My Animal Life(37)

Why was I immobilised by threats of violence? I think my father should answer that question. Our house had been ruled by threats of violence and actual violence, since we were small. He was not very violent, as these things go; he didn’t have to be, the fear was enough. I never thought, as I would now, of fighting those men, of calling their bluff. Perhaps they would have been ashamed to punch me, as they were not ashamed to touch me when I didn’t want them to. How deeply I was part of my difficult family is shown by the thoughts that ran through my brain like electric shocks, agonising, twitching: my parents would be angry. My father would be shamed. There would be a terrible, final scandal. Though I was facing death, I could still feel guilty.

But as I struggle to remember what actually happened that early summer night in St Aigulin, what that hateful, fat little man did to me, I realise one odd thing that makes me happy: I never considered giving in. Partly, of course, because I was a virgin. I simply wouldn’t have known what to do, or which halfway houses it was tactical to offer. (And maybe, I think now, they didn’t know either. They were Catholics, deep in the Catholic countryside, in 1966, when the pill was very new. Maybe having sex was not something they were used to.)

But killing he was keen on, the little conscript, keen on threatening it, at least, this olive-skinned, lard-faced, stubble-headed man so far from the tall pale handsome Frenchman I had thought, in the rosy glow of sunset, I was choosing. This one had no aura of youth or glamour. He did not smile under his creepy moustache, a black greasy millipede crawling on the sweat. He did not, like the first boy, try to woo me. He was fat and brutal and excited. I remember clearly asking him if he had a sister, or a mother. Perhaps he was wearing a crucifix. He would not admit to having either, he would not talk to me, I was just a body.

The title of this book is My Animal Life, and my feelings for animals are interest and respect, but I remember the dread thought: he’s just an animal. For him I had no soul, no special livingness, no consciousness that had to be regarded. And so, in this hot prison, he abolished me — we abolished each other — so he could harm me. I didn’t see sex: all I saw was death. There was nothing alive, just the end of the road. And that longed-for world outside the window. I do not know how long it went on. I know he didn’t rape me, or damage me physically, he just repeated his dead ultimatum. I do remember that I was crying. And I remember I was praying, as well, small stumps of prayer: please God. Please help me.

And then the world turned. The story breaks, and pivots. The door swings open, and light pours in. My prayer is answered. My prayer was answered. It wasn’t time; this was not the end. In another universe, perhaps, I died, but in this one, suddenly, I slipped my prison. The room was full of people — men — but they were shouting at the conscript, and he was shrinking, and I saw two faces I recognised, my friends from the village, come to find me. They took me downstairs, they were vocal and worried, they grouped around me, excluding the city boys, they found my jacket and my chain pendant, they made black coffee, which I never drank. I stopped crying as they comforted me. Unbelievably, I had been saved. It wasn’t even late; long before midnight.

Someone took me back to the hotel. Blindly, I did as I had promised and popped my head into my parents’ bedroom. From my father’s point of view, nothing had happened, so long as I did what I was told, so long as I was back before my curfew. Had I had a nice time? Yes, I lied. A lovely time. All my friends had been there.

(And I still don’t know what happened that night. Did the first boy, Lazy Eye with his dark glasses, panic about the rape he thought was in progress and go and find acquaintances from the village, where everybody knew each other? Did the house belong to someone from the village, sons whose parents were away, who came back by chance and stumbled on the story? It doesn’t matter. Somehow I was saved.)

But the randomness of it has stayed with me for ever. I did not save myself, by initiative or courage, by strength or cunning or sexual know-how. I was saved by chance, or perhaps by prayers. I was helpless in the power of others. And the underside of that is, I needn’t have been saved. A universe existed where I was not saved. It was terrifying, full of rape and murder.

I thought I had escaped, but I was only half-right. The school trip ended three days later. I did not say a word to my mother and father, though the story must have circulated in the village. One of my four friends, the boy I least liked, took me out one night and asked me too many questions: ‘Mais qu’est-ce qu’ils t’ont fait, dis-moi, Margaret?’ What did they do to you, tell me, Margaret? He wanted the details. Naïve though I was, I knew he was excited by the thought of what might have happened to me. I closed up tighter, like a clam.