Sextet (60 page)

‘That wasn’t really what I meant; then you’re watching a finished performance. If you had watched Natasha put that performance together, piece by piece…’ He gave her a steady look. ‘Working with my wife is a very interesting process. Her approach is the very opposite of my own. She is oblique, timid, instinctual, and emotional; I am none of those things. She swerves in on her target, whereas I track it in a controlled, planned way. Yet she hits that target, time after time after time…’ He paused. ‘So I have come to see, Natasha’s attack is every bit as carefully planned as my own—but being a woman, she prefers to disguise that. On set, obviously, I give Natasha direction. I can assure you, on set and off, she submits to direction only if she wants to do so. And sometimes she contrives it so that the direction I give her is the direction she has been secretly desiring.’

There was a silence. Juliet met that pale gaze. She did not like the information he was giving her, and she did not like that word ‘submit’, either. She suspected he had intended it to cause a specific unease—and if so, he had succeeded.

As she stood looking at him, weighing the implications of his words, she became aware, for the first time, of the background noises in the room, the clickings, creakings and shiftings which, in her experience, were always to be sensed at the Conrad. A radiator made a faint sound; a voice filtered into the room from the stairs. It was born in on her, with sudden force, that a woman had been killed in this building the previous night.’

She found herself looking at Tomas Court’s hands; her throat had become dry; he had strong square hands, of some beauty. Suddenly, information rushed at her. She had been telling herself that Court’s presence here could be explained, that if he had been admitted to Natasha’s room now, it was because, after the night’s events, she was afraid and desperate for consolation or protection. Now she saw that supposition was wrong; she knew it with every instinct in her body. Court’s sexual reunion with his wife had another explanation—and it was one she had no wish to examine.

‘It’s a little hot in here, don’t you find?’ he said.

‘A little, yes,’ Juliet replied, moving further away from him.

‘I’ll ask Angelica to turn down the thermostat.’

He removed his jacket as he said this, and rolled back his shirtsleeves. Juliet saw—and knew he intended her to see—that he had a scratch on his inner arm. He had read her mind, Juliet thought, and he was now answering an unspoken question. She looked at the scratch, which ran from elbow to wrist. Since she had a similar scratch on her own back, she knew precisely who had made it and in exactly what circumstances.

‘You’ve injured yourself,’ she said.

‘The injury was not self-inflicted.’

‘Your marriage is
over
,’ she said, paling with anger. ‘It was over before you divorced. It’s
finished
.’

‘You would want to believe that, of course.’ He paused; for the first and only time she saw his equilibrium threatened. ‘I wouldn’t deny there’s been pain in my marriage. Considerable pain is involved—and that pain is mutual.’

‘I’m not discussing pain—of any sort—with you,’ Juliet said sharply. She moved further away. ‘I’m aware of your interest in the subject. It’s apparent—only too apparent—in every one of your damned movies.’

‘True, true.’ He gave her a pale glance. ‘But I do at least avoid the banalities of pain, you know. Give me credit for that. You won’t find whips or masks in any of my movies. That kind of tawdry game doesn’t interest me remotely…’ He paused. ‘Nor, in case you’re wondering, does it interest Natasha.’

He bent and picked up his jacket. Juliet, uneasy and distressed, looked at him with loathing. He was intensely male, she found; the fact that even she was aware of his sexuality made her violently angry. She was beginning to see that Natasha might desire and fear this man—or desire him
because
she feared him. That idea sickened her; of that need, Natasha could be cured, she told herself. Giving Court a glance of defiance, she returned to her chair and sat down again. This, she was glad to see, annoyed him.

‘Shall I tell you why you’re wasting your time here?’ he said, ‘and why my wife will not come down to see you, however long you wait?’

‘Natasha will come down. She loves me.’

‘Perhaps, to an extent. There is one requirement, however—and in your case, it’s missing.’

Juliet gave him a look of disbelief and scorn.

‘Oh, please,’ she said, ‘don’t tell me you’re
that
stupid. Believe me, that particular lack is an advantage, as Natasha has often told me.’

‘Has she? Well, my wife will always try to be gentle, but I’m afraid you misunderstand.’ He paused. ‘There is one difference between you and me, and it has nothing to do with gender. You cannot hurt Natasha, you see, whereas I can. And my wife retains the ability to hurt me. She is the only woman who has ever had that ability—and don’t smile, no man has it either.’

‘I wasn’t smiling. I don’t view the ability to cause pain as a distinction.’

‘Then we differ.’ He gave her a quiet glance. ‘And now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to work. I’m going down to my loft in TriBeCa. You’re sure you won’t let me see you out, drop you off somewhere?’

‘No. And I find it astonishing you can even consider working at such a time—’

‘Oh, I can always work.’ His pale eyes rested steadily on her face. ‘No matter the circumstances. The work, ultimately, is the only thing of any importance.’

‘Another male boast.’ Juliet returned his look coldly. ‘If your son had died last night, would you be working this morning?’

‘No.’ His gaze moved away from hers and came to rest on the blank wall opposite. ‘But next week I should have worked, or the week after.’

His tone reproached Juliet, who at once regretted her remark.

‘That wouldn’t be true of Natasha,’ she said slowly, considering him. ‘If anything happened to Jonathan it would destroy her.’

‘I think so too. I expect that is the one difference between us.’ He paused. ‘Now I must go. I’m glad to have met you.’

With that—and Juliet sensed he meant his final remark—he left. Still angry and discomposed, she remained in the room. She sat there for four hours, trying to understand the information she had been given, and the information she was certain he had withheld.

Several times she rose to her feet, intent on going upstairs and confronting Natasha. Each time, realizing that such a confrontation at such a moment was unthinkable, she sat down again. As Tomas Court had predicted, she began to feel a pained humiliation. When she could endure that no longer, she left.

She called many times over the following weekend, to find all calls fielded by a machine or a surly Angelica. Not one of her calls was returned and, subsequently, not one of her letters was answered.

She suffered, but less than she would have done when younger, she told herself. Refusing to speculate any further on the nature of the bond that held Court and Natasha together, it came to be her view that Natasha had accepted her husband’s aegis—an error fatal in its consequences, she believed, and one made by too many women. She wrote no more letters, and in this way, with many questions left unresolved, she came to accept that the Conrad chapters of her life, as she now thought of them, were over.

Being a resilient woman, she determined not to look back, but to close the book on the entire episode; in her experience, such ends were always best viewed as a new beginning.

‘I
’M GOING TO SHOW
you the south front first,’ said Colin.

‘Where is it? Where is it?’ said Lindsay.

‘You can’t see it yet. Wait until we come out of the wood. You’ll see it clearly from the deer park…’ Colin hesitated. ‘That is, well, it’s not much of a park. More a sort of field, really.’

It was going to be a
park
; Lindsay knew that immediately. She could hear the anxiety and hope in Colin’s voice; she now knew what to expect when Colin began on qualifications and understatements. It was going to be a park, a huge park, a
demesne
, a place of appalling perfection. She had encountered this park in innumerable films and novels and, in her mind’s eye, she could see it already.

It had been landscaped by Capability Brown, or some similar man of genius. It would declare at a glance the mastery of his vision, his gift for disguising artifice, and his sublime use of asymmetry.

There would be
oaks
. She could see these oaks now, in their venerable majesty; she could see not grass but ancestral greensward, descending from the brink of the house to the brink of some lake, a lake created 200 years before (or thereabouts; she was not too sure of the exact dates here), a lake which now looked as if the hand of God had put it there.

She was sure that, on the far side of that lake, there would be some quaint temple, the vista towards which, and from which, would have been contrived with eighteenth-century grace, wit and decorum. She was afraid of this temple, this lake, these oaks and this greensward. She was afraid of any property large enough to boast a park, and she was terrified of the house at the heart of it. The reason for this fear was simple: she feared temple, lake, greensward, oaks, park, house, because they belonged to Colin.

For the past two days, she had been trying to persuade Colin to describe his house—forewarned is forearmed, she had told herself. She had tried on the long overnight flight from New York, which they had taken that Friday; she had tried in her London apartment, to which they had returned from the airport in Colin’s extraordinary car, the most powerful she had ever driven in. She had tried on the motorway down here, and when they finally arrived—not at some country inn, that plan had changed, but at Shute Farm—she had tried again.

Not at first. She had been so entranced by the farmhouse, which proved even lovelier than it had seemed in photographs, that for some time she had forgotten Shute Court altogether. Colin had somehow ensured that the farmhouse had been made ready for them; they could spend this night there, he had suggested. Some fairy had been in, Lindsay felt, forgetting the magic wand of money. This benevolent personage had lit the cooking stove, lit the fires, polished and cleaned, made up the brass bed with lavender-scented sheets, and left food and wine for them. Even the lights had been left on, so, as Colin’s great car purred and bumped its way up a rutted track, and she saw the house for the first time through the gathering dusk of a winter’s afternoon, its lighted windows seemed to welcome them.

With excitement and delight, Lindsay had rushed from room to room, while Colin pointed out to her its various architectural features. Lindsay loved its wide-boarded, uneven oak floors, which reminded her of the deck of a ship. She loved its beams and low doorways, which meant Colin had constantly to duck his head. She loved its old and twisting stairs, the soft honey stone of its lintels, and the kitchen, with its scrubbed floor, warm range, rag rugs, dresser and array of blue and white china dishes.

Such was her delight that it was some while before she noticed that Colin was becoming quieter and quieter. The more she exclaimed and praised, the unhappier he became—and Lindsay, realizing the reason for this, blushed guiltily at her own stupidity and was silenced. Colin, after all, did not want her to live here. He wanted her to live in Shute Court, and—although that issue remained unresolved between them, Lindsay not answering his proposal and Colin not pressing her—she could understand that he now felt it was a mistake to have brought her here. He had not foreseen, perhaps, the extent to which this place, small and humble no doubt by his standards, would please her.

Later that evening, still feeling an unaccountable residual anxiety for Tom, she telephoned him at his Oxford lodgings. But Tom, deep in an essay on Nietzsche, claimed he was too busy to talk, and too busy to see her for the next few days. Lindsay, who had been longing to see him, resigned herself to this; over dinner, she began on her questions about Shute again. Colin could not be persuaded to describe his house, however; he admitted it was large—well, quite large; beyond that, not one word could she prise from him.

As the hour grew later, and outside, owls called to each other, she began to suspect that Colin had further plans for that night, which he had not disclosed to her. Lindsay was drawn to that brass bed, in that blue-painted bedroom; for once, Colin showed no haste to be there. They sat in front of the wood fire, in the small beamed sitting-room, drinking a delicious wine which Colin said was a Bordeaux, and Lindsay kept calling a Burgundy. As midnight approached, Colin grew more and more tense; his face became pale and fixed and his replies increasingly distracted.

Eventually, as midnight struck, he rose to his feet, and taking her hand, pulled her upright.

‘It’s Sunday now,’ he said. ‘It’s the first Sunday in Advent. I’m going to show you Shute now. I want—I’d like you to see it by moonlight.’

Lindsay was moved by his expression and by the fact that he had evidently planned this. Had she ever doubted how much this meant to him, those doubts would have vanished now. She had never seen him more serious; she could sense his agitation and she could see his determination to conceal it.

It was cold outside; the air was fresh and still, and a light rain was falling. They put on coats and boots and scarves. Colin took her hand in his and, as before, held it inside his coat pocket. They set off down the track from the house, Colin refusing to use a flashlight. Her eyes would grow used to the darkness, he said, and Lindsay, unused to walking in the dark anywhere, and certainly unused to walking in the dark in the country, found this was so. The moon, high, round and seeming in constant motion as small clouds moved across its face, gave easily enough light. There was no colour; it was like walking through a negative. The moon silvered the track ahead of them and gave to the familiar—a hedge, a post—a fleeting, fluctuating shape she found restful. Above them, there was a myriad of stars; the only sounds were their footsteps and the calling of the owls. The air smelled of earth, of the rain and of woodsmoke. Lindsay felt tranquillity steal into her mind; the world of cities, planes, cars, appointments and people, fell away from her. Clasping Colin’s hand and looking at him with love, she felt they breathed in truth and breathed out contentment.