Consent Read online

  *

  Naturally in the early days, once I felt settled in my studies, my thoughts turned away from theoretical anxieties and ever more towards technique. Chiefly I began to presume that bugs, webcams, homing beacons and surveillance devices generally would become my daily tools, so I acquired many of them, and familiarised myself eagerly, having always enjoyed the process of acquaintanceship with new technology. Successes were rare, however, and in the end I had to admit my disappointment. The problem was not that the devices failed, though there were those times. They were also incriminating and traceable if found, but that was not the problem either. The problem, really, was that they worked too well.

  At this stage, you have to understand, I wasn’t good at this. Without comparators, I don’t know if I’m good at it now, but back then I was worse, for sure. I lost people, frequently, and this primed me to believe that information was scarce and precious, that I could never have too much. I first understood the mistakenness of this way of thinking with subject eighteen, Nina M, who was a script writer and editor, though it was hard to say how successfully she was either, and indeed trying to say became my point of interest. Nina worked most days in a coffee shop near her home. The place was large, and did little business outside mealtimes. Presumably for this reason management did not seem to mind Nina and a number of other regulars lingering all day, ordering little, sometimes even making phone calls in their seats. I was lucky because a laundrette stood across the road, where I could easily watch while washing. Despite not hearing any of the conversations between the regulars, I gradually formed the view that it was insensitive, this state of residence, since it transformed the cafe from one workplace into two, and as a result made the work of the table staff a kind of servitude. The discomfort I felt watching, and the sullenness that I fancied I saw in the servers’ eyes, did not derive per se from their poor pay in relation to the freelancers they served, nor because of any high-handedness I saw on the freelancers’ part, but rather because of the collegial spirit that existed around them but without them. Normally servers have this to themselves, and it gives them the dignity of hosting customers on their own turf, but the freelancers took this away by memorising the menus and knowing the table numbers and asking after the cook by name. (And he, Alfredo, did not help things by so often coming out to greet them.) At first I held Nina guilty only of thoughtlessness. Later I began to believe that she did enjoy her dominion over the table staff because it balanced her own feelings of professional inadequacy. If she knew she was not yet admired for her work, she could at least be resented. Far from being insensitive, it was sensitivity malignly applied.

  Anyway, the difficulty of the situation for me was that I could not spend time there without myself becoming one of the regulars. I knew that Nina had her own table opposite the door, table four, so late one afternoon, when she had left, I went and sat there and affixed a tiny transmitting microphone with a wad of chewing gum to the table’s underside. The signal from this microphone I could receive and record across the road with another device inside my washing. I bought a dozen table cloths, and various uniforms and napkins, and got a story ready about being a contract caterer. I began to feel that this was not enough to explain my staying in the laundrette for days on end, however, so I installed a different microphone, one which would store recordings rather than transmit them. It was slightly larger, but still easy to bury in the gum. After four days in total, I gave up. The bugging wasn’t difficult. What was, which I had not considered, was managing all of the material that bugging makes. The microphone was noise-activated of course, but in a coffee shop, and indeed in most public places, there is always noise, which ends up creating maybe five hours of tape each day. Once you’ve been over the hard to hear sections several times, that’s at least eight of listening. I could fairly quickly find Nina’s arrival in the morning. She’d be greeted by the other regulars or by the staff, be asked how she was, and give a brief description. The rest was an ordeal. I don’t know about you, but I can’t concentrate for long on the sound of nothing happening. The lunch choices of other customers, their conversations with their wives and boyfriends and clients, even Nina’s conversations with them, and her chats about friends’ love lives, the clatter of crockery and the endless, endless shrieks of the coffee machine … There may well have been some good material there, but I wouldn’t know because I spent most of the time in a stupor, too bored to hear it. I’d formulate the next day’s plans, or think about past subjects, and the tape would run on and on. Then I’d notice, reprove myself, rewind, and start losing interest again. I began to resent Nina myself, for putting me through it.

  Since Nina I’ve understood that technology has particular uses. I’ll use it to record a moment that I expect to be interesting, or when I need to follow someone in real time in order to react, such as with that young mother in the service station. Otherwise it’s a last resort, like my wallet plan for Amelia. I explain this now in order to give context to my sense of wonder at what I got from Frances. In a way I was breaking my own rules by installing the equipment speculatively, but I did expect the house to be quiet, and I felt that it would help me stay out of sight, having so impulsively introduced myself to her the previous day. Plus it was an opportunity I’d not had before and might never have again.

  *

  I tried to walk casually back to the van. As far as I could tell the devices were working properly, though it was hard to say for sure in a silent house. Moments later she returned, no longer carrying the clothes. My breathing became loud in my headphones like I was the whole world.

  She shut the door. I heard it. Thenceforth I heard all the other little shifts and whispers of her behaviour. Oh, but it was glorious! I’m not sure I’ve ever known such free-wheeling rapture. The whooshing of her steam iron and the way the stand rattled when she put it down. The clinks of tea-making. Her singing with the radio on. Such unprotectedness. Yet there I was, protecting her.

  Presently Stephanie returned and I got all their talk. Stephanie had a boyfriend but Frances didn’t. They discussed the forthcoming meeting, and the shape of her predicament. How I pined to comfort her. I wanted to be with her all the time. When she left I could have walked up to her and taken her hand without a word.

  But I let her go. I knew where she was going, and that I had to be there. In triumph, I drove home. I put music on myself and sang. On my return I showered, ate, backed up all the data, and excitedly made notes still in a towel. When the time came to leave, I had to force myself to stop writing.

  I should quickly explain my policy on disguises. I think the trick, insofar as there is a trick, is not to try to look like someone else, as anything below mastery only draws the eye. Instead I dress as an aspect or a version of myself. Studies suggest that hair is recognition’s reference point, so I slick mine back, and add to this plain-lensed spectacles. This changes how I look enough, I think, to deflect most glances. Those who stare may recognise me, it is true, but I’ll have nothing but my style choices to account for. Consider by contrast how you might explain a false moustache or nose. In short the aim is not to conceal yourself entirely. It is to conceal that anything is being concealed.

  Dressed thus therefore I taxied to the Rising Sun and I wasn’t kept waiting. At 5.38 Frances drifted out of the building and across the street. All the way across and into the Rising Sun itself. Steady, I thought, gripping my drink. Be steady here. I’d sat in overlooking pubs so many times that I’d taken their safety almost as a rule. In their leisure time people like to be some distance from their work. I also knew to keep calm. A busy pub is a good hiding place.

  She took a table far from me and drank a gin and tonic. I was at the front, where the best view of her office was, and it was difficult to look round. When I did look I saw she was alone and pale. I’d expected her to go directly to the station. I’d been half out of my seat to go with her. This silent drinking though, I didn’t like it. It wasn’t good at all. Steady. The thought was in my min
d to lose the spectacles, ruffle my hair and stride into the picture. I was desperate to know what had happened, of course, but now I yearned even more to offer the comfort that only I could give. I also knew two days in a row would be strange.

  I’d seen the man looking. I’ve become an expert in men’s looks. He started talking. I don’t know what he said and I didn’t need to know. This shirted bulge, this dead anatomy. You know what his words are, and that he practises their use. You know he’d seen that she was prone. You see him smile at the right times and buy more drinks. (You watch sharply for adulterants.) He lets her do the talking, and you watch him nod, the ladies’ man. You move round your table to get a better angle. You know they’re talking about her work and see him feast on it indifferently. Will. She talks a lot about Will. Her boss, that scumbag you’d heard her say at home. The man grins like it’s a big joke when what’s funny is what’ll happen to him. Men like him, men like Will. For them Frances is meat or money. Frances, the most precious of all. They know nothing about her. Who she really is. They have no place in her mind.

  Frances went to the bar. She put her back against it while she waited. I turned to face the window in order not to be seen, though she had seemed to be gazing past me at her office. A man was leaving, the tall man I had seen escort her out the day before. Will himself, it had to be, with his jealousy and his sandwich ploy. Frances had told me all about his ways to keep her down. When I turned back to read her expression she had gone. Will flashed past my window. The ladies’ man was staring at the door.

  Will.

  I heard her shout.

  Will!

  I couldn’t get the rest cleanly, but it was like something left her with the shouting, because when she came back she looked abruptly smaller. The ladies’ man got drinks and put a hand on her back which stayed there.

  I stood and tried to leave without being seen.

  Hi, Frances said.

  Oh. Hi, I said. I was going to call. Are you OK?

  Not really.

  I’m Patrick.

  An arm steamed in. I shook its hand.

  I work just round the corner, I said like I needed to explain.

  Oh yes? What business are you in?

  He’s a writer.

  She remembered.

  Yeah? What do you write about?

  Oh anything really. Ideas, stories, stuff … Basically I just like writing and reading.

  My company, we had a job with a publisher the other day. Matinee Press they were called. Do you know them?

  I don’t. I’m really sorry. I’m in a hurry. Good to meet you, Patrick. Frances, I’ll call soon.

  OK. I’ll …

  Whatever else she said I didn’t catch.

  *

  Stations are crowded places, which tends to make you worry you will lose your subject if you don’t keep close. This in turn can make you conspicuous and shifty. With experience, however, you learn that the opposite is true, that railway stations induce highly regular behaviour, meaning that if you do lose sight of someone you have an unusually good chance of finding them again, if you stay calm. There’s usually only a short list of places they could go, remember and, when there, they usually wait. If they’re running it will be to catch a train, which can be your reason to run after them. If they vanish search each platform, beginning with your best guess. Nothing is guaranteed of course, but you’ll need bad luck to lose them altogether.

  On this occasion it helped that refurbishment work had hidden the downward escalator and a section of the concourse behind blue hoardings. These funnelled the crowd and slowed Will down. I saw his head waiting to start the stairs, then at the bottom I saw which way he turned. When I arrived on the platform he was reading a large poster across the tracks, at the end where the trains scream in. It was an old advertisement, for coffee. The edges were peeling and torn. The whole wall behind us was untiled render. Above, where the electronic display and the security cameras ought to be, just the cables hung knotted and waiting. All along the platform it was the same. No cameras. No information. I jostled forwards until I was directly behind him. He’d finished with the coffee advert now, and put in earphones. He had his phone in both hands and was reading, like this was the most ordinary evening in the world.

  The rails began to shiver and gleam. I doubt he noticed. I’m not sure he ever noticed anything. Some shuffling behind packed us tighter together. As the train approached I got a chestful of his elbows. He made no effort to withdraw them. The train roared. The noise was dizzying. I slipped a foot between his legs, wrapped my heel around his ankle and looking absently along the platform with my hand wedged in the shadows gave him a sharp push in the lower back. As he stumbled I grimaced and jerked my foot away as though trodden on. As he fell I reached out but failed to catch him. I did try. Because in fact I was a little early. He had a few seconds just draped on the rails. I’d not planned this, so I’d not worked on timings. It’s the surprised eyes that I remember, and the grime on his suit. The glow of his phone on the blackened ground.

  And though the driver was really quite prompt in putting the brakes on, we were at the fast end, as I say, so there was no chance at all to stop in time. There was just a swirling in the crowd, a kind of blunted surge, and someone shouting Help him! Help him! and Will shouting something inaudible, like there was anything that could be done. And in his struggles I think he must have touched the live rail because there was a heavy bang and that scared everybody back. There was a scattering of screams. He looked surprised at nothing now. He twitched a bit. I don’t know the effects of electrocution on the body. I’m not a doctor. And he was lying slanted so one wheel, the near wheel, caught his trousers first and sort of wound them in, dragging the whole leg-half of his body inwards and tightening the cloth around the shin bone until the metal bit and one leg then the other sort of stiffened upwards and puckered off, the first leg more cleanly because of the inclusion of the ankle with the second, leaving only a partly crushed wet shoe to drop from the wheel’s side. And during this there was a kind of gargle from him, but briefly, because the far wheel met his head straight afterwards, hair first then eye. It severed his earphone cable and kind of folded his skull contents through his mouth. And I don’t know how much blood I had expected, I hadn’t done any expecting, but there was a lot, though it didn’t look like blood, it looked like oil, black oil, except when electric flashes lit the red. And there was smoke, but not the plastic-smelling kind machines make, something more natural. And crying. Someone fully wailing now. And the smack of perhaps a pint of something landing on the floor and the smell of vomit definitely. And the station manager and staff were fairly quick, to give them credit. Someone climbed in and reversed the train, and the others evacuated everyone except those of us who had been nearby and had seen the incident and were needed to give statements. We were led up the escalator to an office where we watched a pair of paramedics rushing down the stairs to do, we knew, no good at all.

  We waited. We were told the police would come. And there were fourteen of us. We counted. A young couple, four commuters, an old lady, and a family of six tourists, I think. They spoke another language to each other. One of them, a boy about fourteen, had been the vomiter who we all felt sorry for and disgusted by. We waited until the authorities had found an interpreter and a fresh T-shirt for the boy and finally one of the commuters said, Did anyone see what happened? Did he just trip? And a few others said, I think so. And I said, I was right behind him. I don’t know what happened. I think he tried to step back. Maybe he got tangled with the woman next to me, but he trod on my foot. By the time I realised he was already falling. It was all so quick. And the first person said, Yes, he seemed to stumble on the way down. There was an agreeing murmur and some mentions of his shoelaces, which might have been untied. People said the shoelaces on smart shoes were a nightmare. One had a friend who broke his collarbone. And it was established that there would usually be cameras but they might not have been installed. There’d been none
for months. And it was said that nobody knew the man or had even noticed him before the accident, unless you count noticing that he was tall. And everyone believed it was an accident because his face down there said he never meant it, the poor guy. It was just an awful thing, a surprise to many that it was not a common thing, the way the platforms were so crowded most days. It’s bound to happen. And when the police arrived, that’s what they got, a room of us, all sad and agreeing, quiet, not crying yet, just wanting to be alone with our loved ones.

  Are you doing anything later? he said eventually, and she said, laughing, No. He said, We could go and get something to eat. Are you hungry? Uneasy about that, the lights, the menus, she said, I was going to have something at home. Then she said, You can join me if you like. So now they are in the taxi and her thoughts are of Steph. Two texts she’s sent without reply, which could mean anything. Steph could be at Greg’s. She could be at home. The taxi could pull in and there could be the blue of television on the curtains, Steph on the sofa, Steph with her sewing stuff out, Steph eating. They’d have to make conversation. Steph would pretend to go to bed.

  Patrick’s hand is on her knee. He’s kissing her again and she responds, the beard startling in the dark. The hand moves along her thigh.

  Just a bit further up, she says as the taxi dawdles.