Trial of Passion Read Online Free Page A

property, contracts, and commercial transactions.
    They say poor Jim Mendel won’t recover from his prostate surgery. I could have been dean at thirty-eight, Gowan. Instead, I am about to become — in the lexicon of podspeak — outplaced. That’s likely to occur even if I’m acquitted — given the tenor of the times in the politically correct institutions that our modern universities have become.
    I’m actually a fairly regular bloke for a rapist. I shootpool, better at billiards. Still play a little old boys’ rugby. I drink beer with the students.
    And I go out with single women. This, of course, will be painted as the crime of the century when I’m on the witness stand. There must be something abnormal about a chap who’s been a bachelor all his thirty-eight years. The jury will be thinking:This character can’t form lasting relationships. Let’s see, he’s not gay, so he must be some other kind of pervert.
    Let me get under way. I’ll go straight to the bone. Pardon the expression. Gowan, I was so drunk I couldn’t have got it up with a tow truck. Can you call expert evidence about that?
She
was drunk. And how does
that
play out? Now, witness, you say she was passed out on your couch. Yes, she was. And do you deny you gave into your animal instincts and became a lusting beast and had your will of this innocent young creature?
    Why had she painted herself red? The colour of blood — some pagan ritual while I slept?
    I taught Kimberley Martin for a time this year, as you know. She’s twenty-three, middle-class, but rising: about to be married into excessive wealth. She’s in second year, and a rather — please don’t think I’d ever be
unkind
to Kimberley — less than brilliant student. She scrimped by first year. She’s by no means dull-witted, but she seems to have a lot of different things on the go. The Drama Society, for one. Watch out for the stage tears.
    I’m not going to pretend she was just one of that sea of shining faces sitting in the lecture hall. She is not cosmetically disadvantaged. She’s a traffic-stopper, and you’d have to have a terminal case of myopia not to notice. Long ringlets of crimped russet hair, always brushing it away from those big, green, innocent eyes. Wide, poutylips. Tall. Graceful. Self-assured. Hip. And engaged. To a handsome tycoon.
    You know how students will try to avoid catching your eye for fear they will be asked to discuss, say, the rule against perpetuities. Not Kimberley. She always gave me the full frontal look. She didn’t know an answer one time, so she told a joke instead. It was funny, we laughed. I liked her then.
    I started getting the impression she was coming on to me. It may be she uses her looks as a tool — perhaps she thought she could charm her way to a passing grade in Property 11. She started hanging about after lectures, wanting me to explain some obscure rule or other. The kind of woman who touches as she talks — delicately, always with two fingertips. Heavy eye contact and lots of come-hither erotic nuances. In the meantime, I was trying to appear hopelessly professorial.
    Then, with odd regularity, I started to bump into her on the campus. Between classes. On the grounds. In the cafeteria. Oh, would you mind if I brought my coffee over? Not at all, said the fly to the spider. There was also a visit to my office in mid-November. She wanted some career advice; she was interested in family law. She carried on about how her betrothed wanted babies; she wanted a career.
    And I’m about to lose mine. I love my work. I’m popular with the students. I’m a good teacher, Gowan. I was.
    And here I am spending New Year’s Eve by my fucking self in my fucking den. I didn’t accept any invitations, to everyone’s vast relief. It spoils the party when someone’s pinging off the walls.
    Gowan, can’t anyone talk to Arthur