The High Flyer (4 page)

XII

Kim and I soon decided that marriage was a viable option, but we also decided to keep both our affair and our marital plans under wraps for a time. There was a good reason for this extreme discretion: by coincidence we were both in the process of changing jobs. Kim had been asked to become Head of Legal at Graf-Rosen, the big international investment bank, while I was being wooed by the partners of Curtis, Towers who were keen for me to shore up their tax department. Obviously it made sense that we should present ourselves as people who had their private lives in immaculate order, and certainly I had no intention of telling my would-be partners that I had marriage plans; they might have felt faint at the thought of maternity leave, even though my life-plan allowed me, if necessary, to work for up to two years after marriage before becoming pregnant.

By that time I had decided that I did not mind waiting another year for Kim’s divorce; by the February of 1990 when proceedings could begin I would still be two months short of my thirty-fifth birthday and the year I had earmarked for marriage. I also felt I should welcome the opportunity to get to know Kim as well as possible before tying the knot. The only danger lay in our establishing such a satisfactory relationship that he became too contented with unmarried life, but I reckoned I had the know-how to steer him away from fulfilling this notorious male pipe-dream.

Kim did reconsider the way he was setting about extricating himself from his marriage, but since a year of his separation had already elapsed, it seemed in the end less trouble not to meddle with the wheels which had been set in motion. There is only one ground for divorce: irretrievable marital breakdown. But in order to demonstrate this breakdown it has to be shown that either adultery or unacceptable behaviour (flexibly defined) or one of three different categories involving separation (including desertion) has taken place. Kim and Sophie had agreed last year that they should claim marital breakdown as manifested by the simplest form of separation (two years spent apart, both parties consenting) but if Kim’s adultery with me were now to be substituted for the separation, the divorce proceedings could be considerably accelerated.

For a brief moment we were tempted, but we both saw that it was wiser not to play the adultery card. Quite apart from the fact that we were keen to keep our relationship low profile while we were changing jobs, the marriage break-up could so easily be misrepresented. There would have been no drama in court, since uncontested divorces are shunted through so fast that the parties barely have time to hear their names when the list is read out, but word of the adultery could have got around and the truth distorted. People might have thought I had bust up the marriage. Not wanting to be slagged off as hormone-driven or desperate I was keen to avoid this slander, and Kim was equally keen for people not to push the lie that he had junked his wife because he had fancied a much younger woman. People might have thought he was gripped by a midlife crisis and temporarily unreliable.

“And to be honest,” said Kim, after we had decided to keep going with the two-year separation, “I’m not sure I would have relished going to Sophie to suggest a quickie divorce based on adultery. Divorce is difficult enough for her as she’s a practising Christian in a small, conservative community, but at least the two-year separation route enables her to tell her friends that although the marriage is ending there’s no one else involved.”

I was not only startled by this comment but disturbed. “Do you mean to say she doesn’t know about me yet?”

“Why should she? Since we’re both being so discreet—”

“But she’s bound to hear eventually!”

“Let’s get the job-change out of the way. Then once we’re free to be more open about our relationship—”

“Kim, if she hears the truth from someone else, she’s going to be miffed as hell. Why don’t you go down to Oakshott next weekend and break the news?”

But he said the job-change was creating quite enough stress in his life and Sophie had to be kept on ice until the pressure had eased.

A week later during a rare night out at the Barbican Theatre, we had the disastrous luck to come face to face with Sophie’s brother, and the next morning Kim reluctantly phoned Sophie to break the news of my existence. But he was too late. The brother’s tongue had already been wagging. Sophie wanted to know if remarriage was being planned and Kim found he could procrastinate no longer.

When he told her the truth she promptly withdrew her consent to the divorce.

XIII

“What the hell’s going on?” I said shattered when I heard what had happened.

“She’s taking the high moral ground by saying she’d be condoning my adultery if she agreed to a divorce, but I suspect this is really just another case of ‘a woman scorn’d’ venting her fury.”

“But it makes no sense! Surely she realises you’ve committed adultery before?”

Kim said drily: “It’s one thing to turn a blind eye while your husband conducts an ultra-discreet extra-marital sex life; that’s all part of being a virtuous long-suffering wife. But it’s quite another to find yourself being publicly discarded and replaced.”

“But why shouldn’t she be discarded and replaced if she’s refused to sleep with you for—how long did you say it was?”

“A hundred light-years. Look, sweetheart, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all this but I’m sure it’s just a temporary hitch . . .”

I found no comfort in this assurance. It was true that nowadays no one could delay a divorce indefinitely, but it was also true that Sophie could still make us wait several more years before Kim was able to obtain a divorce without her consent. So horrified was I by this potential derailing of my life-plan that I was beyond speech, and seeing how upset I was Kim redoubled his efforts to reassure me.

“Carter, she’s going to abandon this tough line just as soon as she realises I’m determined to marry you—she’s going to abandon it just as soon as she realises all her delaying tactics are futile!”

But I was barely listening. Another horrific thought had struck me. “Christ, supposing she takes you to the financial cleaners?”

“She wouldn’t,” said Kim automatically.

“Why not? If she’s got a good lawyer—”

“You’re forgetting the law’s supposed to avoid punitive settlements. And there’s no reason why the financial situation shouldn’t result in a standard clean-break arrangement.”

My scepticism deepened. “What exactly is the financial situation?”

“Sophie has her own money. Because of this I’ve always spent freely, with the result that I’m now long on income but short on capital, and that means the crucial asset for me is that house in Oakshott which I bought with my own money and which is registered in my name. When Sophie and I discussed the divorce last year, she offered to buy me out so that she could stay on, and I think that’s fair enough as she has more money than I have. So since we’re basically in agreement—”

“You’re dreaming. Surely under the Matrimonial Causes Act the judge will take your future earnings into account when assessing the assets? And Sophie must be entitled in equity to a share of her home— she’s probably even entitled to that under common law!”

“But in cases where both spouses have money, I’m sure they can cut their own deal for rubber-stamping by the judge at the time of the divorce—”

“You’re still dreaming. Sophie will now try and screw you over the house.”

“No, she won’t! She’s got too much dignity!”

“Oh yeah? Then what’s she doing crashing around in a fury? And incidentally, isn’t this vindictive anger of hers immoral for a Christian? Shouldn’t she just forgive you and turn the other cheek?”

“Sophie’s a good woman but she’s not Jesus Christ.”

“Then what’s the betting that she’ll seek revenge and call it justice!”

But Kim was clearly still reluctant to face the worst. “Sweetheart—”

“Look,” I said, becoming much milder in the hope of sounding more persuasive, “surely all that counts is that the divorce shouldn’t be delayed for years? And since we’re both going to be earning megabucks, is it really so disastrous if you emerge from the marriage with less than the ideal amount of capital?”

“But I need every penny that’s rightfully mine in order to give you a first-class home in a first-class neighbourhood! Don’t you know how much it costs nowadays to buy a decent house in Chelsea or Kensington?”

“But with our joint income we’re bound to be able to swing the deal we want! Listen, darling, don’t get hung up on that Oakshott house or she’ll use it as a weapon against you, and once those lawyers start haggling—”

“My money went into that place,” said Kim obstinately, “and I want that money back. If Sophie now starts screaming that any percentage of it should be hers, I’ll—”

“Hey, what kind of freak
is
this woman?” I exclaimed, trying to lighten the conversation by injecting a shot of humour. “You keep describing her as if she were two different people! First of all she’s meekly agreeing to a divorce and being too dignified to screw you over the house, but the next moment she’s ditched her size-twenty housecoat, togged herself up like a Hollywood tragedy queen and dynamited our plans while breathing fire in all directions! Are you sure you’re not a bigamist with two wives?”

“Isn’t one enough?” Kim retorted acidly, but he did manage to laugh. Then he said: “The discrepancy’s an illusion. The truth is that Sophie’s what the old-fashioned English still call a ‘lady’—someone well-bred, well-mannered, deeply conservative, highly moral and usually well in control of herself. And this sort of woman, who bottles up her emotions, is much more likely to explode with wrath if she feels she’s been wronged. She was merely bottled up last year but now she’s exploded.
Res
ipsa loquitur
.”

I sighed in exasperation. “Okay,” I said, “you’ve convinced me she’s just one person, but I still think she’s carrying on as if she’s fruity-loops. However”—I took a deep breath, knowing I had to concentrate on keeping calm—“I can see now you were right to say her tantrum probably won’t last once she realises you’re determined to marry me. I’ll lie low so as not to inflame her further, your lawyers will wave a magic wand to produce the right financial settlement—after all, what the hell are they being paid for?—and Ms. Fruity-Loops will eventually realise that if she wants to keep her halo twinkling she’ll have to abandon the role of avenging harpy. We’ll all live happily ever after in the end, I’m sure of it.”

But a week later the phone calls began.

I

She phoned me at my flat in the Barbican. I had just returned from an exhausting day at my new job and was feeling thoroughly creased and cross. Two dinosaurs had tried to stamp on me and two whippets had attempted breast-brushing. Whippets are racy young males with minimal post-qualifying experience who are barely house-trained and who regard a female lawyer as some novel type of inflatable doll.

“Hullo?” I said, taking the call. I was wondering if Kim was phoning to tell me what an idyllic day he had had with all the dinosaurs grovelling before him and all the minimal p.q.e. whippets tiptoeing past in reverent silence.

“Miss Graham?” The woman’s voice was a pleasant, educated contralto. I confirmed my identity.

“Miss Graham, this is Sophie Betz.”

I hung up. I was still standing there, still too shocked to think clearly, when the phone rang again. I decided the caller was Kim. Bad decision. It was Sophie persisting.

“Miss Graham, please don’t hang up. I’d very much like to talk to you, and—”

Slamming down the receiver, I disconnected the phone and mixed myself a double vodka martini.

II

When Kim stopped by at my flat later and heard the news he was even more shocked than I was. He was also far more angry. Now at last the playful dolphin vanished and I saw the boardroom shark. “I’ll gut whoever leaked your phone number,” he said, “and if the leak came from Milton’s office I’ll bloody sue him.” His distinguished divorce lawyer was in fact a man whom no one in his right mind would sue, but I recognised that Kim needed to let off steam by resorting to violent language.

After I had calmed him down we tried to work out how the leak had occurred. I did have a circle of acquaintances who knew my ex-directory number, but none of them had met Kim, let alone Sophie, and I found it hard to imagine them casually passing my number to a stranger. For a moment I toyed with the idea that the leak had come from someone at the office, but this theory too seemed implausible. My secretary Jacqui, who had accompanied me to Curtis, Towers from my last firm, would never have divulged my home phone number to anyone, and I had given it to none of my new colleagues because I had not been long enough at Curtis, Towers to make friends. The number would be in my personnel file, but I could hardly see Sophie hacking her way into a confidential information system—and how would she have known anyway that I worked for Curtis, Towers?

“She must have hired a private investigator,” said Kim abruptly. “A good PI would have ways and means of turning up your unlisted number.”

But this plausible explanation only triggered another question: why had Sophie hired a PI? Legally I had no connection with the divorce case. I did find myself wondering if Sophie’s lawyers wanted to dredge up information about me in the hope of slinging mud at Kim when the time came to decide who should have the Oakshott house, but I realised at once that since the object of a divorce settlement was not to be punitive but to be equitable, this theory did not make sense. I personally thought the court would order the house to be sold and the proceeds to be divided between the two of them, a decision which would allow Sophie to pay Kim for his half-share if she wanted to stay on in her home. Such a ruling would acknowledge both the fact that Sophie, as a wife of over twenty years’ standing, deserved a share of the family home, and the fact that the place had been bought with Kim’s money. Of course I was not a divorce lawyer, but as far as I could see mud-slinging would be irrelevant in sorting out this routine separation dispute.

“Let’s not forget,” I said at last, “that the main result of this PI’s work—assuming a PI’s been hired—is that Sophie’s been able to access me. And that means the next question has to be: why the hell’s she calling?”

Kim groaned. “Maybe she sees you as an innocent young woman corrupted by an older man and needing to be saved.”

“God! In that case I’ll get an answering machine. It’s never seemed necessary before, but—”

“No, wait. An answering machine sounds like the obvious solution but I believe it would be a tactical error—Sophie would take it as an invitation to leave message after message. Just keep hanging up on her, and she’s bound to get discouraged in the end.”

But unfortunately he was underrating his wife’s persistence. When she finally realised the phone calls were getting her nowhere, the letters started to arrive at my flat.

III

Since we were both now working in our new jobs and Sophie was aware of the affair, Kim was soon saying that our extreme discretion was no longer necessary, we could let it be known that we were a couple, and why didn’t he move in to my Barbican flat.

“Because I haven’t invited you to do so,” I said, remembering my resolution not to let him become too comfortable before the wedding ring was firmly on my finger. A man’s will to marry is a tender plant which needs careful nurturing, and the risk of it dying of inertia is one which needs to be taken seriously. “I agree there’s no need to keep the affair under wraps now, but before you move in let’s just see what Sophie does next.”

“But that’s the point!” he protested. “I want to be on hand to screen you from further harassment!”

“If you start to live with me, aren’t you much more likely to stimulate it?”

It was on the Saturday morning after this conversation that I received the first letter. It was written on thick cream paper and the engraved address managed to conjure up in every line visions of the leafy lanes of Surrey. “THE LARCHES,” proclaimed the print, “ELM DRIVE, OAKSHOTT . . .” Even the postal code had a T for Tree in it. “Dear Miss Graham,” I read queasily, “I am sorry you do not wish to speak to me. I assume you are feeling guilty about committing adultery with my—”

I said aloud: “Oh my God!” and crumpled the letter as I clenched my fist. But then curiosity overwhelmed me and I straightened the paper out again.

“. . . committing adultery with my husband,” the letter continued. “However, I do not write in a spirit of recrimination but out of a desire to save you from—”

My fist reclenched, the paper recrunched and I moved into the kitchen to consign the whole religion-soaked twaddle to oblivion. How dared she talk of “saving” me! These religious nutters were a menace to a free society and to the sacred right of the individual to live as he or she chose.

The flats in Harvey Tower, in common with all the other flats on the Barbican estate, have an extraordinary waste disposal system called the Garchey, which consists of a tube leading from one of the two kitchen sinks in each flat to some unimaginable lower region which connects, I assume, to the sewers. Nothing consigned to the Garchey is ever recovered. Consigning Sophie’s letter I turned on the water and flushed the rubbish away, but when Kim heard about the letter he was not only livid with Sophie for sending it but livid with me for destroying it.

“Why didn’t you wait to show it to me?”

“Why should I? It was garbage. I junked it. End of story.”

“But what did she say?”

“Nutterguff about sin and salvation. I didn’t even read beyond the opening lines.”

“But of course you did! No woman can resist reading to the end of a letter from her lover’s wife!”

“Watch it, buster. I’m not in the mood for being stereotyped and I’m never in the mood to be called a liar.”

He apologised at once but was unable to change the subject. “If there are any more letters,” he said, “would you please hand them to me unopened?”

“No,” I shot back. “I’m a big girl now. I’m allowed to read letters which are addressed to me. For God’s sake, Kim, why are you getting your guts in such a twist over this?”

He sighed heavily, apologised a second time but could only add: “I just don’t want Sophie upsetting you.”

“Fair enough, but I’m hardly a delicate little daisy trembling for fear of being trodden on! Why are you overreacting like this?”

“Who says I’m overreacting?”

“I do. Darling, what’s going on? Are you afraid Sophie’s going to spill the beans about some vital dimension of the marriage which I don’t yet know about?”

“Oh sure! I’m panicking in case she tells you I’m an unreconstructed male who likes his wife to wait on him hand and foot!”

“God, trying to cross-examine a lawyer like you is worse than trying to pull teeth. Come on, Betz, shape up—I’m not letting you off the hook! Just why are you so livid with Sophie and just why are you so anxious for me to have nothing to do with her?”

He sighed again. He was good at these heavy sighs; I suspected that they gave him time to reorganise his thoughts with lightning speed. But at last he said frankly: “I suppose the rock-bottom truth is that I feel guilty about her—the rock-bottom truth is I feel a bit of a shit. It was okay when the decision to divorce was reached by mutual consent and there was no other party involved, but it does make a difference, I have to admit, that I’m exchanging her for a younger woman. And you know the psychological pattern which guilt so often produces, don’t you? You can’t face your own self-hatred so you project it onto someone else. If I’m angry at the moment with Sophie it’s because I’m actually angry with myself for hurting her; if I’m trying to keep Sophie out of your life it’s because I can’t stand the effect she’s currently having on mine.”

After a pause I said: “I like you better for feeling guilty. You’d certainly be a bit of a shit if you didn’t. Thanks for being honest with me.”

So that was that. But I saw clearly then that the way to help Kim survive this rancorous divorce was not to bother him further with tales of Sophie’s harassment. He needed to be cosseted, soothed and supported during this arduous time which was made all the more stressful by the fact that he had just taken on a very high-powered job. I had read enough pop psychology to know that guilt led to anxiety which led to neurosis which led to melt-down, and I did not want to land my big fish only to discover that I had acquired some sort of piscine blob.

I decided that he should come to live with me at Harvey Tower before guilt could trigger an impotence which might cast a fatal blight on that delicate plant, the male will to marry.

IV

When Kim moved in I was a trifle nervous in case he then revealed unattractive traits which he had so far managed to conceal, but he remained well-behaved and indeed turned out to be superbly house-trained for a man of his age—by which I mean that he did not leave his clothes all over the floor or the bathroom in a mess or dirty dishes stacked outside the dishwasher. He also showed himself capable of doing selected chores, provided that he was the one who did the selecting. Evidently the years of living on his own during the week at his Clifford’s Inn pied-à-terre had more than counterbalanced the old-fashioned pampering he would have received from the old-fashioned wife at weekends.

Sophie sent three more letters but I tore them all up unread. And where, it might well be asked, was my natural curiosity? I came to the uneasy conclusion that it had been consigned to a limbo which I was most reluctant to explore. Was I feeling in any way guilty myself? Absolutely not! The marriage had ground to a halt long before I had appeared on the scene. My hands, I told myself fiercely, were as clean as a couple of whistles. My conscience, I told myself even more fiercely, was pristine. I utterly refused, I told myself—now even sweating with fierceness—to feel any degree of guilt whatsoever.

But in that case what was all the fierceness about and why did I feel so sick whenever I received a letter from Sophie that I could hardly wait to flush it down the Garchey?

I decided finally that I should admit the guilt in order to surmount it. Fine. I was experiencing guilt. Not much. Just a bit. And there was no doubt that part of my mind did feel sorry for Sophie. It was no fun for a middle-aged woman to preside over the disintegration of her marriage, but on the other hand so often losers had only themselves to blame for their losses. Why hadn’t she shed thirty pounds, smartened herself up, sought therapy for the sex hang-up, made an effort to share Kim’s London life? Bearing these failures in mind I decided I could only feel moderately sorry for her—and considering she was currently bent on creating as much trouble for Kim as possible while pestering me with religious nutterguff, I considered I was being extremely magnanimous in feeling sorry for her at all.

Meanwhile Kim and Sophie were communicating only through their lawyers who were enjoying many delicious hours of convoluted negotiations as they attempted to resolve the impasse. Their lavish bills provided lurid proof of what a fine time they were having; as Kim said drily to me once after receiving a bill from Milton, lawyers can be such swine.

I was just thinking in despair that nothing would alter Sophie’s determination to make Kim wait the statutory five years in order to obtain a divorce without her consent, when she stunned us by changing course. Maybe she found the legal bills too outrageous to tolerate a moment longer or maybe she finally realised the long-term futility of her stand, but whatever her reason was she agreed to abandon the delaying tactics on two conditions: the first was that Kim should cede her the house at Oakshott, and the second was that they should divorce at once, using Kim’s adultery with me as the grounds for establishing the marriage’s irretrievable breakdown. No doubt this second condition featured on her agenda precisely because she had realised that Kim was far from keen to go down this route, and she still wanted to cause him as much inconvenience as possible.

Kim was livid. I urged him to grab the divorce, ditch the house and wash his hands once and for all of this revenge-obsessed female, but his macho pride was interfering with his common sense and he hated the thought that Sophie was able to push him around. More time slipped away. More legal costs were incurred. However, this second impasse was again resolved by Sophie herself. She had left me alone ever since changing course earlier, but now she started pestering me again with phone calls and my patience finally snapped.

“GET RID OF THAT WOMAN!” I yelled to Kim. “I don’t care how you do it, but if you don’t get rid of her right away and grab that divorce I’ll—” I was about to say: “I’ll climb every wall in this flat!” but I believe he thought I was going to say: “I’ll break off our relationship,” for he interrupted me so quickly that he stumbled over his words.

“Okay, I’ll fix it,” he said. “I’m not going to let Sophie wreck us. I’ll call Milton first thing tomorrow morning.”

So Sophie had her revenge and Kim lost all the money he had invested in the house at Oakshott, but at least the divorce now rocketed ahead and we were both too exhausted to care that adultery had been substituted for the two-year separation. In the December of 1989, a year after we had first met, Kim and I were free to whip through a registry office wedding before boarding a plane to Germany for the honeymoon, and I could tell myself the nightmare generated by Sophie was finally over.

But I was mistaken.