St. Urbain's Horseman (54 page)

“I sat at a table, ordered a coffee, and then this bird sat down beside me, high on pot. We got to talking.”

“Did you tell the
girl,”
he said, flashing Harry a warning look, “who you were?”

“I did not say I was Jacob Hersh. I'm attractive to women, you see. I don't need to chat them up. Or write to them on House of Commons notepaper, like John Profumo.”

Mr. Justice Beal's hands fluttered. Mr. Pound sat back, beaming; he whispered something to his junior, who smiled, holding a hand to his mouth.

“My question was –”

“I told her my name was Stein.”

“And then what happened?”

“I did not offer her a part in a film. I invited her back to the house for a drink and some fun.”

“And then what happened?”

“She couldn't wait, that's what happened.”

“But she did read from the script we had all seen?”

“We played a game or two.”

Harry denied using force. Miss Loebner was more than eager for it, he said. He did not strike her with a riding crop. “But she asked me to. A lot of them like it, you know. Especially your Kensington Gore types. It excites them.”

“I would appreciate it immensely if you would confine your remarks to the events that took place in the house.”

He had not committed sodomy with Miss Loebner. “She begged me to, but it's not my line. I'm not an establishment type. I was nobody's fag at Eton.”

Mr. Pound rose to cross-examine Harry, his appetite mingled with pity, and he quickly pointed out that the medical evidence had shown traces of sperm in Miss Loebner's anus.

“On her impassioned urging, I attempted entry. I teased her backside, but I couldn't bring myself to actually do it.”

“Then you did not commit sodomy with Miss Loebner, in spite of her invitation?”

“No. The proof is when Jake – Hersh – came downstairs again she said to him, Hey, man, your friend won't bugger me, he's not the back-door type, what about you?”

Jake, who was to testify next, cringed in the dock.

“Could you tell us,” Mr. Pound asked, “how Miss Loebner left the house?”

“Like I said, we wanted her to stay to breakfast, but, suddenly, she panicked. She said she had to get back to her place before her employer wakened, but would we like to see her tomorrow night.”

“She offered to return?”

“She said she hadn't had such a ball since she'd had it off with a couple of West Indians.”

Then Mr. Pound shifted to the question of Sergeant Hoare. “Did you say to Sergeant Hoare, when he came to arrest you, that No Cossack is going to plant a bloody brick on me?”

“It has happened, hasn't it? It's a matter of record.”

“You did say it to him, then?”

“Yes. I'm experienced in these matters, don't you see?”

Mr. Pound faltered. He turned to Mr. Justice Beal for instruction. Leaping up, Mr. Coxe asked, “Would your lordship permit me to have a word with my client? I did already caution him, but …”

“Will it be necessary for the jury to leave the court?”

“No, your lordship.”

“Do you wish to have a word with him here or below?”

“Here, your lordship.”

Mr. Coxe warned Harry that nobody knew of his previous record; it could not be introduced until after the jury had reached their verdict. Even then, only if he were found guilty.

Resuming for the prosecution, Mr. Pound asked, “You say you played a game or two with Miss Loebner.
Did that include concealing her clothes?”

“No. It did not. She was free to leave at any time.”

As Harry quit the witness box, bristling with defiance, Jake sensed the jury's revulsion.

Jake was overcome with despair, he felt undone, as he himself was sworn in.

Sir Lionel asked, “Were you expected at your home on the night of June twelfth?”

“No. I was to arrive the following day.”

“Where were you coming from?”

“Montreal.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was on family business.”

Questioned more closely, Jake allowed he had gone to attend his father's funeral and, as is the religious custom, was observing a week of mourning.

“What happened when you arrived at your house?”

“I'm afraid I took Stein and Miss Loebner by surprise.”

“Did Miss Loebner seem distressed?”

“She most certainly did not.”

“What was she wearing?”

“She was nude.”

“Didn't this embarrass her?”

“Far from it.”

“Did Stein then offer you the girl? Did he say, Do you want her now? She's crazy for it all ways.”

“No. He did not.”

“And then what happened?”

“She came to my bedroom, with brandy on a tray.”

“At your request?”

“No. Of her own volition.”

“Did you discuss your rifle with her?”

“No. I did not.”

“What happened in your bedroom?”

“She attempted to fondle my penis, but I told her I was tired. I wished to have a bath. I sent her downstairs.”

Jake said it was four o'clock when he wakened and went downstairs himself.

“Did you waken because you heard disturbing sounds from downstairs?”

“I wakened with a headache. I heard laughter from downstairs. Moans of pleasure. That's all.”

They skipped Jake's quarrel with Harry over the saddle and the rifle. Jake admitted he couldn't remember whether his dressing gown was belted or not.

“You were still in a distressed state.”

“That is correct.”

“How did Miss Loebner greet you?”

Jake hesitated. He bit his lip. “She called out, Hey, man, your friend won't bugger me, he's not the back-door type, what about you?”

“What was your reply?”

“Some lame joke. I don't remember.”

“What happened then?”

“I sat down on the sofa. She sat down beside me.”

“And then what happened?”

“She began to stroke my penis.”

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing.”

There was a pause.

“I was tired,” Jake said. “It was soothing.”

“Then what happened?”

“She got overexcited. I made her stop.”

“And what happened next?”

“She was insulted. We quarreled. Suddenly, I had had quite enough. I insisted she leave the house.”

“Did you handle her roughly?”

“No. Not roughly. Well, I did shove her, perhaps.”

“And then what happened?”

“She said, I will fix you for this, you mother-fucker bastard.”

It was time to adjourn, and Mr. Pound deferred his cross-examination of Hersh until Monday morning.

Harry, who had begun to flake and peel ever since they had first appeared together in Magistrates' Court, had no skin left now. Only flesh. Over the long and agonizing weekend, a largely sleepless weekend, Jake was in and out of Ruthy's flat, where Harry was staying.

“You looked at me like I was a lump of shit,” Harry charged. “When I finished my testimony, I looked at you in the dock, my friend, and I saw it in your eyes, no different from the others. Harry Stein is a lump of shit.”

Ruthy, whatever resources she had being exhausted, was perpetually in tears.

“If they put this man behind bars, I'm going to wear black until the day he comes out. I will stand in front of your door every morning dressed in black.”

“I mightn't be home, Ruthy. We may be tossed into prison together.”

“I've been a widow once. I don't deserve this. God shouldn't let me be a widow a second time.”

Harry broke out in shingles. He had a cold sore on his lip. He vacillated between castigating Jake, threatening him, and then suddenly revealing the gentle side of his nature, the crushed soul within. He was exhausting, his mood changing from moment to moment.

“If they find me guilty, and not you, I'm going to alter my testimony. I'm going to say you challenged me to bugger her.”

“That would be a lie,” Jake replied wearily.

“Oh, listen to that! I say! Aren't you lying in there?”

“Yes. Like a trooper.”

“Didn't you have any fun with her?”

“Yes, Harry. I did.”

Harry assumed a falsetto voice. “Did she place her hand on your cock? Yes, Sir Fuck Face, it was ever so soothing. Soothing, was it? Is that what it was?”

“Shettup, Harry.”

Then, as Jake seemed despondent, Harry said without rancor, “Not to worry, mate. It will all be over for you tomorrow.”

“Will it?”

“In the end, it's class that counts in this country. There are only two rotters in there. Me, and Ingrid.” He ruffled Jake's hair. “Hey, remember that day we had champagne together at the White Elephant?”

“Yeah. That was fun.”

“Out of all the people you knew, you chose me to celebrate your son's birth with.”

“Yes,” Jake lied.

“You said not everybody's rotten. Well, I don't think you're rotten. You've been a friend to me, just like you said.”

And, all at once, he was seized with indignation again.

“It's the marks on her arm that's going to do us in. You made them, throwing her out. Not me. If you hadn't lost your temper, neither of us would be in court.”

Sunday night Jake did not even attempt to sleep. He lay in bed with Nancy, chain-smoking and drinking cognac.

“My life seems to function in compartments,” he said. “When I'm in Montreal, I don't believe in my life here with you and the children. In court, it seems I was born in the dock, there was no life before and there will be nothing after. But lying here with you, I can't even believe that I'm expected to turn up in court again in the morning.”

Maybe to be sentenced, she thought.

“They're skinning me alive in there, Nancy. I am insulted. I have never been so profoundly insulted.”

“It will all be over tomorrow evening.”

“The lies. My God, we're all lying. The barristers. Harry, me, Ingrid. Everybody's lying. It's incredible.”

In the morning, he walked Sammy to school, holding his hand all the way. He returned to the house and took Molly to school, telling her a story about Rabbi Akiba. Once more, he refused to allow Nancy to come to the Old Bailey. He absolutely forbade it. Ormsby-Fletcher arrived in his black Humber.

“I am expecting you for dinner,” Nancy said.

“Yes. Certainly. See you later, darling.”

Mrs. Hersh's head darted out of the door.

“Good luck,
ketzelle.”

“Thanks, Maw.”

At 10:30, Jake was sworn in again, and Mr. Pound began his cross-examination.

It went well to begin with, but then Jake had had enough. He was undone by nerves and indignation.

“You have told us,” Mr. Pound said, “how you found it …” here he paused, determined to find the exact word … “how you found it … 
soothing
 … to have Miss Loebner stroke your penis.”

“Yes.”

“Would you not then have found
fellatio
even more … soothing?”

“I did not allow her to take me in her mouth.”

“That was not the question.”

“If,” Jake replied, seething, “we are now discussing sexual pleasures, in the abstract, as it were, well, yes, I do not hold
fellatio
to be a disagreeable act.”

“But not with Miss Loebner?”

“No.”

“Because she's German?”

“Because she did not appeal to me.”

“Have you ever smoked cannabis?”

“I'm a gin man. It's a question of generations, I suppose … different tastes …”

“But have you ever smoked it?”

“Yes, I have,” he replied sharply. “Once or twice.”

In his closing speech for the Crown, Mr. Pound, his style florid, excoriated the permissive society, warning the jury that the very foundations of society as they knew it were threatened, unless somebody had the common sense to call a halt. He raked over Harry's testimony and demeanor with scorn. “Stein's case,” he said, “is pathetically clear-cut. He is a disappointed little fellow, clearly not attractive to women, who forced his gross attentions on an innocent girl. Lying to her, drugging her, and finally beating her. Stein has not had the benefit of a first-class education or upbringing. I daresay my learned friend will play on this stale tune soon enough, telling you about this man's deprived background, as if it were a license for rape and sodomy. The defense will try to bring tears to your eyes, members of the jury, telling you that though this poor little chap could get glasses on National Health, the welfare state failed to provide him with girls.” Mr. Pound clucked his tongue. He shook his head. “And, after all, these are permissive days, and everything the prisoner has seen in the so-called adult cinema, or in Soho strip clubs, tells him that he has a right to everything. Even to satisfying his very special tastes. For Stein, you know, is something of a photographer. As you have heard, he regularly photographs nude girls in chains. The sort of girls available for such work in squalid Soho basements. Oh, yes, Stein's case is all too familiar. He is flotsam. The driftwood that floats in the brackish waters of the I'm-all-right-Jack society. Stroll through the streets of Soho, the back alleys of this once proud city, and within the shadow of Nelson's column you will uncover a plethora of Steins, lingering outside pornography shops and strip-club displays …”

Mr. Pound reminded the jury of Jake's affluence and called their attention once more to the saddle and riding crop kept by a man who was no equestrian himself. “You must ask yourselves why, members of the jury, and to what purpose.” Hersh, he suggested, was possibly the true villain of this sordid affair. “At once more privileged, I put it to you, and more blameworthy. He is not an embittered little man,
like Stein, denied his share of materialism's cornucopia. He is well educated, successful, talented, married, with three children. He lives in style, mingling with cinema stars in Mayfair's most fashionable restaurants.
Look at it this way. He is so successful in his chosen field that he earns rather more annually than the prime minister of this country
. Why, oh why, you must be asking yourselves, would such a man, seemingly blessed with all that this world can provide, stoop to such perversions? Let me suggest this to you, members of the jury, he is so arrogant a man, accustomed to directing fantasies under set conditions, that this time he attempted to carry over into actuality the prerequisites of his trade,
he wished to direct real people in x-certificate scenes, as it were.”