Catharine had started trying not to listen as soon as she realized the sort of thing that was going to happen to the child in Dr. Best's first story, but she had to go on looking at him, because whenever you looked away from him he stopped talking, waited for you to look at him again and went back to the beginning of his last sentence but one. Going on looking at him made it harder not to listen to him, and it was not until she had heard what happened in the park that she was able to push the meaning out of his voice by hearing it as a flow of little cries and moans separated by puffs and clicks.
To keep this going, she had to push the meaning out of the doctor's face in the same sort of way. At the start, it was more of a face than most people's: a glossy pink bald crown with a patch of thick curly hair above each ear, wide and shining blue eyes, a nose that seemed too big for its nostrils, a band of broken veins across each cheekbone, lips of which only the lower one did any work, a bottom row of narrow black-edged teeth. As she concentrated on it, all this turned into shapes and colors, some parts moving, others not, as important and as unimportant as the whites and pale greens and lines and corners that were the papers on the desk, the dark greens and ovals and pinks of the flowers, the rectangles and dark blues and dark reds along the wall, or best of all the bands of light and shade everywhere. This was the method of dealing with things that she had learned very quickly six months earlier, just after finding out that there was nothing about her life that she liked.
Making it so that either everything she saw and heard was important, or nothing but unimportant things were anywhere, had helped a lot at first. But as soon as she was really good at it, and could keep it up most of the day, she had begun having trouble with sizes and distances. It was about that time that her sister and brother-in-law had got Dr. Best to look after her.
The trouble began again now. What was the doctor's face must be an ordinary size and an ordinary distance away. But, as she looked at it, it suddenly grew and receded at the same time, so that very soon it was, or seemed as if it was, yards across and yards and yards away, like a mountain miles off, a cloud in the sky. Then, with an invisible flick that she always expected but could never time, it was very small and near, the size of a penny at arm's length, a pinhead so close that she would brush it with her eyelash if she blinked.
Hardly frightened at all, Catharine said to herself, meaning it very sincerely, that what she was looking at was Dr. Best's face, attached to the rest of him behind the desk in his office, surrounded by papers and all those flowers and the books, with bars of sunlight from the Venetian blind falling on the walls and floor and furniture. And after only a few seconds everything was back as it should have been. Now she knew she was getting better.
Just then the doctor stopped talking. She felt so cheerful that she smiled at him and asked casually, "What happened to the man? Did they catch him?"
"What man?"
"The man in the park. The one that raped the little girl."
He clicked his tongue, thrusting out his lower lip. "I don't know- that's none of my concern. Really, Mrs. Casement, I do beg you most seriously not to identify yourself with other victim-figures in this way. It's childish, childish in the technical psychoanalytic sense as well as the semantic."
"I was only asking. I wasn't identifying. I wasn't raped."
"No no no, I meant… Let it pass, let it pass. We've wasted quite enough time already. Now. You agree you've been warned that investigating your lesbian tendencies may lead to your suffering a shock?"
"If you like to put that in writing I'll sign it."
"That won't be necessary. Your oral consent is sufficient. Very well. You appreciate that unless you answer my questions fully and to the best of your knowledge and ability honestly there is no point in my putting them to you?"
"Yes, all right."
"Good. Now just running over what you told me last time… You've never taken part in any overt sexual activity with another member of your sex, never so much as embraced passionately with another girl or woman, never made a sexual approach to one or had one made to you by one, never entertained any romantic sentiment towards one. Do you agree?"
"Agree? Of course I agree. It's what I said myself, isn't it?"
"I merely wondered if you'd had any second thoughts on the matter. I'm particularly interested in your friendship with this… Lady Hazell. Would you care to tell me something about that?"
"It's just a friendship, doctor. There are such things, you know. Lucy is a widow and very rich and I met her through my first husband. When I left my second husband she said I could come and stay with her until I got myself sorted out. Only as you know I didn't get myself sorted out. But I must have told you this when I first came here."
"In a rather different way. Do go on."
"Well, that's all there is. She's been very kind to me and she makes me laugh and I'm fond of her."
"What does she think of you?"
"I don't know. I suppose she's sorry for me. I suppose she likes me."
"Is she ever… physically affectionate, does she put her arm round you, hug you and the like? For instance, does she ever dance with you?"
Catharine laughed heartily. "Dance with me? No. She doesn't ever dance with me. She's got quite enough male dancing partners."
"So I confess I rather assumed," said the doctor, hissing slightly. "Oh yes, she came to see me after visiting you last week. Without an appointment, I may say. In fact she didn't even knock at that door. Fortunately I was disengaged. She said I wasn't giving you the right treatment and became abusive on the point."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Best. I didn't know she was going to do that."
He gave a brief snorting laugh, probably to show how trifling had been the effect upon him of Lady Hazell's intrusion. "Yes. She runs a sort of permanent salon for young men, doesn't she, at that grand house of hers? Officers from the camp and such? Parties and the rest of it till all hours?"
"She gives parties, yes."
"A curious environment, it must have been, for a woman undergoing a breakdown. Did you join in the parties when you were there?"
"I just gave people drinks sometimes."
Dr. Best said suddenly, "A very attractive person, I mean physically, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes, clearly. But if you mean have I ever wanted to go to bed with her the answer's no."
"Living in that house you must often have seen her naked or semi-naked, in the bathroom and the bedroom and elsewhere. Have you ever experienced sexual excitement at such times?"
"No."
"You haven't been aware of your nipples hardening or any genital phenomena?"
"Christ, certainly not. I told you I get little enough of that with men."
"We'll come to that later. Meanwhile I can't help being struck by the extreme emphasis of your denial, Mrs. Casement. Over-stressed reactions to such inquiries always tend to suggest that the subject is concealing an opposite reaction. So please think carefully. You have never in any way been sexually attracted towards Lady Hazell or any other girl or woman as far as you are aware, is that correct?"