Free Sextet by Sally Beauman Page A

who had erupted into Colin Lascelles’s life, via a 2 a.m. telephone call from America some eight months before.
    At that time, Tomas Court had been riding high on the critical and commercial success of Dead Heat (Genre: thriller. Setting: an unidentified American city). There was advance-word praise for his then soon-to-be-released movie, Willow Song (Genre: film noir . Setting: a Paris populated by American Émigrés; according to Lindsay’s son, Tom, subsequently: ‘A cross between Tarantino and Henry James’).
    In that telephone call, Court had informed Colin that he was now planning to make his first movie in England, and that it was to be an adaptation of a nineteenth-century novel. It would star, as most of Court’s movies did, his erstwhile wife, Natasha Lawrence; it would be produced and scripted, as were all his movies, by Court himself. Colin had been surprised by this information, since the subject matter represented a departure from Court’s previous movies. Later, on reflection, he was less surprised. Court’s work had always been eclectic, and he liked to experiment with different genres; if a director such as Scorsese could move from mafiosi to Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence , why shouldn’t Court decide to take a similar course?
    Colin, who had been fast asleep when the call came through, and who discovered he had a blinding hangover when awakened, realized, at some point in the conversation—it dawned on him slowly—that Court was virtually offering him the job of this movie’s location manager. At which point, fumbling for light switch and cigarettes in the dark, he requested further details. When? He was told. Studio, backers? He was told that too. Financing, budget? A stream of precise and impressive figures flowed down the phone. By that time, Colin had the light on; he was holding a pad and pencil in his right hand and juggling two lighted cigarettes in his left. Elation was taking hold. He had just agreed to meet Court in Prague, two days later, and Court was about to hang up, when it occurred to Colin, through qualms of residual intoxication and mounting excitement, that there were other rather more vital questions he should have asked.
    He duly asked them. In particular, he asked which nineteenth-century novel Court meant to film. To his surprise, Court then became evasive. The name of the novel was not given over the telephone, nor was it given at the subsequent first meeting in Prague; a meeting which took place in a huge, shuttered, dimly lit hotel suite, and which lasted precisely one hour. During that hour, the tall, quietly spoken Court asked questions, and Colin, who was nervous, talked a great deal. He was not allowed to smoke—Court claimed to suffer from asthma, and indeed several asthma inhalers were in prominent view. By the time he left, Colin felt he had overcome this disadvantage, that he had talked good sense and acquitted himself reasonably well.
    It was only later, as he went over and over the interview in his mind, that he realized how inconclusive, how puzzling, it had been. Recollecting it, it became disorderly; a dusty imprecision now clouded his view. He realized he could not recall exactly what Tomas Court had said, and that he had spoken very little. He realized that, having expected to acquire information, he had acquired virtually none—meanwhile he himself had given too much away.
    ‘I talked ,’ he had told Rowland, over a drink a few days later. ‘I damn well never drew breath, God knows why. Something came over me. He just sat there; he wasn’t even asking questions by then, and I suddenly felt this compulsion . It was like the confessional. Worse. I just gabbled away…’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘I don’t know .’ He sank his head in his hands. ‘My father, my brother’s funeral, my American great-aunt—you remember, Rowland, Great-Aunt Emily; you met her a few times.’
    ‘What else?’
    ‘ Worse —it gets worse , Rowland…’
    ‘Not