Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  For one painful, peculiar moment, Katya thought Lindsay was about to cry. She realized that the act Lindsay put on was far more effective than she had conceived, and that for some reason Lindsay was under strain and deeply upset. She regained control very quickly, however. Looking at Tom, she made a face that was wry and contrite.

  ‘I know, I know.’ She gave a sigh. ‘I push too hard and I talk too much, and perhaps—it’s not very restful. I do understand that, but I was only teasing you, Tom—Katya’s right. I liked Colin, and I wouldn’t embarrass him. I didn’t really intend to say anything…’

  Tom smiled. ‘Admit you were tempted.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’ Lindsay returned the smile. ‘But I shan’t say a word. He’s bound to have forgotten, and I won’t remind him. I promise to behave impeccably, all right?’

  It was very rare for Lindsay to break a promise to anyone; with her son, every promise made was religiously kept. Tom, knowing this, at once relaxed; Katya, who had suddenly sniffed the cordite of trouble ahead, assumed that trouble had been avoided. Lindsay became quieter and was perhaps tense, but the next half-hour passed pleasurably.

  Everything was fine, fine, fine, Katya would later tell herself—until the moment when they heard the roar of an engine, and Katya, looking out of the window, saw a long, sleek monster of a sports car pull up.

  VI

  ‘IT’S AN ASTON MARTIN,’ Tom said, awe in his voice. ‘Oh my God, it’s a DB5. Classic—I’m not missing this. I’ll let them in…’

  The door slammed shut behind him.

  ‘I didn’t know Rowland drove an Aston,’ Katya said.

  ‘He doesn’t.’

  ‘Well, he’s driving one now. It must be your fiancé’s, I guess.’

  ‘Don’t, Katya.’ Lindsay gave a wan smile. She joined Katya at the window. Both women watched the tall, dark-haired figure of Rowland McGuire extricate himself from the low-slung driving seat. He was wearing somewhat aged clothes, as he had been on most of the occasions Katya had met him; in this case an antique tweed jacket, a dark green sweater and ancient corduroys. Clothes clearly did not interest Rowland McGuire in the least; Katya had decided that this was because Rowland tried to make no impression, and cared neither to please nor attract. When Rowland entered a room, he did so as himself, arrogantly indifferent as to whether he was approved, liked, sought after or dismissed. Sometimes Katya admired, and sometimes she resented this.

  Rowland did not appear to be in the best of tempers, perhaps. He looked impatiently up and down the street, then glanced up at the house; Lindsay moved away from the window at once. Rowland, with Tom’s assistance, then proceeded to lever and yank the Aston’s passenger from his seat. This took some time; eventually, like a recalcitrant cork from a bottle, a man popped out precipitately, head first. He protested volubly; his face had a greenish pallor and the thin November sunlight seemed to be paining his eyes, for he donned a pair of dark glasses at once. He walked with exaggerated care towards the door of the house, wincing as Rowland banged the car doors shut.

  ‘Your fiancé has a hangover,’ Katya said.

  ‘What does he look like, my fiancé?’

  ‘Well, he’s not as tall as Rowland, but who is? He’s about six feet, maybe six one or two…Even shabbier clothes than Rowland. Thin, quite elegant…Oh, he’s sitting down on the garden wall…No, he’s standing up again. He’s talking to the privet hedge.’

  ‘Just my luck. Not just a maniac, a dipsomaniac. Hair? Does my fiancé have hair? Black? Brown? White? Bald? Katya, tell me he isn’t bald. I don’t think I’m ready for a bald fiancé…’

  ‘No, no, he has rather wonderful hair. Auburn. Byronic if you’re being charitable; in need of a barber, if you’re not. Hang on. Oh, he has excellent eyebrows—diabolic eyebrows; they go up in peaks…’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. You can’t see his eyebrows from there.’

  ‘I can. He just looked up. Oh—he’s smiling. He’s shaking hands with Tom. He has a very good smile. An angelic smile…Terribly pale though. Alabaster. I think he’s about to pass out. What’s he doing now! Oh, he’s sitting on the doorstep. I think he’s gone to sleep. Rowland not amused. Face like thunder…Riot act being read…’

  Lindsay made a moaning sound. ‘Oh, not one of Rowland’s lectures. Katya, I’m not looking forward to this.’

  ‘What a brave man. He’s just told Rowland to piss off. Rowland not too amused by that either. Wait a second—yes, he’s vertical again. They’re coming in. Brace yourself…’

  Lindsay had ceased to listen, Katya realized. Turning, she watched Lindsay arrange herself, first on a chair, then opt for standing up. She was wearing very understated clothes, as she usually did, despite Tom’s allegations. Fashion-pack black, Katya thought, examining Lindsay’s flat black pumps; black tights; short, pleated, black skirt and black polo-neck sweater. Katya felt envious, as she always did, of Lindsay’s boyish build; she herself was too curvaceous, or—as Katya put it in her more self-critical moments—Junoesque. She pulled down the baggy sweater she was wearing and crossed her arms over her breasts. The eyes of the two women met in mutual understanding; Lindsay’s hands flew to her ear-rings, two delicate, pale jade tear-drops.

  ‘Why did I wear this today? I look as if I’m going to a funeral…’

  ‘You look fine, Lindsay. You look great. Those ear-rings are really pretty. Are those the ones Genevieve gave you?’

  ‘Yes. Gini’s goodbye present when she left for Washington. I—they’re hurting my ears; I think I’ll take them off…’

  To Katya’s surprise, Lindsay did so—and in an odd, furtive, hurried way too. As footsteps could be heard mounting the stairs, she thrust them into her pocket. She again sat down, then again stood up.

  ‘I hate meeting people I don’t know. It makes me so nervous. Shall we open some more champagne, Katya? Yes, let’s. I’ll replace it another time…’

  Thus Lindsay created yet another of her diversions, Katya thought. It was not the arrival of a stranger, but of Rowland, that was making her nervous, Katya decided, watching her with some amusement and some pity. By the time the door was finally opened and introductions were being made, Lindsay was again suffering a useful female difficulty with a champagne cork. This ensured that, within seconds of entering, Rowland McGuire and this Colin Lascelles were both caught up in an argument, Colin advocating shaking the bottle, Tom intervening to protest that wasted half the champagne, and Rowland quietly taking the bottle from Lindsay, kissing her on the cheek, greeting Katya, and opening the champagne without the least difficulty or fuss.

  ‘Coffee might have been a wiser idea,’ Rowland said, with a glance in Colin’s direction. ‘And strong black coffee, at that.’

  ‘No, no, no. The worst possible thing.’ Colin was already ensconced on the sofa; the dark glasses had been removed and he was beaming at everyone with a genial delight that suggested he had known them all for most of his life.

  ‘Do you get hangovers, Tom? Katya? I had a hangover for three years when I was here. Alka-Seltzer; prairie oysters—none of that works. The best cure of all is a pink gin—but a glass of champagne is also excellent. Thank you, Lindsay. It settles the stomach, soothes the brain, reminds the legs how to walk…’ He looked at Lindsay in a considering way, over the rim of his champagne glass; he hesitated. ‘We did speak on the telephone yesterday, didn’t we?’

  ‘Last night, yes. But only very briefly…’

  ‘Oh good, I thought we did. It’s just—well, I was celebrating. A bit of a bender. Then Rowland was up at dawn, as usual, banging on the door, hauled me out of bed, made me pack—I kept asking him, what’s the hurry? Another couple of years and I’d have slept it off. Now, I’m still feeling the after-effects: head a bit woozy, memory on the blink…So I wasn’t sure—’ His brow crinkled; he turned a pair of blue, innocent eyes on Lindsay and gave her an anxious look. ‘I hope I made some sort of sense when we spoke? Rowland nagged—he does that. Why did you call? What did you want? Was there a messag
e? He kept it up in the car, for hundreds of miles—I had to go to sleep…’

  ‘There wasn’t really a message. Nothing important. I just wondered when Rowland was getting back. Don’t worry about it. I’d been at a party and I know how it is…’

  ‘A party?’ Rowland handed Lindsay some champagne. ‘And was it good?’

  ‘No, horrible. Something to do with a movie company called Diablo. Tomas Court’s new production company, oddly enough, Colin. In fact…’

  ‘Did you go on your own?’

  ‘No, Rowland, I went with Markov and Jippy. I talked to two homunculi, a man called me “babe”, and then I left.’

  This précis, or the champagne, which she drank a little too fast, gave Lindsay courage. With a small glance in Rowland’s direction, she sat down on the cerise sofa next to Colin and began asking him about Yorkshire. Within minutes, Colin, visibly recovering, was launched on a saga only too familiar to Rowland. ‘That bloody, bloody man,’ Colin began, and Rowland moved off.

  Lindsay listened with excessive attention; Tom and Katya were drawn into a discussion of Court’s movies and psychopathology. After pacing backwards and forwards in an unsettled way for some while, Rowland stationed himself near the shelves at the far end of the room where, with close and apparently pleasurable attention, he began to examine the books. Rowland often absented himself in this way on such occasions, so no-one took much notice of this. When the discussion moved on to the subject of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Katya rose to fetch the book in question. She found Rowland was holding her copy and examining it—presumably not reading it, since the book was upside down, she noted. As she approached, he corrected this and turned the pages, the margins of which were filled with vituperative comments from Katya.

  ‘Don’t read those,’ said Katya, blushing scarlet. ‘Rubbish. Childish stuff. I wrote those a year ago, at least…’

  The remark seemed to amuse Rowland. One of the most disconcerting aspects of the man, Katya thought crossly, was his unreadability. Impossible to tell now if he was amused by something she had written, or by her, or by himself. Rowland McGuire’s intelligence always piqued her, and his proximity always made her physically self-conscious. When he was nearby her hands felt clumsy, she felt over-burdened with breasts and hips. Was it the contrast between her figure (womanly) and the adjective ‘childish’, that amused him? Or had she written something very stupid? Katya snatched at the book.

  ‘Are you always that unforgiving?’ Rowland remarked, relinquishing it.

  ‘I don’t forgive bad writing, no,’ Katya snapped.

  Another assessing, glinting, green glance was his only reply to this. Katya could not decide whether to withdraw or attack.

  ‘Don’t tell me you like it,’ she said, half turning, and thus retaining the option of retreat.

  ‘I like certain aspects of it, very much.’

  Rowland appeared to have no interest in being challenged further. He took down another book from the shelves—Coleridge, Katya saw—and began reading. His other ability, to make her feel invisible, Katya had noticed before. She gave him a cutting look, returned to Tom, put her arm around him and sat down on the floor next to him. There she remained, seething and smiling, until Lindsay, stopping Lascelles in mid-sentence, rose and announced with tense animation that if they didn’t leave immediately—immediately—they would miss the table she had booked for lunch.

  The restaurant Lindsay had chosen was called Tennyson’s. It was a large brasserie, much favoured by undergraduates, serving good, inexpensive Italian wines and the best hamburgers in Oxford. It was very crowded. Approaching their table, in an alcove flanked by potted palms, Lindsay noticed that the floor was oddly unsteady. It occurred to her that she had eaten no dinner the night before and no breakfast that morning; she had just consumed four glasses of champagne on an empty stomach, and this was disastrous. She had something she needed to say to Rowland, a confession that grew more urgent by the second. This confession, which she might have made on the telephone the night before, had she reached him, had to be made before Rowland returned to London and spoke to her editor, his old friend and colleague, Max Flaunders. She began to see that this confession could be made now, over lunch, and in front of the others. There were several advantages to that somewhat cowardly approach, not least that, if Rowland were angry—and he might well be angry—he would be constrained by their presence, and would have to keep his anger to himself.

  Sober up, sober up, she muttered under her breath, looking at a wavering table, as waiters fussed with extra chairs. Important, she felt, to get the seating right…

  Unfortunately, Colin Lascelles also had ideas about the seating; while Lindsay was still arguing silently with a potted palm, he put them into effect. Tom sat at the head of the table, with Katya next to him and Rowland beside her; Lindsay was seated opposite Rowland and next to Colin Lascelles. Rowland seemed indifferent to these arrangements, and preoccupied, but every time Lindsay looked up, she met his gaze. She would have to meet his gaze when she made the confession. She would do it soon, she promised herself. Maybe she should do it when the first course arrived, or perhaps the second; no, at the pudding stage, that would be the moment, perhaps. Meanwhile, no wine, no wine at all, and masses of starch to soak up the champagne…

  ‘And so,’ Colin was saying, ‘Court hired a team of private investigators because the police were getting nowhere, and the man was smart; he always called from phone booths, and he always called from out of state…’

  ‘Weird,’ said Tom. ‘And this was going on when they made Dead Heat? That puts a whole new construction on that movie…’

  ‘Before, during and after.’ Colin nodded. ‘It started around two years after their son was born, and I believe it’s been continuing ever since.’

  ‘Horrible.’ Katya gave a small shiver. ‘And he threatened them?’

  ‘So I gather. Not Court himself, but Natasha Lawrence, yes. Also the son. So you can imagine…’

  ‘Did he use a name? Why couldn’t they trace him?’

  ‘He moved around too fast, I think. And he did use a name—a false one, presumably. What was it? What was it? Something very ordinary—King, I think. That’s it; King. Jack? John? No. Joseph, that was it.’

  ‘Joseph?’ Rowland said, speaking for the first time, and so suddenly that Lindsay jumped. ‘Joseph King? You’re sure that was the name?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely.’

  ‘Joseph?’ Rowland said, ‘or Joe? As in Joe King. As in Joking?’

  ‘Good God.’ Colin blinked. ‘You’re right—I was told Joseph, but there could be a pun. Joking. Joe King. I never thought of that.’

  ‘Why did you never mention this to me, Colin?’ Rowland gave him a sharp glance. ‘I’ve had months from you on the subject of Tomas Court and you never said a word about stalkers, or threats.’

  ‘I know,’ Colin blushed, ‘and I should have kept my mouth shut now. It’s the hangover—my tongue runs away with me. Forget I said any of this, all of you; it’s probably all gossip, anyway. Tomas Court never said a word about it, needless to say. One of his assistant directors told me…Ah, food! I’m the prawns, I think. Rowland, were you soup or salad? Lindsay, you were definitely salad…’

  ‘Spaghetti. I was spaghetti.’

  ‘No, no. Salad. A small green salad, wasn’t she, Rowland?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lindsay accepted the salad meekly. She pronged a lettuce leaf with her fork and moved it around in a puddle of vinaigrette. She nibbled the leaf and wolfed some more bread. She gulped the rest of her Perrier and then, as the conversation resumed, decided that perhaps, since Colin had already poured it, a little wine might be risked. She drank a glass of something red, which Colin instantly refilled. Lindsay, joining in a conversation about Oxford, talking fast, did not notice this.

  Suddenly a hamburger had arrived; she had no recollection of ordering a hamburger—Lindsay felt courage flow back. Colin had just finished a long disquisition on the s
ubject of Balliol College; there was a lull in the conversation—the perfect moment to spring her surprise. In fact, she had several surprises to spring, but the others could wait for another occasion. Now, she had to make her main confession; she fixed her eyes firmly on Rowland’s green Christmas sweater.

  ‘I’ve resigned,’ she said, in a very small voice.

  Either no-one heard this remark or no-one understood it, for there was a surprising lack of reaction. Her voice seemed oddly unreliable; Lindsay cleared her throat.

  ‘I’ve resigned,’ she repeated, so loudly this time that heads at the nearby tables swivelled. ‘I’ve resigned from the paper. I am no longer a fashion editor. That is, I am, but only for a bit. I shall cover the New York collections next week and then I’m owed some holiday time, and then, soon, I’ll be free. I’m giving up fashion. I’m giving up journalism. I’m remaking myself. I’m going to write a book: a biography of Coco Chanel, probably. So now you all have to congratulate me and drink to that.’

  This announcement did produce a reaction. There was a brief, surprised silence, then a babel of questions: How? When? Why? Into this babel, Lindsay continued with her speech.

  ‘I decided months ago really,’ she went on. ‘I just had to make myself do it. I’ve been working in fashion too long. I need a change…’

  ‘Challenges!’ Colin Lascelles put in. ‘Quite right! Fresh fields and pastures new! I’ve always believed in that…’

  ‘Woods. Fresh woods and pastures new,’ Katya corrected. She leaned across and kissed Lindsay. ‘Well done. You were wasted in fashion. I think that’s totally brilliant…’

  ‘Brave!’ Tom said, rising and also kissing her. ‘That’s great—do I still get my allowance? Only kidding. Wow! I never thought you’d actually do it…’

  ‘A toast.’ Lascelles refilled glasses. ‘To the fair Lindsay—may she succeed in whatever she does next…’

  There was another buzzing outburst of questions and exclamations; Lindsay found these made her curiously blind and deaf. Then, as the blindness and deafness began to recede, she began to realize: Rowland McGuire had taken no part in this.