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went out together. One Sunday they visited the open-air art exhibition on the Thames embankment. There were dozens of artists there, young and old, displaying their paintings, and they all had one thing in common: They were failures who had been unable to have their works exhibited in any gallery. The paintings were terrible. Catherine bought one out of sympathy.
“Where are you going to put it?” Evelyn asked.
“In the boiler room,” Catherine said.
As they walked along the London streets, they came across the pavement artists, men who used colored chalks to paint on the stone of the pavement. Some of their work was amazing. Passers by would stop to admire them and then toss a few coins to the artists. One afternoon on her way back from lunch, Catherine stopped to watch an elderly man work on a beautiful landscape in chalk. As he was finishing it, it began to rain, and the old man stood there watching his work being washed away. That’s a lot like my past life, Catherine thought.
Evelyn took Catherine to Shepherd Market. “This is an interesting area,” Evelyn promised.
It was certainly colorful. There was a three-hundred-year-old restaurant called Tiddy Dols, a magazine stand, a market, a beauty parlor, a bakery, antique shops, and several two-and three-story residences.
The name plates on the mailboxes were odd. One read “Helen,” and below it “French lessons.” Another read “Rosie,” and below that “Greek taught here.”
“Is this an educational area?” Catherine asked.
Evelyn laughed aloud. “In a way I guess it is. Only the kind of education these girls give can’t be taught in school.”
Evelyn laughed even louder when Catherine blushed.
Catherine was alone most of the time, but she kept herself too busy to be lonely. She plunged into her days as though trying to make up for the precious moments of her life that had been stolen from her. She refused to worry about the past or the future. She visited Windsor Castle, and Canterbury with its beautiful cathedral, and Hampton Court. On weekends, she went into the country and stayed at quaint little inns, and took long walks through the countryside.
I’m alive, she thought. No one is born happy. Everyone has to make his own happiness. I’m a survivor. I’m young and I’m healthy and wonderful things are going to happen.
On Monday she would go back to work. Back to Evelyn and the girls and Wim Vandeen.
Wim Vandeen was an enigma.
Catherine had never met anyone like him. There were twenty employees in the office, and without even bothering to use a calculator, Wim Vandeen remembered every employee’s salary, national insurance number, and deductions. Although all of this was on file, he kept all the company records in his head. He knew the monthly cash flow from each division and how it compared with the previous months, going back five years, when he had started with the company.
Wim Vandeen remembered everything he had ever seen or heard or read. The range of his knowledge was incredible. The simplest questions on any subject would trigger a stream of information, yet he was anti-social.
Catherine discussed him with Evelyn. “I don’t understand Wim at all.”
“Wim is an eccentric,” Evelyn said. “You just have to take him as he is. All he’s interested in is numbers. I don’t think he cares about people.”
“Does he have friends?”
“No.”
“Does he ever date? I mean—go out with girls?”
“No.”
It seemed to Catherine that Wim was isolated and lonely, and she felt a kinship with him.
Wim’s range of knowledge amazed Catherine. One morning, she developed an ear ache.
Wim said gruffly, “This weather’s not going to help it any. You’d better go see an ear doctor.”
“Thanks, Wim. I …”
“The parts of the ear are the auricle, auditory meatus, tympanic membrane, the chain of ossicles—hammer, anvil, and stirrup—tympanic cavity, the semicircular duct, oval window, and eustachian tube, auditory nerve, and the cochlear duct.” And he walked away.
On another day, Catherine and Evelyn took Wim to lunch at the Ram’s Head, a local pub. In the back room, customers were throwing darts.
“Are you interested in sports, Wim?” Catherine asked. “Have you ever seen a baseball game?”
“Baseball,” Wim said. “A baseball is nine and a quarter inches in circumference. It’s made of yarn wound on a hard rubber cone and covered with white leather. The bat is usually made of ash, not more than two and three quarter inches in the greatest diameter, and not more than forty-two inches in length.”
He knows all the statistics, Catherine thought, but has he ever felt the excitement of actually doing it?
“Have you ever played any sports? Basketball, for instance?”
“Basketball is played on a wooden or concrete floor. The ball has a spherical leather cover thirty-one inches in circumference, inflated by a rubber bladder to thirteen pounds of pressure. It weighs twenty to twenty-two ounces. Basketball was invented by James Naismith in 1891.”
Catherine had her answer.
Sometimes Wim could be an embarrassment in public. One Sunday, Catherine and Evelyn took Wim to Maidenhead, on the Thames. They stopped at the Compleat Angler for lunch. The waiter came up to their table. “We have fresh clams today.”
Catherine turned to Wim. “Do you like clams?”
Wim said, “There are long clams, quahog, or round clams, razor clams, surf clams, single shells, and blood clams.”
The waiter was staring at him. “Would you care to order some, sir?”
“I don’t like clams,” Wim snapped.
Catherine liked the people she was working with, but Wim became special to her. He was brilliant beyond her comprehension, and at the same time, he seemed withdrawn and lonely.
Catherine said to Evelyn one day: “Isn’t there some chance that Wim might lead a normal life? Fall in love and get married?”
Evelyn sighed. “I told you. He has no emotions. He’ll never get attached to anyone.”
But Catherine did not believe it. Once or twice she had caught a flash of interest—of affection—of laughter—in Wim’s eyes, and she wanted to draw him out, to help him. Or had it been her imagination?
One day, the office staff received an invitation to a charity ball being held at the Savoy.
Catherine walked into Wim’s office. “Wim, do you dance?”
He stared at her. “A bar and a half of four-four-time music completes one rhythmic unit in a fox-trot. The man starts the basic step with his left foot and takes two steps forward. The woman starts with her right foot and takes two steps backward. The two slow steps are followed by a quick step at right angles to the slow steps. To dip, the man steps forward on his left foot and dips—slow—then he moves forward on his right foot—slow. Then he moves to the left with his left foot—quick. Then closes his right foot to his left foot—quick.”
Catherine stood there, not knowing what to say. He knows all the words, but he doesn’t understand their meaning.
Constantin Demiris telephoned. It was late at night and Catherine was preparing to go to bed.
“I hope I didn’t disturb you. It’s Costa.”
“No, of course not.” She was glad to hear his voice. She had missed talking to him, asking his advice. After all, he was the only one in the world who really knew about her past. She felt as though he were an old friend.
“I’ve