Praise

Further praise for The Cheek Perforation Dance:

‘Compelling and disturbing. Pre held ideas about male and female sexuality are turned on their head. Intrigued? You should be. This is a very intriguing novel.’

Irish Independent

‘If you’re searching for a gentle holiday read then allow us not to recommend this. The skill of this courtroom drama is in the construction: Thomas intercuts the court case with flashbacks to their love affair suggesting several disquieting notions of what constitutes modern love.’

Arena

‘Distressingly believable.’

Front

Praise for Kissing England:

‘To say this is elegantly written would be an understatement; the unique essence of England, and being English, is captured perfectly. Imbued with a delicate blend of humour and irony, Kissing England evokes as many personal memories as the ones it creates.’

Time Out

‘Wry, dry, it’s White City Blue meets Brideshead Revisited. Cracking stuff.’

Daily Mirror

‘Thomas balances unremitting explicitness with acutely observed set pieces.’

The Times

Dedication

For us, then

The fourteenth Veintana, Quecholli, was dedicated to Mixcoatl. The feast was celebrated by one or two days of hunting and feasting in the countryside during which the hunters adorned themselves like Mixcoatl himself and kindled new fire to roast the game. Subsequently, a man and a woman were sacrificed to Mixcoatl in his temple. The female victim was slain like a wild animal: her head was struck four times against a rock until she was half-conscious; then her throat was slit and her head decapitated. The male victim displayed the head to the assembled crowds before he himself was sacrificed by heart extrusion.

An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods andSymbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, by Mary Miller and Karl Taube

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Praise

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

— Patch, slow down

Says Joe. Patrick turns, and looks back down the sunny London street. Patrick’s friend Joe is wearing a green and yellow martial arts tee shirt, and notably scuffed indigo jeans. Comparing this choice of attire to his own suit and tie, Patrick wonders how he and Joe must appear: like a banker and his drug dealer, discussing prices; like two guests en route to a mildly bohemian wedding; like the accused and his friend, walking to court.

— Don’t want to be early, do you?

Patrick nods, assessing the truth of this. Then Patrick says:

— Guess not … – Thinking, considering – How about a pint?

Joe lifts his hands:

— It’s nine in the morning

Patrick:

— But they’re open. The pubs are open round here, because of the meat market

— I know they’re open – A sigh, a smile – I was just wondering whether you really want to get lashed half an hour before …

Joe stops; shrugs. Patrick turns on his polished black shoes, walks briskly and authoritatively up a side street, and presses a pub door.

Inside the pub the atmosphere is already noisy, and yeasty. The Smithfield pub is full of office lads beering up before work, and meat-market porters winding down after work. Finding two stools by the sticky bar, Patrick pulls, and sits, and says to the barwoman:

— Pint of Guinness … – Looking sidelong – Joe?

Joe does another vague shrug. Patrick persists:

— Joseph?

— … 6X. Half

— Pint of 6X please

The barwoman nods and takes two glasses from the shelf above; Patrick gazes around the bar. In the corner he can see a platoon of nervy, wide-eyed student kids. The students are giggling and nudging each other as they order beers with their breakfasts.

—Takes me back

Says Patrick. Joe, a bit vague, says:

— Sorry?

— Those kids – Says Patrick – Look at them. That was us once. We used to come here after tripping – Patrick widens his eyes – Remember?

Joe grins, and nods. Patrick returns his gaze to the students. Feeling a small ache inside, Patrick marvels at the youth displayed: the impeccable complexions, the innocent cheekbones, the naively exuberant gestures; the gold Saxon hair of the girls.

—You’re only twenty-nine Patch

— I feel ninety-seven, right now

Joe sighs:

— Well. What do you expect? This morning of mornings?

Hmming, Patrick tips the beer to his lips. The Guinness is cold and very bitter. Patrick remembers how he never liked drinking this early.

— God, it’s too early to drink

Joe looks at him blankly. Then says:

— Shall we go?

Manfully struggling with his pride, and with his desire to get drunk despite, Patrick nods, and rises. Together the two old college friends walk out of the pub into London: into the sweetly polluted summer air. They take a right. Then another. Their route takes them past the meat market, past the place where John Betjeman lived, past the church where they filmed Four Weddings and a Funeral, past the hospital ward where Mozart had his tonsils out; and past the ad agency car park where Patrick got his one and only blow job from a Muslim girl.

At the last they make a left, and find themselves staring down the boulevards of capitalism at the noble dome of great St Paul’s. Joe starts walking towards the cathedral, but Patrick says he knows a short cut. Joe nods acquiescently. Patrick steps right and guides them into a garden, then into a courtyard, then through the pink granite undercroft of a Malaysian bank; here they turn and find themselves facing a huge great building site.

— Jesus – Says Joe – I thought they’d finished London

Patrick tries to smile but fails. Patrick does not feel like smiling. He feels like turning, like going back to the pub. Patrick is thinking about what is to happen: what is awaiting him, in ten, twenty, thirty minutes. How many minutes?

Pulling back his stiff left shirtcuff, the cuff so diligently ironed by his mother last night, Patrick checks his watch. Its white face stares back at his white face.

9.20 a.m.

Patrick looks across the thundering street. Pensively he surveys the chaotic building site: the raw new girders and gleaming steel fire escapes; the piles of creamy new bricks.

Joe:

— OK?

With a nod Patrick says:

— OK …

But Patrick feels far from OK. Patrick feels so far from OK he wonders if he might be about to start trembling, or worse. Patrick desperately does not want this: he does not want to look scared in front of Joe.

—Joe …

— Uh?

— I think maybe I …

A knowing expression:

—You want to go in on your own?

—Well …

— Don’t worry mate – Joe claps Patrick on the shoulder, and starts skipping left, into the traffic, calling out as he goes – I’ll see you inside

And so Joe goes.

Alone, now, in the middle of the city hubbub, Patrick swallows and fights himself. His nerves once again quelled, he stares across at the building beyond the building site: his destination. On the top of the building, bright against the cloudless blue sky, is a statue of a woman, holding scales in her golden hand.

Oh, sure, right. Trust a woman?

Dismissing the irony of this, Patrick threads through. The pavement by the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, is a tumult of chatting journalists, sweating handicam men, and young foreign sightseers knocking into people with their enormous blue rucksacks. Ignoring the crowds, hoping they are all similarly ignoring him, Patrick makes for the lowslung main door of the courts. But Patrick’s boldness is holed. By the sound of a familiar car door, and by the even more familiar sound of a young woman’s voice. The girl is saying:

— Yes Dad I’ll call you

Jesus. Can it be? Can it be? Patrick stops still on the pavement, staring blankly at the side of a big red bus, dumbed. It sounds like her; it certainly sounds like her. Like her. Like his ex; like his accuser; like the truelove he hasn’t seen for a year.

But. Patrick thinks again: no, no, it can’t be; doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t just be … here, standing right by him, would she?

— I think I’ve got to give evidence first thing Daddy

Unable to resist, Patrick turns, and looks. A recognisably big BMW is parked hard by the pavement. Climbing out of the back of the car is a striking blonde girl with a shortish checked dress showing long suntanned legs. The sight makes Patrick’s knees infirm. Because. It is. It’s her.

And now the memories engulf him. As Patrick stands and tries not to react at the sight of his ex-girlfriend, his tormentor, the principal witness for the prosecution, the best friend he allegedly raped twelve months ago, he reacts by remembering. He sees it all. The whole tableau of love. He sees: a bugle on a windowsill; a pair of handcuffs in a fridge; an Aztec history book stained with claret; a sunny Torrington Square, nearly two and a half years ago.

Two and a half years ago?

Silent, and still, Patrick stares. At Rebecca.

2

— He’s still staring

— That’s nice, Rebecca

— No, he is

— OK … – Murphy sighs – OK …

Rolling on her back, Murphy shuts her sarcastic eyes. Slightly frustrated, Rebecca gazes away from the man, and looks around the square. The late May sun is shining but the place is empty: Torrington Square is nearly deserted. Apart from a few Indian girls in flared jeans chatting by the Brunei Centre, and a small group of Japanese girls with miniskirts and superpale legs, sitting demurely on the steps of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Murphy and Rebecca are alone on the mangy bit of central London lawn between Birkbeck College and the Institute of Education. Torrington Square. Musing again on the man, Rebecca says:

— It’s definitely him

— Uh-huh …

— I wonder what he does

— Indeed

Murphy is lying flat out with her skirt hitched up: tanning; ignoring her friend; her head pillowed by her folded pink cardigan. Murphy is using a textbook to shield her eyes from the glare. Rebecca’s textbook. Opting not to mention this, Rebecca says:

— He’s the guy I was telling you about. The one who always sits over there – Brightly – He must work round here, he’s rather young for a lecturer tho, maybe he’s a postgrad or …

Murphy opens her mouth:

— Rebecca … shut the fuck up

Narrowing the space between them Rebecca snatches her textbook from its cowboy-hat role on Murphy’s face. For a second, Murphy seems to scowl; then Murphy breaks into a profile of a smile. Rebecca smiles, too.

Using a grass-stained elbow, Murphy is levering herself onto her front, and visoring her eyes with a flat unwedding-ringed hand so as to look over at him.

A sharp, Murphyish breath.

Rebecca says:

— So? What do you think?

Murphy sets her lips; considers the question. Then:

— He looks a bit …

— What?

— … You know … Brutal … Stone Age – Another look, through the telescope of her squinting eyes – Hasn’t shaved for a while

Rebecca mulls this; Murphy says:

— Just your sort. Another puppy drowner

Staring down at her painted toenails half hidden by her sandals, Rebecca demurs:

— Well

— Why don’t you just wait outside Wormwood Scrubs and have done with it?

Rebecca, chuckling:

— Can’t help it if I’m partial to … a bit of rough …

A Murphyish snort:

— Bit of rough? That guy’s on parole

Rebecca slaps Murphy’s suntanned thigh; Murphy does a laconic ‘ouch’ and then says:

— Anyway, what about Neil? Forgotten him already?

— Neil Schmeal

—Wagon Wheel

Silence. For a moment the two of them observe a Japanese girl protecting her face from the sun with an angled A to Z. Tucking some of her brown hair behind a thrice-pierced ear, Murphy says:

— Still hungry!

Rebecca hands over the second lunch bag:

— Here

— Ta …

Reaching into the shared brown paper bag Murphy takes out the last sandwich. Plastic sandwich podule open, she extracts the coronation chicken sandwich and lays it flat on the bag. Then she lifts a flap of the bread so as to examine the contents.

— Hm

Picking up the sandwich she sniffs the curry-scented, yellowish paste. Nose wrinkling, she puts the sandwich down again, plucks something from the sandwich filling, and then holds this up, in front of Rebecca’s face, like a priest presenting the communion wafer.

—What’s this?

Murphy is holding up an almond. Rebecca says:

— It’s an almond

— Almond? ALMOND?? – Murphy’s voice is almost a yelp – Why do they do this? Why do they put fucking almonds in a bloody chicken sandwich? Why can’t they leave well alone? What’s happening to the world?

Rebecca smiles, says nothing; plucks grass.

Consideringly, Murphy begins removing the bits of almond, diligently extracting them from the gunk, then smearing them with a wince of repugnance on a convenient bit of lawn. This done, Murphy re-examines. Pointing to another suspicious constituent of the curry-sauce-yellow sandwich filling she looks over at Rebecca, reproachfully.

Rebecca sighs:

— Raisins …

Murphy:

— Raisins? Really? Oh, for God’s sake. Did I ask for raisins? Did I say please can you put some fucking dried fruit in my fucking chicken sandwich?

Rebecca’s friend is making an I’ve-had-enough face. Rebecca notices Murphy’s ankle chain. Sighing, exhaling, Murphy squints at the sandwich, looks at Rebecca, squints at the sandwich. With a decided air Murphy bags the sandwich, leans back, takes aim, and expertly lobs the sandwich bag into the nearest bin.

Clapping her hands Murphy sits up straight, cross-legged again, triumphantly laughing; Rebecca laughs, too: feeling happy in the sun. Making a cunning face Murphy does a blatant grab for the last of Rebecca’s lunch; successfully filching from the other paper bag a chocolate bar. With a shrug Rebecca watches as her best friend eats the bar; Murphy is talking with a mouth full of chocolate:

— Anyway. What about the boyf?

— Him …?

— Yeah. Neil. Supergeek. You gonna give him another chance?

Rebecca moues, as if to say: enough said. Sat back on straight arms Rebecca turns and glances over at the guy who hasn’t shaved for a few days. He isn’t glancing at her. He is busy with his own sandwiches, washing them down with a can of cola, idly flicking through his big newspaper. Occasionally he seems to look up and stare vacantly at the Fifties brickwork of Birkbeck. Trying her hardest Rebecca wills him to look at her: look at me, look at me, look at me … please?

As if commanded, he turns his face … and looks at the bike sheds behind Birkbeck College. Offended, rolling over, Rebecca says to Murphy, who is examining her stomach for a tan mark:

— I’ve seen him here a few times now

—Who invented cellulite?

— That guy …

— I mean you never hear Jane Austen banging on about it, do you? Did Elizabeth Bennett freak out in case Darcy saw her orange peel?

— He often eats his lunch here

— So when did cellulite start? The Sixties? I blame feminists. I reckon lesbian feminists must have invented it. To put us off getting naked with guys. Woman-hating bastards. Chop their tits off I say

— How old do you reckon he is?

— Are you still banging on about that … thug? He’s gross, Becs, he looks like he’d mug your mum

— He’s quite … sexy …

— You’re such a slapper, Jessel

— He looks … interesting …

— Psychotic

Rebecca shakes her head and goes to answer but Murphy is checking her ironically big plastic watch. The watch with the knowingly naff boy-band motif. Looking up, tongue clicking, Murphy says:

— Gotta go

— But … it’s not even two

— It’s called work, girl

— … Stay …?

A certain pause. Murphy looks over; Rebecca looks back. Rebecca notes that Murphy’s face is nicely tan, her eyes green, her nose stud silver in the early summer sun. Murphy is laughing, as she makes a spastic voice, as she lodges her tongue behind her bottom lip:

— Derrr … Werrrk

— Unfair!

— What’s it like being a Hampstead heiress with nothing to do but check your bikini line?

— I do do the occasional PhD

— Yeah?

With a somehow sarcastic expression, Murphy reaches and lifts another of the books that have slipped from Rebecca’s Prada bag. Slow, ironic, Murphy recites the title:

— The Broken Spears. The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico

Rebecca is shrugging; Murphy:

— … Call me a stupid cow with skates on, but I thought you were doing the Crusades?

— Well

— Too easy was it? Thought you’d tackle a few more subjects? Brainiac

Murphy looks like she’s thinking of another insult; to stop her Rebecca picks up the paperback that Murphy was reading. Slowly Rebecca recites the title, in a similarly stilted way:

— Veiled Voices, an anthology of Arab women’s poetry

Murphy looks vaguely abashed; and a tiny bit proud. Rebecca says:

— Not exactly the lightest of reading … – Checking the title again – Any good?

Murphy shrugs and says:

— Actually, it is … it’s very good, kinda horny

— Kind of horny?

Murphy laughs:

— Well it’s … interestingly confessional – A glance between them; then Murphy shrugs again – OK so I’m easily aroused …

Before Rebecca can ask her next question, her usual question about Murphy’s love life, Murphy has barked

— Fuck, Becs, I have to go. My boss’ll be chewing her arm off. Conceptual dustbin lids don’t sell themselves y’know …

Rebecca smiles:

— No. Hold on. I’ll come with you, I’ve got to buy something from Waterstone’s

— K

Preparing to go, they look around.

— Er …

— Golly …

Hands on hips they assess the mess they have somehow made. Surrounding their lunch spot is a fairy ring of mobile phone cards, choc-bar wrappers, doodled-on diary pages, and bits of cigarette packet. And Aztec history books, scrunched-up tissues, hay-fever nasal sprays, empty mocha coffee cups, Hello! magazine, OK! magazine, Arab women’s poetry paperbacks, and splinters of smeared almond. Murphy laughs; Rebecca laughs. Laughing as one, they stoop to it: with a burst of zeal and energy they bend to collect the rubbish, bag the books, collate the other stuff, and spend a minute mutually grooming grass stalks. Then and only then do they start walking. As they leave Rebecca checks the corner of the lawn where he was; he isn’t.

Ah well …

But he is already just a memory, a memory almost forgotten as they stroll happily across the grass and down the steps that lead under Birkbeck College. This is their normal short cut: today the two old college friends’ route is blocked by crowds of weird people. By bearded blokes in bad Hawaiian shirts, by hairy-legged women with Marxism For The Twenty-First Century laminate badges. Walking past a parade of temporary bookstalls set out in the sun with an array of yellowing Workers Power titles, Murphy finally stops, wrinkles her nose, blurts:

— God, they ming

Rebecca:

— Murf, please

— But they do. They smell. Yuk

— Murphy

— But why? Why do they have to pong? Does it say that in Das Kapital?

The two college friends push through one particularly gamey cell of would-be Irish Republicans from Guildford as Rebecca explains:

— It’s a Marxist Weekend, they take over the Union every spring for a weekend and have … I don’t know … conferences … I suppose …

Evidently unsatisfied by this Murphy stops short on a pavement and starts loudly reading out the signs installed everywhere: the Luton Comrades For A United Ireland poster, the Kidderminster Spartacists Meet In The Marlborough Arms flyer. Then:

— Correct me if I’m wrong, Becs, but didn’t, like, these people lose? Weren’t they like … totally wrong?

— I’m going to Waterstone’s

— Yeah? Try that poetry collection, you might like it …

Rebecca nods. The two of them are on the corner of Malet Place. In the sun Murphy smiles and reaches over and holds Rebecca’s face and kisses her on the cheek.

— And take care, ducks

With that done Murphy twists on a heel, and walks away down the road.

Still stood still, Rebecca watches her friend depart. From this vantage, the slight overfatness of Murphy’s bottom is obvious, despite the pink cardigan tied around. The sight of this tugs at Rebecca. Flushed by something, Rebecca realises that it is actually this, the pathos of Murphy’s self-consciousness, the pathos of Murphy’s awareness of her own physical imperfections, that constitutes a large part of why Rebecca loves Murphy. Considering this, this odd fact, Rebecca gazes, half in reverie, as Murphy suddenly turns, brightly smiles, and does a sarcastically soppy wave back at Rebecca.

Observing her friend’s cheery wave, Rebecca feels overwhelmed. From nowhere, she now feels an engulfing sadness, as if something soon, something looming and near, something awful is about to happen to her dearest friend that should forever change …

Dismissing it from her thoughts Rebecca goes over to Waterstone’s the Bookshop. Pressing glass she enters. Immediately inside she pauses in the welcome cool downdraught from the doorway aircon. Where to? Travel, Cookery, or Magazines? Or Medieval History, as is proper and right? By her self-imposed schedule Rebecca is all too aware that at this moment she shouldn’t even be here: she should be back at the London Uni library reading up Frankish chronicles. Disregarding her postgraduate conscience Rebecca instead makes her way slowly round Fiction, Crime and New Titles, before climbing the black metal stairs, and the second flight of stairs, at the top of which she turns and makes that guilty but familiar, wicked but much loved right turn: into Literature, and Drama, and Poetry, and Art. Her trueloves …

Hours pass, maybe minutes. Rebecca moves from Braque to Brancusi, from Hockney to Biedermeier. Finally she finds a book about French eighteenth-century court portraiture. The engrossing book makes Rebecca wonder how she can relate the sensuality of rococo portraiture to her thesis; she knows she can’t, but hey.

Then Rebecca starts. Something has made her pull her head from the book: some subconscious foreshadowing, some creak in the floorboards. Some noise. Turning, Rebecca sees: him. It is him. The thug. The puppy drowner. The very real subject of her very recent lunchtime daydreams is standing in the doorway pretending to look at the book he is holding. The book is an anthology of love poetry, Rebecca notes: but the way he is not truly reading it makes Rebecca realise, with a surge, that quite possibly his real intention is to talk to her; it seems as if he really wants to be talking to her, to be looking at her.

So this is it; my pounding heart surcease, Rebecca thinks. For the moment he, the thug, does nothing. He appears to be about to say something, he is surely struggling for the right words, but nothing yet. Closing her eyes Rebecca starts on wondering what he will eventually enunciate when he works up the courage; with a pole vault in her heart she considers what cliché’d but lovely line of poetry he’ll choose, how he’ll opt to mark this wonderful, enchanted, never-to-be-forgotten moment in their now forever twinned and linked-together lives by saying thou unravished bride of quietness, or maybe carentan o carentan or just possibly I have desired to go, Where springs not fail, to fields where flies no sharp and sided hail, and a few lilies blow.

— Great arse!

He says.

3

Fleeing the sunshine and the sight of Rebecca, Patrick steps inside a low metal doorway into a tiny badly carpeted lobby, where he is scrutinised by three policemen standing half visible behind big panes of scratched, thickened glass. Patrick leans and explains, through the grille at the bottom of one pane of glass, that he is up for trial. The policeman looks blank, then mutters, then reads from a big book to his side; with a final, diffident glance at Patrick the policeman nods and buzzes a button which slides open the door of a cylindrical plastic airlock to Patrick’s right. Unsure, Patrick turns and steps inside the vertical clear plastic coffin. The circular door behind slides shut; Patrick wonders why the Old Bailey gets its furniture from cheap Seventies BBC space dramas; the arc of transparent plastic that is the door in front jerks open.

Clear of the door Patrick is beckoned through a metal detector arch by the same policeman who gave him the funny look. The policeman then directs him up some steps and turns away as if he does not want to look at Patrick any more.

Patrick approaches some more steps. These are big steps, bigger steps. This is more like it, thinks Patrick. His shoes tap-dancing on the large marble steps Patrick feels a tiny frisson of aesthetic pleasure as he is guided by the dead architect’s unseen hand up and out into the cool marble spaces of the Central Criminal Court proper.

— Patrick

It is his lawyer; and his lawyer’s junior.

— Hello Mister Stefan

— About time!

— Yes er sorry

— You do remember your bail conditions?

Patrick grimaces inwardly, then outwardly. He does not feel like being ticked off, not now, not here. His lawyer seems to notice this. With a lofty chuckle Stefan places a squeezing hand on Patrick’s shoulder. At the same time, Charlie Juson, his lawyer’s junior, slaps Patrick’s other shoulder. Patrick smiles weakly at this display of slightly awkward mateyness, and stares wonderingly ahead. The last time Patrick saw his brief Robert Stefan QC, Robert Stefan QC was in an open-necked shirt leaning back in a relaxed leather chair in his panelled chambers in the blossomy, vernal, High Middle Ages loveliness of a Maytime Inner Temple, discoursing whisky-in-hand-ishly on his wide knowledge of various sex crimes. Here Stefan is in black with a white horsehair wig on his head: looking very serious.

Back then, two months previously, when Patrick had gone to discuss his hopes, his fears, his case, his evidence, his chances of getting jail, cricket, rugby, the precise meaning of the word ‘consent’ as regards rape trials, Stefan had seemed to Patrick rather young to be a top lawyer, a silk, a Queen’s Counsel: which was both worrying and reassuring. Now, here, in the Old Bailey, Stefan seems older and infinitely more serious; which both reassures and frightens Patrick. So Patrick stands here feeling confused; Stefan talks quickly:

— Don’t worry, we haven’t been called yet

— Right

— Ten thirty I think

— Yes

— But I rather think we’re going to be in Court Eighteen are you feeling alright?

— Patch!

Patrick turns.

— I just saw her mother she was staring at me like

— Anderson!

— Chin up you old twat

— Was that her outside? In the school dress?

— First there’ll be jury selection

— Then evidence in chief

— Talk about hooters!

— Joe

Surrounded by gaggles of over-sarcastic friends and an anxious-looking sister Patrick wonders, slowly. For a moment he feels comforted by this mob-handedness: after all, how can anything go wrong, with all his friends and his sister and probably his mother here and … and …

And then he remembers that if this were his funeral they would still be here, all of them, his friends and family, behaving precisely the same way, being chatty yet sad, feeling guilty but laughing, greeting each other merrily and youthfully and then stopping as soon as they remember where they are. And so now Patrick swoons at the thought that this is indeed his funeral, here, stood in the middle of the marble lobby of the Central Criminal Court of Old Newgate Jail he will be gone and never seen again; will be despatched with due ceremony; and with this thought Patrick feels himself transcend, go out-of-body, feels himself levitate above the vortex of buzzing besuited friends and black-cassocked priests-cum-lawyers … he is ascending … ascending to somewhere, to somewhere where his experience is so beyond what they shall ever experience he is beyond the reach of mutual understanding and they shall none of them ever be friends again.

— Patch you nutter I told you not to rape her

— As I’ve said, with previous convictions, the recommended sentence can …

— Tapir!

Crackling through the noise of his friends and lawyers like someone shouting his name at a party Patrick hears a voice come over the court loudspeakers

—All parties in Skivington please go to Court Number Eighteen

— That’s us

Says Stefan.

Patrick breathes in, breathes out. He sweeps a gaze across the faces in front of him: his lawyer, his friends, his sister. His sister Emily. Emily looks back at him. Her Skivington-blue eyes are slightly moist, her hair slightly dishevelled; her caring for him is evidenced in the lack of care for herself. Holding her brother by his besuited shoulder Emily says:

— Good luck, Patrick

— Yeah mate

Says Joe. Someone else says:

— Give ’em hell, y’wanker

A couple of Joe’s friends have slapped Patrick on the back; Joe has done the same. With his shoulder still smarting, Patrick is then man-handled by his lawyers, by Robert Stefan and Charlie Juson, up some more expensively shallow, lavishly marble steps, unto a marble cool corridor. Escorted by his legal bouncers, Patrick walks past other lawyers in wigs and kit, past his solicitor Gareth Jenkins who gives Patrick a thumbs-up, past a girl who seems to be crying, past three nasty-looking blokes with tattoos who are staring at the crying girl. Then they stop before a padded door which is all velvet and wood and dignified weight.

The door opens, they step through; the door closes quietly and slowly behind. Patrick lets himself be led into a wooden-railed dock. The dock. Patrick sits down on a crap plastic chair and gazes around Court Number Eighteen. It is a long high soft-lit soft-white light-brown-wood-panelled courtroom. A clock ticks on one wall. The other wall is taken up by a jutting gallery; the public gallery? Patrick presumes it is. Patrick leans to try and see who is seeing him from the gallery; he can’t quite see. So instead Patrick looks at the royal crest, the Lion and Unicorn above the judge’s big wooden throne at the end.

The judge isn’t on his throne, isn’t in the courtroom, but lots of other people are: a clerk of the court; what Patrick assumes is a stenographer, though he isn’t sure what a stenographer is; his own lawyer, now opening his briefcase; another lawyer-type, but older, (older? wiser?? the prosecution???) opening his own briefcase; his solicitor, doing nothing (nothing?); some security musclemen who are standing ominously nearby; a yawning policewoman; another policewoman chewing gum; another clerk of the court; and a couple of seedy-looking guys in cheapish suits who are staring him out from some of the side galleries ranked beside the dock. Journalists? Patrick shakes his head and stares at the royal crest above the judge’s seat. Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense.

Something about this agitates him. In his dock, in his seat, Patrick swallows. Although Patrick knows it is a trick, a stunt, a sleight of the psychosocial hand, he feels his pulse race, his heart go fast: the Majesty of the Law. He might have been in courts before, but they were nothing like this.

Patrick is, now, suddenly, again, scared. He feels like a small boy sent to the headmaster’s study. Like a schoolkid walking down the corridor, heading for detention … Except this time his detention will result in his spending fourteen years in a cold northern jail before having three broken lightbulbs shoved up his arse by his gay psychotic car-jacking Kurdish cellm …

— All Rise

Everybody in the court who wasn’t standing now stands; at the back of the court beside the judge’s throne a clerk opens a door and a small oldish man walks in wearing a larger wig. The man ascends to the throne and sits down and gazes around and says:

— Good morning, everybody

A good morning is mumbled back by everybody. Everybody sits down who seems to be allowed to sit down; Patrick does the same. At once people start chatting, opening folders, relaxing, moving about the courtroom confusingly but confidently: just people doing what they normally do, on a normal day. Normal day! Patrick sits there, marvelling. Then Patrick’s lawyer leans across to chat to the man whom Patrick presumes is the prosecution lawyer, Alan Gregory QC. The prosecutor nods, nods again, and then laughs.

!

The spittle of outrage fills Patrick’s mouth as he sees this open collaboration, this evidence of conspiracy. How can they be chatting? Laughing? Chatting? Jesusfuck! Patrick is outraged, helpless, stuck in his blue plastic chair in the wooden dock, palsied by impotent anger. Colluding! Conspiring! Chatting! Patrick wants to shout out at them: Wankers! Jobsworths! Toffeewombles!

But Patrick does not shout this; shouting out swearwords isn’t going to do anything. He realises this. The judge might be a pantsucking fuckbat but …

The judge!?!

Patrick eyes up the judge. A good man, surely, hopefully, pleaseGod, yes. Yesyes, a good man. Yes. And so Patrick calms down, and so Patrick calms down. And so he calms down … until he has another spasm of panic when he realises that he can’t see his friends. Where? Where! Scandal! Before it has fully dawned on Patrick that they are in the public gallery and the public gallery is virtually directly above him, overhanging him, and therefore invisible to him, some official stands up and says:

— Stand up!

Patrick looks around the court to see which idiot is being bossed in this way. Then he realises it is him: Patrick Skivington. Obediently Patrick stands, and steadies his knees. The clerk, or whoever it is, says:

— You are Patrick Skivington of flat two, number thirty-five, Leominster Place, London WC1, correct?

Patrick nods and croaks a quiet yes. The clerk says:

— You are charged that on the night of August twenty-eight, two thousand and – Patrick jibes; was it that long ago? The clerk completes the date; then pauses, slightly, before saying – raped Rebecca Jessel, contrary to section one of the Sexual Offences Act of nineteen fifty-six – Another significant pause; another glance up – How do you plead?

OK, OK, OK. Patrick takes a grip of his thigh. OK. Ready. Ready-ready. Firm voice. Big voice. This is your chance. For months Patrick has waited for this moment, this moment when he shall express all his outraged innocence, all his innocent hurt, all his unjustly tormented truly-suffering-selfness, in two words. He has only two words, two words to say it all, all he’s felt over these last months, this last year, all he felt in prison, all he felt in his cell, all he felt on remand: and so Patrick stands, and lifts his chin and looks directly at the judge, at the Queen, at God, and asseverates, with all the self-righteous self-justification he can adduce in a tone of voice:

— NOT GUILTY

Half a second passes while this sinks in. Then, nothing. Contrary to Patrick’s quondam daydreams of the last year, the tone of outraged innocence in his voice fails to instantly convince. The proceedings are not summarily dismissed. The court is not in uproar. The public gallery is not full of hat-waving citizens demanding his immediate release. Nor does the judge glance sharply across at the clerk and say what is this obviously innocent young man doing here, let him go at once.

Instead the judge clears his throat and says:

— OK I think we’ll have the jury in

— Call the jury!

— The jury …

Patrick sits down. Around him notepapers have been unfoldered, pens clicked on, wigs taken up. Then the main door opens, and a procession of people are led in, Indian file, one by one. Two of them are indeed Indian: a youngish fanciable girl, and a middle-aged woman in a horrible, oversized jumper. Urgent, Patrick scans these two, and the rest of the jury. Patrick tries to remember Stefan’s advice not to eyeball the jurors for fear of frightening them, but he can’t help himself. These people are going to be holding his bollocks in their hands, and he wants to assess their bollock-holding fitness-for-purpose.

Eight of the jury are women; only one (a man in a battered brown-leather jacket, with a wry intelligent smile) is the sort of person Patrick would consider even sharing a couple of beers with. Apart from the cute Indian girl. One of the men, a darkish, shortish, possibly foreign man, has an eggshell-blue nylon shirt on. With a glossy green leather tie.

Patrick shudders.

He is doomed.

One by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one the jury is sworn in, each taking a bible in hand:

— I swear by Almighty God to do my best to try the defendant according to the evidence presented …

As the jury is sworn in, Patrick weighs up the irony of the fact that he is about to be tried by a man wearing a green leather tie. His fate is about to be decided by a man who buys his clothes second hand in … Azerbaijan. This pleasurably snobbish line of thought exhausted, Patrick finds that after this he is actually growing very very very slightly … bored. Bored? Patrick’s sense of doom, of pointlessness, of almost-being-extraneous-to-proceedings has metamorphosed into a kind of numb dull indifference which is barely a whit away from … boredom. From his dock seat Patrick idly gazes at the female stenographer, wondering what her nipples are like; until he is shaken out of his maudlin torpor by the annoyingly pompous voice of the prosecutor, Mister Alan Gregory QC.

Gregory has stood up, and is saying to the jury:

— Members of the jury, the case you are about to hear is distressing in the extreme. It involves the savage sexual brutalisation of a young girl by the defendant, Patrick Skivington – Gregory does the faintest of gestures towards Patrick; Patrick thinks how much he wants to staple train timetables to Gregory’s head; Gregory goes on – It is my duty as prosecution lawyer to present to you the evidence in a dispassionate and logical light, but also to convince you beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant was responsible for the truly appalling crime you are about to try – A second actorly handwave, then – The burden of proof, as we call it, rests with me. My colleague who is appearing for the defence – He wafts the same manicured hand at Stefan, who nods, smiles briefly – Has nothing to prove, as such. His job is more to sow doubt, as it were. However I restate that it is my belief that the evidence in this case is overwhelming and conclusive, besides being … ah – Looking at the ceiling; looking down – … Very upsetting, and that you should encounter no difficulty in finding the defendant guilty – A glance, a glance at Patrick – At this stage in proceedings it is usual for the prosecution counsel to present a kind of résumé of the indictment, a summation, but as we shall be going over all the evidence in some detail more than once I shall restrict myself to a brief precis of the alleged crime – Gregory pauses, gazes down at his papers in a somehow Oxbridge way; Patrick feels his teeth grinding; he tries not to listen to his own teeth, or to Gregory; but can’t help – The allegation is simply put: that the defendant, on the night of August twenty-eighth, last year, raped his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Jessel. But, members of the jury, that bald statement barely begins to describe the true horror of the crime that, the prosecution posits, the defendant perpetrated that night. You all, I hope, have some photos in your files, these photos – Gregory suddenly and unexpectedly holds up a big photo and wafts it at the jury. Even from this distance Patrick can see a picture of his and Rebecca’s bedroom. Eyes left, Patrick sees the jurors reaching in folders and looking at the same photo and nodding back at the prosecutor, who smiles so ingratiatingly and says some more stuff that Patrick succeeds in blocking out. For a few moments Patrick is successful in not hearing anything, but then the prosecutor gets a little louder, as if approaching his peroration, and the loudness forces Patrick to listen, to hear Gregory say – Nor was this just a simple case of non-consensual vaginal penetration, the technical definition of rape. No, the prosecution holds that this man, the defendant, also subjected this terrified girl to a number of other degrading acts, to coercive anal penetration, to forced oral sex, to various other sadistic sexual crimes, some of which are dealt with in the ancillary indictments – Adjusting his wig Gregory stands back a touch, as if thinking; then he looks up and goes on – I shall be bringing medical evidence to support this claim. A deal of evidence that will require a … strong stomach – Patrick feels his own jaw chewing, jaw-going, his jaw, jawing, hurting – And now, with the court’s permission, I should like to call the alleged victim, Rebecca Jessel, to the stand

Patrick lifts and shakes his head and tries to stare bravely at the wall, at the neutral wall above the judge’s head. A faint tiny prickling behind his eyes indicates to Patrick Skivington that he would probably be crying if he were ten years old and being picked on like this in the school yard.

Patrick does not cry. He stares forward.

Wasp-face! Dog-features! Badger-breath!

4

— Great arse?

— … Yes

— Great arse?

— So?

— Ha! This Patrick guy – Murphy picks up a pencil, waggles it – Smooth-talking bastard!

— It was a book …

—Yep OK

— I was looking at a book, of French rococo art

— Sure, Becs

— No you don’t understand he was looking over my shoulder, at that picture by Boucher – Murphy not responding, Rebecca goes on – The painting of that girl with her bottom in the air, so you see it was really quite sharp

Murphy percusses the end of the pencil against her lips:

— It isn’t big and it isn’t clever

— Murf!

— I don’t mind you lying to me, it’s when you lie to yourself

— Ohhh

Amused but frustrated Rebecca says no more. Instead she leans against the edge of Murphy’s desk: the only furniture of note in the pale-blond-wooden-floored, mostly white-matt-walled emptiness of Schubert & Scholes, Murphy’s gallery.

Rebecca:

— How long has it been since you had a shag Murf?

— He just sounds rough. Very rough … – Murphy is twirling the pencil like a tiny baton between her fingers – Tell me about his criminal record again?

— It’s nothing heavy

— Oh, only a tiny little bit of GBH

— He got in a couple of fights when he was at Uni

— A couple of fights. Jesus! – Murphy sticks the pencil into her hair, twists hair around the end — That’s why they threw him out of his college, the University of Tesco’s Car Park, or wherever it was? Right?!

— Yyyess

— Let’s face it, he’s a bloody caveman

Rebecca tilts her head:

— Mmm. Sexy, isn’t it?

— No – Murphy snaps – It’s not. It’s wanky. The guy’s a musclebound fuck-wit and you’re all gooey-eyed. Christ! – Murphy gazes into the eyes of her friend – What about all that feminism stuff we studied at Edinburgh, what about Simone de Beauvoir and … that other French cow?

— You should see him when he’s got a bit of stubble

— Ohhh … – The pencil falls from Murphy’s fingers, bounces off a two-month-old edition of Blueprint magazine, and spins to the pale-blond-wood floor. Murphy looks down, says – I presume you’ve shagged him already?

— He’s such a spunk

— So that makes it OK? You atrocious slut

Surveying a pile of oversized metal film canisters stacked carefully in one corner of the gallery, Rebecca says:

— Actually we haven’t – Looking back at her surprised-looking friend, meaningfully – I only went down on him

A clucking noise from Murphy; Rebecca:

— Which I thought was rather restrained

— Restrained?

— Comparatively

Murphy:

— Fifteen minutes after meeting the bloke you’re on your knees wrestling with his zipper … restrained?

— Nice and big, by the way

— ?

— And thick

Murphy laughs:

— Girth?

— Gerrrrrrtthh!

— We Like Gerrrrrtthhhhh!!

Their chorus done, Murphy shakes her head and says:

— Just don’t come running when he goes and dumps you you hairy old SLAPPER

A pause. Murphy is bending to pick up the pencil from the floor. Watching her friend bend over, Rebecca assesses her friend’s shortish brown hair; her lithe figure; the cuttlefish tattoo she can see above her friend’s new jeans-belt. Rebecca, idly:

— Love the belt

— Yeah?

Saying ‘yeah I do’, Rebecca sits back against the desk again. Looking at a grainy art photo of a power station on the wall, Rebecca says:

— Actually, we’ve only kissed

— Yeah right – Murphy looks sarcastic and uncomprehending and pleased at the same time – Three dates: and you’ve only kissed? Honestly?

— Honestly

— Wow … – Murphy pretends to get up from her chair – Do you want to lie down? I’ll get you a blanket

— I think … he’s a bit … inhibited

— Inhibited?

— Well, I told him

— No!

— Couldn’t help it. He took me to some club he knows … and we started talking about sex and – Rebecca grins self-consciously – I just stupidly came out with it

— Jesus

— I know – Rebecca mumbles a laugh – Maybe it was a slight mistake

— I’ve told you, Becs: it frightens them

— But it’s just the truth

Murphy shakes her head:

— Twenty-eight different lovers is quite a lot for a twenty-two-year-old Rebecca, smiling:

— Rather more than he as it turned out

— Where’d he take you then?

— Thirty-one anyway … sorry?

— Your second date. Where?

— I told you, this club, he knows all these places in Soho cause of

— No, before the club

— Oh, some posh restaurant

— Hope he paid

— Of course. It’s so awfully unfair isn’t it?

A confirming grin, then Murphy says:

— Don’t tell ’em – Murphy cocks a finger to her lips – They’ll figure it out one day, don’t let on …

Rebecca nods, distracted, says ‘uh-huh’. Again, she looks appraisingly at her friend. Rebecca wonders if and when her best friend will get a boyfriend. Then she wonders if her own impending relationship will affect her friendship with Murphy; then Rebecca realises she has no idea what effect her possible love affair with Patrick will have, because she’s never been in love before. In which case, how does she know she is falling in love now? Simply because she’s more anxious than normal, more nervously upbeat? More keen to submit?

As if telepathically, Murphy says:

— I suppose you’re going to go and fall in love with this bozo aren’t you?

— No

— YES – Murphy is sighing, urbanely – You’re going to sleep with him tonight and by next week you’ll be texting him messages on his phone and by autumn you’ll be wearing his bloody shirts and then – Murphy stops, nods to herself, decides on the rest of her speech – Then by next spring when you both walk home from restaurants you’ll start looking casually in estate agents and then … and then … – Searching for the right part of London, Murphy goes on, emphatically – Then you’ll move in to some stupid stupid flat in Clapham and that’ll be it. Finito. After that you’ll only ever ring me when he’s been horrible to you and then you’ll have a baby and move to Suffolk and spend the weekend wearing Aran jumpers and God it’s so annoying

— You’re jealous. Sweet

— Course I’m fucking jealous – Murphy shakes her head in amazement – Why shouldn’t I be jealous. Just don’t get hurt? K?

— You might be wrong anyway – Rebecca glances at the precious-metal watch, the watch her father bought her for her eighteenth. This makes her feel a pang of something. Some regret – He’s a bit rough in some ways … – She makes a thoughtful face – Anyway I’m meeting him at the pub down the road, in a minute

Murphy, calmer:

— You did say he lives round here, right?

— Ya, it’s convenient for his job – Rebecca looks out of the window, as if expecting Patrick to walk by – S’just down the road

— So that’s why he fetched up every time we had a sarny

— Yes – Rebecca thinks about Patrick’s flat; about the kiss on the sofa, the hand on her nipple – He’s got a nice flatmate, very shaggable

Murphy looks up, helpless:

— Really?

— Really. Joe … something. Cute bod. Bit of a druggie

— Mmmm?

— Wears a good pair of jeans …

— Ooooh …

Rebecca starts laughing at Murphy’s melodramatic ooooh-noise; Murphy has already stopped laughing. Murphy is saying:

— Hello hello

Rebecca:

— I’ll arrange a drink or something. So you can meet him, he’s very sweet and funny, I’m sure you’ll

— sssss!!

Murphy is nodding towards a well-dressed man who has swung through the plate-glass door from the street; Murphy:

— The Christmas rush!!

Obediently Rebecca gazes across the gallery: at the expensively empty space of Schubert & Scholes now filled by a punter, a customer, a man. The man has an air of wealth, and confidence; enough for Murphy to put on her brightest, most insincere gallery-girl smile.

His hands on his knees, the pinstriped man begins examining a collection of enamelled Japanese household rubbish piled alongside one wall of the gallery. Quickly swivelling to her best friend, Murphy makes a ‘sorry I’d better do some work now’ expression; slipping herself off the desk Rebecca puts a fist to her tilted head and makes an ‘OK I’ll ring you tomorrow’ gesture.

In Charlotte Street the blue sunshades are up outside Chez Gérard. A few yards further down the road couples are eating noodles outside the Vietnamese place. And on restaurant tables ranked alongside the entire facade of Pescatori Fish Restaurant big azure-glass ashtrays are glinting expensively in the sun. Walking down this, through this, all this, along her favourite London road, Rebecca feels a head-rush of happiness. She feels a sudden sense of her youngness, her freeness, her possibly-about-to-be-no-longer-singleness. She feels almost ebullient: so ebullient, she finds she is virtually skipping down to the junction of Charlotte and Percy Streets, as she heads for the Marquis of Granby pub.

But before she reaches the Marquis of Granby pub, Rebecca clocks her watch again and realises she has walked so fast, and so ebulliently, and so nearly-skippingly, she is ten minutes early.

So now? Assessing the sun Rebecca sees that it is still slanting brightly enough down Rathbone Place to make it worth working on her tan. Taking a corner seat at one of the wooden pub tables outside the Marquis Rebecca arranges herself: she turns and faces with closed eyes the hot sun, stretching her bare legs out. After a minute of this Rebecca opens her eyes, and sees that her legs are already the subject of some male consternation. One besuited barely-out-of-his-teens drinker is openly pointing at her. For his benefit, without making it too obvious, Rebecca raises her dress an inch or two higher; thinking of Rembrandt’s wife in the painting as she does so.

More heads turn. A tongue actually lolls. Rebecca has never seen a tongue loll before, but there one is, lolling. At her. Not for the first time in her life, Rebecca decides she actually quite enjoys this: the sensation of masculine eyes upon her. It makes her feel like a mid-period Picasso at a glamorous auction; it makes her feel like an attractive woman. Sitting here being sizzled by the heat Rebecca starts to wonder why some art history feminists get so worked up about the male gaze. How so? Why so het up about leers and oeillades? Rebecca does not comprehend it. These staring men make Rebecca feel strong, empowered, aristocratic. To Rebecca right now these men look like so many Catholic French peasants gazing at le Roi Soleil. Dumb, resentful, awestruck serfs …

Thinking of this, primrosing down this intellectual path, Rebecca wonders unwontedly if she can spin a thesis out of this, out of, say, the male gaze as serf-like feudal reflex. Perhaps, she decides, she could; but then, she decides, she shouldn’t. All these thoughts of matters historical, and theoretical, and thesis-esque, are in fact making Rebecca feel a simultaneous twinge of guilt. Because she isn’t working even on her present project, her Crusader thesis, hardly. At all.

Rebecca opens her eyes, worried now. Ever since she and Patrick met, she thinks, she’s done virtually nothing towards her PhD. And this does not make Rebecca feel empowered and royal: right now this makes her feel crap, teenage, girly and feeble. God it’s so crap, Rebecca decides, pulling down her dress to hide her legs: that a mere man can come along and upend her priorities, distort her intellectual life, make nonsense of her ambitions and life goals, by not having shaved for a day or two. How gay is that?

So she must do some work, Rebecca decides, just to show she isn’t just a cheerleading troupe of hormones.

Sighing in the sunshine, putting down her pint of lager, Rebecca takes a textbook out of her bag, the ever-present, hardly-touched Crusades history book, and starts to read up. Flicking pages she comes upon the section she was deconstructing up until … the bit she was studying up and unto the moment Patrick walked casually through the front door of her life, like he’d had a key all along …

Patrick …? Patrick … PATRICK. Rebecca wonders why it should be Patrick that finally stirs her, rather than any other. He’s nice-looking, she thinks; not the most good-looking. So is it because he’s like her father? Rebecca cannot imagine anyone less like her passive, diffident, tentative, bridge-playing father. Is it then because he’s like her mother?

Rebecca shudders.

Then it must be because he’s like neither; the opposite of both. In which case, how will her parents react to him? And how will he react to them? Can they possibly get on? Will Patrick understand the set up? Will he despise Rebecca for living at home, with her parents, at her age, for having sloped back home so as to do her London Uni PhD? Will he understand that she only did this because home was luxurious, convenient, palatial, and cheap …

Work!

Page opened, page corner unfoxed, Rebecca reads. She has to work. Lips firmed, she begins:

As the Crusaders trekked across Europe towards the Holy Land, they left a trail of dead. In Speyer, Worms and other German cities they butchered Jews in their thousands. Witnesses in Mainz, in particular, reported fearful scenes of panic, of terrified Jewish women barricading themselves in their houses, and throwing gold coins out of the windows, to try and distract the rampaging soldiery.

To no avail. The pogrom was savage, and relentless, and shocking, even by the …

— Hello?

Eyes up, Rebecca sees that: yes! it’s Patrick. Half stooping Patrick kisses Rebecca on her grateful cheek, turning her face Rebecca turns this into a kiss on the lips. At this Patrick seems to start, then stop. For a second Patrick seems unsure again: he just stands there. Rebecca takes this chance to shut and bag her book, and also to appraise Patrick: to assess his hiply retro jeans, his cool white cotton shirt, his two days’ stubble. Sensing the appraisal, Patrick makes a wry face, and a buying-the-drinks gesture, and disappears inside the pub. Two minutes later he comes out with two pints of coldish lager which the two of them sit and drink quickly, and thirstily, while they talk. After these two pints Patrick goes into the pub and buys two more pints; they drink these two almost as quickly. They are getting drunk. As Rebecca gets drunk, Patrick gets drunk, and the two of them talk excitedly and happily as they get drunk. The fact that they are getting drunk means they keep breaking into laughter apropos of nothing. This in itself makes Rebecca feel quite strange inside: sipping her beer, calming herself, she tries to concentrate on what Patrick is saying. Patrick is explaining that the small record label which he is helping to run has just bought an even smaller label which means they now have a roster of Asian ambient techno bands to promote and, yes, Rebecca thinks, his tanned chest looks nice with that silver cross against it.

Patrick has stopped talking. Rebecca makes a sorry-I-was-distracted-could-you-say-that-again face. Patrick shakes his head:

— Like you’re interested

— Oh I am

Patrick laughs:

— Lying tart

— No no really tell me more about that Asian thrash metal scene

— OK OK – He chuckles – Do you fancy coming back to my flat?

Eyes on his laughing eyes, eyes on his thick, black, slightly violent hair, Rebecca wonders: about Patrick’s differentness, his maleness, his foreignness. As Patrick makes some more noises it comes to Rebecca that his Irish-English-Britishness is as foreign to her as, no doubt, as a Jewess, she is to him. She is his Outremer. He is her Frankish knight. And this is their First Crusade.

And perhaps, Rebecca thinks, I overintellectualise

— Got some Kiwi Riesling

— Uhhh, sorry?

Looking at Rebecca with a cool expression, of amused bemusement, Patrick says:

— I was … suggesting – He slows, deliberately – That we eat at my place, I could do some food, open a bottle of white or something. You know?

Nodding demurely, saying ‘sure’, Rebecca sips at her lager. Then she gives up on being demure and gulps the rest of her beer down. As she wipes her lips with the back of her hand, he laughs. Rebecca sarcastically apologises and says:

— Did you not know I was a complete lush?

Fitting his empty beer glass into the circle of dampness it has already made, Patrick says:

— Come on – Holding out a hand he takes Rebecca’s hand, and thereby helps her up and away.

Pleased to be holding hands with him, worried her hands are perspiring, noticing he is checking out her cleavage as they walk along, Rebecca says nothing. Together, hand in hand, they walk down Windmill Street, over Tottenham Court Road, along the side roads to Patrick’s flat. His flat. To the bare, unpainted stairs of his first-floor shared apartment.

In the flat they stand, slightly awkward. Rebecca makes a comment about how nice and bright it is in the day, and of course how centrally located. Patrick makes a mumbling noise about how he grew up in a boring small town and therefore has a fear of living in small towns or suburbs; how living away from the centre of London makes him feel like he is dying. Dying in prison. Then he laughs and says:

— I’ll get a drink

Into the sitting room, flooded with square sunlight from the large first-floor windows, Rebecca kneels in her summer dress on the polished bare floorboards and starts checking out Patrick’s bookshelves. From the kitchen she can hear sounds of him, uncorking bottles, clattering plates and cutlery. The last time she was in this flat, she thinks, the only other time she was in this flat, she had been very very drunk and it was very very dark and she had not had the time to case the bookcase, to do the essential appraisal. So now is her chance.

— White wine OK then?

— Yes – Rebecca calls back, through the walls, into the kitchen – Yes please fine

So: the bookcase. Running her eyes along the spines, feeling slightly guilty about her intellectual snobbishness, Rebecca does her assessment.

De Bernières, of course; Bridget Jones, slightly surprising; Tolstoy, v.g.

— Dressing on your salad?

— Yes, please, whatever

Thinking for a second about the Tolstoy, pleased about the Tolstoy, Rebecca moves on.

Pushkin, golly; Nick Hornby, hmmm; Turgenev, wow; Akhmatova, even better.

Hmm.

— God I love rocket

He is calling from the kitchen again. Rebecca laughs something in agreement and completes her research. It doesn’t take long. Apart from the literature and fiction titles she’s seen, the rest of the shelves are stuffed with boy books: psychology, sociobiology, politics, rugby; books on fascism, cricket, anti-Semitism, sex, ant society, human evolution and Southampton FC. For the life of her Rebecca doesn’t know what she thinks about the maleness of these bookshelves. Here is the intellectual equivalent of a fridge with just two beer cans in it. Is that good or bad?

As she tries to assess her own reaction Rebecca notices that Patrick has returned with a bowl of salad, two plates, and some cutlery lodged like a tango dancer’s rose in his mouth; getting to her feet, slightly embarrassed to have been caught checking his shelves, Rebecca takes the forks out of Patrick’s mouth, as he turns and produces from behind him two wineglasses full of cold white Riesling. Rebecca notes that Patrick is looking down her cleavage again as he stops to place her wineglass on the windowshelf.

They sit side by side on the sofa; eat the salad. The salad is nice, the wine nicer. Rebecca decides to ask:

— The books – She says, with half a mouthful of rocket – They all yours?

— Yeah – He answers, similarly mouth full – Mostly. The fiction tends to be Joe’s, all the poetry and Russian crap

— Right

— And all the science stuff is basically mine

— Uh … – Rebecca says – Huh

They both go quiet as they eat. At one point they both laugh nervously at the same time; then they both laugh genuinely because they have both laughed nervously at the same time. Then Patrick:

— And the music’s totally mine

He is gesturing behind her. Turning on the sofa Rebecca takes in, for the first time, the entire opposite wall. The entire opposite wall is comprised of floor-to-ceiling shelves holding CDs, singles, tapes, DATs, minidisks, LPs, DVDs, God knows. Thousands of titles, literally thousands. Even from this distance, with her dim knowledge of music, Rebecca can see there is a notable mixture: jazz, blues, acid house, Celtic folk, Yorkshire brass band, Karlheinz Stockhausen (Karlhwho Stockwhat?), Wagner, bluegrass, flamenco. Pulled especially from the rack is a row of CDs, standing together by the player.

Setting her finished plate of salad on the floor Rebecca skips over to the row of CDs; kneeling, and wine-sipping, and gazing, she checks out the titles of these chosen CDs. What he is listening to now. Minnie Ripperton, Maria Callas, Joy Division, Nick Drake (?), the Carpenters, Elvis, Blind Melon (??), Jacqueline du Pré.

Again, despite her misty grasp on things musical, and the fact that she is now really quite drunk, quite pleasantly, happily drunk, Rebecca realises there is something odd, something almost too eclectic about this selection. With her wineglass in hand, feeling pleasantly sluttish, Rebecca is about to swivel and ask him about the music, when she feels his lips on her neck. His arms are around her waist from behind, making her feel slim. His voice is close, boozy, warm:

— Dead cred

— Mmnn?

Her voice is slurred. His voice is closer, hotter:

— You see I’ve had an idea we should release a CD

— Nn

— Made up entirely of music by glamorously dead people, like all those

— Realll

— Yess – He is kissing her earlobe – Cause I think there’s something about music by dead people, interestingly dead people – Another kiss – Something that’s incredibly powerful – Another kiss – And better and poignant and the copyright might be a nightmare but we could call it Dead Singers’ Songs – Two kisses, four – And I think it would it would it might oh God Rebecca your breasts they are SO

— Here – She says, laughing – Here, you unbuckle it here

5

— So when did you first meet Mister Skivington?

In the witness box, Rebecca coughs. Then she looks flatly across the various heads that comprise the courtroom and she says:

— two years ago

The prosecutor nods and smiles, but his smile is uncertain. The judge intervenes:

— I’m sorry Miss Jessel but you’ll have to speak up

— sorry

In the dock Patrick exhales. He wants to curse, loudly. So where did she get this voice? His articulate, educated, cultured, self-confident, sexually experienced, words-like-Weltanschauung-knowing twenty-four-year-old ex-girlfriend: where did she suddenly acquire this meek, quiet, bashful, timid, inarticulate, hushed, I-am-oh-so-innocent teenagerish voice? Cursing quietly Patrick rests his forehead on two thumbs pointing up from interlocked hands; then he looks up to hear the judge say to Rebecca:

— The jury must be able to hear every word, you see

Rebecca nods:

— Yes, I’m … very sorry

The judge smiles reassuringly at Rebecca, and then turns back to the prosecutor’s grey wig:

— Do you want to repeat the question, counsel?

The wig nods. Laying down a pen on a desk, wrapping a hand around a black gown, gazing once more at his principal witness in her gingham-checked dress and her lambswool cardigan, the suntanned prosecutor opens his mouth and says:

— So you met the defendant about two years and two months ago?

— Yes. In a bookshop

— And you began … dating, soon after that?

— Yes

Dating? Patrick twitches, feels the horrible triteness of the word. He and Rebecca never dated …

— And how long after that did your relationship begin?

— A couple of … weeks. Maybe three …

— You were at college at the time?

— Yes. King’s College. London University. I still am

— What are you are studying?

— History. The Crusades

— And you are doing – The prosecutor looks at his file for a fact already, quite obviously, in his head – A PhD, yes?

— A doctorate, yes

— And your bachelor’s degree, from Edinburgh University – His eyes lifting – What was that in?

Rebecca shrugs:

— Art History

— And you – Gregory pauses, half smiles – took first-class honours in that, am I right?

— Yes

With a slight turn of the body towards the jury the prosecutor pauses to let this important fact take root, then says:

— OK. Now, fairly soon after this, as I understand …

And so it goes on. As Patrick sits in the dock and tries not to stare, hard, at Rebecca, at the side of her blonde head, Rebecca is asked to describe the inception and genesis of their relationship: from the first meeting, the first date, the first sex. As she sees it; as she saw it.

— I was seeing someone else but you see

— We went to a restaurant and we

— He was older than me so I

And during this litany Patrick has to admit, despite himself, that his lying cow of an ex looks surprisingly sweet, trembly and believable in the witness box. Surprisingly young, fresh, and betrayed. And raped. And in turn Patrick feels cheated, intrigued, guilty, scandalised, stressed-out, odd and libidinous. Not least because of Rebecca’s get-up. Obviously she is wearing the schoolgirly dress as a deliberate move; self-evidently she chose the pale cardigan, unheeled sixth-former shoes, and the throat-exposing hairstyle this very morning – in a deliberate attempt to gain sympathy, as self-conscious props designed to assist her in her role as the wronged adolescent, the abused child-bride. Yet Patrick still has to admit to himself: the ensemble works. At least: it works for him. Looking at her looking all schoolgirly and vulnerable, gamine and young and quite-possibly-raped-a-year-ago, Patrick wants nothing so much as to take Rebecca into the Old Bailey toilets and press her pleading face against the cold Edwardian tiling, hard.

— He was in the music business. He ran nightclubs and groups …

— I’d never really fallen for someone like him before

— I found him interesting and

Stuck in the dock Patrick wonders. As he watches his ex-girlfriend do her evidence in chief, he has to ponder how well she is going down. How well is she going down? If he were in the jury box, the visitors’ gallery, what would he see here in this pale-wood-panelled Old Bailey courtroom? Would he see a farce, or a tragedy? Or would he nip to the pub instead? Would he just dawdle a while and listen to Rebecca and then turn to a mate and say – oh forget it, this bastard’s going down. Boring.

And what precisely would he think of Rebecca? Would he empathise? Be repulsed? Find himself moved? Would he be touched by the pale rapeable baby pink of her lambswool cardigan? Or be appalled by this lying whore of a Jewess lisping her ex-lover into court?

— So you became lovers when?

— … On the fourth or fifth time

— That’s mid-June?

— Yes … I think so … it’s … – Rebecca lifts her blonde head and gazes frankly at the counsel – Difficult to be specific

— We understand, Miss Jessel, we don’t need actual dates

— I wish I could be more accurate … – She tilts her head and looks young – It’s a bit … you know …

At this the whole court seems to nod in sympathy; even Patrick feels himself nod sympathetically, too. It is. She’s right. It’s … a bit … you know.

— And you continued going out all that autumn … and over the new year?

— Yes

— Until eventually you moved in together … the following spring?

— Yes …

— So. Let me get this right – A slight adjustment to the wig. A slightly self-conscious adjustment – By this time, Miss Jessel, would you say that … – The prosecutor stops again; stares at the wall behind Rebecca’s head; he seems to consider something written on the wall, as he starts again – Would you say that you were in love with the defendant?

Rebecca looks puzzled. The courtroom stares at her puzzlement, rapt. Only the stenographer and Patrick are not looking straight at Rebecca. Patrick is looking out the side of an eye. Stretching out an arm to steady herself against the panel of the witness box Rebecca swallows, shrugs, looks pained, looks at her hands, says:

— … I suppose. Yes

— Only suppose?

— No. Yes. Definitely. Very much so

— Why?

— Why?

— Why were you in love with him? What was it that … attracted you to him?

— He was … funny, different. I …

— He was fun?

— Yes. Cynical but amusing, I mean … sort of sexy …

In the dock Patrick tries not to puff with pride: sexy! Sexy and funny! I’m sexy and funny … and amusingly cynical! Then he remembers he is on trial for rape. Embarrassed by himself he leans forward and listens to Rebecca say:

— But it wasn’t just that about him

Alan Gregory QC:

— No? What else was it?

Rebecca shakes her head, turns her head to look at the judge; the judge smiles paternally as if to say go on; Rebecca turns back and goes on:

— I don’t know. How can you define it?

— It, Miss Jessel?

— Love. Whatever it was … it was love – Again – We were in love

The court goes more quiet, more still. From the dock Patrick can almost hear the jury’s huge enjoyment. He can sense their pleasure at this laid-on melodrama, this subsidised soap opera, its clichés withal. His life. His trial.

— So you definitely would say you loved him?

— … Yes. I would – Rebecca nods, and then swallows, apparently with difficulty. Doing his own bit, the judge asks Rebecca if she wants a glass of water; Rebecca shakes her head and says no and goes on – He was … he was … – Head high, she confesses – As a man, Patrick was easy to fall in love with …

Rebecca stops. Patrick looks at her and feels again an unwonted pang of pride, and also gratitude for what she has said; he wonders how difficult it was for his ex-girlfriend to say that. Then he watches, trying not to be sympathetic, as Rebecca steadies herself again. Rebecca looks, now, as if she is resisting the urge to turn across the courtroom and stare at Patrick, to turn her delicate well-bred doesn’t-need-make-up face on Patrick. Sat on his plastic chair in the dock Patrick studies Rebecca not looking at him: he can see a very slight painterly pinkening around Rebecca’s delicate nostrils, as if she is flushed with difficult emotions. Patrick nearly flinches, seeing this, feeling Rebecca’s unspoken suffering. He feels like blushing.

But why? Why should he blush? For-God’s-sake. Affronted by his own thoughts, Patrick sits and gazes away from her, ignoring Rebecca’s words about their love. He doesn’t want to think of their love. Doesn’t want to think of her lies. It was true they were in love; it’s lies what she says now. So how does he disentangle them? How does he unloom this skein of mendacity and veracity? And if he doesn’t know how to do it, how does the jury? How?? HOW?

Patrick is choked by confusion. He feels like swearing. Or shouting out. Or crying. But why? He never cries anyway, or hardly ever, so why here? Because the girl he loved more than himself is now twenty yards away trying to put him in prison? Why should he cry at that?

— Miss Jessel?

Rebecca has gone quiet, she has lowered her head, and stopped talking about their love; now she is gazing across the court: gazing out. To Patrick she looks as if she is gazing out the window onto some sunlit pastoral scene, gazing at elm-shaded watermeadows, some fields where the fritillaries dance …

Rebecca is saying, slowly:

— I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anybody else in my life

Pause, gown, lapel, Alan Gregory:

— And you think he felt the same way?

— I’m not sure … You’d have to ask him. I think maybe …

A pause; then, she says again:

— … maybe

For the first time, so far, Rebecca stops. Totally. Just for a moment Rebecca looks like she is really truly struggling to compose herself, to think of something to say. As she struggles, and succeeds, in maintaining her composure Patrick blatantly stares. For all Patrick’s lawyer’s stern advice never to stare at Rebecca Patrick is looking directly at Rebecca thinking how much he loved her, too: because she made him so desperately happy when he was with her, so desperately unhappy when not. So: what does that mean? That he obviously doesn’t love her any more? Patrick is even more confused, startlingly angry: with everyone, with her, with himself. He doesn’t know what he should do, he doesn’t know what he’s meant to think, he knows what he wants to do. Right now Patrick wants to cross the dreamy dissolving non-reality of the courtroom and take Rebecca in his arms; he wants to gather the harvest of her narrow waist to his waist, and cuddle her, and comfort her, and kiss the place where her blonde hair thins to her warm and living temple.

And then he wants to grab a fistful of hair and nonchalantly spin her round and hoist her over the sill of the dock and reach under her dress for the elastic of her panties.

— So you moved in together in February of that year?

— Yes

— And this was his idea as much as yours?

— Yes, we both wanted it

— Who was paying the rent, Miss Jessel?

— I was, mostly

— I’m sorry? You were paying? – The prosecutor is standing back, pretending to be shocked.

Patrick feels like laughing aloud at this. Patrick feels like openly laughing at the actorliness of this cameo; at the prosecutor’s overdramatised reaction. Looking left Patrick checks out the lined-up twelve faces of the jury to make sure they saw this, too, to make sure they are fully aware of the prosecutor’s phoniness.

But the jury, the Asian girl, the man in the green tie, the older Asian woman, all of them: they’re just gazing back at the prosecutor, soaking it all up, taking it all in, unflinching, suspending disbelief. In the dock Patrick sighs, bitterly.

Three yards from the dock the prosecutor is making a frown – I don’t understand, Miss Jessel. Didn’t he have a job?

— Yes, but … – Rebecca sounds as if she is embarrassed; embarrassed for Patrick – You see, his business started going under …

— The nightclub?

— The club, yes. And the label

— Was he losing a lot of money?

— Yes. They were going bankrupt

Now Patrick wants to squirm. So what? So what’s this got to do with anything? Chin on paired thumbs Patrick listens depressedly and involuntarily to the lawyer vowelling away in his pompous English way.

— Miss Jessel

The prosecutor is beginning to assert himself. Using Rebecca’s mumbled monosyllables, exploiting to the full each tiny yes and he did Gregory is beginning to take over the court, casually laying out the truths as he sees it: the truths about Patrick’s sex life, and Patrick’s social life, about Patrick’s violence, about Patrick’s drinking. On top of the revelations about Patrick’s career this comes hard. It makes Patrick queasy. Patrick feels like this is some medieval ordeal, some game with the pilliwinks and gyves. A devious and cruel sport designed to make him squeal in mental pain, and thus reveal his evilness. Patrick flinches in the dock, waiting for the next barbed question, the next prosecutorial thrust. He watches Gregory like a kid in the dentist’s chair, fearfully eyeing the dentist to see what hideous tool he will choose next. Then Patrick once more curses Rebecca for bringing him to this: this profound embarrassment.

The worst of it is that Patrick can see all too easily what Gregory is doing, why he is doing this stuff, asking these questions about Patrick and Rebecca’s financial relationship, their resultant arguments, the death of the nightclub. The prosecution is leading them all by the hand, along the tortuous coastal path of the evidence, to a place where the gorse of doubt will finally part, allowing the prosecutor to stand and point to where the sea of certainty serenely twinkles in the sunlight: the sea of certainty that tells them that Patrick Skivington is a juvenile fool, who, because his job went arseover, and he couldn’t cope with adversity, and he felt like and indeed was an inadequate wretch cuckolded by life, came back one sad and sordid evening to rape the living Jesus out of his innocent young girlfriend Miss Rebecca Jessel, now of fifteen Goldsworthy Drive, Hampstead Garden Suburb, NW3, then of flat two, number seven Linden Street, Marylebone West One.

— Did he ever hit you?

— Yes

— When?

Rebecca looks downcast; Alan Gregory shuffles some paper importantly and confidently on his desk; grips the lapel of his gown; repeats the question. In turn Rebecca nods, pained, self-evidently pained by having the truth winkled out of her, the terrible truth:

— He hit me once … I …

— Take your time

— It was just before … you know …

— Go on

— We’d had a party. Patch

This is the first time she has used Patrick’s nickname; the sound of it in her mouth feels to Patrick so painful and sweet, touching and hypocritical at once.

— Patch came home, he came home from the office with a friend. He came back drunk and he and Joe they fooled around and he was

In the dock Patrick closes his eyes like he is about to do a macho swoon, like it isn’t just his nickname in her mouth but him in Rebecca’s mouth. Patrick feels like she has him in her mouth just one more time and she is sucking him slowly, looking up at him, ominously submissive.

— He was drunk. He started hitting me … He was angry

Half sucking, half biting.

— Why? Why was he angry?

— I think … because … I was …

—Yes?

— As I said his nightclub wasn’t working out … so …

Just biting.

— You mean he … – The prosecutor looks like he is pained by his own upcoming dip into the vernacular – ‘Took it out on you’?

— Yes – Rebecca’s voice goes even quieter. The judge asks her to speak up again; Rebecca apologises, meekly. She takes in one big breath and visibly grips the banister of the witness box as she says to the far corner of the cream-painted courtroom – He hit me quite badly

— You were bruised?

— Yes

— Did anybody else know about this?

— Well …

Crossing his legs, crossing his arms, Patrick switches desperately off. He just doesn’t want to hear this bit. The bits that aren’t complete lies are the total truth: both hurt. He crosses his arm and looks at his watch, watches it tick towards lunch, as Rebecca goes on about their arguments, their fights, about the last fight before he left, before she kicked him out. Rebecca is rambling, believably; the prosecutor is gently nudging her rambles along, and Patrick is looking at his wristwatch and thinking, seriously, with passion:

Is this it? Rebecca? Where is the other truth? The real truth? Where is the love, the sex, the death, the Aztecs? Suddenly he feels like standing up and asking her, shouting: nothing about me and Joe? Nothing about why I was angry? Nothing about my dad and your needs and my love? Your cunt? NO?

The prosecutor is in full flow now:

— So you decided to finish it?

— yes

— How long was it before you saw him again?

— yes

— And that was when you changed the locks?

— yes

— And he took how much money out of your account?

— yes yes YES

Patrick tries not to look or listen: Rebecca is unmistakably shaken. Under this barrage of friendly but piercing questions she has stopped, to control herself. Her voice is quieter than ever, her face shakes behind the lattice of one draped hand; her lips are smeared with pink; her delicate nostrils are pinked. And her hair is young, gold, meek and sweet.

Then the court’s awed and worried silence is shattered as the judge leans nearer Rebecca and says I think we better take a break for lunch here but Patrick doesn’t really listen to this. Patrick just stares at his girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend, the girl, the bitch, the liar, the bogus emoter, and thinks:

Jesus, Bex. You loved me that much?

6

Lifting his coffee-bar-type soup cup full of takeaway Chinese soup Joe blows low; then sips; then grimaces. Patrick:

— Something wrong with the soup?

Joe shakes his head, lowers the cup:

— Yeah no … yeah

— What?

— This soup. It’s that stupid healthy Chinese shit

— Yeah?

— With no monosodium glutamate

— … So?

Joe sits forward on the sunlit Soho Square bench, gazes mournfully into his soup:

— I like MSG …

Joe goes quiet, as he gingerly sips. Patrick looks at Joe. Then Patrick says:

— You know, sex is in many ways the monosodium glutamate of life

Joe:

— Oh God

— It makes what would otherwise be unpalatable palatable, it makes the boring samey noodles of life that extra bit

— OK shut up – Joe says, then he says – Anyway why did I buy soup? It’s thirty degrees in the shade and I buy soup? Man

From his side of the bench Patrick clicks his tongue, in empathy. Then Patrick returns to his own takeaway tray of sushi. Patrick can sense Joe watching on, hungrily, enviously, as Patrick chopsticks a smear of translucent tuna belly, briefly dips the fish in a little plunge-pool of soy, then deftly drapes the result between his lips.

Joe:

— You know your gran sucks your pants?

— Uh-huh

— She told me in bed last night

— Right – Patrick says – Right … Well …

— Yeah?

— Your girlfriend told me your cock looks like a weasel with a goitre on its head

— What girlfriend? – Joe shakes his head, says – How is she anyway?

— Sorry??

Joe, tutting:

— Your girlfriend, the rich one … you met her in a bookshop two months ago, you’ve been sleeping with her ever since – Slowly – She’s OK, yeah?

Silence. Patrick contemplatively stirs a few stray grains of rice around his little puddle of soy. Then he says:

— Tits are too big

Joe:

— As if

— No they are, too big, and too … firm

— Don’t

— Too firm and too good, wasted on me, those big creamy

— You cunt, Skivington

— Oh, I forgot, you like big ones, don’t you?

— Suck my cock

— Actually – Patch relents – I was thinking of bringing you in on the tits, as a kind of, breast consultant

— Kind of bomb disposal?

— … professional tit wrangler …

Together they shout:

— Breast whisperer!!!

After that the two of them grin. Then Patrick eats some more rice as he sidelong watches Joe. His friend is staring out onto the sunlit lawns of a crowded Soho Square garden. Kneeling sideways on a rare space of lunch-time grass is a young mother with her baby. Joe is silently regarding this pietà. The mother is kissing her baby’s foot, sucking its toes. Joe seems to nod approvingly at this, then he says:

— So, are you falling for her?

Patrick, with a mouthful of salmon roe:

— … not sure – Swallowing – She’s a package

— Yeah?

— Yeah. Pretty, sexy, rich … bit Jewish

— Nice legs, shame about the faith?

The sound of some shirtsleeved office lads arguing fills the air. Patrick looks at Joe. Joe looks at Patrick. Joe says:

— Sorry about that

Turning his face to the sun, Patrick nods and in a vague voice says:

— How about you, any progress with the redhead?

— Nah

— Not at all?

Joe shrugs:

— They all like want someone with a big car and … no crack habit

— Sticklers

— Nit pickers

— So you’re wanking a lot? Bashing the bishop …?

A pause. Then Joe says, in an odd voice, above the sound of a bike courier’s yowling radio:

— It’s true to say the upper hierarchy of the church has come in for some criticism

Patrick thinks for a while about this, sniggers for a second, then says:

— You’re still missing that last girl aren’t you? The last one

— Sally-Ann? My little Sally-Ann?

— That ugly smackhead with no arse

— Yeah, Sally-Ann …

A car alarm makes a horrible noise. Patrick tuts. Wiping some sweat from his forehead with a forearm, checking his watch as if he has something to do, Joe starts on a slow speech:

— Y’know, I remembered something this morning, when I woke up, alone again – Joe tilts his head, goes on – When we were, like, together, me and Sal, she used to do this thing – Joe pauses, and turns his eyes on the middle distance, as if toward the distantly heard sound of a much loved pop song

— When I was asleep she would do some smack and then roll over and kiss me and blow the smack smoke into my mouth – Joe makes a wry sad face – Which meant, like, I wouldn’t have to wake up, like, clean, so I wouldn’t have to suffer reality even for a fucking minute in the morning

Patrick sits on the bench, wondering what to say to this. Not knowing what to say he joins his friend in looking out across the Square at a group of toenail-painted secretaries sharing a packet of organic crisps on the grass. At length Joe says:

— Wish I had some fucking smack now …

— Really?

— Yeah, really

— So why don’t you? Just buy some?

As if to assist Joe in his purchase, Patrick points his Pepsi-can-gripping hand across the Square to a markedly deserted corner of the sunlit lawn. Where a gaggle of obvious drug addicts is lying, under a single big dirty blanket, like a family of Victorian street-Irish. Next to the addicts stands a stack of unsold, or stolen, Big Issues. Patrick watches as Joe shrugs at the prospect, as if to say ‘why bother’; then Patrick returns his gaze to the tribe of drug addicts. Like a troupe of Aborigines in an outback Aussie town, Patrick thinks. The junkies. They are the Abos of London, following the songlines of their addiction around the twilit streets, moving from waterhole to waterhole, moving from chemist to dealer to dodgy doctor, following their ancestral and mysterious routes around the underworld of the city … Which makes me, Patrick thinks, running away with himself now, which makes me Crocodile Dundee, a man who understands their ways yet is not of them and yet who

— You’ve not shagged her yet have you?

Patrick thinks hard, says:

— Of course I have

— So why aren’t you totally in love?

— Did I tell you – Patrick says – About my idea for a new hobby?

Joe sighs:

— Mn. Go on then …

— Well – Patrick takes a drink of his warming Pepsi, takes another shot of it. And then another shot and then a third shot before slowly burping most of the next sentence – I’m thinking of buying an Alsatian dog and a long leather coat and getting my head shaved and then going up to Golders Green Station and shouting out ‘SCHNELL! SCHNELL! SCHNELL!’ at people as they get off the train

— Why aren’t you crazy about her then?

— OK … – Patrick sighs – She’s got thick ankles

— Thick ankles? Jesus! Dump her!

— And the drug thing, her drug history, it’s a problem

— The fact she hasn’t ever done drugs?

— Exactly – Patrick goes quiet and pensive. Then he goes on – But that’s not it, that’s not the real problem. I do really like her, you know … I mean … – To fill the gap in his thoughts Patrick steps down from the bench, and goes to an overfull Soho Square rubbish bin; after carefully balancing his empty sushi tray on top of the enormous pile of rubbish he returns and sits back on the bench and says – Even though we’ve got less in common, or not as much as some … I like her … precisely because sh … sh …

— Sh?

— Because she’s different. Smart. Cultured – Seizing the theme, Patrick runs with it – Really. She’s amazing. She knows all about art, and politics, and history, it’s incredibly refreshing – Examining the tan mark where his forearm meets his rolled-up white shirtsleeve, he says – Maybe I’m just too used to Soho ladettes smoking rollups and farting, do you think that could be it? – Patrick looks over at Joe; Joe nods, says:

— So it’s the hooters then?

Patrick:

— No, I like them big, and I love the arse

— So what the FUCK?

— I know, I know … – Patrick sighs – I knowwww – Feeling the heat now, he unbuttons another one of the buttons on his expensive white shirt and then he slumps back to let the sun run its fingers through his chest hair. After a few seconds, feeling properly relaxed for the first time this lunchtime, Patrick admits – Actually I think I know what it is

— ?????

— Yes. I think – Struggling to be honest – I think I just … like … girls to be … shorter, poorer, younger, and stupider than me

— She’s certainly shorter than you

— Ta, Joe

— And – Joe says – She’s a lot younger, isn’t that enough? Not enough dimorphism?

Patrick stalls, does not reply. For a moment the college friends are united in quietness, experiencing each other’s post-lunch metabolic low. Patrick is thinking about perhaps saying something else. Right now Patrick thinks he would like to confess to Joe that what he really needs is for Rebecca to be more submissive, because he’s now realised he needs something sexually very submissive in women, something more than Rebecca has so far given him. Then Patrick decides he can’t be arsed to talk about relationship stuff anymore. Instead Patrick looks idly and languidly at a beautiful girl in lowslung jeans and silver navel ring, as she swings her hips through the Square towards Oxford Street. For a full minute Patrick watches the girl’s walk. Then he swerves to take in another chick just behind that one. Then he looks back at the first one. And her friend.

Stuck by lust to his bench, Patrick regards his own reaction to the girls, the parade of girls. Mostly he loves this, the constant catwalk of London, the fugue of female beauty, the sweet repetition with minor variation. But at this moment he also resents the power, he resents these girls’ power and fame and the way they get in clubs for free, like members of some manufactured boy band … like unwarranted celebrities with no real talent …

— Dying for a smoke

— What?

Joe pats his pocket, rueful:

— Need a cig …

— So … smoke one?

— Can’t, man

— Given up?

Still rueful:

— Boracic

Silence, traffic-thrum, Patrick’s hand reaches for his own pocket:

— You want to borrow some cash?

— Nah – Joe surveys the Square, as if looking for a different benefactor – I already owe you enough – Joe’s face is wide, sad, honest, wry – Anyway. I start some temping job tomorrow

— Shipbrokers?

— Shipbrokers …

This sadly spoken word some kind of signal, Patrick checks his watch and says:

— OK. Better get going … Got the lawyers round

— Going over the contracts for the club?

— Yep, some hitch with the survey

— … what’s it like being more successful than me?

Patrick replies:

— I’m not

Joe replies:

— Haddaway and shite

Now the two of them are up. Now the two of them are up, out the Square, and walking over the road towards Greek Street. Halfway across they come to a stop. Barring their way is a builder’s lorry making beeping noises as it reverses. Using the moment Patrick looks down Greek Street at yet another building site: at the place where a building is going up behind a vast theatre curtain of plastic. Watching the moving girders and big yellow machines and men in red plastic hats carrying lengths of scaffolding, Patrick says:

— I remember when all this used to be fields

— Yeah?

— When I first lived in London there was … a meadow here, with sheep … and fallow deer …

Joe, nodding:

— God yeah, and there was, like, a little stream down there, and that’s where there used to be that shepherd with his long clay pipe, right?

— Yep. And that – Patrick gestures, vaguely – That Starbucks coffee house, that used to be a little glade with crab-apple trees, and we used to make cowslip bells. Right next to that van, remember?

— Seems like yesterday

The lorry circumvented, the two friends cross the road and pace more briskly, until they come to the junction where they part. Jabbing his friend’s arm Joe says goodbye and good luck and then angles away and then jogs down the street towards Charing Cross. Watching his friend go, Patrick thinks about his friend’s drug habit for a second and then Patrick turns and walks, and sees, strolling towards him, a very pretty blonde girl, a beautiful blonde girl who gives him the usual feelings of resentment and sad yearning and powerlessness and why don’t I ever get girlfriends like that … until Patrick realises it’s Rebecca. His girlfriend.

7

— So he pinned you to the wall and said what?

Out-staring the prosecutor Rebecca says nothing; then she looks frankly and somehow bravely above his head and says:

— Kiss me properly you …

— Yes?

— Kiss me properly … you …

Rebecca stops. The judge’s eyebrows go up. In the witness box Rebecca shrugs: a shrug that says she doesn’t want to say any more. With an inscrutable glance at the defence lawyer the judge leans towards Rebecca; and says:

— Miss Jessel, I am aware this might be rather painful – The judge does an avuncular smile – But we have to have the exact wording as far as it is possible. It might well be very important, it might not, but that’s rather for the jury to decide – Again the smile – So if you could tell us just as much as you can?

The smile turns into a nod at the prosecutor. Alan Gregory nods back at the judge, and then expectantly turns to Rebecca. Shifting her weight slightly in the witness box, Rebecca responds:

— Well, he … he … came across and he pushed me back and … then he said ‘kiss me properly you …’

Another silence. This time, before the judge can intervene, Rebecca says:

— Jewish bitch

A pause. Half the court is looking at Patrick; the other half is looking at the prosecutor. The prosecutor:

— He called you a … ‘Jewish bitch’?

— Yes

— And by this time how long had he been in the flat?

— About ten minutes

— Just ten?

— Yes. It can’t have been much longer than that because the kettle hadn’t boiled

— Yes, I see – Alan Gregory QC caresses his own chin – OK. Yes. Now – Gregory glances momentarily at the back of the court, at Patrick – Now as the defendant kissed you, did you try to push him off?

— Yes – Rebecca looks slightly offended by the question; Patrick feels he doesn’t want to look at her; Rebecca regains herself and says – Yes. I pushed him away as much as I could but he … just laughed. He was acting weird …

— In what way?

— I’m not sure – Her face goes slightly blank – I remember wondering if he was drunk, I could smell beer, smell the pub

— Were you scared by this time?

Patrick can hear the big clock on the side wall ticking. Rebecca:

— Yes

— So what did you decide to do?

— Well … I … uh?

The lawyer turns to his notes. Says:

— I’ll rephrase that. In fact, if I may – A half nod towards the judge – I’d like to go over the facts as they stand again … – Patrick notices the judge give a subliminal answering nod. Gregory says – Let’s take stock. This is a young man you used to live with but with whom you no longer have a relationship. Is that correct?

— Yyes

— And he’s only in your flat on the pretext of picking up some clothes, correct?

— Uh-huh

— Sorry?

— I mean yes. Yes that’s right

The prosecutor lifts the papers closer to his face, as if to scrutinise a surprising fact more closely; then:

— OK. So. He’s come round to the flat to pick up his stuff. He’s been in the flat for ten minutes – A direct glance at Rebecca; Rebecca nods; the prosecutor says – So he’s tried to kiss you, he’s … abused and insulted you, he’s acting to say the least somewhat … strangely. And what do you do?

— I … I’m – Again Rebecca looks like she is aggrieved by the tone; across the court Gregory comes back with a softer, more explanatory voice:

— Miss Jessel I’m only trying to get the facts straight – A jaunty smile – Look at it this way, perhaps. Some people might say that you should have asked him to leave straight away. At this early point. You see?

Realisation seems to cross Rebecca’s face. She nods vigorously like she has remembered her lines; then she says:

— Yes I see what you’re getting at but you must understand. Yes he was a bit drunk but … he was still my ex. I still felt … you know … – She pulls her cardigan sleeve distractedly – That’s why I invited him around

— And this is why you let him linger?

The cardigan sleeve is released:

— Yes. I still felt for him. I had been very much in love with him – Her face goes odd – I never thought he’d go and do … that …

— Naturally

The prosecutor flicks a tiny hardly detectable glance at the back of the court; in Patrick’s direction. In the dock Patrick tries to stay calm. His chin resting on a fist, the elbow on a knee, aware he looks like Rodin’s Thinker, Patrick stays calm and stares straight back at the prosecutor. Patrick is determined not to be fazed or angered. Patrick wants a calm detachment to enter his mind. He wants to think about something else. And so, as Rebecca goes on to describe, in tediously minuscule detail, their subsequent movements about the flat that fateful evening, that evening, the evening in question, Patrick sits back in the dock and decides to think about sex. Religion. Sex. Religion …

Patrick wishes he’d masturbated this morning. He wonders why he always thinks about sex at the worst times. Trying to think about something else, about anything else … about religion, Patrick recalls a conversation he had with Joe about religion. This morning. Just this morning Joe had made the point that there were really only three arguments for the existence of God, the Argument from Design, the Argument from Ultimate Purpose, and, finally, the best of all the theological proofs, the Argument from Japanese Schoolgirls.

Patrick sniggers. Thinking of Joe’s comment, Patrick starts chuckling. Quite loudly: wheezily laughing. By Patrick’s side the policeman looks quizzically at Patrick. Across the court the policewoman standing behind Rebecca glances over at Patrick, and frowns. Faced by these stares Patrick swiftly sobers: his chuckles become a smile which becomes a tense, engaged expression when Patrick hears exactly what Rebecca is saying. Rebecca is saying:

— So he said he wouldn’t leave until – Rebecca takes a big breath – Until I let him … fuck me

— And you were sitting across the table at this point?

— Yes

— Why do you think he should say something like that?

— I don’t know … I …

Rebecca stalls, looking excruciated, embarrassed, and at the judge. The judge flashes a significant glance at the prosecutor. As the prosecutor pauses, Patrick starts to feel sorry for Rebecca. This in turn makes Patrick feel slightly proud. Patrick feels good and proud that he himself should be so forgiving and noble as to pity the woman who tortures him; but then Patrick realises that inside him somewhere he also feels good and secretly happy that he and Rebecca are as one again, here, now: united in their shame; as one against a world which seeks to publicly bundle them in their own dirty bedlinen.

Rebecca:

— I suppose he rather thought it might … turn me on. I guess he thought that talking like that would be … arousing – Rebecca grips the stand and looks at the prosecutor, she looks him in the face – It wasn’t

The prosecutor:

— And this was the point at which you asked him to leave?

— Yes

— And what did he do?

— He said he wouldn’t

—Anything else?

— He said … he wanted to fuck me up the arse

Silence. Clock-ticking silence. Patrick looks at a middle-aged grey-haired woman in the jury who is sucking a boiled sweet with a wholly rapt expression: like she is enjoying a guiltily pleasurable afternoon at the movies.

His head in his hands Patrick sighs. Then he regains himself, looks up at the prosecutor: who is now fiddling with his papers. Alan Gregory QC has turned to his left where a seated assistant is holding up a piece of paper. The assistant is pointing to a certain passage of writing. Taking the paper the prosecutor nods intelligently, and revolves on Rebecca:

— And was it at this time that the phone rang?

— Yes

— And who was it on the other end? Who’d rung you up?

— A friend …

— Which friend?

— I … can’t remember …

— You told the police in your statement

— Yes, I know …

Taking her time, Rebecca glances around the courtroom, as if to remind herself of something; for a second her upward gaze comes to a rest on the visitors’ gallery, overlooking the courtroom. Patrick suspects she has probably recognised someone, one of their friends or a member of his family. Thoughts collected Rebecca turns back to the prosecutor and says:

— Freddie

— Frederick Legge?

Rebecca shrugs her lambswooled shoulders:

— Yes

— And what did he want?

— Nothing important

The prosecutor refers to his piece of paper again:

— You told him to … ‘fuck off’, is that right?

Shrugging, again; again clearly embarrassed Rebecca nods, says:

— Yes

— You chatted for a few seconds and then you made it clear you didn’t want to speak to him and you put the phone down, correct?

— … Yes

— But – The prosecutor looks at the defence barrister and pauses and then says – I’m sure the defence counsel would raise this but for my own purposes could you tell me … why? Surely when Mister Legge rang this was an ideal opportunity to let someone know you were being harassed?

Another shrug from Rebecca. For the first time Patrick leans forward with keen, optimistic interest. Clearing her throat, Rebecca:

— At the time … I thought I could handle it all myself. I’d seen Patrick drunk like this before and I thought it was just another … time like that – In her dress, and her cardigan, she shifts girlishly from foot to foot; then – I had absolutely no idea that straight after that he would do what he did

— I see. Thank you … – With a flurry of black gown the prosecutor makes a moving-on expression. He says – As soon as you’d put the phone down the defendant came around the table and began trying to kiss you, correct?

— Yes

— Did you struggle?

— Yes – Rebecca looks at the wall as her face pales – But he was too strong. Too big …

— Was he touching you?

— Yes

— How?

— He had one hand on my throat and … one hand down my top. On my breast

— Yes?

— He’d undone the zip of my top and he was groping my breast

— Yes, of course. Was it this top? – With his left hand, the prosecutor has magicked a zip-up top from somewhere, some bag on his desk. Intent, concerned, Patrick watches as Rebecca watches the top being flagged at her. She looks surprised and shocked to see it. Finally Rebecca says:

— Yes

The judge:

— Miss Jessel?

Rebecca’s voice is trembly:

— Sorry. Yes. Yes it was that top. That’s what I was wearing – Rebecca allows herself a big long breath. While the lawyer re-bags the top Patrick finds his sympathy going unwontedly out once more as Rebecca breathes and breathes deep, fighting back obvious emotion. Rebecca Jessel gazes into the middle distance as she begins to describe: how Patrick put his hand down her jeans. How Patrick groped her breast. How she tried to stop him but he was too strong for her. How he nuzzled her breasts as she yelled. How he picked her off the chair and dragged her like a puppet over the floor and pushed her down on her back and

— And you were screaming during this?

— Yes

— And this was the point where he unzipped himself?

— Yes

— Were you … totally naked by this time?

— Yes

— What had happened to your jeans?

— I

— Had he taken them off, too?

— YYess … I think so

— How?

— I don’t quite know, I …

— You’re not sure how he stripped you?

— No … he’d somehow managed – Rebecca shivers visibly, she grips the side of the witness stand; Patrick can see her knuckles going white; for some reason he wonders if she still bites her nails as then Rebecca blurts – It was all a blur but he’d managed to get my jeans off and I …

In the stand Rebecca seems to shudder, she rocks back on her feet and looks imploringly at the judge.

The judge:

— Take your time, Miss Jessel

With a nod Rebecca gulps and asks for a glass of water. The court gathers itself close, takes a collective breath, as Rebecca turns and accepts a glass from the policewoman behind her. The moments pass as Rebecca delicately sips, then puts the glass down. Now Rebecca licks her newly-red lips as she looks across the silent courtroom and says:

— He forced me onto my back and held my arms above my head and then he got his penis out

— Did he have an erection?

— Yes. He was hard

— What happened then?

— He used his other hand to part my thighs

— And then?

— He held his penis in his hand … I think … and he

Patrick looks at the middle-aged juror; she has stopped sucking her sweet and her jaw is hanging open as Rebecca says:

— He put his penis inside me and began …

— Began … Miss Jessel?

Clock-tick. Patrick’s heart. Rebecca’s voice:

— He began to rape me …

— What then?

— Then he started saying things

— What did he say?

— That I was …

— Yes

— That I was a bitch … a slut … his little slut …

— Anything else?

— He said … he said he loved my dirty little … – The court waits – cunt

— Anything else?

Rebecca inhales, then she says, slowly, deliberately:

— He said he was going to fuck me in my dirty … cunt and that he was going to fuck me in my little arsehole even if I didn’t like it and – She closes her eyes and visibly trembles as she recounts – He said he was going to … come in my face … and that I was … until I was … that I was nothing … He said I was a slut, a bitch, a sadistic bitch

She stalls. Rebecca stands back from the side of the witness box and she pauses and then she drinks some more water from the glass. The prosecutor looks at the jury, at the judge, and then at Rebecca and says:

— How long did this go on for?

Glass down, chin up, lips wet:

— Don’t know … maybe five minutes … maybe ten

— And you were frightened?

Rebecca looks at the prosecutor like he has said the most stupid thing in the world. Rebecca Jessel:

— I was totally petrified

— And all the time you’d been asking … begging him to stop?

— Yes. I was screaming. I was shouting no … all the time …

— And did this have any effect?

— NO!

Rebecca has almost shouted. The court seems taken aback at this bitter yelp; Patrick watches as Rebecca calms herself, as she shakes her blonde head and repeats:

— It had no effect

Now Rebecca goes quiet. Looks down. The prosecutor hmms and nods, and looks at something on his desk, at a piece of paper he is pinning down with lazy fingers. A moment passes. Tanned face up, Gregory says:

— What happened next, Miss Jessel?

— He pushed me upstairs

— No. I mean … before then?

Rebecca looks blankly at the prosecutor, then her expression relaxes as she seems to realise what he’s saying; Rebecca replies:

— He withdrew from me … suddenly … and then he

— Miss Je

Not listening, Rebecca goes on:

— He withdrew and he … grabbed my hair with one hand and he said … he said I was to suck his … to suck his … cock, to lick the … filthy cunt off his cock

In the dock Patrick grimaces; he can’t help it; in the dock Patrick grimaces and lowers his forehead into one hand: feeling shame and pain and embarrassment and guilt; feeling guilt for everything, guilt for being male, guilt for having a sex drive, guilt for being a horrible rapist. Then Patrick grips himself and tries to rid his mind and face of guilt. He looks up, defiant.

Rebecca is saying:

— He was holding my head by the hair … it hurt … he had my hair in his hand and he was forcing me onto his … penis … forcing me to fellate him … to suck him, I was choking and screaming and I remember my mouth hurt and I was screaming because he was hurting my mouth as he

Patrick stares at Rebecca; despite the hell, despite the worst, despite it all he feels a tiny slight stiffening in his groin as he looks at her: her dear darling face. He is thinking of the time when he

— Forced me to suck him, and he put his hand, he put his finger in my … backside … my back passage … my anus and

and Patrick tries not to; he tries not to be agitated by this but it is difficult. He is forced, forced to listen, forced to listen to Rebecca describing to all these people he’s never met, and all his friends in the gallery, and the unicorn above the judge’s head, how he made her suck him; how he threatened to beat her senseless; how he slapped her hard; how he bit her shoulder and upper arm; how he put his cock in her

— anus. And then he said …

— What?

— He said that the carpet was hurting him, burning his knees …

Rebecca sips more water; her lips are glistening. Rebecca bites her glistening red lips and opens her lips and tells them all how he pushed her away; how he pushed her upstairs, how he pushed her into the bedroom and pushed her onto the bed and started raping her

— again and

— again?

— and again

and Rebecca tries not to cry as she tells them how he bit her, slapped her, told her to shut the fuck up; how she screamed out and scratched him; how he rammed his

— penis

inside her

— dirty little cunt

how he raped her and bit her and slapped her until she was dizzy, how he licked her face how he bit her ear how he told her she was his

— stupid Jewish tart

who wanted and needed his

— cock

in her

— cunt in

her

— arsehole

and so when he turned her

— over

and

— over

and

— took

her hard from behind and

— raped

her and

— raped

her

— and made

her cry and she just begged him and cried out and begged him and begged him and begged him and begged him and begged him and begged him not to

— come inside

Patrick can’t work out which is louder: the clock, or his heart, or the sound of Rebecca’s silent sobbing in the witness box. The silence otherwise is unendurable. Patrick covers his ears with his hands and stares down at the floor of the dock. He looks at a cigarette butt ground into the darkness. The court stays silent; Rebecca is still weeping; the prosecutor mumbles something but the judge intervenes and says, very quietly, as he revolves upon Rebecca, who is still covering her eyes as she stifles a gulp of tears:

— Miss Jessel, I think we are going to … adjourn for the day … so if you’d like …?

Under her hands, behind her hands and tears, Rebecca nods. She nods, and then she turns and steps down and walks slowly out of the box and down the steps. But then she pauses, very near the shocked, white-faced jury. The jury members try not to look at her, but they fail. Patrick senses the jury looking at Rebecca with pity, embarrassment and fascination as Rebecca seems to pause to gather her wits. Next to Patrick’s ear Patrick hears the hoarse whisper:

— The first day is always the worst

Patrick looks at his lawyer, at Stefan, who has surreptitiously moved over so as to stand near the dock, near him, to whisper this. Patrick sees that Stefan is looking a little vexed. Patrick gulps the bitterness in his own mouth and gazes silently leftwards. Rebecca is now coming towards him. With angered excitement Patrick realises that Rebecca’s route to the exit door is going to take her right past him in the dock. Not knowing whether to open his eyes or close them or what, Patrick sits as still as he can as Rebecca walks right in front of him. He doesn’t want to look at her gingham dress and her soft cardigan, at her walk so demure and her face so pale. But as she passes just close by, he can’t help it. She is so close he can actually smell her, smell her scent, smell the scent that reminds him of her, of him; of them. Of happiness.

8

— Morning!

He says. Underneath him, Rebecca mumbles, bleary, confused:

— Z’it morning?

— Nope

— I was asleep …?

— Yep

She hmms, nods, yawns. They are lying in Rebecca’s bed, in Rebecca’s parents’ house. The pinkness of Rebecca’s yawn becomes a sleepy sentence:

— Still raining?

— Yeah

— Mmmmmmmyes – Rebecca is stretching her soft naked body under the duvet, her glossy nudity – I like when it rains, really rains …

Then she stops. Patrick listens, but she has stopped talking. All Patrick can hear is a lonely car slashing down the wet, empty, 2 a.m. Hampstead street, outside. Patrick listens to this: to the absence of traffic, that very unLondon sound. It makes him think about traffic, their difficult traffic, the contraflow.

He thinks, again, again, yet again, about the contraflow of their worrying sex life: why no climax? why hasn’t she properly orgasmed? wherefore not the smackrush? What is their problem? Staring at Rebecca’s unaware face Patrick frets: why does he feel she hasn’t entirely given of herself? why does he feel that he hasn’t entirely possessed her? and why does their sex feel like an unwinnable computer game? What is this? What?

To distract himself from these not so new, always perturbing thoughts Patrick leans out of her bed and riffles fake-lazily amongst the piles of books and papers she habitually stacks by her bed. Aztec books, predictably; Crusader texts, naturally; some poetry, of course Then Patrick finds a charity form: a sponsorship form for a half-marathon intended to publicise Third World Debt.

Picking this form up, feeling playful, bitchy, grumpy, Patrick says:

—You’re running a marathon?

Beneath him:

—Yyyyeah half

His face moves nearer hers:

— For Third World Debt?

Still sleepy:

— Yessss …

— Hnn – He says; then he says – You know I could help you out with this?

She does not reply. He says:

— I could you know, I know a lot about Third World Debt, you should see the debts I ran up in the Third World last winter

Silence. Patrick:

— Coke bills in Colombia, unpaid whores in Bangkok

—That’s nice for you, darling

— Actually – On a roll now, Patrick says – I was thinking of starting a charity of my own, to help Third World Hunger – He moves his face directly over hers as she turns to stare at the wall – I was going to call it … International Fellatio Relief

She mumbles nothing. Patrick says:

— I’d go to Third World countries and get young women to give me head and swallow my semen, thus providing them with that valuable, hard-to-come-by protein …

Beneath him Rebecca turns over and buries her face in the pillow and starts singing a Celine Dion song. Pulling at her singing shoulder, Patrick says:

— Becs — Another tug – Becs? Stop singing? Bex!

At the third tug she rolls over, stops singing. She looks up at him, and grins, and reaches out a hand and strokes his unshaven chin as if to tell him to shut up. Then she tells him to shut up. Feeling a rush of responsive emotion Patrick stoops his mouth to the crook of Rebecca’s pretty neck, and kisses her lovely scented Rebeccaness. Subsequently he rolls back onto his side of the four big expensive white pillows and wonders if he is as hungry as he thinks he might be: whether they can nip down to her kitchen, open the enormous brushed steel door of her fridge, and eat the ice-cold white peaches the Jessels always seem to keep on that big blue glass plate …

Rebecca moves nearer. With a flinch, Patrick feels her cold feet press against his legs, her feet seeking the warmth of his calves. It is as if, he thinks, she is trying to attach herself, trying to lock herself on, trying to anchor herself: in him, in the shifting, unreliable sands of his soul. For a moment Patrick wants to shout out no, don’t do it, don’t be stupid.

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