by James Lasdun
Her flecked grey eyes widened for an instant, searching mine. It struck me, as it never had in the past, that she was insecure; that it actually mattered to her how, to what precise purpose, someone who called himself a writer might adapt her existence for the purposes of a story.
‘Well. It must be fun to make up stories about real people,’ she said, resuming her poised air. ‘You can make them do whatever you want, can’t you? Fall in love, inherit a fortune, become a Buddhist or a junkie or God knows what … I’d like to end up in a nice little cottage in the Cotswolds, if you do write your book, with hollyhocks and plum trees and two or three handsome farmers for lovers, preferably with wives they have to get home to before daybreak.’
‘I’ll arrange it.’
‘Ha! And interesting friends like you to come and visit, of course.’
‘Of course.’
She gave a contented sigh. I got the sense of an impressionable spirit; more susceptible to things than I’d imagined.
‘And what was your role in all this going to be?’ she asked. ‘One of those detached observers like what’s-his-name in the Powell books?’
‘Nicholas Jenkins.’
‘Yes, Nicholas Jenkins. I always found him rather cold and dull. I hope you weren’t going to portray yourself like that.’
‘Actually, I think I was.’
‘No! It wouldn’t be accurate. You’re a lot more fun.’
‘Well, I’m glad you think so.’
She narrowed her eyes in a look of mock provocation.
‘And would I still be able to make you blush?’
I was enjoying the flirtatious tack she’d taken, but even as I laughed and tried to think of a suitably suave reply, something – some confusion, or irritation with myself – flared inside me.
‘Listen, Julia, I’ve been wanting to tell you,’ I heard myself say, the words tumbling out in a sudden, clumsy, headlong rush, ‘I’m a friend of Marco’s. Marco Rosedale. I see quite a lot of him in New York.’
7
It seems even clumsier now, that declaration, than it did at the time. Brutal, almost. But then in hindsight practically everything I said seems tinged with brutality.
The effect on Julia was instant and extreme. She seemed to recoil from me, physically, flinching back into her chair, all the little nuanced tensions of amusement on her face slackening at once, giving way to a look of hurt shock, followed by anger.
‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘No.’
‘Did he send you?’
‘No.’
‘He sent you, didn’t he?’
‘No. I’m here because you invited me.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?’
‘I’ve been wanting to. Ever since you called. It’s just – not the easiest thing in the world to bring up.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Well … The whole story.’
She gave me a hard stare.
‘You’ve heard it then.’
‘Parts of it. His side, obviously.’
‘What does he say?’
‘Well, mainly that he didn’t, you know …’
‘Rape me?’
I nodded. She looked down, her lips moving for a moment without sound.
‘What I’d like to know,’ she said, raising her head again, ‘is why the fuck, in that case, he thinks I’m saying he did?’
I’d decided by then that I was going to be absolutely frank. I felt guilty for not having told her right away that I knew Marco, and it seemed to me I owed her a full account of everything he and I had discussed. More pragmatically, I also sensed I was as close to the heart of the story as I was ever likely to get, and that in my role as its custodian, so to speak, I ought to do whatever I could to keep pushing forward. Frankness on my part, it seemed to me, would be as good a method as any to provoke frankness on hers.
‘He has a few theories,’ I said.
‘Such as?’
I looked at her as levelly as I could.
‘Money, principally.’
She breathed in, long and slow. I saw a muscle clench in her jaw.
‘Money?’
‘He seems to think you … you’re in a position of needing to make money.’
She gave a mirthless smile.
‘Well, it’s true. I am. Who isn’t? Not him, I suppose, with his money-bags father behind him. Anyway, so what?’
‘That’s why he thinks you wrote that thing,’ I said. ‘Or one of the reasons.’
She closed her eyes, shaking her head slowly.
‘Yes, okay, money. I need to make it, just like everyone else. I wrote a memoir, which by the way is mostly not about Marco Rosedale, though I’m sure he thinks it’s all about him. It’s about the same world as your book, by the sound of it, only it isn’t made up. I didn’t write it for money, I wrote it in an effort to get myself out of a deep emotional and professional rut. But I certainly hoped to get a decent sum for publishing it. I showed it to the Messenger and they offered me what would have been a year’s rent on this place just for that little bit about Marco. I was surprised it interested them, frankly. I mean, who cares about Marco Rosedale? And it’s not as if his behaviour was so unusual either. Half the men in London were like that, I said as much in the piece. Still, I’d have been happy to take the money if the Messenger hadn’t been so pathetically afraid of upsetting him.’
‘You think they should have ignored that letter?’ I asked.
‘What letter?’
It hadn’t occurred to me that she might not have been told about Gerald’s letter. I braced myself.
‘Well … Marco found a letter from your boyfriend at the time.’
‘What boyfriend?’
‘Gerald Woolley.’
‘Oh, God! He found a letter from Gerald Woolley?’
‘Yes.’
‘To me?’
‘No, to him. Marco. He showed it to the guy at the Messenger. Mel Sauer. That’s what changed their mind.’
‘Gerald wrote a letter to Marco?’
I nodded.
‘When? Recently?’
‘No. At the time of your … thing with Marco.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Saying what?’
‘Asking to meet him. You’d told Gerald about your – your feelings for Marco, and he wanted to talk it over with Marco, man to man, I guess.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘The letter quoted things you said about Marco.’
‘What things?’
‘Well … Very complimentary things.’
‘Not possible.’
‘Calling him an exceptional human being, exceptionally decent …’
‘Not possible!’
‘He showed me a picture of it. Apparently it was sent just after the Belfast programme was broadcast. So after – you know – the night in question.’
I was trying to get it all out as quickly and straightforwardly as possible, to spare her any unnecessary anguish. But from the waves of pain registering on her face, it appeared my responses were striking her as something more in the nature of poisoned arrows than the simple expedient frankness I was intending.
‘Let me get this straight,’ she said. ‘Gerald and Marco held a meeting to decide who I belonged to and now Marco’s using the letter to try to prove I’m a liar – is that what you’re telling me?’
‘Well, they didn’t actually meet. Marco never answered the letter. And to be fair to Gerald, he did acknowledge you were free to do whatever you wanted.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘I know. Very ahead of his time.’
‘How come Mel Sauer never mentioned any of this to me?’
‘I have no idea. What did he tell you?’
She shrugged. ‘Something about Marco being more aggrieved than they’d expected, even after I toned it down, and the story not being a big enough deal to be worth a legal fight. I didn’t question him because it confirmed what I thought anyway, though it m
ade me furious that Marco thought he had any right to be aggrieved. That was actually when I first twigged that I’d written something important. I mean, I knew it was somewhat titillating, but I’d imagined people would just read it as a funny sketch of seventies sexual habits, which is how I’d thought of it myself. I didn’t think of it as anything serious. Not till they tried to stop me publishing it.’
She refilled her wine glass, gesturing at the bottle to indicate I could help myself, which I did. Her hand shook a little as she raised the glass to her lips. She narrowed her eyes suddenly.
‘I see! So that’s why Renata Shenker changed her mind too! She told me it was because she couldn’t deal with all the Cease and Desist letters Alec Rosedale was firing at her. Apparently he was going to force her into bankruptcy. But they must have shown her Gerald’s letter. Yes. I see now. Dragged her into their nasty little cabal. That’s the real reason why she pulled out. Very interesting. Very interesting.’
‘Well, no, actually,’ I said, realising I was going to have to break another unpleasant piece of news to her. ‘It was something different in her case.’
‘What?’
I fortified myself with a large sip of wine.
‘I think it was some correspondence about a book you wanted to write. On a German aviator.’
‘Hanna Reitsch?’
‘Yes. They got hold of your proposal, along with the report from the original publisher’s reader – a friend of yours, I believe.’
‘Andrea Merton? Not that she’s still a friend of mine, by the way. But go on.’
‘That’s what they showed Renata. That’s why she backed out.’
Julia looked even more bewildered than before.
‘I’m confused. What on earth could that book proposal possibly have to do with … anything?’
I did my best to explain. It all sounded a bit far-fetched. Julia was looking increasingly agitated. She stood up before I’d finished, and began pacing about, biting at a nail.
‘So Renata Shenker thinks I’m some kind of Nazi sympathiser? That’s why she pulled out?’
‘I don’t know what she thinks.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t think you’re a Nazi sympathiser. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Marco does either. But the way he sees it, he’s fighting for his reputation—’
‘Fuck him!’
‘I mean, I think you were trying to praise the woman for not being a hypocrite, but I could see how someone might take it the wrong way. Especially the widow of a camp survivor.’
‘Oh, rubbish! You’d have to be a lunatic to think I was in any way sympathising with her political beliefs. She went to prison for them, rightly, obviously, but then built a new life for herself. That’s what interested me about her. I was interested in people who’ve had to start afresh in life. I’d done a whole series of articles on second acts. The book proposal came directly out of those.’
‘I didn’t know that. Marco only read me the parts where you seemed to be praising her for not recanting her National Socialist principles.’
She flung up a hand.
‘Of course I wasn’t praising her.’
‘Also for calling Germany a land of bankers.’
‘God almighty!’
‘I mean, to be fair, even your friend, or former friend, seemed to find it strange. She said in her report she thought you might have gone off the deep end.’
‘Andrea?’
‘If that’s—’
‘She’s the only person who saw it. She told me it’d be a tough sell so I didn’t show it to anyone else. I’ve often wished I had. That’s one of the things I write about in my memoir, by the way – my chronic lack of self-confidence.’
‘She didn’t tell you it came over as, you know …?’
‘No! Nobody tells me anything, apparently. Except you.’
‘I’m sorry to be a bringer of bad tidings.’
‘Though here’s something even you probably don’t know, which is that I had a fling with Andrea’s husband. He was a junior minister under Blair and some photographer snapped us in his limousine. That’s why Andrea’s so keen to dish on me, no doubt.’
‘Huh.’
‘Not that it makes any difference. I’m sure Alec Rosedale would have got some other dirt into his grubby little mitts if this hadn’t shown up. Or rather, twisted some other perfectly innocent thing to make it look like dirt. That’s what those people do, isn’t it?’
‘Lawyers?’
She gave me an angry look.
‘Yes, lawyers.’
Dusk had fallen outside. The rain had slowed. Yellow lights gleamed blurrily below us. Julia leaned against an empty bookcase.
‘So. Money. What else? You said Marco had a few different theories.’
I shrugged. A slight weariness had fallen on me. ‘Does it matter what he thinks?’
‘It matters to me. Tell me.’
‘Well. He thought maybe you were punishing him for not offering you a serious relationship.’
‘Rubbish. Rubbish! What a fucking arrogant bastard!’
‘But actually, then he changed his mind and said he thought it was more that he’d somehow ruined your relationship with Gerald.’
‘My God! You seriously believe that? As if I could possibly have any regrets about Gerald Woolley. Other than letting him cling to me as long as he did. Your mother thought he was an utter drip. She’s the one who persuaded me to ditch him for that American of hers.’
‘The one you—’
‘Got jilted by. Yes!’
She gave a harsh laugh.
‘That’s someone I do regret losing, by the way. Ralph Pommeroy. Just so you don’t think I’ve become some man-hating harpy. I loved that man with all my heart.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
She switched on a bright overhead light and sat back down in the chair facing me, clamping her temples between a finger and thumb.
‘What else? What other theories?’
‘Something about repetition, imitation,’ I said. ‘Doing it just because so many other women are doing it.’
‘Accusing men of rape?’
I nodded.
She considered this for a moment, then tilted back her head.
‘What … exactly … is wrong with that?’
‘I guess he thought it made the accusation less, you know …’
‘Original?’
I smiled, and she gave a faint smile back, just a flicker really, but it made me feel she hadn’t altogether merged me into Marco, for which I was grateful.
‘Raping people isn’t exactly original either, is it?’ she said.
‘True. But listen. Julia … I want to ask you something.’
‘Yes?’
‘I mean – tell me if I’m out of line, but …’ I broke off, unsure how to put it.
‘Go on.’
She was gazing at me intently from the flimsy wicker chair. She seemed exposed at that moment, unguarded; the bareness of the little flat expressive, suddenly, of an acute and anxious vulnerability.
‘Well … What actually happened in that hotel room?’
8
The question hung in the silence for an uncomfortably long time. I began to wonder if, in my growing fascination with the story, I’d allowed myself to lose sight of a certain basic decorum or tact. But when she finally spoke, there was no particular rancour or even discomfort in her voice.
‘I’ve told you,’ she said mildly. ‘What happened is that Marco raped me. What else matters?’
‘I suppose I’m trying to understand how it came about. I realise it’s not my business …’
She gave a little movement of her head and the gesture seemed to express a tacit permission to probe. At any rate, I decided to take it as that, and she didn’t seem to object.
‘You’d gone up to his room with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Voluntarily …?’
‘Yes. And yes, I lay down on hi
s bed voluntarily, and yes, we started kissing and touching and all the rest of it, voluntarily.’
‘And then …?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did something happen, to change your mind?’
‘No. I just realised I didn’t want to screw him.’
‘Do you remember the reason? Not that there, you know …’
‘Not that there has to be a reason. Quite. But there was a reason, and I do remember it.’
‘Was it Gerald?’
‘No. Well, yes, partly. That’s certainly what I told Marco.’
‘He … disputes that, by the way.’
I began to explain that it was the timing he disputed, not the remark itself, but she silenced me with a dismissive wave.
‘Who cares what he says? Anyway, there was something else too.’
‘Yes …?’
She turned, facing the black window. I caught her eyes in her reflection.
‘It was because it wasn’t me he was screwing, or trying to screw. It was someone else. And I didn’t like that.’
‘You mean … in his mind?’
She nodded, turning back to me.
‘I assume you know why we were in Belfast?’
‘For that IRA film, right?’
‘That’s right. Well. We’d spent the day in a flat with a view onto an alley where we’d been told by some disgruntled ex-OIRA man that the Provos were going to tar and feather a girl who’d been out with a British soldier.’
She paused, seeming to lose herself in the memory. Another long silence passed. She’d drunk enough, it appeared, for her sense of time to have become somewhat elastic.
‘Marco told me.’ I prompted her: ‘He said it had been gruelling.’
‘Did he?’ A glimmer of sarcasm showed in her eyes. ‘Well, it certainly was for the girl. They dragged her screaming from a car, stripped her to her underwear and tied her to a lamp post with her hands behind her back. She already had black eyes and bruises all over her face but she was struggling as hard as she could the whole time. Two enormous women shaved her head and then a man who’d been warming a pot of tar with a blowtorch poured it over her and someone else dumped a sack of chicken feathers over her. They hung a sign around her neck saying: “Soldier Doll” and drove off. It was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I was sick with guilt too, for not intervening. Not that there was anything we could have done, from where we were. When we got back to the hotel that afternoon I had to have about six whiskies just to begin to calm down. I was drunk by then, obviously, but I can tell you sex was the last thing on my mind. Still, I’ll admit that when Marco started in with the little caresses and kisses it certainly gave me something new to think about.’