Sean Thomas - The Cheek Perforation Dance

— Miss Jessel

The prosecutor is beginning to assert himself. Using Rebecca’s mumbled monosyllables, exploiting to the full each tiny yes and he did Gregory is beginning to take over the court, casually laying out the truths as he sees it: the truths about Patrick’s sex life, and Patrick’s social life, about Patrick’s violence, about Patrick’s drinking. On top of the revelations about Patrick’s career this comes hard. It makes Patrick queasy. Patrick feels like this is some medieval ordeal, some game with the pilliwinks and gyves. A devious and cruel sport designed to make him squeal in mental pain, and thus reveal his evilness. Patrick flinches in the dock, waiting for the next barbed question, the next prosecutorial thrust. He watches Gregory like a kid in the dentist’s chair, fearfully eyeing the dentist to see what hideous tool he will choose next. Then Patrick once more curses Rebecca for bringing him to this: this profound embarrassment.

The worst of it is that Patrick can see all too easily what Gregory is doing, why he is doing this stuff, asking these questions about Patrick and Rebecca’s financial relationship, their resultant arguments, the death of the nightclub. The prosecution is leading them all by the hand, along the tortuous coastal path of the evidence, to a place where the gorse of doubt will finally part, allowing the prosecutor to stand and point to where the sea of certainty serenely twinkles in the sunlight: the sea of certainty that tells them that Patrick Skivington is a juvenile fool, who, because his job went arseover, and he couldn’t cope with adversity, and he felt like and indeed was an inadequate wretch cuckolded by life, came back one sad and sordid evening to rape the living Jesus out of his innocent young girlfriend Miss Rebecca Jessel, now of fifteen Goldsworthy Drive, Hampstead Garden Suburb, NW3, then of flat two, number seven Linden Street, Marylebone West One.

— Did he ever hit you?

— Yes

— When?

Rebecca looks downcast; Alan Gregory shuffles some paper importantly and confidently on his desk; grips the lapel of his gown; repeats the question. In turn Rebecca nods, pained, self-evidently pained by having the truth winkled out of her, the terrible truth:

— He hit me once … I …

— Take your time

— It was just before … you know …

— Go on

— We’d had a party. Patch

This is the first time she has used Patrick’s nickname; the sound of it in her mouth feels to Patrick so painful and sweet, touching and hypocritical at once.

— Patch came home, he came home from the office with a friend. He came back drunk and he and Joe they fooled around and he was

In the dock Patrick closes his eyes like he is about to do a macho swoon, like it isn’t just his nickname in her mouth but him in Rebecca’s mouth. Patrick feels like she has him in her mouth just one more time and she is sucking him slowly, looking up at him, ominously submissive.

— He was drunk. He started hitting me … He was angry

Half sucking, half biting.

— Why? Why was he angry?

— I think … because … I was …

—Yes?

— As I said his nightclub wasn’t working out … so …

Just biting.

— You mean he … – The prosecutor looks like he is pained by his own upcoming dip into the vernacular – ‘Took it out on you’?

— Yes – Rebecca’s voice goes even quieter. The judge asks her to speak up again; Rebecca apologises, meekly. She takes in one big breath and visibly grips the banister of the witness box as she says to the far corner of the cream-painted courtroom – He hit me quite badly

— You were bruised?

— Yes

— Did anybody else know about this?

— Well …

Crossing his legs, crossing his arms, Patrick switches desperately off. He just doesn’t want to hear this bit. The bits that aren’t complete lies are the total truth: both hurt. He crosses his arm and looks at his watch, watches it tick towards lunch, as Rebecca goes on about their arguments, their fights, about the last fight before he left, before she kicked him out. Rebecca is rambling, believably; the prosecutor is gently nudging her rambles along, and Patrick is looking at his wristwatch and thinking, seriously, with passion:

Is this it? Rebecca? Where is the other truth? The real truth? Where is the love, the sex, the death, the Aztecs? Suddenly he feels like standing up and asking her, shouting: nothing about me and Joe? Nothing about why I was angry? Nothing about my dad and your needs and my love? Your cunt? NO?

The prosecutor is in full flow now:

— So you decided to finish it?

— yes

— How long was it before you saw him again?

— yes

— And that was when you changed the locks?

— yes

— And he took how much money out of your account?

— yes yes YES

Patrick tries not to look or listen: Rebecca is unmistakably shaken. Under this barrage of friendly but piercing questions she has stopped, to control herself. Her voice is quieter than ever, her face shakes behind the lattice of one draped hand; her lips are smeared with pink; her delicate nostrils are pinked. And her hair is young, gold, meek and sweet.

Then the court’s awed and worried silence is shattered as the judge leans nearer Rebecca and says I think we better take a break for lunch here but Patrick doesn’t really listen to this. Patrick just stares at his girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend, the girl, the bitch, the liar, the bogus emoter, and thinks:

Jesus, Bex. You loved me that much?

Lifting his coffee-bar-type soup cup full of takeaway Chinese soup Joe blows low; then sips; then grimaces. Patrick:

— Something wrong with the soup?

Joe shakes his head, lowers the cup:

— Yeah no … yeah

— What?

— This soup. It’s that stupid healthy Chinese shit

— Yeah?

— With no monosodium glutamate

— … So?

Joe sits forward on the sunlit Soho Square bench, gazes mournfully into his soup:

— I like MSG …

Joe goes quiet, as he gingerly sips. Patrick looks at Joe. Then Patrick says:

— You know, sex is in many ways the monosodium glutamate of life

Joe:

— Oh God

— It makes what would otherwise be unpalatable palatable, it makes the boring samey noodles of life that extra bit

— OK shut up – Joe says, then he says – Anyway why did I buy soup? It’s thirty degrees in the shade and I buy soup ? Man

From his side of the bench Patrick clicks his tongue, in empathy. Then Patrick returns to his own takeaway tray of sushi. Patrick can sense Joe watching on, hungrily, enviously, as Patrick chopsticks a smear of translucent tuna belly, briefly dips the fish in a little plunge-pool of soy, then deftly drapes the result between his lips.

Joe:

— You know your gran sucks your pants ?

— Uh-huh

— She told me in bed last night

— Right – Patrick says – Right … Well …

— Yeah?

— Your girlfriend told me your cock looks like a weasel with a goitre on its head

— What girlfriend? – Joe shakes his head, says – How is she anyway?

— Sorry??

Joe, tutting:

— Your girlfriend, the rich one … you met her in a bookshop two months ago, you’ve been sleeping with her ever since – Slowly – She’s OK, yeah?

Silence. Patrick contemplatively stirs a few stray grains of rice around his little puddle of soy. Then he says:

— Tits are too big

Joe:

— As if

— No they are, too big, and too … firm