The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

  “She must have hired a private investigator,” said Kim abruptly. “A good PI would have ways and means of turning up your unlisted number.”

  But this plausible explanation only triggered another question: why had Sophie hired a PI? Legally I had no connection with the divorce case. I did find myself wondering if Sophie’s lawyers wanted to dredge up information about me in the hope of slinging mud at Kim when the time came to decide who should have the Oakshott house, but I realised at once that since the object of a divorce settlement was not to be punitive but to be equitable, this theory did not make sense. I personally thought the court would order the house to be sold and the proceeds to be divided between the two of them, a decision which would allow Sophie to pay Kim for his half-share if she wanted to stay on in her home. Such a ruling would acknowledge both the fact that Sophie, as a wife of over twenty years’ standing, deserved a share of the family home, and the fact that the place had been bought with Kim’s money. Of course I was not a divorce lawyer, but as far as I could see mud-slinging would be irrelevant in sorting out this routine separation dispute.

  “Let’s not forget,” I said at last, “that the main result of this PI’s work—assuming a PI’s been hired—is that Sophie’s been able to access me. And that means the next question has to be: why the hell’s she calling?”

  Kim groaned. “Maybe she sees you as an innocent young woman corrupted by an older man and needing to be saved.”

  “God! In that case I’ll get an answering machine. It’s never seemed necessary before, but—”

  “No, wait. An answering machine sounds like the obvious solution but I believe it would be a tactical error—Sophie would take it as an invitation to leave message after message. Just keep hanging up on her, and she’s bound to get discouraged in the end.”

  But unfortunately he was underrating his wife’s persistence. When she finally realised the phone calls were getting her nowhere, the letters started to arrive at my flat.

  III

  Since we were both now working in our new jobs and Sophie was aware of the affair, Kim was soon saying that our extreme discretion was no longer necessary, we could let it be known that we were a couple, and why didn’t he move in to my Barbican flat.

  “Because I haven’t invited you to do so,” I said, remembering my resolution not to let him become too comfortable before the wedding ring was firmly on my finger. A man’s will to marry is a tender plant which needs careful nurturing, and the risk of it dying of inertia is one which needs to be taken seriously. “I agree there’s no need to keep the affair under wraps now, but before you move in let’s just see what Sophie does next.”

  “But that’s the point!” he protested. “I want to be on hand to screen you from further harassment!”

  “If you start to live with me, aren’t you much more likely to stimulate it?”

  It was on the Saturday morning after this conversation that I received the first letter. It was written on thick cream paper and the engraved address managed to conjure up in every line visions of the leafy lanes of Surrey. “THE LARCHES,” proclaimed the print, “ELM DRIVE, OAKSHOTT . . .” Even the postal code had a T for Tree in it. “Dear Miss Graham,” I read queasily, “I am sorry you do not wish to speak to me. I assume you are feeling guilty about committing adultery with my—”

  I said aloud: “Oh my God!” and crumpled the letter as I clenched my fist. But then curiosity overwhelmed me and I straightened the paper out again.

  “. . . committing adultery with my husband,” the letter continued. “However, I do not write in a spirit of recrimination but out of a desire to save you from—”

  My fist reclenched, the paper recrunched and I moved into the kitchen to consign the whole religion-soaked twaddle to oblivion. How dared she talk of “saving” me! These religious nutters were a menace to a free society and to the sacred right of the individual to live as he or she chose.

  The flats in Harvey Tower, in common with all the other flats on the Barbican estate, have an extraordinary waste disposal system called the Garchey, which consists of a tube leading from one of the two kitchen sinks in each flat to some unimaginable lower region which connects, I assume, to the sewers. Nothing consigned to the Garchey is ever recovered. Consigning Sophie’s letter I turned on the water and flushed the rubbish away, but when Kim heard about the letter he was not only livid with Sophie for sending it but livid with me for destroying it.

  “Why didn’t you wait to show it to me?”

  “Why should I? It was garbage. I junked it. End of story.”

  “But what did she say?”

  “Nutterguff about sin and salvation. I didn’t even read beyond the opening lines.”

  “But of course you did! No woman can resist reading to the end of a letter from her lover’s wife!”

  “Watch it, buster. I’m not in the mood for being stereotyped and I’m never in the mood to be called a liar.”

  He apologised at once but was unable to change the subject. “If there are any more letters,” he said, “would you please hand them to me unopened?”

  “No,” I shot back. “I’m a big girl now. I’m allowed to read letters which are addressed to me. For God’s sake, Kim, why are you getting your guts in such a twist over this?”

  He sighed heavily, apologised a second time but could only add: “I just don’t want Sophie upsetting you.”

  “Fair enough, but I’m hardly a delicate little daisy trembling for fear of being trodden on! Why are you overreacting like this?”

  “Who says I’m overreacting?”

  “I do. Darling, what’s going on? Are you afraid Sophie’s going to spill the beans about some vital dimension of the marriage which I don’t yet know about?”

  “Oh sure! I’m panicking in case she tells you I’m an unreconstructed male who likes his wife to wait on him hand and foot!”

  “God, trying to cross-examine a lawyer like you is worse than trying to pull teeth. Come on, Betz, shape up—I’m not letting you off the hook! Just why are you so livid with Sophie and just why are you so anxious for me to have nothing to do with her?”

  He sighed again. He was good at these heavy sighs; I suspected that they gave him time to reorganise his thoughts with lightning speed. But at last he said frankly: “I suppose the rock-bottom truth is that I feel guilty about her—the rock-bottom truth is I feel a bit of a shit. It was okay when the decision to divorce was reached by mutual consent and there was no other party involved, but it does make a difference, I have to admit, that I’m exchanging her for a younger woman. And you know the psychological pattern which guilt so often produces, don’t you? You can’t face your own self-hatred so you project it onto someone else. If I’m angry at the moment with Sophie it’s because I’m actually angry with myself for hurting her; if I’m trying to keep Sophie out of your life it’s because I can’t stand the effect she’s currently having on mine.”

  After a pause I said: “I like you better for feeling guilty. You’d certainly be a bit of a shit if you didn’t. Thanks for being honest with me.”

  So that was that. But I saw clearly then that the way to help Kim survive this rancorous divorce was not to bother him further with tales of Sophie’s harassment. He needed to be cosseted, soothed and supported during this arduous time which was made all the more stressful by the fact that he had just taken on a very high-powered job. I had read enough pop psychology to know that guilt led to anxiety which led to neurosis which led to melt-down, and I did not want to land my big fish only to discover that I had acquired some sort of piscine blob.

  I decided that he should come to live with me at Harvey Tower before guilt could trigger an impotence which might cast a fatal blight on that delicate plant, the male will to marry.

  IV

  When Kim moved in I was a trifle nervous in case he then revealed unattractive traits which he had so far managed to conceal, but he remained well-behaved and indeed turned out to be superbly house-trained for a man of his ag
e—by which I mean that he did not leave his clothes all over the floor or the bathroom in a mess or dirty dishes stacked outside the dishwasher. He also showed himself capable of doing selected chores, provided that he was the one who did the selecting. Evidently the years of living on his own during the week at his Clifford’s Inn pied-à-terre had more than counterbalanced the old-fashioned pampering he would have received from the old-fashioned wife at weekends.

  Sophie sent three more letters but I tore them all up unread. And where, it might well be asked, was my natural curiosity? I came to the uneasy conclusion that it had been consigned to a limbo which I was most reluctant to explore. Was I feeling in any way guilty myself? Absolutely not! The marriage had ground to a halt long before I had appeared on the scene. My hands, I told myself fiercely, were as clean as a couple of whistles. My conscience, I told myself even more fiercely, was pristine. I utterly refused, I told myself—now even sweating with fierceness—to feel any degree of guilt whatsoever.

  But in that case what was all the fierceness about and why did I feel so sick whenever I received a letter from Sophie that I could hardly wait to flush it down the Garchey?

  I decided finally that I should admit the guilt in order to surmount it. Fine. I was experiencing guilt. Not much. Just a bit. And there was no doubt that part of my mind did feel sorry for Sophie. It was no fun for a middle-aged woman to preside over the disintegration of her marriage, but on the other hand so often losers had only themselves to blame for their losses. Why hadn’t she shed thirty pounds, smartened herself up, sought therapy for the sex hang-up, made an effort to share Kim’s London life? Bearing these failures in mind I decided I could only feel moderately sorry for her—and considering she was currently bent on creating as much trouble for Kim as possible while pestering me with religious nutterguff, I considered I was being extremely magnanimous in feeling sorry for her at all.

  Meanwhile Kim and Sophie were communicating only through their lawyers who were enjoying many delicious hours of convoluted negotiations as they attempted to resolve the impasse. Their lavish bills provided lurid proof of what a fine time they were having; as Kim said drily to me once after receiving a bill from Milton, lawyers can be such swine.

  I was just thinking in despair that nothing would alter Sophie’s determination to make Kim wait the statutory five years in order to obtain a divorce without her consent, when she stunned us by changing course. Maybe she found the legal bills too outrageous to tolerate a moment longer or maybe she finally realised the long-term futility of her stand, but whatever her reason was she agreed to abandon the delaying tactics on two conditions: the first was that Kim should cede her the house at Oakshott, and the second was that they should divorce at once, using Kim’s adultery with me as the grounds for establishing the marriage’s irretrievable breakdown. No doubt this second condition featured on her agenda precisely because she had realised that Kim was far from keen to go down this route, and she still wanted to cause him as much inconvenience as possible.

  Kim was livid. I urged him to grab the divorce, ditch the house and wash his hands once and for all of this revenge-obsessed female, but his macho pride was interfering with his common sense and he hated the thought that Sophie was able to push him around. More time slipped away. More legal costs were incurred. However, this second impasse was again resolved by Sophie herself. She had left me alone ever since changing course earlier, but now she started pestering me again with phone calls and my patience finally snapped.

  “GET RID OF THAT WOMAN!” I yelled to Kim. “I don’t care how you do it, but if you don’t get rid of her right away and grab that divorce I’ll—” I was about to say: “I’ll climb every wall in this flat!” but I believe he thought I was going to say: “I’ll break off our relationship,” for he interrupted me so quickly that he stumbled over his words.

  “Okay, I’ll fix it,” he said. “I’m not going to let Sophie wreck us. I’ll call Milton first thing tomorrow morning.”

  So Sophie had her revenge and Kim lost all the money he had invested in the house at Oakshott, but at least the divorce now rocketed ahead and we were both too exhausted to care that adultery had been substituted for the two-year separation. In the December of 1989, a year after we had first met, Kim and I were free to whip through a registry office wedding before boarding a plane to Germany for the honeymoon, and I could tell myself the nightmare generated by Sophie was finally over.

  But I was mistaken.

  V

  Since I was a sun-and-sand holidaymaker Germany was hardly my first choice as a honeymoon destination, but Kim wanted to relax in an environment he knew well and I could see too that it was an exciting place to be now that the fall of the Berlin Wall was generating talk of German reunification. Realising how keen he was to sample the Deutsch-buzz and acknowledging how frazzled I felt after the divorce-mess, I decided I was more than willing to postpone my dream of a long-haul flight to the Seychelles, and anyway I was so pleased to be Mrs. Betz at last that I found the last thing I wanted to be picky about was the location of the honeymoon.

  Fortunately Germany turned out to be fun. What a difference it makes to travel in a foreign country with someone who can speak the language! We visited Cologne, so that Kim could show me his parents’ city, and then we withdrew for Christmas to a very grand castle which had been converted into a hotel. It seemed strange not to be trekking north to Newcastle and Glasgow for the annual pulse-check, but I was secretly relieved to delay exhibiting Kim to my family.

  “Will they be upset?” Kim had asked in concern when we had been planning the honeymoon, but I had assured him my parents would understand.

  In fact it was not until I reached Germany that I wrote to my parents to inform them I was married. After revealing my husband’s name I wrote to my mother: “Don’t be cross at missing the wedding—it only lasted a couple of minutes, certainly not long enough to justify a trip south, and hardly anyone was present except a few people we’ve known for years. I’ll send you some copies of the honeymoon photos so that you can see how nice-looking he is. He’s a forty-nine-year-old lawyer with a top job at an investment bank—” I paused to debate whether I should mention that he was of German descent, but decided this fact was best omitted. I then wondered whether to mention that he was half-Jewish, but decided this fact was best omitted too. Provincial people could be so insular. Finally I concluded: “—and he came to England from America many years ago. He was educated at a famous school and at Oxford, so he’s got class as well as brass—all right, I know he’s not exactly ‘the boy next door,’ but I was never going to marry one of those, was I? Love, KATIE.”

  This letter took me a long time to write and my labours had to be aided by two large glasses of German champagne. But afterwards I dashed off a note which read: “Hi Dad—sorry no Xmas viz this yr— honeymooning in Krautland—Kim’s a bank lawyer, surname BETZ, Yankish accent, naturalised Brit, earns megabucks, drives a Mercedes, wears Savile Row suits (like James Bond) and even has handmade shoes. Everything totally brill. Love, KITTY. PS. Get the pic? £££ are his business. So don’t be dumb enough to dream of fleecing him.”

  I mailed both these letters with relief.

  Then at last I was entirely free to luxuriate in marital bliss.

  VI

  I noticed that every German we met assumed Kim was a German citizen living only temporarily in London, and Kim never made any attempt to disillusion them. He certainly never mentioned South America, but on the other hand, as I said to myself, why go looking for trouble? Everyone knew South America had been a favourite destination after the war for those Nazis who feared they would have a date with the prosecutors at Nuremberg, and it would have been tedious for Kim to keep explaining that his Jewish father had left Germany in the 1930s. I thought it was very sensible that whenever he was asked where he came from he simply said: “Köln.” No one ever expressed any surprise, and it made me realise that his German, unlike his English, was unmarred by any trace of a fo
reign accent. I had studied German at school so I could speak the language in a limited fashion and understand more than I spoke, but I could not hear the different accents. I only knew Kim was never questioned about his.

  “I simply speak as my parents spoke,” he said easily when I raised the subject, “and we always spoke German at home.”

  I said, thinking of my own past: “Accents can be such a problem.”

  “The trick is to convert them into an asset by making them all part of playing the system. That’s why in Germany I pass myself off as a German, in England I pass myself off as an American and in New York I pass myself off as an Anglicised Jew. That way I can make my background work for me wherever I happen to be.”

  “Con man! Well, at least my Home Counties accent is better than yours is!”

  “You think so?” he said laughing. “You should listen to yourself after a couple of vodka martinis!” And the conversation then concluded as I attempted to wallop him with a pillow and he wrestled the pillow from me in order to put it to a more imaginative use. It was such a luxury to have both the leisure and the stress-free environment to enjoy sex frequently.

  Indeed, by the end of the honeymoon we had almost forgotten what stress was, and when we arrived back in London we smooched for some time in my moonlit living-room high above the City before bowling into bed in an ecstasy of happiness. I was such a hardened cynic that I still hardly dared believe such happiness could exist, but the evidence for such a blissful state now seemed incontrovertible. Perhaps I finally dared to ditch my cynicism when I realised Kim was just as stunned by our happiness as I was.

  “I feel quite different,” he confided that night. “I don’t feel dislocated any more.”