Without Consent

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘I can’t cook, you know,’ Helen said.

  She lied, as well; that was all Anna needed.

  The flat was a slightly untidy haven of multicoloured peace. Anna was aware of the moral superiority which came from the knowledge that she was a far better housekeeper than her hostess, and on far less money. She touched things, she admired, explored and settled like a wary animal. Most of all, she liked the garden: unplanned, overfull, big enough for a cat to get lost. She would have loved to get her hands on that garden.

  Much, much later, after several glasses of wine and food in the form of an endless parade of snacks, Anna told Helen, lightly, speaking briefly, nothing heavy, that what she really wanted was revenge, and Helen repeated, equally lightly, Redwood’s cynical formula. Lure him back, make him do it again, collect evidence. She was only speaking in the context of the options available for redress rather than revenge; namely, none. They laughed about it; neither of them aware at the time of how the idea might take hold, like one of Anna’s plants in parched ground.

  When Bailey arrived, Anna left. He had made her feel welcome; her discomfort lay in the fact that she had never meant to stay so long and was not much at ease around men at the moment, even though it was nice to refuse his offer of a lift home and then be ushered into a cab. As if she was as normal as she seemed. A capable woman able to unlock her own door with that once-familiar pleasure in being home. Ashamed to feel so diminished by some incident which had not even threatened her health. And all the rest of her, still burdened with love and lies.

  Bailey stood awkwardly in the kitchen, the way he sometimes did, as if he had never been inside the flat before, instead of a million times at the last count. There were moments when Helen wanted him to be in no doubt that this was her territory, others when she wanted him to meld in with the furniture, as comfortable as if he owned what was hers. His lack of resentment often amazed her; so did his humility and his complete acceptance of her ambiguous rules. She did not deserve him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t know you had company. Only I didn’t want to be on my own.’

  This was an admission, coming from him. There was far less of his almost obsessive reserve than there had been, but he was never going to be a man who admitted easily to need.

  ‘Good. There’s wine in the bottle and the night’s young. Is it Ryan?

  He nodded. Helen put her arms around him. His body felt like knotted wood, slightly softened by age, yet hardened by the tension which seemed to sigh through his voice.

  ‘Never mind a drink,’ Helen said, ‘you need a massage. Hot bath, maybe. Tender loving care, all that.’ She kept her voice free from anxiety but his pallor was alarming. Bailey was ever thus: resisting the river of emotion until the dam was ready to burst. She never remembered the ulcer.

  ‘I need inspiration,’ he said. ‘And a different job. And,’ he added, accepting a glass and something resembling a sausage roll, both swallowed with indifference. ‘And … what was I saying?’

  ‘Exactly that.’

  He sat at the kitchen table, marginally relaxed. She was almost up to speed on the Ryan débâcle, she thought, but plenty could have happened in forty-eight hours. Such as some little snippet from the laboratory, some detail which made the whole thing worse.

  ‘I’ve got to pass it over to that sanctimonious star, Todd,’ Bailey said. ‘I’ve got to. No choice about it. The girl’s finalized statement is entirely convincing, needless to say. I’ve never bunked off a case before, and yes, I’m so angry with Ryan, I could spit.’

  ‘Why did he do it?’ Helen wondered out loud, feeling awkward about the fact that she had never felt at ease with Ryan, although confident she had hidden it. It was, in part, she suspected, a kind of jealousy. Ryan might know more about Bailey than she ever would; might even have a greater command over his affections.

  Bailey rounded on her with red eyes.

  ‘What do you mean, why did he do it? He might not have done it. Don’t make assumptions.’

  ‘Why not? You’re sure, too, or you wouldn’t be half as infuriated as you are now, or isn’t it the thought of him being guilty which gets you down? You assume; you’ve got the evidence. Why can’t I assume?’

  He took a deep breath and attempted a smile. His stomach rumbled; the sausage-roll affair was a mere titillation, but the rumbling was his own fault for neglecting the simple business of eating. He had long since given up expecting, or even hoping, that Helen’s fridge would automatically hold the makings of a man-sized meal. Sometimes yes, usually no; he was used to it.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t quite explain. I mean, I have to deal with my own assumptions and the evidence, which looks bad enough, but I find myself enraged if anyone else points the finger at him. Even when the stupid clot makes it worse, and even then I don’t want anyone else suggesting that Ryan’s guilty; I don’t want to believe it, even though I do, actually, believe it. Am I making sense? No, I expect not. I loathe Todd.’

  Helen stood behind his chair, kneading his shoulders. He reached for her hand and held it against the side of his face, resting his cheek against it. Bailey revelled in any sign of affection; he had been born and raised with a shortage which had turned him into a quietly demonstrative man.

  ‘By an odd turn of coincidence,’ Helen said, ‘Anna, that girl you just met, my new friend; she might have been interviewed by Ryan. About a month ago. If she’d made a complaint, that is. She lives on his patch. But she didn’t and she won’t. She thinks her complaint is too bizarre for anyone to take seriously.’

  ‘Why?’

  She would have liked to have told him, but she doubted it would have made him feel better.

  ‘You’ve heard enough about sexual aberrations for one day,’ she said. ‘It’ll keep.’

  At about half-past eight in the evening, Aemon Connor delivered his wife into the hands of the police, more by accident than by design. It was not a measure he had ever considered appropriate for any member of his family, although when his daughters were small, he had found the prospect of having them imprisoned singularly tempting. Now, he could have wished them at home, rather than summering with the relatives he believed would have a more beneficial influence on making them hardy than Brigid ever would. To allow any stranger into his apartment, unless it was to admire the handiwork and commission a building on the same lines perhaps, was anathema, but there was little else a man could do when his wife would not get out of the bath.

  Would not, could not; he was unsure of the difference, only that by the time he actually saw her in there, having put his foot to the flimsy lock which provided privacy rather than security, she was cold. Attempts to communicate through the door had resulted in her humming, softly at first, breaking out halfway through the first line of a hymn tune he thought he recognized, into a bubbly laugh which was devoid of any quality of joy. Well, as he told the doctor, he’d known since the beginning that Brigid, despite a sweet and gentle nature and a fine singing voice, too, lacked a certain something in the brain department, but this was another matter altogether. What he would never mention to the doctor was the fact that he considered his gentle wife such a conversational dead end that he fucked her out of despair. It was all a man could do in order to stay sane and as loyal as his faith demanded. Nor did he mention to the doctor that his wife had not left her cooling bath – cold, in truth, but on a day like this not chilly enough for any signs of hypothermia yet – by voluntary means. When she refused to respond to an order, he had seized her by the arms first, then the waist, and bumped and dragged her out of there, swearing mightily and calling on God for a witness. He had put that damn bathrobe on her, the one she hid inside so often to make herself look like a nun, shoved slippers on her feet by grabbing her ankles and forcing her tootsies inside. Aemon also failed to mention that her passivity during all these manoeuvres, which was not to be mistaken for co-operation, had given him an embarrassing stirring of desire; the one thing she could always do when no one else could, ma
king her more infuriating than ever. Her skin was whiter than the morning milk, spongey to the touch. When he dumped her on the sofa, she had screamed, scrambled up to one end of it, curled her slippered feet beneath her and put her thumb in her mouth. Since this was the greatest sign of animation yet, he took it as a favourable sign.

  He helped himself to a large drink to steady his nerves, then another. She seemed happy enough, until she fixed her huge eyes on him and giggled. She took the thumb out of her mouth, formed a fist out of her hand with the index finger pointing at him like the barrel of gun, whispering, bang, bang, bang. Soon after that, he called the doctor.

  The medic was a dark little man, half Aemon’s size, pretending he had better things to do than interrupt his dinner. Aemon did not like Asians, for being so much better employees than his fellow countrymen. He liked this example even less when he turned into an interfering idiot with ideas of his own. He was beginning to mutter about his wife needing sedatives or whatever treatment was recommended for hysterical women, when she interrupted, opened her mouth and said, very clearly, ‘Please take me away, I’ve been raped.’

  Brigid rarely completed a sentence, so it was not surprising that Aemon’s jaw dropped. When she went silent again and the doctor turned to him for explanation, he was the picture of surprised guilt. Brigid’s fragile wrists emerged by accident from that cloying gown, as if she was trying to shake it off. ‘I hate it,’ she hummed, ‘hate it, hate it,’ again sounding both clear and absent-minded. She had slender arms, where the bruises were beginning to form from his efforts to get her out of the bath, livid patches beneath her skin; the only features the doctor seemed to notice. Apart from the flowers and the unopened chocolates which he took to be the guilty gifts of a guilty man.

  He asked her politely if she was able to get dressed and come with him. She obeyed with a brilliant smile. Aemon stood by in silent confusion, for once, lost for words.

  To Sally Smythe, summer was a silly season and she could only feel relief that it was drawing to an end. The gaiety of skimpy summer clothes was not enough to compensate for the fact that the warmth brought out of the brickwork vulnerable persons in all their disguises, and as they took to the streets and parks, so did the other type of vulnerable person who was likely to attack them. Oh, the lure of the great outdoors. The last person who had sat in the Rape House had been extremely dirty: a back-packing tourist girl sleeping rough until a stranger had decided to join her, not taking her refusal kindly. She had sat in here, with paper separating her torn clothes from the fabric of the chair, smelling, while they waited for the doctor. It went against Sally Smythe’s instinct to prevent a person from washing. Mrs Connor was quite a contrast. She sat in the anonymous room like a shy cousin invited to tea, and she was as clean as a whistle.

  Soft-spoken, too, apparently grateful for her surroundings which she stated she liked very much, speaking with the voice of a well-trained guest. Raped and/or abused by husband, Sally Smythe read the doctor’s urgent guess. Mrs Connor seemed in no hurry. She might simply be there for the enjoyment of the hotel accommodation they would have to arrange soon. Would be nice to make some headway first, Sally thought; nasty bruises on the wrists.

  ‘Who attacked you, Brigid? Please call me Sally. Did your husband get a bit …’ There was not even the slightest scent of sex. Brigid smiled her brilliant vacant smile.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘not this time.’

  There were some victims who were much more responsive to a man.

  Ryan worked in the garden until after dark, as he had done every evening since his suspension. Against all the odds, it was not the emptiness of the days which threatened him, when his wife was at work and his children, ever adaptable to new conditions, either pursued their independent social lives on a prearranged course as if nothing had happened, or wheedled him for entertainment. Trouble at work, was all they knew, whatever else they had guessed; Dad considering changing jobs after a few weeks’ rest. His children were a source of solace, distraction and intense anxiety by day. It was in the evenings, with his wife at home, that he felt awkward, claustrophobic and guilty.

  The problem with his garden was no more than the time of year. It was too soon to begin on preparations for winter, too late to plant or prune. He would normally have sat back and enjoyed the late summer season: the flowerbeds were weedless, although passing their best; his two fruit trees were free of blight and the lawn was healthy. There was nothing for it but to dig a pond.

  Mary would have preferred him to concentrate on a number of things which required urgent attention indoors, but changed her mind. Anything which did not necessitate them remaining in the same room together for more than an hour at a time would do. If he was outside and she was in, they could behave normally. She would not be obliged to bite her own tongue in an effort to prevent herself from asking him, look, what exactly did happen on the night you went out with that girl? I know you haven’t told me the truth. She would ask futile questions; each of them an accusation, a declaration of lack of faith which might be met with the mulish silence she dreaded, or the speaking of some truth she dreaded even more. There was a dull sense of déjà vu in all of this: there had been mutual infidelity in the past; enough evenings of silent recrimination, secrets and rows for neither of them to want a repetition.

  She was brisk and calm. In bed, under cover of darkness, she had tried to make herself affectionate, but she could not pretend any real desire any more than he could respond. If he tossed and turned, it was better she did not know. The sleeping pills she had got from the doctor were remarkably efficacious, suppressing her boiling anger and letting her do what she needed to do: turn her back on him and sleep away the effort of being nice.

  The pond had taken shape. Ryan, following instructions from an old Reader’s Digest book, read first, dig your hole. The book did not mention what he was supposed to do with the resulting mountain of earth, except wheelbarrow it away to a site for a future rockery with the prospect of further time-consuming labour. Then, line your hole. Soon he could consider buying plants and fishes, then net to prevent marauders, then something to surround the pond. This task could go on for ever.

  He was crouched on the edge of his hole, bone weary, rubbing soil from his hands. He stared at his nails, brown with the stuff and rubbed the fresh calluses raised by digging. Gardening without the impediment of gloves, as he usually did, gave a man hands like sandpaper. His wife had been known to complain. He wondered whether Shelley Pelmore would remember encountering hands like that on her soft skin and, if she did not, would it be useful in his own defence? He could hear the question asked by a barrister with a voice to curdle blood: ‘Surely, madam, you can remember if his hands were rough or smooth? Were they labourer’s hands, madam, or those of a man at a computer terminal? Were they the hands of a man who digs a garden? You don’t know?’ In the last two years sitting in court to give moral support to the genuine rape victims who were his witnesses, Ryan had wanted to shoot the bewigged pompous farts who used questions like that to confuse.

  Now, he would encourage it. He could take that girl and wring her little neck with his own calloused hands.

  She was gorgeous, slim and lithe and gorgeous. Unquestionably affectionate, unlike his wife. So gorgeous, he could imagine burying her in a hole smaller than his pond.

  The darkness of the August evening was not the real darkness of winter. His eyes had adjusted to it and he could imagine coming out here and seeing the glint of water, putting his feet in it on another night as warm as this, even though that was not what he was supposed to do with an ornamental pond. The strained voice of his wife floated over the lawn, shouting for him, trying not to sound impatient.

  ‘Phone,’ she said briefly, when he reached the harsh light of the back door, rubbing his eyes as he came inside. She watched, with resigned disapproval, as his dusty boots dragged dirt through the kitchen.

  ‘Who?’

  The phone had been so silent these last days, unles
s it was calls for the kids.

  ‘Don’t know. A woman, anyway. I asked her for her number for you to call back, but she wouldn’t.’

  Ryan rubbed his hands on his trousers and went into the hall.

  ‘Help me,’ said the voice. ‘Help me, please.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Although juries must be told that “consent” in the context of the offence of rape is a word which must be given its ordinary meaning, it is sometimes necessary for a judge to go further … he should point out there is a difference between consent and submission … The jury should be reminded too of the wide spectrum of states of mind which consent could comprehend and that where a dividing line had to be drawn between real consent and mere submission …’

  These were the words which excited him, would exonerate him if ever he needed it.

  Both of the girls who had died had been afraid, although only initially. He would never have forced either of them, or any woman for that matter. The thought of doing anything so cruel shocked him. But even the most mature patient was timid, out of ignorance. There was nothing ‘mere’ about submission. One submitted to the dentist, the doctor, to life, even; submission was vital to survival. It was not a different state of mind to consent, but a close cousin. And in the end, one submitted to death; not consent, submission. What was the difference?

  The law never mentioned redemption. The law did not believe in it.

  The interior of the Rape House looked even more anonymous after cleaning. Plants, Sally Smythe thought; it needs plants.

  ‘What did you do when he kissed you?’ she asked the girl. There was silence.

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t doing anything out of order at that point, was he? I mean, you didn’t mind him kissing you?’