The High Flyer (43 page)

IX

I allowed Nicholas and Alice to come with me to hear Lewis conduct the brief service at the crematorium. I realised eventually that I needed Alice, who had such a comforting personality, and I felt I could hardly tell Nicholas to get lost when he volunteered to accompany her. The only other person whom I allowed to attend this very private funeral was Gilbert Tucker. He phoned to ask if he could be present, though he did not say whether he was representing his brother or whether he was merely signalling the concern he had felt for me ever since I had wound up at his vicarage on the night of the melt-down.

I found I was glad to see him. He reminded me of my unseen companion who had steered me through the darkness, although when I saw Gil again he seemed just another priest in uniform, just another clerical carer with well-honed professional skills.

There was no sign of my unseen companion as we gathered in the chapel, but during the opening sentence I knew he had somehow slipped in because light began to stream through the darkened neural pathways of my brain.

Lewis said, quoting St. Paul: “ ‘For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers
, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God . . .’ ”

A wave of emotion overwhelmed me as I finally started to grieve.

X

I have no clear memory of the rest of the service but afterwards I managed to say to Gilbert Tucker: “Please try to explain to your brother that I thought I understood everything but now I realise I understand almost nothing, and while I sort out the mess I don’t want to hear him slagging off Kim as he did that other time. That’ll only make me more ripe for a head transplant than ever.”

Gil said: “He realises that now,” and when he had given my hands a comforting clasp he added as if we were discussing some exotic item of food which had to be kept at the right temperature in the refrigerator: “Don’t worry about Eric. He’ll keep.”

“Tell him the phoenix will eventually rise from the ashes,” I said impulsively, but afterwards I wished this sentence had remained unspoken.

I knew the thought of another relationship still terrified me.

XI

It was noon when we arrived back at the Rectory. Normally Alice would have gone to the kitchen to prepare the informal weekday lunch which the Healing Centre’s staff were welcome to attend, but on that day the task had been delegated and she came upstairs to the flat with me instead.

After I had fixed myself a vodka martini and she had poured herself a glass of wine we sat down together on the sofa. “Thanks, Alice,” I heard myself say. “Thanks for everything.” Then I started to guzzle the martini.

When I came up for air Alice said cautiously: “Do you feel awful, not so awful or really and truly frightful?”

“I’ve no idea, I’m too banjaxed to know. All I do know is that unless I dig up some answers to all the unanswered questions soon, I’m going to go nuts.”

“Questions about Kim?”

“Questions about everything. Lewis did help me by suggesting the monster at Oakshott was reflecting a malign subpersonality which was eclipsing Kim’s real self; that made me see that a funeral service for the Kim I’d loved was still possible, and as the funeral service was obviously . . . obviously—”

“Obviously right,” said Alice.

“—obviously right, yes, Lewis must have hit on some sort of truth. But what exactly was this truth he hit on? I mean, how does one explain what happened to Kim in medical and scientific terms?”

“Can’t one just say Kim had a nervous breakdown and leave it at that?”

“But ‘nervous breakdown’ isn’t a scientific term. It’s a metaphor.”

“I don’t really understand about metaphors,” said Alice, “but surely, from a common-sense point of view, it’s all quite simple?”

“Is it? But how does one explain someone like Mrs. Mayfield? How does one explain evil? And if God exists, why doesn’t he just zap the Powers and—but no, I can’t cope with God. All I know is that I’ve somehow got to stop myself being so frightened of repeating the experience with Kim that I wind up a hermit chained to a rock, and unless I understand what’s happened how can I guarantee there won’t be a rerun?”

“Well, if you did wind up chained to a rock, I bet some gorgeous St. George would soon ride along and rescue you!”

“Sister, forget St. George! I couldn’t cope—I’d cling to my rock and scream at him to go away!”

Alice sighed, but probably not at the thought of a sexy St. George rescuing a woman from a dead-end situation; her loyalty to that ditherer Nicholas was indestructible. With sympathy she said: “Well, of course, I’m just an ordinary person, not intellectual or anything, but the way I see it is this: Kim was damaged in his childhood and couldn’t heal himself. Mrs. Mayfield damaged him further because she enjoyed having power over people and didn’t care whether they got damaged or not. Kim’s damage had already made him sick, and because Mrs. Mayfield made the sickness worse he eventually killed himself. Why do you have to translate all that into scientific language?”

“Because I must have the basic facts interpreted by someone qualified to give an opinion! Supposing I bought a very expensive car and it broke down soon afterwards. I couldn’t just say: ‘Oh, it broke down because it’s a lemon!’ I’d want to take it back to the garage and stand alongside the mechanic when he looked at the engine—I’d want to be told by the appropriate expert, using the appropriate technical language, exactly what had gone wrong.”

“Well, I know I’d never understand what the mechanic said,” responded Alice, “so I’d just ask for the car to be repaired under the warranty.”

“I envy you. But would you
never
want an explanation for why things go profoundly wrong?”

“For evil, you mean? But evil just
is
! It’s like an elephant—difficult to describe but we all know it when we see it and there’s no point in asking why it exists because it just does.”

“But we don’t all know evil when we see it,” I said at once. “Lots of very nice people in the 1930s thought Hitler was wonderful. And how do you explain Hitler?”

“He was a freak, like Stalin and that Chinese man who was always taking great leaps forward. But you can’t explain freaks any more than you can explain evil. They just happen, like elephants.”

“But why does God let them happen?”

“Oh, we can’t possibly know the mind of God! Our brains are too small.”

“Then why didn’t he make them bigger? Surely God wouldn’t be so inefficient as to give no comprehensible explanation?”

“What’s efficiency got to do with it? God’s ways aren’t our ways— but look how spectacular his ways are! Look at the skies and the stars and the mountains and the seas and the animals and the fish—”

I thought of my dolphin. Then I drained my glass and said: “I don’t care about all that. I just want an explanation, and if God can’t come up with one he can get lost.”

“It’s people who get lost, Carter.”

“Then why the bloody hell can’t God send someone to find them?”

“I sort of think he already did.”

“But Kim stayed lost,” I said, and went away to shut myself in my bedroom.

XII

When Alice eventually came to check that I was resisting the urge to bang my head against the wall, I said: “If I’d loved him as he wanted to be loved I might have saved him.” I was sobbing so hard I could barely speak.

“Oh Carter, no—you mustn’t blame yourself—”

“But I’m responsible, aren’t I? It wasn’t Mrs. Mayfield who killed him after all. I killed him by rejecting him and giving him nothing left to live for.”

“Carter, you didn’t kill him. He killed himself. And he did that because he was sick and Mrs. Mayfield had driven him mad.”

“But if I’d loved him as he wanted to be loved—”

“Carter, this man was a murderer! He did terrible things for years and years and years—”

“Yes, but that wasn’t his true self! If the evil other self could have been amputated—evicted—whatever—then I might have saved his true self by loving him. If I’d agreed to a reconciliation—”

“How could you possibly have done such a thing? Kim had crushed your love to death with all his cheating and his lies! How could you ever, ever have trusted him again?”

“But if I’d somehow managed to forgive him—”

“Forgiving him is one thing. Forgiving him and going on with the marriage by living a lie, pretending the love still existed even though it was dead, is something else.”

“But I did love his true self! If that was still there, buried under all the evil, then perhaps if only the evil could have been shovelled off—”

“Yes, I understand what you’re getting at, but bearing in mind what happened at Oakshott, how can you blame yourself for recoiling from a reconciliation either then or now? And if you can’t blame yourself for that, how can you blame yourself for the suicide?”

I had no answer but felt no better. “I can’t bear to think of those scenes at Oakshott!” I burst out, starting to cry again. “If I go on remembering how much I hated and feared him then, I’ll go mad too, I swear it, I’ll never get over it, never—which is why I’ve got to focus on the real Kim, the man I once loved—and yet if I do that I’ll go mad too because then I’ll have to blame myself for not loving him enough, not agreeing to a reconciliation, not being strong enough to save him—”

“Carter dear—”

“Oh God, I’m so messed up, I can’t believe how messed up I am, but if only I could get some kind of a rational, logical handle on what really happened I feel there’s a chance I might stay sane—”

The doorbell rang as Val arrived to pay a lunch-time house call.

XIII

“I’ve got to understand what happened,” I said to Val after Alice had left us alone together. I had mopped up my tears, consigned the sodden tissues to the wastepaper basket and mixed myself a second vodka martini. Val had declined my offer of a drink but showed no sign that she disapproved of my self-prescribed tranquilliser. “In law,” I said, “a case may look a mess, but once you interpret it from a legal point of view and apply the correct legal principles the problems become comprehensible and the mess can be overcome. So please—give me the medical, scientific explanation of what was wrong with Kim! Then I’m sure I’ll be able to sort out the mess and get on with my life.”

“That sounds like a positive attitude,” said Val, trying to be encouraging but only succeeding in sounding wary. “However, medicine can’t always provide clear-cut answers, and scientific theories are often far more speculative than the non-scientific members of the public are willing to believe.”

“But what’s the final medical verdict on Kim? There must be a final verdict!”

“As I understand it, the hospital’s in-depth inquiry into why Kim killed himself shed no additional light on the evidence given by the doctors at the inquest. The psychiatrist in charge of the case remains convinced that Kim’s release from hospital wasn’t premature.”

“But it must have been!”

“The psychiatrist defends himself by saying this second breakdown was entirely due to the extreme stress involved in the confession, and he blames Lewis for encouraging Kim to go down this route when he was in no fit state to do so. Lewis, on the other hand—”

“—says the men in the white coats are round the twist.”

Val sighed. “Everyone gets upset when a case ends tragically,” she said, “but the hard fact is that not all tragedies are avoidable. Personally I wouldn’t want to condemn dear old Lewis here because I believe he did valuable work in befriending Kim, but I do see the psychiatrist’s point of view. He’d been led to think you were just going to drive Kim to Oakshott, have a sandwich or two and enjoy a friendly conversation which would bode well for the marital future. That was a very different script from the high-stress confrontation which actually took place.”

“So the doctors never secretly revised their diagnosis that both the suicide and the initial breakdown were due to stress? They still honestly believe there was no pathological illness and no serious personality disorder present?”

“I know why you’re asking those questions,” said Val. “It’s because the man you described in those final scenes appeared to be behaving like a sociopath. But when a personality fragments under extreme pressure, all kinds of subpersonalities, normally suppressed by the ego, can erupt out of the unconscious and grab control of the mind. Of course anyone who commits murder without remorse has a serious problem, but personally I still don’t feel I can label him a sociopath, someone disconnected from normal emotions. We know he felt guilt about Sophie; we know he cared deeply for you.”

“But surely he must have been in some sense mad?”

“He was certainly disturbed but he remained lucid, he wasn’t suffering from hallucinations and he wasn’t suicidal when he was in hospital. I don’t actually think he was mad at all until right at the end when his personality shattered to pieces on that balcony.”

“So what the hell was going on?”

“Well, if I were to say he was bad but not mad I’d be making a judgement which a doctor isn’t qualified to make. I can’t say: ‘He was a corrupted man who couldn’t bear the burden of his sins.’ That’s not a medical diagnosis. One could treat the medical problems caused by this spiritual malaise, but as for the malaise itself . . . No. The scientific, medical language stops here. All I can say is that this case was definitely one for the priests . . .”

XIV

We were silent for a moment. Outside it had begun to rain, and I watched the drops spatter across the windowpane as a gust of wind swept up Egg Street from the south. I was aware of Val’s stillness, the concentrated quality of her attention, and I wondered if, in the uncharted borderland which lay between sickness and health, I was traversing an abyss which I was too terrified to allow my eyes to see.

“Then was I to blame,” I heard myself say numbly, “for forcing Kim into this high-stress confrontation?”

“But you didn’t force him, did you?” Val said at once. “He was burning to tell you everything in the belief that this would save the marriage. If the blame belongs to anyone it belongs to Lewis, but on the other hand I’m sure Lewis was right to believe Kim had to level with you—by that stage you couldn’t have gone on with the relationship without learning the whole truth. No, the real problem was that it was the wrong time and the wrong place for the confessional.”

“But that really was my fault! I didn’t intend to wind up at Oakshott, but I certainly insisted that I meet him on his own as soon as he left hospital!”

“But we all knew of this plan of yours, didn’t we? So the fault was ours for not talking you out of it! Carter, the truth is we’ve all made mistakes in this case, so don’t crucify yourself by taking on all the guilt. That would certainly be the road to neurosis—which reminds me: Robin said I was to tell you he had a cancellation at four-thirty this afternoon, and if you wanted to drop in for a word he’d be very happy to see you.”

I thanked her and agreed with relief to be there.