The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

by D. G. Compton

  Her book, for instance.

  While the hours departed.

  Abruptly she left the cafe and took the nearest expressway to Computabook. Priorities were what counted, and if she was realistic she had to admit that precious little time remained to her for the writing of her book. The rigors would become more frequent, followed by intermittent paralysis, followed by coordination loss, followed by sweating, double vision, incontinence, hallucination, progressive autonomic breakdown bringing on irregular heartbeat, anoxia, total paralysis, and ... It was an impressive list, a litany with a rhythm, a poetry, even a certain magnificence of its own. And she knew she needed magnificence. She remembered the Irish poet Yeats had said, for the magnificence, that he would rather be chronic cardio-sclerotic than Lord of Upper Egypt. She tried out his Irish accent in her head, and was cheered. But it did leave very little time for the writing of a novel.

  Possibly she could reprogram Barbara, devise new criteria, new cross-associations, new wordstore links. It was a task she could probably perform long after the more usual writing skills had deserted her, long into incontinence, double vision, even muscular spasm. If she hadn’t killed herself first.

  She worked the whole day on the basic parameters, savagely, channeling her anger, enjoying the reversal of Barbara’s most cherished beliefs. Peter came in and out, got on with the running of the department, asked no questions. It was, he thought, pausing in the doorway, looking at her, the least and the most he could do. She’d never tell him her trouble, simply live through it. They’d worked together for a long time, nearly three years . . . He could find no comfort whatsoever in this new evidence that not only homos were lonely.

  He lingered on after three, unwilling to leave her solely to Barbara’s mechanical conversation. He tidied his desk, and tidied it again. He doodled approaches to the banality screening program Kate had mentioned the day before. She might be pleased, or she might resent the intrusion. At that moment she was busy with something else, busy with her rage: it hung, unexplained, in the air of her office like a dangerous vapor.

  Around four o’clock an outside call came through, and he ran interference. The caller said she was a newspaper reporter. Peter was glad he had run interference.

  ‘Mrs Mortenhoe isn’t here,’ he said.

  ‘That’s strange . . . I’ve rung her home, and she isn’t there either.’ The reporter sounded pleased. ‘Perhaps you could tell me something about Mrs Mortenhoe’s plans.’

  ‘Plans?’

  The question was inexcusable, probing, but he asked it. He was intrigued.

  ‘Her plans for the next four weeks. How long she intends to stay with Computabook. Where, and with whom, she intends to spend the terminal phases.’

  Ask a silly question and you get a silly answer. He cut the reporter, saying, ‘I think you have the wrong number,’ and left the line open to stop her ringing again.

  He stared for a long time at the speaker from which her voice had come. It was a mat yellow plastic box, perforated on all sides with thousands of tiny round holes. It had no right to tell him what he had no right to know. It had no right to tell him what he positively should not know. Finally he got up, and walked on mortal joints across to the door of her office.

  ‘Katie-Mo, there was a call for you.’ He wanted to see her. ‘It was a reporter.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘It was a woman. I told her you weren’t here.’

  ‘Bless you. Probably some woman’s page looking for a new angle on the romantic novel.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  She looked up from her work. He felt his unforgivable knowledge branded across his forehead.

  ‘Why don’t you go home?’ she said, smiling, smiling. ‘It’s long past knocking-off time.’

  ‘I think I will.’ He was drawn to her, and repelled by her. ‘If you’re sure there’s nothing?’

  ‘You know me, Pete. Always the eager beaver.’

  He nodded, and went. He understood her anger better than she understood it herself. He didn’t ask her what she was so busy doing, he didn’t ask her anything. One way and another he’d received answers enough.

  Katherine waited a couple of minutes, went through to his office to make sure he had gone, then returned to her own office and called Dr Mason at the Medical Center. When she gave her name she was put through at once.

  ‘Katherine. I’m with a patient. May I call you back?’

  ‘No, you mayn’t. I just wanted to tell you I’m suing you for breach of professional confidence.’

  ‘Please, Katherine. I can’t talk now.’

  ‘A letter from NTV and now a call from the newspapers. What right had you to publish my totally private affairs around the nation?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘No doubt I’ll soon be getting my telegram of condolence from the Prime Minister.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘It seems to me perfectly simple.’

  ‘There are so many people involved, Katherine. Medical orderlies, data processers, neurograph operators. A leak is possible at so many levels.’

  ‘The leak came from you, Doctor. I can hear it in your voice.’

  ‘You’re upset, my dear. Let me call you back.’

  ‘I don’t need NTV in order to make money for my family. I have you. And if you call me again I shall enter a further suit for molestation.’

  ‘That’s a good curtain line, Katherine. But—’

  She didn’t let him spoil it. And enjoyed imagining his discomfort at the other end, the embarrassed shrug he would offer his patient across the desk, and the smile, the professional smile she knew so well, with which he would instantly mend the shattered consultation. He was false, the falsest of them all. She laughed aloud, a nasty sound in the silent office, and then crisply dialed the number at the head of Vincent Ferriman’s company notepaper.

  ‘Mrs Mortenhoe. Katherine. How good of you to call.’

  ‘Not good of me at all. I just wanted to know exactly what Dr Mason has told you about me.’

  ‘Dr Mason ? Are you suggesting that your personal physician has—’

  ‘If not him, then who?’

  ‘I’d like to tell you, Mrs Mortenhoe. But naturally we have to protect our sources of—’

  ‘Dr Mason has admitted it.’

  ‘I’m sure he hasn’t. In this sort of case there are so many people involved, Mrs Mortenhoe. Medical orderlies, data processers, neurograph operators. A leak is possible at so many levels.’

  ‘At so many levels.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I seem to have heard that line before, Mr Ferriman.’

  ‘Obviously somebody has been getting at you. If you wish it, Katherine, we at NTV can protect you from—

  ‘You’ll find, dear Vincent, that I am perfectly capable of protecting myself.’

  And she terminated the conversation. But it was a sour sort of triumph. The words sounded unworthy, even through her consuming anger, like the cheap, across-the-garden-fence raillery they were.

  She felt beleaguered, and returned to the comfort of her book, to the dignity with which it would present the bitter truths of human nature. No, the neutral truths, the chemical truths of human nature. The need to persecute the oddball was one of these truths, a drive evolved a hundred million years ago for the stabilization of an uncertain species. Greed was another, much later, the result of power structures that depended on material possessions. Deceit was another, a sophistication that—

  Almost immediately the internal telephone rang: Reception to say there was a man to see her. In fact, there were four men. From the newspapers. Reception was much excited. Katherine said she would see none of them, and would Reception make sure that they were all reminded very forcibly of the invasions of Privacy Act. Any place beyond the foyer of the Computabook building rated as a Private Area. Reception, more excited than ever, said she would do her best.

  Five minu
tes later a man appeared, without knocking, in Katherine’s doorway.

  ‘Mrs Mortenhoe?’

  ‘I think she’s gone home. Her office is next door — sixty-nine-B. Why don’t you try in there?’

  ‘I should tell you, Mrs Mortenhoe, I took a peek at the block directory. I also got this from the Data Bank photo-files.’

  He passed her the tape printout of a photograph offering a very passable likeness. She shied away from it.

  ‘Those files are for official use only,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t trust anybody these days.’ He flicked his cigarette lighter and burned the print to a wisp of gray ash that disintegrated slowly in the still, sunny air of the office. ‘Your word against mine, Mrs Mortenhoe.’ He sat down in front of her desk and brought out a pocket tape recorder. ‘In clear sight of all,’ he said. ‘According to the law.’

  ‘Except that, being uninvited in a Private Area, your presence here constitutes a clear infringement of the IPA.’

  ‘Not uninvited, Mrs Mortenhoe. Your Press Officer knows all about my visit.’

  ‘Did you tell him why you wanted to see me?’

  ‘I don’t think he asked me. He probably thought I was interested in the origins of the romantic novel.’

  At last she had a worthy opponent a focus for her rage. She smiled at him, and waited. She knew the law.

  ‘Could we stop sparring, please? My name is Mathiesson. Morning News.’ He showed her his press card and the pass he had got from Computabook’s Press Officer.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you, Mr Mathiesson.’

  ‘Then you do not deny that the news of your terminal condition came as a terrible shock to you?’

  She knew the law. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘And you do not deny that your husband is planning a final fling dream holiday for the two of you?’

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  ‘And you do not deny that you have been offered seven hundred thousand pounds for an NTV exclusive?’

  As much as that? Was it really as much as that? ‘I have nothing to say.’

  ‘Mrs Mortenhoe, what does it feel like to know you’re dying?’

  She knew the law. ‘I. . . have nothing to say.’

  ‘Do you deny that prior to receiving this tragic news, your husband had been in two minds about your coming renewal?’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’ Oh God.

  ‘Your husband is very dear to you, Mrs Mortenhoe?’

  ‘I don’t have to stay here and listen to your questions.’ And still she knew the law.

  ‘Of course not. You’re free to leave any time you want to.’

  A worthy opponent. She thought of the men downstairs, the men who hadn’t had the foresight to get to the Press Officer before he went home. Out on the street she was public property. Harry wouldn’t have told the reporter a thing like that. It wasn’t even true.

  ‘I wish to make a formal statement of Private Grief,’ she said.

  You need two witnesses.’

  ‘I shall get them.’

  ‘There’s a girl on Reception. Everyone else has gone home. And you can hardly expect me to oblige.’

  ‘I wonder what you hope to gain, Mr Mathiesson, using these sort of tactics.’

  ‘You’re talking to me, Mrs Mortenhoe. And, like every other good newspaperman, I hope to gain the truth.’

  She let her silence show what she thought of that one. He opened his eyes very wide, as if he agreed with her.

  ‘NTV may have the money, Mrs Mortenhoe, but are you sure you like their methods? They tell me you can’t even take a crap without a camera counting the poops. Sign with us and we’ll guarantee you certain privacies, and the presence of never more than one reporter. And for a maximum of fourteen hours in any twenty-four.’

  ‘You work long hours.’

  He shrugged. ‘You owe it to the public, Mrs Mortenhoe. They’re pain-starved. It’s a serious psychic deprivation: you know that as well as I do.’

  She smiled at him, rang down to reception and asked for a taxi to be sent around to the loading bay at the back of the building. There would be no reporters there — it was a Private Area.

  He leaned across her, keeping her finger on the switch. ‘Mathiesson here,’ he said. ‘Better make that two.’

  She smiled at him again. She was enjoying herself, enjoying her hatred, enjoying how she was going to humiliate him.

  ‘I’m going home now,’ she said.

  ‘Mind if I tag along?’

  ‘There’s no law against it.’

  ‘Right. But lay one finger on you and you’ll prosecute?’

  ‘Right.’ She gathered up her handbag and a sheaf of her day’s jottings. ‘My pain is my own affair, Mr Mathiesson. I do not propose to sell it to you, or to anyone else.’

  ‘I can see you’ve not yet heard from the merchandisers.’ He picked up his tape recorder and followed her out into the corridor. ‘They’re a persistent lot. Almost as persistent as we are.’

  They stood together by the elevators.

  ‘You won’t get past my front door,’ she said.

  ‘Squatter’s rights, Mrs Mortenhoe. If the boys see me arrive with you they’ll know I have a prior claim.’

  An elevator arrived and they got in. She pressed for the ground floor, then slipped out of the last nine inches as the doors were closing. There was a caretaker’s entrance she could make her own way to, and bugger the waiting taxi. But Mr Mathiesson was too quick, and held the elevator on the emergency button.

  ‘Forgotten something, Mrs Mortenhoe?’

  ‘The ladies. If you’ve no objection.’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  He went with her back along the corridor, and settled to wait. She crossed the washroom, broke the seals on the fire escape window, and stepped out. Mr Mathiesson was some ten feet away, waving cheerfully out of the corridor fire exit.

  ‘A breath of fresh air, Mrs Mortenhoe?’

  Looking down at the vertiginous pattern of steps below her, she knew she could anyway never have faced them. She and Mr Mathiesson went down together, standing silently side by side in the elevator, down to the ground floor. With only one ploy left she was no longer enjoying herself.

  She gave the waiting taxi driver her address, watched her companion climb into his taxi, then went straight through her own and out the other side. Mr Mathiesson was waiting for her.

  ‘Conan Doyle,’ he said. ‘Circa 1890.’

  She capitulated. Above all, she would give him no further opportunity for the exercise of his repulsive wit. He could have his squatter’s rights, if they were so important to him. She returned to her taxi and sat in it miserably, hugging her knees, as the driver slotted it neatly, complete with succubus, into the passing traffic. He could have his bloody squatter’s rights, she thought if they were so important to him.

  Ironically enough it was the city, in the end, that made the fool of Mr Mathiesson. A turbine truck absentmindedly ran into the back of his taxi at the first thruway intersection, killing him instantly. She made her driver stop, paid him off, and walked back to look at the mess. Mr Mathiesson’s neck was broken, and his face was imprinted with crumbled lozenges of shatterproof glass. The truckdriver, with several teeth missing, was bleeding tidily into a litter bin. Unseen around the back of the truck a small man in a gray-green jacket leaned against a parking meter, finishing the last pages of his Aimee Paladine.

  Katherine gathered from onlookers that the taxi driver was in the telephone booth over the road, phoning for the Accident Instant Disposal Service. She returned for one last look at Mr Mathiesson, and then went quietly away through the crowd. Organisms wore out, broke down, stopped. There was nothing to make a song and dance about.

  ~ * ~

  3

  Thursday

  She passed the night in a grubby hotel. And woke with her anger gone. The change had begun right back by the crumpled taxi, by poor Mr Mathiesson whom nobody was ever going to humiliat
e again. But she had preserved her anger for its comfort, through her long walk across the aimless central precincts, each dedicated to a newer, brighter lie, of the city. She had preserved it for its solutions, for the righteousness it gave her, leaving Harry, incapable of the simplest thing she needed, to the anxious emptiness of the flat and an endlessly ringing doorbell. She had preserved her anger right across the new city and into the gray residue of the old, up the steps of the first hotel in a street like her father’s street, and on again up threadbare stairs to a studio room with a toilet annex.