This was not a dream.
In Cinema III at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh, in either 2001 or ’02 (at any rate, I hadn’t yet met Lena), which is tiny and seats perhaps sixty or seventy or even fewer, the usher sits through the film on the corner seat of the last row nearest to the left-hand rear exit. On this particular occasion, I was seated one place away from her, with another man between us. She was a familiar face, one of a few staff members with slight learning difficulties employed by the Filmhouse at the time, primarily as ushers.
It must have been a daytime scene in the movie because the theatre was especially well lit right then, but I became conscious of some movement to my left. I kept facing forward, but stole a glance a while later. The man on my left was fondling the breasts of the usher next to him.
I was so startled that I peeked again. Yes, absolutely, I’d been right the first time; his right hand was roving on the outside of her black Filmhouse T-shirt, but with his eyes never leaving the screen. The young woman was facing forward too, and it was hard to be sure whether she was enjoying this grope, because she was sitting upright with her own hands in her lap (I remember now, there was a small exit light above her on the ceiling that must have also brightened the spot). But crucially, she hadn’t protested or pushed him away or made any sound, nor did she get up and walk out. The door was just to her left, with friends and colleagues immediately outside.
So the man could have been her boyfriend. In fact, the only reason I’d had this sudden doubt that she was being molested was her (mild) disability. In any other case — an adult woman in a familiar workplace who remained silent when someone was touching her — I would have assumed she didn’t mind. Right?
The groping continued for the rest of the film. Once I’d noticed, I couldn’t help being aware of it. Sometimes he took a break and switched hands. But her hands stayed in her lap; she never once touched him back, nor did he at any point touch himself (perhaps he deemed that one step too far with me right beside him). They remained impressively soundless throughout.
She was at the door as usual when the film was over, and replied normally to my goodbye, which made me more confident that I’d done well not to intervene. Afterwards I wondered for a long time whether perhaps she had been petrified — sitting bolt upright like that, her own hands unmoving — and that I had basically witnessed, and remained silent during, a public rape. I saw her again at many more films, but never the man. She was still working there when Lena and I started dating in early 2003, and one day, after watching Salma Hayek’s Frida together, I asked Lena for her opinion on this incident.
‘You’re right, it is impossible to be sure. He could have just brazenly been taking advantage of her fear, and perhaps inexperience. Or they could have been together at the time. I guess what I’d say is, if you’d seen or heard the slightest hint of resistance from her, you would have had to intervene. But otherwise, yes, given what you saw, and her silence over the entire film and remaining in her seat when she could have easily walked out, I have to agree that the primary reason for your doubt was her disability and not the groping itself.’
And so Lena let me off the hook that time. On this occasion however, with the woman in the bus, after our initial mistaken assumption, which the three of us were able to confirm for one another, that the man was her partner or friend, it had become emphatically clear that his attention was unwanted. He was loudly violating her in public.
And yet I had again sat and watched. It was my brother and Lena who immediately knew how to react.
What is missing in me?