by Lynn Shurr
“My housekeeper, Birdie Jones. Birdie, this is our guest, Miss Suzanne Hudson.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Suzanne.” Birdie smiled broadly, nodded, and wrapped her hands in her white apron.
“I want to take her around the front first. Please serve coffee in the parlor today.”
“Sure thing, Mr. George.” Birdie, chuckling and shaking her head at the change in routine, went back into the kitchen.
The front of the house on its bluff overlooked Bayou Brun. Now, this was a vista tourists would pay to photograph. Ancient magnolias stretched their tips toward the clouds and brushed the earth with their lower leaves. They formed irregular clumps on a neatly mowed lawn. Obviously, these trees had been singled out when someone cleared the woody ridge in 1842. No one path led down to the river. No matter which way a visitor went, a tree blocked the course and caused a veering to the left or right. Some of the small groves, dense enough to hide behind or in, must have provided spots for delicious lover’s games once upon a time.
“On late spring nights, the whole yard smells of lemon from the blooms.”
Caught up in a vision of uniformed cavaliers and crinolined ladies playing hide-and-seek in the fragrant, moonlit arbors, Suzanne glanced expectantly up at George and waited for his next words.
“Makes me sneeze,” he said. Turning toward the façade of Magnolia Hill, he continued, “This column has some Yankee bullet holes. There’s half a cannon ball lodged in another. That should interest the guests. How they managed a gunboat barrage from the bayou with all the trees in the way, I don’t know, but the Jeffersons surrendered fairly quickly, moved into town, and let the Yankees take over.”
“I thought Magnolia Hill had been in your family for over a hundred years.”
“It has, but old Captain Jefferson built the place exactly where the bayou becomes too shallow to navigate a steamboat. That way he had the convenience of not having to cart his goods up the hill from town, and he avoided the heat and mosquitoes down in the bottoms. The St. Juliens weren’t much until after the war, only French farmers with a hoard of kids and six or seven slaves. Eli Jefferson built most of the town except for the Roadhouse and the St. Julien place.”
“He must have been a remarkable man.”
“My mother thought so.”
She examined the eight rounded brick pillars, carefully stuccoed, smoothed, and whitewashed to resemble marble. The brickwork showed through where the minié balls and cannon shot lodged. The columns had been left unpatched for posterity as if to say, “Look what the Damn Yankees did to our home.”
She’d studied enough in advance on the area to realize with most of the traffic coming by river, the house put its best face toward the water and turned its back on the muddy roads to the rear. Unfortunately, the university library contained about three sentences on Port Jefferson, and it had been too late to borrow any material. Having no intelligent comment to make on the Battle of Magnolia Hill, she felt as if her ignorance about the project showed as lavishly as a petticoat when they crossed the flagstone terrace.
She grew more comfortable in the front hall. The mansion had the typical two rooms deep, three rooms wide with a central hall pattern. Being more English than French in style, the important rooms for entertaining sat on the first level, not the second, and tall ceiling to floor windows took the place of French doors.
Birdie had placed the coffee service in the parlor to the right. A settee of rosewood and red velvet and a pair of matching, tufted petticoat chairs that appeared to be real John Belter faced each other across a square of Brussels carpet. Blocking the way to the seating, a massive round table reared up on legs snaking out from the central pedestal like the paws of an angry dragon. A single crystal bowl full of wax fruit ornamented its center.
Between the tall windows with their view of the magnolias sat that Victorian curiosity, a tête-à-tête, with its joined seats facing in opposite directions so that courting couples could share intimacies and strain their necks at the same time without snuggling too close. On the mantel, a gilt clock chimed four under its glass case. To one side of the fireplace stood a fire screen that appeared to be made of eighteenth century needlework. Charmed by its miniscule scene of women in panniered dresses strolling in a formal garden, Suzanne went to it immediately.
“That was Mother’s favorite piece.”
George nodded toward a portrait reigning over the room. Not an oil painting but a nicely executed, hand-tinted photograph of a woman who had height and grandeur, even on film. She wore her light blonde hair pulled back from her face. Her steely gray eyes had a piercing quality that her son’s eyes lacked. She did not smile. She did not lean against the rococo chair on which one hand rested with its red, polished nails pointing downward. The lady wore a strapless ball gown ornamented with pearls around her neck, but Suzanne had the feeling Mrs. Jacques St. Julien could have posed naked with the same icy and elegant repose. She wouldn’t have called the mistress of Magnolia Hill gangling or horsey at all, more like imposing and imperial. Suzanne chose to sit down for coffee with her back to the disturbing portrait.
Birdie bustled in to pour and offer around a silver plate full of lemon squares dusted with powdered sugar. George sat huddled over the delicate porcelain cup lost in his large hands and said not a word.
“So, tell me about your mother. I understood from Dr. Dumont that she collected many of the antiques in the house.”
“Yes. She was Virginia Lee of Richmond before she came here. She liked to say she descended directly from both George Washington and Robert E. Lee.”
“George Washington was childless. You must mean the Custis family.”
Having just put both of her socially graceless feet in her mouth by correcting the boss, she took a gulp of the rich and very strong coffee. Coughing, she casually added milk and hoped Mr. St. Julien would let her comment and the fact that she couldn’t handle her coffee slide.
“Of course Washington had no offspring. She meant the Custis family, but it was one of Mother’s little jokes on people who didn’t know American history as she did. Supposedly, Martha Washington did the fire screen.”
“Don’t tell me the W in your name stands for Washington?” Suzanne quipped lightly.
“It does.” George neither smiled nor cringed. He simply seemed fatigued by remarks about his name. “Mother kept a card file on each piece in her room. You will need to verify her information, write a brief history of the house, and organize her material into printable book format. The sooner I start making money off this place, the better.”
“I see.”
“Birdie has your room ready if you want to rest before dinner. I can have her bring a tray if you would rather relax this evening.”
“I think that would be very nice. It’s been a long day.”
She would get a good rest and be more on her game tomorrow. No worries that George St. Julien might ask her out to dance all night.
The guest room had a canopied bed with a rising sun headboard, a small writing desk, and a French armoire that opened to reveal a television set on the shelf above the drawers. A chaise on which a lady could languish sat at the foot of the bed.
Birdie brought up a homey meal of heavily-seasoned fried catfish, double cornbread, greens, and a square of freshly baked bread pudding dotted with raisins for dessert. The maid apologized, saying she was not a fancy cook, that the fancy cook had gone when Miss Virginia got sick. Suzanne assured her all the food looked delicious, and it was, damn the fat and cholesterol count. The only portion she didn’t care for was the mess of greens, spinach-like and larded with bacon grease, but as the only vegetable on the tray, she sucked it down.
Settling in for the evening, Suzanne figured with any luck she could complete the project in three months, stay in her room at night, and never have to drink coffee with boring George Washington St. Julien again. Wasn’t it just her luck to travel all this way to find another man even stiffer and stuffier than Paul?
Chapter Two
Suzanne’s story
As it turned out, Suzanne did not have to avoid awkward conversations with George Washington St. Julien. The man, slightly absurd like his name, always left for his office on the main street of Port Jefferson before 8:00 a.m., lunched downtown in the home of his great-aunts or at the Roadhouse—Port Jefferson remaining undiscovered by Burger King or Kentucky Fried Chicken—and seldom returned home before 7:00 p.m., if at all. An accountant, a licensed CPA, the small stack of business cards he left on the hall table proclaimed to visitors who never arrived. He handled the books for all the businesses in Port Jefferson large enough to need the service, but had to travel frequently into Lafayette to audit the larger accounts that paid the bills at Magnolia Hill. Often, he stayed overnight.
She learned all of this and more within two days of her arrival from Birdie, whose only birdlike qualities were her tendencies to sing and nibble all day long. She wore the headset of the old Sony Walkman stowed in her apron pocket like a headband as she cleaned her way around Magnolia Hill. Birdie had a strong voice and an amazing repertoire. Best at doing the blues, she could handle Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and old spirituals equally well. Rap, in her opinion, was trash music. On days when her batteries ran low and she could not get the all black R & B music station out of Baton Rouge, Birdie sang a cappella.
On her first morning at the Hill, Suzanne woke to a powerful and sultry version of “Stormy Weather,” instead of to her little, plastic travel alarm sitting incongruously on a massive marble and mahogany nightstand. Birdie sang as she made up “Mr. Georgie’s” room across the hall. The song was apt. Outside, a warm, heavy rain fell, churning the bayou a deeper shade of coffee brown. A baritone rumble of thunder accompanied her song.
Ashamed to be sleeping late on the first day on the job, Suzanne put on a robe and stumbled toward the bathroom where Virginia Lee’s hands had recreated turn-of-the-nineteenth-century luxury. The walls wainscoted in cherry wood matched the tank and seat of the commode. A crystal pull chain on the water closet made it a pleasure to flush, and the marble pedestal sink was almost too lovely for toothpaste spit. With the deep ceramic tub encased in more cherry, clearly no showers were intended to be taken to wet the cabbage rose-patterned wallpaper. A concession to practicality had been made in the tile floor, mostly hidden by a bath mat resembling a small oriental rug. As impressive in its own way as the parlor, this bathroom was not place where one would want to be ill for fear of spoiling all the pretty things.
Suzanne hesitantly used a crystal tumbler from the nickel-plated rack by the sink to rinse her mouth after brushing her teeth and winced at the white ring left on the expensive glass. Birdie knocked politely.
“Sorry to wake you, Miss Suzanne.”
“It’s okay. I overslept.”
“Here’s clean towels. Mr. Georgie just has coffee and biscuits most mornings, but I’m about to do a little cooking for myself. Can I make you some grits and eggs, maybe a little sausage?”
“No, thanks. Coffee and biscuits are enough for me. I’ll be right down.”
She did come down fairly quickly as there wasn’t much reason to primp over hair and make-up and clothes. Doing the minimum to be presentable, Suzanne passed down the mahogany staircase and enjoyed the silky feel of the waxed, wooden handrail from first step to last. A place had been set at one of the twelve chairs around the immense table in the formal dining room. Beneath the chandelier with its tiers of electrified candles, her plate with two large baking soda biscuits, a pat of butter, a jam caddy set to one side, and a single steaming cup of coffee sat seeming slightly ridiculous in the grand setting.
Suzanne took a seat between two empty chairs and looked across three empty chairs toward a massive mirrored and crested Renaissance revival sideboard with a pink marble top. Even though she loathed watching herself chew in the mirror, she did appreciate the fact that the twelve crested and leather-seated chairs and the matching glass cabinet were a rare find, probably original to the house. She would certainly find out when she tackled Mrs. St. Julien’s files. Ignoring the wonderful sounds and scents of frying coming from the kitchen, she wiped her lips on a real linen napkin and started for the room belonging to the Mistress of Magnolia Hill. George had neglected to show her its location, and she hated to interrupt Birdie’s breakfast, but finding the place would not be hard.
Designed on simple neo-classical principles, Magnolia Hill was capacious but not ostentatious. Unlike the multi-roomed piles constructed by wealthy late Victorians, Eli Jefferson deemed five bedrooms upstairs, two parlors and a large dining room to be enough. Of course, the place once had a detached kitchen, rooms for servants under the eaves, and outbuildings aplenty, most of them now gone except for an old stable visible from her side window. The upstairs room that had possibly been a nursery housed the elegant bath. Her room and George’s room faced the gallery and the bayou beyond. Mrs. St. Julien’s sleeping quarters had to be either to the left or the right of the bath. On the left, she guessed, by George’s room.
As soon as Suzanne turned the brass doorknob and walked into a place of classical revival elegance, she knew she’d found the place. Virginia St. Julien favored the style of Louis XVI, one-hundred-fifty-year-old imitations of a two-hundred-fifty-year-old style. The upholstery on the gilded chairs matched the yellow brocade covering the walls. A fanciful brass bedstead bedecked with curlicues and cherubs sat between the two windows overlooking the parking area and the long row of young magnolias.
Suzanne went directly to the spindly-legged secretary near a corner étagère holding an extensive collection of porcelain figurines. Virginia Lee kept her notes in very functional metal index card boxes, one for each room including the kitchen. Each item in the house had a card of its own with a brief description, a possible date, and the provenance of the piece. She found a small key in the back of the first box clearly labeled “Safety Deposit—Docs.”
With records so disappointingly complete, Suzanne believed she would find nothing much new to discover about the collection. Mrs. St. Julien had attempted to create a room for each one of the rapidly changing Victorian styles. Personally, she objected to the concept. A better plan would have been to take the house back to a definite date in its history and furnish the place accordingly if she intended to give tours. As for making Magnolia Hill a home to live in and raise a family, Suzanne would have furnished it with a few heirlooms, comfortable favorite furniture, and some contemporary additions. But if George wanted a Victorian showcase to lure the public, he was nearly there.
Taking the appropriate file along, she inspected the master bedroom of the late Jacques St. Julien. His wife had decorated his personal space in that rare and currently unpopular style of furnishings known as Gothic revival. Virginia Lee must have gone to some trouble to assemble the half-tester bed with enough pointed arches in its makeup to satisfy a cardinal. A rather ghastly carved bureau retained a set of silver-backed men’s brushes. Several rigid side chairs capped with crosses sat against the walls like worshippers in the cathedral-like gloom of the dark and heavily draped room. A pope might have lain down here to die and felt perfectly at rest. Given Jacques’ romantic reputation, Suzanne appreciated the irony.
Examining George’s room gave her a different feeling. She opened the door with hesitation. It was one thing to enter the museum quality room of a deceased man and another to barge into the space where a living man sleeps. Unlike the dead rooms in the rest of the house, this area held bits and pieces of George St. Julien’s life.
The simple cottage style bed with its spooled maple head and footboard looked too short for the length of the man who slept under its quilts. A faded university sweatshirt drooped over the golden pattern on a Hitchcock chair. Stenciled linoleum covered the floor as if this were the one place Virginia Lee despaired of keeping clean. Instead of the period prints or sconces holding knick-knacks adorning the walls in other rooms, George had tacked a few school and sports pennants to the paneling. They�
�d faded with age.
In one corner, a baby’s crib in the style now called Jenny Lind overflowed with dusty basketballs and dirty sneakers. The plain pine dresser held mementoes: a few old sports trophies surmounted by leaping men balancing balls; a formal wedding photo of a tall, slim bride with a wreath of orange blossoms crowning her veil and her groom, a short, broad-chested naval officer with his hat worn at the same jaunty angle as his crooked smile; a small snapshot of a little boy wearing thick, round glasses and balancing precariously on one of the rococo petticoat chairs in the parlor. The child’s forehead wrinkled with anxiety. Was this the picture of the solemn son Dr. Dumont had seen? She left the room quickly to rid herself of the feeling of invading her employer’s privacy, as if she had been looking into his personal records without consent.
Bringing the boxes to the rococo parlor, Suzanne began her inventory there. In the evening, she’d enter the confirmed information on her laptop computer for easier reference and indexing. The settee and side chairs proved to be absolutely real John Belter, see documentation folder #1, and score one for the art history major.
Around noon, Birdie called her guest to lunch. Suzanne found a ham po-boy sandwich large enough for two and a glass of iced tea occupying the lonely space on the dining room table. She took her meal into the parlor and continued to crawl under and squeeze behind furniture looking for identifying marks. Toward six while she worked on the dining room, Birdie came to set a place for dinner.
“I swear ya’ll as bad as Mr. Georgie when it comes to eating. Most nights I have to wrap his meal in foil and put it in the oven. Now you just leave off working and sit down a minute.”
“Honestly, I hate to eat alone.”
“Well, Mr. Georgie won’t be back ’til late.” She hesitated a moment. “Come on in the kitchen, then. I was having a little something before I go home to my own.”
Suzanne followed Birdie through the connecting door and down two steps into the kitchen, somehow not raised to the same level when attached to the house after cooking became a less smoky and hazardous duty. A steaming bowl that looked like a chipped serving piece already occupied one of the places at a small oak table, its leaves folded down to make it fit under the square of window where the last light of a gloomy day faded.