I am five or maybe six, and my bedtime – even on the longest and most slowly extinguished summer evening – is quarter to seven. I lie in bed listening, with a powerful sense of grievance, to other children – many no older than me – playing loud games in nearby gardens. Their voices mingle with the persistent hoarse hoo-hooing of love-sick woodpigeons on the roof outside my window.
Sleepless, I watch dust dance in a shaft of honey-coloured June evening light.
My father comes in from work. I hear the front door close behind him, and my mother greeting him. And surprisingly soon afterwards, I hear him coming up the stairs (I recognise his heavier tread).
I sleep with the door open, and he pushes it wider before entering. Seeing that I am still awake, he draws himself up on tiptoes, stretches his arms out rigidly in front of him, fingers pointed, and makes a frightening face which involves pulling up his top lip to reveal his upper teeth, and dragging his luxuriant eyebrows down into a threatening frown. And then he advances on me, making a high-pitched humming noise through his teeth, and menacing me with his pointed fingers, which he uses to administer a series of jabs to my tummy, arms and chest.
I howl with laughter. My father laughs, too.
My mother shouts up the stairs: “He should be settling down now! If you get him too excited, he’ll never sleep!’
My father continues to poke and jab at me. I laugh until tears roll down my face, and plead with him to stop. My father is being a bloodthirsty mosquito. I can’t remember if he tells me this, or if I just know that is what he is being. But how could I know, since his bulky six-foot mosquito bears so little resemblance to the actual insect? He must have told me.
At this point in my life, my father is capable of being playful and affectionate.
Or perhaps, it occurs to me now, he is just drunk.
*****