The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

  “I’m sorry. I was only trying to—”

  “How could you talk of being blackmailed as if it were a mere passing inconvenience? How could you try and gloss over it as if—”

  “I was only trying to spare you from the full horror of it all. You’d already had to absorb so much.”

  “That’s patronising. I’m the one who decides how much I can or can’t absorb. I don’t need you making that kind of decision for me.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “I want you to be genuine, I want you to be truthful! How else can I trust you and feel secure?”

  “I understand. Yes, of course. Look, I only went for the gloss when I saw you were becoming upset—”

  “Okay, we got our wires crossed, but now be honest and answer me this: why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “I didn’t trust them.”

  I stared at him. “You think all coppers are bent?”

  “No, of course not. But I didn’t trust them not to remember the Blitz.”

  “The Blitz?”

  “Okay, I go to the police. I say: ‘Excuse me, I’m the son of a Nazi and I’m in a real jam because—’ ”

  “But none of the police today would have been old enough to have fought in the war!”

  “You think the British don’t remember? My God, haven’t you been reading the papers properly this month? Was mad cow disease the only news item which got through to you?”

  “Oh, you mean—”

  “I mean there’s a big debate coming up in the House of Lords on the issue of whether or not old Nazis living in England should be prosecuted for their war crimes, so don’t try and tell me the war’s a dead issue!”

  “Okay, I concede the wrinklies still bang on about it, but I for one don’t spend my time thinking about—”

  “You don’t spend your time thinking about anything except your job!”

  “That’s a bloody awful thing to say!”

  “You told me to be truthful!”

  I tried to hit him but he grabbed my wrist and swung his body on top of me. I struggled but it was useless. He was too heavy, too strong.

  When I was still he said gently: “I love you, I’m sorry for everything, you’ve been wonderful . . . So we don’t really have to quarrel now, do we?”

  I shook my head, no longer able to speak, and allowed him to make love to me.

  V

  I thought all the drink would ensure that he stopped short of penetration, but he was fresh from several hours’ sleep and charged up by all the black coffee. The act did not last long and he seemed neither to expect nor require a response, so I just lay there and waited for the ejaculation.

  After we had showered and dressed he announced that protein was good for hangovers and embarked on producing a platter of ham and scrambled eggs. I ate a little to please him, and eventually he said: “Now I want you to promise me not to worry about Mrs. Mayfield. I can handle her.”

  “But if she wants to blackmail you—”

  “I think the danger’s more theoretical than real, and to be frank I’m more worried about Sophie continuing to pester you.”

  I was surprised what a relief it was to focus on Sophie again, and as soon as I did focus on her I saw at last what had been going on.

  “Of course!” I exclaimed. “Now I understand! What Sophie really wants to do is bust up our relationship by spilling the beans about your Nazi past—she thinks I’ll be as incapable of handling that as she was!”

  “Exactly. She’s saying she wants to save you because I’m ‘mixed up with the occult,’ as she puts it so inaccurately, but in actual fact—”

  “—in actual fact that’s just her way of justifying her behaviour to herself when the bottom line is she’s mad as hell at being junked for a younger woman and can’t stand the thought of me being Mrs. Betz!”

  “That makes sense, certainly.”

  “Well, I know everything now, don’t I, so Sophie’s automatically defused. Unless—” I stopped. I had remembered the fallen picture and my nightmare vision of Sophie trashing the flat.

  “—unless she’s got so hooked on revenge in her unbalanced state,” said Kim, finishing the sentence for me, “that she’ll want to continue giving you a hard time just for the hell of it.”

  I decided to talk to him about my nightmare vision.

  VI

  “No, no, no,” said Kim reassuringly when I had finished. “That theory can’t be right. How could she have got into the flat?”

  “Well, she’d only need one key, wouldn’t she, since the lobby door at podium level is always unlocked unless there’s a temporary porter on duty. Maybe Mary Waters snitched your key and had it copied.”

  “Mary? You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Look, I know you won’t hear a word against your devoted slave, but it’s not impossible that she’s sided with Sophie here, and if she has—”

  “Sweetheart, you’ve let your passion for old movies get the better of you! It’s only in old movies that the virgin secretary sublimates her love for her boss by siding with the spurned ex-wife against the blonde glamour-girl! In real life Mary just sees wives as patterns of information to be logged on the computer so that she can remind me when their birthdays come up, what their favourite flowers are, where they like to eat and whether or not they’re allergic to chocolate—”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this. How many wives do you have and who’s allergic to chocolate?”

  We finally started to laugh.

  Sick with relief I realised the crisis was on the wane.

  VII

  Before we left the subject of Sophie I said: “Maybe now’s the time to get an answerphone. I would have insisted on one when she started calling again, but I didn’t want you to know the trouble had recurred.”

  He hesitated fractionally but said: “Okay, let’s do it but I still hate the thought of you being bothered by recorded messages.”

  “I understand why you disliked the idea of an answering machine when you wanted to stop Sophie telling me the truth about your past, but now I know the whole truth that worry of yours no longer exists, does it?”

  “True . . . But I still think the machine would only encourage her to annoy you.”

  “You can play back the tapes to save me from annoyance!” I glanced at my watch. “I’ve got to get going,” I said, and at that point we parted, I leaving for the hairdresser, he promising to clear up the breakfast debris before putting in a couple of hours’ work at the office.

  Later, as my hair was being coaxed to the exact shade of muted gold which toned so perfectly with my austere office suits, I found it hard to decide which of the lacerating dialogues had undermined me most; my perspective was changing as my sodden brain dried out enough to process the information properly. Now the blackmail, though still a horrific story, seemed less important than the picture I had acquired of a disturbed, damaged man who had teetered on the brink of breakdown before reeling into the orbit of a fraudster. I did not want Kim to be disturbed and damaged. I wanted him to be hard-headed and tough-minded, absolutely in control of his life and his world. I wanted him to be the man I thought I had married.

  I recalled the tormented ramblings, the driving obsessions, the weird metaphysical references to the Principalities and Powers of Darkness— even to demons—and as I instinctively recoiled from such abnormality, I was conscious of Mrs. Mayfield’s name hanging over the whole mess like some monstrous moon shedding light on a blighted landscape from a black and blasted sky.

  It was not until I was picking up my cleaning some time later that I began to feel unpleasantly bewildered. Surely I should have managed to uncover Kim’s neurotic side before I married him? After all, I had done everything right. I had approached the marriage rationally and sensibly, even considering such essential details as his sperm-count. I had loved him, of course, but I had not been whirling around in a frenzy of romantic illusions, hell-bent on proving love was blind. I had analysed all h
is pros and cons—or so I had thought. I had talked to him, wined and dined with him, travelled with him, tried him out in bed and lived with him. Surely after fulfilling all these requirements, just as the modern dogmas demanded, I should not now be feeling gutted by a string of revelations which I had never in my wildest premarital dreams begun to imagine? My predicament baffled me. It was not at all in accordance with my life-plan.

  Returning to the flat I hung up my clean suits and set off for the supermarket. In the garage I found the Mercedes gone, a fact which meant Kim had finished his overtime at Graf-Rosen and taken his picture to be reframed. It also meant that I was stuck with the Porsche, not the best car for doing the weekly shopping, but today I thought that was probably the least of my problems.

  I felt unexpectedly nervous in the supermarket, but there was no sign of Sophie. The place was packed. I hated shopping on Saturday afternoons and felt furious with myself for wasting so much of the morning being hung over. Plunging into the heaving throng I tried to concentrate on filling the cart with the necessary items but eventually I found myself coming to a halt in one of the aisles like a train which had run out of steam. I gazed at the vast display of toilet rolls, all packaged in a variety of pastel shades. Did we need to stock up on lavatory paper? I could not remember, and for once I had made no list. I could remember only the morning’s revelations.

  But now I found myself approaching them from another angle. This was not a conscious decision. It was merely my trained legal mind kicking in to try to help me break out of the emotional roller-coaster I was riding. Recalling the crucial scenes as if Kim were my client, I realised that various questions were lining themselves up in my mind. They were: had this man still been lying at any point during the morning’s conversations, and if so, what had the lie been and what had it meant? And even if there had been no more lies, had he in fact been telling the whole truth? Were there yet more dimensions to the truth waiting to be uncovered? And was there a subtext in all these revelations, meanings which were implied rather than openly expressed?

  It was restful looking at the toilet rolls, assembled in their pretty colours. Selecting a four-pack I moved on slowly while my mind once more began to replay the morning’s dialogues.

  I reviewed the German reminiscences but decided they rang painfully true. I considered his compulsion to make amends to the Jews, but on this point I had found him wholly convincing. And as for all that obsessive research . . . I paused by the snack racks. Mountains of revolting junk food stretched down the aisle into the distance—but suddenly I was no longer seeing the garish packaging. A voice in my head was saying: “The Nazi-hunters would know what his father had done and whether his father should have ended up at Nuremberg. Surely Kim could have adopted a pseudonym, concocted a cover story and tapped in to their information systems if he had really wanted to find out what had happened?”

  However, even the Nazi-hunters could not know everything. Europe had been in chaos. Records had been destroyed. Probably many horror stories would never now be known.

  I moved on, still thinking of Kim’s father, and the next moment I was seeing the subtext of Kim’s monologue about his parents. He had hated them. He had never actually said so, but every word he had spoken on the subject had revealed his anger and contempt.

  This was chilling. I did not hate my own parents. I just had nothing to say to them. If I were to be informed that my mother was at death’s door I would not exclaim: “Good news!” I would be on the next train to Newcastle to show her that although I was a rotten daughter in many ways I did care when the chips were down. I would go to see my father too in similar circumstances—after making sure the sob-story was not just a scam to extract money from me. But the only woman Kim had spoken of with warmth had been his nurse and the only man Kim had spoken of with respect had been his English stepfather—and even when Kim had been talking of Giles there had been a curious dearth of affectionate remarks.

  Strange things could happen to children who were not loved properly when they were young. They could grow up emotionally stunted and not fit to become parents themselves, but on the other hand—and yes, thank God for the other hand—Kim had had his nurse caring for him until he was nearly five and he was obviously unstunted now in his love for me.

  I moved slowly on around the supermarket.

  In front of the meat cabinets I paused again, remembering Sophie, and it was then that I had my most horrific moment of the entire morning.

  I had been operating all the time on the assumption that Sophie was emotionally disturbed and Kim was well-balanced. But supposing it was Kim who was nuts and Sophie who was sanity personified? And supposing Sophie’s warning about “the occult” had been not an unconscious attempt to justify her stalking when her real motive was so far from benign, but instead a desperate effort to convince me that her concern was rooted in reason and good sense?

  Aloud I said: “I’ve lost it. I’m fruity-loops.” Various people turned to give me a quick glance but no one looked surprised. One met nutters in London all the time nowadays, particularly since the government had started closing down the mental hospitals.

  Completing the shopping as quickly as possible I snaked back to Harvey Tower in the Porsche. The Mercedes was back in its slot, and when I called the flat from the lobby Kim came down to the car park to help me with the bags.

  Later in the kitchen when we were unpacking he said startled: “Why have you bought bacon when we never eat it?”

  “Oh, is it bacon? I thought it was ham.”

  “And why did you buy Special K instead of cornflakes? And my God, are those flowers decorating the lavatory paper?”

  I laughed at his expression but felt my eyes sting with tears. Turning away at once I managed to say: “I was discombobulated.”

  He heard the catch in my voice. “Carter—”

  “I’m all right,” I insisted fiercely. I hated crying and firmly believed that crying in front of another person represented a loss of control which could only lead to disorder. Flaking out’s for the fluffettes.

  I heard him say gently: “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. You’ve been so brave, so—”

  “Can it.” I tried to study the flowers on the borders of the lavatory paper, but when he touched me I hurtled into his arms and stuck there. His clasp tightened. For a while he said nothing, allowing me to recover my composure, but after I had raised my face to his he kissed me on the mouth and said: “I hate myself for upsetting you.”

  “It’s okay, I’ve assimilated it all now.” I kissed him back. He had shaved, the alcohol fumes had been vanquished; he was kissable. His eyes were a clear hot sexy blue. His dark hair was slightly ruffled by the exertion with the shopping bags, but that just made him look sexier. His minimal sideburns, the perfect shade of grey and immaculately trimmed, jacked up his good looks to film-star standards. He smelled strongly of aftershave, faintly of soap and alluringly of Macleans toothpaste, the peppermint kind which always made me salivate. The turgid memory of the morning’s hung-over sex vanished. I wanted only to rip off his clothes, pin him down on the bed and ravish him.

  But I didn’t. I said instead: “Kim, there’s one last thing I want to say about this morning’s revelations.”

  “Sure! If there’s anything more you want to ask—”

  “I want you to listen—and make sure you listen well.” Stepping backwards away from him I put the box of Special K away in the storecupboard. That gave me additional time to psych myself up. Then I said: “I love you and I truly sympathise with you over all those past traumas. But I too have my past traumas and this means there could be a serious problem for us in future unless you recognise that I can’t stand being lied to by someone I love. Silly of me, isn’t it, to be so influenced still by the fact that my father’s lies destroyed my trust in him, but there we are, that’s life, and I suspect a lot of us are stupid in some way or other as the result of being booted around by a loved one when we were small.” I began to open a pac
ket of biscuits with a steady hand to demonstrate how calm I was. “Well,” I said, pulling out a stick of shortbread, “I’ve nothing else to say except that if you’ve got any further confessions to make I’ll hear them now, if you don’t mind, and not later as the result of further chats with Mandy Simmons.”

  There was a silence. I bit into the shortbread and chewed quietly while I watched the electric clock marking the seconds as it hung on the wall nearby.

  At last Kim said: “I couldn’t have done that better myself!” He sounded both amused and admiring.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the speech had to be made, didn’t it? Although for a moment I thought you were going to flunk it in favour of sex.”

  “Was that what you intended when you kissed me?”

  “I kissed you because you were looking like a million dollars after your visit to the hairdresser—naturally I wanted to seduce you rather than listen to you! What kind of a husband do you think I am?”

  “A master of the delaying tactic.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “Can I have your response now, please, to the issue I’ve just raised?”

  “Message received and understood.”

  “Any further confessions?”

  “None.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You have a confession in mind?”

  “Just a question. Why didn’t you go to the Nazi-hunters to find out what your father had done?”

  “I’d have thought that was obvious. I didn’t seek their help because I was terrified they would check any cover story I chose to use and find out who I was. And because I was sure I’d be able to uncover the facts for myself. And because I was ashamed, because I felt guilty, because I was horribly and hopelessly hung up over the whole bloody mess.”

  There was another pause before I said abruptly: “Thank you. I’m sorry, but I had to know.” Closing the packet of shortbread I put it away alongside the Special K, and as I did so he ran a finger lightly down my spine.

  “Do I get to seduce you now?”