Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  Deciding that, as step-fathers went, Colin might prove an exceptionally nice one, he sighed.

  ‘Are you any good at chess?’ he said.

  ‘Not bad. Why?’

  ‘Mum’s appalling. I mean, so bad it’s awesome. But there’s something she does when she plays; it’s just given me an idea…’

  Tom spoke rapidly, for some minutes. Colin’s eyes widened. ‘You think so? You’re sure? When?’

  Tom frowned and considered again.

  ‘When does this movie finish? End of February? Three months from now? That’s about right. Go for March first…’

  ‘Three months? I can’t stand it…’

  ‘Festina lente,’ Tom said, surprising Colin. ‘Trust me—the first of March is perfect.’

  A week later, in mid-December, Lindsay went up to London to help Pixie move into her own once much-loved apartment. This process did not take long, since Pixie’s belongings consisted of a hi-fi system, some CDs, a budgerigar and a suitcase.

  ‘Don’t you have anything else, Pixie?’ Lindsay said, as they deposited these in her former sitting-room. ‘What about books? Clothes? Where are all your clothes?’

  ‘Oxfam,’ said Pixie.

  She yawned, stretched, rearranged her red hair and executed a small jig.

  ‘I’m beginning a new life. New apartment. New hair colour. New job. New clothes. New future.’

  ‘How’s the job working out?’ Lindsay said, looking around her and feeling despondent.

  ‘Brilliantly. Max says I’m the best fashion editor he’s ever had. Except for you, obviously.’

  ‘Oh, great. Terrific. Thanks a million.’

  ‘And this place is a big improvement on that horrible hole I had…I might repaint it. Do you mind?’

  ‘Feel free,’ said Lindsay.

  ‘You sure you want me to just rent? I’ll buy it if you like. I’m getting into mortgages. Gearing.’

  ‘No, you can’t bloody well buy it.’ Lindsay sat down. ‘I may need it.’

  ‘Is something the matter with you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m post-menstrual.’

  ‘Post?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘You’re joking.’ Pixie stared at her hard and long. ‘Tell me I’m not hearing this.’

  ‘I’m not joking. I was never more serious in my life. I love him. I love him desperately. I want his babies.’

  Pixie opened her mouth to protest, argue and expostulate. She looked at Lindsay’s face and closed it again.

  ‘Plural?’ she said, being nothing if not practical.

  ‘If possible. One would make me so happy, but if the one was female…’

  Pixie felt she wanted to scream—loudly. Since she was fond of Lindsay, she did not. She sat down beside her and took her hands.

  ‘Lindsay. Look at me,’ she said with great sternness. ‘Now tell me, is this for him or for you?’

  ‘Both.’ She gave Pixie a look of misery. ‘I can’t help it, Pixie—I’m just like that. I always was. There’s this direct line between my heart and my womb. I’m a throw-back, Pixie. I’m primitive.’

  Pixie agreed with this view, but forbore to say so, since Lindsay had now begun crying.

  ‘Oh, Pixie, I love him so much,’ she said. ‘I love him with all my heart. He’s the most wonderful man. He’d be such a wonderful father. I know he needs an heir—but it isn’t that really…’

  ‘I should hope not,’ said Pixie, who disapproved of primogeniture and found this a very nineteenth-century predicament.

  ‘He should have children. I know he wants them, but he won’t say so—he’s afraid of hurting me. He’s afraid I’m too old—and so am I. Oh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?’

  Pixie thought for some while.

  ‘Give me your dates,’ she said. ‘Right, now let’s make the calculations here…When’s he next down from Yorkshire?’

  ‘Tomorrow. But only for about half a day…’

  ‘Tomorrow’s perfect. Half a day? What’s the matter with you? You can fix this inside ten minutes.’

  Pixie rose. She opened her suitcase, rummaged around inside and brought out a small white jar.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Now, you rub this stuff into your skin about half an hour before, OK? It’s unbelievably expensive and it never fails. Believe me, Lindsay, this would fix it for an eighty-year-old woman…’

  ‘What are you doing with it?’

  ‘Sample,’ Pixie said briskly. ‘It came in to the Beauty Department the other day. I thought I could use it. It’s an aphrodisiac as well

  ‘I don’t need an aphrodisiac. That’s not the problem.’

  ‘Lindsay, with this cream and no pill, you conceive. Believe me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. It’s so much quackery.’

  ‘You put this on. You also wear an amber necklace—do you have an amber necklace? No? Well, buy one on your way home and wear it. Throughout. Don’t take it off under any circumstances. Promise me now.’

  ‘All right. I promise.’ Lindsay smiled.

  ‘That’s better. Now—let’s have a drink and I’ll tell you all the gossip. You go first…’

  ‘I don’t have any gossip.’ Lindsay sighed. ‘I sit alone with all these books and papers and I do research. What else? I go to see Colin’s father sometimes, or he comes to see me. I like him very much. He talks in this antique way. He says, “By Jove”. Yesterday, he brought me a puppy—it’s the sweetest thing, Pixie. It has this brown fluffy fur, and these deep brown eyes. I may call it Jippy…’

  Pixie smothered a yawn.

  ‘Tom’s much better. He’s having a wonderful time in Yorkshire. He and Colin are working an eighteen-hour day. I miss Tom. I miss Colin.’ She hesitated. ‘I live from phone call to phone call, Pixie. From letter to letter. I love him so much—I dream my life away.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘I know you won’t approve, but you’ll understand one day…’

  Pixie was very determined not to do so. She was, however, not as unaffected as she might have liked to be by the expression in Lindsay’s eyes and by the way in which she spoke. She determined to change the subject quickly.

  ‘Well, I can do better than that…’ She poured two glasses of some terrible wine she had brought with her. She sat down on a cushion on the floor, stretched out her legs and made herself comfortable.

  ‘First of all,’ she began, ‘you, Lindsay, are dead—did you know that? I met some terrible crazed PR woman, Lulu something, yesterday, and—’

  ‘Lulu Sabatier? I don’t believe it. That bloody woman hounded me for months. I told her I was dead…You actually met her? What does she look like?’

  ‘Weird. Tall. Long white hair. About forty. Rabbity teeth. Australian accent—or could be New Zealand.’

  ‘No!’ Lindsay stared at her, recognizing the woman from that corridor at that party. ‘But I met her! She gave me some other name. Why would she do that?’

  ‘I tell you, she’s weird. She kept rabbitting on about how much she’d liked you, how you’d gone down to her garden, or some crap. You know why she was hounding you? She represents that gruesome actor—what’s his name? The one that looks like a recently deceased choirboy…’

  ‘Nic Hicks? I don’t believe this.’

  ‘That’s the one. She thought you might want to use him in some male fashion feature, and now she thinks I might. Can he be that desperate for exposure?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Without doubt.’ Lindsay frowned. She thought back to Hallowe’en, to Lulu Sabatier’s party, to that aircraft-carrier loft, and its magical garden.

  ‘How odd,’ she said. ‘When she’d called thirty-five times, it did cross my mind it might have been important. The party was important—I see that now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Go on.’

  ‘Secondly—guess who Rowland and Max have signed up—exclusively? Pascal Lamartine, no less. Max says he’s working on some book, but next year, once that’s done, it’s off to war zones ag
ain…’ Pixie paused. ‘I thought you said he’d given all that up for good…’

  ‘He has. He’s agreed to work for Rowland? That’s not possible. It’s totally impossible.’

  ‘Wrong. It’s signed and sealed. Apparently, Rowland approached him and Max clinched it…’

  ‘Which war? I can’t believe this…’

  ‘Oh, there’s always a war,’ Pixie said airily. ‘And now for the really interesting news: Rowland McGuire himself. Knock that back, Lindsay, you’re going to need it. You may not believe this, but I hear…’

  Lindsay listened for some while. A sadness crept upon her. She looked at the sofa on which she was sitting, the sofa where she and Rowland had sat talking, late at night, on their return from that lunch in Oxford. She thought of what they had both said then—and what they had not said. She could see now that it was one of many past moments when she, and also perhaps Rowland, had been haunted by a future that might have been, and to which, briefly, they were close. It was just the other side of a door, just around a corner—and now, vestigial, imprecise, perhaps imagined, it would remain there. She bent her head; she found she could hear Rowland McGuire’s voice, describing his Hebrides, or Hesperides.

  ‘I wish him well,’ she said quietly, when Pixie had finished. ‘I hope it’s true. And oddly enough, Pixie, I have no trouble believing it.’

  ‘Are you wearing a new scent? Darling, you smell wonderful,’ Colin said, burrowing beneath the bedclothes in the brass bed, in the blue bedroom at Shute Farm. He drew the blankets and the patchwork quilt over them.

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Lindsay. ‘It’s something Pixie gave me.’

  ‘I like the necklace too. I like you wearing a necklace and nothing else…Is it the necklace? Or the scent? Or absence? Something’s having a very powerful effect on me…’

  ‘It’s the necklace, I expect,’ Lindsay replied, in a dreamy way. ‘I bought it yesterday. It’s that lovely dark amber. It’s the colour of your hair, Colin. I wonder…’

  Colin burrowed down further in the bed. With love, he kissed her thighs, and the triangle of springy hair between them, and her stomach, and her near-invisible stretch marks, and her breasts and her mouth. These stations of her body were all dear to him.

  ‘Ah, I can’t bear this,’ he said. ‘Darling—it’s nearly five; it will be getting light. I’ll have to leave soon.’

  ‘Oh, don’t go, don’t go yet. I can’t bear it either. It’s still dark. It can’t be twelve hours yet…’

  ‘It’s twelve and a half. Lindsay, marry me—’

  ‘Colin, I—Give me a little more time. I’m—it’s a very serious step…Darling, if you—oh, yes. Just like that. Oh, that feels so right. If you move just the smallest amount…Oh, that is the most miraculous thing when that happens to you. But we mustn’t; not again. You’ll be late…’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn,’ said Colin.

  ‘Happy New Year, Lindsay,’ said Rowland McGuire, climbing out of his car and walking round to its passenger door. ‘Can I say that, considering it’s nearly the end of January? We made it—just. The roads from Oxford were very icy, and that track…Did you have a good Christmas?’

  He kissed Lindsay, who had ventured out to meet the car, wrapped in several sweaters, a jacket and Colin’s overcoat. Rowland stared at her. ‘You’re looking wonderful. You look—This place is obviously suiting you.’ He paused as his passenger climbed from the car. ‘Lindsay, this is Miriam. Miriam, this is Lindsay.’

  The two women shook hands. It was Miriam Stark’s impression that this small woman, with her untidy hair, scarcely saw her. Her face was lit with an astonishing radiance. The cold air had made her cheeks pink; her eyes shone with an infectious happiness. Gesturing with small hands in red woollen gloves, and talking away rapidly, she led them into the farmhouse.

  With an obvious pride and delight in it, she settled Miriam and Rowland by a great fire, and began to rush back and forth fetching tea things. She had made a cake, she said, in their honour—but she wasn’t very good at cakes, so this one was a little lopsided…It was some while before she paused for breath; by then, she had removed the layers of outer clothing and was standing by the fireplace, looking at them.

  She was wearing flat leather boots, with a pair of claret-coloured trousers tucked into them like breeches. She was wearing a careless vivid shirt and what might have been a man’s tweed jacket. Around her throat was a dark amber necklace.

  Miriam Stark, looking at her quietly, found her beautiful. She looked, Miriam thought, a little like a boy, a boy in travesty, and she reminded Miriam, who was steeped in Shakespeare, of a Viola, or a Rosalind. Every second sentence she uttered, Miriam noted, began with the name ‘Colin’. When she pronounced this name, she would colour a little and the light in her eyes would intensify. ‘Holla your name to the reverberate hills,’ thought Miriam, taking a piece of the lopsided cake, which proved excellent.

  Then, as the afternoon wore on and the light outside faded, her impressions of this woman began to shift a little. She was older than she appeared, Miriam realized, and probably, given her son’s age, older than Miriam herself was. Though in this light she looked, with her short hair, impulsive manner and velveteen breeches, like some Elizabethan boy-actor, there was another quality to her joy which proclaimed the woman in her. Miriam could sense an uncertainty, a hope qualified by wistfulness, which she found moving. She wondered what might be the cause of this, and had the opportunity to continue these speculations, for she was a woman of few words herself, and in the company of strangers always said little.

  She noticed that this Lindsay appeared hungry, yet ate little. She noticed that, from time to time, she rested her small hands across her stomach, just below her breasts. She was very slim and seemed unconscious of making the gesture, but to Miriam, who had once carried a child herself, the movement, half protective, half superstitious, was unmistakable.

  She glanced at Rowland, wondering if he too would recognize it. He did not, she thought; he had become increasingly silent as the afternoon wore on, and seeing him avert his eyes from the radiance in Lindsay’s face, she realized suddenly that he was finding it virtually unbearable to be here. Pitying him, she rose to her feet and quietly suggested that they leave now.

  ‘So, did you like her? I hope you did,’ Rowland said, breaking a long silence in the car, when they were halfway between the farmhouse and Oxford.

  ‘Very much. She is—transparent.’ Miriam paused. ‘I envy her that.’ She paused again. ‘I think she will not write her book however.’

  ‘Probably not.’ Rowland kept his eyes on the road. ‘But I think she’ll abandon it without regret—in the circumstances.’

  ‘That cannot have been easy for you, Rowland,’ Miriam ventured, after a further pause, turning her cool gaze towards him as he drove.

  ‘No, but it will get easier eventually. I am still very…’ He paused at an intersection. ‘I am very fond of her, and I’m equally fond of Colin.’

  ‘Describe this Colin. I look forward to meeting Colin.’

  ‘He’s excitable. He says “Oh, God, God, God” very often. And sometimes…’ Rowland hesitated. ‘Sometimes I have the sensation that God listens—which is strange, considering I’m an atheist. Colin—well, Colin has a good heart, apparent naivety, and an instinct for the jugular. As you’d expect,’ he added, in a dry way, ‘considering his background.’

  ‘And will she really marry him?’ Miriam frowned. ‘That vast house? All that money? Those possessions?’ She gave an involuntary shiver. ‘She must surely fear…’

  ‘You saw her face. She’s afraid of nothing.’

  The interruption was curt; Rowland’s tone, Miriam felt, could not disguise an emotion that might have been regret, but which she suspected came close to anguish. That tone, she found, affected her deeply. She said nothing.

  They had reached the Headington roundabout and the outskirts of the city; Rowland turned into Oxford. He could sense Miriam Stark’s increas
e in tension before he had driven 100 yards.

  ‘Where shall I drop you, Miriam?’

  ‘At the college, please, Rowland.’

  Rowland slowed the car.

  ‘Why won’t you let me come to your house?’ he asked, in a quiet voice. ‘Miriam, is there some reason for excluding me?’

  ‘I exclude all men from my house. That is my policy.’

  ‘That wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t the case fifteen years ago.’

  ‘No.’ She looked away. ‘I was younger then. Now—I write my books at home. I prefer to keep that part of my life separate. I value that purity.’

  ‘Very well. The college then.’

  They drove on for some way in silence. Miriam Stark looked at Rowland’s dark hair and at his profile. Knowing that she was being influenced by the joy seen in another woman’s face, and knowing that she was contravening a resolve taken several weeks earlier, she said, ‘Rowland, I will come with you to an hotel, if you like…’

  ‘I do like.’

  ‘Then turn left here. We can go to the Randolph.’

  ‘Lindsay, I want you to listen to me very carefully,’ said Colin.

  He was speaking to her on a mobile telephone, from one of the upstairs rooms of the perfect Wildfell Hall Rowland had found him. From this room, where he knew he was safe from interruption, he could see across the moorland that surrounded the house to the path that led down to the beach below. From this vantage point, he could just glimpse the further extremity of the beach; he looked at a crescent of pale sand and a still, calm sea. It had been his practice, these last months, whenever he could escape from the demands of filming, to walk on this beach and think of Lindsay. He had grown used to the hours of its tides; thinking of her, always with love, sometimes with impatience to be with her, and sometimes simply with yearning, he had found the regularity of these tides soothing. The tide was now coming in fast; the day was fine, with a scent of spring, and a sharp, late winter’s sun was shining.

  ‘Can you hear me, darling?’ he said.

  ‘I can hear you absolutely clearly, as if you were standing next to me.’

  ‘What date is it today, Lindsay?’