Michael Ridpath: See No Evil

June 18, 1988

I’m scared. There, I’ve written it. After twenty minutes staring at the empty page trying to think of a way to begin this diary, I’ve realized I can’t start until I get this down.

I’m scared.

Of whom? Of what? Of Neels, for sure. When he lost his temper last night and clenched those meaty fists, for a moment I thought he was going to strike me, more than that, beat the life out of me. But what scares me most about Neels is that I’m losing him. Losing him and I don’t know why.

I’m scared of South Africa, or maybe for South Africa. I’m scared of what white is doing to black and black is doing to white. Like Neels, I’m scared the whole place will go up in flames at any moment. And I’m scared of myself, of what’s happening to me.

I feel all alone, alone in the middle of my family. Neels spends so much time in the States now. Caroline is sweet, but she’s just twelve and such a quiet little thing. I only realized how much I wanted Todd back home when I got that letter from him today telling me he wasn’t coming. He’s planning to stay in Hampshire with some friends from school over the summer vacation. What is my son doing thousands of miles away in a boarding school in England? And why do I need him so much?

I thought it would help to write it all down. Somehow I need to figure out who I am, what I’m going to do. I bought this fancy notebook in Paris last year. It’s black moleskin, the kind of notebook Bruce Chatwin carried across Africa and Australia. It’s begging to be filled with great thoughts and insights, but I don’t have any of those. I don’t know what I think. I didn’t want to use a journalist’s spiral notebook. I’m not a journalist anymore. So what am I? Wife? Mother? Stepmother? Prisoner? Prisoner of my ideals? Prisoner of my fears?

All questions, no answers.

Goddammit to hell.

It was quiet at Langthorpe Aerodrome. There was no roar of aircraft engines running up twenty yards outside the flying school, nor whine of those same engines in the circuit a thousand feet above. The only sound was the gentle plink of recently deposited rain water as it fell in fat irregular drops from the gutters and trees. The air was damp, cold and still. The lurid orange windsock hung limp by the fire truck. A grey mass of cloud, scarcely able to hold its many tons of tiny water droplets, pressed its great weight down on to the runway and the line of poplars on the far side. The sea, seven miles to the north, was invisible. So too was the round church tower of the village of Langthorpe, barely half a mile distant.

Alex Calder peered vainly at the cloud for any sign of sun. According to the weather forecast the slow-moving cold front was supposed to clear at any moment, leaving behind the newly washed brilliant blue skies and tufts of cloud through which it was such a joy to fly. But that wasn’t going to happen, at least not for the next couple of hours, so Calder sent home the student who had been hovering around the reception area hoping that part of his scheduled lesson on ‘recovery from unusual attitudes’ could be salvaged.

There was a pile of recent ‘Notices to Airmen’ from the Civil Aviation Authority to be gone through, but Calder couldn’t resist bringing up the Spreadfinex page on his computer. Numbers flashed up blue and red, familiar numbers, representing the bond markets of the United States, Britain, Japan and the euro zone. There was a time when Calder had been immersed in these numbers ten hours a day, buying and selling millions of dollars of bonds on behalf of his employer, Bloomfield Weiss, a large American investment bank. But two years previously he had quit that world in disgust and together with a partner had bought the aerodrome and its attached flying school. He still missed it: the thrill of pitting his wits against the market, of watching those winking figures as they indicated losses transformed to profit. Throwing his little red Pitts Special aerobatic biplane around the sky went some distance towards slaking his thirst for risk, but not far enough. So in the last few months he had begun to bet on the direction of the bond markets, using an internet spread-betting service. It was almost like the real thing, except he no longer had an edge over the market, he knew he was more likely to lose than to win and the sums he was playing with were thousands of pounds of his own money rather than millions of dollars of someone else’s.

That morning he was down fifteen hundred quid on a bet he had made that US bond prices would rise. They hadn’t. Yet. He was confident that they would. Perhaps he should bet a little more?

He glanced up as he heard footsteps along the path outside his window. A man and a woman strolled by. The man was young, tall and confident. And the woman...

Calder grinned and leaped to his feet. He met them as they entered the reception area. When the woman saw Calder her face lit up and she unhooked her arm from her companion’s and embraced him.

‘Kim, I can’t believe it,’ Calder said. ‘I haven’t seen you for—’

‘Ten years,’ the woman said.

Calder looked at her. She had changed very little. Kim O’Connell’s Irish ancestry had always been obvious, with her white skin, jet-black hair and grey eyes. The hair was cut shorter and the unruly curls had been tamed, faint lines etched the edges of her mouth and eyes, but the smile was there, that warm, generous, flirtatious smile that she bestowed on everyone and anyone.

‘You’re staring,’ she said. ‘Do I pass?’

‘Sorry,’ Calder said. ‘It was just so unexpected. But it’s good to see you!’

‘This is my husband, Todd.’

‘Hi, Alex, how are you?’ The man thrust out a hand and shook Calder’s firmly. He was a couple of inches taller than Calder, with a square jaw, blond hair brushed back from his forehead and bright blue eyes. He was dressed in a turtle-neck, chinos and an expensive suede jacket. Handsome. Definitely handsome. But Calder would have expected nothing less from Kim.

‘I’d heard you got married,’ he said.

‘Of course you had. We invited you to the wedding!’

‘Yeah. Sorry I couldn’t come. I think I was working in New York at the time.’

‘The wedding was in Philadelphia! Pathetic, Alex.’

Calder smiled and shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sorry I missed it.’

‘What about you? Is there a girlfriend? A wife? Little flying Calders?’

Calder tried not to wince as he thought about Sandy. The row that they had had on the phone following his disastrous trip to New York to see her was still raw. ‘No,’ he said flatly.

Kim’s eyes narrowed. Calder could see her curiosity was piqued, but she decided not to pursue it.

‘Look, are you hungry?’ he said. ‘It’s just about lunchtime and there’s a nice pub in the village I live in. It’s not far.’ He glanced at the sky; if anything it was pressing lower on the airfield. ‘Not much is going to happen here for a while.’

There wasn’t room for them all to fit into Calder’s Maserati so they hopped into Todd and Kim’s hired car and Calder directed them through the village of Langthorpe and north towards the sea and Hanham Staithe. Kim rattled on about their drive to Norfolk from her parents’ house in Liverpool. He had forgotten how much she talked, but he noticed that the Liverpudlian tinge to her accent he remembered from university had been replaced with a hint of American.

Ten minutes later they were all installed in the Admiral Nelson, an ancient white stone pub, mostly empty on a weekday lunchtime. It overlooked the pot-holed hard, newly inundated with rainwater from above and seawater from below. A variety of vessels, sailing dinghies, small fishing boats and even a couple of thirty-foot yachts strained against their moorings in the creek as they were thrust upstream by the flooding tide. The marsh beyond brooded under the dark clouds. Calder ordered drinks at the bar, a pint of local bitter for Todd, a half of cider for Kim and a ginger beer for himself: there was still a possibility he might be able to fly that afternoon.