At the mansion block, Doyle must have been looking out for them because the moment they drew up he came scuttling out like a crab, head tucked down, shoulders hunched against the wind, to open her door. She replied to his greeting absent-mindedly, because her attention had been caught by the sight of Fergal emerging from the entrance.
“How are you, Catherine?” he said, coming forward to help her up the steps.
“They haven’t locked you away then, Fergal?”
He cast her a small admonitory frown, as though it were inappropriate to make light of such things. In the lobby he said rather formally, “I’m glad you telephoned. Had you been trying for long?”
“For two or three days, off and on. In the rush I lost your mobile number.”
“I was away in Dublin, seeing my mother.”
“The police they’ve finished with you then, have they?”
“I believe so.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them that it was a mistake.”
“And what sort of a mistake, may I ask?”
He didn’t reply until the lift had arrived. “I told them,” he said in a considered voice, ‘that it was a private matter.”
She held her tongue with difficulty. Once in the lift, however, she asked firmly, “And the man following me?”
“I know nothing of anyone following you, Catherine.”
“No?” She would have argued with him, because in recent weeks she had learnt to question all facts offered to her by way of explanation, but something held her back. She realised, with mild surprise, that it was a belief in his honesty. “Oh, well,” she sighed, “I was never sure there was anyone anyway.”
The lift stopped, the door opened, Fergal held a hand over the sensor to stop it from closing again. His lugubrious face took on an expression of great solemnity and some discomfort. “I have to tell you though, Catherine, that there was someone watching over you in the night. The man outside your house -I can only offer my sincere apologies that the fool should have alarmed you and caused you distress.” With this speech, Fergal himself became almost agitated. “He was meant to stay in the car, to keep his distance. He disobeyed his instructions. He was dismissed immediately.”
There was a long moment in which Catherine couldn’t speak, except to breathe in a tone of incredulity, “My God.”
The silence was broken by a sharp buzz as someone tried to summon the lift. Fergal stepped out and, restraining the door once more, helped Catherine onto the landing. The door closed with an impatient whir.
“Terry asked you to set it up, did he?” Catherine asked with iron
calmness. “This watchT
“Yes.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“It was simply for those few days. While you were on your own in the house.”
“You knew I was on my own? But how did you She broke off as the answer came to her. Ben had gone to Poland; he must have gone with Terry’s knowledge, perhaps even his blessing, to sort out this business of theirs, or to raise money, or ... But she had tired of trying to understand the crazy world of Ben’s dealings. “But why put a man outside?” she asked.
Then, as her anger began to goad her more fiercely, she repeated with indignation, “Why?”
“To watch over you. Nothing more, Catherine.”
“But the reason, Fergal. Why should you want to do that? What am I saying? I mean, of course, why should Terry want to do that? To spy on me?”
“Never to spy, Catherine. Never that.” Fergal spoke with the sadness of misunderstanding. “It was merely to make sure you came to no harm.”
“But who would want to harm me? Tell me! Do you know of someone who
wants to harm me? Do you, Fergal?” All pretence of calm left her
then, and she exclaimed bitterly, “Why, oh why do I feel that I’m the
last to be told anything! Why do I feel that I’m being treated like a
child! Or worse like a nothing, a nobodyl’
Fergal said placatingly, “I myself am not aware of any particular person who wishes to harm you, Catherine.”
“But Terry knows of someone perhaps? Is that it? Is it?” She snorted, “But I suppose you would have to get his permission to answer that!” With this retort, she turned perilously fast, maintaining her balance only by a panicky jolting move of one crutch, and started her unwieldy progress towards the flat.
Reaching the bend in the passage, she saw Maeve standing in the open doorway of number twenty, so still that Catherine felt sure she must have been there for some time and heard her spat with Fergal. Maeve came forward tentatively, hands out as if to embrace Catherine, before losing her nerve and coming to a sudden halt with her hands clasped tightly together. “Come in,” she whispered at the floor, before leading the way.
Catherine glanced back, but there was no sign of Fergal. Watching, presumably, and waiting.
An elderly tortoiseshell trotted determinedly into the flat just ahead of Catherine. Maeve shooed him into the kitchen with a brief awkward smile before gesturing Catherine towards the sitting room.
“Oh, Catherine, how I’ve been dreading this moment,” she said, taking Catherine’s coat. “And how I’ve wished to talk to you for so long.”
Once Catherine was settled in an armchair, Maeve seemed to lose what small amount of confidence she might have had. Wringing her hands, she cast around in desperation. “Oh, there’s tea,” she said breathlessly. “I made some tea. Will you?” As she pointed jerkily towards a nearby table Catherine saw that her hand was trembling.
“Thank you,” Catherine said formally.
Maeve went to the side table and moved to pick up the teapot, then the milk, then the teapot again, before appearing to forget why she was there. As her hand paused indecisively in midair, the rest of her also seemed to be in imminent danger of stalling. She swayed slightly and gasped.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Catherine suggested. “We could have tea later.”
Blinking rapidly, Maeve half turned and, taking this in at last, gave a dazed nod. It was another few seconds before she managed to unlock her limbs and manoeuvre herself to a chair.
“Are you all right?”
She whispered, “Yes, I... Forgive me. I... stupid .. .”
Appearing to remember some instruction she had been given for just such an occasion, she closed her eyes and took a long slow breath, holding on to it for several seconds before exhaling at the same measured rate. She did this twice before opening her eyes again. “I forget to breathe,” she gasped. “Then I breathe too much. Hyperventilation. It makes me feel faint.”
With her transparent skin she looked even paler than in the rose garden, and, if anything, thinner, though this may have been the effect of her clothes, a black ribbed sweater that clung to her body and a long straight skirt through which her hip bones protruded in sharp crescents. Without make-up, her wide-set eyes appeared to float in her face, adding to her air of distraction.
Pressing a hand to her chest, appearing to recover a little,
she managed to say, “The trial Fergal said the verdict’s due any minute.”
“They thought today. But now it’ll be tomorrow. Probably.”
Maeve absorbed this slowly. “Aha. And you yourself, Catherine,” she asked in her soft whispering voice, ‘did you have to go to the court and appear?”
Suppressing her impatience, Catherine answered mildly, “They didn’t need me there. Or rather, I told them I wasn’t going, so they had no choice but to manage without me. They had Ben, of course. He gave evidence.”
Again Maeve pondered this for some time, and again Catherine had to curb her restlessness.
“And what’s going to happen at the trial?” Maeve asked in the same halting voice. “Will he be sent to prison?”
“Will he be sent to prison?” Catherine repeated vaguely, as though she hadn’t given this much thought. “I think, all in all, from what people tell me, reading betw
een the lines probably not.”
“Oh .. . Oh! I’m so very sorry.”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
Maeve searched Catherine’s face in open bewilderment. “You don’t mind?”
“I mind, yes. But I’m not going to let it rule my life.”
“But, Catherine, I don’t understand why won’t he go to prison?”
“He has an alibi. Apparently it’s rather a good one.”
“Oh. But is that enough? How can that be enough?”
Catherine shrugged.
“What a pity no one saw him!” she declared with sudden passion.
Catherine said drily, “Quite.”
With a surge of colour, Maeve stared hastily at the floor and became stranded once more in a world where she could neither breathe nor speak.
Catherine prompted firmly, “So .. . this flat, Maeve it isn’t yours?”
Maeve looked startled by the question, but also relieved.
“No,” she agreed meekly, “This flat is Dadda’s. Mine’s next door. I mean it used to be mine, when I was here.”
“And you phoned from there?”
She whispered, “Sometimes, yes.”
“Why me, Maeve? Why not Ben? It was Ben you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“I never meant you any harm, Catherine,” she moaned wretchedly. “Never.
Please believe me. Please.”
“But you’ve been’ she chose one of the more delicate expressions ‘seeing Ben?”
“I wish I didn’t mean to I .. .” Maeve’s face contorted, her eyes gleamed with tears.
“When did it start?”
Her gaze fixed pleadingly on Catherine. “Oh, it was all over before
your marriage. I swear. I swearV
Catherine kept very still.
“That was one thing I could not have done. Not that! Never! No once you were married! I promise! For the rest.. .” She bowed her head. “I cannot justify anything to you. Not a single thing. What I did was wicked, utterly wicked. When I think back now, I can’t believe that I could have behaved in that way, telling myself I was doing no harm, knowing full well that I was doing dreadful harm to everybody, to the Lord, to myself, to ... you. I can only say that I seemed to lose all power over myself, that I couldn’t seem to stop myself, or to fight my way free. It’s not enough to say that though, is it? You can always stop yourself if you try hard enough! I just couldn’t couldn’t stop.” She sank forward, caging her eyes with rigid fingers, until her forehead was virtually resting on her knees.
“And when did it finish?” Catherine asked in a voice that conceded nothing.
A gasp. “That September.”
Maeve would have been nineteen then, which pushed Catherine towards the question: “How long had it been going on?”
Maeve’s reply was almost inaudible, and Catherine had to repeat it for confirmation. “A year?” She thought: That would be about right. By then she and Ben had been together two years, long enough for him to welcome a little diversion before settling down to the serious business of marriage. And of course the really irresistible attraction of such a diversion with Terry Devlin’s daughter.
“A year .. .” she murmured again. It was only with the greatest effort that she asked, “And ... how did it happen, Maeve? How did it start?”
Maeve lifted her head a little. “It was me. I... called him.”
“Just like that?”
“He’d .. . said to call him. I knew no one in London. He said to call him for lunch and .. .”
“You’d seen him, though. Somewhere. Not long before.”
“At the races.”
Of course, Catherine thought. The races. Where it appeared that everyone in her life was doomed to meet and part. “And how often did you see him?” she asked.
“Perhaps .. . once every two weeks.” Her head was going down again, her voice fading.
Catherine pondered the questions that sprang into a hurt and saddened mind. What did you do? Where did you go? When in the day did you meet? How many hours did you spend together? Did he say he cared for you? Did he promise to look after you?
Strangely but perhaps not so strangely after all she hoped Ben had been kind to her.
“What did you want when you phoned the house, Maeve? Why call?”
Maeve was crying, the tears dripping from her nose and cheeks unchecked. “I just wanted him to speak to me,” she sobbed. “To accept that I still existed, that he couldn’t just pretend I wasn’t there any more. I wanted to make him speak to me that’s all! Oh, it was a dreadful madness, Catherine a dreadful madness. I couldn’t think of anything else at all.
Nothing, nothing! My studies, my friends I did nothing, saw nobody for weeks and weeks. All I could think about was making him talk to me! Just talk to me.” She raised a hand as if to deflect an accusation. “Oh, don’t think for a moment I had any other ideas! No, no, I knew he’d never want to see me again, not like that. No, I just wanted to ... talk, to make him realise .. .” She struggled to express some other idea, but gave up with a gesture of hopelessness.
“And your illness?”
“Oh, I wanted to die,” she announced matter-of-factly. “I rejoiced at the thought of dying. Lord forgive me, but I hoped and prayed for it. It was like a terrible darkness all around me, the wish to die. I couldn’t see my way clear. I couldn’t imagine the darkness going away. That’s what happens when you’re very ill you can’t see a way clear, you can’t imagine it’s ever going to end. I’d learnt about such things in college, I knew it was a terrible illness, depression, but you don’t understand it when it’s happening to you. The only thing you know is that the pain is unbearable. I realise now that I was in great need of treatment, that I was very, very ill ill in my body and ill in my mind, that I needed the right drugs. I know that now .. .”
Catherine softened a little. It was impossible to feel angry in the face of such unhappiness. “But you almost died, you said. You were seriously ill.”
“Yes,” she answered in a flat voice directed at her knees. “I hadn’t been eating, I’d lost weight, too much weight. And when I got ill, I didn’t go to the doctor. I never thought... It didn’t seem important, you know? It was only when I got a fever. Even then I didn’t think to tell anyone. And the next thing I knew I was in the hospital.” She finished this speech as she had begun it, in the same measured delivery.
Catherine let the silence draw out before asking, “And me, Maeve? Why did you make the calls to me?”
“I thought I thought She started again. “I was beyond reason, Catherine, beyond reason ... I thought that we might meet, you and I, that we might talk .. . Oh, not that I was going to say anything to you. No, no not a word. No, I simply thought that if we talked, then .. .” Her voice faded again in shame or disbelief.. .. “I might just see him.”
This brought a parallel memory to Catherine, of a time when she’d been young and impressionable and had formed a mercifully brief obsession for an older man she’d met at a polo match. He was beautiful and rich and amusing; in the short time before she realised he was also self-indulgent, lazy and unkind she’d waited in for his calls, caught up in a frenzy of hope.
She murmured, “On the phone once, I heard you crying.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Maeve protested. “I always meant to speak to you, even if it was just to say hello, but I never could.” She directed a groan of scorn at herself. “Of course I couldn’t! It was part of the madness, to think I could talk to you as if nothing had happened. Lord help me!”
“But you spoke to Ben sometimes?”
“Yes.”
“And?” she asked with an attempt at lightness. “What did he say?” She had to interrupt Maeve’s whispered reply to ask her to speak up. “My hearing,” she explained patiently, ‘is not so good as it used to be.”
“He said he couldn’t see me,” Maeve said in a voice that was barely more audible. “He said it wouldn’t be possible.”
“So you never saw him?”
“No.”
Catherine waited for the rest of it. It was a while coming, a minute or more, and arrived obliquely in a flurry of unconnected fragments and repetitions, told in the same rushed whisper, which she had to strain to hear. “Oh, I understood,” Maeve began, apparently referring to Ben’s refusal to see her. “I knew it wasn’t possible ... I knew, but at the same time ... I went to Mauritius, I went to Italy. But it was no good, I couldn’t bear it. I only wanted to ... It wasn’t that I expected anything no, no. But I had this terrible need to ... This, this She made a gesture of frustration. “It was as though I had no room for anything else in my head. I used to imagine so often, used to think about it all the time, day and night ... I didn’t expect anything, I just.. .” She lost her way altogether then. She pressed a palm to her forehead. When she picked up the threads again, it was with new resolve. “I wanted my say,” she declared, with a sense of discovery. “I wanted a proper end to it, a moment I could look back on and think: That was the end of it and I had my say. I wanted peace. That’s all. Peace.” She added bleakly, “Of course, there was nothing to be said. And no peace to be had. But that was how I felt at the time.”
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