Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  “I know it’s hurtful. It still has to be said.” He gave her a long, steady, and regretful look, then moved toward the door. “I have a child, Gini. I know what that involves. If you have requirements for any future father of your children, doesn’t it occur to you that I have requirements also? I know what I would want in any future wife, in the mother of any children I might have. This time—” He hesitated. “This time I’d want to be sure that there was love on both sides. The kind of love that didn’t waver, that would endure. Responsibility, fidelity—all those things.” His voice became bitter. “Above all, like most men, I would want to be totally sure that any child my wife gave birth to was actually mine.” He paused. “You can be very self-absorbed, Gini. Even so, I imagine you can understand that.”

  The final reproach was gently made; Gini had never felt such shame. With a low cry she held out her hand to him.

  “Pascal, wait Whatever I did—I do love you. I still love you. I can’t bear to hear you say these terrible things. I wish none of this had happened. I’d give anything to put the clock back. But you could trust me. I’d never—you could come to trust me again. Please—we could move beyond this eventually, you said we could.”

  “That was an hour ago. How strange.” He looked at her blindly, then glanced down at his watch. “Yes, an hour. It feels like a lifetime. In that hour you’ve told me how passionately you wanted my child, and I’ll never forget your face when you said that.” He paused. “But it didn’t prevent your going to bed with a virtual stranger, did it? You still let him cover up for you, and lie to my face—” His voice broke. “Is that love, Gini? It isn’t any love I recognize. I would have died rather than do that to you. I—look, it’s better if I just go. I can’t bear any more of this. You’ve changed, Gini.” He lifted her face up to his. “You used to be so—open. So direct. And now—you equivocate. You shift ground. You claim one truth, then deny it with your next breath. What did that to you? The war? My absence? A man you scarcely know? Tell me the truth.”

  Gini looked for a long time at his face.

  “All three,” she answered at last in a low voice.

  She could see that the admission hurt him as much as it hurt her to make. His face contracted; then he turned away.

  “That’s honest, at least. Thank you for that.” He moved to the door again, half opened it, then looked back.

  “I could have kissed you then. I wanted to very much. Did you know that?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “Better not to weaken in that particular way.” He shrugged. “If one’s going to do this, better to do it cleanly, don’t you think? I have to catch that plane. I’ll have moved my things out of the apartment by the time you get back. Gini, good-bye.”

  And with that, just as she had expected, he left. The door closed quietly behind him. She heard his feet descend the staircase. Running first to the door, and then to the window, she saw him emerge from the entrance below. He crossed the narrow street, crossed the small park beyond at a fast pace. She watched his tall, determined figure as he receded into the distance. On the quay beyond the park he hailed a taxi and climbed into it. Indeed absolute; he never once looked back.

  With tears blurring her vision, Gini ran to the bed. She picked up the letters she had written to him and pressed them tight against her chest. She felt cut to the heart by his words; it pained her deeply that he should have left these letters, these talismans. She stared at the walls of the room, with their remorseless patternings of ruins, of shepherds and nymphs. Shame and self-reproach and uncertainty washed through her mind. She thought: I could go after him—and then she felt it, welling inside her, a resistance, even a rebellion, that lay deep inside herself.

  She was almost thirty years old. Her years of fertility were shortening month by month. That desire for a child—had Pascal understood, truly understood, when she spoke to him of that? He might; he might not. Oh, decide, she said to herself, beginning to pace the room, trying to force herself to think. And then it occurred to her as it had—if she were truthful—once during the previous night, that she might have conceived now, that even now, within her, infinitely small, were the beginnings of new life.

  That possibility terrified her. Standing suddenly still, she realized that whatever decisions her mind came to, her body might already have made for her an irrevocable choice. Her fear deepened, and then, stealing along her veins, came a furtive exultation, an ill-advised joy; she tried to examine the idea of maternity—and maternity under these circumstances—she tried to see its implications, but they were too huge and her mind could not grapple with them. She watched herself take refuge in a certain fatalism, that woman’s defense.

  Wait, she said to herself, wait—because no decision could be made until she was certain, and meanwhile neither Pascal nor Rowland need be involved; she felt, obscurely, that she had forfeited that right.

  With that realization, that here essentially she was alone, some equilibrium returned. Clutching Pascal’s letters, she moved to the window and looked out at the Seine, at that slanting view of Notre Dame; from this partial viewpoint it resembled the bow of a great ship.

  She thought of Anneke’s mother, and a promise made to herself. She ran out of the room, down the stairs, and into the street. Work, she thought, hastening back to the St. Vincent.

  Room 810 was empty. Rowland McGuire, adhering to his schedule, had already left.

  Chapter 16

  MORTE D’UNE LEGENDE READ the headline on the newspaper delivered to Lindsay’s room that morning. Beneath it was the famous Beaton photograph of a laughing, short-haired young woman, her hands half obscuring her face. Lindsay began to translate the long article.

  Her French was serviceable, but not extensive: she could not cope with the lyricism, the orotundity here. She could gather that the facts repeated the authorized version of Cazarès’s life. Beyond that, she could see that Maria Cazarès was already being turned into a symbol, before she was twenty-four hours dead.

  But a symbol of what? She struggled with the vocabulary, the syntax. Several things, it seemed: of modern womanhood, of modern women, whom she had freed, the writer claimed, redefining their images of themselves. Of France, in that she embodied the French virtues of elegance, discernment, and chic. By the final paragraph, the claims seemed to have swelled, as if the male writer were drunk on his own prose. L’éternelle feminine, Lindsay read, trying to construe a clutch of dense phrases. She had the gist, she thought. Maria Cazarès, une femme solitaire, unique, et mystérieuse… yes, yes, she understood that… was the something something and the very embodiment of the eternal feminine—whatever that was, Lindsay thought with sudden impatience. Giving up, she tossed the paper aside.

  How typical, how predictable, she thought, that having decided Cazarès was an enigma, a female enigma, they should give the task of decoding her to a man. Lindsay, who had slept badly and still felt restless, moved to the window and looked out. It was still early; she could see the day would not be clear. The sky was low, the clouds scudding fast. Wind whipped the branches of the trees and rippled the Seine. The air was watery, gray, promising rain and then more rain: a day of half-light and mist.

  This hotel room was beginning to feel confining. She made some time pass, first by telephoning home and speaking to Tom, and then by sending a second fax to her contact at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, who had not yet replied to her query of the previous day. Then, having hesitated some time, and finally having decided to risk it, she called Rowland’s room, since it was now nine in the morning and need not, therefore, be too embarrassing if it was Gini who picked up the phone.

  She let the number ring, but there was no answer. Then, still feeling on edge, she went down to the room the Correspondent was using as their headquarters. Pixie, dressed in a garment that appeared to be made of knitted string, was already there. Lindsay picked up her pass for the Cazarès press conference that morning, checked on a few other details, was about to leave, then paused.
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  “You made sure there were passes for Rowland and Gini?”

  Pixie gave a small smile.

  “Oh, sure. I had them sent up to their room last night.” Then, after a delicate pause: “Clever of McGuire to get that room. I wept, pleaded, offered to sell the management my body—and I had no luck at all.”

  “So? Rowland has more heft than you do,” Lindsay said.

  Pixie’s smile broadened. Lindsay knew what that smile meant: it meant gossip, speculation, the spirals of office intrigue.

  “Well,” Pixie said, “he’s that kind of man. Not easy to refuse.”

  “What’s that supposed to imply?”

  “—Though I thought it was pretty odd. Him sharing that room with her. I mean, he’d fired her only a few hours before.”

  “What? Rowland fired Gini?” Lindsay shook her head. “No, Pixie. I saw them both last night. You’re wrong.”

  “Oh, everyone saw them last night,” Pixie said in a negligent tone. “After all, this place is stuffed to the gills with reporters, what can you expect? They were seen going out late last night. They were seen when they returned. One look at her face, apparently—there was what you might call ribaldry in the bar.”

  “What absolute rubbish,” Lindsay said sharply. “I was with them both later. They were working, that’s all.”

  “They were? For how long?”

  “Look, Pixie, I was up in the room with them a good two hours, maybe more. We were all three of us working. And you might think about doing some work right now.”

  She moved to the door, hoping this lie would quell the gossip, then hesitated. “What made you think Rowland fired Gini?”

  “I don’t think. I know. Tony called me from London late last night. McGuire was on the telephone, in his office, with the door closed, but Tony overheard. He said you couldn’t help overhearing, McGuire was so mad, you could have heard him in Piccadilly Circus.”

  Lindsay sighed: Tony was Pixie’s latest boyfriend, and devoted. He worked in a very junior capacity in the features department, in an office across the corridor from Rowland McGuire’s.

  “Well, I’m sorry, Pixie,” she said, “but for once Tony has it wrong. I told you—I was with them. Gini certainly has not been fired.”

  “Oh, she got reinstated.” Pixie gave her a sidelong glance. “I mean, that was obvious to everyone in the lobby last night. But he did fire her. And he didn’t mince his words. She’d screwed up in Amsterdam, Tony says, and McGuire was going wild. Then he started in on Pascal Lamartine. Tony said he’d have died if he’d been on the receiving end. Tony said that was the worst he’d ever heard him. Then he slammed down the phone, he’d fired her by then, several times, and then he came storming out of his office with his green eyes flashing fire. Then he left, and before he left he went suddenly quiet and—” Pixie gave a sigh. “I just wish I’d been there, that’s all. I told you he was gorgeous. Can you imagine how totally gorgeous he’d be in a rage? I love tempestuous men…”

  “Pixie, for God’s sake!”

  “Well, I do. Show me the woman who doesn’t. I’m just honest, that’s all. Just the thought of McGuire in a rage makes my nipples go hard.”

  “That’s enough, Pixie.”

  “It’s his eyes, mainly…” Pixie, always irrepressible, gave a small shiver of delight. “And that black hair. And the voice. And the muscles. And the fact that he’s so tall. Also I hear he’s incredible in bed. I mean like seriously incredible, so you can hardly walk the next day. Walk? I can tell you, I wouldn’t be walking anywhere, I’d just be lying there, waiting for more…”

  “Pixie, stop this right now. I’m not interested in these fantasies.”

  “They’re not fantasies. All this is well documented. There’s this girl I know…”

  “Pixie!”

  “She scores them, all right? And her top mark is twenty-five. She gives them marks for invention, stamina, intuition, size, tendresse, output, concern—”

  “Intuition? Who is this girl?”

  “And you know what McGuire scored? One hundred. He went right off the charts. She was floored. Also, and this is corroborated, because she checked, and it wasn’t just her—also, he has these rules…”

  “Rules?” Lindsay said faintly.

  “Yes.” Pixie lowered her voice to a more confidential tone. “Like—before, right—he always makes the situation crystal clear. It’s sex, maybe friendship—and that’s all. The relationship isn’t going to have any future, there’s going to be no commitments on either side. Those are his terms. And he sticks to them too. I mean, not even any endearments, no ‘darlings,’ no personal revelations of any kind. This girl said she didn’t know one thing more about him when he ended it than she did the day it began. It drove her totally wild.”

  Pixie gave Lindsay a long, significant look. Lindsay had a brief battle with her own most vulgar instincts; the instincts won.

  “How long did she—”

  “Two months. I gather the all-time record is two and a half. This was some years back, just after he returned from Washington. She said he went through women like a machine. She said that when it began, when he spelled out his statute of limitations, as it were—well it was fatal. She fell in love with him before he’d finished the first sentence. And then, the next morning, when she got out of bed and, like I say, she could hardly stand, she made herself this promise. She was determined, but determined, to be the one who changed his mind.”

  “Well, she clearly didn’t succeed—” Lindsay said.

  “She tried really hard,” Pixie continued, launched now, and speaking fast. “She thought that if she managed to hide the fact that she was totally crazy about him, she had a chance. I mean, she’s having the most incredible sex of her life, she figures there must be progress of some kind. Only there wasn’t.” Pixie sighed. “And the instant he realized how she felt—well, one night she was so overcome she just told him—that was it. Curtains. Kind but immovable. The end.”

  Lindsay had begun to move toward the door.

  “She tried everything,” Pixie went on, and Lindsay stopped. “She was getting so desperate, she was so madly in love, she hit on this really crazy plan. She’d get pregnant. She was sure, if she could just do that, she’d change his mind. So she stopped taking the pill and she never said a word. Only, of course, that didn’t work either. Condoms.” Pixie gave Lindsay a significant look. “Always. Because he’s careful as well as wild. And no way could she get around that—believe me, she’s inventive, and she tried.”

  Lindsay had blushed crimson. She turned back from the door. “Pixie, stop this at once. We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we just shouldn’t. I don’t expect you to understand. Let’s put it down to the generation gap. This is someone’s private life, someone we both know and like.”

  “I thought you didn’t like McGuire? You said he was arrogant.”

  “Never mind. Like him or dislike him, it makes no difference. That kind of gossip always ends up causing trouble, and pain. I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want you passing this kind of rumor around. If there are rumors, those rumors are untrue…”

  “If you say so.” Pixie shrugged.

  “I mean it, Pixie. Just keep your speculations to yourself, and don’t damned well encourage them in other people. I assume you have work to get on with—because if you haven’t, there’s something badly wrong.”

  Pixie gave her a look of astonishment.

  “Everything’s under control, Lindsay.”

  “Just make sure I get the transparencies from the Chanel and Gaultier shows by nine tonight. Make sure Markov’s there, at his hotel, before you bike his invitations around to him, and remember, Pixie, any hitches, one fuckup, and you’re unemployed.”

  Pixie had colored. “I’m good at my job,” she protested. “This is going to run like clockwork.”

  “It had better,” Lindsay said, walking out, and just mana
ging to prevent herself from slamming the door. She knew Pixie would probably be making some face at it once it was closed—and she was, of course, fully justified. Lindsay’s cheeks were still bright scarlet. She quickly left the hotel, went out into mists and soft rain, and took in deep breaths of damp air.

  She was furious with herself. How could she reprimand Pixie for gossiping, when she had just been listening avidly to gossip herself? How could she then compound her own felony by picking on Pixie’s work, when that work was always excellent? She had just set Pixie an appalling example, and if she had succeeded in stemming the tide of gossip about Rowland and Gini, she would not have done so for long. She glanced back at the hotel. The lobby had been seething with journalists, with TV crews. In that kind of hothouse atmosphere, gossip bred faster than germs.

  She felt dirtied by her own curiosity, sickened by the kind of details people bandied around. Beyond and behind such feelings were others.

  Deeply troubled, Lindsay crossed the quay and leaned over the balustrade, looking down at the Seine. Prior to the conversation with Pixie, she had been trying to convince herself that her own instincts the previous night had been wrong. Now she felt doubly unsure. One aspect of Pixie’s report worried her, and that was the description of Rowland’s firing Gini, and the manner in which that action was performed.

  Lindsay knew just how vulnerable Gini was to criticism from those she liked or admired. It was a legacy, of course, from her father, from all those years when she had tried to prove her worth, and win his affection, and failed.

  Lindsay had never dared to say this to Gini, but she had always believed that this inheritance had been a strong contributing factor in her attraction to Pascal Lamartine. Lindsay might not have heard all the details of Gini’s original involvement with Pascal, for Gini was reticent, but she had heard the story of how Gini had first met him, in that press bar in Beirut, and it seemed to her there was an obvious aspect to that story to which Gini, and presumably Pascal, were totally blind.