Cat and Mouse

by Christianna Brand

  “She actually needs nursing, does she?”

  “Not exactly nursing: but looking after. Depends how things are, of course, how her face is and what’s been done to it last, and all that. And whether she’s under drugs or not. But the thing is that you can’t leave her, you see. ’Tisn’t safe.”

  “How do you mean,” said Tinka, already with a glimmering of horror. “Not safe?”

  “Always trying to do herself in, dear. Got hold of the morphia that time. You have to watch her like a hawk. He’s always afraid shell throw herself over the Tarren.”

  “Over the Red Precipice?”

  “That’s right, dear, though why they call it red I don’t know, except that there was a battle of some sort there in the olden days or something of the sort. After the blood, I suppose. There’s one bit got a sort of a fascination for her. Like a kind of a ledge it is, running along under the edge of the precipice. You can step down onto it, but my goodness, when you’re there it’s like standing in the air. Fair turns my stomach, it does. You look down and down. …”

  Katinka had stood there, swaying, for one brief moment before Mr. Chucky had barred her headlong flight from the caves. “She hasn’t actually tried to throw herself over?”

  “We’re always afraid she will, because why’s she so keen on going there, otherwise? I keep a pretty good grip on her arm when she insists on going that way on her walks.”

  “She does go out then?”

  “My dear,” said Mrs. Love, “she’s human. She’s just a person like the rest of us, only that her poor face is so bad. She needs exercise and fresh air, you can’t keep her shut up in a room because she isn’t exactly looking her best. Of course she walks a bit funny, but she can scramble along pretty well except for steps and that.”

  “Don’t you ever meet anyone?”

  “There’s not many comes up this way, now that Mr. Carlyon’s asked the police to warn them off the path. She always wears a chiffon scarf: she doesn’t like even Dai to see her too plain, and she’ll pull it a little across her face when she talks to him. But we never hardly see anyone; now and again a couple of chaps walking across the mountains to Neath, or kids after berries—we just dodge down behind a rock till they’re gone.” She sighed. “Me! Going for walks along a wet old mountain, tied to a creature that can’t as much as speak! I don’t know why I stick it really, except it’s for Mr. Carlyon, him being so patient and good. But my gentleman friend’s getting fed up with me being so long away—him being in London, of course.”

  “Have you got a gentleman friend?” said Katinka. “More than I have!” (If only Carlyon had been her “gentleman friend”!)

  “Haven’t I?” said Mrs. Love, throwing up her fat little feet with a crow of confidential laughter. “And not Mr. Love, either, I can tell you! Love! Not much love lost between us two, there wasn’t. Fussed off after the first week and I never set eyes on him since. So that’s how I met my friend, because I went off to the pictures to take my mind off it, like, and it seems I sat down next to him. Pathetic, he says it was, me sitting there crying me eyes out, and Laurel and Hardy showing; so after we come out he asks me, very respectful, whether I’d care for a cuppa tea with him, and there it is, we’ve been going steady ever since. He doesn’t get much fun at home—well, you know what I mean, dear—and he can’t abide me going on these country jobs. But the money’s good and I can’t resist poor Mr. Carlyon and that’s the fact.” She fished out a photograph and held it out before Katinka with an appraising air. “Not much of an oil painting, poor old Harry, but there you are, it’s funny with sex—love at first sight it was, and we’ve been going steady now, it must be nearly twelve years.”

  So the rainbow did not fade for everyone.

  She was late down to breakfast next morning. Carlyon had nearly finished. He enquired politely after her ankle. “It’s better, thank you,” said Katinka, answering cool civility with cool civility. “I’m going to get down the path today if it kills me.”

  He stood at the table, one hand holding the napkin scrunched up, in the act of flinging it down. “You’re going?”

  “If I can possibly manage it.”

  “I see,” he said. He thought for a moment. “If you’d been staying I’d intended to ask you to do us a—well, a kindness.”

  “A kindness?” said Katinka. “Me?”

  He looked at her, troubled and reluctant. “The truth is—well, Angela, my wife, she’s asked if you would go and visit her. She never sees a soul from the outside world, just us three; and now that you know the worst about her she seems to think that you might not be too much—repelled.”

  Tears of pity and eagerness filled Tinka’s eyes. “Of course; of course I’ll go.”

  “She’s not well enough to get up today,” he said. “She’s staying in bed. I’ll see that the light’s kept dim.”

  She protested. “No, don’t. I don’t mind a bit, I swear I don’t and after all, I’ve seen her face now, I shan’t mind any more.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of you seeing her face,” said Carlyon coldly. “I was thinking of her seeing yours. You have a very expressive face, Miss Jones.”

  All her brave pity, all her longing to be of service, ebbed out through her high-heeled shoes. “Well, all right. I’ll do whatever you say. Just tell me what you want. I won’t try any more—there’s no use hoping to make you believe me, or understand.”

  “No hope at all,” he said. “Well, at ten o’clock, then?” He went out of the room.

  An hour later he led her, still limping a little, up the creaking stairs. “And if you don’t mind, Miss Jones, nothing personal.”

  “How do you mean, nothing personal?”

  “Just talk to her quietly, tell her about things in the outside world, London and so forth. She loves to hear what’s going on and a woman can tell her about fashions and films and rubbish like that—you won’t find she minds that, she likes to know what’s going on. But no questions, please. Nothing about herself.”

  “How can I ask her questions, anyway?” said Tinka, rather bewildered. “I thought she couldn’t speak.”

  “She can indicate yes and no, I suppose,” said Carlyon, impatiently. “And we don’t want even her yesses and noes appearing in the tabloid press.”

  She stood absolutely stock still. “My God! You don’t still think that I should question her—and after all that’s happened?”

  “How do I know?” said Carlyon. “You were willing enough to nose her out and make capital out of her, before. Why should you have more mercy on her now?”

  She saw that he was weary unto death, worn out with the long night of unsleeping anguish; she would not exacerbate him with further protestations. “All right, all right, I’ll do just what you say.” He led her to the end of the corridor and pushed open a door and went through a room furnished as a sitting-room, and tapped softly at another door and opened it; and they were in the dark.

  Mrs. Love rose from the bedside, gradually discernible as Tinka’s eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness. She came forward and kindly took her hand; and led her towards the bed which stood across the window, though now the curtains were closely drawn. “There, Mrs. Carlyon, dear, here’s the young lady come to see you and ever so nice it’ll be, won’t it, to see a fresh face—well, to hear a fresh voice, dear, that’s more like it, isn’t it?” She placed a chair for Katinka beside the bed. “There you are, Miss Jones, you have a nice chat to Mrs. Carlyon, tell her how dear old London’s looking, and all that.” She turned back to Carlyon. He said: “Thank you, Mrs. Love. You can go, if you like; I shall be here.” He sat down at a small table across the room and in the dim light, Katinka saw him put his head in his hands. He was very still. She turned back to the bed.

  The shape of the head was outlined on the pillow, but the terrible patched face was only faintly discernible in the kindly darkness. There was a movement in the bed, and she realized that it was a hand put out towards her own, and, cravenly calculating, knew it
to be the left hand, the good hand, the little uninjured white hand that had appeared through the broken glass of the window and begun to write the pitiful plea that had, only too effectively, been answered. Even had it been the horrible claw of the right hand, however, she would have taken it in her own friendly clasp; this she swore to herself. But it was the good hand.

  She began to talk to Angela Carlyon.

  Thankful beyond words to be of use, she talked on and on. London, the shops, the films, the office where she worked, the other girls. … Miss Let’s-be-Lovely and the incessant curling and uncurling and pomading and massaging and Set-it-at-Homing of her unfortunate hair. There were gruesome chokings which she took to be appreciative laughter. She had never worked so hard in her life, but the habit of clowning in the pubs up and down Fleet Street stood her in good stead. She was exhausted by the time Mrs. Love put her head inside the door. “It’s long after eleven, Mr. Carlyon.”

  Carlyon stood up abruptly. “I think that will have to do, darling. Miss Jones must be tired.”

  The little hand jerked desperately at Katinka’s. “I don’t think Mrs. Carlyon wants me to go yet.”

  “You’re both tired,” said Carlyon. “Let Miss Jones go now, sweetheart. Perhaps she can come again.” He bent down and with infinite tenderness, pushed aside the soft scarf that half shrouded her, and kissed the revolting, ravaged face. “I’m glad you’ve been happy, but say goodbye now to Miss Jones.” He stood a little aside, waiting.

  Katinka got up from her chair. “Well, goodbye, Mrs. Carlyon.”

  The hand jerked impatiently in hers. She stood irresolute, not liking to pull it too sharply away. It felt as though… Yes. Inside her own palm, a pointed nail was moving with little downward strokes. An A. An N? Yes, surely that was an N. And a—a G. ANGela I suppose, thought Katinka, she wants me to call her by her Christian name. She said, tentatively, a little embarrassed: “Or may I say, ‘Goodbye, Angela’?”

  But the hand jerked again, the weary head turned from side to side on the pillow in repudiation. Inside her palm, the gentle stroking began again. An A. That was certain. And then a downstroke; another, a diagonal, downstroke; an upstroke. An N. Or the beginning of an M. But Carlyon had come back to the bedside and Katinka whipped her hand away, shivering at the thought that he might suspect her of secret communication with his wife. Angela, however, made no effort to conceal her attempts at a message. She opened out Katinka’s palm and looked up at him with her little gleaming, piggy blue eyes, as though imploring his assistance.

  One had come to think of him as with a sort of habitual austerity; it was strange to hear the light endearments come so easily to his lips. He put down a hand and stroked the soft, fair hair. “Now, angel, darling, you must let Miss Jones go; that’s enough. She can come and see you another time.”

  The poor head nodded violently. She put out a hand and suddenly switched on the little bedside lamp. It was the bad hand: the gruesome bunch of knuckle and skin, long red nails bunched dreadfully together. Tinka saw that it was embellished with a ring, a ring that seemed vaguely familiar, a big ring, half the size of a walnut, perhaps, of carved white jade; the head and breast of a sphinx with great, backward-sweeping wings. It was infinitely sad—the hideous claw, long past all beauty, wearing the beautiful ring.

  She was trying to get it off; the good hand wrenching at the ring, trying to force it over the crooked finger with dreadful, gobbling noises of entreaty and eagerness. Carlyon said, patiently: “Now, dearest—no more. You must let Miss Jones come away.”

  Katinka could bear no longer the sickening wrenching at the broken knuckles. “I must go now. I’ll come back again soon if you’ll let me, but I must go now.” It was too frightful if the poor creature were going to try to repay her visit, or tempt her back, by giving her the ring. “I must say goodbye and go.”

  The sad head nodded again, the hands were still. She lay back, relaxed, against the pillow. Poor, terrible, patched face, that once had been “a chocolate box.” What Carlyon could do, she could. Katinka bent down and placed a little kiss at the corner of the ruined mouth; and went away.

  At the door, she turned. Angela Carlyon lay back against the pillows, head bent, her two hands, one sweet, one horrible, crossed upon her breast. The white jade ring gleamed on the crooked finger. Where had Katinka seen that ring before?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THAT AFTERNOON A VISITOR came to Penderyn. Katinka, dozing in the afternoon sunshine on a wooden bench outside the sitting-room window, awoke to see a woman coming up the path: an elderly woman, walking painfully with the aid of two rubber-tipped walking sticks, in an elegant town coat and hat that made a black blot against the grey-green of the mountain grass. A woman who had once been beautiful: a Londoner, thought Katinka, or a Parisian or a New Yorker—and dressed still for London or Paris or New York, and not for dragging herself up the rough path of a mountain district in Wales. There was something odd about her, something about the way she held her head, something about the direct way in which she moved, staring straight ahead of her, towards the front door of the house. Katinka leaned forward to get a better view of her, and in doing so knocked her book off the edge of the seat and gave an involuntary exclamation of annoyance. The woman went steadily on, not turning her head; and Katinka thought, that’s it, of course. She’s deaf.

  The visitor disappeared round the corner to the front door, and Katinka leaned back against the cushions and went on with her book. She did not know how long she had read, but she came back to the present to hear Carlyon’s suddenly raised voice. He was saying: “Please speak more quietly.”

  “I will say what I like,” said the woman’s voice, in reply.

  “You’re free to say what you like,” said Carlyon. “But please don’t say it so loud.” He paused for half a moment and Katinka realized that he had reflected that the woman could not understand what he was saying. He repeated low, but distinctly: “You do not know how loudly you are speaking.”

  The woman lowered her voice at once; but she said with a sort of implacable insistence: “I have come because I wish to know about my niece’s affairs. I have a perfect right.”

  “I wrote to you at the time of the accident. I told you all about the whole situation.”

  “What?” said the woman.

  “I say, I wrote to you when it happened.”

  “I can’t hear you,” said the woman. “What I say is that you have not answered my letters.”

  “I wrote to you fully in America,” said Carlyon, steadily. “I wrote to your solicitors. They know the whole situation.”

  She began to fluster a little. Tinka, only half consciously lending an ear, could imagine the beautiful mouth beginning weakly to tremble, the drooping eyes filling with tears of frustration. “I’ve been very ill,” the woman said, fretfully. “The shock made me worse. After all, I brought her up from her childhood. I had a relapse and then I couldn’t get home. It’s been so long; I feel so helpless. I can’t hear what they’re saying, I can’t discuss things any more, I never know what’s going on around me. I can’t hear what you’re saying—not properly. …”

  “I’ll write it down for you,” said Carlyon, and his voice was kind.

  “I want to know about her affairs,” insisted the woman.

  Now Carlyon’s voice grew angry, grew impatient, exasperated. “I can’t go over and over all that any more. It’s all been explained to you, to your own family lawyers, to everyone within reach… Oh, lord, you can’t hear me, can you? Just a moment…” There was a little silence, evidently while he wrote and the woman read. Then she said: “I know all that. But she was a very rich girl.”

  “I had no need of her money,” said Carlyon stiffly. Silence again while he wrote.

  “I know, I know,” said the woman fretfully. “And the solicitors assure me… But some of the things are mine. We just let her have them while we were in America. I wrote to her: on loan, I said. Pictures and things. Valuable things. Of course we were wil
ling for her to have the use of them, what was the use of their wasting away in store? But they were only on loan.”

  “She has more need of them than ever now,” said Carlyon in a low voice; but she did not hear, her voice overlaid his as she said: “That’s mine. That picture’s one of mine—the Sisley snow scene.”

  “If she agrees that it’s yours, you must have it back,” said Carlyon.

  “And the Dresden pieces.”

  “Anything she tells me is yours, you’re welcome to.”

  “After all, they’re valuable,” said the woman querulously. “Very valuable.”

  “I know. And I say that if you claim them and she agrees that they’re yours, I’ll return them at once.”

  A shadow flickered across the sunny path, and Mr. Chucky appeared in the full splendour of his bright brown suit. He said without preamble: “Can you hear anything from there?”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m listening?” said Katinka, up in arms.

  “Ssh!” said Chucky. “I can’t hear, while you’re talking.”

  “Then I’ll talk like a ruddy minah bird,” said Tinka. “I’m not going to have you snooping any more. It isn’t fair.”

  “Shut up—I can’t hear what he’s saying.”

  “You won’t be able to anyway. He’s writing most of it down.”

  The argument bickered back and forth. “If he sees you, if he realizes that you’ve been listening, then he’ll think that I was in on it too. I’m not going to have you putting anything about him in that filthy rag you represent, whatever it is. …”

  “Ssh! Ssh!” said Mr. Chucky, unmoved.

  “I shall tell Mr. Carlyon that you’ve been listening.”

  “He has invited the police here for that very purpose,” said Chucky, grinning. But he took his ear away from the wall. At that moment Carlyon’s voice said, “Very well. I’ll fetch proof.”