D. Compton: The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

She tried not to be angry with Dr Mason. It wasn’t his fault.

‘My symptoms,’ she said, watching herself in the mirror. ‘You were going to tell me about my symptoms.’

The symptoms went on and on. After a while I couldn’t listen. It was as if they were to be mine almost more than hers — which in a sense they were. Mine, and through me the pain-starved public’s. I wasn’t looking forward to the experience. I’d seen her face before the screen came down, and I’d seen that face before.

It was the face of my son. Before we’d learned to listen for his tiny noises, in the days when we didn’t go up to him in his cot until our own bedtime, often after eleven, by which time the hairy monkey behind the curtains and the white owl on the cupboard that would both come down on him if he ever dared to shout for help (come down on him and do exactly what I never discovered, he didn’t know, but their vengeance would be terrible), when these creatures that he finally managed to tell me about, and others that he never did, when all these creatures had so paralyzed him and for so long that his face was white, empty, painful… My first, and only, son, that is. By my first, and only, marriage. He was a fine child, and clever. The marriage had been equally fine, but rather less clever. Not surprisingly. I had neither of them by the time I reached the office viewing room with Vincent.

That, then, was Katherine Mortenhoe’s face before the screen went down. Afterward there was no more than a series of director’s tricks: women watching themselves in mirrors, women flailing and wailing, women saying fuck. It diverted me (and distanced me) to wonder which had come first, directors watching women’s tricks or women watching directors’ tricks. Certainly human behavior had changed since the coming of TV behavior. But the symptoms went on and on…

Rigor, paralysis, coordination loss, sweating, double vision, incontinence… all with a timetable and a brisk itinerary like a package vacation brochure: in the first week customers all do this, in the second week customers all see that, in the third week customers all feel something else. In the fourth week customers all drop dead. At last Dr Mason, who had been addressing the opposite wall rather than the living woman in front of him, closed the final glossy page, where there should have been a picture of a lot of brisk happy people waving good-bye at a brisk happy funeral. If the picture was there, he didn’t let her see it.

The particularization had seemed to me a needless cruelty, but Katherine Mortenhoe brightly took in every word, nodding, and sometimes asking for clarification. If I hadn’t just once seen her real face (Vincent must have been proud of having arranged that), I’d have thought she was enjoying it. I’d have thought that it at last gave her an importance. But the brightness was only another director’s trick, though she did it rather well.

Then she stood up, and promised to keep in touch, and formalized the occasion by shaking Dr Mason’s hand, and went. As simply and plainly as that. Maybe the romantic in her demanded a sort of stylized nobility.

I was glad I couldn’t follow her, couldn’t see her out in the corridor, couldn’t go down with her in the elevator. One way and another she had precious little privacy left.

Dr Mason, who had gone with her to the door, closed it behind her and returned to his desk. Once there he appeared to have nothing to do. People move about so. It was Vincent, of course, who got things going again.

‘Can do?’ he asked me.

I closed my eyes.

‘You always feel like that,’ he said. Then, ‘Mason should have made more of the Syndrome thing. How special she was. This special sensitivity. She’d have liked that.’

I didn’t answer. He pressed the intercom switch.

‘Mason? I think you should have made more of the Syndrome thing. How special she was. This special sensitivity. She’d have liked that. Don’t you think so?’

I heard Dr Mason squaring papers, presumably the computer printout. ‘I never want to have to do that again,’ he said.

‘But we agreed you should emphasize her special sensitivity. For God’s sake, the poor woman needs something to cheer her up.’

‘I kept talking. It was all I could do -just keep talking.’

‘Not long ago such jobs were a regular part of the doctor’s day.’

‘They aren’t anymore.’

‘No. Well. And I’m not saying I could have done it any better. Anyway, Roddie can always bring out the Messiah bit later on.’

I opened my eyes. After three minutes closed the pain was just beginning. ‘You’re very sure she’ll sign,’ I said.

‘They always do.’

‘We all know why.’

‘Can I help it how the world’s made?’ He kept it light, imitating his dear old grandfather. ‘Please, Roddie, do me a favor. No guilts, no great social conscience. You want I should give the lady to some other boy? Some boy who wouldn’t treat her right? Some boy without half your style? You want that?’

I played the ball given. ‘You can’t,’ I said, laconiclike. ‘I’m the one with the eyes.’

Mason was leaving the office. The microphone was on and he’d heard us and he could have come through the connecting door. But he’d preferred to keep his side of the mirror, and now he was leaving. Suddenly it infuriated me that he should try to keep himself apart.

‘Hey,’ I shouted. ‘If you think your bit stank, then how about mine?’ Pinning myself out so that anything he said or did was bound to hurt. If he went out without answering, that too would hurt.

He turned, his hand on the doorknob. ‘I think you’ll help her,’ he said. ‘With any luck, so shall I. We can only do our best.’

He managed not to sound priggish, and I may have blushed. Anyway, he was talking to a mirror.

‘I must go now. I have other patients.’

He smiled at where he thought I was, and went.

He was a nice man, and the room was empty without him. The nice room where nice doctors told nice patients nasty things. Vincent got up, stretched, wandered around behind me, did his best to fill in. I never want to give the impression that Vincent was — is — insensitive. But his considerable sensitivity, both artistic and personal, was entirely media-orientated. Mine I was still working at.

‘It’s too soon after the operation,’ he said. ‘You’re still unsettled. We should have waited.’

‘You don’t choose your terminals. They just come along. I’m grateful for the opportunity.’ I meant it. ‘I can’t think of a better chance to prove it’s all been worth it.’

‘We have faith in you, Roddie. Of course you know that.’ He scrunched my shoulder with his large thick fingers. ‘The man with the TV eyes — it feels good, huh?’

I hadn’t decided how it felt. Instinctively I put my hand up to my head, to the plate under my scalp. The thin seams were just detectable beneath my hair.

‘It’s a great responsibility,’ I said.

He waved that away for the formality it was. ‘And the sleep?’ he said. ‘It would drive me mad, you know. Never sleeping.’

‘You get used to it. I rest a lot. The drugs help. I’m never tired.’ That was a lie. I was permanently tired. ‘They say if anything gets me it’ll be the lack of dreams.’

‘You should sleep with your eyes open. I hear sentries do it all the time.’

If he was going to teach me I refused to go on being brave. ‘It’s not quite the same,’ I said.

He slapped me playfully. I was a member of his team. Either I gave him reassurance or he couldn’t afford to know.

‘I’ll buy you a drink, Roddie. The staff here have a bar down in the basement somewhere.’