Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  Darling Lindsay, I’m very glad you can’t read Latin. I’m afraid I had it rather dinned into me at school. Vivamus, dear Lindsay, atque amemus—soles occidere et redire possunt, nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda…Incidentally, you know that little thing you do that I mentioned (desk clerk at the Pierre, get LOST) the thing you do when I—you remember? Well, I’m thinking about it now. Effect immediate—and wasted alas; most frustrating. I send love, darling Lindsay. Take care of yourself. I hope the research goes well. Gabrielle Chanel sounds odd. Why didn’t she marry the Duke of Westminster? I think of you in the archive place, darling. If I were with you there, we could do some very interesting research…Will call usual time tomorrow. You can read my writing, I hope? Darling, I kiss all your asterisks.

  Colin.

  Wednesday. The Pierre.

  Dearest Colin,

  The desk clerks here are giving me very peculiar looks. I wonder why? It’s a great boost to my confidence—I’m perfecting a sultry slink for their benefit. This cheers me up when I get back from work. All day today in the Abbott Levy archive at MOMA. Wearying. Escaped finally, and came back feeling a bit low for some reason—having to concentrate, I expect. Then Emily kindly called and asked me round for a drink. We had great fun—I think I’m now getting used to her. I certainly like her a lot. I heard all the latest news about Biff, H. Foxe et al. (Ah, I find I do know some Latin after all.) I’ll regale you with it when you call.

  Emily told me the whole story of Anne Conrad and the two brothers. Heavens! It terrified me. No wonder she still haunts the place. The elevator was out of order when I left (overloaded by NL’s decorators, and the first time it’s broken down since 1948, Emily said), so I had to walk down that staircase alone.

  I wished you’d been here when I returned. I miss you too, but there are so many things we need to talk about. Hurry up and come back to New York, I’m lonely and V jvfu lbh jrer xvffvat zl oernfgf evtug abj. You are a wonderful ybire, and I am very, very sbaq of you—but don’t make me run too soon, dear Colin: I’m always slow off the starting blocks.

  I’m faxing this, so you can work out the above. Also this: V jvfu lbh jrer vafvqr zr, in fact, V jvfu guvf constantly. More research tomorrow. Not sure I’m cut out for this—archive libraries awfully quiet—no-one allowed to speak. Good night, Colin. I can just see the moon. Can you see it too? I send all best wishes and love, kisses too.

  Lindsay.

  Friday. Montana.

  My darling Lindsay,

  Your letter came today. Darling, it made me So happy. I’ve read it a thousand times. It’s folded up with that wicked fax you sent me—naughty girl! I carry both of them next to my heart. Your code nearly drove me frantic—but, yes, I’ve cracked it. Wish-fulfilment and memories of prep-school helped me. Very useful! I’ve been thinking about lbhe oernfgf all day, and how it feels when I pbzr vafvqr you. Do you know what it does to me when you gbhpu zl pbpx? I was thinking about it today, in the middle of a production meeting—concentration badly impaired. Also had the most rabezbhf rerpgvba. Most embarrassing.

  Darling, promise me: I don’t want you to worry about anything. We can go as slow or as fast as you want—at the moment, I can’t think beyond the day when I next see you. I just want to take you in my arms. I will never rush you, darling, please believe me. If I should ever sound hasty, it’s because I’m so impatient to be with you. Darling, you are in my thoughts, day and night. Everything I see and do and think is only for you. I watch the sun rise and the moon shine and, unless I can tell you about them, they have no meaning at all. Oh, Lindsay, I wish you were here. Darling, your absence makes my heart ache.

  I’ve been trying to convince myself that this sudden parting could be of use—a baptism of fire, perhaps. When we return to England, I’ll have to be in Yorkshire most of the time, and I’m praying that this separation now will help us to bear that one. What do you think? We’ll still be able to talk to each other, the way we do now. I’ll have a mobile. You can always leave messages—coded or otherwise!—on my machines. Then, if you’re at Shute—and I hope you will be, darling—I’ll be able to come down to see you on odd days and the occasional weekends. It’s about four hours door to door—I’ve been working out times and best routes! And you might like to come up to Yorkshire, perhaps, to see at first hand the sheer soul-destroying tedium of actual filming, in what will probably be snow or pouring rain, I expect.

  Then you could have the dubious pleasure of meeting the famous Nic Prick—you remember? The one who played Prospero to my definitive Caliban at school? He was called Hicks-Henderson then, and he was a world-class jerk aged fourteen. He remains one. He flew in here yesterday from LA—or the Coast, as he likes to call it. I was counting his name-dropping rate: it was three a minute when he arrived; he got it up to six a minute by the time he left for New York. I realized that Tomas is very devious and very smart: the Gilbert Markham character Nic’s playing is a smug, vain, sanctimonious, prurient prat—typecasting. After he’d called me ‘Col’ fifteen times, I remarked on this. Sarcasm wasted: he was delighted—but then he thinks Markham is the hero. I think Tomas was very amused at that. Have you started reading Tenant, darling? I want to know if you agree with Rowland—maybe there were things I missed.

  Must concentrate. Darling—two things. First, you remember what I told you yesterday about events in Glacier Park? Well, the police arrived in force not long after we spoke, and apparently that identification is now confirmed: an Australian tourist—gay, I think. He’d only arrived in the States a few weeks before and had been hitching. No family over here, his family back home not close and not sure of his travel plans, didn’t know he was heading for Montana etc., etc. That’s why it’s all dragged on so long. When he hadn’t written or called for four months, some cousins finally raised the alarm. They did the ID from dental chart records, I think. Poor, poor man.

  This means, of course, that JK is alive—but I always knew he was, you remember? Apart from those events at the loft, I could sense him there. I can sense his presence here too—the result, well, you can imagine: phones never stop ringing, everyone edgy, security people crawling all over the place, and Tomas utterly silent on the entire issue, though you can see he’s in the most terrible state, terrified for his son. He was on the phone to NL for three hours today and came back grim-faced—worked us all until nearly midnight, which is when I began writing this.

  I can’t wait to get out of this place and come back to you. Which brings me to my second point. Darling, about Thanksgiving. I’m so glad! It will give Emily a great deal of pleasure, and it’s only dinner, after all. She’ll be inviting some other people, I expect—she always makes rather a big thing of Thanksgiving. Don’t know who. Don’t care. I shall only have eyes for you.

  Darling, I’ve been thinking, I’m so desperate to see you. Tomas leaves early Wednesday morning to join NL for Thanksgiving—I’m going to fly back with him in one of the studio’s jets; it’s the quickest way I can get back to New York. I’ll be there by midday on Wednesday, so here’s a suggestion: Darling, why don’t I book us a marvellous room at the Plaza for Wednesday and Thursday night? That would mean you’d save on the expense of a room at the Pierre—economy, darling, think of that! And we could meet at the Plaza, like wicked, illicit lovers, wouldn’t that be fun? You could show me your sultry slink, then we could go up to our room and stay there shamelessly for a day and a half—until we have to leave Thursday evening for Emily’s Thanksgiving beanfeast. Would you like that?

  I know you want to see Gini and her husband, and Markov and Jippy—as they’re all tied up for dinner, why don’t you get them to meet us in the Oak Room at the Plaza for Thanksgiving drinks? Sevenish? Then you and I could go on to Emily’s—I’m bribing her to let me sit next to you. I intend to do unspeakable things to you, hidden by the tablecloth—I want to see if you can keep a straight face…

  I’d love to meet your friends—especially Markov. Did
you realize that I spent our first-meeting lunch in Oxford worrying about him? From the moment Tom and Rowland first mentioned his name, I was in a state of jealous torment: I thought he might be your lover—that’s why I started drinking like a fish. Total panic. Very glad indeed that he’s gay.

  Oh Lindsay, Lindsay, what have you done to me? I’m usually a man of great equilibrium, as you know. Always calm, always confident, and yet now—Are you smiling, darling? You have the most beautiful smile in the world; it lights up a room. Of course, you also have the most beautiful, the most desirable oernfgf in the world. I kiss them. Oh God, I wish I were vafvqr lbh now, darling.

  I’m sending this by fax—shouldn’t really, but the post is so slow. Darling, I’ll be with you Wednesday. Let me know re above Plaza plot etc. when we speak. I’m sorry this letter is so long, but it’s been a vile day, and I was feeling miserable without you. I’ve just read your letter again—Oh, Lindsay. Trust me, darling. It made me so happy, what you said about the simplicity of our shpxvat—I feel that too. I kiss all your beloved asterisk bits. I send you my love. Only 101 hours until I next see you. Stars very bright tonight. Almost a full moon. Yours, darling,

  Colin.

  THANKSGIVING

  XIII

  IN OXFORD THAT WEDNESDAY, the day before Thanksgiving, Katya was enduring the last fifteen minutes of a tutorial. It was being conducted by her senior tutor, Dr Miriam Stark, a woman whose cool intelligence Katya feared; it concerned the use of narrators in two novels by the Brontës. It had begun with Katya reading aloud to Dr Stark the essay she had written on this subject, comparing Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights with her sister Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; it had continued with Dr Stark’s analysis of that essay; the questions had been unrelenting and the criticisms barbed.

  Katya, who had begun writing having done too little preparation, and who had continued writing with her mind on quite a different subject, was aware this essay was a poor effort. For several weeks now, Katya had been suffering a certain mental and emotional turmoil; reading her essay aloud, she had realized that turmoil and confusion were evident in every line. In an obstinate way, she continued reading, praying Dr Stark might not notice the skimpiness of her arguments, praying she might be impressed by the two obscure critical references Katya had tacked on at the last moment, and—failing that—might be distracted by Katya’s aggressive and iconoclastic tone.

  Dr Stark had not been distracted by such frills; she was concentrating on fabric, on basic tailoring, and for the past twenty minutes had been scissoring Katya’s offering apart.

  Katya glared at Dr Stark, an American who had graduated summa cum laude from Barnard, but whose MA and PhD had been awarded by Oxford. She was in her late thirties, was beautiful, highly distinguished, and thin, which seemed unfair.

  Dr Stark, famously unmarried, had a cloistered air about her; she possessed an aura, Katya always felt, of steely, determined, female dedication. She was a Fellow of Oxford’s last remaining women’s college, a college to which Katya had applied in a burst of feminism she now regretted, and she was the kind of woman who could spend half an hour dissecting the implications of one word.

  ‘Katya, I can see your mind was not on this essay when you wrote it, and is not on it now…’ Dr Stark paused, having caught Katya staring moodily through the window at the quadrangle and pouring rain outside.

  ‘Yes, well possibly,’ Katya mumbled, taking refuge in mutiny. ‘I don’t really like either novel.’ She eyed Dr Stark. ‘All that hysterical spinsterish passion. I don’t really go for the Brontës at all.’

  ‘Evidently,’ Dr Stark replied, showing no inclination to argue with that kind of coat-trailing idiocy. ‘Katya, have you asked yourself why it is you have these problems with women writers? All women writers?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Katya, who on principle never admitted to having a problem with anything.

  ‘Katya—it is most marked. It was apparent in your work on Eliot, even on Austen. It is most apparent here. I set you this particular essay, Katya, because I hoped it might suggest to you that these novels, far from consisting of womanish outpourings, as you seem to believe, are schematic, and very carefully planned.’

  She frowned. ‘I find it strange, Katya, that in addressing yourself—intermittently, as I think you will admit—to the question of narrative techniques, you have failed to examine the ways in which these narrators are made to manipulate their texts…’

  She flicked a page. ‘Both novels contain lacunae, Katya—I find no mention from you of that. Both novels make use of what one might call ‘secret’ texts, in one case a diary, in the other, for instance, the marginalia of a child. Beyond such details, you have shown a marked disinclination, I feel, to examine the similarities in their structures…’

  ‘Yes?’ Katya said, in her most challenging tone.

  ‘Both novels employ two narrators, Katya.’

  ‘I went into that.’

  ‘You dipped into that. In each of these novels, Katya, one narrator is male and one female. In each case, the female narration is framed by the male one. The two interact. One might say there is a dialectic between the two…That did not interest you, perhaps?’

  Katya made a non-specific noise.

  ‘Which narrator does the author intend us to believe, do you think, Katya? The male storyteller, or the female? Neither? Many critics, as you will of course know, have taken the view that it is the women here, Nelly Dean in the one case, Helen Huntingdon in the other, who give us an author-endorsed truth. I would not take that view myself.’

  She flicked another of Katya’s pages. ‘I have to say, Katya, that you appear to have no view on the subject whatsoever. Which is uncharacteristic, to say the least.’

  Katya was stung. ‘I thought…’ she began.

  ‘You thought very little, Katya.’

  Dr Stark handed back the pages of the essay, now covered in Stark hieroglyphs. She gave Katya a long, cool and assessing stare.

  ‘One of the purposes of your degree course, Katya, is to teach you to read. To teach you the subtleties of the reading process. They will not be acquired by skimming and skipping, or approaching a text with a mind awash with foolish prejudice.’ She paused. ‘Such skills, I sometimes fear, are endangered—might even be on the way to becoming extinct. Except, of course, in places such as this…’

  She glanced towards the quadrangle; Katya glanced at her watch.

  ‘Such skills,’ Dr Stark continued, ‘useful in the study of literature, can occasionally be of use in life.’ She paused. ‘Katya, something is wrong. You have ability, and on the evidence of this essay, you are squandering it. You are, when you wish to be, intelligent. You were most certainly not in an intelligent frame of mind when writing this, nor are you in a receptive frame of mind now. Katya, you are clearly distracted by some other matter—would you like to tell me what that is?’

  ‘No,’ said Katya.

  ‘Deal with it,’ Dr Stark replied, gathering up her skirts and rising to her feet. ‘You are at liberty to waste your own time, but not mine. Six thousand words on the complexities and significance of the heavily disguised time scheme in Wuthering Heights by next Tuesday. Should you feel disposed to rewrite this particular essay, it would be of benefit.’

  Sod it, thought Katya, rising hastily, as Dr Stark whisked past her and moved to her desk. She thought of her own novel, begun on a sudden impulse earlier that week, at three o’clock in the morning, when Tom was fast asleep. It was told, in the first person, by a woman twenty years older than Katya: she had been pleased by its world-weary tone, its eclat and its bite. It now occurred to her, as Dr Stark began to gather up armfuls of papers and books, that perhaps first-person female narration was a mistake. Why not have two narrators? Four? Omniscient third person? No, far too dated. A subtle combination of first and third? Stream of consciousness? Diaries? Some metafictional folderols, perhaps? It came to Katya that her narrator, who was of course not a heroine, but merely a vo
ice, would function far more effectively with testicles. She was perfecting this sex change in her head, and wondering whether it might toughen up that interesting section on page four, when she realized that Dr Stark, saying something about picking up lamb chops from Sainsbury’s, was accompanying her out of the door.

  They crossed the quad together and turned out into the street. There, Katya, striding along in a bad temper, combat cap pulled low on her brow, head lowered against the rain, collided with someone in a black suit and a black overcoat.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Dr Stark, coming to an abrupt halt. ‘Rowland? It is Rowland, isn’t it? I can’t believe it. It must be fifteen years.’

  It was indeed, and undeniably, Rowland McGuire. His hair was very wet; his coat was soaked; his expression was grim, dazed and dark. Katya, lip curling, thought he had a Rochester look.

  ‘Miriam,’ he said, as Dr Stark blushed a slow, deep crimson. ‘I—this is a surprise. I’ve been looking for Katya—’

  ‘And now you have found her. Fortunate.’

  ‘This city is impossible. You can’t park in it. You can’t drive in it. Katya, I’m looking for Tom. I need to see Tom. Urgently…Yes, almost fifteen years, Miriam.’ He paused, frowning. ‘After the Commem. Ball. Yorkshire, I think.’

  ‘How accurate you are, Rowland. But then you always were.’ Dr Stark smiled in a somewhat dangerous way. ‘I agree about the traffic in this city. One always ends up going around in circles, don’t you find? And now I must leave you. I’m late for a lecture, as it is…’

  She disappeared. Katya had decided twenty seconds before that she did believe in destiny after all; she glared hard at the walls of her college.

  ‘She’s not going to a lecture. She’s going to Sainsbury’s to buy lamb chops,’ she said, in an angry voice. ‘Why did she blush? She never blushes.’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea,’ replied Rowland, in a tone that precluded further questions. He began walking away in the direction Dr Stark had taken, then halted abruptly and turned back.