“And how much longer will you be here?”
“Oh, out quite soon now. Got to get back to work!”
Maeve continued to gaze at her for a long while after she’d finished speaking. Then, seeming to come to a decision, she reached slowly into her handbag and pulled out an envelope. “Catherine .. . Here are the keys to my flat. I want you to have them in case you should ever need them.”
Catherine was bemused. “Maeve, I.. .”
“It’s just off Regent’s Park. The address is in there with the keys. Dadda wants me to keep the place but I won’t use it again, I know I won’t. I’d like you to feel you can use it any time you want to, any time at all. For as long as you need it. I want you to know there’s somewhere safe for you, somewhere that no one will.. . bother you.”
“Maeve, I... it’s very kind of you, but I really don’t think I’ll ever need it.. .”
“Oh, it’s got a lift,” Maeve said hastily, as if this might clinch the argument. “And nice wide doors. And the toilet’s got space beside it I checked everything very carefully with the spinal injuries people.”
“But.. .”
Before she could think of anything to say Maeve leant forward and, folding Catherine’s hands around the envelope, laid her own hands over the top. “Please it would make me so happy to feel that you knew it was there.”
“But I have my home. With Ben.”
“Yes, of course. But it would make me happy.”
“I can’t imagine I’d ever .. .”
“No. But still.”
Catherine gave in then, because it was easier to do so. “Thank you,” she shrugged.
Maeve stood up. “I have to go now. But I’m so very glad to have seen you, Catherine. You are in my thoughts and prayers always.”
When Maeve bent down to kiss her on the cheek, Catherine was reminded of a bird, her touch was so light.
Ten minutes later Emma came into sight, battling against the wind on the far side of the rose garden. Spotting Catherine, she altered course towards her with a quick wave. “God, darling, it’s wild out here! Aren’t you dying? Listen you’ll never guess who I’ve just met.” Her eyes flashed.
“A girl called Maeve?”
“No, her daddy. The famous Terry. We’ve been chatting!”
Catherine stared at her.
“He was waiting in the hall. We had a long talk. He may be a villain, Cath, but I have to say he’s rather good company.” When Catherine didn’t speak, Emma added inconsequentially, “He had a horse at Longchamps that lost by a head.” Then, not so inconsequentially. “He’s charming and he’s rich. I tell you, a girl could be tempted!” With a shake of her head, she laughed at herself before pushing Catherine back through the gale.
Chapter Eleven
THE CAB from the airport jolted along as far as South Kensington where it had a small but ill-tempered altercation with a white Transit van and Simon abandoned it to walk the last half mile. To add to his woes there was a vicious wind, an advanced blast of midwinter, which cut through his thin raincoat and chilled his jet lagged bones, still somewhere on Argentinian time. ‘... the wind’s like a whetted knife ...”
He lived in a thirties block at the Brompton Road end of Draycott Avenue. Seen through weary eyes in the early darkness, the box-like flat seemed arid and cheerless. He’d rented it as a temporary measure some eighteen months ago but, without the time or single-mindedness to find a place of his own, had stayed put. It was like a hotel room, just a place for marking time. The furnishings were bland and characterless, the style international-chintz, with skirted sofas and easy chairs in a floral design which, with relentless regard for uniformity, matched the curtains and tie-backs. In a fruitless attempt to stamp his mark on the place he’d bought some modern pictures, but they’d looked wrong under the low ceilings and had stayed where he’d left them, propped against a wall in the bedroom. The bathroom was tiny, the shower inadequate, the lighting execrable and the heating uncontrollable. Come what may, he had determined to buy a place of his own in January and move in immediately, onto bare boards if necessary.
The answering machine was showing eight messages, but he didn’t attempt to listen to them until he’d taken a bath. He lay in water as hot as he could take for ten minutes, then went straight into a cold shower and felt the jetlag lift a little. He dressed for an evening that would take him to a drinks party, maybe a quick dinner if the company looked promising, and an early night.
He poured himself a glass of white wine before flipping on the answering machine, hoping, but not really daring to hope, that there’d be something from Catherine, who was now back at home. He’d called her from Argentina, but the first time her mobile had been switched off and he’d had to leave a message; the second time, irritatingly, Ben had answered, though Simon had deliberately not used the house line. Then this morning he’d called from the baggage hall at Heathrow to find her phone switched off again.
The tape spewed out its messages. There were two invitations to supper parties at flats shared by chaotic girls in Wandsworth and Battersea, neither of which tempted him, and another from a rather impressive girl he’d met at Cheltenham and never imagined hearing from again, which he would definitely accept. But his spirits, having lifted sharply at this, sank onto a more troubled plain as the next message brought Alice’s low lingering voice into the room, wanting to know if he was back and whether he was free the next evening. Alice remained a puzzle to him. He’d taken her out to dinner twice and gone along with her to parties on another two evenings. After the second dinner she’d come for him in the cab with a voracious kiss, mouth open, breasts thrust hard against him, no possible doubt as to what she’d had in mind, and he’d had to plead an incipient cold to be sure of getting home intact and alone. Then at a party the next week Alice had been all over another man in full sight of him and everyone else. She seemed to live in a permanent frenzy, trying to do everything, go everywhere and, it would seem, have every man who happened her way. Sometimes he wondered if she was on drugs; at other times he thought she was trying to make up for time lost to her excess weight, now almost vanished. More recently, it had occurred to him with the abruptness of the obvious that her excesses might have rather more to do with Catherine, that, however terrible Catherine’s accident, it had in a strange way allowed Alice to break free from cruel comparisons. What he couldn’t work out, and what caused him suspicion, was where he was meant to fit into all this.
If he expected the last two messages to bring more welcome invitations he was soon disappointed. The next voice, which opened with a combative, “Hello? If you’re there, could you answer, please?” froze him gently, like an icy hand on his shoulder. Even before the voice announced itself as his aunt Betty he knew what was coming. “It’s no good, I’m at the end of my tether. I don’t know what to do with her. She’ll have to be admitted, Simon. I’m sorry, it’s more than I can take. Could you please call immediately. This time I mean it! I’m at my wits’ end. I have no life, I have no peace .. .” The voice broke into a sob. He saw the little house in Chigwell, with the garish purple-pink wallpaper, wriggly stripes above and stippling below a livid purple frieze, frilly curtains at the mock-leaded windows, cheap knickknacks and dolls on the sills: straw-hatted Spaniards astride donkeys, flamenco dancers tossing their shawls. He saw the bedroom upstairs into which his mother barricaded herself on her days of fury, the multitude of ethnic-Indian cushions spilling off the bed, vying with the clutter of clothes and magazines and suitcases for floor space, for her revolt against tidiness was another gleeful source of conflict with her sister. He saw her in the darkness, lying slumped on the bed, head bent awkwardly against the wall, with the television on full blast and vodka, cigarettes and the cat for company.
He didn’t have to imagine her language because it came blasting into the room with the next message. “Simon? Come and get me now! Do you hear me? Right nowV She was half choking, half sobbing with rage. “You have no idea what it’s like in this
dead-end hell-hole. I’ll go mad mad if I have to stay a moment longer. Where are you, for God’s sake? You little bastard! You shit! Come and get me out of this fucking awful placel Do you hear me?” What he heard was the ominous hiss of her breath as she filled her lungs for the long agonised wail of fury and thwarted will that he knew so well, a moan that to his ears had come to sound like an animal’s. Rasping for breath, she ranted incoherently for a while, the phone seemingly forgotten as she was caught up in a fever of grievances. Then came the sly wheedling tone of entreaty. “Darling, darling, are you there? Are you? My darling boy, my baby, come and take your mum away. Come ... If you only knew how vicious and cruel she is to me. Vicious. She’s always hated me always, alwaysl Oh, she always seems so sweet! Butter wouldn’t melt. Little miss fucking perfect. But darling, you’ve no idea she tortures me, she makes my life a misery. She won’t even let me go out. She locks me in, the bitch, and I can’t get out! She takes my money. I’ve nothing nothing. Darling, darling .. . come and take me away. Please, darling. Please, please, please .. . please. Your mumsy needs you ... Your mumsy loves you more than anything in the whole world .. .”
The earlier she started on the vodka, the fiercer her voice became, though the screaming and tears were always the same whatever time she started. He lowered the volume and watched the tape turning and turning while he dialled the house. It was still turning when Betty answered.
“She’s broken the bedroom window,” Betty said without preamble. “I was almost hoping she’d jump out.”
“What about the doctor?”
“He won’t see her. He says if she won’t take her antidepressants then there’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing I can do either, Simon. I’ve had it. She smashed the mirror yesterday.” He heard the niggardly note in her voice, the sound of someone counting the cost of the disruption. “She’s up there now, music on to wake the dead and the neighbours complaining. I tell you, I’ve had it this time!”
“I’ll come tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! I can’t last till tomorrow. Tonight, Simon.”
And so he found himself looking in on the drinks party for a brief half hour before driving out through the unlovely regions of Leyton and Wanstead to Chigwell. He heard the music as he parked the car, and he heard her jeering at the world as he climbed the stairs. He called to her as he pushed his way past the makeshift barricade but she pretended not to hear him, nor to see him when he turned on the lamp, throwing her hands up over her head as if to repel him. It took him half an hour to calm her, to still the stream of invective and rage, and then she wept with great heaving sobs and clung to him, her fingers clawing at his arm, her tears and snot leaving trails down his shirt. Her unwashed hair smelt of filth and cigarette smoke and self-loathing. And all the time he tried to keep in his mind the image of her dancing the leading role in Daphnis and Chloe, the black and white shot of the impossibly high arabesque that he kept on the chest of drawers in his bedroom, because then he could almost forgive her.
These ‘bouts’, as they had all come to call them, followed a routine, and there was no departing from the tyranny of the progression, no short cuts to be expected or hoped for. The tears followed the rage; and after the tears came the slurred ramble of complaint and denunciation. To anyone else, the jumble of protest would have been incomprehensible, but he knew the script so well that it was like shorthand to him, he could extrapolate a sentence from a single word. Why was everyone against her? Why had she been abandoned? What had she done to deserve it? First the Company had turned against her, plotted to get her out, and after all she’d done for them, staying on through thick and thin, bad times and good. Who else had gone on stage sick, who else had danced time and again through the pain of injuries? And how had they thanked her? By kicking her in the teeth. Everyone was against her. Everyone. Men all bloody bastards, Simon’s father worst of all. Ditching her for that common tart, sloping away like a rat, making her beg for the money he owed her. Just out for what he could get, an easy time, burning money on booze and prostitutes, the worst sort, coming back with their stink on him. A bloody bastard, just like the rest of them .. .
The whining lament of self-pity followed the familiar path, winding back and forth through endless repetitions, illogicalities and lost endings, until finally the last stage was reached, the vengeful semi-comatose silence, the ugly glare of distrust that followed him blearily around the room as he tried to impose some sort of order on the dump that was the floor.
Then, at long last, she slept.
By the time he’d bathed her face and hands and put her to bed and gone down to have his ear bashed by Betty for the best part of an hour over a bottle of wine, it was almost midnight. To get away at all he had to promise that he’d book another stint at a clinic, though they both knew it would change nothing because his mother’s paranoia would always triumph over any shaky resolve to stop drinking.
The road back to town was clear, but that didn’t stop it seeming to go on for ever, and by the time he found a parking space near the flat he was more than ready for his solitary bed.
He viewed the message light on the answering machine with suspicion,
fearing it might be Betty again, or worse still, his mother,
re-energised by her own resentment, but the voice that floated into the
room sent his heart thudding with joy.
“Simon?” Catherine murmured faintly. “Oh .. .”
His joy stalled as she gasped in a tone of panic or distress, “Look ... if you’re not back too late, would you .. . could you .. . call .. . please .. . I’m on my own, and .. .” A gasp. “If you could call.”
Christ, what a time to have left his mobile off! Tonight of all nights! What a bloody idiot! He cried aloud, “God! God!” But it was also a cry of happiness and exhilaration because she needed him.
In his haste to dial the house he got it wrong and had to tap the number out again. As it began to ring he noticed the time was almost one. When it kept ringing without reply he wondered if she’d switched the phone off in her bedroom, if she’d simply gone to sleep, or ... He tried her mobile. This too rang unanswered until the automatic message service picked up.
He grabbed his keys and raced for the car. Stealing across one set of red lights, openly jumping another, he reached Notting Hill in exactly thirteen minutes and, double-parking outside the darkened house, ran to the door and pressed long and hard on the bell before shouting her name through the letter box. He pressed his ear to the flap but heard nothing. There were no lights showing, not so much as a glimmer. He was about to beat on the door when he picked up a faint sound and, putting his ear back to the letter box, heard her call his name.
“Yes, it’s me!” he called back, with a leap of elation. “It’s Simon!
Are you all right?”
The rattle of a chain, the turn of one deadlock then another, and the door opened a fraction. In his haste to get in he crashed the door against her wheelchair.
“Wait,” she cried.
He retreated momentarily before opening the door more carefully to find she had moved herself well back. He went forward and squatted at her side. The hall was very dark except for a strip of street lighting that slanted across her mouth.
“Catherine, are you all right? What is it?”
Her mouth moved but it was a moment before she managed to whisper, “I’m all right.”
“What’s happened? What is it?”
“Shut the door. Please.”
Pushing the door to, he found the light switch and they both blinked in the sudden glare.
Crouching again, he took her hand. “What is it?”
She took a steadying breath. “There was someone there.”
“Outside?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he come to the door? Did he threaten you?”
She shook her head.
“Did he try to get in?”
“No. No ... he was just there.”
“Well, you’re all right now,” he assured her. “You’re safe. Nothing can happen now. Nothing!”
She nodded with more certainty, as though she was just beginning to believe it might be true. “Thank you for coming,” she said forlornly.
“Oh, Catherine!” His throat seized up, he shivered with emotion. Reaching forward, he put his arms round her and pulled her into an embrace that was necessarily a little awkward because of the chair but none the less sublime because, after a short pause, she brought her hands up to his back and returned the embrace. He continued to soothe her. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” And all the time he wanted to shout with joy because he was holding her and she needed him.
Eventually he sat back on his heels and suggested a cup of tea, and smiled a little at the banality of it. He wheeled her into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She was still very dazed. Only when some life had come into her face did he finally ask with great gentleness, “So .. . tell me exactly what happened.”
“It was probably nothing,” she said resolutely, as though she might somehow convince herself of this. “Probably just a drunk.” Despite the time, she was still fully dressed, and he realised she’d intended to sit up all night alone in the dark.
“You saw him, though?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Over the road.”
“What was he doing?”
She hesitated. “Standing.”
He made a show of absorbing this thoughtfully. “Watching the house, you mean?”
“I thought so .. .” Screwing up her face, she seemed to lose all confidence in her own judgement.
Before she could change her mind altogether, he moved her firmly forward. “How long was he there?”
“I don’t know .. . half an hour? Maybe longer.”
“And what time was this?”
But either she hadn’t heard or her mind was somewhere else because she shook her head and frowned more deeply. “What happened was .. . I’ve had this feeling .. . since Ben’s been away .. .” A final hesitation and she got it out. “I think someone’s been following me.” She glanced at him as though she half expected to be disbelieved.
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