gannex raincoat, even a herringbone crombie, and she’d be happy for months. She was like an old junkie, or a withered procuress, coaxing on these sherry-drinking widows and wine-supping travel-agency clerks. Dan had been her most promising protégé.
    After about a fortnight, Carol passed the off-licence, seemingly by chance, and was snagged in by Ted Wiggins. ‘Haven’t seen you in ages,’ he shouted at her through the half open, sticker-laden door, so anxious was he to detain this vision in a
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Readers’ Offer raincoat. She came in, slightly, and explained what had happened. Ur-Carol emerged from behind her plywood door and, advancing as far as the circular niblets merchandising display in the centre of the shop—the outermost limit of her fiefdom—she tut-tutted as Carol told them both that Dan had become a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
    Ur-Carol knew all about AA. But she regarded it purely as a competitor, paying no heed at all to its dogma. As far as Ur-Carol was concerned, AA grabbed away thirsty throats, throats that needed and deserved to be slaked.
    So Ur-Carol kept her thin lips zipped up and our Carol went away. But Ur-Carol knew that they would both be back. She twisted the copper bracelet around her lolly-stick wrist and willed it.
    So it was no wonder that Carol chose the Wigginses’ off-licence as the logical place to seek out the lager of Lamot. Just going there, walking along Fortune Green Road to the head of the parade of shops leading to the Quadrant, was second nature to her after living in Muswell Hill for two years. And when she got to the boozers’ bureau it was the same as ever, occupying the very prong position, with glass frontage extending down both boulevards.
    On this occasion, as Carol entered through the door on one side of the shop, her namesake exited from the other in hot pursuit of one of the mutant waste boys. ‘You’re barred!’ screeched the harridan. ‘Don’t come back here again, if I even see you in the neighbourhood I’ll call the police!’ The mutant boy staggered on the pavement and regarded her with a fuzzy expression, which resolved itself within seconds into a visage of brutal irresponsibility. Ur-Carol had caught him off guard and hustled him out the door. He now managed to compose himself and with great deliberation his hand went to his fly.
    Carol meanwhile stood alongside Ted Wiggins. Both of them were transfixed, viewing the action framed by the plate glass window as if it were being projected from behind them and they had paid to see it.
    Although only newly accustomed to casually leaning side-on to a counter and hooking a hand into her jeans’ pocket, Carol had graduated with commendable speed to using her fingers as an instrument withwhich to stroke, tug and generally hang on to her penis.
    Men like to do that, don’t they? They like to hang on. It’s like genital thumb-sucking. Stroking the old todge in its 65% cotton housing doesn’t really produce a sexual feeling, it’s more like keeping the sensual rev counter at a steady 10,000 revs. But somehow or other, Ted Wiggins sensed Carol’s arousal, an arousal that crept up the dial as the convoy man confronting Ur-Carol Wiggins pulled out his pride—a queer thing with a shaft as long and shiny as the ferrule of an alpenstock—and steamily pissed on the autumn pavement.
    Wiggins used the distraction. Forever after he couldn’t say