'Excuse me, have you seen Abigail?' Very polite.

'No,' they would reply, already looking suspicious, twitching their reins. 'Abigail who?'

'Well, if you see Abigail, could you tell her not, under any circ.u.mstances, to use the toilets over there?'

'STAND!' they would bark at their nervous ponies. 'Stand! Why?'

'It's just that there are some boys going round looking through the holes in the wood when people are using the toilets. I think she ought to know I mean, it's not very nice is it? so I'd be grateful if you'd tell her. Thanks very much.'

The girls would flick a glance at the toilets and then look back at Terry as he walked away, and he would sense rather, he would know that the girls would be calculating when they last used the toilets or when they would next need to. Although the novelty of this exercise quickly wore off for Sam and Clive, Terry could have cheerfully continued the game all afternoon.

They bought lemonade from the refreshments counter inside the pavilion. 'You've got a broken window,' Clive observed to the lady engaged in serving.

'Vandals,' she said, opening the till.

'I wish I could get 'em,' said a red-faced man with a cloth cap and green Wellington boots. Purple veins in his cheeks seemed set to explode. 'I'd make 'em into pulp.'

'It's so senseless,' Clive pointed out, accepting his change.

'They must be sick,' Sam added.

They slurped their lemonade and watched the compet.i.tors without interest. The commentator's disembodied voice requested a big hand for Lucinda on Shandy. Terry left them to go to the toilet. While p.i.s.sing he glanced up and saw an eye looking at him through a knot-hole. The eye disappeared, to be replaced by another one.

When he came out two girls in jodhpurs, holding their riding hats in their hands, were giggling at him. 'f.u.c.king perverts,' he growled.

He found the other two standing near a practice jump, hoping to see someone fall off. Ponies cantered up in regular order to leap the bales of straw. Terry was about to tell them about the giggling girls when he heard pounding hooves accelerating behind them. 'Out of the way!' a rider screamed. The boys scattered as a horse twice the size of most of the ponies galloped between them and cleared the practice jump by at least three feet. The rider reined in the horse, turned it in a circle and walked it back towards them.

It was a girl. She wore cream-coloured jodhpurs and a tweed hacking jacket. Her long, dark hair was stuffed into a net under her peaked riding hat. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes blazed.

'Could have killed us!' bellowed Clive.

'Then don't stand in the middle of the practice ring, stupid!'

The horse loomed overhead. She sat six feet above them, twisting in her saddle, struggling to restrain the excited, walleyed animal. Sam recognized the girl with whom he had locked eyes when he was hiding in the pavilion. He instinctively took off his gla.s.ses, and then put them back on again. 'Just watch where you're going.'

'You stay there if you're dumb enough to want to get trampled.' She spurred on the horse with the heels of her gleaming black riding boots, and the boys had to part a second time to get out of her way.

'b.i.t.c.h,' shouted one of the boys, but she was already cantering away.

's.l.u.t!'

'Tart!'

'Slag!'

They were silent, gazing after her as she disappeared inside the compet.i.tion ring.

'She's f.u.c.king gorgeous,' breathed Sam.

'Yeah,' Terry agreed, still in awe.

'Yes,' said Clive, doubtfully.

12.

Gun 'How long have I been seeing you now?' Skelton made a cursory flick through the file in his hands.

Sam shrugged. He wasn't certain if it was three years or four. Terry had stopped seeing Skelton after the first year, when his nightmares began to subside. Sam, however, had taken Clive's advice.

Indeed, Sam had never objected at all to having his head looked at. It meant, after you'd endured an hour answering pointless questions and drawing pictures for the nicotine-stained psychiatrist, a respite from school. When Terry had been 'cured', thereby losing his bonus holiday, Clive had advised Sam how to secure a day off school indefinitely. 'Next time he asks you, draw a picture of your own gravestone.'

So Sam had done just that. After the usual round of tedious and baffling questions about his mother and father, Skelton had given him a pencil and a large sheet of cartridge paper, instructing him to draw a scene 'with water'. Sam had hastily scribbled a picture of a pond surrounded by trees, under which was beautifully rendered a Celtic-cross gravestone, shadowed with lush moss and tangled with ivy. His name was engraved in the stone.

SAMUEL SOUTHALL.

REST IN PEACE.

GNAWED TO DEATH BY A TOOTH FAIRY.

For good measure, Sam had included a bat swooping towards the headstone and a skull pierced by a dagger resting alongside the grave mound. Skelton had taken the sheet of paper and studied it closely. 'Good,' he'd said in a disturbingly quiet voice, 'good, very good.' Then he'd made extensive notes as Sam sat playing with his thumbs. Appointments had quickened in frequency after that offering and had then thinned out to one meeting every twelve weeks over the last three years. With Skelton now flicking through the manila folder and asking him how long it had been, Sam wondered if it was time to sketch another gothic picture.

Placing the folder flat on the large, polished oak desk, Skelton came from behind it to plump heavily in the armchair next to Sam. Crossing his legs, he placed his fingertips together, prayer-like, under his chin. He exuded stale tobacco. 'Are we still seeing the Tooth Fairy?'

Sam croaked an answer. He had to say it again. 'Yes.'

'How often?' Skelton's answer was met with a shrug. The Scotsman thrust out his jaw, exposing the yellowing, stone tablets of his own lower teeth. He seemed barely to have enough room in his mouth for them. 'Often, occasionally or rarely?'

'Occasionally.'

'And does he still instruct you not to tell me about him?'

'Yes.'

'Always?'

'Yes.'

Skelton tilted his head radically to one side, fluttering his eyes closed, as if listening to far-away music. Suddenly he jerked upright. 'What?'

'I didn't say anything,' Sam insisted, pushing his gla.s.ses up the bridge of his nose.

'Quite. I think it's time we said goodbye to this Tooth Fairy, don't you?' Sam shrugged another answer. Skelton mimicked with a return shrug. 'Yes, farewell to the spiritus dentatus, methinks, G.o.d speed, safe journey, bon voyage, mind how ye go, be on yer way, old chap, only goodbye. What say you? Hmmm?'

Sam looked at his shoelaces.

Skelton reached behind him and s.n.a.t.c.hed a pencil from a pot on the table. He held it up for Sam to see. 'Look at this, laddie.' The pencil had been sharpened to a needlepoint. Skelton held the pencil aloft, carefully displaying it as though about to perform some conjuring trick. Suddenly he snapped it into two pieces, a clean break. He looked deep into Sam's eyes.

Sam looked back, trying to match Skelton for deepness. It had been a perfectly good pencil.

'See that?' said the psychiatrist. 'Easy.' He reached over and plucked another from the pot. 'Can you do it?' He presented the pencil to the boy with both hands, proffering it as if it were Excalibur.

Sam snapped the pencil in two and handed it back.

Skelton accepted the broken pencil. 'Yes, yes, yes, and farewell to the Tooth Fairy. Don't you agree? We've had enough of him. There are important changes going on in your life. Changes, Sam. Things you don't even know about. Hormones, good G.o.d. No room for this Tooth Fairy. We've got to make s.p.a.ce for other things. What other things? I hear you ask. Well, girls, life, beer and skittles. Understand me?'

Sam nodded briefly. Skelton placed the broken bits of pencil on his desk. 'Suppose I freely give you a gun. Here it is. Take it.' The psychiatrist held out an empty hand. 'Go on, lad, take it, don't be afraid. It won't go off in your hand. Take it!'

Sam held out his hand, and Skelton clapped it with the leathery palm of his own in an aggressive handshake. 'Good. Feel its weight, that's it. Aim it, go on. NO! NOT AT ME! That's better, point it over there. That thing is loaded with a silver bullet, which is what you need for dispatching Tooth Fairies and the like. Right, so you know what to do next time this wretched Tooth Fairy appears. You know what to do, yes?'

'What?'

Skelton pointed another imaginary gun at the door and fired off a round. 'You kill him, laddie. You kill him.'

Sam looked at the door and then back at Skelton.

Skelton blew smoke from the barrel of his own imaginary gun and offered an evil, conspiratorial smile.

Since Clive had demonstrated the art of masturbation by the pond, Sam developed an easy facility for the habit in the privacy of his bed. His imagination, he discovered, offered considerable aid and encouragement to the practice. Female volunteers were numerous. Actresses were easily persuaded to step forward from the TV screen, their enthusiasm matched by one or two of the prettier female teachers at Thomas Aquinas Grammar, and indeed some of the older girls seen around the school were equally pliant. He did make the occasional concession to the girls who were his immediate contemporaries, in that he would stand on a table before a small, energized crowd of them and m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e for their enjoyment and edification; they in turn would gaze back in awed fascination and amus.e.m.e.nt, daring each other to touch the object of interest. It was during the performance of these fantasies that he could achieve the unspeakably satisfying throb Clive had earlier described. But it was a dry throb and not at all the fountain to which Clive had attested.

Then one night it came.

Sam was asleep and dreaming. He was hiding in the gymkhana pavilion. The doors of the pavilion had been blasted away by a bomb, and the girl in jodhpurs and riding boots was searching for him. Outside the pavilion a huge white horse grazed noisily. Beyond the horse he could see the woods and the pond, gleaming in a yellow light, all strangely out of proportion. The girl spotted him through the c.h.i.n.k between the crossed poles of his hiding place, and their eyes locked. She put a hand to her mouth, backing away slowly, reaching for the reins of the grazing horse. Mounting the horse, she kicked it on. At first the animal resisted, until finally she urged it inside the pavilion. Suddenly the horse jumped, its forelegs stretching towards him. Miraculously it pa.s.sed through the three-inch gap into his hiding place.

And he was awake, back in his own bed; but the horse had completed its jump through the open window of his bedroom. Still on its back, the girl rider steadied the horse before slipping down from the saddle, shimmying slightly to advertise the sword-like slimness of her thighs in her tight, tight jodhpurs. She took off her riding hat, swishing her long, dark hair like a horse's tail as it fell free. Only then did Sam become aware that his own hand was grasping his swollen c.o.c.k in a vice-like grip. Fire scourged his bowels, and there was a lazy tickling in his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. Something ominous was about to happen.

'This is a dream,' he told himself.

Then he woke up, and the girl and the horse were gone. His window was open to the night air. Someone was watching him at the foot of the bed. The Tooth Fairy, after a long absence, was back.

Sam was astonished at how the Tooth Fairy had changed. The outfit was almost the same, with mustard-and-green striped tights and heavy boots. But the face was completely remodelled. It was less heavy; the features were finer, the eyes softer. And when the Tooth Fairy smiled at him, the teeth, although still filed to sharp points, were whiter and smaller. The Tooth Fairy had grown taller and yet had lost weight, exhibiting a trim, lithe frame except around the hips and the b.u.t.tocks, which had plumped considerably. And even as he looked, Sam saw the unmistakable paired cupolas straining under the tight-fitting black tunic.

'You're a . . .'

The Tooth Fairy's long eyelashes blinked at him. I'm a what?'

'I mean you're . . . but I thought you were a . . .'

'Talk sense or don't talk at all.' The voice hadn't got any higher, but it was now a purr instead of a growl.

'You're a girl!'

The smile vanished from the Tooth Fairy's face. 'I swear I'm going to kill you one day for the things you say.'

'But I always thought-'

'Stop! Don't say another word!'

'It's just that-'

This time the Tooth Fairy stepped up to him and placed her fingers against his mouth. 'You can be so hurtful, Sam. So hurtful.' She sat down on the side of the bed, crossing her legs, her nylon tights hissing as one leg brushed another. Sam smelled a new perfume on her fingertips. It was a fragrance he a.s.sociated with the moist earth at springtime, with woodland bluebells; and there was another, more ambiguous, marine odour.

The Tooth Fairy took her hand from his mouth and looked at him hard, her dark eyes squinting slightly. She quickly removed her tunic, letting her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s fall free. Sam looked at the dark buds of her nipples and the surrounding bruise-coloured aureoles. The question was settled beyond dispute. One breast was slightly smaller than the other, and the strange new scent streamed from her body. His breath came shorter. It was the closest the Tooth Fairy had ever been, and he was simultaneously attracted and repelled by her physicality. She was grotesquely beautiful.

'You've got something I want,' she said.

His mouth dried.

'Yes,' she said. 'Something Skelton gave to you. I can't tell you how important it is that you give it to me.'

'Skelton?' He remembered the imaginary gun.

'That old b.a.s.t.a.r.d knows nothing. Believe me, I know everything you two say to each other. I have to have it, Sam. I have to have it.' She was almost pleading with him. 'Give it to me.'

'You're too dangerous.'

'Anything I've ever done to you, I didn't mean it, Sam. It's just the way it works out sometimes.'

'I haven't got it. Skelton just gave me an imaginary-'

'You're hiding it under the bedclothes, Sam.'

'I'm not.'

'Let me see. I'm going to have a look.'

Sam was paralysed as she slowly peeled back the bedclothes. She leaned closer so she could see in the dark, and that mysterious new scent broke like a soft wave, a cloying musk, an admixture of tidal odours, marsh gas, mushrooms dipped in honey, an intoxicating smell of corruption and inspiration commingled. He thought he would faint.

'My G.o.d,' she said peering at the swollen p.e.n.i.s still gripped in his fist. 'My G.o.d. So that time has come.'

Sam cringed with terror and humiliation, but his c.o.c.k responded to the threat of her proximity by engorging still further inside his closed fist. He could feel her breath condensing on his face. Still gazing at his c.o.c.k with fascination, she extended her little finger towards it. Sam tried to shrink back from the long, manicured, polished fingernail. His breath came shorter, and still shorter, as contact between her fingernail and his c.o.c.k seemed imminent.

Did she touch? Did the outstretched fingernail make contact? He never knew. The moment was blotted out by a booming thunderclap of the heart. Some exquisitely fine elasticity linking brain and bowel snapped and a ca.n.a.l opened, flooding like the slow-fast, fast-slow lava flow of some primeval subterranean pool, pumping from the agonized c.o.c.k still squeezed in his fist. The explosion blew the Tooth Fairy clean out of the window, shattering the gla.s.s and the window frame together. There was a long, aching moment of void, before a spiced wind rushed to fill the vacuum, rea.s.sembling the window frame and all the gla.s.s, fragment by fragment, like a film playing backwards but without the Tooth Fairy.

Sam lay in the dark, feeling in his hand the hot sting of his first seed. Slowly his breath came back to him. He lifted his hand to the pencil-beam of moonlight stealing through the crack in the curtains. It glowed dully, silvery. He blew gently on his hand to cool his fingers.

13.