The High Flyer (15 page)

VII

I knew he had outplayed me, not only sidestepping the confession I had sought about the disordered flat but even persuading me to acquiesce in his desire to maintain contact with Mrs. Mayfield, but nevertheless I felt I had succeeded in gaining a much clearer picture of what was going on. I now had a better understanding not only of his hang-ups—all much worse than I had ever imagined—but of his relationship with Mrs. Mayfield; I could see that she had managed to exploit his profound emotional damage so that he had become psychologically dependent on her. I had assumed Kim was being inexcusably perverse in keeping the relationship going, but now I realised that this behaviour sprang from an irrational fixation, not from a rational choice. This did not justify his association with a woman opposed to his marriage, but it did allow me to reclassify his actions as neurotic instead of deliberately hurtful, and this in turn made it possible for me to forgive him.

It seemed plain he needed some form of psychiatric help to sort out his emotional problems and wean him from Mrs. Mayfield, but I knew he would refuse to consult a psychiatrist. As I once more sat on the couch in the early hours of the morning and sipped Scotch, I tried to calm myself by listing the good points which still existed alongside the crisis. We loved each other; the sex was good and getting better; when he was being the dolphin instead of the shark he was fine; we had much in common, we got on well, we were certainly capable of making each other happy. The problem of children was tricky but not, I now decided, insuperable. I was confident that I could win him over, perhaps by giving way on the decision about where we were going to live, and I told myself I should no longer see the reproduction issue as a long-term anxiety.

The real long-term anxiety was Mrs. Mayfield. She would have to be dynamited out of his life, I could see that, and I would just have to hope that Kim’s natural toughness would ensure his survival once his psychological prop was removed, but how did I manoeuvre myself into a position where I could light the fuse?

Suddenly I thought of Sophie, issuing her warning in the supermarket. Sophie was sane, I was sure of that now, just as I was sure that Kim had created the mess in the flat and encouraged me to attribute it to Sophie because it was vital to him that I should write her off as someone who had no credibility at all. This in turn meant that Sophie knew still more unpalatable facts which Kim was determined to keep from me, and I was sure that at least some of these unpalatable facts must relate to Mrs. Mayfield.

“He’s mixed up with the occult . . .” It occurred to me now that I had never taken this allegation seriously. I had been too busy dismissing Sophie as demented, and besides, whenever the word “occult” cropped up I always thought: nutterguff! and switched off. But what exactly was the occult? Supposing it consisted not just of ludicrous ladies reading crystal balls and silly students messing around with Ouija boards, but of something very much more dangerous? The Witchcraft Act, I knew, had been repealed earlier in the century. Maybe all kinds of creepy-crawlies had sidled out of the woodwork by this time and were busy battening on vulnerable people.

I had no idea whether witchcraft and the occult were the same thing, but suspected that even if they were not, both had been covered by the Act. The fact that these activities were no longer illegal certainly restricted my opportunities to dynamite Mrs. Mayfield, but shady activities could often lead to law-breaking. Instantly I thought of blackmail. If I could prove Mrs. Mayfield was a criminal I could gut her. All I needed was the necessary information—a conclusion which meant I had no choice now but to seek out Sophie.

This was hardly a pleasant prospect but desperate situations called for desperate measures. I could not continue to share Kim with Mrs. Mayfield. Of that I was quite sure.

Returning to bed I wondered if he had lied to me when he had denied taking drugs that evening. But I managed to dismiss that anxiety by focusing on the fact that at least he had ditched that dire group.

Making an enormous effort I at last succeeded in willing myself into unconsciousness.

VIII

The persistent tension was reaching me, seeping deep into my body and stealthily infiltrating my mind. Again I tried to shut out my anxieties by concentrating on my work, but this time I failed. The lack of sleep was undermining me too, and by three o’clock I was totalled. Telling Jacqui to hold all calls I tried a power-nap, but my brain instantly accelerated, keeping me awake with thoughts of the neurotic stranger I had married. My head started to ache. I took aspirin to no effect. At last, seriously worried in case I started making bad decisions, I realised the smart thing to do was to withdraw from the scene.

I found a taxi in Bishopsgate and reached the car park on the street level of Harvey Tower minutes later. The attendant on duty nodded sociably to me but I was hardly in the mood for conversation. Stumbling into the lift I sagged back against the panels.

In the thirty-fifth-floor lobby I suddenly felt I was going to pass out and I had to lean against the wall to steady myself, but fortunately the dizziness soon passed. I unlocked the front door—and immediately felt sure something was wrong. Kim had been the first to leave that morning and I knew the flat should be immaculate, but nevertheless I was convinced I was going to find more disorder. I checked the master bedroom nearby and heard the breath rasp in my throat. The wardrobe doors were yawning wide. The floor was strewn with Kim’s suits, but although I examined them I found no sign of damage, and meanwhile my own clothes were still suspended from the rail. I stood breathing rapidly as I surveyed this bizarre scene, but before I could start rehanging the suits, which I had picked up from the floor and placed carefully on the bed, it dawned on me that the rest of the flat needed checking. At once I raced down the corridor to the living-room.

The cushions from the sofa had been tossed onto the floor and the stool by the telescope had been upturned but the telescope itself was untouched and all the pictures were still on the walls. A weird feature of the disorder was that the television was on, the volume mute. Grabbing the remote control I zapped the picture, and it was then that I heard the sound of dripping in the kitchen.

The refrigerator door was open, prevented from swinging shut by a carton of milk which had fallen on its side and was leaking stealthily from its closed but unsealed flap. The carton was protruding from the shelf at an angle which allowed the milk to drip straight onto the vinyl floor below.

I stared at this evidence that the disorder was recent. Then I tipped the carton upright, slammed shut the fridge door and shot back into the living-room to call the office of Graf-Rosen.

I knew it was possible that Kim had sneaked home during the lunch-hour.

IX

“Mary, it’s Carter,” I said as Kim’s PA came on the line. “Is Kim there?”

Ms. Waters immediately assumed the honeyed tones which masked her dislike. “I’m afraid he’s in a meeting, Carter.”

“How long’s the meeting been going on?”

“Since two.”

It was now twenty past four and I doubted if the milk could have been leaking from the carton for more than five minutes. But maybe the carton had not started to leak straight away; maybe the unsealed but closed flap had at first proved an effective dam.

Abruptly I said: “Did he have a lunch-date?”

“Yes, upstairs with two partners.”

“He hasn’t been out of the building?”

“Oh, there wouldn’t have been time! Carter, is something wrong?”

I pulled myself together. “I was confused because I thought I spotted him just now on the Barbican podium. Okay, Mary, don’t mention this call to him—obviously I saw a look-alike.” I hung up, aware of an enormous relief. Whoever the culprit was, Kim was in the clear.

But a second later I was deep in confusion again. If Kim was innocent then all my deductions based on his guilt were wrong and Sophie was still Ms. Fruity-Loops, stomping around my flat and creating havoc. Moreover if the disorder was recent Sophie might still be in the area. Heaving open the sliding door I rushed onto the balcony.

The Barbican flats all have wraparound balconies which double as fire-escapes and make life easy for the window-cleaners. My views east and north were restricted, but the area of the podium to the south and west of the Tower was clearly visible to me and when I rapidly scanned the landscape I caught sight of a fleck of royal blue far below. It was adorning one of the seats which overlooked the gardens at the western end of the podium.

I dived indoors, slid into a pair of flat shoes, grabbed my bag and shot out of the front door. By a miracle the lift arrived instantly. At podium level I tore past the astonished porter and raced outside. All weariness had now vanished, killed by the adrenaline which was surging through my veins. Across the podium I ran, with Shakespeare Tower on my left and Ben Jonson House soaring above its forest of columns on my right. Ahead were the gardens framed on three sides by the low-rise blocks which stood on the north-western edge of the estate, and there, looking out over this tranquil scene with her back to me was Sophie, sitting placidly in her royal-blue coat as if she were savouring a well-earned rest after her bout of destruction. Well, why shouldn’t she spend a little time relaxing? I was supposed to be at the office and she would have thought herself as safe as an escaped criminal sunbathing on the Costa del Sol.

When I drew closer I saw she was wearing a hat, a nasty piece of black felt which surprised me because I knew Sophie dressed with good taste. But my surprise barely registered. I was too busy relishing my triumph.

I slowed to a walk to recover my breath; now that she was grabbable I could afford to take a moment to ensure I was ice-cool for the dénouement, but suddenly she wrong-footed me by sensing my presence. I saw her shoulders stiffen. The next moment she was rising to her feet, but when she turned to face me I found myself staring at her without comprehension.

This woman was a stranger. But she knew me. She was smiling radiantly. Beneath the heavy powder on her face she was pink-cheeked, as if something had delighted her. Her lips were slightly parted; she looked as if she had seen a luxury item which she could hardly wait to purchase. Her blue eyes were serene but moist, as if the delight was almost too much for her to bear. Grey curls peeped from under the cheap hat. She looked like an old-fashioned grandmother viewing the latest addition to a far-flung but peculiarly close-knit family.

“Why, what a lovely surprise!” she said cosily in a creamy voice. “It’s Carter, isn’t it, dear? I recognise you from your photographs. Do I have to introduce myself or can you guess who I am?”

My voice said: “You’re Mrs. Mayfield,” and as I spoke I felt the repulsion ripple down my spine.

I

“I’m ever so pleased to meet you, dear,” said the woman, and I could feel her strong, sinuous personality wrapping itself around me as efficiently as an anaconda busy domesticating some unfortunate tree. Meanwhile her creamy contralto with its south London accent was calling to mind images of a suburban matron pouring out tea in a lace-curtained parlour. I could see now that the royal-blue coat was not in the least like Sophie’s. It was loosely cut, shoddy, perhaps even something she might have run up on a sewing machine in double-quick time when the idea of masquerading as Sophie had first surfaced. The coat was unbuttoned, sagging open to reveal a floral dress topped by a thin grey cardigan. The weather hardly justified the wearing of a cardigan in addition to the coat, but that sort of person was always wedded to her cardigan. It was like part of a uniform.

I tried to estimate how old she was. She had good legs and her narrow, elegant feet were jacked up by high-heeled shoes as if she wanted to distract attention from the bulky upper half of her body. She was certainly dressed to look sixty, but the grey curls seemed like a wig and her skin was good. In the end I decided she could have been any age between forty-five and seventy, and a member of any number of professions ranging from chartered accountancy to hooking.

“Shall we sit down for a moment?” she was saying. “It’s so lovely here by the gardens, isn’t it, and they’ve even got goldfish, I see, in that pond, although I don’t suppose they’ll last long, poor little loves, they’re bound to be kidnapped for catfood. Well, I was just on my way to see a friend of mine who lives in Ben Jonson House”—she indicated the long block of low-rise flats nearby—“but I found I was early so I thought I’d pause to admire the beauties of nature, somehow managing to flourish even in the most peculiar places, and you can’t get anywhere more peculiar than the Barbican, can you, nearly forty acres of brutish concrete dreamed up, I’m sure, by a bunch of men entirely unaided by women—women would have softened all those straight lines and put the whole thing on street level, much more practical for shopping, but men never think of the needs of housewives, do they, which is why they designed a huge housing estate two floors above the ground—or is it three?—and then finished off their fantasy by putting all the low-rise blocks on legs. What
did
they think they were doing, I ask myself, but that’s men all over, isn’t it—minimum self-knowledge and maximum capacity to cause trouble!”

As she paused for breath I was finally able to say in my hardest voice: “You’ve been messing up my flat.”

“Well, I heard about the trouble you’ve been having, but—”

“I mean today. Just now. You bust in and blitzed around.”

“Not me, dear, although I admit I’ve just come from Harvey Tower. Harvey Tower! Named after William Harvey, I’m told, who made all those discoveries about the circulation of blood when he was working nearby at Bart’s Hospital—I love the way the Barbican blocks are called after historic City celebrities, I really do, but why are all these celebrities men? Lauderdale, Shakespeare, Cromwell, Ben Jonson, Defoe, Thomas More—”

“If you didn’t trash my flat what the hell were you doing at Harvey Tower?” I was finding her rambling, elliptical style curiously exhausting; I began to feel as if I were wrestling with toffee.

“Your husband left his organiser at my house last night, dear, and when he rang me this morning to check it was there I said I’d be visiting my friend Pauline this afternoon and could drop the organiser off at the porters’ desk.”

I said very clearly: “I put it to you that you talked your way past the porter. I put it to you that you then entered my flat with a key which my husband had given you last night. I put it to you—”

“Put it where you like, pet. It’s a fantasy.”

“But—”

“Here’s what happened. I arrived at the Barbican tube station. I trotted down the Beech Street tunnel, which runs under this lovely, lovely garden where we’re busy enjoying the beauties of nature. Your husband had already phoned the lobby porter to tell him I’d be coming, but of course Harvey Tower, being designed by men and therefore hugely unpractical, has its entrance at podium level, so I had to go in from Beech Street through the car park, explain my errand to the attendant there and wait while he phoned the lobby porter to check I wasn’t some nasty IRA terrorist. What a kerfuffle! But at least you can tell yourself the security’s excellent. Anyway, once the attendant heard I was expected he allowed me to take the lift up to the porters’ desk, and then—”

“You went straight up to the thirty-fifth floor without pausing at podium level!”

“No, dear, I went straight to the lobby where I left the organiser, snug in its little Jiffy bag, with the porter, and then I went straight out into the gardens. If your flat’s been disturbed again, the culprit wasn’t me.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Well, suit yourself, dear,” said the woman serenely, “but you really should calm down—your stress levels are much too high and I’m not surprised you were driven to leave work early. Suffering from a tension headache, were you? Feeling groggy from lack of sleep?”

“Now look here, Mrs. Mayfield—”

“I see big health problems ahead if you go on like this, pet, I really do, and I said as much to Jake last night. I hope you don’t mind me calling your husband Jake, but that was the name he used when he first came to see me and I always thought he instinctively knew it suited him better than Kim. ‘Jake’ sounds so strong and tough, and of course he’s ever so keen on the macho.”

“Stuff that—what I want to talk to you about is—”

“Names are so important, aren’t they?” continued Mrs. Mayfield, effortlessly ironing out my interruption. “For instance I never allow myself to be called ‘Betty’ or ‘Lizzie’ or ‘Ellie’ or any of those other nasty abbreviations, I’m always ‘Elizabeth’! It’s a question of tone, a question of class. ‘Elizabeth Mayfield’ sounds so pretty, doesn’t it, so elegant, so English—oh, I just love my name, I really do, it makes me so happy just to listen to it! But
your
name, dear, if you’ll pardon me saying so, is a mistake. Flaunting a masculine name to conform to a masculine lifestyle means that a large part of your true nature’s being suppressed, and I think poor Jake is just beginning to realise this. ‘Carter Graham’—no, no, no, dear, it won’t do—it won’t do at all! Have you ever thought of calling yourself Kate?”

“Mrs. Mayfield,” I said, so infuriated by this time that I could cheerfully have consigned her to an acid bath, “let’s cut the crap and get down to business. I know for a fact—”

“Pardon me, dear, but I don’t think you know anything for a fact, you’re absolutely out of your depth—which is why you’re mishandling this conversation. I’m perfectly willing to be friendly! Why do you keep jumping down my throat?”

“Because you told Kim not to marry me! Because you spun him all that guff about how I’d start ‘flirting with the enemy’! Because you forecast sexual problems in an attempt to bust up my marriage!”

“Well, pet, I never think it’s a good idea for people to rush into a second marriage the moment they get their divorce, and as for flirting with the enemy, well, it wasn’t guff, was it? You fancied that young man who came to work for you! You fancied him and you flirted with him and—”

“I absolutely, categorically deny—”

“—and I’ll tell you something else, my love. You’re not through with the enemy yet, not by a long chalk.”

“Look, it’s no good trying to pull this psychic stunt on me because I just don’t believe in—”

“It was quite dark,” she said dreamily, gazing out over the flowerbeds. “It was a lovely, plush, velvety darkness, not inky, not grimy, but
voluptuous
. I loved it, I was entranced by it, I was
luxuriating
in it, and as I watched I saw you running down this dark, dark street. But you didn’t like the dark at all—silly, ignorant little girl that you are beneath all that pseudo-masculine, pseudo-sophisticated, pseudo-intelligent modern nonsense—and when you got to the house you started banging on the front door in hysterics. I couldn’t see the house properly because everywhere was so dark, but I knew there was a church nearby because the next moment . . . well, it was all symbols, dear, you wouldn’t understand, but I read the symbols and I knew you were knocking at the closed door, the one with no handle, and I knew that the next moment
he
would be there—you know who I mean, I won’t say his name—”

“I don’t know who you mean, I don’t want to know who you mean, and all I can say is—”

“A clergyman answered the door but of course he was just standing in for that other person, and then I saw beyond the symbols and realised you’d be sucked up by the enemy, absorbed by them, eaten alive by them—”

“You’re certifiable.” I started to struggle to my feet. “You ought to be locked up.”

“Really, dear? Are you sure you’re not projecting onto me all the worries about your own mental health which you never dare to acknowledge?”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“You’re breaking down under the strain of maintaining this masculine lifestyle, pet—the disorder in the flat is just mirroring the disorder in your mind, and I predict there’ll be other signs of derangement too before long. That flat must have ever such a lovely view, but you’re very high up, aren’t you, and one day soon you’re going to go out onto that balcony and you’re going to look down on that concrete podium thirtyfive floors below and you’re going to want to smash yourself on it— SMASH yourself on it—you’ll long to smash yourself on it, long to, it’ll be an urge you’ll never, never be able to resist—oh, you’ll try to resist, of course, you’ll fight and fight against it, but in the end you’ll go out on that balcony and you’ll move to that rail and you’ll—”

“You’re evil,” said my voice as every drop of blood in my body seemed to turn to ice. “You’re wicked. You’re obscene.”

“Rattled you, have I? Well, it’s about time someone did! You’re living in a state of illusion, my girl, and if you don’t shape up soon and realise that Jake’s quite the wrong husband for you, I promise that one day you’re going to step out on that balcony and—”

I shouted her down. I was sweating and faint but I drummed up the strength to yell: “Fuck off! You leave me and my husband alone or I’ll get the police to arrest you!”

“I’ve broken no law, dear, and as for your husband, why shouldn’t he see me if he wants to? I can do him more good than any doctor!”

“The right osteopath would have fixed his back trouble without battening on him afterwards like a bloody vampire!”

“Pardon me, pet,” said Mrs. Mayfield in a voice oily enough to undulate under all my defences, “but did you say back trouble?”

I sank down abruptly on the bench.

II

There was a vile silence. I knew I should end it at once but no words came.

“Fancy!” said Mrs. Mayfield placidly at last, reverting to her cosier manner. “Well, if he wants you to think his problem was back trouble, far be it from me to interfere!” She glanced at her watch. “Gracious me, look at the time—I must fly!”

“Wait.” I was fatally entangled at last, and suddenly I saw I had been wrestling not with toffee but with a tarantula who had now trussed me up in its web. “What was really wrong with him?”

“Oh, nothing serious,” said Mrs. Mayfield, daintily adjusting the cuff of her coat after the glance at her watch. “Just the usual masculine trouble, but I knew Jake would be fine once I’d introduced him to the right group to restore his confidence.” She produced some skin-tight gloves from her handbag and slowly drew them on while making sure every wrinkle in the material was smoothed away. I was reminded of a pathologist preparing to disembowel a corpse.

My voice said numbly again: “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s because I did such a good job of curing the impotence, dear, but of course the problem could recur if his relationship with you were to get as fraught as his relationship with Sophie—and that reminds me, pet, do stop talking about having children! He doesn’t want them, never has, never will, and once he thinks you only want him for fertilisation purposes he’ll never get an erection and you can guarantee he’ll be looking elsewhere for sex in no time flat. After all, that’s what happened before.”

“You’re saying—you mean—”

“Well, of course he doesn’t want you to know that his first marriage was far more of a mess than he ever told you it was! No wonder Sophie’s panting for revenge now that he’s ditched her—she stuck by him all those years when she could have been having children by someone else! No wonder she can’t wait to tell you about his impotence and his efforts to cure himself with other women and finally about all the lovely, healing, fun-times he’s had with my group! No wonder she’s bursting with the desire to tell you that unless you agree to do without children your marriage will be on the rocks in no time!”

“But he’s told me he’s willing to consider having children!”

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He’s ever so keen on you at the moment, but it won’t last, can’t last, because your sex-life’s inevitably going to go to pieces—well, of course I could see this problem coming a long way off! He thought you were so wedded to your career that you wouldn’t want children, but I said: ‘Don’t make me laugh! That girl’s suppressing a huge part of her femininity and one day she’s going to get fed up with being a pseudo-man. She’ll go domestic, take cooking courses, fall in love with a Hoover and—naturally!—want a baby. It’ll be nature reasserting itself,’ I said, ‘and she’ll not only hear the biological clock ticking but she’ll ditch the job, shed the masculine identity and get pregnant faster than you can say “mother’s milk.” You mark my words,’ I said, ‘this is
not
the kind of girl you want to marry. You want a woman who married young and got all the maternity stuff done at an early age.’ But he couldn’t see it! The silly little love was so infatuated that he took you at face value! I could hardly believe he was capable of being so naïve!”

I levered myself to my feet. My legs felt as if they were only flimsily attached to my body and I had to grip the edge of the bench to steady myself. Stiff-lipped I said: “What happened last night when he said goodbye to the group?”

“Oh, was he planning to say goodbye? That’s news to me . . . And now I really
must
be on my way! Lovely to have met you, dear, although I’m sorry you were so edgy and under the weather. Don’t hesitate to contact me in future, will you, if you decide you want help in curing that little orgasm problem you have—I’ve got another group you’d do very well with, and I’m sure they’d be ever so happy to meet you!”

And smiling radiantly she gave a little wave in the style of the Queen Mother before tip-tapping away across the podium in her elegant high-heeled shoes.

The sun was still shining on all the flowers nearby but I felt as if I were suffocating in a cloud of darkness. Slumping down on the bench again I buried my face in my hands.