‘So?’
‘Gesture of solidarity.’
‘Barefaced extortion.’
The fat young woman lowered her hands, hooked her thumbs in her leather belt. ‘We’re on Benefit. You’re on salary.’
‘Not anymore, I’m not.’
‘We bleed for you.’
The crowd around them laughed. The stranger’s bulging handbag obviously contained enough, and more, or she wouldn’t be holding it so tightly against her stomach. Katherine suddenly wondered why she was humiliating herself in front of these people. Harry would hardly grudge her one fifty out of his three hundred thousand.
She paid with no further argument. The crowd applauded with friendly irony. She packed her new purchases into the sleeping bag holdall and started to walk away. After she had gone perhaps ten paces the fat young woman in the policeman’s uniform called after her and, unwisely, she looked back. She saw the young woman peel a few notes off the bundle she had given her and put them in her pocket. The rest she fanned out in one hand. ‘We have been visited,’ she shouted, and tossed the bank notes into the air.
Nobody scrambled. They stood silently watching, and if a note fluttered within reach they caught it. There was a ritual quality about their action. Many notes blew away on an updraft over the shacks and gimmicky hovels for others to find.
Katherine turned angrily and strode away. The woman’s gesture had been vulgar and pretentious. The whole place was vulgar and pretentious. She betted that once she was out of sight the people would be down on their knees, grubbing for her money on the littered, filthy concrete. Except that she knew she’d lose her bet.
Her departure was followed with the same polite interest as her arrival had been. Nobody molested her, or spoke to her other than occasionally to suggest that she should care . . . And she did care. She cared very much. She cared furiously that society in its idleness should find it cheaper and easier to subsidize these thousands of freakish, self-indulgent misfits, rather than educate them to reality. It made her life of honest endeavor, and Harry’s, suddenly pointless and quite unnecessary.
The children had gone from the truck dump. She let herself out through the double doors of the container and walked away down the desolate road. She was angry, and a rigor was gathering, and her anger was without justification. The connections in her mind were hers — not good or bad, noble or ignoble, simply hers. That she should be jealous of these vulgar, idle, pretentious, stupid, childish, immoral people was intolerable . . . The walk back into taxi country was long. The tightness around her scalp increased, so that when she passed a parked car she thought of asking the man in it for a lift, at least as far as the nearest main thoroughfare. But she couldn’t have borne to have a paralysis, or even a rigor, inside his tidy motorcar. Besides, he was asleep, his face hidden in the gray-green pillow of his jacket, folded up and tucked under his head. So she didn’t look (don’t look, dear) and walked on by.
The holdall was heavy, and she was thankful when she came to proper streets and could rest on it by the curb and wait. Once she had adopted her new persona taxis would decline to notice her. So she sat very straight and neat, with her knees together, a thoroughly respectable and industrious woman. The rigor, when it came, was mild, and she sat up straight and neat throughout it. When it had passed she leaned sideways to unzip the holdall and get out her handbag. The tag of the zip was awkward. Concentrating, she discovered that the difficulty was more with her fingers. She saw the strange way they moved: they struck bluntly against each other and lost direction. Nevertheless, with patience and perseverance she was still able to make them open the zip and get out her handbag.
By the time a taxi came along this difficulty too had passed. Working the taxi door handle was easy, so delightfully easy. The driver never looked around, simply hunched in his seat and went where she asked him to, whistling off pitch in a way that normally would have made her want to scream. But she worked her hands, opening and shutting her handbag, and hardly even noticed. She went first to the central heliport where she squeezed her new holdall into a left luggage locker, and then hurried home to Harry. She owed him something. All the way from the heliport and then up in the elevator to their flat she tried to think what.
~ * ~
I was taken to police headquarters, my detention, they said, no more than a formality. They were nice enough, in a barbed sort of way, but they stuck to their formality. The magistrate who could authorize Christopher Barber’s release on nominal bail was not available until the morning. It being a somewhat delicate matter they didn’t like to bother the duty magistrate who might be less . . . sympathetic. Less bloody corrupt, I thought, and sighed for my own ingratitude.
To be locked in a cell can be pretty rough, even for the ordinary citizen who closes his eyes and shuts it all out, and even gets a bit of sleep maybe. But for me, refugeless, it was murder. I took my relaxants, my wonderful, wonderful sleep surrogates, and lay down on my bunk, and prepared for the long night. The ceiling of my cell, like the walls, was made of steel plates like the hull of an antique battleship, so I planned to pass the time by counting the rivets. I knew that if I kept this up for long enough my mind would move off somewhere else, leaving my eyes to tick mechanically to and fro, back and across. In that way a sort of dazzled unawareness would come, and even dreams. It took concentration, and often it didn’t work, and mostly I didn’t bother to try, but when I did try and it did come, it was like everything you’ve ever read about home. It was so gentle. It was where I belonged but could never stay.
I started the night not too badly, even optimistically. I had counted rivets for about half an hour and the edges of my mind were just beginning to soften, when they turned the lights off. I should have reckoned on this, of course: this wasn’t a political jail: prisoners here were allowed their beauty, their sanity sleep. But in fact the sudden total darkness caught me unprepared. It was for a moment incomprehensible, an experience only dimly remembered, one that might signify anything: death, destruction, the coming of God. I lay stunned, unable to move, hearing in the new silence, the dark silence, hearing the blood beating in my ears. Then the two tiny pains started, and I made the connection, and remembered the flashlight left in the pocket of my overturned car.
Of course they came quite quickly when I pounded on the door. They were nice to me. When I told them of this terrible darkness phobia I had (dating from my childhood, Roddie Two’s childhood), they turned the lights back on again. They weren’t monsters. It wasn’t as if I were a criminal — I’d done them all a favor, really. To calm me, they brought me news. The woman I’d thought I’d killed wasn’t dead at all. She might even walk again, when (if?) she came out of her coma. And anyway, a Mr Ferriman had been on the telephone. They were to tell me the contract we’d both been worrying about was all fixed. Also I wasn’t to worry about the accident: I’d been on company business, so company insurance would settle, and handsomely. Already my car had been collected and repairs begun ... I could imagine the message, as Vincent gave it, being rather less crude. He respected my sensibilities. But its gist would have been the same.
So the light stayed on, and my night began again. And the safety of home had never been so distant.
Seven hours remained. I suppose seven hours do not seem all that terrible. Neither, really, do four hundred and twenty minutes. But I counted them, every one. And they’re more than enough when all your life has is an ambition you’ve seen through, a hope you dare not examine, and a direction you’d rather not guess. They’re enough to make possibilities of joy seem, to say the least, a bit ridiculous.
I was in a mood, of course. Earlier in the evening I’d wanted to talk to Tracey, just to talk to her, and the police had said no. They were taking no chances. It wasn’t that they doubted my discretion, but they were taking no chances. Probably they were right. There was nothing, at that moment, that I could say to Tracey or she to me. But the twenty-five thousand two hundred seconds they left me with were more than e
nough to make possibilities of joy seem, to say the least, a bit ridiculous.
~ * ~
5
Saturday
The first thing Katherine did on waking was to rouse Harry. To . . . rouse Harry. This, she had realized, was what she owed him. The fact that she was leaving him, for sound, complicated reasons that he’d never understand, demanded it. After she had gone, when his bewilderment and conventional pain were over, this would be what he’d remember. This, the sign and proof of her patient love, he would take with him, worth far more than any crude three hundred thousand pounds.
It would end their relationship as she wanted it to end (she had a literary background), not with a whimper but a bang.
At bedtime the previous evening, therefore, she had held him off, damped him down, invoked a headache she didn’t have, and then lain awake listening to his gentle breathing till justice caught up with her and the headache became real. And other things besides . . . He’d slept soundly, however, and her goings-on hadn’t disturbed him.
She wasn’t going to tell him about the money, of course: he must find out about it later, when only he himself was around to see his confused reactions; when his guilty delight, his shameful golden dreams, wouldn’t matter. Instead, on the basis of their savings and Vincent’s thousand pounds, they spent the evening sorting through a new batch of travel brochures. It didn’t matter where they went, Harry said: Vincent had promised to provide protection and the necessary TV link anywhere in the world. Also he’d be using a mysterious new production technique: Katherine wasn’t to worry — she’d hardly know the cameraman was there even.
She watched Harry carefully sorting the brochures into piles of probables, possibles, and hopelesses. She realized it must have been pretty comprehensive, that first brief interview he’d had with Vincent Ferriman. Really quite remarkably comprehensive. Terms suggested, papers signed, money paid, protection promised, even production techniques discussed . . . And then, only an hour later, hardly an hour later, when she had got back from the hospital — ‘What use is money?’ he’d said. And — ‘The idea is obscene,’ he’d said. And — ‘I told him to get stuffed,’ he’d said.
With a check for one thousand of Vincent’s pounds no doubt crisp in his pocket.
Yet it wasn’t this that explained her decision to leave him. This was nothing new, nothing really new. It didn’t alter her love for him. And it certainly made no difference to her sentimental determination that he should remember her ultimately and fondly for a shared, final, grand, and ceremonial fuck. (This was a determination that Ethel Pargeter — in different words, of course — would have understood very well indeed. And Ethel Pargeter’s readers also, moist-eyed, with hot lumps in their throats. )
So the previous evening she had held him off, and now — at the right, the ceremonial moment — she roused him, stroking his morning hard-on, tweaking the few sad hairs on his chest. A wakening for him to remember, for him to remember when she was long ago and far away ... It would end their relationship, their real, wordless, skin-on-skin relationship, nobly, not with a whimper but a bang.
He lurched onto her. He was a slow waker.
‘Fight it back, my honey,’ she whispered. ‘Press down. Remember? Press down with your diaphragm. Fight it back.’
So he woke, and pressed down till he could press down no longer.
It was enough. It freed her of her mind. ‘Godgodgod,’ she cried. And (briefly) meant it.
Afterward she left him gasping and went to get breakfast. Today was her day for doing-not-brooding. Out of the kitchen window she saw that rain was falling, a fine gray, unspringlike drizzle. Also it turned out to be one of those occasions — they hadn’t had one in weeks — when the electric appliances in her kitchen had died on her. A small bomb in some generating substation, no doubt, or a civil liberties saboteur on the staff of the central grid. She had no idea what they were after this time, and didn’t care. She just wished the authorities would give them whatever it was, and let ordinary people get on with their lives — and deaths — in peace. Meanwhile she cooked breakfast on her standby gas cooker that dirtied the bottoms of her pans. Neither the rain nor the inconvenience depressed her: today, Saturday, was her doing-not-brooding day. Brooding could, would, even should, come later.
~ * ~
They ate breakfast in bed. Life was one long holiday. They discussed their plans. She was glad Harry had lied to her: it made her own lies less troublesome. But it didn’t, and she knew it didn’t. Today, however, was her doing-not-brooding day. She sorted through the bundle of brochures.
‘Capri?’ she said. ‘If there’s a square inch?’
‘I rather thought the Bahamas.’
‘They’re one big marina.’
‘There’s always Pitcairn.’
‘At this time of year it’s full of Germans.’
‘You’re being provincial, Kate. Besides, everywhere’s full of Germans.’
‘Except Germany. Germany’s full of Americans.’
‘I don’t see how it can be. After all—’
‘A joke, Harry. Just a joke.’
Harry sniffed, and shifted his legs under the bedclothes, and picked a brochure at random. ‘How about Tasmania?’ he said.
He’d spoiled it. How naive they were to be thinking always of islands. As if an escape, a refuge, existed anywhere. She took Tasmania: Home of the Pacific Grand Prix from him and looked at the pictures. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll go there. At least it’s a long way off.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, it’s not very—’
‘We’ll go there, Harry.’
The decision made, Harry immediately got in a fuss. What about the climate? What about clothes? What about currency? What about travel permits? What about—
‘Ring Vincent,’ she said. ‘Tell him to fix it.’
Harry was doubtful. ‘He’s a very busy man.’
‘Like hell he is. As long as I’m alive he’ll be busy doing what I say. That’s what NTV pays him for.’
‘You used not to be such a hard person, Kate.’
There were several answers to that one, but she let them all pass. Today was her doing-not-brooding day.
Prodded, Harry rang NTV House. He found Vincent as charming as ever, and helpful, and delighted with the choice of locale. Tasmania was strong on filmic settings; the islanders -as yet unmedia-oriented — would be little trouble; the television facilities were excellent, on account of the annual Grand Prix. His assistant would make all arrangements, and the documentation would be ready for them to pick up when they came to NTV House at four. On the question of the clothes, though, he’d prefer Mrs Mortenhoe to buy her own. Neither he nor his assistant would presume to choose clothes for a beautiful woman. Katherine, standing close to Harry, heard this.
‘Beautiful Katherine Mortenhoe and her beautiful husband make a beautiful couple doing beautiful things in a beautiful world, while she prepares beautifully to die. It’s all so beautiful . . .’
But she didn’t mind a shopping expedition. She made no precise plans for getting away from Harry: a dress shop would be as good a place as any.
They left the flat. She didn’t look back. If she could leave Harry so easily, then of course she could leave these other bits and pieces of her life. Outside in the drizzle the newsstand screens were showing: Record Price to Syndrome Victim + Blast Hits Power Station + NTV Signs Mortenhoe + Riots Chaos Flares in County Town + Ferriman on Is Dying a Dying Art? + She hurried Harry on before he could buy a printout. She’d rather the news of his nest egg came later, when he needed comforting after the cancellation of his trip to Tasmania.
A reporter picked them up almost immediately, and then two more. She kept walking. Harry, out of breath but enjoying himself, gave them an interview on the move. He’d miss all this chat, she thought, when the NTV exclusive took over at four.
Outside the dress shop, statutorily, they left the reporters, Harry in midsentence. Katherine sat him firmly down on a spin
dly gold chair while she went around gathering armfuls of summery clothes from the racks. Then she kissed him lightly on the forehead and patted his arm good-bye. He looked up, pleased, remembering their morning. She whisked away to one of the trying-on rooms.
The three mirrors caught her momentarily — Vincent Ferriman’s hot property, Dr Mason’s terminal case, Peter’s Katie-Mo, her father’s fucking nuisance, Gerald’s armored cruiser, John Peel’s pickup, Harry’s newly hard person, her own . . . her own worst enemy? The phrase, as is the way with cliches, saved her from making any real effort. It even had a certain hideous aptness. She smiled, and watched reflections of reflections of reflections of the smile. Then she broke away — none of them, none of it, lumpy, with elbows, was she — she broke away from the mirrors, dumped the clothes on a chair, and went back out of the trying-on room.
She hovered around the back of a tall showcase, then looked cautiously around its end. Harry was no Mr Mathiesson. He was where she had left him, dutifully, his legs crossed, jiggling his top foot and watching it. He would stay there for a long tune. Half an hour. Longer even. He was patient. And endearingly trying to be smart, legs crossed, showing a lot of sock. She evaded an approaching assistant and quietly made her way out of the shop by another entrance. No other good-bye was possible. Or desirable.
The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe Page 15