Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course!’ he cried. ‘Fascinating. Timely. Brilliant. Mind you, it’s years since I read it. I’ll reread it at once. Tonight. Can’t wait…What, er, what made you decide on that novel, Tomas?’

  Tomas Court, as Colin had noticed by then, had remarkable eyes. He now turned those eyes upon Colin and bestowed upon him one of his long, silent, disconcerting stares.

  Court’s eyes, narrow, somewhat cat-like, and not without beauty, were of a pale, watery, greenish-hazel hue. Colin found it impossible to read their expression, and could never say why he found their inspection such an unpleasant experience. Court always appeared well mannered, patient and calm; nothing in his gaze suggested disapproval or distrust or dislike, yet Colin at once felt deeply uneasy, as if Court possessed some alien vision, X-ray eyes, Martian eyes, which enabled him to see through Colin’s body to inspect the back of his skull. Lies, evasions, boasts and untruths, Colin feared, lay naked before the gaze of this quietly spoken man. He squirmed in his chair (they were meeting in New York, this time, in yet another dimly lit, anonymous hotel).

  Colin’s question he felt, was like most of his questions, not going to be answered. Rebelling, and summoning some residue of spirit, he repeated it. Court sighed and looked away.

  ‘The heroine interested me, I guess,’ he replied. ‘She’s the tenant of the title, you see.’

  Colin did not see. He assumed illumination would come when—as he later put it to Rowland—he actually read the blasted novel. Tomas Court now provided him with a copy of it, and of his draft script; with alacrity Colin read both. Having done so, he was none the wiser. He liked the script, which seemed to him to depart from the original novel quite rapidly, but he found the novel itself very heavy going indeed.

  ‘I ploughed through,’ he reported to Rowland. ‘I ploughed through religiously

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to smile, you already know it. You never damn well stop reading; it’s a disease with you. You like things like that—God knows why.’

  ‘You didn’t enjoy it then?’

  ‘Enjoy it? I was crucified with boredom. The beginning’s OK. This mystery woman arrives; she’s called Helen. I quite like that bit, but after that it’s downhill all the way.’

  From this robust, if possibly simplistic view, Colin could not be dissuaded. Rowland wasted no time on arguments; Colin, armed with Court’s script and abandoning all thoughts of the novel, began work. He was very experienced and very good at his work, and initially the location searching went well. Several months passed, during which Rowland occasionally received progress reports. These, at first, were very upbeat indeed, then a detectable note of doubt began to creep in.

  Initially, Tomas Court was a marvel, and Colin worshipped at his shrine. He lauded his attention to detail, his perfectionism, the constant fertile flood of his ideas. Then, it seemed, Court could be inspired, certainly, but was also somewhat changeable. A week later, the word ‘indecision’ was used; a week after that the charge had hardened—‘wilful perversity’ was now the term. Spoken of as ‘Tomas’, and with considerable warmth, when this saga began, this modulated to a curt ‘Court’ some weeks later; there was then a period when he was known, in a jocular, defensive tone as ‘the evil genius’; for the past month he had been simply ‘that bloody man’. These were the staging posts whereby Colin’s initial enthusiasm and admiration dwindled to uncertainty, then irritation, then irascibility, then resentment, and finally—this was his present state—despair.

  This journey of Colin’s towards the crisis he had now reached had been watched by Rowland from the sidelines. It had amused him at the time, and it amused him now, but beneath the amusement he felt a certain unease. He paused, having finally reached the vantage-point on the hills to which he had been walking. He looked back the way he had come, bracing himself against the wind, which at this height was strong. It gusted, then insinuated, this wind, buffeting him, then channelling itself through the crevices in the outcrop of rocks against which he leaned. In doing so, it acquired a voice, a thin note of eerie lamentation, which seemed to emanate from the rock, or from the air itself. It chilled Rowland and threatened the equanimity he had been working hard to achieve. Realizing that he had remained out far longer than he had intended, and walked further, he moved away from the plaintive rocks, turned back towards the cottage and began to descend.

  The wind hit him hard between the shoulder-blades; it sang out its ghostly protest as it whistled between stones and tugged at the heather. This was a bleak place. Rowland paused, fighting the past, then turned up the collar of his jacket and continued on. He would have liked to return with some useful advice for Colin, but could think of none. He could tell him, of course, to stop worrying over whether or not Tomas Court was now playing games with him; he could tell him to soldier on. Colin would do that in any case, though, for he was tenacious. His present fear, of course, which he could not bring himself to name, was failure; Colin, deeply insecure, always feared failure, and yet ran to greet it, to anticipate it; there were reasons for this, as Rowland, his friend for many years, was well aware.

  All of these events, Rowland realized, told him more about Colin’s character than Tomas Court’s. Colin had always been precipitate, rushing in where angels feared to tread, and Rowland, who usually fought his own impulsiveness more successfully, had always liked, even admired him for this. Colin was also passionate, a man of extremes, as Rowland knew he too could be, on occasion; but Colin was less measured and lived in a world of violent opposites—there was tragedy or comedy, triumph or disaster, with no grey, indeterminate area in between.

  This characteristic of Colin’s did not make it any easier to help him now, and it did not help Rowland in his attempts to read the character of Tomas Court through the curlicues of Colin’s style. Colin, now in despair, utterly thwarted, fearful of failing and being rejected by a man he had placed high on a pedestal, was now busy dismantling that pedestal. He had spent the last three days here in Yorkshire oscillating wildly from optimism to pessimism, attacking as vices the very qualities he had seen as Court’s virtues before. Court’s perfectionism had become perversity, or pedantry; when Colin was at his lowest point, bumping along the riverbed of pessimism and paranoia, he had begun to claim that Court was intent on destruction. ‘I know what that bloody man is after!’ he had cried, that morning. ‘He wants me destroyed.’

  The reason for this assertion was, on the surface of it, simple enough. For Wildfell, as he now termed it, Colin had, as his first task, to find, confirm, set up, cost and work out the logistics for a total of 123 locations. Some were exteriors, some interiors; some would be used for several lengthy scenes, others might feature for only a few seconds.

  Over the past months, sometimes travelling in the company of Court himself, or one of his assistant directors, or alone, Colin had found, and had confirmed by Court, all but one of these locations. This process had gone well—suspiciously well, Colin now said. One problem—there remained that last, key, still-unfound location: the exterior of the Wildfell Hall of the novel’s title. In his opinion, Colin had found at least thirteen potential Wildfell Halls, thirteen perfect Wildfell Halls.

  Tomas Court, formerly the perfectionist, now the pedantic nit-picker, had liked none of them. In fact, he had hated them, and had reiterated his hatred, his dissatisfaction and disappointment in a stream of wounding, cold faxes and calls. Colin, stung, had continued his search—was still continuing his search. He had travelled the length and breadth of England; he had made desperate forays into Scotland, and even more desperate forays into Wales. Returning, he despatched batches of photographs, videos, diagrams, maps and notes around the globe to the peripatetic Tomas Court. Time would pass—Court liked to keep him on tenterhooks, Colin claimed—then back would come word from Montana, or Berlin, or Los Angeles. ‘No’ was the word, it was always the word, and so often and so unkindly had that word ‘No’ been said that it had precipitated in Coli
n a profound confidence crisis. ‘It’s not just my reputation that’s at stake here,’ he had said some three weeks previously, in London, having inveigled Rowland into joining him for dinner after work, ‘it’s my sanity. I want you to understand—that bloody man is sucking the marrow out of my bones, Rowland. I’m desperate. I’m at my wit’s end. I don’t know where to turn, so I’m turning to you. Help me out here, Rowland. Just advise me, that’s all I ask.’

  Rowland had resisted this plea. Once or twice in the past he had been sucked into Colin’s dramas via the advice route, and it was not an experience he had enjoyed.

  ‘Listen…’ Colin went on, ‘you know the blasted novel. There’s a description of Wildfell Hall in chapter two—you remember? Now, you’re interested in architecture. In fact, you know quite an impressive amount. Not as much as I do, obviously, but enough. You spend half your life climbing or walking in godforsaken places…’

  ‘That isn’t true. I wish it were.’

  ‘…So you have the right background knowledge. You must have some ideas. Think, Rowland. I need somewhere remote. An old house, large, ideally Jacobean, untouched and unrestored—and gloomy, Rowland; it has to look dark, threatening, even haunted. Large, spooky, remote and 1610, that’s what he wants. At least, I think that’s what he wants.’

  ‘You don’t sound too certain. Why? You must have a brief.’

  ‘Of course I have a brief. And I’ve fulfilled it, to the letter, thirteen times.’

  ‘Then there must be some requirement you’re missing.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what it is. Atmosphere, he said. What’s that supposed to mean? It means anything you damn well want it to mean, which is why he uses it. I’m telling you, Rowland, that bloody man is devious, perverse. And for some reason I don’t understand, he’s hanging me out to dry.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rowland suggested as gently as he could. ‘Perhaps it would help if you read the original novel again.’ Colin shuddered. He drank a glass of red wine very fast.

  ‘I daren’t,’ he said. ‘I feel stupid enough as it is. I don’t want to get any more muddled. The cerebellum is under stress, Rowland, which is why I turn to you. Because you’re clever—you’ve got this analytical mind. You’ve got this horribly exact memory. People, places, things, conversations, books, houses; Rowland.’

  ‘Yes, well I often wish my memory were rather less good. This is ridiculous, Colin. You’re putting yourself down. Why do you do that? You’ve worked with some of the best directors in the world. Houses? You’ve got an encyclopedic memory for houses…’

  ‘Have I?’ Colin gave him a humble look. ‘I don’t feel as if I have—not any more. I’ve had confidence-suction. Rowland, please help. Don’t turn me down.’

  Rowland hesitated. He always found it difficult to be sure when Colin genuinely needed help, and he was aware he could be manipulative. His friend had always lacked confidence in his own abilities; a legacy from his childhood, Rowland suspected, for he had grown up in the shadow of his elder brother, killed in a car accident when Colin was in his last year at school. On the other hand, Colin thrived on crises, and if none existed, was capable of creating some of his own. On balance, Rowland thought then, he believed Colin was truly in need of some help and moral support; there was now genuine panic and bewilderment in his manner, and it alarmed Rowland, since it reminded him of Colin as he had been when he first encountered him, in Oxford, some eighteen years before.

  That meeting had taken place late at night, in the quad at Balliol College, where they were both undergraduates, although they had then moved in very different social spheres. Colin, who could be heard yodelling before he was seen, was wearing white tie and tails, and was accompanied, or propped up, by a clutch of cronies from some ancient, snobbish, august Oxford club whose members devoted themselves to getting drunk fast. Colin had just won a competition that involved drinking straight down as many bottles of vintage claret as was feasible in five minutes. He was already celebrated throughout Oxford for his feats in this respect, which had won him the nickname Deep Throat. On that occasion, he had consumed two and a half bottles of Chateau Margaux 1959, and was, astonishingly, still vertical. Rowland had not come from the kind of school, or the kind of background, essential for membership of such clubs; upper-class louts were not his favourite companions, and—given to puritanism then—he had looked at this rowdy group of Old Etonians with distaste.

  He had been about to pass by when something in Deep Throat’s expression caught his eye. He was regarding Rowland with a flushed, kindly innocence, this red-haired young man, who was the heir to 12,000 acres, who had just consumed wine which cost more than Rowland could afford to spend in ten weeks. His expression conveyed precarious dignity, absurd pride and incipient distress. He made a hiccuping sound and fixed Rowland with blue, alarmed eyes. ‘Help,’ he said, with surprising distinctness, as he began slowly, like a felled tree, to topple forwards towards the flagstones of the quad. Rowland, in a better state of alertness than the friends were, found he had moved forward, held out his arms and caught him. They then scattered, and Deep Throat was sick—ignominiously, understandably and accurately, as he remarked the next morning when Rowland called in to check on him.

  ‘I missed my shoes!’ he said, bright-faced. ‘I missed yours as well. Here, have some champagne. Childe Roland to the dark quad came. I’m going on the wagon tomorrow, so shall we celebrate now?’

  They celebrated, at nine in the morning, with a bottle of Dom Perignon, some iced buns provided by Colin’s scout, and anchovy toast burned by Colin. Rowland missed two lectures and made two discoveries: he was less of a puritan than he had thought, and he liked Colin Lascelles, who, it seemed, was even more appalled at the prospect of inheriting 12,000 acres and the minor title that went with them than Rowland McGuire was.

  The next week, hung-over again, he drove Rowland out into the countryside north of Oxford and stopped the car on the edge of a beech wood. He pointed; below them, in a valley enfolded by gentle Cotswold hills, was one of the most beautiful houses Rowland had ever seen.

  ‘That’s Shute,’ Colin said. ‘It will be mine one day. It should have been my brother’s, only he died.’ Then he let in the clutch, drove them back to Oxford and started drinking again.

  From that moment onwards, Colin attached himself to Rowland, and Rowland, often exasperated by him, grew fond of him. In the eighteen years since, their relationship was little changed. Although Colin had learned to control his drinking, indulging in binges only occasionally, and was now highly successful, he remained incorrigible, and he still treated Rowland as a surrogate brother. He still asked Rowland’s assistance from time to time, and when pressured, Rowland grumbled, then, often against his better judgement, gave way.

  So, on the occasion of that dinner, he had agreed to help. He promised to mull the matter over, consult some friends and see what he could come up with. He suggested Colin meet him in his editorial office at the Sunday Correspondent the next day; there, Rowland would join him as soon as he could escape from a round of meetings.

  He found Colin ensconced in his office, propositioning his secretary. Having extricated her from a situation she appeared to be enjoying—Colin was good-looking and had undeniable charm—Rowland gave him a brief and, he hoped, helpful lecture on Anne Brontë’s Wildfell Hall.

  ‘Think about this house, Colin,’ he said. ‘Think about the mystery woman you like so much at the beginning of the book. She’s taken refuge in Wildfell Hall, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Colin, eyes beginning to glaze.

  ‘It’s not her permanent home. She doesn’t own it; she’s renting it, from a man.’

  ‘I don’t really see’, Colin began mutinously, ‘that it makes the least bit of difference who she’s renting it from. It could just as well be some mad old grandmother—so what?’

  ‘No, Colin. Think. This woman is young, she’s beautiful, she has a son—and she’s lied about her past. She’s living under a false name an
d she’s in hiding at Wildfell Hall. What happens almost immediately after she’s moved in there?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. All these bitchy women in the neighbourhood start gossiping about her. Gilbert Markham meets her and falls in love with her. Then—I’m not too sure about the next bit, I skipped it, I kept falling asleep; it’s much better in the movie—hang on, I know! They all find out she’s having a secret affair with the owner of Wildfell Hall, who’s this tall, dark, brooding man. Then we get this flashback bit, and it goes on and on and on…’

  ‘Dear God.’ Rowland buried his head in his hands. ‘How you got a degree, Colin, I’ll never understand. Think. Use your brain. Forget all this gobbledegook; you’re getting the plot wrong. Think about property, and sex, Colin, and the connections between the two…’

  At the mention of sex, Colin’s face brightened. ‘I don’t quite follow you, Rowland…’

  ‘Listen, Colin, it may have escaped your notice, but for much of the novel, all the property is owned by men. The question Anne Brontë raises—one of the questions—is whether the men own the women as well.’

  ‘Oh Lord—it’s feminist, you mean?’ Colin blinked. ‘I must have missed that. No wonder I didn’t like it, I can’t stand that sort of thing. It’s so unnecessary, don’t you find? Look, Rowland, this is all very interesting, but could we get on? I have to find a house…’

  ‘I know that, but this house symbolizes something, Colin.’

  ‘Not to me it doesn’t. A house is a house. It has four walls, a roof and a door. Come on, Rowland, you said you’d give me some suggestions…’