Sextet

by Sally Beauman

‘Really?’ Colin looked at her in a doubtful way. ‘You’re not just saying that?’

  ‘No. I promise you I’m not. It’s wonderful here—an immense treat. This is the best champagne I’ve ever tasted in my life. I’m looking forward to meeting your aunt and I’m quite looking forward to eating this lobster, which I’ll do once you’ve calmed down. And while I eat it, you can talk to me about architecture, or your family, or the evil genius, and I shan’t be bored in the least. Now…’ She hesitated. ‘I’ll tell you what was worrying me earlier, if you like.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I was mainly worrying about the bill, because it’s going to be catastrophic, Colin…’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Colin was showing signs of recovery. ‘I expect it is.’

  ‘Exactly. So you shouldn’t have done this. It was very sweet of you, but it wasn’t necessary…’

  ‘Sweet?’ Colin frowned, but the glint of amusement had returned to his eyes.

  ‘All right—kind, thoughtful. But unless you’ve come into a fortune recently…’

  ‘Recently? No, alas.’ Colin smiled. ‘But Tomas Court is quite generous, you know, Lindsay. It won’t hurt to push the boat out a bit, once or twice.’

  He answered her with such frankness, with such an engaging smile, that Lindsay felt ashamed of her suspicions. They were low things and they all scurried away at once. Her face cleared and she gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘Well, I’m very glad about the fortune,’ she said. ‘I hate riches; they get in the way, don’t you think? You know, Scott Fitzgerald, “The rich are different from you and me”—all that.’

  ‘Have some more champagne.’ Colin paused. ‘I agree. A very good quotation, that.’

  ‘But you’re being extravagant,’ Lindsay continued. ‘So I want you to promise we can split the bill, then it will only be semi-catastrophic, all right?’

  Colin hesitated then. He looked at Lindsay for some while, an odd expression in his eyes. He looked faintly bewildered, Lindsay thought, and faintly stunned, as if some unknown assailant had crept up behind him and struck a blow from the back. Then he began to smile. The eyebrows Katya had described as diabolic rose in two quizzical peaks; the blue eyes lit with a deepening warmth and amusement. Katya had been right, Lindsay realized, and so had Pixie: Colin Lascelles was not only good-looking, he was an attractive man. He did not attract her, obviously, but she was beginning to see how he could be extremely attractive to someone else.

  ‘It’s a deal,’ he said. ‘You can eat your lobster now, but you’d better take your hand back first.’

  Lindsay, who had forgotten where her hand was, removed it from his. She began to eat the lobster, and very delicious it was. As she did so, she considered Colin’s character, which she now felt she understood. He was very English, she thought—that was the key. English, sweet-natured, perhaps not as inexperienced with women as she had previously imagined, touchingly vulnerable and incapable of subterfuge or deceit. She was beginning to see now why Rowland liked him so much, for Colin, like Rowland, could be both dry and ironic. Of course, he seemed younger than Rowland, although they must be almost the same age, and because there were no complications here, she found him easier to talk to than Rowland ever was. She must remember, she resolved, how easily his confidence was dented—almost as easily as her own. Sometimes, in his insecurities, he reminded her of Tom; which was why she felt quite protective towards him, she realized, and, glancing up, anxious to allay any further uncertainties, she gave him a warm, somewhat maternal smile. Colin, noting the quality of that smile, felt a passing frustration. Since he was indeed very English, he did not express it, but concealed it behind his excellent manners—natural to him, but also useful on occasions such as this.

  He reminded himself that he had just improvised—and improvised with some brilliance, he felt. A combination of luck and guile had enabled him to steer them around a very tight corner. Now they were back on the open road. Open the throttle, accelerate, he reminded himself, and patted the breast pocket of his masterly jacket to make sure a certain envelope he had brought with him—the fatal envelope—was in place.

  It was. He debated the best moment to produce it: before going on to Emily’s? Over coffee here, perhaps? Or later, when he escorted Lindsay back to the Pierre? He decided he would play it by ear. In the meantime, he thought, it would be wise, given Lindsay’s opinions, to be more careful. Lindsay noticed details, ill-considered details, give-away details such as suits.

  When Lindsay was looking away, he seized his opportunity, and, hidden by the tablecloth, removed from his wrist the leather-strapped, wafer-thin gold Patek Philippe watch. He could hardly claim to have found that at Oxfam. He stuffed it into his pocket, feeling much more confident at once.

  ‘So,’ said Lindsay, leaning forward and smiling in the most enchanting and feminine way, ‘tell me more about your aunt’s apartment building, Colin.’

  Colin, who was not intoxicated, instantly felt so.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s called the Conrad building, and it’s a very strange, even sinister place.’

  IX

  ALONE IN HIS LOFT at TriBeCa, earlier that evening, Tomas Court had also been conducting a dialogue about the Conrad building, a dialogue none the less forceful for being imagined. The two speakers were himself and his wife, and the dialogue began as soon as Thalia, Mario and Colin left.

  The minute the door closed on them, it burst out in his mind, a cacophony of contradictions, interruptions and pleas, of ill-phrased assertions and ill-timed non sequiturs. Court stood quietly in the shadows of the room, outside the circle of bright light that lit the work table, and let this chaos into his mind. He was used to this form of possession; when he ceased working, a process that demanded all his energy and will-power, he always felt drained and bloodless, emptied and lightheaded; an energy vacuum had been created, and into this vacuum anything, including malevolence, might rush.

  Today it was to be the Conrad. So be it, he thought, and waited, not allowing his breathing to quicken or tighten. He knew that, given time, this cacophony and havoc would resolve itself. He fixed his eyes on one feature of the room—it never mattered which feature, and in this case it happened to be the bars of the window, opposite which he stood. The bars, eight feet tall, and at least six across, formed a crucifix shape, which amused him distantly, since he was without religious belief. He looked at this cross, and was aware that outside in the street some absurd commotion was taking place; he could hear that his English location manager was giving vent to his feelings, but as far as Court was concerned he might just as well have been shouting his protests in Urdu. Lascelles’s laments were a cry from another country and Court felt an absolute lack of curiosity in anything Lascelles said.

  After a while, as Lascelles’s voice died away and silence fell in the room, the dialogue with his wife quietened; her interruptions became fewer, then ceased altogether; he was left listening to his own voice. Why? said his voice. Why, why, why? Why live there? Why invite rejection? Why do this?

  He felt stronger at once, the moment of mental palsy over and done with, he told himself. The why questions were familiar demons; they had been plaguing him for months. It was now safe to move, safe to begin functioning again, although he truly functioned, as he well knew, only when he worked. He picked up one of the cardboard boxes which littered the loft, and carried it across to the circle of light on his black work table.

  He took no second look at the welter of coloured papers still strewn across its surface; he had not the least inclination either to re-examine them or tidy them up. Each day, embarking on work, whether here, on location, or in a studio, he would know, before he began, exactly where he aimed, and how much expenditure of spirit, energy and will-power would be necessary that day to take him there. When he reached that preordained point, he stopped, and had been known to do so in mid-sentence, or mid-take. If necessary, he would drive or drag others on with him to this stopping place; if nece
ssary, he would manipulate, annoy, abuse, frighten, trick or charm them en route, but get there he would.

  He opened the lid of the box and moved the tumble of shooting schedules to one side to make space. During the day, these papers held magic, for they were the raw materials of his art, as essential to it, in their way, as celluloid, cameras, actors and light. Now, since he was at rest, they were inert, and merely his instruments; they were without power until tomorrow at seven in the morning, when he again picked them up.

  From the box he took out the material which various researchers had been gathering for him for months. Every scrap of information here concerned the Conrad building. There were old architectural journals; batches of photographs new and old; photocopies of the original plans for the building, plans which had been lying in some city hall archive for decades. Court laid them all out on the table and began to examine them minutely; it was not the first time he had done this.

  He examined the, to him, grotesque façade of the Conrad, with its baroque excesses and its Gothic turrets. It seemed to him that the architect had given the building a forbidding and secretive look. He disliked the extravagance of its great gaping maw of an entrance; he disliked the oeil-de-boeuf windows which ornamented those turrets and punctuated the roof-line, and which gave the building a menacing, many-eyed look, as if it were continuously hungry, and continuously vigilant.

  His wife was seeking to buy apartment three, situated on the north corner of the building, overlooking Central Park. She had already viewed this apartment several times; she had refused to allow him to accompany her—proving to be obstinate on this point.

  ‘Tomas,’ she had said, ‘you don’t want me to live there and you don’t believe I’m going to be allowed to live there. No. What’s the point?’

  Thwarted in this desire, he had turned to this research material instead. Now, he inspected the architectural plans, drawn up by Hillyard White over eighty years before. He traced the walls of apartment three, examined its orientation, dimensions and fenestration. He could see the disposition of the rooms; the photographs and descriptions in the various books and journals gave him an idea of how this interior might look. He could half see some rich space with many closets, with rooms which led into further rooms, and with yet more rooms beyond that. The apartment was very large; he now realized for the first time that it was a duplex. Towards the rear, there was a Second storey, secreted away; this would be the site of the main bedrooms; this was where his wife would sleep. His wife I had her final meeting with the board of the Conrad, with the committee who would decide her fate, the following morning; she would be given their decision then. Suppose that decision, against all the odds, was yes? How did you reach that second storey, that bedroom?

  He bent more closely to the plans, which, to a non-expert, were not easy to decipher. There was the staircase—he saw it now—but how did you reach the staircase?

  He only half saw, half glimpsed, he realized. It was like looking into some marvellous lighted room from the street outside, and then, just when all its secrets were about to be revealed, some officious person came along and closed the shutters in his face.

  He was suddenly seized with anger; his hands began to shake. With a furious, violent gesture, he swept the papers to the floor. Immediately, the chaos returned, and those two voices began arguing again in his head. ‘Oh, it torments me, Tomas, it torments me,’ his wife said. This time, he shouted his wife down and drowned her out, anger giving him an eloquence that, when they actually had this argument, he rarely possessed.

  He spelled out to her the insanity of this plan, a misconception from the first. Why was she continuing with the shaming procedures inflicted on her by the Conrad board, who for months now had been vetting her finances and every other aspect of her life? Why had she hired, at huge expense, first a real-estate broker, then one of Manhattan’s most expensive law firms to press her suit? All this money and effort would be wasted, he shouted, raining his reasons down on her now-bowed, imagined head. Neither money nor lawyers turned the key of admission at the Conrad, and if the broker—some man called Jules McKechnie—was claiming otherwise, she was being taken for a ride. Could she not see that?

  The Conrad, he reminded her, was a co-operative; its board could choose whom to refuse and whom to admit. For decades, the Conrad board had weaselled its way around the law, in particular the laws regarding discrimination on grounds of colour, race or sex. It was a bastion, and it did not raise its drawbridge to actresses, divorced women with young children, or the nouveau riche. Did she not know, had her precious broker and her over-priced lawyers not checked: no member of the acting profession, let alone a movie star of her fame, had ever lived in the Conrad, though many had sought admission. And no young children had been brought up in the Conrad for a quarter of a century at least.

  The occupants of the Conrad, he continued, were ageing, rich, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They believed in the Social Register, since they, and everyone they cared to know, were listed in it; they believed in money, provided it was inherited, and thus disinfected of all taint; and they believed in an Episcopalian God, while failing to practise any of His teachings. They are evil, he thundered; that building is evil, and I will not allow my son to be brought up in that place.

  ‘Our son,’ his wife’s voice quietly corrected him, and he heard again her one attempt to justify her decision. ‘I want to live there, Tomas. I see it differently from you. I shall feel safe there. This has nothing to do with you. It’s my choice.’

  That reply, which had infuriated him when she gave it, and which infuriated him now, explained nothing. It was in his wife’s nature to explain herself and her actions as little as possible, and it was this intransigency in her, this refusal ever to allow him to be sure he understood her, which bound him to her—or so he sometimes thought.

  In a sudden rage with her and with himself, he slammed out of the apartment, wearing only a jacket and unprepared for the cold of the streets. He had a car available to him, and a discreet, reliable driver whom he could have called upon, but he disliked others knowing his movements as much as he disliked them knowing his thoughts, so he flagged down a cab, knowing he should go back for a coat, but refusing to do so. He had to be careful of cold air, of course, just as he had to be careful of dust, pollen, pollution, smoke and a thousand other hidden substances in the air; this disability he loathed and resented. His anger deepening, he told the cab driver to take him uptown to the Carlyle, where his son would be waiting for him. Then, changing his mind, and knowing he needed something else, he told him to go to the Minskoff theatre, where his wife would be on stage, and that night’s performance of Estella would now be taking place.

  Why? Why? Why? This question pursued him uptown in the cab; it pursued him across the noisy, crowded space of Times Square, where he abandoned the cab, and it pursued him to the theatre, where he paused, looking at the lights that spelled out his wife’s name on the theatre front.

  Why live there, and why exclude him in this way, when he was sure she still loved him and wished for a reconciliation as much as he did? Why, when she was eager to work with him, did she still refuse to live with him? Did her continuing fear of Joseph King explain this decision—or was there some other, hidden reason? He glanced over his shoulder, having, as he often did, the sensation that he was being watched. No-one appeared to be watching him, so he turned down the small alleyway leading to the stage door and entered the theatre, feeling as he had done on many occasions that he would find the answers to all his questions here, that they lay very close, within reach.

  He was known at the stage door, and no-one detained him there, for these visitations of his were frequent. He went first to Natasha’s dressing-room, where his way was blocked, first by the strange androgynous creature Natasha insisted on having as her dresser, and then by one of the bodyguards—the favourite bodyguard, the Texan.

  Court was a tall man himself, but the Texan was even taller. Court looked coldly at
his blond, muscled good looks. He looked like an overgrown child, and was possibly more intelligent than he appeared.

  ‘I don’t see that you can offer my wife much protection if she’s on stage, and you’re here by her dressing-room,’ he said.

  ‘I agree. But Ms Lawrence insists.’

  ‘Give my wife a message, would you? Tell her I need to talk to her. I’m going up to the Carlyle now to see my son. I’ll wait there until she gets back after the show.’

  An expression of doubt passed across the man’s face. ‘I’m afraid she’s going out after the show, sir. She’s having dinner with her property broker, Jules McKechnie. I think it was mentioned…’

  ‘Ah, so it was. Then tell her I’ll call her tomorrow.’

  ‘I surely will.’ He paused. Tomas Court felt his blue eyes, eyes which appeared as innocent as a summer’s sky, rest on his face. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr Court?’

  ‘No, there is not.’

  Court turned away. He went into the backstage maze at the Minskoff, along corridors, through fire doors, up flight after flight of stone stairs. He paused on one of the upper landings, a warning constriction beginning to tighten around his chest. Then he went on, up more stairs, until, right at the top of the building, he came to the place where he had to be next.

  He opened a series of doors and stepped into the lighting box, high at the back of the auditorium, above its top-most tier seats. This dark, boxed-in coffin of a room, glass-fronted, sound-proofed, jutted forward over the heads of the audience and gave him an eagle’s eye view of the stage. The two technicians there, used to these unannounced visits of his, looked up, nodded, then returned their attention to the winking lights of their computer consoles. One silently passed him a pair of headphones, and Court stood there, holding them, watching the console, watching their hands moving back and forth among the switches and slides and myriad tiny green and red cue lights. He had a confused sense of being piloted, of being in flight; they were taking off, banking, gaining height. He felt that at any minute, all the answers to his questions would be there in his mind, and he would understand his wife.