He’s got my wrists in one hand above my head, and he’s undoing my trousers with the other.

‘Come on baby,’ he says, ‘you know you want it.’

And I do, just as I did through the tense week of our holiday, when he withheld sex unless I’d do as he asked, which basically meant picking up people for threesomes and taking vast amounts of stupid drugs like GHB. Even now I can feel, beside his erection, the hard shape of a glass bottle in his pocket. Any minute now he’ll get it out, and we’ll swig from it, and that will be that. Fucking for hours on the floor, on the sofa, over the table, the bath, even sometimes in bed.

Finally it’s over and he’s asleep and the flat is quiet, the block is quiet, I imagine Michael downstairs thinking, ‘Thank God they’ve finished,’ and taking out his earplugs.

I never went back to talk about his boxes. It will have to wait. I have other things to think about.

Five

We borrowed a car from one of the corporals, an old Morris 10, and drove to Blackpool on Friday night. Wright was in high spirits, and kept up a monologue about birds and booze while I did the driving. When we arrived, the rain had set in. We dropped our bags at the boarding house, and didn’t bother to change. Saturday would be the night for civvies, when there was a dance at the Tower Ballroom at which Don Lang’s Frantic Five would be playing. ‘From the Six-Five Special!’ said Wright, when I looked blank. ‘Off the telly, for fuck’s sake. Get with it, Grandad!’

I took the precaution of finding out that there was an exhibition of French watercolours at the Grundy Gallery, and a production of La Fille du Régiment at the Opera House if – as I suspected – I was left to my own devices for large parts of the weekend. For Wright, as for most of the men, Blackpool means ‘birds’, ‘pussy’ etc. That was why we were here, wasn’t it? Two mates on the piss and on the pull. He said it often enough.

The landlady gave us a lecture about the terrible fate that awaits anyone who brings ‘unregistered guests’ on to the premises. We made our way to the nearest pub and got the first pint in.

‘What sort of boys does she take us for?’ said Wright, wiping the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I wouldn’t bring a lady back to that dump. The kind of bird I’m after will have a place of her own.’

There were no birds to be had in the Red Lion, despite Wright’s assurances that we’d be mobbed as soon as they saw the uniform, so we moved on. It was raining, and the esplanade was deserted. Even the Blackpool whores didn’t like getting cold and wet. We did the round of the pubs, each one ‘bound to be heaving with fanny’, according to Wright, and each one emptier than the last. By ten o’clock, with closing time looming into view, he was starting to look crestfallen. ‘What kind of shit hole is this, anyway?’ he said as he sank his fifth pint, and I sipped my fifth half.