Sextet (3 page)

This thought, as always, she tried to push aside. Four months of silence, she said to herself. She tried hard to concentrate on the details of a day to which she had looked forward—the witchy cake, Jonathan’s magician costume, the wand he had made, and the magic stars on his cape. She tried to give him the response he needed, for she could see how proud he was of this costume. She gave the requisite cry of fear when he embarked on a spell, and she shrank back and cried out obligingly when Angelica made her entrance as a burly and convincing witch. But she found she could not concentrate; her mind was running ahead to the theatre and the mysterious present from her husband. Tomas, a man of few words, a man who used words with care, would not promise her the best present he could give her, unless he meant what he said.

‘You’re tense,’ Maria said to her a little later, in Natasha’s bedroom, as she began her massage. She scooped some of her herbal oils into her palm and began a slow rhythmic massage of Natasha’s back. The room filled with the smell of lavender and rosemary; Maria, a plain woman, had magical hands—but not tonight.

‘Feel that—all that tension,’ she said, her hands easing and pressing at the back of Natasha’s neck. ‘Try to relax it or you won’t sing well tonight. What are you worrying about? You’re worrying about something—I can feel it right here.’

‘Nothing. Everything. The Conrad, some interview I did, the performance tonight, Tomas, Jonathan, life, why I’ve been left in peace for four months…I don’t
know
, Maria.’

‘You’re lovely.’ Maria said, with a sigh. Her capable magic hands moved gently down Natasha’s spine. ‘You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Just lie still. You’ve been working too hard. Relax. I can get rid of all your problems—you know that.’

Her therapy, indeed, was usually effective; it was without effect that night; Natasha Lawrence remained tense when the massage was completed. One and a half hours before curtain-up, she was back in her dressing-room, and there waiting for her, as promised—but Tomas Court always kept his promises—was the package her former husband had sent.

It was contained inside a padded envelope, then wrapped again in thick brown paper, on which, in Tomas’s cursive script, was the name ‘Helen’. She turned it this way and that, then unsealed the wrappings. Inside, as she had expected, was a copy of a novel, and inside the leaves of the book was her surprise—a tiny clipping from a Montana newspaper, dated earlier that week.

Her hands began to shake; the print blurred before her eyes. She read the story, which concerned the discovery of a body in the Glacier National Park, three times. Indeed, Tomas could have given her no better present than this. Nevertheless, lighting a match and watching the scrap of newsprint flare, she destroyed her present at once. She crumbled the dust in her fingers, then washed her hands and began the process of making up her Estella face.

By the time her dresser arrived, she was—as always before a performance—quiet and concentrated. Her dresser, an androgynous young man, hired at her behest, who always dressed her for all her theatre work, was adept at making himself invisible. He helped her into the white organdie of her first-scene dress. For this act of the musical, in which Estella was still a child, no wigs were needed, and Natasha Lawrence preferred to arrange her hair herself. The invisible young man quietly withdrew; he returned only when the half was called, as he always did.

He paused in the doorway, for the alchemy of the past half-hour never ceased to fascinate him. The dressing-room had been occupied by a woman—now a child, a wilful child, occupied it. He looked at the triplicate reflections of this child in the mirrors; the child applied one last pink stroke of colour to her lips; the tannoy crackled, the humidifier puffed.

‘They’ve called the half, Ms Lawrence. Can I fetch you anything?’ he asked, as he always did.

He knew the answer would be a haughty impatient ‘No’, and he knew it would be made in the imperious English voice of Estella. The invisible young man, a romantic about the acting process, liked this transformation, this switch into character. Occasionally, boasting to his friends of the insights his work afforded him, he would also boast of this. He waited; he sniffed; faintly, through the humid air, he thought he could smell burning, an acrid scent.

‘Some water. A little honey. My throat’s tight,’ the actress replied, in her usual voice.

The young man, surprised, fetched them with alacrity. He felt uneasy at this departure from tradition, but his unease proved unfounded. It was agreed by the entire cast, and all the stagehands, that for some reason, Natasha Lawrence’s performance was especially electrifying that night.

T
HE PARTY WAS BEING
held on Hallowe’en to celebrate a film; possibly the completion of a film, or its launch, possibly the clinching of some deal in connection with a film. The photographer, Steve Markov, who wangled the invitation for Lindsay Drummond, inclined to the latter view. ‘Money,’ he said, holding up the somewhat peculiar invitation card hand-delivered to Lindsay’s London apartment. He sniffed it in a theatrical manner. ‘I smell money. A co-production deal? Subsidiary rights? Video release in Venezuela?’

He smiled one of his fugitive mocking smiles. Lindsay regarded him warily. Markov was one of her oldest friends, but his superabundant energy tended at times to swamp her. In the past, other friends, in particular Gini Hunter, had mitigated Markov’s influence. But Gini’s departure to Washington DC had left her unprotected, fighting some lonely rearguard action. Markov was currently conducting an energetic campaign to alter her life—he described it as
sad
; she suspected the manoeuvrings. Having smiled, adjusted the dark glasses he permanently wore, and stretched back against the cushions of her sofa, he confirmed this.

‘You have to go, Lindy,’ he went on, more firmly. ‘I’m going. Jippy’s going. You should go. “
Nel mezzo del cammin,
” my best beloved. Get a life.’

‘I detest that phrase,’ Lindsay replied, turning the invitation card this way and that. ‘That phrase is glib. That phrase is cant.’

‘Which? The Dante?’

‘
Not
the Dante, and stop showing off. Stop calling me Lindy. How do you read this damn thing anyway?’

‘You hold it up to a mirror, I think.’

Lindsay did so. The invitation card, which was shocking pink and had appeared to be printed in Arabic, Sanskrit, or hieroglyphs, at once became readable, if less than informative.

Diablo!!!
, it read. Beneath that, in a smaller typeface, was a brief command: ‘Lulu says Come to Celebrate All Night on All Souls’ Night’. Appended, in a very small typeface indeed, was an address in London’s Docklands, three fax numbers and the Hallowe’en date.

‘Who’s Lulu?’ Lindsay asked, inspecting this.

‘Lulu Sabatier. You must know her; she’s a legend. Everyone does.’

‘Do
you
know her, Markov?’

‘Not exactly.’ His tone became evasive. ‘I know
of
her; she knows
of
me. Now she knows of you, so she’s invited you to her party. Except it won’t be her party, not really. Her place, but she’ll just be fronting it. Welcome to Wonderland, Lindy. You know movie people. You know how they operate, yes?’

‘She’s in PR, in other words.’ Lindsay gave him a cold look. ‘This is a PR party. Give me strength.’

‘PR? PR? I’m seriously wounded by that accusation…’

‘It has all the hallmarks: frantic ingenuity, mirror-writing, for God’s sake. A way of attracting attention in a world with a ten-second attention span. How does she cap this, Markov? Send out the next invitations in Morse?’

‘It’s an idea. I’ll mention it…’

‘And
Diablo
? Who’s Diablo? What’s Diablo? Where’s Diablo?’

‘You mean you don’t
know
?’ Markov removed the dark glasses, the better to give her a pitying look. ‘Lindy, where have you been this last month?
Pluto
, perhaps? Diablo, sweetheart, is the name of Tomas Court’s new production company, and Tomas Court, white hope of American movies, is going to be
at
this party, Lindy, my dear. In person. Himself. Or so Lulu claims, Lulu not being one thousand per cent reliable, of course.’

Lindsay digested this information. She had her pride.

‘Markov,’ she said firmly. ‘I have no intention of going to this party.’

‘You’re intrigued; admit you’re intrigued. Lulu’s hooked you. I knew she would.’

‘The hell she has. Lulu? That has to be the silliest name I’ve heard in years…’

‘She used to be called Pandora…’

‘That doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse. Markov, I don’t go to this kind of party on principle. Life’s too short.’

This remark, as Lindsay instantly realized, was a mistake. A smile curled around Markov’s lips. He finished his post-lunch coffee, then made his conversational pounce.

‘Do you want to change your life, or not?’ he began. ‘Because I seem to remember, honeychild, that last month, or like the month before
that
, you said—’

‘I can remember what I said.’

Lindsay hastily rose to her feet. She edged across to the window and looked down at her familiar London street. Leaves whirled in an autumnal wind; the sun shone; the weather had an optimistic look. Backing away from the window, she thumped a cushion or two into place, tidied up the already tidy pile of Sunday newspapers, surveyed the detritus of the lunch table, fetched the coffee pot, and poured herself another cup of coffee she would not drink.

She had hoped that one of these aimless activities might deflect Markov; none did. With buzz-saw determination, he stuck to the point.

‘
Age
was mentioned,’ he was continuing, still with that maddening smile on his face. ‘
Career
was mentioned.
Domicile
was mentioned. I suspect the term “empty-nest syndrome” came up…’

Lindsay gave a groan. One of Markov’s least pleasant traits was his perfect recall of past conversations. Could she actually have used that trite phrase ‘empty nest’? Surely she had not sunk as low as ‘syndrome’?

‘I was drunk,’ she said. ‘If said that, which I doubt, I must have been drunk. It doesn’t count.’

‘Bad news, sweetheart. You were stone cold sober…’ Markov paused. ‘Angry, though. Fierce. You positively
trembled
with resolution. I was moved, Lindy. I was impressed…’

‘Will you stop this?’

‘“I am sick of being a fashion editor”—that’s what you said. “I am sick of the fashion world.” You were going to talk to that editor of yours. Have you talked to that editor of yours?’

‘What, Max? No, not yet.’

‘Fresh woods and pastures new—you quoted that.’

Markov gave a sigh that was very nearly as theatrical as his usual mode of speech. ‘Darling, you were having lunch with some publisher man. A
contract
was being dangled. This publisher man—a
very
big wheel—wanted a book on Coco Chanel. You, Lindy, were going to write that book. It was going to be definitive. It was going to make you poor, but never mind that. Has this lunch with the big cheese of British publishing actually happened?’

‘No, I postponed it. I need time to think.’

‘And then there was the real-estate agent…’ The buzz-saw hit a higher pitch. ‘This guy had two firm potential buyers for this apartment. He was promising a bidding war. He pointed out that this is now a highly desirable area of London, so
if
you sold, you’d make a profit. Not a large profit, I admit, but just enough to buy, or rent, a small hovel somewhere outside London, in the sticks. In this hovel, you, Lindy, were going to commune with nature. A dog was mentioned, and a cat. Ducks featured, as, I’m afraid, did chickens…’

‘I never mentioned chickens.’

‘Oh yes, you did—at length. Lindy, I can see this hovel now; it had a wood fire, patchwork quilts. In it, serene, scholarly and alone, you wrote your book…’

‘So? It was just an
idea
.’

‘It was never-never land, Lindy. Face facts.’

‘I’ve had a few set-backs, that’s all. That estate agent was fired. I haven’t had time to look at any hovels yet, but I’m going to. I…’

‘And when you described this idyll, Lindy, was I unkind? No, I was not; I was encouraging, patient. And why? Because I knew the
real
reason behind this sudden desire to up sticks and change your life…’

‘Will you stop this? Markov, that’s
enough
…’

Lindsay sank her head in her hands. She was beginning to regret, deeply regret, having asked Markov and his lover Jippy to Sunday lunch. She had done so partly because she was fond of them both, partly because they happened to be in London, and mainly because Sunday, that family day, was now the hardest, the loneliest, the most interminable day of the week.

With a sigh, she raised her head and inspected her pleasant and familiar sitting-room. This apartment had been her home for eighteen years; formerly, it had been occupied by Lindsay, her son Tom, and her difficult mother, Louise. Now difficult Louise, astonishingly, had remarried and moved out; Tom was in his second year reading Modern History at Oxford. Thanks to their absence, the room was depressingly tidy. Markov and his friend Jippy, who was sitting beside him, but remaining silent as always, would soon be leaving; then the apartment would also be depressingly quiet. Lindsay feared this.

Even that quietness, however, might be preferable to Markov’s present unrelenting assault, now moving in a most unwelcome direction. In a moment, Lindsay thought, a name—a forbidden name—would be mentioned. She embarked on a few more displacement activities, caught the glint of Markov’s pretentious dark glasses and sat down. She glared at the glasses, which Markov rarely removed; maybe he would be merciful, she thought. He was not.

‘
Rowland
,’ he said. ‘The name Rowland McGuire was mentioned; several times, sweetheart—which was progress. Which was honest, at least. Because let’s face facts, honeybunch—that man is at the back of this.’

‘I never mentioned Rowland,’ Lindsay cried, hearing a familiar defensive note enter her voice. ‘Well, maybe once or twice, in passing. Can we stop this conversation? All right, I said I intended to make some changes in my life. I’m
making
them, Markov. In my own way, at my own pace.’