Sextet (17 page)

It was years since he had seen a guy, Rowland realized. When he was a boy, when he first came to London to live, these straw men, these hollow men, had been commonplace in the weeks leading up to Bonfire Night; children stationed them outside tube stations, on street corners, outside firework shops. He paused, looking at the malevolent mask, and with a rush, his childhood came back. He remembered the gorgeousness and gaudiness of the fireworks themselves, the black aromatic powder that leaked from them; he thought of the solemn ceremony every year, his mother and himself, wrapped up in coats, alone in a neglected North London back garden, positioning rockets in milk bottles, lining up magic on a garden wall: Vesuvius, Krakatoa. Light the blue touch-paper, stand well back.

He looked at the two boys, who were shivering with cold. This area in the East End of London, always a refugee area, lived in over the centuries by French Huguenots, then Jewish immigrants, was now predominantly Bengali. Rowland wondered if these two boys knew the history of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot, and if so whether it could have any meaning to them: it had little meaning to him. He put his hand into his coat’s breast pocket, and the two boys looked at him expectantly.

‘The going rate used to be a penny,’ Rowland said, with a smile. ‘I imagine it’s gone up…’

The boys exchanged glances; they looked, in a pointed way, at the upturned hat next to the guy on the pavement. It contained a collection of ten and twenty pence coins; prominently displayed, in the centre, was a one pound coin and a fifty pence piece.

‘Inflation, innit?’ said the older boy, giving Rowland an impertinent look.

Rowland withdrew his hand from his pocket and took out his wallet. The boys tensed. Rowland dropped a five pound note into the hat, complimented them on the excellence of the guy, and then, ashamed at his own sentimentality, walked away fast. Whoops of jubilation and derision greeted this generous evidence of his own gullibility; glancing back over his shoulder as he reached his house, Rowland saw that the two boys had decided, perhaps on the strength of his contribution, to pack it in; they were departing, dragging the grinning corpse of the guy up the street.

Rowland let himself into the cold and the silence of his early-eighteenth-century house. It did not possess central heating, and modern heating systems might have damaged the panelling, in any case. Rowland had never minded its familiar winter chill, and its calm, its silence, he had always loved. Taking pity on it, buying and rescuing it some fourteen years before, when it had been in a state of ruinous neglect, he had found he wanted to change it as little as possible. The creeping dangers which threatened its structures and its beauties, the damp, the dry rot, the leaking roof and decaying timbers, had been cured. Standing alone in the unfurnished first-floor sitting-room when all this work was finally complete, he had closed the shutters to the tall windows, and for the first time lit a fire. It caught instantly and burned well; its flames burnished the panelled walls and danced upon the bindings of his books. With the crackling of flames and the creaks of old timbers adjusting to heat, Rowland had had an acute sense of his home’s past: he had thought of the French Protestant refugees who had been the first occupants here over 250 years before, several of whom lay buried in the sombre city churchyard beyond, and he had felt that, like them, he was not truly the owner of this house, but its tenant or custodian. It would outlast him, as it had outlasted them. In a new millennium, others would stand here, as he did, and perhaps sense, as he did now, past joys and past griefs, some of which he would no doubt have contributed himself.

This thought, that he was part of the house’s continuum, destined to become one of its spirits and whispers, had contented him then. Now, he found he was restless, less calmed by these four walls; for reasons he could not grasp, and was reluctant to examine, the silence and familiarity here now agitated him. He would sometimes have the sensation that the house was waiting for something to happen, that it resented being empty by day, and under-occupied by night. It possessed four bedrooms, only one of which was regularly used; the other three, occupied occasionally by friends passing through London, had a melancholy reproachful air; Rowland kept their doors closed, disliking this.

That evening, his first free evening since returning from Yorkshire, he had brought work home with him, as he usually did. He lit the fire in the sitting-room and waited for the warmth to dispel the house ghosts. These ghosts, of past losses, approximations and ill-timings, of hopes that had once fired Rowland, but no longer did, were reluctant to depart. They lurked in the corners of the room; angry with them and with himself, he switched on all the lamps in an attempt at banishment. The lamplight was ineffective since, as Rowland knew perfectly well, these ghosts had their being in him; it was his blood they fed upon, and they emanated, grey and disconsolate, from himself.

It had perhaps not been such a good idea, he thought wryly to himself, to have bought a refugee house; nor was it wise to indulge the kind of early evening melancholy hundreds of city-dwellers no doubt experienced. He was tired; he felt overworked and hungry—that was why, as soon as the front door closed, he now heard the whispers and reproaches of the dispossessed.

Hunger, anyway, was easily assuaged. Rowland went downstairs to his kitchen—a kitchen Lindsay described as charming but primitive. In one of the old battered saucepans—he could remember Lindsay cooking him scrambled eggs in that saucepan, the first time she came here—he heated up some canned soup. He made himself a sandwich, and some minutes later, found he had eaten it.

The food revived him. He returned upstairs to find the fire blazing, the room warm and the ghosts suppressed. He telephoned Lindsay, who was departing for New York early the next day, and found her number was engaged. In a desultory way, he began dealing with the backlog of mail, which had been reproaching him all week. A month before, he had sent a brief, formal letter of condolence to Gini, formerly Hunter, now Lamartine, on the death of her father. He had half-expected that a reply, no doubt equally formal, might be here, amidst this pile of buff envelopes; it was not, and he found he could accept this without disappointment; maybe he had begun to acquire indifference.

He sifted through the bills, and found buried among them a postcard in writing he did not recognize, which proved to be from Tom’s girlfriend, Katya. She gave a lively account of Colin Lascelles’s recovery on the cerise sofa; she requested the details of a book Rowland had recommended over lunch in Oxford, the title of which she had now forgotten, but which she felt was essential for her literature course. She sent love and best wishes, as did Tom, who was out, she wrote, playing in some university rugby match. The words ‘rugby match’ had been underlined in a scornful way; their inherent absurdity was emphasized by an exclamation mark.

Rowland looked at this missive for some while. Much pursued by females, he had learned over the years to be wary of all communications from women, even those—especially those—that appeared innocent. He frowned. On a postcard, he wrote the name of the book, its author and publisher. He added, ‘Best wishes to you both’, signed and addressed it, then gathered it up with the rest of the mail to be posted.

He looked at the work he had brought home with him, then, discovering it could wait, poured himself a whisky. He put more wood on the fire, and in a thoughtful way examined the black and white mountain photographs Lindsay had referred to, which he could remember her inspecting the first time she came here.

The photographs, attached to a pin board, were the sparsely furnished room’s only personal element, apart from its many books. Beneath them were notes Rowland had made which detailed previous climbs of these particular peaks, routes used, weather conditions and so on. Little tongues of firelight moved across these notes, and he recalled Lindsay’s complaints about the jargon used here, with its terms—arêtes, corries—which she could not understand.

‘It’s a foreign language, Rowland,’ she had said. ‘You’ll have to translate.’

‘On reaching the Three Sisters north face overhang,’ he read now, ‘a traverse is needed across the buttress to reach the flake where the wall meets the overhang. The flake is positive; there is a small crack for the right foot, but the left has to smear. Behind the flake, just room for a Number Three Friend, and this can be backed up by a Number Five Rock Placement in the offset crack in the roof. Note, this placement is marginal after rain. Only a dyno can get you to the one substantial hold under the roof, but the swing out on gripping is nasty: 35 metres drop…’

Rowland read on, and as he did so, these words opened out the mountains to him; he saw, simultaneously, their immensity and the minute details of the cracks and crevices which made ascent possible. He considered that route and the sense of triumph he had felt on completing it. He considered, in particular, the use of a ‘dyno’, or dynamic movement, as referred to here. In essence, when effecting a dyno, a climber leaped—and although, to a watcher, that move might appear one of fluidity and acrobatic ease, it was dangerous. There was a moment, the tiniest of moments, when the climber moved through air, up and across the rock-face, springing towards the smallest projection or indentation in the rock, over which, or in which, his fingers could obtain enough purchase to support his body weight. The manoeuvre required nerve and physical strength; it required route knowledge and experience and a very precise degree of judgement. If mistimed, or ill-executed, the climber fell—in which case, his safety depended on the skill and care with which he had secured his protection ropes.

Rowland considered this manoeuvre, and the crux of this route. Coming to a sudden decision, he picked up the telephone and again called Lindsay.

This time, she answered almost immediately. Hearing her familiar voice, Rowland felt less sure of his reason for calling.

‘You’ve been engaged,’ he said.

‘Yes, I know.’ Lindsay, as she often did, sounded breathless and jittery. ‘I—someone from the States was calling me. I’m packing for New York. Why do I pack so badly, Rowland? There’s clothes all over the bed and the floor. I can’t decide what to take.’

‘Take that red dress,’ Rowland said, after a pause. ‘I like that.’

‘Really? It’s a bit…Are you sure? I suppose it would do for parties.’

‘Will you be going to many parties?’

‘I might. Yes, probably. But I’ve lost the knack for parties, Rowland.’

‘I suspect I never had it.’

There was a silence, during which Rowland watched a red-dressed Lindsay move across some New York party space. In his mind’s eye, he saw her do this very clearly—and she was not unaccompanied.

‘I had a postcard from Katya,’ he said, with some difficulty, and with detectable awkwardness. ‘She wanted the details of some book I mentioned. I gather my friend Colin recovered.’ He paused. ‘I gather he did at least call you to apologize…’

‘Oh, yes, he did. That Sunday morning, after you left. He rang first thing—he is
nice
, Rowland. He sent me this bouquet of flowers; it was so beautiful. Roses and lilies and things. It was huge; it used up all my vases. I’m in my bedroom, and it looks like a bower…’

Rowland frowned.

‘Also those clothes,’ Lindsay said, still breathlessly, ‘so it looks like a bower
and
a bomb site. Oh, I’ve just seen a rocket. They’re having a firework party next door. There’s this enormous bonfire. It’s like a war zone here, explosions, fire-crackers going off. Can you hear fireworks, Rowland?’

Rowland listened. He realized that all evening, the other side of some barrier in his mind, he had been hearing muffled explosions, the whine as rockets took off.

‘Yes, I can. Just. The shutters are closed though and that blocks out the sound.’

‘I love those shutters. Is the fire lit?’

‘Of course. Otherwise I’d freeze. Lindsay—’

‘How nice.’ Lindsay gave a breathless sigh. ‘Are you working? Have you had a horrible week?’

‘Fairly horrible. It’s easing up. I should be working and I’m not; I couldn’t concentrate for some reason. I—I just rang to wish you a safe journey…’

‘Thank you. I’ll give your regards to Broadway, Rowland…’

‘I’d like that.’ He paused. ‘Give my regards to Colin as well. I haven’t set eyes on him since lunch in Oxford.’

‘Colin?’

‘Well, Katya mentioned that he was about to go off to New York. I’m sure he’ll look you up there…’

‘Oh, he said something about that. He’s having meetings with the evil genius, I think, and he’s going to be staying somewhere odd—I remember, with some American aunt. Some batty ancient aunt.’

‘That’ll be his Great-Aunt Emily. She is ancient, but not batty; quite the reverse.’

‘Well, I don’t expect I will see him, Rowland. Or the aunt. I’ll be rushing about…’

‘Lindsay—’

‘Going into ecstasies about dresses and hats. I’m quoting you now, Rowland. You said that once, years ago, before I taught you to understand fashion…’

‘Lindsay—’

‘I was
so
angry with you when you said that. It’s taken me nearly three years to admit that all your criticisms were right…Oh heavens, did you hear that? The most enormous explosion; like Semtex. I’m sorry, I’m talking too much. Why do I do that?’

‘Because,’ Rowland said, in a measured way, ‘because you’re a woman, Lindsay. Because you think that if you talk fast enough and long enough, I won’t hear what you’re actually saying. And it does make it difficult. It’s like decoding something; it’s like listening to Morse.’

‘What nonsense. I always say what I think…’

‘Do you?’ Rowland gave a sigh. ‘In my opinion, Lindsay, you say what you truly think even less often than I do, and I virtually
never
say what I think.’

‘You don’t need to,’ Lindsay replied, with spirit. ‘I can tell what you’re thinking, whatever you say. Women can do that; it’s our great strength.’

‘Oh really? Then tell me what I’m thinking now.’

‘That’s not fair. I can’t see you.’