The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

  Yet I did not expect afterwards to see him again. I had no illusions; this had been a one-night stand in which I had soothed my damaged pride and he had taken a break from the Home Counties wife whom, I was willing to bet, he had no real intention of divorcing. A woman hardly expects to see a man again after a freakish connection like that, and most of the time she has no desire to see him again either. Sensibly I told myself I had achieved the goal of numbing my pain by means of sophisticated behaviour—although I knew very well that there was nothing particularly sophisticated about using sex in this way. Analgesics, after all, hardly constitute a banner of the beau monde; no one has ever suggested that taking aspirin is the last word in cosmopolitan chic.

  On the morning after the night before Kim said: “I’m booked to the hilt for these three days in New York and I’m going to be unconscious every night as soon as I hit the sack, but I’d like to see you again in London. Can I call you at your office?”

  But I rejected this suggestion. Personal calls at the office create mess. Word gets around. A woman can never be too careful, particularly when there are male rivals panting to see her bite the dust. “Call me at home,” I said and gave him my number, but still I did not expect to see him again.

  When he recorded my number carefully in his organiser I noticed again that he was left-handed. I had noticed this earlier when he had made love, and suddenly I had the impression of a mirror image, as if this off-beat outsider who so skilfully played the system was far more like me than I had previously begun to imagine.

  He phoned a week later from his City pied-à-terre in Clifford’s Inn.

  VII

  “It’s Kim Betz,” he said. His faint American accent seemed more noticeable on the phone and so did his even fainter European inflections. “Just checking to see you got home safely from the Big Apple. Still in one piece?”

  “Apparently. And you?”

  “Very definitely in one piece, all systems go. How do you feel about dinner?”

  “I eat it every now and then.”

  We dined together for three nights in succession and spent the following weekend in Paris.

  “What about your wife?” I enquired when this cross-Channel spree was proposed.

  “She’s visiting a sick friend in Nether Wallop.”

  “There can’t possibly be a place called Nether Wallop!”

  “Check the map!”

  I was astonished, but the truth was I knew very little of England. Since coming to London I had poured myself into my work, and on my limited time off I had gone abroad to beaches where I could lie on the sand and do nothing. I arrived too exhausted for sight-seeing and left just when I was sufficiently recuperated to fancy it. The idea of expending precious energy on exploring the south of England was one which had never occurred to me. Even my knowledge of the leafy lanes of Surrey was based on hearsay.

  I had always lived in cities. I had only bitter memories of Glasgow, but I could remember Newcastle without wincing and later there had been Oxford, beautiful, honey-coloured Oxford, the gateway to another life and another world. I had lost my Scottish accent when my mother had remarried and moved to Newcastle, and I had lost my Geordie accent as quickly as possible after reaching Oxford; I was an old hand at acquiring new identities, and so, I learned in Paris, was Kim. After his father had died in Argentina in 1949, Kim’s mother had married an American, a move which had enabled Kim to spend the next four years in New York. When the American husband too had died she had married an Englishman, and at the age of thirteen Kim had finally begun to live in Europe.

  As we dined together on our first night in Paris I said sympathetically: “It must have been hard to adapt to yet another culture,” but Kim merely said: “I finally got lucky. The English stepfather was good news.”

  “And your mother was happy?”

  “Presumably.” He thought for a moment before adding: “My mother was the old-fashioned, European type of woman who regarded marriage primarily as a business arrangement.”

  Cautiously I said: “She didn’t mind your father being Jewish? I thought anti-Semitism was rife in Germany before the war.”

  “He had money, he didn’t practise his religion and he was confident when they met in 1935 that he’d never be targeted.”

  “I see.” I found I was unsure what to say next, but Kim remarked easily in his wryest voice: “Although my father died of drink and the American husband got himself shot, my mother finally hit the jackpot with Giles the Brit. He was heavily into money and class but of course, being British, he never discussed them.”

  “Surely in the 1950s the British were still poor in comparison with the Americans?”

  “My mother wanted to get back to Europe.”

  “But didn’t it bother her, marrying a Brit less than ten years after the war?”

  “Giles was offering her a beautiful home, a generous dress allowance and an interesting social life. It was obviously time to consign the war to history.”

  “Sensible lady!” I said, playing safe by mirroring his ironical tone.

  “The real problem was that most of the Brits didn’t feel quite the same as she did, but she faked a great Swiss accent and was soon living happily ever after.”

  “How resourceful. But what about you?”

  “I was more of a problem, but before I was dumped at public school Giles told me to say I was American. Giles had worked in both Germany and Switzerland before the war, and he realised I’d never succeed in passing myself off as Swiss to anyone who knew anything about the German language. A lot of Americans have German names, and having spent four years in New York I spoke American English anyway.”

  “But with a German accent.”

  “Believe me, I toned that down in double-quick time once I was incarcerated with several hundred English boys! And any European inflections I passed off as New York yiddish. That was Giles’s idea too.”

  “He sounds as resourceful as your mother.”

  “Well, he played his cards close to his chest, and I was never sure what he really thought about being saddled with another man’s child, but I realised very early on that I could trust him to do right by me. That was important. It made my life easier because I always knew where I stood with him.”

  “Did he officially adopt you?”

  “Good God, no, we were never on that kind of footing, but he was the kind of old-fashioned, upper-class Brit who was very good at meeting his responsibilities and he saw to it that I had a first-class education. In return I worked like a Trojan and never gave him a spot of bother. After the years with my father, who was a bit of a bastard, and my first stepfather, who was a complete shit, I knew when I was well off, I assure you.”

  I asked if Giles was still alive, but learned that he had died in 1969. At that point Kim’s mother had finally returned to Germany, where she had died of cancer twelve years later.

  “Do you have any other German relations?” I asked.

  “None survived the war.”

  “Not even anyone from your mother’s family?”

  “Cologne was heavily bombed.”

  I fell silent, glimpsing in that single sentence all the suffering he had glossed over with so little emotion: the exile in foreign lands, the stepfather who had done his duty but refused to adopt him, the ordeal of having to lie at school about his origins, and finally the pragmatic decision to adopt the nationality of the men who had dropped those bombs on Cologne.

  I heard myself say: “Did you ever think of settling in Germany with your mother after Giles died?”

  “No, by that time I was twenty-nine and my future, thanks to Giles, was quite obviously in England.” He refilled our coffee-cups. In the restaurant around us plenty of people were still dining but our corner table was quiet and secluded. “Well, so much for my secret history!” he said with a smile as he set down the coffee-pot. “Now let’s hear about yours.”

  But although I had been anticipating this demand for some time, I found I still ha
d not made up my mind what I was going to say.

  VIII

  “I assume your parents are still alive,” said Kim, as I toyed with several opening statements but failed to utter any of them.

  “Uh-huh. I check the pulses once a year.”

  “Surely there’s more to them than their pulses?”

  “Not a lot. My mother enjoys a very ordinary life with her second husband, who’s an electrician. They have two girls, both now married.”

  “You get on with them?”

  “Why not? They’re all very nice. It’s not their fault that when I visit them every Christmas I feel like an alien dropping in via my private UFO.”

  “I get the picture . . . And your father?”

  “He’s the reason why my mother has this passion for a quiet life in which nothing unpredictable ever happens.”

  “An adventurer?”

  “That’s certainly one way of describing him. It would be less glamorous but more truthful to say he’s an occasional member of Gamblers Anonymous. He should be a full-time member, but he never gets that far.”

  “You see him at Christmas too?”

  “Sure. I take the UFO up to Glasgow after checking the pulses in Newcastle. He’s always delighted to see me.”

  “Proud of your success?”

  “Thrilled.”

  “And your mother’s proud of that too, of course.”

  “My mother’s idea of success,” I said, “is marrying a local boy and raising a family. My father’s idea of success is living high on the hog. So you can guess which parent comes within a million miles of imagining what sort of life I have.”

  “Did your father remarry?”

  “More than once, like your mother, but it’s never worked out. All his wives have found him a walking disaster . . . And talking of wives—”

  I had decided it was time I found out more about Sophie.

  IX

  “The first thing I have to confess,” said Kim, “is that she’s not visiting a sick friend in Nether Wallop this weekend. I’ve no idea where she is. We’ve been living apart since last February.”

  From my point of view this was good news but I felt an austere reaction was called for. “Why didn’t you come right out and say so on the flight to New York?”

  “Sometimes it’s wise to be reticent.”

  “Worried in case I was one of those thirty-somethings hooked on dreams of wedding bells?”

  “You’d be surprised what a talent women of all ages have for dreaming!”

  “So does this belated confession mean you’ve decided I’m no dreamer?”

  “It means I’ve decided you’re gorgeous enough for me to have a few dreams of my own.”

  I did not take this remark too seriously, since lovers do tend to pay that sort of compliment when dining out in Paris, but I appreciated the hint that he was willing for the affair to become more significant. “Okay, Mr. Smoothie,” I said. “Let’s hear more about this separated wife of yours.”

  To my relief he then proved more than willing to talk of Sophie, and I learned that they had first met when he had been up at Oxford; she had been the sister of one of his friends there. Her family was both wealthy and well-connected, and having worked out that it would be wonderfully providential if he were to fall in love with her, Kim discovered later, once he was qualified, that he was in love. Surprise! It was an old, old story.

  Unlike me Kim was a barrister, not a solicitor, but he had decided from the start that he had no wish to spend a long apprenticeship in chambers, and as the result of his stepfather’s influence he had started work as an in-house lawyer at a German bank based in the City. With his bilingual skills and his natural aptitude for business he was soon flourishing, and by the time the marriage took place at St. Paul’s Knightsbridge in 1966 he was already earning a good salary.

  “So what went wrong?” I demanded, deciding it was time to switch on the pneumatic drill to dig up the truth.

  “Isn’t it obvious that my marriage was a smart career move but an emotional non-starter? We’ve stayed together so long only because she really did turn out to be the ideal wife for an ambitious lawyer—and don’t think I’m not grateful to Sophie for her support over the years. But in the end a marriage—especially a childless marriage—can’t survive on mere gratitude.”

  “When did you stop having sex with her?”

  “About a hundred light-years ago. Naturally I’ve had other arrangements—”

  “Naturally.”

  “—but last February we had a row when she refused to come to a Livery Company dinner with me and suddenly I thought: screw it. So then I suggested it was finally time we faced reality and talked about divorce.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “She wasn’t too keen at first, but in the end she had to concede it would be a relief to end the fiction and live more honestly. I was only showing up at weekends by that time anyway; I always spent Monday through Friday at Clifford’s Inn.”

  “Why was Sophie content to keep the marriage going if she was getting no sex?”

  “Sex was never her favourite pastime.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure! Hey, why the cross-examination?”

  “Because I want to know exactly where I stand and because I know damn well that even ill-assorted couples can bat around in bed right up to the decree nisi and beyond!”

  He said, amused: “I love it when you act tough!” But then he leaned forward across the table, clasped my hands and added as seriously as I could have wished: “There’s nothing going on between me and Sophie, Carter. And believe me, this is going to be a friendly, routine, unopposed divorce which will flash through the rubber-stamping process just as soon as we complete the two-year separation in February 1990.”

  How sad it is that even the most successful lawyers can make massive errors of judgement.

  X

  The main result of these confidential conversations in Paris was that I decided Kim was capable of being the husband I had long wanted but had almost lost hope of finding. He fitted the ideal profile. He was successful enough to earn more money than I did, so this meant a major psychological hurdle was demolished. (Most men feel emasculated if they fail to be king of the bank accounts.) He had the educational background which enabled him to go everywhere and know everyone who needed to be known, yet at the same time he well understood what it was like to be an outsider on the make. He had no parents who might prove tiresome. His marriage was already ending so no one could accuse me of breaking it up, and there were no children about to be deprived of a father. I had, of course, taken care to establish that the absence of children was not his fault; apparently something was wrong with Sophie’s Fallopian tubes, and an operation to unblock them had failed. I felt sorry for her. But I also felt very relieved that the absence of children did not disqualify Kim from becoming my husband.

  I seemed to have reached the point in my assessment where all I had to do was list his virtues. He had charm, brains, chutzpah, sex appeal, sophistication . . . I ran out of fingers on my left hand and began to count on my right. He was more than acceptable in bed. I knew he had to be a killer-shark in the boardroom, but he apparently had no trouble leaving this side of his personality at the office and becoming the friendly dolphin in his leisure hours. (This dual-natured temperament is far from unknown in big business, and those who possess it often make devoted family men.) I could think of only one disadvantage: he was a little old. It would have been better if he had been five years younger— but then he would not have been earning so much. However, despite being in his late forties he seemed reasonably fit. He walked to work, swam at weekends, had regular check-ups. He was a fraction overweight, but what’s half a stone between friends? He drank, but not to excess. He smoked cigars occasionally but he had given up cigarettes. In short, it seemed reasonable to assume his sperm-count was adequate. (I know this sounds calculating, but a mature woman has to be clear-e
yed when assessing middle-aged men as potential fathers, and I was no dewy-eyed fluffette.)

  Kim’s final virtue was that he had no interest in dewy-eyed fluffettes and made no secret of the fact that he wanted someone who had the brains to share his London life to the hilt. It was true that he was hardly likely to marry a brainbox who looked like the back end of a bus, but fortunately looking like any part of a public conveyance has never been my problem. I took care of myself. Looking good is a weapon when one jousts continually with treacherous males. All the Hitchcock blondes knew that. Hitchcock would have approved of me, even though my big flaw is that I’m two inches too short. Five feet six is the ideal height for a high flyer. Anything taller gets called butch and anything shorter gets stamped on. Many were the men who had tried to stamp on me and wound up with bruised feet . . . But even the brightest men, as I have already noted, can make massive errors of judgement.

  When we were back in London and Kim was telling me about the eminent lawyer who was handling the divorce, I said idly: “It’s a pity you can’t cite adultery by Sophie to hurry the process along. How can you be sure she hasn’t embraced the single life by reversing her anti-sex stance and taking up with some overmuscled hunk twenty years her junior?”

  He found that possibility very amusing. “Sweetheart, Sophie wears size twenty clothes and has her grey hair set in corrugated-iron-style waves!”

  “For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed, appalled. “Why doesn’t she slim down, smarten up, get a life?”

  “She thinks she’s got a life. She’s a pillar of the local church.”

  “Oh God, are you saying she’s one of those ghastly Born-Agains?”

  “No, just a member of the mainstream Church of England.”

  A terrible thought belatedly occurred to me. “Kim, you’re not religious, are you?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a Christian. But I think there’s something out there.”