“How’s my girl, then? How’s my Moggy?”
For the first week Catherine had not known how to answer this question, but now she said, “Fine.”
“What, here on your lonesome?” Ben looked around with a show of surprise. “I thought Alice was going to be here. Where’s Alice?”
“She went ages ago. She had a date.”
“Not a date date?” He gave a mock leer.
“She didn’t say.”
He hovered indecisively, as though in the absence of other people he might only stay a minute. She knew he found it easier when the family were there, or Emma, who was the only friend Catherine allowed to visit her, because then the burden of conversation was shared, the tone light-hearted. Whenever they were alone, his manner became rather forced, his talk wild and rambling, and then she had to remind herself how hard it must be for him, for all the family: the strain of seeing her stretched out like a piece of medical meat; the fear of mentioning the p-for-paralysis word; the need to put on a cheerful front.
“Good dinner?” she asked.
“Oh, you know, the usual blow out. That’s what they always want.”
It had been a business do, Catherine remembered. Some Poles in London for a couple of days.
“A surprise for you!” Lifting his briefcase onto the bed, he pulled out a small package and brandished it aloft, like a conjurer producing his best trick.
Another present. She said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“What do you mean, wish I wouldn’t?” The lightness of his voice didn’t conceal the note of rebuke. “Open it!” He thrust it into her hands.
The wrapping was well sealed and it took her a moment to find a way in. Pulling the paper off at last, she held up a miniature television designed to fit into the palm of one hand. She couldn’t imagine when she would use it. “Thanks.”
Her tone must have sounded less than enthusiastic because he made an expression of offence that was half-serious. “Thanks? But you haven’t even looked at it yet. Turn it on see what a great picture it’s got.” When she failed to find the switch he plucked it from her grasp and riddled with the controls. “See?” He held it close above her face.
“It’s amazing.”
Like a boy with a new toy, he showed her every channel and button, looking to her expectantly for suitable expressions of wonderment and appreciation. She realised he’d had more than just a glass or two of wine when he swayed gently and put out a hand to steady himself, though he managed to fuse it into one seamless movement that to anyone else would have appeared deliberate.
Putting the television to one side at last, he declared, “It’s for when everyone’s driving you nuts!”
“All the time, you mean?”
He liked it when she showed the right spirit. “All the time,” he echoed with a warm chuckle of approval. “Absolutely!”
She felt a burst of love for him, for his quirky smile, his mischievous eyes, for the marvelous familiarity of him, and the novelty too, because however hard she tried her memory could never quite do him justice. Close behind this came a plunge of anxiety, which brought her up with a hard jolt. Would they ever survive this? Could any marriage survive this?
She asked, “How’s work?”
A lazy shrug. “Got a lot of catching up to do. Sort out some non
senses
“Nothing serious?”
“No, no.”
“Simon can’t do it for you?”
“Ha! I wish!” Still in expansive mood, he asked, “So, my darling Moggy, how are things?” Neither of them could remember how or why he had come to call her Moggy they weren’t cat lovers but somehow the name had stuck.
She didn’t attempt to list the various indignities of her day, nor describe the auditory tests that had showed almost no hearing in her damaged ear; like her moments of panic, anxiety and dread, these were things she had learnt not to talk about. “Emma packed for me.”
Faint puzzlement flickered over his face and she knew that for a moment he’d forgotten she was being moved to the spinal unit the next day. “Oh, right,” he said airily. This was Ben’s way, to ignore the more unsettling things in life and concentrate on the positive. It was one of the things that had drawn Catherine to him, this belief that life could be lived in a permanent state of confidence and enthusiasm.
“There’s an awful lot of champagne left over,” she mentioned. “Could you take it home?”
“What, haven’t we drunk it all? Hell! We’ll soon put that right when you get to the new place! Lots of people coming to see you, Cath. They’re all queuing up.”
“I don’t want to see anyone. Please, Ben, tell them to stay away. Will you? Please.”
“Might cheer you up, you know.”
The thought of small talk appalled her, but what appalled her most of all was the thought of their curiosity and pity. “No. Absolutely not. I would really hate it.”
“But they love you, darling heart. They want to come and dish out all the gossip. Give you the latest.” Catching her expression, he shook his head reprovingly and his voice took on a mildly exasperated edge. “Mad to cut yourself off, Moggy. Got to have a bit of light relief sometimes, you know!”
When she didn’t reply his eyes drooped, he gave a slight shrug and, reaching for a chair, pulled it up to the bed.
“Can’t see you down there,” she reminded him as he sank down onto it with a sigh.
“No?” he murmured lazily. He stood up again and, having shifted indecisively once or twice, perched on the edge of the bed, which had long been established as the only place where she could see anyone properly.
“Now, what have I got to tell you?” he said abruptly, coming alive to the need for news. “Yes! Got a call from Sam Blake. You know Sam and Livvy? Want us to go and stay with them in Barbados next Christmas.
Bit of a wild child in his City days, of course, old Sam. Sailed close
to the wind, so they say, but one hell of an operator, no doubt about
that. Running an investment company now. On his way to a second
bloody fortune, jam my bastard! But a fantastic place they’ve got in
Barbados, apparently. Her family has pots of moolah, of course ‘
Catherine found herself listening but not listening. This was the trick, she had learnt: to disconnect herself from such moments, from such conversations, from Ben’s life, from her own too, though quite what her life involved now she couldn’t have said. The only world she could focus on was small and contained: this room, this bed, this body, and the unit they were transferring her to in the morning. If she listened too closely to what Ben was saying it was like touching some terrible heat, the pain made her pull away.
Finally, when the word “Barbados’ filtered through yet again, she could bear it no longer and interrupted him in a voice that was too loud and too sharp. “I forgot,” she said, ‘the police were here.”
“Oh.” His smile had a glassy veneer. “Wilson?”
“And the WPG.”
“The blonde job with the big boobs?”
“Well, it was the same one as before, anyway.” She heard the note of criticism in her voice and thought: This is no way to go, I’m sounding difficult. “Yes, the blonde job. They said they’d been trying to get in touch with you.”
He rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, I called them! Yesterday?
Monday? They’re never there. Hopeless! What did they want, anyway? Let me guess,” he jeered languidly, ‘to tell us they’ve found nothing.”
“More or less.”
“I knew it. And they came and bothered you just to tell you that? Sorry, darling, I should have got hold of them, shouldn’t I? Should have told them to get lost. Forgive me?” He rolled towards her with an endearing boyish smile. “Poor Moggy. Poor darling.” His voice had a bleary sentimental note. He squeezed her hand, then after a moment’s hesitation reached out a second time and, still not entirely at ease with the role of bedside companion, laid his hand ra
ther awkwardly in hers. He asked, “What did they say? They’ve given up on the stupid phantom caller, I hope.”
“Yes. There’s no way of tracing the calls.”
“Of course there isn’t! And it wasn’t anybody who had anything to do with anything you said so yourself.”
“That’s right,” she murmured.
“That’s exactly what I told Simon! He should never have made such a big thing about it with the police. Never have encouraged Emma to make all those ridiculous statements!” With a final press of her hand he withdrew his own and in the process of settling himself more comfortably on the edge of the bed turned away slightly so that his face was partly in shadow.
She said, “Wilson wanted a statement.”
“But I’ve given him a statement.”
“No, from me.”
He turned down his mouth in an expression of mystification. “But why?
To say what?”
“Just what I remember.”
“But, darling, you don’t remember anything.”
“I remember going into the house.”
He shook his head firmly. “No, no, you said you didn’t ‘
“But I do now. I remember now.”
His eyes narrowed almost to the point of invisibility, she sensed a sudden alertness in him. “Since when?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Things have been coming back to me in bits and pieces.”
“But are you sure?” he asked easily. “It couldn’t be’ he rotated a finger next to his temple, signalling brain problems’ you got a bit mixed up?”
“No, I remember moving into the driving seat to go and park, I remember you taking the cases up to the door.”
“You didn’t say anything.” It was an accusation.
“It didn’t seem terribly important.”
“Didn’t seem important!” he jeered, flashing cold shark eyes at her.
She realised her mistake. It was like pressing a button, this route to Ben’s insecurities. He couldn’t bear the thought of being excluded in any way, of having even the smallest item of information kept from him. His mother had walked out when he was twelve and no one had given him a word of explanation, not then, and not later, certainly not his mother herself, who’d gone to America and barely been in contact since. He’d been brought up by a profligate and largely absent father who, among his other notable acts, had twice forgotten to pick Ben up from school at the end of term, and had once left him to find his own way back from France after taking up an invitation to go and stay with a minor principessa on Lake Como. Not surprisingly, Ben hated to feel he wasn’t being told the full facts, or, worse still, that decisions were being made behind his back.
“Sorry,” Catherine said. “I didn’t realise I’d remembered anything very significant until the police asked me.”
Ben forced enthusiasm into a voice that was still cool with injury. “So! Memory all coming back! That brain of yours! All there! All working! That’s great!” Then, thinking this through, he leant towards her with an unfocused look of concern. “Haven’t remembered anything upsetting though, have you, my darling?”
“No.”
“Nothing about that man?
“No,” she lied again.
He straightened up. “Good! Can’t have you upsetting yourself!”
This was the official family line, she had realised some days ago. Everything must be done to make sure she did not get upset, though this strategy rather awkwardly ruled out discussion of the immediate past and indefinite future.
She said reminiscently, “But tell me -I can’t quite remember
when you were at the door, trying to get in, you called something back to me. Something about the lock. Something .. .” She gave up. “What was it?”
He was cautious suddenly, or slow, or distracted. “What? Oh, I said the lock felt strange. Stiff.”
“Ah,” she breathed. It came back to her now. “Yes .. . And the lights I’m not going mad, am I? You didn’t put any on, except for a couple at the back of the house.”
Ben drew his head back with a frown. “No, darling, where on earth did you get that from? No, I put the hall light on, then when I realised the alarm wasn’t set I went off on a hunt saw the mess in the living room did a complete round. No, I turned on every light in the place! Of course I did!” He shook his head firmly. “But, Moggy darling, why go into all this now? What’s the point?”
“I want to get a picture, I want to get it clear in my head, so that I can forget about it. That’s all.”
He shrugged as though he was being persuaded against his better judgement.
She continued, “What about when you went upstairs? Did you leave the hall light on?”
“Of course! And I put the landing light on, and then well, I would have put the study light on, but the bastard was waiting for me, wasn’t he?”
“I thought it was dark when I came in.”
He scoffed, “No, darling. Now I know you’ve got it all mixed up!”
“Oh ... well, then.”
“For God’s sake, the lights were definitely on!” he insisted as if she had argued against him. “Is that what you told the police, that the place was dark?”
“I said I thought the only lights were in the kitchen and the sitting room. But I must have got it wrong.”
“Totally!” He shook his head firmly. “That’s going to be great, isn’t it? You saying it was dark, and me saying it was lit up like a Christmas tree. Ha!” He was annoyed certainly, but also rather amused, as if the idea of being an unreliable witness rather appealed to him.
“Sorry.”
He brushed it aside with a lift of one hand.
“One last thing.”
His attention was fading fast.
“Upstairs when I got upstairs someone was shouting. Yelling. It was you, wasn’t it?”
“I should think so,” he said without hesitation. “Well, I was bloody furious, wasn’t I?” His eyes gleamed briefly.
“Did the man speak?”
“Mmm?” He had heard all right, but either he was thinking about it or he didn’t know the answer. “What a question, Moggy.”
He would have left it there if she hadn’t pressed him. “Did he say anything?”
Realising some effort of concentration was expected of him, Ben screwed up his eyes, he pushed out his lip, he exhaled slowly before shaking his head. “Can’t remember now. All lost in the mists.”
She was silent.
“Is that it?” He looked tired, or possibly the worse for alcohol.
“I think so.”
“Got your pictured
“What?”
“You wanted a picture, you said. To get it clear in your head.”
“Yes, got my picture.”
“Good!” He lumbered to his feet. “So, what time would you like me here in the morning?”
“Ten, if you wouldn’t mind. I’m rather nervous.”
“Nervous? Why nervous, Moggy?”
“The thought of being moved.” She was aware that in showing this loss of nerve she was failing to show the kind of doughty spirit expected of her.
“Hey!” He pressed his palm tenderly to the side of her face. “Not to worry. There’s my girl!”
He bent down to kiss her and rest his cheek against hers, and she closed her eyes, better to draw in the warmth of him, the scent of him, the texture of his skin. She felt a rush of memory, an amalgam of the hundreds of nights they had spent together. In a surge of feeling, she put a hand around his head to bring his face still closer to hers, but just as her fingers tightened against the thick silky hair he pulled away.
“I miss you,” she whispered. Saying this was like breaching a dam, just a trickle for the moment but one sudden move and there’d be a torrent. The urge to give way to it was very strong. Her throat swelled, she felt all the pressure of her grief and self-pity. Yet something warned her against expressions of anguish. Partly, she had an irrational fear of voicing her terrors, as if th
is alone could give them the dread solidity of fact. More practically, she feared Ben’s revulsion and dismay. Having no use for displays of emotion himself, he looked on them with mistrust and embarrassment.
In the end she said simply, “Miss you so much.”
“Miss you too,” Ben said breezily. Then, clearly feeling that something else was expected of him, he added in a suggestive growl, “Won’t be long now!”
She managed to maintain her expression until he had gone, and then she began to weep, slowly at first, a trickle of hot silent tears that slipped coolly into her ears and hair. When these failed to take the edge off things, she cried with a sense of anger. Finally she remembered the brandy bottle. Reaching for it, she managed to knock it to the floor and had to call the nurse.
The bell was answered by an Irish girl named Kathleen: “But you can call me Kate’.
“There’s a bottle of brandy on the floor.”
She laughed. “A nightcap, is it?”
“Have one yourself.”
“Trying to get me fired!” She found the bottle and, pushing a straw into the neck, held it to Catherine’s mouth. If she noticed Catherine’s un dried tears she didn’t mention them. When one sip stretched to four she exclaimed in mock disapproval, “Steady on!”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“So you are.”
“I’m frightened.”
“No need, I’m sure. They’ll look after you better there. They’ll be able to give you a lot more time than we can.” Capping the brandy bottle she put it back in the locker. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“Give me another drink?”
“You’re a devil! As bad as a Paddy.”
Catherine didn’t want to be left alone quite yet. “There’re some letters on the locker,” she said. “Would you read them to me?”
“Only one I can see.” She moved chocolates and tissues and paraphernalia. “No, only one.”
“Well, that one, then.”
She saw Kate baulk at the length of it, five pages or so, but, perching on the edge of the bed, she began to read without complaint.
“Dear Catherine, I hope you’re continuing to make progress and that the flowers arrived safely. The roses were the last from the climbers on the west wall, which have blossomed so profusely though alas so briefly. I do not of course know their name my ignorance would be laughable if it were not so shameful. However, I’m taking myself in hand, so far as common names go at least I think it would be unrealistic to aspire to Latin at my age when I’ve still trouble enough with the spelling of the English language. A Mrs. Kent is coming to tell me what’s what. She is said to be an expert on gardens hereabouts (she’s done quite a few gardens in Wicklow) ‘
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