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.
— 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