Rape

by Marcus Van Heller

  We appeared to be passing through grazing land. I could see dim shapes in the fields on either side. I glanced back. The lights of the police van were brighter, a little nearer. I leaned over towards the driver.

  "Slow right down round the next bend, but don't stop," I said, "and then keep going after we've jumped or I'll shoot up the car."

  There was no answer and I jabbed him with the gun.

  "All right. I heard you," he growled.

  "My dear, sweet, Lydia," I said, lingering over the name, "when the car slows we're jumping out. You're going first and I'll be so close behind I'll be able to catch you if you try to run. If you want to stay in one piece I shouldn't try."

  We waited, tensely. There were low hedges on either side of the road. I looked back again. Yes, the van was gaining. To jump was the only hope.

  I could make out the curve in the road.

  "Slow right down and then accelerate after we've jumped," I snapped again. "And make sure you do."

  I opened the door on the girl's side and held it ajar.

  The taxi swayed round the bend, the following lights disappeared, I pushed the girl, leapt out after her, slammed the door and pushed her at the hedge in a single movement. The driver accelerated. His skin came first.

  In the seconds that followed I manhandled the girl over the low hedge, dropped on her, holding her down, hand over her mouth as the police van streaked round the bend and swept on.

  I yanked the girl to her feet and began to run with her across the dark expanse. Dim shapes rustled around us, cows raising their heads to stare.

  "We can go faster than this," I snapped, pulling the automatic from my pocket. I goaded the girl to a faster pace, running half behind her, holding an arm.

  Back on the road further along from our point of entry into the field, stationary lights twinkled; others flickered along the hedge and voices carried to us over the three hundred yards or so we had crossed. The colonel's bass roared out, "Lydia, Lydia! Where are you! Don't worry my love we're coming!"

  "Not a murmur!" I hissed at the girl.

  We ran on as the lights spread out in the field behind us, flickering in a widening semi-circle. We half clambered, half fell over a wooden gate and raced on close in to another hedge parallel with the road. Some of the torches were flickering closer, their, beams reaching the other side of the hedge along which we were stumbling. The girl was gasping for breath and my ribs ached. I could have got along faster on my own, but I was unwilling to let the girl go while she might still be of use as a shield, while the pursuit was still so close. The lights were flickering in our field now and suddenly there was a cry in French.

  "Along here! Here by the hedge! Cut them off-the other side of the field!"

  Through my painful breathing I cursed. They had heard us panting, running on the harder earth. The night was very still; sounds carried-our sounds and the sounds now seeming to stretch all around us. A voice cried out ordering the dousing of half the torches so that we couldn't locate the pursuit.

  A wild, furious panic surged inside me. I was on the point of abandoning the girl and trying to escape with the little extra speed of singleness. I had a sudden picture of my hemmed in position. I'd never really imagined myself trapped, hunted down. I'd had great faith in my ability to get out of this. I fought down my panic and then I saw the great shape of the barn looming up ahead and more to the center of the field. The only hope-a rest. I dragged the girl towards it, forcing an extra spurt of effort. We reached its high, wooden wall with the torches sweeping in towards us and the sound of panting around us from dark places. I jerked the girl, who was in a state of near collapse around the walls, searching frantically for the door. They were on the far side, swung inwards, open; great wooden doors half the height of the barn. I hurled the girl in and she collapsed on some straw. It seemed that my hands couldn't keep up with my mind as I swung the doors shut one after the other and, feeling frantically in the darkness, found the enormous wooden bar the giant staples, grated the bar into the slots.

  I sagged in momentary relief against the door, panting, feeling my heart pumping painfully, hearing the echoing sounds of distress from the girl behind me.

  There was the sound of heavy breathing almost immediately outside the barn, a pushing and crashing against the door, a shout of: "Careful; he's armed."

  The door didn't yield a fraction and I remained against it, recovering, only six inches from my pursuers.

  A confused sound of voices and the tramping feet of fresh arrivals grew outside. They knew we were there. There was nowhere else.

  Gun in fist I moved quietly away from the door in the gloom. I could see the blurred outline of the girl, still panting on the straw, as I walked gingerly around the walls. There was no other entrance. Our end was clear for some dozen feet and beyond that straw in various layers reached back for another twenty or thirty.

  A voice called to me from outside as if from another world-a police inspector.

  "You're trapped Crawford; you might as well come out."

  I crept back to the door, feeling along it with my hands. A couple of feet from the floor to one side I found what I was seeking-a little niche in the wood where a knot had worn out. I put the muzzle of the gun close up to the hole and fired a shot into the field beyond.

  There were muttered oaths, sounds of a quick dispersal outside-and then quiet.

  I heard the voice of the colonel then, just arriving.

  "What's happened? Where are they? My girl all right?"

  There were muffled replies and then the voice again, desperate and verging on the hysterical.

  "Lydia, Lydia darling! Let me get at the door! Let me go!"

  There was the sound of a scuffle. The colonel was having to be restrained from risking a bullet.

  I knelt down beside the girl, exhausted still from flight.

  "You keep quiet," I whispered tersely. "Not a word if anyone shouts."

  I moved back to the door, listening. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't think beyond the moment.

  The inspector's voice came again-from a greater distance.

  "If you come out now Crawford, you have rape in England and a few lesser charges here against you. If you continue to oppose us your eventual position will be much worse."

  I gathered my breath.

  "Don't forget I've got the girl," I shouted back. "If anything happens to her the blood will be on your head."

  Silence followed, while I strained listening.

  "Crawford, you haven't a hope. In an hour you'll be surrounded by a hundred police. We'll gas you out if necessary."

  I put the automatic to the hole and squeezed the trigger twice. There was silence.

  I went back to the girl and squatted a yard or two from her in the straw. She was quiet, terrified probably, unable to speak.

  Could I use her to bargain with. My mind searched wildly. They couldn't shoot their way in for fear of harming her. But I couldn't get out. Even if I waited until daylight and took her out as hostage for my safe getaway, I stood little chance. A hundred men! They could be on the roof, behind the hedges. Sharpshooters could pick me off with ease. If we stayed put we'd be starved or tear gassed-in spite of what the colonel might say.

  For a long time I stared dully at the motionless shape of the girl, unable to concentrate, my head vacant with despair. Outside there was no sound. Reinforcements were on the way.

  An hour or more passed. I couldn't see my watch.

  Sharply, startling me a heavy voice penetrated into the barn-a different voice, more authoritative.

  "Crawford, we'll give you until dawn to come out with the girl unharmed. Then we're coming in. You know what you stand to gain or lose."

  Then the colonel's voice shouting wildly, not very reassuringly:

  "Don't worry darling. It'll be all right."

  I put my hand to-my head. My hand was cold and my head ached the way it did when I worried about a pa
inting. I saw the girl, dimly, looking unmoving in my direction and I sank to the floor resting my back against the door, balancing the gun loosely towards her.

  Dawn. How many hours to dawn? What to do? I started blankly towards the girl, feeling the empty stillness of the barn, my mind a vacuum, unable to think, only able to sit there stupidly, hopelessly. From time to time an odd thought would pass-bits of 'Hamlet', the ace of clubs, a Utrillo, all merged and insistent, crowding the present from my mind. Time ticked by and the girl was asleep in spite of everything and I was thinking that I mustn't sleep. And then I was at school and I had committed some crime and was to come before the head to be severely punished. Everybody said I would be expelled, everybody was looking at me, some with stem pity, others with malice and disgust, all with unbending superiority. I waited and waited to see the head and the waiting was unbearable.

  I awoke with a start and my head was heavy with burden. It was some seconds before I placed everything and then I got quickly to my feet. The girl was asleep and light was filtering through cracks and holes all over the bam. My body ached, my mouth was thick, eyes tired and heavy, hair stiff and dry.

  Dully I bent to the peephole by the door. Outside I could see nothing but the green field, fresh dewy blades of grass, a section of hedge-and the promise of a lovely day. I felt sick and unbelieving.

  The girl stirred and awakened, uncomprehendingly at first and then the slow recognition and fear spread across her face.

  I looked at her face, seeing it for the first time since Sussex and it was the face of a woman, firm, shadowed a little with the responsibility of life. I had made her a woman-one of those strong shelters which are strong because of our eventual need for shelters. I had forgotten her body, but now it was there in its supple strength. I needed her in that moment. I needed the relief, the temporary shelter.

  As the voice cried out: "Are you coming out Crawford We'll give you five minutes," I blazed away through the hole until the automatic clicked and then I dropped it in the dirt and turned to the girl.

  I went towards her and she didn't say a word. She just looked at me with her eyes wide and staring as if she were dumb. I fell down onto her, devouring her mouth with mine, relieved in the warm humanity of her. My hands moved over her body and she began to struggle. I thought dully, 'Not again' and held her with an arm across her neck.

  I reached down and took out my penis and looked at it stretching like a reaching arm.

  Her body was nude and beautiful to look at and I could think only of her.

  In the background I heard a murmur of something outside and movement-but this was what mattered, a life and a life together, brushing together for an all excluding moment, but only for a moment because life is a single, lonely thing. All through my body an electrical current was running. I was incomplete and I needed completion. And the girl was struggling uselessly and she cried out as I moved onto her, so I put my hands on her throat to quieten her. And with my hands there my electrical current had made a circuit with her. I was right inside her, my penis a long probing, searching need. She writhed and twisted, but my hands were quietening her.

  My eyes were stinging and I couldn't see well as I felt the warmth of her thighs against me even through my clothes.

  My penis was cleaving with rapid motion up and up into the soft, moist channel, from between her legs up into her belly. Her legs were splayed and wide open to my need and this was all that was important.

  I heard the thunderous battering which was like a dark force in my head. My eyes were misting as I looked at her face in my passion. Her eyes were closed and she was still. Everything seemed strange and unreal and there was water running down my face and stinging in my nostrils. But there at my loins was the real source and ending of things, there was life and the sensation grew tighter and tighter and tighter. I was existing only there in an unbearable peak of intensity.

  A thundering there, a painful thundering; and in my head, too and I couldn't see anything but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered; everything paled to nothing and this great bursting and bursting and bursting and suddenly flooding was everything. It was a long moment of life and then it was over and life was over and it was supremely unimportant and life was supremely unimportant and the running in my eyes hurt terribly and they were pulling me off her and I knew that she was dead.

  They tried the usual paraphernalia-the temporarily insane lark-but there was nothing very temporary about my "insanity." To tell the truth I couldn't get very interested. Life seemed pretty pointless. Just these moments and then a dull reaction until the next. Complete importance and then complete unimportance, but there was a motivation all the time.

  I don't care. I've had my fill. But all the same I hope there's something better. No damn fool moralizing. Better still, complete oblivion.

  This room is small, restricting. Worst by far then Monique's, but it doesn't worry me any longer. Everything's been very quiet. Somewhere I can hear a tap dripping-there is always a tap dripping, some little insistent sound-and sometimes through the ventilator I heard a bird. I think I hear a bird.

  I can hear something. Listening to the bird I can hear something beyond. Yes, I hear it. I hear the sound of footsteps....

  THE END