Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  ‘I guess so. He’s tall, blond. A country boy. He has a fiancée, Tomas, back home in some little town near Fort Worth. You’ll like him—’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Tomas, please—can’t you get off the phone? I wanted to talk to you…’

  ‘What about?’

  He looked at her steadily; Lascelles’s words, punctuated by those explosions, now blurred. He waited, knowing the answer, feeling amid the stirrings of an irrational anger, the stirring of a familiar desire.

  ‘About that newspaper clipping you sent me. That man they found in Glacier Park. About what the police told you, and the detective agency. You said…You said they had checks to complete, and—I have to know—is he really dead, Tomas? Was it Joseph King they found?’

  ‘New locks,’ Colin Lascelles said, into Court’s ear, ‘and an adjoining room for the bodyguard. Now—’

  Behind his words came the soft thud of another explosion; some atavistic British festival, Court thought; the burning of a traitor in effigy. He sniffed; the air in the hotel suite, purified, humidified, smelt acrid.

  ‘We’ll discuss it tomorrow,’ Court said. ‘I have to go now.’

  He replaced the receiver and looked long and hard at his wife.

  The thick, long, dark weight of her hair had now fallen forward; one strand, coiled like a question mark, rested against the roundness of her left breast. Beneath that breast, invisible to all but a lover, his wife had a small mole, a velvety aberration of the skin which he cherished. In his movies, he had always rendered this alluring defect invisible. He hid it religiously with makeup, with lighting, with camera angles, for it was his mole, part of his secret knowledge of her. That mole, in some detail, and with relish, King had described. He looked at his wife levelly; King’s knowledge, of which his wife remained ignorant, could have only one possible explanation. Yet that explanation was impossible, since his wife recognized neither King’s voice, nor his writing—or so she had told Court many, many times.

  ‘Do you want him dead?’ he said, his tone cold.

  ‘Tomas, please.’ She gave a helpless gesture of the hands. ‘How can you ask that? You know I do. I prayed he’d die; and if that’s wicked, I don’t care.’

  ‘Their enquiries are inconclusive.’ He kept his eyes on her. ‘They need more time…’

  ‘Why? Why?’ The colour had now ebbed from her face, and her skin was ashen.

  ‘They just do, that’s all. It’s complicated.’ He paused, and for a second he could hear King’s voice, mocking, knowledgeable. Just a fragment from one of the many, many tapes of his calls; the words used were effective—Court could feel the kick and pulse of them in his groin.

  Still looking levelly at his wife, he held out his hand to her. She began on excuses at once: there wasn’t time, it was too soon, Jonathan would be returning, she would have to leave for the theatre, she needed to talk, just talk…

  Court scarcely heard her words behind some crackle and hiss in his mind, a sound that could have come from a defective tape, or from a fire.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, in the tone which always guaranteed she would obey him. Still she hung back, and he flexed his fingers. He listened to the thud in his blood, the bang of his heart.

  ‘It’s been a month,’ he said. ‘A month. Trust me. Come here.’

  FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

  VIII

  ‘ON THE BEACH,’ TOMAS Court said.

  ‘But…’ said Colin Lascelles.

  ‘But…’ said Mario Schwartz, Court’s first assistant director.

  Mario and Colin glanced at each other; both were keeping count and so far Colin was winning. He was averaging twenty ‘buts’ an hour; Mario, limping behind, was averaging fifteen.

  ‘Fucking hell…’ said the neat, grey-haired, bespectacled woman who was sitting next to Court and recording these proceedings in microscopic script. Her name was Thalia Ng; she was one of Court’s oldest associates, a woman resembling some mouse of a librarian. One week into his protracted meetings with Tomas Court, Colin was still adjusting to her habitual mode of speech—it clashed with her woolly cardigans.

  ‘On the beach,’ Court repeated, ignoring these interruptions. ‘When Gilbert Markham sees Helen for the first time, he has to see her on the beach.’

  ‘Why?’ said Thalia Ng.

  ‘Because I say so,’ Court replied, with charm.

  ‘Personally,’ Thalia Ng replied, in cosy tones, ‘I think Gilbert Markham is a prick, and Helen is one tight-assed bitch. Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck where they meet, but…’

  The eyes of Mario and Colin locked; Thalia Ng’s score was ten and rising.

  ‘They don’t meet,’ Tomas Court fixed her with a cool glance. ‘I said he sees her. She’s down by the sea; he’s up on the cliffs. He watches her. She’s only just arrived in the neighbourhood and he doesn’t yet know who she is. In case you haven’t noticed, Thalia, there’s a lot of voyeurism in this book…’

  ‘Sure, and there’s a whole lot more in your script. And OK, I can live with that, but you’ve now changed your mind four times. Four times, Tomas. First, they’re meeting on the moors, and I think, Oh shit, been here before—it’s 1939, it’s Sam Goldwyn’s Wuthering Heights. I mean, please, it’s Merle fucking Oberon and…’

  ‘Larry fucking Olivier,’ Court interjected politely. ‘Precisely, Thalia.’

  ‘Then,’ Thalia Ng continued. ‘Then, like major rethink, they meet in Gilbert Markham’s house, the same way they do in the novel—big yawn. Then—I’m on idea number three now, Tomas, I’m keeping track of this horse shit—then, it’s night, and Helen’s inside Wildfell Hall, and this jerk Markham is creeping around in the garden, trying to get a first look at her, and I’m thinking: Rear Window? Peeping Tom, perhaps? Now it’s moved again. She’s on the fucking beach. That beach is giving me problems, Tomas. That beach is saying French Lieutenant’s Woman, a colostomy bag of a movie. So perhaps you’d tell me, before you comprehensively gang-bang the schedules yet again, are you serious! Are you sure about this?’

  Tomas Court gave a small tight smile. Colin could not decide if he was annoyed or delighted by Thalia Ng’s comments. The suspicion was growing in Colin’s mind that these arguments between Thalia and Court were a little double act they both enjoyed. He suspected they were rehearsed; he suspected that, right from the first, Court had intended this scene to take place on the beach, and that Thalia knew that. Quite why Court should want to play Prospero in this way, Colin could not decide; all he knew, as the long day wore on, was that Thalia was an unlikely Ariel, and he seemed destined to play Caliban, Prospero’s deformed and discontented slave.

  This role was familiar to Colin, since he had once actually played it, aged fourteen, at an end-of-term culture-fest at his public school. He had given a vigorous and, it was widely agreed, triumphant performance, leaping about grunting like a chimpanzee, with a fish in his mouth in the drunk scenes. Even his father, not known for his interest in or respect for theatre, had enjoyed the evening. He had motored up from Shute in his ancient silver Rolls Royce, and sat in the front row, moustache bristling, laughing loudly and slapping his thigh every time he considered Caliban had made a joke.

  ‘By Jove, he’s got something, that Shakespeare johnny,’ he said to Colin afterwards. ‘Bloody fine costumes too. Who was in charge of costumes?’

  ‘Matron,’ Colin said.

  ‘Who was that playing Prospero?’

  ‘Hicks-Henderson major, sir. I hate him.’

  ‘Don’t blame you. Can’t act for toffee. Complete and utter berk.’

  Compliments on his own definitive playing of Caliban had followed. Now, Colin drifted off and away to the islands of nostalgia, to a land of lost content where his brother was still alive and all was well. ‘Be not afeard’; he heard his own reedy fourteen-year-old voice pronounce. ‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not His head began a slow descent towards the table; sleep gat
hered him gently in its arms, then Mario Schwartz stuck an elbow in his ribs.

  Colin jerked upright, trying to radiate alertness.

  ‘But…’ he said.

  Mario noted this addition to his score; no-one else took the least notice.

  ‘Those schedules are provisional, Thalia,’ Court was saying, ‘so just stop arguing, and fix it—all right?’

  Thalia Ng gave a small enigmatic sigh, and wrote a note in microscopic script. Court stretched and flexed his fingers.

  ‘Right. Let’s move on. Scene eight,’ he said. Colin waited until the director was well into the depredations he intended for scene eight. He wondered how long he could decently wait before interjecting another ‘but’, and whether, in any case, he had the energy. When he was certain Prospero was not looking his way, he rested his wrist on the edge of the table, then, very, very discreetly, eased the cuff back against the edge, so that he could look at his watch.

  It was now nearly six in the evening. He had been sitting at this long black table, in Court’s TriBeCa loft, since eight o’clock that morning. The previous meetings with Court had been bad, but this was undoubtedly the worst. It began with the news that, after protracted wranglings, Nic Hicks had finally signed to play Gilbert Markham. Nic Hicks, or Nic Prick as he preferred to call him, was the man Colin most loathed in the world. He recalled his meeting with him in that theatre bar; he contemplated the appalling prospect of spending the entire twelve-week shooting schedule in the closest daily proximity with this man: Nic Hicks, whose conceit was boundless, Nic Prick who had whinging down to a fine art.

  He was just recovering from this blow, announced by Tomas Court with a small sly smile, he had noticed, when Thalia reported during a coffee break that Nic had been on the phone, would be arriving in New York shortly, and sent word that he and Colin must get together very soon. Colin had assumed that, if there were any justice in the world, this had to be the lowest point of the day; he was wrong. He was now frantic for a cigarette, exhausted, frustrated and confused.

  On the table in front of him, next to the usual array of Court’s asthma inhalers, were piles of different coloured papers: pink, green, yellow, blue. These were the various schedule revises already made; buried somewhere beneath them, and now altered beyond recognition, was the immaculate, location plan he had proudly brought with him from England. Buried somewhere else under this multicoloured litter was the original first draft shooting schedule he had helped to compile in those few heady days of optimism when he first arrived in New York.

  This pristine, sensible document, its every detail overseen by Tomas Court, was now in the process of being unpicked, slashed, rent, trampled upon, patchworked and restitched. The alterations made by Court over the previous couple of days had been substantial; today, he had excelled himself. He had juggled locations, so far changing the settings of fifteen major scenes and ten minor ones. Thalia Ng’s function, apart from abusing Court by rote, was to keep a record of these alterations, each one of which had a knock-on effect. Cast, crew, availability, transport, accommodation, costs—Colin watched a mile of dominoes topple down; he had long ago lost track of which scene was now happening where; he was starting to feel sick and dizzy, on the edge of some cliff, watching the seas of despair.

  Visconti was worse, he told himself. Visconti, a genius, was a total megalomaniac; yet he had managed to work with Visconti. He had worked with a tetchy, ageing, punctilious David Lean, on a film never actually made. He had survived Lean, the quixotic Truffaut, that kung-fu Korean, the lunatic Pole, the deranged Australian, several certifiable Brits, and those two new-wave Germans who needed strait-jackets. I can deal with this, he told himself grimly; very few movie directors, in his experience, were men of sweet reason, so of course he could deal with it. He would, however, deal with it a whole lot better if he could have a cigarette.

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said, rising to his feet.

  Tomas Court went on talking; Thalia Ng tapped his arm.

  ‘Colin wants the John.’

  ‘Oh.’ Court looked up, his expression preoccupied.

  ‘Didn’t Thalia show you earlier? The far end, turn right, first door on the left. Now, that scene you mentioned, Thalia, with Gilbert Markham in the garden at night—I want to keep that, but I’m moving it…’

  A low groan escaped Colin’s lips. He moved away from the table fast. He was supposed to be meeting lovely Lindsay Drummond at seven-thirty. He was taking her out to dinner; this prospect alone had kept him sane all day.

  No problem, he thought, negotiating the long, bare, improvisatory loft area which comprised Court’s main living and working space. The space offended Colin’s educated eye: it was bleak and looked unloved; no effort had been made to furnish it; it looked as if Court had just moved in, or was about to move out. Colin avoided various stacks of cardboard boxes—there were piles of them everywhere. A cigarette, then he would feel revived and confident, he promised himself. He would return to the table and contribute, which would probably amaze everyone, since he had scarcely opened his mouth all day.

  Then he would simply announce he was leaving—just like that. The rest of them could go on until midnight if they felt like it—and they probably did; he would be sitting at a quiet table in a quiet, civilized restaurant, eating wonderful food and advising Lindsay.

  He had now been advising Lindsay, on and off, for the past week, whenever he could contrive a gap in his and her frantic schedules. At every opportunity, he had been prompting Lindsay on the subject of her prospective biography, her inadequate advance, her economic pressures, and her hope to relieve these by renting her London apartment and finding somewhere cheaper out in the sticks. Whenever Lindsay attempted to change the subject, Colin gently led her back to it; he now knew a great deal about Gabrielle Chanel, and Lindsay’s hoped-for hovel with the roses around the door.

  The role of adviser to Lindsay was not, perhaps, the one he would have chosen, but he had to start somewhere, and he now felt he was perfecting the role. Quiet, concerned, wise, prudent—that was the line to take. Colin was aware he was somewhat miscast in this role—quietness did not come easily to him and prudence felt unnatural—but he was trying hard. Colin’s experience of women, considerably more extensive than most women assumed on meeting him, told him that Lindsay needed careful handling. She was quite odd anyway (he liked her for this) and she appeared to be in some odd stressed-out state; it was very important, therefore, to take things slowly and not to rush.

  Considering what a bad start they had made in Oxford, Colin felt he had a lot of territory to cover, but so far they were making progress, bowling happily along at a prudent speed: this evening, he had decided, was the moment to depress the throttle and accelerate.

  He had reached a bare brick wall, a completely bare, brutal, black brick wall at the far end of the loft. Opening a door, Colin found himself in a dark narrow corridor. He turned right, as instructed, and felt about for a light switch. He found one, proceeded a few yards further on, as an ugly neon strip flickered above his head, then he stopped and gaped.

  When, directed by Thalia earlier on, he had found his way to the bathroom here before, all the other doors in the corridor had been shut. Now, a door opposite the bathroom, a door which clearly led into Tomas Court’s bedroom, was wide open. Private, Out of Bounds, pronounced the voice of Colin’s rigorous upbringing, but it was already too late.

  He had seen through into the bedroom beyond, which was eerily lit by the bluish neon from the corridor, and by the street lights shining into the room through its wall of metal-framed windows. He could see that the room contained one very large, monstrous bed, draped with a dark cover the colour of dried blood. Next to the bed, on a wheeled table that had a surgical look, was a large old-fashioned recording machine, of the kind that took spools of tape, not cassettes; Colin had not seen such a machine in years. It was flanked by two towering black speakers and by a cliff, a precipice, a cascade, of audiotapes. Mounted behind the bed, bl
own up very large, so the photograph was the size of some Renaissance altarpiece, was the celebrated black and white still of Natasha Lawrence in Dead Heat. Colin stared, transfixed. It could not escape his notice that the image had been slashed—a huge jagged knife cut had been made at a diagonal angle, slicing through her body from the left shoulder, with its little crouching spider, to the pale delicate jut of her right hip.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Colin muttered under his breath, and took a step back. It then occurred to him that perhaps Mario and Thalia had not seen this, that it might be better if they did not see it. Gingerly, he moved forward, intent on closing the door and concealing what he had seen. As soon as he moved into the doorway, a light lit—a small red light, mounted on some invisible piece of machinery high on the opposite wall, above the bed. Colin looked at it nervously; it was possible that the light was part of some security system, was similar to those body-heat detectors that his father, for instance, had recently installed in the Great Hall at Shute, at vast expense. On the other hand, given Tomas Court’s profession, or predilections, it could be a camera; he might now be being recorded on some closed-circuit device.

  Colin blushed from hairline to neck. He would look like a snooper; he now felt like a snooper. Act casually, said some demented voice in his head; he planted a nonchalant expression on his face, whistled a tune, slammed the door, shot across the corridor into the bathroom, opened the window, stuck his head out and smoked, very fast, that much-needed cigarette.

  One hour later, to Colin’s astonishment, Court seemed suddenly to bore of his alterations. He rose to his feet, announced he was going to see his son, and allowed them all to escape. Colin felt greasy with fatigue and unease; the day’s events were now conducting some tribal dance in his head; all he could hear were tom-toms drumming out the signals of danger and distress.

  In silence, he, Mario and Thalia descended in a grim elevator. Outside, Mario paused by a stack of trash cans.

  ‘Sweet Jesu,’ he said, with feeling, then gave them all a high-five and went loping off.