D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

She took her letter upstairs, and out into the sun. The letter looked less dangerous there, less likely to go off. The pavements were filling up. She experienced the rigor again, and sat down in a little grass park with gravestones and daffodils, the letter on her lap, while she willed the rigor to go away. Then she opened the letter.

My dear Katherine,

I begin like that because I feel, after my long talk with your husband earlier this afternoon, that we are already old friends. Or perhaps old enemies would be more appropriate, for I gather from Harry that you and I are unlikely to see eye to eye on a number of points.

Undoubtedly he has told you of my proposal, and I can guess that your initial reaction — as with most people — has been one of distaste and even total rejection. It is my experience, however, that such reactions are the result of an incomplete understanding of the issues involved.

It would be impossible for me to present a rationale of my position within the span of this short letter. I can only assure you that others have found me a not insensitive person, and that I approach you at all only out of a sincere belief in the profound human value of what you and I together can create. It is possible even that you may find my experience helpful in your present trouble.

On a purely practical level, for example, our organization would be able to provide you with complete protection from the unscrupulous commercial pressures you are certain to be subjected to during the coming weeks. It would be mealy-mouthed of me not also to mention here the considerable financial advantages to your family should you agree to even a limited participation.

The law, of course, protects your right to privacy as a citizen: we at NTV go further, having a lively respect for your privacy as a unique human individual. I am available at any time to answer your questions, and — even if there is no possibility of a central ground on which we as intelligent people may meet — I still look forward to talking to you at the earliest possible opportunity.

She had hoped for a grasping, gushing letter that she could immediately hate. All that was left now was for her to resent Vincent Ferriman for his discreet professionalism. Not that, even so, she considered his letter worth answering: there was nothing that he and she — no matter how mutually intelligent they were — could possibly have to say to each other. If she had to die (which at that moment seemed incredible, even the gravestones among the daffodils confirming the fact that it was other people who died, not she) she would die in private. Dying was the one human activity still able to receive that privilege.

She was not afraid of Vincent Ferriman’s rationale, his reasons, for she knew she was beyond them. If she met him or spoke to him, it would be her body that rebelled, not her mind. And her body would make her throw up on his feet.

She refolded his letter and put it carefully away in her handbag. Then she sat among the noisy sparrows, her legs neatly together, and fought the grayness his letter had brought. Organisms wore out, broke down, stopped. There was nothing to make a song and dance about. She remembered she had come out without having a proper breakfast, remembered why, and felt ashamed.

Then she understood her grayness. It wasn’t caused by Vincent Ferriman’s letter — hunger and shame were what were the matter with her, and both were remediable. She was still far too early for Computabook, so she got up and went in search of a cafe with a public telephone. There she could eat, and make her peace with Harry.

Over on the far side of the park a small man in a gray-green jacket was eating sandwiches. He finished the last and shook the remaining crumbs onto the grass for the birds. Later he got to his feet a little stiffly and went in search of a place that, when he found it, turned out to be a cafe with a public telephone. He passed it quickly, without looking in the window, and went on to a bookshop a couple of hundred yards down the road where he bought, after long deliberation, a book by Aimee Paladine.

‘Harry?’

‘Kate? Where are you?’

‘Are you all right, Harry?’

‘Of course I’m all right.’

‘I wasn’t very nice.’

‘You couldn’t help it.’

‘Of course I could.’

‘It’s not a very nice situation.’

‘Harry — I’m sorry.’

‘What was I supposed to do, though — dance a jig?’

The plastic telephone mount had numbers scrawled on it, and obscene comments. She began to lose interest in Harry.

‘If you were Chinese you might.’

‘If I knew what you wanted, then—’

‘They dress up in white and dance through the streets. Or they used to, long ago, in the year of the four blue dragons.’

‘What are you on about, Kate?’

‘Chinese funerals.’

‘If I only knew what you wanted.’

‘Harry, it says here, Have cunt, will grovel. I think that’s sad, don’t you?’

‘Kate, where are you? I’m coming to fetch you.’

‘You mustn’t.’

‘I’m coming.’

‘It’ll make you late for work.’

‘I’ve told them I’m not going in.’

‘Why on earth not?’ He didn’t want to answer, and she pressed him. ‘Why on earth not?’

‘They’ll understand, even if you don’t.’

‘I understand perfectly. Perfectly.’

‘If I only knew what you wanted, Kate.’

‘I want to be married to someone else, Harry. For the last twenty-seven days of my life I want to be married to someone with courage.’

She liked telephones: they gave her the power to end conversations exactly when she wanted to. She rang off and went slowly back to her table and her egg on toast. Hunger and shame were what were the matter with her, and both were remediable. With food she cured her hunger, and with fury she cured her shame.

He was worried about the future, of course, his future. A Newly Single for the second time, and two years older than she (had he ever been, like her, young?), and not rich, and with a built-in shabbiness that by now would attract only the bossiest of the has-beens (she was bossy herself, perhaps, but never a has-been), she had to admit that his prospects were hardly rosy. Probably the best he could hope for was a future as stepfather to a trio of maintained minors whose real father preferred penury to the company of them and their distracted mother. It was a common enough situation, and attracted the doormat types. The types that made the fine understanding father figures in a dozen Celia Wentworths. But at least Harry’s future was life.

A bossy has-been? Never. John Peel had tried to pick her up, had believed her to be thirty-eight. If she wanted a man she could get one any time at all. She finished her egg on toast… No, she couldn’t allow herself that one; that was the petty bureaucrat talking, the sexy, high-life government executive in charge of one thousand paper clips. If she wanted a man (unpaid) she’d really have to work quite hard. And she needed the energy for other things.

Other things?

Her book, for instance.

While the hours departed.

Abruptly she left the cafe and took the nearest expressway to Computabook. Priorities were what counted, and if she was realistic she had to admit that precious little time remained to her for the writing of her book. The rigors would become more frequent, followed by intermittent paralysis, followed by coordination loss, followed by sweating, double vision, incontinence, hallucination, progressive autonomic breakdown bringing on irregular heartbeat, anoxia, total paralysis, and… It was an impressive list, a litany with a rhythm, a poetry, even a certain magnificence of its own. And she knew she needed magnificence. She remembered the Irish poet Yeats had said, for the magnificence, that he would rather be chronic cardio-sclerotic than Lord of Upper Egypt. She tried out his Irish accent in her head, and was cheered. But it did leave very little time for the writing of a novel.