D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

‘None of that,’ he said. ‘The Castle Trustees don’t have to stand for none of that.’

Harry went very red. ‘My wife felt faint, officer.’ He moved away from Katherine, letting her stagger. ‘You can see for yourself she can hardly stand.’

The attendant watched her. ‘This is Castle Property, mate. If she’s drunk or high I shall have to report the matter.’

‘She’s neither of those things. She’s—’

The attendant shaded his eyes against the sun. ‘I’ve got it now. I reckon she’s this Mrs Whatsit there’s all the fuss about. I seen her picture in the paper.’

He moved closer, and stared into her face. Afraid that he was going to help her, Katherine tried to tell him to go away. Her jaw flapped up and down. The paralysis was only in one leg, so why couldn’t she speak? But it was all right: the attendant had no intention of helping her.

With her face on a hundred million screens and front pages, Katherine had been able to reach the Castle unnoticed. Ordinary people on the street did not see their fellows — this was how they kept sane. But now however, by behaving unsuitably in an embrasure on the Castle battlements, Katherine had drawn attention to herself.

‘Keep back!’ the attendant shouted, putting into people’s minds the fact that there was something to be kept back from. So they kept back, closer and closer.

‘Poor thing. Why ain’t she in a home?’

‘It’s him I blame, bringing her up all this way.’

‘Course, she’s a good bit younger in her picture.’

‘Hoping to push her off, I reckon.’

‘PG sticker and all — who does she think she is?’

‘Push her off? Do me a favor — not if he knows which side his bread’s buttered.’

‘Couldn’t have something ordinary, not like the rest of us.’

‘Mind you, she’s pale all right.’

‘Never heard of paint and powder? What some folks’ll do for money…’

While at the back of the crowd a man stood quietly watching, his gray-green jacket slung over his shoulder on account of the heat.

Katherine closed her eyes against the jostling mouths. And behind her the smooth stone parapet, and beyond it the wind. By the time she could speak again there was nothing anyone would want to say. Sensation returned to her leg, and she walked.

‘And a lot of fuss about nothing that was. If you ask me.’

‘PR, love. Haven’t you heard of PR?’

The conducted tour schedule was now seriously out of joint. The guide had phoned down and called a halt in the armory, but still the people were two abreast on the spiral staircase, and shouting angrily, and feeling faint. Since going back was clearly impossible, and the emergency stairs were only for real emergencies, Katherine and Harry were forced on their aggrieved companions for the entire allotted course. The guide wisely abbreviated his spiel, for few now cared, and got them out in fourteen minutes flat. Possibly the Castle had known less worthy occasions in its seven hundred years, but somehow Katherine doubted it.

‘Disgusting. She oughtn’t to be allowed out, not among normal healthy people.’

‘I’m going to get my money back.’

These were her audience, the grief-starved public of Vincent Ferriman. And he was right, of course: sanitize her agony, interpolate a TV screen, a director’s sensibility, and these same people would experience veritable orgies of compassion. It was only face to face that they feared her. It was only face to face that, given a leader, they’d have torn her limb from limb.

Outside the Castle, beyond the drawbridge, a group of reporters were waiting. She and Harry, unclean, had been allowed to the head of the party filing out through the turnstile marked Out. She was first onto the drawbridge, leaning on Harry’s arm. Seeing her, the reporters shouted and surged, and popped their cameras. People clicked eagerly through the turnstile behind her, pushing her forward. The reporters, knowing the law, eased her to one side and closed in on Harry.

‘Exactly what happened, Mr Mortenhoe?’

‘Did you save her, Mr Mortenhoe?’

‘Was she trying to kill herself?’

‘What are your plans, Mr Mortenhoe?’

‘After this, do you feel you were justified in bringing her to a public place?’

‘Just answer me this — was she trying to kill herself?’

Harry tried to force his way through to her. ‘Private grief,’ he shouted. ‘Leave us alone. Private grief…’

Somebody laughed. ‘Where’s your sticker, Mr Mortenhoe? Suppose you tell us what it feels like, knowing you’ll soon be Newly Single?’

Harry lowered his head and pushed through, beating at them savagely as he went. He wasn’t very good at it. But a reporter’s nose was bloodied and a camera spun out of another’s hand and was trampled upon. The voices, knowing their rights, grew angry. Harry was tripped, and fell heavily. The voices gathered around.

Katherine stood, unmolested, in a still circle of legality, and watched him being helped to his feet. Watched him being accidentally shoved so that he fell down again.

She began screaming. It was the only thing she could think of to do. Coarse, humiliating, painful, detestable, the only thing she could think of to do. She screamed in steady, unremitting blasts, her hands linked loosely across her stomach, her handbag tucked under one arm, well aware of her acute ugliness. She sounded ugly, she looked ugly. But the crowd’s attention, which had been Harry’s, was hers again.

In the sudden silence her screams beat back at her from the gray walls of the Castle behind. Once started, her screaming was easy to continue. It was all that seemed right on that sunny, grief-starved morning. Harry went to her, was permitted to go to her. His coat was torn, his hair untidy, but otherwise he seemed unhurt. Something, possibly shame, lay heavily on the still, angry crowd. And she went on screaming because she daren’t stop.

There were taxis waiting, taxis that had brought the reporters and their gear. Harry led her to one of these — no one else would touch her, know her — opened the door, and treading a knife-edge of high-handedness, helped her in. The crowd moved then, slowly closer. He told the driver where to go, them climbed in after her. He said, ‘Thank you, Kate.’

She sat in the back of the taxi, screaming in steady, unremitting blasts. No doubt the driver would soon complain. As he started to move off the crowd pressed around, trying — now it was impossible — to reach her, hands catching at the door handles, scrabbling at the windows. Harry said, ‘That’s enough now, Kate.’

He would never stop her. He would sit beside her, patiently wanting her to stop. He would dislike her. But he would never make her stop. He was Harry. She held tightly onto the edge of the seat, and watched the shopfronts reel by, and was abruptly silent, fighting the terrible need that continued in her body. Her mind too, one part of it, continued to scream. Harry said, ‘Well done.’

They reached home without further incident, without further conversation. The screaming faded. Safe finally behind their PG-stickered front door, they stood together in the lobby, the sweat cooling under their arms, and with it the last of the sustaining excitement. Harry released her. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, generously pretending that some of it, somewhere, somehow, had been his fault.

She dragged her feet slowly through into the sitting room, and lay down on the settee. His fault? She closed her eyes. Whose fault? If she had had an excuse for going to the Castle — other than the obvious one of stopping, of not answering his flab-joggling, towel-imperiling harangue — it had been the hope of reaching back, of finding perspective. Seven hundred years, seeable and touchable, would make death seem right and proper… It was a reasonable hope. So that in a way (although he’d never see it) her nonanswer to Harry would answer him after all. And fault wouldn’t come into it.