Not Playing the Game

by Jennifer Chapman

  The struggle over, the unspeakable drive spent, sound returned to Arthur. He heard the wheezing and it was coming from him.

  ‘Oh! Oh!’ he moaned in a snatch of breath. He slipped off the bed, weak and exhausted, and crawled to a corner of the room.

  Mickey regained consciousness some time later, the pillow still partially covering her face. At first she felt quite numb and disorientated and then she registered the pain.

  Slowly she eased herself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and then reaching to the lamp and saw that her naked limbs were streaked with blood. She began to shake. She was icy cold. She turned to gather up a sheet to wrap round herself and as she did so saw Arthur crouched in the corner, his eyes fixed upon her, round and small without the glasses. She saw also that he was terrified, even more than herself.

  Carefully, as if any sudden movement might trigger a further attack, she drew the sheet around her and moved away from the bed. To reach the door she had to circumnavigate various pieces of furniture and go past him. Her eyes never left him and his never her.

  She got as far as the door before anything happened then suddenly he spoke, his voice strangely high-pitched.

  ‘You can’t make me go to the owl,’ he said.

  Mickey wrenched at the door and stumbled out on to the landing. She felt now as if all the furies of the world were at her back. She ran down the stairs, the sheet billowing and catching in the banister struts so that it tore with a great rending sound.

  She dismissed the telephone in the hallway, and went through the house to the kitchen. She closed the door and grabbed at the extension phone on the wall. She dialled 999.

  The process seemed agonizingly slow, the operator putting her through to the police, waiting for them to answer, waiting, listening, shrinking and panicking at the slightest noise from within the house.

  At last she began to give her name. The voice at the other end sounded incongruously calm. What was the telephone number. Where was she. What was the problem? It was as if they didn’t hear what she said.

  She thought she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. She left the receiver dangling and stumbled across the kitchen to the back door. Sore and full of ache as she was, she ran outside, the torn sheet partially round her. She went round to the front of the house but everywhere was so dark and still she just couldn’t go on down the gravel drive, besides, the nearest neighbour was half a mile away and if Arthur was behind her he would have no difficulty catching up: her feet were bare.

  She looked around for somewhere to hide and saw her car. She hastened towards it. Mercifully, because it had failed to start that morning she’d not bothered to lock the driver’s door. She slid inside. The door closing seemed to make an enormously loud noise, yet it was no more than a click. She pressed down the lock then squeezed between the front seats and lay down on the floor at the back.

  She waited for what seemed the longest time she had ever known, but surely they would come, surely she had given enough information for them at least to make a check. She lay very still, listening all the time for the slightest alien sound, and her mind kept calling upon David. Her sense of loss was suddenly quite overwhelming, as sharp as if an arm had been severed. He was the only person she wanted at this moment, the embodiment of protection was how he seemed, and yet only a few hours earlier she’d thought she had come to terms with having lost him, and that she had been so mistaken was somehow more terrifying than the immediate horror.

  The police did come. She’d said nothing into the phone, mouthing the words had been an illusion, but the call had been traced after she left the receiver.

  There were just two officers, solid and kind, men of routine procedures. She heard their car draw up beside her own. Stiffness had taken over her limbs, but she managed to unlock one of the rear doors and push it open, still lying across the narrow floor space. A powerful torch was shone into the car, over the seats then down, into her face.

  ‘Over here, Ron,’ she heard the voice behind the torch, and: ‘You alright, love?’ addressed to her.

  They helped her out and the shivering returned with a vengeance. A blanket was draped round her shoulders, one of the officers sending a message over the radio, the other was asking her what had happened.

  ‘Arthur,’ she said. ‘I think he’s still in the house.’

  ‘Looks like a domestic,’ the officer called across to his colleague. ‘Get in the car, love. We’ve called an ambulance.’

  Mickey registered what he had said. She wanted to protest, explain, but how? She knew now that Arthur had raped her, tried to suffocate her, but the legal questions were already obscuring the reality: victims of rape didn’t stand a chance in court if previously they’d slept with the man.

  She didn’t see any more. The ambulance came and she was taken to hospital. She was asked many questions. Unpleasant tests were performed. Her body looked a mess but the cuts and abrasions were no more than superficial, and the next day David came to see her.

  ‘I was here last night,’ he said, ‘but they’d given you a sleeping pill.’ He was distant, vaguely hostile.

  A woman police officer appeared. ‘Do you feel able to talk?’

  David slid away,

  The WPC pulled up a chair to the bedside.

  ‘We understand that you knew your attacker?’ she began.

  The questions went on and on. Mickey felt dirty and guilty, she understood the inappropriately dignified-sounding term, to be defiled, but dignity, she felt, had gone from her forever. The policewoman spoke softly but with an edge of disdain.

  ‘You’ve been very lucky,’ she said at one point, and Mickey wanted to laugh out loud at the absurdity of this platitude.

  Instead she sighed and said: ‘I’m not sure it’s worth bringing a charge.’ And, indeed, there seemed little point, she was long past revenge. She felt herself responsible for what had happened, as if there had been a certain inevitability that something of the kind would take place: after all, you couldn’t expect to get away with behaving as she had, not forever. It caught up with you sooner or later, maybe not in such an obvious way, but perhaps she should be grateful that her particular comeuppance had been straightforward and not a long, lingering tyranny: perhaps she had been lucky.

  ‘Mrs Evans,’ the policewoman was saying. ‘There’s no question of not bringing a charge. This man has been convicted of manslaughter. He’s still on parole.’

  The officer noted the victim’s response. It had been mooted at the police station that Mrs Evans could be one of those women attracted by the mind of a pervert; that possibly she knew the past record of her attacker and had brought the attack upon herself through her own foolishness, not that this would alter the facts, but as witnesses such women were unpredictable. In this case, though, there was no question of prior knowledge, all colour had drained from the subject’s face and she seemed unable to speak.

  That evening Molly and the Walrus came.

  ‘We were here last night with David,’ Molly said, with a great weight of anxiety overtly in her expression. ‘He seemed very concerned,’ she added, as if there was significance in this observation.

  ‘Damned madman,’ the Walrus muttered, gazing at his elder daughter as if the situation was beyond belief. ‘Should have been kept locked up.’ He stood behind Molly, as if using her as a shield against the paternal emotion he was too inhibited to express.

  David did not come that evening and when her parents had gone Mickey despised herself anew with the realization that subconsciously she’d hoped to gain his pity.

  Dan came later on, after visiting hours, but this was allowed because he was who he was.

  ‘Mickey I’m so sorry. If only I’d been there,’ he said. He looked shocked by her appearance but quickly disguised this initial reaction by stretching forward and kissing her on the cheek. He was so aware, she thought, supersensitive as she was at that time to the behaviour of those around her: he understood how she felt, infected, untouch
able.

  The next day she was discharged from the hospital and without demur allowed Molly to take her home.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The notion of arousing David’s pity was not misplaced, but this was only half what he felt. Against it was a deepening sense of transgression, that Mickey had been unfaithful to him with a man such as this, a maniac, a violator.

  It was noon on Sunday and David’s head ached as usual. He went downstairs to the kitchen where Josephine was cooking something and listening to a ‘phone-in’ on the radio.

  ‘I love these awful programmes,’ she said as he appeared in the doorway. ‘I keep waiting for someone to say something terribly rude.’

  She had to speak, he’d noticed that. There was a nervousness, a constant wary uncertainty manifest in this bright chatter. He propped himself against the door jamb and watched her move about the kitchen, her belly now enormously extended.

  ‘Is there anything I can get for you?’ she asked. ‘Lunch will be another hour yet.’

  ‘Black coffee,’ he said.

  ‘Oh David, you drink too much, and I don’t mean coffee.’ She stopped what she was doing and turned to him. ‘I know what you’re going to say, that it’s none of my business, but what are you trying to do, kill yourself?’

  It was on his lips to agree with her, that it was none of her business, but he’d no desire to be unkind to her, not deliberately. She’d looked after him when he was ill and stayed on, perhaps because she was as lonely as he was. He was grateful to her but aware that he was being unfair in allowing the situation to continue as it was, without form or future, doubly unfair with the birth of the child only a couple of months off. She needed to get settled somewhere and have some sort of security. She was still working but he imagined the job would go after she had the baby, and with it her flat, though perhaps that had gone already.

  ‘Josephine,’ he began. He rarely used her name and could see straight away the look of panic in her face, as if she knew this heralded the thing that was going to be difficult to say and which they’d both sidestepped for months.

  ‘I’m sorry but . . .’

  She stopped him.

  ‘I’m sorry, but,’ she repeated. ‘Please David, there’s no need to say anything. I do understand and I know what you’re going to say. You want me to leave. It was inevitable sooner or later and it’s probably better that I go now; after all, you’re not going to want a screaming baby in the house, not when you’ve got a permanent hangover!’ The old acid tongue, easier to cope with than bright chatter.

  ‘And don’t look like that!’ she yelled at him.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, like you, damn you.’

  ‘Well I can’t really do much about that,’ he said, somehow relieved, even amused. She’d knocked pity on the head, that was what it was, and for a few moments he even stopped feeling sorry for himself.

  The radio was still droning on and suddenly he experienced an overwhelming memory of Mickey on Sunday mornings listening to the omnibus edition of The Archers.

  Josephine was watching him. Her explosion of anger had died, and she waited now for what might happen next, still hanging on and hating herself for doing so. She felt undermined but not by David or anyone other than herself.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she said, sensing it was foolish to ask.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing important,’ He said.

  ‘At least be honest,’ she persisted, even more foolishly.

  ‘The Archers.’ He paused, ‘And Mickey.’

  ‘What a combination,’ she remarked, but it sounded wrong and falsely facile. He never spoke of Mickey now, she was like a forbidden subject, but since the telephone call on Friday night she must have been in his mind constantly. Josephine knew what had happened, although David had allowed her only the outline of the facts. It was terrible, a hideous, awful thing to have happened, yet Josephine envied Mickey, centre stage again and without even trying. Oh, what a loathsome thought to have, but there all the same. And now she’d break the rules again, say the same, stupid things she’d said once before: ‘Why don’t you take her back? Why don’t you!’

  He looked up and she couldn’t tell whether he was at last angry, or worse, deciding he should do what she said.

  When he spoke his voice was low and even: ‘I think we’ve had this conversation before.’

  Josephine’s heart was pounding.

  ‘Well then?’ she responded, bravely.

  ‘It’s not that simple, you know it. I can’t take her back. It wouldn’t work. There’d be no trust.’

  ‘Trust!’ Josephine exclaimed. ‘Why do you have to have certainty? Do you want a boring, predictable marriage?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

  ‘I must be quite mad.’ she continued, as if thinking aloud. ‘Why do I say these things when I want you for myself?’

  He studied her for a moment.

  ‘I don’t think you could be sufficiently “boring and predictable”,’ he said, switching to a maddening gentle mockery.

  ‘Oh why do you have to be so heartless!’ she sighed.

  He moved past her and stood at the window. The garden looked bleakly neglected, a waste ground of winter scrub where once there had seemed potential for pleasing growth and order.

  ‘You may as well have me if you want me,’ he said then.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, hesitantly. ‘Oh, stop it, please.’

  ‘Why not?’ he carried on. ‘You’ve looked after me, perhaps I could do the same for you.’

  ‘Wait a minute, David, what are you saying?’ she interrupted, sickening, self-deceiving hope irrepressibly rising in her.

  ‘We’ll get married,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re still married to Mickey. Because I’m expecting someone else’s child. Because you don’t love me!’

  ‘Are you turning me down?’ he said, watching her, steadily, and she thought for a moment that he really was without pity and the whole thing was no more than a careless joke.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, feeling herself about to cry. ‘I mean, no, you bastard, I accept.’

  She waited for the situation to evaporate, trying to steel herself against the let-down.

  ‘That’s settled then. As soon as the divorce is final.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I love you!’

  ‘Go easy on the love, Josephine. Go easy on that.’

  Chapter Twenty

  The chairman of the constituency party disliked what was in progress. It was the kind of gathering where everyone seemed to want to speak at once; they were over excited with indignation and his hearing was so poor he couldn’t catch half of what was said.

  Primrose Shaw-Footing was the most vociferous. ‘It’s very unfortunate for all concerned, but we have to think of the party first,’ she bellowed, above the din.

  ‘Hear! Hear!’ someone concurred.

  The meeting had been called at short notice yet it was the most well-attended for years. The chairman noted the strong attendance with a feeling of distaste. It was a damned poor show really: they were out for blood. As usual, he blamed the press more than anyone, though this went back to an unhappy incident some twenty years ago involving a group of Boy Scouts.

  He cleared his throat, banged his fist on the table and shouted ‘Order’, aware that he sounded rather like the Speaker of the House of Commons. The room went quiet, he still had presence. He indicated that Mrs Shaw-Footing could speak, as she would interrupt anyway if anyone else were given the floor.

  ‘In my opinion it shows a certain lack of judgement when a Member of Parliament is involved in something of this nature. After all, these are the people in whom we’ve entrusted the running of the country, and if they can’t avoid scandal in their private lives, what hope for England!’

  ‘Great Britain,’ someone corrected her.

  ‘Yes,’ she continued, her voice increasing in
volume. ‘Great Britain. We may not have an empire any more but we are still Great Britain and let us never forget it. We have a moral duty to set an example. We cannot let our standards slide . . .’

  The chairman and many of those gathered had heard all this before. It was the ‘Bring back the British Empire’ speech she delivered at the time of the Common Market referendum and at the outbreak of the Falklands war and, if he remembered correctly, after some ‘nig-nog’ had daubed a piece of vulgar graffiti on the front door of the Conservative Club.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said loudly.

  Another woman stood up.

  ‘I have to agree with the previous speaker,’ she began tremulously. ‘We turned a blind eye, and wrongly I felt, to our MP living immorally with a married woman. Some of us even went to his house on Christmas Eve and by doing so condoned what was going on. But now that this terrible thing has happened and it’s been in all the newspapers we cannot ignore the situation any longer. We must be seen to be concerned before the court case begins and there’s another wave of publicity.’ She sat down.

  ‘With due respect to the last speaker,’ a man sitting behind her said, ‘surely if we take action at this stage it could be construed as pre-judging this fellow who’s been charged with raping Mrs Evans.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ the chairman said, seizing upon the point as the most convenient means of bringing the meeting to a close, though he had no doubt it would re-convene at the bar, and indeed, he was nobbled almost straight away.

  Bertie Goldschmidt bought him a drink and with a nod and a chuckle began speculating as to the possibility of it having been a ménage à trois at the Lovell house.