Wavewalker

by Stella Duffy

  On a late summer night in 1986 Caron McKenna-North got up from the supper table and went upstairs to the canopied bed she shared with Deb on the third floor of their huge Victorian terrace. She left Max and Deb to finish the washing up, kissed them both and climbed the stairs smiling. She was sleepy and safe in the knowledge that her husband and her lover were colluding in a new line of attack on a difficult ex-patient, sorting out Max’s problems and leaving Caron free to her work. Deb was doing what she did best, making life easy for all three of them. At least, that’s how Deb’s conversation with Max started. But an hour later things had changed markedly, and four hours after that Max woke Caron to tell her about Deb. Sticky wet and cold blood dead on the second landing of their staircase. The blade beside her was from Max’s old-fashioned razor and must have been taken from his bathroom while he worked downstairs in his study. Caron held Deb, the still damp blood sinking into her own pyjamas and Max went back upstairs to start tidying Deb away.

  The following week Anna Johnson repeated the actions of her mother nearly forty years earlier and jumped off the Dover to Calais ferry. She’d never learnt to swim. Her case, like all of Max’s cases, remained strictly confidential and Dr Maxwell North was praised in most newspapers for refusing to give in to the temptations of the tabloid tenner.

  He can’t help himself, can’t stop himself.

  Neither can I.

  I am almost too close now, the tide is going out, there is not much longer I can remain unseen.

  Nor do I want to.

  The confrontation is imminent and I begin to enjoy the thought of it.

  I will have to let him know I am near, am here.

  I want to see him look for me as I have searched for him.

  See him look around corners and under beds.

  I know he is afraid, he is so scared of losing it.

  He should be.

  I am getting ready to make him pay.

  The wages of his sins will bankrupt him.

  CHAPTER 20

  Holding Caron in his arms to tell her about Deb, Max thought she was going to throw up. Her whole body strained against the knowledge he was forcing into her. But the police were already on their way and it was vital that any hints of Caron’s life with Deb were removed before they came in with their intrusions and prying and contacts in the press. Max tidied away the photos and telltale books and Caron went slowly downstairs, to the corner where Deb stained away her life. She looked at the form, Deb but not Deb, lying at her feet, her body wrapped up warm on a muggy summer night, sticky in an old winter quilt. Wrapped up warm but body cold.

  Ten minutes later Max came downstairs and led Caron away.

  “Now, all you have to do is tell the truth. You were asleep. I woke you. You came down here to see her, then I took you back to bed.”

  “That’s not the truth.”

  “It’s enough.”

  “No Max, you’re supposed to tell the truth, the whole truth.”

  “There is no point in telling them the whole truth. And it’s not fair. Think about Deb’s family.”

  “Don’t you mean my family?”

  “If you like. Caron, we certainly don’t have time to go into all this now. Deb’s dead, for some reason, despite all we’ve done for her, she has decided to kill herself. Now I’m sure this is hard for you, it isn’t exactly easy for me, but just for the next couple of hours, let’s see some of that famous English reserve and stiff upper lip and get on with it. OK?”

  The doorbell rang and Caron had no choice.

  When the police finally left it was already day, Max went into his study to work on the new paper he was to deliver to the BMA and Caron went up to her studio at the top of the house and looked around. There was Deb, or the beginnings of Deb, in the block of ebony she’d been working on. Deb as hidden woman, coming out of the shadows of the dark material. Deb emerging. There too was Deb in the pile of things collected for the new installation. Deb’s influence, Deb’s attitude, Deb’s strength, hung like a dark curtain over the whole room. Hot morning sunshine was flooding in from the windows all around the top of the studio, bouncing off the white walls giving the clear light she loved for her work, but Caron could hardly see for the fog in her head and the tears in her eyes, so she sat on the floor of her studio, little bits of dried plaster, shavings of wood and brick sticking to her gown. Too tired for tears, she sat and rocked herself and finally acknowledged Deb’s death, and worse, the manner of her death. An hour later she stood up, threw off her gown and started to work in the pale pink silk pyjamas she always wore to bed. Pyjamas stained with Deb’s dried blood. She worked on the ebony head of Deb, refining and defining it, all the while sorting out in her head what she already knew to be reality.

  She had gone to bed at midnight, Deb was downstairs with Max, they were doing the dishes from the late supper the three had shared. Cold beef and new potatoes, the beef a little pink, the potatoes drenched in melted salty butter. Max had been lavish with his favourite Italian wine and both Caron and Deb were a little drunk. Caron had kissed them both and gone to bed, leaving the two of them as she so often did, Deb and Max sorting out yet another of Max’s traumas, some patient with a grudge against Dr Maxwell North, determined to make a fuss about yet another life unfulfilled.

  Max regularly had these traumas and never seemed to know how to deal with them. Or rather, he did know how to deal with them, knew exactly what needed to be done, but it was almost as if he didn’t trust himself to go alone. Caron had often wondered what would happen if he did go alone. She supposed Max was scared that they’d irritate him so much he might just blurt out the truth, that these rich women needed to get a life, not more therapy. That their mutual arrangement was so much more beneficial to him than it was to them. That their exorbitant fees supported the work he really believed in, the group work, the work with addicts, with manic depressives, with schizophrenics. The work Max was proud of. The work he loved. She knew how much he despised the “paying guests” as he called them and was happy to help save him from his own anger when she could. After all, she too had lived off her father and husband in the early years until the success of her own work. She didn’t want Max to hurt these women who could so easily have been herself or any of her friends and, even more, she didn’t want him to hurt himself. She was not Max’s lover, but she was his wife, and cared for him. Their arrangement worked for her and it had worked for Deb as well. He’d call Caron at home, worried that Lady So-and-so was about to tell the world all the secrets of his methods, his precious Process. Of course they never did. All they wanted was more of his time, usually for free. More time in the presence of the great Dr North. Caron would soothe his fears and then Deb would go to speak to them. To remind them of the contract they signed when they entered into therapy with Max, the “no revelation” clause, the demand for secrecy, both for their sake and his. And, faced with the implied threat of disclosure of all their own sad little secrets, they would reveal to the sweet young Australian that all they really wanted was more time with him. The healer. Like Max, Deb was an outsider, beyond the class distinctions they defined themselves by, they could tell her the truth. The trust fund couldn’t afford it, or their husband, grown jealous of hearing Max’s name constantly invoked in a haze of glory, had refused to pay and now they wanted just that little bit more … Deb would offer three free sessions, just to “tidy things up” and the sad woman with too much money and not enough life would relax and give herself over, again, to Dr Maxwell North.

  So, Caron had left them doing just this. Planning Deb’s methods for the next day. Going over the complainant’s case history as they scrubbed out the roasting dish, disposing of her fears as efficiently as the grease-cutting liquid they were using dispersed the congealed fat and blood of the dead animal. It was all perfectly normal. Yet four hours later Deb was dead. It wasn’t just Caron’s love for Deb that made it impossible for her to accept the suicide. She and Deb had talked about it. They’d been lovers, living in the sam
e house and working with a man who dealt in that world. The world of unhappiness and suicides, it wasn’t strange for the three of them to talk about it for hours. Well, Caron and Deb would anyway, Max would just contribute a few statistics and theories when it came to that topic of conversation. He’d pass Deb and Caron off as ghoulish and try to alter the path of the discussion. Caron knew it was a sensitive subject among the people he worked with. There were few mental health professionals who had not lost a patient to their own despair and she knew that among their friends in the field it was a cause for concern, either dealt with in angry defence or silent guilt. Or, as Max preferred, dismissal. It had happened, it was sad, it was over. But Caron wasn’t able to dismiss this suicide so easily.

  She looked down at the work under her hands. It was Deb. Deb’s head, Deb’s long, soft hair. The head was life-size and Caron pressed her own lips to those carved in the rich ebony. She kissed the head of her dead lover as if she could breathe life into it, as if with her love it could live and speak the truth. It didn’t speak out loud, but Caron heard the voice inside her own head. Heard what she’d been too scared to acknowledge inside her own silent head. Caron placed the carving carefully on a shelf at the back of the room. She went downstairs to wash and rest, to think about what she was starting to know. She was beginning to think she understood Max better than he wanted her to and, looking clearly at herself, beginning to realize just how little she was prepared to do, even with that knowledge. It would take a stronger woman than her to deal with Max. Until then, Caron would wait and harbour her truth. She had carved Deb’s head just as Deb’s bloody body had been carved, Max would be less yielding than the ebony.

  CHAPTER 21

  If Saz had any summer of love illusions about San Francisco, they were soundly dashed about ten minutes before the plane touched down. She’d been hoping for one of those glorious late evening landings into any unknown city – losing altitude while the captain drones on about local times and weather variations, to come gliding through the clouds and make out famous landmarks, in this case, specifically the Golden Gate Bridge. No such luck, even in summer, Saz’s LA Law-fed visions of California were brutally dashed as they landed in rain, a light breeze and an unrelentingly wet, if gentle, mist.

  Having had no time to prepare herself for the journey meant that Saz avoided the usual problems of queuing at baggage claim. Molly had very sensibly packed the smallest travel bag they possessed, and Saz merely had to lift her “cabin allowance” from the overhead locker, replace the shoes she’d removed almost nine hours earlier at Gatwick and walk from the plane, through customs and visa check and straight out to a waiting cab.

  The mystery employer had given her strict instructions – flight to San Francisco, cab into the city and a week-long room reservation at the Amsterdam Hotel which, according to the list of instructions that came with the tickets, was “near” Nob Hill. She’d done little surveillance work, but enough to know that “near” could mean anything from round the corner to about two miles away and she assumed that the vast majority of San Franciscans didn’t realize the English, on hearing the address, would only think of a silent “K” but, as everything was fully paid for in advance, she felt little need to complain. And she’d also been given plenty of cash for incidental costs. More cash in fact, than Saz could possibly expect to spend in one week, though obviously, all the presents she would have to buy Molly for leaving her at such short notice would cost a fair bit.

  She checked into the hotel which appeared perfectly normal if a little quainter than what she was used to in the States, rather more like a B&B in Canterbury than a hotel in California. She went out into the street and round the corner to the little café where she was confronted with an alarming array of types of coffee.

  “Coffee please.”

  “Espresso, double espresso, cappuccino, cafe latte, cafe mocha, iced?”

  Suppressing a desire to tell the over-friendly young man that in her advanced state of jetlag even Gold Blend would do, she ordered a cappuccino and apple muffin “to go” and retired to her room to waste the afternoon and evening hopping between the twenty or so cable channels until she could fend off sleep no longer. Nine hours later, she woke up simultaneously alert and exhausted at 5.30 a.m.

  “Come on Saz, sleep for God’s sake. This is no way to start a week of wandering.”

  But even an entire run through the in-bed relaxation routine Molly had been teaching her, the non-sensual version, did no good and after another half hour of trying to sleep with no result, she got out of bed, pulled on her running clothes and went out of the hotel and into the city for a quick circuit to get her bearings. The run downhill to Market Street and then along the waterfront round to Fisherman’s Wharf got her acquainted with the central downtown area, and the walk uphill back to the hotel got her acquainted with her hamstrings and the necessity of abandoning running and taking up mountain climbing as her preferred form of exercise. After a shower and a somewhat more circumspect flick through the huge array of TV channels than she’d subjected herself to the night before, she was ready to go out. And, eschewing the hotel’s proffered complimentary “continental” breakfast of Danish pastries and coffee, she went out for her favourite meal – the real American breakfast.

  Saz tucked into her “Farmers’ omelette” – sausage, eggs, bacon, potatoes, peppers and tomato, all cooked up in one big cholesterol enhanced mess – with rye toast and jam, with all the abandon of a woman used to fierce regular exercise and fervently in lust with her lover. That is, she didn’t once think “I’ll get fat”.

  She finished her meal, paid the startlingly cheery waitress and headed out. She had her San Francisco map sent to her by the unknown employer, which she’d discovered on the plane also had two crosses on it – one by the waterfront corresponding to the address on the business card and one on a street in North Beach. The guy on reception had also very kindly provided her with a quick précis of the transport situation – BART, MUNI and buses – though as she had so much cash, taxis seemed by far the simpler option. She had an extra jumper just in case the sunshine suddenly disappeared behind what Carrie called a “San Fran bastard of sudden fog” and she was ready to go to work. She stepped out into the street and as she did so the dazzling sunshine was swallowed up by a bank of mist that seemed to roll up the road to meet her. Saz pulled on her jumper and looked around for a cab.

  “Bloody brilliant, I was planning on Baywatch and I get Brigadoon. Let’s hope I don’t cross the magic bridge without noticing or my ruby slippers’ll never get me back to Kansas.”

  Saz told the driver her destination and sat back in the taxi marvelling at how many hours she must have wasted to have such a thoroughly sad knowledge of Hollywood musicals. It took less than ten minutes for the driver to cut through a dozen back streets and take her to the shop back down by the water, but the cutting was so fast Saz couldn’t quite keep track on her map and was thoroughly disorientated by the time the cab pulled up.

  She wandered past two street performers, one a young – and very bad – juggler, the other an old – and much more entertaining – banjo player, and a dozen or so “emporiums” until she reached the one listed in the information pack delivered along with the tickets. She stared in through the gift shop window. It was fairly ordinary in a retro-hippy, stars and moons kind of way. Good-looking teapots and hand-etched Mexican wine glasses lined the shelves, various astrological and astronomical items hung from the ceiling and the back wall was lined in star-spotted blue velvet. Saz was a little disappointed to have come all the way to San Francisco to see half of Camden Market and most of Molly’s bathroom recreated in the gift shop she’d been directed to by her employer, but she entered Midas’s Daughter, reminding herself that this was work, not tourism, and there was no reason at all that San Francisco shouldn’t be overcome by the same fashion blimp that had so thoroughly engulfed London. She went in, loosing the breeze on a field of wind-chimes above her head as she did so. A head popped o
ut from behind the velvet curtain.

  “Hi, looking for Jake, or just looking?”

  The young, and very gorgeous, black woman came out into the body of the shop. She had long curly dark hair, copper black skin and huge eyes. Tall and slim, God had obviously meant her to be a dancer when forming her long legs with perfect turnout. Her bare right shoulder sported a white tattoo of a dolphin.