Lovers and Liars Trilogy (97 page)

“Come on, Lindsay. This is boring. Classics.”

“Okay. I’m impressed. He can read Latin and Greek in the original. The fact remains, he knows less about fashion than my cat. So who’s running the fashion department, Max? Me, or some Oxford pedant with a power complex?”

“Wrong on three counts.” Max gave her a smug look. “You shouldn’t associate him just with Oxford. He’s half Irish, a farmer’s son. He isn’t a pedant, he’s fun. He’s a very experienced and much-sought-after journalist whom I brought onto this paper to clean up the features department. Which he’s done, in under two months. And he doesn’t have a power complex. He just likes getting things done his way. As do you, of course.”

“Oh my God. I’m beginning to understand. How old is he?”

“Thirty-fiveish.”

“Your age, more or less. You’re contemporaries, in other words. Did you know him at Oxford, Max?”

“Yes,” Max said, still mildly. “I did, actually. We shared digs our second year. We shared a motorbike. We admired the same woman, only Rowland cut me out. We—”

“Give me strength.” Lindsay finished her whiskey in one gulp. She could see how much Max was enjoying this. She stood up.

“Right. I won’t mention old boy networks, Max…”

“Far too cheap.”

“I won’t even mention male bonding. I get the message.”

“I didn’t like those Markov pictures either. Or the model. She looked half-starved. I don’t like these waifs.”

“I was overruled, and I stay overruled, right? That devious bastard’s lobbied you. I’ve been screwed.”

“Just in these two instances. Let’s say I listened to McGuire’s arguments. He thinks we could improve our fashion coverage if we took a stronger, more journalistic stance. Lindsay, he’s very bright, you know. He’s also bloody good. His views prevailed. Next time…”

“Next time his views prevail, Max, I resign. It’s the collections this month. I won’t have McGuire interfering. I won’t work like this.”

Max beamed at this threat. “Nonsense,” he replied. “You’d never resign. You love this job. You love this newspaper. You love me—I’m a good friend, and an exceptionally good editor…”

“You were once.”

“And you’ll love Rowland McGuire, given time. Ask around, Lindsay. Everyone loves him. Except the people he’s fired, of course.”

Not me, Lindsay thought now as McGuire returned to his desk. Had she disliked him and distrusted him less, she might have been prepared to admit that Pixie’s description of him was apt. McGuire had the kind of looks that stopped traffic—and Lindsay had to admit that whatever other faults he had, vanity was not one of them; McGuire seemed genuinely unaware of his good looks. He certainly did nothing to enhance them. He had a lean, muscular build that even the aged and crumpled tweed suits he tended to wear could not entirely disguise. He had wild black hair, worn slightly long, and badly cut. He had green eyes, an amused, lazy, and faintly mocking expression: he was rumored to have the temper of a fiend, but Lindsay had never witnessed this.

Had she not known him as she now did, she might have imagined him striding across fields through Celtic mist. She could have seen him being capable in an outdoors sort of way, performing vaguely rural masculine acts such as ministering to a sick animal or chopping wood. She could see him being brave; she could imagine him being fearless on a mountainside; she could envisage him as a soldier or a poet or vet: what she could not see was a man who would function effectively in a modern newspaper office—yet clearly he did so, so this was her mistake.

Now she looked at him narrowly. The apparent kindness, the occasional gentleness of manner: they were deceptive, she thought, deliberately designed to disarm and charm: they merely ensured that McGuire, in the competitive world of newspapers, disabled his opponents and got to the finish line first.

“You’re going down to the country today, I hear?” McGuire now said. “You’re staying the weekend with Max?”

Lindsay jumped. Lost in contemplation of McGuire’s ruthlessness, possible and already proved, she was forgetting the grande dame gambit. She straightened, and gave him a polar look.

“Yes, I am.”

“Give my love to Mrs. Max. And all the mini-Maxes.” He smiled. “Four children. I used to think it was excessive. Now I think—it’s nice. I gather there’s a fifth on the way.”

“Yes. It’s due in two months.”

“Maybe it’ll be a girl this time. Max would like that.”

“No doubt,” Lindsay replied, ignoring the almost imperceptible Irish lilt that had crept into his voice. Both it and the smile were attractive—and McGuire knew it.

“Look, can we make a start?” She leaned forward. “I have a lot of work to do before I leave. I’m finalizing the arrangements for Paris. Did you see the outline I sent you?”

McGuire shifted papers on his desk. “You’re going down to Max’s with a friend, I think Max said…”

“Yes. Gini. Genevieve Hunter. You know her?”

“No. Before my time here…” He continued to sift papers in a distracted way. “I’m familiar with her work though. And her reports from Bosnia last year, of course. They were excellent. As good, in their way, as Pascal Lamartine’s photographs…They’d worked together before, I believe?”

“Yes.”

“They made a good team. I said so to Max. Where did I put that damn outline? It was here a second ago… Why didn’t she stay out there and continue working with him?”

“I really wouldn’t know.”

“Someone mentioned…She’s been ill, I gather?”

“Not really. No. She’s fine now anyway.”

“Oh, I must have misunderstood. Max said…” He did not complete the sentence. Lindsay ignored the prompt. McGuire was well informed; if he knew about Gini’s illness—and few people did—then Max had been gossiping. Clearly he and Max were far closer friends than she had realized.

It was then, when she was trying to figure out what in hell else Max might have told him, that McGuire sprang his surprise. He finally found the outline and tossed it back across his desk.

“Fine,” he said.

Lindsay stared at him. “Fine? You mean you’re happy with it?”

“You’re the fashion editor.” He shrugged. “If you have to use that damn Markov, use him. Feature the shows you select. If you could bring yourself to put the knife in just occasionally—that would be nice.”

“You have no suggestions? I’m surprised.”

“No. The collections are your domain. I wouldn’t dream of interfering. After all, I can’t tell a Lacroix from a Saint Laurent.”

Damn Max,
Lindsay thought, catching the glint of amusement in McGuire’s green eyes. Her conversation had been reported back.

“I’m glad you’ve learned your limitations.” Lindsay pushed back her chair, intent on a fast exit.

“There is just one other thing,” McGuire said.

Lindsay turned back in surprise. McGuire had picked up that green file, she saw, a heavy green file, tied with tape.

“That suit you’re wearing—it’s a Cazarès, isn’t it?”

Lindsay gave him a venomous look. “Yes, as it happens. It is.”

“Have you met Cazarès ever? Interviewed her?”

Lindsay looked at him uncertainly. She was unsure if the question sprang from ignorance or guile.

“No,” she replied. “I haven’t. And as you probably know, no journalist has. Cazarès doesn’t appear in public, except at the close of her shows. And she doesn’t give interviews, ever, to anyone. She’s virtually a recluse.”

“A beautiful recluse, I gather.”

“She’s certainly that.”

“But Jean Lazare, on the other hand—he does talk to the press?”

“To safe journalists. Friends of his. People who won’t ask awkward questions about Cazarès, yes, he does. I wouldn’t describe the process as an interview, but he does give an audience occasionally.”

“Could you swing an audience with him?”

“If I wanted one, which I don’t. Probably. Yes.”

“Try. See if you can get to him while you’re in Paris.”

Lindsay gave McGuire a puzzled look.

“Why? It’s pointless. If he did see me, I wouldn’t get anything usable. Sure, I’d like to know if the rumors are true—wouldn’t we all? I’d like to know if Maria Cazarès really did start cracking up five years ago. I’d
love
to know how much of the collection she actually designs these days. Everyone would like the answers to those questions…”

“So ask them. Ask Lazare. Why not?”

“Several reasons,” Lindsay snapped. “In the first place, I wouldn’t dare—and if I did, my feet wouldn’t touch the floor, I’d be banned from all Cazarès shows so fast. Secondly, I told you—it’s pointless. Lazare has a set text for interviews: Maria Cazarès is a genius. His function is to protect her from the intrusions of the herd. That’s it.”

“And to run a multimillion-dollar company. Let’s not forget that.”

“Sure. Which he does with ruthless efficiency. He’d talk about that quite willingly. He’d discuss their ready-to-wear lines, their cosmetics, their perfumes. He’d talk statistics and turn on the charm. Waste of time. I already know the statistics. Cazarès has the best PR department of any Paris couture house. I’ve heard it all before, all right?”

“Have you? Are you sure?”

Lindsay was about to make a tart reply, then paused. McGuire’s emerald-green eyes were regarding her sharply, and there was a sudden edge in his voice. She hesitated, sensed unspoken reprimand, then shrugged.

“Okay. I exaggerate. I haven’t heard it all—nor has anyone else. There are mysteries about Lazare, and Cazarès, obviously. They go way back…”

“I’d say so, yes.” McGuire glanced down at the folder. “Speaking as a non-expert, that is. Where they came from, how they met, how Lazare made his first fortune, the exact nature of their relationship now, why Lazare was trying to unload the company last year—”

“Was
rumored
to be trying to unload,” Lindsay interjected.

“Why, this year, Lazare has changed his mind, is sitting tight. Just a few minor things like that. Nothing to concern the fashion rat-pack too seriously…” McGuire gave her a small green glance.

“Of course,” he continued, “fashion editors don’t function like other journalists, do they? I’m learning that. They don’t ask awkward questions. They don’t investigate the industry they’re reporting. They attend the collections, coo at their friends, shut down the small sections of their brains still capable of operating, ooh and aah over hemlines, and experience ecstasy. Over a skirt. Or a jacket. Or a hat…”

“Just a minute,” Lindsay said.

“What they’re looking at,” McGuire went on imperturbably, “bears no relationship to the lives of ninety-nine percent of ordinary women. It won’t even affect the way those women dress. It’s frivolous, obscenely, expensively insulting to the female sex…”

“Could I speak?”

“… But their reports provide, of course, free publicity twice a year for a highly profitable industry. And the fashion journalists go right along with that. They help promote the product no matter how crass, how foolish, how damned
unwearable
that product is. That used to puzzle me. Why lie? Why extol this nonsense year after year? I’m learning, of course. They can’t criticize. They don’t
dare
to criticize. If they did, they’d risk losing their precious invitations, their prestigious seats in the front row. Do you sit in the front row, by any chance, Lindsay?”

He turned his cool green gaze in her direction. Lindsay dug her nails deep in her palms.

“Yes,” she said. “I do. It took me ten damn years to get there, and I report what I see a whole lot better than I would from ten rows back.”

“I’m sure you do,” McGuire said. “Where I grew up, they used to say that if you supped with the devil, you should use a long spoon. But I’m sure that wouldn’t apply in this case. After all, if you wrote what you actually thought—if you pointed out, for instance, that the Cazarès collections had become uninspired, lackluster, what would it achieve? You’d be banned.”

He quoted her words back at her with the most charming of smiles. Lindsay, who had once possessed a fierce temper but had learned to control it, counted to ten and inhaled calming, counted yoga breaths. Bog-Irish idiot, she said to herself. Prig. Preacher. Insufferable, smug, overbearing, rude…She hesitated. She was honest enough to admit there was considerable truth in what he said, and furious enough to have no intention of admitting that fact.

“Perhaps it would help, Rowland,” she began finally, her tone excessively polite, “if I explained to you some of the realities of my job. I go to the collections to report clothes. To report
trends.
I look at cut and color and fabric and line. I’m expert at that. It helps that clothes interest me. I like clothes. So do the hundreds of thousands of women who read my pages every week. The female readers this paper needs. The ones who gladden the hearts of the ad agencies, Rowland, the agencies that buy space in this paper, and help pay your salary as well as mine.”

“I’m aware of the economics of this industry, thank you,” McGuire put in.

Lindsay fought down a rising urge to lean across his desk and slap him.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Take a look at your features output, Rowland, before you preach. Last Saturday, for instance. You ran a long piece on Chechnya, and a piece on the Clintons…”

“So?”

“You
also
ran a report in the car column on the new Aston-Martin, a piece on an exclusive Thai beach resort under travel, and a comparison of fifteen brands of virgin olive oil in the food column, the first
sentence
of which was so damn pompous and pretentious, it made me choke. You allowed that ghastly girl who reviews restaurants for you—a ghastly girl
you
brought on to this paper—to devote an entire column to some damn fancy restaurant outside Oxford, where she and her latest boyfriend had just blown nearly two hundred pounds of your department’s budget. On lunch. That’s not frivolous? That’s not obscene? Come on, Rowland. Don’t give me this shit.”

There was a silence. Grandes dames, Lindsay thought, would not have used that last epithet. Too bad, she thought. She now felt much better. No regrets. McGuire, she noted, had colored. But if her remarks had struck home, he recovered quickly. He gave her a brief glinting glance, then—to her annoyance—laughed.