The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

  DAVID F. FORD

  The Shape of Living

  I

  I was the one who broke the silence. I said: “You know her.”

  “Oh yes, we know Mrs. Mayfield!” agreed Hall sardonically. “Or rather I should say we know of her. We’ve never actually met the woman. We just meet the casualties she leaves behind.”

  Nicholas merely said as he examined his thumbnail: “She keeps her distance from us. People like that usually do.”

  “People like what?”

  “Prime manipulators in cults or groups which are not just antipathetic to Christianity but actively hostile to it.”

  At once I said: “She told Kim I’d start ‘flirting with the enemy.’ That was her exact phrase. But I didn’t know any Christians when she said that. She couldn’t possibly have known—foreseen—”

  “Such people often have psychic gifts,” said Nicholas, clearly quite unimpressed by Mrs. Mayfield’s clairvoyance. “That’s all part of the problem. They don’t offer their gifts to God so that the gifts can be used for serving others. They offer the gifts up elsewhere and then abuse them to serve themselves.” He turned to Hall. “It looks as if we have three problems to consider. One: the recurring disorder in the flat. Two: the ghost. And three: the presence of Mrs. Mayfield.”

  “They’re probably all linked,” said Lewis, writing busily, “but of course one mustn’t jump to conclusions, so—”

  “—so let’s now take a look at the background. Carter, can you fill us in, please, about who you are, where you come from and how long you’ve been married?”

  I somehow succeeded in embarking on my narrative in a calm and steady voice.

  II

  By this time I had realised I was going to tell them the whole story. This was not just because I had seen it might hamper their investigation if I started withholding facts; it was because they were both so professional, so patently men of integrity and so obviously at ease in this foreign country where I was a complete stranger that I knew I would be mad not to put my trust in them. Neither of them had batted an eyelid when I had mentioned the ghost. Neither of them had appeared to find the disturbances in the flat in any way remarkable. But most of all I was reassured by their reaction to Mrs. Mayfield. Here were two people who not only had her measure but were able to make her seem less powerful. She was a dangerous woman but not uniquely so; they had come across her type before; she had never had the nerve to seek them out; her clairvoyance was run-of-the-mill stuff, nothing remarkable, just a gift she had chosen to abuse. I felt enormously relieved that they had not only grasped the situation at once but were able to reinterpret it for me in a way which made it easier to cope with the nightmare which Mrs. Mayfield presented.

  As I told my story they asked questions to clarify details. Nicholas asked questions about the keys and about the Barbican’s security arrangements. Hall cross-questioned me about the earlier disturbances in the flat; he was not hostile, but in paying great attention to detail he was very persistent and some of the questions he asked were extraordinary. (“Did you see any of the objects move of their own accord?” “Did you see any object sail through the air and make a sharp-angled turn?” “Did any of the electrical appliances turn themselves on unaided?” “Did the lights go on and off without any switches being touched?”) In the beginning my responses were sarcastic, reflecting my incredulity that he should believe me capable of inventing such possibilities, but after a while I was too exhausted to give anything but straight replies. “The lights did flicker tonight,” I said finally, “and earlier the television was showing a picture although it had been left on stand-by, but those were obviously just electrical blips. So why are you throwing out all these mad suggestions which no one but a nutter would take seriously?”

  At that point Hall said to Nicholas: “The case is quite obviously genuine,” and Nicholas said apologetically to me: “I’m sorry, but we have to be sure. It’s all part of the routine, just a normal procedure, nothing personal.”

  I had broken off my narrative so that Hall could focus on the disturbances, but now I resumed it. When I reached the point where I had to describe my visit to Oakshott neither man made any attempt to interrupt me.

  “. . . and coming home on the A3,” I heard myself say, “I stopped at a petrol station and used a public phone to give the police an anonymous tip-off.” Why did I tell this lie? I regretted it instantly but knew I had been driven by an acute desire to avoid any discussion about whether or not we should inform the police of Sophie’s death. I could no more cope with the subject of the police at this stage than I could cope with the memory of my unprofessional behaviour in that horrible house.

  However, having slipped in the little lie to make the narrative more palatable, I saw Hall’s pen falter on the paper. He never looked up but I knew the lie had been detected; perhaps my voice had changed fractionally. I glanced at Nicholas but he immediately looked away and examined his thumbnail again.

  Having lost the thread of my narrative I floundered around trying to recapture it.

  “You resumed your journey along the A3,” said Nicholas, helping me along but addressing the thumbnail. “You reached London—”

  “I reached London and tried calling the Savoy again but Warren still wasn’t in his room. I then drove on to the Barbican . . .” My voice had levelled out but I remained rigid with discomfort. I could not remember when I had last made such a hash of telling a lie.

  Fortunately my listeners were soon diverted by my account of my return to Harvey Tower. To compensate for the lie I now put in every detail, even describing how I had been so exhausted that I could barely get to my feet after finding my keys.

  Nicholas said casually: “Did you feel similarly exhausted before when you were on the brink of discovering a disturbance?”

  “I was knackered when I came home for the first time today after leaving the office early. But I wasn’t grovelling around on the floor and feeling too zonked to get up.”

  “Let’s hear more about the final disturbances now,” said Hall. “You gave us a preview when you mentioned the flickering lights, but can we have a step-by-step account of what happened?”

  So I completed my narrative, struggling hard to maintain a steady voice, but when I had finished describing with deep embarrassment the irrational events which had occurred, Hall merely said: “Was the telescope smashed?”

  “The telescope? No, it was still standing.”

  “Always untouched, wasn’t it, although it would have been easy to knock over. After all, here you have a situation where the sofa and armchairs were being tossed around, a display-stand overturned, glass shelves broken—”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m not suggesting, merely observing. It’s a curious detail.” He made another note and turned the page of his notepad.

  “Let’s just recap for a moment,” said Nicholas quickly. “Carter, you said the door of the bedroom flew open and cracked against the wall. Are we to assume that no one could have been standing behind the door and manipulating it?”

  “I suppose so.” I struggled to concentrate again. “If someone had been standing behind the door it wouldn’t have crashed into the wall because it would have hit that someone first.”

  “That needn’t be the case, surely,” said Hall, looking over the top of his reading glasses. “It would depend how much space there was between the hinges and the wall, the wall which would be hit by the unchecked door.”

  I was getting confused. “Yes, that’s true.”

  “I’d like to clarify the lay-out of this flat,” said Nicholas, diverting me with a practical question. “I’ve been in the Barbican tower blocks on enough occasions to know that although the flats may differ in the internal lay-out, each consists of a rectangle bisected by a corridor. Where’s your living-room in relation to your bedroom? I’m trying to picture the geography of the scene when you saw Sophie.”

  I explained how the master bedroom stood on
the right of the front door and faced down the long corridor to the living-room at the far end. “That’s how I was able to stand on the living-room threshold and look straight at her.”

  “What kind of distance are we talking about here?”

  “At least thirty feet.”

  “And how well lit was the corridor?”

  “There are two lights in the corridor and one in the hall and they all work off the same switch which I turned on as soon as I entered the flat.”

  “Do you wear glasses?”

  “No.”

  “All right, you have good sight, the location was well-lit, the door flew open and you saw this woman whom you instantly recognised. How long did the moment last before the door slammed shut again?”

  “It’s hard to say. Probably around five seconds.”

  “And you saw her clearly.”

  “Unusually clearly. As I mentioned, I was experiencing this weird, heightened perception which I suppose was some sort of reaction to all the stress.”

  “Was she transparent?” asked Hall with interest.

  “No, of course not!” I was appalled by the question and also embarrassed, as if it represented a social blunder.

  “And you say she was wearing Sophie’s royal-blue outfit,” persisted Nicholas, apparently not interested in transparency. “But are you sure about this? There’s no possibility that it was Mrs. Mayfield’s downmarket attempt to mimic the coat?”

  “None . . . Wait a minute, are you suggesting . . .” My voice trailed away.

  “We have to consider every possibility,” said Nicholas comfortably. “That’s routine. Lewis used to say long ago when he was training me in this ministry that when dealing with the paranormal one first has to consider the normal, rational explanation because nine out of ten times it’s the normal, rational explanation which is correct.”

  “Well, of course,” I said, stimulated by the words “normal” and “rational,” “the obvious explanation is that this was all rigged by Mrs. Mayfield, but I just can’t see how she did it. Quite apart from the fact that I’m positive in my identification of Sophie, Mrs. Mayfield couldn’t have had access to my flat tonight. She had no key.”

  “I can think of a way round that one,” said Hall, taking off his glasses and giving them a polish. “When your husband loaned her his key earlier she could have had a copy made before returning the original in the Jiffy bag.”

  I stared before saying to him with increased respect: “That never occurred to me.”

  “You had other things on your mind. However, despite floating that idea, I have to say that I’m always very suspicious of conspiracy theories.”

  Nicholas said: “Lewis prefers to follow the principle of Occam’s razor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The principle that when there are competing theories the one closest to the truth is likely to be the one which is the simplest, the one which is shorn of fancy embellishments.” He glanced across at Hall. “I’m tempted to think that both the disturbances in the flat and the appearance of the ghost represent phenomena which are easy to classify.”

  “I’m so glad,” I said drily, “because I’m still completely at sea. Is it too much to hope that you can give me a rational explanation of what’s been going on?”

  “We can offer you what we believe to be a rational conclusion based on our experience in this field,” said Nicholas politely, “but whether you yourself will find it rational is another matter altogether. Have you ever heard of poltergeist activity?”

  III

  “Sure,” I said without hesitation. “It’s nutterguff spawned by horror movies and no sane person could possibly believe in such a thing.”

  Nicholas appeared untroubled by my furious incredulity. “If you’ve been relying on horror movies for your information,” he said, “you may well have no idea what a poltergeist really is. For a start, it’s not a ghost. It’s got nothing to do with ghosts at all.”

  Feeling more furious than ever as I realised I had a lawyer’s duty to give him a fair hearing I said crossly: “Okay, I’ll bite. If it’s not a ghost, what is it?”

  “Evidence of a disturbed household.”

  I stared at him.

  He stared back.

  Then as my anger faded I realised I was horrified.

  IV

  Sensing how unnerved I was Nicholas moved at once to calm me. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “We don’t know yet how the phenomenon works, but we know why it happens and we know what we can offer in the way of effective remedies.”

  I said stiff-lipped: “Sorry. Can’t believe, won’t believe. But I respect you enough to keep listening.”

  “In that case let me say that the hallmark of the poltergeist case is that objects get disturbed or broken, apparently without human intervention. In fact there always is a human involved, but the human is operating at a distance—the theory is that the human acts involuntarily and unconsciously to generate a certain form of energy which moves these objects. We refer to this person as the owner of the poltergeist, and it seems clear that the purpose of the poltergeist activity is to relieve a stress which is building to intolerable levels . . . Have you ever heard of cases where adolescents cut themselves to relieve unbearable tension?”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “The poltergeist phenomenon seems to be similar, particularly since most cases occur in households where there’s a disturbed adolescent; one of the problems adolescents have is that they often don’t possess the ability to get rid of their tensions by expressing them verbally.”

  “What about the households without adolescents?”

  “In those cases the owner of the poltergeist is usually someone who’s repressing emotion on a large scale, possibly someone who’s never come to terms properly with a traumatic past and who’s refusing to deal with it even though memories of the trauma are invading the present.”

  With enormous relief I said: “That’s Kim.” Fascination was now mingling with my scepticism. “So how do you fix this problem?”

  “It sometimes helps to bless each room of the house or flat, and I would always offer to pray on the premises with those afflicted, but the solution to aim for is counselling. The underlying tensions have to be uncovered, examined and healed—and then once the stress has been eased, the disturbances will cease.”

  “Poltergeist activity usually burns itself out anyway after nine months or so,” remarked Hall, producing a packet of cigarettes. “Life moves on; tensions ebb and flow. But of course the activity is so tiresome that it’s always desirable to end it as soon as possible . . . Nicholas, what happened to that ashtray you used to keep here?”

  “I finally got tired of it.”

  “How intolerant! Do you smoke, Ms. Graham?”

  “I gave it up.”

  “Really? I wish you’d teach me how!”

  “Something tells me, Father Hall, that you’re far too much of a tiger-thumper to welcome instruction from a woman!”

  “My dear Ms. Graham, I can’t think where you got that idea from! And let me stress that I’m most exceedingly partial to tigers!”

  Nicholas remarked mildly: “I always enjoy feminist strip-cartoons, but why don’t you two start calling each other by your first names while we focus on the matter in hand? Lewis, do you want to make any further comment about the disturbances in the flat?”

  “No—except to explain to Carter that paranormal activity can feed upon itself in a spiralling crescendo of unpleasantness, and this seems to be what happened tonight.”

  “I agree.” Nicholas turned back to me before embarking on a summing up. “My theory runs like this: you arrived back at the flat shattered by Sophie’s death; your experiences at Oakshott had triggered intolerable tensions; you knelt on the floor to retrieve your keys, and at that point the kinetic energy generated by the tension was released, causing the fresh disturbance in the flat; after the release you were so exhausted you could hardly get up, but once yo
u entered the flat the sight of the disorder heightened the tension again and this in turn resulted in a fresh bout of poltergeist activity: the flickering of the lights, the shifting of the curtains—and finally the violent opening and slamming of the bedroom door, the movements which framed the sighting of the ghost.”

  At once I said strongly: “I dispute every word you’ve said. I still don’t believe in poltergeist activity, and even if I did the owner of the poltergeist wouldn’t be me.”

  Again Nicholas remained tranquil. “I thought it was important that I should be upfront and honest with you about what I suspect,” he said, “but you’re under no obligation to agree with my theory. We have a saying in this type of case: ‘The facts are sacred but interpretation is free’— or in other words, you can adopt any theory you like so long as it doesn’t do violence to the facts . . . Now, are we ready to move on and discuss the ghost?”

  Having snitched the saucer below my teacup to use as an ashtray, Lewis was busy smoking his filthy cigarette while Nicholas himself, casually crossing one long leg over the other, was leaning back in his swivel-chair. For a moment I longed to yell in exasperation, but I knew such idiotic behaviour would solve nothing and anyway by this time I had been seduced by their low-key style and laid-back authority which allowed me to disagree with them as violently as I chose.

  I decided I had to grit my teeth and go on.

  V

  “What I want to do,” said Nicholas, “is to work out why you saw this ghost and what this sighting means.”

  Fear drove me into maintaining a defiant response. “Surely the only conclusion a sane person could reach is that when I saw the ghost I was mad?”