D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

‘I got news for you, Roddie.’ He handed me a bundle of stills. ‘Things are moving nicely… The silly girl went on an outing and our friends nabbed her. They’d have had her cold if they’d kept their nerves.’

The stills showed a riot of some kind: angry faces, the familiar ugliness. I looked closer. ‘You say she got away?’

‘She screamed. Would you believe it? She made a fuss and they let her go. If they were mine they’d be looking for jobs as of now.’

‘Made a fuss? That doesn’t sound like Katherine Mortenhoe.’

‘A put-on, I’d say. Utterly calculated. You’ve got to hand it to her.’

One of the pictures was a close-up of Harry. His wife stood behind him, caught by the camera with her face screwed up as if expecting to be struck. In another she had her mouth wide open, horribly unattractive. Her eyes were cold — possibly she was screaming. And in another I could dearly see a trail of saliva down her chin, and her hand possibly on its way to wipe it off.

‘Even so,’ Vincent said encouragingly, ‘I understand it was pretty nasty.’

I gave him back the photographs. Katherine Mortenhoe and her tormentors were indistinguishable.

Late in the afternoon more personal delivery letters arrived at the flat, a different postman, but equally avid. Harry dealt with him, disappointing him, and brought the letters through to the living room where Katherine was watching the third regional rebroadcast of the scene outside the Castle. Ingenious editing kept her off the screen in compliance with her Private Grief order, and the sound track fluffed over her screams. With each replay the item concerned her less: the attractive, forty-four-year-old Mrs Mortenhoe of the announcers was not she, neither was the aggressively sturdy Mr Blount her own poor frightened Harry. They were creatures with only a tape reality. They were part of the image machine. Even the names were unrecognizable in the microphonic mouths of the reporters.

Harry opened the first of the letters. It was from a group of spiritualists. ‘They want to make an appointment with you six weeks from now,’ he said.

She wondered why he told her these things. Perhaps, like the news item, they made the present less real, and therefore the future. It was a feeling that could be allowed to grow, and it was dangerous. Once, long ago, two days ago, the choices had been simple: to fill her days with living, to write her book, to do her duty by Peregrine, or to go for dignity instead. Now she had to fight, if it was worth fighting, even to remain in touch with what her choices might be. She could, if she wanted, lose herself in the image machine.

Harry’s attention was attracted by a yellow telegram envelope halfway down the bundle. He pulled it out, opened it, read it, and passed it to her.

DISGUSTED BY COVERAGE OF CASTLE INCIDENT STOP ASHAMED OF COLLEAGUES UNPROFESSIONAL BEHAVIOR STOP RENEW OFFER OF FULLEST PROTECTION SOONEST STOP FERRIMAN.

She read the message twice, then the small print on the back of the form, the time of acceptance, the stamp of the receiving office, the limitation of liability in the event of nondelivery.

‘How much did this man offer you, Harry?’

This time he didn’t prevaricate. ‘Three hundred thousand pounds.’

The words mingled in her head with the equally improbable TV noises. She reached out and turned off the set. ‘Mr Mathiesson said seven.’

‘I expect he was making a wild guess. Vincent said three. He put it in writing.’

‘Did he now?’ She’d always thought there was more to Harry than met the eye. ‘And the piece of paper you sort of signed?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Come along, Harry. You agreed to let him know if we left town. Surely he didn’t expect you to do that for nothing?’

‘…I took the money for us, Kate. There were no other strings -just a thousand pounds to help us get away at once.’

He twitched, and dropped his bundle of remaining letters and didn’t like to stoop to pick them up.

‘I know it was silly. Thoughtless. Not… worthy. I just didn’t think at the time how upset you’d be.’

She turned away, not able to watch him grovel. The horribleness of these conversations with Harry was entirely her fault. She made him something he didn’t need to be. The conversations were bad for them both, and likely to get worse, and should be stopped as soon as possible. Their need for each other was devious, and anyway no excuse. Its denial would bring them both a painful sort of freedom.

‘I was only upset that first afternoon,’ she said. ‘Since then I’ve been thinking about your Vincent’s offer very carefully. All in all, I think it has a great deal to recommend it.’

‘You do?’

Dear Harry — perhaps there were limits even to his credulity. ‘Well no. Not really. But now that this afternoon has shown us just what can happen, I don’t see that we have any alternative.’

Lying to him bothered her. But he would never agree to what she was planning, would never admit the relief it would bring. And anyway, she was going to have to do without the luxury of superficial truthfulness on many of the twenty-five days that remained. If she wanted really to live, she was going to have to fight. So she got up, and went to him, and bent to help him pick up his letters (they were his letters now, whatever was on the envelopes), and said, ‘I’ll go and see Vincent Ferriman in the morning. On my own, Harry, while I’ve still got some of my Private Grief time left.’

She glided, pleased with herself, her decision, out of the room. He watched her go, and absently put the remaining letters behind the clock on the mantelpiece, and wondered what the hell she was up to. She was as changeable as a weathercock, but he supposed it was only to be expected. Later, when she was rummaging in her handbag for the NTV letter, he nearly told her about the miniature transmitter (for her own protection) that Vincent had got him to slide in under the lining. But in the end he didn’t, for you could never be quite sure of the sort of thing that would make her fly off the handle.

And down in the street it was change-of-watch time for the man in the gray-green jacket. He handed his tiny bleep receiver over to his relief, and gratefully sloped off home. The relief settled down in his motorcar for a long and boring night.

I first heard of the kidnapping of Katherine Mortenhoe on the all-night telly in the Night Hawk’s coffee bar. At three in the morning you find yourself watching anything, even the Tokyo Stock Market slotted into fifth reruns of your own shows. You watch too much, and you drink too much coffee, and you eat too many doughnuts. It’s funny how hungry you can feel, even at that dead, overlit, hopeless hour. A few years of being the man with the TV eyes and I wouldn’t be able to see out of them for fat.

The Mortenhoe flash woke up even the joe behind the counter. I asked if I could use his phone, and rang Vincent, but he’d wisely turned off for the night and I only got his answering service. I thought of going around to her place, but since she was no longer there, there didn’t seem to be much point. Besides, half the media world was there already, and the other half on its way.

The flashes came through at fifteen-minute intervals. She’d been snatched as a hostage by a group of university students demanding the immediate release of a hundred and twelve of their fellows at present awaiting trial on charges of insurrection. They’d been waiting now for nineteen months, like most people, I’d forgotten the case. Now that they’d made their point, I thought, maybe they’d bring her back. Or dump her. She was, I thought, drunk as I was on coffee and doughnuts, too young to die. Twenty-five days too young.