The High Flyer (3 page)

VIII

“I assume your parents are still alive,” said Kim, as I toyed with several opening statements but failed to utter any of them.

“Uh-huh. I check the pulses once a year.”

“Surely there’s more to them than their pulses?”

“Not a lot. My mother enjoys a very ordinary life with her second husband, who’s an electrician. They have two girls, both now married.”

“You get on with them?”

“Why not? They’re all very nice. It’s not their fault that when I visit them every Christmas I feel like an alien dropping in via my private UFO.”

“I get the picture . . . And your father?”

“He’s the reason why my mother has this passion for a quiet life in which nothing unpredictable ever happens.”

“An adventurer?”

“That’s certainly one way of describing him. It would be less glamorous but more truthful to say he’s an occasional member of Gamblers Anonymous. He should be a full-time member, but he never gets that far.”

“You see him at Christmas too?”

“Sure. I take the UFO up to Glasgow after checking the pulses in Newcastle. He’s always delighted to see me.”

“Proud of your success?”

“Thrilled.”

“And your mother’s proud of that too, of course.”

“My mother’s idea of success,” I said, “is marrying a local boy and raising a family. My father’s idea of success is living high on the hog. So you can guess which parent comes within a million miles of imagining what sort of life I have.”

“Did your father remarry?”

“More than once, like your mother, but it’s never worked out. All his wives have found him a walking disaster . . . And talking of wives—”

I had decided it was time I found out more about Sophie.

IX

“The first thing I have to confess,” said Kim, “is that she’s not visiting a sick friend in Nether Wallop this weekend. I’ve no idea where she is. We’ve been living apart since last February.”

From my point of view this was good news but I felt an austere reaction was called for. “Why didn’t you come right out and say so on the flight to New York?”

“Sometimes it’s wise to be reticent.”

“Worried in case I was one of those thirty-somethings hooked on dreams of wedding bells?”

“You’d be surprised what a talent women of all ages have for dreaming!”

“So does this belated confession mean you’ve decided I’m no dreamer?”

“It means I’ve decided you’re gorgeous enough for me to have a few dreams of my own.”

I did not take this remark too seriously, since lovers do tend to pay that sort of compliment when dining out in Paris, but I appreciated the hint that he was willing for the affair to become more significant. “Okay, Mr. Smoothie,” I said. “Let’s hear more about this separated wife of yours.”

To my relief he then proved more than willing to talk of Sophie, and I learned that they had first met when he had been up at Oxford; she had been the sister of one of his friends there. Her family was both wealthy and well-connected, and having worked out that it would be wonderfully providential if he were to fall in love with her, Kim discovered later, once he was qualified, that he was in love. Surprise! It was an old, old story.

Unlike me Kim was a barrister, not a solicitor, but he had decided from the start that he had no wish to spend a long apprenticeship in chambers, and as the result of his stepfather’s influence he had started work as an in-house lawyer at a German bank based in the City. With his bilingual skills and his natural aptitude for business he was soon flourishing, and by the time the marriage took place at St. Paul’s Knightsbridge in 1966 he was already earning a good salary.

“So what went wrong?” I demanded, deciding it was time to switch on the pneumatic drill to dig up the truth.

“Isn’t it obvious that my marriage was a smart career move but an emotional non-starter? We’ve stayed together so long only because she really did turn out to be the ideal wife for an ambitious lawyer—and don’t think I’m not grateful to Sophie for her support over the years. But in the end a marriage—especially a childless marriage—can’t survive on mere gratitude.”

“When did you stop having sex with her?”

“About a hundred light-years ago. Naturally I’ve had other arrangements—”

“Naturally.”

“—but last February we had a row when she refused to come to a Livery Company dinner with me and suddenly I thought: screw it. So then I suggested it was finally time we faced reality and talked about divorce.”

“How did she take it?”

“She wasn’t too keen at first, but in the end she had to concede it would be a relief to end the fiction and live more honestly. I was only showing up at weekends by that time anyway; I always spent Monday through Friday at Clifford’s Inn.”

“Why was Sophie content to keep the marriage going if she was getting no sex?”

“Sex was never her favourite pastime.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure! Hey, why the cross-examination?”

“Because I want to know exactly where I stand and because I know damn well that even ill-assorted couples can bat around in bed right up to the decree nisi and beyond!”

He said, amused: “I love it when you act tough!” But then he leaned forward across the table, clasped my hands and added as seriously as I could have wished: “There’s nothing going on between me and Sophie, Carter. And believe me, this is going to be a friendly, routine, unopposed divorce which will flash through the rubber-stamping process just as soon as we complete the two-year separation in February 1990.”

How sad it is that even the most successful lawyers can make massive errors of judgement.

X

The main result of these confidential conversations in Paris was that I decided Kim was capable of being the husband I had long wanted but had almost lost hope of finding. He fitted the ideal profile. He was successful enough to earn more money than I did, so this meant a major psychological hurdle was demolished. (Most men feel emasculated if they fail to be king of the bank accounts.) He had the educational background which enabled him to go everywhere and know everyone who needed to be known, yet at the same time he well understood what it was like to be an outsider on the make. He had no parents who might prove tiresome. His marriage was already ending so no one could accuse me of breaking it up, and there were no children about to be deprived of a father. I had, of course, taken care to establish that the absence of children was not his fault; apparently something was wrong with Sophie’s Fallopian tubes, and an operation to unblock them had failed. I felt sorry for her. But I also felt very relieved that the absence of children did not disqualify Kim from becoming my husband.

I seemed to have reached the point in my assessment where all I had to do was list his virtues. He had charm, brains, chutzpah, sex appeal, sophistication . . . I ran out of fingers on my left hand and began to count on my right. He was more than acceptable in bed. I knew he had to be a killer-shark in the boardroom, but he apparently had no trouble leaving this side of his personality at the office and becoming the friendly dolphin in his leisure hours. (This dual-natured temperament is far from unknown in big business, and those who possess it often make devoted family men.) I could think of only one disadvantage: he was a little old. It would have been better if he had been five years younger— but then he would not have been earning so much. However, despite being in his late forties he seemed reasonably fit. He walked to work, swam at weekends, had regular check-ups. He was a fraction overweight, but what’s half a stone between friends? He drank, but not to excess. He smoked cigars occasionally but he had given up cigarettes. In short, it seemed reasonable to assume his sperm-count was adequate. (I know this sounds calculating, but a mature woman has to be clear-eyed when assessing middle-aged men as potential fathers, and I was no dewy-eyed fluffette.)

Kim’s final virtue was that he had no interest in dewy-eyed fluffettes and made no secret of the fact that he wanted someone who had the brains to share his London life to the hilt. It was true that he was hardly likely to marry a brainbox who looked like the back end of a bus, but fortunately looking like any part of a public conveyance has never been my problem. I took care of myself. Looking good is a weapon when one jousts continually with treacherous males. All the Hitchcock blondes knew that. Hitchcock would have approved of me, even though my big flaw is that I’m two inches too short. Five feet six is the ideal height for a high flyer. Anything taller gets called butch and anything shorter gets stamped on. Many were the men who had tried to stamp on me and wound up with bruised feet . . . But even the brightest men, as I have already noted, can make massive errors of judgement.

When we were back in London and Kim was telling me about the eminent lawyer who was handling the divorce, I said idly: “It’s a pity you can’t cite adultery by Sophie to hurry the process along. How can you be sure she hasn’t embraced the single life by reversing her anti-sex stance and taking up with some overmuscled hunk twenty years her junior?”

He found that possibility very amusing. “Sweetheart, Sophie wears size twenty clothes and has her grey hair set in corrugated-iron-style waves!”

“For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed, appalled. “Why doesn’t she slim down, smarten up, get a life?”

“She thinks she’s got a life. She’s a pillar of the local church.”

“Oh God, are you saying she’s one of those ghastly Born-Agains?”

“No, just a member of the mainstream Church of England.”

A terrible thought belatedly occurred to me. “Kim, you’re not religious, are you?”

“I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a Christian. But I think there’s something out there.”

“God, you mean?”

“I’ve never found ‘God’ a helpful word. But I have my own views on what St. Paul meant when he talked of the Principalities and Powers.”

“That sounds like serious fantasy! All I can say is that if you’re going to tell me you believe in UFOs, please hand me a large brandy first!”

“I think Jung got it right about UFOs,” said Kim astonishingly. “The point is not whether they exist in what we think of as reality, but why people start seeing them. Jung thought they were a
psychic
reality, indicative of profound anxiety in the collective unconscious.”

I felt my jaw sag. When I had recovered from my amazement I demanded: “But you’re not really interested in all that guff, are you?”

“What guff? Jung? Psychic phenomena? Mysteries of consciousness? Spiritual matters? God? Principalities and Powers? St. Paul?”

“Oh, the whole damn lot! I mean, surely every rational person knows nowadays that there’s no God, religion’s a crutch for losers and truth which can’t be scientifically proved in a laboratory is no truth at all?”

Kim burst out laughing. “Why, what a cute little version of logical positivism! Where did you find that summary—in a Christmas cracker?”

I somehow managed to stop my jaw sagging again. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Sweetheart, logical positivism is an outdated and increasingly discredited philosophy. It reflects the state of mind generated by the Enlightenment, but we’re post-Enlightenment now.”

I stared at him. I did open my mouth to speak but no words came out because I had no idea what to say. What he was talking about had never featured in any of my law books. I felt like an unbriefed barrister, but the next moment Kim had grasped what had happened and was moving to protect my self-esteem. “Relax!” he said soothingly. “I never read a history of modern thought either until I hit forty—you’re much too young to be bothered with that kind of stuff!”

I felt exactly as if a dinosaur had patted me on the arm and said: “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about this problem, my dear!” My natural instinct was to punch him on the nose.

“I don’t give a damn whether you label my views logical positivism, common sense or absolute bullshit,” I snapped. “All I know is that I’m going to continue to put my trust in logic and rationality, and no one is ever going to catch
me
dabbling in any kind of philosophical or theological nutterguff!”

“That’s fine, sweetheart, but if you’re going to be an atheist, do yourself a favour and be an intellectually respectable one, okay? You won’t win any brownie points, believe me, by putting a belief in Jesus Christ in the same category as a belief in UFOs . . . Or are you going to abandon your old-fashioned Enlightenment attitudes and claim that an ill-informed belief is as good as a well-informed one in the post-modern supermarket of ideas?”

I knew at once that all I could now do was concede defeat and change the subject. “No wonder you earn twice as much as I do!” I said goodnaturedly. “You’ve done me up like a kipper! And now if you’re in the mood to contemplate me as a late-night snack, why don’t we . . .”

To my relief he was more than willing to adjourn to the bedroom.

XI

Later I decided I should read a book about modern thought and learn how to make an intellectually respectable case for atheism. It would never do to make a gaffe at a future dinner-party.

But the trouble was there was never any time for serious reading. There was never any time for non-serious reading. I even had difficulty in finding time to go with Kim to the theatre and the cinema. Certainly there was never any time to sit and think—in fact the very idea of having enough time to waste time seemed bizarre, even shocking. As a high flyer you bartered your time and energy in exchange for wealth and power and everyone admired you, approved of you, thought you were wonderful, because you were living out the gospel of worldly success and the doctrine of sophisticated salvation. It was a tough life but you could never whinge because you knew you’d got to heaven and therefore, logically and rationally, you had to be happy. To whinge would have been an unforgivable sin. Whingeing was for wimps—who were the sinners, the lost and the damned.

I decided to set aside time on my honeymoon to read a book called
Modern Thought in a Nutshell
. I had no idea whether such a useful précis existed, but it seemed reasonable to hope that it might. The bookshops around the Law Courts always stocked in-a-nutshell summaries of legal subjects for the law students unable to understand their lecturers, and I felt I could cope with even the dottiest aspect of modern thought so long as it was presented nutshelled, preferably on a snow-white beach in the Seychelles . . .

But in fact my honeymoon, when it came, involved no intellectual reading at all.

I was much too exhausted after the divorce.