The High Flyer (29 page)

V

“My mother never cried, never,” I said in a later session, “and after she remarried she used to say angrily to me: ‘You can’t possibly be unhappy, you’ve got so much to be thankful for!’ So I wasn’t allowed to be unhappy, it didn’t happen, and I never cried, never. But not crying didn’t mean I felt happy and after a while I got angry. I thought: I’ll show her! I’m going to escape into a world she only sees on telly and I’m going to drive the kind of car James Bond would drive and I’m going to live in a place like you only see pictures of in magazines and I’ll be so bloody rich I’ll be able to have ANYTHING I WANT, and I’ll show them all—I’ll show not only Mam and Ken and those two stupid girls but
him
up in Glasgow—I’ll show them all I can live very nicely without family, thanks very much, and then I’ll be really happy because I’ll never again have to pretend to be happy when I’m not.

“And in the end, I said to myself, in the end I’m going to marry the exact opposite of
him
up in Glasgow, I’m going to marry a man who’s hugely rich because I know it’s only money that counts, and if
him
in Glasgow had had money he wouldn’t have spent his life in the betting-shop trying to win a fortune and he wouldn’t have let go of my hand and we’d all be together still and I’d be happy.

“So it all seemed so clear, you see, it seemed so obvious that you had to be very successful in order to make lots of money, and having lots of money was the only way to control what happened to you, it was the only way to survive all the bloody mess everywhere, the mess generated by all the people who couldn’t make money. God, I can’t tell you what a mess it was when I was little, living from hand to mouth, never knowing when the bailiffs were coming—yes, it was chaos,
chaos
, and the chaos was vile, it was terrifying, it was absolute bloody hell.

“But I found my way out of all that, didn’t I? I was saved by my brains—and by my determination never to wind up like my mother. Never, never, never, I said to myself was I going to marry a man like my father who would destroy my trust and rob me blind and lie to me over and over again! No way was
I
ever going to wind up trashed like that, I told myself, because once I had money I’d be safe, I’d be secure, I’d have everything under control, I’D BE HAPPY.

“I had this life-plan. I loved my life-plan, loved it, and I followed it to the letter. I got the education, I got the professional qualification, I got the jobs, I got the red Porsche, I got the dream-home in the sky, I got— oh, so much money, I can’t tell you!—I got power, I got control, I got ORDER. No more chaos. And at the end of all that I even got the man of my dreams, so everything was perfect, perfect, perfect . . . although, of course, life was quite a strain, I was always working so hard, never having time for . . . well, for just living a normal life, just simply
being
. I mean, there was really no time for anything except achieving my goals on schedule and working my life into a statement which said to my parents: ‘Fuck you for not loving me properly, fuck you for all the mess which made me miserable . . .’ It was almost like an act of revenge. Well, I suppose it
was
an act of revenge . . . But of course it was also the road to happiness, and I wanted happiness, lots of it, it was owing to me.

“Sometimes I did wonder if I was happy. Sometimes when the City bastards were bloody to me, sometimes when all the hard work seemed too much to bear. But I couldn’t be unhappy, could I? My life-plan was guaranteed to bring me happiness. The guarantee was cast-iron, blue-chip, fail-safe. I was so rich and so successful—how could I be other than happy? As my mother would have said, I had so much to be thankful for, and big girls don’t cry.

“But sometimes I think I wanted to cry. Sometimes when it all seemed more of a strain than I could bear . . . But I never did cry, except when my last lover left me. That was so painful that I couldn’t help crying, but I only cried for less than a minute and after that I filed the memory away, I wiped it, it was as if it had never happened. I soon put my life in order again, believe me. I always had everything so absolutely under control, and that’s how I succeeded in winding up with the perfect job, the perfect home and the perfect husband.”

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.