Sextet (54 page)

Be calm, don’t be so
stupid
, she said to herself; these wild fears for her son, to which she had been subject often when he was a child, were absurd now. He was a man; he was grown-up; there were a hundred ordinary sensible reasons why he should not be answering his phone. Tomorrow, this fear would seem ridiculous, and thinking this, she went into the bathroom beyond, walked across its chequer-board floor of black and white tiles, and seeing in the mirror how white and odd she looked, splashed water on her face.

She looked down at the tiles and thought of how, when he was aged seven, she had taught Tom to play chess. He had been good at the game and he had been able to beat her, consistently, by the age of eight. Hopeless, hopeless, Lindsay thought, leaning against the basin; she had not been gifted with an analytic intelligence, and she conducted a chess game with the same foolhardy incompetence that she conducted her life. She always brought her queen into play too early; she could not understand pawn strategies; she neglected her knights, lost her bishops fatally soon, and always forgot to castle, realizing it would have been advantageous to do so ten moves too late. Precipitate in attack, devoid of defence, she thought, and a slow tide of misery rose up in her heart; she did not mind losing the game—she had never minded that—but this was not a game, and as a result of her foolishness, her lack of foresight, others would be hurt.

For that, she could not forgive herself. I must go back to the dinner, she thought, returning to the bedroom. She turned towards the door, turned back towards the telephone, then bent, and on a sudden impulse, picked up one of those near identical coats from the bed, and buried her face in it.

Swimming into her mind came a vision of her future: she saw herself, despite her best resolutions, continuing as before, her life a series of ill-planned expeditions. There she was, as she had always been—a poor helmsman, charting a desperate, erratic course across an interminable ocean, always believing that land would be sighted soon. At sea: the story of my life, she thought.

A sound came from the doorway behind. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were in here,’ said Rowland McGuire’s voice.

Lindsay dropped the coat guiltily and stepped back.

‘I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just came for my coat, Lindsay. I have to leave now, and—’

‘You’re not interrupting. I was just trying to call Tom. I’ve been worrying about Tom for some stupid reason…’

‘You weren’t calling Tom then.’

‘No. I was—thinking.’

This remark met with a silence—a silence which clamoured to Lindsay. Rowland picked up his overcoat and slowly put it on. Lindsay, afraid to look at him, could feel the tension radiating from him. She hoped he would remain silent; she hoped he would speak.

‘I went to Oxford to see Tom yesterday,’ he said, finally, turning to look at her. He hesitated. ‘He’d left for Scotland, so I missed him. I—Lindsay, I went there because I had this fixed idea in my head that I had to ask Tom’s blessing before I spoke to you.’ He gave a sigh, looking away. ‘Now, I don’t even know why I felt that. I went as soon as I received your letter. Your letter was delayed, you see. At the time, it seemed important to do that. Now it seems obtuse.’

‘Rowland, no—’ Lindsay took a step towards him. ‘You mustn’t think that.
Not
obtuse…’

‘I really couldn’t have borne it in that dining-room for another second,’ he went on, in a quiet voice. He glanced towards the door, then rested his green eyes sadly upon her face.

‘I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. I was trying to understand how much all of this was simply a matter of chance, accident—mistimings, especially on my part. I kept trying to convince myself that if I stayed, the timing might suddenly come right. Then—something someone was saying—I realized: better absent myself. I shouldn’t have been here. I shouldn’t have come to New York. My presence has already caused enough trouble for one evening, and I don’t want it to cause any more, especially for you…’

He hesitated, then moved into the doorway. Lindsay watched the light from the corridor glance across his face. She could see the strength of emotion he was struggling to conceal, and her heart went out to him. A great surge of words rose up within her; she said his name and began to move quickly towards him. Reaching his side, she realized that none of those words could be said.

‘I wanted to know—’ He broke off, taking her hand. ‘Did you understand my letter, Lindsay?’

‘I didn’t then, but I do now. Rowland, I’m so sorry. I’m so desperately sorry—’

‘My love.’ He caught her against him, cradling her head in his hands. He began to kiss her hair, then pressed her tight against his chest. Lindsay listened to the beating of his heart. Everything she had never said to him, and everything she had ever hoped he might say to her, were expressed then, she felt, in the confusion and flurry of that brief embrace.

Gripping her by the arms, he drew back and looked down at her face.

‘Yes or no, Lindsay—just tell me that.’

The question had been torn from him. Lindsay could see that he had not intended to ask it, and perhaps regretted it the instant the words were said. Loyalty and fear of disloyalty could be read in his face. To his question there was a rich fund of answers; she could feel them stored in her heart. Three years of answers and explanations and revelations never made; she consigned them to oblivion.

‘No,’ she replied, in a low voice—and she admired him then as much as she had ever done, for although the recovery was not instant, it was courageous and it was swift.

‘Ah, I feared you would say that.’ He stopped, fought to control his voice, then continued. ‘Lindsay you will always be very dear to me, and I wish you nothing but joy. I want you to know that—’

He embraced her gently as he said this, drawing her into his arms in a quiet protective way. Lindsay found she could not see for sudden tears. She found that, as once before in Oxford, she was encircled by his arms, and her face was resting against his chest.

‘If you were wearing that green sweater,’ she said, in a shaky voice, ‘I’d kiss it now, Rowland…’

‘Never mind. You can kiss my tie instead.’

Lindsay kissed his tie. She was just thinking how much she liked the patterns of this tie, how sensible and orderly they were, and how calm she felt, when someone began screaming. It was a woman, and the sound was painfully close. The cry was repeated, then repeated again, on a mounting note of terror and distress.

Colin was halfway along the corridor when he too heard this cry. The corridor in Emily’s apartment, as in that of Natasha Lawrence’s below, ran like an artery from the reception rooms at the front of the building to the bedrooms at the back.

In the dining-room, halfway along this corridor, there had, for some while before, been sounds that indicated disturbance, trouble and distress.

For a while, still seated at the table, Colin had been deaf to them. To his right, some interminable conversation between Emily and her three ancient female friends had begun; it concerned the current vagaries of the elevator. Colin had been deaf to that too; the whole of his mind dwelt upon Lindsay—to such an extent that he scarcely noticed Rowland rise and speak to Emily in a quiet voice. It was only when Rowland came around the table to him that he had realized he was leaving; he half rose, but Rowland immediately pushed him back towards his seat.

‘No, really, Colin. I’d rather see myself out. I don’t want to break things up, and I have to go—’

‘Don’t be absurd. Let me see you out…’

‘Really.’ Rowland’s expression did not encourage argument. ‘I’d rather slip away. I have an early plane to catch. My thanks for this evening—’

He turned and left. Slowly, Colin sat down again, puzzled by Rowland’s expression, tone and haste.

‘The
override
switch, Emily dear,’ one of the ancient women was saying, and Colin, scarcely hearing her, began to feel a sick unease. Something was happening, he felt; something
had
been happening, and he had been blind and deaf to it. But what was it? What was it?

He could sense some dark and shapeless idea at the back of his mind, and he knew he had been given clues, that he could see this thing if he concentrated, if he dragged it forward into the light. But the thing would not move, and was almost instantly occluded by another, more pressing thought. Colin began to realize that Lindsay’s telephone call was taking too long, that she had been absent too long. Could she have felt faint again? And why had Rowland chosen that moment to leave? It was then that the sounds from below, apparent for some while, finally registered. He heard the running footsteps, the slamming doors, the woman’s voice calling, at exactly the same moment that anxiety for Lindsay gripped.

‘Is something
wrong
, Emily?’ One of the ancient women suddenly asked. ‘My hearing is not perfect, but…’

‘I can hear someone crying,’ said Henry Foxe, becoming very pale and rising to his feet. ‘Emily, it sounds like a child crying…’

‘What’s that
banging
?’ Frobisher rose with a look of alarm. ‘It’s coming from the stairs. Is some door being forced? Colin, I think you should—’

Colin was already running from the room as she spoke. As he reached the main corridor, he heard the scream, rising up from below his feet. He froze, feeling the cry reverberate up through his body. His heart had started hammering; he glanced along the corridor, to his right and to his left. To his right, he saw nothing; to his left, he half saw in a bedroom doorway some shape which should not be there, which could not be there, and which he knew he had to be imagining. From beyond the front door, straight ahead of him, a renewed, confused clamour broke out. He could hear a frantic, metallic, banging sound, some broken protest, the cries of a child in obvious distress, then the sound of a man’s voice—a voice he recognized at once. No, dear God, please no, said this voice, and Colin found he was across the hall, through the door, and out in the shadows of the landing.

It was of the utmost urgency and importance to be there, he knew that, even as he also knew that it was of the utmost urgency and importance to remain in Emily’s apartment, where he could look again at the two people—yes, it had been two people—who had been standing together in that doorway to his left.

He peered along the galleried landing, trying to see past its riot of pillars, trying to make sense of its shapes. Ahead of him, that red carpet poured itself down the stairs; above him, other galleries whispered and cried out alarm. He could hear doors opening and closing; he could sense a terrible, gathering collective fear: something had been let loose in this building—but Colin’s mind refused to tell him what it was. He heard Emily’s voice from the corridor behind him, then some cry from one of the old women. He fixed his eyes on the landing, and found he could see some haunting white shape, moving beyond the pillars; the shape was the size of a child; it was airborne; it had too many arms, and there was something that appalled him about its face.

‘Lindsay, stay
there
. Colin, what’s happening?’ Rowland said, from behind him, and that banging and crashing and anarchy burst out again. Of course he was not surprised to hear Rowland’s voice, Colin thought; of course he already knew that Rowland had not left; of course he also knew why Rowland had remained. He had seen him with his arms around Lindsay. He had been shown the unthinkable, the unimaginable and the impossible just now, in that bedroom doorway to his left.

How stupid of me, he thought. How unbelievably stupid. How could I not have seen something so obvious? A dull pain settled itself inside him; looking along the galleries now, he found the pain steadied his vision and comprehension had come. He saw a simple tableau—father, abductor, child—which made clear and immediate sense.

‘Oh, my heart—let me sit down. I can’t breathe,’ said a voice from the hall behind him. Glancing back, he saw Emily being helped to a chair, Rowland bending over her with a look of concern, and Lindsay running towards him.

It seemed to take her an immense time to approach. Years passed while he looked at her pale uplifted face. He knew she was saying something, but her words would not transmit their sense. He said something to her—he was never sure afterwards what it was, but it was probably something about the police, about calling the police. He thought maybe he told her to keep the door
closed
; he certainly slammed it, and he thought he said that.

As soon as it
was
shut it was very clear to him what he had to do next. None of this was really happening, but even so he had to help the child—so he began to run along the gallery towards the child, and the man grasping the child, and the figure slumped against the bannisters, breathing painfully, who, he realized, was Tomas Court.

As soon as he moved—and only seconds had passed, but they felt like years—the man holding the child stopped scrabbling and banging at the elevator doors and ran off. He was still clutching the child, like some pale bulky parcel, and he still had his hand clamped across the child’s mouth. Colin could see the child’s hands plucking at air, and he felt outrage and incomprehension at this. He paused only for a moment by Tomas Court. Then, seeing he could scarcely breathe, let alone pursue, set off in pursuit himself. He expected the man to run down the stairs towards the entrance hall; but, since nothing was obeying the usual rules, he did the opposite and started to run up. Colin followed, running at speed, stumbling, then running again. His heart was now pounding; the man had a head start of almost two flights, and as he ran Colin had a clear sense that this was all a dream, and at any moment he would wake up.

‘Stop, stop, stop,’ he heard himself shout in this dream, and it struck him how absurd this was. Even so, he cried ‘Stop’ several times more. He changed it to ‘Please, stop’ on the sixth landing, which was even more absurd, and ‘Don’t, please,
don’t
’ on the eighth. He found he was saying something garbled, and incoherent to a tiny, frightened, wizened, ancient face which popped out from behind a door on the ninth floor, but the door then slammed, and the bolts were drawn across. In his dream, Colin could then concentrate on what really mattered, which was making his legs move faster, and getting the air into his lungs, which were starting to seize up.