‘It annoys you that any of your actions should be predictable?’
‘No. It annoys me that you should think yourself so clever for predicting them.’
‘If I sounded like that, I’m sorry.’
He might have been sincere. But interrogators went in for sincerity: they took a course in it at Interrogators’ School.
‘All right,’ I said, humoringly, ‘tell me why you recommended me.’
He had it planned. ‘You were an outsider. You were also exceptionally stable.’
‘I’m an outsider now, all right.’
‘And now with good surgical reason, which is a relief to you.’
‘No!’
My anger was not so much at his cruel lie as at the way he’d tricked me into denying it. ‘Yes,’ she’d said, ‘I suppose you must.’ And cared. Something — my famous stability? — prevented me, but only just, from laying violent hands on him, where he sat, quite motionless, observing, on the end of his long black chain. I had no words, words that could not be ridiculed, for my secret hope. And no violence either.
‘You’re wrong, Klausen,’ was all I could say. ‘Believe me, you’re wrong.’
He moved at last, lifting his feet so that the chair swung slowly. ‘Convince me,’ he said.
‘Why should I bother?’
‘Because you bothered to contradict me in the first place. We both know it was my report more than anything else that got you the job. We weren’t always on opposite sides.’
He was saying he’d given me something to blame. He’d also provided himself as a scapegoat for the blame. I might have known any coin Klausen tossed would have two heads.
‘We never did speak the same language,’ I said, in non-reply.
‘I’m sure you realize, Roddie, that your alienation is not basically from other people but from yourself.’
‘That’s what the book says.’
‘Books are often right.’
His pathetic, priestlike complacency no longer bothered me. ‘So that’s what I’m here for? So that you can tell me how much I hate myself?’
‘Telling you what you already know is one thing. Getting you to admit it is another.’
Once this incredible man had taken me in. But in those days, of course, he’d had something I needed ... I caught myself shifting my ass from one flabby side to the other, and went right on doing it. He could watch me and smile to himself at his wisdom as much as he liked.
‘Know thyself, saith the prophet.’ Anyway, the fucking chairs were hard, so what did he expect? ‘Which, being interpreted, Klausen, means jack off like crazy.’
He made like he’d heard it all before. ‘I doubt if you can do even that now, with Vincent watching.’
‘He needn’t know. I can turn down the sound and look the other way.’
Too late I saw he’d won the point. But he graciously let it pass. ‘Did you turn down the sound before you came in here?’ he asked.
‘I’m not even wearing the gear. It came off for the doctors, and I carefully didn’t put it back.’
‘I’m glad.’ He heaved himself out of his chair, needing a new paragraph, and went to the window. The Clinic had Clinic grounds, a Clinic fountain, Clinic trees. ‘This stability of yours,’ he said to the Clinic grass, ‘it’s going to be strained. I wanted you to understand how much.’
He expected some response, but got none.
‘That’s all, Roddie. I just wanted you to understand how much.’
My silence pitied him. My God, Klausen turned me off.
‘And I think you do. You’re nobody’s fool, Roddie. You understand very well. I hope you make it.’
He seemed to have finished, so I got up and left. It seemed to me that the score was fairly even. And I had work to do, even if he hadn’t. I had an appointment after lunch with Clement Pyke, father to the only true Katherine Mortenhoe.
~ * ~
Katherine found the Castle packed solid with parties of children and afternoon shift workers whiling away the sunny morning. Movement inside its walls was only possible in the wake of the quarter-hourly conducted tours. She and Harry waited in line, then tagged along, across the drawbridge (labeled Drawbridge), through the keep (labeled Keep), around the roped-off (and labeled) inner courtyard, and into the labeled Great Hall. They moved slowly, keeping as far back as they could from the guide’s piercing PA system.
In the armory (labeled Armoury) beyond the Great Hall there was a long wait, people piling in behind, while the party strung itself out up the famous 300-step spiral staircase. The ascent was slow and claustrophobic, and, as it progressed, was made increasingly difficult by breathless climbers sitting on the steps to rest. Kate was proud of Harry: he made it to the top in one.
The Castle stood on a steep little hill in the middle of the city, its gray towers higher than all but the tallest of the surrounding point blocks. The guide interrupted his intoned but lurid description of past glories and spent several minutes identifying present landmarks. His party, showing their first signs of real animation, hung over the labeled Battlements, shrieking and gesticulating as they picked out their own areas, and possibly even their own windows in their own residential buildings. The past meant nothing to them. Their security lay in recognizing the ornaments on the mantelpiece of this year’s flat. Katherine drew Harry out of the circulation flow, into an embrasure (labeled Embrasure). These same people, on the moors or by the sea, would stay within the safe, six-foot ambience of their motorcars.
Harry squared his shoulders. ‘Just think of being a sentry,’ he said, ‘up here on a windy night.’ He gazed around proprietorially, stamping his halberd and clinking his coat of mail.
And then, suddenly and inconveniently, quite without warning, she had her first paralysis.
She’d expected the rigor first, and the tight feeling around her scalp, but neither of these happened. She just lurched against Harry and he sensibly propped her up. It wasn’t a bad paralysis, just one leg as far as the knee really, but she was grateful to Harry for being there, and for being so sensible. Otherwise she could easily have fallen down and bumped herself.
He whispered kind things to her and she leaned on the comfortable (not fat) bulk of him, trying to think if there had been some sensation in the last few minutes that might have warned her. She’d heard, for example, that epileptics saw flashing lights or smelled funny smells. Either would be useful. But she could remember nothing of the sort ... A castle attendant (labeled Castle Attendant) pushed toward them through the landmark-spotting crowd.
‘None of that,’ he said. ‘The Castle Trustees don’t have to stand for none of that.’
Harry went very red. ‘My wife felt faint, officer.’ He moved away from Katherine, letting her stagger. ‘You can see for yourself she can hardly stand.’
The attendant watched her. ‘This is Castle Property, mate. If she’s drunk or high I shall have to report the matter.’
‘She’s neither of those things. She’s—’
The attendant shaded his eyes against the sun. ‘I’ve got it now. I reckon she’s this Mrs Whatsit there’s all the fuss about. I seen her picture in the paper.’
He moved closer, and stared into her face. Afraid that he was going to help her, Katherine tried to tell him to go away. Her jaw flapped up and down. The paralysis was only in one leg, so why couldn’t she speak? But it was all right: the attendant had no intention of helping her.
With her face on a hundred million screens and front pages, Katherine had been able to reach the Castle unnoticed. Ordinary people on the street did not see their fellows — this was how they kept sane. But now however, by behaving unsuitably in an embrasure on the Castle battlements, Katherine had drawn attention to herself.
‘Keep back!’ the attendant shouted, putting into people’s minds the fact that there was something to be kept back from. So they kept back, closer and closer.
‘Poor thing. Why ain’t she in a home?’
‘It’s him I blame, bri
nging her up all this way.’
‘Course, she’s a good bit younger in her picture.’
‘Hoping to push her off, I reckon.’
‘PG sticker and all — who does she think she is?’
‘Push her off? Do me a favor — not if he knows which side his bread’s buttered.’
‘Couldn’t have something ordinary, not like the rest of us.’
‘Mind you, she’s pale all right.’
‘Never heard of paint and powder? What some folks’ll do for money . . .’
While at the back of the crowd a man stood quietly watching, his gray-green jacket slung over his shoulder on account of the heat.
Katherine closed her eyes against the jostling mouths. And behind her the smooth stone parapet, and beyond it the wind. By the time she could speak again there was nothing anyone would want to say. Sensation returned to her leg, and she walked.
‘And a lot of fuss about nothing that was. If you ask me.’
‘PR, love. Haven’t you heard of PR?’
The conducted tour schedule was now seriously out of joint. The guide had phoned down and called a halt in the armory, but still the people were two abreast on the spiral staircase, and shouting angrily, and feeling faint. Since going back was clearly impossible, and the emergency stairs were only for real emergencies, Katherine and Harry were forced on their aggrieved companions for the entire allotted course. The guide wisely abbreviated his spiel, for few now cared, and got them out in fourteen minutes flat. Possibly the Castle had known less worthy occasions in its seven hundred years, but somehow Katherine doubted it.
‘Disgusting. She oughtn’t to be allowed out, not among normal healthy people.’
‘I’m going to get my money back.’
These were her audience, the grief-starved public of Vincent Ferriman. And he was right, of course: sanitize her agony, interpolate a TV screen, a director’s sensibility, and these same people would experience veritable orgies of compassion. It was only face to face that they feared her. It was only face to face that, given a leader, they’d have torn her limb from limb.
Outside the Castle, beyond the drawbridge, a group of reporters were waiting. She and Harry, unclean, had been allowed to the head of the party filing out through the turnstile marked Out. She was first onto the drawbridge, leaning on Harry’s arm. Seeing her, the reporters shouted and surged, and popped their cameras. People clicked eagerly through the turnstile behind her, pushing her forward. The reporters, knowing the law, eased her to one side and closed in on Harry.
‘Exactly what happened, Mr Mortenhoe?’
‘Did you save her, Mr Mortenhoe?’
‘Was she trying to kill herself?’
‘What are your plans, Mr Mortenhoe?’
‘After this, do you feel you were justified in bringing her to a public place?’
‘Just answer me this — was she trying to kill herself?’
Harry tried to force his way through to her. ‘Private grief,’ he shouted. ‘Leave us alone. Private grief. . .’
Somebody laughed. ‘Where’s your sticker, Mr Mortenhoe? Suppose you tell us what it feels like, knowing you’ll soon be Newly Single?’
Harry lowered his head and pushed through, beating at them savagely as he went. He wasn’t very good at it. But a reporter’s nose was bloodied and a camera spun out of another’s hand and was trampled upon. The voices, knowing their rights, grew angry. Harry was tripped, and fell heavily. The voices gathered around.
Katherine stood, unmolested, in a still circle of legality, and watched him being helped to his feet. Watched him being accidentally shoved so that he fell down again.
She began screaming. It was the only thing she could think of to do. Coarse, humiliating, painful, detestable, the only thing she could think of to do. She screamed in steady, unremitting blasts, her hands linked loosely across her stomach, her handbag tucked under one arm, well aware of her acute ugliness. She sounded ugly, she looked ugly. But the crowd’s attention, which had been Harry’s, was hers again.
In the sudden silence her screams beat back at her from the gray walls of the Castle behind. Once started, her screaming was easy to continue. It was all that seemed right on that sunny, grief-starved morning. Harry went to her, was permitted to go to her. His coat was torn, his hair untidy, but otherwise he seemed unhurt. Something, possibly shame, lay heavily on the still, angry crowd. And she went on screaming because she daren’t stop.
There were taxis waiting, taxis that had brought the reporters and their gear. Harry led her to one of these — no one else would touch her, know her — opened the door, and treading a knife-edge of high-handedness, helped her in. The crowd moved then, slowly closer. He told the driver where to go, them climbed in after her. He said, ‘Thank you, Kate.’
She sat in the back of the taxi, screaming in steady, unremitting blasts. No doubt the driver would soon complain. As he started to move off the crowd pressed around, trying — now it was impossible — to reach her, hands catching at the door handles, scrabbling at the windows. Harry said, ‘That’s enough now, Kate.’
He would never stop her. He would sit beside her, patiently wanting her to stop. He would dislike her. But he would never make her stop. He was Harry. She held tightly onto the edge of the seat, and watched the shopfronts reel by, and was abruptly silent, fighting the terrible need that continued in her body. Her mind too, one part of it, continued to scream. Harry said, ‘Well done.’
They reached home without further incident, without further conversation. The screaming faded. Safe finally behind their PG-stickered front door, they stood together in the lobby, the sweat cooling under their arms, and with it the last of the sustaining excitement. Harry released her. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, generously pretending that some of it, somewhere, somehow, had been his fault.
She dragged her feet slowly through into the sitting room, and lay down on the settee. His fault? She closed her eyes. Whose fault? If she had had an excuse for going to the Castle — other than the obvious one of stopping, of not answering his flab-joggling, towel-imperiling harangue — it had been the hope of reaching back, of finding perspective. Seven hundred years, seeable and touchable, would make death seem right and proper ... It was a reasonable hope. So that in a way (although he’d never see it) her nonanswer to Harry would answer him after all. And fault wouldn’t come into it.
But the seven hundred years had been unavailable. People had got in the way. She lay with her eyes closed, quietly testing the dexterity of her hands. She could oppose her thumbs. She had a long way yet.
The morning’s events had taken Harry differently, made him restless, full of plans. He ranged about the room, throwing out suggestions, places to go. She listened to him, felt affectionate, even loving, but isolated all the same on her slippery, twenty-six-day decline. In the end she had to interrupt.
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘We’re staying here. We’re talking in whispers, and drawing the blinds against the helicopters, and disconnecting all the bells. We’re staying here, in the one place where we’re safe.’ And sliding quietly, privately. down to death.
He stopped his pacing. ‘What about the shopping?’ He was patient with her. ‘Remember I’m known in the district. If I go—’
‘In a few hours you’ll be known in every district. And where you aren’t known, you’ll be followed. We’ll have the shopping delivered.’
‘I don’t like to say this, Katherine, but I think you overestimate public interest in your case.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes. A few more days and they’ll be on to something else.’
‘From a find to a check, from a check to a view, from a view to a death in the morning . . .’
‘You’re upset, Katherine.’
‘It’s a quotation, Harry. Peel’s view halloo . . . You’re forgetting I majored in Folk Lore.’
‘You told me Computer Science.’
She felt her scalp tightening. ‘We’re staying
here,’ she said quietly. ‘Here where we’re safe.’
He sat down beside her and took her still dexterous hands and looked into her still nonhallucinating eyes. ‘Katherine love, we’d go mad. Nobody could live like that. We’d start hating each other. We’d go mad.’
Of course he was quite right. ‘Of course you’re quite right,’ she said. And suddenly saw that the only way for her to endure what remained was totally on her own. Where the madness would be hers only, and perhaps a comfort. ‘We’ll think of somewhere we can go. There must be somewhere.’
She gripped his hands, and pulled him closer, and kissed him on the mouth, and afterward whispered, ‘I’m sorry, love,’ in that intimate, unspecific way that allows no answer. He patted her and they kissed again, Katherine wondering all the while just how she was going to be rid of him, and he of her. The burden they presented to each other was intolerable.
The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe Page 10