‘Because I have to know now. Em, please—’
‘Have you given her the envelope yet?’
‘No, I haven’t. But I’m about to…’ He stopped pacing and his whole demeanour changed. ‘Come on, Em,’ he said, more quietly, ‘put me out of my misery. I’ve made so many bloody mistakes, and this time it really matters. Am I right—yes or no?’
Emily found herself moved by his pallor and by the expression in his eyes. She knew the answer he wanted, for it was written in every line of his handsome face. Her expression became serious, and she looked at him in silence for some while.
‘You’re sure?’ she asked at length.
‘Totally.’
‘You’ve considered the question of her age?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t start on fertility again. It was inexcusable when you did that…’
‘Colin, your family have lived at Shute for over four hundred years.’
‘I don’t bloody care.’
‘There is the entail to consider, Colin.’
‘Fuck the entail.’
Emily sighed. She saw the flash in his eyes as this statement was made and it affected her, since she had a weakness for passion and iconoclasm; she was also devoted to Colin and wished to see him happy, though in her experience, romance and contentment rarely went hand in hand.
‘Colin, someone has to say this to you, so I will. She has a son approaching twenty; she may look much younger, but she must be forty at least. You are aware of the biological clock, as I believe it is called these days? Colin, do I have to spell this out to you?’
‘No, I’ve already done those calculations.’
‘And it doesn’t alter your view?’
‘It couldn’t.’ The blood washed up into his face. ‘I love her, Em.’
Emily sighed. She found her nephew hard to resist when he looked as he did now, and she felt, looking at him fondly, that many women, perhaps even Lindsay, might have shared this view. Colin was indeed chivalric; he rode to the lists careless of the fact that he was vulnerable, and deeply so.
‘Well, well—I begin to see that,’ she said quietly. ‘Colin, don’t say any more, it will make me sentimental, and to be sentimental, at this juncture, will be of no assistance at all.’ She sighed again. ‘I’m not going to give you advice. Young men in your condition rarely listen to advice, however wise. And I have to admit, I liked her. The age is a very definite drawback—though, of course, even at forty, or forty-one, there is hope…But in many ways, she is just what you need, and I am not blind to that. She is honest—not an ounce of calculation, I thought. Also quite smart, amusing…Your father would adore her, and I think she would adore him. I can even see her at Shute…’
‘So can I.’
‘You’re going to have to confess. A palace is a rather different kettle of fish to a hovel, Colin dear.’
‘Shute isn’t a palace; it’s my home. And I’m going to explain all that to her…’ Colin, recovering somewhat, gave her a glance that was half-anxious, half-amused. ‘I have it all planned out, Em. I told you, I’m not going to risk losing her. This is a campaign.’
‘So I see.’ She laughed. ‘I also see my verdict doesn’t make two cents’ worth of difference. If I’d said the opposite would that have changed your mind?’
‘No.’
‘So resolute! Well, well, you’d better go.’
‘Do I have a chance, Em?’
Emily smiled, then sighed. ‘As to that, I never make predictions. She likes you, which can be a good start. I wonder—have you any rivals, though?’
‘Oh God, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I can’t believe there aren’t, but she claims there’s no-one…’
‘Does she indeed?’ Emily gave Colin a small glance. ‘Well, you’ve always been good at getting your way when it mattered, Colin. You’ve been smart so far, I think…’
‘I intend to go on being smart.’
‘But I’m not too sure about the platonic approach; I wouldn’t overdo it. Interesting what she said about men who dithered…I’ve always felt that the great secret of seduction is knowing when to make your move. Now, kiss me goodnight, you wicked boy, and don’t keep her waiting any longer. Full speed ahead—’
‘Festina lente,’ Colin corrected, the glint of amusement returning to his eyes. ‘Festina very lente for at least the next two weeks. So I’ll be back in half an hour.’
In the taxi-cab—and Colin proved as expert at summoning cabs as he was at summoning waiters—Colin established a most gentlemanly three inches of seat between them. Lindsay admired this.
‘I’m sorry I was so long,’ Colin said. ‘I just had to calm Emily down a bit. She really is worried about the decision tomorrow.’
‘She’s obviously going to vote against—’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Ah well. I hope I didn’t upset her. I’m feeling guilty now. I hope I wasn’t too sanctimonious. She’s not young, and it’s predictable she’d feel as she does.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve given her a far harder time. She doesn’t mind, and she loves a good argument. In any case, she liked you. She’s just been singing your praises…’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘No, no, you’re wrong. She thought you were very pretty. She thought you had extraordinary eyes, truly beautiful, candid eyes.’
‘Heavens,’ said Lindsay, secretly gratified.
‘And then, she admired your dress sense…’ Colin gave her a sidelong glance, suppressing a smile. ‘She particularly liked that white T-shirt thing you’re wearing…’ Lindsay, remembering Pixie’s comments on that T-shirt, blushed in the darkness of the cab.
‘She said she liked your voice. She said it had a most attractive catch in it. Your sense of humour, she mentioned that…’
‘Stop. Stop. I’ll get swollen-headed.’
‘Oh, and when you stood up to her, held your ground—she adored that.’
‘Are you sure, Colin? I didn’t get that impression at all.’
‘I warned you she was odd—you mustn’t be misled by her manner. Once you know her better, you’ll begin to see—’ He broke off. ‘That is, if you meet her again. I hope you’ll come to like her. She’s a very good judge of character—of everything, in fact. I never make an important decision without consulting her…’
‘And do you take her advice?’ Lindsay asked, struck by his tone.
‘Not always, but I listen to her views.’ He took Lindsay’s hand in his. ‘So, all in all, she was very glad to have met you.’ He raised her hand to his lips, kissed it, then released it. ‘Very glad,’ he repeated.
Lindsay, thrown by that kiss on the hand, stared at him. Colin, who had been gazing out at the passing streets in an abstracted way, glanced back with a smile.
‘And so, in conclusion, she hopes you weren’t too bored by a crotchety octogenarian, and that you’ll visit her again before you leave New York…Ah, the Pierre. Here we are. I’ll just see you safely in. I’ll tell the cab to wait, if I may.’
Lindsay preceded him into the Pierre. She felt flurried and dazed as a result of that kiss on the hand. The cab actually was waiting, she noted, as Colin completed his negotiations with its driver; that meant that Pixie’s predictions were very wide of the mark.
Realizing this, Lindsay felt a certain disappointment. She did not want Colin Lascelles to make any advances to her—of course not—and she would certainly have repulsed them had he done so; but after three years of being invisible to Rowland McGuire, it might have been pleasant, she thought, if just one man had found her desirable in a mild way, now and then.
This evidence of her own triviality and vanity alarmed her; she advanced on the front desk, reprimanding herself. She collected her key, picked up her messages, glanced through them, came to a halt, and made a small moaning sound as Colin Lascelles, appearing agitated, reached her side.
‘You’re worrying about the cab,’ Lindsay said, noticing that he looked edg
y, even pale. ‘You mustn’t keep it waiting. Thank you, Colin, for a marvellous evening and a delicious dinner—but don’t imagine I’ve forgiven you yet for paying that bill. You broke your word.’
‘I said, “It’s a deal”. I didn’t give you my word.’
‘Even so, it was cunning and underhand. I shall take you to a burger bar in revenge.’
‘I shall keep you to that. Meanwhile, I meant to give you this earlier…’
He produced an envelope from the breast pocket of his masterly suit.
‘For me, Colin? Whatever is it?’
‘Nothing, nothing. Just some photographs that might interest you. I’ve added a note. Let me know what you think. I’ll call you tomorrow. Oh, damn and blast that man…’
The driver of Colin’s cab had just punched his horn hard, on cue, and exactly as this weird Brit had just tipped him ten dollars to do. As the sound died away, Colin’s blue eyes rested upon Lindsay intently. Drawing her towards him, he kissed her cheek in the most decorous manner possible, thanked her, then turned and disappeared.
Lindsay retreated to her room, which still smelled of magic unguents, of yams and papaya juice. She leaned against the closed door for several minutes, until her heart rate slowed down. A short while later, she permitted herself to read the only one of her messages of any significance. It informed her that Mr McGuire had called at 11 p.m., and would call again the following morning, at nine, New York time.
Lindsay kissed this message several times and rescheduled her next morning’s activities in her mind. She reminded herself that, when this call came through, she would rigorously observe her new womanliness and sweetness of tongue. She paced about the room in a fervour; then, discovering that only two minutes and not a lifetime had passed, she examined Colin’s mysterious envelope and opened it.
Inside was a brief note, in large writing she found difficult to decipher. Eventually she made out the words: ‘This place belongs to someone my father knows,’ she read. ‘It needs a loving tenant, I gather. Rent low. Maintenance negligible. Available now. Terms negotiable, but long let preferred. Could this be of interest? Colin.’
The style of this note surprised Lindsay, who would not have expected terseness from Colin. Having read it carefully twice, she turned to the enclosed photographs. She stared at them in disbelief, then gave a gasp of delight. They showed an old, beautiful house, of medium size, which might once have housed a farming family. It had a steep lichened roof and walls of honeyed stone. Next to it was an ancient stone barn, in front of which chickens pecked in a perfect courtyard. It had a perfect cottage garden, with hollyhocks and lavender. There was a perfect stream, flowing through a perfect orchard, and the boughs of the trees there were weighted down with ripening apples. Beyond the garden and the orchard, lay the green serenity of English fields, bathed in the gold of an English summer afternoon. ‘Shute Farm,’ Colin had written on the back of one of the pictures. ‘Twenty miles from Oxford.’
Lindsay could not believe her eyes. It was uncanny how closely this resembled the house of her dreams, as described several times to Colin. When she saw that, although it was not by any manner of means a hovel, it did have a rose, a crimson rose, trained around its door, she surrendered her heart to it.
She went to bed thoughtful and lay in the dark, suddenly fearful that she might dream of those ghosts at the Conrad. But her sleep was benign: she dreamed she was living in the magical house, writing an inspired biography, enjoying frequent visits from those two good friends, Colin Lascelles and Rowland McGuire. One afternoon, under those boughs of ripening apples in that orchard, Colin proposed to her again. This time, he was sober, and this time the proposal was witnessed by a silent Rowland McGuire. Lindsay was plucking an apple, and just about to give Colin her answer, when the dream took a new turn.
At the Conrad, Colin Lascelles did not even attempt sleep; in a fervour from that kiss on the cheek, in an agony of suspense as to Lindsay’s reaction to the photographs, he felt it unlikely he would ever sleep again. He left Emily, together with Frobisher, to watch a late movie on television—it was one of their favourites, Terminator II. He retired to his own rooms at the far end of Emily’s very large and labyrinthine apartment. There, he paced up and down, tried to work, failed to work, discovered an urgent need to express himself, and picked up paper and pen. He wrote a long and impassioned letter to Lindsay Drummond, baring his heart. He covered six pages in his large sprawl, reread them, found them ill-phrased and inadequate, and decided instead to write to Rowland McGuire. He penned five pages to Rowland, explaining how grateful he felt to him for bringing the miracle of Lindsay his way, then decided in mid-sentence that this confession might be premature.
Rowland was discreet, it was true; indeed, he was one of the most discreet men Colin had ever known, remaining as reserved and silent on the subject of his own affairs as he was on those of his friends. He was, however, an old friend and colleague of Lindsay; it was not impossible they would be in communication during her stay in New York, and not entirely impossible that Rowland might let something slip in conversation. Better to wait and apprise Rowland of his hopes, fears and joys later, he decided, remembering that he had already, some days before, sent Rowland a postcard that was somewhat over-emotional in tone. He reread what he had written and found both letters weighty with adverbs. They had tried to cure Colin of adverbs at his public school; now a rash of them had broken out. There was ‘deeply’ and ‘tenderly’ and ‘unbelievably’ and ‘eternally’ just in the space of two lines.
He ripped both letters into confetti, consigned them to his metal waste-bin, then, knowing both Emily and Frobisher were capable of snooping, set fire to them. He burned his hand, scorched a fine Persian rug and filled the room with choking smoke. Waving his arms and swearing, he leaped across to the window and flung it wide open. It had begun raining; the air was chilly and a fine mist hung above the trees of Central Park. He stared out at the same moon Tomas Court had found thin and sickly, and it seemed to him enchanting, creating a silvery city, a Manhattan of monochrome. Only the constant restless surge of the city and the ceaseless panic of its sirens disturbed him. When they intruded too much into his reverie, he closed the window again and leaned against the glass, surrendering to the homesickness for Shute that was never far from him, and which now welled up in his heart.
He thought of the peace of its parkland, the grace and charm of Shute Court’s south façade. Beautiful in all weathers and all lights, the great house had a particular magic by moonlight. Perhaps, he thought, he could contrive it so that Lindsay saw Shute at night and by moonlight, when he showed it to her for the first time.
A week after she moved into the estate farmhouse, perhaps? Two weeks? He wanted her to have time to fall in love with the beauties of the place, but he knew that once she was actually there, his deceptions could not be protracted too long, and the risk of accidental discovery was strong. He would have liked to take her there now, he thought; he wished that, at this very moment, they were walking hand in hand through the copse and out into the enchantment of the deer park.
Within seconds, he was seeing, then scripting, this first encounter; then he was scripting Lindsay’s first meeting with his father—a little difficult this, for although Colin loved his father dearly, he knew his eccentricities were marked. Then he was introducing Lindsay to his two beloved lurcher dogs, Daphnis and Chloe; now they were in the Great Hall, now in the kitchen, and suddenly, he discovered, in his bedroom, in the peace and privacy of which room, Lindsay began to say and do the most marvellous things.
Colin lay down on his bed and closed his eyes; his imagination now beginning to gallop, he gave it a lover’s free rein. He worshipped the roundness of Lindsay’s breasts and the smoothness of her thighs; he discovered she possessed a loving agility; locked in each others arms, they were just moving from a long adagio of kisses and caresses towards a crescendo of desire, when the telephone rang.
Colin looked at his bedside clock, discove
red it was three in the morning, and was immediately certain that only one person in the world could be telephoning now. He grabbed the telephone, waited for that wonderful voice with a catch in it, and discovered he was listening to the very different voice of Thalia Ng.
His mind grappled with this disappointment and its detumescent effect. Gradually it began to register that Thalia, for once, was not swearing, and that she sounded both shaken and alarmed.
‘I need your help,’ she was saying. ‘Get a cab, Colin, and come down to TriBeCa—’
‘TriBeCa? Now?’
‘Yes, Tomas’s loft. And make it fast.’
Colin’s cab dropped him on the corner of Court’s street. As he turned into it, he heard voices and running feet, then the slam of a vehicle’s doors. He saw that a long white unidentified van, too small to be a hospital ambulance, but possibly a private one, was pulling away from Court’s building. It moved off fast, without sounding its siren, but with the blue light on its roof flashing fear out of the shadows of the street and striking panic into Colin’s heart. He ran the last few yards, entered the building and, ignoring the elevator, ran fast up the stairs. The door to the loft was wide open and he could just see Thalia Ng, standing on the far side of that long black work table where they had both spent most of the preceding day.
Colin moved forward into the doorway, questions on his lips, then stopped dead as he saw the extent of the damage in the room beyond. He stared around him, in shock and bewilderment. ‘Oh dear God,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Christ—what’s happened here?’
Thalia was supporting herself, he realized, by leaning against the table. Her face was drained of all colour and she was trembling.
‘He called me,’ she began, in a low unsteady voice. ‘He called me an hour ago. I came straight over. I called his doctor from home, before I left, because I could tell—from his voice, the way he was breathing…’ She fumbled for a chair, then sat down. ‘Shut the door, Colin. I need a drink—find me something. Brandy, Scotch—whatever. I don’t care.’
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