Sextet (11 page)

Katya glanced at her watch. ‘She’ll be late; she’s always late. She’ll get lost in the one-way systems. You know how she drives…’

‘Shit, shit, double shit.’ Tom was leaping crazily about, stuffing socks and knickers under pillows. ‘What if she
isn’t
late? What if she’s on time?’

‘Stay calm. I need those knickers. What are you hopping around for?’

‘I just stubbed my toe. I stubbed it on that evil coffee table. I’m crippled, I may never walk again…’

‘Straighten the duvet. Pass me those knickers. Just give me two minutes, I’m almost finished. I just have to be really savage about Will Ladislaw…’

‘Who?’

‘He’s the love interest. In here.’ Katya indicated a fat paperback copy of
Middlemarch
from which protruded slips of white place marks, like a porcupine’s spines. ‘
Not
one of Eliot’s successes. An apology for a man.’

Tom moaned. He emptied the tell-tale ashtray, hid the Rizla papers, picked up the dirty plates and glasses and shoved them into a cupboard. He closed the door, handed Katya her knickers, straightened the duvet, punched the pillows, then stood on one leg like a crane, rubbing his injured foot and looking around him with an expression of wild surmise.

‘What else? What else? There’s bound to be something else. Mum has X-ray eyes; she doesn’t miss
anything
. What about the dust? There’s all this
dust
. Where does all this dust come from?’

‘Lindsay’s seen dust before. She won’t mind. I can’t think why you’re fussing. Lindsay’s cool.’

‘Cool? She’s my
mother
. She’ll go on about washing facilities. Cooking facilities.’

‘So? Show her the kitchen; it does exist.’

‘The kitchen? Are you mad? She’d
die
if she saw that kitchen. There’s a bowl of Cressida’s spaghetti on the window sill that’s three months old. It has
mould
. It practically has legs. It’s
breeding
out there…’

‘I expect she’ll understand. I wish you’d shut up. I just have to skewer this love scene. How can you be a genius and write a love scene like this one? It creaks. There’s a ridiculous storm. She can’t do storms. She’s pinched the storm from one of the Brontës. Charlotte, I think. Where’s my
Jane Eyre
?’

‘Under that coffee mug, next to the ashtray. Christ—quick, give me that ashtray…’ In the act of reaching for it, Tom paused. He could now read the words on Katya’s computer screen; they were not kind words—Katya was young, as well as fierce—and they caused Tom some alarm.

‘Shit, Katya—you’ve really…You don’t mince your words. Castrated? Epicene? Poor Will what’s-his-name…’ He bent more closely and read the next paragraph. Unconcerned, concentrated, Katya continued to peck away.

‘Bloody hell.’ Tom gave a sigh. ‘Is this guy Will supposed to be the hero?’

‘Sort of. Maybe. I can’t make up my mind. Neither could Eliot, unfortunately, and it shows.’

‘You say—this guy Will Whatsit isn’t erotic then?’

‘He’s handsome.’ Katya shrugged. ‘Passionate. He obeys some of the conventions. But not erotic—no.’

‘Do heroes have to be erotic?’

‘Sure, heroes ought to exude sex. They have to have sexual power.’

This statement alarmed Tom even more. He forgot about the disorder of the room and the pain of his stubbed toe.

‘Sexual power?’ he said. ‘Come on, Katya—that’s a nineteenth-century novel. Closed bedroom doors.’

‘No-one screws, you mean?’ Katya, still concentrated, typed a final blistering sentence. She leaned back in her chair, removed her spectacles and smiled. ‘
That
doesn’t matter. In fact, it helps. The reader’s vile imagination does all the work…You want to know what makes a man erotic in a novel?’

‘I already know: money and looks. I’ve read
Pride and Prejudice
. Hell.’

‘You’re wrong, it’s silence: a capacity for silence. Obviously, money helps—or did. Social status. Dark eyes and dark hair…’

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ said Tom, whose hair was fair.

‘But silence is vital. If a hero is a man of few words, he remains mysterious, and mystery in a man is
always
erotic…’

Tom looked at Katya doubtfully. He did not like this opinion or this conversation. He groaned. Beautiful, dedicated Katya seemed oblivious to his distress; she had picked up a notebook, and was scribbling a couple of
aides-mémoire
.

‘Interesting…’ She scribbled faster. ‘The links between eroticism and capitalism. Does the money enhance the virility, or is it the other way around? The silent man as the romantic hero…Fascinating. It allows the reader to write the hero’s script for him, of course. Maybe
that’s
why it works so well…’ She tossed down her pencil in sudden impatience and fixed Tom with her lovely, and very short-sighted, blue eyes.

‘Of course, all that stuff’s antediluvian. When I write a novel, it won’t have a hero
or
a heroine. I have no patience with that sort of thing.’

Tom felt humbled. He made a private vow to be as Trappist as possible from then on. Perhaps it had been a mistake to be so open with Katya? Perhaps, in revealing his heart to her, he had disarmed himself and unwisely divested himself of a vital weapon in the male armoury. Enigma. Mystery. Silence. Erotic power.

‘Shit,’ he said miserably. ‘I’m a failure as a man. I see it now. I’m like Will Whatsit. I’m a eunuch, a castrate. I’m epicene.’

That, at last, attracted Katya’s attention.

‘Are you?’ she asked, leaning forward and touching him in a way, and with an immediate result, that gave the lie to this statement. Tom forgot about novels and heroes, and also about the time. Ten pleasurable minutes later, he remembered clocks; he leaped out of bed with a panic-stricken howl.

‘Shit. Double shit. Where’s the duvet?’

‘On the floor. Pass me my jeans.’

‘This is terrible. This is appalling. I love you, Katya.’

‘I love you too. Comb your hair.’

Tom combed his hair, which was now rather longer than when his mother had last seen it. He felt his chin, decided to shave, decided not to shave; he found a clean shirt and rushed about the room. While he rushed, Katya put things in order. She achieved this, it seemed to Tom, in about fifteen seconds. The dust disappeared; the fluff on the carpet was sucked away; papers lay down in piles; books stacked themselves on shelves. A quick, fierce burst of female efficiency; suddenly chaos no longer threatened and the detritus was gone.

Fifteen seconds after that, Tom was posed on the sofa, surrounded by suitable evidence of undergraduate industry; Katya, also posed with book in hand, was seated opposite, smelling of rose-petal soap, demure in an armchair. For five minutes, all the church bells of Oxford chimed the half-hour. Both waited expectantly.

‘I
told
you she’d be late,’ Katya said a short while later. ‘I
told
you we had time. We could have…’

Tom, intent on an heroic, erotic silence, ignored this prompt. He gave Katya a volcanic look; Katya giggled; Tom persevered. Katya’s amusement died away; she shifted in her seat, lowered her eyes and, to Tom’s triumph, blushed rosily. Tom was just congratulating himself on the ease with which he had mastered this effective new technique—nothing to it, much easier than actually speaking, a cinch—when the telephone rang. Both Tom and Katya expected it to be Lindsay, calling with some excuse for her delay—she had backed into a bollard, imprisoned herself in a remote cul-de-sac, or something similar. It was not Lindsay, however, but her friend, and Tom’s friend, Rowland McGuire. Rowland, it emerged, was trying to track down Lindsay.

They spoke for some while, then Tom replaced the receiver.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Rowland’s going to join us for lunch. He’s going to drop in on his way back to London. He’s got some friend with him…’

‘A woman friend?’

‘No. Some man who was up at Oxford with him. Works in films.’

‘Interesting.’ Katya gave Tom a sidelong glance. ‘Lindsay will be pleased. You don’t think…’

‘No, I don’t,’ Tom said, in a very certain tone. ‘Katya, I’ve told you a billion times, they’re
friends
…’

‘He might fancy her. I think it’s on the cards, and you’d be the last person to notice if he did.’

‘My mother? You must be mad. She’s thirty-five. She’s been thirty-five for quite a while.’

‘She’s Rowland’s age, or thereabouts.’

‘That’s different. Get it into your head—my mother is not Rowland’s type.’

‘Why not? She’s pretty; she’s nice.’ Katya paused; she gave a small frown, ‘What is Rowland’s type?’

‘Damozels,’ Tom replied darkly, ‘or so I’ve heard. Beautiful women.
Difficult
women. Women who need rescuing. Rowland’s gallant, or so people say.’

‘Do they indeed?’ Katya’s frown deepened.

‘People gossip about Rowland.’ Tom shrugged. ‘It’s probably all lies. They say he breaks hearts. In the nicest possible way, of course.’

‘He’s arrogant,’ Katya said, thoughtfully, after a further pause. ‘He’s one of the most arrogant men I’ve ever met, but some women—
older
women—like that kind of thing. Lindsay might like it, for one…’

‘She doesn’t. She never stops ticking him off for being arrogant, jumping to conclusions, that sort of thing. But he’s clever—’

‘Very.’

‘And he’s kind, so she forgives him. And she amuses him; she makes him laugh, relax. Rowland trusts her, and Rowland’s very reserved; he hardly trusts
anyone
…’

‘I’ve noticed that.’

‘So, they’re friends; that’s it, nothing more. Why can’t you accept that? As far as Rowland’s concerned, my mother’s an honorary man…’

‘An enviable fate.’

‘Katya, I’ve
told
you, Lindsay’s given up on men in the romantic sense. She gave up years ago. She’s not interested and she doesn’t need them. She has a good job, a good salary, lots of friends, her own apartment. She’s got shot of my grandmother, which is nothing short of a miracle. I’m not there, messing the place up. She’s her own woman. Why would she need a man?’

Katya could think of several answers to that question, not all of them polite. In different circumstances, she would have voiced them, but now, merciful to Tom and condescending to the blindnesses of man and son, she remained silent. One day, she thought, when the moment was more propitious, she might have to explain to Tom, that he, like most sons and daughters, chose to neuter his mother. She herself avoided this error only because her own mother flaunted her sexuality with an abandon Katya both envied and loathed. This ambivalence Katya also wished to confess to Tom, but the moment had not yet come. She hesitated, then rose and crossed to the only mirror the room possessed—a small one, with a crack in the glass.

Like her mother, Katya was tall; unlike her mother, Katya was not thin. She examined her own reflection censoriously; it suddenly occurred to her that her hair might look better down.

‘Maybe I should change,’ she began. ‘I’m not sure about this sweater…’

‘Change? Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. For lunch, I suppose. If all these people are coming…’

‘Don’t.’ Tom also rose. He kissed the back of her creamy neck. He wound one of the auburn tendrils around his finger. ‘Don’t, you look lovely just the way you are. You…’

He stopped, remembering the Trappist vow; a screeching of brakes was heard, then a few swear-words as Lindsay attempted to park outside.

Tom clattered down the stairs to let his mother in; Katya remained, gazing moodily at her own reflection. Eventually, after many toings and froings, much unloading and dropping of packages, a laden Tom and a laden Lindsay finally arrived in the room, talking nineteen to the dozen as usual, and breathing fast.

Tom had been up at Oxford only a few weeks for this, the first term of his second year; this was Lindsay’s first sight of his new lodgings. Being optimistic and loyal by nature, she began admiring things at once. It was a wonderful house in a romantic street; she loved the trees outside and the leafy view of roofs and dreaming spires. The room was really spacious; you scarcely noticed the pattern on the carpet once you were inside, and as for that cerise sofa, well, it looked very comfortable, and the Indian throw was marvellous, how clever of Katya to find it…What, the kitchen was just across the landing, and shared? How convenient; what fun. No, of course she didn’t need to see it, but she had brought this huge casserole thing that Tom and Katya might find useful, oh, and some sweaters Tom had left behind—it might turn cold at any moment—and somewhere there was a poster she’d found, in case the walls were bare, and somewhere, somewhere, damn these wretched carrier bags, there was a bottle of that scent Katya had said she liked…

Throughout the confusions of this speech, Lindsay, who could never bear to arrive anywhere empty-handed, delved into bags and tossed wrapping paper around. The gifts, apart from the sweaters, were well received. The walls here
were
bare, and Tom was delighted with the spider poster from
Dead Heat
. Katya opened a large flagon of scent called L’Aurore and dabbed some behind her ears. Into the autumnal sunlight of the room came a burst of spring, the scent of hyacinths and narcissi.

Katya kissed Lindsay, then reminding herself, as she sometimes did, that she was going to be a novelist and as such should
observe
, she drew back and watched. She liked Lindsay, and now that she knew her better, she was beginning to see that Lindsay was adept at a variety of actressy tricks. Lindsay rarely entered a room, she
erupted
into it, chattering away, beginning on one sentence, and then, before it was completed, beginning on the next. She might look boyish, with her slim build and her crop of short, curly, dark hair; she might be inches shorter than statuesque Katya; and she might, like a small boy, possess a great deal of engaging and disruptive energy—but to a degree, Katya suspected, she cultivated this. Lindsay’s energy, Katya felt, was channelled in a protective way. The chatter, the hand gestures, the insouciance were a form of disguise—they distracted attention, and Lindsay intended them to do so, from what she might actually be thinking or feeling; and Lindsay, in a muddled, loving, well-intentioned way, was afraid of revealing her true feelings above all; or so Katya thought.