Caring for cathy, p.10
Caring for Cathy, page 10
“Shall we take custody of the animal?” Bateman asked Ryan.
“Recovery of the complainant’s property, yes.”
When Bateman made a move to take Poppy from David, she pulled away, the leash trailing on the ground. Poppy retreated a step for every step of the advancing officer. Bateman shouted, “Gotcha!” and jumped on the trailing end of the leash to halt Poppy. She leaped away with such force, that she tore the leash from under the soles of the officer’s stout, black shoes. Bateman staggered, and nearly lost his balance.
“Bloody hell!” he gasped. “Nasty brute!”
The five of them, the two police officers, Helmut, David, and Cathy, were left in a rough circle, each – except Cathy – wondering what to do, or what would happen next.
“We have an ongoing investigation here,” Ryan began in a deeper voice, taking control. He flexed his jaw to frame a suitably grave announcement. “And … I strongly suggest you return the dog immediately! I may need to take Mr Thurgood into custody later, to help with our enquiries.”
The threat hardly impinged on David. What concerned him was that if Mrs Temple was Anita, she must have known all along that Poppy had belonged to Cathy, and yet she had chosen to act in such a petty way. He couldn’t understand it.
Ryan eyed Bateman. Poppy had disappeared. Ryan flipped his chin toward the police car. The two officers lumbered to the vehicle, and when Bateman, the driver, had steered clear of the other parked vehicles, he accelerated away in an angry surge of gravel.
17
David’s reaction, when he had to accept that Mrs Temple was Anita, was to consider her the one person in the world, ahead of any other, who should have taken a sympathetic view about Poppy’s loyalties. Mrs Temple knew everything, yet she had presented herself as an innocent householder, in distress about her pet.
He began to try to remember what Cathy had told him about Anita. In the early days at Denby Hall, Cathy had said so much about herself. David had listened, letting Cathy’s past fill his own empty landscape.
How did Cathy find out about Anita? She said she had always thought there was somebody else. Her physical life with Desmond was sporadic, and drifted to an end quite soon after marriage. Cathy blamed her illness. She could never be very physical. She supposed there had to be an Anita, and feared that there would be.
She said she had identified Anita very early. She was a family friend, married to another man. Desmond had introduced the couple. Graham and Anita had been guests of the Marsdens, and vice versa. Occasionally, they had dinner together or went to a gallery. Cathy met Anita’s sister too. They used to sing in the same choir at St George’s in Camden. They would go out for coffee and a chat after choir practice. Cathy would hear from Anita’s sister what Anita was doing in the early years of the marriage. Anita’s sister didn’t divulge anything, if she knew, but it was too much of a coincidence that Anita seemed to be regularly in the same place – a town, or perhaps at a party, or other social function – as Desmond was. And Cathy had watched Desmond and Anita when they were in the same room together. Once, when they were playing bowls at a party at the Marsden’s house, and it was Anita’s turn, Cathy saw Desmond, as captain of their pair, place his hand on Anita’s bottom, and whisper some instructions in her ear. It was the exceptional, and unconscious intimacy, of those who are physically close. She had heard Anita call Desmond ‘Dear’ in an unguarded moment. In Anita’s vocabulary, ‘Dear’ wasn’t a common coin. It became obvious to Cathy, from many supposedly innocent words and gestures, that Desmond and Anita were trying to cover up the fact that they knew each other very well, and far beyond the friendliness of dinner-party conversation. Cathy said that she could ‘feel’ the bond between Desmond and Anita when she was in the same room. It was like a magnetic field which repelled her, and made her heart shrink.
“However, I decided to do nothing, because I thought Desmond would do nothing,” Cathy said. “I hinted about it, but we never talked. Desmond had two sensitive fronts in this respect. One was his children by his first marriage. He had already put them through an acrimonious breakdown, and I believed he would hesitate before breaking two more marriages, his own second one, and Anita’s. He knew he’d lose face with his children, who were then teenagers. Another sensitivity was his image at work. He was a senior executive, hoping for promotion, respectably married for the second time. In those days, a steady marriage was supposedly the sign of a steady man.
“I was right. Desmond did nothing, except continue to see Anita occasionally. Of course, we ceased to see the Temples as a foursome. In the practical way of providing material help, and comfort for me, Desmond has been a good husband. And he looked after me personally in all the years I was imprisoned at home by the disease. My hold on Desmond increased rather than diminished with the years.
“Certainly, none of this stopped him ‘secretly’ buzzing off to Lake Garda for a long weekend with Anita. But if I try to see it from Anita’s point of view – she lost Desmond to me, except for brief encounters, over the twenty years. I took over Desmond’s life. You have to understand what that means, David.
“Marriage was the bond that held us together because Desmond respected it. That was the cause of our staying together. But people stay together for all sorts of different reasons, married or not. It doesn’t really matter that marriage was the bond; it might have been something else, say love, or money or just plain habit. The point is, we were a couple, and once you’re in ‘coupledom’, for whatever reason, illogical and unsatisfactory consequences often follow.”
Cathy talked to David about what couples do to each other in alarming terms. She thought the slang phrase ‘my other half ’, referring to a spouse or partner was accurate. She said couples were really one person, each with half a brain. She drew a strange picture of a being with four legs, four arms, and four eyes. But the creature had one brain, halved, and kept in two separate compartments in telepathic communication; a weird insect, sometimes at war with itself.
“You can be talking to a man about the rose garden he intends to add to his home,” she said, “and suddenly you realise you’re talking to his wife as well, although she might be in another room, or another town. When you know a couple well, you can see that they have ceased to be Janet and John, and become ‘Janjon’. The lives of couples are twisted together like the branches of wisteria. The twisting and turning is partly involuntary and unconscious. It’s not the sum total of the rational thoughts of two brains. It’s the tangled decision-making of two half-brains, which interact, and may not connect properly. If you asked Desmond what the impact of my life has been on his, I suspect he would concede that it’s been wrought into grotesque shapes by our coupledom. And yet, he has endured it.
“Desmond’s been conditioned by what he does, like all of us. He’s an engineer. He deals with practicalities. Grey areas have little place in his thinking. There is no room for ‘might work’. All his life has been governed – and he’s still steered – by what he regards as precise and measured thought. The irony of his life is how irrational, and illogical, it has been. And the reason for that is coupledom, and the convoluted decision-making of two half-brains. Even though my halfbrain has little power left in it now, it still emits a tiny signal, which can have its effect.”
To David, this was an alarming vision. He felt that in getting close to somebody, you could be subsumed within this ‘couple’ insect, and without realising, become a part of it. David had no wish to be that close to anybody – another concern for Caroline Higgins, who was always poking around to discover if he had a close relationship with somebody. David’s father was remote, and not the material for a couple in Cathy’s sense. David supposed that he himself was closer to Cathy and Poppy, than any other living beings, but not in the way that Cathy had meant.
Cathy said that her coupledom with Desmond left only ruins for Anita. And over the years, the emphasis had changed. Now that Cathy was hospitalised, and would never leave such an environment, Desmond was free to live with Anita. But Anita could not easily desert her elderly husband. Anita was bound to him by a sense of obligation. She was bound too by years of deception, which it would pain her to reveal.
“And I’m still in the frame, David barring the way to the joint property, needing some of Desmond’s time to look after my affairs, which he gives, dwindling away the money he’ll get under my will. Yes, Anita must see only ruins. In the hot blood of her early relationship with Desmond, it could all have been very different.”
David saw that Desmond and Anita, too, were a couple, a deformed being, occasionally coming to life in holiday cottages, and hotel bedrooms, inhabiting them feverishly for a few hours, and then relapsing into a coma of telephone calls and emails, dominated for years by Cathy’s needs, squirming under them, and still tacitly threatened by them. And now checkmated by Mr Temple’s needs.
It may have been thoughtless of Desmond, in giving Poppy away, not to anticipate the turbulence that might be caused. But after thinking it over carefully, David could at least begin to understand Anita Temple’s frustration and spite, in failing to win Poppy’s loyalty, and hence Anita’s uncompromising attitude towards him.
18
David was sitting in the sun, on the porch seat at the front entrance one morning, when Mark Demeter came out of the door, and stood facing the drive, rubbing his hands. Mark appeared to be alone, and to have slipped out of the door while staff, health professionals, and tradesmen were coming and going. He sometimes did this. The rule was that every visitor, resident, and staff member, had to be let in or out by Kay, and had to sign the record book, both inward and outward. But frequently, the door was held open by one person, as a politeness to another, and the record book got overlooked.
Mark was not allowed to leave Denby Hall unaccompanied, and David wondered whether he should alert Kay. Mark was wearing his best suit this morning, a dark blue chalk stripe, with a pale blue office shirt, and a red floral tie. His hair had been wetted, and slicked down. Mark’s manner was to look you in the eye, and unselfconsciously begin a conversation. He could have been an alert, fortyish businessman. That was his backgound, in banking, until he had a fall while rock-climbing in Wales.
While Mark was standing expectantly at the edge of the paving, a car drew up. Mark gave an economical gesture of recognition with his hand. The driver got out, and shook hands with him. Brief words were spoken. Mark pointed to a space further along the drive, where the car could be parked. The driver accomplished this and retrieved his jacket and a file of papers from the back seat of the car. His bald head and face were pallid, and a paunch bulged his shirt. Mark escorted him to the door, and pressed the buzzer.
It looked to David, at first sight, as though the meeting had been prearranged, but he knew that it could not have been. He overheard Mark promising the man a complete tour of the Hall. Kay opened the door.
“Mulvaney, registration unit,” the man announced.
Kay stepped aside, and Mark followed Mulvaney through the doorway. David was curious, and followed too. He guessed that Mark had seen Kay’s diary of appointments – open on her desk – and moved to intercept Mr Mulvaney.
When the book had been signed, Mark pointed to a small framed photograph of Rudolph Steiner on the wall, and declared that he was the Hall’s guide and mentor. The inspector smiled wanly. Mark took his arm.
“Most of the cases we have here are trauma cases. Did you know that, Inspector?”
“I know what your registration covers,” the inspector said, cautiously.
“Motor cars. Motorcycles. Smashes. Deadly.”
“Certainly. Tragic.”
“But cars are beautiful and sexy, eh?” Mark leered, putting his face close to the inspector’s.
“A modern preoccupation,” the inspector said, leaning away.
“What I mean is, we don’t have nutters here. No paranoiacs, schizophrenics, that lot.”
“No, of course,” the inspector agreed warily.
“This isn’t a looney bin, Inspector. You’re not at risk here.” Mark grinned darkly, “Nobody is going to cut your throat with a razor, or try to choke you.”
“That’s a comfort,” the inspector said, looking hard at Mark to confirm the reassurance.
As they moved out of the lobby, Mark pushed open the first door in the corridor, the smoking room.
“Alas, we have to provide for these poor misguided souls,” Mark said, gesturing toward the dim figures in the haze of tobacco smoke.
The room was dark, and ill-ventilated; it stank of stale tobacco. The walls, once painted blue, were now furred with a brown stain. A large bucket of sand occupied the centre of the floor, littered with buts. Two or three residents were sitting quietly, talking and puffing. Their faces looked haggard in the poor light. One was a young woman with gapped teeth and a dress which hung low on her bare shoulders, almost showing her breasts, as she drooped on her chair.
“Watcha doin’ Mark. Goin’ to make a speech, then?” she cackled.
Mark ignored her. “Absolutely revolting, isn’t it, Inspector? But enjoyment of life. That’s why we do it, Sir! People have their little weaknesses, their little comforts.”
The inspector flinched, and made a note on his file.
“We’re not censorious. No, Sir. This is a liberal establishment. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.”
“Really?” the inspector, said drily.
“And this lady here, Cathy Marsden is the owner of the dog you mentioned, the renowned, much loved and exceedingly beautiful Poppy,” Mark said, pointing out Cathy in the gloom. “I suggest you ask her about Poppy. Cathy, this gentleman is from the local authority.”
The inspector stepped forward. “Ms Marsden, we have a complaint that you are keeping your dog here, with the support of the management.”
“With our complete support,” Mark asserted.
“That’s true, is it?” the inspector asked, looking from the impassive Cathy to Mark, and writing something.
“Absolutely,” Mark said, opening his jacket, and sticking his thumbs comfortably behind his red braces.
“It’s no use talkin’ to Cathy, Mister. She don’t talk back, do you love?” the gap-toothed woman said.
“I think I can answer pretty well for Cathy, Inspector,” Mark said.
David was in the doorway, still debating with himself what to do, when he saw Helmut coming down the corridor rapidly. Helmut must have heard from Kay that the inspector had arrived, and begun his inspection. Helmut’s face seemed to have contracted, and become very small on the whole space of his skull.
“Vot is happening?”
He grated out the words, as he pushed past David into the smoking room. He swung toward the inspector.
“Sir, may I ask your business?”
The inspector was about to answer, and then, taking in the foppish, but creased, and worn-down Helmut, and hearing the accent, said to Mark, “One of your patients?”
“Indeed yes, a very sad case,” Mark confirmed.
“I’m dealing with Mr Demeter, the manager,” the inspector said agreeably to Helmut, not wanting to further upset an obviously disturbed person.
“Most certainly,” Mark said, puffing out his chest.
“Please! I am Helmut Schniewind, the licensee.”
“He’s a fantasist, Inspector,” Mark said with assurance, and a grin.
“Interesting,” the inspector said, with the faintest note of uncertainty.
“We humour him,” Mark said.
For a few seconds there was a state of doubt between the three. The inspector, shaking his head in confusion; Mark, good-naturedly pressing his case, and not falling back one inch in his assertions, and Helmut, fumbling to withdraw his identification card from the folds of his jacket.
Keith came in the door, and sized up the picture in moments. “Come on, Mark! You shouldn’t be in here. It’s bad for you. Out! And you too, David. Out!”
The inspector’s eyes sparked, and he reared his stooped shoulders up. “What’s going on here? This is a mad house!”
Keith took Mark by the arm, and ushered him out of the room, leaving Helmut to deploy his considerable ability to placate the inspector.
The next day, David caught up with Keith, and asked what had happened, and what Inspector Mulvaney had said. Keith’s face twisted painfully.
“He was highly pissed off, of course. Nothing about the dog. That was all bullshit, so don’t worry yourself about it. But he left poor old Helmut with a requisition list as long as your arm. Replacement of carpets, repainting and redecoration of five bedrooms, new window vents in the kitchen, new extractor fans for the smoking rooms, and a repaint. You name it, we have to replace it. Thousands of quids worth. The guy dropped a shed-load of do-do on us. Well done, Mark.”
“And Mrs Temple,” David added.
19
After the police visit, Helmut, Keith, and David walked Poppy to Eccleston Street to return her. Helmet had arranged the visit with Mrs Temple, and wanted to apologise. When they arrived, the Filipino maid opened the door, and sought to take the dog inside, as she had apparently been instructed to do, and close the door as soon as possible. Helmut resisted this.
“Could I see Mrs Temple, please,” Helmut said, while David held Poppy’s leash.
The maid went away leaving the door ajar. David could hear the high tones of Mrs Temple’s voice down the hall, as the maid explained that Poppy had not yet actually been handed over. The maid returned after a few moments, saying that Mrs Temple wasn’t available, and could she please have the dog.
“I’m very sorry, but I would like to speak to Mrs Temple first,” Helmut said stubbornly.
The maid turned her mouth down at the corners, and her eyes up, showing crescents of white. Something frightening was about to happen. She went back to her mistress. David heard even higher feminine notes. After a pause, Mrs Temple swept down the hall and threw the door wide open.
