The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

by D. G. Compton

  I drove off, leaving her handbag in the hedge where the Collectors had thrown it, pretending not to understand the noises and strangled movements she made to attract my attention and make me go back. I had a vague feeling that some time quite soon she’d be glad not to have a radio homer tucked neatly under her arm. I wasn’t yet sure how or when, but quite soon I was going to have to leave her. The ultimate intrusion into other people’s lives was the ultimate intrusion into my own. And it had to stop.

  ~ * ~

  Dr Mason looked up as Vincent came into the viewing room. ‘There’s just been a holdup,’ he said. ‘Should we get on to the police?’

  Vincent warmed up the other monitor and reran the tape. ‘I’d rather wait. The last thing we want is the police barging in on Roddie, demanding statements, and what he’s doing with Rondavel’s car, and so on.’

  ‘So the gang gets away with it?’

  Vincent sighed. On this man, who was no crusader, he could clamp down, but joylessly. ‘Look, why don’t you ring the police, if you’re so worried?’

  ‘I’m in your hands. You know that.’

  ‘My dear Doctor, our consciences are our own property.’

  There was a long silence. On the real-time screen the road in front of Roddie’s car slipped slowly by. Occasionally he glanced sideways at Katherine. She appeared to be perking up. The robbery sequence had been all good stuff... As soon as Vincent was sure the doctor had nothing further to offer, that he understood his situation, a compromise was possible. ‘We’ll have to tell the authorities before we transmit of course. If they complain about the delay we can always blame Dawlish. The roster says he’s on duty here till nine.’

  Dr Mason made no comment. ‘That’s her second attack in six hours,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how much longer we can risk it.’

  ‘You really believe she will die just because you told her she would?’

  ‘Isn’t that why we chose her?’

  ‘You may be right. You know, what really worries me is that if she dies of course you’ll never get to write your paper.’

  Mason hunched lower in his chair. ‘One day you’ll push me too far, Mr Ferriman.’

  Vincent doubted this, but thought it not worth the test. ‘I think I’d better cut the discovery of the gun,’ he said brightly, changing the subject. ‘I know the chairman would appreciate it. He was shit scared on the telephone, so we can afford to be magnanimous. Even tycoons have a right to their little secrets.’ He punched Dr Mason’s shoulder in a friendly fashion. ‘The essence of good reporting, Doctor, is a decent respect for the truth. Both decency and respect sometimes require one to avert one’s gaze.’

  But Dr Mason was unresponsive to epigrams. He was watching the road slip slowly by in front of Coryton Rondavel’s motorcar.

  Winding down the window required great concentration. But it was worth it, for the wind that blew in confirmed her feeling that they were approaching the sea. It brought with it the smell of vacations, of sand shoes and boarding-house bedrooms, and rotting seaweed that popped and slithered underfoot . . . Perhaps the smell of decay was slightly stronger than she remembered. She hadn’t been to the seaside in many years: they said the sea was changing, and smelled of different things. She and it together.

  She had wondered only very briefly about all Rod’s money. She was richer by far than he. Much more insistent was her curiosity concerning the kiss he had so lightly given her on her forehead. It might have been another fantasy. By now anything might. But it was strangely of a piece with his other kinds of caring. She flexed her starfish fingers and looked down, seeing them unaltered but feeling them red and thick and horny. They would never write her book now. She wasn’t sorry — in it he would have been a sport, a hereditary accident. But she’d watched him get that way. She’d been watching him change all the times when he’d thought he’d been watching her. They had of course both changed. Change was possible. Her book was a sin.

  The word stopped her. Even the Dial-A-Vicar had preferred to talk of failure and success, rather than sin and virtue. But she’d crawled out of antediluvian mud on the legs of curiosity, and descended from ancient trees in search of something more than survival. And looked for a meaning the moment her mind was capable of encompassing one. Dying — that too had to be either good or bad, right or wrong. Was it sentimental to think that Rod was telling her which? And what anyway was sentimental but a nasty, modern, ashamed invention?

  They reached the outskirts of the town, drove under a flyover, and then up to join the thruway. It was nearly eight-thirty now, the traffic bright and thick. The elevated thruway stalked across the suburbs, giving a slow, dreamlike view of the distant terraces and crescents of the old town, the show town, and beyond it the sea. Rod nudged her and pointed, but she had seen it already. ‘Isn’t it beautiful,’ she said, feeling suddenly very happy.

  It always was beautiful. That first glimpse of the sea, because of what it meant, always was beautiful. Between rooftops, unexpectedly around the side of a hill, at the end of a municipal car park, under blue skies or gray, it was one of the most exciting things she knew. It was beautiful with promises, and she could not remember a time when they had not been kept. This, she knew now, was why she had asked Rod to bring her here.

  The thruway descended to a gigantic roundabout built half out over the water. She asked Rod to go around twice, just so that she could look along at the old promenade, at the high white Georgian houses and the icing-sugar pier and the streets full of sky. Then they turned off, seeking somewhere outside the Trust where they could park. They were lucky, it was their lucky day, and found a place almost at once, close to the show town boundary, drawing in as another car pulled away . . . Even having no money for the meter was a lark. They bundled up all the clothes, and the holdall, and Rod’s duffle bag, and the tablecloth full of food, and ran away down the pebbly beach. The gas tank was nearly empty anyway. The car, their magic carpet, could sit there and gather tickets. Its smiling owner would hardly grudge them a fine or two.

  She was breathless, and laughing, and dropping towels and things behind her on the ringing stones. A dog joined in, pulled at trailing sleeves, barked a lot. Rod found a sheltered hollow by a breakwater and they scooped it deeper, piling the smooth pebbles up in a wall around them. The dog sat and wagged its tail and barked till Rod threw stones for it to fetch. Finally it got bored and went away. They lay back in their house and stared up at the sky.

  ‘You know,’ Rod said, ‘it’s not warm. In fact, it’s bloody cold.’

  They bundled themselves up in Rondavel’s Margaret’s clothes.

  ‘I wonder what Harry’s doing at this moment,’ Katherine said, as the thought came into her head.

  ‘Your husband? Worrying about how he’s going to spend all that money, I expect.’

  She turned on one elbow. ‘How did you know Harry was my husband?’

  ‘I know everything about you there is to know. Date of birth, childhood illnesses, the novels you wrote before you went to Computabook.’

  A curl of wind crept over the pebble wall and made Katherine shiver. ‘I didn’t think fringies read newspapers,’ she said.

  ‘But I’m not a fringie. I told you. I’m nobody’s nobody. The original outsider.’ He linked his hands behind his head. ‘You know, a man actually told me that once, a man who ought to have known better. He was called Klausen. “You’re the original outsider,” he said. “And you’re looking for someone to blame.” ‘

  She shivered again. If there was one thing she hated, it was people who talked about their health. And there were other things he was going to tell her, things that already stuck into her. They weren’t nice things. She stood up and held out her hands to him. He protested. ‘Listen to me, Katherine—’

  ‘No. It’s idiotic, huddling here feeling cold. Come on. You can tell me whatever it is as we go.’

  But the pebbles were too noisy, and the walking too difficult, and the sea too exciting as it hissed and nibbled at
their feet.

  In spite of the wind and the overcast sky, the beach had begun to fill up. Rod kept her by him, and apart, almost as if he were still afraid of her being recognized. Perhaps, on the other hand, he was simply being tactful, for she was no longer even Sunday’s woman, let alone Saturday’s or Friday’s. The sou’wester was gone, and the clothes bore New York labels, and the goggles had been replaced with sunglasses from the pocket of the car. ‘More seasidey,’ Rod had said, handing them to her as they came down off the thruway. So perhaps he was just being tactful, in case she fell down in a spasm or otherwise made an exhibition of herself.

  They walked away from the show town with its too-good-to-be-true promenades and pier, along the beach toward the sports pavilion and bathing pool, kicking stones, and pausing, and moving forward in that casual, absorbed manner that beaches bring out in the most purposeful of people. The pebbles were worth noticing, and the tiny sand-hoppers, and the plastic bottle that rolled a little farther in with each wave. They passed a Punch and Judy show, its canvas flapping wildly in the wind, three bored children squatting in front of it, waiting for it to begin. The operator’s feet stuck out under the side, and hammering could be heard.

  The swimming pool had one man in it, going doggedly from end to end while another man in white flannels and several scarves ran up and down beside him, shouting. A notice under the diving boards gave the day’s sea pollution level. Past the swimming pool there was a concrete slipway for small yachts, and beyond that a line of wooden breakwaters curving around to another pier, shabby and broken-down. They decided to go as far as the pier and then return to where they had left their things. They were beginning to feel hungry.

  Hereabouts the town council’s efforts at keeping the beach clean petered out. Rod took her hand and led her up from the water’s edge, avoiding the heavy scum that heaved gently to and fro, and walking on the pale dry shingle close under the sea wall. The smell here was bad. But they had an agreed destination, so persevered. The sun came out briefly. They didn’t mind the brown water, the complicated smells: they were beach people, superior, self-contained.

  The pier was rusty, and ended abruptly about thirty yards out over the sea, leaving the jagged edge of half a gutted dance hall complete with plastic cupolas. On the beach under it elaborate windbreaks had been erected behind which people appeared to be camping. The beach here was clean again.

  ‘I should have thought of it before,’ Rod said ‘View of the sea, no mod cons, highly desirable. What d’you think?’

  He turned to Katharine and she nodded She was excited and at the same time afraid. She was either far too old to be sleeping out on beaches, or not old enough. The stones would be hard and the wind cold, and the sea at night a frightening companion. But she wouldn’t be alone. And if her dwindling hours were to end here there were few better places. The pebbles were real and so was she. And with Rod to talk to she wouldn’t be alone.

  He had gone ahead of her down the beach and into the shadow of the pier. She ran to catch up to him.

  ~ * ~

  There was, as I knew there would be, a guy in charge. This is the age of leaders. They feed on the habit of structure. They sprout from the ground, and people accept them, and they’re usually on the make. This one was a woman, small and thin and very important. She wore a dark brown overall and carried a shawl-like piece of knitting. She came and stood very close in front of me, somehow making my greater height into a disadvantage.

  ‘Yersss?’ The final sibilant went on much too long.

  ‘I was hoping there might be room for two little ones,’ I said jollily.

  ‘We don’t like fringies,’ she said, smiling complacently around the hiss.

  ‘We’re not really fringies.’

  ‘Your lady-friend isss.’ Behind her several of her existing tenants were taking notice.

  ‘She’s not my lady-friend. We’re just. . . traveling together.’

  ‘We don’t have no dirty stuff here neither.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘We keep a nice place. And we don’t like fringies.’ I wasn’t going to argue. There’d be other places on the beach. I took Katherine’s arm and began to move off. ‘However, if it’s only for the one night. . . We never likes to turn nobody away, not even when it’s fringies.’

  I glanced at Katherine and she nodded. She was trying not to laugh. ‘We’ve got no money,’ I said.

  ‘Fringies never hasss. I don’t know what they does with it, I’m sure. Orgies, most like.’

  She made it rhyme with corgis, helping me to keep my temper. ‘Can we stay or can’t we?’

  ‘Place up there by the middle pillar.’ She pointed with her knitting. ‘Leaks a bit so just pray for fine weather. Name of Baker. Missis.’

  I peered into the gloom. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Baker.’

  ‘Last one in keeps the beach swep’. That’s you two. And there’s a convenience up on the prom for your necessaries. No fires after dark, no pets, no drunken behavior. And no orgies.’

  ‘And leave the bath as clean as you would like to find it... I wondered what had happened to deprive Mrs Baker of a boarding house she so richly merited. Mr Baker, possibly, drunk and orgiastic. ‘It sounds very reasonable,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think so, Katherine?’

  But Katherine had gone in to the center pillar and was prodding the pebbles, feeling the bed. ‘It will do us very nicely, thank you, Mrs Baker. We’ll just go and fetch our luggage, and then—’

  ‘Broom’s with me any time you want it. Tide’s flowing now — it’s the ebb as keeps you busy. Still, there’s the two of you, and we don’t bother once it gets down to the end of the breakwater.’

  We thanked her again, and took our leave. She stood, needles clicking, and watched us go. As long as we acknowledged her position in the structure of things she would love us. She was a find. She was just what Katherine needed. With my selfish attempt at confession I had nearly spoiled it, the beach, the sea, the silly freedom she had contrived for us.

  A couple of hundred yards away we tumbled into the shelter of a breakwater and could laugh. No doubt Mrs Baker wasn’t all that funny. But we thought her so. We rested, and retold the funniest bits, and laughed again. Then we heaved ourselves up and started back along the beach.

  At the swimming pool the man in the water was still flailing, but his friend had pooped out and was leaning on one of the diving boards. He still shouted occasionally, but it was doubtful if the swimmer heard him. Farther on the Punch and Judy show had started, to an audience of the same three bored children. Katherine pulled me over, and we joined them.

  It was all terribly ethnic. Punch was whacking at a policeman and shrieking like a mad dictator. Most of his squeaks were lost on the wind, but his meaning was clear enough and horribly, inexplicably comic. We glanced at each other and smiled. When, a moment later, the policeman’s head suddenly came off and rolled about the stage we laughed aloud. The three children turned to stare at us. We laughed even more, at their solemn faces, even perhaps at Mrs Baker again.

  Up on the stage the policeman’s body had been dragged away and replaced by Judy, complete with fire-engine-red-faced baby. It was then, however, that the wind chose to gather itself and catch at the striped front of the booth like a sail. The whole contraption staggered and blew over. It became a recumbent mess of sticks and flapping canvas and the wild legs of the Punch and Judy man inside. The children sat, interested at last, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Naturally we went forward to help. Katherine sorted through the heaving mass and found the fasteners to the entrance up the back. The language of the man inside was mercifully muffled: not that the kiddies, those particular kiddies, seemed to need much protection from the wickednesses, of the world. Finally he emerged, sitting up, very indignant, in the wreckage of his show. I avoided Katherine’s eye. ‘You’re not hurt?’ I said.

  The Punch and Judy man grimaced, and removed a small shiny cylinder from his mouth. ‘Me
call,’ he said. ‘Helps with the squeak. Pure silver, in case of accidents. Swallering like. Which has been known.’

  We helped him up. He wore a tidy, thirty-year-old suit, double-breasted, with a red-and-white striped bow tie. Although an old, old man, his face was surprisingly smooth and pink around its eager, professional smile. He dusted himself down and straightened his tie. ‘Ta very much. A friend in need is a friend in deed.’

  Then he remembered his audience. He held his arms wide to command their attention. ‘Kiddies, kiddies . . . Owing to unforeseen circumstances, kiddies, the show is temporarily suspended . . .’ He lowered his arms and bowed. ‘But mind you tell your chums, mind, old Punch’ll be up to all his old tricks again this afternoon, sharp as paint. By royal charter, two o’clock pip emma.’