Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  Rowland gave up. He passed Colin a list. Of the four houses on it, it turned out, three had already been suggested by Colin and rejected by Tomas Court, a fact he had neglected to mention. This did not appear to demoralize Colin; on the contrary, he assumed a businesslike demeanour, produced numerous dog-eared maps and notebooks, and showed signs of cheering up.

  ‘I knew I could rely on you!’ He beamed at Rowland. ‘We think alike. We’re getting somewhere now.’

  Pointedly, Rowland looked at his watch.

  ‘There’s just one leetle problem, Rowland. This fourth place you suggest…it’s, well, it’s a bit too remote. It’s a hundred miles from all my other locations, there’s no road to it, and not a whiffle of an hotel…’

  Rowland controlled his temper. ‘You didn’t mention roads or hotels.’

  ‘Well, I thought you’d realize. I mean, think, Rowland, I have to house a crew, the cast, Natasha Lawrence. I have to consider costs: transport, caravans, limousines, generators, computer links, catering, security. Stars don’t walk to location, Rowland, and they’re kind of fussy about hotels. I can’t put Natasha Lawrence up in some boarding house, now can I?’

  ‘Why not? She’s there to work. I imagine she’d survive.’

  ‘Don’t be naïve, Rowland. You know perfectly well it doesn’t work like that. We’re talking suites, twenty-four-hour room service, a pool, a gym. She has a bodyguard, and she works out with him every morning…’

  ‘You said remote, dammit…’

  ‘I know, but there’s remote and remote. Now don’t get testy, Rowland, and don’t give up on me…’

  ‘Give up on you? I wouldn’t dream of it. After all, apart from the small matter of getting out a Sunday newspaper, I have nothing else to do. My calls are being held. I’ll just tell them to hold them for the next hour, shall I? Or would two suit you better?’

  ‘Now, Rowland, don’t be sarcastic. I can’t take it, not just now.’

  ‘Besides, it’s perfectly straightforward, right? We should sort this out in no time. What you need is a Grade One Jacobean house no-one’s noticed or altered in four hundred years, in a remote moorland location, with satellite links and a luxury hotel at the end of its drive. What could be easier? If this newspaper doesn’t come out next Sunday and I do nothing else but sit here being your psychotherapist, while you pop out and seduce my secretary once in a while…’

  ‘She’s a very pretty secretary, Rowland. An excellent choice.’

  ‘…then no doubt we’ll find you your house. You’ll be delighted. Tomas Court will be delighted. Meanwhile, I—’

  ‘Please, Rowland,’ Colin said, in a very small, pathetic voice. ‘Please. I’m begging you now. I’ve helped you in the past. You remember that time at Oxford when I lent you my lecture notes?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘What about all those Oxford girls? I was useful to you then, Rowland. When you broke their hearts, who consoled them? I did. Max occasionally, I admit, but I was the chief consoler, Rowland, remember that.’

  ‘You’re confusing consolation and opportunism, I think.’

  Colin waved this objection aside. ‘Rowland, let us not argue about ancient history…’

  ‘Argue about it? You can’t even remember it. You were drunk, Colin. Perpetually drunk. You were drunk for three whole years…’

  ‘You’re right. You’re right.’ Colin sank his head in his hands. ‘I was an irresponsible wastrel. A ne’er-do-well. The Lascelles black sheep. But you set me on the straight and narrow, Rowland. You got me through my exams. I’ll never forget that. None of my family ever forgets it…’

  Rowland tensed.

  ‘So I know I have no right to ask for your help again, but you did mention you were going on holiday next week…’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing. There’s no need to look so suspicious. I just thought, since you’ll be going north anyway…’

  ‘Colin, I’m going climbing. It’s the first holiday I’ve taken in over a year.’

  ‘Of course. And you need that break, Rowland, you deserve it. You’re looking tired, tense. Which is why I thought you might like to spend a few days in Yorkshire on your way back from Scotland. I’m renting a cottage up there as my base. It’s on your route back, Rowland, and that bloody man will still be bombarding me with faxes and calls. By then, I’ll be on my eighteenth perfect house, I expect, and ready to shoot myself. So it just occurred to me, maybe, out of the goodness of your heart, and because you once loved my sister, Rowland, years ago…’

  ‘I did not love your sister.’

  ‘Well, she loved you, which is much the same thing, and despite your failure to respond, she still speaks fondly of you. She’s recovered, of course, she has four children now. Even so, every time your name comes up, I catch this little gleam in her eye…’

  ‘Colin, what do I have to do to make you go away?’

  ‘She always says what a very good loyal friend you are, Rowland. Well, they all say that: my father, Great-Aunt Emily; they never stop singing your praises—what a good influence you are on me. A man of honour. One to rely on in moments of extremity…’

  Rowland sighed. ‘Dear God. What have I done to deserve this? All right. OK, you win. Give me the damn address and I’ll look in on my way back…’

  Colin had taken this capitulation generously. Having got his way, at which he was skilled, he skedaddled. And now, here Rowland was, in a cold leaky cottage in the back of beyond, in the company of a man who, like himself, could not cook. For three days, subsisting on lumpen cheese sandwiches and cans of soup, he had endured Colin’s plaints and joined him on fruitless searches for a place that Rowland, too, was beginning to believe did not exist.

  It was a chimera, he told himself, opening that reluctant creaking gate and approaching the cottage. When he had first been drawn into this ridiculous quest, he had seen Wildfell Hall clear in his mind; now it had receded. The more he listened to Colin, the less he saw.

  It was diverting, this search, up to a point. It had the advantage of distracting him, but he now intended to return to London and work, and the real world. He would leave in the morning; he would be back in his own house by Saturday afternoon. He might telephone Lindsay perhaps…It was Saturday morning now, he realized, looking at his watch. He would grab a few hours sleep and leave immediately after an early breakfast…And he entered the cottage intending to firmly inform Colin of this.

  ‘Well, well, well, well, well,’ Colin said.

  Rowland stopped in the doorway. It was at once apparent to him that Colin, noisily suicidal when he left, was now drunk. It was one-thirty in the morning; during an absence of one and a half hours, Colin had contrived to become merry. His long thin limbs were stretched out on the sofa; his auburn hair was dishevelled; he had his feet to the fire, a large tumbler of Scotch in his hand and a Cheshire Cat grin on his face.

  ‘Aha!’ he said indistinctly. ‘Good news! Doubly good news! What a dark horse you are, Rowland. What a very nice world this is.’

  Rowland took this announcement with equanimity. He removed his wet boots and poured himself a Scotch from a near-empty bottle. He sat down in a squashed, comfortable armchair on the other side of the fire. Colin watched him beatifically as he did this.

  ‘Well now, let me guess,’ Rowland said eventually, when Colin seemed about to achieve nirvana or fall asleep. ‘You’ve had a call from Tomas Court? A fax? He actually likes one of the houses?’

  ‘He does. The first one we saw; the one you suggested; the one near the sea. He’s just got the v-v…’

  ‘Videos?’

  ‘Them. Those. And the punctures. He’s looked at the punctures…’

  ‘The pictures?’

  ‘Right. And he likes them. He likes them a lot. He likes them a very great deal. He likes them an inordinary amount.’

  ‘Well, now that is good news. Your problems are over. Great.’

  ‘You’re a true friend, Rowland;
that’s what you are. A friend in need, indeed.’ Colin paused and showed signs of becoming emotional.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ Rowland said. ‘I shouldn’t cry about it, if I were you, Colin. Are you sure you really want that whisky?’

  It seemed Colin did want the whisky. It seemed that he might resent being deprived of the whisky. It seemed he was prepared to put up a fight about the whisky. In fact, he would fight any man who came between him and the whisky; fight him to the death. Rowland agreed that this was a very reasonable point of view.

  Colin, who had risen uncertainly during this recital of his rights, sat down again uncertainly. He looked at Rowland for some while and, at length, appearing to recognize him, reiterated his opinion that Rowland was a dark horse, a very dark horse indeed. He tapped his nose as he said this.

  Rowland found this statement, and the reasons for it, rather harder to unravel. After ten minutes of obfuscation, he had the gist. Some while after the good news from Court, which Colin had immediately begun celebrating, a woman had called, wishing to speak to Rowland. This woman, whose name was Lynne, or Linda, or possibly Lynette, had a voice and a manner Colin instantly liked. Or, another way of putting it, he and Lynne, or Lisa, had hit it off. They had, it seemed, chatted away as if they were old friends; they had chatted away for hours, about Yorkshire, and men who liked walking in the dark, and life, and this and that.

  ‘This and that?’ Rowland said, when this account rambled to a conclusion. ‘And her name’s Lindsay, by the way.’

  ‘Lindsay! The fair Lindsay! I salute her!’ Colin drank.

  ‘She’s dark, not fair,’ Rowland said, his manner slightly irritable.

  ‘Dark and fair. With a voice. With a magical voice. It has a catch in it.’ Colin seemed to be sobering up rapidly. ‘I could have listened to that voice all night. She liked my voice too; she said so. She said I sounded very merry. I cheered her up.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it.’ Rowland rose. ‘Did she leave a message for me or was she too busy complimenting you?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘Try. She must have had a reason for calling.’

  ‘She sent her love.’

  ‘Not that. A proper reason. What did she want?’

  Colin was relapsing again; the angelic smile had reappeared on his face. ‘We came to an understanding,’ he announced.

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘We did. We communicated. Arrangements were made! I remember! I remember!’ Colin flailed, then subsided. ‘It was a friendly call, she said. She wondered when you might be getting back. You’re friends. Friendly friends. That’s what she said. And after that…’

  ‘After that, what?’

  ‘I proposed. I proposed marriage.’

  ‘I see.’ Rowland gave Colin a long, cool, green-eyed look. ‘And did my friend accept?’

  ‘I think she did.’

  ‘Well, accept my congratulations,’ Rowland said evenly. ‘And now I’m going to bed.’

  V

  AT TEN IN THE MORNING, that same Saturday, Lindsay’s son Tom was calm. He was in the large bedsitting room of his lodgings in a tall, dilapidated but pleasant north Oxford house; from upstairs and from below, where other undergraduates had rooms, came the sounds of music: Mozart from the north side, Dire Straits from the south. He was stretched full-length on a sofa with an unfortunate cerise loose cover, a sofa that even his landlady, the distrait widow of a physics professor, admitted had seen better days. As much of the cerise as possible was disguised by an Indian cotton throw found by Tom’s girlfriend, Katya. Tom had managed to position himself so that he avoided the jab and prod of springs.

  On his chest was balanced the third bowl of cornflakes he had eaten that morning, this one moistened with water, as he and Katya had forgotten to buy milk the previous day. He munched a spoonful experimentally; they tasted edible. He turned a page of the large book propped on his knees, which detailed the economic consequences upon Germany of the Treaty of Versailles.

  Across the room from him, Katya, who ostensibly lived in her college, but spent little time there, was pecking away at the keys of her word processor with two fingers. She was wearing a white nightdress and woolly socks; her auburn hair was wound up in a bundle on top of her head, from which precarious knot tendrils escaped. Every so often, she would stop pecking at the keys, push these tendrils aside impatiently, lean forward, adjust her large working spectacles and glare at the screen. Her essay on George Eliot’s Middlemarch was due to be delivered to her tutor, the terrifying Dr Stark. It should have been completed the evening before, and would have been, had she and Tom not decided that a late-night six-hour Hallowe’en retrospective of classic vampire movies was rather more urgent than a nineteenth-century novel, or inexorable inflation in 1930s Germany. Then they had had to eat, then Cressida-from-upstairs had arrived with some red wine and Algerian grass; then they had had to sleep—well, go to bed anyway; then…Tom considered the subsequent events with pleasure. Two hours of actual sleep? One and a half? He abandoned the cornflakes and half-closed his eyes; the tome on his knees slid to the floor. Ten, ten, ten. Oxford had so many churches, and none of their clocks synchronized. The chiming of an hour could last five minutes or more, and Tom, loving the city, loved it especially for this stretching of time.

  Peck, peck, peck went Katya’s fingers on the keys. Katya, expected to get a first, as was Tom, was fierce in her typing, fierce in her opinions, this being one of the reasons why Tom had now loved her for two years. No, more than two years, he thought, lazily, stretching out his legs and wriggling his toes. Two years, two months, a week and two days. The length of this period of fierce fidelity pleased Tom; it reassured him that he had not inherited his father’s genes; his father, whom he scarcely knew and now never saw, being, as Tom sometimes contemptuously said, a fickle weakling of a man. Two years, two months, a week, two days and—he paused to calculate—twelve and a half hours.

  It was at this point, very suddenly, that Tom ceased to be calm. He leaped to his feet as if electrocuted, and stared wildly around the room. The room, he now saw, was a slum, a pigsty. How had this escaped his notice before? The bed in the alcove was unmade; there were T-shirts, socks and knickers strewn across the floor; on the table was a stack of last night’s dirty plates and unwashed wineglasses; there were Rizla papers and obvious roaches in the ashtray. He sniffed; did the room smell of grass? He thought it might smell of grass. He plunged across the room and opened the window wide.

  ‘Oh my God. Oh my God,’ he said. ‘It’s Saturday. It’s Saturday now.’

  ‘So?’ Katya did not look up; she pecked even faster at the keys.

  ‘Mum’s coming. She’ll be here any minute. She’ll be here in less than half an hour.’

  Katya glanced at her watch. ‘She’ll be late; she’s always late. She’ll get lost in the one-way systems. You know how she drives…’

  ‘Shit, shit, double shit.’ Tom was leaping crazily about, stuffing socks and knickers under pillows. ‘What if she isn’t late? What if she’s on time?’

  ‘Stay calm. I need those knickers. What are you hopping around for?’

  ‘I just stubbed my toe. I stubbed it on that evil coffee table. I’m crippled, I may never walk again…’

  ‘Straighten the duvet. Pass me those knickers. Just give me two minutes, I’m almost finished. I just have to be really savage about Will Ladislaw…’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He’s the love interest. In here.’ Katya indicated a fat paperback copy of Middlemarch from which protruded slips of white place marks, like a porcupine’s spines. ‘Not one of Eliot’s successes. An apology for a man.’

  Tom moaned. He emptied the tell-tale ashtray, hid the Rizla papers, picked up the dirty plates and glasses and shoved them into a cupboard. He closed the door, handed Katya her knickers, straightened the duvet, punched the pillows, then stood on one leg like a crane, rubbing his injured foot and looking around him with an expression of wild surmise.
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  ‘What else? What else? There’s bound to be something else. Mum has X-ray eyes; she doesn’t miss anything. What about the dust? There’s all this dust. Where does all this dust come from?’

  ‘Lindsay’s seen dust before. She won’t mind. I can’t think why you’re fussing. Lindsay’s cool.’

  ‘Cool? She’s my mother. She’ll go on about washing facilities. Cooking facilities.’

  ‘So? Show her the kitchen; it does exist.’

  ‘The kitchen? Are you mad? She’d die if she saw that kitchen. There’s a bowl of Cressida’s spaghetti on the window sill that’s three months old. It has mould. It practically has legs. It’s breeding out there…’

  ‘I expect she’ll understand. I wish you’d shut up. I just have to skewer this love scene. How can you be a genius and write a love scene like this one? It creaks. There’s a ridiculous storm. She can’t do storms. She’s pinched the storm from one of the Brontës. Charlotte, I think. Where’s my Jane Eyre?’

  ‘Under that coffee mug, next to the ashtray. Christ—quick, give me that ashtray…’ In the act of reaching for it, Tom paused. He could now read the words on Katya’s computer screen; they were not kind words—Katya was young, as well as fierce—and they caused Tom some alarm.

  ‘Shit, Katya—you’ve really…You don’t mince your words. Castrated? Epicene? Poor Will what’s-his-name…’ He bent more closely and read the next paragraph. Unconcerned, concentrated, Katya continued to peck away.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Tom gave a sigh. ‘Is this guy Will supposed to be the hero?’

  ‘Sort of. Maybe. I can’t make up my mind. Neither could Eliot, unfortunately, and it shows.’

  ‘You say—this guy Will Whatsit isn’t erotic then?’

  ‘He’s handsome.’ Katya shrugged. ‘Passionate. He obeys some of the conventions. But not erotic—no.’

  ‘Do heroes have to be erotic?’

  ‘Sure, heroes ought to exude sex. They have to have sexual power.’

  This statement alarmed Tom even more. He forgot about the disorder of the room and the pain of his stubbed toe.