Lovers and Liars Trilogy (186 page)

This idea distressed Lindsay, who was wary of the rich in general, and wary of rich men in particular. Sooner or later, a lordliness and a crass insensitivity, which in her experience almost always accompanied wealth, became apparent. Sensing Colin’s gaze, she bent her head to the menu. Fish or meat; flirtatious or merely friendly; rich or normal?

‘I can’t decide,’ she said.

‘Well, the caviar’s always reliable,’ Colin said, in a gentle, helpful way. ‘If you like caviar, of course. The lobster’s generally excellent. Great-Aunt Emily swears by the soft-shell crabs…’

Lindsay saw, in both senses, her entree.

‘I shall begin with the lobster,’ she said. ‘Cold, poached. Then the grilled sole, I think…That’s a wonderful suit, Colin; is it in honour of Aunt Emily?’

‘Most certainly not. It’s in your honour. I’m glad you like it; I found it in an Oxfam shop. I’ll have the same as you, I think…’

He placed these orders with a waiter who had instantly appeared at his elbow. He opened the tome of a wine list, flicked the pages briefly, closed it, and made a tiny movement. The wine-waiter materialized.

‘They have some very good Montrachet, Lindsay, would you like that?’

Lindsay, to whom alcohol was alcohol, and useful when nervous, felt pretty sure that she had drunk Montrachet on some occasion and liked it very much. She said so.

‘I love all Sauvignons,’ she added.

‘Oh.’ Colin looked confused. ‘Well, this is a white burgundy, but if you’d rather have…’

‘No, no, no. I love burgundies too. I love everything, in fact.’

Colin smiled. ‘We’ll stay with the champagne for the moment,’ he said. ‘Then, the Le Montrachet DRC, I think. The nineteen seventy-eight. If you’d bring it with the fish.’ The waiter departed.

Colin gave Lindsay what she felt was a curious look.

‘Better be prudent, I think,’ he remarked, in a meaningful way.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Lindsay, still weighing the provenance of the marvellous suit. ‘Ever since that lunch in Oxford, I’ve reformed. I’ll never get drunk again in my life.’

‘Nor I,’ said Colin, laying some stress on this.

‘They seem to know you here, Colin?’

‘A bit.’ He met her gaze unwaveringly. ‘It’s because of Aunt Emily. This place is sort of her local.’

Lindsay opened her mouth to say, Local, huh? and shut it again.

‘Really?’ she said, in an encouraging tone, and, to her surprise, found no more was needed; Colin was off and away at once.

‘Well, she lives not far from here, you see. She has an apartment in this amazing building, 1910, Hillyard White was the architect. I wanted you to see it—that’s partly why I thought we’d pop in on Emily tonight. It’s one of the most extraordinary buildings in Manhattan, and it’s absolutely untouched—not a single detail despoiled, for once. Only the Dakota is in the same class, but even the Dakota can’t compete. The staircase…’

Lindsay was glad to see the effectiveness of the prompt-feminine, but had no intention of being deflected by architecture.

‘But you obviously come here often yourself, Colin?’ she said.

‘If I’m in New York, I usually drop in—with Emily. She’s been coming here for about three hundred years, you see; in fact I think she used to come here with her father. And she first brought me here when I was eight, so it’s become a tradition, and it always cheers her up. She gets lonely—not that she’d ever admit that. Too many of her old friends are dead or housebound, and Emily’s still packed with energy, indefatigable, a true daughter of the revolution…I hope you’ll like her. I do, very much.’

Lindsay was impressed by this speech, for its sincerity was transparent, and she warmed to Colin. Her suspicions backed off a little way, and Lindsay felt glad. The counsel for the defence was trouncing the prosecution, she decided, as the lobster arrived; Colin was far too sweet-natured to be rich.

‘So, is she an aunt on your mother’s side or your father’s?’ Lindsay asked, too occupied by the appearance of the lobster to notice that, at this question, Colin exhibited a faint constraint.

‘My mother’s. My mother was American.’ He paused. ‘She—well, she died when I was eight.’

‘Oh Colin. I’m so sorry—’ Lindsay at once looked up and placed her hand on his arm. To her astonishment, she saw that he was blushing. He blushed slowly and agonizingly, from the neck of his impeccable shirt to his hairline; he blushed like the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel, and Lindsay, appalled that she seemed to have inflicted this, took his hand in hers at once.

‘Whatever’s wrong, Colin?’ she began.

‘
Everything
,’ Colin burst out. ‘Why did I do this? Why didn’t I
think
? I should have known—you don’t like it here, do you? It’s not your kind of place. I could tell when we came in—but I thought it might grow on you. And now, you’re trying to be polite, but it’s a
disaster
. Dragging you off to see my aunt—why did I decide to do that? I must have been mad. Insane. We should be going on to a nightclub, something like that…’

‘I hate nightclubs,’ Lindsay said.

‘…And this place! I must want my head examined. We should have gone somewhere new, somewhere fashionable; one of those minimalist places, in SoHo, somewhere like that. Hundreds of tables, lemon grass in everything, Californian food…’

‘Colin—will you listen to me a minute?’

‘I
know
those places. I could have rung them up.
Why
didn’t I think of that? Why did I start talking about architecture?
Architecture
! Christ! I could see you were bored; you cut me off, and what do I start on—my
aunt
. My aunt and the evil genius, it’s a wonder you haven’t gone to sleep…’

‘Colin.’ Lindsay pressed his hand, and the tirade bubbled a bit more, then stopped.

‘That’s better. Now listen to me. I hate those SoHo restaurants. I hate those restaurants wherever they are. I loathe lemon grass, I loathe the waiters auditioning when they recite the menu, I loathe the table-hopping and the celebrity-spotting. I like it
here
; I like it very much.’

‘Really?’ Colin looked at her in a doubtful way. ‘You’re not just saying that?’

‘No. I promise you I’m not. It’s wonderful here—an immense treat. This is the best champagne I’ve ever tasted in my life. I’m looking forward to meeting your aunt and I’m quite looking forward to eating this lobster, which I’ll do once you’ve calmed down. And while I eat it, you can talk to me about architecture, or your family, or the evil genius, and I shan’t be bored in the least. Now…’ She hesitated. ‘I’ll tell you what was worrying me earlier, if you like.’

‘Go on.’

‘To tell you the truth, I was mainly worrying about the bill, because it’s going to be catastrophic, Colin…’

‘Well, yes.’ Colin was showing signs of recovery. ‘I expect it is.’

‘Exactly. So you shouldn’t have done this. It was very sweet of you, but it wasn’t necessary…’

‘Sweet?’ Colin frowned, but the glint of amusement had returned to his eyes.

‘All right—kind, thoughtful. But unless you’ve come into a fortune recently…’

‘Recently? No, alas.’ Colin smiled. ‘But Tomas Court is quite generous, you know, Lindsay. It won’t hurt to push the boat out a bit, once or twice.’

He answered her with such frankness, with such an engaging smile, that Lindsay felt ashamed of her suspicions. They were low things and they all scurried away at once. Her face cleared and she gave a sigh of relief.

‘Well, I’m very glad about the fortune,’ she said. ‘I hate riches; they get in the way, don’t you think? You know, Scott Fitzgerald, “The rich are different from you and me”—all that.’

‘Have some more champagne.’ Colin paused. ‘I agree. A very good quotation, that.’

‘But you’re being extravagant,’ Lindsay continued. ‘So I want you to promise we can split the bill, then it will only be semi-catastrophic, all right?’

Colin hesitated then. He looked at Lindsay for some while, an odd expression in his eyes. He looked faintly bewildered, Lindsay thought, and faintly stunned, as if some unknown assailant had crept up behind him and struck a blow from the back. Then he began to smile. The eyebrows Katya had described as diabolic rose in two quizzical peaks; the blue eyes lit with a deepening warmth and amusement. Katya had been right, Lindsay realized, and so had Pixie: Colin Lascelles was not only good-looking, he was an attractive man. He did not attract her, obviously, but she was beginning to see how he could be extremely attractive to someone else.

‘It’s a deal,’ he said. ‘You can eat your lobster now, but you’d better take your hand back first.’

Lindsay, who had forgotten where her hand was, removed it from his. She began to eat the lobster, and very delicious it was. As she did so, she considered Colin’s character, which she now felt she understood. He was very English, she thought—that was the key. English, sweet-natured, perhaps not as inexperienced with women as she had previously imagined, touchingly vulnerable and incapable of subterfuge or deceit. She was beginning to see now why Rowland liked him so much, for Colin, like Rowland, could be both dry and ironic. Of course, he seemed younger than Rowland, although they must be almost the same age, and because there were no complications here, she found him easier to talk to than Rowland ever was. She must remember, she resolved, how easily his confidence was dented—almost as easily as her own. Sometimes, in his insecurities, he reminded her of Tom; which was why she felt quite protective towards him, she realized, and, glancing up, anxious to allay any further uncertainties, she gave him a warm, somewhat maternal smile. Colin, noting the quality of that smile, felt a passing frustration. Since he was indeed very English, he did not express it, but concealed it behind his excellent manners—natural to him, but also useful on occasions such as this.

He reminded himself that he had just improvised—and improvised with some brilliance, he felt. A combination of luck and guile had enabled him to steer them around a very tight corner. Now they were back on the open road. Open the throttle, accelerate, he reminded himself, and patted the breast pocket of his masterly jacket to make sure a certain envelope he had brought with him—the fatal envelope—was in place.

It was. He debated the best moment to produce it: before going on to Emily’s? Over coffee here, perhaps? Or later, when he escorted Lindsay back to the Pierre? He decided he would play it by ear. In the meantime, he thought, it would be wise, given Lindsay’s opinions, to be more careful. Lindsay noticed
details
, ill-considered details, give-away details such as suits.

When Lindsay was looking away, he seized his opportunity, and, hidden by the tablecloth, removed from his wrist the leather-strapped, wafer-thin gold Patek Philippe watch. He could hardly claim to have found
that
at Oxfam. He stuffed it into his pocket, feeling much more confident at once.

‘So,’ said Lindsay, leaning forward and smiling in the most enchanting and feminine way, ‘tell me more about your aunt’s apartment building, Colin.’

Colin, who was not intoxicated, instantly felt so.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s called the Conrad building, and it’s a very strange, even sinister place.’

A
LONE IN HIS LOFT
at TriBeCa, earlier that evening, Tomas Court had also been conducting a dialogue about the Conrad building, a dialogue none the less forceful for being imagined. The two speakers were himself and his wife, and the dialogue began as soon as Thalia, Mario and Colin left.

The minute the door closed on them, it burst out in his mind, a cacophony of contradictions, interruptions and pleas, of ill-phrased assertions and ill-timed
non sequiturs
. Court stood quietly in the shadows of the room, outside the circle of bright light that lit the work table, and let this chaos into his mind. He was used to this form of possession; when he ceased working, a process that demanded all his energy and will-power, he always felt drained and bloodless, emptied and lightheaded; an energy vacuum had been created, and into this vacuum anything, including malevolence, might rush.

Today it was to be the Conrad. So be it, he thought, and waited, not allowing his breathing to quicken or tighten. He knew that, given time, this cacophony and havoc would resolve itself. He fixed his eyes on one feature of the room—it never mattered which feature, and in this case it happened to be the bars of the window, opposite which he stood. The bars, eight feet tall, and at least six across, formed a crucifix shape, which amused him distantly, since he was without religious belief. He looked at this cross, and was aware that outside in the street some absurd commotion was taking place; he could hear that his English location manager was giving vent to his feelings, but as far as Court was concerned he might just as well have been shouting his protests in Urdu. Lascelles’s laments were a cry from another country and Court felt an absolute lack of curiosity in anything Lascelles said.

After a while, as Lascelles’s voice died away and silence fell in the room, the dialogue with his wife quietened; her interruptions became fewer, then ceased altogether; he was left listening to his own voice. Why? said his voice. Why, why, why? Why live there? Why invite rejection? Why do this?

He felt stronger at once, the moment of mental palsy over and done with, he told himself. The
why
questions were familiar demons; they had been plaguing him for months. It was now safe to move, safe to begin functioning again, although he truly functioned, as he well knew, only when he worked. He picked up one of the cardboard boxes which littered the loft, and carried it across to the circle of light on his black work table.

He took no second look at the welter of coloured papers still strewn across its surface; he had not the least inclination either to re-examine them or tidy them up. Each day, embarking on work, whether here, on location, or in a studio, he would know, before he began, exactly where he aimed, and how much expenditure of spirit, energy and will-power would be necessary that day to take him there. When he reached that preordained point, he stopped, and had been known to do so in mid-sentence, or mid-take. If necessary, he would drive or drag others on with him to this stopping place; if necessary, he would manipulate, annoy, abuse, frighten, trick or charm them
en route
, but get there he would.