Gold top. Not her own. ,
When Catherine emerged from the bathroom five minutes later, Alice was waiting for her, smiling brightly.
“Anything else, Cath?” she asked, following her into the bedroom.
“A new head?”
“Did you have that much?”
“However much, it was too much.” Catherine waved a hand towards the wardrobes. “Some time you’re going to have to go through my clothes for me, Ally. Sort ‘em out. Chuck ‘em out. Everything tight or vaguely tight. Ruthless. To hell with how much it cost.” Realising this was presuming rather a lot, she remembered her manners. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
Alice gave a stiff smile, her eyes shone with a fierce indecipherable light. “You can’t wear them?”
“Too hard to get on and off. Not likely to fit either. My world has gone pear-shaped in more than one sense of the word words, excuse me. Everything has rather settled, you see, around my bum.”
The bed was a low one and Catherine eyed it wearily. “Now, if I get onto this bloody bed, will I ever get off it again? More to the point, do I care?”
Alice’s face had taken on an increasingly appalled expression.
Wondering dimly if she had caused offence, too muddled to work out what it might have been, Catherine held out an appeasing hand, her second of the day. Stepping forward to grasp it, Alice seemed to keep coming, to be falling towards the wheelchair, and instinctively Catherine flinched, pulled her head away, before she understood that the arms which reached out to envelop her roughly, the cheek that bumped awkwardly against hers, were proffered with intense emotion.
“Oh Cath,” Alice cried in a ragged voice, ‘any time you need me. Any time at all.”
Catherine felt the absolute stillness, the freezing of sensation, that was her defence against pity. The sympathy she’d received today had brought home to her with dismal clarity the depressingly pessimistic view that the able-bodied held of disability. This, they were implying with their relentless compassion, is the end of life as you knew it, the end of almost everything that made it worthwhile, the end of all you had hoped to enjoy in the future, the end of beauty and physical attraction and their first thought, though they would vigorously deny it the end of a fulfilling sex life. To them she was now indistinguishable from her condition: paralysed Catherine, wheelchair Catherine, poor sad tragic Catherine. She used to have it all, you know. Each pitying smile, each hand laid tenderly on her shoulder, each compassionate hug was like a slap in the face. We think you’re wonderful actually translated as You are nothing now, except in terms of the heroic role we have chosen to bestow on you. They would not be denied their right to pity her; they insisted on it, because then they could face themselves in the mirror with a small glow of self-congratulation.
And now her sister: Alice who knew better than most the indignity of finding herself an object of pity.
Catherine thought: The drink’s making me bitter.
After Alice had helped her onto the bed, Catherine said, “I’ll be fine now, thanks.” But as Alice left the room Catherine called her back. “Last thing. Would you look under the bed for me?”
Alice made a comical frown. “Under the bed? What am I looking for?”
“A baseball bat.”
Dropping to her knees, Alice made a thorough search. “Nothing here, Cath.”
“You’re sure?”
Alice crawled round to the end of the bed and looked from there. “Nothing.” She got breathlessly to her feet and laughed, “What’s it for bit of self-defence?” She started and gave a sharp groan of horror, knuckle pressed histrionically to her mouth. “Sorry, Cath, I didn’t mean to ... Oh, God, God of course! You’re worried about being here on your own! Is that what it is? Do you want me to stay? I’m happy to stay!”
Catherine wasn’t quite ready for Alice in this protective role and spoke a little more sharply than she’d intended. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing like that.”
“Sure?”
“Sure. Now, go away,” she growled. “And leave me to rest. Everyone’s so bloody keen on me resting. Well, tell them I’m bloody resting like a good girl, will you?”
When she’d gone, Catherine turned herself onto her side and, with her arm stretched across Ben’s half of the bed, as though in her dreams she might find him there, fell into the leaden sleep of alcohol and extreme tiredness.
She woke groggily to full darkness and the rocking of the mattress as Ben sat down heavily on the edge of the bed at her back.
“Didn’t realise you were up here, Moggy.” His voice was thick and unreadable. “Thought you were resting downstairs. Why on earth did you come up here?”
She turned onto her back. “It was too noisy downstairs.” Reaching for his hand, she added, “And I wanted to be here, in our own bed.”
The light from the landing was too faint for her to see his face but she had the impression that his expression had hardened. She heard him exhale, a long slow breath. His hand was loose in hers.
She asked, “Has everyone gone?”
“Except Emma. She’s cooking supper. Pasta, I think. Do you want to come down? I can’t say I’m entirely happy about carrying you, Moggy, not down those stairs, not when I’ve had a drink or two. But if we go slowly, I suppose .. .”
“I promise not to fall.” If Ben thought she was making a poor attempt at humour he didn’t say so.
For a fraction of a second their conversation about the debts had seemed to belong to another time and place, but now it came crowding back through the steady beat of her headache, like an emotional hangover.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“What?”
“Not worrying too much about the money?”
“Of course I’m worrying about the money,” he said testily.
“We never finished talking. The house I’m not clear,” she said with dull dread. “Are we going to have to sell it?”
“Sell it? God, no.”
“There’s another way then?”
“A second mortgage. It’s all arranged.”
“All arranged?”
“I’ve got the papers downstairs.”
Something inside her smarted a little at the realisation that he had arranged the whole thing and gathered the paperwork without telling her.
He said, “We can get Emma to witness our signatures.”
“You mean, tonight?”
“Well, she’s here. Might as well make the most of it.”
“Can’t we leave it till tomorrow, darling?”
“But Moggy, she’s here,” he repeated doggedly. “And nothing’s going to be different tomorrow.”
“I’d rather leave it, if you don’t ‘
He shot to his feet. “You’re not listening, Moggy!” His voice was pitched dangerously low. “Nothing’s going to be different tomorrow! And I need to be sure I’m getting this money -otherwise I might as well go and slit my bloody throat!”
“I’d just like to feel we’d talked it through properly, that’s all. To be sure it’s the best way.”
His voice rose suddenly. “I am sure! And I’m telling you there isn’t any other way!”
She’d only seen him this angry once before, during their big row in France. Among their friends he was known for being imperturbable, a reputation that perfectly suited his view of himself as a person who conducted his life on his own terms. It hurt her to see him like this because she knew how much he hated it.
When she finally spoke again it was soothingly. “Darling, I
didn’t mean to suggest you hadn’t looked into it properly .. . of course I didn’t. It’s just I’d like to know how big this mortgage is going to be. And what happens if we can’t keep up the payments.” He was very still and she couldn’t make out his expression in the darkness. “Could we lose everything? That’s what I want to know.
Because I’ve no other money, nothing at all-‘
“Ah, so that’s it!”
The
y had got onto dangerous ground. He didn’t like to be reminded that it was Catherine’s money that had paid for the deposit on the house.
“Couldn’t we buy a tiny flat?” she asked. “Have some security at
least, and use the spare cash from this place ‘
“Christ! No time! No time!”
On old ground one is destined to take the same turnings, and she heard herself say, “I just think of Mummy. It was all the money she ever had. Everything she’d worked so hard to keep She had been about to say to keep safe.
“So it’s your money now, is it?”
“Of course not. It’s ours, of course it is. I’m just worried about what’ll happen if we lose it.”
“We’ll rent, we’ll save for another place God, I don’t know! All I know is that if I don’t get this cash together I’m bloody sunk! And now you’re talking as if we had a whole bundle of options. Well, I’m telling you there are no options!” He paced the room, he came to a halt in the light of the doorway and clasped a hand to his forehead in a final gesture of exasperation.
Catherine felt the future close in on her, dark and cold.
Appearing to calm himself with an effort, Ben came back and sank onto the bed with a long and heartfelt sigh. “Oh Moggy .. .” He bent over and rested his cheek against hers. “If there was any other way .. . We’ll be all right, once we’re through this. Promise you. We’ll be fine.”
But she had lost the simple capacity for optimism. Before the accident, she might have looked on the prospect of hard times as a challenge, a fine test of commitment and loyalty, but now it frightened her. Now, she had special needs, not the least of which was security.
“Hey,” Ben murmured into her ear. Pulling back, he placed his palm against her cheek.
Heart heavy, she heard herself say, “You can count on me.”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me down. I knew it.” He kissed her briefly before scrambling to his feet again. “Supper? Do you want to come down?”
“I’m not sure I can eat anything.”
“I’ll call Emma up, then. I’ll go and get the papers. We’ll get it all over and done with.”
“Ben?”
He paused in the door.
“What happened to the baseball bat?”
A short pause in which the atmosphere seemed to sharpen. “Good God,” he exclaimed, “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“I thought it might have been used in the attack.”
“What?” He gave a small incredulous laugh.
“I thought I was imagining things, and then I wasn’t so sure, and now well, it’s gone.”
He moved back to the side of the bed. “Moggy, you’ve been having bad dreams. I moved it ages ago.”
“Moved it? Where to?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” he said airily. “Somewhere out of the way. The cupboard under the stairs, I think. Or the study. Maybe the study.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he echoed as if the question were absurd. “Because it was too dangerous to leave under the bed. They always say intruders grab a weapon and use it against you, don’t they? Thought it’d be safer.”
“You don’t think that this man’ she couldn’t bring herself to say his name ‘could have found it, then?”
“No!” he scoffed dismissively. “I moved it ages ago!”
“And it’s still there, wherever you put it?”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head and completed the show of disbelief with a heavy sigh. “I’ll go and get it if you like!”
“Oh, don’t bother now ...”
“No, no!” he said with a weary half laugh. “Never let it be said.” He was already on his way out of the room. She heard a cupboard door being opened in the study, followed by a clattering, then the sound of his feet thudding down the stairs, followed by faint rattling in the hall. He must have run up the stairs much more quietly than he had gone down because the next thing she realised he was striding back into the room, holding the baseball bat up like a trophy. In a juxtaposition of light and dark, time and memory, she saw the attacker freeze-framed, as if lit by a flashbulb, the weapon high in his hand. The image vanished as quickly as it had come.
“There,” Ben declared, offering the bat up to her.
“God. I was so sure .. .”
“Think you had a few too many, Moggy. You were certainly well away down there! But you’re feeling better now, eh? Slept it off?”
“I wasn’t feeling well.”
“I’m not surprised,” he said in the same knowing tone.
Swinging the bat lightly in one hand he strode out of the room, leaving the door open. She saw him hesitate and, with the faintest glance back in her direction, take a right turn into the bathroom. A minute later the lavatory flushed, the plumbing hissed as the cold tap was run, and it may have been her imagination, it may have been a trick of an overwrought mind, but she thought she heard the click of the bathroom cabinet.
She saw him cross the landing and head downstairs. Within a couple of minutes, he was back with the documents in his hand. Emma appeared shortly afterwards, wiping her hands on an apron. She would have chattered, but Ben cut her short, and she made a comical face over his shoulder, a schoolgirl rebuked for talking in class.
“Shall I sit you up a little, Moggy?” Ben asked.
He fed the documents to her one by one, then took them to Emma and stood over her while she witnessed them, alert for any misaligned word.
“There!” he said, smiling. “How about some supper, then?”
Catherine repeated, “Not for me.”
Ben hurried off with the documents while Emma helped Catherine into the wheelchair for a trip to the bathroom. Once inside, Catherine ran the tap to disguise any noise and levered open the medicine cabinet with the lavatory brush. The bottle of perfume had gone.
Seeing her back to bed, Emma waved conspiratorially and whispered that she’d be back soon.
It seemed a long time before she returned. By then Catherine’s brain felt heavy, there was a clamminess on her skin like the beginnings of fever.
Emma drew up a chair and began to chat. As she illuminated some comment with a sweep of one hand Catherine found herself trying to catch her scent, and thought: This way misery lies. Even as she tried to banish the idea from her mind, she interrupted Emma with, “What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”
“Perfume?” She had to consider for a moment. “Help. It’s Givenchy, I think. Yes Givenchy. Why, darling? Do you like it? Shall I buy you some? Let me buy you some. An extra birthday presie.” With a flick of her hair she leant forward excitedly. “Thought we might go to Harvey Nicks when you’re next home, eh?” She rolled her eyes, she lifted both shoulders, she hugged her fists together like a small child. Breaking off only to light a cigarette, she hurried on. “Starting on the first floor where else. Then on to raid the cash meres what do you think? Yeah? Then a boozy lunch on the top floor. Then’she thrust her head forward, she gave a wild grin ‘a facial? Haircut? God, we could spend the earth!’ Her smile died slowly, overtaken by a look of concern. “You okay, Cath? You look so tired. Do you want me to go away and let you sleep?”
“Tell me something first.”
“Of course!”
“Ben .. . has he been okay?”
Emma hesitated, as if to make sure she’d understood her correctly. “Ben? You mean recently? Generally? I think he’s been fine. I mean, working hard. Terribly hard. No one ever gets to see him. And worried about you, of course. Fretting about getting the house adapted, getting the things you need. It’s all he ever talks about, you know how he wants to get everything right for you. How he wants to care for you.” At this, two thoughts sprang unbidden into Catherine’s mind, that a caring role was not one that Ben would have chosen in a dozen lifetimes, and that even in the most dedicated of carers a sense of obligation didn’t always sit easily with love and desire. Emma cast around for any last ideas before declaring firmly, “But otherwise no, fine
.” She added tentatively, “Why?”
“No one gets to see him, you say?”
“Absolutely not. Hasn’t made a single party since I can’t think when. Not the Hamilton wedding, not even Dunny’s birthday, and you know how he adores Dunny. Oh he did get to Jack’s do you know, his annual bash. Had a great time, the life and soul of the party.”
This was what Catherine always failed to allow for Ben’s skill at concealment, his ability to put on a front, especially for his friends, who doted on his irreverent sense of fun. In times of stress, there’s a certain comfort to be gained from cliches, and now she heard herself ask, “If there was something I should know, you would be the first to tell me, wouldn’t you, Emms?”
Emma made a gesture of bewilderment, an arc of her cigarette.
“Something you should know? What do you mean, darling?”
“You know that old saying about the wife being the last to know.”
Emma’s mouth dropped open, she rounded her eyes in a show of astonishment and incredulity. “Darling.. .” She was momentarily speechless. She gave a short nervous laugh. “No . I’ve heard nothing like that. Really, darling. Nothing at all!” She took a deep breath, as if getting over the shock. “Where on earth did you get that idea?”
Catherine closed her eyes. “Nowhere, I expect.”
“No, Cath, really,” Emma argued again. “Haven’t heard a thing. And you know how everyone is with the gossip. They can’t wait!”
“Tired now,” Catherine murmured. “Leave the door open, would you? And the light?”
“Of course, darling.” She stood up and paused uncertainly before creeping out of the room.
Long after she’d gone, Catherine heard laughter downstairs and felt the worm of doubt turn once again in her stomach. After another fifteen minutes or so, the front door sounded and the house was quiet.
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