The Cheek Perforation Dance. Sean Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ For-God’s-sake. Affronted by his own thoughts, Patrick sits and gazes away from her, ignoring Rebecca’s words about their love. He doesn’t want to think of their love. Doesn’t want to think of her lies. It was true they were in love; it’s lies what she says now. So how does he disentangle them? How does he unloom this skein of mendacity and veracity? And if he doesn’t know how to do it, how does the jury? How?? HOW?

      Patrick is choked by confusion. He feels like swearing. Or shouting out. Or crying. But why? He never cries anyway, or hardly ever, so why here? Because the girl he loved more than himself is now twenty yards away trying to put him in prison? Why should he cry at that?

      — Miss Jessel?

      Rebecca has gone quiet, she has lowered her head, and stopped talking about their love; now she is gazing across the court: gazing out. To Patrick she looks as if she is gazing out the window onto some sunlit pastoral scene, gazing at elm-shaded watermeadows, some fields where the fritillaries dance …

      Rebecca is saying, slowly:

      — I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anybody else in my life

      Pause, gown, lapel, Alan Gregory:

      — And you think he felt the same way?

      — I’m not sure … You’d have to ask him. I think maybe …

      A pause; then, she says again:

      — … maybe

      For the first time, so far, Rebecca stops. Totally. Just for a moment Rebecca looks like she is really truly struggling to compose herself, to think of something to say. As she struggles, and succeeds, in maintaining her composure Patrick blatantly stares. For all Patrick’s lawyer’s stern advice never to stare at Rebecca Patrick is looking directly at Rebecca thinking how much he loved her, too: because she made him so desperately happy when he was with her, so desperately unhappy when not. So: what does that mean? That he obviously doesn’t love her any more? Patrick is even more confused, startlingly angry: with everyone, with her, with himself. He doesn’t know what he should do, he doesn’t know what he’s meant to think, he knows what he wants to do. Right now Patrick wants to cross the dreamy dissolving non-reality of the courtroom and take Rebecca in his arms; he wants to gather the harvest of her narrow waist to his waist, and cuddle her, and comfort her, and kiss the place where her blonde hair thins to her warm and living temple.

      And then he wants to grab a fistful of hair and nonchalantly spin her round and hoist her over the sill of the dock and reach under her dress for the elastic of her panties.

      — So you moved in together in February of that year?

      — Yes

      — And this was his idea as much as yours?

      — Yes, we both wanted it

      — Who was paying the rent, Miss Jessel?

      — I was, mostly

      — I’m sorry? You were paying? – The prosecutor is standing back, pretending to be shocked.

      Patrick feels like laughing aloud at this. Patrick feels like openly laughing at the actorliness of this cameo; at the prosecutor’s overdramatised reaction. Looking left Patrick checks out the lined-up twelve faces of the jury to make sure they saw this, too, to make sure they are fully aware of the prosecutor’s phoniness.

      But the jury, the Asian girl, the man in the green tie, the older Asian woman, all of them: they’re just gazing back at the prosecutor, soaking it all up, taking it all in, unflinching, suspending disbelief. In the dock Patrick sighs, bitterly.

      Three yards from the dock the prosecutor is making a frown – I don’t understand, Miss Jessel. Didn’t he have a job?

      — Yes, but … – Rebecca sounds as if she is embarrassed; embarrassed for Patrick – You see, his business started going under …

      — The nightclub?

      — The club, yes. And the label

      — Was he losing a lot of money?

      — Yes. They were going bankrupt

      Now Patrick wants to squirm. So what? So what’s this got to do with anything? Chin on paired thumbs Patrick listens depressedly and involuntarily to the lawyer vowelling away in his pompous English way.

      — Miss Jessel

      The prosecutor is beginning to assert himself. Using Rebecca’s mumbled monosyllables, exploiting to the full each tiny yes and he did Gregory is beginning to take over the court, casually laying out the truths as he sees it: the truths about Patrick’s sex life, and Patrick’s social life, about Patrick’s violence, about Patrick’s drinking. On top of the revelations about Patrick’s career this comes hard. It makes Patrick queasy. Patrick feels like this is some medieval ordeal, some game with the pilliwinks and gyves. A devious and cruel sport designed to make him squeal in mental pain, and thus reveal his evilness. Patrick flinches in the dock, waiting for the next barbed question, the next prosecutorial thrust. He watches Gregory like a kid in the dentist’s chair, fearfully eyeing the dentist to see what hideous tool he will choose next. Then Patrick once more curses Rebecca for bringing him to this: this profound embarrassment.

      The worst of it is that Patrick can see all too easily what Gregory is doing, why he is doing this stuff, asking these questions about Patrick and Rebecca’s financial relationship, their resultant arguments, the death of the nightclub. The prosecution is leading them all by the hand, along the tortuous coastal path of the evidence, to a place where the gorse of doubt will finally part, allowing the prosecutor to stand and point to where the sea of certainty serenely twinkles in the sunlight: the sea of certainty that tells them that Patrick Skivington is a juvenile fool, who, because his job went arseover, and he couldn’t cope with adversity, and he felt like and indeed was an inadequate wretch cuckolded by life, came back one sad and sordid evening to rape the living Jesus out of his innocent young girlfriend Miss Rebecca Jessel, now of fifteen Goldsworthy Drive, Hampstead Garden Suburb, NW3, then of flat two, number seven Linden Street, Marylebone West One.

      — Did he ever hit you?

      — Yes

      — When?

      Rebecca looks downcast; Alan Gregory shuffles some paper importantly and confidently on his desk; grips the lapel of his gown; repeats the question. In turn Rebecca nods, pained, self-evidently pained by having the truth winkled out of her, the terrible truth:

      — He hit me once … I …

      — Take your time

      — It was just before … you know …

      — Go on

      — We’d had a party. Patch

      This is the first time she has used Patrick’s nickname; the sound of it in her mouth feels to Patrick so painful and sweet, touching and hypocritical at once.

      — Patch came home, he came home from the office with a friend. He came back drunk and he and Joe they fooled around and he was

      In the dock Patrick closes his eyes like he is about СКАЧАТЬ