The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

by D. G. Compton

  The children sat on. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Katherine asked.

  ‘Not the first tumble, missis, and won’t be the last.’ He rummaged under the canvas and brought out an armful of dolls, half a dozen Punches in different costumes, Judies, a policeman, a judge, a hangman, a bright green crocodile. ‘If the troupe’s all right, then Tommy’s all right. Know what I mean?’ He held out his hand. ‘Tucker by name, Tommy by popular acclaim. Clean but clever. Established 1920, still going strong. Ta all the same.’

  Obviously he didn’t want us hanging around to watch the humiliating business of putting his show together again. We shook hands and left him, taking the children with us. We were sure, we said, that their mommies would be wondering where they were.

  ‘I hope he gets a better audience at two o’clock pip emma,’ Katherine said as we watched them run off. ‘Do you think he will?’

  ‘I expect he’s on a grant from the Folk-Arts Society.’ I’d done a feature once on old-style entertainers. ‘So it doesn’t really matter what sort of an audience he gets.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’

  Of course it did. Her question wasn’t based on sentimentality but on sentiment, a proper respect for Mr Tucker, Tommy by popular acclaim. I’d long ago stopped trying to piece together the bits of Katherine Mortenhoe, of the only true continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, but this particular bit kept sticking out: respect for other people. It had been typically wrong-headed of her father to suggest that she wanted to die. I’d watched her fight her way out of her circumstances. She was more alive than anybody I knew. Except perhaps my wife. My ex-wife. My future wife.

  Our things weren’t disturbed in the hollow of stones where we’d left them. We divided the remaining food into two meals: after them we’d go hungry unless something happened, unless we made something happen. Katherine wasn’t worrying. She ate her ration cheerfully, talking about other vacations she had had, mostly awful, that now could be made funny. I didn’t feel she was making her future my responsibility, but simply that she found the present far more important.

  For the first time in over an hour, longer than I had ever managed since the operation, I remembered who I was, what I was. I remembered Vincent. I didn’t want to use him but if we weren’t to starve I didn’t see I had any alternative. So I excused myself and climbed away back up onto the promenade. I leaned on the rail and watched her in long shot holding Rondavel’s Margaret’s skirts up with one hand, throwing stones into the sea. It was beautiful. The rollers came on in long dark ridges. The wind blew her hair about. And a dog, the same dog, had appeared from nowhere and was chasing each retreating wave, barking deliriously. I held the long shot. Vincent would think it beautiful too.

  ‘We need money,’ I said. ‘Whoever’s there, get this message to Mr Ferriman. Tell him I’ll be up on the promenade by the old pier at around eight. I’ll be alone. Tell him to send someone with money.’

  Katherine turned, saw me, waved. I waved back. ‘Got that?’ I said.

  After a pause my sound gear came to life. ‘Dr Mason here. I’m worried about the patient. I’d like you to—’

  I cut him. ‘Go to hell,’ I said. ‘Just give Vincent my message, then go to hell.’

  He was a nice man. He had a nice room where nice doctors told nice patients nasty things. I didn’t want him sitting on the other end, judging me. ‘You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Then just go and doctor.’

  I’d raised my voice. A man came and leaned on the rail beside me and asked me how I was feeling and I told him I was feeling fine. Then he asked me if I was feeling in a holiday mood and I told him no. Definitely no. If he’d tried any harder I’d have socked him and probably got myself into trouble, but he didn’t. He just leaned beside me and sighed till I left him and went back down to Katherine. What talking to myself on the rail outside the gents had led him to hope I can’t imagine.

  On the way back to the old pier — there was no sign of Tommy — Katherine had a bad go of the shakes. I sat her down and wrapped her sleeping bag around her. It went on a long time, several hours, I don’t know, I wasn’t timing it, and afterward she had to wash in the sea, pollution levels and all. I helped her into another of the dresses: there was only one more left so I did my best to rinse out the previous one. It sounds squalid, and I can only say it wasn’t. We were humble with each other. And this time she didn’t get quite better. One arm stayed paralyzed and she appeared to have difficulty balancing as she walked.

  I have to be explicit about her deterioration. And yet by doing so I give it a false importance. At the time there was so much else going for us that we scarcely even noticed the changes. We were very happy, together, that afternoon on the beach.

  ~ * ~

  She was very tired, her eyes wide with the brightness of the sea, her ears singing with its noise. When they reached the old pier she let Rod spread out her sleeping bag in their place by the pillar, lay down on it, and fell asleep. She dreamed very vividly of Harry. It was evening when she woke, and she could remember nothing of the dream except that she had expected it to be distressing and it wasn’t. Dr Mason hadn’t mentioned a false euphoria. Possibly her contentment was genuine. Though there was something, some small something still needing to be done, that hovered just out of sight in the back of her mind.

  Rod was a few feet away, talking quietly with someone she couldn’t quite see. She sat up, suddenly remembering Mrs Baker. ‘The beach, Rod. We ought to be tidying up the beach.’

  ‘Don’t worry, pet. There wasn’t much. I’ve seen to it.’

  She lay back. She could see why Mrs Baker had said there was a leak around that particular pillar — above her head cracks gaped wide enough to see the sky through. She prayed, as instructed, for a fine night. . . She realized that the person Rod was talking to was the Punch and Judy man. This was neat, the way things could be expected to turn out. She’d hoped to get to know him, and here he was.

  ‘ ‘Course, a good bottler could make all the difference between going hungry and setting down to a slap-up repast. Real good bottler and you splits fifty-fifty. Otherwise it’s sixty-forty . . .’

  She moved closer. Rod heard the stones creak and made a place for her beside him. The Punch and Judy man hardly seemed to notice. ‘Haven’t used a bottler now, not in years. No call. Not since the grant come in. Lays a hat out though, and lives in hopes.’

  Katherine leaned up on her good arm. ‘How was the two o’clock show?’ she asked.

  ‘You awake, then? Sleeping the sleep of the just, I said to young Rod here. You’re Kathie, I’m Tommy.’ She knelt and shook hands again. ‘Never forget a face or a favor . . . Show wasn’t much. Day was when kiddies stood in queues, shouting “We want Punch and Judy.” Today there’s not much call for it. Don’t know why. Tell you what, though . . .’ He paused, massaging his hands, enjoying what he was going to tell them ‘. . . Done plenty of shows for the toffs up in that London place. Made a film for their archives. Questions. . . talk about questions. ‘Course, I told them a lot of cobblers. I mean, what showman gives away his little secrets?’

  He talked on. ‘Done me time in conjuring, of course. Always start with something colorful. Flags of all nations. Vanished a live canary once. Had the Cruelty on to me for that. . . Funny how people are. Vanish a dozen women and nobody says a word. Not so nimble now, mind. But nimble enough.’ He opened his hands very wide, then clapped them together and produced a battered plastic flower out of his sleeve. ‘Nimble enough for an old ‘un.’

  It began to grow dark. Katherine was content to sit and watch his extraordinary animation. He was eighty-six, he said, played the schools now mostly. Exam questions and all — part of the nation’s heritage.

  ‘But the royal charter bit’s right enough. Some old king, George it might have been, or William, give Punch and Judy the right to twenty minutes, any time, any place. Never been took away, not as far as I know . . .’ Suddenly he broke off. ‘If you’re heating something up you’d best get moving.
Ma Baker don’t take to fires after sundown. Had a major conflagration once, as I understand it. Cup er tea? Bit er stew needs warming through?’

  Katherine had forgotten about food. Rod said he was going up into town to scrounge something later on. ‘Can’t have that. Old Tommy never forgets a face or a favor. Just you fetch some sticks and we’ll see what we got.’

  He went away to his own neat bivouac and returned with tin plates and spoons and a large saucepan. ‘Hey presto — all-purpose stew. Warm your cockles.’

  They made a fire of sticks and plastic bottles. All-purpose stew turned out to be largely baked beans and cut-up sausages, very thick on the bottom of the pan. There were other fires around them, and a few superior people with camping gas burners. Everyone was friendly. In spite of the openness of the beach Katherine felt contained, and even private. Nobody exceeded their invisible boundaries, or stared, or asked questions. They made their own lives, and she made hers.

  ‘What’s a bottler?’ she asked, suddenly remembering the conversation she had woken to. She liked the old man’s chatter.

  ‘Bottler? Bless you, that’s the bloke what goes round with the hat. Good one makes all the difference between going hungry and setting down to a slap-up repast.’ He rambled on about bottlers he had known. Then his plans: he was moving on first thing. Do on an old folks’ estate. Funny how the old folks could still get a laugh out of Punch’s thievish tricks . . . She noticed that Rod was getting more and more restless. He’d been uneasy the whole evening, as if the Punch and Judy man bored him. Or perhaps it was she who bored him. Sometimes he was very close and sometimes he was so distant it made her want to cry. There were parts of his mind she didn’t know at all. Time was so short. She needed him, but more than that she needed to understand him. She needed to understand just one person before she died.

  Finally he stood up and made some excuse and got a flashlight from his duffle bag and wandered away up the beach. The sea hissed and sucked. She watched him go, remembering her bravado of the morning. I clean up after myself. And when I don’t you leave me. It had been cruel to them both, and ridiculous. The bright inhumanity of the woman she had grown out of. The woman, if there was any hope at all, she had to have grown out of.

  The old Punch and Judy man hardly seemed to notice Rod’s going. He was telling a story about an escapologist done up in chains and put in a gunny sack on the cobbles outside the Tower of London. Sacks she knew, but gunny was a word from before she was born.

  ~ * ~

  Vincent’s man was waiting for me under a street lamp. He gave me another of NTV’s thick brown envelopes. The ease with which Vincent poured out bank notes revolted me. The man and I had nothing to say to each other. I opened the envelope and took out two fivers and handed the rest back. Katherine wouldn’t mind. She had things to concern her other than where money came from or went.

  ‘You sure that’s enough?’ I said I was sure that was enough. He put the remaining money away in a briefcase. ‘Mr Ferriman said to tell you you’re doing a great job. And to keep on with the good work.’

  I stared at him. I needed Vincent’s encouragement like I needed typhus.

  ‘And he’s fixed tomorrow. He’s rented a caravan along the coast a bit. It looks beat up and you can find it by accident like. The way the lady’s going she won’t ask too many questions.’

  He gave me the address on a piece of paper. The way the lady was going Vincent stood to make a considerable loss on his investment. Twenty-six days he’d paid for . . . Maybe that was why Mason had been in the monitoring room. Maybe he had plans to sue the nice doctor. Three hundred thousand pounds for three or four or five half-hour shows was a lot of money.

  I put the address away in my back pocket. ‘Tell Mr Ferriman thank you. No -1 can tell him that any time. Tell him you saw me, and I was looking fine, and—’

  ‘I can’t say that. To tell the truth, you’re looking terrible.’

  I left him under his lamp post. It was time he learned that the last thing the Man with the TV Eyes wanted was the truth. I didn’t go straight back to Katherine but on, with my fivers in my hand, to the nearest pub. I had no intention of getting drunk: I merely was putting off, in the ritual, male fashion, the eventual homecoming.

  Some people are fascinated by chance decisions. The history that would have been changed if only so-and-so hadn’t stopped to pick his nose at some apparently unimportant moment. Me they bore stiff. All the same, chance decisions and unimportant moments and unimportant places sometimes come together like you’d never believe. That particular evening the unimportant moment was eight-thirty and the unimportant place was an unimportant pub with an unimportant telly.

  This telly showed me Katherine Mortenhoe in her own, sensational, one and only, never-to-be-equaled Human Destiny half-hour.

  I left that pub even soberer than I had entered it. Colder and soberer. And wiser too . . . You see, beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder. Neither is compassion, or love, or even common human decency. They’re not of the eye, but of the mind behind the eye. I had seen, my mind had seen, Katherine Mortenhoe with love. Had seen beauty. But my eyes had simply seen Katherine Mortenhoe. Had seen Katherine Mortenhoe. Period.

  I couldn’t even blame Vincent. He hadn’t cut the footage for shock effect. He hadn’t changed the emphasis. He hadn’t even cheapened it with sob-stuff narration, or music over. The sound track was mine and the sequences were mine also. It was Katherine Mortenhoe as my eyes had seen her.

  And my eyes had seen a dribbling, palsied wreck. My eyes had seen a ponderous, middle-aged woman capering unsuitably about a beach. My eyes had seen her filthied clothes. My eyes had seen her lumpy, graceless body lumber naked out of a pretty-pretty stream and stoop for the towel so that her breasts swung like pale, water-filled bladders. The sarcastic wolf whistles of my fellow-drinkers are still with me. This was how they saw her. When she wasn’t repulsive she was pathetic. I knew her to be neither.

  But it was I and I alone who had assembled through the medium they tell us cannot lie definitive evidence that she was just that: either repulsive or pathetic, and often both. Evidence that had been seen and believed by maybe sixty million people.

  I loved her. If that was the word. And there was no other.

  There are times when self-disgust is a luxury, when you can scrooge around in it and feel delightfully unclean. There are other times when self-disgust is simply a destroyer. And there are yet other times, I know now, when self-disgust is a challenge. I paused on the promenade by the entrance to the old pier. I could go down to her, and vomit up my guilt, and feel better, and vanish into the night. But she didn’t want my guilt. I could instead simply vanish into the night, keeping my guilt to myself, and pray that she died before Vincent got other men to her. But she wasn’t going to die, not in the few hours that I could win.

  I walked out onto the pier. The sea and the sky were utterly dark, and as I left the street lamps behind me I switched on my flashlight. The floor of the pier was made of thick planks, caulked with tar like the deck of an old barge. I walked along the side of the windowless dance hall to the very end of the pier. There was a high protective railing, and signs warning of the danger. I climbed up the railing and sat astride it. I could hear the sea below, and the creaking of the dance hall shell behind me. I shone my light down, but the sea was too far below and the beam died in the void. I had never in my life thought of suicide as a viable course of action and I didn’t then. In fact the idea never entered my head.

  I sat on the rail and considered the options. A new one occurred to me. I was, I insist cold sober. I was not reacting with panic or hysteria. I suppose I insist on this because I am in many ways proud of the detestable, self-mutilating thing I did, and won’t be given excuses. I took my flashlight and threw it as far out to sea as I could, watching it flash and swing and curve down till it disappeared. It was a heavy flashlight and it went a long way. I watched it because I didn’t want there to be any suggestion later on that
I might have dropped it by accident. If I was to spit in Vincent’s face I must do it properly.

  I took off my sound gear and threw that away also. The gray, overcast day had darkened uncomplainingly into a starless, sightless night. I stayed looking out to sea, staring into the impenetrable black. The pain soon began. When I couldn’t go on looking I closed my eyes. I’m not good at pain. All I could do was hang on.

  I’ve been told that I made noises, and that it was these noises that got people up from the beach below to help me. I’m afraid I don’t remember, I only know that by the time they got to me the pain had stopped. I had bought back what I had sold. I was free.

  ~ * ~

  8

  Tuesday

  Roddie had turned in a winner. Vincent was never wrong about these things. The show had everything: fine art-work, a strong narrative line, pathos, suffering, excitement, humor, offbeat characters, even some magnificently earthy female nudes. The telephone calls started coming in even while it was being screened. The public was siphoned off by Public Relations, but the others he tried to speak to each and every one. It was natural to value most the praise of his fellow professionals. Inevitably an invitation or two snowballed into an after-the-show party in the Reception Lounge. It was a shame Roddie couldn’t have been there. Everybody said the show was a certain award winner. And to prove it several NTV directors were there, and champagne was authorized. Although modest to the last, privately Vincent agreed with them. And Vincent was never wrong about these things.