The Cheek Perforation Dance

— Jesus

— I know – Rebecca mumbles a laugh – Maybe it was a slight mistake

— I’ve told you, Becs: it frightens them

— But it’s just the truth

Murphy shakes her head:

— Twenty-eight different lovers is quite a lot for a twenty-two-year-old Rebecca, smiling:

— Rather more than he as it turned out

— Where’d he take you then?

— Thirty-one anyway … sorry?

— Your second date. Where?

— I told you, this club, he knows all these places in Soho cause of

— No, before the club

— Oh, some posh restaurant

— Hope he paid

— Of course. It’s so awfully unfair isn’t it?

A confirming grin, then Murphy says:

— Don’t tell ’em – Murphy cocks a finger to her lips – They’ll figure it out one day, don’t let on …

Rebecca nods, distracted, says ‘uh-huh’. Again, she looks appraisingly at her friend. Rebecca wonders if and when her best friend will get a boyfriend. Then she wonders if her own impending relationship will affect her friendship with Murphy; then Rebecca realises she has no idea what effect her possible love affair with Patrick will have, because she’s never been in love before. In which case, how does she know she is falling in love now? Simply because she’s more anxious than normal, more nervously upbeat? More keen to submit?

As if telepathically, Murphy says:

— I suppose you’re going to go and fall in love with this bozo aren’t you?

— No

— YES – Murphy is sighing, urbanely – You’re going to sleep with him tonight and by next week you’ll be texting him messages on his phone and by autumn you’ll be wearing his bloody shirts and then – Murphy stops, nods to herself, decides on the rest of her speech – Then by next spring when you both walk home from restaurants you’ll start looking casually in estate agents and then … and then … – Searching for the right part of London, Murphy goes on, emphatically – Then you’ll move in to some stupid stupid flat in Clapham and that’ll be it. Finito. After that you’ll only ever ring me when he’s been horrible to you and then you’ll have a baby and move to Suffolk and spend the weekend wearing Aran jumpers and God it’s so annoying

— You’re jealous. Sweet

— Course I’m fucking jealous – Murphy shakes her head in amazement – Why shouldn’t I be jealous. Just don’t get hurt? K?

— You might be wrong anyway – Rebecca glances at the precious-metal watch, the watch her father bought her for her eighteenth. This makes her feel a pang of something. Some regret – He’s a bit rough in some ways … – She makes a thoughtful face – Anyway I’m meeting him at the pub down the road, in a minute

Murphy, calmer:

— You did say he lives round here, right?

— Ya, it’s convenient for his job – Rebecca looks out of the window, as if expecting Patrick to walk by – S’just down the road

— So that’s why he fetched up every time we had a sarny

— Yes – Rebecca thinks about Patrick’s flat; about the kiss on the sofa, the hand on her nipple – He’s got a nice flatmate, very shaggable

Murphy looks up, helpless:

— Really?

— Really. Joe … something. Cute bod. Bit of a druggie

— Mmmm?

— Wears a good pair of jeans …

— Ooooh …

Rebecca starts laughing at Murphy’s melodramatic ooooh-noise; Murphy has already stopped laughing. Murphy is saying:

— Hello hello

Rebecca:

— I’ll arrange a drink or something. So you can meet him, he’s very sweet and funny, I’m sure you’ll

— sssss!!

Murphy is nodding towards a well-dressed man who has swung through the plate-glass door from the street; Murphy:

— The Christmas rush!!

Obediently Rebecca gazes across the gallery: at the expensively empty space of Schubert & Scholes now filled by a punter, a customer, a man. The man has an air of wealth, and confidence; enough for Murphy to put on her brightest, most insincere gallery-girl smile.

His hands on his knees, the pinstriped man begins examining a collection of enamelled Japanese household rubbish piled alongside one wall of the gallery. Quickly swivelling to her best friend, Murphy makes a ‘sorry I’d better do some work now’ expression; slipping herself off the desk Rebecca puts a fist to her tilted head and makes an ‘OK I’ll ring you tomorrow’ gesture.

In Charlotte Street the blue sunshades are up outside Chez Gérard. A few yards further down the road couples are eating noodles outside the Vietnamese place. And on restaurant tables ranked alongside the entire facade of Pescatori Fish Restaurant big azure-glass ashtrays are glinting expensively in the sun. Walking down this, through this, all this, along her favourite London road, Rebecca feels a head-rush of happiness. She feels a sudden sense of her youngness, her freeness, her possibly-about-to-be-no-longer-singleness. She feels almost ebullient: so ebullient, she finds she is virtually skipping down to the junction of Charlotte and Percy Streets, as she heads for the Marquis of Granby pub.

But before she reaches the Marquis of Granby pub, Rebecca clocks her watch again and realises she has walked so fast, and so ebulliently, and so nearly-skippingly, she is ten minutes early.

So now? Assessing the sun Rebecca sees that it is still slanting brightly enough down Rathbone Place to make it worth working on her tan. Taking a corner seat at one of the wooden pub tables outside the Marquis Rebecca arranges herself: she turns and faces with closed eyes the hot sun, stretching her bare legs out. After a minute of this Rebecca opens her eyes, and sees that her legs are already the subject of some male consternation. One besuited barely-out-of-his-teens drinker is openly pointing at her. For his benefit, without making it too obvious, Rebecca raises her dress an inch or two higher; thinking of Rembrandt’s wife in the painting as she does so.

More heads turn. A tongue actually lolls. Rebecca has never seen a tongue loll before, but there one is, lolling. At her. Not for the first time in her life, Rebecca decides she actually quite enjoys this: the sensation of masculine eyes upon her. It makes her feel like a mid-period Picasso at a glamorous auction; it makes her feel like an attractive woman. Sitting here being sizzled by the heat Rebecca starts to wonder why some art history feminists get so worked up about the male gaze. How so? Why so het up about leers and oeillades? Rebecca does not comprehend it. These staring men make Rebecca feel strong, empowered, aristocratic. To Rebecca right now these men look like so many Catholic French peasants gazing at le Roi Soleil. Dumb, resentful, awestruck serfs …

Thinking of this, primrosing down this intellectual path, Rebecca wonders unwontedly if she can spin a thesis out of this, out of, say, the male gaze as serf-like feudal reflex. Perhaps, she decides, she could; but then, she decides, she shouldn’t. All these thoughts of matters historical, and theoretical, and thesis-esque, are in fact making Rebecca feel a simultaneous twinge of guilt. Because she isn’t working even on her present project, her Crusader thesis, hardly. At all.

Rebecca opens her eyes, worried now. Ever since she and Patrick met, she thinks, she’s done virtually nothing towards her PhD. And this does not make Rebecca feel empowered and royal: right now this makes her feel crap, teenage, girly and feeble. God it’s so crap, Rebecca decides, pulling down her dress to hide her legs: that a mere man can come along and upend her priorities, distort her intellectual life, make nonsense of her ambitions and life goals, by not having shaved for a day or two. How gay is that?

So she must do some work, Rebecca decides, just to show she isn’t just a cheerleading troupe of hormones.

Sighing in the sunshine, putting down her pint of lager, Rebecca takes a textbook out of her bag, the ever-present, hardly-touched Crusades history book, and starts to read up. Flicking pages she comes upon the section she was deconstructing up until … the bit she was studying up and unto the moment Patrick walked casually through the front door of her life, like he’d had a key all along …

Patrick …? Patrick … PATRICK. Rebecca wonders why it should be Patrick that finally stirs her, rather than any other. He’s nice-looking, she thinks; not the most good-looking. So is it because he’s like her father? Rebecca cannot imagine anyone less like her passive, diffident, tentative, bridge-playing father. Is it then because he’s like her mother?

Rebecca shudders.

Then it must be because he’s like neither; the opposite of both. In which case, how will her parents react to him? And how will he react to them? Can they possibly get on? Will Patrick understand the set up? Will he despise Rebecca for living at home, with her parents, at her age, for having sloped back home so as to do her London Uni PhD? Will he understand that she only did this because home was luxurious, convenient, palatial, and cheap …

Work!

Page opened, page corner unfoxed, Rebecca reads. She has to work. Lips firmed, she begins:

As the Crusaders trekked across Europe towards the Holy Land, they left a trail of dead. In Speyer, Worms and other German cities they butchered Jews in their thousands. Witnesses in Mainz, in particular, reported fearful scenes of panic, of terrified Jewish women barricading themselves in their houses, and throwing gold coins out of the windows, to try and distract the rampaging soldiery.

To no avail. The pogrom was savage, and relentless, and shocking, even by the …

— Hello?

Eyes up, Rebecca sees that: yes! it’s Patrick. Half stooping Patrick kisses Rebecca on her grateful cheek, turning her face Rebecca turns this into a kiss on the lips. At this Patrick seems to start, then stop. For a second Patrick seems unsure again: he just stands there. Rebecca takes this chance to shut and bag her book, and also to appraise Patrick: to assess his hiply retro jeans, his cool white cotton shirt, his two days’ stubble. Sensing the appraisal, Patrick makes a wry face, and a buying-the-drinks gesture, and disappears inside the pub. Two minutes later he comes out with two pints of coldish lager which the two of them sit and drink quickly, and thirstily, while they talk. After these two pints Patrick goes into the pub and buys two more pints; they drink these two almost as quickly. They are getting drunk. As Rebecca gets drunk, Patrick gets drunk, and the two of them talk excitedly and happily as they get drunk. The fact that they are getting drunk means they keep breaking into laughter apropos of nothing. This in itself makes Rebecca feel quite strange inside: sipping her beer, calming herself, she tries to concentrate on what Patrick is saying. Patrick is explaining that the small record label which he is helping to run has just bought an even smaller label which means they now have a roster of Asian ambient techno bands to promote and, yes, Rebecca thinks, his tanned chest looks nice with that silver cross against it.

Patrick has stopped talking. Rebecca makes a sorry-I-was-distracted-could-you-say-that-again face. Patrick shakes his head:

— Like you’re interested

— Oh I am

Patrick laughs:

— Lying tart

— No no really tell me more about that Asian thrash metal scene

— OK OK – He chuckles – Do you fancy coming back to my flat?

Eyes on his laughing eyes, eyes on his thick, black, slightly violent hair, Rebecca wonders: about Patrick’s differentness, his maleness, his foreignness. As Patrick makes some more noises it comes to Rebecca that his Irish-English-Britishness is as foreign to her as, no doubt, as a Jewess, she is to him. She is his Outremer. He is her Frankish knight. And this is their First Crusade.

And perhaps, Rebecca thinks, I overintellectualise

— Got some Kiwi Riesling

— Uhhh, sorry?

Looking at Rebecca with a cool expression, of amused bemusement, Patrick says:

— I was … suggesting – He slows, deliberately – That we eat at my place, I could do some food, open a bottle of white or something. You know?

Nodding demurely, saying ‘sure’, Rebecca sips at her lager. Then she gives up on being demure and gulps the rest of her beer down. As she wipes her lips with the back of her hand, he laughs. Rebecca sarcastically apologises and says:

— Did you not know I was a complete lush?

Fitting his empty beer glass into the circle of dampness it has already made, Patrick says:

— Come on – Holding out a hand he takes Rebecca’s hand, and thereby helps her up and away.

Pleased to be holding hands with him, worried her hands are perspiring, noticing he is checking out her cleavage as they walk along, Rebecca says nothing. Together, hand in hand, they walk down Windmill Street, over Tottenham Court Road, along the side roads to Patrick’s flat. His flat. To the bare, unpainted stairs of his first-floor shared apartment.

In the flat they stand, slightly awkward. Rebecca makes a comment about how nice and bright it is in the day, and of course how centrally located. Patrick makes a mumbling noise about how he grew up in a boring small town and therefore has a fear of living in small towns or suburbs; how living away from the centre of London makes him feel like he is dying. Dying in prison. Then he laughs and says:

— I’ll get a drink

Into the sitting room, flooded with square sunlight from the large first-floor windows, Rebecca kneels in her summer dress on the polished bare floorboards and starts checking out Patrick’s bookshelves. From the kitchen she can hear sounds of him, uncorking bottles, clattering plates and cutlery. The last time she was in this flat, she thinks, the only other time she was in this flat, she had been very very drunk and it was very very dark and she had not had the time to case the bookcase, to do the essential appraisal. So now is her chance.

— White wine OK then?

— Yes – Rebecca calls back, through the walls, into the kitchen – Yes please fine

So: the bookcase. Running her eyes along the spines, feeling slightly guilty about her intellectual snobbishness, Rebecca does her assessment.

De Bernières, of course; Bridget Jones, slightly surprising; Tolstoy, v.g.

— Dressing on your salad?

— Yes, please, whatever

Thinking for a second about the Tolstoy, pleased about the Tolstoy, Rebecca moves on.

Pushkin, golly; Nick Hornby, hmmm; Turgenev, wow; Akhmatova, even better.

Hmm.

— God I love rocket

He is calling from the kitchen again. Rebecca laughs something in agreement and completes her research. It doesn’t take long. Apart from the literature and fiction titles she’s seen, the rest of the shelves are stuffed with boy books: psychology, sociobiology, politics, rugby; books on fascism, cricket, anti-Semitism, sex, ant society, human evolution and Southampton FC. For the life of her Rebecca doesn’t know what she thinks about the maleness of these bookshelves. Here is the intellectual equivalent of a fridge with just two beer cans in it. Is that good or bad?

As she tries to assess her own reaction Rebecca notices that Patrick has returned with a bowl of salad, two plates, and some cutlery lodged like a tango dancer’s rose in his mouth; getting to her feet, slightly embarrassed to have been caught checking his shelves, Rebecca takes the forks out of Patrick’s mouth, as he turns and produces from behind him two wineglasses full of cold white Riesling. Rebecca notes that Patrick is looking down her cleavage again as he stops to place her wineglass on the windowshelf.

They sit side by side on the sofa; eat the salad. The salad is nice, the wine nicer. Rebecca decides to ask:

— The books – She says, with half a mouthful of rocket – They all yours?

— Yeah – He answers, similarly mouth full – Mostly. The fiction tends to be Joe’s, all the poetry and Russian crap

— Right

— And all the science stuff is basically mine

— Uh … – Rebecca says – Huh

They both go quiet as they eat. At one point they both laugh nervously at the same time; then they both laugh genuinely because they have both laughed nervously at the same time. Then Patrick:

— And the music’s totally mine

He is gesturing behind her. Turning on the sofa Rebecca takes in, for the first time, the entire opposite wall. The entire opposite wall is comprised of floor-to-ceiling shelves holding CDs, singles, tapes, DATs, minidisks, LPs, DVDs, God knows. Thousands of titles, literally thousands. Even from this distance, with her dim knowledge of music, Rebecca can see there is a notable mixture: jazz, blues, acid house, Celtic folk, Yorkshire brass band, Karlheinz Stockhausen (Karlhwho Stockwhat?), Wagner, bluegrass, flamenco. Pulled especially from the rack is a row of CDs, standing together by the player.

Setting her finished plate of salad on the floor Rebecca skips over to the row of CDs; kneeling, and wine-sipping, and gazing, she checks out the titles of these chosen CDs. What he is listening to now. Minnie Ripperton, Maria Callas, Joy Division, Nick Drake (?), the Carpenters, Elvis, Blind Melon (??), Jacqueline du Pré.

Again, despite her misty grasp on things musical, and the fact that she is now really quite drunk, quite pleasantly, happily drunk, Rebecca realises there is something odd, something almost too eclectic about this selection. With her wineglass in hand, feeling pleasantly sluttish, Rebecca is about to swivel and ask him about the music, when she feels his lips on her neck. His arms are around her waist from behind, making her feel slim. His voice is close, boozy, warm:

— Dead cred

— Mmnn?

Her voice is slurred. His voice is closer, hotter:

— You see I’ve had an idea we should release a CD

— Nn

— Made up entirely of music by glamorously dead people, like all those

— Realll

— Yess – He is kissing her earlobe – Cause I think there’s something about music by dead people, interestingly dead people – Another kiss – Something that’s incredibly powerful – Another kiss – And better and poignant and the copyright might be a nightmare but we could call it Dead Singers’ Songs – Two kisses, four – And I think it would it would it might oh God Rebecca your breasts they are SO

— Here – She says, laughing – Here, you unbuckle it here

5

— So when did you first meet Mister Skivington?

In the witness box, Rebecca coughs. Then she looks flatly across the various heads that comprise the courtroom and she says:

— two years ago

The prosecutor nods and smiles, but his smile is uncertain. The judge intervenes:

— I’m sorry Miss Jessel but you’ll have to speak up

— sorry

In the dock Patrick exhales. He wants to curse, loudly. So where did she get this voice? His articulate, educated, cultured, self-confident, sexually experienced, words-like-Weltanschauung-knowing twenty-four-year-old ex-girlfriend: where did she suddenly acquire this meek, quiet, bashful, timid, inarticulate, hushed, I-am-oh-so-innocent teenagerish voice? Cursing quietly Patrick rests his forehead on two thumbs pointing up from interlocked hands; then he looks up to hear the judge say to Rebecca:

— The jury must be able to hear every word, you see

Rebecca nods:

— Yes, I’m … very sorry

The judge smiles reassuringly at Rebecca, and then turns back to the prosecutor’s grey wig:

— Do you want to repeat the question, counsel?

The wig nods. Laying down a pen on a desk, wrapping a hand around a black gown, gazing once more at his principal witness in her gingham-checked dress and her lambswool cardigan, the suntanned prosecutor opens his mouth and says:

— So you met the defendant about two years and two months ago?

— Yes. In a bookshop

— And you began … dating, soon after that?

— Yes

Dating? Patrick twitches, feels the horrible triteness of the word. He and Rebecca never dated …

— And how long after that did your relationship begin?

— A couple of … weeks. Maybe three …

— You were at college at the time?

— Yes. King’s College. London University. I still am

— What are you are studying?

— History. The Crusades

— And you are doing – The prosecutor looks at his file for a fact already, quite obviously, in his head – A PhD, yes?

— A doctorate, yes

— And your bachelor’s degree, from Edinburgh University – His eyes lifting – What was that in?

Rebecca shrugs:

— Art History

— And you – Gregory pauses, half smiles – took first-class honours in that, am I right?

— Yes

With a slight turn of the body towards the jury the prosecutor pauses to let this important fact take root, then says:

— OK. Now, fairly soon after this, as I understand …

And so it goes on. As Patrick sits in the dock and tries not to stare, hard, at Rebecca, at the side of her blonde head, Rebecca is asked to describe the inception and genesis of their relationship: from the first meeting, the first date, the first sex. As she sees it; as she saw it.

— I was seeing someone else but you see

— We went to a restaurant and we

— He was older than me so I

And during this litany Patrick has to admit, despite himself, that his lying cow of an ex looks surprisingly sweet, trembly and believable in the witness box. Surprisingly young, fresh, and betrayed. And raped. And in turn Patrick feels cheated, intrigued, guilty, scandalised, stressed-out, odd and libidinous. Not least because of Rebecca’s get-up. Obviously she is wearing the schoolgirly dress as a deliberate move; self-evidently she chose the pale cardigan, unheeled sixth-former shoes, and the throat-exposing hairstyle this very morning – in a deliberate attempt to gain sympathy, as self-conscious props designed to assist her in her role as the wronged adolescent, the abused child-bride. Yet Patrick still has to admit to himself: the ensemble works. At least: it works for him. Looking at her looking all schoolgirly and vulnerable, gamine and young and quite-possibly-raped-a-year-ago, Patrick wants nothing so much as to take Rebecca into the Old Bailey toilets and press her pleading face against the cold Edwardian tiling, hard.

— He was in the music business. He ran nightclubs and groups …

— I’d never really fallen for someone like him before

— I found him interesting and

Stuck in the dock Patrick wonders. As he watches his ex-girlfriend do her evidence in chief, he has to ponder how well she is going down. How well is she going down? If he were in the jury box, the visitors’ gallery, what would he see here in this pale-wood-panelled Old Bailey courtroom? Would he see a farce, or a tragedy? Or would he nip to the pub instead? Would he just dawdle a while and listen to Rebecca and then turn to a mate and say – oh forget it, this bastard’s going down. Boring.

And what precisely would he think of Rebecca? Would he empathise? Be repulsed? Find himself moved? Would he be touched by the pale rapeable baby pink of her lambswool cardigan? Or be appalled by this lying whore of a Jewess lisping her ex-lover into court?

— So you became lovers when?

— … On the fourth or fifth time

— That’s mid-June?

— Yes … I think so … it’s … – Rebecca lifts her blonde head and gazes frankly at the counsel – Difficult to be specific

— We understand, Miss Jessel, we don’t need actual dates

— I wish I could be more accurate … – She tilts her head and looks young – It’s a bit … you know …

At this the whole court seems to nod in sympathy; even Patrick feels himself nod sympathetically, too. It is. She’s right. It’s … a bit … you know.