The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

  “St. Martin’s Le Grand,” I heard myself say aloud, “Little Britain, Cheapside, Poultry, Milk Street, Egg Street, Love Lane, Old Jewry, Cornhill, Threadneedle Street, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, London Wall, Houndsditch, Bevis Marks . . .” On and on rolled the names as I remembered that when terrorists were arrested in Northern Ireland they survived interrogation by endlessly naming the streets of Belfast. And it seemed to me then that I too had fallen into the hands of an enemy, though it was an enemy who was as invisible as the compassionate stranger who had fallen into step by my side.

  I was very close to the Cathedral now; I was crossing the street towards Paternoster Row. Paternoster Row! I could remember when I had first arrived in the City and studied the map. Several of the streets around St. Paul’s had religious names: Paternoster Row, Ave Maria Lane, Amen Court . . . How quaint I had thought, that those echoes of a dead culture should still survive, but the culture was not dead at all, I could see that now; it was vibrantly alive, and as I entered the pedestrian precinct on the north side of the churchyard, all the names were chiming in unison so that every past and present particle of that brilliant landscape was fused in some eternal Now which was beyond my ability to understand.

  The precinct was deserted, and for a moment as I hurried along it I was cut off from the noise of the traffic but the silence did not frighten me because everywhere was bathed in light. The Cathedral towered above me as I struggled around its perimeter and emerged at last at the top of Ludgate Hill.

  I began the journey down to Ludgate Circus, the main junction at the bottom of the valley, but as soon as the floodlit Cathedral lay behind me I began to be afraid again of the dark. I could feel the fear expanding but my companion was hustling me forward at an increased pace as if determined to snatch me from the suffocating net spread by my enemy. “Keep naming the names!” I heard him urge, so I started reciting them again, muttering like some pathetic old bag lady who was living on the streets after being turned out of her mental hospital. “Paternoster Row, Ave Maria Lane, Amen Court . . . Paternoster Row, Ave Maria Lane, Amen Court . . .” I reached the Circus, crossed New Bridge Street and hurried on downhill towards the river.

  At the top of Fleetside I paused, my nerve finally failing me. The streetlights were out. Just some electrical fault, of course, but . . . How dark it looked down there, how very dark, even though there was a light still burning above the front door of the house by the church. “Keep naming the names!” cried my companion, knowing I was flagging, and in his determination to save me I knew just how much I was cherished. “Keep naming the names!” But my powers of speech were ebbing fast and all I could do was whisper: “Paternoster . . . Ave Maria . . . Amen,” over and over again as I groped my way into the dark towards the light at the end of the street.

  I was within ten yards of the Vicarage when the light went out.

  “Run! ” shouted my companion before I could waste breath on a scream, and I did run. The adrenaline generated by terror gave my body such a boost that I covered the last yards in a flash and vaulted up the steps to the front door.

  It was too dark to see where the bell was. I started to bang on the panels.

  “Help me!” I shouted. “Help me! Let me in!”

  At once the porch light flicked on again as someone unhooked a chain and reversed the locks. The next moment the door swung wide and I saw a man’s tall figure silhouetted against the lighted hall.

  I was still shouting: “Help me, help me—” but I did not have to shout any longer. It was as if my invisible companion had finally materialised, pouring himself into the man in front of me so that the man himself, though a stranger, seemed known to me through and through. A hand reached out, drawing me firmly across the threshold, and as I stumbled at last out of the dark I heard him say in the gentlest and kindest of voices: “It’s all right. You’re safe here. Come on in.”

  II

  I sank down on the nearest chair in a large hall at the point where an ornate wrought-iron staircase rose to the floor above. The front door closed. My rescuer stooped over me. “Have you been attacked?”

  I shook my head. I knew I had been attacked over and over again, but I knew too that it would be wiser not to talk about wrestling with the Powers and being vanquished, of struggling through the darkness with an unseen companion who had given me the strength to survive. Yet at the same time, because I knew that in some mysterious way this man was my unseen companion, I found myself addressing him as if he had been with me on the journey. I felt I had to make at least some attempt to tell him how grateful I was, how amazed, how overwhelmed.

  In a rush I said: “I’m not sure how to thank you because what you did was so extraordinary that I can hardly put it into words, but I know the Powers were powerless against you, they couldn’t break into that circle you created around me, you cared enough to make sure they couldn’t break in. I didn’t know there could be such caring by a stranger but it happened, I experienced it—yet at the same time I can hardly believe it because the caring was so undeserved, so unmerited, so unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

  There were tears streaming down my face but I was barely aware of them. I was more aware of him squatting down by my side so that we could converse more easily, but he made no attempt to speak. He simply went on holding my hand, being there, caring for me although I had done nothing to earn such care. However, as the seconds passed and my mind began to slip back from its heightened state of consciousness into its normal mode of perceiving reality, I began to grasp that this was a man who in the ordinary course of my daily life I had never previously met. He was dark, about forty, with straight hair, brown eyes and a sensitive mouth. Only his square chin seemed familiar. He was clearly troubled by my distress but in no way embarrassed by it. The expression in his eyes was as kind as his voice, and cautiously I reached out to touch his clerical collar. I think I wanted to make sure he was real and not the hallucination of a disturbed mind.

  “Odd how we still wear these collars, isn’t it?” he said casually. “Sometimes I think the Church is far too wedded to tradition.”

  I decided he was real. It was the wry, humorous tone which convinced me. Tentatively I said: “I’m looking for Tucker.”

  The clergyman said startled: “I’m Tucker. How can I help?”

  “No, I don’t mean you.” I tried to explain but it was too difficult. I started to cry again.

  “Ah,” said the clergyman, having put two and two together, “you want my brother. Just a moment.” And he moved into a room on the other side of the hall. As I watched he flicked a switch on a box which stood on a large, untidy desk and said a moment later: “A friend of yours is here. She seems a little distressed, so if you could come down straight away . . . Thanks.” He cut the connection but even before he could return to the hall I heard a door banging shut at the top of the house. Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand I looked down at my jeans and wondered if Tucker would recognise me.

  Footsteps clattered down the stairs and came to an abrupt halt on the half-landing above the hall. Tucker’s voice exclaimed amazed: “God Almighty, Ms. G, whatever have you been up to?” and a second later he was bounding down the remaining stairs two at a time to eliminate the gap which separated us.

  I tried so hard to be Carter Graham. I tried so hard to produce a snappy response worthy of a smart high flyer. But in the end all I said was: “Oh Tucker, I’m so glad to see you!” And hurtling into his arms I collapsed sobbing against his chest like some flaked-out fluffette floundering around in another era, in another world, long ago.

  III

  “Hey, it’s okay, it’s all right—I’m here—I’ll listen—I won’t go away . . .” Tucker was soothing me with old-fashioned gestures and modern platitudes; I was being enfolded in a solid, respectable clasp and my back was being patted gently, moves which kept his hands occupied in a suitably asexual manner. I was dimly aware that he was wearing a sweatshirt devoid of a logo, and white jeans. The sweatsh
irt smelled of fabric softener, as if it had just been laundered. His curly hair seemed longer than when I had last seen it, brushed and subdued, at Alice’s flat, and this hint of Bohemianism was enhanced by the designer stubble which was darkening his jaw. His eyes were bright with concern, astonishment and something else, something very friendly which I could not immediately define. It was as if my extreme vulnerability had touched him in ways which he had never anticipated but was far from finding unwelcome.

  Meanwhile my disintegration into total fluffiness was so appalling me that I was struggling to stand up straight and switch off the water-works. As I feebly mopped my face again I managed to say: “Sorry, Tucker, not quite myself. Just been to hell. Didn’t like it.”

  “Come up to my room and tell me everything!”

  “Eric,” said the older Tucker, “I think Ms. Graham, who’s clearly very shocked, might prefer more neutral surroundings. Why don’t you take her into the reception room down here while I make some tea?”

  “I’ll handle this, if you don’t mind, Gil.”

  “I do mind. I’m responsible for strangers who come to this house in distress and I’m entitled to say how they should be received.”

  “Oh, don’t be so damned pompous!”

  “Better pompous than irresponsible!”

  I seemed to be reviving ancient nursery feuds. Quickly I said: “I don’t want to cause trouble. I’ll just sit here in the hall.”

  “No need for that,” said the younger Tucker quickly, shaping up. “We’ll do as Gil suggests,” but at once his brother said to me: “Is that acceptable to you, Ms. Graham? You’re the one who’s important here.”

  I was so surprised by this unusual and imaginative consideration that at first I could only mutter an assent, but curiosity soon surfaced. “How did you know who I was?”

  Gilbert Tucker gave a fleeting, ironical smile before saying drily: “You’ve been mentioned now and then during the past few weeks.” He turned aside. “Let me make that tea I mentioned.”

  “This way, Carter,” said his brother bossily, piloting me across a nearby threshold into a small, shabby room where two battered leather armchairs faced each other beside an elderly gas fire. Above the fireplace hung a crucifix consisting of a light brown wooden cross and a figure made of pewter-coloured metal.

  “Do you want to wait for the tea to arrive or do you want to plunge into your story straight away?” said Tucker, parking himself in the chair opposite me.

  But I did not know. All I could say was: “God, I can’t believe I fluffed out against your chest like that!”

  “I assure you my chest was happy to be of service.”

  “I bet. Hey, Tucker . . .” My voice trailed away.

  “Yes, Ms. G?”

  “Something’s wired a computer virus directly into my brain. I’ve been hacked.”

  “I’ll fix it.”

  My eyes yet again filled with tears.

  “Ah, Ms. G, Ms. G—”

  “Can it, Tucker. I’ve got to think,” I said feverishly. “I must think.”

  For by that time my battered powers of reason were telling me that I had to stop myself dumping him in deep trouble.

  IV

  The problem was my behaviour at Oakshott.

  When lawyers find someone who may or may not have been murdered but who has without doubt died in a manner which requires investigation, they don’t go poncing around in rubber gloves while wiping fingerprints off doorhandles and snooping among private files. They call the police. Or at the very least they call for an ambulance. If Sophie had died by accident I might get away even now with pleading mere unprofessional behaviour, but if Sophie had been murdered I risked being charged as an accessory after the fact. In retrospect I was appalled that I had behaved so idiotically but at the same time I could see just how it had happened. Shock had knocked me off balance, and it was worth remembering too that the events at Oakshott were only the latest in a series of blows to my equilibrium. If I had finally freaked out in that silent, sinister house amidst those silent, sinister woods, it was hardly surprising. But it did leave me in a difficult position as I struggled to clamber back onto an even keel.

  Obviously the most important task I now had to undertake was to protect Tucker from being dragged into the Oakshott débâcle. If Sophie had been murdered and I confided in him, he too could be classed as an accessory after the fact unless he confided in the police immediately. So I could not tell him Sophie was dead. But if I could not tell him Sophie was dead, how could I tell him that I had seen her ghost—and would he believe me even if I did tell him? I thought he might quixotically try to believe me, but I did not want someone being quixotic. I wanted someone who could accept my story and come up with some practical suggestions for sorting out my life. Or in other words, I was beyond being helped by a mere trained listener, no matter how sympathetic and delightful he was. I needed an expert—and not just some whimsical old ghostbuster from the nutty fringes. I wanted a professional who was protected by the rules relating to confidentiality.

  I had just reached this rational though baffling conclusion when the Reverend Gilbert Tucker entered the room with a mug of tea.

  V

  Gilbert seemed alarmed by the deep silence, and as he set the tea down on the lamp-table by my chair he said quickly to me: “How are you feeling?”

  “Banjaxed. But not brain-dead, not any more.” I turned to his brother. “Tucker,” I said, “don’t go ballistic, but I’ve got to talk to Gilbert on his own. I’ve just worked out that I need a priest.”

  “It can happen to the best of us, Ms. G, but at least the clerical white rabbit is right here and I don’t even have to pull him out of a hat.” He stood up.

  “No need to go too far away—”

  “I’ll be in the kitchen.” He smiled encouragingly at me before he left the room.

  As Gilbert took his place in the armchair opposite I said: “How far does clerical confidentiality run nowadays?” but he was reassuring.

  “Nothing you tell me now will be repeated by me to anyone else.”

  I listened to my shallow breathing for several seconds before saying: “Truthfully?”

  “Truthfully. I deal in trust, not betrayal.”

  I swallowed. “All the time?”

  “It has to be all the time. After all, you can’t be half trustworthy any more than you can be half pregnant. You’re either trustworthy or you’re not.”

  I mentally pawed these sentences as if they were pieces in a complicated jigsaw which needed rearranging, but finally decided no rearrangement was necessary for the picture to make sense. I reminded myself that I was not about to confess to murder. My misdeeds, terrible though they were when committed by a lawyer, were almost certainly not sufficient to drive a clergyman to wash his hands of me and phone the police. I decided some sort of confession could now be risked. But I also decided to be as sparing as possible in my references to the Oakshott horrors.

  “All right,” I said. “I trust you not to shop me but I wonder if I can trust you not to laugh. I’ve seen a ghost.”

  Gilbert looked startled but not, so far as I could tell, disbelieving. “Where?”

  “In my flat just now. It was my husband’s ex-wife.”

  “When did she die?”

  “Earlier this evening in Surrey. I found the body.”

  Somehow Gilbert kept calm and continued to ask sensible questions. “How sure are you that she was dead?”

  “There was no pulse. She had fallen downstairs. Her neck was broken.”

  “An accident?”

  “Probably.”

  “But you didn’t call the police?”

  “Too worried about the possibility of murder.”

  “I understand, but let me just get this absolutely straight. You found this woman dead in Surrey. You then drove home to your flat—”

  “—and found she was already there, waiting for me, yes, except of course she couldn’t have been. I don’t believe in g
hosts so I couldn’t have seen what I know I did see. But on the other hand—”

  “—you did see what you know you did see.”

  “Yes—and I can’t deal with that, can’t get any kind of handle on it at all.” I paused to suck in some air before adding: “All I know now is that I can’t go back to the flat until this has been sorted out, but how can I get rid of this thing? How can I be sure it’s gone away? How can I be sure it won’t try to kill me by dragging me out onto the balcony and tipping me over the rail? I met a vile woman this afternoon who calls herself a psychic healer and she tried to make me believe I’d want to throw myself off the balcony, so what I’m afraid of is—”

  “You must have the best possible help,” said Gilbert Tucker at once, not even waiting for me to finish this sentence, “and you must have it without delay. Now, I’m not an expert in this area, but I certainly know a man who is. He’s another priest here in the City, and his name is Nicholas Darrow . . .”

  VI

  The church of St. Benet near London Wall—St. Benet’s-by-the-Wall, as it was known in late twentieth-century London—was a striking little number designed by the architect of St. Paul’s, Sir Christopher Wren, in the seventeenth century after the Great Fire had devastated the City; I learned later that St. Benet’s had been damaged in the Second World War but restored in the 1950s. Unlike Gilbert Tucker’s gloomy gothic anomaly in Fleetside, this church was floodlit, white and sleek. It stood in a little graveyard where flowers and shrubs had been cultivated, and beyond the graveyard Egg Street ran north to London Wall, the road which ran parallel to the south side of the Barbican. I knew Egg Street but I had barely noticed the church; I had barely noticed any of those City churches before I had arrived with Tucker at St. Eadred’s Fleetside after our champagne farewell at the Lord Mayor’s Cat.