Sextet (65 page)

‘Well, I can do better than that…’ She poured two glasses of some terrible wine she had brought with her. She sat down on a cushion on the floor, stretched out her legs and made herself comfortable.

‘First of all,’ she began, ‘you, Lindsay, are
dead
—did you know that? I met some terrible crazed PR woman, Lulu something, yesterday, and—’

‘Lulu Sabatier? I don’t
believe
it. That bloody woman hounded me for
months
.
I
told her I was dead…You actually
met
her? What does she look like?’

‘Weird. Tall. Long white hair. About forty. Rabbity teeth. Australian accent—or could be New Zealand.’

‘No!’ Lindsay stared at her, recognizing the woman from that corridor at that party. ‘But I met her! She gave me some other name. Why would she do that?’

‘I tell you, she’s
weird
. She kept rabbitting on about how much she’d liked you, how you’d gone down to her garden, or some crap. You know why she was hounding you? She represents that gruesome actor—what’s his name? The one that looks like a recently deceased choirboy…’

‘Nic Hicks? I don’t
believe
this.’

‘That’s the one. She thought you might want to use him in some male fashion feature, and now she thinks I might. Can he be that desperate for exposure?’

‘Oh, yes. Without doubt.’ Lindsay frowned. She thought back to Hallowe’en, to Lulu Sabatier’s party, to that aircraft-carrier loft, and its magical garden.

‘How odd,’ she said. ‘When she’d called thirty-five times, it did cross my mind it might have been important. The party was important—I see that now.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Go on.’

‘Secondly—guess who Rowland and Max have signed up—exclusively? Pascal Lamartine, no less. Max says he’s working on some book, but next year, once that’s done, it’s off to war zones again…’ Pixie paused. ‘I thought you said he’d given all that up for good…’

‘He has. He’s agreed to work for Rowland? That’s not possible. It’s totally impossible.’

‘Wrong. It’s signed and sealed. Apparently, Rowland approached him and Max clinched it…’

‘Which war? I can’t believe this…’

‘Oh, there’s always a war,’ Pixie said airily. ‘And now for the
really
interesting news: Rowland McGuire himself. Knock that back, Lindsay, you’re going to need it. You may not believe this, but I hear…’

Lindsay listened for some while. A sadness crept upon her. She looked at the sofa on which she was sitting, the sofa where she and Rowland had sat talking, late at night, on their return from that lunch in Oxford. She thought of what they had both said then—and what they had not said. She could see now that it was one of many past moments when she, and also perhaps Rowland, had been haunted by a future that might have been, and to which, briefly, they were close. It was just the other side of a door, just around a corner—and now, vestigial, imprecise, perhaps imagined, it would remain there. She bent her head; she found she could hear Rowland McGuire’s voice, describing his Hebrides, or Hesperides.

‘I wish him well,’ she said quietly, when Pixie had finished. ‘I hope it’s true. And oddly enough, Pixie, I have no trouble believing it.’

‘Are you wearing a new scent? Darling, you smell wonderful,’ Colin said, burrowing beneath the bedclothes in the brass bed, in the blue bedroom at Shute Farm. He drew the blankets and the patchwork quilt over them.

‘Mmmm,’ said Lindsay. ‘It’s something Pixie gave me.’

‘I like the necklace too. I like you wearing a necklace and nothing else…Is it the necklace? Or the scent? Or absence? Something’s having a very powerful effect on me…’

‘It’s the necklace, I expect,’ Lindsay replied, in a dreamy way. ‘I bought it yesterday. It’s that lovely
dark
amber. It’s the colour of your hair, Colin. I wonder…’

Colin burrowed down further in the bed. With love, he kissed her thighs, and the triangle of springy hair between them, and her stomach, and her near-invisible stretch marks, and her breasts and her mouth. These stations of her body were all dear to him.

‘Ah, I can’t bear this,’ he said. ‘Darling—it’s nearly five; it will be getting light. I’ll have to leave soon.’

‘Oh, don’t go, don’t go yet. I can’t bear it either. It’s still dark. It can’t be twelve hours yet…’

‘It’s twelve and a half. Lindsay, marry me—’

‘Colin, I—Give me a little more time. I’m—it’s a very serious step…Darling, if you—oh,
yes
. Just like that. Oh, that feels so
right
. If you move just the smallest amount…Oh, that is the most miraculous thing when that happens to you. But we mustn’t; not
again
. You’ll be late…’

‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn,’ said Colin.

‘Happy New Year, Lindsay,’ said Rowland McGuire, climbing out of his car and walking round to its passenger door. ‘Can I say that, considering it’s nearly the end of January? We made it—just. The roads from Oxford were very icy, and that track…Did you have a good Christmas?’

He kissed Lindsay, who had ventured out to meet the car, wrapped in several sweaters, a jacket and Colin’s overcoat. Rowland stared at her. ‘You’re looking wonderful. You look—This place is obviously suiting you.’ He paused as his passenger climbed from the car. ‘Lindsay, this is Miriam. Miriam, this is Lindsay.’

The two women shook hands. It was Miriam Stark’s impression that this small woman, with her untidy hair, scarcely saw her. Her face was lit with an astonishing radiance. The cold air had made her cheeks pink; her eyes shone with an infectious happiness. Gesturing with small hands in red woollen gloves, and talking away rapidly, she led them into the farmhouse.

With an obvious pride and delight in it, she settled Miriam and Rowland by a great fire, and began to rush back and forth fetching tea things. She had made a cake, she said, in their honour—but she wasn’t very good at cakes, so this one was a little lopsided…It was some while before she paused for breath; by then, she had removed the layers of outer clothing and was standing by the fireplace, looking at them.

She was wearing flat leather boots, with a pair of claret-coloured trousers tucked into them like breeches. She was wearing a careless vivid shirt and what might have been a man’s tweed jacket. Around her throat was a dark amber necklace.

Miriam Stark, looking at her quietly, found her beautiful. She looked, Miriam thought, a little like a boy, a boy in travesty, and she reminded Miriam, who was steeped in Shakespeare, of a Viola, or a Rosalind. Every second sentence she uttered, Miriam noted, began with the name ‘Colin’. When she pronounced this name, she would colour a little and the light in her eyes would intensify. ‘Holla your name to the reverberate hills,’ thought Miriam, taking a piece of the lopsided cake, which proved excellent.

Then, as the afternoon wore on and the light outside faded, her impressions of this woman began to shift a little. She was older than she appeared, Miriam realized, and probably, given her son’s age, older than Miriam herself was. Though in this light she looked, with her short hair, impulsive manner and velveteen breeches, like some Elizabethan boy-actor, there was another quality to her joy which proclaimed the woman in her. Miriam could sense an uncertainty, a hope qualified by wistfulness, which she found moving. She wondered what might be the cause of this, and had the opportunity to continue these speculations, for she was a woman of few words herself, and in the company of strangers always said little.

She noticed that this Lindsay appeared hungry, yet ate little. She noticed that, from time to time, she rested her small hands across her stomach, just below her breasts. She was very slim and seemed unconscious of making the gesture, but to Miriam, who had once carried a child herself, the movement, half protective, half superstitious, was unmistakable.

She glanced at Rowland, wondering if he too would recognize it. He did not, she thought; he had become increasingly silent as the afternoon wore on, and seeing him avert his eyes from the radiance in Lindsay’s face, she realized suddenly that he was finding it virtually unbearable to be here. Pitying him, she rose to her feet and quietly suggested that they leave now.

‘So, did you like her? I hope you did,’ Rowland said, breaking a long silence in the car, when they were halfway between the farmhouse and Oxford.

‘Very much. She is—transparent.’ Miriam paused. ‘I envy her that.’ She paused again. ‘I think she will not write her book however.’

‘Probably not.’ Rowland kept his eyes on the road. ‘But I think she’ll abandon it without regret—in the circumstances.’

‘That cannot have been easy for you, Rowland,’ Miriam ventured, after a further pause, turning her cool gaze towards him as he drove.

‘No, but it will get easier eventually. I am still very…’ He paused at an intersection. ‘I am very fond of her, and I’m equally fond of Colin.’

‘Describe this Colin. I look forward to meeting Colin.’

‘He’s excitable. He says “Oh, God, God,
God
” very often. And sometimes…’ Rowland hesitated. ‘Sometimes I have the sensation that God listens—which is strange, considering I’m an atheist. Colin—well, Colin has a good heart, apparent naivety, and an instinct for the jugular. As you’d expect,’ he added, in a dry way, ‘considering his background.’

‘And will she really marry him?’ Miriam frowned. ‘That vast house? All that money? Those possessions?’ She gave an involuntary shiver. ‘She must surely fear…’

‘You saw her face. She’s afraid of nothing.’

The interruption was curt; Rowland’s tone, Miriam felt, could not disguise an emotion that might have been regret, but which she suspected came close to anguish. That tone, she found, affected her deeply. She said nothing.

They had reached the Headington roundabout and the outskirts of the city; Rowland turned into Oxford. He could sense Miriam Stark’s increase in tension before he had driven 100 yards.

‘Where shall I drop you, Miriam?’

‘At the college, please, Rowland.’

Rowland slowed the car.

‘Why won’t you let me come to your house?’ he asked, in a quiet voice. ‘Miriam, is there some reason for excluding me?’

‘I exclude all men from my house. That is my policy.’

‘That wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t the case fifteen years ago.’

‘No.’ She looked away. ‘I was younger then. Now—I write my books at home. I prefer to keep that part of my life separate. I value that purity.’

‘Very well. The college then.’

They drove on for some way in silence. Miriam Stark looked at Rowland’s dark hair and at his profile. Knowing that she was being influenced by the joy seen in another woman’s face, and knowing that she was contravening a resolve taken several weeks earlier, she said, ‘Rowland, I will come with you to an hotel, if you like…’

‘I do like.’

‘Then turn left here. We can go to the Randolph.’

‘Lindsay, I want you to listen to me very carefully,’ said Colin.

He was speaking to her on a mobile telephone, from one of the upstairs rooms of the perfect Wildfell Hall Rowland had found him. From this room, where he knew he was safe from interruption, he could see across the moorland that surrounded the house to the path that led down to the beach below. From this vantage point, he could just glimpse the further extremity of the beach; he looked at a crescent of pale sand and a still, calm sea. It had been his practice, these last months, whenever he could escape from the demands of filming, to walk on this beach and think of Lindsay. He had grown used to the hours of its tides; thinking of her, always with love, sometimes with impatience to be with her, and sometimes simply with yearning, he had found the regularity of these tides soothing. The tide was now coming in fast; the day was fine, with a scent of spring, and a sharp, late winter’s sun was shining.

‘Can you hear me, darling?’ he said.

‘I can hear you absolutely clearly, as if you were standing next to me.’

‘What date is it today, Lindsay?’

‘It’s the twenty-eighth of February, Colin.’ Her voice, Colin thought, sounded a little unsteady. ‘And it’s the last day of filming—unless Tomas Court has decided to go over…’

‘He never goes over.’

‘Then you’re a free man in about—what? Two hours? Three hours?’

‘Ten minutes,’ said Colin. ‘He says he’s going to do this in one take—and I believe him. That means I’ll be with you before dark. They’re shooting the first scene of the movie now, then I’m leaving.’

‘Why do they
do
that? Shoot inside out and back to front? It’s confusing…’

‘Not when you’re used to it.’ Colin drew in a deep breath. ‘Darling, I’m going to ask you something that I first asked you on the telephone in a cottage not far from here. Lindsay, tell me—and by my calculations, this is for the thirty-fourth time of asking, are you going to marry me, yes or no, because in my pocket, at this moment…’

‘Yes,’ said Lindsay.

‘I have—somewhere—ah, here it is, this special licence, which means that tomorrow, in Oxford, whether you consent or not, I’m taking you to…What did you just say?’

‘I said yes,’ said Lindsay.

Colin then became incoherent. She became incoherent. She decided to wait until he was with her before telling him that this would be, in effect, a shotgun wedding.

‘Ten weeks,’ said Lindsay, coming to the end of her confused, halting, hesitant explanation.

They were standing in the kitchen at Shute Farm, where Colin, having driven at fearless speed, but with the caution of a prospective bridegroom, had arrived half an hour earlier.

Listening to her explanation, Colin had blushed one of his agonizing blushes. His face was now white. He was hearing a tremendous rushing sound in the quiet of this room. Its power astonished him; it came to him, very slowly, that this sound indicated profound joy, a joy so overwhelmingly intense, it left him speechless. Moving towards Lindsay and taking her in his arms, he found speech did gradually return to him, so he could express, by word and by touch, the fears, hopes, desires and plans which sprang into his mind now—and that she, similarly gifted, could reply to them.

Some considerable while later, a father-to-be’s panic came upon him. He felt that Lindsay should not be standing. He felt she might need to lie down; he felt she might need to eat—or possibly
not
to eat. He felt perhaps she needed fruit, or milk; he certainly felt—though he kept this to himself—that Lindsay must, at the earliest opportunity, be seen by Harley Street’s most expensive, wise and infallible obstetrician. Was she sleeping? Could she rest? Did she have cravings? Colin hoped, with a fond, wild hope, that she had the most impossible of cravings—whatever she craved, he would obtain for her.