by Sean Thomas
— 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.
&n
bsp; — 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
