Sean Thomas - The Cheek Perforation Dance

— … 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.

— And you continued going out all that autumn … and over the new year?

— Yes

— Until eventually you moved in together … the following spring?

— Yes …

— So. Let me get this right – A slight adjustment to the wig. A slightly self-conscious adjustment – By this time, Miss Jessel, would you say that … – The prosecutor stops again; stares at the wall behind Rebecca’s head; he seems to consider something written on the wall, as he starts again – Would you say that you were in love with the defendant?

Rebecca looks puzzled. The courtroom stares at her puzzlement, rapt. Only the stenographer and Patrick are not looking straight at Rebecca. Patrick is looking out the side of an eye. Stretching out an arm to steady herself against the panel of the witness box Rebecca swallows, shrugs, looks pained, looks at her hands, says:

— … I suppose. Yes

— Only suppose?

— No. Yes. Definitely. Very much so

— Why?

— Why?

— Why were you in love with him? What was it that … attracted you to him?

— He was … funny, different. I …

— He was fun?

— Yes. Cynical but amusing, I mean … sort of sexy …

In the dock Patrick tries not to puff with pride: sexy! Sexy and funny! I’m sexy and funny … and amusingly cynical ! Then he remembers he is on trial for rape. Embarrassed by himself he leans forward and listens to Rebecca say:

— But it wasn’t just that about him

Alan Gregory QC:

— No? What else was it?

Rebecca shakes her head, turns her head to look at the judge; the judge smiles paternally as if to say go on ; Rebecca turns back and goes on:

— I don’t know. How can you define it?

— It, Miss Jessel?

— Love. Whatever it was … it was love – Again – We were in love

The court goes more quiet, more still. From the dock Patrick can almost hear the jury’s huge enjoyment. He can sense their pleasure at this laid-on melodrama, this subsidised soap opera, its clichés withal. His life. His trial.

— So you definitely would say you loved him?

— … Yes. I would – Rebecca nods, and then swallows, apparently with difficulty. Doing his own bit, the judge asks Rebecca if she wants a glass of water; Rebecca shakes her head and says no and goes on – He was … he was … – Head high, she confesses – As a man, Patrick was easy to fall in love with …

Rebecca stops. Patrick looks at her and feels again an unwonted pang of pride, and also gratitude for what she has said; he wonders how difficult it was for his ex-girlfriend to say that. Then he watches, trying not to be sympathetic, as Rebecca steadies herself again. Rebecca looks, now, as if she is resisting the urge to turn across the courtroom and stare at Patrick, to turn her delicate well-bred doesn’t-need-make-up face on Patrick. Sat on his plastic chair in the dock Patrick studies Rebecca not looking at him: he can see a very slight painterly pinkening around Rebecca’s delicate nostrils, as if she is flushed with difficult emotions. Patrick nearly flinches, seeing this, feeling Rebecca’s unspoken suffering. He feels like blushing.

But why? Why should he blush? For-God’s-sake. Affronted by his own thoughts, Patrick sits and gazes away from her, ignoring Rebecca’s words about their love. He doesn’t want to think of their love. Doesn’t want to think of her lies. It was true they were in love; it’s lies what she says now. So how does he disentangle them? How does he unloom this skein of mendacity and veracity? And if he doesn’t know how to do it, how does the jury? How?? HOW?

Patrick is choked by confusion. He feels like swearing. Or shouting out. Or crying. But why? He never cries anyway, or hardly ever, so why here? Because the girl he loved more than himself is now twenty yards away trying to put him in prison? Why should he cry at that?

— Miss Jessel?

Rebecca has gone quiet, she has lowered her head, and stopped talking about their love; now she is gazing across the court: gazing out. To Patrick she looks as if she is gazing out the window onto some sunlit pastoral scene, gazing at elm-shaded watermeadows, some fields where the fritillaries dance …

Rebecca is saying, slowly:

— I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anybody else in my life

Pause, gown, lapel, Alan Gregory:

— And you think he felt the same way?

— I’m not sure … You’d have to ask him. I think maybe …

A pause; then, she says again:

— … maybe

For the first time, so far, Rebecca stops. Totally. Just for a moment Rebecca looks like she is really truly struggling to compose herself, to think of something to say. As she struggles, and succeeds, in maintaining her composure Patrick blatantly stares. For all Patrick’s lawyer’s stern advice never to stare at Rebecca Patrick is looking directly at Rebecca thinking how much he loved her, too: because she made him so desperately happy when he was with her, so desperately unhappy when not. So: what does that mean? That he obviously doesn’t love her any more? Patrick is even more confused, startlingly angry: with everyone, with her, with himself. He doesn’t know what he should do, he doesn’t know what he’s meant to think, he knows what he wants to do. Right now Patrick wants to cross the dreamy dissolving non-reality of the courtroom and take Rebecca in his arms; he wants to gather the harvest of her narrow waist to his waist, and cuddle her, and comfort her, and kiss the place where her blonde hair thins to her warm and living temple.

And then he wants to grab a fistful of hair and nonchalantly spin her round and hoist her over the sill of the dock and reach under her dress for the elastic of her panties.

— So you moved in together in February of that year?

— Yes

— And this was his idea as much as yours?

— Yes, we both wanted it

— Who was paying the rent, Miss Jessel?

— I was, mostly

— I’m sorry? You were paying? – The prosecutor is standing back, pretending to be shocked.

Patrick feels like laughing aloud at this. Patrick feels like openly laughing at the actorliness of this cameo; at the prosecutor’s overdramatised reaction. Looking left Patrick checks out the lined-up twelve faces of the jury to make sure they saw this, too, to make sure they are fully aware of the prosecutor’s phoniness.

But the jury, the Asian girl, the man in the green tie, the older Asian woman, all of them: they’re just gazing back at the prosecutor, soaking it all up, taking it all in, unflinching, suspending disbelief. In the dock Patrick sighs, bitterly.

Three yards from the dock the prosecutor is making a frown – I don’t understand, Miss Jessel. Didn’t he have a job?

— Yes, but … – Rebecca sounds as if she is embarrassed; embarrassed for Patrick – You see, his business started going under …

— The nightclub?

— The club, yes. And the label

— Was he losing a lot of money?

— Yes. They were going bankrupt

Now Patrick wants to squirm. So what? So what’s this got to do with anything? Chin on paired thumbs Patrick listens depressedly and involuntarily to the lawyer vowelling away in his pompous English way.