APPROACHING NOTTING HILL GATE that Sunday evening, Lindsay was beset with nerves. She signaled right, turned left, and narrowly missed a post. She stole a glance at Rowland, who sat beside her, his long legs stretched out as far as the confines of her small car permitted. He looked unperturbed.
She slammed on the brakes outside her own house and peered up at its façade. The couple who lived on the lower floor appeared to be out, but lights burned at the windows of her own apartment: Tom might be home, and Louise would certainly be in, she thought with a sinking heart.
“I’ll just run up and find that photograph and my article,” she said. “I can’t explain properly about Lazare until you see that picture. So I’ll just grab it, then I’ll run you home—where did you say you lived?”
“In Spitalfields,” said Rowland. “It’s in the East End. It’s miles away. Why don’t I just take the tube? Anyway, you can’t park here, you’re blocking the street.”
“Nonsense,” said Lindsay, who was only half listening, and whose knowledge of London’s East End was vague in the extreme. “It’ll take us—what? Fifteen minutes? I told you—this is exciting, Rowland, wait until I explain.”
“What about our lunch tomorrow? Why can’t you explain then?”
“Because this could be important—urgent. Besides, I’m—I’m not going to have time for lunch tomorrow, I realize now. It’s too much of a rush. I have to pack for Paris, and—Look, Rowland, just wait in the car, will you? Then if someone wants to get past, you can move it.”
She leapt out before Rowland could argue further, ran inside, and began charging up the four flights of stairs. Halfway there, she paused; she realized she might have sounded rude, inhospitable. Too bad, she decided. She had had the entire journey from Max’s house to make up her mind, and she was determined on two things: first, she was going to see Rowland McGuire’s home at all costs, and second, Rowland McGuire was not, under any circumstances, to encounter Louise.
She flung open the door of her apartment to a rich smell of frying onions and hamburgers. She could see Tom at the kitchen stove, and a sink piled high with unwashed dishes. She could see Louise on the living room sofa, her feet up. She was dressed to kill, and drinking a glass of wine.
“Hi, Mum,” said Tom.
“Where is he?” said Louise.
“He’s outside in the car, I told you,” Lindsay said, hugging Tom, then moving through the room at top speed. “I told you when I called. I just need to pick up a couple of things, then I’m giving him a quick lift home.”
“Darling, how dreadfully rude. What can you be thinking of?” Louise, who was fast on her feet when she wanted to be, was already at the window. “Look. The poor man’s parked the car for you. Goodness—he’s devastating, darling. Why didn’t you say? And now he’s standing down there like a lost soul—and it’s freezing cold.”
“Louise…”
“Coooeee…” Louise was leaning out the window and waving her glass. “Hello, Rowland,” she called in siren tones. “Lindsay can’t find those papers. Come up and have a glass of wine.”
“Please, God, don’t do this to me,” Lindsay muttered under her breath. Louise closed the window and turned around.
“What was that, darling?”
“I was praying,” Lindsay said. “I was praying my life might change. I was praying you might change. Never mind…”
“Answered prayers are always the most dangerous, as Truman Capote put it,” said Louise. “Or was it Capote? It sounds Catholic. A bit Jesuitical. Maybe it was Graham Greene?”
She was reaching for the buzzer to open the front door.
Lindsay gave her one last desperate look, her fair, sleek, impossible mother, and fled into her bedroom. She went on praying that she’d find what she was looking for quickly: she tugged drawers open; she scattered files. Vogue, she thought. English Vogue, and an article that was one of the first she’d ever written, when she was starting out and still working freelance. Was it 1978, or 1979? Had she filed it under “Freelance” or under “Vogue”?
“Darling, what a noise you’re making in there,” Louise called. “There’s no need to hurry. I’ve introduced myself. Tom’s introduced himself. Goodness! It does smell awfully oniony in here. Tom, open the kitchen window. Can you cook, Rowland? No? And a very good thing too. It’s a woman’s province, in my opinion, but then, Lindsay has these advanced ideas. Poor Tom manages very well. Sit here beside me, Rowland—just toss those magazines on the floor. I hope you like the Chardonnay—Australian, of course, madly cheap but quite fun. Now, tell me, have you known Lindsay long?”
Lindsay dropped a stack of files. Dear God, she thought; even Louise, a fast worker, was not usually this unsubtle. Deciding she could not bear to overhear any more, she kicked the door shut. From beyond it, as she searched, came the interchange between Louise and Rowland, a blessedly indistinguishable stream of words. Rowland was being forthcoming, she thought, as she caught his lower tones. Damn; the article was not filed under “Vogue”; it must be in “Freelance,” then—and it was that file she had dropped. Its contents were now scattered all over the floor. With a moan of exasperation she sank to her knees and began scrabbling among the papers. They were back to front, upside down. It took her almost ten minutes to find the article and its accompanying photograph. The instant she saw it, she knew she had been right. She felt a surge of triumph and excitement. Clutching the papers to her chest, she opened the door.
“…and so you’ve never been married, Rowland?” she heard. “A handsome man like you? What’s wrong with modern girls? Why, in my day you’d have been snapped up, Rowland, long ago.”
“Evasive tactics,” she heard Rowland reply. “I have them down to a fine art.”
“Nonsense!” Louise cried. “You just haven’t found the right woman yet. I can always tell—you’re a romantic, Rowland, I’m sure.”
“You’re right,” Rowland said astonishingly. “Louise, you see into the secrets of my heart.”
“Without her glasses,” Tom put in, “which she’s too vain to wear, she can’t see the wall opposite. So I doubt—”
“Now, Tom, don’t advertise my frailties.” Louise gave a gusty sigh. “Though it is true, Rowland. I have to admit it. I am getting older, and I am getting rather frail.”
“Never,” said Rowland in firm and gallant tones.
“Now, Rowland. No flattery. You’re a sweet man, but the truth is, I’m not getting any younger, and without Lindsay I couldn’t manage at all. I feel I’m a terrible burden to her, though she never complains.”
“It wouldn’t occur to her, I’m sure.”
“Yes, well, I depend on her,” Louise said, her voice sharpening, as if she objected to something in Rowland’s tone. “It’s a case of whither she goes, I go. Like Ruth. In the Bible. You know.”
Lindsay, who had remained frozen in her bedroom doorway throughout this not-unfamiliar recital, could stand it no longer. Usually, it took Louise several weeks to work through this repertoire; why on earth had she accelerated to this degree?
She entered the living room, face set. She wondered if Rowland had noticed that the room, though large and pleasant, looked as if it had recently been struck by a hurricane. Would he notice what two days of Louise and Tom could do to a room, and if he noticed, would he care?
Tom was sitting opposite Rowland and Louise, amid a pile of books on Ingmar Bergman. He was wearing no shoes, and had holes in his socks. On his lap was a tray on which was a giant-size squeezy bottle of ketchup, and a plate piled high with burgers, french fries, and onions. Louise and Rowland, meanwhile, looked distinctly pally. Louise’s blue eyes were fixed on Rowland, and Rowland’s face wore a relaxed, easy smile. Tom met Lindsay’s gaze with an expression of profound sympathy. He even remembered, loyally, to attempt to rise.
“Don’t get up, Tom,” Lindsay said rather wildly as Rowland beat him to it. “Rowland, I’ve found the article.”
“And we should go, alas.” Rowland had already put down his wineglass and was now extending his hand, with extreme courtesy, to Louise.
“Louise, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. Tom, I’ll send over those books I mentioned.”
Louise was busy mouthing the words wonderful man, and making sure Rowland saw her do it. With surprising difficulty, considering how nimbly she’d nipped across to the window earlier, she allowed Rowland to help her up from the sofa. She gave him a brave grimace, then a brave sigh. “No, no, it’s nothing…” She waved Rowland aside. “Just this little pain I get in my spine. Rowland, I’m so glad to have met you. Of course, I felt as if I knew you already. Lindsay talks about you all the time.”
“Yeah. She bad-mouths you,” Tom put in, loyal and truthful to the last.
“Does she indeed?” Rowland said with a cool green glance in Lindsay’s direction. “Ah, well. The hostilities are over, Tom. We’re at the peace negotiation stage now, isn’t that right, Lindsay?”
Rowland contrived to make this process sound curiously erotic. Lindsay, who found his glance and his tone were affecting her body in a number of inexplicable ways, averted her gaze. Louise made an odd chirruping noise that possibly indicated parental indulgence and possibly indicated rage.
Lindsay had to admit that Rowland was both decisive and manful when he chose. Before Louise could launch her next salvo, he had Lindsay by the arm, had steered her through the door and led her down the stairs.
“She does that,” Lindsay said, getting into her car, which Rowland had parked perfectly, in a tiny space, with two inches to spare. She began hauling on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Rowland. She does it to everyone. She does it all the time.”
“I could see that,” he replied, unperturbed. “Hard left, Lindsay. Take it slowly. Well done.”
Scarlet with exertion and shame, Lindsay finally extricated them and set off up the street.
“East?” she said. “If I just keep going east, will you direct me from there?”
“You’re going north at present, Lindsay. Make a right, here.”
Lindsay obeyed. They bowled along for a considerable distance in silence. Lindsay had a slight run-in with a blind taxi driver, and a brief altercation with a battered Ford Cortina, occupied by four youthful comedians. The comedians overtook her on the inside; they appeared to object to her lane procedure at the last traffic circle. As they barreled past four arms were extended from the Cortina’s windows simultaneously, and four fingers were stabbed up at the air.
Lindsay hit the horn as the Ford disappeared into the distance. She glanced toward Rowland, who was still looking calm.
“You’re a pleasure to drive, Rowland. I can’t stand backseat drivers. People will tell me when to brake, or signal; it drives me mad. Gini’s impossible. Nervous as a cat. The whole way down to Max’s, she kept her eyes closed.”
“I don’t blame her,” Rowland said in easy tones. “You’re a terrible driver. You’re one of the worst drivers I’ve ever encountered in my life. Your only rival, as far as I’m concerned, was a one-eyed taxi driver who once drove me in Istanbul. He was smoking hashish at the time. He had something of your style.”
Lindsay decided to take this as a pleasantry. “I drive perfectly well,” she said firmly. “A bit fast, maybe. I don’t like hanging around.”
“Most women make poor drivers anyway,” Rowland went on. “They lack spatial awareness. Tests have been done. It’s been scientifically proved.”
“What nonsense.”
“It’s true. It’s why there are so few women architects. It’s why women make such mediocre chess players.”
“I play brilliant chess. I taught Tom.”
“Who wins when you play Tom now?”
“Well, he does. But that proves nothing. Tom’s exceptional.”
“I thought he might be. I liked Tom.”
“Did you?” Lindsay swerved joyfully. “Oh, I’m so glad. I don’t expect he said very much—not with Louise there.”
“No. He didn’t. That was why I liked him. He has good taste in films. Remind me to give you some books for him. Also—” He glanced toward her. “He doesn’t miss much, I’d guess.”
“Tom doesn’t miss anything,” Lindsay said with pride. “Left or right here?”
“Left,” said Rowland. “Oh, well, never mind. We can approach it this way. Go past that factory, turn in here, that’s it… Now turn left by the Hawksmoor church. Isn’t it a wonderful church? It’s my favorite in the whole of London. I can lie in bed and look at its spire.”
Lindsay, who had never heard of Hawksmoor, turned sharply left where indicated. She was just thinking what an extraordinary neighborhood Rowland lived in, one of the slummiest and roughest she had ever seen in this city, when her eyes took in the street and the house he was indicating. She gasped, slammed on the brakes, and came to an abrupt halt with one wheel on the pavement.
“My God. What an incredible street. What incredible houses…”
Rowland was looking fondly at the row of brick façades. The houses were terraced, with fanlights and tall sash windows. Small flights of steps led up to their doors.
“They’re 1730, or thereabouts,” he said. “They were built for the Huguenots, who came here when they were driven out of France. They were famous as merchants and silk weavers. It’s always been a refugee area. After the French left, it became a Jewish quarter. Now it’s predominantly Bengali. I rescued this house. It was falling down when I bought it.”
“It’s beautiful, Rowland.”
“Isn’t it? It’s still a bit primitive inside. I’ve had it twelve years. Friends used it when I was in Washington. I’ve never really gotten around to furnishing it exactly… Oh, my God. Quick. Start the car!”
Lindsay, who was already climbing out as he said this, looked around in bewilderment. A short way up the street, she saw, there was a long, low white Mercedes convertible. From it had just emerged a tall, thin, and very beautiful young woman. For one second, in the dim streetlight, Lindsay thought it was Gini. This girl had the same figure, the same cropped blond hair, the same wide mouth, the same air of determination. But Gini would not be wearing spray-on silver trousers, a cropped black T-shirt, and a black leather motorcycle jacket; she would not be wearing startlingly scarlet lipstick, and she would not be provoking this reaction in Rowland, who—now out of the car—looked poised to flee.
“You sheet,” the girl yelled, reaching Rowland, and striking him hard in the chest. “You peeg. I call. I weep. I write you letters from my ’eart. I seet in my car. I wait. I weep some more—beeg tears, look. ’Ow can you do zis to me? Merde, je m’en fiche, tu comprends?” She continued screaming in her own language, her mouth distorted with woe, tears plopping onto the leather jacket. Periodically, she struck Rowland, and periodically Rowland said, “Sylvie…”
In mid-Racinian recitative, Sylvie turned her attack from Rowland to Lindsay’s new, shiny Volkswagen. Swirling around with impressive speed, she raised her fist and brought it down hard on the hood. A dent appeared.
“Now, just wait a minute,” said Lindsay, advancing.
“Beech,” screamed Sylvie. “Inglish beech. You steal my man. I show you what I think of beeches. And their stupid cars.”
She kicked the Volkswagen’s bumper. Another dent appeared.
“What the hell? That’s it,” Lindsay said. She made a grab for Sylvie but missed as Sylvie was hoisted into the air.
“Out. Go away. Go home.” Rowland was shouting in a voice audible at least three blocks away. “Now. That’s it. It’s over.”
He had Sylvie in a firm grip several feet above the ground. Her legs kicked furiously. She was clawing and spitting like a tomcat. Even Lindsay was impressed, and Lindsay had a fierce temper of her own.
“I die.” Sylvie suddenly went limp. “I keel myself. I cut my neck. Right now.”
“No. You don’t,” said Rowland, frog-marching her along the sidewalk to her car. “You have remarkable powers of self-preservation, Sylvie.”
“I keel that beech, then, before I go.”
“That bitch is my wife, Sylvie,” Rowland said, depositing her next to her car somewhat violently. “We got married yesterday. It was a whirlwind romance. Now, go home.”
“Ta femme? Hypocrite! Menteur! C’est impossible!”
“Not impossible. Would you like to see the ring?”
He spoke with absolute green-eyed conviction. Sylvie gave an eldritch wail. She uttered a stream of French insults, slapped Rowland’s face extremely hard, leapt into her Mercedes, and screeched away.
Rowland turned to Lindsay, who was still standing, mouth agape, by her poor wounded car. Without speaking, his expression unreadable, he took her by the arm, led her up the steps, and opened his front door. He switched on the light. On the doormat inside, and trailing from the letterbox, was an assortment of women’s panties.
Lindsay bent and picked them up. There were black lace ones, pink lace ones, white lace ones. She looked at Rowland.
“Sylvie’s?” she asked.
“They’re her style,” Rowland replied. “Posting them through the letterbox is her style as well.”
“Bloody hell,” said Lindsay, and they both began to laugh.
They laughed all the way up the staircase, which was uncarpeted, and along a corridor, and into the first-floor reception room. Lindsay, who felt weak from laughing, sank down in the room’s only chair.
“Oh, my God,” she said at last. “She was extraordinary, Rowland.”
“Not extraordinary enough,” he replied.
“Does this kind of thing happen to you often?”
“Variations upon it, yes. Two or three times a year. God knows why.”
Lindsay did a rapid calculation: Max had said that none of the women lasted longer than three months. “Three months is the all-time record,” he’d said. “For most of them one month’s more the mark.”
Lindsay wondered whether Sylvie was a one-monther or a three-monther, then she checked herself. This was none of her business, after all.
Rowland, she realized, was moving around the room very fast. Having displayed such impressive equilibrium earlier, he was now looking agitated. He was closing the wooden shutters to the tall windows, switching on lamps. For the first time, Lindsay began to take in the oddness of the room. It was perfectly proportioned, and it was paneled; there was a beautiful old fireplace next to her that showed evidence of recent fires. It was also the barest, the most monastic room she had ever been in. Apart from the chair in which she sat, a table piled high with books, and shelves overflowing with books on the far wall, it was almost completely empty. There were no radiators and it was bitterly cold.
“I wonder,” said Rowland, looking distinctly ill at ease now. “Is it a bit chilly in here?”
“It’s polar, actually, Rowland. I’m getting frostbite.”
“The fire. I’ll light the fire. That should help.”
He began piling kindling, paper, and logs in the fireplace. He contrived to light the fire with one match, something Lindsay could never do.
He rose, and backed away. “A drink,” he said. “Yes, you’d like a drink, I expect. I do have whiskey. On the other hand, you’re driving—”
“It’s all right, Rowland,” Lindsay said, taking pity on him. “I’m not planning on staying, I promise you. Relax. This is work. I’m going to show you this article, then I’m out of here. Meantime, one small whiskey would be excellent—and it wouldn’t do any harm.”
“Fine. Fine.” Rowland still looked anxious. “Right. I’ll just get the whiskey, then. It’s in the kitchen, I think.”
He disappeared at a rapid pace. Lindsay listened to his feet clattering down the bare staircase. She rose and began to walk around the room. There was one other element, which she had not noticed immediately. The entire wall behind the chair on which she had been sitting was covered with black-and-white photographs. Mountains. Peak after jagged peak. Lindsay, who feared and disliked mountains, bent to peer at them more closely. They were annotated, she saw, in Rowland’s clear and beautiful handwriting. Each peak was identified, and beside it was a date, and further notes. Some of the notes referred to weather conditions, others, presumably, to routes, but they were in an incomprehensible jargon, packed with words like “arête” and “corrie,” which Lindsay did not understand. Max had said Rowland climbed, and Lindsay had envisaged modest rockfaces. Surely he had not climbed these?
Rowland returned a few minutes later with two glasses, a bottle of scotch, a small jug of water, and a saucer containing salted peanuts.
Seeing Lindsay bent toward one of the photographs, his manner at once warmed.
“That’s Sgurr Na Guillean.” He indicated a fearsome peak, crested with snow. “In the Cuillins, on Skye. I traversed the ridge there last month. The weather was extraordinary—completely clear for two whole days. I spent Christmas night bivouacked just there.”
He pointed at a sheet of sheer snow, with a vertigo-inducing drop below it. It looked to Lindsay like the most inhospitable place in the world.
“On a ledge, and roped, obviously, in case the weather changed.”
“Christmas night?” Lindsay said in a faint voice. “Were you alone, Rowland?”
“Yes. Which probably wasn’t wise, on Skye in winter. I usually climb with friends. But at Christmas—you know. Most people want to be with their families. And besides, I like to climb alone.”
Lindsay said nothing. She could feel the pace of her mind accelerating, going into overdrive. She tried to engage the brakes of good sense, and they failed.
Rowland handed her the whiskey, and passed her the saucer of peanuts. Lindsay could tell he was proud of finding these, which he offered with touching courtesy. Looking at the peanuts—there were ten of them—she knew she was one inch away from tears.
Afterward, she always knew it was at this precise second that she fell in love with Rowland McGuire. But she could never decide what provoked that debacle. Was it the thought of him alone on a mountain on Christmas Day, or was it because the damn peanuts were so stale?
Rowland found two upright chairs, which he placed side by side at the table. He swept the books to the floor, and Lindsay placed on the table the green file he had given her, and the article she had brought from her home. They both sat down, and Lindsay tossed back her whiskey too fast.
“Now,” she began, intensely aware of Rowland’s proximity, “I’m going to help you, Rowland, just as I promised, despite the fact that you neither apologized nor groveled.”
“I forgot. I promise I will.”
“So pay attention. You’re about to enter a world you don’t understand.”
“I’m paying attention,” said Rowland with suspicious meekness. “I’m hanging on every word.”
“Right. We mentioned all the mysteries about Lazare and Maria Cazarès—you remember? Where they came from, how he first made his fortune, whether they are lovers, the nature of their relationship now, and so on. What would you say was the central mystery, the single most important one?”
“Where each of them came from. If that could be answered, some of the other questions might be answered as well.”
“I agree. Now I’m going to test you—you say you’ve read this file of yours. What’s the authorized version of their origins?”
“The PR version? It’s quite a good tale. Maria Cazarès was born in a tiny village in Spain and orphaned when she was still a small child. She then went to live with some relative, an aunt or possibly a cousin, also Spanish by origin but then living in France. This aunt—whom no one ever met or interviewed, incidentally, was a very skilled embroideress, who had worked for Balenciaga for many, many years. This elderly, unmarried woman took Maria in—and taught her to sew. From an early age Maria proved very talented. After the aunt retired from Balenciaga’s workshops, she found it hard to live on her pension, and so she began a small private dressmaking business, with Maria as her assistant. The aunt then conveniently died, and Maria continued this work on her own. Slowly she began to make a name for herself among the stylish women of Paris, and plucky little thing that she was, she carried on sewing in her freezing atelier until she had enough money to open a small shop. One day, who should pass that shop, and be at once mesmerized by the clothes in its windows, but a rich young man, origins unknown, called Jean Lazare. Lazare, instantly recognizing Maria’s genius, befriended her. He invested in her business, and guided her from then on. In 1976, after remarkably few setbacks, he launched her—Cazarès gave her first couture show.”
Lindsay gave him an admiring look.
“Word perfect, Rowland. And do you buy that story?”
“I quite like it. It’s familiar. There’s a touch of Little Nell, a whiff of La Dame aux Camélias and La Bohème…”
“But do you buy it, Rowland?”
“No. I suspect the Spain/Balenciaga link is a red herring. I think it’s invention from beginning to end.”
“It diverts all the attention to Maria Cazarès, I agree. And it leaves unanswered a whole lot of other questions—if Lazare is not French, for instance, and he’s never managed to sound pure French, then where is he from? Corsica? A former French colony like Algeria? Could he be Portuguese, or Spanish? All those have been suggested, but if any of it is true, why not admit it? What has he got to hide? He’s hinted in the past that his family might have had links with Corsica, and that he had a poor upbringing. In which case, how did he acquire the fortune that he needed to set Cazarès up as a couture house? Answer: no one knows.”
“But you think you’ve found some clue?”
“I think I’ve found more than a clue, Rowland.”
“You do?” Rowland was now looking at her closely. “Well, it must be something major. You look different, you know. There’s a strange glow about you.”
“I expect it’s the firelight,” Lindsay said hastily. “And then, I am excited. I suspected I was right all weekend.”
“You kept very quiet about it.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t want to interfere. There was a crisis—you and Gini and Max had work to do. I wasn’t sure if you’d still be interested.”
“I am still interested,” he said. “Very interested. So, are you going to explain?”
“Yes, I will.” Lindsay wrenched her eyes back to the file. Rowland moved his chair a little closer. Firelight flickered against the paneled walls.
“Your researchers did a good job, Rowland,” she said slowly. “There are clippings in this file that I’ve never seen. I didn’t begin working in fashion until 1978, and it was 1984 before I first attended the Paris collections. So I was especially interested in the coverage here of Cazarès’s early shows—the clothes that first made her name, the clothes that began the legend. Going through the pictures of that early work, I came across this. It stopped me in my tracks. It’s an evening dress by Maria Cazarès, from her very first collection in 1976. As photographed for American Harper’s Bazaar.”
She drew out the clipping she referred to, which was in full color and from the original magazine. Rowland leaned across to inspect it.
“No one else could have made that dress, Rowland,” Lindsay went on. “Not Lacroix now, not even Saint Laurent in the past. It could only be a Cazarès. You can read her signature in every detail. This dress is part of her St. Petersburg collection—that’s how it’s remembered now. Look at the cut and fullness of the skirt—isn’t it the most wonderful color? That rich, dark, seaweedy green. Look at the detailing on the hem—that narrow band of black silk velvet. Look at the gold and green brocade of the sleeves, and the shape of the over-jacket. You see how its curves are emphasized by the fur trimming? Look at the way the bodice and armholes are tailored, so the shoulders seem narrowed—”
She stopped; Rowland had just yawned.
“Rowland, please—just try. This is important. If you can’t read the signature, you won’t understand. Now, tell me what you see here.”
“I don’t like that turban thing the model’s wearing. It looks absurd.”
“Rowland, forget the turban. Look at the dress. Try to see its component parts. Try to read its language. Try to see the story this dress is telling. Isn’t it romantic? Doesn’t it make you think of St. Petersburg balls? Think…” She cast around desperately. “Think of War and Peace, Rowland. The ballroom scenes in that. Think of Natasha’s nighttime sleigh-ride through the snow.”
A glint of comprehension began to appear in Rowland’s eyes.
“Yes, maybe…” he said, frowning. “I begin to see… You’ve read War and Peace, then?”
Lindsay sighed. “I may not have read classics at Oxford,” she said in patient tones, “but I’m not completely uneducated, Rowland. Of course I’ve read War and Peace. As a matter of fact, I read a lot. I read all the time.”
Rowland looked at her with new interest. “Do you?” he said. “What are you reading now?”
Lindsay lowered her eyes. On her bedside table she kept the books she intended to read and the books she usually ended up reading, side by side. At the top of the pile at the moment was a fat airport romance, six hundred pages of love and heartbreak, which soothed her at the end of a hard day. Its author’s style might lack grace, but the plot was deft and the characters dramatic. Their emotions were violent; last Thursday, on page 345, the hero had died; tired Lindsay had cried.
“John Updike,” she said. “The last of the Rabbit ones, you know.”
Rowland’s face lit up the instant she mentioned the name. He began speaking; Lindsay, resolving to start that novel that very night, interrupted fast.
“Rowland, I know you’d prefer to discuss books, but now’s not the time. Please, I need you to concentrate on this.”
Rowland apologized. He bent over the photograph of a ball gown designed two decades earlier, and stared at it with fierce concentration. He seemed determined to deconstruct its female codes. Lindsay, amused, watched him apply his intellect to it.
“It has both male and female elements,” he said at last. “The dress itself couldn’t be more feminine. But Cazarès has married it with a man’s waistcoat—with the kind of garment a Cossack might wear.”
“That’s excellent.” Lindsay shot him a look of approval. “You’re learning. That’s the essence of the Cazarès style—the union of apparent opposites. Male and female, rough and smooth, exotic and austere, chaste and impure. That’s her grammar, if you like. Now—keep concentrating. Look at this second photograph here.”
Feeling nervous, she drew out the article she had brought from her own files and laid it in front of him. The picture accompanying her interview was full-page. It showed a regal, white-haired, and still-beautiful woman standing in a resplendent drawing room. Draped across the chair next to her was a dress, a long dress, with an accompanying overjacket trimmed with fur.
“It’s the same dress,” Rowland said almost at once. “Same dress. Same jacket. They’re identical.”
“Indeed they are,” Lindsay said on a note of quiet triumph. “And that’s odd. Very odd indeed. Almost inexplicable.”
“Why? I don’t understand. Explain.”
“Because the first dress I showed you was made in 1976. And this one here was made exactly ten years earlier. The 1976 dress is a Cazarès—that’s indisputable. This 1966 dress, though identical, as you say, was made by an unknown girl, an amateur seamstress, whose name was Marie-Thérèse.”
She had Rowland’s full attention now. She watched him take in the implications of this. She watched him begin to seek an explanation.
“It becomes stranger, Rowland,” she went on. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering if perhaps Maria Cazarès and this Marie-Thérèse could be one and the same? You’re wondering if this 1966 dress could date from her unknown period, pre-Lazare, pre-fame, when she was allegedly working away in that freezing atelier the PR people love to describe.”
“You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“Then think again. Because this dress wasn’t made in a freezing atelier. It wasn’t even made in Paris. It was made in America.”
“America?”
“Yes, Rowland. In New Orleans.”
“Shall I go on, Rowland?” Lindsay said hesitantly a short while later. Ten minutes had passed, during which her account had been interrupted by a reaction on Rowland’s part that she did not understand. He was now standing with his back to her, having risen to put another log on the fire. He appeared to have forgotten that she was there, and was standing staring down into the flames.
“I’d like you to hear the story as I was told it,” she continued. “It’s a good story—at least I like it. It’s a love story of a kind.”
“Of course.” Rowland turned. “I want to hear it.”
“Is something wrong, Rowland?”
“No, no. It’s just—when you asked if I knew that city. I was remembering the last time I was there, that’s all.”
“Did you know it well? Was this when you were working in the States?”
“Fairly well. I went there a few times. I had a friend in Washington.” He hesitated. “Her brother was a lecturer in law at Tulane. We went there to visit him a few times.”
“Tulane?”
“It’s the university in New Orleans. It has one of the best law faculties in America. Never mind. That’s hardly relevant. Go on.”
As he spoke, he returned to the table and sat down. Lindsay, who had no intention of questioning him further, could not tell whether his memories of this place were happy or unhappy; perhaps both, she decided. Just for an instant she had glimpsed a very different Rowland McGuire from the one she thought she was beginning to know. She sensed he had no wish to reveal this aspect of himself, and was angered by his own brief lack of control. He picked up the bottle, and when Lindsay shook her head, poured some whiskey into his own glass. He lifted the liquid against the light, examined it, and then turned back to her with an attempt at his usual manner.
“So tell me this love story of yours, Lindsay. Go on.”
“You’re sure? It’s getting late. I could leave you my article if you’d prefer. You can read the story there. Almost all of it. Everything except the end—which I was asked not to use.”
“No, no. I dislike unfinished stories. Stories should have a clear beginning, a middle, and an end.” He smiled. “Besides, I’d rather hear it from you.”
“Very well.” Lindsay’s heart gave a skip. She picked up the photograph of the tall, white-haired, patrician woman with the lovely dress beside her. She could remember that interview so well: it had been her first major freelance commission. She had been twenty, proud of hitting on the idea for the piece, proud of placing it with Vogue, and—when she reached the house where the interview was to take place—very nervous indeed.
It had been a house in Belgravia, a tall, white-pillared building, its doors opened by a butler, the first butler Lindsay had ever seen outside films. She followed him up a wide staircase and into a huge drawing room with three long windows overlooking the garden square outside. It was autumn; a fire was lit, yet the room was filled with spring flowers. The former Letitia Lafitte Grant, now Lady Roseborough, had risen as she entered, and Lindsay, confronted with this figure of legendary elegance, had quailed.
Then her hands had been clasped, and Letitia had begun speaking in that warm southern voice, so Lindsay’s courage returned.
“Come have some tea, my dear. You’ve come here to ask me about my clothes? We’ll have us such fun—there’s things I’m going to show you that I haven’t looked at in a million years…” She had pronounced it ye-ahs. Lindsay, in the quiet of this room with Rowland now, could hear Letitia’s slow drawl as she herself recounted a story heard long before.
“The woman in this picture,” she explained, “was called Letitia Lafitte Grant, at least that was her name when this dress was made for her. She came from a very old Louisiana family, and had married into an even older and even richer one. Her family had heritage and the Grants had oil. When Letitia married, she went to live in their house, a very beautiful antebellum mansion on the north bank of the Mississippi, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. She was a famous southern hostess, a famous beauty, a famous horsewoman, and a famous collector of couture. She was also, I think, a generous woman—a woman with a very kind heart.”
Lindsay paused. “I went to interview her because of her legendary elegance. She was the kind of woman who could look wonderful in anything. She could make an ensemble out of a borrowed man’s shirt, one of her husband’s tweed jackets, an old pair of jeans. She loved couture clothes, went to the Paris collections twice a year for over twenty years, and had kept her entire wardrobe in a state of perfect preservation. She died about three years after I interviewed her. Her couture collection is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York now.
“The idea of the interview was that she would show me her collection—the Schiaparellis, the early Chanel, the Balenciagas—and she did show me all of those. I had asked her to select one of her favorite dresses for the photograph, and that’s the dress she chose, draped over that chair.”
“It was a surprising choice?” Rowland asked; he was listening intently now. “You expected her to select a dress by some famous name?”
“Yes. I did. She explained that she had chosen it because this dress reminded her of a happy period in her life, when her children were almost grown up and before her first husband’s final illness began. And because it reminded her of an extraordinary young girl, the girl who had made it, Marie-Thérèse.
“Letitia told me that it was a very New Orleans story,” Lindsay went on. “She said I had to imagine a city very different from the one New Orleans later became. When there were fewer tourists, when it was still possible to feel the city’s past. She said I had to imagine the heat, and those beautiful houses in the French Quarter, with their wrought-iron balconies, and their atmosphere of decay. She said I had to imagine the city’s opposites, its mix of riches and poverty, its mix of races and nationalities—French, Spanish, Caribbean—its mix of religions and superstitions and tongues. She said I had to imagine a city unlike any other in America, where the extraordinary was an everyday occurrence. She made me see her New Orleans, Rowland, and then she told me the story of Marie-Thérèse.
“Letitia had made the girl’s acquaintance some years before this dress was made. Marie-Thérèse was then about fourteen, and was attending a convent school in the French Quarter, where one of Letitia’s maids had also been at school. On the maid’s recommendation, Marie-Thérèse was given some work for the Grant household, embroidering linen and so on. She had been taught her skills by the nuns at her convent, several of whom were French, and Marie-Thérèse, who was of French descent herself but born in New Orleans, was said to be their ablest pupil. When Letitia saw the work she had done, it was so exquisite that she asked to meet the girl. She was at once struck by her. She was quiet, almost excessively modest, not beautiful, but arresting—Letitia described her as jolie-laide. She had a very pale skin—magnolia pale, Letitia called it—a childlike manner, and jet-black hair. Letitia was eager to give her more work—mainly because she knew that this girl’s circumstances were very poor.”
Lindsay paused, and glanced across at Rowland. “Marie-Thérèse had a brother, and they had been orphaned, it seemed. The brother had abandoned school when he was thirteen and his sister just nine. He had become sole provider for his sister from then on.”
There was a silence. The fire hissed as a log shifted.
Rowland slowly raised his eyes to meet Lindsay’s gaze. “There was a brother? An elder brother?”
“Yes, and according to Letitia, a very protective brother too. An ill-educated, sensitive, proud, and touchy young man.”
“Interesting. Go on.”
“As a result of that meeting, Letitia took a great liking to the girl. Periodically, she would come out from the city to visit Letitia; Letitia never went to the girl’s own home. Over the next two years, Letitia gave her work whenever she could, and whenever the girl, who was still at school, felt able to take it on. Gradually she was entrusted with other tasks besides embroidery. She made some blouses for Letitia, then a beautiful shawl. She was allowed to make alterations to some of Letitia’s clothes, and Letitia could see how they fascinated her. She would tell the girl stories of her own visits to the couture houses, of the fittings she went to, and the perfectionism that was insisted upon. She explained about toiles, how each garment was assembled and hand sewn. One day she gave Marie-Thérèse one of her oldest and favorite garments, a prewar Chanel suit that had been accidentally torn, and was, she thought, beyond repair. The girl took it away and returned with it in perfect condition. When Letitia examined it, she realized that the girl had taken the entire jacket apart and restitched the whole thing. Marie-Thérèse was trembling with excitement; usually she spoke very little, but that day she could not stop talking about what she had learned. Do you know what she said to Letitia? I quoted it. She said, ‘Madame, I could always see the art, but now I understand the science of clothes.’
“From then onward,” Lindsay went on, “Letitia took an even greater interest in the girl. She encouraged her to talk about her circumstances, her home, and her brother. And she was perturbed by what she heard. Marie-Thérèse and her brother’s home consisted of two rooms in a poor part of the Vieux Carré, almost next door to the convent and its school. The rooms were rented to them by the nuns, whose order owned several run-down properties in that part of New Orleans. It was known as the Maison Sancta Maria, because it had a small statue of the Virgin Mary set into a niche in the garden walls. The renting of these rooms was an act of charity on the nuns’ part—and also something more. They believed, as did her brother, that Marie-Thérèse had a vocation. They were pressing her to become a novice once her schooling was over. Marie-Thérèse had accepted this. She told Letitia she intended to take the veil.
“This concerned Letitia, who was not Roman Catholic. She suggested the girl should think very seriously before taking such a step. She said she herself was more than prepared to offer an alternative: Marie-Thérèse could join the Grant household; she could be trained for domestic service, or ways might be found to make use of her sewing skills. To Letitia’s surprise, the girl refused, though with charm and modesty. She explained she was always guided by her brother, who would never countenance such a step. She said that she could not consider any course of action that would separate her from her brother, who was everything to her—her guardian, protector, and friend. Letitia pointed out gently that although the brother worked for the nuns, helping to maintain their gardens, to become a nun would certainly involve separation from him. Marie-Thérèse listened politely but seemed not to understand.”
Lindsay turned to look at Rowland.
“I was never told their surname,” she said, “but the brother’s Christian name was Jean-Paul. That’s very easily abbreviated to Jean, of course. Just as a Marie-Thérèse, who lived in the Maison Sancta Maria, might well, if she were later to alter her name, opt to be plain Maria—especially if she wished to disguise her nationality, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, I would,” Rowland replied. “But I don’t want to force a connection too soon.” He hesitated.
“I like this story of yours, Lindsay. But I’m not sure that I see the love story yet.”
“You will. It was as a result of that conversation,” Lindsay continued, “that Letitia’s St. Petersburg dress was made. Every year for Mardi Gras, the Grants gave a ball—it was a great event in the Louisiana calendar, and each ball had a theme. They had held an Ottoman ball, a Venetian ball. In 1966 the theme was to be Russian, and Letitia decided that instead of having her dress made in Paris, as she usually did, she would have it made by Marie-Thérèse. Her motives were not purely charitable. If the dress proved a failure, it would not matter greatly—Letitia had roomfuls of clothes. But if it was the success she hoped, she knew her friends would all want to use this marvelous girl. Then, perhaps, Marie-Thérèse would see that there truly was an alternative life to the cloister.”
“And did Letitia succeed?”
“No. The plan backfired. The dress was glorious, a succès fou. All her friends were indeed eager to know the name of the girl who had made it. But neither they nor Letitia ever had the opportunity of employing her. After the night of the Mardi Gras ball, Letitia saw Marie-Thérèse only once more.”
Lindsay paused, frowning into the fire across the room. Then, with a sigh, she turned back to Rowland.
“When Letitia reached that part of her story,” she said, “I saw her face change. I thought she was about to tell me that something dreadful had happened, perhaps that there had been an accident, that Marie-Thérèse had died. But I was wrong. That wasn’t what happened at all. She told me the end of the story on condition I would not print it. It wasn’t death that intervened, Rowland. It was the brother—Jean-Paul.”
“I see. And Letitia had never met the brother?”
“No. She knew he worked all the hours God made—in the nuns’ gardens, in a menial capacity in various New Orleans bars and hotels. Once or twice, at her husband’s suggestion, and because his sister claimed he was a gifted mechanic, he had been allowed to help service the Grant cars—they included a number of prewar Rolls-Royces, for which Letitia’s husband had a passion.”
“And Lazare now collects similar cars.”
“Precisely. These jobs had never developed into anything more permanent. The regular staff disliked the boy; they found him arrogant, hypersensitive, always imagining slights that weren’t there. He had a violent temper; no one wanted to work alongside him. When the brother arrived on her doorstep the day after her Mardi Gras ball, Letitia found she could understand that reaction. She took an immediate dislike to the boy.”
Lindsay hesitated. “She pitied him to some extent, I think. He was only nineteen, and Letitia could see that he’d made a pathetic attempt to appear well dressed. But from the moment he entered her house, he was aggressive and rude. He told her, in a haughty way, that his sister did not need her patronage, that he had always supported her financially and always would if need be. He said he would not tolerate interference in Marie-Thérèse’s life from a Protestant family who could never understand a Catholic girl. He spoke at length, and with great emphasis, of his sister’s modesty, purity, and religious devotion. He said he would allow Marie-Thérèse to do no more work for Letitia, and that their meetings would cease—all she was doing was poisoning the mind of his sister, tempting her with worldly things. Marie-Thérèse was destined to become a bride of Christ, he said, and this had always been apparent to him, from her earliest years. It was what their dead mother would have wished for her, and he meant to ensure that wish was fulfilled. He recited this speech, which was clearly prepared, with few interruptions from Letitia. Then he stormed out. As with his sister, Letitia saw him only once again.”
“How extraordinary. How strange…” Rowland said into the silence that followed. “Poor Letitia. So what happened next, Lindsay? Tell me the end.”
“Several years passed. Letitia had been offended, and she made no further attempts to see Marie-Thérèse. Occasionally she would hear of her through the maid who had first introduced her, but there was little information, and gradually she lost interest. She had other more important things on her mind: her husband’s illness had manifested itself, though it had not yet been diagnosed. It was three years later, in 1969, that she heard from her maid that there had been some crisis: Marie-Thérèse had completed her schooling by then, and had begun instruction at the convent. But she had never completed her novitiate, claiming a loss of faith. This, and other factors, the maid said, had eventually led to a quarrel between the nuns and Marie-Thérèse. She and her brother were about to be evicted, put out on the streets. They had very little money, and no home.
“The maid, convent-educated like Marie-Thérèse, was also a modest girl. When she first heard this story, Letitia sensed that there was some other reason for this eviction that the girl could not bring herself to name. She blushed deeply, and became vague and incoherent when questioned. She said Marie-Thérèse had betrayed the trust the nuns had always shown in her, and that she was seeing no one because of her shame.
“Letitia’s husband was very ill at this time. She did not press the matter. Then, in January 1970, her husband was in remission and Mardi Gras was approaching. There would be no ball that year, but Letitia’s thoughts returned to Marie-Thérèse. She sent for the maid and questioned her. With great reluctance the maid was eventually persuaded to give an address where Marie-Thérèse and her brother were now said to be living. She said she’d heard that they were desperately poor, and that Marie-Thérèse had been ill, but she would divulge nothing more.
“A few days later,” Lindsay went on, “Letitia decided to set off on an errand of mercy.” She paused. “I think you can probably guess, Rowland, what she discovered. But oddly enough, it was not something she herself had ever foreseen, and so she was profoundly shocked, even appalled. It took her a long time to find the house, which was dirty and dilapidated, a rooming house in an area to the north of the French Quarter, an area most whites shunned. When she finally reached the house, the front door was open; there were no doorbells, and no nameplates. There was an elderly man sitting on the stoop, drinking bourbon. He said that Marie-Thérèse and her husband lived there, in a back room on the top floor. Letitia could hear a baby crying as she mounted the stairs. At first she assumed the noise was coming from one of the other lodgers’ rooms. Then she realized, as she reached the top of the stairs. The door to Marie-Thérèse’s room was open, as if someone had only just returned—she crossed to the doorway and stopped, without speaking. Marie-Thérèse was huddled in a bed on the far side of the room. She was nursing a tiny baby, trying to persuade it to feed. Bending over her, and with his arm around her shoulders, was her brother, Jean-Paul. Letitia said that she knew instantly, knew beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he was the father of this child.
“She was on the point of leaving before they even realized she was there. Then something stopped her: she could hear from the way in which the baby was crying that it was ill—Letitia had four children of her own. She could see that Marie-Thérèse was painfully thin and looked sickly. She could see tenderness and fear in the way Jean-Paul spoke to mother and child, and she was ashamed of her own immediate reaction. She was on the point of speaking, of suggesting they send for a doctor—her own doctor, if necessary. Then Jean-Paul looked up and saw her. His expression was so terrible that she found she dared not speak. Instead, she put down the basket of fruits she had brought with her, knowing the gift was absolutely inappropriate now. She was watched, in silence, by Jean-Paul, whose face was rigid with anger and scorn. She took out all the money she had with her and placed it in the basket. Then she turned, and left without a word.
“And that was almost the very end of the story,” Lindsay said, meeting Rowland’s troubled gaze. “Letitia never saw brother or sister again. For some six months after that, she continued to send money to them by mail. It was never acknowledged; she never knew if it was received. Later that year she heard from her maid that brother and sister had left New Orleans. But when she asked about the baby, the maid denied all knowledge of it, so Letitia became concerned. She wondered if the baby could have died. She worried that it might have been adopted, or fostered, or put in a home. She made many inquiries, all fruitless, and finally went to the convent, where she was received by the Mother Superior. This woman confirmed that Marie-Thérèse had had a child—a male child. She would say nothing as to the question of the child’s father, and she denied all knowledge of the child’s present whereabouts. Marie-Thérèse was unmarried. Dead or alive, she said, the child of such a union could not be her concern.
“Letitia was very angry, but she had come to a dead end and could discover nothing more. Later the same year, her own husband died. Letitia left Louisiana to visit friends in Europe. Some time after that she met her second husband and moved to London. She had returned, she told me, to Louisiana from time to time, but she never felt at peace there again. She never heard any more of the extraordinary girl and her brother. All that was left of the entire episode was the dress in this photograph here. A dress that must now be somewhere in the Metropolitan Museum—packed away, carefully protected in acid-free tissue paper.”
She met Rowland’s eyes, then looked quickly away. She turned her gaze toward the fire, the shutters, the paneling, the photographs of mountains with their annotated routes. Rowland said nothing, but she could sense he was affected by this story, as she had been the first time she heard it. His head was bent to the two photographs of Russian dresses. With a sigh, Lindsay rose.
“So you see, it was a love story,” she said. “A love story of an unusual kind.”
“Most are—to those involved,” he replied.
Lindsay continued to stare at those mountains; a log shifted in the fire.
“I’m certain it’s the story of Cazarès and Lazare,” she said at last. “Rowland, I’m sure.”
“I am too. I probably shouldn’t be. There’s no proof beyond the dresses. But I have instincts too, Lindsay—as much as you do. I can hear the truth in it.” He hesitated, then looked up to meet her gaze. “But you have to understand, Lindsay—I’m sure you do. Even if I could prove every last word of it, it’s a story I could never use in their lifetime. Max wouldn’t countenance it. Neither would I. It’s their affair. It’s intensely private—and a child is involved… What are you doing?”
“Getting my coat. I do understand. I knew you’d say that. I knew it could only be background. I ought to go home now.”
“Why? It’s only nine—we could go out for a meal, I thought. I’m very glad you told me all this. There’s a hundred and one things I want to ask you.”
Lindsay stopped in front of those mountain photographs. She looked at their noted routes. She breathed in and out ten times, then put down her coat with a smile.
“Aren’t we married, Rowland?” she said. “I seem to recall we were married yesterday, after a whirlwind romance… So, shouldn’t we act married? Why don’t I cook you a meal?”