He slumped down on the bed as if exhausted by this outburst, but a second later he was on his feet again, too strung up to keep still.
“It’s evil which constitutes reality in this world,” he said, pacing up and down, “and what human beings long for most is to escape pain and suffering. Schopenhauer got that right—but of course you wouldn’t have read Schopenhauer. You never read anything except the latest laws on tax!”
“I may be very ignorant,” I managed to say, “but there’s one thing I do know and I didn’t need to read a book in order to find it out. What people want most of all is to love and be loved.”
“Don’t hand me that romantic rubbish! Love’s nothing but a built-in biological imperative to perpetuate the human race!”
Without hesitation I said: “That’s the nastiest speech I’ve heard for a long time, and to make matters worse it’s absolute crap!”
“But there are plenty of people who think as I do!”
“Yeah—people like Mrs. Mayfield! Power-junkies hooked on domination! Kim, can’t you honestly see that once you downgrade love like that you downgrade human beings, and once you downgrade human beings you’re squarely on the road to Auschwitz?”
“If you’re calling me a Nazi, I swear I’ll—”
“I know you hate the Nazis!” I cried. “But that’s exactly what makes this conversation so appalling! You’re talking as if your next line of dialogue is going to be: ‘Heil Hitler!’ ”
“Bullshit!” he shouted. “You don’t understand a single thing I’ve said! The Third Reich was generated by the Powers and Hitler abused his power to go along with them—he did everything he could to help them win! But my aim is always to defuse the Powers by controlling them and subjugating them. That’s the only way to feel safe and secure! That’s the only way to ensure a decent, normal life!”
“All right,” I said rapidly, recognising that his distress was genuine, “you’re basically one of the good guys. But I still think there’s something unreal about this world-view of yours. There’s a sort of nothingness about it . . . a sort of absence of something . . . an absence of the good perhaps, yes, that’s it; you’re concentrating all the time on the darkness of evil, but what about the light? What about beauty and joy and all the experiences which make one feel it’s great to be alive? For instance, what about that terrific sex we had last Friday? That was such a great way of expressing our love for each other—are you seriously trying to tell me it was nothing but a manifestation of a biological drive?”
All his aggression vanished. Painfully he said: “I was unsure how well you liked that.”
“My darling Kim—”
“You shouldn’t have faked it.”
“Okay, I’ll come clean: I was getting sore. But that doesn’t alter the fact that it was great sex! I felt really guilty that I needed to call a halt—I felt you didn’t deserve to be disappointed by a partner who was less than perfect, and that was another reason why I—”
“For God’s sake, you were making love, not sitting the Law Society examinations!” he said, still too upset to laugh but struggling for a humorous response to end the quarrel, and a second later we had blundered into each other’s arms.
“Surely you can admit now,” I said at last after we had embraced fiercely, “that love’s more important than power?”
“But love’s dependent on power.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I watched my father go to pieces after the war I realised that a man’s got to be macho and he’s got to have power if he wants a woman to keep on loving him. Otherwise she just goes off and screws someone else.”
I was appalled. “Not if she loves him!”
“Now you’re being romantic and sentimental again. Admit it—it was the power which first attracted you to me! I could see how the power turned you on as soon as you found out what I did and could figure out how much I earned!”
I forced myself to answer steadily: “In the beginning I wasn’t looking for love, just for sex. But our relationship’s travelled a very, very long way since then.”
“If I lost my job tomorrow you’d leave me.”
“Don’t be absurd!”
“If you found out I was powerless you’d be gone. That’s the way of the world. That’s rock-bottom reality.”
“No,” I said stubbornly. “You’re wrong. Rock-bottom reality is that I love you. Rock-bottom reality is love.”
He moved blindly back into my arms again and I hugged him with all my strength. For a while neither of us spoke but when he released me at last he whispered: “I’d like to believe that. I really would.”
“Can’t you at least believe that I love you?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid the Powers will smash your love up unless I’ve got the means to beat them back. I’ve got to have the strength,” he said, turning away from me, “to keep wrestling with the Powers, and at the moment Mrs. Mayfield’s the one who ensures I have that strength, Mrs. Mayfield’s the one who can control the Powers so that they don’t overwhelm me. One day,” he said, “I believe I’ll be strong enough to do without Mrs. Mayfield, but I’m not quite strong enough yet. I’ve been through so much. I need more time.”
There was a long silence. Finally I said: “Okay, let’s leave it at that for now,” and standing on tiptoe I kissed him on the cheek.
But he barely heard me. “Carter, you don’t really think, do you, that I arranged that mess in the flat yesterday?”
“No, that was just a forensic trick to get you to open up. Let’s forget it,” I said, unable to summon either the nerve or the energy to return to the subject, but later I lay awake haunted by all my anxieties until dawn began to break again over the City.
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 t
urn 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-flun
g 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.
EIGHT
When someone deeply hurts us it is one of the worst forms of overwhelming.
DAVID F. FORD
The Shape of Living
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.
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