“Ah. In that case .. .”
“Why’re you asking, Terry? Come clean!”
“I just wondered how things were with Ben, that’s all. What he was up to.”
“What-work? Money?”
“An overall picture anything, everything. Money. Work. Life.”
“Life .. .? Oh.” It was a knowing sound. “You mean, is he playing away?”
“I suppose that too, yes.”
“Shit, Terry, you’re asking me what men like Ben get up to when their wives are unwell? Like I’m an expert or something?” She guffawed at the thought. “But you still haven’t told me -why the interest? He hasn’t gone and got himself on the wrong side of you again, has he?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, welll You’d think he’d have learnt the first time round. You’d think he’d know it was mad to tangle with you, Terry! But then he was never too bright about that sort of thing, was he? Look, I wish I could help .. .” He could almost picture her lifting her shoulders in one of her more expansive gestures.
“Well... if you hear anything.”
“If I hear! You’re a funny one. But I’ll say yes to dinner when you’re next in London.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Promise?”
“It’s a certainty, Rebecca.”
Ringing off, he poured himself another whiskey and saw again the day three years ago when he’d invited Ben and Rebecca to the Derby. Strange the details that had stayed in his mind: the stillness of the air, the sunshine falling on the women’s hats, the pretty blue dress Maeve had been wearing. He remembered thinking what a fine couple Ben and Rebecca made, how well suited they seemed, how much he liked her. Over lunch, mellow with champagne, he remembered feeling something close to contentment, with his business going well, and Maeve by his side, a picture at seventeen and not a care in the world.
After the second race the four of them had decided to wander down to the paddock. Had it been his idea? It hardly mattered now. There was quite a crowd below the stand, Terry took the lead as they eased their way through the mob. He paused to greet one or two people, turned to wave to someone in the distance and swung back to find Duncan and Catherine standing in his path. It was the first time he’d seen Catherine since the episode with the letter more than a year before. Time had done nothing to protect him from the lurch of mortification he felt at the sight of her. Somehow he managed a smile, a greeting; he bent to kiss her cheek. By some miracle of social programming he remembered to introduce everyone, and without muffing their names either. Ben and Catherine shook hands, said all the mundane things that people say when they are meeting for the first time on a beautiful day at the races. For Terry, the awkwardness seemed to have passed. The two parties moved on, the day sparkled, Terry felt a little easier in his mind. There was nothing to suggest that anything momentous had happened, nothing to suggest that Ben and Catherine’s meeting was in any way significant, yet in those few minutes the world had shifted for all of them: by such insignificant events is one’s whole future determined. Terry often wondered what direction their lives would have taken if he hadn’t invited Ben and Rebecca to the Curragh that day, if instead of going to the paddock the four of them had chosen to visit one of the many boxes to which he had an invitation. But thoughts of that sort were a whip for one’s own back, and there was no sense in meting out more punishment.
It was the next evening near midnight, when the whiskey was roaring and chasing through his veins, that Terry began a new letter. Morne, he wrote carefully at the top, and Friday because he couldn’t remember the date. Dear Catherine, I hope you will not mind me dropping you a line in your new place, but I thought I should report on the visit of the celebrated Mrs. Kent. First, may I say that I hope your new place is to your liking and that the staff are looking after you well. If the food is half good and the other inhabitants do not speak unless spoken to I always think one is in with a chance .. .
So, Morne received a visit from the illustrious Mrs. Kent.. . I have to say that things did not get off to the best of starts when Conn took exception to her. Under normal circumstances Conn is not a partial dog he would as soon lick an intruder’s face as bite him but for some reason he took against Mrs. Kent. Perhaps it was her voice commanding, I think, would be a fair description perhaps she had the scent of a Rottweiler on her we will never know but he bared every one of his rickety teeth and shivered and shook and generally carried on alarmingly until I hauled him back into the house and locked him up.
This counted against me with Mrs. K, along, so it appeared, with much else. She is a forceful personage, not so very old in years (forty?) but mature in manner, who carries her knowledge like an encyclopedia. I went to the bottom of the class because I knew no plant names, had not rooted out the Russian vine that is growing through one of the yews, and had failed to realise that half the fruit trees had canker or would it be fungus? As for the shrubs that bore the marks of Mick’s blunt machete, she said that it didn’t terribly matter since they should never have been planted there in the first place (the soil?). She said it was a pity the garden had fallen into such neglect, since some of the best things would be difficult to save. Like what? I asked. Like the avenue and the lavender garden and the rose arches, she said. It was then I began to wonder if we were going to see eye to eye, Mrs. K and I. I love the lavender garden, you see. And the avenue, for that matter. And even the rose arches, though I’ll admit that they’re a little thin and scrawny. Be that as it may, after much tut ting and sucking in of breath and looking at the angle of the sun (another black mark I could not fix on south, let alone east or west), she decided she might, on reflection, advise on a grand plan. She began to describe a few possibilities, but I couldn’t take them in -I think I was still smarting from the accusation of neglect (your mamma loved the place a bit wild, didn’t she? and I’m sure she was right). However, I’ve said yes to an outline plan and a few drawings, and we’ll see where we go from there.
He read this through in despair. What would she make of this nonsense? He thought of tearing it up and starting again, but after pouring himself another whiskey he fell asleep in the armchair, to be awoken several hours later, cold and stiff-necked, by the sound of his own snoring. The next morning he signed the letter without reading it through, and posted it in the village before he had the chance to think better of it.
Chapter Six
THE MATCH flared in the darkness, illuminating Julie Basing’s plump face. Holding the hand-rolled smoke like a peashooter, she lit it with a short puff quickly followed by a second lingering drag. “Hey,” she murmured contentedly, ‘truly vicious.” She held it out to Catherine.
Catherine hesitated before taking it. This hesitation was as much a part of the nightly ritual as her acceptance. Inhaling, she felt her head swim almost immediately. “Help.”
“Dunno what you been missin’ till you get good stuff.” Catherine passed it back. “A bit strong for me.” They sat side by side in a corner of the unit garden, on the farthest loop of the farthest path. From behind them, the lights of the wing cast a feeble glimmer. The night was warm and still. Above the horizon, the sky was tinted a hazy orange from the town, but high over their heads one or two stars were showing through, faint pinpricks in the velvety dome. Catherine watched the steady unblinking dot of a satellite moving mesmeric ally across the sky towards the mass of nearby trees, which stood like giant sentries, tall and silent and heavy, bowed down by the last heat of the long summer. Even before the first trees began to turn, it seemed to her that she could smell mouldering leaves and woodsmoke. “I used to love autumn,” she said.
“Nah,” scoffed Julie, ‘summer, Spain and sangria for me.” “In autumn you can plan for the next season. Move plants that aren’t thriving. Make good your mistakes.”
“No sortin’ my mistakes,” laughed Julie, who at twenty-five had two children by different fathers and no man to support her. “You know, this stuff is truly great. Why don’
I roll you a couple of joints for tomorrow?”
For an instant Catherine was tempted.
“Or you gonna stay ratted all weekend?”
Catherine gave an ironic laugh. “Why not?”
“Shove some vodka in an Evian bottle, then you can take nips mornin’ and afternoon.”
“There’ll be champagne, I expect.”
Julie was unimpressed. “And?”
“My sister’s doing the food so ... smoked salmon, I should think.” At the thought of the party Catherine felt a fresh stab of apprehension and, against routine and instinct, accepted a second smoke. She took a deep pull, savouring the workings of the drug, the languor, the sense of lightness, most of all the blunting of anxiety, which was like a small but perfect miracle.
Julie leant across and tapped her arm. “Hey, it’ll be okay.”
“I told Ben I didn’t want a party.” Catherine saw again his closed expression, the distracted smile, the narrow unresponsive eyes.
“Look at it this way, it’s your birthday, and they’re just tryin’ to make you happy.”
“They’ll fuss, I know they will. I’m dreading it.”
“I did, didn’ I, first time back.”
“But you knew what to expect.”
“You’re kiddin’. Me nan ran about like a strangled chicken, pushin’ food at me. Me dad, he kept talkin’ to me brother about the Cup, ‘cos then he didn’ have to look at me an’ the big bad wheelchair. And me mum, she just went and cried her eyes out in the kitchen.” Julie had been riding pillion on her boyfriend’s motorbike when they’d collided with a lorry and she’d been thrown thirty foot onto a low wall.
Catherine said, “At least they didn’t give you a party.”
“Yeah, well they’re all gonna say the wrong thing. Right? They’re gonna treat you like a child. Right? They’re gonna say’ she put on a Knightsbridge accent “We think you’re so marvelous! We think you’re so brave! They can’ help it. They dunno no better. Just sink another dose o’ champagne, get wasted, have a laugh.”
Julie’s creed was simple. You made the most of everything life had to offer and ignored the rest. While this approach left out too much, it perfectly suited her own stubborn nature and the philosophy of the spinal unit, which was pragmatic and upbeat. As if in echo of this, a distant shout of laughter floated across the garden on the torpid air, followed by a ripple of good-natured jeers.
On her arrival, Catherine had been quietly appalled by the quasi-military camaraderie, the blind devotion to sports and team games, the institutional humour. For some weeks she had resisted the pressure to join in everything from quiz nights to group discussions and counselling sessions, where, against all instinct, you were expected to offer up your most private and painful thoughts to strangers. Yet before long she too had succumbed, as all but the most stubborn must succumb, because in the end it was a relief to fight on only one front at a time, to be carried along by the routine, the sense of shared experience, the knowledge that, for what was probably the last time in your life, no explanations were due. She had responded to the atmosphere of, if not mutual support, then mutual resistance, a unifying scorn for the preconceptions and mawkish sympathies of the outside world, and learnt to joke loudly and laugh falsely at a great many things that by most standards were not very funny.
Her family had greeted this flippant mood with transparent relief and renewed attempts to get her back into the swing, as they liked to call it. The birthday party was one of their more obvious tactics. They seemed to believe that social contact, no matter how superficial, was like good medicine, hard to take at first, but immensely beneficial in the long run.
“Ben comin’ to get you?” Julie asked. “He could chat up that boot-faced hint across the corridor again, then we might get a few more laughs.”
“He’s coming at nine.”
“Been away again, has he?”
“Just very busy.”
“He works like crazy, don’ he? Least you got that. A bloke who brings home the bread.”
Catherine murmured, “I’m not so sure.” She said it softly but not so softly that Julie couldn’t hear.
The pale disc of Julie’s face turned and peered at her in the darkness.
“Not sure, how?”
It was a while before Catherine answered. “I’m not sure if I’ve got the bloke, and I’m not sure if we’ve got any money.”
Julie drew in a long thoughtful breath. “Ooops. You think he’s playin’ away?”
Catherine chose her words carefully, and each still felt like a small betrayal. “I think there are things we need to talk about that we don’t talk about.”
“Yeah, well, men never talk, do they, not unless they’ve got a gun to their heads.” She glanced around again and said in a tone of friendliness, “Wanna talk about it now?”
“Not much to say really,” she lied.
“Talked to the shrink?”
“He says that Ben’s showing the classic symptoms of survivor guilt. Or rather, double survivor guilt, because he didn’t manage to protect me, and because it was me and not him who was severely injured. Something like that.”
“What’s that got to do with playin’ around, for Chris’sake?” Julie declared in a combative tone.
“Ah, well how did he put it?” Catherine went through the motions of recalling the psychiatrist’s argument, though she remembered it perfectly well. “Dr. Fellowes said that when a man’s failed in his most basic role as protector it leaves him feeling unworthy and emasculated. And that if he feels bad enough he may go and do things that are out of character.”
“Oh, p-l-ease!” Julie gave a hearty groan. “So they feel guilty, these men, so it’s okay for them to go and fool around. I tell you, if it was a woman they’d say she was a load of rubbish.
Shit, Cath what I mean is that men get all the breaks.-That’s what I mean. So ... ol’ Shrinko what’s he suggest, then? Therapy?”
“He says I should make it clear to Ben that I don’t hold him responsible in any way. That I still respect and esteem him.”
“Yeah, well so? That’s what men want all the time, in nit Respect and no bother.”
Sometimes in her bleaker moments Catherine remembered how Ben seemed to avoid contact with her new body. Occasionally, when she really wanted to torture herself, she thought he was actively repulsed by it. But then, as the group discussions had taught her, there was no state of paranoia from which the newly disabled were immune.
“That Shrinko,” Julie muttered, ‘he’s a case, if you ask me.”
Catherine said, “He doesn’t rate my own guilt much.”
“What’s wrong with it, then? Not good enough, or what?”
Catherine began slowly, trying to make sense of it all over again. “Ben and I had a terrible row in France. Our first really serious row. I felt it was hanging over us I still feel it’s hanging over us. I keep thinking that if it hadn’t been for the stupid row the accident would never have happened.”
“What?” Julie gave an exaggerated sigh of disbelief. “Now, how in God’s heaven do you work that one out?”
“I was going to stay on in France while Ben went to America, but at the
last minute I came back with him. Because of the row. You know trying
to make amends, hating the thought of parting badly. But all I managed
to do was stir it up again. We had another tiff on the way in from the
airport. So stupid about something so unbelievably trivial ‘
“Like what?”
“Oh, about whether these friends we’d been staying with had taken offence at this nickname Ben had given their child.”
“What name d’he call it?”
“Raucous.”
“And was it?”
“Well, yes, it was, but then all small children make a racket,
don’t they? The point was, it became an issue. So ridiculous! It just made everything worse again. And I just can’t get it out of my head that
if we hadn’t been arguing then Ben would never have stormed up and tried to fight it out with the intruder. He would have called the police or got a neighbour or ... well, something else.”
“Wan’ my opinion? Sounds like a load of complete bollocks to me. Men fight. It’s in the blood. Can’ help it. Every bloke I’ve ever known has been a fighter, and I’m not just talking push and shove either. It’s in their terosterone, or whatever you call it.” She took a second equally unsuccessful stab at it. “Trerosterone? Anyway second bloody nature.”
“But he was angry. He was tense. He wasn’t thinking straight. If he’d been thinking straight.. .”
“So this makes it your fault? Give us a break, Cath! You did nothin’ that no woman ain’ done through history you had a bar ny with your old man. What was the big row about the first time, anyway? What was the big tangle about in France?”
Music came on somewhere, a tinny jangle that pulsated across the darkened garden. “Oh,” she sighed, ‘money.”
“Well, that wouldn’ be a first either, would it? Men spend, women mend.”
“It was awful. I’ve never seen him so angry.”
“They never like bein’ told they’re not safe with money, do they? Can’ take it. Never have, never will.” Julie performed her nightly ritual, pinching off the burnt end of the joint and stashing the tiny stub in her tobacco tin. Then, matter-of-factly: “So now you think you’re broke? Broke, like no Caribbean this year? Or broke, like no rent money?”
An aircraft flew so high above that it might have been at the same altitude as the satellite, on the very edges of space. Catherine looked up and thought of the intense phone conversations that took Ben out into the garden for up to half an hour on end when he came to visit, the way he prowled up and down and gesticulated as he talked, and the tension in his face when he returned. She could think of nothing that could put that sort of fear into him but money. “I don’t know. Could be no rent money.”
“You can earn, then,” said Julie sweepingly. “Go an’ do yer gardens.”
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