‘Seems to me,’ said Collar, ‘there ain’t nothing even remotely funny about raping a fifteen-year-old girl.’
‘Rape!’ Brian nearly fainted. He remained upright only by placing his hands flat on the floor behind him and transferring his weight. There was a roaring in his ears and, though the beginnings of anger kept him conscious, his heart felt as if it was being sucked out of his chest by a vacuum pump.
‘That’s . . . Not . . . True . . .’
‘You seen the evidence ain’cha?’
‘The pitchers.’
He would never stop seeing the pictures. Her anguished triangular face staring directly at the camera. The slender figure crouching submissively on the edge of the settee as if awaiting further punishment. Brian recalled with much bitterness his earlier conclusion that Edie couldn’t act for toffee.
‘Edie? Look at me. Please.’
As if even the sound of his voice was a threat she burrowed even more deeply into the protective crook of her brother’s arm. They sheltered together like orphans.
Brian, consumed with exasperation, cried, ‘There was no rape. It wasn’t like that.’
‘You calling her a liar?’ asked Collar. ‘On top of everything else what you done.’
‘No. Well. Yes, actually.’
‘Oh sweet Jesus.’ Edie began to cry. Soft moany little warbles, like a wounded pigeon. Her brother stroked the fiery floss of her hair, glaring at Brian in disgusted disbelief.
‘Edie . . .’
‘Leave her alone,’ said Tom, his glance as cold as charity. ‘We’re looking after her now. I’m only sorry I never saw the need of it before.’
‘We had no warning, Brian, you see,’ said Denzil. ‘No hint that you were like that.’
‘I am not like that!’ The calm contempt in their eyes, their brazen hypocrisy, was driving him mad. When he tried to speak he almost gagged. ‘I would never have . . . She asked me round . . .’
‘You do that, Edie?’
‘Ask him round?’
Her response, though muffled in the folds of Tom’s coat, was perfectly audible. ‘He just turned up.’
‘See? You’re out your cranium, Bri.’
‘You’ll be saying next,’ Denzil spoke through bared teeth, ‘that you’re going to refuse to compensate her for that terrible ordeal.’
Brian saw Edie whipping off her top, rolling down her tights, guiding his tentatively erect member with expert fingers, striking a match against her thumbnail.
‘Too bloody right I am,’ he cried.
‘That’s not very nice,’ said Collar. ‘Swearing.’
‘Funny sort of example for a teacher to set.’
‘Yeah, but he’s a funny sort of teacher.’
‘All them extra-curricular activities.’
‘That he don’t wanna pay for.’
‘’Course it’s entirely up to him.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘If he can handle the consequences.’
‘Now let’s talk about this calmly and with—’
‘He can handle anything.’
‘A natural leader.’
‘A born leader.’
‘Plenty of bottle.’
‘Where it matters.’
‘That’s not the way I heard it.’
‘So. How does five thou strike you, Bri?’
‘Five smackaroonies.’
‘Five grand or all those juicy Awayday piccies turn up on Hargreave’s desk.’
‘He’s fallen over.’
‘I have not.’ Brian picked himself up. Lifted his skin-and-bone haunches and adopted a trembly negotiating posture identical, had he but known, to that of the chacma baboon on finding itself up a similar gum tree. ‘Look - can’t we talk this through? Go over the pros and cons, as it were.’
‘Them two words could be seen as highly insulting,’ said Tom. ‘Given the present circs.’
Brian mentally re-ran his last speech. He could see nothing in it to cause offence. Perhaps they were playing with him. Setting out to deliberately mishear or misinterpret everything he said as the secret police in totalitarian states were said to do. He really didn’t think he could bear that.
‘Don’t try trashing us about.’
‘Or pretending you got no money.’
‘’Cause this is serious shit we’re talking here.’
‘I certainly haven’t got that sort of money.’
‘You can raise it.’
‘Your sort always can.’
‘What do you mean - “my sort”?’
‘Middle-class wankers.’
Brian closed his eyes to shut out, if only momentarily, the sight of them. He found it almost impossible to believe that something so unspeakably dreadful was taking place. Brian was not a brave man. He could not even read the word ‘ordeal’ without a symbiotic flutter in his chest. Now as his bowels gave a slow cold churn he squeezed them tight, praying they would not leak. So much for grace under pressure.