Sextet Read Free Page A

childhood she had never had, but she was too recently bereaved—if bereaved was the term—to wish to celebrate more fully the night of the dead.
    So the pumpkin would glow, her son would be persuaded eventually that the purpose of lying down in his little red cot was to sleep, then there was the long tranquillity of an evening with her husband to look forward to. They would make their plans for Thanksgiving—her friend Lindsay Drummond would be coming from England to celebrate it with them—and they would make their plans for their American itinerary, for the book Pascal would photograph and she would write. They would sit by the fireside and consult yet more guides, yet more maps.
    The journey ahead opened up in her mind and the highways of America beckoned. She had forgotten Natasha Lawrence and all those unanswered questions long before the cab driver, recalcitrant, twitching and fuming with some unspecified rage, was paid off.
    The actress, who had intended to answer no questions of any import, forgot the interview even more quickly. She undertook, on average, some two or three interviews each week, more when a theatre opening or movie premiere approached, and she regarded them as a necessary evil. Once they were over she wiped them; five minutes later she had no recollection of the interviewer or of anything either had said. She had learned years before—and she was a woman of great self-discipline—that to worry about interviews encouraged vanity and self-doubt, also, latterly, fear—so she wiped them: click; gone from the screen, gone from the memory bank. On this occasion, the only question which had caused her any disturbance was the question about the Conrad building—and she had dealt with that. Click, and the past hour was gone; she felt reinvigorated at once.
    Her life, organized by others, was well-organized. Within five minutes of Gini Hunter’s departure, she was in the back of her dark limousine, with its dimmed windows, being carried north through the darkening streets of New York. Within half an hour, she was back in her apartment at the Carlyle hotel, where she could be with her son for at least two hours before her return to the theatre. Those hours, which nothing was allowed to interrupt, were the only point in her day when she felt that, unwatched, private and secure, she need no longer act, but could simply be herself.
    Today, however, she had one small extra anxiety.
    ‘Has the package come from Tomas?’ she said to Angelica, as she entered the apartment, pulling off her coat.
    ‘No, but he called. He’s sending it to the theatre by courier; it’ll be there when you go in tonight.’
    ‘Ah,’ Natasha said, looking at Angelica and taking the pile of letters and packages she held out. She looked down at these in a nervous way; Angelica sighed.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Nothing from him . I checked. And no calls either…’
    Faint colour rose in Natasha’s cheeks; hope lit in her eyes. She glanced over her shoulder at her son, who had looked up from his book. He knew better than to ask questions, or greet his mother at this point; he bent to the pages of Treasure Island again. Angelica lowered her voice.
    ‘It’s been four months now. Nothing for four months.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘He’s never been silent for this long before.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Maybe he’s dead.’ Angelica lowered her voice still further. ‘Could be. Hit by a truck, jumped off a bridge, sank a bottle of Temazepam, prowled about too late one night in the wrong place. It happens all the time…’
    ‘To other people, yes.’
    ‘I dreamed he died. I told you. I dreamed it just the other night.’
    ‘Ah, Angelica.’
    Angelica placed great faith in her dreams, which were often dark and occasionally malevolent. Natasha Lawrence might have liked to place equal faith in her dreams, but she had learned from experience, and now did not. Angelica’s dreams often inverted or reversed truths, and