Lovers and Liars Trilogy (124 page)

“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?”

“T
HIS IS A BAD
idea,” Rowland said, clattering down the bare stairs behind her. “Lindsay, I’m warning you. I told you I wasn’t house trained. There won’t be any food.”

“Of course there will,” she replied over her shoulder. “Through here? Every kitchen has food in it, Rowland, even yours.”

It had not escaped Lindsay’s notice that her proposal to cook had caused Rowland deep unease. In the gospel according to Max, of course, Rowland’s one-monthers and three-monthers always insisted on ministering to him.

“Listen, Rowland,” she said firmly, removing from the back of the kitchen door a frilly apron Rowland would certainly never have purchased. “Let’s get one thing clear. This is
work.
We’re colleagues. With luck we might end up friends. I do not have designs on you. I’m not moving in on you. I hate people who do that. I’ve had innumerable lovers who tried to do just that to me—and they’re all ex-lovers now.”

“Really?” Rowland said, recovering his poise, leaning back against the door and raising an eyebrow. “Innumerable, eh?”

“You don’t need chapter and verse.” Lindsay began opening cupboards. “I’m just telling you, the techniques are roughly the same. In my case they start telling me what wine to buy. Then they criticize my clothes. Then they tell me how to bring up my son. Then they complain about the hours I work. At which point”—she glanced back at him with a smile—“I usually let Louise loose on them.”

“If they’re that easily detached, they probably weren’t worth bothering with in the first place,” Rowland remarked.

Lindsay, mildly thrilled by this statement, ignored it, and made a great show of going through cabinets in search of food. The exchange seemed to have been useful, she thought; Rowland now appeared much more relaxed, in a good humor, even quietly amused. He found a bottle of wine and uncorked it. He set two places at the table.

“So, Sylvie wasn’t serious, then?” Lindsay managed to interject. Rowland looked genuinely astonished, then a little embittered.

“Serious? I thought you’d heard the gossip. I never get seriously involved. Didn’t your informants make that clear?”

Lindsay decided it was safer to say no more. She concentrated her attention on Rowland’s kitchen, which, though primitive, had charm. The refrigerator might be antique, and the gas stove looked prewar, but the room had a beautiful York stone floor, and a splendid built-in breakfront—at present, unfortunately, still painted its original Victorian brown.

Blue, Lindsay thought; that wonderful flat, washed-out Swedish blue; or perhaps an off cream. Then you could put lots of blue and white plates on it, and a huge jug of wildflowers. You could have a rash mat on the floor… really, all the room needed was repainting, and
things
…

“So tell me. I’m going to cross-examine you now,” Rowland said, sitting down at the pine table—it was nice, that pine table—and running his hands through his astonishing hair. “First, why has no one else made this connection before? Those two dresses are identical. Your piece appeared in
Vogue,
after all.”

“Timing, mainly,” Lindsay answered, staring at Rowland’s small store of edibles and wondering how on earth you could make a meal from these ingredients. “My article didn’t appear until spring 1979, three years
after
the Cazarès St. Petersburg collection. It ran in an English magazine, and that particular 1976 Cazarès dress was featured only in an American publication. Unless you put the two photographs side by side, you’d never make the connection. At most, you’d note a resemblance and pass on.”

Inside the cabinet there were two shelves. On the bottom one were the items Rowland had evidently purchased: five cans of tomato soup, several cans of tuna fish, an unopened package of instant five-minute rice, some breakfast cereal, marmalade, and jam. On the upper shelf were articles evidently purchased by Sylvie and perhaps by her predecessors—some of it looked dusty, sad, as if neglected for months, or even years. There was a large bottle of very expensive virgin olive oil, a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, a can of pâté de foie gras, some raspberry vinegar, some green peppercorns, and a little pot of musty Provençal mixed herbs.

“You don’t have any eggs, do you, Rowland? Sorry, what did you just say?”

“Letitia,” he said, fetching eggs, then sitting down again, apparently now happy to let Lindsay get on with it, as she much preferred. “All right, so no one else spotted the similarity, but she must have. She bought couture. Surely she must have noticed that the hot new Paris designer had produced a dress identical to the one made for her ten years before?”

“No. Because she gave up all that after her first husband died. She stopped going to the collections. She stopped buying couture. She would have heard of Cazarès by the time I interviewed her, obviously. But she wouldn’t have seen the
Harper’s Bazaar
picture of that actual dress. I keep telling you, Rowland. It’s an American publication. If she’d known, she’d certainly have told me. I’m certain she had no idea… Rowland, don’t
watch
me when I cook. It puts me off.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t really watching you. I was thinking. Staring into space. Are you going to scramble those eggs? I like scrambled eggs.”

“Yes, I am,” said Lindsay, breaking eggs into a bowl. “It’s going to be a hodgepodge. A Tom sort of meal. And it’s going to be damn difficult scrambling eggs in this thing. They’ll stick. The bottom of the pan’s all wobbly. Don’t watch.”

Obligingly, Rowland averted his eyes.

“The dates fit,” he went on in a thoughtful way, “the ages fit. Lazare’s—what? Almost fifty? And Cazarès never reveals her age, but she must be in her forties, even if she looks younger. If she was sixteen or seventeen in 1966, that would make her around forty-five or forty-six now. Possible?”

“Yes. Insofar as you can tell from one glimpse on a runway twice a year. When she’s heavily made up, and darts away again as quickly as possible.”

“It would explain a good deal,” Rowland went on. “The accent Lazare has, for a start; a New Orleans French accent is very strange. Presumably Cazarès managed to eradicate hers—but then, she was better educated than her brother. More important, it explains the pathological secrecy, of course. The deliberate laying of false trails. Can you imagine it, Lindsay, if it’s true? All those years pretending they were not related, desperately hiding that one central truth from the world?”

“No, I can’t,” Lindsay said. “But I know it would be horrible—corroding. And they weren’t just disguising the fact that they were related. They were lovers as well as brother and sister. If the rumors can be believed, they’re lovers still.”

She broke off from stirring eggs to turn the bread toasting under the grill.