Lovers and Liars Trilogy (123 page)

“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.”