Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  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 dr
ink, 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.