Sextet (6 page)

It occurred to her—she had seen a flight of steps—that somewhere there must be a way down to that tempting garden below, perhaps via one of the archways, or one of the corridors which seemed to lead off this aircraft-carrier deck. Carefully, she navigated in what seemed to be approximately the right direction. She was a little delayed,
en route
, first by the famous and poisonous actor, Nic Hicks, who mistook her for someone else, and then by a man who claimed she was his third wife and the love of his life. She was further held up by an impetuous man who grabbed her arm, waved a bottle of pills, and announced he was about to commit suicide; on Lindsay’s informing him that, in these circumstances his decision was perfectly understandable, he had a change of heart and decided to have another drink instead.

At last, still nursing a few dregs of champagne, she found herself alone in a corridor, a long white corridor, lined with posters for, and stills from, famous movies:
Casablanca
,
Persona
,
Citizen Kane
,
Gone With the Wind
,
La Règle du Jeu
,
Pulp Fiction
,
Jules et Jim
,
Dead Heat
,
Bicycle Thieves
,
The Virgin Spring
…Lindsay had seen all of these films, many with Tom who was a film buff and movie addict. She passed along the display, slowing first at one, then another. She came to a halt in front of the celebrated poster for Tomas Court’s third and breakthrough movie,
Dead Heat
, the film paleface and ponytail had been lauding and denigrating earlier.

It showed a still from that movie which had now become so famous it was part of the collective consciousness, imprinted on the minds of almost everyone, whether they had seen the actual movie or not. This image, reproduced on a million T-shirts, had first been seen by Lindsay some eighteen months before in New York; it had been blown up 30 feet high, and had been fronting the façade of a movie theatre on Madison. A marriage of beauty and menace, she had thought then; she had found it disturbing, and still did.

It was a cunningly lit, rear-view shot of Natasha Lawrence, still Tomas Court’s wife when the movie was shot, but divorced from him shortly after its premiere. She was barebacked, and was framed by a suggestion of a white curtain to her left, and by a blank white wall in front and to the right of her. Lawrence’s singularly beautiful face could not be seen; her dark hair was cropped as short as a boy’s; her right arm was lifted and pressed against the wall; her left arm was pressed against her side; a shaft of light slanted against the curve of her spine, below which the picture was cropped.

This image might have been, and in some senses was, an Ingres-like tribute to the beauty and allure of a woman’s back, though Lawrence was thinner than any of Ingres’s Odalisques. The eye was drawn by the exquisite pallor of the skin, by the arch of the slender neck, by the line of the spine; it suggested the skeletal, while celebrating the voluptuousness of flesh. Then, gradually, the eye was drawn by what appeared, at a casual glance, to be some small birthmark or blemish, a small dark patch high on the left scapula. On closer examination, this dark area proved to be neither a blemish, nor a tattoo—most people’s second assumption—but a spider, an actual spider, a real spider, of modest dimensions, with delicate legs and black skin. Discovering this, women had been known to shriek and shrink back; Lindsay herself, who could deal with spiders, had felt a certain revulsion. A Freudian revulsion, Tom had later annoyingly claimed; a revulsion Court no doubt intended, Rowland McGuire had remarked, since Court was the most manipulative of directors—and the most manipulative of men, or so it was said.

Looking at this image now, Lindsay felt she saw elements in it which she had missed before; the image, and the very violent sequence from which it was taken—a sequence she had never watched in its entirety, because she always covered her eyes—seemed to her to have a riddling multiplicity of meanings: it could be read both ways, she felt; from the right and from the left.

She was about to pass on towards the stairs, which she could now see at the end of this corridor, and which she hoped, if her navigation were accurate, might lead down to the garden below, when a small accident occurred. Stepping back, eyes still on that poster for
Dead Heat
, she collided with a woman, and—apologizing—swung around. The woman, equally startled it seemed, almost dropped the four laden plates she was balancing, and gave a small cry of alarm.

‘Whoops,’ she said, in a strong Australian or New Zealand accent, as a solitary olive bounced off the plates, rolled along the corridor, and came to rest in front of some bookshelves by the stairs.

Lindsay, guiltily aware that she might now be trespassing, looked the woman up and down. She was tall and gaunt, with a large nose, rabbity teeth, small, round, granny glasses, and an arresting head of long, thick, near-white hair. Despite the hair colour, she was, Lindsay realized, around forty years old, no more. She was wearing what might have been a uniform: a neat black dress with white collar and cuffs, but no apron. Was she a waitress? Lindsay looked at the woman, and then at the plates she was somewhat furtively carrying.

‘Goodies,’ said the woman, following the direction of Lindsay’s glance.

The woman appeared to have raided the sumptuous buffet table Lindsay had glimpsed earlier, through the crowds. Heaped on the plates were cheeses and grapes; there was a large wedge of some spectacular gilded pastry pie, some of the wrens’ eggs, a glistening pyramid of caviar. There might have been some lobster—Lindsay thought she glimpsed a claw—and on the largest of the plates was a cornucopia arrangement of little tarts and cakes and miniaturized meringues, spun-sugar confections, marzipan
amuse-gueules
and tiny black chocolate petits fours. Balanced on top of them was a marzipan apple, tinted pink and green, with a clove for a stem; a pretty conceit. This, to Lindsay’s surprise, the gaunt woman suddenly passed to her.

‘Delicious, yeah?’ It
was
delicious. ‘Mrs Sabatier is really pleased with these caterers. She says they’re a find.’

‘I expect I shouldn’t be here,’ Lindsay said, extracting the clove, and, for want of anywhere else, putting it in her pocket. ‘I hope this isn’t out of bounds…’

‘No worries.’

‘It’s just—I used to be good at parties, but I seem to have lost the knack.’

‘I don’t blame you.’ The woman smiled, showing even more rabbity teeth. ‘It’s pandemonium back there.’

‘It is rather.’ The woman had begun to move off, and Lindsay trotted after her. ‘I was just wondering—I wanted to see the garden…’

‘The garden?’ The woman came to a halt.

‘Would Mrs Sabatier mind? I could see it from above. It looked so beautiful. There’s all these marvellous statues, a goddess, a nymph…’

The woman hesitated, then shrugged.

‘I guess it’s all right. Mrs Sabatier’s gone to bed anyway. She avoids these parties of hers like the plague. And you are?’

‘My name’s Lindsay Drummond. I work at the
Correspondent
…’ The woman looked her up and down.

‘Right. Mrs Sabatier probably wouldn’t mind. It’s those stairs over there. If you get stopped, if anyone objects, just say Pat gave you the OK…’

‘Pat?’

‘That’s me. Really.’ She made an encouraging gesture. ‘It’s fine. The doors are open. You don’t need a key.’

As she made this remark, Pat was moving off rapidly again. With Lindsay at her heels, she approached a wall of bookshelves at the head of the stairs. Without further speech, she opened an invisible door in these bookshelves and disappeared. What a cunning piece of
trompe l
’
oeil
, Lindsay thought, pausing to examine it; why, even the hinges were well-nigh undetectable. She examined the false book spines, amused; then she began to descend the stairs. There, at a turn on a lower landing, she ran into Markov and Jippy at last. They turned back with her and accompanied her to the garden below, where, Markov claimed, they had been lurking for some while.

‘Smart move, huh?’ he said. ‘It was purgatory up there. Wall to wall jerks. No sign of Tomas Court. We saw you skulking at the window. We waved…’

Lindsay was not listening. She was looking around her, entranced. A secret garden, she thought, invisible from the street, invisible from any other building except the one she had just left. Mist drifted across the symmetry of the hedges and settled above the still surface of the pool. It was as quiet as any country garden; she could hear, just, the tidal slap against stone of the river beyond; from above, like the murmur of bees, came muted sounds from the party; no traffic was audible and no roads were visible; across on the far bank of the river, she could just see the outline of some industrial building, bulking as large as a cathedral in the dark. Markov and Jippy had taken her arms; now, Lindsay disengaged herself. She wandered away, touching the stone goddess’s crumbling hem, then the base of her ardent god’s pedestal. She reached up and touched the nereid’s sightless eyes.

‘Look, Markov, Jippy,’ she said. ‘Isn’t she lovely? In daylight, I’m sure she’s meant to be blind, but the moon gives her eyes. She’s looking across the river…What time is it, Markov?’

‘Nearly midnight. Around midnight, Lindsay…’

Lindsay had moved off again. She trailed her hand dreamily over the crisp crests of the topiary hedges and made her way along a path, the river flowing ahead of her, and Markov and Jippy somewhere behind her in the shadows. Perhaps Jippy brought me here for the garden, Lindsay thought; perhaps it was Jippy’s companionship that made her feel truly at peace for the first time that evening, for Jippy’s presence always calmed.

She stepped through a gap in the hedges and approached a wooden balustrade. She leaned over it, wisps of mist drifting, then clearing, and looked down at the flow of the tide. The river was smooth and dark, a liquid looking-glass; reflected in it, bending gently then reassembling as the currents moved beneath, she could see the moon, lights like orbs, and an Ophelia-woman, pale and poised on the tide, who looked up at her, half drowned, from some water world beneath.

In the distance, a church clock chimed, then another, then a third. The last minute of the last hour of the last day of deadline month. Lindsay thought of Rowland McGuire, who had felt close, very close, the instant she came out here. She would summon him up, Lindsay decided, before, as she had resolved she would, she said her final and irrevocable goodbye.

Rowland McGuire, this week, was away. Taking his first vacation in a year from the newspaper he edited, he was climbing with friends on the Isle of Skye, or possibly—for his plans were subject to change—he had moved on to join another old friend from his Oxford days, a man who, as far as Lindsay could gather, was associated with the film industry in some way. This man had wanted Rowland to join him in Yorkshire, where he was engaged on some hush-hush project of an undisclosed kind, which—for unspecified reasons—required unspecified assistance from Rowland McGuire.

Scotland; Yorkshire. Lindsay closed her eyes, spinning together these inconclusive strands in her mind. Behind her somewhere, Markov was talking about nothing as usual, and Jippy was walking up and down in a somewhat anxious way. She concentrated:
Yorkshire
, she felt sure and, since her imagination was on such occasions busy, detailed and compliant, Rowland rose up before her with a visionary speed.

There he was, in some remote place—Rowland liked remote places, and liked to be alone in them. Lindsay discovered he had spent the day on some Brontë-esque moor. She could see its crags and its heathers; she could hear a lapwing’s cry. She could watch Rowland stride across these wuthering heights: this she did for a while, and very dark, handsome and desirable he looked. Then Lindsay settled him down in an inn by a blazing log fire, an inn delightfully unencumbered by the friend or other inconvenient occupants. Rowland, she found, was reading—well, he usually was. Yes, he was definitely reading, and he was wearing the green sweater Lindsay had given him the previous Christmas, a sweater which was almost exactly the same green as his eyes. She could not quite see the title of his book, a pity that, but she could read Rowland’s mind. He was thinking about her; he had just decided that before he turned in, he would give Lindsay a quick call.

‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Markov said, on a plaintive note, ‘but is it suddenly arctic out here? Jippy, can you feel the wind getting up? It’s
Siberian
. Brrr…Like my legs are icy, my nose is icy, my hands…’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Markov, shut
up
,’ Lindsay cried, and concentrated again.

It might have been pleasant had Rowland begun that telephone call with some momentous word—‘darling’, for instance, would have done very nicely indeed. Lindsay’s imagination, however, had its dry, its legalistic side; it was a stickler for accuracy. Rowland, therefore, did not use this, or any other inflammatory term; he simply addressed her, as he always did, by name.

And then—she could hear his voice distinctly—he told her in a friendly, fraternal way what he had been up to this past week. He enquired as to her own recent activities and announced he’d be returning to London soon. He recommended a book for Tom’s Oxford history course. He passed on his best wishes to Tom; then, with less obvious warmth, but a politeness characteristic of him, he sent his regards to Lindsay’s difficult mother, whom he disliked, not unreasonably, and to her mother’s new husband, disliked by both Lindsay
and
Rowland, who disparaged him with enjoyment and accord.

These formalities over, he said, as he often did, that it was good to hear her voice, hoped she was well and looked forward to seeing her again soon.

Lindsay disconnected. It was a conversation of a kind she had had with Rowland a hundred times: amusing, polite, concerned, dispassionate, brotherly; these conversations broke her heart. Rowland, of course, did not know that, at least Lindsay was hopeful he did not, for she kept her own feelings well concealed, and had done so now for a long time—almost three years.