The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

  I stopped speaking. Robin said nothing. He always knew when to keep his mouth shut.

  Then I broke down and began to weep again for everything I had lost.

  VI

  At another session I said: “My job wasn’t without its satisfactions, but it nearly killed me. It was as if I was obliged to lie every day on a beautiful, luxurious sofa which was actually a rack in disguise. And I’ll tell you something else. I liked my home, but it was spooky being so far from the ground. Do you think Mrs. Mayfield was able to sense that? Sometimes now I think she didn’t have to plant in my mind the horror of the Big Fall; she merely had to exploit an ambivalence which was already there.”

  “That’s certainly an interesting thought.”

  “It was strange, wasn’t it, about the disorder which kept breaking out in my flat? Of course I don’t believe in all that poltergeist rubbish, but it was odd how the disorder coincided with the unravelling of my personal life. It was as if the flat was a mirror reflecting the gathering chaos.”

  “A mirror . . . yes, that’s a good simile.”

  “And I’ll tell you an even odder thing: my telescope was never damaged. I mentioned my telescope to you, didn’t I?”

  “You did, yes. Are you able to say why the telescope was so important to you?”

  I said carefully: “It was like a link to a parallel world. I knew there was another world out there but I couldn’t connect with it as I slaved away in my daily life. When I was looking through my telescope . . . well, I used to look at the stars and sunsets and the patterns of the city lights and feel such a sense of wonder and awe . . . There was never any room for those sorts of feelings when I was working. Do you think I was just being sentimental? After all, I was only looking at an urban landscape, wasn’t I?”

  “When we listen to music all we hear are vibrations in the air. But of course we get more out of music than mere vibrations.”

  I felt sufficiently encouraged by this observation to confess: “I love the City! People think it’s ugly compared with the glamorous West End, but I love the way it refuses to die. No matter how many catastrophes devastate it, it always springs back to life.”

  “So you’re saying it’s not just an urban landscape. It’s a powerful image of regeneration.”

  “It’s a symbol of the power of life.” I thought about that statement. Then I said: “But it’s more than a symbol. It is life—real life.” I thought some more and was able to add: “But I could only make contact with it when I looked through my telescope.”

  “But then you were called down from your ivory tower, weren’t you?”

  “Called down? I was evicted! The Powers kicked me out onto the street and smashed me up!”

  “But you made it to Fleetside.”

  “Just! Yes, I did.”

  “So the Powers didn’t have the last word.”

  “Not that time. There was something else waiting for me down on those City streets, something else waiting down there in real life.”

  “And what was that?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Luck,” I said. I revolved the strap on my wrist. “Let’s face it, I’ve been pretty damn lucky, winding up at St. Benet’s and receiving all this top-quality care. Otherwise I might have gone mad, but of course I know now that Sophie’s ghost was just a bereavement phenomenon and that there was no poltergeist, just that arch-cow Mayfield playing tricks. All the same . . . it was strange how the telescope was never damaged, wasn’t it?”

  “Very strange,” said Robin.

  VII

  “Hey!” wrote Tucker on the back of his second postcard from the Algarve. “I’m tired of quaffing Mateus, adorning the pool and getting myself fit. (You should see my forearms!) To please my mother I’m now sporting a short haircut and no beard. To please my father I listened yesterday without interrupting while he expounded on his latest theories about the Witan (Anglo-Saxon pow-wow place). To please myself I’ve been indulging in primal screams. What’s new? I’m trying to get the parents to instal a fax here but we can’t work out how to do it in Portuguese. Yours banjaxed, E.T. PS: Poor old Nick, being unmasked as an exorcist! Has he had any Hollywood offers yet?”

  VIII

  “Kim seemed far from well,” said Lewis, “but he’s sure the chief problem now is the drugs—apparently the doctors are still trying to get the cocktail right. He didn’t want to talk much but he was keen to learn how you were.”

  I felt queasy. “Did he ask whether I was going to visit him?”

  “Yes, but I explained that you too had problems to work through, and he seemed to have no trouble accepting that you weren’t up to visiting him at the moment. What upset him was the news of your departure from Curtis, Towers.”

  I felt queasier than ever. “What did he say?”

  “He asked me to tell you that he was very, very sorry and that he just hoped you’d be able to forgive him one day for dragging you into such a mess.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more,” I said, and walked out.

  IX

  “. . . and so there I was,” I said to Robin, “standing in the kitchen of my mother’s house in Newcastle, and telling her she shouldn’t put so much salt in the stew because I didn’t want to wind up with high blood pressure, and she said: ‘What do you know about cooking—you can’t even cook a decent breakfast!’ So I said: ‘You’re damn right I can’t—I’ve got better things to do with my time, thanks very much!’ And we had another row—all my Christmas visits seem to end in a row and it’s nearly always about food because she keeps on cooking things which I don’t want to eat.”

  “How difficult!” said Robin, exuding sympathy, but he added: “Food has a tremendously symbolic quality, I often think.”

  “But surely food’s just fuel!”

  “Fundamentally, yes, but sometimes it symbolises nurture and care and a sort of wordless love.”

  “My stomach’s about to heave. If you’re saying these ghastly, high-fat, high-cholesterol meals are her weird way of saying ‘I love you,’ you couldn’t be more mistaken!”

  “Couldn’t I?”

  “Well, no way does this woman love me! I was just a millstone round her neck after she left my father, and I’m sure she never wanted me around after she remarried. She was always mean to me—why, she never even let me have another cat! If I’d had a cat of my own to replace Hamish, a real cat instead of that slobbish hunk of fur my step-father chose for my half-sisters, I wouldn’t have minded not being loved by my parents. My cat would have loved me instead.”

  “Animals are very good at giving unconditional love.”

  “Well, never mind that, forget Hamish, let me explode this nauseating theory of yours that my mother cooks as a way of saying ‘I love you.’ The truth is she cooks for one reason and one reason only: she has to fuel that dreadfully dull man she’s now married to.”

  “I wonder why she did marry that dreadfully dull man.”

  “Obviously she was suffering from a violent reaction to my father’s lethal charm!”

  “No other reason?”

  “What other reason could there be?”

  “Was your stepfather ever nasty to you?” Robin had dropped the italics. That meant we were nearing another stretch of white water in our counselling canoe, but although I peered ahead I was unable to spot the rapids.

  “Nasty to me?” I was exclaiming scornfully. “Ken? He wouldn’t know how!”

  “He didn’t abuse you? He wasn’t cruel?”

  “Don’t be funny, he’s not the type!”

  “You’d be amazed how many different types of abuser there are,” said Robin quietly. “Many of my clients were abused in some way by their stepfathers.”

  “Okay, so I didn’t have an awful stepfather! But that was just the luck of the draw, wasn’t it?”

  “Was it?” said Robin. “But there was no draw, was there? Your mother chose him.”

  I opened my mouth but found I was quite unable to reply.

  X


  “Hey, Tucker! (I refuse to address you as E.T.) Soon I’ll be able to send you a postcard moaning about my parents. I’ve decided to take a fresh look at them to see if my previous assessment needs updating; that cunning Robin has whetted my curiosity and now it’s insatiable. Alice is going to come with me. She’s hardly ever been north of Watford Gap so this will be like a polar expedition for her. I thought I could face my mother more easily if Alice was there to talk about food. Does your mother try to stuff food into you all the time? (Note my tact in sending this card in an envelope so that she can’t read it.) Keep swilling that PortuPlonk. Cheers, C.G. PS: I was most interested to hear news of your forearms.”

  XI

  “Kim’s feeling much better,” said Lewis. “They finally got the drug cocktail right.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was certainly more chatty—we had the most interesting talk about that film Days of Wine and Roses which I’m sure you’re too young to remember.”

  “Ah.”

  “The bad news is that the senior chaplain’s starting to take a dim view of me, even though I’ve assured him I’m simply there as a visitor. As Kim refuses to have anything to do with the members of the chaplaincy team, it’s naturally galling for them when I sail in and talk to him for half an hour . . . Did you see Val this morning? No? The latest medical word on Kim seems to be favouring the diagnosis that he’s merely a normal man who’d reached the end of his tether—in other words, they’re saying he’s not a psychopath and not suffering from some long-term illness such as schizophrenia. That’s good news, of course. If it’s true.”

  I finally managed to rouse myself. “The doctors still think he’s not faking the breakdown?”

  “Apparently.”

  “But do you think the doctors have got it right?”

  “I’ve no idea. I’m not privy to their discussions, but I’ll tell you this: although this mental breakdown may be genuine, his basic problem— how to live outside the world of Mrs. Mayfield—is spiritual. And so far as I know that problem hasn’t been addressed at all.”

  I shuddered and turned away.

  XII

  “Sweetheart, Forgive me writing, but I just want to say I LOVE YOU, you’re still the most important thing in my life, and once I’m better we’re going to work this out, I promise. KIM.”

  XIII

  “This steak-and-kidney pudding is marvellous!” exclaimed Alice to my mother three days later. “It’s much better than my own recipe. How very kind of you to go to so much trouble to give us such a delicious meal— you must have been slaving over that stove for hours!”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble!” said my mother, very casual, but despite her downcast eyes I knew she was deeply gratified.

  XIV

  “Hey, Tucker! My family are slavering at Alice’s feet. I’m surfing along in her wake and wondering if it’s all a dream. Tonight I plan to have a serious conversation with my mother. This is unprecedented. Drink a glass of PortuPlonk for me and pray I don’t go fruity-loops. C. G.”

  XV

  “Oh, Katie!” said my mother as Alice watched television with my stepfather in the back room and I helped with the washing-up, “I do like your friend, what a nice lass, I always wanted you to have a friend like that, what a lot you missed out on because you were so busy working, you were always such a loner.

  “What I want to say, love, now I’ve got you on my own, is that I’m sorry things aren’t working out with your husband, but it’s only a few months since you married, isn’t it, and the first year of marriage is often very difficult—well, I should know, what with your father always in the betting-shop and Ken always watching telly—not that there’s anything wrong with watching telly, of course, but sometimes I think it’s a bit dull.

  “Why did I marry him? Well, what a funny question! He had a good job, didn’t he, with the Electricity, and I knew he was steady and decent, I knew he’d look after us—which was more than I could say for that Rob I was also seeing, but you probably don’t remember Rob because I mostly kept quiet about him. Anyway I made the right decision because Ken’s been a much better father than Rob would have been, and I had to think of that, didn’t I, especially after all you’d been through.

  “I knew Ken would be kind to you because when I told him how much you’d cried after your father lost Wee Hamish, his eyes filled with tears and he said: ‘Poor little lass!’ That’s why we eventually did have another cat. I didn’t want another, I was so exhausted all the time when the girls were little, but when the girls were finally at school I said to Ken: ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I give in, get the cat,’ so he went and chose Squashy, but the girls took over Squashy at once, didn’t they, so you still didn’t have a cat of your own, and I knew you ought to have one that was specially yours, like Wee Hamish, but I was going out to work again by then so that you girls wouldn’t go short of anything, and life was just one thing after another, and somehow I never could face that extra cat.

  “So what I want to say, Katie, now that I’m talking about Squashy, is that I’m sorry I didn’t get that extra cat for you. I can see now I was being selfish, not making that extra effort, and I know you always resented it. I knew you always felt you were short-changed.”

  When she stopped speaking there was a long silence before I managed to say: “But I wasn’t short-changed about the things that mattered.”

  “Well, just so long as that’s all straightened out,” she said, busy scouring a saucepan, “that’s fine . . . My goodness, Katie, are those tears in your eyes? Well, we can’t have that, can we! Remember what I always said: ‘Big girls don’t cry’—although sometimes I think I was really talking to myself when I said that. When I was going through the bad times, you see, I often felt that if I ever started crying I’d never stop, and if I was to break down you’d be taken into care, and . . . well, never mind that, it didn’t happen, did it? I married Ken and everything came right and every day I think how much I’ve got to be thankful for. Always count your blessings, Katie! It used to make me so cross when you wouldn’t do that, but now perhaps you can look back and . . . well, you did have so much to be thankful for, didn’t you? You really did . . .”

  XVI

  “Hey, Tucker! Greetings from Glasgow. Alice is shopping in the smart part but I’m about to head for the dark side.”

  I paused, my pen poised above the card.

  The seconds trickled emptily away, but then I thought of Tucker saying: “Truth matters,” and I remembered Kim telling me lie after lie.

  Gripping my pen hard I wrote: “My father’s in jail for theft. Being on the dole didn’t give him enough money for gambling. He’ll be out in September—which is just as well as this is the worst prison he’s ever been in. It’s a long story and not one which can be told on a postcard. Just be thankful for your own father, wittering on about the Witan in glorious, sun-drenched Portugal. C.G.”

  XVII

  “I’m going to make it this time,” said my father. “I’ve got a feeling in my bones. Okay, I know you’ve heard me say all that before but this time I really mean it. Yes, I know you’ve heard me say that before too, but this time when I get out I’m going straight, I swear it, because if I wind up in a place like this again I’ll make sure I get carried out feet first in double-quick time.

  “But you don’t want to hear me talking like that. Are you all right, sweetheart? How’s my wonderful girl? How’s the best daughter in the world? Now, I want to hear all about this husband of yours—I need to be convinced he’s good enough for my Kitty! When I get out I’m going to buy you a really good wedding present—I don’t want your husband thinking I’m a loser just because Lady Luck deserted me and I wound up in a tight corner. After all, I could have made it big if only—but you don’t want to hear me say that either. I’ve said it too often before. I know what I do wrong, as I said to the new chaplain only the other day.

  “ ‘I know what I do wrong so all I need now is one lucky break!’ I said to him, b
ut when he just sighed I said: ‘But I do get lucky sometimes! I’ve got this daughter who’s the best girl in the world. There’s luck for you!’ So he pretended to be interested and said: ‘How often does she come to visit?’ but when I told him: ‘Every Christmas without fail!’ I could see he just thought that was pathetic. He said gloomily—just like a bloodhound he looks—he said gloomily: ‘Would you like me to pray for her?’ So then I lost patience and said: ‘What for? She’s not going to visit me more often. She’s busy making bloody millions and she’s just got herself a husband. She won’t come near Glasgow till I’m out of here and she can pretend to her man I’m employed.’

  “Then the chaplain makes his great bloodhound face look even gloomier and says: ‘Maybe I could thank God that at least you have someone who’s important to you,’ so then I get so pissed off I tell him: ‘Sod it, my girl’s hardly in my life at all, God knows why she ever comes here, she never forgave me for losing her cat when she was six years old.’

  “Well, you won’t believe it, but this interested him. He twisted his awful bloodhound face into a strained expression as if he was constipated and he said: ‘Have you ever said you were sorry?’ and I said sure. ‘I said it was Lady Luck playing me false,’ I said, but he just mumbled: ‘I hear that’s not the way it’s done at Gamblers Anonymous.’

  “Well, I didn’t like him nagging me like that—they’re not supposed to, you know—so I snapped: ‘Don’t you bloody preach to me, I’ve heard it all before—“Accept responsibility for your actions” and all that—but how do I say to my girl: “Yes, I was solely responsible for losing your toys and Wee Hamish?” What man can face his beautiful daughter, the only good thing that’s come out of his fucking stupid life and admit straight out that he’s nothing but a fucking mess?’ But the chaplain just said: ‘If she can suffer the wrong you did, you can apologise for it.’ Bastard! They’re not meant to do that, you know, they’re not meant to, it’s called ‘Being Judgemental’ and the social workers all say it’s wrong. So I just told him: ‘Fuck off—and fuck your prayers and preaching too!’ And then the next morning in the post . . .