by Tim Pears
Ezra stepped outside the front of the hotel himself, and breathed in the cool air. Dawn was breaking, trying to bring colour as much as light to the grey stones and streets, though with less success so far. A street-cleaning vehicle, its green shell faint, as if the colour had been chemically desaturated, was whirring along the Aldwych. The effortful sound of its small engine whining past, and gradually receding, served only to accentuate the silence of the great city at that early hour of the day.
Ezra went back inside the hotel, and walked through the lobby to the lift. The one in which he’d descended was still on the ground floor, doors open, awaiting his return. Inside, he pushed 4. The doors closed. The lift rose slowly. It had its own maroon carpet. The lift eased to a smug halt. The doors seemed to wait a measured moment. The length of an intake of breath. Then they slid open. Ezra stepped out on to the fourth floor. After another pause, the doors closed behind him. He noted from the numbers on the sign on the wall in front of him which way to go to get to Klaus Kuuzik’s room, and he walked along the dimly lit, maroon carpeted corridor. It curved before him. Ezra walked easily, tired and calm. There was no hurry any more. Not because the things that were so important hours, minutes, before no longer mattered, but rather because he, and his position in unravelling events, had altered: something told Ezra in his weariness that he was no longer outside but now, perhaps for the first time in he didn’t know how long, in sync, in tune with the ordained order of reality unfolding before his footsteps.
He found Kuuzik’s room. Some twenty yards away was an alcove. There was an unmarked door, presumably to one of the walk-in cupboards where the maids kept their linen, towels, bathroom accoutrements. Ezra stood in the alcove. Within a minute he heard a door open, and peered around the corner. Blaise backed out of Kuuzik’s room. She smiled and then leaned back in, over the threshold of the room, her torso disappearing from view for a moment. Then she re-emerged, and turned, and walked towards Ezra. He stepped backwards, pressing his body against the cupboard door.
Blaise strolled by. Ezra watched her amble barefoot away along the corridor. She was carrying some items of her costume: the Egyptian cobra headpiece, the long crocheted gloves, the silver necklace; they dangled from her left hand. She was swinging them slightly, and her tread lifted a little, as if she was humming a tune to herself; her head was shaking, minutely, from side to side as well. Her sun-bleached brown hair was no longer piled high on her head, but fell around her bare shoulders. She vanished around the curving corridor. Ezra closed his eyes. His neck tipped, unable suddenly to support the weight of his head, which dropped towards his chest. He slid down the wall, until he rested on his haunches. There he slumped, breathing awkwardly, dead weight gradually spreading out and working down to the floor just as surely as if he’d been put there by a pair of fists. Though his mind worked on; wondering how on earth he was going to tell Sheena.
Ezra threw clothes and possessions into his travelling case. At Reception he left money and a note in an envelope for Blaise, telling her he’d gone home early, and for her to follow him back to Oxford with Chrissie Barwell. He left a note for Chrissie asking her to take care of Blaise.
The first train on a Sunday morning didn’t leave Paddington until three minutes past eight. Ezra took a taxi to Marble Arch and waited less than five minutes before an Oxford Tube coach pulled up. He climbed in his galabeya to the upper deck. Outside, the sky seemed to be a uniform block of grey cloud, so low the top of the coach almost touched it. Along the motorway to Oxford Ezra gazed out at the colourless landscape, a single word, unforgivable, repeating itself inside his brain, ricocheting in slow motion around his skull.
He took a taxi home from the station. It was seven-thirty. The house was still. The sound of people talking came from the sittingroom. Ezra left his bag in the hall. Louie sat cross-legged on the sand-coloured carpet, too close to the big television, watching CBeebies. He hung on every word of the pair of presenters, who shared a similar perky manner. Manic depressives employed during their up periods on children’s TV.
Ezra said hello. Louie ignored him. Ezra walked over and knelt down and kissed the top of his son’s head. Louie stared at the screen, mesmerised. The remote was in his lap, the first tool the child had mastered.
The kitchen was a mess. Sheena had filled the dishwasher before going to bed – its orange On light still glowed in the dim light – but she’d not tidied away condiments, unsullied cutlery, empty wine bottle. Ezra did so while the kettle boiled, then he carried two mugs of tea upstairs.
Sheena slept with her mouth slackly open. She looked puffy and exhausted in the half-light, as if sleep were tiring her. Her black hair trailed across the pillow. Two or three white hairs showed themselves unapologetically. Ezra placed a mug on the table beside Sheena. It seemed wrong to wake her. He walked round to his side of the bed, removed his shoes, and sat on top of the covering sheet. He leaned back against his pillows and drank his tea, waiting patiently, feeling exhausted but too grim, too empty, for sleep. There was no need for sleep. There was no point. Sheena would wake soon enough.
It was the sound that woke her. Sleep was a weight. Sheena had to make a real effort, from a prone position, to lift it off her. She pushed, and supported herself on her elbows.
‘What are you doing here?’ her drowsy voice demanded. She twisted around. Her eyes were scrunched up against the threadbare light. ‘What time is it?’
Ezra made no reply.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sheena asked. ‘Why are you sobbing? What’s happened?’ She blinked. ‘Is Blaise here?’
‘No.’
‘Is she all right?’ Sheena said, raising herself clumsily up.
‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘I mean, she’s not hurt. She’s not dead or injured.’
‘Good,’ Sheena said. ‘Christ, Ezra. Don’t do that to me.’
He shook his head.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course not!’ he spluttered. When was the last time he’d cried in front of her? Of anyone? From amidst the sobs he stole a single deep breath. ‘I mean, yes, I’m fine.’
‘Oh, God, Ezra,’ Sheena exclaimed. He turned to her. ‘When did you make this tea?’ she asked. ‘It’s got a white film on top of it. No. Wait. Just stop there. I can’t do anything without a cup of tea. I’ll be back in a minute. You can tell me everything.’
Sheena got out of bed and shivered. ‘It’s cold,’ she said, as she went into the bathroom. Ezra heard her pee. The loo flushed, taps ran. She emerged tying herself in her white bathrobe, picked up the mug of cold tea, and left the room.
They each sat upright, facing ahead, holding hot mugs of tea, and Ezra described the evening. He recounted the moment Blaise opened the door of her hotel room, when there stood a lifesize doll before him, the marionette of a ripe young woman. He knew he was about to deliver the confession that would condemn him, and, abject, condemnation was what he wanted. Yet something, some vestige of self-preserving instinct, restrained him, curtailed his need for punishment.
Ezra outlined the events of the party, which was marked like staging posts by the three separate occasions when Blaise approached Klaus Kuuzik. He recounted their disappearance from the ballroom, his search, and he told Sheena in as much detail as he could remember the thoughts that raged through his mind as he tried to work out whether or not to storm Kuuzik’s room, so that Sheena might, despite her propensity for deciding right and wrong with precipitous clarity, appreciate the extent of the dilemma he faced. Even if he had done the wrong thing, or failed to do the right thing, as he now understood was the case, at least Sheena might agree that although it was a mistake, it was one that anyone could have made.
Ezra stared straight ahead as he spoke, in a dull monotone, the mode of delivery expressing its form, solemn and penitent. Sheena gazed at her tea as she listened. Eventually Ezra described making his way to Kuuzik’s room, seeing Blaise emerge, and hiding in the alcove to watch her walk away along the corridor. He finished, and w
aited, for the verdict.
‘Are you sure?’ Sheena asked, at length.
‘Sure? Sure what?’
‘That they had sex?’
Oh yes, Ezra was sure. He recalled Blaise’s hair falling on her shoulders; the way her necklace and gloves swung from her fingers; how her body swayed to the tune in her mind. He recalled her head slowly shaking from side to side, and could imagine all too well the smile that was on her face, hidden from him. Lasting at most half a dozen seconds, the glimpse had given him as full a picture as a father could possibly need of a girl sauntering, along her own path, towards a newfound freedom.
But no, he had no proof. And it was better, he suspected, not to be sure. ‘No,’ Ezra said. ‘I’m not one hundred per cent certain. Not really.’
‘So you’re not even sure,’ Sheena said. ‘How did she look? From what you saw. Did she look unhappy?’
The cobra headpiece swinging from her left hand. Her tread rising and falling. Ezra wondered what tune it was that played in her head. ‘No, Sheena. I suppose actually she didn’t. She looked happy.’
‘Right,’ Sheena said. ‘I see. Now this guy, Klaus, you’ve been telling me for months what a great guy he is, right? I didn’t really believe you, Ez, and I certainly don’t now. But I mean, what exactly is the big deal here?’
Ezra gazed at the tea going cold in the mug in his hands. He hadn’t drunk a drop of it. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.
‘Who are you crying for?’
Ezra winced. ‘What do you mean? Are you not listening? Our daughter, of course.’
Sheena laughed. ‘Sweetheart,’ she said. ‘This is a moment in our lives, you and me, don’t you think, for quiet celebration? It sounds like Blaise chose who she wanted to have. What better way to lose her virginity? In a hotel room with an older man. Maybe he even gave her an orgasm. Her first time. That would be something, wouldn’t it?’
‘Would it?’
‘Well, would you rather she lose it, I don’t know.’ Sheena paused, then made a dismissive sound, as if dislodging something from her throat. ‘Outside in the dark, with some cruel skinny youth.’
‘That’s hardly the point.’
‘Some drunken, painful, thirty-second fumble,’ Sheena spat. ‘In the middle of nowhere.’ Her tone suggested that what she described might be her own bitter memory.
‘Wait a minute,’ Ezra said. This was not going the way he’d imagined. ‘You’re not taking …’ He was unprepared for this. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. ‘Wait.’ Ezra took a deep breath. ‘She is under-age. That’s the point. This was statutory rape, Sheena.’
‘Yes,’ Sheena agreed. She frowned. ‘That’s true.’ Her countenance opened. ‘And if Blaise comes home and tells us she was raped, we’ll do whatever we need to, we’ll do everything we can, Ezra, to get your man locked up. And I mean: everything. But from what you’ve told me, it was, I don’t know, it was the opposite of rape.’
‘But, Sheena …’ Ezra stuttered. His brain felt like it had been jolted, as if he’d looked up and found himself in some kind of mental traffic accident. The shock felt familiar: he recalled the dislocation he’d experienced when, after some months with the Achia, he first began to comprehend the extent of the differences between their way of thinking – their morality, their cosmology – and his own. Or rather that of the culture he was from. And he was struck by how asinine had been his presumptions of common humanity; how profoundly alien these human beings were.
‘But, Sheena,’ Ezra said. ‘Don’t you see? This is our daughter we’re talking about.’
Sheena sighed, as if simply impatient to move on, now that she’d been woken so early, to her shower, and getting dressed for a new day. ‘Yes?’
‘Well, what was Kuuzik thinking of? I mean, I’m one of his senior employees. A trusted colleague.’
‘Does he know she’s fourteen?’
‘Yes, of course he …’ Ezra tried to recall conversations. An introduction. ‘I don’t know, though. I’m really not sure.’
‘Maybe he genuinely assumed she was sixteen.’ Sheena put her empty mug on the bedside table, and got up, gathering her hair as she did so.
‘But don’t you see?’ Ezra demanded. ‘How can I look him in the eye?’
Sheena stepped over to her dresser. She took a hair grip and clipped it into her hair. She reached for another, then stopped. Her hand hovered in mid-air for a moment. Sheena turned back to face her husband. ‘Oh, I do see,’ she said, staring at Ezra. Her left hand still held a hank of hair behind her head. ‘Yes. Oh, I’m sorry. Of course. I’m so stupid.’
‘Look, Sheena –’
‘It’s not about Blaise. It’s about you.’
‘No,’ Ezra said, loudly.
‘Ez, sweetheart, I can see the problem. My God, of course. I’m sorry. How can you show your face?’
‘This is about Blaise, Sheena!’
‘There’s no need to yell. I understand. You’re right. You should have stopped it. Interrupted. Yes! I’m sorry.’ Sheena shook her head. ‘You should have broken the bloody door down.’
‘Sheena, we’re talking about molestation, interference –’
‘He would have respected that, I don’t doubt.’ Sheena emitted a brief snort of laughter. ‘I haven’t even met the man, yet I don’t doubt that. Isn’t that weird?’
Ezra hurled the tepid contents of the full mug he’d been holding. The brown liquid streamed towards his wife. Most of it struck her around the chest and soaked into her white bathrobe. The rest splashed across the duvet, on the carpet; some drops up into her face. ‘It’s not about me,’ Ezra said. ‘Or him. Who gives a fuck about him?’
Sheena gaped at Ezra, open-mouthed. Drops of cold tea dripped from her hair, her chin. ‘Did you just throw that at me?’ she asked.
‘Our daughter,’ Ezra said. ‘Are you some kind of monster? Don’t you care about Blaise?’
Sheena turned to her dresser. She seemed to be looking for something, as if the next lines of her script were secreted there. Having scanned them, she turned back, her eyes bright. ‘You weak bastard,’ she said. ‘You come back here blubbing. What do you want me to say? Well, I’m saying it. Yes, you should have intervened.’
‘But not for Blaise?’ Ezra could feel his voice creaking, and sensed that he was close to tears again. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He was unable to look at Sheena, to accept how little he knew her. ‘You heartless …’
Sheena pulled a tissue from the pocket of her dressing-gown, and wiped her face. ‘Yes, for Blaise, then, if you like,’ she said, in a tired voice. ‘I don’t care. You have it however you like. For Blaise. Yes. That’s fine.’
How was it possible, Ezra wondered, to live so long so close to someone, and know them so little?
‘It’s like you held back, last night, in that hotel, the same way you do with me. You know something, Ezra? You want to know? I’ll tell you. You’ve never once in all these years given me a good fuck. Do you realise that? Not once.’
‘Is that right?’ Ezra asked. He smiled a thin-lipped smile at her. ‘That’s all you’ve ever needed.’
‘A man who won’t hold back. Who doesn’t think I’ll break up, I’ll fall apart, if he lets himself go. Who can do it and just keep doing it until I’ve had enough. Is that so much to ask? A man without caution.’ Sheena began to pace the area between her dresser and the bed as she spoke. ‘A man unafraid of what he does.’ She alternated between looking intently at Ezra and peering wildly around her, as if not wanting to look at him, resenting it when she did, but then unable to fix on anything else.
‘So why don’t you get some other man to do what you want.’
It seemed like what Ezra said had shocked Sheena, because it made her suddenly focus on him. ‘Are you serious?’ she asked. She emitted a brief, theatrical kind of laugh, dismissive of any innocence he might attempt to pretend to. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to believe you don’t know.’
Maybe it was the
colour draining from his face, an open target. Maybe it was the drops of cold tea still in her hair. Maybe she believed Ezra and maybe she didn’t, but now Sheena let him have it: the time it began, when Hector was small and she realised it was something she couldn’t bear to live the rest of her life without; the names of strangers Ezra had never met; the discovery that she could have it without it interfering with her family. Ezra remained kneeling on the bed, his head bowed. It was difficult for Sheena to conclude. A way eventually occurred to her.
‘You should try it,’ she said.
However often afterwards Ezra reconsidered that moment, he would never accept that he decided to say anything. He simply heard his own voice, and Sheena heard it too. ‘Ask Minty,’ he suggested in a hoarse whisper.
When she struck him, her open palm on the side of his head, it felt to Ezra like the most generous gift. Sheena gave him permission to defend himself. Ezra sprang off the bed and grabbed her wrists, twisting and squeezing them tight to her body then half-picking her up and dragging her into the bathroom. Sheena struggled, but Ezra was surprised by how much stronger than her he was. The restriction upon his limbs imposed by the gallabea was a greater obstacle than Sheena’s resistance. He pulled her into the shower cubicle and dropped her there, and turned on the cold water, and stood at the threshold, pushing Sheena back when she tried to escape. She was crying, but the water would wash away her tears. Finally, Ezra left her there, and walked back to the bedroom, pulling the wet gown over his head. He sat on the end of the bed, naked, breathing hard. Well, here we are, he reckoned. This is where we are. He looked up, and saw Louie standing in the doorway. Ezra got up, and walked towards him, but the boy turned and ran off along the corridor.
