Without Consent

by Frances Fyfield

‘Hello,’ she said boldly. ‘Nice weather, innit?’

  He smiled, nodded acknowledgement and retreated behind the newspaper again. Helen noticed immaculate shoes, casual trousers of some synthetic fabric and a pair of brown hands, before the train rumbled into Oxford Circus. As she passed towards the door, she noticed the top of his head, the skull shiny brown, like polished wood. The indentations in that sculptured skin showed up in the station’s artificial light, the dome oddly tactile, so that she almost wanted to reach out and touch it, like the knob on a banister. She compounded Rose’s cheekiness with a grin of her own, surprised to feel a frisson of attraction for an impertinent stranger so completely bereft of hair.

  ‘Are you always like that with men on the tube?’ Helen asked as they crushed together on the escalator, where it seemed the whole world had suddenly joined in a headlong rush to escape the subterranean oppression. She always expected someone to begin howling with rage on the up escalator out of the underground, because of the sheer slowness of it and the pushiness of passengers, but resentment was more conservatively expressed. Behind her a shopping bag, carried like a weapon by a determined woman, brushed her legs. She turned, somehow expecting to see the bald head further down. It was a foolish expectation, even in an ideal place for strange hallucinations. Rose was answering her as they put their tickets into the gates and started up the stairs, avoiding the inevitable someone who could not manage the machinery and held up the queue.

  ‘He wasn’t a stranger,’ Rose shouted back.

  ‘Who was he then?’

  ‘He’s a doctor. Saw him yesterday. Stared up my fanny; must have recognized my voice. I talked too much.’

  She did not elaborate; Helen did not ask. Shopping fever had descended on Rose’s brow and her face wrinkled with concentration. There was the mild state of madness induced by Oxford Street in all its tawdry splendour; the one place where Helen failed to detest crowds.

  There was method in the madness, too. Unlike Bailey, who shied away from shops like a frightened filly, crept into them and out again as if he was on a secret mission, Helen and Rose stood at the threshold, breathed in the scents of the perfume counters and knew they were home. The method was no method; there had to be a purpose to justify the expedition, but the purpose could be abandoned. It took Rose half an hour to fall out of love with the idea of a dress (Look at this, Aunty H … I wouldn’t wear it to go to bed in …) and fall into adoration with the idea of a trouser suit she had seen (perfect shape, foul colour). They were on the trail; out of this place, on to somewhere else, looking without real expectation for a facsimile of a suit with the same buttons, but not that tasteful and over-bred shade of sludge. In the meantime, Helen had purchased three pairs of stockings and a hair-slide and Rose had bought a pan. If that was all they got, it really would not matter.

  Heavy on the blood sugar, though, as Rose put it, necessitating frequent sit-downs and caffeine fixes. It was understood, after initial quarrels, that Helen would purchase these overpriced beverages and also the cake, which was part of the proceedings, the paying arrangement being an acceptance of Helen’s motherly role and their unequal financial status.

  ‘They know how to shop,’ Rose said enviously, counting the bags of two delicate tea-drinking Japanese ladies in Liberty’s café. ‘They’ve got fifteen carriers each.’ She sipped and put down the cup with a clatter.

  ‘All right, Aunty H, now tell me what Anna told you.’

  Typical Rose, waiting for the right blood-sugar level, never really forgetting anything; but that was another thing about large shops. All the ladies, as well as the minority of men, sipping liquids and giving one another their wholehearted attention, talked nicely in whispers, like a lot of low-voiced conspirators. Revolutions could be planned here; coffee-shops in the anterooms of spending halls were exactly the right kind of place for secrets and the baring of the soul. Indiscretions would be taken away, wrapped in tissue paper, back to the realms of suburbia where they would no longer exist.

  ‘I don’t think I can tell you. She didn’t swear me to secrecy or anything, but she didn’t want you to know.’

  Rose nodded, curious but unperturbed.

  ‘I s’pose I’ve got to respect that. Did you tell Bailey?’

  ‘No, but I might. In fact I’m sure I shall, but then, he doesn’t know her. There’s a difference.’

  Rose nodded again, mature about such things, well versed in the need for respecting confidence. She was a fabulous gossip, loved it; she also knew what not to repeat and what not to demand.

  ‘Did you like her?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, very much.’

  Such value in the faint praise offered like that. Rose finished a mouthful, sat back and rubbed her stomach.

  ‘I shouldn’t have had that, Aunty. On account of the traditional pre-wedding diet,’ she said without much conviction, using the pastry fork to subdue and then eat the last of the crumbs, only satisfied after the last was swallowed. ‘Two more questions, Aunty, then I’ll leave it alone, promise. First, was she raped, and second, could you help?’ She mimicked the Redwood voice.

  Helen was choosing words with the care which so often infuriated Rose. All she wanted was a quick response, the flush of shopping fever temporarily suspended.

  ‘If she’s telling the truth …’ and Rose noted that the ‘if’ was not emphasized, merely used to introduce that lawyerly note of caution she so loathed, ‘… then she was assaulted in a way designed to make a complete and utter fool of her. Using means so silly that the telling of it would make a fool of her all over again, because it sounds like a joke. Her assailant was someone she admired, with a cruel sense of humour. She’s adamant about not going to a professional. Perhaps it helped that I didn’t laugh.’

  Rose chose not to say that this all sounded like a load of cobblers.

  ‘And she’s equally adamant she won’t say who it was.’

  ‘Protecting him?’ Rose asked incredulously, always dismissive despite herself when Helen got formal. Shop till you drop with this woman, she’d told Michael, but never say you know her.

  ‘No. Protecting herself from further ridicule. She might be coming round for a drink and a meal next week. That might help more. And she loves her work. That will help too. Did what I could, Rose. Not much.’

  ‘Sure you did.’ That was enough. Some kind of result, Rose supposed; enough to mean it was time for her to abandon interest. It surprised her to hear that Anna loved her work, that wasn’t what she had heard, but if Helen liked Anna and Anna liked Helen, something had been achieved. Helen always underestimated her own power. She doesn’t even know how lucky I feel to know her, even when she gets things wrong, Rose thought, scraping back her chair, treading respectfully over the distinctive bags which fanned out from the next table, moving gingerly with the steps and smile of a cat. She had no time for people buying porcelain.

  ‘Why are you so afraid of getting married, Aunty H?’ she asked as they passed through handbags. Neither had much use for leather; shocking prices.

  ‘Dunno. I suppose because I did it once, hated it and found out I’d married a thief. He didn’t even know the meaning of truth. An utterly lovable thief.’

  ‘Must’ve been his body.’

  ‘We’ve got an hour,’ Helen said in a voice grim with resolution.

  ‘Monsoon? Principles?’

  There it was, fifty-five minutes later in neither of these premises, but hanging in the window of an establishment neither had considered. Not a dress, not a trouser suit: a jacket made in heaven.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘If, at a trial where any person is for the time being charged with a rape offence to which he pleads not guilty, then, except with the leave of the judge, no evidence and no question in cross-examination shall be adduced or asked at the trial, by or on behalf of any defendant, about any sexual experience of a complainant with a person other than that defendant.’

  Shelley Pelmore understood shops better than the back of her hand. She h
ad haunted shops ever since she was allowed out on her own. West End shops were the stuff of dreams when she was a kid, especially the ones where music boomed and nobody cared who you were and you had to shout to ask the price of anything. Not that she had even whispered in those distant days, or dared to ask particulars of what she could never afford. On one single occasion, she had been stopped by the store detective, leaving with a vest tucked up the sleeve of her jacket. A vest, of all things! Nothing gorgeous, just an ugly piece of thermal underwear, chosen on a November afternoon, simply to find out if thieving was as easy as someone had said it was. Her informant had lied about the ease, but it had been a bitter wintry day, and Shelley’s wise reaction on arrest by a woman who resembled her mother was to burst into tears, say she was sorry, but oh, she was so cold and it was colder still at home. A pretty child; thin, pinched, distressed, she had been forgiven with a brisk pat on the arm, accompanied by a kindly warning. Even now, she could still feel the shock of that hand on her sleeve.

  She had felt genuine distress, a mixture of shame and horror over her own incompetence, but by the time she was halfway home, she could see she had been wise in learning her lesson with a vest. Anything more covetable would not have been forgiven as easily. Shelley never did it again. It diminished her love of big shops for a few days, but the light and warmth, the colours and the merchandise, were too strong a lure. It was preordained that she would work in a shop of large proportions and escalators, another childish passion, and only a question of time, she told herself, before she would own a shop of her own. Progress was slow, pay was lousy; she was not much further forward but it had ceased to matter.

  The problem was that shops had lost their allure; she was waiting for it to come back. It was quite a while now since anything gave her a buzz, unless it was skin.

  ‘Can I help you, madam? Just browsing?’

  Suit yourself, you old cow.

  Shelley had moved from hapless trainee in a department store to experienced sales assistant, almost to floor manager, until she’d had that fight with another girl which put her out of the running, although, mercifully, not out of a job. She had learnt from her mother, knowledge retained like a talisman, that to be out of a job was the greatest disgrace on the planet, so she stayed for a while, although she knew she was not going to progress any further. Instead she took a sideways move into a far classier, up-market South Molton Street designer boutique, which felt like a kind of promotion. Escalators wearied her by then.

  A friend of hers, who was leaving to have an unwanted baby, had recommended Shelley on a temporary basis. By the time she wanted the job back, Shelley was well dug in amongst the expensive clothes, indispensable to the manageress and not to be ousted by a mere plea of loyalty. End of friendship; so what? Shelley had other friends, other distractions; she flitted among the silk chemises and linen jackets, dressed in the shop’s stock which suited her model figure, shining with suppressed sexuality; a brooding presence which gave the display an added cachet. She despised the fat customers all the more, because she knew their secret ambition was to look as sultry and tempestuous as she did inside these clothes.

  She had told Ryan some of this. Something about the frustration of selling to fat cows with no looks and much more exciting lives. And about being best friends with the manageress; the kind of friendship which led her into clubs and pubs as a willing ally, trailing along with a couple more girls, all exceedingly slender, with the unspoken misunderstood purpose of giving the older wiser woman some kind of support as she cruised the bars, looking for something special with a bank balance to match. Shelley never did know when she was being used. As friendships went, the one with the manageress could be blown away in a puff of smoke, but Shelley had never known that, either.

  ‘What you been up to? Two days off and thinner than ever, well, I don’t know. What’s the matter, Petal?’

  ‘Period pain,’ Shelley drawled. ‘Won’t happen again.’ Knowing she was being watched. Let down this brittle creature more than once and the coveted job and the fun which went alongside might be at risk, and worst of all, the man of her dreams and nightmares would not know where to find her.

  Derek was right: Shelley was tired to her bones and might well have been better resting at home. She was too nervous and edgy to be at her best. When the phone rang at the back of the shop she jumped, and when she steamed the creases out of a blouse her fingers were nerveless and clumsy.

  Perhaps, if she told the manageress what she had endured so recently, there might be sympathy; or disbelief. Besides, she was unsure of her ability to tell the story in the way she had told it when they took the statement; any repetition would confuse. She panicked when she thought of having to repeat it, live through it all again. The only person she wanted to talk to was him. She painted her face, teased her hair and waited.

  Late afternoon; the two brown hands appeared in front of her on the display cabinet which housed the underwear: pure silk, made only for those with sufficient time or domestic help to keep them beautiful. The display was a fine froth of cream and lace: colour of the month, café au lait. His hands on the glass were enormous and alien by contrast.

  ‘I’ll have two of those, miss. Please.’

  ‘The briefs, sir? Which size?’ Her voice trembled; her fingers fluttered among the lace.

  ‘Your size.’

  ‘Any. You choose.’

  ‘Your colour.’

  She wrapped them with an attempt at the air of indifferent insolence she had perfected with the fat ladies, her heart beating like a gong and a sheen of sweat breaking out on her face, pausing in her fussing with the tissue paper to swipe her hair back from her forehead.

  ‘How would sir like to pay?’

  He handed over the card without a word; she put it briefly to her lips before passing it through the machine, stood watching the slip emerge for signature as if that piece of paper held the secret of the universe. ‘I must see you,’ she mouthed at him as he bent to sign. The bag rustled as she handed it to him, noticing with a kind of anguish how the varnish on her nails was chipped and untended. They had taken scrapings from under her nails, a sample of saliva from her tongue and swabs from her vagina; she wanted him to know all that. She wanted him to know how well she had done and how bravely she had endured. She ached to touch the burnished crown of his head, finger the smooth and repellent ridges of his skull, but she desisted.

  ‘What a lovely day,’ he said loudly. ‘Far too good for working.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No choice about it.’

  ‘Ah well. Perhaps you’ll be able to take a walk in a nice shady park later on. If not today, tomorrow? Something to look forward to … so wonderful to have these places.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

  Watching his retreating back, she felt the sweaty mix of revulsion and excitement which made her stammer. The breath of the manageress was on her neck. Long manicured fingers, without chipped nails, straightened the back of Shelley’s collar, patted it back into shape, feeling beneath it the dampness of her skin, sidling round to check the price of the sale.

  ‘Three times in a month that mean old baldy’s been in here. The mistress must need some pleasing, or is he a conquest of yours, sweetie?’

  Shelley suddenly had a vision of the rape suite in that faraway police station as a place of safety.

  Maybe the life of a well-off Irish Catholic lady would be better if she had worked. A little job in a shop, perhaps. Brigid Connor watched the afternoon light turn dark and felt down her spine the threat of a storm. Late summer brought these alarms; she was less afraid of the thunder than the lightning. Oh dear Lord, if a storm were to burst over her head, she would run and hide in a cupboard, and if the devil himself had come to the door, she would fling her arms round his neck. Such nice eyes that doctor had, so kind. It was he who had stumbled upon the truth, only by letting her talk without saying anything. All she had wanted was for him to find something wrong with her, something which would mak
e sex impossible, but there was nothing to be found. Maybe it was he who had sent the cutting from the newspaper. Maybe it was one of the girls. Brigid eyed the drinks trolley. It was Aemon’s favourite affectation, as if they ever threw cocktail parties. She knew she would succumb, despicable though it was to be sipping anything other than tea at four in the afternoon, with a storm coming on as well. If her husband found her laid out and comatose, she would blame the lightning which brought with it that everlasting fear of the wrath of God. Punishment; the apartment destroyed in a bolt from heaven which would consign them to hell and then do the worst thing of all, bounce them back, the same as they were before.

  Taking a tincture was a new habit she had learnt from the parish sisters, who were not, she had come to realize, quite as obtuse and fatly comfortable as they seemed. Perhaps one of them had sent the newspaper cutting.

  There was a ritual which had come to precede the tincture habit, like many of her rituals, which she vaguely recognized as a sign of something not quite right, although with the clarity of vision afforded by the first drink she could say there was nothing unusual about her own neuroses. It was beginning to occur to her that her careful rationing of drink might not be such a brilliant idea. Aemon had a thing about women and drink; hated it. Should he find her under the influence, it would either make her untouchable or, if it did not, she could sleep through the whole process. For the moment, she could not bring herself as far as putting that theory into action. Pride of a kind forbade it and, besides, she did not have a lifetime’s experience of practice. Life might have been different if she had learnt, long before, to enjoy the taste of alcohol.

  It did such dreadful things to the skin, so she’d heard. Made a female flushed and wrinkled before her time, her mother said. Made a man inherit the belly more suitable to a pregnant woman, so she had noticed of Aemon. Ah, drink is a terrible thing, sister. She thought all this as she ran the bath, thinking at the same time that only a woman with nothing to do bathes twice a day, but so the ritual demanded. It was a variation of the idea that a bath was therapeutic, relaxing, good for the soul and the body, cleansing enough to eradicate past and future sin. Sins such as taking the pill, denying Aemon his ambition for a son, offending God on both counts, and then telling the doctor all about it. Brigid simply liked this bathroom as a fantastic resort; it was big, beautiful, blousy and soft at the edges.