Mystical Paths (13 page)

‘Michael’s looking forward to living here after we’re married,’ she said, returning to the room with my glass of Coke. ‘He’s never been able to afford Belgravia before because the BBC are so mean about money.’

Michael, a television producer, had been living for some years in a large, light, tousled flat in an excitingly seamy area of Maida Vale. I felt sorry for him having to leave it. ‘Skip Michael for the moment,’ I said, sitting down on a Georgian chair. ‘Tell me about Katie.’

‘I didn’t see her when I called back at the funny-farm this morning — she’d been sedated.’ Marina paused to sip her drink, which I assumed was not just any old champagne but the Coterie’s favourite: Veuve Clicquot. Her vanity ensured she didn’t make a habit of drinking at odd hours but she was quite capable of hitting the bottle in mid-afternoon if life became unusually fraught.

‘I can’t tell you how awful it was yesterday,’ she added with a shudder as she set down her glass.

‘Try.’

‘Well, after I’d got the knife away from her I was terrified she’d try again in some other way — stuff herself with pills perhaps when my back was turned — so I did something really idiotic. I was just so unnerved by that time — I kept remembering Holly when she finally succeeded in committing suicide – the bath water bright red from her slashed wrists –’

‘What did you do?’

‘I gave Katie a shot of heroin.’

‘
You gave –
’

‘
It’s okay, she’s not a regular user! And neither am I. We only took it on a regular basis for a while after Christian died – we found it was the only thing that numbed the pain, and –’

‘– and now she still likes to have the sniff around! Of course she’s a regular user – you had the will-power to stop, but she kept on! No wonder she’s as thin as a famine victim!’

‘No, honestly, Nick, you’ve got it wrong! She doesn’t use much – hell, I’m her supplier and I’d know if she was taking more than an occasional dose –’

‘It’s insane even to flirt with a drug like that. She might have spent three years not being addicted but she could go over the top into addiction at any time, particularly now that she’s in a bad mental state. Who the hell do you get the stuff from?’

‘Dinkie.’

‘Dinkie! What’s happened to her? No,’ I said rapidly, fighting down the nausea which always accompanied my memory of the black blast of foreknowledge in 1963, and blotting out the horror of the futures which had consistently come true, ‘don’t answer that, don’t let’s get side-tracked. You dosed Katie with heroin, you said –’

‘– and she calmed down, well, passed out, and that was when I called the doctor. I hadn’t had the chance before. But as soon as I put down the phone I realised I had to tell him what I’d done because otherwise he might give her a shot of something else which would react with the heroin and kill her. Oh God, what hell it was! The doctor was furious, said he’d have to call the police –’

‘I bet. But of course you batted your eyelashes at him and he wound up saying he’d have done the same thing himself if he’d been in your shoes.’

‘Well, actually ... yes. More or less. But Nick, although I know I was idiotic to give her the heroin, what else could Ihave done? She was as mad as a hatter, completely freaked out –’

‘I know. A nightmare. All my fault. Dreadful.’ I guzzled my Coke and felt desperate.

‘No, it wasn’t all your fault, darling, honestly – she was heading that way before I brought her to you. If only she didn’t feel so massively guilty –’

‘That massive guilt,’ I said, ‘is what I just don’t understand.

It’s almost as if she feels personally responsible for the drowning.’

Marina stared at me. ‘But that’s exactly what she does feel!

Didn’t she tell you?’

I stared back. ‘But how could Katie believe she was respon- sible for Christian being swept overboard by a freak wave?’ ‘Katie doesn’t believe in the freak wave,’ said Marina. ‘She thinks he committed suicide.’

FIVE

‘Then there are the strains due to what is called the sexual revolution. I hope we welcome the greater openness about sex, and I am sure the old puritanical idea that sex should always be hushed up was unwholesome and did harm. We must avoid a kind of backlash towards puritanism. But sex is the bond of a union between two persons in their totality as persons; that is its true meaning. And today we have to witness against all those influences which separate sex from human personality and treat it as an excitement on a sub-human plane. The commercial exploitation of sex is horrible, yes horrible.’

MICHAEL RAMSEY
Archbishop of Canterbury 1961-1974
Canterbury Pilgrim
I

‘
We decided not to mention the suicide possibility to you,’ said Marina rapidly, ‘because we wanted you to go into the séance uninfluenced by what we thought. But did Katie really never mention suicide afterwards when you were alone together?’

‘She must have been too disturbed. But Marina, are you saying you seriously believe —’

‘No. I’m sure the death was an accident. Katie’s the one who’s convinced it was suicide.’

‘But why would Christian have killed himself?’

Well, you can make out some sort of case for it. He seemed to be fed up with everyone and everything by the summer of ‘sixty-five, so you could argue that he dived overboard in a fit of depression — and if his life had really become so meaningless that he preferred to die, then it’s hardly surprising that Katie’snow guilt-fixated. She’d see herself as part of the life he found so futile, part of the reason why he killed himself.’

‘But why did life become so meaningless?’

‘My dear,’ said Marina after another gulp of champagne, ‘he was simply too successful. Wasn’t it Alexander the Great who wept because he had no new worlds to conquer? Christian had achieved all his ambitions except getting the chair in medieval philosophy — and even that would have dropped into his lap in the end.’

‘If he did commit suicide there must have been much more going on than just a severe attack of
ennui.
’

‘
Exactly. That’s why I’m sure it wasn’t suicide. There was nothing else going on — and I’ll tell you another reason too, Nick, why I’m sure the death was accidental. I shared a flat with Holly right up to the time she killed herself, and with the wisdom of hindsight I can now look back and spot the early signs which indicated which way she was going. I believe that if Christian had been working up to suicide, I could now look back and identify similar signs. But I can’t because they don’t exist.’

‘Maybe you simply missed them. After all, how often did you see Christian during the final months of his life?’

‘Not so much as usual — all right, I’ll admit that. He’d developed a craze for sailing and he used to go off to Bosham every weekend with Perry. But I did still see him and he did still confide in me —’

‘But how far did he confide in you?’

‘Oh, I’m sure he told me everything, he always did. He never talked to Katie of his problems because he hated it when she got upset and wept all over the place.’

‘Nevertheless,’ I said at once, ‘she was the one who was actually living with him and she strikes me as being an intuitive type. If she’s now so convinced he committed suicide maybe she picked up some vibe you missed.’

‘Then why hasn’t she told me about it?’

‘It may be no more than an impression which she’s buried deep in her subconscious mind. Tell me, did he ever think of leaving her?’

‘Oh no! Christian was essentially good and kind and decent, and you don’t walk out on an adoring wife, two beautiful children and a newborn baby unless you’re a monster. Besides, it would have been bad for his career. The ruling élite’s so old-fashioned up at Oxford. Immorality has to be discreet and private because immorality which is messy and public is an offence to all the great intellects. They think it’s evidence not only of bad taste but of downright stupidity.’

‘Then maybe he was in the grip of an intolerable emotional conflict: he wanted to leave Katie but couldn’t see how to do it without destroying her and wrecking his career. So death came to seem the only way out.’

‘No, that doesn’t add up at all,’ said Marina without hesitation. ‘You’re being much too melodramatic. The truth is he was content to jog along with Katie – okay, he’d reached the state where he periodically found the marriage boring, but he did have me to pep it up, and if he’d wanted an orthodox mistress – which he didn’t – he could have had his pick from any number of swooning women.’

I decided not to comment; if I was going to hear the truth about Christian’s sex-life it seemed unlikely that I would hear it from Marina, viewing the world through her platonic-sex spectacles. ‘Just supposing,’ I said instead, ‘that Christian did commit suicide. Why would Perry have concealed it from the police?’

‘Oh, that’s obvious: he’d have lied in order to protect Katie from unpleasantness.’

She was making sense again. I thought her opinions were probably reliable so long as sex wasn’t under discussion. ‘Have you ever talked to Perry about the possibility of suicide?’ I said.

‘Of course – I went to see him as soon as Katie had trotted out her theory, but he insisted the freak wave was no fantasy.’ ‘Did he actually see Christian go overboard? I seem to remember from the newspaper reports –’

‘No, he was in a different part of the boat when the wave struck. It’s true that Christian could have deliberately dived overboard – or he could have decided not to bother to swim after he’d been catapulted into the water – but Perry’s as sure as I am that Christian wasn’t suicidal.’

I immediately wondered how far Perry would level with her if he wanted to protect Katie from unpleasantness. Adopting a different tack I. said: ‘What do the rest of Christian’s family think? Is Katie the only one who suspects suicide?’

‘As far as I know Katie’s out there on her own, but those Aysgarths can be very buttoned up when it suits them.’

‘I’d like to know what goes on under the buttons. If someone commits suicide the causes can usually be traced a long way back – and the further back you go, the closer you come to the suicide’s family.’

‘Honestly, Nick, I’m sure it wasn’t suicide!’

‘Yes, but can’t you see,’ I said, ‘we’ve got to prove it? The only way to cure Katie now is to prove that Christian’s death really was accidental and that she herself was in no way to blame.’

‘If we could discover that he had a powerful motive for staying alive –’

‘I’ll work on it.’

‘Darling, you’re a saint!’

But I wasn’t. I was a sinner, driven to make amends in the only way now available to a woman he had almost destroyed. It was then that I realised my confession in the chapel had been a nullity. The slate of my conscience hadn’t been wiped clean by the desire to repent; the graffiti of guilt remained unerased; so much for my delusion that I was free to set the catastrophic séance aside and make a fresh start.

‘I’ll see Perry first,’ my voice was saying, ‘and then I’ll move on to the family. What about Christian’s Oxford friends? Would they be any use to me?’

‘I doubt it. He kept up a front for Oxford and only let his hair down with my Coterie – and since most members of my early-’sixties Coterie are now either mad or dead, they’re not much use to you either.’

‘There’s your fiancé. What does Michael think about all this?’

‘My dear, don’t, I implore you, go stirring up Michael. He’s madly jealous of my relationship with Christian because he can never quite believe it was all utterly platonic. But you might try Venetia. She knew Christian well.’

‘How well?’

‘Oh, not
that
well! But they liked each other. They were good platonic friends.’

‘Uh-huh. This mystery’s crawling with platonic friendships, isn’t it? What happened to everyone’s genitals?’

‘What a typically masculine remark!’

‘Come off it, Marina, just peep down from your platonic cloud-cuckoo land for a moment! How sure are you that Christian wasn’t sleeping with someone on the quiet?’

‘One hundred per cent sure. I know Christian and Katie were going through a rough patch but she never refused him, she told me so. He was free to have sex with her morning, noon and night.’

‘No wonder he got bored.’

Marina decided to throw a tantrum on behalf of her sex. ‘God, what pigs men are sometimes! I’d like to hit you over the head with the champagne bottle!’

‘All I meant was –’

‘I know exactly what you meant! You can only see women as objects – you grab a girl, plunge up and down, get bored, toss her aside, pick up someone new and begin the whole shoddy charade all over again! I must say, I’m amazed –
amazed
–
that you want to make a great big grown-up commitment like getting married, and if I were Rosalind Maitland –’

‘How did you know about Rosalind?’

‘Her sister Phyllida told someone who told someone else who told my sister Vivien. Well, Rosalind’s a brave woman, that’s all I can say, and I hope you don’t get tired of plunging up and down with her before you even reach the altar!’

I said tersely: ‘I’m not sleeping with Rosalind. I’m about to become a priest.’

‘All the more reason to make hay while the sun shines!’ ‘Ordinands don’t make hay.’

‘So you’re currently as pure as driven snow, are you?’ ‘If you want to put it that way, yes. Certainly.’

‘My dear Nick,’ said Marina, becoming amicable again as she triumphantly outmanoeuvred me, ‘do you really think I don’t know you’re lying to the back teeth?’ And she smiled at me as I slumped winded with horror on my hard smart Georgian chair.

II

All I could say was: ‘So she told you.’

‘Of course. Katie tells me everything – but it’s okay,’ she added kindly, abandoning all her hostility, ‘don’t worry, I understand. You did it to make her feel better. It was a gesture of loving friendship.’

I finished my Coke, slammed down my glass and said: ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I did it to make myself feel better. I did it in the hope that I could still boost my pride by pulling off a cure.’ I hesitated, but only for a second. ‘It was a sin.’

‘Oh God! Well, I suppose you’re honour-bound to take that dreary view, but frankly I can’t think why the Church gets so hung up on sex when most of the time sex is no more important than a handshake between two people who like each other.’

This time I never hesitated. I said: ‘That’s the most pathetic remark you’ve ever made to me.’

She was shocked. The glamorous, famous, sophisticated, socially-successful, worldly-wise Marina Markhampton was never pathetic. She couldn’t be. It was inconceivable. ‘Pathetic?’ she said incredulously.

‘Yeah –
pathetic!
Why spend your life trying to be a run-of-the-mill animal when you’ve got the chance to be the greatest thing on earth — a fully integrated human being?’ I stood up. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Nicholas.’

I halted in my progress to the door. Never before had she called me by my full name.

‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘Please.’

I stayed. That was a big mistake. I knew instinctively what a big mistake it was, but I made it anyway. I suppose I thought I could handle the consequences.

‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is,’ she said, speaking rapidly, ‘to hear someone come out against casual sex. I mean, one just has to believe casual sex is right and normal these days, doesn’t one, it’s a sort of religion, and I’ve pretended to believe in it because I don’t want anyone thinking I’m peculiar, but I don’t believe in it, I
can
’
t
believe in it, not when I look around and see the damage it causes not just to the guilty but to the innocent. A friend of mine’s mother —’ She broke off. Then she said: ‘No, forget the friend.
My
mother ... My mother had a casual affair once. Well, I’m sure she’s had lots of casual affairs, but this particular one ... No, never mind, I don’t care, not any more, it doesn’t matter,’ said Marina as her eyes filled with tears, and then she exclaimed passionately: ‘Immorality
hurts,
and it’s the innocent who suffer!’

She began to weep. Being Marina she wept beautifully, elegantly, pausing only to sip more champagne in an attempt to regain her composure. Her mascara had thickened but was holding up well. Her enormous blue eyes had assumed a dewy, vulnerable look. She was ravishing. ‘I feel so confused,’ she whispered. ‘Although deep down I don’t believe in the casual-sex religion, it still seems to me that the only way to survive in life is to regard sex as no more important than a handshake, because so long as you stay uninvolved you protect yourself from the pain of rejection — from the pain of loving someone who doesn’t care. I can’t bear rejection,’ said Marina, ‘can’t
bear
it. Being rejected by someone who ought to care is my idea of hell. So sex has to be neutralised somehow, and if one can’tabstain altogether the next best thing is to make it meaningless. Only then can one feel safe.’

She sank down slowly, gracefully, invitingly on the sofa and I sank down rapidly, clumsily, automatically beside her. Her left hand drifted towards my right. Our fingers touched, then intertwined. After a pause she murmured: ‘You do understand, don’t you?’

‘I’m working on it. Keep talking.’

Well, to cut a long story short, I’m currently in the most ghastly jam. When I get married, I don’t expect to enjoy sex — well, I wouldn’t dare enjoy it, if I enjoyed it I’d be too vulnerable to the pain of rejection — but I’ve got to appear to enjoy it, otherwise darling Michael will be so disappointed. So although I’ve got to be inwardly neutral I’ve got to be outwardly rampant, a sex-goddess de luxe. Yet how can I be a sex-goddess if I’ve had no previous experience?’

‘You mean —’

‘Yes. I’ve never done it. Not with Michael. Not with anyone. I almost did it several times when I was very young, but there were so many men to choose from and somehow it seemed more fun to keep them on tenterhooks. And then when I was twenty —’ She stopped before forcing herself to add: ‘There was a man and I wanted him to love me but he turned his back on me and walked away.’

‘Bastard.’

‘Yes, but forget him, he doesn’t matter any more, he can rot in hell for all I care. The one who matters now is Michael — which means I’ve simply got to have a five-star sex-lesson in order to get rid of the virginity and ensure I’m a sex-goddess de luxe on my wedding night. You do see, don’t you, that bearing all the extremely tricky circumstances in mind, this is the only course I can possibly take?’

I opened my mouth to say: ‘You’re nuts,’ but no words emerged. In the end I merely grabbed her glass and gulped down some champagne. Perhaps I thought it would give me instant oblivion.

‘Katie said you were fantastic. In fact that was what upset her most: you being fantastic and giving her an orgasm. She’d never had one before.’

I nearly dropped the glass.
‘
Never had one?
’

‘
No. Obviously Christian wasn’t much good in bed. Funny, isn’t it? He was so brilliant at everything else.’

I poured out some more champagne and drank it straight off.

‘Anyway,’ said Marina, topping up the glass, ‘although Katie was shattered I immediately thought:
there
’
s
the man I need, the man who can rescue me from this ghastly fix, the man who can —’

‘No,’ I said.

‘But Nick, you’d be my saviour!’

‘How can you say that after seeing how I wrecked Katie?’ ‘Katie was wrecked anyway, and besides, this situation’s quite different. I’m asking you, as a dear friend of many years’ standing —’

‘It’s not different. You’re asking me to be a healer, but I can’t heal you, not in that way.’

‘Are you worried about Michael? But I’d never tell him! I never tell Michael anything.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Marina, are you really sure you want to marry Michael?’

‘Yes. He’s handsome and clever and charming and he adores me and I’m mad about him.’

‘I think the one you really love is Katie.’

‘Yes, but that’s got nothing to do with real life. Real life is getting married and having a baby.’

‘No. Real life is being true to yourself, not trying to be something you’re not.’

‘I really will hit you over the head with the champagne bottle in a minute! Look, Nick, I know what I want: I want to marry Michael and for his sake I want to be absolutely sensational in bed.’

‘Wonderful. But there’s just one problem. That man in your past will lay a dead hand on your psyche and wreck all your efforts to be a sex-goddess unless you face his memory squarely,come to terms with the wrong he did you, and forgive him.’

‘This
is
my way of coming to terms. If I become a sex-goddess and enslave darling Michael I shall triumph for ever over the past.’

‘And if you don’t?’

‘With you to teach me how to be rampant, I don’t see how I can fail. Are you going to swill the rest of the champagne or am I?’

I swilled it. Then I said: ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve no choice but to turn you down.’

‘But you can’t reject me like that!’ said Marina. ‘Not now you know how brutally I was rejected in the past! It would be cruel.’

This seemed, vaguely,’ to make sense. Then I realised, clearly, that I would be failing in my duty as her friend if I refused to help her. The whole success of her marriage was in the balance, and perhaps too I could somehow make amends for that unknown man whose cruelty had maimed her psyche. If I could bring a little healing — just a little — into Marina’s life, then it would help atone for the wreck I’d made of Katie. Extraordinary about Katie, never having had an orgasm before. Maybe I’d achieved some sort of healing there after all. Maybe I hadn’t been so misguided as I’d thought. Maybe I really was a sexual colossus despite the average-sized genitals and my failure to resemble Mr Universe. Maybe ‘More champagne?’ said Marina.

‘Yeah, let’s take a bath in it.’

‘Divine!’ said Marina. ‘I think there are still eight bottles left in the case.’

We raided the kitchen and adjourned upstairs.