Maybe the Horse Will Talk

by Elliot Perlman

  ‘Okay,’ Betga said, drawing breath while a flat palm of his was raised in the air about level with Acting Sergeant Quinn’s eyes. ‘Now don’t take this to mean I wouldn’t ever be interested in your version of this aspect of my life, but this isn’t really the reason I suggested we meet. The reason I invited you to meet me was to talk about Carla’s future.’

  ‘I would . . . I suppose . . . like to have some part in her future,’ said the acting sergeant.

  ‘You suppose?’

  ‘Well, yes, I’ll admit that.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not the admission that causes me to emphasise the word “suppose” as though an accurate transcript would italicise it. It’s your very tentativeness.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t really get what you’re talking about, Mr Betga.’

  It was at this moment that the Slovakian craft beers from just north of Richmond arrived. The bartender put them down on the table diplomatically and Betga forthrightly shifted them both towards Ron Quinn, almost whispering to the bartender, catching him before he headed back to the bar, ‘I’ll have one too.’

  ‘Look, Acting Sergeant,’ said Betga and then, ‘Do you mind if I call you “Acting”?’

  ‘You can call me Ron when I’m off-duty.’

  ‘How will I be able to tell?’

  ‘When I’m off duty I’ll probably be settling your daughter.’

  ‘Now that’s good, Ron,’ said Betga, pounding the table with his fist.

  ‘That’s the first damn thing you’ve ever said to me that’s got any kind of spunk, any kind of pushback.’

  ‘Mr Betga, I don’t go looking for confrontation.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of looking for confrontation, Ron. It’s a matter of not looking for a way out when it finds you. It seems to me that you walk through your life as though wearing a sign that reads “I’m done. It’s over for me”, which makes you carrion flesh for others to devour.’

  Ron Quinn thought for a moment. ‘I’ve never thought of myself in those terms. But whether I do or not, what concern is it of yours?’

  ‘I can understand you asking that question, especially since its answer may surprise you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Ron, I’ve come to realise that I owe you a debt of gratitude. You clearly know I’m Marietta’s father.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What you might not know is that I’m in love with Carla, have been ever since my days at Freely Savage, when we met at Torrent Industries HQ, right from the first time we flirted over the document shredder.’

  ‘I’m not sure she’ll believe you . . . because of your . . . affair with the legal recruiter when you —’

  ‘I know what I did . . . was wrong. But even then, I loved her,’ Betga interjected more angrily than he’d intended.

  ‘While sleeping with another woman?’

  ‘Ron, we’re talking man-to-man here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Er . . . Yes.’

  ‘It was a tight employment market. A man has to do whatever he can in difficult circumstances to provide for his family. Yeah? In terms of the economy it’s like a time of war. Some of the things we do for our family . . . well, they’re not pretty.’

  ‘So the legal recruitment woman, she wasn’t pretty?’

  ‘No, she was smokin’ hot, but morally, ethically, I know I was on shaky ground.’

  ‘Shaky ground! You were cheating on Carla. I’d say that’s pretty cut and dried.’

  ‘Yes but, no offence Ron, there’s that constabulary thinking again. One could argue that had I got the job and been able to support her and Marietta without Carla knowing the lengths to which I’d gone to get the job, well, then I’d done the greater moral good. In fact, one did argue that as I recall.’

  ‘It didn’t work though, did it?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t able to raise her mind off the sordid details she kept imagining. I couldn’t stop her re-living a scene she’d never seen. Carla is a very jealous woman and when a jealous woman owns a vivid imagination it’s possible for a man to have recurring nightmares without ever being allowed to fall asleep.’

  ‘What does all this have to do with owing me a debt of gratitude?’

  ‘During the time I speak of right up until very recently you took care of her, watched out for her, and gave her very impressive hands-on help with Marietta. You even helped her with money. I will forever be grateful for that, Ron.’

  ‘Thank you Mister . . . What should I call you?’

  ‘Betga’s good.’

  ‘Mister Betga?’

  ‘No, I’d like to think we’re friends now. Just Betga’s fine.’

  ‘What kind of name is Betga?’

  ‘It’s German but the spelling was changed to help English speakers. Very thoughtful family.’

  ‘How long has your family been here?’

  ‘My paternal grandfather was a physicist back in Germany. Tried to get into America after the war but they didn’t believe he was a Nazi so they wouldn’t let him in. Others got in, much stupider men, not him. It’s always been “who you know”, hasn’t it? Had to come here instead.’

  ‘Why didn’t they believe he was a Nazi?’

  ‘He didn’t really carry himself like a Nazi. Tried to say he was just a bit flat ’cause they lost the war but US Immigration wasn’t buying it. Not only that, he couldn’t adequately explain why he’d been in hiding for twelve years. Wasn’t expecting the question. Put him on the spot. He was still jet-lagged too. I imagine he was. Can’t be sure because I was still very young when he died. But let me ask you something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How did you learn to change toddlers and babies, to settle them and that sort of thing? Do you have kids?’

  ‘No, sadly.’

  ‘You’re not married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you’ve been married?’

  ‘No, never married.’

  ‘So how did you learn to be so good with small children?’

  ‘Well, I learned from being an uncle to my sister’s kids. Always hoped to be a father but it never . . .’

  Betga was in danger of choking up. This policeman was ruthless. He spun platinum-plated pathos the way Spider-Man spun webs. But Betga was saved from lachrymose capitulation by the sight of Kasimir who, although some distance away, was unable to hide his astonishment and disgust that Betga had not only brought in a cop but was sharing a table with him and, even worse, drinking with him. Betga could see Kasimir shaking his head. He knew he would have some explaining to do when this was over.

  ‘Well, you’ve learned very well from your sister’s kids,’ Betga mused, returning to the topic of the policeman’s facility with pre-verbal children. ‘So listen, Ron, despite meeting Carla under different circumstances, I think you’d agree that we both have respect and affection for her.’

  ‘Most definitely.’

  ‘And we both want what’s good for her and Marietta.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And we both know that she’s struggling with respect to money at the moment and could use a break, financially speaking.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t know the precise circumstances but . . . yes.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how much, if anything, she’s told you about the work I’ve been doing for her in my capacity as her lawyer negotiating a settlement on her behalf against Torrent Industries.’

  ‘No, whenever she has talked about you it’s been mainly . . . other things.’

  ‘Okay, but be that as it may, I’m on the verge of delivering her a settlement that I suspect will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.’

  ‘Gee, that’s fantastic, Mr Betga.’

  ‘Please, Ron, you can drop the “Mister”. Betga is fine.’

  ‘That’s fantastic . . . Betga.’

  ‘Yes, it is, it would be, but one of my last remaining obstacles is her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s reluctant to accept a settlement offe
r.’

  ‘Why on earth wouldn’t she accept it?’

  ‘Because she wants the guy punished and the settlement would almost certainly contain no sanctions against the perpetrator. It would be a confidential settlement and it would be paid not by the animal that sexually assaulted her but by the company that employs him.’

  ‘Well, that’s okay. The perpetrator would face his justice in the trial, the criminal trial. I told her, what he did was a criminal offence, probably several of them.’

  ‘Ron, have you ever been to a sexual assault or a rape trial? Ever sat in on one?’

  ‘Actually, no, I can’t say that I have.’

  ‘Do you know what the defence would do to her? To save time, that’s a rhetorical question so don’t feel under any pressure. Since she knows her assailant, they would try to do two things; they would try to make her out to be sexually promiscuous and, even more cruelly, they would try to make any of the physical activity that formed the basis of the assault appear sexual and consensual. The first issue is clearly irrelevant but highly prejudicial. We would, of course, try to keep all evidence of her past sexual history and evidence of the way she dresses, how she has recovered from the assault and is working now, et cetera, out of evidence, but we wouldn’t be completely successful, certainly not enough to keep all of this evidence out and —’

  ‘Well, I could testify,’ interjected the sad policeman with the eagerness of an earnest puppy, an eagerness Betga had never before known the man to possess. ‘I could testify that I made my romantic intentions clearly known quite early in our friendship and she didn’t feel that way.’

  Betga didn’t know where to look after hearing this. He let Ron Quinn’s words glide gracefully downwards like an ageing seabird all the way down to the depths of one of his two already drained Slovakian craft beer glasses. What was he to do with that admission given he was trying not to offend its maker, a man no jury in the land would convict of being sexually enticing at any time to anything, living or dead, in any universe, known or hitherto undiscovered.

  ‘Trust me, Ron, your testimony, even sworn on the deed to the land on which the bible was first printed in Mainz, Germany, back in 1455, even that wouldn’t quite cut it.’

  ‘That’s impressive, Betga, how you just know things that aren’t . . . aren’t even really what we seem to be talking about, unless I’ve somehow missed something. This bible printing business . . . Do you know about this from your family history, you know, back in Germany?’

  ‘No, Ron. We Betgas fled Mainz sometime around 1282, leaving all property deeds to the archbishop’s treasurers. Pity that. Still, Gutenberg wasn’t much of a tenant. Never had any money. And, boy, was he messy! Fingers, everything. Very messy. But be that as it may, and notwithstanding the value of the sterling evidence of her stoic resistance to your entreaties that you would tender to counter the previous sexual indiscretions the other side would try to impute to Carla, the real damage would come when the perpetrator gives his evidence.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s going to say they were involved in a consensual relationship that, to his regret, passionately spilled over into the workplace. Inappropriate, yes, but not assault.’

  ‘But that’s simply not true!’

  ‘You don’t get to court much, Ron, do you?’

  ‘No,’ the acting sergeant said somewhat sheepishly.

  ‘The bastard is going to lie and the standard of proof required in a criminal case, “beyond reasonable doubt”, is higher than that required in a civil case, so he’s going to get off. He would be found not guilty.’

  ‘So Carla’s more likely to win a civil case than a criminal case,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Betga, ‘which is why I can see the company settling, just to ensure the case never comes to court. The company would pay handsomely to keep the allegations out of the news. So then, you see, Carla wouldn’t have to testify.’

  ‘Right, so you want her to sue the company in a civil case but not to have the police charge the perpetrator in order that she be spared the rigours of a criminal trial?’

  ‘Ron, you’ve now grasped the whole thing. I’m trying to get her some compensation and at the same time keep her from going through the agony of a criminal trial where the other side will spend up big in order to lie about the events of the night, forcing her to publicly re-live her torment as both the victim and a witness, and where they would also drag her name through the mud with respect to the most private part of her life; all of it in public, recorded by the press to be saved on the internet in perpetuity where everyone in the world can read it and where one day Marietta could also read what was done to her mother.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that does sound like the way to go, Mr Betga. Er, sorry, Betga. Why isn’t she listening to you?’

  ‘Because, Ron, you filled her head with dreams of retribution via a criminal trial.’

  ‘Well, it’s understandable she’d want the man punished.’

  ‘It is, Ron, but there are certain things I can’t do. Although, between us, I’d rather you didn’t say that around here. She’s not factoring in the ordeal of going through a criminal trial.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ Everything was slowly sinking in for the man in blue. ‘And you want me to talk to her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I can’t tell her his actions weren’t criminal because they were.’

  ‘No, but you can tell her what she’d have to go through in a criminal trial and that, even after that, the guy is likely to be found not guilty.’

  ‘What about the perpetrator getting punished? He deserves to be punished. How will he be punished?’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to find the answer to that somewhere within Gutenberg’s handiwork.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘Ron, do you know who Gutenberg was?’

  ‘Well, from the conversation . . . I just sort of assumed he was a relative of yours.’

  ‘Ron, if you’ll help me in this way, to take care of Carla, I’d like to do something for you.’

  ‘Oh, Betga, really, there’s no need to —’

  ‘No, I’d like to. You might not know this, Ron, but I’m a highly sought-after life coach.’

  ‘A life coach?’

  ‘Yes. And I’d like to offer you —’

  ‘But I’m not in training for anything.’

  ‘You don’t know what a life coach is, do you?’

  ‘A life coach?’

  ‘Yes, Ron, this is another one of those occasions you’ve probably experienced before where repeating the term you didn’t understand a few seconds earlier yields no further discernible enlightenment. That’s the kind of thing I can help you with.’

  ‘Oh Betga, I don’t know, really.’

  ‘Ron, let me ask you, how long have you been an acting sergeant?’

  ‘Just hit eleven years last month. We had sponge cake down at the station. Not everyone could make it.’

  ‘Are there any consequences to being an acting sergeant as opposed to a real one?’

  ‘Just superficial things, really.’

  ‘Like the way people treat you?’

  ‘Hardly notice it. Water off a . . . bird, a water bird.’

  ‘Any financial consequences?’

  ‘To an extent.’

  ‘To what extent?’

  ‘It changes.’

  ‘Does it ever change in your favour?’

  ‘I’m not . . . aware . . . of that . . . having happened.’

  ‘Will it affect your retirement?’

  ‘The department’s never . . . in so many words . . . broached that directly with me.’

  ‘Ron.’

  ‘Yes?’ The policeman looked up slowly from the table, like a child crouching behind an older man’s face, and into the eyes of a younger, more handsome man who had fathered a daughter with a beautiful woman the policeman had helped and never even kissed.

  ‘We’ll make time, Ron. I
can help you. You’ve been a great support to Carla and to Marietta. Let me do this for you. Free of charge.’

  Betga thought the policeman was going to cry and that, if he did, he himself didn’t know what he would do. He couldn’t be seen in the Grosvenor Hotel offering aid and comfort to a serving uniformed member of the Victoria Police. As it was he was going to have a lot of explaining to do. Thankfully for him Acting Sergeant Quinn managed to keep speaking.

  ‘Betga, you know, I think that despite yourself, you managed to learn something from your uncle.’

  ‘My uncle?’

  ‘Gutenberg. You’ll have to tell me about him.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll throw that in too.’

  III

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ Carla asked.

  ‘Perhaps this wasn’t a great idea.’ The reality of accompanying Maserov to Carla’s house was suddenly dawning on Jessica. Betga was there minding Marietta while Carla finished her shift in the office of a cosmetics wholesaler. She was temping and considered herself lucky to get the work. The agency through which she sought work had been deluged by people, almost all women, clerical workers of varying degrees of experience and training, needing work. There was a massive imbalance between the demand and supply for clerical and administrative workers, even those who were highly skilled and experienced. The imbalance was weighted against the women with labour to sell. So Carla was forced to take shifts far across the other side of town. Today she’d had to go out near the airport and even this had been possible only because she was able to leave Marietta with Betga. So when Carla at long last walked into the house, having first emptied her letterbox of the stack of envelopes with corporate logos perfectly formatted by the computers of the various companies to which she owed money, she wasn’t at her most conciliatory.

  Maserov, Betga and Jessica wanted Carla to reconsider her decision not to settle her sexual harassment suit with Torrent Industries out of court. But Jessica had gone with the additional intention of apologising as a woman, a female member of the Torrent Industries HR department, for not having done anything to protect Carla from a predator like Mike Mercer. She had not formulated a clear picture of what it was she, acting on her own, could have done but this hadn’t dampened her need to apologise. The matter of how much of this need to apologise was for Carla’s benefit and how much for her own was something that lurked away from the footlights of her consciousness behind a curtain of other needs, the need to assuage guilt being only one of them.