Lovers and Liars Trilogy (195 page)

‘You’re worrying about the cab,’ Lindsay said, noticing that he looked edgy, even pale. ‘You mustn’t keep it waiting. Thank you, Colin, for a marvellous evening and a delicious dinner—but don’t imagine I’ve forgiven you yet for paying that bill. You broke your word.’

‘I said, “It’s a deal”. I didn’t give you my word.’

‘Even so, it was cunning and underhand. I shall take you to a burger bar in revenge.’

‘I shall keep you to that. Meanwhile, I meant to give you this earlier…’

He produced an envelope from the breast pocket of his masterly suit.

‘For me, Colin? Whatever is it?’

‘Nothing, nothing. Just some photographs that might interest you. I’ve added a note. Let me know what you think. I’ll call you tomorrow. Oh, damn and blast that man…’

The driver of Colin’s cab had just punched his horn hard, on cue, and exactly as this weird Brit had just tipped him ten dollars to do. As the sound died away, Colin’s blue eyes rested upon Lindsay intently. Drawing her towards him, he kissed her cheek in the most decorous manner possible, thanked her, then turned and disappeared.

Lindsay retreated to her room, which still smelled of magic unguents, of yams and papaya juice. She leaned against the closed door for several minutes, until her heart rate slowed down. A short while later, she permitted herself to read the only one of her messages of any significance. It informed her that Mr McGuire had called at 11 p.m., and would call again the following morning, at nine, New York time.

Lindsay kissed this message several times and rescheduled her next morning’s activities in her mind. She reminded herself that, when this call came through, she would rigorously observe her new womanliness and sweetness of tongue. She paced about the room in a fervour; then, discovering that only two minutes and not a lifetime had passed, she examined Colin’s mysterious envelope and opened it.

Inside was a brief note, in large writing she found difficult to decipher. Eventually she made out the words: ‘This place belongs to someone my father knows,’ she read. ‘It needs a loving tenant, I gather. Rent low. Maintenance negligible. Available now. Terms negotiable, but long let preferred. Could this be of interest? Colin.’

The style of this note surprised Lindsay, who would not have expected terseness from Colin. Having read it carefully twice, she turned to the enclosed photographs. She stared at them in disbelief, then gave a gasp of delight. They showed an old, beautiful house, of medium size, which might once have housed a farming family. It had a steep lichened roof and walls of honeyed stone. Next to it was an ancient stone barn, in front of which chickens pecked in a perfect courtyard. It had a perfect cottage garden, with hollyhocks and lavender. There was a perfect stream, flowing through a perfect orchard, and the boughs of the trees there were weighted down with ripening apples. Beyond the garden and the orchard, lay the green serenity of English fields, bathed in the gold of an English summer afternoon. ‘Shute Farm,’ Colin had written on the back of one of the pictures. ‘Twenty miles from Oxford.’

Lindsay could not believe her eyes. It was uncanny how closely this resembled the house of her dreams, as described several times to Colin. When she saw that, although it was not by any manner of means a hovel, it did have a rose, a crimson rose, trained around its door, she surrendered her heart to it.

She went to bed thoughtful and lay in the dark, suddenly fearful that she might dream of those ghosts at the Conrad. But her sleep was benign: she dreamed she was living in the magical house, writing an inspired biography, enjoying frequent visits from those two good friends, Colin Lascelles and Rowland McGuire. One afternoon, under those boughs of ripening apples in that orchard, Colin proposed to her again. This time, he was sober, and this time the proposal was witnessed by a silent Rowland McGuire. Lindsay was plucking an apple, and just about to give Colin her answer, when the dream took a new turn.

At the Conrad, Colin Lascelles did not even attempt sleep; in a fervour from that kiss on the cheek, in an agony of suspense as to Lindsay’s reaction to the photographs, he felt it unlikely he would ever sleep again. He left Emily, together with Frobisher, to watch a late movie on television—it was one of their favourites,
Terminator II
. He retired to his own rooms at the far end of Emily’s very large and labyrinthine apartment. There, he paced up and down, tried to work, failed to work, discovered an urgent need to express himself, and picked up paper and pen. He wrote a long and impassioned letter to Lindsay Drummond, baring his heart. He covered six pages in his large sprawl, reread them, found them ill-phrased and inadequate, and decided instead to write to Rowland McGuire. He penned five pages to Rowland, explaining how grateful he felt to him for bringing the miracle of Lindsay his way, then decided in mid-sentence that this confession might be premature.

Rowland was discreet, it was true; indeed, he was one of the most discreet men Colin had ever known, remaining as reserved and silent on the subject of his own affairs as he was on those of his friends. He was, however, an old friend and colleague of Lindsay; it was not impossible they would be in communication during her stay in New York, and not entirely impossible that Rowland might let something slip in conversation. Better to wait and apprise Rowland of his hopes, fears and joys later, he decided, remembering that he had already, some days before, sent Rowland a postcard that was somewhat over-emotional in tone. He reread what he had written and found both letters weighty with adverbs. They had tried to cure Colin of adverbs at his public school; now a rash of them had broken out. There was ‘deeply’ and ‘tenderly’ and ‘unbelievably’ and ‘eternally’ just in the space of two lines.

He ripped both letters into confetti, consigned them to his metal waste-bin, then, knowing both Emily and Frobisher were capable of snooping, set fire to them. He burned his hand, scorched a fine Persian rug and filled the room with choking smoke. Waving his arms and swearing, he leaped across to the window and flung it wide open. It had begun raining; the air was chilly and a fine mist hung above the trees of Central Park. He stared out at the same moon Tomas Court had found thin and sickly, and it seemed to him enchanting, creating a silvery city, a Manhattan of monochrome. Only the constant restless surge of the city and the ceaseless panic of its sirens disturbed him. When they intruded too much into his reverie, he closed the window again and leaned against the glass, surrendering to the homesickness for Shute that was never far from him, and which now welled up in his heart.

He thought of the peace of its parkland, the grace and charm of Shute Court’s south façade. Beautiful in all weathers and all lights, the great house had a particular magic by moonlight. Perhaps, he thought, he could contrive it so that Lindsay saw Shute at night and by moonlight, when he showed it to her for the first time.

A week after she moved into the estate farmhouse, perhaps? Two weeks? He wanted her to have time to fall in love with the beauties of the place, but he knew that once she was actually there, his deceptions could not be protracted too long, and the risk of accidental discovery was strong. He would have liked to take her there now, he thought; he wished that, at this very moment, they were walking hand in hand through the copse and out into the enchantment of the deer park.

Within seconds, he was seeing, then scripting, this first encounter; then he was scripting Lindsay’s first meeting with his father—a little difficult this, for although Colin loved his father dearly, he knew his eccentricities were marked. Then he was introducing Lindsay to his two beloved lurcher dogs, Daphnis and Chloe; now they were in the Great Hall, now in the kitchen, and suddenly, he discovered, in his bedroom, in the peace and privacy of which room, Lindsay began to say and do the most marvellous things.

Colin lay down on his bed and closed his eyes; his imagination now beginning to gallop, he gave it a lover’s free rein. He worshipped the roundness of Lindsay’s breasts and the smoothness of her thighs; he discovered she possessed a loving agility; locked in each others arms, they were just moving from a long adagio of kisses and caresses towards a crescendo of desire, when the telephone rang.

Colin looked at his bedside clock, discovered it was three in the morning, and was immediately certain that only one person in the world could be telephoning now. He grabbed the telephone, waited for that wonderful voice with a catch in it, and discovered he was listening to the very different voice of Thalia Ng.

His mind grappled with this disappointment and its detumescent effect. Gradually it began to register that Thalia, for once, was not swearing, and that she sounded both shaken and alarmed.

‘I need your help,’ she was saying. ‘Get a cab, Colin, and come down to TriBeCa—’

‘TriBeCa? Now?’

‘Yes, Tomas’s loft. And make it fast.’

Colin’s cab dropped him on the corner of Court’s street. As he turned into it, he heard voices and running feet, then the slam of a vehicle’s doors. He saw that a long white unidentified van, too small to be a hospital ambulance, but possibly a private one, was pulling away from Court’s building. It moved off fast, without sounding its siren, but with the blue light on its roof flashing fear out of the shadows of the street and striking panic into Colin’s heart. He ran the last few yards, entered the building and, ignoring the elevator, ran fast up the stairs. The door to the loft was wide open and he could just see Thalia Ng, standing on the far side of that long black work table where they had both spent most of the preceding day.

Colin moved forward into the doorway, questions on his lips, then stopped dead as he saw the extent of the damage in the room beyond. He stared around him, in shock and bewilderment. ‘Oh dear God,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Christ—what’s happened here?’

Thalia was supporting herself, he realized, by leaning against the table. Her face was drained of all colour and she was trembling.

‘He called me,’ she began, in a low unsteady voice. ‘He called me an hour ago. I came straight over. I called his doctor from home, before I left, because I could tell—from his voice, the way he was breathing…’ She fumbled for a chair, then sat down. ‘Shut the door, Colin. I need a drink—find me something. Brandy, Scotch—whatever. I don’t care.’

‘He doesn’t drink…’ Colin closed the door and looked around him helplessly. He took a step forward, heard glass crunch under his feet, and realized that there was blood on the floor.

‘I know, but he keeps some for other people. In that cupboard over there.’

Colin made his way to the cupboard with care. His passage was blocked by up-ended, smashed chairs, by a blizzard of paper, ripped photographs and coils of cinefilm. One of the cupboard doors had been wrenched off its hinges and most of its contents lay smashed and spilled on the floor. At the back of it, he found an unopened bottle of bourbon and one wineglass. He brought these back to the table, righted a chair and sat down next to Thalia.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Drink it slowly—’

Thalia took a swallow, half choked, then swallowed a little more. Colin looked at her untidy frizz of grey hair and at her clothes, which had obviously been bundled on in a hurry. He realized that she was much older than he had first thought, nearer sixty than fifty, and that she had been crying. Gently, he took her hand.

‘Take your time. Thalia, can I get you something else? Tea? Sweet tea? You’ve had a shock—’

‘Tea? Are you kidding?’ Some colour had returned to Thalia’s face. ‘You have a cigarette? I know you smoke sometimes—’

Colin hesitated, his eye caught by one of Court’s asthma inhalers, lying amidst shreds of paper on the floor.

‘It’s OK. Tomas would forgive us, in the circumstances. Besides, he isn’t here…’

Colin lit cigarettes for both of them. Thalia inhaled, then, to Colin’s consternation, began crying again.

‘I thought he was dead,’ she began. ‘I thought he was dead. I walked in and he was lying on the floor right there, and I thought I was too late. Oh shit.’ She pulled off her glasses, and rubbed at her eyes ineffectually. Colin produced a handkerchief and handed it across. Thalia looked at this immaculate square of white linen, laughed, then began to cry again.

‘I might have known you’d carry one of those. You’re just so goddamn English, you know that?’

‘Sorry,’ said Colin, ‘I do try. I just seem to revert now and then.’

Thalia laughed again and dried her eyes. She took another swallow of bourbon and another deep inhalation of her cigarette.

‘You’re OK,’ she said at length, in a shaky voice. ‘Tomas thinks so. I think so—and that’s why you’re here. Tomas doesn’t have any friends. I couldn’t call Mario, because he talks. In fact, I couldn’t think of anyone who
wouldn
’
t
talk, and then I thought of you.’

‘I won’t say anything.’ He looked around at the chaos of the room. ‘Thalia, what in God’s name happened? Is Tomas all right?’

‘No.’ She blew her nose. ‘Shit, my hands won’t stop shaking.’ She swallowed a little more bourbon. ‘No, he’s not all right. He hasn’t been all right for quite some time. The asthma’s worse and—there are other problems: stress, overwork, lack of sleep, anxiety.’ She looked away. ‘So—something happened here tonight, and I don’t know what it was. There’d been a break-in, I guess. Tomas—someone had hit him. His hands were bleeding and there was this gash on his face, but the doctor said that wasn’t serious…’

‘But he’d collapsed?’

‘Yes. He was semi-conscious; he couldn’t speak. It was a bad asthma attack—one of the worst I’ve seen.’ She broke off and stubbed out the cigarette, grinding it in an angry way in a broken saucer that lay among the ripped papers on the table. ‘But he’s going to be OK—the doctor says so. He will be OK. Rest, medication—they’ll pull him around. Meantime, I need your help. You’re going to help me clean up this shit here.’ She gestured around the room. ‘And you’re going to help me fix up a convincing cover story, because we need one, fast.’

‘A cover story?’ Colin looked at her in confusion. ‘Why, Thalia? Shouldn’t we call the police? Natasha Lawrence—have you called her, Thalia? She has to know—’