D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

By midnight the critics had gone, suitably encouraged, to hack out their copy. He began easing out the others. Tomorrow was another day, he said. He even reminded them that the Show Must Go On. They slapped his shoulder, and had just one more drink, and went. At one o’clock he set his secretaries emptying ashtrays and collecting dirty glasses. At two o’clock he personally closed the doors to the lounge, poured himself a final nightcap, and took the elevator up to his flat. He toasted himself, his triumph, in the elevator mirror. Then he changed his mind, stopped the elevator at the sixth floor and took it down to the monitoring room instead. His triumph ought to be shared. If La Mortenhoe was asleep he’d call up Roddie. People liked to be told they were appreciated.

In the monitoring room he found Dr Mason asleep in front of a bright blank screen. Unreasonably the alcohol went suddenly cold on him. He put his half-filled glass down on top of the monitor and tried without success to get a picture. There was no sign of either Simpson or Dawlish. His head was buzzing and he took a neutralizer.

‘Where’s the duty engineer?’ he asked, unnecessarily loud.

Dr Mason jerked awake. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘You were asleep. Where’s the duty engineer?’

‘Of course I wasn’t asleep… I sent him home. We agreed I had to be here. There was no point in both of us—’

‘You had no right. Now the monitor’s gone on the blink.’

Vincent turned on the second set and drummed his fingers, waiting for it to warm up. With a busy day ahead of him he ought to have been in bed hours ago.

‘Is that what it is?’ Dr Mason said. ‘I thought it was just night.’

‘Night is always brilliant white, of course.’

Dr Mason mumbled. He looked half dead. The second set warmed up and showed the same blank white rectangle. There was no picture, and no sound either.

‘That’s right,’ Mason said. ‘It went like that straight after he threw his flashlight away.’

‘Who threw whose flashlight away?’

‘Your man. Your Roddie. He threw his flashlight away. After that it went dark and then suddenly bright. I waited for something to happen. I… suppose I may have dozed off.’

Vincent sat down. Those neutralizers worked so bloody slowly. ‘When did all this happen?’

‘I don’t sit here watching the clock.’

‘It’s important, Doctor. Please try to remember.’

‘…He’d gone to the pub and watched the show. It wasn’t at all bad. Went down well in the pub too.’

‘I’m so glad. Then what happened?’

Dr Mason considered. ‘Well now…’

Time seemed to have slowed to a complete standstill. Vincent got up again, abruptly, feeling as if his head would burst. ‘It doesn’t matter. You can tell me on the way over.’

‘Where are we going? I can’t leave. I’ve got my patient to consider.’

‘Certainly. That’s why you’re coming with me.’

He went to the telephone, started looking down the list for the extension number of the Air Transport Controller. A call at this hour of the night would take some explaining.

Katherine sat up. She’d heard what I’d been listening for ever since we’d climbed into the van. I’d hoped she’d be asleep. I’d hoped in a makeshift sort of way that if she was asleep she wouldn’t hear the helicopter when it came. And if she didn’t hear it then maybe none of the next bit would ever happen. Our discovery, my explanations, their recriminations, his contractual reminders. But she wasn’t asleep. She heard the helicopter when it came at last, and she sat up.

Of course, I should have had a plan. Right from the beginning I should have thought beyond the bargain I was striking and the price I would pay. If I didn’t have a plan then a price — though different — would be extracted from her as well. And I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a plan became when I finally came to think about it I realized that no plan was possible.

By then they’d got me down off the pier: Katherine, and Tommy, and two or three others. They thought I was drunk and I didn’t disillusion them. Not that they’d have been easy to convince — I mean, who really goes blind, suddenly, for no reason at all, in the middle of the night, on the end of a broken-down pier? So I let them lead me down and thought myself lucky to be spared immediate embarrassment. I’d reckoned without Mrs Baker.

She turned us out.

To be precise, she didn’t even let us in. It was her moment of purest joy, I could hear it in her voice. She met us by the edge of the windbreaks and read us her own private riot act. She had the other guests to think of, she said. Drunkenness was not allowed, never had been. Fringies was all the same. Give them an inch and they took a mile.

A confused mass of something hit my chest. Dropping most of it, I discovered it was made up of our possessions. I recognized the zipper around Katherine’s sleeping bag, and joined it, and between us we stuffed most of the things in. It was probably almost as dark there on the beach for her as it was for me. I and my lady friend, Mrs Baker remarked behind us, could have our orgy somewheres else.

I followed close as Katherine hobbled away. Soon she sat down and I sat down beside her. She shivered. It was her own shiver, unrecorded, untransmitted, ungloated-over. We were both of us free.

‘You came back,’ she said. ‘I’d thought perhaps you wouldn’t.’

‘Of course I came back.’

‘But you got drunk first… I’ve never known about men getting drunk. Were you upset? You sounded as if you were upset.’

I put one arm around her shoulders. Out of all the thoughts in my head there was not one that I could tell her. Not even that I loved her. If that was the word. And there was no other. ‘I’ll look after you,’ I said, forgetting in all honesty that I no longer could.

For as long as we sat there the future seemed unnecessary. Luckily for us there was someone rather less romantic. Footsteps approached across the pebbles. A throat was cleared. ‘Orgy or no orgy, I reckon you two’ll freeze to death come morning.’

It was Tommy. I stood up, suddenly terribly aware of my sightlessness. I didn’t know where he was, how far, in what direction. ‘Yes. Well, Tommy, I thought of going along to the—’

‘The thing is, there’s always my old van. It’s a bit crowded, but at least it’s private. Never forget a face or a favor. The police moves you on if you kips in the shelters.’

He was right. His van was a bit crowded. It was a largish van, but filled with conjuring props, and puppets, and the Punch and Judy booth, and various lumps I couldn’t possibly identify. All the same, he fitted us in somehow… And it was then, as we climbed up and tried to make ourselves comfortable, that I started listening. Listening for Vincent’s helicopter and hoping that Katherine would be asleep when it came.

‘Isn’t that a helicopter?’ she said, sitting up, very awake.

‘It might be,’ I said.

‘I didn’t think helicopters flew much after dark.’

‘They don’t usually.’

The noise approached. Suddenly Katherine gasped. I searched for her, found a puppet’s leg, then the cover of her sleeping bag. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘The lights hurt my eyes.’

I should have guessed that Vincent would bring the camera chopper, halogen floods, the full production number. I always told him he overlit his night O.B.’s. By now the beach would be flattened by the weight of lights.

It seemed as good a moment as any. ‘I can’t see any lights,’ I said.

‘Don’t be silly. Of course you can.’

I left it. There’d be other moments just as good. Or better. The helicopter note changed, a gale blew up around the van as the helicopter hovered, then settled. Finally it switched off and flailed slowly down to silence. Feet hurried, stumbling, across the beach. They were going in the direction of the pier. Away in the town somewhere a church clock struck four. Four in the morning… Vincent wasn’t going to be exactly popular with Mrs Baker.