The High Flyer (20 page)

VII

Alice came right up to me and said: “I’m so sorry if things are awful for you at the moment, Carter,” but I could only grab her hand to signal my thanks. Meanwhile Nicholas was saying: “Alice, Carter needs to eat. Maybe some cold meat—a bit of salad—nothing too heavy—”

“Leave it to me.” She withdrew just as Lewis Hall, the silver-haired tiger-thumper, cruised into the room.

“I told you, didn’t I, Ms. Graham, that we’d meet again,” he said as soon as he saw me, “but I’m sorry the circumstances apparently leave so much to be desired . . . Good evening, young Tucker! How very stimulated you look—playing the white knight evidently agrees with you!”

Tucker shifted uneasily from one foot to the other but said with the air of a man determined to hold his ground: “I know the interview’s about to become confidential, but I thought I’d wait in the kitchen in case I’m needed later.”

Hall merely turned to his colleague. “Do we need a white knight in the kitchen at this point, Nicholas?”

“I think not,” said Nicholas, completing the mopping-up operation, “but thanks for your help, Eric. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow.”

This dismissal was accepted without protest but as Nicholas sat down again in his swivel-chair and Hall began to clear a space amidst the files and books which were stacked on the round table in the centre of the room, Tucker moved over to me to signal his reluctance to leave. “If you want me,” he said, slipping a business card into my hand, “just whistle.”

Hall cleared his throat. “Nicholas, do you have a block of A4 I could use?”

Nicholas extracted the notepad from a drawer of his desk and handed it over without a word. Neither of the clergymen looked at me, and I realised then, as Tucker left the room, that they probably knew rather more than I did about that past of his to which he had alluded at the end of our champagne session, the Bohemian past in which he had bobtailed around with married women after yawning himself loose from all the fluffettes.

I glanced at the business card. Gilbert’s printed details had been crossed out, and on the back below a handwritten telephone number Tucker had scrawled: “MY PRIVATE LINE,” and underlined the words three times.

“While we’re waiting for your food to arrive,” said Nicholas, as I slid the card into the back-pocket of my jeans, “let me just take a moment to give you an idea where we’re coming from and how we operate. Do you know anything about my ministry at St. Benet’s?”

Sinking back again into the tub-chair I said cautiously: “I know you operate something called a Healing Centre.”

“In that case let me put the Healing Centre in its context before you start worrying that we’re quacks operating a medical rip-off. St. Benet’s is one of the City’s Guild Churches, a fact which means we’re open during the week and closed on weekends. Many of these churches have special ministries, and when I took over St. Benet’s in 1981 I was already a specialist in the Christian ministry of healing. Christians have traditionally been interested in healing not just because Jesus was a very great healer but because the importance of healing and wholeness in body, mind and spirit is implicit in his teaching about how to get a top-quality life. This means I work alongside a doctor, because I see my ministry as complementing orthodox medicine and not acting as an alternative to it. The Healing Centre’s in the crypt of the church. I also work there with a psychologist, and we have access to other medical specialists.”

He paused as if to allow me the opportunity to voice objections but when I remained silent he added: “One of the most reassuring facts, some outsiders find, is that there are a number of checks and balances in place to make sure I don’t turn into a phoney wonder worker who gets his kicks out of manipulating people. If I turn dishonest, the medical profession withdraws its support, the Bishop’s troubleshooter drops down on me like a ton of bricks and the trustees of the Healing Centre, which is a registered charity, demand my resignation.”

As I at once thought of Mrs. Mayfield I heard my voice repeat: “A phoney wonder worker . . . manipulating people . . .”

“I’m afraid the whole field of healing is rife with fraud, so let me explain what I mean by dishonesty. If I’m dishonest I forget I’m here to serve people, not to dominate or exploit them. If I’m dishonest, I lose sight of Jesus Christ who preached a gospel of faith, hope and love, not a manifesto of power and profiteering. If I’m dishonest I forget there’s no place for self-centredness in a Christ-centred ministry of healing. The healer’s got to be a person of integrity whom people are justified in trusting.”

He paused again. This time I managed to say: “I think I should tell you I’m not a Christian.”

“I appreciate your honesty, but in fact we have no policy of exclusion here. We operate on the principle that every individual is created by God for a purpose in his scheme of things, and that therefore every individual should be treated with respect and cared for accordingly.”

“Sometimes,” said Hall, “we have to deal with troublemakers who try to infiltrate the Centre, but we never turn away those in genuine need.” He was now sitting at the round table with his notepad open in front of him, and as he spoke he began to doodle on the blank page.

“We get all kinds of cases, of course,” said Nicholas, “including the kind of case which I believe you yourself are presenting . . . Now, Gil didn’t go into detail about what kind of paranormal problem this is, but let me reassure you by saying that although the media love to hype up paranormal incidents and deck them out in all kinds of fancy trimmings, the reality is usually far less preposterous and far more interesting than the media would have us all believe.”

“All we’re really talking about here are unusual pastoral situations,” said Hall, doodling away busily. “That’s why priests get involved. The majority of cases involve distressed people who need pastoral help.”

“Or in other words,” said Nicholas, following on so smoothly that the dialogue began to seem like a monologue, “the paranormal is usually grounded in the normal and remains closely linked to it—one can even say that it’s just a level of the normal which we don’t often encounter.”

“Like a whistle pitched so high that only a dog can hear it,” said Hall helpfully. He began to draw a dog on his notepad. “The whistle exists in reality but humans can’t hear it unless their normal hearing is somehow enhanced.”

“I think it’s also worth pointing out,” remarked Nicholas, “that there’s nothing particularly spiritual about the paranormal. What we’re really talking about is a phenomenon of consciousness which produces mysteries, but these mysteries can usually by solved by a combination of reason and logic allied to insight and experience.”

“The symptoms of the disorder can be extremely disturbing, of course,” added Hall, “but once the underlying disorder is treated the symptoms soon disappear, so—”

“—so the important task for us now,” said Nicholas, again producing a seamless follow-on, “is to try to uncover the basic problem which is generating the unpleasant symptoms. That’s why I’ll need to ask you questions about your background so that I can get a full picture of what’s been going on. Lewis will be taking notes because in this sort of case I always work with someone who can take a careful record of the evidence; it protects the client and it protects me too. I promise you we’re scrupulous in applying security procedures—the notes will be kept under lock and key—but if at any stage of your story you want Lewis to stop writing all you have to do is say so.”

“Normally Nicholas works with a layman on these cases,” said Hall, who by this time had given the dog a clown’s hat and was busy sketching in a circus background, “but since Gilbert Tucker mentioned that clerical confidentiality was essential here I decided to fill the role of note-taker and corroborating witness. I hope that’s acceptable to you. I’m very old but not, thank God, senile.”

“He’s still only sixty-nine,” said Nicholas to me, “but for some reason he often talks as if he’s ninety-six.”

I had just managed to stop myself trotting out that 1960s’ mantra: “Sixty-nine is Divine,” when Alice re-entered the room with a tray of food.

VIII

“Now,” said Nicholas, pouring out a cup of tea for me as I began to nibble a raw carrot, “let’s make a start on your story while you eat. I’m hoping that the more you unburden yourself the more you’ll feel like eating.”

Alice had withdrawn again after telling me she was going upstairs to prepare our bedrooms. Meanwhile Hall had stripped the top sheet from his notepad to expose a blank page and was making a heading in a handwriting which was too eccentric for me to read from where I was sitting.

Returning to his swivel-chair Nicholas added: “Before I ask you questions about the background, would you like to have a shot at summarising in a couple of sentences what the paranormal trouble is? It might help to ease the stress, but on the other hand if you feel this is too difficult at present—”

Waving this sentence away before he could finish it I said rapidly: “This evening my flat was disarranged—it keeps getting disarranged, but this time no one could possibly have done it. And I saw a ghost. And— am I allowed a third sentence?”

“By all means.”

“I keep having hellish thoughts about throwing myself off my thirty-fifth-floor balcony because a psychic healer planted the idea in my mind this afternoon and now I can’t get it out again.” I faltered but managed to add: “I don’t know whether this balcony phobia is paranormal activity or just me going nuts, but my husband’s mixed up with this woman—she’s determined to break up our marriage, and—” But at this point I was unable to continue.

At once Nicholas demanded: “What’s her name?” and as I answered: “Mrs. Elizabeth Mayfield,” I saw both men wince before they looked at each other in silence.

I

I was the one who broke the silence. I said: “You know her.”

“Oh yes, we know Mrs. Mayfield!” agreed Hall sardonically. “Or rather I should say we know of her. We’ve never actually met the woman. We just meet the casualties she leaves behind.”

Nicholas merely said as he examined his thumbnail: “She keeps her distance from us. People like that usually do.”

“People like what?”

“Prime manipulators in cults or groups which are not just antipathetic to Christianity but actively hostile to it.”

At once I said: “She told Kim I’d start ‘flirting with the enemy.’ That was her exact phrase. But I didn’t know any Christians when she said that. She couldn’t possibly have known—foreseen—”

“Such people often have psychic gifts,” said Nicholas, clearly quite unimpressed by Mrs. Mayfield’s clairvoyance. “That’s all part of the problem. They don’t offer their gifts to God so that the gifts can be used for serving others. They offer the gifts up elsewhere and then abuse them to serve themselves.” He turned to Hall. “It looks as if we have three problems to consider. One: the recurring disorder in the flat. Two: the ghost. And three: the presence of Mrs. Mayfield.”

“They’re probably all linked,” said Lewis, writing busily, “but of course one mustn’t jump to conclusions, so—”

“—so let’s now take a look at the background. Carter, can you fill us in, please, about who you are, where you come from and how long you’ve been married?”

I somehow succeeded in embarking on my narrative in a calm and steady voice.

II

By this time I had realised I was going to tell them the whole story. This was not just because I had seen it might hamper their investigation if I started withholding facts; it was because they were both so professional, so patently men of integrity and so obviously at ease in this foreign country where I was a complete stranger that I knew I would be mad not to put my trust in them. Neither of them had batted an eyelid when I had mentioned the ghost. Neither of them had appeared to find the disturbances in the flat in any way remarkable. But most of all I was reassured by their reaction to Mrs. Mayfield. Here were two people who not only had her measure but were able to make her seem less powerful. She was a dangerous woman but not uniquely so; they had come across her type before; she had never had the nerve to seek them out; her clairvoyance was run-of-the-mill stuff, nothing remarkable, just a gift she had chosen to abuse. I felt enormously relieved that they had not only grasped the situation at once but were able to reinterpret it for me in a way which made it easier to cope with the nightmare which Mrs. Mayfield presented.

As I told my story they asked questions to clarify details. Nicholas asked questions about the keys and about the Barbican’s security arrangements. Hall cross-questioned me about the earlier disturbances in the flat; he was not hostile, but in paying great attention to detail he was very persistent and some of the questions he asked were extraordinary. (“Did you see any of the objects move of their own accord?” “Did you see any object sail through the air and make a sharp-angled turn?” “Did any of the electrical appliances turn themselves on unaided?” “Did the lights go on and off without any switches being touched?”) In the beginning my responses were sarcastic, reflecting my incredulity that he should believe me capable of inventing such possibilities, but after a while I was too exhausted to give anything but straight replies. “The lights did flicker tonight,” I said finally, “and earlier the television was showing a picture although it had been left on stand-by, but those were obviously just electrical blips. So why are you throwing out all these mad suggestions which no one but a nutter would take seriously?”

At that point Hall said to Nicholas: “The case is quite obviously genuine,” and Nicholas said apologetically to me: “I’m sorry, but we have to be sure. It’s all part of the routine, just a normal procedure, nothing personal.”

I had broken off my narrative so that Hall could focus on the disturbances, but now I resumed it. When I reached the point where I had to describe my visit to Oakshott neither man made any attempt to interrupt me.

“. . . and coming home on the A3,” I heard myself say, “I stopped at a petrol station and used a public phone to give the police an anonymous tip-off.” Why did I tell this lie? I regretted it instantly but knew I had been driven by an acute desire to avoid any discussion about whether or not we should inform the police of Sophie’s death. I could no more cope with the subject of the police at this stage than I could cope with the memory of my unprofessional behaviour in that horrible house.

However, having slipped in the little lie to make the narrative more palatable, I saw Hall’s pen falter on the paper. He never looked up but I knew the lie had been detected; perhaps my voice had changed fractionally. I glanced at Nicholas but he immediately looked away and examined his thumbnail again.

Having lost the thread of my narrative I floundered around trying to recapture it.

“You resumed your journey along the A3,” said Nicholas, helping me along but addressing the thumbnail. “You reached London—”

“I reached London and tried calling the Savoy again but Warren still wasn’t in his room. I then drove on to the Barbican . . .” My voice had levelled out but I remained rigid with discomfort. I could not remember when I had last made such a hash of telling a lie.

Fortunately my listeners were soon diverted by my account of my return to Harvey Tower. To compensate for the lie I now put in every detail, even describing how I had been so exhausted that I could barely get to my feet after finding my keys.

Nicholas said casually: “Did you feel similarly exhausted before when you were on the brink of discovering a disturbance?”

“I was knackered when I came home for the first time today after leaving the office early. But I wasn’t grovelling around on the floor and feeling too zonked to get up.”

“Let’s hear more about the final disturbances now,” said Hall. “You gave us a preview when you mentioned the flickering lights, but can we have a step-by-step account of what happened?”

So I completed my narrative, struggling hard to maintain a steady voice, but when I had finished describing with deep embarrassment the irrational events which had occurred, Hall merely said: “Was the telescope smashed?”

“The telescope? No, it was still standing.”

“Always untouched, wasn’t it, although it would have been easy to knock over. After all, here you have a situation where the sofa and armchairs were being tossed around, a display-stand overturned, glass shelves broken—”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m not suggesting, merely observing. It’s a curious detail.” He made another note and turned the page of his notepad.

“Let’s just recap for a moment,” said Nicholas quickly. “Carter, you said the door of the bedroom flew open and cracked against the wall. Are we to assume that no one could have been standing behind the door and manipulating it?”

“I suppose so.” I struggled to concentrate again. “If someone had been standing behind the door it wouldn’t have crashed into the wall because it would have hit that someone first.”

“That needn’t be the case, surely,” said Hall, looking over the top of his reading glasses. “It would depend how much space there was between the hinges and the wall, the wall which would be hit by the unchecked door.”

I was getting confused. “Yes, that’s true.”

“I’d like to clarify the lay-out of this flat,” said Nicholas, diverting me with a practical question. “I’ve been in the Barbican tower blocks on enough occasions to know that although the flats may differ in the internal lay-out, each consists of a rectangle bisected by a corridor. Where’s your living-room in relation to your bedroom? I’m trying to picture the geography of the scene when you saw Sophie.”

I explained how the master bedroom stood on the right of the front door and faced down the long corridor to the living-room at the far end. “That’s how I was able to stand on the living-room threshold and look straight at her.”

“What kind of distance are we talking about here?”

“At least thirty feet.”

“And how well lit was the corridor?”

“There are two lights in the corridor and one in the hall and they all work off the same switch which I turned on as soon as I entered the flat.”

“Do you wear glasses?”

“No.”

“All right, you have good sight, the location was well-lit, the door flew open and you saw this woman whom you instantly recognised. How long did the moment last before the door slammed shut again?”

“It’s hard to say. Probably around five seconds.”

“And you saw her clearly.”

“Unusually clearly. As I mentioned, I was experiencing this weird, heightened perception which I suppose was some sort of reaction to all the stress.”

“Was she transparent?” asked Hall with interest.

“No, of course not!” I was appalled by the question and also embarrassed, as if it represented a social blunder.

“And you say she was wearing Sophie’s royal-blue outfit,” persisted Nicholas, apparently not interested in transparency. “But are you sure about this? There’s no possibility that it was Mrs. Mayfield’s downmarket attempt to mimic the coat?”

“None . . . Wait a minute, are you suggesting . . .” My voice trailed away.

“We have to consider every possibility,” said Nicholas comfortably. “That’s routine. Lewis used to say long ago when he was training me in this ministry that when dealing with the paranormal one first has to consider the normal, rational explanation because nine out of ten times it’s the normal, rational explanation which is correct.”

“Well, of course,” I said, stimulated by the words “normal” and “rational,” “the obvious explanation is that this was all rigged by Mrs. Mayfield, but I just can’t see how she did it. Quite apart from the fact that I’m positive in my identification of Sophie, Mrs. Mayfield couldn’t have had access to my flat tonight. She had no key.”

“I can think of a way round that one,” said Hall, taking off his glasses and giving them a polish. “When your husband loaned her his key earlier she could have had a copy made before returning the original in the Jiffy bag.”

I stared before saying to him with increased respect: “That never occurred to me.”

“You had other things on your mind. However, despite floating that idea, I have to say that I’m always very suspicious of conspiracy theories.”

Nicholas said: “Lewis prefers to follow the principle of Occam’s razor.”

“What’s that?”

“The principle that when there are competing theories the one closest to the truth is likely to be the one which is the simplest, the one which is shorn of fancy embellishments.” He glanced across at Hall. “I’m tempted to think that both the disturbances in the flat and the appearance of the ghost represent phenomena which are easy to classify.”

“I’m so glad,” I said drily, “because I’m still completely at sea. Is it too much to hope that you can give me a rational explanation of what’s been going on?”

“We can offer you what we believe to be a rational conclusion based on our experience in this field,” said Nicholas politely, “but whether you yourself will find it rational is another matter altogether. Have you ever heard of poltergeist activity?”

III

“Sure,” I said without hesitation. “It’s nutterguff spawned by horror movies and no sane person could possibly believe in such a thing.”

Nicholas appeared untroubled by my furious incredulity. “If you’ve been relying on horror movies for your information,” he said, “you may well have no idea what a poltergeist really is. For a start, it’s not a ghost. It’s got nothing to do with ghosts at all.”

Feeling more furious than ever as I realised I had a lawyer’s duty to give him a fair hearing I said crossly: “Okay, I’ll bite. If it’s not a ghost, what is it?”

“Evidence of a disturbed household.”

I stared at him.

He stared back.

Then as my anger faded I realised I was horrified.

IV

Sensing how unnerved I was Nicholas moved at once to calm me. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “We don’t know yet how the phenomenon works, but we know why it happens and we know what we can offer in the way of effective remedies.”

I said stiff-lipped: “Sorry. Can’t believe, won’t believe. But I respect you enough to keep listening.”

“In that case let me say that the hallmark of the poltergeist case is that objects get disturbed or broken, apparently without human intervention. In fact there always is a human involved, but the human is operating at a distance—the theory is that the human acts involuntarily and unconsciously to generate a certain form of energy which moves these objects. We refer to this person as the owner of the poltergeist, and it seems clear that the purpose of the poltergeist activity is to relieve a stress which is building to intolerable levels . . . Have you ever heard of cases where adolescents cut themselves to relieve unbearable tension?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“The poltergeist phenomenon seems to be similar, particularly since most cases occur in households where there’s a disturbed adolescent; one of the problems adolescents have is that they often don’t possess the ability to get rid of their tensions by expressing them verbally.”

“What about the households without adolescents?”

“In those cases the owner of the poltergeist is usually someone who’s repressing emotion on a large scale, possibly someone who’s never come to terms properly with a traumatic past and who’s refusing to deal with it even though memories of the trauma are invading the present.”

With enormous relief I said: “That’s Kim.” Fascination was now mingling with my scepticism. “So how do you fix this problem?”

“It sometimes helps to bless each room of the house or flat, and I would always offer to pray on the premises with those afflicted, but the solution to aim for is counselling. The underlying tensions have to be uncovered, examined and healed—and then once the stress has been eased, the disturbances will cease.”

“Poltergeist activity usually burns itself out anyway after nine months or so,” remarked Hall, producing a packet of cigarettes. “Life moves on; tensions ebb and flow. But of course the activity is so tiresome that it’s always desirable to end it as soon as possible . . . Nicholas, what happened to that ashtray you used to keep here?”

“I finally got tired of it.”

“How intolerant! Do you smoke, Ms. Graham?”

“I gave it up.”

“Really? I wish you’d teach me how!”

“Something tells me, Father Hall, that you’re far too much of a tiger-thumper to welcome instruction from a woman!”

“My dear Ms. Graham, I can’t think where you got that idea from! And let me stress that I’m most exceedingly partial to tigers!”

Nicholas remarked mildly: “I always enjoy feminist strip-cartoons, but why don’t you two start calling each other by your first names while we focus on the matter in hand? Lewis, do you want to make any further comment about the disturbances in the flat?”

“No—except to explain to Carter that paranormal activity can feed upon itself in a spiralling crescendo of unpleasantness, and this seems to be what happened tonight.”

“I agree.” Nicholas turned back to me before embarking on a summing up. “My theory runs like this: you arrived back at the flat shattered by Sophie’s death; your experiences at Oakshott had triggered intolerable tensions; you knelt on the floor to retrieve your keys, and at that point the kinetic energy generated by the tension was released, causing the fresh disturbance in the flat; after the release you were so exhausted you could hardly get up, but once you entered the flat the sight of the disorder heightened the tension again and this in turn resulted in a fresh bout of poltergeist activity: the flickering of the lights, the shifting of the curtains—and finally the violent opening and slamming of the bedroom door, the movements which framed the sighting of the ghost.”

At once I said strongly: “I dispute every word you’ve said. I still don’t believe in poltergeist activity, and even if I did the owner of the poltergeist wouldn’t be me.”

Again Nicholas remained tranquil. “I thought it was important that I should be upfront and honest with you about what I suspect,” he said, “but you’re under no obligation to agree with my theory. We have a saying in this type of case: ‘The facts are sacred but interpretation is free’— or in other words, you can adopt any theory you like so long as it doesn’t do violence to the facts . . . Now, are we ready to move on and discuss the ghost?”

Having snitched the saucer below my teacup to use as an ashtray, Lewis was busy smoking his filthy cigarette while Nicholas himself, casually crossing one long leg over the other, was leaning back in his swivel-chair. For a moment I longed to yell in exasperation, but I knew such idiotic behaviour would solve nothing and anyway by this time I had been seduced by their low-key style and laid-back authority which allowed me to disagree with them as violently as I chose.

I decided I had to grit my teeth and go on.