The One Safe Place (16 page)

"Should have been twice that," Heathcote grumbled, but Marshall saw that his anger was no longer directed at him.

When Marshall arrived home that afternoon just as the sky was beginning to let loose, his mother hugged him and said, "Well done." He accepted this and set about his homework to the sound of rain thumping all the windows, but when his father came home, drenched as he ran from the car to the house, and told him "Well done" as though he and Marshall's mother had rehearsed the phrase, Marshall couldn't take it: not when they'd both watched his performance in court. "I didn't do it," he protested. "I was, I was sewage. You saw."

"We saw you take everything his lawyer threw at you."

"You handled him at least as well as I did," Marshall's father said.

"He still made me say things I oughtn't to have said."

"But that's it, don't you see?" his mother protested, and his father explained, "The judge and the jury could see the lawyer was trying to confuse you because he hadn't any better defence. That's one of the things that went against our gun-toting friend."

Marshall felt unexpectedly exhausted. Perhaps that was an effect of relief, or of his having worried all weekend for no reason. He slogged through his homework and ate dinner, then tried to read a novel whose cover would allegedly stick to his fingers like glue, until his mother brought into the front room a copy of
I Spit on Your Grave,
a rape and revenge movie one of her students had lent her so that Marshall's mother could grade her essay in defence of it. "I don't think you should watch this, Marshall."

That made it sound more interesting, but he was too tired to argue. He went to the bathroom and congratulated himself on the size of his penis, and brushed his teeth until his mouth tasted like a large vanished mint, after which he wandered into his room and sat up in bed and read the same paragraph, and the same paragraph, and the same paragraph. At this point, admitting defeat, he switched off the light and lay watching as the night charcoaled the contents of his room, and listening to the rain around him and the screams downstairs, which seemed to be going on at considerable length, though maybe real rapes did. He found not being able to see the reason for the screams exciting for a while, then irritating, and wakened to find them still continuing, and then he didn't waken.

Soon he wished he'd stayed awake, when a bell began to shrill somewhere near him. Was it inside or outside the house? Was it the alarm? In that case, why wasn't the siren sounding in the hall, and why had nobody responded to it? He unstuck himself from his bed and stumbled out of the room, trying to grasp whether the house was lit by daylight or electric light and, whichever, how dim the slaty glow was. Leaning over the banister, he saw that the key was protruding from the alarm panel, which was turned off. Someone was in the living room; he could see more light beyond the door. He went downstairs faster than he'd known he could, and looked in.

His father was sitting close to the dead television and brushing his hair, repeatedly dragging the brush across the crown of his head in an attempt to tame a tuft which refused to be flattened. At least, that was the reflection Marshall saw on the grey screen, but when he looked at his father he saw that not only was he absolutely still, the brush was lying on the carpet. "Dad," Marshall said.

Perhaps his father couldn't hear him for the bell. Marshall stepped forward and picked up the brush and began to scrape at his father's scalp with it, only to notice that each movement of the brush enlarged a red stain that was pulsing up through his father's hair. "Dad," he pleaded in a voice which seemed to have exploded out of his control, and awoke.

The bell stopped a second later. He heard his father padding heavily downstairs to the hall in the silence. The bedroom was almost dark, and appeared to be in the process of turning into fog. Marshall didn't want to be alone with his dream or without some reassurance that all was well in the house. He flung himself out of bed and hurried to the top of the stairs.

His father was just removing the key from the control panel. It took Marshall a moment to realise that he couldn't have reached the panel to turn off the alarm while he was descending the stairs. Then the doorbell rang again, and his father plodded to the front door and set about unchaining and unlocking it, muttering, "Wrong house. Can't you stop for a minute? Trying to wake the dead?"

Someone was trying to gain entry to the house before the sun came up—before anyone in the building was fully awake. Marshall saw the faces behind his parents in the courtroom, and remembered the words that had been mouthed at him. "Dad," he cried in a voice far too much like the one he'd had to use in his dream. His father blinked over his shoulder at him, surprised to see him, but at the same time pulling the door open, and it was too late.

Susanne fell asleep thinking about rape. Had the film really needed to show Buster Keaton's granddaughter being raped by one man and sodomised by another and penetrated with a bottle by a third? It was the only film Susanne had ever felt the need to take a shower after watching, but did that prove the film had shoved the reality of rape in her face? That had been Martha's experience, according to her essay in which she had also cited a study where a group of students had been set the task of constructing a scenario to communicate what gang rape was like for the victim and had found themselves making many of the choices apparent in
I Spit on Your Grave.
Martha had argued her case coherently enough to earn herself a high grade, and Susanne appreciated it was never a bad thing if her own assumptions were given a good shake. Apart from that, she felt so relieved that the court case was over and that Marshall no longer needed to pretend he wasn't anxious, not to mention that she and Don no longer needed to pretend they didn't know he was, she fell asleep almost before Don climbed in beside her and crooked one arm around her midriff.

She had no idea how much later she was roused by an uncomfortable feeling that she ought to awaken. Don's arm was no longer around her, and she had the impression that something had taken him away. She widened her eyes, which persisted in blinking as though the dark was a heavy residue left by the night on their lids. Between the curtains in front of the balcony was a gap which hadn't been there when she'd gone to bed. She heard male voices muttering, several of them somewhere close, and she kicked off the quilt. Planting her feet on the yielding carpet, she padded to the window.

Two cars were outside, their fenders almost touching her car and Don's, and the house had stretched its light along the path to them. The front door was open. The voices weren't in the street but downstairs. Had she heard the doorbell in her sleep? She was holding onto the handles of the windows while a moment of dizziness passed when she saw that the two vehicles boxing in the Travis cars bore police insignia. Everything would be all right—though what was there to be put right? The thought seemed to grab her by the groin and stomach and abruptly dry throat, and she wobbled across the room and unhooked her robe from the back of the door, and struggled into the garment as she wavered onto the landing.

The hall below was lit, and it was crowded. She saw at least eight policemen, their uniforms black around Don, and beyond them a group of people who made her feel she mightn't after all have wakened, or that the family was on "Candid Camera." Then Marshall, who was gripping the wooden bulb which brought a full stop to the last line of banister, looked up at her, and several policemen did. From their expressions she could see that whatever was taking place, it was no joke.

She felt the banisters shake as she swung herself around them, felt the stairs tremble as she ran down faster than she was sure she could control. Everyone was watching her, and from the group of people nearest the front door a movie camera trained its lens on her. She put one hand on Marshall's shoulder so as to sidle past him rather than spend time persuading him to relinquish his white-knuckled grip on the wooden bulb, and the policeman who had been confronting Don took three heavy steps toward her.

He had thin pale lips and a sharp nose with nostrils pinker than the rest of his wide face, and startlingly black eyebrows which appeared to be underlining the wrinkles incised in his forehead. "You are Susanne Travis?"

Being addressed by name gave her a more immediate sense of herself—enough of one that she pinched her robe shut against the gaze of the crowd in the hall and tied the cord tighter, constricting her waist. "Who else would I be?"

His lips parted again, producing a spider-thread of saliva which vanished into their left corner. "I have to inform you that I have just served your husband with a warrant to search these premises."

"You've..." It wasn't only the invasion of her house which made her feel backed into a corner and all but undressed by the intruders, it was her being scrutinised by the camera, whose attention felt like the chill of the hour rendered harsher. "Better show it to me."

The policeman unfurled the fingers of one hand toward her, then poked them inside his jacket. "You are involved."

"Damn right I am. We both own this house." Susanne peered at the thick sheet of paper he unfolded in front of her, then she took hold of it in case that helped the mass of legal jargon communicate its sense to her. When he didn't let go of the page she felt as though his blunt grasp was somehow preventing the meaning from reaching her. She glanced at Don, who responded with a dull nod which sent a surge of helpless anger through her. "Would you mind closing that door?" she asked the people nearest to it, and was infuriated by her own politeness. "Who the—who the Gehenna are you anyway?"

Don smiled so wryly it looked as though a stroke had affected one side of his face. "They're filming a documentary about police work."

"What police work?" She heard herself sounding angry with him, and shook her head at him and turned on the policeman with the pressed lips. "What are you supposed to be looking for?"

"I think you know that, Mrs. Travis."

"Then you think a whole lot," she retorted, which didn't sound at all like her intended meaning. "It's a mistake, isn't it, Don? Can they do this? Do we get to make a phone call?"

"I don't know who we'd call this early."

"Of course, sure, that's the way it's meant to work." She became aware of Marshall, and reached to stroke his hand on the banister. "It's okay, honey. They're the police. They aren't going to do anything bad to us, are you?"

The officer in charge gave her a look so blank it was menacing. "We'll start on the ground floor if we may."

That was addressed largely to his forces, who separated into three groups and went into the front room and dining room and kitchen. Maybe they were searching for illegal dinner plates, Susanne thought wildly, or forbidden vintages of wine, or prohibited cutlery, or banned ingredients: maybe you weren't allowed to have a full jar of nutmeg in Britain. Then she knew what they were after, just as one young policeman called "Inspector" from the front room.

As Susanne launched herself in that direction the camera swooped after her, and only grabbing her own wrist prevented her from clapping a hand over the lens. She wasn't going to be made to appear to have something to hide, and they couldn't screen any of this footage without her and Don's permission, could they? She experienced some satisfaction as the pale-lipped inspector collided with the cameraman behind her in the doorway, but then she saw the policeman holding up a videocassette, his plump scrubbed face so triumphant that he might have been imagining the boost he'd just given his career. "I spit on your grave, Inspector."

Susanne hadn't time to laugh at how he sounded. "That belongs—"

"Yes, Mrs. Travis?"

The inspector's question allowed her time to rethink what she'd almost blurted out. "It belongs to a group of films I'm studying with my students."

"I'm afraid that won't help you under the circumstances."

Susanne planted her hands on her hipbones. "What circumstances?"

He turned a look of weary disbelief on her, then his gaze drifted to the policemen who were peering behind furniture and overturning cushions on the chairs. "Nothing else in here, Inspector," one said for all of them.

"Keep hold of that tape, Desmond. You should be aware, Mrs. Travis, that the film has been banned as a video nasty since 1984."

For a moment she heard only the date, which seemed so appropriate that she wondered anew if the entire situation could be someone's idea of an elaborate joke. The other policemen were returning along the hall, followed by Don, who had been keeping an eye on them. "Nothing, Inspector."

"I suspect we'll have more joy at the top of the house."

Susanne felt her mouth open and dry up. Someone who'd been in the building was responsible for the raid—had contacted the police and told them exactly where to look—and the faces of everyone at the party raced in a distorted jumble through her mind. The police were marching upstairs in single file, the camera panning with them, and as Marshall dodged out of their way his eyes met hers. She remembered his saying in court that the cassettes were kept on the top floor, and saw him remember, and went to hug him. "Never mind, honey," she said, feeling awkward and inadequate and more furious than ever with the invasion of the home, and grabbed Don. "What are we supposed to have done?" she whispered. "Clement said he checked it was legal to show those movies as part of a course."

Don shrugged as though trying to heave a burden off his shoulders, and beyond him she saw the director and cameraman exchange glances. They knew. Policemen were opening doors on the floor above while most of the intruders trooped to the top, and she felt them spreading like a mass of blackness through her house. "Go ahead," she urged, pushing Don and Marshall toward the stairs. "We don't want them where we can't see them."

She was trying not to conclude that she and the family were the intruders, strangers in a country where they'd learned the rules too late. Policemen were in her and Don's room and in Marshall's, opening wardrobes and pulling out drawers and groping under beds. She saw Marshall's face go awry, and he ran to his room, then hesitated, unsure whether he was allowed to be there. Her rage at how he was being made to feel could have lashed out in any direction, but she focused her attention on the director, an overweight man in his thirties with nearly all of a moustache and fewer hairs on top of his head than there were purple veins on his round face. "You tell me," she demanded, only inches from him. "What don't we know?"