Sextet (50 page)

It was hard to hear such an unpalatable truth from a friend, Lindsay thought, turning towards the door when she was sure that she had composed herself. She walked along the corridor, Gini following more slowly. Reaching the stairs, Lindsay looked down at the lobby, where the rest of their group was now awaiting them. With a dazed disbelief, she saw that Rowland McGuire and Pascal Lamartine were now deep in conversation, as if they had put aside their past enmity. Markov and Jippy were waiting to say goodbye, Jippy’s face still white, pained and anxious. The actor, Nic Hicks, was signing autographs, and there at the foot of the stairs, waiting for her, was Colin.

Seeing his face light as he caught sight of her, Lindsay felt a surge of misery and distress. Colin could not hide his feelings for her, and had no wish to do so. Lindsay, looking at the openness of his gaze and the transparency of his affection, felt ashamed. The last thing she would have wished to do was injure him, yet now she saw injury was inevitable—and for that, she blamed no-one but herself.

Her farewell to Gini took place outside, on the sidewalk, and Lindsay felt, as she kissed her, that it was in some ways a final farewell. She pressed her cold lips against her friend’s cold cheek, and she knew it would be a long time before she could forgive her for what she had said. Plain-speaking should not, but did, cause rifts; nor was she entirely sure that Gini’s reasons for speaking out were as pure as she claimed. Perhaps her motives were altruistic, but perhaps also jealousy had played a part, she thought, as she watched Gini briefly clasp Rowland’s hand, then turn away without a backward look. It made no difference—she saw that with a pained clarity. Whatever had prompted Gini to speak, her arguments concerning Lindsay’s age were unanswerable. However much that particular truth hurt—and it hurt very deeply—it was one which could neither be argued away, nor escaped.

H
OW LONG HAD THIS
truth lain in wait for her? Lindsay asked herself, approaching the stairs at the Conrad. She looked at the red-carpeted stairs, with their sentinel slaves, holding up torches that gave insufficient light. She followed the flights of stairs with her eyes, as they wound up and up, and doubled back. Gini’s arguments had a remorseless logic, and she could not understand how, afflicted with a peculiar blindness, she could not have seen this. Or had she seen it—and merely turned away her face, refusing to confront the issue, as she had in the past refused to confront other issues of equal seriousness in her life?

Am I infertile? I might not be infertile, she thought, looking at the red tide of that staircase. She brushed the last of the snow from her black coat; beside her, a radiator sighed; it murmured of biology and bad timing; of statistics and birth defects. She looked at Colin, at the silent figure of Rowland, at the terrible actor, who was bounding up the stairs, still with an endless, irrepressible, meaningless flow of words on his lips. These men were her own age. Any one of them could hope, even expect, to be able to father a child for the next twenty years and beyond; she herself did not share this uncircumscribed fecundity, and it had never occurred to her how much that might matter until now. Redundant yet again, she thought, and although she could smile at that, the pain and rebellion in her heart were acute. She glanced over her shoulder, feeling an instinct to leave, a longing to leave; but the evening, of importance to others, had to be endured, she knew that. Disguising her feelings with some remark, she crossed to the stairs and began to mount them. At the first landing, she heard a sound that sent a pang of recognition straight to her heart; she stopped.

‘What was that?’ She swung around, looking along the shadowy galleries. ‘I can hear a child crying…’

Above her, Nic Hicks continued to mount the stairs; both Colin, who was next to her, and Rowland, who was behind her, came to a halt. They listened.

‘I can’t hear anything—can you, Rowland?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘You
can
. Listen—there it is again…’

Colin hesitated, then with a glance at Rowland, took her hand in his. ‘Darling, I really can’t hear anything…’

‘Neither can I. Lindsay, are you all right? Colin, she looks terribly pale…’

‘Lindsay? Darling? Darling—look at me. Christ, Rowland, I think she’s going to faint.’

Lindsay heard this exchange from a great distance. The words were fuzzy and obscure, receding from her fast. A small serene catastrophe occurred: she watched placidly as the bannisters tilted, the stairs somersaulted, and the dome above her head moved in a slow and beautiful arc, coming to rest beneath her feet.

Someone caught her, as she commenced a slow, obedient, dizzying trajectory; when the world reassembled itself and recognized its usual rules once more, she found she was sitting on the top-most stair of the first flight, with her head between her knees. From this antipodean viewpoint, she discerned that the man on her left had his arms around her, and the man on her right was holding her hand. The man on the right was somewhat calmer than the man on her left.

‘Oh, God, God,
God
; said the man on the left. ‘She’s ill. I
thought
she didn’t look well at the Plaza.’

‘Let her breathe. She’s coming round. She’ll be fine in a minute. Lindsay, keep your head
down
,’ said the man on the right.

‘Stop
pushing
her. You’ll hurt her—’

‘I won’t. For God’s sake—’

‘Go and get her some water. Frobisher will give you some water, and ice. Or a key—I remember now—that’s what you do. Something cold down the back of the neck. Or is that for a nose-bleed? Oh, Lindsay, Lindsay…’

The man on her right sighed and rose to his feet. Lindsay listened to his footsteps mounting the stairs to the next landing. There was a jingling sound. The man on her left began fumbling with her collar. Something small, cold and metallic was inserted against the back of her neck.

To her surprise, upside-down Lindsay found this object produced a discernible effect. Its small chill cleared her vision; she looked down at the red stairs, and seeing they were no longer playing tricks, slowly raised her head. She found herself looking into a pair of blue eyes, alight with anxiety and concern. As she raised her head, a transformation came upon this face.

‘Oh, it’s worked. Thank God. I only had a Yale—this stupid little Yale. Lindsay—look at me. Can you hear me? Are you all right?’

Lindsay found she could hear him. It seemed to her astonishing and marvellous, that without a muscle moving, the expression in these eyes could alter with such eloquence. She saw anxiety become relief, relief become joy, and joy modulate to love; the love, which moved her very deeply, struck in her some chord, for she recognized the quality of this emotion at once. It was in this way that she looked at her son; this love, unqualified, poignant, and direct was always powerful—and she could sense its power at this moment. The last residual skewing of her vision ceased: the walls stood upright, at right angles to the floor; the last hissings and whisperings she had been hearing, which might have come from the radiators, although she thought not, also ceased. She had a sense that something in this interior shielded its eyes from the powers here and scurried off.

‘A Yale key?’ She gave a low sigh. ‘Oh, Colin.’

‘I know, but it was all I could find.’ He paused. ‘It’s the key to my apartment in England. I have this sort of apartment in my father’s house. The house is terribly large. It’s called Shute Court, but everyone just calls it Shute…’

There was a silence. ‘Shute?’ Lindsay said. ‘Colin, I don’t understand…’

‘That farmhouse belongs to it as well. It’s—well, it’s part of the estate, and the estate’s enormous. My family has had it for four hundred years. It will all be mine one day. Lindsay, I’m rich.’

There was another silence. Colin had spoken in the tones of one confessing some mortal disease. His blue eyes were fixed steadily on hers and his face had become very pale. Lindsay wanted to weep and to laugh. She took his hand in hers.

‘I think now might be the moment to faint again,’ she said.

This reply appeared to delight Colin; his face lit. He drew in a deep breath, as if about to dive into icy water from some great height, and clasped both her hands in his.

‘I want you to marry me,’ he said. ‘I want you to overlook everything I’ve just told you and marry me.’ He paused. ‘I know I proposed before, and I think I meant it then, but there’s always the possibility you didn’t believe me, considering a few minor factors…I’d never met you; I was blind drunk.’

‘I’m not narrow-minded,’ Lindsay said, in a reproachful way, her vision beginning to blur. ‘Colin—’

‘I’m not very good at proposing.’ Colin gave an agitated gesture. ‘On the telephone. On the stairs. I was going to do it in two days’ time, by moonlight. I thought if I did it by moonlight, you might accept.’

‘I’m glad you did it here, on the stairs. I’m so—’

‘Lindsay, why are you crying?’

‘I’m not really crying. Well, I am a bit. I’m—taken aback. Colin, I’m touched, more than touched, and I’m honoured…’

Colin, who could hear the ‘but’ coming, lifted his hand and quickly laid his fingers against her lips. He looked into her eyes intently. ‘Don’t give me your answer now. I was incapacitated the first time I asked you, and you’re incapacitated now. It’s not really fair to propose to someone who’s just fainted. No, don’t say anything.’ His expression became tender; he frowned. ‘Now keep still. I’m going to fish that key out.’

The process of retrieving the key was complicated and took some time. Having finally extricated it, Colin held it up and looked at it somewhat sadly.

‘This is yours,’ he said, in a quiet voice. ‘It’s all yours. I’m yours. I tried to tell you that in my fax from Montana. Did you notice?’

‘Ah, Colin—yes, I did.’ A tear fell onto her knee. ‘I wasn’t sure that was what you meant.’

‘If I didn’t mean it, I would never say it.’ He paused and gave her a sad, steady look. ‘I believe I could make you happy, Lindsay. I don’t have any illusions about my failings—but I know I could do that. I could make you happy tomorrow and next year and thirty years from now. And thirty years from now, if you were my wife, I’d know I’d achieved something worthwhile in my life, and I’d be completely content. That doesn’t sound very romantic, perhaps, but it’s my best qualification. I would never alter, Lindsay, I promise you that.’

‘Ah, Colin,’ she said, turning her face away to hide her tears. ‘People do alter. They alter very swiftly, despite all their best intentions…’

‘No,’ Colin said with great firmness. ‘I give you my word.
Semper fidelis
, in my case. And I know I won’t have to translate that, my darling.’ He paused. ‘Look at me, Lindsay. And when you’re considering your answer, just remember: I am not going to miss this particular bus, not if I have to go on chasing it for the next ten years. And I give you fair warning of that.’

Taking her hands in his, he drew her gently to her feet and turned her to look at him. ‘You look so beautiful. The colour’s come back to your cheeks. Your eyes—well, I won’t ask you why you have tears in them; I know you’ll tell me in due course. Meanwhile, I’m going to kiss you.’ His manner became sterner. ‘So don’t argue, don’t faint again, and don’t move an inch.’

He did so. Rowland, returning with the water, and with ice Frobisher had taken an age to provide, saw that these aids were not needed. He looked at the embracing couple, at the sweep of the stairs with its sentinel slaves, and quietly turned back.

He returned to Emily’s apartment. There, he was introduced to a small, melancholy man called Henry Foxe, and to three ancient women whose identities he at once confused, and remained unsure of ever afterwards. Hearing the trickle of dropping names from Nic Hicks threaten to become a flood, knowing he would insult him if he stayed a second longer, he withdrew to the kitchen with some muttered and inadequate excuse.

Frobisher, as fond of him as Emily, took one look at his face and gruffly put him to work. Things not being what they had once been in this household, she informed him, he could make himself useful. He could open that wine; he could hold that tureen steady while she decanted her Alice B. Toklas Algonquin soup. Finally, he could light the candles through there in the dining-room, but she gave him warning—the room was draughty and the candles temperamental, so they kept going out.

Rowland went through to the dining-room, a shadowy place. It was chilly; he draped the curtains more tightly closed, then began to light the array of candles one by one. They made the corners of the room more suggestive. In the glimmering polished surface of the table, Rowland found he could see some pale and insubstantial reflection, which he assumed was his own. In the still of the room, he found he felt haunted and uneasy; if he turned, he felt, he might encounter some other self.

The last of the candles refused to light. Patiently, Rowland struck another match; as it again guttered out, with the candle still unlit, he became aware of the noises for the first time. He tensed, then swung around, sensing someone behind him as close as a shadow; he found he was looking at empty space.

The voices emanated from the floor, he was almost certain of that, but the acoustics here had an odd quality, so the voices shifted their position—now they came from his right, now from his left. He was no sooner certain that they issued up from beneath the parquet, when they seemed to come from the walls, or the corridor beyond instead.

He burned his fingers, dropped the match, and again tensed. The shadows bent upon the walls; the voices, a man’s and a woman’s, he was almost sure, whispered of past losses and future loneliness. He could hear a sound like water; then, as he lent against the table, head bent, the tenor of the voices changed. A new sound began, mounting above these miserable whisperings and drowning them out.

Rowland, less quick to identify the sound of a child crying than Lindsay, finally recognized it. Something brushed against his hand, and he drew back sharply, his heart full of inexplicable grief. He found he was now listening to silence, to a thick, hushed expectant silence. He found he was no longer certain whether he had identified that last cry correctly. It unnerved him, for he had been sure, so sure, that he had heard the impossible: the calling to him of a son he did not possess.