A Dream of Wessex (18 page)

With his free hand he reached down and tore at the front of her gown. One button tore away, the other pulled the fabric with it, hanging on threads. The gown fell open and his hand snatched at her breast, twisting and pulling at the nipple. She tried to gasp, but he was choking her. He released her mouth for an instant, but before she could draw breath he had clamped his arm across her throat, making her gag. She could feel him pressing himself against her back, could feel the hardness of his arousal pushing into her buttocks.

She tried to scream, had no breath. She was clawing at his arm with her hands, kicking backwards ... anything to get him to release her!

He was fumbling with his trousers now, and she knew that this was the only moment when she had a chance of freedom. With all her strength she forced her body down, leaning forwards. His arm pulled back, throttling her. She straightened, but then, using her last resource of strength, forced herself forward again.

His arm weakened, and she stumbled away.

She turned to face him, one half of her gown torn from her body, hanging down. Paul stood before her, his penis jutting from the front of his trousers.

‘Don’t move!’ she said, and her bruised throat made her cough painfully. ‘Not one inch nearer! ‘

Paul, red in the face and breathing heavily, took a step towards her.

Julia saw the nail-scissors on the floor by the gas-fire, and snatched them up.

Holding one of the tiny blades out like a knife, Julia said: ‘Paul, I’ll kill you.’ He took another step, and she said: ‘I mean it!’

‘You like me rough,’ he said for the second time, but now it was without menace, almost pleadingly.

‘Get out.’ She was more terrified than she had ever been in her life.

They stared in glaring silence, like two animals cornered by each other, but then Paul relaxed.

He reached down into the front of his trousers, straightened himself up, zipped the fly. He walked slowly to the door, took down his jacket.

Julia watched his every movement.

When he had put on his jacket he swept back the hair from his face, and opened the door.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Stretton,’ he said loudly, into the corridor. ‘I thought you were playing hard to get.’

As the door slammed behind him, Julia dropped the scissors, and fell across the bed and sobbed uncontrollably.

Half an hour later, she went to the door, turned the lock, then went to have a bath. She had a purple bruise across her throat, and there were scratches on her cheek where his fingernails had raked her. Her right breast was swollen and sore. She felt soiled, dirtied.

But later, as she lay awake in the dark, trying for sleep, she realized that Paul could not threaten her again. She could match him psychologically. She knew him now as she had never known him before, and she could contain the knowledge.

And she felt, without fear, that Paul had the same knowledge of her.

While they were driving back from the funeral in Salisbury, Julia read the other reports as she had planned. Her heart and mind weren’t in them though, and she skimmed them, hoping to glean the necessary information with her eyes alone. Funerals always dispirited her, and the windswept grounds of the crematorium, with the procession of hearses leaving and arriving every few minutes, had seemed like the setting for a continuous, organized tragedy, staged scrupulously and tastefully.

Afterwards there had been the other ordeal: the nice cup of tea with her parents. Her father looked awkward and large in his dark suit, and her mother, tearful during the service, transferred her grief for Tom to nagging concern for Julia. ‘You don’t look as if you get any fresh air, dear,’ and ‘I hope they’re feeding you well’, and ‘Do you ever hear from that nice boy you used to see in London?’ I’m very busy, Mum, and I’m happy, and yes isn’t it sad about Tom, and I get all the fresh air I want, and I think we ought to be getting back pretty soon ...

Marilyn had gone with her to the tea-shop, and pretended not to listen to the conversation.

There had been no sign of Paul in the morning, but she did not even feel relief. If she had any feelings left about Paul, they were fatalistic ones. He might yet try to take revenge, but she was ready for anything. She was prepared to take the silk scarf from her throat, to show what it presently concealed, and bare her bruised breast if it would be enough to convince the others that it was Paul who was a threat to the projection, not her.

Marilyn had sensed that something climactic had happened the previous evening, but Julia had sidestepped her questions. When the participants returned from Wessex they were often in an upset state for hours afterwards, and Marilyn had grown accustomed to it. Although she was not directly involved with the projection, Marilyn had grown to know the participants, and had sometimes remarked to Julia on the way it was changing them.

‘How has it changed me?’ Julia had once asked her.

‘For the better,’ was the answer, but it was a laughing one and Marilyn had said no more.

As they drove out of Dorchester, and crossed the Frome Valley towards Maiden Castle and Bincombe House ‘beyond, Julia looked at the bleak, wind-blown scenery, trying to see it with her Wessex eyes, to see the calm, blue bay, dotted with boats. The southern side of Dorchester was ugly, with the post-war council houses of Victoria Park lining the hills. There was no sign of their existence in Wessex, evidence of the participants’ unconscious consensus of distaste.

The main road passed Maiden Castle, which loomed up on its hill to their right. Glancing at it, Julia said: ‘Marilyn, do you know any reason why I shouldn’t go back into the projection today?’

‘You know it isn’t anything to do with me.’

‘Yes, but I wondered if you’d heard anything.’

‘About you?’

‘Not specially,’ Julia said. ‘But I returned only the day before yesterday, and someone was saying that after Tom’s death the periods outside the projector should be longer.’

‘The only thing I’ve heard is that the medical examinations are going to be more rigorous.’

‘I’d heard that too.’

Before they had left for Salisbury in the morning, Don Mander had called a brief meeting. It was urgent that at least two people should rejoin the projection, as there was now a total of seven participants out, although Steve and Andy were not counted as full projection members. Colin Willment had gone on to London after the funeral, although it was likely he would be back in a day or two. Don Mander himself was undecided whether or not to take leave. Mary and Julia had offered themselves for an immediate return, although Mary needed at least one day to herself in London.

Of Paul Mason, nothing had been said.

When they reached Bincombe House, Julia went to her room and began to go through her clothes, wondering if she would need them in the next few days. There were a few that needed laundering, and she put them aside for the staff to deal with. She now had more clothes here than she had at her flat in London, but she never needed more than a few. She had brought most of them down with her the last time she came from London; now she was thinking she might take some of them back.

On the way down to Salisbury she had stopped for a snack with Marilyn, but hadn’t eaten since ... not even tea-cakes or scones in the afternoon, much to her parents’ surprise. She was hungry now, and if she was rejoining the projection she should stay that way. She wanted to see John Eliot or Mander, and see what they wanted her to do. In spite of her new equanimity about Paul, his barb about her needing long leave still clung to her.

She went downstairs, but there was no one about. She stood indecisively by the fireplace in the lounge for ten minutes, wondering where Paul had been during the day. Marilyn had told her on the way back from the funeral that he was staying at the Antelope Hotel in Dorchester, so that accounted for why she hadn’t seen him in Bincombe during the morning, but she had fully expected him to be there when they got back.

Upstairs, she found Mary Rickard packing a suitcase.

‘I hope your house is going to be all right,’ Julia said. What are you going to do about it?’

‘I’ll have to take out a court-order tomorrow, then give power of attorney to my ex-husband. It should be quite straightforward, because the house used to be in his name anyway.’

‘When do you hope to be back here?’

‘The day after tomorrow,’ Mary said. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you ... I thought you were back in Wessex.’

‘I’m still waiting to hear from John Eliot.’

‘From what I know, he’s waiting for you. He told me you were rejoining immediately after the funeral.’

‘So I’m going back! ‘

Julia felt a pleasant sense of relief, and also a thrill of excitement. Wessex was still there for her.

‘Mary, what do you think of Paul Mason?’

‘He seems a pleasant young man.’

As she said this, Mary was folding a skirt and she did not look at Julia.

‘Come on Mary. I’d like to know.’

‘He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?’

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘No ... but you said you were at university together.’

‘We were there at the same time,’ Julia said. ‘I remember him vaguely.’

‘So you say, dear. It doesn’t matter to me. I noticed the way he was watching you.’

For a moment Julia was tempted to tell her what had happened last night, but she had long been in the habit of not confiding in other members of the projection - consciously, at least - and she knew Mary less well than most.

‘I did go out with him once or twice.’

‘I said it doesn’t matter. In spite of what I said today, I was never one who believed we should treat each other as if we weren’t human. Anyway, I happen to know that before the projection began there was at least one affaire going on. It doesn’t seem to have made much difference.’

Julia said, with interest: ‘Who was it between?’

‘A man and a woman,’ Mary said, with a smile. ‘It was finished without blood or tears, as far as I know. So if you once had something going with Paul Mason, and you don’t want to talk about it, then that’s your business.’

‘You still haven’t told me what you think of him.’

Mary closed the suitcase lid, and sat down on the edge of her bed. She had large, soft features, kind eyes.

‘I’ll tell you, Julia, because that does matter to me. I think he’s a dangerous and self-centred man. I think he will harm the projection, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

She was speaking quietly, calmly. Mary rarely exaggerated: her reports were always exemplary of precise observation, telling images.

Julia said: ‘Do you know anything about him?’

‘Nothing I can’t see with my own eyes. And nothing I can’t work out for myself. The trustees have hired him because he’s just the kind of sharp young man they think the projection needs. But they don’t realize what a malevolent ambition could do.’

‘I thought Don Mander and John Eliot liked him.’

‘Eliot likes him, Don doesn’t. It doesn’t matter what the participants think, anyway. The trustees want their money’s worth, and they think a slick young operator with a background in gutter journalism and property speculation will get that for them. I suppose it’s our own fault, ultimately. The trustees have always been out of touch with the projection. Julia, Wessex is real for me. I don’t want it changed.’

Julia remembered Paul in her room; the calculating grin before he tried to rape her.

‘Mary, last night ... I spoke to Paul Mason. He was talking about what he was going to do with the projection.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing specific. But he dropped a large hint, said there was an obvious omission in the projection.’

‘I heard him talking to John Eliot,’ Mary said. ‘He was asking how the projection equipment was used in Wessex. Eliot said it was used to retrieve the participants, and Paul asked him if it could be used for anything else. Do you suppose this is the same thing?’

‘It might be. What did Eliot say?’

‘He said, of course, that it couldn’t. That’s all I heard.’

Julia said: ‘He’s up to something. Mary, what’s it going to be?’

‘We’ll find out eventually. But we have a consolation.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We know the projection better than he does. It’s ours, and we can keep it ours. There are thirty-eight of us, Julia, and only one of him. No one can change the projection alone ... Wessex is too deeply embedded now.’

Julia thought of Paul, the ambitious graduate who claimed that no job was too big for him and his talents, and had been right. Paul the career-climber, the rat-race smoothie. She knew Paul would have the will.

Mary said: ‘If we succumb to Paul he’ll do what he wants. Our only hope is to be united with ourselves.’

‘But only four of us know about Paul! And Colin’s on leave, and you’re going back to London.’

‘I’ve already talked to Colin. He feels the same as us. He’s entitled to his leave, but he’ll be coming back as soon as he can. Maybe in a day or two. I’ll be back in two days’ time. As for the others ... they’ll have to be told as they’re retrieved. Although if Paul makes changes, they’ll see what’s happening for themselves while they’re in Wessex.’

Mary stood up, and took her coat down from the door.

‘I want to catch the last train,’ she said. ‘And I’ll have to ring for a taxi.’

Julia watched as Mary checked that the suitcase was firmly closed, then glanced about the room to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Julia followed her out of the room, and they went downstairs together. Don Mander was waiting for them in the hall.

Julia caught Mary’s arm as they turned on the stairs, holding her back before Don saw them. She had suddenly realized that after Mary left she and Don would be the only two active participants at Bincombe. The thought frightened her, and made her understand how Mary had become an unexpected ally against Paul. Don Mander she didn’t trust; he seemed altogether too ready to accept the trustees’ appointment of Paul.

‘Mary,’ she said softly, ‘can’t we do something to stop Paul?’

‘I think not, dear. He joined the projection this afternoon.’