Struggling at last into my favourite black dress, I told myself fiercely that dinner-parties should be banned by law.
IX
Words can barely describe the relief I experienced when the evening proved to be a success. This triumph was perhaps hardly a surprise, since I can go to enormous lengths to avoid failure, but honesty compels me to admit the occasion was a success not because I had the flat looking like a dream-pad in a property magazine but because Alice produced a meal worthy of a multistar Michelin restaurant. How she did it in my cramped unmodernised kitchen must remain one of the culinary wonders of 1990.
She had chosen a Basque recipe; roast saddle of lamb was accompanied by almonds, potatoes and a sauce Béarnaise in which mint replaced the usual tarragon. The first course consisted of an elaborate salad, designed to seduce the American guests, and as it was in the Tuscan style it also entranced the judge’s wife, who, just as Alice had suspected, was keen to display her knowledge of Chiantishire cuisine. After the main course a lemon sorbet kept down the cholesterol count for those who cared about such things and provided an acerbic contrast to the luscious lamb, but following the sorbet a board of mouth-watering Stilton, Cheddar and Brie circulated for those who still yearned to kick their diets in the teeth. A large bowl of grapes accompanied the cheeseboard in its wanderings.
Moving into the kitchen to check the progress of the coffee I murmured to Alice: “Magnificent! Well done!” and Alice’s plump cheeks became pink with pleasure. This evening she was wearing glasses because, she said, she had only recently taken to trying contact lenses and she was still unable to wear them for long periods. In keeping with her professionalism she was dressed in a plain black dress with black stockings and flat black shoes; a white apron billowed over her resplendent bosom. I was reminded incongruously of a certain kind of card seen in West End phone booths, the card advertising the services of prostitutes who gratify the weirdos by dressing up in uniforms to provide kinky sex.
The coffee circulated. Liqueur chocolates were passed around. Behind the closed door of the kitchen Alice began the next phase of clearing up. On his way to fetch the box of cigars Kim murmured to me: “How’s she getting home?”
“Her partner or fiancé or whatever he is will come and pick her up. She’ll call him from the bedroom when she’s ready to leave.”
“Great cook, great dinner—and great uniform!” He winked at me.
I gave him a mild cuff and turned my attention to the non-smokers who were regrouping around the telescope as the cigar-fiends headed for the balcony. To my relief the night was fine. The guests spent ages drooling over the view.
When I next checked on Alice I found she had finished clearing up and had called the boyfriend, but he had been delayed; was it all right if she waited for him in the flat or would I prefer her to go downstairs? She knew he would appear eventually. There was no question of him not showing up.
“Well, of course you must stay in the flat!” I exclaimed. “Switch on the bedroom TV and make yourself at home!” Being so excessively hospitable to strangers was hardly my style, but I was more than keen to display my gratitude to her.
The porter eventually buzzed from the lobby just as we had closed the front door on the last guest. “Mike in the garage says someone’s come to pick up your cook, Mrs. Betz.”
“Thanks.” I hung up the intercom’s receiver and floated into the bedroom where Alice was watching an old black-and-white film on TV; I caught a glimpse of Joan Crawford emoting beneath eyebrows thick enough to support a row of dinner-plates. “Your pal’s arrived,” I announced. “Hey, let’s invite him up here for a drink—why didn’t I think of that earlier? If anyone deserves a drink you do!” It need hardly be said that I was in that expansive mood which follows a period of sustained stress. Huge relief had produced a euphoria hyped up by vodka, port and claret. (Kim had succeeded in passing off the ’85 St. Julien as a much older vintage; everyone had been too pie-eyed after the generous pre-dinner drinks to notice the date on the label.)
Alice was saying to me: “I wouldn’t dream of troubling you,” but she was overruled by Kim.
I recalled the porter on the intercom. “Could you ask Mike to tell the gentleman he’s invited up to the thirty-fifth floor for a drink?”
But the gentleman declined to come. It was very kind of Mr. and Mrs. Betz, but he would just collect Ms. Fletcher and disappear.
“He needs the personal touch!” I declared, determined to draw this shy wallflower into the centre of the action. “Come on, Alice, we’ll go downstairs and get him. Kim, stay here and open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the best dinner ever cooked in Harvey Tower!”
Poor Alice, who of course was stone-cold sober, tried to protest but was quelled by the Betz brigade radiating drunken imperiousness. We rode down past the podium and emerged into the car park to find a very clean white Peugeot parked directly in front of the door which led to the lift shafts. As we appeared the driver sprang out. He was a tall, slim man in his forties with brown hair, neatly cut, and an unusual face, all strong bones and hard angles and taut pale skin. He wore jeans and a black leather jacket. As he came to greet us I noticed that he moved with a grace almost liquid in its fluency, a grace which made me wonder if he was an accomplished actor well used to inhabiting the best stages in town.
Alice said to me: “This is Nicholas Darrow. Nicholas, may I introduce—” She paused, tripped up by the conundrum of alternative surnames.
“Carter Graham,” I said, automatically serving up the name I gave to everyone I met through my work, and as the stranger held out his hand the facings of his jacket parted so that I could see not only the blue shirt beneath but also the telltale strip of white plastic at his neck.
He was a clergyman.
X
I was so struck by the coincidence that I was face to face with a Christian only a day after I had sworn that Christians would never play a part in my life that for a moment I was immobilised. I had to remind myself very sharply that this was a man I was unlikely to see again.
“Hi,” Darrow was saying perfunctorily while I was still wrestling with my amazement, and the next moment I found myself clasping his outstretched hand. He had long, slim fingers which wrapped themselves firmly around mine.
All I could say when my hand was released was: “Alice didn’t tell me you were a clergyman.”
“Well, I shouldn’t imagine the subject came up,” he said neatly. “After all, I wasn’t on the menu.” He turned to Alice. “Everything okay?”
“Fine!” She smiled at him radiantly.
“Then we’ll be on our way. Ms. Graham, forgive me for turning down your kind invitation, but I have to be up early tomorrow.”
I muttered some civility before Alice said goodbye and volunteered to help me out with any future dinner-parties. Having thanked her, I watched them depart and then rode back to the thirty-fifth floor.
“So you failed to lure him upstairs!” commented Kim who had wisely avoided opening the champagne. “How did he resist you?”
“No idea.” I wandered into the bedroom and started shedding my jewellery.
“Nice guy?”
“Not my type.” I glanced at my reflection in the mirror and decided I looked like a Hitchcock heroine who had survived some peculiarly sinister encounter. (Grace Kelly after her escape from Raymond Burr in Rear Window?) I wondered why I found myself unable to say to Kim: “You’ll never believe this, but the boyfriend turned out to be a clergyman! How about that for a laugh?” But perhaps a sinister encounter could not, by definition, ever be considered amusing.
Fortunately I was too drunk to meditate further on Mrs. Mayfield’s prediction that I would start “flirting with the enemy.” Having knocked back the maximum dose of Alka-Seltzer I removed my make-up, stripped off my clothes and sank into oblivion as fast as a concrete block disappearing into quicksands.
XI
I needed to give full recognition to my hangover the next morning, although off
icially there was no time; on Saturdays I had to operate to a tight schedule in order to complete all my chores. I had to clean the flat, do the wash, pick up the cleaning, raid the supermarket, visit the hairdresser, manicure my nails, replenish my make-up supplies, sort out the mail I had been too busy to open during the week, balance my cheque-book and run a couple of miles on the treadmill I kept among my clobber in the second bedroom. The bonus this weekend was that I had already done a deep clean of the living-room, which now only required tidying, and Alice had left the kitchen pristine except for the floor, an area I could usually wash in less than a minute.
Being house-trained (though not quite so house-trained as he had managed to be before the wedding), Kim had his own chores to do. He did his own wash and picked up his own cleaning. We had tried to merge our washes and amalgamate our pick-ups, but somehow we always required different settings on the washing machine, and as for the cleaning, there was usually too much for one person to collect in a single visit. Kim raided the supermarket for me sometimes but was unreliable as he always deviated from my list and imposed his own choices, most of which I disliked on principle. He refused to do any housework—a perfectly valid line to take, but until I could find the time to hire a cleaner I was unable to refuse too. As the result of the divorce he had more correspondence than I did to tackle at weekends, and on this particular Saturday he was going to have to take his shattered picture to be reframed after his swim at the health club. Often he had to walk over to his office and work for a couple of hours. In short, we were busy, busy, busy on Saturdays, and waking hung over was definitely not the best way to start the weekend.
We were still slumped in bed, still drinking black coffee and feeling as if we ought to be hooked up to life-support machines, when the phone rang.
“Our doting guests are calling to shower us with compliments,” I said.
“Already? You seriously think they’re conscious? Hey, kill that noise before my head splits open!”
I picked up the receiver and succeeded in uttering a monosyllable. It was: “Yep?”
A woman’s voice said with awful brightness: “Hullo, is Jake there, please?”
“Wrong number. Sorry.”
“Wait, is that Carter?”
I was so startled that I said: “Yes, it is,” instead of demanding to know who was calling.
“Oh Carter, it’s Mandy Simmons—remember me? We met recently at that super party in Mayfair, and—”
“I remember. Who’s Jake?”
“Oh, isn’t that silly of me, I quite forgot, he’s usually known as Kim, isn’t he? We always called him Jake in the group . . . Have you heard about our little group, by any chance?”
“You bet,” I said, wishing my brain was less soaked in chemicals. “I just loved the way you all told Kim not to marry me.”
I was aware of Kim sitting bolt upright. “Give that to me,” he ordered, reaching for the receiver, but I clung on. Meanwhile Mandy was bubbling away, frothy as a shaken carbonated drink. “Goodness me, don’t take offence just because we made a silly mistake! We realise now we overreacted, and that’s exactly why I’m calling! Tell Kim we’d really love to see him again, and—is he there by any chance? Can I speak to him?”
“In your dreams, sister,” I said and tried to slam down the receiver but Kim caught my wrist and took over the call.
“Mandy?”
“Jake!” I could hear her very clearly. I was pressed against Kim, my ear inches from his. “Sweetie, what on earth have you been saying about us to Carter? She sounded absolutely ferocious!”
“Mandy, let’s get this straight. I’m grateful to the group for all the help I received, but—”
“Elizabeth’s missing you terribly!”
“Elizabeth’s a tough lady. She’ll survive.”
“It’s your survival we’re all worried about, sweetie! I say, did you tell Carter about your Nazi past?”
Kim slammed down the receiver. Then he hurled the phone at the wall so violently that the plastic casing split, and blundered from the bed to the bathroom.
FOUR
We feel that the weave of our self with others is unravelling or being torn . . . habits of trusting communication are betrayed.
DAVID F. FORD
The Shape of Living
I
I remained where I was, propped against the pillows. I had never realised before that a person can be literally shocked rigid. Finally my brain kicked in and I was able to unlock my limbs, retrieve the shattered phone and replace the receiver. Padding to the bathroom door I listened, holding my breath, but there was no sound. In the shower-room nearby I dowsed my face with cold water but when I came up for air I still found lucid thought impossible. I only knew that I now possessed knowledge that Kim had been very determined I should never acquire and that if I failed to play my cards correctly Mandy’s dynamite might well have a devastating effect on the marriage. I needed to be sympathetic and supportive, not angry and shocked.
Yet I was angry and shocked. In the kitchen I drank two glasses of water to drown my hangover and then moved to my telescope in the living-room. Outside the rain was falling and it was too misty to see far, but I followed the river east from its south-north twist at Westminster until I wound up staring at the golden figure of Justice, holding her sword aloft, above the criminal courts of the Old Bailey. I was still sitting at my telescope, still thinking of how justice had been meted out to the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, when I heard Kim moving about in the kitchen.
I did not turn around but merely called: “Sorry—I should have put some fresh coffee on.”
“That’s okay.” He sounded calm. I assumed he too had been fiercely willing himself to regain his equilibrium, and suddenly the likeness between us gave me strength. I felt that the scene I now had to handle required no elaborate strategy but only the faith that the relationship would survive.
Idly I heard myself say: “I know that type of woman. She usually works in glamour-mills famous for bloodbath turnovers, and she’ll simper and coo in her little-girl frock right up to the moment when she’s whipping out the knife to disembowel you. Of course she knew, didn’t she, that even after you came on the line I’d be listening in to every word she said.”
“Right.” He emerged from the kitchen with a tall glass of milk in his hand and drifted over to me.
“Have a look,” I said, patting the telescope. “It’s very therapeutic, puts everything in perspective.”
But he shook his head. “I’d be too afraid I’d see the City bombed to pieces.”
At once I said: “That was a very long time ago and you were only a baby at the time.”
“True. Only a baby . . . but not, I’m afraid, in Argentina. Did you never suspect?”
I could only say with great difficulty: “I trusted you.” Somehow I managed to add: “When did life in Argentina begin?”
“Nineteen forty-seven. I was born in Cologne in 1940 and my father, of course, wasn’t Jewish. He joined the Nazi Party in 1929, the year Hans Frank became its legal adviser . . . Have you ever heard of Hans Frank?”
I shook my head, so shattered by this rapid recital of facts that the name barely registered, and at once Kim added, as if driven to speak before his nerve failed him: “My father was a lawyer, well-educated, from a good family. I mean, he wasn’t just some robot in the OKH who put his brains on ice while he obeyed orders—”
Mechanically I repeated: “OKH?”
“The German Army High Command. The OKH and the OKW were . . . no, forget that. It’s enough to say that my father found the military types very boring. Before the war he worked with Hans Frank on the Gleichschaltung legal system and became a member of the German Academy of Law when Frank founded it. He and Frank were good friends. Frank was famous for saying: ‘Love of the Führer has become a concept in law.’ Frank . . . well, Frank became famous for a lot of things . . . He was hanged at Nuremberg after the war.”
He paused but I was too numb to re
spond, and at last he began to talk again, still using the flattest possible voice. “Frank became Governor-General of occupied Poland,” he said, “and operated from Wavel Castle in Krakow. He initiated the policy of destroying and degrading the Poles until they were reduced to a slave society—oh, and he murdered Jews, of course. Masses of them. More people died in Poland than anywhere else during the war . . . Well, I don’t need to say anything further, do I, except that my father worked in Krakow alongside Frank. And he did business with a man named Reinhard Heydrich . . . Ever heard of him? No? He never made it to Nuremberg because he was assassinated in 1942. He formed the Sicherheitsdienst—the SD—which was an intelligence and security service for the SS, and he was the principal Nazi agent in the campaign against the Jews. The SD was closely allied to the Gestapo.”
He paused again, and the next moment I felt his fingers tentatively brushing my shoulder. Perhaps he needed to see if I would recoil, but by this time I had managed to focus on the fact that Kim, born in 1940, was hardly responsible for his father’s choice of friends.
Forcing myself to cover his hand briefly with mine I was able to ask: “Were you in Krakow with your father?”
“No, no, Poland was dangerous territory, blighted, filled with people whom my father regarded as subhuman. But he arranged for me and my mother to live near the border in eastern Germany so that he could often come and see us. Sometimes my mother managed to visit him in Krakow but she never took me with her. I was always left behind with my nurse and the dog.”
“So that photograph you showed me—”
The High Flyer Page 9
