Lovers and Liars Trilogy (141 page)

“You see that usher there?” He gestured to one of the Cazarès assistants. “He has three seats for us, center aisle, fourth row. Claim yours now. I’ll join you in a minute.”

“Three seats—and they’re keeping them? Rowland, how on earth—?”

“Ways and means.” He gave a tight smile. “Just go.”

Lindsay did so. The assistant in question could not have shown more solicitude had she been the editor of American
Vogue.
Lindsay looked around her, mystified, then saw that the editors of American
Vogue
and
Harper’s Bazaar
and French
Vogue
and
Paris Match
and
Hello!
were in the same row. She was greeted with raised eyebrows and little quick air kisses. Five minutes later Rowland joined her. As he sat down, he said: “Have you seen Gini this morning? Did she come back to the hotel?”

“No. I didn’t know she’d gone out.”

“She had some research to do.” He turned, craning his neck, and looked back at the doors. “Maybe she was held up…”

Lindsay said nothing. He radiated tension. She looked at his pale, averted face; she looked down at his strong, capable hands, which were half clenched, and she could sense deep perturbation. Something had obviously happened, something well beyond the scenario she had been painting. She felt ashamed at her own triviality; the last residual influences of Pixie’s stories fell away.

If Gini was coming, she was too late now. They were closing the doors at the back of the room. At the front, in the pit below the dais, the phalanx of photographers and TV crews stirred.

Lindsay said gently, “Do you always wear black, Rowland, on occasions like this?”

“What?” He glanced toward her, then away.

“Most people don’t bother. Not anymore. Not even for funerals, these days.”

“I don’t really know. I wasn’t thinking about it particularly.” He turned back to look at the rear doors again. “Habit, maybe. Upbringing. When I was a small child—in Ireland—people dress for death. It’s a mark of respect—why?”

“No reason.” Lindsay was touched. “I like it. It’s old-fashioned. But it feels right—that’s all.”

He was not even listening. He rose and removed his overcoat, which he tossed down on the floor. As he rose, Lindsay saw women’s heads turn. She glanced up: Rowland’s dark, untamable hair fell across his forehead; the black suit, the white shirt, emphasized his height and his looks. Just along the row from her she heard a sharp American whisper:
Darling, who’s that perfectly divine man?
Rowland had evidently sensed none of this. “Damn,” he said, sitting down again as a group of somber-suited, impeccable Cazarès executives came onto the dais in front of them. “Damn. It’s too late now. And I need to talk to her…”

“You have a lead?” Lindsay said in a noncommittal tone: it might be a lead, she supposed, but that was not the first thing that sprang to mind.

“What? Yes. I do. And it’ll have to wait now.”

He turned back to look at the dais. Lindsay tensed. Jean Lazare had just entered, and as he did so, walking at a quick pace to the lectern, silence fell in the room.

The tribute he gave was brief, and he made it four times: first in French, then in English, then in Spanish, and finally in German. While he spoke the room was hushed, the only sound the soft whirr of cameras. When he ended, and only when he ended, came the flashing of scores of camera bulbs.

Lindsay could follow some but not all of the French; Rowland’s comprehension, she thought, was better than her own. He listened with total concentration; once or twice he frowned. As Lazare switched to English, he appeared to continue to listen, but Lindsay was unsure if he actually did so. She was straining hard to catch every phrase, so her attention was diverted, but she could sense that although Rowland kept his eyes on Lazare, he scarcely saw him. His true attention seemed elsewhere, perhaps back in the French version of Lazare’s statement.

“Yesterday afternoon,” Lazare began, “as you will know, Maria Cazarès suffered a heart attack. She was at the home of her former maid, to whom she was devoted. I take comfort from the fact that when this happened, so suddenly, she was not alone, but with a friend. I should like to take this opportunity now to thank the doctors of the St. Étienne hospital, who made every effort to revive her, and who gave her every possible care. Unfortunately, their efforts were not successful. Mademoiselle Cazarès died a short while after she arrived there. I was by her side.”

He paused. “I wish to announce that as would have been the wish of Maria Cazarès herself, her couture collection will be shown tomorrow, exactly as planned. It will include three designs, her last designs, drawn by her the day before she died. Maria Cazarès was born an artist, and was an artist to the end.

“Tomorrow morning, at Cazarès, there will be a spirit of joy, not sadness.” He paused again, on a note that was one of command. “We will be celebrating one of the most extraordinary women of our time, and certainly the most extraordinary, gifted, and visionary woman I have ever known. She was a couturière of wit, of originality, of passion. She was a woman who, as she once said, understood both the art and the science of clothes…”

As he said this, Lindsay gave Rowland a sharp glance.

“I know,” he said in a quiet voice. “Quiet. Listen to the next part.”

Lazare looked around the hushed room, that sea of upturned faces, then continued, his voice with its strange harsh accent perfectly level, unemotional, and controlled.

“It is not for me to write her obituary. But I should like to say this: I knew Maria Cazarès and worked closely with her for many, many years. In that time I never knew her to be other than vigilant, devoted to her professional task. This involved, as is always the case for any woman, many sacrifices. Maria Cazarès did not marry; she did not have a child. It has been suggested in the past, by those who did not know her, and were ill informed, that this choice was easily made. That was not so. Her dedication was not achieved without both sacrifice and struggle, and in this context, only a French term will serve: like all great artists, Maria Cazarès was, in respect of her art, a
religieuse.

“She was also”—he made his first tiny hesitation—“a woman who brought joy to people’s hearts. In her private life she showed candor, understanding, grace, courage, and generosity. She had, and always retained, a childlike directness and simplicity, and she remained to the end unseduced by fame.

“In her professional life”—his voice gained strength now—“she was that rarity, a woman designing for women, while almost all the other practitioners of her art were men. She redefined the ways in which modern women chose to present themselves to the world; in changing their image, she perhaps helped to alter their conception of themselves. I leave that question to be decided by others, but I will say this: it was an education for a man to work with her, and to know her gave me insights I value greatly, into a world in which the instincts of the body and the heart are as valid and as important as the deliberations of the mind—let us use shorthand: into the female world.”

He looked down—although he was speaking without notes—then raised his head, standing formally, stiffly, almost as if to attention, Lindsay thought.

“I pay my last respects now, and I will use one last French phrase. For the world, Maria Cazarès was an artist: for me she was, and always will be—the
amie de mon coeur
.”

He stopped, his dark eyes resting on the body of the hall. Lindsay felt a tightening of pity and sympathy around her heart. What must it cost him, she thought, to speak in this way, to blend truth and what was surely falsehood so seamlessly? To speak in that level, deliberate, uninflected tone? Lazare, still betraying no emotion, gave the Spanish version of this tribute, and then the German, then turned, and immediately left the stage.

Rowland was on his feet before the executives on the dais had moved. He had Lindsay by the arm, and was leading her quickly down the aisle as the crowd began to move, as murmurs began and a tide of reaction began to swell. Lindsay was surprised by his haste, then understood it: Gini was standing just inside the doors at the very back of the hall.

Lindsay just caught a glimpse of her pale face; she saw Rowland give her a sharp and questioning glance, then he drew them both out into the lobby, into the courtyard, hastening them along and stopping only when they had rounded a corner. He came to a halt in a quiet, narrow side street with a row of apartment buildings opposite, and behind them a high wall.

“You heard?” Rowland said, and Lindsay realized that not only was the question addressed solely to Gini, but that as far as either of them was concerned, she herself was not there.

“Yes.” Gini was backing against the wall; she began speaking fast. “They let me in just as he was reaching the end of the French version. Such control—such extraordinary control. How could he do that? How could he speak in that way? So formally—and he wasn’t even using notes. I—” She broke off, and looked at Lindsay for the first time. “Rowland told me your New Orleans story. I was thinking about it all the way through. I could hear it, under his words, inside his words…”

Lindsay found she could say nothing. She was riveted by Gini’s face. She had recently been hit, and hit hard. Right down the left side of her face, and across the cheekbone, there was a darkening bruise.

She was trying to conceal this, Lindsay observed, by standing so that this side of her face was turned to the wall behind her. The tactic was not succeeding. Rowland was now also looking at the bruise. Lindsay watched his face change, watched him begin on some quick, involuntary movement. Gini, her eyes on his face, lifted her hand, then let it fall.

There was a silence, a silence that seemed to Lindsay to be filled with noise, with a tension that could not be dispersed. Gini began speaking again: she seemed to believe, Lindsay thought, pitying her, that if she just kept speaking, the nature of this moment could be concealed.

“The way he described her character,” she began. “Then. He said something about candor…”

“Candor, understanding, grace, courage, and generosity.” Rowland’s eyes never left Gini’s face. “Those were the words.”

“Yes. And
religieuse.
Something about insights that she gave him… It was right at the end. And he evaded the issue of time, of how long he’d known her.”

“Many, many years,” Rowland said. “Time was immaterial. He made that clear with his final words. Her dying made no difference. She remained the—”

“Are they issuing the text?” Gini interrupted him very fast. “I wasn’t taking notes. I meant to, but I wasn’t…”

“They’ll issue it. They’re probably issuing it now. We don’t need it. I can remember the salient parts.”

Gini gave a low sigh; her hands clenched and unclenched.

Lindsay looked from one to the other and stepped back quietly. She knew that she had no place here.

She began to detach herself as quietly, quickly, and plausibly as she could. She said that she had to meet Markov, which was true; she said she had to see him before that afternoon’s Chanel show. She could, she knew, have announced that she was to embark for Mars: neither Gini nor Rowland would have noticed. They were locked into a silent communication that was as voluble as a torrent of words.

She turned and began walking quickly away. At the corner she looked back once. Gini was now standing with her back against the wall, her head bent. Rowland was directly in front of her, his arms either side of her body, his palms pressed against the wall. He was speaking with force.

As Lindsay looked back, he stopped speaking, and Gini slowly raised her head to meet his eyes. Lindsay did not wish to be a spy, or to see any more. She turned the corner, fought her way through the crowd still spilling out from Cazarès, passed for a second time through that babel of tongues, and made her escape fast. She knew what her next task was: she had to eradicate this pain, an actual pain as discernible as a headache, that seemed to have lodged itself around her heart.

How long was it since Lindsay had left them, Gini thought, ten minutes, fifteen? It could have been longer. It could have been much less. Time was refusing to obey its ordinary rules. She turned back to look at Rowland, who was now standing beside her, his face averted, his back against the wall.

He was breathing fast, as if he had been running. She could sense his anger and his agitation in the air.

“I just want to
work,
Rowland,” she said, turning to him and touching his hand. “Please. I may not be capable of anything else—but I am capable of that. I just want to fix my mind on this story. I want to pull the pieces together, and I want to find Mina, above all. You agreed, Rowland, you agreed that we could do that—”

“I know.”

He hesitated, then turned to look at her. Her pale face was upturned to his; he could not bear to look at the bruise. Her lovely eyes were wide with an expression of entreaty. When she looked at him in this way, Rowland felt he could refuse her nothing; he wondered if she realized that. He felt he must be utterly transparent to her: she must know.

“Please, Rowland,” she went on. “I can’t talk to you about this. It wouldn’t be right. You don’t need to be involved. I have to deal with it, come to terms with it in my time and my way. I don’t think I even
could
talk about it. Too much has happened too fast. So—I just want to fix on something relatively simple, relatively clear. A series of steps: this interview, then that one. Please help me do that, Rowland. I ought to be able to do it on my own—but I can’t. Not today. Not now.”

Rowland would have said she was a woman who would never admit weakness; he was immeasurably touched by that confession of weakness now. At that moment he wanted nothing so much as to take her in his arms, but he could see that would be wrong, possibly unfair—and that she was trying to tell him this indirectly.

“Very well.” He moved a little farther away, and Gini, watching him do so, and watching a guarded expression come upon his face, thought: he’s distancing himself.

“I worked after you left.” He was staring past her, along the road. “Since you forbade me to stay with you, or come with you…”