The High Flyer: A Novel - Hardcover

Buch 2 von 3: St. Benet's Trilogy

Howatch, Susan

 
9780375410574: The High Flyer: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0375410570 ISBN 13: 9780375410574
Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

High-powered London attorney Carter Graham's perfect life with her new husband is shattered by the revelation of her husband's secret ties to the occult and the Nazis, and an increasingly desperate Carter seeks aid from Nick Darrow, the mysterious head of St. Benet's Healing Center, as she struggles to come to terms with her own life and marriage

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Howatch was born in 1940. She obtained a law degree from London University and then immigrated to the United States, where she lived for eleven years. During that time she wrote eight novels, including her international best-sellers <b>Penmarric</b> and <b>The Wheel of Fortune</b>. In 1980 she returned to England, where she began to study Church history. The result was the six novels that make up the Starbridge series. In 1993 she made headlines by funding a lectureship in theology and natural science at Cambridge University.

Aus dem Klappentext

m is a successful, financially secure London lawyer in her mid-thirties, a partner in her firm. She has the perfect clothes, the perfect car, the perfect apartment and, as of a few months ago, the perfect husband. She is perfectly on track, exactly where she hoped to be at this point in her life. Except that reality is about to change her course.<br><br>Carter slowly begins to learn that her husband, Kim, is not what he seems. People from his past hint at a serious involvement in the occult and at a connection between his family and the Nazis. Carter has a disturbing encounter with the "psychic healer" who warned Kim against their marriage; and, even more alarming, with what seems to be the ghost of Kim's ex-wife, recently deceased in a suspicious accident. Kim grows more and more cagey in his explanations for his increasingly devious behavior. Bit by bit, everything Carter thought she knew about him--and about herself--is called into question.<br> <br>Her world shattering--is sh

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Chapter One

When I first saw my temporary secretary it never occurred to me to flirt with him. Even in 1990, when suing for sexual harassment was still considered to be primarily an American activity, an office flirtation would have been considered unwise for a high flyer, and besides, this particular male hardly struck me as being irresistible. He had curly hair, chocolate-coloured eyes and a chunky, cherubic look. My taste in men has never encompassed overgrown choirboys.

Walking into my office I found him stooped over my computer, and since I was not expecting a male secretary I assumed he was someone from the maintenance department. I did notice that he was dressed as an office drone in a grey suit, drab tie and white shirt, but maintenance men often resembled office drones these days; it was a side-effect of the technological revolution.

Abruptly I demanded: "What's the problem?" and added for good measure: "Who the hell are you?" I always feel irritable on Monday mornings.

He glanced up, decided I was just another dumb blonde hired to massage a keyboard and made the big mistake of adopting a patronising manner. "Relax, sweet pea," he said casually, "I'm the temp from PersonPower International! I've been assigned for two weeks to Mr. Carter Graham."

I dropped my bag on the visitor's chair, folded my arms across my chest and dug my high heels into the carpet. Then I said in a voice designed to bend nails: "I'm Carter Graham."

The man jumped as if stung by a bee, and as his head jerked up I realised that his square jaw was incompatible with the choirboy image. "I beg your pardon, ma'am," he said at once. "I must have misunderstood the lady in personnel who directed me here."

"The lady in personnel must be suffering from amnesia. She knows I only work with female temps."

"I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am, but let me reassure you by saying -- "

"You're gay."

"No, but I can do everything women and gays can do with computers, and I've even taken a course in DTP."

I saw no reason to put up a front by pretending to know what this latest technological time-waster was. "DTP?"

"Desk-Top Publishing, ma'am."

"I don't approve of dubious activities taking place on a desk-top. Are you seriously -- seriously -- trying to tell me that PersonPower International have had the nerve to send a heterosexual white Anglo-Saxon male to work in my office?"

"Maybe they see it as their contribution to multiculturalism, ma'am."

Worried about my ability to keep a straight face I turned aside, tramped to the window and stared at the crowded street four floors below. Only after I had carefully counted to ten did I swing back to face him and say: "All right, so be it. Welcome to Curtis, Towers."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"But now you listen to me, and you listen well. This is a first-names office but you and I are going to use surnames for the duration of your time here. I'm not having all those hormones and pheromones stimulated by any pseuds'-corner office intimacy."

"In that case would you care to be addressed as Miss Graham, Mrs. Graham or Ms. Graham?"

"Well, I certainly didn't go through a wedding ceremony only to be called 'Miss' at the end of it, and I'm not Mrs. Graham, I'm Mrs. Betz. But my marital status is hardly your concern."

"Right, Ms. Graham."

"And your name is -- "

"Eric Tucker."

"Okay, Tucker, get me unsugared coffee, black as pitch and strong enough to make an elephant levitate. Then we'll start to flay the fax till it screams for mercy."

He never asked where the coffee machine was or where he could make coffee or whether he would be able to obtain a takeaway from the cafeteria. He just responded smartly: "Yes, ma'am," and zipped out of the room. That impressed me. But I also heard the note of amusement in his voice and knew I was not the only one who had played the scene poker-faced but tongue-in-cheek. That alarmed me. Sharing the same sense of humour can be a snare in an office setting. Humour leads to intimacy which leads to loss of detachment which leads to bad judgement which leads to a mess. I resolved to be on my guard.

I wished he were much younger than I was, but I thought he too was probably in his mid-thirties. Younger men were easier to muzzle and keep on a short leash; younger men were less likely to think a woman's place was not in the boardroom; younger men were easier to intimidate, control and organise. But this smooth-talking item was not a younger man. Nor, I was sure, was he ever again going to remind me of an elderly cherub or an overgrown choirboy.

At that point I spent three seconds wondering why he was working as a temporary secretary and three seconds wondering, in the casual way one does with new acquaintances of the opposite sex, what he was like in bed. Then I said to myself impatiently: "Bloody sex! Why are we all so obsessed with it?" and focused my mind instead on the intricate fiscal affairs of my major clients, the Unipax Transworld Corporation.

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Verlag
Alfred a Knopf Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2000
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375410570
ISBN 13 
9780375410574
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
500
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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