‘Oh no. How awful.’
‘Not really,’ said Sally laughing, ‘he was an artist. With a beard. And the smell of paint on his smock and there was this studio and he wanted to paint me in the nude. I was so pure in those days. He made me lie on this couch and he arranged my legs. He was always arranging my legs and then standing back to look at me and painting. And then one day when I was lying there he came over and bent my legs back and kissed me and then he was on top of me and his smock was up and…’
Eva sat and listened, fascinated. She could visualise it all so clearly, even the smell of paint in the studio and the brushes, Sally had had such an exciting life, so full of incident and so romantic in a dreadful sort of way. Eva tried to remember what she had been like at fourteen and not even going out with boys and there was Sally lying on a couch with a famous artist in his studio.
‘But he raped you,’ she said finally. ‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’
‘The police? You don’t understand. I was at this terribly exclusive school. They would have sent me home. It was progressive and all that but I shouldn’t have been out being painted by this artist and my parents would never have forgiven me. They were so strict.’ Sally sighed, overcome by the rigours of her wholly fictitious childhood. ‘And now you can see why I’m so afraid of being hurt by men. When you’ve been raped you know what penile aggression means.’
‘I suppose you do,’ said Eva, in some doubt as to what penile aggression was.
‘You see the world differently too. Like G says, nothing’s good and nothing’s bad. It just is.’
‘I went to a lecture on Buddhism once,’ said Eva, ‘and that’s what Mr Podgett said. He said–’
‘Zen’s all wrong. Like you just sit around waiting. That’s passive. You’ve got to make things happen. You sit around waiting long enough, you’re dead. Someone’s trampled all over you. You’ve got to see things happen your way and no one else’s’
‘That doesn’t sound very sociable,’ said Eva. ‘I mean if we all did just what we wanted all the time it wouldn’t be very nice for other people.’
‘Other people are hell,’ said Sally. ‘That’s Sartre and he should know. You do what you want is good and no moral kickback. Like G says, rats are the paradigm. You think rats go around thinking what’s good for other people?’
‘Well no, I don’t suppose they do,’ said Eva.
‘Right. Rats aren’t ethical. No way. They just do. They don’t get screwed up thinking.’
‘Do you think rats can think?’ asked Eva, now thoroughly engaged in the problems of rodent psychology.
‘Of course they can’t. Rats just are. No Schadenfreude with rats.’
‘What’s Schadenfreude?’
‘Second cousin to Weltschmerz,’ said Sally, stubbing her cigar out in the ashtray. ‘So we can all do what we want whenever we want to. That’s the message. It’s only people like G who’ve got the know bug who get balled up.’
‘No bug?’ said Eva.
‘They’ve got to know how everything works. Scientists. Lawrence was right. It’s all head and no body with G.’
‘Henry’s a bit like that,’ said Eva. ‘He’s always reading or talking about books. I’ve told him he doesn’t know what the real world is like.’
In the Mobile Murder Headquarters Wilt was learning. He sat opposite Inspector Flint whose face was registering increasing incredulity.
