Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

‘I’ve been quite upset since yesterday. Since seeing Daphne.’

‘Oh?’ Realising this required attention, he folded up his paper and the three vertical lines between his eyebrows deepened with apprehension. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing happened exactly. But we talked about the past. She had this… she was sexually abused as a child. I knew him. It was Ralph Boyd. You know, the composer?’

Michael nodded. ‘Oh God.’

‘She was so young when it started – only twelve or thirteen – and he was married with children. And the awful thing is that she still doesn’t think he did anything wrong. In fact she’s making a huge artwork about it, as though it’s something to be glorified.’

‘That’s appalling.’ Michael got up and switched off the radio.

‘I know. He’s a monster. And it’s brought it all back, how I was part of it. I was there, witnessing the whole thing, complicit.’ Her voice broke momentarily and, though she tried to disguise it by coughing, Michael came round to her side of the table and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘He didn’t…? Not with you?’

‘No!’ It came out louder than expected. ‘No, it’s not that. But I can’t bear that she just smiles about it as if it’s not a crime. Just because he’s cultured and charming, there’s no reason he should be treated any differently to Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter. He deserves to be arrested along with all the other child molesters.’

‘I don’t know how people can do that.’ His reactions were so familiar to her that she knew he would run a hand through his hair, as he often did when stressed. He’d gone completely white now, though when they were first together his hair was like hers – a mousy blonde that turned flaxen in the sun. ‘So what will you do? Will you report him?’ His fingers were already touching his scalp.

‘No, it needs to come from her. I have to make her see there’s been a crime committed and that she’s the victim. I’m not going to just leave it. People should know he is a child rapist.’

When Daphne returned from her sneaky trip to Greece with Ralph, she’d changed. Even before she admitted she’d ‘done it’, there was something different about her. After the summer she always looked smooth and brown as a polished nut, but this time it was as though the small, internal piercing made her walk with a new looseness, a voluptuous sway. After she confessed, Jane quizzed her. ‘What was it like? Did it hurt?’ She was hungry for knowledge. This seemed only fair for agreeing to pretend, whenever required, that she was going to travel to Greece with Daphne and Ralph on the Magic Bus. ‘What about foreplay? Did you do 69?’ She knew the theory, but sexual intercourse was as distant as a far-off continent. And now Daphne had been there and was annoyingly stingy with details.

‘You can’t describe it,’ she claimed conveniently.

Just before school started in September, Daphne asked Jane to go with her and Ralph to Brighton. At first, it sounded appealing, despite the subtext that she was merely a suitable chaperone, though even after the shenanigans of the summer, Daphne’s parents were more bemused than suspicious.

‘We’ll have fun. Oh go on,’ pleaded Daphne when Jane said she didn’t want to be a gooseberry. ‘Please! We’ll mix you up with cream and sugar and turn you into a gooseberry fool. It’ll be great. You need some sea air.’

‘I bet Ralph doesn’t want me there.’

‘Course he does,’ Daphne replied, not convincing Jane, but evidently believing herself at that moment. ‘We both want you.’

Jane realised it would be awkward when Ralph turned up at Barnabas Road in Maurice, and there was a baby on the back seat.

‘Jason’s come along for the ride,’ Ralph said, smiling as though that was normal. ‘Nina’s got an exhibition and she’s a bit exhausted.’

‘She’s about to pop,’ explained Daphne in a cold voice, as though ‘pop’ was a medical term.

Ralph ignored this, adding, ‘Anyway, it’s high time this young man had an expedition with his father.’

It was still early – about 8 a.m. – and Ellie came out on to the street barefoot and wearing a fragile, silken kimono with nothing underneath. Her dark, curly hair fell loose around her shoulders and Jane stared in wonder that you could have a mum like that. Ralph bounded over, kissed her, whirled her around as if they were going to do ballroom dancing and then went on one knee and sang something in Italian. ‘Madam Butterfly,’ he clarified afterwards to the ignorant girls. Jane was horrified: how pretentious can you get? Ellie appeared delighted by her serenade, which was obviously the whole point. She smiled absently as the girls piled into Maurice.

‘Be good, children,’ she said, which might have been ironic. She was often hard to gauge.

Jane took the back seat without asking – second-class citizens know where they belong. The car reeked of a milky, nappyish aroma from the baby next to her. Her period had started the night before and she felt like a giant baby herself, with a bulky, thigh-chafing sanitary towel wedged between her legs and an abdominal ache pulling like overweight gravity. She watched miserably as Ellie waved and made some Greek coo-y noises through the window at Jason. Daphne got into the front seat, as ladylike and refined as if Ralph was her chauffeur and Jane and the fat baby were bags of shopping dumped behind.

The cool of the misty morning gave way to intense heat and they got stuck in traffic leaving London. Having slept for a while, the baby began wailing and its jowly face went puce. Ralph called instructions to Jane about how to calm it down: the dummy was spat on to the filthy car floor, the rattle was ignored and the bottle of milk was drunk in a trice before the crying began again. Then there was an awful stink and, despite the girls’ attempts to breathe through their mouths and cover their noses, it became necessary to stop. Ralph turned down a country road and found a field in which to change the nappy. Daphne and Jane went to have a pee and eventually found some bushes where they squatted awkwardly amongst prickly, thistle-laced grass. On their return, Ralph handed Jason to them and announced, ‘I’ll just take a leak too.’ He walked a few steps, turned his back and, legs slightly splayed, shoulders squared, let out a golden arc. Nothing was said, nor was it necessary, but it was a moment Jane always remembered – how the easy pride of a man urinating signified so much more than pissing. It remained as a moment she’d seen the inequality of the sexes laid bare.

In the car once again, Jane noticed Ralph’s hand sneaking across and stroking Daphne’s fingers, while singing more bits from Madam Butterfly . ‘It’s pop music really,’ he said. ‘But it proves the power of a good tune. Pure emotion – that’s all most people want. Isn’t that right, Lady Jane?’ She didn’t answer. Occasionally, he shouted jovially, ‘Everything all right back there?’ Jason munched his way through a packet of Farley’s Rusks and Jane sneaked one for herself, nibbling it cautiously while pretending to look out of the window at the green rise of the South Downs in the distance.

‘So, girls, the delights begin. Where shall we start?’ Ralph radiated geniality as they walked towards the sea and turned along the promenade. The front was packed with noisy day-trippers strolling or sprawled in lines of striped deckchairs. On the beach, people had established their territories with towels, umbrellas and folding chairs and the sea was rimmed with others paddling. Some braver souls were swimming and playing with rubber rings. The baby – actually a toddler, Jane and Daphne agreed – tottered unsteadily along the pavement for a few yards before being strapped into a pushchair, a sunhat plonked on his head and another rusk thrust into his hand.