by Winnie M. Li
McLuhan speaks before he can get a word out. “Just to reiterate, my client was on drugs at the time, so he may not remember exact details like this.”
“Yes, I understand, counsellor.”
“I can’t really remember.”
“What did you talk about? Did someone ask the other one a question?”
“It mighta been. I think she asked me. She was asking me for some directions, like. Had this book and was sort of lost.”
Just twist the truth a bit. No one’s gonna know and makes more sense for her to be asking the directions. Tourist and all.
“What specifically did she ask you?”
“Well, like, she had this trail she wanted to follow and she wanted to know if she was going the right way.”
“So she spoke to you first?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“Just that she was going the right way. She wanted to get to the hills, like. And I says, yeah I know that area well.”
“And then what happened from there?”
“Well, then, she says: “Really you know that area well? Like she wanted to continue chatting, you know what I mean?”
It’s happening easy now, let the Sweeney charm flow. He remembers what Michael said, your story’s as good as hers. So make it real, live it. Believe it.
Morrison nods. “Yes, please continue.”
“So I keep on chatting to her. Just about the area and all.”
“And why did you continue talking to her?”
“Didn’t have nothing better to do. And besides, she seemed to fancy me. And she was a bit of a beour.”
Morrison raises an eyebrow. “A beour?”
“A good-looking girl, if you know what I mean.”
“So you found her attractive, and it seemed like you two were getting on well.”
“Yeah yeah, I’d say.”
*
I am so sorry to hear about what happened to you.
A friend has written this in an email. Jemima. A skinny, gawky, intelligent English girl whom she befriended working on a television project years ago. They didn’t have that much in common, but for whatever reason, they’ve remained acquaintances since then.
Jemima’s invited her to some drinks she is organizing in Soho.
And, as with everyone else, she’s sent an email back with the truth. She’s not quite up for socializing these days. Because of this thing that’s happened…
Jemima writes back with two, carefully crafted paragraphs.
You may want to get in touch with a friend of mine, Annabelle, who was raped some years back by a work colleague. She said it was all right for me to tell you about her experience.
Annabelle had decided not to pursue a legal case. He was wealthy, from a well-connected family, she wouldn’t have a good chance in court. She had to quit her job. It took her a long time to recover.
But she is now happily married and has a kid. I thought you might like to know that. That it’s possible to move on and put your life back together.
On a distant plane, she is heartened by Annabelle’s story. So it can happen, it’s not completely hopeless. Lives can change for the better after something like this.
But if only she could know how. Fast-forward to that time when life will have improved. Only, there is no clear twelve-step process to guide you. This is where you start to improvise, blindly.
She does not end up reaching out to Annabelle. Somehow it seems like too much of an imposition. And how would she word her email?
Jemima may have told you about me. I’m her friend who was recently raped.
And then what?
*
“And what made you think that this woman fancied you, or at least wanted to keep talking to you?”
Lean back now and grin. Well, don’t lay it on too thick. But remember it like that. Those first few moments, meeting a beour who fancies you. The flashing smile, the eyes flirting, the flick of the hair, the tits heaving when she laughs.
“Well, she smiled. And she kept chatting to me.”
“And what did you two talk about?”
“Loads of things.”
“Such as?”
“Herself and her life and me, I spoke about me family a bit. But I can’t remember much, the whole day’s really a blur.”
“Can you remember anything specific that she said about herself? Where she lives? What she does for a living? If she was visiting Belfast?”
“Oh, she was visiting Belfast.”
“Did she tell you why?”
“I don’t really remember.”
“How long were you two talking for in the park?”
“Got no watch, couldn’t tell you.”
“Could you maybe guess?”
“Half hour, maybe? It was a while.”
“Was there anyone else in the park who saw you two talking?”
“Oh yeah, loads of people.”
“Can you describe anyone in particular?”
“Wasn’t really paying attention.”
“No one you remember at all?”
“No, I was really just paying attention to her.”
*
Slowly, a new routine forms for her. A bare almost-schedule that seems to prop up her empty existence.
Every Thursday is her useless session with The Haven in Camberwell. Every Tuesday afternoon, she rides the bus out to Wandsworth, to see the private counsellor her boss is paying for. Maybe ventures a few steps into the open park next door, then rides the bus back to Vauxhall.
In between, she feeds herself out of some sense of duty, stares out the window, lies on the couch.
Then there’s piano.
She starts playing piano again. For weeks it had sat there, forgotten, the digital piano she’d so proudly bought in January with £400 that she felt justified spending. But one weekday afternoon when her flatmates are at work, she opens the lid, powers it on, sits down, and plays.
One note, then another. A chord she hasn’t played in over ten years.
And the music starts to trickle out. It never left her.
Classical cadences, blues scales, and that book which came with the piano: 50 of Piano’s Greatest Hits. Inside are all the familiar pieces she’s played growing up. Bach minuets and Mozart rondos and Beethoven sonatas. Some are rusty, but with a little practice, she can play them like her thirteen-year-old self again. Only with more control this time.
Leafing further through the book, she finds the music for Clair de Lune by Debussy. She’d never learnt it as a child, but now she has all the time in the world. And it’s not as difficult as she’d feared. Note by note, she pieces together the sharps and flats that crowd the staff lines. Listens to how one chord resolves into the next.
Then she moves onto the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. She’d heard it so many times before and remembers the concert pianist who played it in that church hall in North Jersey, how the notes spilled out so earnest and poignant. If she could just learn to play that, then her life won’t be a complete waste.
A few days later, she has learned the first page and a half of the movement.
See, progress.
And she doesn’t feel like such a pathetic loser anymore, bereft of the life she once led. Because whatever happens, she still has this, she still has this.
*
“So you two are talking for twenty, say thirty minutes. Then what happens?”
Now here’s where you use your imagination. You’ve thought this one through. Worked a charm on McLuhan. Now tell it to the peelers.
“Well, we were just chatting and walking the whole time.”
“Up the Glen, toward the halting site?”
“Yeah, walking up the Glen, to where she wanted to go. And I’d said I lived in the area. So she asked if I could walk with her, be her guide, like.”
“So she asked you? Or you offered?”
“It was kind of both.”
Morrison does this gru
mpy mouth twist, to show that’s not good enough.
“Maybe she asked. Yeah. She was making like she didn’t know the area. I did, she wanted some company.”
“She said that to you?”
“Well, she asked if I could walk with her then, yeah.”
“Right, and when did this happen? Where in the park were you?”
“It was, uh…” Jaysus, this peeler’s loads of questions. “It weren’t too far from where you pass under the road there.”
“You mean the Glen Road?”
“Yeah, the Glen Road. You pass under the road, and then on the other side, there weren’t so many other people. So that’s where she started to really, you know, smile and say stuff like me joining her for the walk.”
“So what were you thinking then?”
“Just that like, yeah, this beour’s keen on me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, that she might, you know, fancy a shag or something. Why else would she ask me to join her?”
“But you didn’t at that point, talk about sex or anything?”
“No, no, we was just talking.”
“So from then on, what happened?”
“Uh, we kept on talking. She weren’t sure how to cross the stream there, so I showed her how.”
“And did anyone see you at this point, from the moment you two passed under the Glen Road?”
Think think think. Was there anyone? “I don’t really remember. Maybe one person, then no one else.”
“Can you describe what that one person was like?”
“Naw naw. Like I said, I was mainly just chatting with her.”
“Can you remember if this other person was male or female?”
Probably not a woman, else he would of noticed. But he shakes his head no.
Morrison nods and takes a break to write some more down. McLuhan clears his throat.
“So after you showed her how to cross the stream, where did you go from there?”
“So’s then, we agreed that we’d walk together.”
“For how long?”
“We didn’t say for how long, but I could tell she wanted to go with me somewhere.”
“How could you tell that?”
“Smiling and flirting, all them things girls do.”
“When you say flirting, what do you mean by that?”
“Just uh…” And picture it, picture her. What would she say? What would she do?
“Well, she put her hand on me… on me shoulder. Kinda rested her body against mine and laughed for a bit.”
“Did she? And when did she do this?”
“Just after I helped her across the stream. Just sort of a thank you, because I helped her.”
“And what else?”
“And she… she took off her socks and shoes to show me her legs when she was crossing the stream. She didn’t have to. I told her how to cross it on the stones, just hopping across, but she stripped down to show me her legs.”
“How much did she strip down?”
“Just her shoes and socks. But, like, she wasn’t hiding her legs or nothing. She wanted me to see them.”
“And did she put her socks and shoes back on?”
“Yeah, after crossing. But that’s when she leaned on me, like.”
Morrison pauses, brow all wrinkly. The other peeler shakes his hand out from all that writing. “Then what?”
“So’s by then, we were walking together, like. And I helped her up the slope.”
“You showed her the way?”
“Oh, yeah yeah. She was really grateful. She wouldn’t of been able to get up the slope without me. But I showed her.”
*
Her friend Caroline had called after hearing what happened.
“Are you at home now?” Caroline had asked, with a strange urgency. “I’m coming over. I have to come over.”
And ninety minutes later, Caroline is in her lounge. The two of them on the couch, drinking mugs of herbal tea.
“I’m just processing,” Caroline says. “I’m so sorry this had to happen to you.”
She shrugs. “Well, there isn’t anything I can do about it now.”
“It’s just…” Caroline starts, then pauses, looks out the window at the river. “Well, you know, it happened to me, too.”
She looks up, surprised, but Caroline is turned away from her. She’s known Caroline for three years and this has never come up.
“When did this happen?” Some protective instinct rears up in her, a muted rage.
“I was young. I mean, I was nineteen, I was interning in DC for the summer. There were a bunch of us living near each other, who all interned for the same congressman. You know how DC is just a hive of young college students each summer.”
She offers a small smile. Seems like another lifetime, to be an eager intern during your college summers.
“There was this one guy, we hung out a lot. It was strictly platonic between us. Or at least, I was never interested in him in that way. And then one night, we were hanging out, smoking some weed, and I wasn’t very sober. I don’t know how it happened. One minute we were laughing and smoking in my bedroom, and the next, he’s pinning me down on my bed.
“And I just remember thinking afterward, ‘I didn’t agree to that.’ But later, I convinced myself I had, just to make it normal somehow. Even though I had a boyfriend back in California.”
Caroline’s still gazing at the Thames, the late afternoon light falling across her high cheekbones.
“But just to make the rest of the summer livable somehow, I told myself me and this guy were dating. Because we had to work together everyday. We were part of this social group that hung out all the time.”
Caroline’s green eyes are full of shame.
She looks back at Caroline, the same way all her friends must look at her when she tells them her story. The eyes wide in shock. The mixture of sympathy and anger. Caroline continues, no longer hesitating.
“And he kept coming over and having sex with me all summer, and I just let it happen. I never tried to stop it. I don’t know why, maybe I didn’t want to cause a stir, as ridiculous as that sounds…”
Caroline trails off, her story over, and suddenly she looks much less assured. Caroline Sanderson – the bright, beautiful third daughter in a Midwestern family of patrician blondes. Her father and grandfather powerful businessmen, her male cousins rising politicians. She wonders if this family legacy made it more difficult for Caroline to admit the truth of what had happened to her.
“And the worst was, at the end of the summer, he went to kiss me goodbye, he said, ‘Oh, we should keep in touch, you never know what might happen.’ And I…”
Caroline’s face crumples, her voice catches in her throat.
“And I told him never to try and contact me again. How dare he try to keep in touch?” Disgust punctuates her voice, and she can imagine Caroline jabbing an angry finger at the unnamed guy, all those years ago. That veneer of impeccable manners momentarily cracked.
“I didn’t tell anyone about it at all,” Caroline continues, her voice calmer now. “I just kept it to myself. I kept seeing that same boyfriend, though I felt like I’d cheated on him. And then, two years later, it all came out. I just got so horribly depressed, I wanted to end it all, and… so, I started seeing a therapist.”
“And what did the therapist say?”
“She was good, real good. She told me it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t cheated on Derek, but I would need to tell him, if I wanted to start to feel better.”
“And did you?” She herself feels the twist of queasiness at the thought of telling a boyfriend.
Caroline nods, and sips her tea. “And he was wonderful. Really really lovely and supportive. But I guess I just needed some time away to really heal, once I was willing to address what had happened. So the timing wasn’t right for us. He’s married now, to a girl who’s perfect for him.”
“Is that why you moved here to the UK?”
“And what did you tell them?”
“Just that after interning, I realized it wasn’t for me.” They both watch the Thames turning grey in the afternoon.
The sadness and regret is palpable in Caroline’s face. “But I guess that’s just the way things go sometimes.”
The shape of our lives. How they can be molded by people you hardly know. And never want to know ever afterward.
Caroline turns away quickly, and starts to sob.
“I’m so sorry. I meant to come here to comfort you, and now look at me…”
She looks on with a shared pain, but she herself has no more tears to shed.
Since Belfast, she has cried herself dry.
*
“Okay, so when you got to the top of the slope, what happened?”
“Well then, it was grand, like. Beautiful view and just the two of us.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“She was out of breath from the climb, like. We both were. So we were leaning on each other to catch our breaths. She was laughing at me, and all. So I could tell I was in, like.”
“What do you mean by ‘in’?”
“Just that, you know, she wanted me.”
“‘She wanted you.’ As in she wanted to do something with you?”
Jaysus, these fucking peelers.
“Yeah yeah, she wanted to shift and then some.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know, like, kissing and stuff.”
Morrison sighs. “Look, Johnny, you need to be more specific here in terms of what you did with this woman. Was it just kissing?”
“Well, at first, yeah. Just some kissing. But she was really going for it.”
“Who started the kissing? Was it her or you?”
“It was both. We both wanted it.”
“What do you mean when you say she was ‘really going for it’?”
“Like, shoving her tongue down me throat and all, letting me do the same to her.”
“And were you two standing at this point? Right where you’d come up the slope?”
“Yeah, that’s where we started kissing.”