Four Bare Legs In a Bed

by Helen Simpson

  ‘Desmond Blackacre was found guilty of rape and sentenced to three months in prison. The lightness of his sentence was owing to mitigating – some would say extenuating – circumstances. You were naked and unwary in a lonely public place. Even supposing this to be Arcadian innocence rather than decadence on your part, Blackacre’s impulse was understandable and, some might say, excusable. In common parlance, you might have been perceived to be “asking for it”. How do you view the affair, Mrs Vernish?’

  ‘I think you are talking nonsense, Mr Deerhurst. For a start, I am heavily built, middle-aged, with a twisted spine and a port-wine stain swathing my left shoulder and breast. Had I been a perfect lissome seventeen, however, I would still defend my right to bathe in the River Severn on a hot August afternoon with no one in sight. The fact that Desmond Blackacre had been furtively tracking me some seven miles through fields of haycocks and bullocks indicates that the rape was more than a mere merry impulse. Had I been the one to notice him in a Worcester teashop, had I tracked him all that way and managed to surprise him sleeping scantily clad in the sun on the riverbank, had I managed to tie him up and so manipulate him that he became a mere tool in my hands, and had I then used him against his will for my own gratification, no court of law would have blamed his folly for the attack. Nor would I.’

  ‘So you think he deserved a heavier sentence?’

  ‘That is another question, you realise. As to “deserving”, I didn’t want him locked up for retribution’s sake. If he doesn’t know the evil of violation in his own nature then no outside interference will convince him. We are our own self-punishers.’

  ‘A most touching and pretentious oration, Mrs Vernish. Doubtless you hope it will sway the jury when they come to sentence you.’

  The sight of Patrick in the witness box turned my stomach. He took a quick look at my face, then his eyes were swivelling like whelks on a pin. I had to remind myself to keep my gums covered; my lips were creeping back in an equine sneer. The other side had produced him as a character witness, and he did a good assassination job, damning me with faint praise in all his answers.

  Yes, he had known me for more than seven years. He had met me for the first time in the Sun and Whalebone over a pint of bitter. We became lovers three and a half weeks later. He did not know I was married then, or he would never have dreamed of ‘trespassing’. Yes, he knew I was a drinker. ‘I often gave her advice on moderating her habits, such as, keep a tally on your inside arm in felt-tip so you know to stop at the fifth glass, and, line your stomach with a pint of milk before you start, but she never listened to me. She said she was interested in Dionysian states of mind.’ This of course led Mr Deerhurst rampaging off into the classical undergrowth of his education, summoning up armies of lecherous satyrs, women eating their own infants (uncooked), and a diatribe against the unwomanliness of alcohol-crazed females, castrating and tearing limb from limb, all of which baffled, dazzled and horrified the jury. Mr Pringle whispered to Mr Deerhurst to inform the court that I am a vegetarian, but this led straight to a charge of drug abuse. Patrick was sweating freely. I was at some point allowed a right of reply. I stared at him and powerfully it returned to me, the pang of disappointment I used to feel on waking and regarding his weak profile pointing up from the pillow beside me.

  ‘I accuse you of lack of love,’ I said.

  ‘I still can’t see the crime in taking a picnic down to Delafosse Meadow.’

  ‘For a start, you were trespassing on private property,’ said Mr Pringle. ‘Delafosse Meadow was sold by the County Council to Piers Townley as building land a year ago.’

  ‘Delafosse Meadow has been common ground for centuries,’ I said. ‘I’ve been eating hard-boiled eggs and sandwiches there for the last thirty years.’

  ‘I’m afraid that is completely irrelevant,’ said Mr Pringle. ‘You were breaking the law.’

  ‘But why on earth did they make such a fuss about my pepperpot?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘It could be seen as an offensive weapon,’ said Mr Pringle reluctantly.

  I broke into peals of laughter.

  ‘I can’t eat tomatoes without pepper,’ I wheezed at last. ‘Can you?’

  ‘Then there was the knife – ’ said Mr Pringle.

  ‘For slicing mortadella,’ I interrupted.

  ‘And the stone.’

  ‘Which I found in the rubble where they’d started building. As I explained to the jury, it contained an ammonite.’

  ‘It was a very large stone.’

  ‘Now it’s my turn to talk of irrelevance.’

  ‘You did however carry this stone with you up into an old beech tree in Delafosse Meadow.’

  ‘True. I always eat my picnic there; it has a lovely broad branch on which I spread a little gingham cloth and set my food out, so managing to avoid all the ants. It’s not very high up, you know.’

  ‘High enough to drop a large stone from. You nearly killed Mr Townley, you know.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ I said. ‘I had no idea he was walking underneath, then his voice boomed out so suddenly that I almost fell out of the tree and I must have knocked the stone off then. Anyway, it missed him.’

  ‘Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea,’ quoted Mr Pringle a shade pedantically. ‘That is, you are not criminally liable for your conduct unless the prescribed state of mind was also present.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Mr Pringle, ‘you failed to convince the jury of that.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ I said, but this time I screamed it, just as I had done in court.

  The terrors were with me earlier yesterday morning but had finished by midday, so I was relatively empty and serene for my interview with the new young Minister for Transition. This was just as well, since he had come straight from his weekly visit to the city hospice and was clearly unsettled.

  ‘Some of those advanced cancer cases …’ he muttered, accepting a mug of prison tea.

  ‘Sugar?’ I asked.

  ‘I think I will, just this once,’ he said. ‘You know, it makes you feel quite grateful for your health.’

  ‘I suppose so, though I can’t help thinking it’s a bit of a waste in my case, considering what’s in store tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was forgetting,’ he said, and blushed like a peony. He was a short muscular young man with an open-book face.

  ‘It does seem a waste though, doesn’t it. Just think how useful it would be if they were able to catch my living daylights in a test tube and transplant them into one of your hospice patients.’

  ‘Give them time, Mrs Vernish, give them time,’ said the Minister. ‘These medical bods come up with the most amazing things. That’s an interesting idea actually.’

  ‘What happens when you die?’ I asked abruptly.

  He riffled through his Transition manual, licking his fingers and looking worried.

  ‘Deathdeathdeath,’ he muttered. ‘I know it’s here somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother,’ I said. ‘Tell me, would I be right in thinking you’re new to this job?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I am,’ he said. ‘Does it show? I put in to be Minister for Sport, but when you’re making your way in government circles you have to take what you’re given.’

  ‘What’s your sport, then?’

  ‘I’m a bit of an all-rounder, really. A spot of rugger. Quite a bit of football. But in summer it’s back to my first love, cricket.’

  I saw a field of happy energetic fools, I felt and smelt the grassy air and the pleasure of fresh sweat evaporating before it could corrupt. My book was open beside me, and from inside the ramshackle pavilion shone the pallor of tablecloths.

  I was so upset that the Minister for Transition took me in a hug and rocked me inexpertly, pressing his mouth now and then to my forehead, until I couldn’t see the green picture any more.

  We shook hands then, a little embarrassed.

  ‘All t
he best,’ he said. ‘I mean, no hard feelings.’

  ‘Not towards you, anyway,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’

  The Minister for Justice brought his own camp stool to my cell. A pot of Sumatran coffee was produced by one of the warders.

  ‘Do you admit the justice of your sentence?’ he asked, almost casually, as he took a sip of the steaming Mandheling.

  ‘No. I can’t see what I’ve done wrong, and anyway I don’t think anything would give you the right to take away my life.’

  The Minister sighed and took a tin of chocolate Bath Olivers from his briefcase. He did not offer me one.

  ‘It would be nice if, at the end of our interview, you were to sign a statement admitting the justice of your sentence,’ he said. ‘The government would like it. The people would like it. The press would like it.’

  ‘What does that matter to me?’ I asked, not without bitterness.

  ‘Our judicial system is one of the most sophisticated and civilised that the world has ever seen,’ said the Minister. ‘A full copy of the Law is given to every child when he or she reaches the age of criminal responsibility.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I lost mine during a game of hide-and-seek at my tenth birthday party. So you see, I never really had a chance to bone up on the straight and narrow.’

  ‘A second copy was issued to you two months later,’ he said.

  I sat up then, and started to go red. ‘Your boys have done their research.’ I said. ‘Yes, I still own that copy, but I never managed to wade through it. It was too boring. Any offence I have committed was unintentional, since I was ignorant of the law.’

  ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse, particularly since you have possessed a copy of it for the last forty-one years,’ he said. ‘In fact, in law, it figures as the most serious example of contempt of court, as you are now no doubt fully aware. It was absolutely no excuse to say that your ignorance was not contumacious. You were guilty of the grossest negligence in this matter.’

  ‘I still don’t know how I’m meant to have broken the law, but I wouldn’t have respected it anyway since it is barbarous enough to approve the death sentence.’

  ‘Barbarous? Nonsense!’ said the Minister. For the first time he looked a little annoyed. ‘The law is a democratic instrument, and the public demands retribution. We do not insult you with talk of the value of deterrence. The law pays you the compliment of assuming that you would rather take your punishment like a man than be lobotomised, forcibly preached at, or subjected to other methods of reform.’

  ‘Why are you going to kill me?’ I cried. ‘I wasn’t found guilty of hurting anybody.’

  ‘Evidence about actual harm done was, as you say, too insubstantial to convict you,’ he said stiffly. ‘But, as any sophisticated society recognises, retribution is proportionate to moral guilt, not to harm done. And there was no doubt about your moral guilt. Give me one reason why you are worth saving.’

  I could not think of anything to say. It had been just the same in court when Mr Prosecuting Deerhurst had demanded a catalogue of my virtues. What could I say? That I have a way with animals, that I know how to make firelighters? Then, as now, I remained silent.

  ‘You received an education at the State’s hands costing £13,000,’ continued the Minister. ‘Fourteen years ago you had an operation to remove your appendix which cost £4,000, also at the State’s expense. You are self-supporting but earn so little that you pay no taxes. You have contributed nothing to the economy, nor have you increased the population. You take no interest in politics. There are no grounds for appeal. You are useless.’

  ‘Live and let live,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t sit on the fence forever.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘We do,’ he snapped, packing away his biscuit tin and folding up his camp stool.

  I’m tearing round the room now, thundering into the walls. I like to hear the crack as my head hits brick. It’s reassuring. The policeman looks worried. He runs after me. He hits my face. I scream. He hits my face again. I stop.

  ‘That won’t help things,’ says the policeman, panting like a walrus. ‘You’ve got to stay calm.’ He takes out his handkerchief and wipes my face with it. My tears trickle down.

  The men have come to fetch me. They stand in the doorway. I look in the mirror again and see my life jumping out of my eyes, which are twice their normal size. One side of my forehead is red; I can see the little lines of the abrasion like the weftage in coarse linen.

  I troop along with the men. They take me outside. There is a funny little cart with a coffin on it, and they lift me into this. I crouch in the shallow wooden box. Two men pull the cart along. They are wearing black caps and badges and jeans. I clutch the sides of the coffin to keep my balance, and stare at my freckled hands. When I was five or six my mother took me shopping for shoes, and in the window was a framed piece of skin from a man hanged for murder, which had been tanned to show the skill of the shoe-shop’s proprietor, and beside it a photograph of the man after he had been hanged. His face was purple; his right eye was open and the left partially so. I asked my mother what happened to the body afterwards.

  ‘Don’t be morbid,’ she said.

  I had no idea what this meant.

  Here we are. They help me down. Rearing up against the sky like a bad joke is the angular tree, from whose single branch dangles the ultimate loop-hole of the law. ‘People are quite kind on the whole, deep down,’ Mum used to say. The man in the black hood has been waiting ever since that morning she told me off for being morbid.

  They take me up towards the steps. There is a squeezing fluttering noise in my ears, a battering of wooden wings. I totter along.

  There has been a horrible mistake, I want to explain, this is an outrage against the whole scheme of things; but my tongue swells like a mouse in my mouth, and various pulses all over my body beat their drums. I try to speak using my eyes. They swim. I look down, clutching at the arm of this kind black-hooded man.

  He thinks I am giving him some money. But I haven’t got any. Someone whispers in my ear to let him have my watch. I hold out my wrist and he unbuckles the Timex, pockets it, then nods his head to me to stand by the edge.

  He pulls a white cotton bag over my head. It lets the light in, and my eyelashes brush against it noisily when I blink. They are fiddling around outside me. Any second now they will turn me off.

  Now my legs disappear from under me. There are distant screams and the crack of gun shots. I am a sack of sawdust, a dead dolly. Somebody has heaved me over their shoulder.

  ‘You’re safe!’ they say to me, grinning their heads off. There are three of them, large, delighted men with generosity and excitement written all over their faces. The cotton bag dangles from a string around my neck. We’re driving at eighty or ninety in a stolen police car, through a blurred landscape of cabbage fields and factories.

  ‘We’re the LFLS,’ they explain. ‘You know, anti capital punishment.’

  ‘This is very good of you,’ I say courteously at last, sounding like a Victorian novel.

  Extravagant and startling hilarity flies around between them. I can see they are on the dizziest, wildest, most exhilarating exploit any of them has managed so far, even in the extremest extremis of adolescence. Their gallantry is the tenderest and deepest I have ever received from men. I am a queen, a goddess, and my new role is to look warmly at them from on high in gratitude. I stay quiet, but inside my thoughts are of the wet-blanket variety. I suppose they realise they will be hanged along with me when we’re caught? We drive on in a dream of speed, and I am reminded of something.

  The boys at Primary School used to divide into two tribes, stalking and ambushing and wrestling each other at play-time for possession of the empty milk crates under the horse-chestnut tree. One day Graham Doyle offered to let me be his tribe’s figurehead; two boys would carry me round in a fireman’s lift, and I would bring luck like a mascot. I refused because it sounded too boring. I would rather
have been one of the kicking, fighting biting ones than a mascot, but not even that very much.

  This is not an adventure for me as it is for these laughing cavaliers. I take no pleasure whatsoever in derring-do. I am coldly horrified by my prevented hanging, and by the thought that it may only have been delayed. These men, on the other hand, are warm and hectic, boiling over with laughter as we ricochet our way around the anonymous fields. They will probably say fair dinkum when we’re caught.

  I would like them to let me out of this car without any fuss. I would make a dash for that wood over there. I’d go like the wind, leaping ditches and vaulting stiles, never needing to stop for breath, legs elastic as the air. I’d strip and rub earth into my skin and leave people entirely behind me. There would be a safe hole in a dead oak trunk or a secret place in a thorn thicket. Surviving on very little is my forte – beech nuts, nettle soup, fieldmice, things like that.

  But no. I now find myself caught up in some damnfool adventure. I am nauseated. I feel no challenge whatsoever, not even the obscurest hint of satisfaction. It’s a thousand to one we’ll be recaptured. How long do they think we can drive a stolen police car? There will be road-blocks at the very next town we reach.

  Even so, although we are to die, this has less meaning for me than for my brave rescuers, since I neither understand nor accept the logic of such dealings. I am no longer the centre of this narrative, but have become its totem instead; I am the inspiration for these men but not in myself of the slightest importance. They are the heroes – if you want heroes, if you can make sense of this setup. Not me. So I must just sit here with my arms folded and let them get on with the story.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.