Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  He hesitated, then moved into the doorway. Lindsay watched the light from the corridor glance across his face. She could see the strength of emotion he was struggling to conceal, and her heart went out to him. A great surge of words rose up within her; she said his name and began to move quickly towards him. Reaching his side, she realized that none of those words could be said.

  ‘I wanted to know—’ He broke off, taking her hand. ‘Did you understand my letter, Lindsay?’

  ‘I didn’t then, but I do now. Rowland, I’m so sorry. I’m so desperately sorry—’

  ‘My love.’ He caught her against him, cradling her head in his hands. He began to kiss her hair, then pressed her tight against his chest. Lindsay listened to the beating of his heart. Everything she had never said to him, and everything she had ever hoped he might say to her, were expressed then, she felt, in the confusion and flurry of that brief embrace.

  Gripping her by the arms, he drew back and looked down at her face.

  ‘Yes or no, Lindsay—just tell me that.’

  The question had been torn from him. Lindsay could see that he had not intended to ask it, and perhaps regretted it the instant the words were said. Loyalty and fear of disloyalty could be read in his face. To his question there was a rich fund of answers; she could feel them stored in her heart. Three years of answers and explanations and revelations never made; she consigned them to oblivion.

  ‘No,’ she replied, in a low voice—and she admired him then as much as she had ever done, for although the recovery was not instant, it was courageous and it was swift.

  ‘Ah, I feared you would say that.’ He stopped, fought to control his voice, then continued. ‘Lindsay you will always be very dear to me, and I wish you nothing but joy. I want you to know that—’

  He embraced her gently as he said this, drawing her into his arms in a quiet protective way. Lindsay found she could not see for sudden tears. She found that, as once before in Oxford, she was encircled by his arms, and her face was resting against his chest.

  ‘If you were wearing that green sweater,’ she said, in a shaky voice, ‘I’d kiss it now, Rowland…’

  ‘Never mind. You can kiss my tie instead.’

  Lindsay kissed his tie. She was just thinking how much she liked the patterns of this tie, how sensible and orderly they were, and how calm she felt, when someone began screaming. It was a woman, and the sound was painfully close. The cry was repeated, then repeated again, on a mounting note of terror and distress.

  Colin was halfway along the corridor when he too heard this cry. The corridor in Emily’s apartment, as in that of Natasha Lawrence’s below, ran like an artery from the reception rooms at the front of the building to the bedrooms at the back.

  In the dining-room, halfway along this corridor, there had, for some while before, been sounds that indicated disturbance, trouble and distress.

  For a while, still seated at the table, Colin had been deaf to them. To his right, some interminable conversation between Emily and her three ancient female friends had begun; it concerned the current vagaries of the elevator. Colin had been deaf to that too; the whole of his mind dwelt upon Lindsay—to such an extent that he scarcely noticed Rowland rise and speak to Emily in a quiet voice. It was only when Rowland came around the table to him that he had realized he was leaving; he half rose, but Rowland immediately pushed him back towards his seat.

  ‘No, really, Colin. I’d rather see myself out. I don’t want to break things up, and I have to go—’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. Let me see you out…’

  ‘Really.’ Rowland’s expression did not encourage argument. ‘I’d rather slip away. I have an early plane to catch. My thanks for this evening—’

  He turned and left. Slowly, Colin sat down again, puzzled by Rowland’s expression, tone and haste.

  ‘The override switch, Emily dear,’ one of the ancient women was saying, and Colin, scarcely hearing her, began to feel a sick unease. Something was happening, he felt; something had been happening, and he had been blind and deaf to it. But what was it? What was it?

  He could sense some dark and shapeless idea at the back of his mind, and he knew he had been given clues, that he could see this thing if he concentrated, if he dragged it forward into the light. But the thing would not move, and was almost instantly occluded by another, more pressing thought. Colin began to realize that Lindsay’s telephone call was taking too long, that she had been absent too long. Could she have felt faint again? And why had Rowland chosen that moment to leave? It was then that the sounds from below, apparent for some while, finally registered. He heard the running footsteps, the slamming doors, the woman’s voice calling, at exactly the same moment that anxiety for Lindsay gripped.

  ‘Is something wrong, Emily?’ One of the ancient women suddenly asked. ‘My hearing is not perfect, but…’

  ‘I can hear someone crying,’ said Henry Foxe, becoming very pale and rising to his feet. ‘Emily, it sounds like a child crying…’

  ‘What’s that banging?’ Frobisher rose with a look of alarm. ‘It’s coming from the stairs. Is some door being forced? Colin, I think you should—’

  Colin was already running from the room as she spoke. As he reached the main corridor, he heard the scream, rising up from below his feet. He froze, feeling the cry reverberate up through his body. His heart had started hammering; he glanced along the corridor, to his right and to his left. To his right, he saw nothing; to his left, he half saw in a bedroom doorway some shape which should not be there, which could not be there, and which he knew he had to be imagining. From beyond the front door, straight ahead of him, a renewed, confused clamour broke out. He could hear a frantic, metallic, banging sound, some broken protest, the cries of a child in obvious distress, then the sound of a man’s voice—a voice he recognized at once. No, dear God, please no, said this voice, and Colin found he was across the hall, through the door, and out in the shadows of the landing.

  It was of the utmost urgency and importance to be there, he knew that, even as he also knew that it was of the utmost urgency and importance to remain in Emily’s apartment, where he could look again at the two people—yes, it had been two people—who had been standing together in that doorway to his left.

  He peered along the galleried landing, trying to see past its riot of pillars, trying to make sense of its shapes. Ahead of him, that red carpet poured itself down the stairs; above him, other galleries whispered and cried out alarm. He could hear doors opening and closing; he could sense a terrible, gathering collective fear: something had been let loose in this building—but Colin’s mind refused to tell him what it was. He heard Emily’s voice from the corridor behind him, then some cry from one of the old women. He fixed his eyes on the landing, and found he could see some haunting white shape, moving beyond the pillars; the shape was the size of a child; it was airborne; it had too many arms, and there was something that appalled him about its face.

  ‘Lindsay, stay there. Colin, what’s happening?’ Rowland said, from behind him, and that banging and crashing and anarchy burst out again. Of course he was not surprised to hear Rowland’s voice, Colin thought; of course he already knew that Rowland had not left; of course he also knew why Rowland had remained. He had seen him with his arms around Lindsay. He had been shown the unthinkable, the unimaginable and the impossible just now, in that bedroom doorway to his left.

  How stupid of me, he thought. How unbelievably stupid. How could I not have seen something so obvious? A dull pain settled itself inside him; looking along the galleries now, he found the pain steadied his vision and comprehension had come. He saw a simple tableau—father, abductor, child—which made clear and immediate sense.

  ‘Oh, my heart—let me sit down. I can’t breathe,’ said a voice from the hall behind him. Glancing back, he saw Emily being helped to a chair, Rowland bending over her with a look of concern, and Lindsay running towards him.

  It seemed to take her an immense time to approach. Years p
assed while he looked at her pale uplifted face. He knew she was saying something, but her words would not transmit their sense. He said something to her—he was never sure afterwards what it was, but it was probably something about the police, about calling the police. He thought maybe he told her to keep the door closed; he certainly slammed it, and he thought he said that.

  As soon as it was shut it was very clear to him what he had to do next. None of this was really happening, but even so he had to help the child—so he began to run along the gallery towards the child, and the man grasping the child, and the figure slumped against the bannisters, breathing painfully, who, he realized, was Tomas Court.

  As soon as he moved—and only seconds had passed, but they felt like years—the man holding the child stopped scrabbling and banging at the elevator doors and ran off. He was still clutching the child, like some pale bulky parcel, and he still had his hand clamped across the child’s mouth. Colin could see the child’s hands plucking at air, and he felt outrage and incomprehension at this. He paused only for a moment by Tomas Court. Then, seeing he could scarcely breathe, let alone pursue, set off in pursuit himself. He expected the man to run down the stairs towards the entrance hall; but, since nothing was obeying the usual rules, he did the opposite and started to run up. Colin followed, running at speed, stumbling, then running again. His heart was now pounding; the man had a head start of almost two flights, and as he ran Colin had a clear sense that this was all a dream, and at any moment he would wake up.

  ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ he heard himself shout in this dream, and it struck him how absurd this was. Even so, he cried ‘Stop’ several times more. He changed it to ‘Please, stop’ on the sixth landing, which was even more absurd, and ‘Don’t, please, don’t’ on the eighth. He found he was saying something garbled, and incoherent to a tiny, frightened, wizened, ancient face which popped out from behind a door on the ninth floor, but the door then slammed, and the bolts were drawn across. In his dream, Colin could then concentrate on what really mattered, which was making his legs move faster, and getting the air into his lungs, which were starting to seize up.

  Reaching the top floor at last, he had a glassy sense that it was not a dream, after all, but that everything was now going to calm down; normality was about to prevail, no-one was going to get hurt, and the child—he realized the child must be Tomas Court’s son—was going to be safe.

  He had a reason for thinking this, he saw, stepping onto the landing and slowing his pace. The abductor, he could now see, was not a man, but a woman. He could see why he had made that mistake: the woman was wearing trousers and her hair was hacked raggedly short. He could also see that she was holding a knife—but he found he was not alarmed by the knife. A woman must be as incapable of hurting a child as he was of hurting a woman: this creed it did not occur to him to doubt. He felt totally sure that the instant the woman saw he did not intend to hurt her, she would give him the child and surrender the knife. Fighting to steady his breathing, he began to walk towards her.

  ‘You’re frightening him,’ he began. ‘He’s only a little boy and he’s terrified. Please, put him down. You can’t want to hurt him. Give me the knife…’

  The woman had been scratching and banging at the elevator doors. As soon as he spoke, she made a panting, grunting sound. She darted away, across the landing, which was large, and backed up against the bannisters. Colin hesitated; there was a sheer ten-storey drop behind her. He felt a vertiginous fear then; his shocked calm began to fragment; the floor began to move, and the dome tilted above his head.

  ‘Precious, precious,’ said the woman, and cut the child’s face.

  Blood welled; Colin looked at the blood welling up in disbelief. She had cut the boy just below the eye, very close to the eye; blood welled up and dripped down over her fingers, which remained clamped over the boy’s mouth. Colin saw the child give one terrified convulsive movement, then fall limp. He could both see and smell his terror now; he could also see that the knife, a long, thin switch-blade, was pressed up against the child’s bare throat.

  ‘Oh, dear God, what are you doing? What are you doing? You cut him,’ He stared at the woman. ‘You—how can you do that? You can’t want to hurt a child. It’s so wicked, wicked. Please—give him to me. I’m not going to touch you, or hurt you. Let him go. Let him go at once…’

  ‘He stinks. Filthy little know-it-all.’ The woman spoke in a low rapid voice, eying him. ‘You take one more step and I’ll jump.’ She frowned. ‘I’ll cut his throat.’

  ‘You can’t do both. What are you saying? Look, please—listen to me. Why are you doing this? What’s the point? You can’t get away from here now. That elevator isn’t working. Every resident in this building will have been calling the police…Please, give him to me.’

  He stopped. He could hear just how stupid and fatally inadequate he sounded. He could not understand why these arguments, so true and so obvious, would not be properly expressed. He tried to look at the woman; think, think, said some irritating, confusing voice in his head. He began to see that the woman was very afraid; her face had a twitchy, jittery look; she was breathing in and out very fast and beginning to shake. Colin took another step forwards. He wanted to make a rush at her, a grab at her—but the knife was just under the boy’s ear, and that ten-storey emptiness lay in wait.

  ‘Precious. Precious baby,’ said the woman, in a low crooning voice. She looked down at the boy; Colin risked another silent step forward. Her head jerked up and the white of her face flared at him.

  ‘Do you have a baby?’

  ‘No, not yet. Look—please. Let me help you. You need help…’

  ‘Call the elevator. Tell Joe to bring the elevator up…’ Colin was afraid to move away to the elevator. If he did, he would be at a greater distance. She might jump.

  ‘The elevator isn’t working,’ he began. ‘I told you—it won’t come. It’s broken down. Listen—’

  ‘I had a baby once.’ Her eyes flashed at him. ‘Didn’t I, Jonathan? Where’s my baby now? Rushed down some drain. Tossed out with the trash.’ Her mouth moved. ‘Get the elevator. Get the fucking elevator, right now, or I’ll jump.’

  She made a jerking movement and the child gave a moan of fear. Colin’s heart leaped. He started to move towards her fast, because he suddenly saw with absolute clarity that if he did not act now, and act quickly, the unthinkable was going to happen right in front of his eyes, and fifteen seconds from now the boy would be dead. I’m going to kill her, Colin thought, moving, propelled on sudden violent rage, and realizing that he could kill her, if only he could get hold of her before she used the knife.

  ‘Get the elevator, Colin,’ said Tomas Court’s voice. ‘Get the elevator now. Do what she says.’

  Colin stopped dead. Tomas Court had spoken sharply; he was standing on the far side of the landing, at the top of the last flight of stairs. Colin stared at his white face. He decided he was going mad; surely there was no way in which Court could have recovered and made it up those stairs? Yet there Court was, breathing quietly, if with obvious pain. He paused for only a second, looking at the woman and his son, then he began to walk towards them, his hand held out.

  ‘Jonathan, don’t move,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘Just stay still. Colin, get the elevator, please. Now, Maria—do you want me to call you Maria? I don’t think of you by that name. I think of you as Tina. I always will, and always have—if you’d said yesterday that your name was Tina, it would have made all the difference. Didn’t you realize that?’

  The use of this name had a magical effect. The woman became still; she stared at Court and made an odd, gentle sound in her throat. Colin found he could breathe again. He darted across to the elevator and summoned it in the certain knowledge it would not come. Hope winged through him; he knew this was the correct thing to do, because Tomas Court had instructed him. Court knew this woman; he could reach her in a way Colin could not. Disaster was about to be averted, Colin thought. Two men against one woman
was no contest, in any case. He could now see every frame of this movie playing itself out; it was a movie he’d seen a million times; it had a kindly director, who ensured that the hero disarmed the assailant, or, failing that, resolved everything quickly, without bloodshed, after a brief and well-choreographed fight.

  At any moment, Tomas Court would give him a signal, Colin thought. He’d stop talking and give him a signal, and the two of them would launch some effective, concerted male attack. He moved back towards Court, who was still speaking. He found the scene in front of him would not stay still, but kept jerking about; he found Tomas Court was not only ignoring his presence and failing to give him any signal, but saying things that made very little sense.

  ‘Didn’t you get my messages?’ he was saying, in a quiet, puzzled way. ‘All those messages I sent? I don’t understand why you’re doing this. You must see—I can’t talk to you now, not with the boy here; he’s in the way. Look at me. Tell me you got those messages, Tina. Tell me you understood.’

  The woman’s grip on the boy slackened for a second. Her mouth moved. ‘Messages?’ She stared at Court in a mesmerized way. ‘I sometimes thought—when I was alone…’

  ‘I can understand that.’ Court had finally come to a halt a few feet in front of her. Colin edged his way to Court’s side. He could see that Court was looking at the woman with tenderness and with regret.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he went on, in a quiet voice. ‘Trust me. I’m not going to touch you—though I want to very much. All this time…’ He gave a sigh. ‘You know not one day has gone past without my thinking of you? I’ve read your letters a thousand times. I know them by heart. There’s one you wrote—’ He hesitated. ‘And I keep it next to my heart.’ He sighed. ‘How is it you know me so well? You’re closer to me than anyone I’ve ever known. I can talk to you without any fear of being misunderstood—and you can talk to me the same way. That’s how close we are.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Put the boy down, Tina. He’s in the way. You’re so very dear to me. Give me the knife.’