Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  She was aware that this strategy—like most of her strategies—was unreliable and could not be continued indefinitely. If she conceived, well and good; she would then be in no doubt as to her next action. If she did not conceive, and Gini’s predictions proved true, then she would have to find a way to leave Colin. So she would have to determine a time limit, she thought, as Colin drew her down beside him on the bed. Six months? A year? No, a year was too long, she thought; a year with Colin and she was afraid she would never have the will-power to disengage from him. Six months then, she thought, as Colin kissed her. Perhaps seven, she thought a minute later. Here, of course, was the right and perfect place to conceive his child, she thought a minute after that, though, in truth, this idea had first occurred to her somewhat earlier.

  Moving against him, she began to say and do some of the marvellous things that Colin, alone in Emily’s apartment all those weeks before, had hoped for and imagined. And Lindsay, who had always believed in those forces to which Jippy, in New York, had addressed his prayers and his spell, conjured them in her mind now, as, after delays sweet to both of them, Colin came into her body.

  The following day was bright, cold and clear. Lindsay was introduced to Colin’s father, whom she found brusque, possibly kindly, and certainly intimidating. With Colin, she attended church—in her case for the first time in many years—where, to a congregation of eight, in freezing conditions, a sermon was preached on the subject and significance of Advent, and Colin’s father, moustache bristling, read the lesson with considerable bravura.

  After Sunday lunch was completed, father and son exchanged a glance which Lindsay failed to notice. Colin announced, in a somewhat mysterious, evasive way, that he had one or two people he ought to see. Lindsay was never sure how the two men contrived this, but five minutes later, she was sitting talking to his father, and trying to think of some possible subject of conversation with this brisk, alarming, soldierly man, while Colin, unbeknownst to Lindsay, was steering his fast and exquisitely engineered car in the direction of Oxford.

  As he drove, at speed, with skill, Colin rehearsed sentences. These sentences proved less easy to handle than his demanding car; he was getting sentence wheel-spin, drift and skid; the results were unfortunate. ‘Tom,’ he muttered, ‘it is your mother whom I wish to marry. Tom, your mother and I…’ No good, no good, Colin thought. Try again; concentrate. ‘Tom, for some time now, it has been my hope to…’

  No good either, Colin thought, becoming desperate. Why had this appalling pomposity descended on him? He was starting to sound like some ghastly suitor in a nineteenth-century novel. Loosen up, he thought; be cool and relaxed, modern and casual. ‘Hi, Tom, how’s things? Just thought I’d let you know. I’ve asked Lindsay to…Lindsay and I are…’ Asked Lindsay to what? Colin was now sweating. He could not think of any appropriately cool, relaxed modern usage. Shack up with me? Get hitched? Tie the knot? Get spliced? Worse and worse, Colin thought; either he sounded like an ageing hippie or like Bertie Wooster.

  Start again, he thought, zipping around the Headington roundabout. Keep it simple. ‘Tom, I want to marry your mother. Tom, I have asked Lindsay to marry me. Tom, I am deeply in love with your mother, otherwise known as Lindsay, and I want to marry her. I want you to give us your blessing, and tell me what in hell I can do to get her to accept me.’

  This was an improvement, Colin thought. At least it was honest. He could refine this, bang it about a bit, get it into some sort of shape. ‘Tom, I am very deeply in love…’ Very, very deeply in love? Fathoms deep in love?

  Get a hold of yourself, Colin thought, swerving violently. He realized that he was now in Tom’s street, and his nerve had entirely failed him. He slowed to a crawl. The words jammed in his brain. He began to see that this expedition was the most foolish of mistakes. It was an error of judgement of colossal proportions. On the last occasion he had seen Tom, the only occasion he had seen Tom, he had been drunk…face facts, paralytic. Tom was unlikely to have forgotten this. Supposing Tom turned around and said he had never heard a worse, a more fatuous suggestion in his life? What was he supposed to do then? Ignore Tom, or just crawl away and die somewhere?

  He stopped the car outside Tom’s house, but did not turn off the engine; he sat there for some minutes in a state of indecision and panic. He told himself this meeting was better postponed. Tom, according to the telephone call with Lindsay the previous night, was working flat out on an essay on the philosophical background to Fascism. He was toiling through Also Sprach Zarathustra and tackling Nietzsche’s concept of Übermensch. For this reason, Tom had put off Lindsay’s suggestion of meeting. Übermensch? This essay now seemed to Colin a most excellent reason for driving away again. He was just about to release the brake, engage the gears and go, when he had the sensation—the very odd sensation—that someone had just tapped him on the shoulder.

  So precise was this sensation that he actually glanced around. There was, of course, no-one behind him. He hesitated. The someone who had tapped his shoulder was now drawing his hand towards the ignition keys. Colin turned the engine off. The invisible someone, he found, was now urging him to get out of the car. Realizing that this invisible person must be his conscience, telling him not to plan something, then funk it, Colin did get out of the car. He found himself encouraged up the path; in an encouraging way, just as he was about to ring Tom’s doorbell, the door was opened for him. A young woman—it was Cressida-from-upstairs—paused in the doorway.

  On learning that this tall, anxious-looking, handsome man wanted to see Tom, she let him in, started to leave herself, then paused.

  ‘The thing is…’ She gave a frown. ‘He’s in a bit of a state. Did you know? Are you a friend of his?’

  ‘I’m a friend of his mother’s. A state?’ Colin also frowned. ‘That’s odd. She spoke to him last night—she said he sounded fine then…’

  ‘Well, I guess he would—to his mother. You know how it is.’ She made a face. ‘He doesn’t want people to know, but he and Katya had this horrible fight—last Thursday, when he got back from Edinburgh. In fact, they’ve split up, and Tom’s pretty miserable. I’m worried about him. I tried to talk to him last night, but he wouldn’t say a word. I tried this morning, but he wouldn’t even open his door. So, like, take it easy with him…’

  She went out, closing the door behind her. Colin saw that now was not the moment to start discussing Lindsay and proposals. The best thing to do, he decided, was to go back to Shute, collect Lindsay, and bring her over here. He turned towards the front door, and again felt that discernible tug from that invisible hand. The hand seemed to propel him to the stairs. After more hesitation, Colin went up them.

  He paused on Tom’s landing. He could hear music coming from rooms on the upper floors; he thought he recognized a Mozart opera, just discernible beneath the heavy beat of some rock group. Then he realized that from beyond Tom’s door came the sound of a man crying.

  ‘Tom?’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Tom? Are you in there?’

  There was no reply. Colin felt a mounting concern. He knocked on the door. ‘Tom, I know you’re in there,’ he said. ‘It’s Colin Lascelles. I need to see you urgently…’ He tried the door, which was locked. ‘Tom, could you open this door, please?’

  There was silence, then the sound of a chair moving. ‘Go away,’ Tom said indistinctly. ‘Just go away, OK?’

  Colin hesitated. He thought he ought to go away; he also thought he ought to stay. The more he thought about it, the more important it seemed to remain and get into the room. Tom, virtually fatherless, had struck him as volatile when he met him; he thought of how he himself had been at Tom’s age, in the wake of his brother’s death. He thought of how he, at this age, had swung wildly from one extreme to another, and how, on bright mornings like this one, he had got up, looked at the day, and started drinking.

  He knocked on the door again. ‘Tom, I’m not leaving. I must talk to you. Now open this door…’

  ‘Fuck off.�
� There was a painful sound. ‘Just fuck off and leave me alone…’

  Colin considered. Three days ago, had this happened, he would either have left to fetch Lindsay, or gone in search of a landlady and a key, or made foolish threats about breaking down the door. He had been shown, however, that there were quicker approaches—and speed mattered; he could now sense urgency.

  Blushing scarlet, he said, ‘Tom, there’s been an accident. Now open this door at once.’

  There was a brief silence, then footsteps, then the sound of a key turning. Colin took one quick look at Tom’s face and pushed past him before he could shut the door. He glanced around the room, which was in a state of chaos. The cerise sofa was without its Indian throw, which was crumpled in a corner. The bed in the alcove was unmade. There were papers and books all over the floor—and there was something else, something that caught his eye as he turned back to Tom, but he was too distressed by Tom’s appearance to take in its significance.

  Tom might be his own height, but he now looked like a boy rather than a man, Colin thought. He was unshaven; his eyes were swollen, and his face was white and tear-stained. He was looking at Colin with an expression of fear and bewilderment.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘What’s happened? Is Mum all right? I only spoke to her last night…Oh, Christ.’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Colin replied quickly, ‘there was no accident. I couldn’t think of any other way to get you to open the door, and—’

  He broke off, seeing a furtive ashamed look cross Tom’s face. Slowly, he turned and re-examined those objects on the table that had caught his eye. There was no mistaking their purpose. He turned back sharply to Tom and the boy’s face crumpled. He gave Colin a blind, miserable look and drew in an unsteady breath.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I wanted to, but I couldn’t even fucking well do that.’ He began to cry again.

  ‘Katya said I was useless—and she’s right. I bought the fucking drink and the fucking pills, and then I couldn’t do it. I’ve sat here for three hours looking at them—and I couldn’t take them…’ He pushed past Colin, fumbled for a chair and sat down on it. ‘You know where she’s gone? She’s taken the train to London. She’s gone to see fucking Rowland McGuire. She thinks she’s in love with him…’

  Quietly, Colin moved across to the table. On it was a notebook with some pencilled message and numerous crossings-out. ‘Dear Mum,’ Colin read. He passed his hand across his face. Next to the notebook was a full bottle of vodka, and laid out in rows, very neatly, was a large number of white pills. The boxes they had been taken from were stacked neatly to one side.

  Colin was very afraid; he looked at the pills, then at Tom.

  ‘This is paracetamol,’ he said. ‘Paracetamol, not aspirin. Have you taken any?’

  ‘No. I told you—’

  ‘You’re sure? Look at me, Tom. If you’ve taken any, I have to know—’

  ‘I haven’t. Not one.’ Tom gave him a frightened look. ‘Count them if you like. They’re all there…’

  Colin counted them; they were all there. He found he was not only afraid, but very angry.

  ‘Do you know what happens to people who take a paracetamol overdose?’ he said. ‘They die. It doesn’t work, using a stomach-pump on them, as it can do with aspirin. It’s irrevocable. Paracetamol causes irrevocable liver damage. You could kill yourself with a quarter of that dosage, but you wouldn’t die now; you’d die in a week’s time. Did you know that?’

  ‘No. I didn’t.’

  ‘Did you think of your mother? Tom, how could you do this? Did you think what it would do to her?’

  ‘Look, I didn’t take them. I didn’t take any…’

  ‘You thought about it. You sat here and you wrote a note. ‘Dear Mum.’ How could you? How? You’re her only child. She loves you so much…’ He looked around the room. ‘Where’s the phone? I’m calling your mother right now…’

  ‘No, don’t do that.’ Tom sprang to his feet. ‘Please, don’t do that. I don’t want her to know…’

  ‘Too bad. You should have thought of that before. I’m not hiding this from her.’

  ‘Please—please.’ Tom caught at his arm. ‘Don’t do that. Let me explain—I wouldn’t have done it. Really. I just—I couldn’t think. I’ve been walking round Oxford for two days, trying to think, and I couldn’t. Nothing made sense. It was just all this fucking awful horrible mess. Katya said all these horrible things—and I couldn’t believe she’d said them. I kept thinking, it’s all a dream. I’m going to wake up in a minute. And this morning—I went round to her college this morning. She told me to get lost. She had this mad look on her face. She went on and on about him, Rowland this, Rowland that—I could kill him. She’s been writing to him. I know he’s been writing back…and I thought, I’ll show her…’

  He rubbed at his eyes and began to cry again. ‘I kept thinking she’d come in, and see all that stuff—and then she’d see how much I loved her. Only she didn’t come, and I’d locked the door anyway. Oh shit…’

  Colin hesitated; it seemed to him that he ought to call Lindsay, and at once. But he could feel it again, that small odd tug at his sleeve. With a sigh, he did what it seemed most natural and useful to do: he put his arms around a boy he scarcely knew, as if he had known him all his life. Gently, he steered him to the sofa and sat down next to him. He looked anxiously at Tom.

  ‘You give me your word you didn’t touch any pills? There aren’t any other boxes hidden away?’

  ‘None. I swear. It was just an idea; a gesture. That’s all I’m capable of—fucking gestures…’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Colin replied in a quiet way. ‘Not taking that amount of paracetamol shows remarkable good sense. Now why don’t you tell me what’s happened? Go back to the beginning, and when you’ve finished, I’ll call Rowland.’ He paused. ‘I know you need have no worries on that score, Tom. Whatever mad idea Katya may have got into her head, Rowland won’t have encouraged her…’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Colin was not sure. True, he could not imagine Rowland leading Katya on, but if she had actually gone to see him, if she turned up on his doorstep? Katya was young; she was noticeably attractive. Thinking of Rowland’s past, he felt doubts, and knew it was vital to conceal them. ‘Has she gone to his house, Tom?’

  ‘That’s what she said she was going to do. Oh, Christ. She’ll be there now. You don’t know Katya—you don’t know what she’s like. She reads all these fucking books. She thinks she’s in a book half the time…’

  ‘I’m sure Rowland will cope with that. I know exactly what he’ll do. He’ll give her one of his ticking-offs—and they’re not pleasant, I can tell you. Then he’ll put her on a train and send her packing, which will almost certainly bring her to her senses…’

  ‘It won’t make her love me again though, will it?’ Tom bent his head. He wiped the back of his hand angrily across his eyes. ‘She doesn’t fucking care any more. She said…’

  He glanced towards the bed and began crying again. Colin put his arm around Tom’s shoulders. He produced one of his Thalia-scorned handkerchiefs and handed it across.

  ‘Start at the beginning,’ he said, ‘and remember, people don’t always mean what they say in these circumstances.’

  ‘They don’t?’

  ‘I certainly hope not,’ Colin replied. ‘Considering some of the things that have been said to me in the past. Now, how did this begin, Tom?’

  ‘When I got back from Edinburgh, she just went mad—totally mad. She’d written this mad note…’ He blew his nose. Looking at Colin fiercely, he drew in a steadying breath.

  ‘I’ll never love anyone else, you know,’ he said. ‘Never.’

  Colin was careful not to disagree. ‘Of course that’s how you feel,’ he said. ‘Now, you talk and I’ll just sit here and listen. And then we’ll find a way to sort this out, I promise you.’

  ‘Rowland, I love you,’ Katya said. She cleared her throat. ‘I wan
t you to be very clear about this. Of course, I still love Tom. In many ways, I shall always love Tom, but I love Tom in this quiet, peaceful, everyday sort of way, whereas, with you…’

  Katya paused. She had been rehearsing this difficult speech the whole way to London on the train. Now she was actually here, in Rowland McGuire’s strange, spartan house, it seemed more difficult to say. She had hoped that, by this point in her speech, Rowland might have done something.

  He had done and said nothing. She had been admitted into the house with considerable reluctance, and only after she had burst into tears on the front step. She had been shown up to this cold, unwelcoming room with these photographs of ugly mountains. She had been in it less than five minutes before she realized that unless she embarked on her speech, she was going to find herself out on the pavement again. Rowland was now leaning up against the mantelpiece, his arms folded; his green eyes rested on her face in a manner that was not encouraging. Katya flushed.

  ‘With you,’ she continued, ‘it’s different. It came to me very suddenly. It was that day I met you in Oxford. It was something Miriam Stark said. Learn to read, she said. So, after you left, I started reading this novel.’ She paused again, half hoping Rowland would ask her which novel; he did not.

  ‘I found I could read it—and I could also read myself. And you. I know what you need, Rowland. I know what you want.’

  ‘Really? You have the advantage of me there.’

  ‘I want to go to bed with you, Rowland.’ Katya’s colour deepened. ‘You may not realize that you want to go to bed with me yet, but you will. I want you to understand…’ She paused, trying to recall her script. ‘I know it won’t be permanent; it will just be an affair. And when it’s over, I’ll go away quietly; I won’t pester you, or anything like that. I know that in your case it will be just—you know—sex, but from my point of view, it’s something I need—at this moment in my life.’