D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

For the first time in over an hour, longer than I had ever managed since the operation, I remembered who I was, what I was. I remembered Vincent. I didn’t want to use him but if we weren’t to starve I didn’t see I had any alternative. So I excused myself and climbed away back up onto the promenade. I leaned on the rail and watched her in long shot holding Rondavel’s Margaret’s skirts up with one hand, throwing stones into the sea. It was beautiful. The rollers came on in long dark ridges. The wind blew her hair about. And a dog, the same dog, had appeared from nowhere and was chasing each retreating wave, barking deliriously. I held the long shot. Vincent would think it beautiful too.

‘We need money,’ I said. ‘Whoever’s there, get this message to Mr Ferriman. Tell him I’ll be up on the promenade by the old pier at around eight. I’ll be alone. Tell him to send someone with money.’

Katherine turned, saw me, waved. I waved back. ‘Got that?’ I said.

After a pause my sound gear came to life. ‘Dr Mason here. I’m worried about the patient. I’d like you to—’

I cut him. ‘Go to hell,’ I said. ‘Just give Vincent my message, then go to hell.’

He was a nice man. He had a nice room where nice doctors told nice patients nasty things. I didn’t want him sitting on the other end, judging me. ‘You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Then just go and doctor.’

I’d raised my voice. A man came and leaned on the rail beside me and asked me how I was feeling and I told him I was feeling fine. Then he asked me if I was feeling in a holiday mood and I told him no. Definitely no. If he’d tried any harder I’d have socked him and probably got myself into trouble, but he didn’t. He just leaned beside me and sighed till I left him and went back down to Katherine. What talking to myself on the rail outside the gents had led him to hope I can’t imagine.

On the way back to the old pier — there was no sign of Tommy — Katherine had a bad go of the shakes. I sat her down and wrapped her sleeping bag around her. It went on a long time, several hours, I don’t know, I wasn’t timing it, and afterward she had to wash in the sea, pollution levels and all. I helped her into another of the dresses: there was only one more left so I did my best to rinse out the previous one. It sounds squalid, and I can only say it wasn’t. We were humble with each other. And this time she didn’t get quite better. One arm stayed paralyzed and she appeared to have difficulty balancing as she walked.

I have to be explicit about her deterioration. And yet by doing so I give it a false importance. At the time there was so much else going for us that we scarcely even noticed the changes. We were very happy, together, that afternoon on the beach.

She was very tired, her eyes wide with the brightness of the sea, her ears singing with its noise. When they reached the old pier she let Rod spread out her sleeping bag in their place by the pillar, lay down on it, and fell asleep. She dreamed very vividly of Harry. It was evening when she woke, and she could remember nothing of the dream except that she had expected it to be distressing and it wasn’t. Dr Mason hadn’t mentioned a false euphoria. Possibly her contentment was genuine. Though there was something, some small something still needing to be done, that hovered just out of sight in the back of her mind.

Rod was a few feet away, talking quietly with someone she couldn’t quite see. She sat up, suddenly remembering Mrs Baker. ‘The beach, Rod. We ought to be tidying up the beach.’

‘Don’t worry, pet. There wasn’t much. I’ve seen to it.’

She lay back. She could see why Mrs Baker had said there was a leak around that particular pillar — above her head cracks gaped wide enough to see the sky through. She prayed, as instructed, for a fine night… She realized that the person Rod was talking to was the Punch and Judy man. This was neat, the way things could be expected to turn out. She’d hoped to get to know him, and here he was.

‘ ‘Course, a good bottler could make all the difference between going hungry and setting down to a slap-up repast. Real good bottler and you splits fifty-fifty. Otherwise it’s sixty-forty…’

She moved closer. Rod heard the stones creak and made a place for her beside him. The Punch and Judy man hardly seemed to notice. ‘Haven’t used a bottler now, not in years. No call. Not since the grant come in. Lays a hat out though, and lives in hopes.’

Katherine leaned up on her good arm. ‘How was the two o’clock show?’ she asked.

‘You awake, then? Sleeping the sleep of the just, I said to young Rod here. You’re Kathie, I’m Tommy.’ She knelt and shook hands again. ‘Never forget a face or a favor… Show wasn’t much. Day was when kiddies stood in queues, shouting “We want Punch and Judy.” Today there’s not much call for it. Don’t know why. Tell you what, though…’ He paused, massaging his hands, enjoying what he was going to tell them ‘…Done plenty of shows for the toffs up in that London place. Made a film for their archives. Questions… talk about questions. ‘Course, I told them a lot of cobblers. I mean, what showman gives away his little secrets?’

He talked on. ‘Done me time in conjuring, of course. Always start with something colorful. Flags of all nations. Vanished a live canary once. Had the Cruelty on to me for that… Funny how people are. Vanish a dozen women and nobody says a word. Not so nimble now, mind. But nimble enough.’ He opened his hands very wide, then clapped them together and produced a battered plastic flower out of his sleeve. ‘Nimble enough for an old ‘un.’

It began to grow dark. Katherine was content to sit and watch his extraordinary animation. He was eighty-six, he said, played the schools now mostly. Exam questions and all — part of the nation’s heritage.

‘But the royal charter bit’s right enough. Some old king, George it might have been, or William, give Punch and Judy the right to twenty minutes, any time, any place. Never been took away, not as far as I know…’ Suddenly he broke off. ‘If you’re heating something up you’d best get moving. Ma Baker don’t take to fires after sundown. Had a major conflagration once, as I understand it. Cup er tea? Bit er stew needs warming through?’

Katherine had forgotten about food. Rod said he was going up into town to scrounge something later on. ‘Can’t have that. Old Tommy never forgets a face or a favor. Just you fetch some sticks and we’ll see what we got.’

He went away to his own neat bivouac and returned with tin plates and spoons and a large saucepan. ‘Hey presto — all-purpose stew. Warm your cockles.’

They made a fire of sticks and plastic bottles. All-purpose stew turned out to be largely baked beans and cut-up sausages, very thick on the bottom of the pan. There were other fires around them, and a few superior people with camping gas burners. Everyone was friendly. In spite of the openness of the beach Katherine felt contained, and even private. Nobody exceeded their invisible boundaries, or stared, or asked questions. They made their own lives, and she made hers.

‘What’s a bottler?’ she asked, suddenly remembering the conversation she had woken to. She liked the old man’s chatter.

‘Bottler? Bless you, that’s the bloke what goes round with the hat. Good one makes all the difference between going hungry and setting down to a slap-up repast.’ He rambled on about bottlers he had known. Then his plans: he was moving on first thing. Do on an old folks’ estate. Funny how the old folks could still get a laugh out of Punch’s thievish tricks… She noticed that Rod was getting more and more restless. He’d been uneasy the whole evening, as if the Punch and Judy man bored him. Or perhaps it was she who bored him. Sometimes he was very close and sometimes he was so distant it made her want to cry. There were parts of his mind she didn’t know at all. Time was so short. She needed him, but more than that she needed to understand him. She needed to understand just one person before she died.