Sextet (24 page)

‘Colin.’ Lindsay pressed his hand, and the tirade bubbled a bit more, then stopped.

‘That’s better. Now listen to me. I hate those SoHo restaurants. I hate those restaurants wherever they are. I loathe lemon grass, I loathe the waiters auditioning when they recite the menu, I loathe the table-hopping and the celebrity-spotting. I like it
here
; I like it very much.’

‘Really?’ Colin looked at her in a doubtful way. ‘You’re not just saying that?’

‘No. I promise you I’m not. It’s wonderful here—an immense treat. This is the best champagne I’ve ever tasted in my life. I’m looking forward to meeting your aunt and I’m quite looking forward to eating this lobster, which I’ll do once you’ve calmed down. And while I eat it, you can talk to me about architecture, or your family, or the evil genius, and I shan’t be bored in the least. Now…’ She hesitated. ‘I’ll tell you what was worrying me earlier, if you like.’

‘Go on.’

‘To tell you the truth, I was mainly worrying about the bill, because it’s going to be catastrophic, Colin…’

‘Well, yes.’ Colin was showing signs of recovery. ‘I expect it is.’

‘Exactly. So you shouldn’t have done this. It was very sweet of you, but it wasn’t necessary…’

‘Sweet?’ Colin frowned, but the glint of amusement had returned to his eyes.

‘All right—kind, thoughtful. But unless you’ve come into a fortune recently…’

‘Recently? No, alas.’ Colin smiled. ‘But Tomas Court is quite generous, you know, Lindsay. It won’t hurt to push the boat out a bit, once or twice.’

He answered her with such frankness, with such an engaging smile, that Lindsay felt ashamed of her suspicions. They were low things and they all scurried away at once. Her face cleared and she gave a sigh of relief.

‘Well, I’m very glad about the fortune,’ she said. ‘I hate riches; they get in the way, don’t you think? You know, Scott Fitzgerald, “The rich are different from you and me”—all that.’

‘Have some more champagne.’ Colin paused. ‘I agree. A very good quotation, that.’

‘But you’re being extravagant,’ Lindsay continued. ‘So I want you to promise we can split the bill, then it will only be semi-catastrophic, all right?’

Colin hesitated then. He looked at Lindsay for some while, an odd expression in his eyes. He looked faintly bewildered, Lindsay thought, and faintly stunned, as if some unknown assailant had crept up behind him and struck a blow from the back. Then he began to smile. The eyebrows Katya had described as diabolic rose in two quizzical peaks; the blue eyes lit with a deepening warmth and amusement. Katya had been right, Lindsay realized, and so had Pixie: Colin Lascelles was not only good-looking, he was an attractive man. He did not attract her, obviously, but she was beginning to see how he could be extremely attractive to someone else.

‘It’s a deal,’ he said. ‘You can eat your lobster now, but you’d better take your hand back first.’

Lindsay, who had forgotten where her hand was, removed it from his. She began to eat the lobster, and very delicious it was. As she did so, she considered Colin’s character, which she now felt she understood. He was very English, she thought—that was the key. English, sweet-natured, perhaps not as inexperienced with women as she had previously imagined, touchingly vulnerable and incapable of subterfuge or deceit. She was beginning to see now why Rowland liked him so much, for Colin, like Rowland, could be both dry and ironic. Of course, he seemed younger than Rowland, although they must be almost the same age, and because there were no complications here, she found him easier to talk to than Rowland ever was. She must remember, she resolved, how easily his confidence was dented—almost as easily as her own. Sometimes, in his insecurities, he reminded her of Tom; which was why she felt quite protective towards him, she realized, and, glancing up, anxious to allay any further uncertainties, she gave him a warm, somewhat maternal smile. Colin, noting the quality of that smile, felt a passing frustration. Since he was indeed very English, he did not express it, but concealed it behind his excellent manners—natural to him, but also useful on occasions such as this.

He reminded himself that he had just improvised—and improvised with some brilliance, he felt. A combination of luck and guile had enabled him to steer them around a very tight corner. Now they were back on the open road. Open the throttle, accelerate, he reminded himself, and patted the breast pocket of his masterly jacket to make sure a certain envelope he had brought with him—the fatal envelope—was in place.

It was. He debated the best moment to produce it: before going on to Emily’s? Over coffee here, perhaps? Or later, when he escorted Lindsay back to the Pierre? He decided he would play it by ear. In the meantime, he thought, it would be wise, given Lindsay’s opinions, to be more careful. Lindsay noticed
details
, ill-considered details, give-away details such as suits.

When Lindsay was looking away, he seized his opportunity, and, hidden by the tablecloth, removed from his wrist the leather-strapped, wafer-thin gold Patek Philippe watch. He could hardly claim to have found
that
at Oxfam. He stuffed it into his pocket, feeling much more confident at once.

‘So,’ said Lindsay, leaning forward and smiling in the most enchanting and feminine way, ‘tell me more about your aunt’s apartment building, Colin.’

Colin, who was not intoxicated, instantly felt so.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s called the Conrad building, and it’s a very strange, even sinister place.’

A
LONE IN HIS LOFT
at TriBeCa, earlier that evening, Tomas Court had also been conducting a dialogue about the Conrad building, a dialogue none the less forceful for being imagined. The two speakers were himself and his wife, and the dialogue began as soon as Thalia, Mario and Colin left.

The minute the door closed on them, it burst out in his mind, a cacophony of contradictions, interruptions and pleas, of ill-phrased assertions and ill-timed
non sequiturs
. Court stood quietly in the shadows of the room, outside the circle of bright light that lit the work table, and let this chaos into his mind. He was used to this form of possession; when he ceased working, a process that demanded all his energy and will-power, he always felt drained and bloodless, emptied and lightheaded; an energy vacuum had been created, and into this vacuum anything, including malevolence, might rush.

Today it was to be the Conrad. So be it, he thought, and waited, not allowing his breathing to quicken or tighten. He knew that, given time, this cacophony and havoc would resolve itself. He fixed his eyes on one feature of the room—it never mattered which feature, and in this case it happened to be the bars of the window, opposite which he stood. The bars, eight feet tall, and at least six across, formed a crucifix shape, which amused him distantly, since he was without religious belief. He looked at this cross, and was aware that outside in the street some absurd commotion was taking place; he could hear that his English location manager was giving vent to his feelings, but as far as Court was concerned he might just as well have been shouting his protests in Urdu. Lascelles’s laments were a cry from another country and Court felt an absolute lack of curiosity in anything Lascelles said.

After a while, as Lascelles’s voice died away and silence fell in the room, the dialogue with his wife quietened; her interruptions became fewer, then ceased altogether; he was left listening to his own voice. Why? said his voice. Why, why, why? Why live there? Why invite rejection? Why do this?

He felt stronger at once, the moment of mental palsy over and done with, he told himself. The
why
questions were familiar demons; they had been plaguing him for months. It was now safe to move, safe to begin functioning again, although he truly functioned, as he well knew, only when he worked. He picked up one of the cardboard boxes which littered the loft, and carried it across to the circle of light on his black work table.

He took no second look at the welter of coloured papers still strewn across its surface; he had not the least inclination either to re-examine them or tidy them up. Each day, embarking on work, whether here, on location, or in a studio, he would know, before he began, exactly where he aimed, and how much expenditure of spirit, energy and will-power would be necessary that day to take him there. When he reached that preordained point, he stopped, and had been known to do so in mid-sentence, or mid-take. If necessary, he would drive or drag others on with him to this stopping place; if necessary, he would manipulate, annoy, abuse, frighten, trick or charm them
en route
, but get there he would.

He opened the lid of the box and moved the tumble of shooting schedules to one side to make space. During the day, these papers held magic, for they were the raw materials of his art, as essential to it, in their way, as celluloid, cameras, actors and light. Now, since he was at rest, they were inert, and merely his instruments; they were without power until tomorrow at seven in the morning, when he again picked them up.

From the box he took out the material which various researchers had been gathering for him for months. Every scrap of information here concerned the Conrad building. There were old architectural journals; batches of photographs new and old; photocopies of the original plans for the building, plans which had been lying in some city hall archive for decades. Court laid them all out on the table and began to examine them minutely; it was not the first time he had done this.

He examined the, to him, grotesque façade of the Conrad, with its baroque excesses and its Gothic turrets. It seemed to him that the architect had given the building a forbidding and secretive look. He disliked the extravagance of its great gaping maw of an entrance; he disliked the
oeil-de-boeuf
windows which ornamented those turrets and punctuated the roof-line, and which gave the building a menacing, many-eyed look, as if it were continuously hungry, and continuously vigilant.

His wife was seeking to buy apartment three, situated on the north corner of the building, overlooking Central Park. She had already viewed this apartment several times; she had refused to allow him to accompany her—proving to be obstinate on this point.

‘Tomas,’ she had said, ‘you don’t want me to live there and you don’t believe I’m going to be allowed to live there. No. What’s the point?’

Thwarted in this desire, he had turned to this research material instead. Now, he inspected the architectural plans, drawn up by Hillyard White over eighty years before. He traced the walls of apartment three, examined its orientation, dimensions and fenestration. He could see the disposition of the rooms; the photographs and descriptions in the various books and journals gave him an idea of how this interior might look. He could half see some rich space with many closets, with rooms which led into further rooms, and with yet more rooms beyond that. The apartment was very large; he now realized for the first time that it was a duplex. Towards the rear, there was a Second storey, secreted away; this would be the site of the main bedrooms; this was where his wife would sleep. His wife I had her final meeting with the board of the Conrad, with the committee who would decide her fate, the following morning; she would be given their decision then. Suppose that decision, against all the odds, was yes? How did you
reach
that second storey, that bedroom?

He bent more closely to the plans, which, to a non-expert, were not easy to decipher. There was the staircase—he saw it now—but how did you reach the staircase?

He only half saw, half glimpsed, he realized. It was like looking into some marvellous lighted room from the street outside, and then, just when all its secrets were about to be revealed, some officious person came along and closed the shutters in his face.

He was suddenly seized with anger; his hands began to shake. With a furious, violent gesture, he swept the papers to the floor. Immediately, the chaos returned, and those two voices began arguing again in his head. ‘Oh, it torments me, Tomas, it torments me,’ his wife said. This time, he shouted his wife down and drowned her out, anger giving him an eloquence that, when they actually had this argument, he rarely possessed.

He spelled out to her the insanity of this plan, a misconception from the first. Why was she continuing with the shaming procedures inflicted on her by the Conrad board, who for months now had been vetting her finances and every other aspect of her life? Why had she hired, at huge expense, first a real-estate broker, then one of Manhattan’s most expensive law firms to press her suit? All this money and effort would be wasted, he shouted, raining his reasons down on her now-bowed, imagined head. Neither money nor lawyers turned the key of admission at the Conrad, and if the broker—some man called Jules McKechnie—was claiming otherwise, she was being taken for a ride. Could she not
see
that?

The Conrad, he reminded her, was a co-operative; its board could choose whom to refuse and whom to admit. For decades, the Conrad board had weaselled its way around the law, in particular the laws regarding discrimination on grounds of colour, race or sex. It was a
bastion
, and it did not raise its drawbridge to actresses, divorced women with young children, or the
nouveau riche
. Did she not know, had her precious broker and her over-priced lawyers not
checked
: no member of the acting profession, let alone a movie star of her fame, had ever lived in the Conrad, though many had sought admission. And no young children had been brought up in the Conrad for a quarter of a century at least.

The occupants of the Conrad, he continued, were ageing, rich, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They believed in the Social Register, since they, and everyone they cared to know, were listed in it; they believed in money, provided it was inherited, and thus disinfected of all taint; and they believed in an Episcopalian God, while failing to practise any of His teachings. They are
evil
, he thundered; that building is
evil
, and I will not allow my son to be brought up in that place.