by James Lasdun
‘He said it wasn’t the first time you and he …’
She gave me a sharp look.
‘Of course it was the first time! It could only have happened because I was drunk, and that was definitely the only time I got drunk with him. He wasn’t the kind of boy you’d take that kind of chance with unless you were certain you wanted to end up in bed with him. Believe me!’
‘So you’d never had any physical contact with him before?’
‘No. It was the first time – and the last, needless to say.’
She seemed to have accepted me, by now, as a kind of designated interrogator, as if I’d been appointed by some impartial agency to adjudicate the matter. I pushed forward, armoured in the sanctioned iciness of the role.
‘Actually, Marco thought it might not have been the last time either.’
‘What? Rubbish! Utter rubbish! How could anyone possibly believe that?’
‘He wasn’t sure. He just thought there might have been other occasions.’
‘Well, he’s sorely mistaken.’
‘You did go on working with him, though?’
‘Yes. I wasn’t going to give up my career. Why should I?’
‘And you never said anything about it at the time? Never reported it? Not that not reporting it means nothing happened, obviously …’
She gave a grim laugh.
‘You have been well trained, haven’t you? You men all act like you’ve come through some sort of Maoist indoctrination programme nowadays. I bet Marco’s the same. I bet he doesn’t go around raping people these days. Assuming he even could, any more.’
‘But just so I have it right, you didn’t tell anyone at the time …’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. As if anyone would have taken any notice if I had. There was no such thing as rape in those days, once you’d got into bed with a man. I didn’t even think of it as rape myself, at the time. The word didn’t enter my head.’
Her candour startled me. I could hear Marco laughing mirthlessly at the admission, as if she’d just self-evidently wrecked her own credibility. See what I mean? I imagined him saying, his voice dripping with cynicism.
‘But so he was thinking of someone else …’
‘He was thinking of the girl.’
It took me a moment to catch on.
‘The one they tarred and feathered?’
‘Yes. There was something he did – holding my wrists together behind my back, very tightly – that made me realise. It turned him on. Especially when I struggled.’
I thought, naturally, of Marco’s affair with his tutor.
‘You’re saying he was getting off on some kind of S and M thing?’
‘Oh, I don’t care about that. It’s that he wasn’t thinking of me, wasn’t seeing me, even. I didn’t like that. It offended me.’
‘So you tried to stop him?’
‘Yes! I said I was sorry but I didn’t want to go on. I told him about Gerald. I couldn’t have explained the other thing, even if I’d wanted to. I didn’t understand it myself until recently. I probably didn’t even realise I was offended. Not that it would have made any difference. Telling him about Gerald certainly didn’t. If anything it just spurred him on. Anyway, it was all over very quickly, as they say. Very quickly.’
I nodded, absorbing the casual pragmatism she seemed to be admitting to. Apparently she saw nothing odd in adapting her emotions to fit her evolving perspective on the event.
‘But you stayed with him, all the same,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘You spent the night with him. That’s what he says. You were there the next morning when the cameraman came to wake him for the flight home.’
‘Oh. Well, yes, that’s true. But what of it? I was drunk and I passed out. But I’d have stayed anyway, probably. I’m not going to pretend I was conflicted about that, at the time.’
‘But I mean, if he’d just forcibly … you know … why would you stay in his bed?’
‘I told you. I couldn’t articulate what I’d experienced, at the time. I didn’t tell myself: I’ve been raped. I knew something I didn’t want to happen had happened, but I didn’t know how to think about it. It wasn’t as if I was lying bleeding in a ditch, or tied up in a dungeon. It’s taken me a long time to see things for what they were. That’s not unusual, by the way, and I’m not going to apologise for it.’
‘No, of course.’
She shook out the last drops of wine into her glass and went to open another bottle. I got up to pee. In the cramped bathroom a leaky tap hissed into a basin. There was a meagre clutter of jars and half-squeezed tubes. I wondered what it must be like for Julia to live in a place like this. It wasn’t a dump, exactly, but it had a peculiar cancelled atmosphere, as if it had been deliberately chosen for its lack of any qualities that might suggest the idea of a home.
I realised, washing my hands on a cracked slip of soap, that I’d decided she was telling the truth. Or at least telling me truthfully what she remembered. There was always the possibility of false memory, I supposed, though I’d never really accepted that as a concept. I was temperamentally opposed to it. I don’t share the contemporary relish for questioning the reliability of the human mind as a processor of reality. At any rate, taking stock of things as I stood at the mirror with its reflection of the door on which a worn grey towel hung like an abstracted grimace, I noted the absence of doubt inside me. I’d been planning to press Julia on the question of whether that fateful evening was the first or last time she’d been to bed with Marco, but it seemed a minor quibble suddenly; not worth pursuing. And as if freed from some internal prohibition, my mind went to that other room, the hotel room in Belfast. I seemed to see it with stark clarity; a functional seventies box with a bed on which Marco with a drunken grin was ignoring Julia’s change of heart, her ineffectual attempt to push him off; forcing himself onto her, into her, the act compressing its own colossal implications to a blackness too dense for either of them to comprehend as they rolled apart. It was like one of those vitrines we’d been shown at that talk at the Irving Foundation: one figure sated, indifferent; the other staring out at the washbasin in the corner, the fly-specked light, the row of boots lined up against the wall, wondering what had just happened.
‘So … What are you going to do now?’ I asked, returning to the living room.
Julia was once again seated on the chair facing mine. A new bottle of wine stood on the table between us. She’d refilled both our glasses. I’d have liked to eat something before drinking any more, but food didn’t seem to be on the horizon.
‘About Marco?’
‘Yes.’
‘What I’ve been trying to do all along.’
‘You mean …?’
‘I’m going to publish my book.’
‘You have a publisher?’ I asked, surprised.
‘No, but I’m going to find one. Renata Shenker isn’t the only fish in the sea.’
‘Have you … sent it out?’
‘Not yet. I thought I might try to get an agent this time. Perhaps you can suggest someone?’
I stammered something about being out of touch with the English literary scene. ‘I could probably find you some names, though …’
She must have noticed my lack of conviction.
‘Are you against me publishing it?’
‘No, no. Of course not. But … I mean, I do wonder if you’ve … if you’re aware of the impact it’ll have …’
‘On?’
‘Marco.’
Her eyes flashed wide.
‘Why should I care what impact it has on him?’
‘No reason. Just that … I mean …’ I looked for a neutral tone. ‘It will destroy his life.’
‘Well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?’
‘Do you want to destroy him?’
‘No. I don’t actually care what happens to him, to be honest. But I have a right to tell my own bloody story! Don’t I?’
‘Of course. But he will be
destroyed. As long as you realise that. He’ll be finished as a journalist, a film-maker. His personal life will be wrecked. He’ll …’ I could hear my voice rising. I appeared to have shifted from the role of impartial magistrate, now that I’d accepted her version of events, into something more like Marco’s advocate. I was surprised at this, though the surprise didn’t change anything. I’d drunk enough to feel the gap between my acting self and my observing self. ‘His life will be over, for all intents and purposes. I’m not saying that’s necessarily unfair. Maybe it’s exactly what he deserves. I’m just … pointing it out. I mean, since you say you don’t actively want to destroy him …’
The expression on Julia’s face seemed to suggest she hadn’t considered this aspect of the situation until now. I continued, cautiously encouraged.
‘He’s very open to self-criticism, you know. He told me he regretted a lot of his own past behaviour with women. He felt bad that he hadn’t been more considerate, empathetic. We had one conversation where he spoke very frankly about growing older and not being so governed by his libido. He said he was a lot happier. He admitted he used to feel compelled to make a conquest of every woman he encountered, but now that’s gone, and he says it’s actually liberating.’
I repeated, as accurately I could, Marco’s spiel about the autumnal pleasures of life that he’d begun to appreciate: pottering off to the gym or bakery, savouring the aromas of the local restaurants and vegetation. She listened, clutching her glass of wine without lifting it.
‘I’m telling you this in case you think he’s still a danger to other women. I mean, if that’s part of the reason why you feel it’s important to publish your—’
‘It has nothing to do with it,’ Julia burst out. ‘I don’t give a damn what he does to other women. He can rape his way across the entire fucking planet as far as I’m concerned. There’s one reason and one reason alone why I intend to tell my story, which is that he raped me. It happened. And I’m not going to be made to shut up about it.’
Evidently I’d misconstrued her attentive expression. I felt suddenly out of my depth; bewildered by her seemingly implacable tenacity, but also by my own apparent compulsion to defend Marco, or at least plead for mercy on his behalf.
‘He has a gun in his drawer,’ I heard myself say. ‘He showed me. He said he’d use it.’
‘On me?’ She looked momentarily fascinated.
‘On himself. If you publish.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’
‘I’m just trying to convey how desperate he is.’
‘I told you. That’s not my concern.’
‘He has a daughter …’
She glared furiously at me.
‘I don’t care. I don’t care.’ She slammed down her glass of wine, which miraculously didn’t snap. ‘Why should I care? Would you care, if you were the one who’d been raped?’
I looked away, thrown off my guard.
‘Would you give a fuck whether or not your rapist had a daughter?’
‘Probably not.’
She gave a curt nod.
‘He will fight you, though,’ I said. ‘He’ll fight you as hard as he can.’
‘So what’s new?’
‘Well … as long as you think it’s … worth it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m just saying, in his mind, he’s fighting for his life. It’s you or him, basically. One of you ends up terminally discredited. Lying rapist or lying Nazi. That’s unfortunately the logic of the situation. And it could be you, Julia. He’ll show every publisher in London that letter from Gerald Woolley, along with the stuff about Hanna Reitsch. His father’ll make sure they all get copies, along with injunctions and writs and all the rest of it.’
She looked at me with sudden intense dislike.
‘Now you’re trying to threaten me!’
‘What?’
‘You don’t believe a single word I’ve said, do you?’
‘I do!’
‘Then you don’t care!’
‘The point is, no one can prove it either way. That’s the nature of these things. And without proof he’ll always be able to raise the possibility that you’re making it up. Especially given the circumstances.’
‘The circumstances?’
There was a brief pause, in which both of us seemed to reel a little at the suggestion that had slipped out of me.
‘You mean my going to his room, voluntarily?’
I made an attempt to backtrack, though I didn’t feel entirely in command of myself at that moment.
‘Well, it’s a factor, I mean, the world being what it is …’
She tilted her head, seeming to reappraise me.
‘You don’t believe it was rape, do you, even if everything I say is true?’
‘I do,’ I protested, trying to sound like myself. ‘Of course I do.’
‘You don’t. Not real rape. Not in a way deserving of real consequences. You think I should just shut up about it, don’t you?’
‘Not at all,’ I said with a weird, glib feeling, as if I’d become my own communications director. ‘But I don’t think it’s going to be easy to find a publisher, with those documents doing the rounds. They’re pretty incriminating.’
‘I’ll publish it myself, in that case!’
‘You’d self-publish?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, that’s your prerogative …’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Nothing …’
‘You think he’d try to stop me doing that too?’
‘I imagine so. If he can find a way.’
Her fury seemed to falter; she looked vulnerable again, uncomprehending.
‘I’m not even allowed to self-publish? Christ almighty! Christ almighty!’
I had a feeling I should leave. I didn’t appear to be in control of what I was saying, or even thinking. I seemed to see myself in front of some grim-visaged campus committee, trying to account for this weird surging impulse to act as Marco’s surrogate. I stood up.
‘What are you doing? You’re not leaving, are you?’
‘I should get going.’
She stared, blinking, with a peculiar, unseeing look as I went over to the door and reclaimed my jacket.
‘What if I can prove it?’ she said with an abrupt wild jerk of her head. ‘What if I happen to have proof that what I’m telling you is true? Because it so happens I do. Cast-iron proof!’
I should have told her I didn’t need proof; that I already believed her. But I didn’t; couldn’t. Perhaps it was the still tenuous nature of that belief – it hadn’t quite solidified into an irreversible conviction. Or perhaps it was just the timing of her offer. I have a professional resistance to last-minute twists, surprise endings, and this sudden offer to supply one offended my sense of literary propriety. I looked down without answering, and began buttoning my jacket.
‘I’d have put it in the memoir,’ she went on, speaking rapidly, ‘except I knew it would be too controversial. Too explosive. Do you want me to tell you what it is?’
‘It’s up to you,’ I said.
‘Do you know what people like Marco have in common?’
I continued buttoning my jacket.
‘Form,’ she said, her voice high and breathy. ‘It’s never just a one-off. There’s always a history. And Marco’s no exception. I happen to know that, for a fact.’
I looked up; curious in spite of myself.
‘Did he ever tell you why he moved to America?’ she asked.
‘No …’
‘Well, I’ll tell you.’
She paused theatrically.
‘He was banished.’
‘Banished?’
‘Yes.’
Her face, like her voice, had changed; acquired a defiant brightness.
‘Yes. He was caught with a fifteen-year-old girl. That’s statutory rape. Her mother found them in bed and told him he had a week to leave England, for good, or she’d go to the police
. So now you know.’
She waited for me to react.
‘Huh,’ was all I could think of to say. The story sounded absurd. I felt a sort of cringing awkwardness on her behalf, and a strong urge to get out.
‘It was the mother who told me. I’d tell you her name, but she asked me not to, out of consideration for her daughter. There’s a lot of stigma for women who admit to being victims of sexual abuse, as I’m sure you know. It’s true, though. Perhaps I ought to have put it in the memoir after all. I could have used pseudonyms. What do you think? I still can, of course …’
‘That’s your call,’ I said, probably rather coldly. ‘If you think it’ll help you, then you should certainly put it in.’
She flinched. She must have caught the scepticism in my tone. The brightness fell from her face like a mask. She looked dazed.
‘It was good seeing you, Julia,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry if …’
‘Must you really go?’
‘I should, yes.’
We managed a pro-forma kiss on the cheek. It was still raining outside. I was cold, hungry, exhausted. Even before I crossed the river the whole encounter was acquiring a spectral quality, as if I’d dreamed or imagined it. I made a deliberate attempt to fix its key features in memory: I had a feeling I was going to need to recall them at some point. Some effort of concentration was required. It was never a neutral matter to be back in London, and I found it hard to focus on other things as I inched home across the city. I liked to think of it as a changeless place, stalled for ever in the same drizzle and gloom I’d left it in decades earlier. But of course there was always some new development: flashy new buildings like the ones coming in and out of view from the Docklands train – Gherkin, Cheesegrater, Walkie-Talkie; new ticketing rigmaroles to figure out on the Tube, new announcements on the platforms in new kinds of voices, the trains themselves smashing out of the tunnel mouths at newly aggressive speeds as if charged with the task of obliterating all memory of the newly interminable wait preceding their arrival. Contrary to what I’d always maintained, the city I’d abandoned seemed suddenly more anarchic, vivid, tumultuous than the one I’d moved to. And by some odd alchemy of transference, that wildness seemed to spread back into the images of Julia and Marco I’d formed when I lived there, Londoners to their fingertips at that critical juncture in their lives, and I had a vertiginous feeling of being caught up in a more turbulent drama than I’d fully grasped, with larger protagonists, gripped by stronger forces.
