The High Flyer (39 page)

XIII

I reached the landing. At the top of the stairs a gallery flanked by banisters skirted the drop into the double-decker hall and passed various closed doors. At the end of the gallery one of the doors stood open, and as I drew cautiously nearer I saw beyond the threshold the thin glare of strip-lighting streaming from a place which I deduced to be an interior bathroom. Memories of modern hotels provided me with an instant picture of the layout: one entered the bedroom, one found the interior bathroom immediately on the left or right, and one walked past the row of closets opposite into a large sleeping area. In a house of this vintage the bathroom would have been a later addition, carved out of the master bedroom.

I paused on the threshold, but as the insertion of the bathroom had made the room L-shaped I could not see all of the sleeping area.

“Kim?” I said again. “Are you all right?”

No answer came. Maybe, having lost his tolerance for alcohol, he had passed out. It seemed a plausible explanation, so plausible that I decided to risk inching forward so that I could see the part of the room which was hidden from me.

I inched. Sweat was gluing my tank-top to my back again. My mouth was quite dry.

The moment I was far enough into the room to see that the sleeping area was empty, he slipped out of his hiding-place in the closet and slammed the door.

The key turned in the lock.

Then he leaned back against the panels and looked at me with unnaturally expressionless blue eyes.

I

I knew at once I must show no fear of any kind. As the experts on big fish say, blood in the water can trigger a feeding frenzy.

In a split second I had my reactions ordered: a sharp exclamation of justifiable shock, an exasperated reproof and a crisp return to the matter in hand. In another split second the scene was launched.

“Damn it, Betz!” I said crossly. “What the hell are you playing at? You nearly gave me a coronary!” Turning my back on him I tramped furiously across to the window and glared out over the garden as I tried to control my breathing. A pant or two after an unpleasant shock was excusable; continued panting had to be eliminated. Spinning to face him again I demanded: “Did you find the Anadin?”

He did not answer. He had removed the key from the door and was tossing it lightly as if it were a coin.

I knew this tactic. It was the silence-blanket. Silence can be unnerving, particularly at a business meeting where talking is always expected. The antidote, naturally, is noise. Talking must at once ensue. The topic is unimportant. What matters is to show indifference to the intimidating behaviour.

“Oh, do stop playing with that key!” I snapped irritably. “Either put it back in the lock, for God’s sake, or put it in your pocket. If you want to talk up here behind a locked door, that’s fine, I don’t care, I suppose you’re afraid I might run away, but as I told you quite truthfully downstairs, I’ve no intention of disappearing (a) because I haven’t yet had my share of the smoked salmon sandwiches, and (b) because I’m expecting a lift to the station in the Mercedes when the time comes for me to go. So forget all thought of me scurrying away through those godawful woods and let’s get down to planning our future together—or are you feeling too knackered for that at present? If you want to have a nap I can easily wait, finish the sandwiches, make myself some coffee—”

“No, I’ll keep going,” he said, deciding it was time to grab control of the conversation. “I took the Anadin and I’ll be better in a minute.”

“Then I don’t understand what we’re doing up here. Can we go back downstairs?”

“Not just yet.” He pocketed the key and moved into the bathroom. I heard a tap running and when he emerged he was sipping a glass of water. I recognised this tactic too. It usually appears at a business dinner when one’s rivals are half-dead with tension and swilling alcohol as if it were lemonade. One then appears with a glass of water to signal not only that one’s in total control of the situation but that one’s will-power is sufficient to make every other person in the room look like a broken reed.

“Water!” I exclaimed. “Just what I need! Is there a second glass?”

Suddenly he laughed. “My God, you’re a cool customer!” he exclaimed, relaxing as he leaned back against the bathroom door frame. “I couldn’t have handled that rough ride better myself!”

“Well, now that we’ve got that little game over and you’ve had the pleasure of seeing me ‘act tough,’ as you always put it, can we talk about the future?”

“I didn’t think we were quite through with talking about the past. What were those questions you said you wanted to ask me?”

“Questions. Ah yes,” I said, heart lurching as I scrabbled around in my mind for a subject unconnected with the blackmail, “I was so busy recovering from my near-coronary that I quite forgot I was going to ask you about the stuff Mrs. Mayfield ended up by swiping. Was the divorce file as innocuous as you said it was, and what was really in that brown envelope?”

He answered willingly enough: “As far as I could gather from my quick skim, the divorce file really did seem to be bland—I told you the truth about that at the Rectory. Either Sophie didn’t tell her lawyers the worst stuff or else she told them off the record at a meeting.”

“And the brown envelope?”

“That was the dynamite. It contained copies she had taken of her letters to you, but the crowning irony was that I never stopped to read them. As soon as I saw the first letter saying ‘Dear Miss Graham’ I knew all the contents of the envelope had to be destroyed so I pressed on right away back to London.”

“So when Mrs. Mayfield swiped both the envelope and the file—”

“It was an essential safety measure. She knew I’d told Sophie I was a member of an occult society, and she knew Sophie could connect me with the real blackmailer.” He started to wander around the king-size bed to put down his water on the bedside table. “And that reminds me,” I heard him say. “Talking of the blackmail—”

“Yes, a terrible subject,” I said rapidly. “Let’s draw a veil over the whole damn nightmare.”

“But when you said downstairs just now that you had a couple more questions to ask, you weren’t thinking of the missing files, were you, sweetheart? It was the blackmail you had in mind,” he said, and when he turned abruptly to face me I knew my careless disclosure that I still had questions to ask even after he had completed his story had been a very big mistake. I now realised he had lured me upstairs and applied the searing psychological pressure because he had felt driven to find out how far I believed him.

“So,” he said, taking care to give me an agreeable smile, “what exactly were the questions you wanted to ask?”

I had wanted to know where the blackmailer had been killed and how the fall onto the line had occurred, but there was no way I was going to ask either question when he and I were alone together in an isolated house behind a locked door. “Well, on reflection,” I said in my most matter-of-fact voice, “they’re not so important as the questions about the files. I was only going to ask”—there was a horrible moment when my powers of invention deserted me, but two harmless questions popped into my mind in the nick of time—“about Sophie,” I said briskly. “When she received the blackmailer’s photographs, was that the first time she knew of your ‘hobby’?”

“Yes, I’d never discussed it with her. Of course she accepted I’d have a sex life elsewhere after we stopped sleeping together, but she would have visualised it in terms of a few occasional utterly monogamous relationships.”

“With women?”

“Of course. The idea that I would have connections with men would never have occurred to her. Did you have another question?”

“Only about the VD. Did you get it from a woman or—”

“From a woman, yes, but you can be sure that after that episode I always used condoms, so you needn’t start worrying about your health. I’ve been practising self-preservation since long before the age of AIDS.”

I fell silent. A wave of empathy for Sophie was washing over me again and bringing a tightness to my throat. I thought of how much she must have loved Kim to stay with him after he had destroyed her hope of having children; I thought of how hard she must have worked to sustain the marriage by blotting out all thought of his inevitable infidelity. I thought of how her love had enabled her to forgive him—until she was finally blasted and brutalised by the truth which emerged from the blackmail. I knew one could argue that she was a masochist with low self-esteem who had been mad not to cut her losses and leave a dead-end, pain-streaked relationship; that would have been the tough-minded feminist position. But I was standing now in Sophie’s shoes and I knew life was neither so simple nor so clear-cut as the activists needed to believe. When you love someone you long to trust them. When you love someone you yearn for the relationship to come right. When you love someone forgiveness is easy, patience is natural and hope becomes a way of life. How easy it is to endure too much suffering and lose sight of the place where the line against abuse has to be drawn! And as these truths swept through my mind I felt outraged by how this man had used and abused his trophy wife year after year so that he could have the marriage which would jack up his image, enhance his career prospects and guarantee the upmarket home which he felt was owing to him.

I said suddenly: “You didn’t treat Sophie as a person.” I was quite unable to stop myself saying this. Nor was I able to stop myself saying: “You treated her as an object in the most self-centred way imaginable, and in doing so you demeaned and degraded her. If that’s the road to self-realisation as defined by Mrs. Mayfield and the members of your occult society, then they’re as evil as the Nazis who destroyed the innocent people who got in their way.”

His eyes widened.

Instantly I guillotined the rush of revulsion and backtracked. “Sorry,” I said, “I got carried away there for a moment, but I’m not blaming the man you are now, the man you’ve become, the man you are with me. I’m blaming Mrs. Mayfield’s influence on the man you used to be before you decided to break with her and get out of her world.”

He did not answer immediately. He just stood looking at me with those cool, expressionless blue eyes while my heart banged with fear, but at last he said neutrally enough: “Sophie was all right. She could have walked out at any time. She had her own money.” His glance shifted to the cross at my throat. “I wish you’d take that thing off,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

“I thought Lewis had made you sympathetic towards Christianity!” I said lightly, trying to ease the tension, but he merely answered: “I don’t like you wearing something which reminds me of Sophie and I particularly don’t like you making offensive remarks about the way I treated her. I was always courteous, generous, kind and considerate. It wasn’t my fault that the blackmailer destroyed the marriage by dumping those photographs on her.”

I saw at once that he had parted company with reality. With nausea I remembered my father, refusing in the past to accept responsibility for his actions and blaming all his failures on Lady Luck. “You’re absolutely right,” said my voice without a second’s hesitation, “and I apologise for being so stupid. I suppose I was just having a moment’s emotional reaction from all the revelations, but darling, don’t let’s talk any more about the past! All my questions have been answered now and I have nothing else to say—except, of course, that I truly admire your courage in confessing everything. You’ve really restored my love and respect, I can tell you!”

“Great!” he said at once, the barracuda finally moving in for the big bite. “Let’s celebrate! Why don’t you take off rather more than just that cross?”

I took a step backwards and found myself pressed against the wall.

II

I had given myself away. That single reflex, born of revulsion, had betrayed me. Desperately I willed myself to cover up the error by another casual remark, but I was too frightened now to dissimulate. No words came.

He said with that same empty look in his eyes: “You’re not coming back to me, are you?”

My voice said: “Jesus Christ.” But the name was not being used as an expletive. I was silently screaming for help. “Jesus Christ,” I said again, my fingers clutching the little cross, and suddenly I saw that these words could be interpreted as yet another display of exasperation. The next moment I was demanding ferociously: “Look, buster, are you out of your mind? Do you honestly, seriously believe I’d go to bed with you here, not just in Sophie’s home but in
Sophie’s bedroom
? God, I can’t believe I’m hearing this!”

“All right, all right!” His expression changed. The emptiness vanished. It was as if he were slipping in and out of two different personalities, and as I saw again how unintegrated he was, I realised how much damage remained to be healed despite his weeks in hospital. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, and to my huge relief I saw he even looked shamefaced. “That was very insensitive of me, but I just feel so strung up over this whole business. I’m not myself at all.”

I had a brainwave. “Is now the time, perhaps, to take that medication you passed up this morning?”

“So long as you’re here I’m not taking anything which affects performance. Carter, what I really want now is—”

“I don’t blame you. And talking of sex, darling, I was very touched when you said you didn’t want our relationship to be tainted with all that other stuff, but you needn’t be afraid our last session was too much for me—I really was telling you the truth afterwards when I said I thought it was a great expression of our love for each other, so obviously we’re all set for the best of bedroom futures—and talking of the future, do let’s discuss what we’re going to do once you’re fully recovered . . .” I was frantically trying to keep him talking while I worked out how I could escape, but no plan sprang to mind. My despair increased. I had to struggle hard to listen to him.

“Well, I thought a lot about this in hospital,” he was saying, obviously reassured by my vision of an adventurous sex life in a future where we were still married, “and I’ve come to the conclusion that our best bet is to relocate to the States. Despite all that’s happened I’m sure I can still get a job there—you can always make it in New York if you’ve got what it takes, and my American friends are influential enough to fix the visa problem so that we can get our green cards. I was thinking we could fly over, make a reconnaissance, look at top-grade apartments—”

“Won’t that kind of relocation cost rather a lot of money?” I said, spotting a topic which was certain to prolong the conversation— although how I was managing to sustain any conversation at all I hardly knew. “I concede we’re not on the breadline, but aren’t you talking megabucks here?”

He just smiled at me. He had the intensely self-satisfied air of someone who has just pulled off a first-class con-trick. I had seen my father look like that on those rare occasions when he had backed a horse which had won against long odds. “I can see the time’s come to tell you something I’ve never told a soul,” he said, by this time almost vibrating with delight. “Now I’m
really
coming clean with you, sweetheart! I’ve got a secret stash in a numbered bank account in Switzerland, and I assure you we’re currently in a position to relocate anywhere we damn well please . . .”