Girls Like That.
A response to Jodie Comer's forensic interrogation of Olivier award winning, Suzie Miller's PRIMA FACIE. One in three.
'One in Three'
Last night I went to a National Theatre screening of Olivier award-winning Suzie Miller's, 'Prima Facie'. Jodie Comer's extraordinary performance as Tessa, and all other roles in her story at once, rattled my cage. Tessa addresses the audience, 'Look to your left. Look to your right. It's one of us,' (you can see it in each other's eyes, do you see?) and I daren't look in my friends' eyes. One in three women (often men too the media reminds us today) are sexually assaulted. But how do you know? And have things changed? And is it the words? And aren't we lucky not to be under house arrest? And we have got the vote, and, well everything really. All of it. How can you know what is wrong? 'Did you take your own clothes off?' (ibid) Well, yes.
*
I don't have the language. I can hardly call it an 'extract' or a 'taster' which feels all a bit too jolly - but this is a slice of my life, lit up.
*
In any case at all, it's hard to know where the story starts and while you're wading through the backstory, the jury are tapping their feet, hanging on for the facts. They want to know what happened and why it matters now. All the characters in my own case exist in, and are focalised through, one actor. It's all going on with me, here, like gestalt therapy on LSD - round and round the kitchen table. And I'd like to thank Jodie Comer for showcasing the technique. I've been toying with writing about it for a while. I do write about this one sometimes. I drop a line down somewhere. Put stuff out; hide it; delete it. Start again but that's a new thing. Just this year, really. I had buried it entirely for fifty years.
*
I had only ever discussed it once, just once, 50 years ago, immediately after it happened. I needed to talk to someone who approved of being on The Pill and I'll call her Julia.
I told Julia I had found it really shocking. Frightening. I told her that it hurt.
He sort of had but, no not really; he hadn't forced himself on me; well not really. Not exactly. No. Yes. Well I'm still not sure. Well, he'd just said, do this so I just did. But then. He just went, so. Well, no, I don't think I know what he would have made of my parents, so. It would have been a bit weird if we'd gone inside. So. Yes. Well, better than a car, yes. Well I guess. It really was kind of horrible. It was as if he thought, I don't know. It was as if.
'Who are we talking about?' she asked. I tried to describe him. I hardly knew his name but I did know he did something with engines. Cars, maybe. The boatyard maybe. He was from that way. Stocky. Quiet.
'Oh, you mean Lumpy!' She was laughing, rolling cigarettes, lighting two, passing me one, smiling at the confidence shared between two liberated women, on The Pill and in charge. I can't remember now if he was actually known as Lumpy locally, but we all knew he was older than we were by a country mile, and that he was 'odd'. He'd be 78 by now. Dead I expect and this is no witch-hunt. Who he is doesn't matter. He is a one-in-three. 'He doesn't talk much, does he?' Julia said. She thought this was hilarious too. 'But he's very, very rough, isn't he? You do mean you had sex with him?' Julia was just checking.
'Yes.'
'And he's really, very rough, isn't he?' she laughed. 'Honestly, I didn't know it could be like that. Like a tornado or something, right?' She looked like she'd won some kind of a prize and in a way we both had. Losing your virginity as often as possible was all the rage in 1974; we were women, new women; we all had needs and we were ready, or at least, that's what I thought. I'd sound it out like a passage from a play I'd had to learn and repeat without thinking about it. What I think now, fifty years later, is that a very needy inner child, desperate for guidance and acceptance was at the wheel of a very fast car, and driving blindfolded.
It was this same Julia who'd found the rough Lumpy bloke 'hilarious in bed/shed/car' who, being a year or two older than me, had told me all about sex in the first place. She'd been put in charge of me while her parents had supper with mine somewhere else. I was then a very naive, podgy, pre-pubescent 11 year old. Julia must have been all of 13 but her older sister had told her all about 'it' and what went on and so, by the system of Chinese-Whispers we relied on before the Internet, I found out about things I was certain my parents knew nothing about. I mean, she told me everything. Everything. I told her I thought it all sounded absolutely horrible but she assured me it wasn't. 'You'll love it,' she promised. 'It feels really nice.' Her sister had even had a baby and was expecting another. This was proof I guessed. I mean, if it didn't feel nice, she'd've stopped at just one, wouldn't she? And their Mum had had five of them, so ...'
And so, seven years later, and on the day after my 18th birthday party, I decided that if Julia had found this Lumpy bloke's way of doing 'it' hilarious, and everyone else really thought it all felt nice, there must be something wrong with me. There must be something wrong with one in three of us, if Suzie Miler's 'Prima Facie's' to be believed.
-Sunday 6th October 1974 -
It was fantastic. An October cool enough for bare foot dancing while cosy inside and the low ceilings making home souk like, with the tapestried rugs on the rough bricks, wood. The collage of home. My 18th. Finally. Grown up. My final A level year. Far out! My mother had done something amazing with some chilli in the preserving pan. My father was overwhelmed by piles of Party 7s and the place was buzzing. Not enough paper cups. Beer in Tea cups. There were people from every corner who I'd met over the prior several years, working at the weekend and in the evening after school, in the psychiatric hospitals dotted about the countryside. People from the Panto; people from the drama club; the artists. No one from school. George had brought his bongos. Mike had come with his guitar. My sister and her friend Helen were shushing over a cake, opening another bottle of red. Lumpy had come to the front door. 'I'm not coming in' he said. I was sad. I'd been waiting. I was so glad he'd turned up. He was terribly late. Grubby. His hands were rough. He just said, 'show me your dad's summerhouse' and chased me to the top of the garden. 'Knickers, off; lift that, lie on that.' He threw me hard against the royal blue fold up sunbed, clawing his belt from his waist with his other hand. I whined. 'Shut up,' he hissed, pulling my head back by a clump of my sleek brunette, birthday hair so I could not look up at him as he forced a dry square peg into a round hole, raw, rough, repeatedly and suddenly, 'Fat rich kid' he's saying, slapping my left thigh, my right grazed by his buckle, bleeding, stinging. He's buckling up and gone. I see the front gate slam shut behind him. I can hear the groan of his van turning over. I can see through the back of the kitchen window, my sister and her friend and the cake. The car duster is in the porch. I push it into my knickers and my long Laura Ashley flowery dress falls heavily to the floor. When I rush through the front door, double crossing my fingers, hoping no one knows I wasn't there for those four or five minutes, there's a cheer and the cake. And my sister's saying, 'she'll always be our crying Cherry' as I blow out the candles on my mother's special birthday orange cake. I wonder, am I fat? I decide not to eat any cake. And everybody sings.
************
The Pill (available to some unmarried women since 1967) lent some a form of toxic freedom interpreted by men who, of the then existent two sexes, had much less freedom to lose. If you were on The Pill it meant you were easy; if you weren't you were frigid or pregnant; if you were pregnant you were a 'girl like that' and a let down; if you said no you meant yes and if you said yes then you were asking for it; and if you said, 'but not like that' you were a cock tease and anybody's. If you took your knickers off yourself, what did you expect?
I got away with it. The best you could hope for is you wouldn’t get caught. I got away with leaving my own birthday party; I got away with being sexually assaulted in my father's summerhouse, by a man with a reputation for letting women get what they asked for. Julia knew. Lumpy or whatever he's called knew. I knew. Three out of three of us knew.
In 1974, when I was 18, it really was still found to be the woman's fault, usually. Men accused of rape were, ritually, pitied. Men who accused women of assault were laughing stock. But now we know that one in three know and now you know too.
It wasn't ok then and it isn't ok now. Pass it on.
Well done. I’m so glad you’re ok. Blowing out your birthday cake afterwards… so devastating. I’m so sorry.
Thank you for sharing this, Cherry. It wasn’t okay then, it’s not okay now, and it will never be okay. But I’m glad you’re okay. 🙏🏻