Sextet (21 page)

A low groan escaped Colin’s lips. He moved away from the table fast. He was supposed to be meeting lovely Lindsay Drummond at seven-thirty. He was taking her out to dinner; this prospect alone had kept him sane all day.

No problem, he thought, negotiating the long, bare, improvisatory loft area which comprised Court’s main living and working space. The space offended Colin’s educated eye: it was bleak and looked unloved; no effort had been made to furnish it; it looked as if Court had just moved in, or was about to move out. Colin avoided various stacks of cardboard boxes—there were piles of them everywhere. A
cigarette
, then he would feel revived and confident, he promised himself. He would return to the table and
contribute
, which would probably amaze everyone, since he had scarcely opened his mouth all day.

Then he would simply announce he was leaving—just like that. The rest of them could go on until midnight if they felt like it—and they probably did; he would be sitting at a quiet table in a quiet, civilized restaurant, eating wonderful food and
advising
Lindsay.

He had now been advising Lindsay, on and off, for the past week, whenever he could contrive a gap in his and her frantic schedules. At every opportunity, he had been prompting Lindsay on the subject of her prospective biography, her inadequate advance, her economic pressures, and her hope to relieve these by renting her London apartment and finding somewhere cheaper out in the sticks. Whenever Lindsay attempted to change the subject, Colin gently led her back to it; he now knew a great deal about Gabrielle Chanel, and Lindsay’s hoped-for hovel with the roses around the door.

The role of adviser to Lindsay was not, perhaps, the one he would have chosen, but he had to start somewhere, and he now felt he was perfecting the role. Quiet, concerned, wise,
prudent
—that was the line to take. Colin was aware he was somewhat miscast in this role—quietness did not come easily to him and prudence felt unnatural—but he was trying hard. Colin’s experience of women, considerably more extensive than most women assumed on meeting him, told him that Lindsay needed careful handling. She was quite odd anyway (he liked her for this) and she appeared to be in some odd stressed-out state; it was very important, therefore, to take things slowly and not to rush.

Considering what a bad start they had made in Oxford, Colin felt he had a lot of territory to cover, but so far they were making progress, bowling happily along at a prudent speed: this evening, he had decided, was the moment to depress the throttle and accelerate.

He had reached a bare brick wall, a completely bare, brutal, black brick wall at the far end of the loft. Opening a door, Colin found himself in a dark narrow corridor. He turned right, as instructed, and felt about for a light switch. He found one, proceeded a few yards further on, as an ugly neon strip flickered above his head, then he stopped and gaped.

When, directed by Thalia earlier on, he had found his way to the bathroom here before, all the other doors in the corridor had been shut. Now, a door opposite the bathroom, a door which clearly led into Tomas Court’s bedroom, was wide open.
Private
,
Out of Bounds
, pronounced the voice of Colin’s rigorous upbringing, but it was already too late.

He had seen through into the bedroom beyond, which was eerily lit by the bluish neon from the corridor, and by the street lights shining into the room through its wall of metal-framed windows. He could see that the room contained one very large, monstrous bed, draped with a dark cover the colour of dried blood. Next to the bed, on a wheeled table that had a surgical look, was a large old-fashioned recording machine, of the kind that took spools of tape, not cassettes; Colin had not seen such a machine in years. It was flanked by two towering black speakers and by a cliff, a precipice, a cascade, of audiotapes. Mounted behind the bed, blown up very large, so the photograph was the size of some Renaissance altarpiece, was the celebrated black and white still of Natasha Lawrence in
Dead Heat
. Colin stared, transfixed. It could not escape his notice that the image had been slashed—a huge jagged knife cut had been made at a diagonal angle, slicing through her body from the left shoulder, with its little crouching spider, to the pale delicate jut of her right hip.

‘Oh Christ,’ Colin muttered under his breath, and took a step back. It then occurred to him that perhaps Mario and Thalia had not seen this, that it might be better if they did
not
see it. Gingerly, he moved forward, intent on closing the door and concealing what he had seen. As soon as he moved into the doorway, a light lit—a small red light, mounted on some invisible piece of machinery high on the opposite wall, above the bed. Colin looked at it nervously; it was possible that the light was part of some security system, was similar to those body-heat detectors that his father, for instance, had recently installed in the Great Hall at Shute, at vast expense. On the other hand, given Tomas Court’s profession, or predilections, it could be a camera; he might now be being recorded on some closed-circuit device.

Colin blushed from hairline to neck. He would look like a snooper; he now
felt
like a snooper.
Act casually
, said some demented voice in his head; he planted a nonchalant expression on his face, whistled a tune, slammed the door, shot across the corridor into the bathroom, opened the window, stuck his head out and smoked, very fast, that much-needed cigarette.

One hour later, to Colin’s astonishment, Court seemed suddenly to bore of his alterations. He rose to his feet, announced he was going to see his son, and allowed them all to escape. Colin felt greasy with fatigue and unease; the day’s events were now conducting some tribal dance in his head; all he could hear were tom-toms drumming out the signals of danger and distress.

In silence, he, Mario and Thalia descended in a grim elevator. Outside, Mario paused by a stack of trash cans.

‘Sweet Jesu,’ he said, with feeling, then gave them all a high-five and went loping off.

Thalia, who, despite her surname, was an Italian-American who hailed from the Bronx, looked Colin up and down. Colin bore her scrutiny humbly; the usual sirens, ceaseless in this city, wailed and whooped in the distance; the beat of some Rasta sound pulsed from a loft across the street. Colin had never felt more English, more inadequate, more out of his depth.

He was longing to ask Thalia if she knew about the slashed picture, but his antique code of honour prevented him. Was Court some kind of pervert? This idea distressed him terribly. What did it all
imply
? What did it all
mean
! he wanted to shout. He began pacing up and down, making inarticulate noises; when these gave no relief, he banged his forehead hard with his fists.

‘Oh, God, God, God,’ he said.

‘You’ll get used to it. Hang on in there,’ Thalia replied, her manner kindly for once. Colin rounded on her, pulling at his hair so it stuck up in auburn tufts.

‘December!’ he cried. ‘December! We’re supposed to start filming in under a
month
. Postpone, I said. Wait until the spring, I said. But no, he says it has to be after Thanksgiving, and it has to be December. It’s a twelve-week schedule. Does he
know
what Yorkshire’s like in December? January? Does he
care
? It
rains
. It pisses with rain the entire time. It
snows
. Villages get cut off…’

‘Cool it,’ said Thalia.

‘We have a start date! My sanity
depends
on that start date. We’re
never
going to start—I see that now. If he moves the whole shoot to California, I won’t be surprised. California? What am I saying? Why not Indonesia? Anne Brontë in Ecuador? How about the Zambezi? We could shift the whole fucking thing to the Amazon basin, how about that?’

‘Relax. He likes you,’ Thalia said.

‘
Likes
me?
Likes
me? He’s destroying me. He’s ripped up months of work—’

‘He always does that.’

‘That bloody man is driving me insane.
Nuts
. Twelve hours—nearly twelve hours I’ve been sitting there, and what’s been my contribution?
Buts
. But, but, but, but…’

Colin kicked a trash can violently, hurting his foot.

‘Listen,’ said Thalia, when the echoes of his anguish had died away, ‘if you’re going to survive this, just remember one thing. I’ve worked with him ten years, and I know…’

‘What?’ Colin cried. ‘What?’

‘He’s the best, OK?’ Thalia patted his arm. ‘Super-cunt, obviously—but still the best…’

‘He’s playing games with me! I know it! I can feel it!’

‘So?’ Thalia gave a little smile. ‘Play some fucking games back. Ciao, Colin.’ She gave him a matronly wave. ‘Have a nice evening. See you tomorrow. Oh—he wants us an hour earlier. He’s altering the end. Seven a.m., all right?’

In her bedroom at the Pierre, Lindsay was getting ready for her dinner with Colin. She was sitting on her bed in her bra and underpants while her friend and senior assistant, Pixie, applied some peculiar pungent gel to her hair. Pixie had taken a liking to Colin, and was exhibiting great interest in the imminent dinner, which she referred to as a hot date. She had decided that, in honour of the occasion, Lindsay needed a complete make-over. This make-over, involving a bath, then the application of various potions, unguents, scents, restorative creams and foot-sprays, had been going on for some while. Lindsay, who had covered six fashion shows that day, was too tired and dispirited to argue. Pixie, born bossy, was taking full advantage of her uncharacteristic passive state.

‘Keep
still
,’ she said, dragging a comb painfully across Lindsay’s scalp. ‘I’m
transforming
you, sod it, and I can’t do it properly if you keep jiggling about…’

‘Give it a rest, Pixie. Who cares what I look like anyway? I’m trying to read my goddamn phone messages, and it’s not easy when I’m being scalped.’

‘Colin cares. You’ve read those messages five times already. Look left, I need to check the back.’

Lindsay sighed and obeyed. It was true, she now knew these messages by heart. During her absence, Markov and Jippy had called (they were now in Crete; ‘Off to the Minotaur’s lair any minute,’ the message read). Gini Lamartine had called about Thanksgiving arrangements, as yet undecided; some sad person from Lulu Sabatier’s office had called (for the seventh time in seven days); various dull, work-connected people had called, and Lindsay’s mother had called to suggest a few thousand purchases Lindsay might like to make for her in Saks.

Rowland McGuire had
not
called. He had not called once in the past week. He was, presumably, not interested in testing her intuition after all, or perhaps he had simply forgotten, been distracted. Lindsay’s intuition, ever acute, could put a shape to that distraction. Given Rowland’s past conquests, it was likely to measure 34, 24, 34; it would be a great deal younger than she was, and would in a short while be discarded—such was life.

‘I don’t even know why I’m
doing
this,’ she said snappishly.

‘You’re just nervous. You’re having dinner with this very handsome, sexy man. You’re about to get lucky. Relax.’

‘Handsome? Sexy? Who is this?’

‘Are you blind?’ Pixie giggled. ‘One glance from those blue eyes and my nipples go hard…He’s delicious.’

‘He’s
nice
,’ Lindsay corrected. ‘Kind, gentlemanly, rather old-fashioned…’

‘He won’t be old-fashioned in bed. I can always tell. Ah well, you older women get all the luck…’

‘I don’t even want to go out.’ Lindsay sighed. ‘I want to stay in, eat chocolates and lie in bed. What’s in that hair stuff anyway? It smells
weird
.’

‘Magic’ Pixie sniffed. ‘Yams, actually. And don’t worry, the smell wears off after a bit. It’s absolutely the latest thing. Eco-friendly, one hundred per cent pure natural ingredients,
and
it attacks the free radicals…’

‘I have free radicals in my
hair
?’

‘At your age, Lindsay, you have free radicals lurking everywhere. Face facts.’

Lindsay faced them. She could sense the free radicals crawling around. They had long given up on such minor targets as her complexion, she thought; they were now infesting her head and heart; they were swimming up and down in her blood.

‘Turn your head this way…’ Pixie examined her. ‘Oh yes,—
excellent
. I’m aiming at a soignée look, très 1930s debutante, with Berlin nightclub undertones. Think Dietrich, then think Nancy Mitford. I want sultry
and
debonair…’

‘I’ve never looked sultry in my life, and I’ve never felt less debonair. Get a move on, Pixie, I’m fed up with this. My feet feel sticky…’

‘They’re
meant
to feel sticky. It’s the papaya juice in that foot-spray. Just wait awhile—you’ll feel you’re walking on air…Hey, your skin is really good, you know that? You on HRT by any chance?’

‘Will you give me a break, Pixie? Pay attention: no, I’m
not
. And the menopause is a long, long,
long
way off.’

‘Only asking. I didn’t really think you were. There’s no need to be so sensitive.’

Pixie made a face at her and continued her ministrations. Lindsay sank deeper into the slough of despondency. The menopause, with luck, should be a decade away; on the other hand, as women’s magazines never ceased to remind her, it could strike at any time, for like all her sex, she was at the mercy of hormones. Hormones, chemicals, free radicals; why, within her own body a nasty civil war, a guerrilla war was taking place. Pixie, of course, believed that war could be won—but then Pixie was such a believer. She believed in tofu and aerobics and mantras and collagen injections and miracle creams that cost 200 dollars for a very small jar. She believed in the beauty industry, where science and ju-ju interlinked, and she believed in
clothes
. In the gospel according to Pixie, there were very few problems in life that could not be solved by intelligent shopping, and spiritual fulfilment could be bought for the price of a new dress.