Sextet (7 page)

Lindsay opened her eyes; the moment felt auspicious. She looked down at her own wavering Ophelia-woman reflection, and wished Rowland a long goodbye. She said her farewell, her final farewell, to the other Rowland, the Rowland she wanted but could not have, the Rowland that inhabited a future that was never going to happen. Let him
go
, oh let him
go
, she said to herself, and then, since she wished him nothing but well, she added a rider: that Rowland might find a woman who would bring him the happiness he deserved, and that he would do so yesterday, tomorrow, at once, very soon.

This was a spell, as Lindsay was aware. She could sense its power in the air, but it was important, indeed vital, that effective spells be correctly wound up. Accordingly, she touched wood three times; she crossed and uncrossed her fingers three times, but these actions seemed insufficiently solemn—she felt, obscurely, that some offering or sacrifice needed to be made. And so, hoping neither Markov nor Jippy could see her actions, she opened her small evening bag. Inside it, folded small, was a note written by Rowland McGuire. It was not a long note, nor were its contents—they concerned work—of any great significance, but it was the only specimen of Rowland’s handwriting she possessed, and she had been carrying it around like a talisman for nearly three years. A small square of paper: ‘Dear Lindsay,’ this note began. If she read it, she knew she would weaken, so she did not read it—anyway, she knew its four-line contents by heart. Leaning over the balustrade, she let this charmed piece of paper fall. It eddied towards her, then away; some current of air caught it, and it settled on the water like a pale moth; she watched it be carried away by the tide.

The gesture made her sad, but she also felt immeasurably lighter, she found. She floated back up the path, arm in arm with Markov and Jippy, Markov grumbling about the cold and Jippy’s quiet gaze resting on the flagstones ahead. It was at this point in the evening, perhaps a little belatedly, that Lindsay, glancing at Jippy, wondered if he might have been influencing her once more. It was Jippy, after all, who had suggested Markov procure her the invitation to this party; it was at Jippy’s urging that she had kept that invitation, and she began to suspect now that it was Jippy’s influence that had weighed with her when she finally decided to come. It was odd, was it not, she thought, that he and Markov had been in the garden all evening, as if they had been waiting for her there. With Jippy, mainly because his presence was so silent and unobtrusive, it was always easy to forget he was there; it was only after her meetings with him were over that Lindsay sometimes suspected he had
influenced
her in some shadowy way, with some invisible sleight of hand.

Now, drifting back through the garden to the stairs, she had, most strongly, the sensation that Jippy had possibly been guiding her, and that he was certainly guiding her now. This was superstition on her part, she told herself; Jippy did not
do
anything to which she could have pointed in evidence—at least not for a little while. Even so, the impression grew; it was imprecise and hazy, yet it was strong. Jippy’s grip on her arm was light; he guided her back along that white corridor, Markov forging ahead of them both now, and he guided her back through the tides of that party crowd. Lindsay could sense both that he wished to speak and was as yet unable to do so, and that he had a destination in view for her; looking at his pale, set face, she felt sure this destination was close, perhaps just the other side of those entrance doors.

Their passage through the party was not the easiest of odysseys. Caught up in the swirling currents, they were buffeted towards that lipstick-red couch with its limpet men and siren girls; negotiating that, they were accosted, several times, by various ancient mariners wishing to tell various tales. Jippy guided them past these hazards; he paused briefly as paleface and ponytail hove into view, lamenting the latest news, which was that treacherous Lulu Sabatier had organized simultaneous Hallowe’en parties in New York and Los Angeles to celebrate Diablo, and that—ultimate treachery!—Tomas Court was now rumoured to be at one or the other of these.

‘But
which
, my friend,
which
?’ the ponytail cried.

‘I don’t
know
,’ paleface responded. ‘I don’t fucking well
know
.’

‘If I find Lulu, my friend, I won’t be responsible for my actions…’

‘I’ll fucking well
kill
her,’ cried paleface, diving into some murky confluence by the doors.

Jippy gave a small gentle smile at this and touched Lindsay’s arm. The crowds parted like the Red Sea before Moses, and she and Jippy surged through. Outside, in the peace and darkness of the streets, Jippy and Markov escorted Lindsay back to her car. They walked, footsteps echoing, along narrow cobbled roads, with the dark walls, the rusting winches and traps of abandoned warehouse machinery, rising up on either side. Just audible on the breeze came the slithering sound of river water against mud; Lindsay could sense that Jippy still wished to speak and was still struggling to voice words.

Nearly half a mile from Lulu’s loft-palace, they finally found Lindsay’s little car, parked outside a ruinous, boarded-up church, with one of its wheels—Lindsay was impetuous at parking—on the pavement. From the deserted streets, from nowhere, the taxi Markov had been demanding of the air some seconds earlier, now appeared. No-one was too surprised by this phenomenon; such things tended to happen when Jippy was around.

‘Greece, tomorrow.’ Markov kissed Lindsay. ‘Blue skies, sun, pagan temples,
divine
hotels. Enjoy Oxford. Enjoy New York. See you when we get back, my dearest. We leave at dawn!’

He then began to argue with the taxi driver—he always argued with taxi drivers on principle—about the route he should take to Markov’s London apartment, which, like the other bolt-holes Markov maintained around the world, was enviably situated, utterly practical, and very small.

‘Goodbye, Jippy,’ Lindsay said, kissing him. ‘I hope you have a wonderful holiday. Send me a card…’

‘I w-w-will. I…’ There came a lengthy, choking pause. Knowing that Jippy was finally about to volunteer the statement she had sensed was imminent when they were in the garden, Lindsay waited quietly while he fought consonants.

‘Y-y-y-yaw…’ Jippy stuck painfully; his brown eyes beseeched her. Lindsay did not prompt, for she knew that could make him seize up completely; she shivered as the wind gusted.

‘Y-y-y-York…’ he managed finally. Lindsay stared at him. Drops of sweat now beaded his forehead; his face was pale. Gently, she took his hand.

‘
York
? Do you mean Yorkshire, Jippy? I was thinking of Yorkshire, earlier. When we were in that garden. Did you know?’

Jippy nodded, then shook his head. He gripped her hand tightly; his own felt deathly cold.

‘Ch-ch…’ This word, also, would not be said. Lindsay glanced over her shoulder at the desolate, semi-ruined building, with its forlorn boarded eyes. Church? Was Jippy trying to say church?

‘Are you all right, Jippy?’ she began. ‘You look…’ She hesitated; ‘afraid’ was the word that sprang to mind, but she was reluctant to use it. She could sense some alarm, some skin-chilling anxiety; it was being communicated to her from Jippy’s cold hand. His lips were now trembling with the effort of words; his eyes rested on hers with a dog-like fidelity; she could not tell for sure, she realized, whether his expression was happy or sad. He gave a small convulsive jerk of the head and suddenly the word, the phrase, burst through its restrictions.

‘Ch-check your machine.’

Lindsay looked at him blankly. She had been expecting a less mundane statement; according to Markov, Jippy’s words often carried a secondary, hidden meaning, but this suggestion seemed to defy all but the most obvious of interpretations.

‘My machine, Jippy? You mean my answering machine? When? Tonight? But I always check it anyway…’

Jippy’s burst of eloquence was over. This time, he did not shake his head or nod; he bestowed on her instead one of his heartening, benevolent smiles—a smile Lindsay would remember, many months later, when she came to consider the results of this evening, and of Jippy’s advice. He pressed her hand, then climbed into the cab beside Markov. As it drove away, both men waved. Curiouser and curiouser, Lindsay thought, driving home.

Mindful of Jippy’s words, and still haunted by his expression, she checked her fax and her answering machine immediately she entered her apartment. Her hopes, which had risen high on the drive back here, now fell. No faxes; no messages; the machine’s unwinking red light mocked her. During her absence, no-one had called her—from Yorkshire, or indeed from elsewhere.

T
OWARDS MIDNIGHT, THE SAME
night, Rowland McGuire put down the book he had been reading, rose, and threw another log on the fire. He pulled on the green sweater Lindsay had given him the previous Christmas, and moved quietly past the table where his friend Colin Lascelles was contriving to smoke two cigarettes at once and exude desperation. He opened the door.

This rented cottage was set high on the north Yorkshire moors. Until his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness beyond, Rowland could see nothing. He drew the door half shut behind him, looked out and waited. After a while, he began to see the tussocky shapes of heather and gorse, the broken suggestions of crags on the horizon and, thrown out across the blackness above him, a glittering profusion of stars.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going out
now
?’ Colin called. ‘You’re mad. It’s All Souls’ Night—the night of the dead. The hobgoblins will get you. I’ll find you in the morning, stretched out, stone cold, with your teeth bared in a vampiric smile…’

‘I’ll risk it; just for a while. I like walking at night. It would be quite pleasant to breathe. You’ve smoked two hundred cigarettes this evening…’

‘Two hundred and
two
.’ Colin’s voice rose in a wail. ‘I need your advice, Rowland. I’m going insane…’

‘You’ve had my advice. I’ve been giving you advice for three days.’

‘I need
counselling
. I need therapy. Jungian analysis might help…’

‘You have a point there.’

‘Rowland, I’m having communication difficulties; severe ones. That bloody man’s unavailable; he’s not taking calls. And my fax machine won’t
feed
; it’s making these puking noises, Rowland, every time I redial…’

‘Tough,’ said Rowland, and closed the door.

Ignoring the primal, plaintive cries this action provoked, Rowland crossed the cottage’s small untended garden, opened its reluctant gate, breathed in the freshness of the air and began to walk up the steep track beyond.

Somewhere below him, hidden by the curvature of the hills, lay the cluster of church and farms which comprised the only settlement resembling a village for many miles. From that hamlet, as he walked, came the sound of a church bell tolling midnight. An infinitesimal pause on each stroke, before the clapper struck bronze; the turning of a day, the turning of a month; not a night of ill-omen, Rowland thought, increasing his pace, but, rightly, a night when the dead were remembered or placated, and prayers were said for the salvation of their souls.

It was not the dead, but the living who were on his mind as he walked. As soon as he was alone, he felt the touch of a hand, heard the whisper of a voice; since the hand and the voice belonged to a woman now the wife of another man, and mother to that man’s child, he tried at once to push her away and drown all remembrance of her. He had tactics for this process; sooner or later, they usually succeeded. It was harder here, in this isolated place, than it was in London, where he could be distracted by the hurly-burly of work, but even so the exorcism could be achieved.

Facts, and the contemplation of facts, helped; it was also useful to have problems that needed solving. Lacking now the enjoyable immediate difficulties he could rely on in London—investigations, deadlines, departmental politicking, the constant pursuit of news—he turned his mind instead to his friend Colin Lascelles’s current difficulties, which were now reaching crisis point. These difficulties Rowland had been co-opted to solve. Colin, as he noisily insisted, was suffering; his sufferings emanated from his current employer, the ‘bloody man’, not taking his calls that evening, the American film director, Tomas Court.

Quite how he had been cast in the Sherlock Holmes role in this saga, Rowland was unsure. Colin’s techniques, as usual, had involved emotional blackmail, hysteria, genuine pathos and winning charm; Rowland had found himself shifted by millimetres from the role of spectator to the role of participator. Now, apparently, he was on the case and expected to solve it by means of his intellectual and deductive powers. Colin had a touching faith in these powers; Rowland had rather less faith, but he was fond of Colin and anxious to help him, so now, walking on, he set his mind to his task.

In Colin’s view, canvassed with great frequency, all his current difficulties could be overcome, and the looming crisis averted, if only they could, together, decode Court’s perplexing character.

‘If we could just figure him out, Rowland,’ he had announced earlier that day, ‘my problems would be over. I’m not
reading
him, that’s the trouble. He’s like a bloody anagram—and it’s an anagram I can’t solve on my own.’

Rowland, who was gifted at anagrams, indeed at verbal puzzles of all kinds, now set himself the task of rearranging the vowels and consonants that comprised what he knew of this famous man. It interested him to do so, since Court was a director Rowland admired, though he was sometimes repelled by the darkness and chilly precision of his films. These films, it seemed to Rowland, set a series of cinematic traps for their audience; they were orchestrated with great care, although that care was often well disguised. Certain critics, and they tended to be ageing and male, missed the shape and purpose of Court’s movies, unable to see beyond their genre disguise. Younger critics, and Rowland agreed with them, could see the use Court made of cinematic conventions. To Rowland, Court’s movies had an inexorable logic; frame by frame, they bore the stamp of his vision; they were conceived, shot and edited by a cunning and well-disciplined directorial hand.