First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (20 page)

One night just after dark I was on my way to the library.
As I passed her old house, the door opened and she called out to me.

“Why don’t you come inside for a few minutes.”

She was standing in the doorway, and I was startled at the way she looked. She was wearing a low-cut blue dress and, for the first time since I’d known her, make-up. Her eyes were mascaraed, her lips were red, and she was smiling. I went to the door.

“My name’s Catherine,” she said. “What’s yours?” And shook my hand warmly.

We went inside.

The hallway was gloomy but the room she led me into was large and impressive. It was one of those old drawing-rooms with heavy mahogany furniture, Tiffany lamps, a brocaded sofa, and armchairs beside a blazing fire. On the walls were paintings of swooning medieval damsels.

What made me feel most at home were the books. One entire wall of this large room was an enormous bookcase from floor to ceiling. Behind glass doors, I could see thousands of books.

“Sit down,” Catherine said.

I sat in one of the armchairs by the fire.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” she said. I noticed how she smiled all the time as she talked, so that the sounds of all her words seemed to come through her nose.

I’d never tasted wine: only that beer John Chapman gave me on St Jude not long before the big wave. But I said yes, I’d like some.

She went over to the table and poured two glasses of red wine from a decanter. She brought my glass to me. When she leaned over to hand it to me, her breasts looked as though they might easily escape from the dress.

I sipped the red wine cautiously: it looked so tempting in the glow of the fire. And I liked the taste.

She sat on the chair opposite with her own glass. She sipped, and licked her upper lip.

“My main interest is in love,” she said, in that smiling voice. “Or, I should say, in love stories.” She told me that since the death of her parents ten years before, she’d devoted herself to the study and collection of love stories. She ran off the names of some of the authors she’d collected, and the titles of their works.

The wine was having a rapid effect on me and it was hard for me to concentrate. But I tried to look interested.

“Have you read any of them?” she asked.

I said I didn’t think so.

“Come and look,” she said, and we went over to the bookcase. She switched on a light above it. The ceiling was at least fifteen feet high and the shelves filled all the wall, with long glass doors above and smaller doors at waist height. A little movable ladder slid along on rails in front of the shelves.

She opened one of the top doors.

“Go on,” she said. “Have a look at them.” She was smiling. “This is my collection. This is what I’ve devoted my life to.”

Some of the books were worn looking; most were quite new. I looked at the titles on the spines—I’d never come across any of them:
A Man for the Kissing; Brides of Belladonna; The Gallant Gambler and the Lively Lass; O Passionato!; Star-Spangled Mistress; My Temptress Tongue; Cherished Foe; Savage Embraces; Black Moon Blonde Lady; Amazon Amy; Lovelorn My Love; Apache Woman; True Love and the Parson from Moosejaw; Wife for Rent; Sweet Passion of the Prairie; The Neurosurgeon and the Lost Lover; Whisper Love in My Earnest Ear; Tangled Cupid’s Heart; Island of Love’s Flame; Lure That Lady; Affaire Immemoriale
. And on, and on, book after book, shelf after shelf of them rising so high I couldn’t make out
the titles any more. Several were by the same authors: Bicky Becker, Rona Ryan, Heather Hill, Winona Wise; and some of the names were foreign sounding: Darcy D’Amour, Delinda Desprit, Mandive Moncoeur. I couldn’t help but be impressed.

“Look,” said Catherine. She bent to open one of the lower glass doors, and I thought it was a miracle her breasts didn’t spill out. “My journal section.”

I looked at the journals to keep my eyes off those breasts. She had whole series of magazines assembled on the shelves, with names such as
Icelandic Love Studies; Romantic Quarterly; Presbyterian Lovefest Annual; Comparative Love Literature
.

My head was dizzied by the books and the wine and the breasts. She was watching me, smiling, expectant.

“This is quite a collection of books,” I said. “They don’t seem to be in any particular order. How do you know where to find one you want?”

I could see she liked my question.

“These books are my best friends,” she said smilingly. “I know where every single one of them is—by instinct.”

“Gosh,” I said.

We went and sat again by the fire. She told me how she divided most of her days between studying her books at home, and researching others. She said the local library was good at getting the very rarest for her. She’d sample the books there, and if she thought they were of the highest quality, she’d track down a copy for her collection.

She was looking at me quite peculiarly now, I thought. Or perhaps it was the wine that made everything seem fuzzy.

“Right now,” she said, “I’m reading a book by Dolores Dolorosa: she’s one of my favourite authors. It’s a story about an attractive older woman, Rebecca, who falls in love with a young man called Tyler: a man with a mysterious
past. I’ve reached the part where they meet at her house and make love.”

She was looking at me smilingly, and I thought, how beautiful she is.

“It’s such a marvellous scene,” she said. “Let me read you a part.” She got up and brought back a book that was lying on the table beside the wine. She sat down again.

“Listen to this: ‘As they lay together in a naked embrace on the pink satin sheets, Rebecca spoke secret words into his ear, and her words set his love alight. His rigidity finally broke and the rhythmic motion of his body became frenzied, and she knew it would soon explode in one great shuddering burst of liquescent fire.’ ” Catherine had read this in her smiling, nasal voice. She closed the book. “Isn’t it quite wonderful?” she said.

I felt quite nervous.

“Yes,” Catherine said, smiling at me, “he’s a very mysterious boy, and she doesn’t know anything about him. That’s the exciting part of the love-making.”

I was very naïve: I was almost nineteen years old, and had no experience of sex except years ago with Maria Hebblethwaite. But I thought I could read the signs: I was sure Catherine Cleaves wanted me. I made up my mind. I put my glass on the table and stood up.

She stood up.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the height of her, and those great breasts, and the smell of her perfume and the perpetual smile.

“I have to go now,” I said.

Her smile didn’t disappear. She looked at me for a while.

“Very well,” she said. “Go.”

And, in a few seconds, I was standing out on the sidewalk in front of the house, breathing in the cool air. I was disappointed and I was relieved.

That night in bed, I kept thinking about Catherine Cleaves; and I thought about her all next day at work. I made up my mind. After work I put on my best clothes, went straight to her house and knocked on the door. I tried several times; but there was no answer.

I went to the Library. She was sitting in her usual place at the reading-table, with an open book in front of her.

I stood beside her, but she didn’t look up.

“Catherine,” I said.

“Good evening,” she said, without looking up.

“Catherine,” I said.

And this time she looked up.

“I was wondering,” I said, “if I could drop in and see you tonight. You know, after you finish your reading.” I felt like an idiot.

She looked at me.

“No,” she said, smiling. “It’s too late.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“It was just that I was so nervous last night,” I said. “I’m fine now.”

She shook her head.

“Too late. Much too late,” she said. “You see, I finished the book last night after you left. Did I tell you it was called
The Handsome Stranger
?” She smiled as she said that; but there was something about the smile now: it seemed to me more like a snarl. “I’ve started this new one.” She held it up for me to see. It was called
Knight of the Velvet Spear
, by Carla Corazon. The cover showed a medieval jousting contest with a lady looking on anxiously from the grandstand. “It’s about the Middle Ages, and so delightful,” Catherine said. “A knight-at-arms comes to a small town in the forest where the baron has been keeping a young woman captive.…”

I tried again.

“So there’s no chance?” I said.

“No, it’s too late,” she said. “Look. Dolores Dolorosa writes four or five books a year, and most of them are about handsome strangers and older women. If I happen to be reading one of them, and if we catch each other at the right time, who knows?”

Her eyes had a strange gleam in them: they seemed sad—or mad.

“Anyway,” she said. “It’s never as much fun as the book.”

I left her there and went home to my room in the boarding-house. And perhaps I might have stayed around and waited for Dolores Dolorosa’s next book, and the right set of conditions. But not long after that, I received a letter from Doctor Giffen. He seemed to be doing well in Canada, though he mentioned that his health wasn’t what it had once been. Again he invited me to come and join him. I thought about it, and this time I accepted the invitation.

I
FELT IMMEDIATELY
at ease in Ontario. It was like a photographic negative held up to the light: I could see, though not always plainly, familiar outlines. Many of the places had Scottish names and the people tended to mind their own business.

Doctor Giffen lived in Camberloo, a middling-sized city sixty miles south-west of Toronto. The city was big enough that if a man wanted to, he could remain anonymous.
He had established a small, financially rewarding practice. He no longer had that smell of ether about him: now he smelt faintly of cologne. He’d always been a small man, but I could see how fragile he’d become: like a brittle puppet. All his energy seemed to be concentrated in his little bright eyes.

His house was one of the big houses in the Woodsides district. The living-room was long, with windows looking out onto the remains of a forest. The focal point was a photograph in a silver frame over the mantel of a stone fireplace. The photograph was familiar: it was the one of my mother and my father. They were standing in the snow in front of a building. An old-fashioned car was parked nearby.

The very first night I arrived in Doctor Giffen’s house, he saw me examining the photograph.

“It’s from your mother’s house,” he said. “I took it as a keepsake the day you left Stroven.” He pointed at the building in the background. “She told me that was a hotel in Invertay: you were conceived there. It was a little skiing resort in the north. As a matter of fact, there’s a town not far from here with the same name. We should drive there some time and see what it’s like. Your mother said that was one of the happiest periods in her life.”

He persuaded one of his patients who owned the Xanadu Travel Agency to give me a job. To celebrate, we had brandy after dinner.

“For medicinal purposes, of course,” he said, holding up his glass. That was one of his rare attempts at humour.

I had more than one glass of brandy, and it loosened my tongue. Before I could stop myself, the question came out.

“Do you remember that hotel you booked me into in Glasgow—where I waited for the ship to St Jude?”

“The Hochmagandie,” he said. “I used to stay there
myself when I was in the City. Yes, it wasn’t the fanciest hotel, but it was handy.” His little eyes were glistening at whatever he was remembering. He was silent then for so long I thought he wasn’t going to say any more, so I spoke again.

“The Captain of the ship that took me to St Jude used to visit there when he was in dock,” I said. “So did the Steward.”

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking as he looked at me.

“That’s no surprise,” he said. “It must have been a good place for sailors.” He paused. “Being so near the docks.”

A third glass of brandy had me by the tongue now.

“I think it was the women that were the attraction,” I said.

His little eyes were bright, but he wasn’t taking the bait. So I told him about Captain Stillar, and his custom of hiring bar-women, then painting them. If I thought this would be a revelation to Doctor Giffen, I was wrong.

“So
he
was your Captain,” he said. “Well, well. Yes, I heard all about him. One of these bar-women, as you call them, told me. I was … friendly with her.” His eyes gleamed and I actually thought he might be mocking me. “She said he painted her once, and after he’d finished, he looked as though he loved her. But she said that only lasted till the paint was cleaned off.” I could see he was enjoying telling me this. “One night when she was with me, the Captain was in the room next door painting another woman. We looked through a crack in the door and saw him doing it.” He shook his little head. “So that was your Captain.”

I was astounded at the idea of Doctor Giffen and some bar-woman on their knees peeping through the crack in the door just as I’d done! I was astounded at the coincidence! But of course I didn’t tell him I’d had the same experience.

“What about the Steward?” I said. “Harry Greene was
his name. He’s the one who wanted my address at the House of Mercy. Did you hear anything about him?”

“Well, well. What a small world it is,” said Doctor Giffen. “Yes, I remember him. I saw him a few times. He used to sit at the bar and talk with anyone who’d listen. He always had books with him. The women said he talked too much. I heard them say they’d rather be painted by the Captain than lectured by the Steward.”

I smiled at that: so much for Harry’s theory about words and love-making. What would he have thought if he’d known the women looked on him as a chatterbox?

Doctor Giffen sipped his brandy slowly. I couldn’t help noticing how skeletal his little hand had become.

“After I met your mother,” he said, “all that kind of thing stopped. It’s strange, but after I got to know her, I never had much of an interest in any other woman. Please believe that, Andrew.” He said this as though it was important that I remember it. And I have.