Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  ‘You are an intelligent man, Rowland. No, sit down; there’s something I want to tell you before you go. This question of children, of heirs. You should know—I discussed that very issue with Colin, here in this room, on the night he introduced me to Lindsay. I reminded him of Shute and the length of time his family has lived there. I reminded him of the entail…’ She paused. ‘I didn’t use the word sacrifice to him then, but I will use it to you now.’ She paused.

  ‘To contemplate marriage to a woman who might, unhappily, be unable to bear a child, is perhaps the greatest sacrifice Colin could make. Yet he intends to marry her, and he made the decision without the smallest hesitation—I think you should know that, Rowland. Other men, in similar situations, might have acted differently…’ She allowed her gaze to rest quietly on Rowland’s face. ‘I would not blame them for that. But I will say that, in these circumstances, Colin’s love for Lindsay should not be underestimated. He showed courage—and I have never admired him more than I did then.’

  The statement was gently made, but it cut Rowland. He rose and turned away. ‘I’ve never doubted Colin’s moral courage,’ he said.

  ‘But you do doubt him in other ways? You think he is unsteady, perhaps? Impetuous? No doubt you would feel concern on Lindsay’s behalf, if that was your view…’

  ‘I do feel concern,’ Rowland began, turning. ‘I feel—’

  ‘My dear, I can see exactly what you feel. I am not blind and I am not deaf.’ Emily gave a deep sigh. ‘Rowland, what you feel is obvious in your speech, in your expressions, in every gesture you make. You have my sympathy, but I would counsel you to think very carefully and very honestly before you take any action you might subsequently regret. Colin looks upon you as a brother. I would not want you to delude yourself that he is not in earnest here, however tempting that might be. He is utterly in earnest. And if I may give my opinion, I think that from Lindsay’s point of view and his own, he has made a hard, but a very wise choice.’

  ‘I love her,’ Rowland said, in a low voice. ‘Emily, for God’s sake—’ He turned away, and Emily, who had never seen his composure even threatened, in all the years she had known him, watched it break.

  Saying nothing, she waited for him to regain his control. She leaned back against the cushions, feeling suddenly that all her energy was gone. The strength of Rowland’s reaction disturbed her; now her eighty-five-year-old mind felt fearful, and every one of her eighty-five-year-old bones seemed to ache.

  She had suspected this conversation might be necessary as soon as Rowland telephoned and announced his arrival in New York; she had known, beyond doubt, that it was necessary when he entered, and she saw the expression on his face. She had begun this conversation feeling very sure of her ground, but now an old woman’s incertitude gripped her. Confronted by the evidence of pain—and a man’s pain, which she found harder to witness than a woman’s—her mind felt flurried, muddled, and flooded with doubts.

  ‘Rowland,’ she began. ‘Rowland, I’m so very sorry. Listen to me—’

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’ Rowland, his back to her, fought to steady his voice. ‘You were right earlier. I’m desperately tired. I should take myself off…’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t. At least stay and finish your drink.’ She gave him an anxious look, then, as he slowly turned, held out her hand to him. ‘If you go now, I’ll feel I’ve offended you.’

  ‘You certainly haven’t done that.’

  He hesitated, then, with a gentleness that surprised her, took her hand, with its bent and misshapen fingers, and held it in his own. Emily saw that he could still scarcely speak for emotion; she drew him down beside her, and looking at his drawn face, felt another flurry of remorse and doubts. Those who could not see beyond Rowland’s appearance, she thought, were very foolish. Rowland McGuire was a considerable man, to whom Colin, and Colin’s family, owed a debt. Who was she to judge whether he was, in her own glib phrase, husband material?

  Marriage was a serious subject; love was a serious subject; the bearing of children was a more serious subject still: these issues determined the course of entire lives—what right did she have to meddle here? She was partisan, and had in any case been too long retired from the fray; she had forgotten the agonies of love, and had no doubt underestimated them, for she was preoccupied too often now with the more pressing concern of mortality and imminent death.

  ‘Ah, Rowland, Rowland,’ she said, laying her hand on his arm. ‘I never married. I never had children. I’m old. I hadn’t understood how strongly you felt. I shouldn’t have spoken as I did.’

  ‘No. I’m glad that you did.’ He looked across the room. ‘I can see now—I suppose I always could—Colin can offer her so much. Not just material things; I don’t only mean that. Colin is generous at heart. And you’re right, they are alike, in many respects. When they first met, I could see then…It’s just that—well, I had thought—I had sensed—’

  He broke off, and Emily, pitying him again, and knowing his pride, turned her gaze away from his. With skill and with tact, she diverted the conversation away from this subject to more neutral ones. Rowland, as anxious as she was to regain neutral ground before he left, followed this lead. Prompted by Emily, he began to talk of other things; Emily half listened to him, and half listened to something else.

  At first, she was aware only of some shift and disturbance in the room—having lived so long in the Conrad, this was something to which she had long been accustomed. Attuned to the spirits of the building, both malign and benevolent, she could always sense when they became restless and stirred.

  This they did, these days, more and more often. Emily attributed their more frequent activation to her own age, to the proximity of her own death, and to the fact that she no longer dismissed them as the products of her own fancy or superstition, as she had done in her youth.

  The spirits here were always encouraged, she believed, by perturbation in human beings. Perhaps Rowland had unwittingly summoned them up tonight; perhaps she herself had. She glanced at his now guarded, tense face, then looked down at the rug beneath her feet. It was an Aubusson, still beautiful, and patterned with faded roses; the dusky pink of these flowers, in this subdued light, darkened to the colour of blood. Tonight, these flowers, like the shadows in the room, teemed with abundant life. Emily’s little dog could also sense this; she felt him stir beside her, and his hackles rise up. She concentrated on the other conversation she could now hear, which she realized had been continuing for some while, beyond and above the sound of Rowland’s quiet voice. She tried to hear what was being said, in that other anterior exchange—and something was being said; she could half hear it, emanating from this carpet’s warp and weft.

  She began to distinguish first a man’s, then a woman’s voice; their words were muffled, but the reproach and pain in their voices were not. Gradually, as she listened, stroking her little dog and wondering if this message might be indirectly meant for herself, she heard that the woman’s voice had come to dominate; Emily listened as an aria of accusation mounted, then faltered. There was a silence, then a long cry of uncertain gender, a cry which might have signified desolation, or delight, or distress.

  ‘What was that?’ Rowland said sharply.

  Looking up, Emily realized how deeply she had been abstracted. Rowland had brought their conversation to a close without her being aware of it; he had risen, and must have been moving towards the door, when he spoke. She looked at him uncertainly, confused and surprised that he should have heard this sound, one with which she had become familiar, and which she believed to be the cry of a woman long dead. It would scarcely do to inform Rowland, a rational man, that the voice was Anne Conrad’s. He would assume that age had finally taken its toll on Emily, that she was losing her wits.

  She gave herself a little shake and opted for the pragmatic answer, realizing as she did so that it could well be correct. After all, according to Frobisher, who had it from the porter, Giancarlo, Tomas Court was at present in the b
uilding; he was in the apartment below this one, visiting his former wife.

  ‘Oh, just a marital argument,’ she said in a dry way, recovering herself and holding out her hand to him.

  ‘I wish you well, Rowland. I wish you wisdom, my dear.’ She paused. ‘When will you be returning to England?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘I see.’ She released his hand. Somewhere in the building a door slammed. Emily shivered.

  ‘It’s darned cold tonight,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to take the stairs, Rowland, the elevator’s playing up again.’

  ‘I’ve already discovered that.’

  ‘I dislike those stairs myself.’ She huddled her shawl more tightly around her. ‘Well, well, you’re a good man, Rowland. I’m glad you came—’

  Rowland hesitated. ‘Are you all right, Emily?’

  ‘Fine. I’m just fine. A little tired maybe.’ She picked up her tiny dog, and kissed his crinkled sagacious brow. Still Rowland hesitated, suddenly concerned for her; he looked about the shadowy room and felt unease furl its wings about him.

  Emily waved him away, her diamond ring catching the light.

  ‘Goodbye, my dear,’ she called after him, as he stepped out into the hall. Rowland passed out onto the galleried landing, with its brandishing arms and inadequate light. He descended the stairs, looking neither to left or right, and left the building. Snow had been falling, he discovered, stepping out onto a thin crust of white. There was an unnatural hush about the city, and more snow would fall during the night.

  XIV

  ‘WHAT TIME IS IT in England now, Colin?’

  With a sigh, Lindsay disentangled herself from his arms; she extricated herself from the tumbled sheets and, sitting up naked and cross-legged, reached for the bedside telephone and began dialling.

  ‘Five hours ahead of us,’ Colin replied, yawning, stretching, then sitting up and kissing the back of her neck. ‘I’ve no idea what time it is here, though,’ he added, beginning to kiss each disc of her spine. ‘It could be yesterday, or next week.’

  ‘It’s six-fifteen. Six-fifteen! How can that be? What happened to the afternoon?’

  ‘Darling, what happened to the morning?’

  ‘They merged,’ Lindsay said, giving him a mischievous glance. She replaced the receiver, then redialled. ‘And now we have to reform. The others will be arriving soon. We have to shower and get dressed and go downstairs and be respectable. Gini’s always horribly punctual…Damn! Tom’s not answering…’

  ‘Tell me about Gini,’ Colin said, beginning to kiss the back of her ear. ‘Will I like her?’

  ‘Probably. She’s beautiful, so most men tend to like her—on sight.’ She replaced the receiver. ‘Bother. I can’t get Tom, and I wanted to speak to him. He flew back from Edinburgh this evening. I wanted to know he was safe. Now I’ll worry about his flight.’

  ‘No, you won’t.’ Colin put his arms around her waist. ‘Darling, he has this number. It’s past eleven in Oxford. If there were any problem, he or Katya would have called.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Lindsay’s face brightened. ‘I’ll try him in the morning, before we leave for the airport.’ Her face became thoughtful. ‘Colin, tomorrow we’ll be in England…’

  ‘I don’t care where we are,’ Colin said, ‘as long as I’m with you.’

  ‘You comfort me.’ In an impulsive way, she took his hand in hers. ‘You comfort me, Colin. I feel happy. I woke up this morning next to you—and I felt content. The day felt full of promise and prospects. I’d forgotten a day could feel like that.’

  Dazzled by the expression in her eyes, and too joyful to speak, Colin drew her into his arms. Lindsay rested her head against his shoulder; he began to kiss her hair; her use of the word ‘comfort’, which had surprised him, stirred some memory. For a moment he could not place it, then it came to him. ‘Comfort me with apples,’ he murmured, beginning to stroke her breasts. ‘My beloved is mine…I forget the rest. Something about lilies…’ His body stirred, and Lindsay gave a sigh of pleasure; her mouth opened under his.

  ‘Darling, we mustn’t, we mustn’t—it’s so late…’

  ‘Let them wait.’

  ‘Colin—no. We shouldn’t. I—Oh God, that’s not fair. We can’t, not again. I can’t go down like this. I have to have a shower. I smell of sex. Darling, stop—they’ll know what we’ve been doing…’

  ‘They’ll know anyway.’ Colin smiled. ‘It shows in your eyes, and mine. I know that.’

  ‘In my eyes? It can’t do. Oh, yes…’

  ‘It does. It’s flagrant. I can see every possible declension of sex in your eyes. Past, present, future—passive and active form. Has fucked, will be fucked—it’s beautiful, and it’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen in my life…’

  ‘Well, perhaps if we’re very quick,’ Lindsay said.

  ‘Are you still anxious, Jippy?’ Markov asked, catching a glimpse of Jippy’s pale face over his shoulder, in his hallway mirror. They were preparing to leave for the Plaza, and Markov was in the process of selecting a hat.

  ‘Don’t be, darling.’ He turned. Jippy was wearing a neat suit that made him look like a minor accountant; Markov, moved by this, took his hands fondly in his. He hesitated. ‘It will all be all right—won’t it?’

  Jippy did not reply. He could not explain, even to Markov, how it felt to see the aura of future events. For days, ever since they had returned from Crete, he had been afflicted by the buzzings and whisperings and seethings that signified unrest. That morning, he had woken from disturbed sleep to a sense of paralysing fear. He had watched some dark shape lumber across the room, and he had smelled evil. Evil had a precise smell, a distillation of iron, burning and salt. It was not a noxious odour, and Jippy suspected others might find it bracing, like sea air, but it left him feeling sick and lethargic, aching at his own impotence, knowing he could glimpse troubles, but that his powers were limited. The troubles, he could foresee, but could not prevent.

  As yet, and as usual, the shape of those troubles were still vague; their proximity was now giving him an acute headache, for which he had already taken several doses of codeine, without effect. Standing next to Markov now, he was seeing fizzes and flashes of blinding light; he wished they would go away; he blinked.

  Markov, having decided on a black fedora, turned to look at him again. When they were alone together, and only when they were alone, Markov abandoned his affectations of speech.

  ‘I love you, Jippy,’ he said.

  ‘I l-love you back,’ Jippy replied in a stout way; his stammer improved when they were alone also; Markov’s term for this shared phenomenon was the ‘Certainty Effect’.

  ‘Does your head still hurt, darling?’

  Jippy nodded; Markov put his arms around him. ‘I’ll make the pain go away,’ he said, kissing Jippy’s neat dark hair, then stroking it. ‘There—is that better?’

  Jippy nodded; the pain, indeed, diminished when Markov held him.

  ‘Well, I won’t do anything to make things worse, I promise you that.’ Markov looked at Jippy in a penitent way. ‘I won’t say a word out of place—for once. Not even to Rowland, if he turns up. Is he going to turn up, Jippy?’

  Jippy did not know the answer to that question, and the minute Markov released him, the sharp stabbing pain had returned to his head.

  Markov opened the front door of his small, smart East Side town house.

  He grimaced at the sidewalk, and then at the sky.

  ‘Can you believe it? It’s snowing again,’ he said.

  Further south, Rowland stood at the window of his cell at the Pierre, and looked out at the dark sky. He had showered, shaved, exchanged one dark suit for a different one, and was still irresolute. Stay or go? Risk or retreat? It was approaching seven, and he remained undecided. The scales were almost exactly balanced. On the one side was the loyalty he felt towards Colin, given added weight by the reason and dispassion of Emily’s arguments; on the other were his own hopes an
d desires—and instincts, of course.

  A decisive man, Rowland hated indecision; he despised it in others and he despised it even more in himself. He took out Lindsay’s letter to him, hoping it might resolve the issue. When first read, in London, it had seemed capable of only one interpretation; now, interpretations swarmed. With a dull misery, he saw that it could mean the very opposite of what he had thought it meant. It could even be read, he realized for the first time, as a farewell letter, in which Lindsay looked at something for the last time, and then sadly but decisively turned her back.

  To go or not to go. He stared out at the streets, at the groups of people making their way to Thanksgiving gatherings. Why had he not acted before? Why, when he was rarely tentative, had be been tentative in this? He lifted Lindsay’s letter to the light again, groping at the sense of her sentences. ‘Colin came here after you telephoned…Are those shutters I admire so much open or closed? The smudges everywhere are from the biro. You’ll find I’m a reformed character…’

  He refolded the letter, some confused and incoherent plea rising up in his heart; he rested his forehead against the glass and watched the snow fall. He began to feel that time had stopped and that the hands of his watch were fixed; he lifted it to his ear and listened to the seconds tick.

  ‘Do we have to go?’ Pascal said to his wife, putting on a tie in honour of the Plaza—and he hated to wear ties. ‘It’s snowing. It’s thirty blocks from here. Couldn’t we just call Lindsay and say we can’t make it?’

  ‘I don’t know where she is.’ Gini was sitting at the dressing-table of the guest bedroom, in their friends’ apartment on the upper West Side. She was concentrating, pinning back her pale hair in a pleat. She had hoped to look beautiful tonight, and felt, in a dispassionate way, that she did. She examined the serene oval of her face and the lustre of her skin; no lines were visible; her father’s house was sold; she was free and beginning her new life. She picked up a string of pearls and held them against her dress. ‘We can’t let her down,’ she said, abandoning the necklace. ‘We needn’t stay long…’