D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

‘I can’t find the travel brochures,’ she said.

He woke more easily now. ‘There were reporters,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you have a hard time getting in?’ And then gathering consciousness, ‘I was up till nearly two. Where were you?’

She sat down on the bed and told him. About Mr Mathies-son, about the crash, about her early morning visit to the police station. He enjoyed, as he always did, hearing about her exciting life. Neither of them spoiled the moment with allusions to the other’s bad behavior.

‘So now we’ve got three days’ grace,’ she said. ‘Getaway time. Over the hills and a great way off.’

‘Won’t they follow us?’

‘Not if we’re clever. We must make clever plans. Starting with those travel brochures you showed me.’

He withdrew a little. ‘You didn’t seem all that interested,’ he said. ‘I… threw them away.’

‘Never mind.’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘We can easily get some more.’

‘I promised Vincent I’d let him know if we left town.’

‘You’ll have to break your promise.’

‘I sort of signed something.’

‘What can he do, my darling? He’ll never have the face to take you to court.’

Harry fiddled with the bedclothes. ‘It’s all very well for you,’ he said, almost inaudibly.

Katherine considered. It was indeed all very well for her: in a few weeks’ time she’d be out of it beyond the reach of the longest legal arm. And poor Harry wouldn’t. He’d worry dreadfully. Perhaps she was asking too much of him.

‘Harry…’ She didn’t quite know how to say it. ‘Harry love, what exactly did you tell Mr Mathiesson?’

She asked him, though she didn’t want to know. He frowned, trying to remember.

‘Which one was he? There were so many reporters.’

‘What did you tell him about our renewal, Harry?’

‘There were so many reporters.’

‘He was from the Morning News. He was a clever one — I bet he looked up the Registry. I just wondered what you’d told him about our renewal.’

‘Oh, that one. You mean the one from the Morning News.’ There was a long pause. ‘Do you really think I’d discuss our renewal with a reporter, Kate?’

‘I just wondered. He said—’

‘Reporters say anything. Anything at all. As if I’d discuss our renewal with — Anyway, what could I say?’

‘He’s dead now, Harry. So it really doesn’t matter.’

‘But you believe him. You think—’

‘He’s dead, Harry. And besides, I didn’t believe him. I knew perfectly well you’d never—’

‘What did he say? Tell me what he said.’

She stood up. ‘He was a silly, squalid little newshound. And it’s time we had some breakfast.’

She rang off, and went out of the bedroom, along the passage, into the kitchen. But the line remained, if faint, still inconveniently connected.

‘You wouldn’t have brought him up if you hadn’t at least partly believed him.’

She ran water loudly into the stainless steel sink. Brought him up… it was a good way of putting it. Mr Mathiesson was vomit; sour, stinking vomit. She wouldn’t allow him, his lies, to take Harry away from her even for a moment. Harry appeared, naked, in the kitchen doorway.

‘You’d always’ — baring his soul — ‘choose to believe other people rather than me.’

She smiled at him desperately, having no other refuge. Till the doorbell rang, and saved them both. She pushed past Harry, went to the door, opened the grille.

‘Can’t you see the sticker?’ she said.

‘Postman. Prepaid personal delivery.’ He held up a bundle of letters.

‘I don’t want them.’

‘Mrs Mortenhoe? The office don’t like it when I don’t deliver.’

She set the door on its chain, and opened it. The postman passed the letters in through the crack.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘A lot of people paid a lot of money to get these letters to you on your doorstep.’

She took the letters and closed the door.

‘Mrs Mortenhoe? What’s it feel like, Mrs Mortenhoe? I read about you in the papers, Mrs Mortenhoe. At the office there was plenty wanted this job, Mrs Mortenhoe, but it was me on the rota.’

She snapped the grille shut, and returned to the kitchen. Out of deference to the postman outside the door Harry had wrapped a towel around his waist. She gave him the letters, she didn’t want them, and stood reconstituting milk for his cereal. The last time a letter had been delivered was two years before, a court summons for excessive water use. Now, suddenly, at one time, there were thirty-two.

Harry opened them carefully, using a kitchen knife, fumbling the enclosures, telling her everything she didn’t want to know about each. The first he picked was from a bedding manufacturer, sending her a colored catalog, and promising her the bed of her choice, queen-size, ‘for as long as she might reasonably be deemed to have need of it,’ plus five thousand pounds, in return for the right to use her name in his worldwide advertising. The decision was hers, of course, but a representative would call that afternoon at three with several private demonstration models in case she felt, in her present situation, disinclined to visit her neighborhood showroom.

Other enterprises were less discreet. If she had been willing, with only four weeks left, to live her dwindling days to the full via a wide range of soft drinks, hair conditioners, chocolate bars, hi-fi sets, sexual appliances, nicotine-free cigarettes, and instant spray-on wallpaper, she could, Harry calculated, enrich her residual estate by some seventeen thousand pounds. Furthermore, a mountain leisure center famous for its Rocky Haven Waffles offered her four weeks free accommodation for herself and her husband, plus a single room and exclusive use of the camp chapel for an additional seven-day period. All this in exchange for the simple statement that if she’d only discovered the mountain air (and the Waffles) sooner she was sure she’d have lived to a hundred and ten. Their representative would be calling at two-thirty.

There were wheelchair brochures, and some tasteful electronic respirators, both firms offering immediate delivery, no deposit terms, and representatives already on their way. Jesus Christ the Second, in orange ink on purple paper, offered no money and wanted none, demanding access to Mrs Martin Lois’ immortal soul instead.

Among a crop of TV and newspaper proposals there were also, addressed to Harry but given away by their black-edged notepaper, several communications from morticians.

Reading all this lasted straight through breakfast and on into the morning. Harry was a great one for letters, taking them very seriously, as proofs that he existed. Prepaid personal delivery letters proved in addition that people wanted him to exist. At first Katherine humored him. After the first six or seven, however, she began to find the whole thing excruciatingly funny. He tried to join in her laughter, but went on all the same carefully putting on one side all those letters that contained firm offers of goods or cash. This made her laugh more than ever. Poor, dear, provident Harry… Her own collection was of representatives’ arrival times. Between two and six that afternoon seventeen salesmen were expected, eleven of these having chosen the peak period between two-thirty and four. And every single one of them would get no farther than the front-door sticker.

‘Harry,’ she said, suddenly not laughing, ‘Harry love, just how much did Vincent Ferriman offer you when you talked with him a couple of days ago?’

Harry looked up from a casket catalog he was trying not to let her see. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

‘Was it as much as seven hundred thousand pounds?’