Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  ‘Pity, because it is heaven, by all accounts. I’d have liked to know if it was true…’ She gave a dreamy sigh. ‘Just, like, the best sex ever. Eight times a night.’

  ‘Don’t be so goddamn ridiculous.’ Lindsay began to yank on the stockings. ‘No-one does it eight times a night. Less is more, Pixie. Remember that.’

  ‘If you say so, Lindsay,’ Pixie replied, in the most irritating manner possible. ‘If you say so…’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you telling me the truth? You’re sure you never—not even once?’

  ‘No, I damn well didn’t. Rowland is a colleague. Can we change the subject and change it now, please?’

  ‘OK. OK.’ Pixie looked thoughtful. ‘It’s just—I’ve noticed him looking at you, once or twice, and I could have sworn that…’

  Lindsay put on the skirt, the jacket and the shoes. This took her at least thirty seconds and demonstrated consummate self-control, she felt.

  ‘What could you have sworn?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing, nothing. Put it this way, maybe he was admiring your work, but I got a rather different impression

  ‘Twaddle,’ Lindsay said, with firmness. ‘Tosh. Romantic drivel. When was this?’

  ‘Oh, back in the summer some time…’ Pixie made an airy gesture. ‘You were wearing that cream dress.’

  ‘Really? I’ve always liked that dress.’

  ‘And another occasion—when you were going straight to the theatre with him from work, September some time?’

  ‘I remember vaguely. September the eighth.’

  ‘He helped you on with your coat, and I caught that look on his face…’ Pixie shrugged. ‘I was probably imagining it. You were putting him down as usual, telling him how arrogant he is—that’s why you didn’t notice, I expect.’

  ‘Putting him down?’ Lindsay began, frowning. ‘No, Pixie—I don’t do that…’

  ‘You never stop doing it, Lindsay.’ Pixie gave her a kind look. ‘I know you don’t mean it, and so does he most of the time, but you’ve got a wicked tongue and you hurt him sometimes. Pity about that—you might have been in there with a chance…’

  Lindsay turned to look at her own reflection. She would silence that tongue of hers, she thought; she would cut that tongue out if necessary. Never ever again, no matter how provoked, would she give Rowland McGuire a sharp answer. From now on, in her capacity as his friend, of course, she would speak with a becoming, a womanly sweetness; she would anoint Rowland with the balm of her female discourse…I shall be dulcet, she resolved, and not just to Rowland, but to all the male sex. Perhaps a certain tartness, even a shrewishness, had been her problem all along, she thought. And how astonishing that Pixie, whose instincts were usually acute for such nuances, should think she might have been in there with a chance.

  Resolving to reform, and to start practising this new mildness of tongue immediately—she could practise on Colin over dinner, she realized; how fortunate—she executed a little pirouette. Pixie examined her, critically, from head to foot. The two women’s eyes met in the mirror; both smiled.

  ‘Well, I have to say it—you look great. I’ve improved you no end. Your skin’s radiant, your eyes are shining…Quite a transformation.’ Pixie gave her a sidelong sly glance. ‘I can’t take all the credit, there must be another reason…Anticipation, perhaps?’

  ‘What?’ Lindsay looked at her blankly. ‘Oh, of Colin, you mean? Well, it will be nice to have a quiet dinner somewhere…’

  ‘Quiet, huh?’ Pixie smiled. ‘You like him, maybe? I wouldn’t blame you. Thin but Byronic. Nice butt. Wild hair. Great line in Levis. Well hung. Dresses to the left—that’s always a good sign…’

  ‘How observant you are, Pixie. I must remember that.’

  ‘And quite an operator too, I’d say…’

  ‘An operator?’ Lindsay shook her head vehemently. ‘No, Pixie, you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. He’s sweet. Volatile. A bit naïve. Not very sure of himself…’

  ‘Oh yeah? Like, he finds out what flight you’re on, and switches to it himself. Then he chats up that stewardess at Heathrow—I watched him do it, Lindsay—and gets you both bumped up to First Class? I’ve seen him with you, in the bar, gazing at you with those innocent blue eyes, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth…I read this man, Lindsay, and I know exactly what he’s after.’ She giggled. ‘And if I were you, I’d give it to him. After dinner tonight.’

  Lindsay listened to this speech in thoughtful silence. From the vantage point of her new-won maturity and saintliness of character, she gave poor one-track-mind Pixie a pitying look.

  ‘Pixie,’ she said, ‘you’re getting cynical, you know that? When you’re older, you’ll understand. Sometimes men and women like to meet and simply talk. There is no hidden agenda…’

  Pixie gave a snort. Some of Lindsay’s new saintliness deserted her.

  ‘Look, Pixie,’ she continued, the sweetness of tongue also momentarily failing her, ‘you know where we’re going after dinner? We are going up town to this apartment he’s staying in. There, Pixie, I’m going to meet his aunt—his great-aunt to be precise—because, God alone knows why, she’s expressed an interest in being introduced. Now I hate to disabuse you, but she’s around eighty-five years old, so I scarcely think…’

  ‘Wow! You’re meeting his aunt?’ Pixie appeared to be thinking fast. Her face lit. ‘Well, what d’you know, this must be serious. That’s good. That’s great. I’m really pleased for you, Lindsay. I’m getting the picture now—like, this could be long-term, I mean, several months, right? Lucky we did the make-over; this is obviously the big night. I see it all…You charm the old lady, get her approval, so to speak, then it’s good night to grandma…He brings you back here to the Pierre, like the gentleman he is, then it’s soft lights, sweet nothings…’ Pixie took her hand in a confiding way. ‘You’d like me to lend you some grass, maybe? I have a stash downstairs. It can help with a first fuck sometimes, I find; kind of eases all the tensions, revs you up for the second fuck, makes sure it goes all right…’

  At this, saintliness deserted Lindsay completely. She snatched her hand back.

  ‘Are you totally mad, Pixie? Stone-deaf? How many times do I have to say this? It’s dinner, it’s the great-aunt’s, it’s back to the Pierre on my own. Read my lips, Pixie: no fucking. Have you got that?’

  Pixie was mortally and morally offended. She gave Lindsay a look of shocked disbelief, made a few pungent remarks about women who hoarded their supposed virtue, then stalked to the door.

  ‘Poor Colin,’ she said. ‘That is so mean and miserly, Lindsay. I’m disappointed in you.’ She opened the door. ‘You know what I call behaviour like that?’

  ‘Don’t bother telling me,’ Lindsay began.

  ‘I call it fucking immoral,’ Pixie yelled, nipping out through the door and slamming it.

  Colin’s idea of a quiet restaurant surprised Lindsay. It proved to be on East 55th Street; it was called Temps Perdu, had long been famous, and was very grand indeed. Realizing that it was their destination, Lindsay came to a halt on the sidewalk, a few yards short of its pinkish entrance canopy. She was about to suggest that this choice was an extravagant one, since Temps Perdu was celebrated for being very expensive, as in Third World debt, when she remembered she was practising sweetness of tongue.

  She rephrased. ‘Won’t this be—well, a little grand, Colin?’ she said.

  Colin looked at her non-plussed. Such a concept did not appear to be familiar to him.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘It’s terribly nice; you’ll like it. The food’s wonderful. There’s a great wine list, and there’s a very jolly head waiter; his name’s Fabian. He’ll look after us.’

  It was on the tip of Lindsay’s tongue to say that, in her experience, head waiters in such New York restaurants were many things: haughty, intimidating, insultingly rude, for instance, but rarely jolly. The old Lindsay would have said this; the new Lindsay made some simpering vacuous disclaimer, and b
oth Lindsays started praying as a flunkey in uniform held the doors back.

  Please God, the Lindsays said silently, to a deity in which neither quite believed. Please God, let them honour Colin’s reservation; please God, don’t let them relegate us to a Siberian table so conspicuously ill-placed that even Colin will notice; please God, don’t let them treat Colin like a worm, and please let them see that he means well and he’s really very sweet…

  Lindsay was so busy with these prayers and with squinting around trying to work out which table was nearest the rest-room exit, and whether they were being inexorably led to it, that she was seated at a banquette opposite Colin before the details of their reception began to penetrate.

  Then she began to realize: the table at which they had been placed was a delightful one, and someone—she was not sure who it was, but someone pleasant with a deep, French-accented voice—had used the phrase, ‘Your usual table’. This usual table, moreover, was in a quiet, even an intimate corner; it had a snowy linen cloth, candles, charming flowers; beyond it, a wine waiter, supervised by a smiling benignant grey-haired man, was opening a bottle of champagne. It occurred to her that the benignant man must be Fabian—this aperçu being assisted by the fact that Colin addressed him as such.

  ‘With my compliments, Mr Lascelles,’ benignant Fabian appeared to be saying. ‘The ’seventy-six. I remember you liked that.’ A large leather-bound folder was placed in front of her. Opening it, Lindsay saw that although it listed three types of caviar and five ways of serving lobster, the menu she had been given did not list prices.

  ‘Bon appétit,’ said Fabian, a man Lindsay realized she now liked very much. He withdrew. Colin gave some Gaelic toast, which he said he had once learned in Scotland, and which ensured long life, love and happiness.

  Lindsay took a sip of the champagne; it was nectar; it was a revelation; it was—no contest—the most delicious champagne she had ever drunk in her life. A tiny silence fell; remembering her new womanliness, Lindsay sweetly and sympathetically asked Colin what sort of a day he had had.

  ‘Ghastly. Unspeakable. Agonizing,’ he replied. ‘Here, feel. My hands are trembling.’

  Lindsay took the hand he held out.

  ‘It’s fine. Not a tremor,’ she said, after a while.

  ‘Really?’ A glint of amusement appeared in Colin’s innocent blue eyes. ‘I am surprised. Try the pulse.’

  Lindsay tried the pulse. She frowned, concentrating.

  ‘It’s fast,’ she pronounced eventually. ‘Definitely feverish.’

  ‘I thought it might be. Entirely the fault of the evil genius, of course.’

  In his easy way, Colin then began to discourse on the subject of the evil genius—or Prospero, as he had apparently now decided to call him. He moved on to shred the character of the famous actor, Nic Hicks. He did this with some wit, but Lindsay was distracted and listened with only half her attention. Various suspicions were inching their way forwards from the back of her mind, and she wanted to examine them in detail. This was not easy; they kept entangling themselves in Colin’s sentences and the choice she was trying to make from the menu. Concentrate, she said to herself.

  In the first place, there was, possibly, an alteration in Colin’s demeanour tonight; she could have sworn that there was a flirtatiousness in his manner when he took her hand, and an accomplished flirtatiousness at that. Perhaps, though, this thought was unworthy and had been planted by Pixie. In the second place, there was the question of Colin’s suit. She had never seen him in a suit before, and this three-piece masterly garment, dark grey in colour with the narrowest, most discreet of pinstripes, was of a kind Lindsay had believed almost extinct. It could only have come from Savile Row, and it made her understand what Englishmen meant when they spoke of having a suit built. The suit; the choice of restaurant; Colin’s reception there…the suspicions swelled and took on a monstrous shape. It occurred to Lindsay that, judging from this evidence, Colin Lascelles might be rich.

  This idea distressed Lindsay, who was wary of the rich in general, and wary of rich men in particular. Sooner or later, a lordliness and a crass insensitivity, which in her experience almost always accompanied wealth, became apparent. Sensing Colin’s gaze, she bent her head to the menu. Fish or meat; flirtatious or merely friendly; rich or normal?

  ‘I can’t decide,’ she said.

  ‘Well, the caviar’s always reliable,’ Colin said, in a gentle, helpful way. ‘If you like caviar, of course. The lobster’s generally excellent. Great-Aunt Emily swears by the soft-shell crabs…’

  Lindsay saw, in both senses, her entree.

  ‘I shall begin with the lobster,’ she said. ‘Cold, poached. Then the grilled sole, I think…That’s a wonderful suit, Colin; is it in honour of Aunt Emily?’

  ‘Most certainly not. It’s in your honour. I’m glad you like it; I found it in an Oxfam shop. I’ll have the same as you, I think…’

  He placed these orders with a waiter who had instantly appeared at his elbow. He opened the tome of a wine list, flicked the pages briefly, closed it, and made a tiny movement. The wine-waiter materialized.

  ‘They have some very good Montrachet, Lindsay, would you like that?’

  Lindsay, to whom alcohol was alcohol, and useful when nervous, felt pretty sure that she had drunk Montrachet on some occasion and liked it very much. She said so.

  ‘I love all Sauvignons,’ she added.

  ‘Oh.’ Colin looked confused. ‘Well, this is a white burgundy, but if you’d rather have…’

  ‘No, no, no. I love burgundies too. I love everything, in fact.’

  Colin smiled. ‘We’ll stay with the champagne for the moment,’ he said. ‘Then, the Le Montrachet DRC, I think. The nineteen seventy-eight. If you’d bring it with the fish.’ The waiter departed.

  Colin gave Lindsay what she felt was a curious look.

  ‘Better be prudent, I think,’ he remarked, in a meaningful way.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Lindsay, still weighing the provenance of the marvellous suit. ‘Ever since that lunch in Oxford, I’ve reformed. I’ll never get drunk again in my life.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Colin, laying some stress on this.

  ‘They seem to know you here, Colin?’

  ‘A bit.’ He met her gaze unwaveringly. ‘It’s because of Aunt Emily. This place is sort of her local.’

  Lindsay opened her mouth to say, Local, huh? and shut it again.

  ‘Really?’ she said, in an encouraging tone, and, to her surprise, found no more was needed; Colin was off and away at once.

  ‘Well, she lives not far from here, you see. She has an apartment in this amazing building, 1910, Hillyard White was the architect. I wanted you to see it—that’s partly why I thought we’d pop in on Emily tonight. It’s one of the most extraordinary buildings in Manhattan, and it’s absolutely untouched—not a single detail despoiled, for once. Only the Dakota is in the same class, but even the Dakota can’t compete. The staircase…’

  Lindsay was glad to see the effectiveness of the prompt-feminine, but had no intention of being deflected by architecture.

  ‘But you obviously come here often yourself, Colin?’ she said.

  ‘If I’m in New York, I usually drop in—with Emily. She’s been coming here for about three hundred years, you see; in fact I think she used to come here with her father. And she first brought me here when I was eight, so it’s become a tradition, and it always cheers her up. She gets lonely—not that she’d ever admit that. Too many of her old friends are dead or housebound, and Emily’s still packed with energy, indefatigable, a true daughter of the revolution…I hope you’ll like her. I do, very much.’

  Lindsay was impressed by this speech, for its sincerity was transparent, and she warmed to Colin. Her suspicions backed off a little way, and Lindsay felt glad. The counsel for the defence was trouncing the prosecution, she decided, as the lobster arrived; Colin was far too sweet-natured to be rich.

  ‘So, is she an aunt on your mother’s side
or your father’s?’ Lindsay asked, too occupied by the appearance of the lobster to notice that, at this question, Colin exhibited a faint constraint.

  ‘My mother’s. My mother was American.’ He paused. ‘She—well, she died when I was eight.’

  ‘Oh Colin. I’m so sorry—’ Lindsay at once looked up and placed her hand on his arm. To her astonishment, she saw that he was blushing. He blushed slowly and agonizingly, from the neck of his impeccable shirt to his hairline; he blushed like the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel, and Lindsay, appalled that she seemed to have inflicted this, took his hand in hers at once.

  ‘Whatever’s wrong, Colin?’ she began.

  ‘Everything,’ Colin burst out. ‘Why did I do this? Why didn’t I think? I should have known—you don’t like it here, do you? It’s not your kind of place. I could tell when we came in—but I thought it might grow on you. And now, you’re trying to be polite, but it’s a disaster. Dragging you off to see my aunt—why did I decide to do that? I must have been mad. Insane. We should be going on to a nightclub, something like that…’

  ‘I hate nightclubs,’ Lindsay said.

  ‘…And this place! I must want my head examined. We should have gone somewhere new, somewhere fashionable; one of those minimalist places, in SoHo, somewhere like that. Hundreds of tables, lemon grass in everything, Californian food…’

  ‘Colin—will you listen to me a minute?’

  ‘I know those places. I could have rung them up. Why didn’t I think of that? Why did I start talking about architecture? Architecture! Christ! I could see you were bored; you cut me off, and what do I start on—my aunt. My aunt and the evil genius, it’s a wonder you haven’t gone to sleep…’

  ‘Colin.’ Lindsay pressed his hand, and the tirade bubbled a bit more, then stopped.

  ‘That’s better. Now listen to me. I hate those SoHo restaurants. I hate those restaurants wherever they are. I loathe lemon grass, I loathe the waiters auditioning when they recite the menu, I loathe the table-hopping and the celebrity-spotting. I like it here; I like it very much.’