Workshop

Eventually, fed up with both my thoughts and my paragraph, I closed the lid of my laptop and went back to the house. As I crunched across the gravel I glanced into the conservatory in time to see Yasmin pull a garment over bare brown skin. I went in. I talked to her, stiltedly, about her writing. She was lying back in a sort of deck-chair, her feet up on the low wall below the glass. The tee-shirt she had been wearing at breakfast time was draped across her like a sheet, but she wasn't actually wearing it; I could see enough to be sure she wasn't actually wearing anything... I could see that she knew just what I was looking at, just what I was thinking. I went on into the house feeling more discontented than ever.

In my room I plugged in my laptop to recharge, and, still restless with discontent, went back downstairs. I could just hear Yasmin's voice from the conservatory. Through the angle of the two doorways in between us, I could just make out the meeting of two coffee coloured thighs, and a dense black tuft of pubic hair. Yasmin's voice came again, and then, unquestionably, John's. I felt a surge of pointless anger - and an old nonsense rhyme went through my head:

As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn't there

He wasn't there again today - Oh how I wish he'd go away!

Mrs MacLeod was in the hall to say that lunch was ready, and should she take it out onto the terrace; and by the time I had agreed, Yasmin had joined us, wearing the tee-shirt, big and loose and coming down to mid-thigh. I was too sulky and irritable to enjoy lunch. Some of my mood seemed to have affected the others, because there wasn't much talk. Towards the end of the meal, Elise made some complaint about the heat, and Yasmin said the water looked cool. Mary looked at John, sitting a little apart against the wall, and said "is it?"

"Yes. Very."

I asked how he knew, and Mary said he'd swum across and back each morning. I looked across the width of the mirror-still water, and hated him.

The others were talking about swimming. Yasmin asked Pat whether she would go, and Pat said she hadn't packed a costume. John said "so? Who's to see?"

And Pat, blushing furiously but looking directly at him, said "you". Mary asked couldn't she swim in a vest and knickers; she looked away and made an inarticulate noise.

I went back up to my room. Under the slated eaves the house was cooking, a sapping, hostile heat. My laptop's battery, of course, was still almost flat. I thought about writing on paper, and then thought about having to copy-type it all in. I felt I needed to write, to get out all the anger and resentment and frustration I was feeling... but the laptop wouldn't work without a power socket, and if I went downstairs I wouldn't be able to see...

That black dot, cutting fast away towards the far shore, must be John. The ripples of his wake spread wide across the mirror surface. The hippopotamus shape in the improbable purple costume was Elise. Yasmin was draped over a rock, apparently naked again. Mary, in a very proper black costume, was swimming a very proper breast stroke close to the shore. Pat, still in the shirt-dress, sat with her knees up to her chin staring out over the water.

I tried to work on my own plot structure, but it wasn't coming. And then, as if my mood wasn't bad enough already, my computer crashed. I stabbed at the power switch, off, then on. It started into the tedious ritual of rebooting.

John, as usual, was invisible, although I supposed he must be at the far shore. Yasmin, undoubtedly naked, stood in the shallows in front of Pat, apparently urging her to come in. Elise sat on a rock looking like a giant sea-anemone left behind by the tide. Mary was further out, swimming sedately.

I started again trying to write, switching from my stuck novel to a rather nasty little short story, and getting on better. I wrote John into my central character, letting my rage spill out onto the screen. The words flowed fruitfully for a while, and then, as always, faltered. I looked out of the window again. Pat was paddling in the shallows, holding the hem of her dress out of the water. Yasmin, a little further out, was splashing at her. John, standing on the shore with a towel kilted around his waist, was watching them, perhaps talking to them - yes, Pat turned her head to look at him, then threw it back, apparently laughing. Yasmin splashed harder, lost her balance, fell backwards. Pat's head turned from Yasmin to John and back.

Both she and Yasmin started back to the shore. As Yasmin came level with Pat she put a wet arm around Pat's waist, and Pat, still apparently laughing, put a dry one around Yasmin's shoulders.

The three of them stood, perhaps talking, for a moment. Then John handed Yasmin his towel, reached for his clothes, and started to put them on. Pat pointedly looked away - I imagined, though I could not see, her flush. Reinvigorated, I turned back to my keyboard.

-----------------+----------------

Towards the fag-end of the afternoon there was a bang on the gong, and Pat asked us to listen to a redraft of her rape scene. The scene was now very different, but still wholly failed. The anchor she was trying to tie it round was the concept that the heroine's virginity was of political importance - if she was a virgin she could be traded in a diplomatic marriage - and that public rape was essentially a way of preventing that. I'm quite happy to believe that that sort of thing could have happened - did happen - in medieval Europe.

But the detail was incredible. Now the warlord was polite, almost effete. A brief (and unkind) precis of what she had written might read:

'Excuse me, Princess Prim and Proper, but most regrettably and for purely diplomatic purposes I am obliged to rape you. Please understand that there is no personal animosity involved, and accept my profound apologies in advance for any discomfort and inconvenience you may suffer.'

In trying to portray the violator as gentlemanly, all she achieved was to make him appear slimy, insincere, and wholly unsexy. There was no possible frisson to the scene. I said nothing, and neither did Elise - but at least I congratulated myself on not laughing. Yasmin was frank. Mary, not unkindly, pointed out a number of technical flaws in the passage, while pointedly not commenting on the emotional content.

Pat started to gather her pages together, looking like a punished child.

"What sort of man is she attracted by?"

Like the Cheshire cat, John emerged from stillness question first. Pat looked up, startled.

"I'm sorry?"

"What qualities in a man, do you think, would she find attractive?"

"Well, kindness, of course..."

"OK, so you've tried to make him kind. What else?"

"and - and gentleness..."

"So kindness and gentleness would be enough?"

Pat looked back at him, as if earnestly trying to understand his question; the look of hurt faded.

"If a man is kind and gentle to you, do you fancy him?"

The question asked so gently, so apparently kindly.

"You mean, sexually?"

"Sexually and personally and in every other way. Your heroine has to come out of this episode - very much attracted to him, doesn't she?"

Pat nodded.

"Would you be?"

Pat looked uncertain; she made one of her inarticulate noises.

"If he was as kind and gentle as all that, would he have done it?"

"Well," she said with more spirit, "he might have if he thought that doing it would save a lot of suffering for a lot of other people."

"Utilitarian rape," said Mary. John frowned at her. He turned back to Pat:

"If he'd raped you, for the good of other people you'd never met, would you like him for it?"

Pat shivered. "No."

"She's got to do more than just like him, though, don't you think?"

Pat nodded.

"What attracts you to your boyfriend, Pat?"

She flushed. "I don't... I haven't..."

"When you have had boyfriends, though. What has attracted you to them?"

The flush spread to her ears. "I'm not... I'm not a very good chooser of boyfriends..."

"Your boyfriends haven't been kind?"

She shuddered. "No."

"So what has attracted you to them?"

Another inarticulate noise. The questions came again, unhurried, unpressured, calm, unthreatening, patient. I felt an unwilling admiration for that patience.

"Think of your most recent boyfriend, What was he like? How would you have described him to a friend, when you'd first fallen in love with him?"

"Tall," she said "Tall and strong and noisy and boisterous and confident and fun..."

"Did he fancy you?"

She nodded.

"Was that attractive?"

"Yes..."

"OK, think about how you could rewrite the scene to show the hero really fancies the heroine. Could they have met before?"

"No," said Pat, "no, the historical sources said they hadn't."

"Could you write it that they had, and that they'd already been attracted to one another?"

"No, because... it isn't what happened, and, and... if I write it like that..."

Mary finished the sentence for her. "There wouldn't really be a story in it, would there."

Pat looked at her. "No," she agreed, "not the one I want to write."

"OK," said John, "so it has to be sudden, and it has to be that he's seized her by force, and there isn't time for seduction, and you have to make us believe that she comes out of it attracted to him."

Pat nodded.

"What really interests you," said Mary, "is the rape, isn't it?"

Pat flushed darkly, and her head moved fractionally in assent. The hurt look was back. Again John intervened; his voice came even softer, even gentler.

"Pat, there's some personal things I need to know..."

She tilted her head slightly; acknowledgement.

"Were you ever abused, when you were a child?"

She shook her head, blankly.

"Have you ever been raped?"

Again, she shook her head.

"Have you ever had sex when you really didn't want to?"

She blushed again, fiercely red, and nodded very faintly.

"And you really want to write this scene?"

Flush fading slowly, she nodded.

"OK," said John, "how would it be if they burst in like a rugby team just back from winning a game, all big and young and fit and rowdy and high on adrenaline; and they break into the palace wine cellars and start passing wine around; and it's just a huge party and it's getting out of hand, and some of the men are having sex with other girls..."

"Yes," said Pat, "I thought of that... but if it's like that they're trashing the place, and it's her home they're trashing..."

"So you can't make that work?"

"No. No, I don't think so..."

They didn't seem to be getting anywhere, and the time was getting on, so I wound the session up and Mary and I started to get the evening meal organised.

---------------+---------------

As we ate our evening meal, the black clouds rolled over the house, and the view outside changed rapidly and dramatically. We took our coffees through into the conservatory and watched in silence as the golden sunlight was driven back down the glen towards the sea, as the darkness took hold of the peaks on either side, and crawled down the rocks and the scree slopes. At last the rain came pounding down onto the glass roof and windows, and we retreated back to the scriptorium table.

Mary had a passage she wanted to try on us, a comedy of errors scene at a cocktail party at which the hero didn't know that the villain was actually the person he was hunting, and the villain didn't know that the hero was the person who was hunting him, and both of them were trying to chat up the first-person heroine, who was trying to conceal from each of them that she knew the other. She read it with gusto, and I think we all enjoyed it. After she had finished reading we commented on it and then went on to discuss the plot sequence that led up to it - and Pat dragged us back again to Monday morning's controversy.

What, Pat wanted to know, was supposed to be sexy about a situation in which a woman was naked and exposed and helpless in the presence of a strange man? Just that, said Yasmin. But, Pat said, she could be raped. Yes, said Yasmin. But surely, rape couldn't be sexy? Yasmin hesitated. I asked, was it the risk that was sexy, the uncertainty, the danger? Yasmin thought that was part of it. Elise said that being bound was sexy, because you weren't responsible and so you weren't to blame. You put yourself in a position where sex might be the consequence but you didn't have to admit to yourself that you were complicit in it, so it was sexy for repressed people.

Mary said that it was also partly the power imbalance that was sexy: all primates used sex to express social pecking orders, so putting yourself into a submissive position in respect to another person was sexy. Surely, Pat said, she wasn't suggesting that human beings behaved like animals.

"But we are animals," said Mary. "Our sexual behaviour is some of our most primitive - partly, I think, precisely because we don't talk about it, think about it. For example," she went on, "the reason stranger sex is exciting is because it widens the gene pool. Through the evolutionary period when human beings lived mainly in small family groups, in-breeding was a real risk and so there was an evolutionary benefit in taking genes from strangers." Pat made an inarticulate protest. Mary went on, remorselessly. "Also, of course, this is why powerful and ruthless men are sexy. In fact it is the core of your own story: women are genetically programmed to respond to strong, powerful, dominant men because their children are likely to inherit their power and dominance and consequently more likely to survive. That's why your princess fell in love with her captor."

"But," said Pat, "but - he raped her!"

"Well," said Mary, "that's genetically programmed as well; on both sides. Men are genetically programmed to impregnate as many women as possible, because it gives them a better chance or passing on their genes, and, as I said, women are genetically programmed to respond to aggressive, dominant men."

There was silence round the table. Outside, thunder growled.

John stirred in his seat, and sat forward. Again, there was that feeling of surprise that he was there - that he had been there all along.

"Do you really want to write this story?," he asked.

Pat said, yes, seriously, she did.

"Then," said John, "you're going to have to imagine yourself into the position of the princess who is being raped".

"I know," said Pat, "I've done that".

"OK," said John, "now you have to imagine yourself into the position where you get off on it".

"But," said Pat desperately, "but - "

"You have to imagine it, you have to be turned on by it, or you can't persuade the reader that the princess is. Can you?"

Pat looked back at him, trapped. She shook her head.

"And you really want to be able to write this story?"

She nodded.

There was a splitting crash of lightning outside, and the lights flickered for a moment. John suddenly grinned, a quick, unsettling, wolfish grin which seemed to come from nowhere. He went on questioning.

"So let's take the best possible case. he's a handsome, romantic outlaw who has just walked into your palace by a trick. What do you feel about him?"

"Afraid," she said.

"Just Afraid?"

"And... and angry!"

"He's caught hold of you: he's very strong, you can't escape. What do you feel about him?"

"Afraid!"

"Just afraid?"

"Yes!"

"Do you know what's going to happen?"

Pat just nods, blankly. "I think so..."

"How do you feel about that?"

"Afraid! Angry!"

"You can't imagine feeling anything else?"

"No."

"Nothing at all?"

"No!"

What was fascinating in watching this was the change in John. For three days he had faded into the background like a lean grey cat, as if he was visible only when you looked directly at him. Now he leaned forward in his seat, his whole posture full of fizzing energy, his grey eyes narrow and focussed. Focus of the whole room. Across the table at the focus of that gaze Pat seemed pinned like a butterfly on a board, not merely unable to escape that intensity, but unable even to try to escape.

"What can we do to help you imagine it?"

Pat stared at him. She didn't answer. John's gaze shifted for a moment; he looked at Mary. It shifted back.

"You read Mary's story on Monday."

Pat nodded.

"About being tied up, naked in front of a stranger."

Pat nodded.

"Why did you react so strongly to it?"

Pat shook her head. She whispered: "I don't know..."

Mary made an excuse, got up, went out. John asked:

"Did it excite you?"

"I don't know."

There was a long pause. John and Pat held each other's eyes across the table; John looked intent; Pat, close to tears.

John asked again, gently, almost caressing:

"Is this helping you?"

Pat nodded.

"You do really want to write this story?"

"Yes..."

"You do really want to be able to understand how it would feel?"

"Yes!" Pat almost shouted over a peel of thunder, and the lights went out.

Darkness. Silence.

After a moment, Yasmin: "has anybody got a match?"

And then, before I even had time to feel in my pocket, another voice, male, not loud, very clipped. "Nobody move". It spoke again, but apparently not to me: "keep very still. This knife is sharp, and you wouldn't want blood on your dress."

My eyes strained to find any shapes in the darkness, but there were none; it was intense. I shifted nervously in my seat. The clipped voice came again: "tell them to keep still, girlie". Pat's voice - high, frightened, but undoubtedly Pat's - asked us - please - to keep still.

There was a period of some minutes, I think, in which I saw and heard nothing - perhaps the faintest sounds from Pat's side of the table, but not sounds I could interpret in any way. Then the voice again, still the voice of a stranger, but softer, quieter: "I want you to stand up now, very slowly, very gently". A chair scraped back and clothing rustled; a moment later there was a double click, as if a chair had been lifted and put down. Again there were faint noises, movements, rustles, at the limit of my hearing, and then, more distinctly, an inarticulate protest. I moved in my chair again. "No! No!" Pat's voice, undoubtedly frightened: "keep still!"

There was the faintest flicker of light from the kitchen door, and Mary's voice, distant, reassuring - "I've got a candle". The light flickered and grew. Shapes started to grow in the darkness around the table. To my right, where Pat had sat, a block of darkness gradually resolved into two figures in a close embrace, and as the light grew they became Pat and John. She stood in front of him, her head bent sharply back. They were kissing. His hand at her throat held a knife with a black double-edged blade.

Mary came in, took in the scene with a quick cool glance, and sat down in the chair John had been sitting in, across the table from where he now stood. "I thought," she said, "you'd all like some light". She put two candlesticks down on the table.

I don't think any of us, then, wondered about Mary's composure. We were too riveted by the scene. The hand with the knife traced little circles and arabesques on the skin of Pat's throat, moving from just under her ear at one extreme to the collar of her dress at the other. His other hand rested on her shoulder. From the movement of their heads it was apparent that the kiss was intense. Pat's hands fluttered in the air at her sides, meaningless panicky movements, and from time to time she made little whimpers of protest.

I moved again, as I thought stealthily, in my chair. John's eyes met mine over Pat's cheek, clear, cold, intent. The knife moved meaningfully at her throat, and she whimpered. I slumped back in my chair. The knife traced its slow arabesque, turning and twisting, up to her ear and down again. He raised his head for a moment, breaking the kiss: "your dress is in my way," he said. "Unbutton it". She whimpered, but didn't move. "Unbutton it!" A hand crept slowly up to her collar and undid one button. "Good girl," he murmured. "And the next". "No!"