Kitabı oku: «The Cheek Perforation Dance», sayfa 2

3

Fleeing the sunshine and the sight of Rebecca, Patrick steps inside a low metal doorway into a tiny badly carpeted lobby, where he is scrutinised by three policemen standing half visible behind big panes of scratched, thickened glass. Patrick leans and explains, through the grille at the bottom of one pane of glass, that he is up for trial. The policeman looks blank, then mutters, then reads from a big book to his side; with a final, diffident glance at Patrick the policeman nods and buzzes a button which slides open the door of a cylindrical plastic airlock to Patrick’s right. Unsure, Patrick turns and steps inside the vertical clear plastic coffin. The circular door behind slides shut; Patrick wonders why the Old Bailey gets its furniture from cheap Seventies BBC space dramas; the arc of transparent plastic that is the door in front jerks open.

Clear of the door Patrick is beckoned through a metal detector arch by the same policeman who gave him the funny look. The policeman then directs him up some steps and turns away as if he does not want to look at Patrick any more.

Patrick approaches some more steps. These are big steps, bigger steps. This is more like it, thinks Patrick. His shoes tap-dancing on the large marble steps Patrick feels a tiny frisson of aesthetic pleasure as he is guided by the dead architect’s unseen hand up and out into the cool marble spaces of the Central Criminal Court proper.

— Patrick

It is his lawyer; and his lawyer’s junior.

— Hello Mister Stefan

— About time!

— Yes er sorry

— You do remember your bail conditions?

Patrick grimaces inwardly, then outwardly. He does not feel like being ticked off, not now, not here. His lawyer seems to notice this. With a lofty chuckle Stefan places a squeezing hand on Patrick’s shoulder. At the same time, Charlie Juson, his lawyer’s junior, slaps Patrick’s other shoulder. Patrick smiles weakly at this display of slightly awkward mateyness, and stares wonderingly ahead. The last time Patrick saw his brief Robert Stefan QC, Robert Stefan QC was in an open-necked shirt leaning back in a relaxed leather chair in his panelled chambers in the blossomy, vernal, High Middle Ages loveliness of a Maytime Inner Temple, discoursing whisky-in-hand-ishly on his wide knowledge of various sex crimes. Here Stefan is in black with a white horsehair wig on his head: looking very serious.

Back then, two months previously, when Patrick had gone to discuss his hopes, his fears, his case, his evidence, his chances of getting jail, cricket, rugby, the precise meaning of the word ‘consent’ as regards rape trials, Stefan had seemed to Patrick rather young to be a top lawyer, a silk, a Queen’s Counsel: which was both worrying and reassuring. Now, here, in the Old Bailey, Stefan seems older and infinitely more serious; which both reassures and frightens Patrick. So Patrick stands here feeling confused; Stefan talks quickly:

— Don’t worry, we haven’t been called yet

— Right

— Ten thirty I think

— Yes

— But I rather think we’re going to be in Court Eighteen are you feeling alright?

— Patch!

Patrick turns.

— I just saw her mother she was staring at me like

— Anderson!

— Chin up you old twat

— Was that her outside? In the school dress?

— First there’ll be jury selection

— Then evidence in chief

— Talk about hooters!

— Joe

Surrounded by gaggles of over-sarcastic friends and an anxious-looking sister Patrick wonders, slowly. For a moment he feels comforted by this mob-handedness: after all, how can anything go wrong, with all his friends and his sister and probably his mother here and … and …

And then he remembers that if this were his funeral they would still be here, all of them, his friends and family, behaving precisely the same way, being chatty yet sad, feeling guilty but laughing, greeting each other merrily and youthfully and then stopping as soon as they remember where they are. And so now Patrick swoons at the thought that this is indeed his funeral, here, stood in the middle of the marble lobby of the Central Criminal Court of Old Newgate Jail he will be gone and never seen again; will be despatched with due ceremony; and with this thought Patrick feels himself transcend, go out-of-body, feels himself levitate above the vortex of buzzing besuited friends and black-cassocked priests-cum-lawyers … he is ascending … ascending to somewhere, to somewhere where his experience is so beyond what they shall ever experience he is beyond the reach of mutual understanding and they shall none of them ever be friends again.

— Patch you nutter I told you not to rape her

— As I’ve said, with previous convictions, the recommended sentence can …

— Tapir!

Crackling through the noise of his friends and lawyers like someone shouting his name at a party Patrick hears a voice come over the court loudspeakers

—All parties in Skivington please go to Court Number Eighteen

— That’s us

Says Stefan.

Patrick breathes in, breathes out. He sweeps a gaze across the faces in front of him: his lawyer, his friends, his sister. His sister Emily. Emily looks back at him. Her Skivington-blue eyes are slightly moist, her hair slightly dishevelled; her caring for him is evidenced in the lack of care for herself. Holding her brother by his besuited shoulder Emily says:

— Good luck, Patrick

— Yeah mate

Says Joe. Someone else says:

— Give ’em hell, y’wanker

A couple of Joe’s friends have slapped Patrick on the back; Joe has done the same. With his shoulder still smarting, Patrick is then man-handled by his lawyers, by Robert Stefan and Charlie Juson, up some more expensively shallow, lavishly marble steps, unto a marble cool corridor. Escorted by his legal bouncers, Patrick walks past other lawyers in wigs and kit, past his solicitor Gareth Jenkins who gives Patrick a thumbs-up, past a girl who seems to be crying, past three nasty-looking blokes with tattoos who are staring at the crying girl. Then they stop before a padded door which is all velvet and wood and dignified weight.

The door opens, they step through; the door closes quietly and slowly behind. Patrick lets himself be led into a wooden-railed dock. The dock. Patrick sits down on a crap plastic chair and gazes around Court Number Eighteen. It is a long high soft-lit soft-white light-brown-wood-panelled courtroom. A clock ticks on one wall. The other wall is taken up by a jutting gallery; the public gallery? Patrick presumes it is. Patrick leans to try and see who is seeing him from the gallery; he can’t quite see. So instead Patrick looks at the royal crest, the Lion and Unicorn above the judge’s big wooden throne at the end.

The judge isn’t on his throne, isn’t in the courtroom, but lots of other people are: a clerk of the court; what Patrick assumes is a stenographer, though he isn’t sure what a stenographer is; his own lawyer, now opening his briefcase; another lawyer-type, but older, (older? wiser?? the prosecution???) opening his own briefcase; his solicitor, doing nothing (nothing?); some security musclemen who are standing ominously nearby; a yawning policewoman; another policewoman chewing gum; another clerk of the court; and a couple of seedy-looking guys in cheapish suits who are staring him out from some of the side galleries ranked beside the dock. Journalists? Patrick shakes his head and stares at the royal crest above the judge’s seat. Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense.

Something about this agitates him. In his dock, in his seat, Patrick swallows. Although Patrick knows it is a trick, a stunt, a sleight of the psychosocial hand, he feels his pulse race, his heart go fast: the Majesty of the Law. He might have been in courts before, but they were nothing like this.

Patrick is, now, suddenly, again, scared. He feels like a small boy sent to the headmaster’s study. Like a schoolkid walking down the corridor, heading for detention … Except this time his detention will result in his spending fourteen years in a cold northern jail before having three broken lightbulbs shoved up his arse by his gay psychotic car-jacking Kurdish cellm …

— All Rise

Everybody in the court who wasn’t standing now stands; at the back of the court beside the judge’s throne a clerk opens a door and a small oldish man walks in wearing a larger wig. The man ascends to the throne and sits down and gazes around and says:

— Good morning, everybody

A good morning is mumbled back by everybody. Everybody sits down who seems to be allowed to sit down; Patrick does the same. At once people start chatting, opening folders, relaxing, moving about the courtroom confusingly but confidently: just people doing what they normally do, on a normal day. Normal day! Patrick sits there, marvelling. Then Patrick’s lawyer leans across to chat to the man whom Patrick presumes is the prosecution lawyer, Alan Gregory QC. The prosecutor nods, nods again, and then laughs.

!

The spittle of outrage fills Patrick’s mouth as he sees this open collaboration, this evidence of conspiracy. How can they be chatting? Laughing? Chatting? Jesusfuck! Patrick is outraged, helpless, stuck in his blue plastic chair in the wooden dock, palsied by impotent anger. Colluding! Conspiring! Chatting! Patrick wants to shout out at them: Wankers! Jobsworths! Toffeewombles!

But Patrick does not shout this; shouting out swearwords isn’t going to do anything. He realises this. The judge might be a pantsucking fuckbat but …

The judge!?!

Patrick eyes up the judge. A good man, surely, hopefully, pleaseGod, yes. Yesyes, a good man. Yes. And so Patrick calms down, and so Patrick calms down. And so he calms down … until he has another spasm of panic when he realises that he can’t see his friends. Where? Where! Scandal! Before it has fully dawned on Patrick that they are in the public gallery and the public gallery is virtually directly above him, overhanging him, and therefore invisible to him, some official stands up and says:

— Stand up!

Patrick looks around the court to see which idiot is being bossed in this way. Then he realises it is him: Patrick Skivington. Obediently Patrick stands, and steadies his knees. The clerk, or whoever it is, says:

— You are Patrick Skivington of flat two, number thirty-five, Leominster Place, London WC1, correct?

Patrick nods and croaks a quiet yes. The clerk says:

— You are charged that on the night of August twenty-eight, two thousand and – Patrick jibes; was it that long ago? The clerk completes the date; then pauses, slightly, before saying – raped Rebecca Jessel, contrary to section one of the Sexual Offences Act of nineteen fifty-six – Another significant pause; another glance up – How do you plead?

OK, OK, OK. Patrick takes a grip of his thigh. OK. Ready. Ready-ready. Firm voice. Big voice. This is your chance. For months Patrick has waited for this moment, this moment when he shall express all his outraged innocence, all his innocent hurt, all his unjustly tormented truly-suffering-selfness, in two words. He has only two words, two words to say it all, all he’s felt over these last months, this last year, all he felt in prison, all he felt in his cell, all he felt on remand: and so Patrick stands, and lifts his chin and looks directly at the judge, at the Queen, at God, and asseverates, with all the self-righteous self-justification he can adduce in a tone of voice:

— NOT GUILTY

Half a second passes while this sinks in. Then, nothing. Contrary to Patrick’s quondam daydreams of the last year, the tone of outraged innocence in his voice fails to instantly convince. The proceedings are not summarily dismissed. The court is not in uproar. The public gallery is not full of hat-waving citizens demanding his immediate release. Nor does the judge glance sharply across at the clerk and say what is this obviously innocent young man doing here, let him go at once.

Instead the judge clears his throat and says:

— OK I think we’ll have the jury in

— Call the jury!

— The jury …

Patrick sits down. Around him notepapers have been unfoldered, pens clicked on, wigs taken up. Then the main door opens, and a procession of people are led in, Indian file, one by one. Two of them are indeed Indian: a youngish fanciable girl, and a middle-aged woman in a horrible, oversized jumper. Urgent, Patrick scans these two, and the rest of the jury. Patrick tries to remember Stefan’s advice not to eyeball the jurors for fear of frightening them, but he can’t help himself. These people are going to be holding his bollocks in their hands, and he wants to assess their bollock-holding fitness-for-purpose.

Eight of the jury are women; only one (a man in a battered brown-leather jacket, with a wry intelligent smile) is the sort of person Patrick would consider even sharing a couple of beers with. Apart from the cute Indian girl. One of the men, a darkish, shortish, possibly foreign man, has an eggshell-blue nylon shirt on. With a glossy green leather tie.

Patrick shudders.

He is doomed.

One by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one the jury is sworn in, each taking a bible in hand:

— I swear by Almighty God to do my best to try the defendant according to the evidence presented …

As the jury is sworn in, Patrick weighs up the irony of the fact that he is about to be tried by a man wearing a green leather tie. His fate is about to be decided by a man who buys his clothes second hand in … Azerbaijan. This pleasurably snobbish line of thought exhausted, Patrick finds that after this he is actually growing very very very slightly … bored. Bored? Patrick’s sense of doom, of pointlessness, of almost-being-extraneous-to-proceedings has metamorphosed into a kind of numb dull indifference which is barely a whit away from … boredom. From his dock seat Patrick idly gazes at the female stenographer, wondering what her nipples are like; until he is shaken out of his maudlin torpor by the annoyingly pompous voice of the prosecutor, Mister Alan Gregory QC.

Gregory has stood up, and is saying to the jury:

— Members of the jury, the case you are about to hear is distressing in the extreme. It involves the savage sexual brutalisation of a young girl by the defendant, Patrick Skivington – Gregory does the faintest of gestures towards Patrick; Patrick thinks how much he wants to staple train timetables to Gregory’s head; Gregory goes on – It is my duty as prosecution lawyer to present to you the evidence in a dispassionate and logical light, but also to convince you beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant was responsible for the truly appalling crime you are about to try – A second actorly handwave, then – The burden of proof, as we call it, rests with me. My colleague who is appearing for the defence – He wafts the same manicured hand at Stefan, who nods, smiles briefly – Has nothing to prove, as such. His job is more to sow doubt, as it were. However I restate that it is my belief that the evidence in this case is overwhelming and conclusive, besides being … ah – Looking at the ceiling; looking down – … Very upsetting, and that you should encounter no difficulty in finding the defendant guilty – A glance, a glance at Patrick – At this stage in proceedings it is usual for the prosecution counsel to present a kind of résumé of the indictment, a summation, but as we shall be going over all the evidence in some detail more than once I shall restrict myself to a brief precis of the alleged crime – Gregory pauses, gazes down at his papers in a somehow Oxbridge way; Patrick feels his teeth grinding; he tries not to listen to his own teeth, or to Gregory; but can’t help – The allegation is simply put: that the defendant, on the night of August twenty-eighth, last year, raped his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Jessel. But, members of the jury, that bald statement barely begins to describe the true horror of the crime that, the prosecution posits, the defendant perpetrated that night. You all, I hope, have some photos in your files, these photos – Gregory suddenly and unexpectedly holds up a big photo and wafts it at the jury. Even from this distance Patrick can see a picture of his and Rebecca’s bedroom. Eyes left, Patrick sees the jurors reaching in folders and looking at the same photo and nodding back at the prosecutor, who smiles so ingratiatingly and says some more stuff that Patrick succeeds in blocking out. For a few moments Patrick is successful in not hearing anything, but then the prosecutor gets a little louder, as if approaching his peroration, and the loudness forces Patrick to listen, to hear Gregory say – Nor was this just a simple case of non-consensual vaginal penetration, the technical definition of rape. No, the prosecution holds that this man, the defendant, also subjected this terrified girl to a number of other degrading acts, to coercive anal penetration, to forced oral sex, to various other sadistic sexual crimes, some of which are dealt with in the ancillary indictments – Adjusting his wig Gregory stands back a touch, as if thinking; then he looks up and goes on – I shall be bringing medical evidence to support this claim. A deal of evidence that will require a … strong stomach – Patrick feels his own jaw chewing, jaw-going, his jaw, jawing, hurting – And now, with the court’s permission, I should like to call the alleged victim, Rebecca Jessel, to the stand

Patrick lifts and shakes his head and tries to stare bravely at the wall, at the neutral wall above the judge’s head. A faint tiny prickling behind his eyes indicates to Patrick Skivington that he would probably be crying if he were ten years old and being picked on like this in the school yard.

Patrick does not cry. He stares forward.

Wasp-face! Dog-features! Badger-breath!

4

— Great arse?

— … Yes

— Great arse?

— So?

— Ha! This Patrick guy – Murphy picks up a pencil, waggles it – Smooth-talking bastard!

— It was a book …

—Yep OK

— I was looking at a book, of French rococo art

— Sure, Becs

— No you don’t understand he was looking over my shoulder, at that picture by Boucher – Murphy not responding, Rebecca goes on – The painting of that girl with her bottom in the air, so you see it was really quite sharp

Murphy percusses the end of the pencil against her lips:

— It isn’t big and it isn’t clever

— Murf!

— I don’t mind you lying to me, it’s when you lie to yourself

— Ohhh

Amused but frustrated Rebecca says no more. Instead she leans against the edge of Murphy’s desk: the only furniture of note in the pale-blond-wooden-floored, mostly white-matt-walled emptiness of Schubert & Scholes, Murphy’s gallery.

Rebecca:

— How long has it been since you had a shag Murf?

— He just sounds rough. Very rough … – Murphy is twirling the pencil like a tiny baton between her fingers – Tell me about his criminal record again?

— It’s nothing heavy

— Oh, only a tiny little bit of GBH

— He got in a couple of fights when he was at Uni

— A couple of fights. Jesus! – Murphy sticks the pencil into her hair, twists hair around the end — That’s why they threw him out of his college, the University of Tesco’s Car Park, or wherever it was? Right?!

— Yyyess

— Let’s face it, he’s a bloody caveman

Rebecca tilts her head:

— Mmm. Sexy, isn’t it?

— No – Murphy snaps – It’s not. It’s wanky. The guy’s a musclebound fuck-wit and you’re all gooey-eyed. Christ! – Murphy gazes into the eyes of her friend – What about all that feminism stuff we studied at Edinburgh, what about Simone de Beauvoir and … that other French cow?

— You should see him when he’s got a bit of stubble

— Ohhh … – The pencil falls from Murphy’s fingers, bounces off a two-month-old edition of Blueprint magazine, and spins to the pale-blond-wood floor. Murphy looks down, says – I presume you’ve shagged him already?

— He’s such a spunk

— So that makes it OK? You atrocious slut

Surveying a pile of oversized metal film canisters stacked carefully in one corner of the gallery, Rebecca says:

— Actually we haven’t – Looking back at her surprised-looking friend, meaningfully – I only went down on him

A clucking noise from Murphy; Rebecca:

— Which I thought was rather restrained

— Restrained?

— Comparatively

Murphy:

— Fifteen minutes after meeting the bloke you’re on your knees wrestling with his zipper … restrained?

— Nice and big, by the way

— ?

— And thick

Murphy laughs:

— Girth?

— Gerrrrrrtthh!

— We Like Gerrrrrtthhhhh!!

Their chorus done, Murphy shakes her head and says:

— Just don’t come running when he goes and dumps you you hairy old SLAPPER

A pause. Murphy is bending to pick up the pencil from the floor. Watching her friend bend over, Rebecca assesses her friend’s shortish brown hair; her lithe figure; the cuttlefish tattoo she can see above her friend’s new jeans-belt. Rebecca, idly:

— Love the belt

— Yeah?

Saying ‘yeah I do’, Rebecca sits back against the desk again. Looking at a grainy art photo of a power station on the wall, Rebecca says:

— Actually, we’ve only kissed

— Yeah right – Murphy looks sarcastic and uncomprehending and pleased at the same time – Three dates: and you’ve only kissed? Honestly?

— Honestly

— Wow … – Murphy pretends to get up from her chair – Do you want to lie down? I’ll get you a blanket

— I think … he’s a bit … inhibited

— Inhibited?

— Well, I told him

— No!

— Couldn’t help it. He took me to some club he knows … and we started talking about sex and – Rebecca grins self-consciously – I just stupidly came out with it

— Jesus

— I know – Rebecca mumbles a laugh – Maybe it was a slight mistake

— I’ve told you, Becs: it frightens them

— But it’s just the truth

Murphy shakes her head:

— Twenty-eight different lovers is quite a lot for a twenty-two-year-old Rebecca, smiling:

— Rather more than he as it turned out

— Where’d he take you then?

— Thirty-one anyway … sorry?

— Your second date. Where?

— I told you, this club, he knows all these places in Soho cause of

— No, before the club

— Oh, some posh restaurant

— Hope he paid

— Of course. It’s so awfully unfair isn’t it?

A confirming grin, then Murphy says:

— Don’t tell ’em – Murphy cocks a finger to her lips – They’ll figure it out one day, don’t let on …

Rebecca nods, distracted, says ‘uh-huh’. Again, she looks appraisingly at her friend. Rebecca wonders if and when her best friend will get a boyfriend. Then she wonders if her own impending relationship will affect her friendship with Murphy; then Rebecca realises she has no idea what effect her possible love affair with Patrick will have, because she’s never been in love before. In which case, how does she know she is falling in love now? Simply because she’s more anxious than normal, more nervously upbeat? More keen to submit?

As if telepathically, Murphy says:

— I suppose you’re going to go and fall in love with this bozo aren’t you?

— No

— YES – Murphy is sighing, urbanely – You’re going to sleep with him tonight and by next week you’ll be texting him messages on his phone and by autumn you’ll be wearing his bloody shirts and then – Murphy stops, nods to herself, decides on the rest of her speech – Then by next spring when you both walk home from restaurants you’ll start looking casually in estate agents and then … and then … – Searching for the right part of London, Murphy goes on, emphatically – Then you’ll move in to some stupid stupid flat in Clapham and that’ll be it. Finito. After that you’ll only ever ring me when he’s been horrible to you and then you’ll have a baby and move to Suffolk and spend the weekend wearing Aran jumpers and God it’s so annoying

— You’re jealous. Sweet

— Course I’m fucking jealous – Murphy shakes her head in amazement – Why shouldn’t I be jealous. Just don’t get hurt? K?

— You might be wrong anyway – Rebecca glances at the precious-metal watch, the watch her father bought her for her eighteenth. This makes her feel a pang of something. Some regret – He’s a bit rough in some ways … – She makes a thoughtful face – Anyway I’m meeting him at the pub down the road, in a minute

Murphy, calmer:

— You did say he lives round here, right?

— Ya, it’s convenient for his job – Rebecca looks out of the window, as if expecting Patrick to walk by – S’just down the road

— So that’s why he fetched up every time we had a sarny

— Yes – Rebecca thinks about Patrick’s flat; about the kiss on the sofa, the hand on her nipple – He’s got a nice flatmate, very shaggable

Murphy looks up, helpless:

— Really?

— Really. Joe … something. Cute bod. Bit of a druggie

— Mmmm?

— Wears a good pair of jeans …

— Ooooh …

Rebecca starts laughing at Murphy’s melodramatic ooooh-noise; Murphy has already stopped laughing. Murphy is saying:

— Hello hello

Rebecca:

— I’ll arrange a drink or something. So you can meet him, he’s very sweet and funny, I’m sure you’ll

— sssss!!

Murphy is nodding towards a well-dressed man who has swung through the plate-glass door from the street; Murphy:

— The Christmas rush!!

Obediently Rebecca gazes across the gallery: at the expensively empty space of Schubert & Scholes now filled by a punter, a customer, a man. The man has an air of wealth, and confidence; enough for Murphy to put on her brightest, most insincere gallery-girl smile.

His hands on his knees, the pinstriped man begins examining a collection of enamelled Japanese household rubbish piled alongside one wall of the gallery. Quickly swivelling to her best friend, Murphy makes a ‘sorry I’d better do some work now’ expression; slipping herself off the desk Rebecca puts a fist to her tilted head and makes an ‘OK I’ll ring you tomorrow’ gesture.

In Charlotte Street the blue sunshades are up outside Chez Gérard. A few yards further down the road couples are eating noodles outside the Vietnamese place. And on restaurant tables ranked alongside the entire facade of Pescatori Fish Restaurant big azure-glass ashtrays are glinting expensively in the sun. Walking down this, through this, all this, along her favourite London road, Rebecca feels a head-rush of happiness. She feels a sudden sense of her youngness, her freeness, her possibly-about-to-be-no-longer-singleness. She feels almost ebullient: so ebullient, she finds she is virtually skipping down to the junction of Charlotte and Percy Streets, as she heads for the Marquis of Granby pub.

But before she reaches the Marquis of Granby pub, Rebecca clocks her watch again and realises she has walked so fast, and so ebulliently, and so nearly-skippingly, she is ten minutes early.

So now? Assessing the sun Rebecca sees that it is still slanting brightly enough down Rathbone Place to make it worth working on her tan. Taking a corner seat at one of the wooden pub tables outside the Marquis Rebecca arranges herself: she turns and faces with closed eyes the hot sun, stretching her bare legs out. After a minute of this Rebecca opens her eyes, and sees that her legs are already the subject of some male consternation. One besuited barely-out-of-his-teens drinker is openly pointing at her. For his benefit, without making it too obvious, Rebecca raises her dress an inch or two higher; thinking of Rembrandt’s wife in the painting as she does so.

More heads turn. A tongue actually lolls. Rebecca has never seen a tongue loll before, but there one is, lolling. At her. Not for the first time in her life, Rebecca decides she actually quite enjoys this: the sensation of masculine eyes upon her. It makes her feel like a mid-period Picasso at a glamorous auction; it makes her feel like an attractive woman. Sitting here being sizzled by the heat Rebecca starts to wonder why some art history feminists get so worked up about the male gaze. How so? Why so het up about leers and oeillades? Rebecca does not comprehend it. These staring men make Rebecca feel strong, empowered, aristocratic. To Rebecca right now these men look like so many Catholic French peasants gazing at le Roi Soleil. Dumb, resentful, awestruck serfs …

Thinking of this, primrosing down this intellectual path, Rebecca wonders unwontedly if she can spin a thesis out of this, out of, say, the male gaze as serf-like feudal reflex. Perhaps, she decides, she could; but then, she decides, she shouldn’t. All these thoughts of matters historical, and theoretical, and thesis-esque, are in fact making Rebecca feel a simultaneous twinge of guilt. Because she isn’t working even on her present project, her Crusader thesis, hardly. At all.

Rebecca opens her eyes, worried now. Ever since she and Patrick met, she thinks, she’s done virtually nothing towards her PhD. And this does not make Rebecca feel empowered and royal: right now this makes her feel crap, teenage, girly and feeble. God it’s so crap, Rebecca decides, pulling down her dress to hide her legs: that a mere man can come along and upend her priorities, distort her intellectual life, make nonsense of her ambitions and life goals, by not having shaved for a day or two. How gay is that?

So she must do some work, Rebecca decides, just to show she isn’t just a cheerleading troupe of hormones.

Sighing in the sunshine, putting down her pint of lager, Rebecca takes a textbook out of her bag, the ever-present, hardly-touched Crusades history book, and starts to read up. Flicking pages she comes upon the section she was deconstructing up until … the bit she was studying up and unto the moment Patrick walked casually through the front door of her life, like he’d had a key all along …