The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

  “I was very relieved when she made this comment, of course, because it showed she didn’t suspect the truth. But when you came on the scene I started to feel nervous about the blackmail all over again. I wasn’t too surprised that Sophie never suspected me of murdering him—she’d lived a sheltered life in that plush Surrey ghetto, and she wasn’t exactly streetwise. But you! You were never going to believe that a successful extortionist would vanish obligingly into the blue after striking gold! So I wasn’t just worried about Sophie giving you the true story about the blackmail and revealing my hobby; I was worried that you’d wonder what the hell had happened to the blackmailer. Even though the press coverage had been minimal I thought you might have a look at the newspapers for February 1988, the month I’d supposedly made the last payment and see what kind of murders had been going on in London and Surrey—and if you did that I was sure the item in the local paper about the murdered man on the railway line a couple of miles from Oakshott would hit you between the eyes.

  “Well, now you can see how important it was that Elizabeth and I should destroy Sophie’s credibility and feed you the false story about the blackmail to pre-empt Sophie’s version. And in case you’re wondering all over again—no, neither of us killed Sophie. The very last thing I needed was an in-depth police investigation into my private life, and anyway by the time our attempt to destroy Sophie’s credibility failed I had a motive the size of a mountain. Of course I wasn’t going to kill her! I went to Oakshott to make one last all-out attempt to talk her into keeping silent, and I’d drummed up a new strategy, a strategy which I still think would have worked: I was going to grovel, beg for mercy and swear not only that I’d repented but that my repentance was all due to my new marriage. Then I was going to ask her if her attempts to break up that marriage could really be morally justified—and I think she’d have backed down at that point, I think she would, because breaking up marriages, let’s face it, isn’t a Christian occupation, particularly if one of the partners is trying to embark on a better life. I should have adopted this strategy long ago with Sophie, I can see that now, but the trouble was I just couldn’t bring myself to grovel, I was too bloody angry. However, since I had my back to the wall I had no choice but to abandon my pride and pull out all the stops . . . except that in the end I didn’t have to, did I, because she died. But I didn’t kill her! The situation was quite different from the one involving the blackmailer because Sophie was ultimately a moral woman amenable to reason, whereas the blackmailer . . . No, there’s no comparison.

  “I’ve no regrets about killing that bastard, none whatsoever. He was truly the scum of the earth, and what does it matter anyway if there’s now one homosexual less in the world? You know, Carter, I’m the first to say Hitler was a villain, and of course I’ve always been totally opposed to his treatment of the Jews, who are human beings just like us; I would never normally defend him, but between you and me, in the privacy of these four walls, I think he had the correct idea about homosexuals. I think in future, when science is more advanced, they should be recognised as mutations and genetically engineered out of the human race . . . Ah, now I’ve offended your liberal principles! I’ve gone too far and need to be reined in—isn’t that what you’re thinking, sweetheart? Okay, I’ll backtrack! I know those sentiments are dead wrong and I promise you I’m really totally opposed to any form of eugenics, but that blackmailing bastard put me through such hell that it’s hardly surprising I sometimes wish all homosexuals could be eliminated.”

  “Of course,” I replied at once, but found I could say no more.

  I had suddenly received a horrible insight into why he was so obsessed with me.

  V

  “How brave and resourceful you were!” I said when I could speak again. “I’m sure I could never have matched your nerve!”

  “Oh yes, you could!” he said dotingly. “We’re so alike—as you yourself often used to say when we first knew each other.”

  Trying not to think of my father I managed to answer: “I knew there was something uncannily familiar about you, but I thought the familiarity was due to the fact that we were both outsiders in England, both high flyers, both worshipping the same gods in the same temple.”

  “There was more to it than that!”

  “Yes, I realise that now,” I said, thinking how I had unconsciously seen in this powerful, successful man who loved me the idealised version of the man whom my inadequate, neglecting father had never been able to become. I saw then exactly how obsessed I had been to make good this loss for which I had never been allowed to grieve, and the insight was rendered all the more devastating by the result of my obsession: all I had done was marry a man who was just as emotionally inadequate as my father—and just as ready to neglect my true needs.

  Meanwhile Kim was still luxuriating in his satisfaction with me. Rousing myself I heard him say: “Our personalities are mirror images of each other—the difference in sex doesn’t matter.”

  The horrible insight deepened but I only said: “I’m not sure I quite understand.”

  “Remember how I said I felt so dislocated before I met you? That was because I felt part of my self was missing—separated from me in some way—and this seemed to create a split in my consciousness which kept crying out to be stitched together.”

  “I remember. So the reason why I’m so attractive to you is because—” I paused, just as a lawyer should, not wanting to lead the witness.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” he exclaimed in triumph. “Wasn’t it clear how much you turned me on whenever you were tough as nails? I know you’re wholly heterosexual—and of course as a heterosexual myself I couldn’t live with any other kind of woman—but deep down you’re just like a man! You’re the missing part of myself which I’ve never before been able to find . . .”

  VI

  “As I told my psychiatrist only last week,” Kim was saying with enthusiasm, “I no longer feel as if something’s missing, because this mirror image you present somehow manages to unify me and heal the split in my consciousness. I’m not sure how this miracle works in psychological terms, but—”

  “Excuse me,” I said clumsily, and my voice sounded a long way away, “but I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “—but the fact is that as soon as I saw you I knew you were perfect,” he declared, not listening. “The way you picked me up in that airport lounge! I thought: here’s this beautiful, sexy girl and she’s just like a man! For months you only showed me your feminine side when we were alone together, but that was okay, that was fine, because I knew that beneath the femininity lay the hard masculine core of your personality— your true self—and that one day, if I waited long enough, you’d come right out to meet me. And one day, sure enough . . . Well, when we had that row—when you finally switched on your true self and showed me your masculine side—my God, I was knocked out, I’d never felt so turned on in all my life, and I knew then, without any shadow of doubt, that you’d never wind up reminding me of my bloody whore of a mother who was forever nauseating me with all her feminine flirting and flouncing—”

  “I won’t be a moment,” I said, stumbling into the bathroom. “I’ll be right back.”

  But the next moment the vomit was rushing up my throat and for the second time in that terrible house I found myself physically racked by revulsion.

  VII

  He was very kind. He seemed to think his murder confession had been too much for me after a surfeit of champagne on an almost empty stomach, but my collapse sprang primarily from the devastating knowledge that he had never known or understood me, just as I had never known or understood him. Haunted, even enslaved by our troubled pasts, we had been chasing fantasies which did not exist, and as we had moved together through our sinister hall of mirrors, the false images had merely multiplied to deceive us further and lead us on into a life unconnected with reality.

  The reality was that I was a woman. My masculine persona, adopted long ago to help me survive in a cut-throat wo
rld dominated by men, was just a hyped-up expression of my masculine side, the side which my true self recognised but to which it assigned no predominant place in my personality. I accepted that this side provided the masculine traits which had enabled me to fashion my hyped-up professional persona, but I had never doubted that my feminine side was in the driving-seat of my personality, and perhaps it was this very confidence in my femininity which had enabled me not only to ape the men without inhibitions but often to ape them tongue in cheek.

  Tucker had always understood that. But this man—this man who wanted to live with a woman who he thought was just like a man—this macho man who feared and despised in others what he had unconsciously feared and despised in himself—this promiscuous loner who felt so threatened by homosexuals that he had to brutalise them periodically to keep his fears at bay—this corporate bruiser who used and abused people without hesitation to further his own ends—this boardroom barracuda who committed murder without regret—this serial liar who systematically cheated everyone who trusted him—this man was someone who could not only never understand me but could never see me as I truly was. He was obsessed by someone who didn’t exist. It was pointless for him to swear that he loved me. He simply wanted me in order that he could function more smoothly. I was merely an object which promised to make his private life more manageable. I was to be used—and no doubt later abused if I dared to be so feminine as to have a child. Our marriage had been an illusion from start to finish, and indeed our whole relationship, constructed to fill each other’s darkest needs and obsessions, had been a folie à deux on the grandest of scales.

  All these thoughts flashed through my mind as I struggled with the physical manifestations of my revulsion, but when I had finished being sick there was no time to think further about the marriage. I had to concentrate with every ounce of strength I still possessed on the task of play-acting in order to survive.

  “Have some water,” he was saying sympathetically, handing me his refilled glass.

  I drank, pressed my burning forehead for a moment against the cool, rose-coloured tiles of the bathroom wall and finally managed to straighten my back.

  “Feeling better?” he said, moving much too close to me.

  “Yep.” I was trying to decide what I should do if he slipped his arms around my waist, but I thought he would probably allow me more time to recover before he pursued his sexual inclinations again.

  “There’s a trace of vomit on that cross of yours,” he said suddenly. “Let me take it off.” And before I could react he had jerked the cross hard, breaking the fragile clasp and pulling the chain from my neck.

  “Kim, for God’s sake!” I exclaimed, too unnerved to censor myself, but he only said: “I just couldn’t stand looking at it any longer,” and he dropped the cross in the wastepaper basket. “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do now if you’re feeling better,” he said, smiling as he turned back to face me. “I’d like to take you to one of the other bedrooms, somewhere quite empty of my past here with Sophie, and then—”

  He told me what he wanted to do to celebrate our reconciliation, but I ceased to listen. All I knew was that my one chance to save myself had finally arrived; all I knew was that he was going to unlock that bedroom door.

  VIII

  He led the way out of the room. As he stepped into the corridor and turned to put an arm around me I halted abruptly on the threshold and said: “I must get the cross. Sorry.” Then I feinted a retreat but immediately, while he was off guard, I doubled back, charged past him and began to race hell for leather around the galleried hall to the stairs.

  “Tucker!” I shouted at the top of my voice, to give the impression that a bodyguard had been hidden nearby all along—and suddenly I realised there was someone in the hall below.

  A woman was moving smoothly from the kitchen towards the living-room. She wore a plain dark red suit with a wide-brimmed straw hat, and she was carrying the flat wooden basket which had been abandoned in the kitchen on the night she had died.

  For a moment she glanced up at me but the brim of her hat ensured that her face remained in deep shadow.

  Then she moved on out of sight into the living-room.

  IX

  I knew my disordered brain was projecting the image, and I knew why I was seeing what I saw. I was in Sophie’s house and Sophie’s suffering had been repeatedly dominating my thoughts. If my brain was now reacting to intolerable stress again, what could be more natural than that I should see her in her own home, where every room held such strong memories of her presence? Yet I still found the sighting a shattering experience.

  Shock had jerked me to a halt at the head of the stairs, and the next moment Kim was grabbing me. His grip was savage. He had realised how far he had been deceived.

  I screamed and screamed as I struggled in his arms, but now I no longer needed to pretend there was help nearby because someone really was there, rushing to my rescue. I heard footsteps racing across the hall—not Sophie’s footsteps; Sophie had made no sound and she had not been running. At first I thought the footsteps were a hallucination but then I realised Kim had heard them too; he was swivelling sideways to look down into the hall, and as the shock made him relax his grip I shoved him hard, so hard that he lost his balance and cannoned into the banisters.

  A second later someone hurtled up the stairs and shot in front of me.

  In stupefaction I recognised Tucker.

  X

  As Kim scrabbled to recover his balance and I lurched back with a sob of relief against the wall, Tucker planted himself between us and said strongly: “Forget the next accident, Mr. Betz—it isn’t going to happen!” Glancing back at me over his shoulder he demanded: “Do you want to go or stay?”

  “Go.”

  “Right. We’re leaving. Precede me down the stairs, please, in case he tries to attack you again.” He swung back to Kim who was now standing upright and breathing hard. “You want to make something of this? You want to land a punch so that I can call the police and get you locked up? You can bet your life they’d be salivating if they knew you’d attacked me a second time!”

  Kim lost his nerve. After spewing out a string of obscenities he shouted: “What do you think you’re doing, breaking into my house and hurling threats at me like a bloody lunatic? Just who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Retribution! ” yelled Tucker, but I grabbed his hand before he could be drawn again into violence, and tugged him back towards me.

  To Kim I said: “He’s right. Injure him a second time and no one’ll believe it was an accident.” I began to grope my way down the stairs. Black spots danced before my eyes and for a moment I thought I might pass out, but Tucker grasped my arm and steered me safely past the last step.

  I looked back. Kim had not moved. He was very still now, his face pale and expressionless. As our glances met he said: “You lied to me,” and I answered straight away without regret: “Yes, I did.”

  “But I trusted you!”

  “You’ve been brutalising people who trusted you for years. Why shouldn’t you be finally dosed with your own medicine?” I began to move unsteadily towards the front door.

  “Well, don’t kid yourself there’s anything you can do to touch me!” he shouted, suddenly unable to control himself a second longer as his personality once more began to disintegrate. “There’s no forensic evidence!”

  I stopped. I turned. I faced him. Then I said so clearly that Tucker would remember every word when the time came to talk to the police: “You’re wrong. If the pathologist did the autopsy so thoroughly that he realised the mangled corpse was murdered, he’ll have found the man had sex before he died, and they’ll get you on the DNA.”

  “Oh no, they bloody won’t!” yelled Kim. “I used a condom!”

  There was a moment of silence as jolting as a high-volt electrical charge. Then Tucker said urgently: “Run, Carter!” and jerking me forward with him he flung wide the heavy front door.

  XI
>
  We rushed to the Mercedes, parked in front of the house, but I saw at once there was no key in the ignition.

  Tucker said swiftly: “My car’s beyond the gates.”

  But the drive seemed very long.

  “You can make it!” urged Tucker as my pace flagged. “Keep going!”

  I tore up the gravel beneath my feet again. The sun was blazing down so fiercely that my body felt as if it were on the brink of dissolving. I heard myself gasp: “He’ll figure no one knows we’re here. He’ll kill us and bury the bodies in the woods.”

  “Fat chance. I’ve got a book to finish.”

  I tried to laugh, tried to cry but wound up just panting for breath. There was a stitch in my side. My lungs were hurting.

  “I’ll carry you,” said Tucker, catching me as I stumbled.

  “The hell you will!” I staggered on.

  We reached the gates. “No sign of him,” said Tucker, looking back, but then such an unnerving thought struck him that he stopped dead. “Could he be getting a gun?”

  I shook my head, bending double to ease the stitch as I halted beside him. “He’s never mentioned owning one—and if he did—it would be in London—and not here.” My gasps for breath provided a bizarre punctuation.

  Tucker exclaimed exasperated: “I wish you’d let me sweep you off your feet!” but I just whispered: “Sorry. Not sweepable.”

  “Why not? A spunky heroine should always wind up swept. If we were back in WWII—”

  “Stuff that. Here’s Kim.”