Without Consent (16 page)

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.

T
o 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.

R
yan 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, unless 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.'

‘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 …'

T
hese 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.

T
he 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?'

‘No.' Her fingers continued to shred the paper handkerchief. ‘I liked him, then.'

‘They say you have to kiss a lot of frogs to meet a prince.'

‘Pardon?' Sally smiled to hide a sigh, reminding herself not to get clever.

‘I mean, we all have to experiment, don't we?' How condescending she sounded.

The girl's answering smile was wan in the extreme. They were not doing well and Sally felt as if she was wading through mud, not because of lies, but in pursuit of the words to frame the truth. Here was a plump girl, shivering slightly in the heat, preternaturally docile, although she had not been like that when the man she had liked took a deep-throat kiss as an open invitation to full-scale intercourse on the front seats of his van. She had fought like a cat, broken a window, all useful evidence, although it hadn't stopped him.

‘Did he do anything else at first, apart from kiss you and you kiss him back?'

Another long hesitation.

‘Put his hands … That's when I started to try and stop him.'

‘Why? If you liked him?'

‘'Cos I wanted him to take me home. That's what he said. And it's all my fault, isn't it?'

She was crying steadily now, tears as plump as her hands. Sally moved the box of tissues nearer.

‘Because I shouldn't have gone with him, should I? I shouldn't have fancied him at all.'

Sally gestured to her colleague to continue the good work and went into the kitchen. The slats of light which came through the Rape House blinds had begun to make her dizzy, but this girl had not wanted sunshine, she could only talk at all in the semi-dark.

The light in the kitchen was gloriously intense, reminding her of a tempting outside world and her own tired eyes. Brigid Connor had liked the kitchen, despite the view of a neglected backyard, or said she did, with her twittering politeness. She had even uttered thanks for a disgusting cup of soup; a charming lady, anxious to oblige, unlike the eighteen-year-old outside, who simply wanted to forget. Mrs Connor was so keen to please, so off-the-wall and, it had to be faced, so stupid, she would, and did, say anything as long as it received a smile, a nod of approval, or an invitation to continue in the same vapid vein. Didn't do so much talking at home, she volunteered; Aemon hated a chatterbox. She liked to take two baths a day, keep herself fragrant. She might have been in the bath when the man came to the door, but then again, she might not. He had no hair, that man. Your husband, Brigid? No, the man
with the gorgeous eyes. At which point, Brigid would put her palms over her own eyes, as if the sight of his had blinded her, and then remove the hands after a minute as if she was playing a game of peekaboo with a baby. They should all have been in a play-pen together. Nervous exhaustion, Sally concluded; premature senility or a reversion to infancy. But, throughout it all, there was something horribly candid in her guileless face. There were throw-away lines, addressed to the kitchen window or her own tea mug. He did, you know; he sucked me wet and dry, he did; never touched me. Something had happened.

Sally filled the kettle automatically. The medical examination which Brigid had not resented, although informing the doctor there was nothing to see, revealed old bruises on buttocks, fresh bruises on wrists and ankles. They had not gone as far as arresting the husband; policy dictated otherwise. Surprisingly, Ryan had always concurred with this caution; don't charge in without being sure; work out which of them has got a screw loose first. In this case, a husband yelling about issuing a summons against the Police Commissioner, with no trace of a stranger in the husband's house. Her dressing-gown fibres apparent all over his suit, as they might be, but nobody had raped her.

Nor had the husband brought the chocolates and flowers which lay on the table. She was his wife, for heaven's sake, and a good life she had too. She was perfectly capable of buying those things for herself. Chocolates and flowers, flowers and hearts. Something had happened, but Brigid Connor had gone back to her old man, and that was really that.

No hair, no name, but flowers and chocolates. And ice.

Phone Ryan. No, she couldn't phone Ryan. Not now.

N
asty little ritual, this, although Todd rather relished it, everyone else around shuffled a bit, changing weight from foot to foot as if it was cold instead of so relentlessly hot.

Todd adopted the informal approach, only safe in front of witnesses, including the man's miserable little brief ‘You know your rights, doncha? No need to say nothing, but silence ain't always golden.' Abandoning the strict wording also, handing him the sheet, which he received with a ghastly smile, like royalty receiving a perfectly repugnant gift and giving it to an aide. ‘You attempted to rape Shelley Pelmore in the vicinity of King's Cross,' Todd intoned, leaving out the date for the sake of brevity. ‘Got that? Anything to say?'