The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

  “We talked about Mrs. Mayfield. Funnily enough I couldn’t discuss her with the psychiatrists. Well, there were a lot of things I couldn’t discuss with the psychiatrists, but I could talk about Mrs. Mayfield to Lewis because he not only knew all about her but he understood the whole damned scene—he knew it was for me the equivalent of the alcohol which brought down the character Jack Lemmon played in the film. At one stage I said: ‘How are you able to talk about her as if she’s someone you’ve known for years?’ and he gave such an interesting answer. He said Mrs. Mayfield represented what he and Nicholas Darrow might have become if they’d dedicated their own gifts to the Powers instead of to God.

  “We had a long, long talk about the Powers. We discussed the nature of evil. Lewis said the problem of Auschwitz, which is so famous for its evil past, is that it encourages people to think evil only exists in certain places, whereas the reality is that evil’s everywhere. ‘Evil is in every place where lies are told in preference to truth and deceit is a way of life,’ said Lewis. ‘Evil is in every place where human beings are manipulated and debased and abused. Evil is a spiritual sickness,’ said Lewis, ‘and we’re all vulnerable to it, all of us, no one’s immune.’ God, he was amazing! He didn’t care that what he was saying was unfashionable. He wasn’t afraid that I’d laugh at him—but I didn’t laugh because I could relate to what he was saying. I told him about the evil I’d experienced when I was growing up and how it had led to this quest to gain power over the Powers . . . He understood it all, of course. He understood it just as well as Mrs. Mayfield. Yet he’d survived by travelling such a very different road.

  “Well, I don’t want to play down the help the doctors gave me. They were great, treating me with kindness and respect. But Lewis . . . I felt he was reaching into areas of experience where they couldn’t go, and yet it was in these areas that I most needed help. He . . . well, he gave me hope. When he understood me so well, I came to trust him, and when he told me I could still turn my life around no matter what I’d done, I thought: if he believes that, then I believe it too.

  “I did say: ‘Supposing I’m not forgivable?’ but he said: ‘Everyone’s forgivable,’ and when I asked about Hitler he answered: ‘Hitler’s not on record as having faced up to what he did and regretted it before God.’ Then he started talking about free will giving us all the option of rejecting God, but at that point I didn’t want to be sidetracked because it was his last visit and time was running out. I said: ‘Okay, I accept that your God will forgive me if I face up to what I’ve done and say I’m sorry, but to be honest,’ I said, ‘I’m more interested in my wife than your God. How can I make her forgive me for screwing up so badly?’

  “Well, Lewis isn’t a man to mince his words. ‘You can’t force her to forgive you,’ he said, ‘but if you can come clean about your past in order to establish a spirit of truth in your marriage, you can show her in no uncertain way that you’ve rejected the lies generated by Mrs. Mayfield. And meanwhile I’ll be praying that you’ll be healed of this way of life which has smashed you to pieces.’

  “Then he added something about Christ—God—whatever—and left. What a man, never afraid to say what he thought and never fazed by anything I said! And when I remembered how well he knew his way around the spiritual scene I asked myself: ‘What have I got to lose by following his advice about telling Carter the whole truth?’ And it was then that I was finally able to say: ‘Yes, I’ve gone down the spiritual drain, it’s no longer any use pretending otherwise, but I really do want to crawl back up.’ I suppose I must have reached that moment in Days of Wine and Roses when Jack Lemmon goes to his first AA meeting and succeeds in announcing: ‘My name is so-and-so and I’m an alcoholic . . .’

  “So that’s where I am, sweetheart, and forgive me for monopolising the conversation, but I felt I just had to explain everything to you so that you’d know where I was coming from. I’m primed to confess, I swear it—but not before I’ve whipped up some Dutch courage with champagne . . .”

  IV

  I managed to make some encouraging comments, but I was quite unable to decide whether or not I believed in his new desire to treat Lewis as a spiritual guru. I found I was too confused to make this assessment, too disturbed by his admission that he had manipulated his way both into and out of hospital—or was he just saying that to boost his self-esteem and convince both of us that he had retained some sort of control over his situation during the breakdown? I knew he had a horror that I should see him as weak and powerless.

  Making a new effort to distract myself from my anxiety I began to tell him about my visit to the North with Alice, but I found he had already been informed of my travels.

  “Lewis was upset,” he remarked, “because he let the cat out of the bag when he said you’d been to see your father—he didn’t know you’d never told me that your father was in jail . . . So we’ve both had our secrets from each other, haven’t we, Carter? And maybe there’s more stuff you’ve kept quiet about too, stuff you regret now and wish hadn’t happened. I never asked you too closely, did I, about your sexual past—I figured that as you wanted to settle down it would be stupid of me to become obsessed with it. You see, I let you start again with a clean slate! I loved you enough to forgive you anything—still do, if there’s anything recent which needs forgiving . . . but Lewis said that if I were wise I’d just drop the subject of Tucker or else you’d get annoyed by my reluctance to believe there was nothing going on.”

  “How well Lewis put it.”

  “I’m sorry, but if you think I can’t tell when some long-haired kid finds you attractive—”

  “Tucker’s thirty-five.”

  “Yes, but he’s obviously never grown up. I know that type. Women would find him attractive because he’d always be up for a screw, but—”

  “Kim, I’ll say this once and then I don’t expect to be obliged to say it again: I have not been to bed with Eric Tucker. I stopped bed-hopping years ago when my self-esteem improved to the point where brain-dead behaviour no longer seemed essential to my well-being.”

  A second after completing this speech I remembered that Kim himself had started off in my life as a one-night stand, but before I could draw breath to shudder he had apologised and was starting to chat idly instead about the routine of his life in hospital.

  V

  By the time we reached the A3 he had finished his descriptions of the doctors, the nurses, the other patients, the tests, the therapies and the drugs, but was lingering over his account of the meals and the socialising.

  “I decided to have no visitors except for Lewis,” he said. “It was a matter of pride—I didn’t want anyone to see me in that setting.”

  “Any word from Graf-Rosen?”

  “I had a formal letter of sympathy, but of course they’re just waiting for me to get well enough to be sacked. The letter said I could take as much time as I liked to recuperate.”

  “Kiss of death.” Time was the one thing no one in demand was allowed.

  “Well, it got my adrenaline going. I spent many happy hours planning how I could kick them all in the balls by nailing a better job elsewhere.”

  “That’s the spirit!” I said encouragingly, but I wondered how employable he was now that he was nearly fifty and had a history of mental breakdown. When he asked about my departure from Curtis, Towers I did not tell him that the answerphone at Harvey Tower had already recorded messages from headhunters, anxious to talk to me. I merely outlined how the chief dinosaur had coaxed me to fall on my sword.

  “Bastard!” said Kim, and removed his left hand from the wheel to caress the inside of my right thigh.

  I never flinched, but even while I was grappling with my physical distaste I was aware of a terrible sympathy dawning for him. For a high flyer there were few things worse than having a question mark placed over one’s long-term future.

  I heard myself say: “Darling, I’m really sorry you’ve had to go through all this.”

  “I’ll be
okay,” he said simply, “just so long as I still have you.”

  At that point I felt so choked up, churned up and messed up that I even ceased to worry that I was now heading for Oakshott at eighty miles an hour.

  VI

  As we approached the Oakshott exit of the A3, I finally nerved myself to say: “I suppose Mrs. Mayfield hasn’t been in touch?”

  “No, it’s clear she’s dumped me. And the group hasn’t been in touch either. All that’s completely finished as far as I’m concerned,” he said, and when I was silent he added with a passionate sincerity: “You’ve got to believe that, Carter, because I swear it’s the truth!”

  “How could I not believe you after all you’ve told me about your talks with Lewis?” I said at once. “Of course I believe you!”

  But did I?

  We reached the Oakshott exit and he swung the car off towards the woods.

  VII

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Kim as he turned the car into the drive of that horrible house which I could now clearly see was built in the handsome style of a between-the-wars architect; with dread I realised that on this second visit I was going to take in far more details, thus ensuring the place was more firmly etched than ever in my memory. I was now noticing the immaculate garden. The front lawn, smooth as green baize, appeared to be weedless. All the borders were bursting with blooms. Even the sinister trees looked as if they harboured nothing more harmless on this occasion than squirrels—and the squirrels would be the red kind, the nice-natured, shy-mannered little tree-rats which always looked so cuddly in those classic storybooks for pre-schoolers.

  “I made sure the gardener was kept on after Sophie’s death,” Kim was saying. “Gardens quickly go to pieces if they’re not looked after.”

  I managed to rouse myself sufficiently to say: “Probate can’t have been granted yet—did the lawyers raise any objection when you said you wanted to stay here for a while?”

  “Are you kidding? They couldn’t wait for me to move in and protect the place from burglars and vandals! Sophie’s brother objected at first— he’s inherited the contents of the house—but he was quick to see the argument for having the house occupied . . . Now, come along inside”— he halted the car on the gravel sweep in front of the main entrance— “and let’s set those traumatic memories to rest once and for all. The cleaning woman gave notice, but Mary organised a firm to do a make-over only the other day so everything should be looking good . . .”

  I slowly emerged from the car. Despite the fact that I knew there were other houses nearby I could not see them; I felt as if I were marooned miles from anywhere.

  Kim was opening the front door, moving forward swiftly to turn off the alarm. “Okay, first things first!” I heard him say cheerfully. “Let’s find that bottle of champagne!”

  With enormous reluctance I followed him into the circular hall and saw again the long curve of the staircase as it snaked up to the gallery of the floor above. The sheer luxury of all that chandelier-crowned wasted space reminded me not only of the money Kim had made in the past but of the mystery attached to the money he claimed to have lost. I might have dwelled on this thought for longer but suddenly I was so busy trying to avoid looking at the spot where Sophie’s corpse had lain that no coherent thinking was possible at all.

  “Want to use the cloakroom?”

  “What? Oh . . . yes . . . but I know where it is,” I said, and immediately found myself reliving the moment when I had vomited into the lavatory on the night Sophie had died. I began to veer towards the cloakroom door but stopped when I realised that I had no desire to relieve myself and no desire to let him out of my sight. I found I had to be sure there was no tampering with the champagne, and although I knew this reaction was paranoid I found I was quite unable to eliminate it.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I said, following him towards the kitchen. “I’m all right at the moment.”

  “Me too. No, wait a moment, I’ll be handling food so I ought to wash my hands. Funny how hygienic one becomes in hospital! Have a seat at the table here, sweetheart—I’ll be right back.”

  I waited until I heard the cloakroom door close across the hall and then my paranoia ensured that I slipped after him to listen to his activities, but only normal, water-sloshing sounds reached me. Speeding back to the kitchen, my heart thudding uncomfortably, I was sitting at the table by the time he returned.

  “Look at that—Sophie’s gardening clobber’s still here!” he murmured in irritation as he moved towards the refrigerator, and following his glance I saw again the flat wooden basket, now containing not only the gloves and secateurs but the straw hat, draped over one edge. The contract cleaners, evidently wanting to leave the table uncluttered, had fought shy of removing the hat and basket from the scene but had dumped the gear on the floor behind the back door.

  “I’m sorry,” Kim was saying rapidly as he saw the expression on my face, “I should have made sure that such an obvious reminder of that traumatic night was well out of sight, but I’m afraid I forgot. Well, let’s face it, I probably chose to forget because whenever I think of that night my head starts to ache. In fact I feel as if I might have a headache coming on right now, but I’m sure it’ll go away when I’ve knocked back some champagne . . . Did Lewis tell you about my headaches?”

  “No.”

  “First of all I thought Mrs. Mayfield was causing them long-distance, but when I said that to my doctors they just thought I was round the twist—I mean, even more round the twist than I was already—so I shut up. They did do tests, just to make sure there was no brain tumour, but when nothing showed up they wrote the headaches off as a stress symptom.”

  “But why should you think Mrs. Mayfield was being malign towards you?”

  “I wondered if she’d come to the conclusion that I was now more of a liability than an asset . . . But let’s forget all that for the moment and enjoy our treat. Ah yes, here they are—smoked salmon sandwiches, made by Mary first thing this morning and dropped off here along with the vintage Moët! Shall we take it all into the living-room?”

  The curtains had been closed in the living-room when I had seen it before, and I was struck now by how light it was in the heat of the day, its long windows facing a terrace beyond which another shaven lawn lay shimmering in the sun. Glossy chintzes in autumnal colours covered the sofas and chairs, and the carpet was the colour of those exotic mushrooms which gourmet food departments sell at rip-off prices. The whole room reeked of the stultifying good taste which the southern English have spent generations cultivating. Even the oil paintings depicted scenes guaranteed not to give offence, and I suspected that these yawn-inducing heirlooms had been inherited by Sophie; Kim’s interest in modern art was nowhere in evidence. A multitude of other valuable knick-knacks, ranging from the antique clock to the pair of silver fruit-baskets, also whispered “CLASS” with sibilants which hissed. I decided I loathed the house more than ever.

  “It’s hot in here, isn’t it?” said Kim, after filling both our glasses and replacing the champagne bottle in the ice-bucket. “I’ll open the French windows.”

  “Maybe we could sit on the terrace?” Despite all the windows I was finding the room increasingly claustrophobic.

  “We could,” he agreed, “but I think it would be too hot for comfort. It’ll be all right in here once we get some air circulating.”

  Once the French windows were open I did feel better; at least if things went wrong I had unimpeded access to an escape route. However, Kim seemed to be having no difficulty in sustaining his role of friendly host, and there was no hint that the scene might take a disastrous turn. I decided that although anxiety was excusable fear was unjustified; firmly I told myself I had to stop being so neurotic.

  “Sandwich?”

  “Thanks.” I took one and looked at it. I even nibbled a corner of the brown bread before putting the sandwich on my plate and reaching for my glass of champagne. “Here’s to us both,” I said. “May we each make
a full recovery from the hell of the last few weeks.”

  “I’ll second that!” he said fervently, and we drank. When we came up for air we both sighed, and as we laughed at our identical reaction I felt for the first time that the Kim I had loved was still there, still alive beneath all the wreckage. I was even tempted to write off my attraction to Tucker as an infatuation born of stress.

  “You’re already looking quite recovered!” Kim was saying, smiling at me. “I like that outfit . . . but why are you wearing a cross?”

  I was startled but said simply: “Lewis gave it to me.”

  “Ah . . . Did anyone at that place try to convert you?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I wondered if, after all that flirting with the enemy, the enemy had tried flirting back.”

  “They cared for me even though I was a stranger. They were committed to truth when I was drowning in lies. They gave me hope even though I wanted to despair. If that’s flirting there ought to be more of it around.”

  He smiled at me again. “After being befriended by Lewis I assure you I feel the same way . . . And talking of Lewis and his fondness for the ‘unvarnished truth’—”

  “Is this where we embark on a Cluedo-style exercise to find out who did what to whom in the library?”

  “Well, at least there’s no library.”

  We failed to laugh this time; the tension was now too great, and as I abandoned all thought of eating I started steadily sipping champagne.

  VIII

  “I’ll start at the beginning,” said Kim, “and confirm that I was born in Cologne and that my father was a Nazi lawyer, but although he sent a lot of men to their deaths he wouldn’t have wound up at Nuremberg. The men he condemned were all German soldiers who’d got into trouble. He was a judge who wound up presiding at courts martial.”