Let Down Your Hair (10 page)

Ryan’s harrowing scream splintered the room.

“Get off her!” shrieked Andrea, and as I jumped down from the desk the scream cut off abruptly with the whipcrack sound of her belting him across the face. “Get
off
her!”
Crack.
“
Get off her!
”
Crack.

He crashed to the floor, coughing violently and clutching his eyes, and I seized Andrea’s arm before she belted him again.

“Stop it!” I screamed, as she wrenched her arm from my grip. “
Stop it!
” I grabbed her shirt and yanked her away from him. “
Andrea!
”

She stopped then, twisting my hands off her shirt and turning around to seize my shoulders in a brutal grip. “Don’t go near him, Sage. Don’t go near him.”

Her white-ringed eyes raised goosebumps on my back. “He
wasn’t raping me
.”

Behind her, Ryan’s coughing subsided into a hideous wet rasping. I tried to break free, but her grip on my shoulders tightened until I squirmed with pain.

“You were screaming,” said Andrea, a furious tremor in her voice. “I heard you through the door. ‘Get off, get off’!”

“That was because I
heard you coming!
”

Her grip slackened. I wrenched myself free, and crouched beside Ryan. He was curled in a ball now, trembling and twitching like a dying spider. His hands were clamped over his eyes, and blood-tinged mucus was dribbling from his nose and both corners of his open, wheezing mouth.

My stomach contracted with horror. Every muscle in me wanted to hold him and soothe him, but he was in so much pain all I dared do was kneel and stroke his shoulder with my fingertips, the Mace on him making my own eyes sting. “Are you OK?” I said, my voice breaking, knowing he wasn’t, but not knowing what else to say.

He shook his head, and I glimpsed the reddening evidence of Andrea’s blows between his fingers. “I can’t see,” he said, in a fractured voice so unlike his own it made me shiver. The voice of an artist who’d lost his sight.

“It’s just Mace,” I said, trying to sound calm. “I’ll get some water and wash it out.”

As I got up, I saw Andrea was on the phone. She lowered her voice and cupped the receiver as I rummaged in my bag for a bottle of water. I gathered some of our fallen clothes and knelt beside Ryan again, putting on my shirt. “I’ve got the water.”

He nodded and peeled his hands off his face. My heart shrank. The skin around his eyes was puffy and raw, and a thin fluid was oozing from his lashes. His cheeks were blotchy, and blood was seeping from his left nostril into the saliva dripping from his mouth.

I poured a shaky trickle across his eyelids. “Is that better?”

“A bit,” he said, his eyes still pinched shut.

“I’ll get you a doctor.”

I draped his T-shirt and jeans over his shivering body and got up again, retrieving my pants and pulling them on before I hurried across to the phone. Andrea had finished her call, and she was standing by the window.

I called an ambulance and gave them directions to the office. When I hung up, Andrea turned to me, her eyes unfocused. As if I were transparent and she was staring through my face at someone else.

“We thought you’d left,” I said, pulling on my pants, not sure she could hear me. “For the conference.”

“I see,” said Andrea, in a stilted voice. “So you thought you’d have a quick fuck on my desk.”

The word ‘fuck’ punctured me, leaving a black hole that drained the magic from everything. Ryan kissing me in the desk chair, telling me I was beautiful, helping me find my mother.

“Actually, no,” I said with tremulous defiance. “He came here to help me find out more about my mother. The information you
hid
from me.”

Andrea gave a brief, bitter laugh. “That’s what he told you, was it?”

The sneering note in her voice unsettled me. “What do you mean?”

Andrea gave me a bleak, cynical smile. “How well do you know this man, Sage? Any father or brother I might have met in court?”

Court?
My jaw dropped. “You think Ryan seduced me to get to
you?
To avenge someone?”

Another
ding
from the elevator outside made adrenalin spike in my blood. Heavy footsteps started down the corridor, and I heard the crackle of a two-way radio. Someone rapped on the wall outside the door.

“Security,” said a brusque male voice.

“In here,” said Andrea.

The owner of the voice entered the room, short and stocky in a pale blue shirt. “Evening ma’am,” he said to Andrea, looking around. His gaze fell on Ryan.

“I’ve called an ambulance,” I said, in a low, trembling voice. “He’s been assaulted. By her.” My hand flicked at Andrea as if hurling a brick. “She
maced
him, and she
hit
him, and she—”

“Miss!” The security guard held up a hand. “I need you to calm down.” He turned to Andrea. “Now, ma’am. When you called, you said—”

“What did you tell him?” I started towards Andrea and the security guard stepped across to block me.

“Miss—”

“Did you tell him Ryan raped me?”

I tried to shove past, but the security guard grabbed me by the wrist. “Miss—”

“
You did, didn’t you?
”

“
Miss!
” He yanked me away from Andrea, and his cool, firm voice broke through my rage. “I need you to calm down and listen. The police are on their way, and it’s their job to go into exactly who did what. Until then, sit down and stay calm. Can you do that for me?”

I nodded. The guard released my wrist and I made my way back to Ryan. The twitching of his limbs had eased, but his breath was shallow and rasping, and his hands were still clamped over his eyes. I sat on the floor beside him and very gently stroked his hair.

The third ding of the night rang down the corridor. The security guard went to look out the door, and I judged from his nod that the footsteps clomping towards us belonged to the police.

I glanced around the office. Andrea was standing by the window looking out, her face unreadable. Torn articles and books lay scattered over and around her desk. The keylogger was still in her computer. Her filing cabinet had an obvious gash in its lock and lockpicking tools lined on top. I felt suddenly cold, as if the rain beating on the windows was running down my back.

Two policeman arrived at the doorway and took in the scene. One pulled out a notebook and started making notes.

“Evening, everyone,” said the other officer, who was older and stouter than his colleague. He looked down at Ryan.

“Mace,” said the security guard.

The older officer nodded. “There’s an ambulance waiting downstairs. Could you go down and tell them to come up?
”

The security guard nodded and headed for the elevator.

“Now,” said the older officer. “I need to ask a few questions. Which of you is Professor Rampion?”

“I am,” said Andrea, her voice flat and ungracious. She didn’t like policemen.

“Got some photo ID for me, Professor?”

She pulled her wallet from the pocket on the front of her suitcase and tossed her staff card on the desk.

“Thanks, Professor. Now. About fifteen minutes ago, we received an urgent call from university security. Can you tell me what happened? In your own words?”

“I was meant to be on a five o’clock flight,” she said, shoving her card into her wallet, “but it was canceled because of the storm.”

“So what happened then?”

“I caught a cab here from the airport to get some notes I’d forgotten.”

The other policeman scribbled in his notebook. “What time would that have been?”

“About six.”

About six
. I bowed my head over Ryan and closed my eyes, as if my eyelids could make everything that had happened since then vanish.

“And then?”

“As I walked towards my office, I heard my granddaughter screaming, so I—”

I lifted my head. “Don’t you dare say he was raping me.”

Andrea raised her voice. “So I took out the—”

I rose to my feet. “Don’t you
dare
,” I said through gritted teeth, and this time she stopped. I swung around to face the policemen. “There was no sexual assault. We were—”

“Miss,” interrupted the older policeman, “settle down.”

As he spoke, another
ding
from the elevator rang down the corridor. This time the footsteps were joined by the rattling squeak of a gurney.

The policeman glanced at his watch. “Look, ladies, how about we chat about this at the station? The one a few blocks from here. You OK to get there?”

The paramedics wheeled the gurney into the office, followed by the security guard carrying a bucket of water.

Andrea shrugged. “We can walk.”

The policemen exchanged glances, and the older one nodded. “How about I take you there in the car?” he said. “These guys won’t be long.”

“Stand back please,” said one of the paramedics.

I backed away, and the paramedic crouched down beside Ryan. “How are you doing, sir? Can you tell me what happened?” 

“Mace,” said Ryan through his hands.

“We need to wash your eyes and face,” said the paramedic. “Can you sit up for me?”

Ryan peeled his hands away and my guts plunged again at the sight of his swollen, oozing face. The paramedic set Ryan with his back against the wall, and started rinsing his eyes with a spray bottle. 

The younger policeman approached me. “Could I check some ID, Miss?” 

I tore my eyes from Ryan, fumbled in my bag and pulled out my wallet. As I handed over my student ID, I heard a sharp gasp from Ryan.

“
What are you doing?
” I shrieked, rushing over to him. 

The paramedic held up his hand to stall me. “We just put disinfectant on one of his cuts, ma'am. Gave him a shock.”

“I’m OK, Sage,” said Ryan, in weak, scratchy voice that chilled me. He groped for my hand and held it while the paramedics dabbed him dry.

“You OK to get dressed?” asked one of the paramedics.

Ryan nodded, and I grabbed his jeans and T-shirt and helped him to his feet. As he struggled into his clothes, the younger policeman approached him.

“Could I have your name please, sir?”

“Ryan Prince.”

He dug out his wallet and handed it over. The policeman took out his driver’s licence, wrote down the details and handed the wallet back. Ryan tucked it back in his pocket, and the paramedics helped him onto the gurney.

Panic stirred again. “Where are you taking him?”

I directed my question at the paramedics, but it was the younger policeman who replied. “To hospital. Those injuries need to be looked at. I’ll be accompanying him.” He gathered up the rest of Ryan’s clothes and placed them on the foot of the gurney.

“Can I come?”

The policeman hesitated, and then shook his head firmly. “He’ll be fine. Make your statement, go home and get some rest. You can come and see him in the morning.”

I stepped back to let the paramedics wheel the gurney out, and something snapped under my foot. As they trundled out the door, Ryan lifted his swollen face and tried to make it smile. “I’ll be OK, Sage.”

The rasp in his voice tore my heart. As the gurney receded down the corridor, I looked down and saw I’d trodden on my paua shell glasses. They were broken in two places on the spreading dark stain where Ryan had been lying on the carpet.

The ceiling of the police station foyer was lined with fluorescent tubes. As I waited to give my statement, one of them malfunctioned and buzzed above my head like a wasp. Everything was the color of concrete, from the grille on the front of the empty reception desk to the two benches bolted to the floor.

The door to my left swung open with a
thunk
that jolted my bones. Andrea emerged, her face closed and grim, still pulling her black wheelie suitcase. I braced myself for battle, but she stalked past my bench to a rack of community pamphlets.

The older policeman nodded at me from the doorway. “Miss Rampion? Come on through.”

He led me to a small, shabby interview room, where we sat on plastic chairs at a desk. Not opposite each other, as I would have expected, but side by side in front of a computer. Next to the mouse pad was a little sign that read Officer Ross Murray.

“Now,” he said, opening a new document headed Witness Statement, “let’s begin with you telling me what happened.”

In the clinical cool of the police station, the events of the night seemed barely plausible. Like a story that had happened to someone else. The only memory that felt like mine was that of Ryan’s battered, oozing face, lodged in me like a hot coal.

“I don’t know where to start.”

Officer Murray tapped a finger on the desk, looking thoughtful. “How about you start with the older lady, Professor Rampion.”

My jaw tightened. “She’s my grandmother.”

“Tell me about her.”

My feelings about Andrea were so warped by anger that I struggled to frame a response. After several false starts, I gave him an account of Andrea’s role in my life until the day I began my PhD. Not the naked, weepy account I’d given Ryan, but a stilted summary of the facts.

Officer Murray nodded solemnly, typing a series of bullet points on his computer. “What about the young man?” He consulted his notebook. “Ryan Prince.”

Image of his body receding on the gurney filled my mind, so vivid I could almost smell the Mace in his eyes. “He’s my boyfriend.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I met him at a drawing class.”

I’d never told anyone about Ryan before, but once I’d begun, the story poured from me, faltering only when I reached the point where I’d let him into Andrea’s office to break into her computer and filing cabinet.

My gaze dropped to the desk. “That’s illegal, isn’t it? Hacking. Violation of privacy.”

Officer Murray hesitated. “Look,” he said at length, “just tell me what happened. Don’t stress about those things now.”

I nodded, but his expression told me that the time to stress about those things would come.

When I finished my story, he scrolled back to the top of his document. “OK. Let’s convert this into a statement.”

About ten minutes later, he printed off three pages and laid them on the desk in front of me.

“My name is Sage Rampion, and I am 22 years old. I have been in a sexual relationship with Ryan Prince for two and a half months. I was raised from the age of six months by my grandmother, Professor Andrea Rampion. She has been hiding mail sent to me by my mother, Emmeline Rampion. This is why Ryan and I decided to search the filing cabinet and computer in Andrea’s office…”

The last few months of my life, boiled down into short, bald sentences, on paper still warm from the laser printer. I read through the statement a couple of times and looked up at Officer Murray.

“Anything you want to change?” he said.

I shook my head and he handed me a pen. “What about Ryan?” I said after I’d signed the statement.

“Depends on the doctors,” he said, adding his own signature. “He was in a bad way. They might keep him in hospital overnight.”

“Which hospital?”

“I’ll have to check. Probably the William Wilde.”

He led me down the corridor and paused by the door to the foyer, looking at me kindly. “He’ll be fine. Go home and get some rest.”

Andrea was sitting on one of the benches. She was writing on a pamphlet called
Women and Safety
, with the expression she wore when marking a really bad essay. The sight of her twisted my stomach with a mix of mutiny and fear.

“Let’s go,” she snapped, voice tight. She shoved the pamphlet in her suitcase, and stood. Our eyes locked for the first time since we’d left her office.

“What,” I said, in a quiet voice, “did you tell the police?”

“Police statements are confidential.” Her words were cold, but she averted her eyes as she said them.

Fury simmered. “Did you lay charges against Ryan?”

She strode out the door without answering and I marched after her. It was dark outside, and the rain had stopped, leaving dripping windowsills and rushing gutters that sprayed and splashed under the wheels of passing cars.

Andrea reached the corner and lifted her hand. A taxi pulled over, sluicing dirty water onto the footpath. The driver jumped out and reached for her suitcase, but she waved him away and heaved it into the boot by herself. She banged it shut and yanked open the back door.

“Get in,” she said, in the caustic tones she reserved for traitors to feminism.

A day ago, I would have hung my head and hopped in obediently. Tonight I stood on the pavement and stared her down. “Did you charge Ryan with sexual assault?”

“
Get in.
”

I pulled out my keyring, yanked off the keys to her office and house, and held them out.

Andrea stared at them as if I was offering her a dead body. “What are you doing?” Her tone was shrill now, balanced on the edge between anger and panic.

“Going.” I turned my hand over. The keys made a tinny metallic ring as they bounced and came to rest on the pavement.

Andrea stared at them for a moment, then she grabbed my wrist and tried to haul me towards the door. “Get in the fucking cab.”

I twisted free with a self-defense move she’d taught me herself, and stepped back, hands up to fend her off if she tried to grab me again.

Her arms fell to her sides, a patchy flush rising in her cheeks. “So where are you going, Sage? To
Ryan?
” She uttered his name with a savagery that would have raised blisters on steel.

“Ryan’s in hospital.” I hitched my backpack onto my shoulder.

“So what’ll he do when he gets out? Give you a diamond ring, make you his little princess?”

Her voice was trembling, but I felt disconnected, as if I was listening through glass. “That’s our business,” I said, looking out into the rain.

“And what if he doesn’t?”

I turned and saw with a shock that Andrea’s face was streaked with tears.

“How long have you known this man?” she demanded. “Two months?”

“I—”

“You haven’t learned
anything
, have you?” She was shouting now, the muscles of her face contorted into a rigid, blotchy mask that disturbed me more deeply than her anger. “Twenty-two years of feminist education and you’re learned
nothing!
What happens after the fairytale, Sage? What happens then? How are you going support yourself?
Sell your body?
”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“I’ll tell you what happens.” She seized my arm again with an urgent, paralysing grip, and this time I didn’t pull away. “He’ll run off with someone younger, leaving you to be the mother and the maid and the breadwinner all by yourself. And people will sympathize with
him.
Because you nagged him, or didn’t fuck him enough, or let yourself go. He’ll
shaft
you, Sage. That’s men. That’s what they do.” Her grip tightened. “Now get in the cab, Sage. Please.”

Her voice was hushed, desperate. It wasn’t only Andrea’s husband who’d left her. Her daughter left too, twelve years later. And now me. I was the third person in Andrea’s life to walk out.

Something broke in me. I looked into Andrea’s wild eyes and took a half-step toward her. For a brief, awful moment, a flicker of hope crossed her features. Then I noticed the taxi driver, thumb on his meter, using the sudden silence to catch my eye.

Andrea glanced at him, and the wildness vanished from her face. She released my arm and smeared a hand across her cheeks, as though her tears offended her. “Yes, turn it on,” she snapped. She swiped the keys from the ground, and climbed into the taxi. “So are you coming?”

She waited for my answer, her face still and tense, but her tears had beaten all the words out of me. My arm was still hanging mid-air, palm open, but the rest of me didn’t budge. I had to look away before I shook my head.

“Fine, then,” she sneered. “Run away. Try living in a world ruled by men. And when you’re weeping on my doorstep in a month’s time, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The door slammed, trapping the corner of her coat and leaving a dangling gray flag that fluttered as the engine rumbled to life. I watched it jerk and flap as the taxi pulled away through a puddle, splintering the air with drops like the fragments of a shattering glass jar.