Claustrophobia (18 page)

Pen slipped a finger inside and saw:
Perth International Airport to Paris-Charles de Gaulle. December 15. A revised itinerary for Ms Kathleen Nancarrow, estimated costs for two persons. Limited seats remaining.
Pen's heart leapt, then sank.

Kathleen grinned. ‘It's all just provisional right now. It's not paid up yet, and I'll need your details for that – your full name, and at some stage your passport number and so on.'

Pen swallowed and looked at the ground.

‘And your actual address,' Kathleen went on. ‘I checked the enrolment file but it's only got your PO box …'

‘She's been researching me,' Pen thought, stiffening.

‘And what
is
your middle name, anyway?'

‘My middle name? I don't have one,' Pen lied.

‘Okay! When we've got that sorted I'll charge the tickets. I said to myself, ‘If Pen won't take it as a gift, she can reimburse me.' But I hope you
will
take it as a gift. It would make me very happy. I like being happy – I haven't had that feeling for a long time, but I have it with you.' Kathleen was excited.

‘It's too generous. I can't.'

‘Then you can pay it off – whenever – no hurry! I won't take no for an answer.' She took Pen's hand and chafed it softly. ‘I want us to do this – it will be marvellous. One of us has to take the plunge,' she repeated. ‘I want you to understand that you mean a lot to me. This is something I can do to show you that.'

Pen was dizzy, and didn't know whether it was morning sickness or shock. She stood up, uncertain what to say.

‘My break,' she said. ‘Have to go back.'

Kathleen laughed. ‘Have I reduced you to monosyllables? Poor darling,' and she leaned over and kissed Pen on the mouth. Pen put her hand to her mouth, as if words would start spilling out in response.

‘I really must go,' she said. ‘Let me think about this, okay? It's a big surprise.' And then she added, as if suddenly remembering her manners. ‘But thank you.'

Kathleen squeezed her hand and released it. ‘Give me a ring, won't you?'

Back in the library, Pen found herself doing the same task two or three times over. ‘The new girl must think I'm loopy. Or premenstrual. Or menopausal.' Pen grimaced to herself. It was like a warped fairytale. A beautiful woman appears out of nowhere, falls in love with you and offers you a holiday in Paris, wants to live
happily ever after
.

Only she hadn't appeared out of nowhere. Pen had conjured her up.

Up out of Derrick's past, a very specific time and place – and that was where she belonged. But how to put her back there?

At all costs, Kathleen must not buy those tickets. Or not with Pen's name on, anyway.

The new girl said out of the blue, ‘Is she a friend of yours, Prof Nancarrow?'

Pen was startled, as much by that ‘Prof' as by the question. It gave her an outside view of Kathleen again, the fact that she mattered elsewhere, in a bigger world than Pen's own crowded head.

‘No – who do you mean? The woman who came to the door there?' She was sure she was blushing – where was her usual lying composure? Maybe pregnancy made you florid like that, outside your control.

The girl nodded.

‘No, not personally,' Pen said, and went off abruptly to return a file to Closed Reserve. She felt like Peter denying Jesus, afraid and ashamed.

‘She's wonderful,' the girl gushed. ‘I had her in first semester.'

Pen smiled to herself – ‘had her' – how grotesque. But there was no sexual allusion. The girl was an innocent. No need to worry there – the conversation would soon be forgotten. Kathleen had been in and out of the library now and then, but academics were always dropping by, for obvious reasons, and nobody at work really connected the two of them.

Yet at the end of the day Kathleen was there at the glass door again. Pen stepped out of the library's air-conditioning into the lingering evening heat, and it was like a gateway to another world. Kathleen was tired but luminous, her hair slightly mussed, her blouse and skirt creased, as if she had rushed straight over from her office.

‘I'm sorry to jump on you like that,' she said, striding alongside Pen to the car park. ‘I didn't mean to give you a fright. Only I couldn't wait. Have you thought about it? The trip? We'll have to start organising. Have you got a good winter coat? I don't mean like the ones people wear here – I mean a really solid one. Maybe we can go shopping. Please say you'll come.'

Pen couldn't get a word in. At the door of the Volvo she said, not knowing how else to break away, ‘Okay. I'll come. I'd love to come.'

‘Fantastic.' Kathleen hugged her, oblivious to passers-by, and Pen tried not to squirm.

‘But please, hold off paying till I've checked my passport and stuff. It might not be up-to-date.'

She had to temporise, after all. If she broke with Kathleen now, she'd still have to work her month's notice and it would be awkward. Better to wait till that month was over, and make it a
clean
break.

There was nothing to pin her down, no trail of crumbs or pebbles in this would-be tale. She had been careful about that all along. She must stay careful.

At dinner that night, Derrick was solemn. He'd been solemn a while now, since Cliff's death, in fact. He toyed with the Waldorf salad she'd brought home and barely touched his chickpea patties.

‘That inquest business,' he said. ‘It looks likely. Takes months, apparently. By which time I guess most people will have forgotten things.'

Pen put her fork down and reached over to touch the back of his hand. He was so fragile, she could see that, from the ginger tendrils at his temples – overdue for a trim, not bothering – to his soft underlip.

‘Forgotten what things?' she asked.

‘I don't know. Whatever there is to tell. Doesn't the mere fact of an inquest mean they are looking for someone to blame?'

Pen resumed eating, doggedly. ‘
You're
not to blame.'

‘Not directly.' He considered a few moments. ‘It was Pollard, wasn't it, who upset Cliff a lot of the time?'

‘Yes. But not only Pollard.'

‘Who else? You know they're going to ask me these things. Not the inquest – but the head, who will have to attend, I imagine. He said today he wants to talk it through, to get the full picture.'

‘I don't know much else.'

‘He didn't bring up – you know,
interference
of any kind?'

Pen screwed up her face in distaste. ‘There isn't a problem
of that sort at school, is there? I never heard talk of it.'

Derrick shrugged. ‘I'm just trying to understand.'

‘Maybe it was the whole culture of the place,' Pen said. ‘Don't forget he had problems at home, too. But phys. ed. was his bugbear. And the science teacher, the woman who made them do dissections. Are you going to mention this stuff?'

‘Would
you
?'

‘Do you mean
Would I
, hypothetically, or
Would I, please
? You want me to speak to the head?'

Derrick appeared dissatisfied. ‘I don't know. It's kind of dropping my colleagues in it for very vague accusations. Aren't we all guilty of neglect, if someone – does what Cliff did?'

‘He said Pollard was a sadist.'

‘Yes, but people use that word quite freely these days, like ‘Nazi' or whatever, appalling as that is. It's not very specific.'

Pen sighed. ‘I think maybe you just need to mention stuff in very general terms, when you talk to the principal,' she said. ‘Because Cliff's not here anymore to explain what he meant. That way you are telling the truth but not overdoing it. It's tricky.'

‘And yet you guessed it was him,' Derrick said. ‘The day it happened. You must have known he was in a pretty bad way. He didn't – mention me at all?'

Strange that Derrick should ask her that again.

She shook her head. ‘I suspect it was more to do with type,' she said. ‘Something I could just read in him, something familiar.'

Derrick looked away.
You have consumed me and spat out
the wretched pieces – can't you feel how wretched I am?
What he'd written to Kathleen. Kathleen of all people! Pen remembered that wretchedness in him when they'd first met, his delicacy of soul – Cliff had reminded her of that in Derrick.

‘Anyway, there's something else I want to talk to you about.'

There was never going to be a perfect moment. And none better than countering all this death talk with baby news.

Nights, now, he slept with his arms wrapped right around her, as if afraid to let go of her – their child – for one moment. Tentative, too, about making love, perhaps fearful of doing damage, though they both knew that was unlikely.

They'd made an appointment with an obstetrician, and Pen had quietly given her notice at work.

To Maureen she told the truth – the relative truth – and asked her not to repeat it. Maureen was solid that way.

‘I lost a baby before,' Pen said. ‘I'd rather keep it to myself until I know all's well. That's the other reason I want to take it easy now, you see.'

It would do as an explanation for leaving work so early in the pregnancy, these days when everyone expected you to be superwoman right up till the last month or so –
taking it easy
because of a previous miscarriage. Only Maureen would know, but she could fend off the curiosity of others. Pen's belly wouldn't show for a few months yet, and by then – before then – she could have dealt with Kathleen.

But each time she went to Kathleen's house, she felt herself sinking in deeper. A couple of times she pleaded off – too
tired, not feeling well – yet she had to keep up the appearance of normalcy, or Kathleen would figure out something had changed. So Pen drove around in the evening to watch a movie with her as usual, or brought takeaway for them to share. It was always at Kathleen's place, the excuse being that hers was still not finished, and too far away.

‘It's not that far,' Kathleen said. ‘I don't care about the building stuff. I'd just like to feel a part of things. However bad your house looks, you don't have to hide it from me!'

‘I'm not.' They were on the sofa, eating Hokkien noodles from tall shiny boxes, about to watch Alain Delon in an early French version of Highsmith's Ripley.
Plein soleil
, it was called: right out in the sun, in full sunlight, the sort that would burn you or give you heatstroke.

‘Like Meursault,' Kathleen pointed out, ‘when he commits murder. Maybe it's an allusion to that. He doesn't know why he does it, he thinks maybe it was the sun …'

‘I
know
the book,' Pen said, rather sharply. They'd studied it at school, even in English.

Kathleen looked at her, surprised. ‘I wasn't meaning to be patronising. I was just musing aloud.'

Pen said nothing, merely pushed the remote control. Something in her was brewing, the urge to start an argument, to have done with it all. She must keep control of herself.

The DVD whirred into action: trendy sixties credits and design. Ripley and Dickie – here he was called Philippe! – at an outdoor café.

Something was wrong, but it took a moment for them to realise.

‘Oh no, it's in English,' Kathleen groaned. The mouths were
moving out of sync with the words. ‘I can't bear dubbed movies.'

‘Me neither,' Pen said, and pressed stop. ‘No point.'

They looked at each other. ‘Well, that puts paid to that.'

‘We could watch something else,' Pen said.

Kathleen shrugged. ‘Or we could snuggle up and just enjoy each other. It feels like ages, Pen.' She ran her hand up the inside of Pen's leg, just so far that it made Pen tremble.

‘Can't you stay the night?'

Pen shook her head.

‘But you can stay a while. At least as long as the film would have taken.'

She meant to say no, to think up some excuse, but the fine grain of Kathleen's palm and fingertips on her thigh was mesmerising. It was like giving in to gravity. The fighting urge she'd felt before melted into another shape, a compulsion to push, to tear, to devour the other person until you were replete. The heat of her a blaze that must be obeyed. People said desire was irrational, yet it was so blatantly logical –
this, then this, then this
– so logical it was impossible to counter. As easy as falling …

Afterwards, they fell asleep, and it was near midnight before Pen could extricate herself.

Derrick would be out of his mind.

Pen smiled to herself at the expression, patting her cheeks, trying to sober up. Like the Emily Dickinson poem: ‘Inebriate of air am I / And debauchee of dew.' She'd had nothing to drink, but you didn't need drink to be intoxicated.

‘You're not really going,' Kathleen murmured. ‘Stay in bed, Pen. It's getting ridiculous.'

Pen looked at her watch. ‘The witching hour,' she thought. So late that it would be near impossible to explain anyway.

She said, ‘I just have to use the bathroom.'

The bathroom was not far from Kathleen's room; Pen ran a tap to help cover the sound of her phone.

‘I was feeling unwell after the evening shift,' she told Derrick, ‘so I'm at Maureen's. She said she can put me up. I'm going to wait till morning – don't want to risk the drive.'

He offered to come and get her, but she said, ‘Darling, it's so late, it's not worth it. Yes, I'm sorry, I should have rung earlier. I know. I know. No, really. I love you too.'

She was whispering.

When she crept back to the bedroom, Kathleen said, ‘Who were you talking to? Or was I dreaming?'

Pen laughed. ‘Must have been. Unless I was talking to myself. Which is quite possible, you know.'