Lindsay closed her eyes. The guilty voice at the back of her mind, always hyperactive, was now starting to jabber about contraceptives, AIDS statistics, and unwanted pregnancies, when she needed to concentrate on McGuire. She looked at her watch, swore, rose, applied some extremely red lipstick, and squirted herself with a super-powerful and unsubtle American scent. She stalked through to her outer office. There, Pixie, her assistant, who was looking forward to this moment, waited until precisely five past ten, then dialed McGuire’s office. She explained in tones of dulcet insolence that Ms. Drummond was in conference, and would be delayed: Lindsay stood over her, making faces, while she did this.
Pixie was nineteen and ambitious. Talented too; her intention was to be editing English Vogue by the time she was thirty, and to take New York by storm by the age of thirty-three. Pixie, a nouveau punk, could always be relied upon to dress originally. This morning she had a diamond in her nose; she was wearing bondage trousers, an African necklace, and a Gaultier top that appeared to be made of shrink-wrap. She had a strong Liverpudlian accent, and she was streetwise. Lindsay used to pretend she had hired her for this last quality; in reality, she had hired her because she liked her, and because Pixie reminded her of her own younger, blithely confident self. Pixie, who often made Lindsay feel old, giggled as she hung up.
“Poor McGuire,” she said. “He’s about to be gutted.”
“Good.”
“Why don’t you like him?” Pixie eyed her. “I think he’s gorgeous myself.”
“He’s a man. An interfering, arrogant man. Watch and learn, Pixie, all right?”
“He can interfere with me anytime. I wish he would.”
“Pixie. Pay attention. Do I look intimidating? How about the suit?”
“The suit’s totally brilliant. Really keen. You want to test me?”
“All right. I’ll give you a clue. It cost five months’ salary. It required a mortgage. A loan from the World Bank.”
“It’s a Cazarès, obviously.” Pixie frowned. “Give me a second. Last year? Spring? Autumn? Yeah—autumn, ’ninety-four. Not the ready-to-wear line…It’s saying ‘couture’ to me…”
“Let’s hope it says the same to McGuire.”
“—but it couldn’t be couture. Not unless you met a millionaire recently…”
“I wish.”
“So it’s the ready-to-wear, but top of the line. I’m looking at the buttons—love the buttons, and the cut of the jacket, on the bias, and the fabric. Cashmere?”
“And silk. What else?”
“The collar?” Pixie began to smile. “The way the collar sort of curves around the neck?”
“Good. Getting warm.”
“Got it. Autumn ’ninety-four. The Signature line. Kate Moss modeled it, in beige, not black. It came out number forty-two.”
“Forty-three. Very good, Pixie. So—am I late enough now? What d’you think?”
Pixie grinned, and consulted her watch.
“Twenty minutes. Give it another five maybe? I mean, if you’re going to be rude, be really rude, right?”
“Exactly.” Lindsay returned the grin.
She gave it ten.
“Have some coffee.” Rowland McGuire lifted his feet off his desk and rose to his full six feet five inches. Lindsay gave him a look of calculated ice, its effects slightly marred by the necessity of looking up.
“If you have time,” she said. “As you know—I’m running late.”
McGuire let this pass with only a brief glance at his watch. “Sit down,” he said over his shoulder. “Sorry about the mess. Just kick those books out of the way. Review copies. All junk.”
Lindsay glared at his broad-shouldered back. She saw that unlike every other man in the building, McGuire seemed capable of making coffee for himself. Another of his ruses, she decided—and one designed to impress. She was certain that had she not been there, a female secretary would have been summoned, one of the clutch of assistants, all new, who sat outside McGuire’s office and trembled at his approach.
Without comment she threaded her way to his desk. Her progress was impeded by stacks of papers, piles of books. In two months McGuire had transformed this department, and its efficiency. Pre-McGuire, the features department had been an amiable place, populated by talented young men who avoided strenuous activity and spent much of the day when not lunching with contacts congratulating themselves on the fact that they had avoided the demands of the newsroom where people were actually required to work. Since the advent of McGuire, these loafers had departed. They had been replaced, Lindsay had noted sourly, by a large number of attractive young women, all of whom were rumored to be ambitious, frighteningly bright—and in love with Rowland McGuire. That morning Lindsay had run the gauntlet of their assessing stares; she had been extremely glad to be wearing the Cazarès suit.
McGuire’s office was equally transformed. Formerly a place of humming modernistic display, all chrome and black wood, it now resembled a scholar’s bolthole circa 1906. McGuire’s state-of-the-art IBM computer was there, it was true, but it was virtually invisible; every surface in the room was piled with papers, magazines, and books. Sitting down by the desk, Lindsay squinted at the titles and was annoyed to see that the pile nearest her consisted of government white papers surmounted by a dog-eared, clearly much-consulted edition of Proust. In French.
She leaned forward and inspected the papers McGuire had been reading when she came in; she could see a large green file, a pile of faxes, and that morning’s edition of the Times, folded back at the crossword. McGuire, it was whispered, completed these crosswords in fifteen minutes flat; she now saw that the insufferable man filled in the answers in ink.
“You must be the only man in London,” she said, “who fills in the Times’s crossword in fountain pen. What happens if you make a mistake?”
“I don’t. Usually,” McGuire said, handing her a cup of coffee. “I’ve always found crosswords quite easy. Even the Times. It’s a quirk. A sort of knack.”
Lindsay gave him a sharp glance. His tone was modest enough. Two months before, when McGuire was first appointed, she might have been deceived by that tone: now she was not. Having given the impression that he was startlingly handsome, pleasant, and too good-natured to last long in this job, McGuire had started firing people. In between felling the dead wood, he had overruled Lindsay’s decisions twice in his first month. To do so once was forgivable. To do so twice was not. Lindsay had wasted no further time in arguments with McGuire, whom she realized she should have distrusted on sight. She went straight over his head, to the editor of the Correspondent, an old friend, Max Flanders.
In Max’s office, over a large whiskey at the end of the day, she had made a further discovery. McGuire, who had seemed so uninterested in power plays, had gotten there first.
“Look, Max,” she had said. “Who’s running the fashion department here? I thought it was me. It says it’s me on my contract. Now I discover it’s an Adonis with attitude. Do something, Max. I turn to you in desperation. Get this man off my back.”
“Strong words,” said Max, and lit a cigarette.
“Max, he knows nothing about fashion at all. Why in hell is he interfering? Since when did I have to answer to features? Is he empire-building, or what?”
“Certainly not. Rowland doesn’t operate that way. Though I have to admit, I sometimes think he’s being groomed for my job.”
Max, once a wild young man, and one whose ascent to editorial power had occurred at vertiginous speed, now cultivated a bland manner. He wore conservative three-piece suits, as befitted the editor of a powerful conservative newspaper. He had recently acquired spectacles Lindsay was certain he did not need. Max was thirty-six, masquerading as fifty-six, when on duty at least. He now suppressed a smile, adjusted the superfluous horn-rims, and gave Lindsay an owlish look.
“Max—am I getting through to you? This man pulled some Steve Markov pictures it took me three months to set up. This man didn’t like the model, di
dn’t like the pictures, didn’t like the clothes. The same man who did these things, Max, has never heard of Christian Lacroix. He admitted it, for God’s sake! I doubt he’s ever heard of Saint Laurent.”
“That’s what Rowland said? That he’d never heard of Lacroix?”
“He didn’t even blush.”
Max sighed. He lowered his eyes to his desk. “You don’t want to believe everything Rowland says, Lindsay. He likes teasing people. I expect he was sending you up.”
The remark did not improve Lindsay’s temper.
“He’s a clown,” she said. “A damned devious one too, I’m beginning to think.”
“Not exactly. Not really,” Max replied in a mild way. “He has a starred First from Balliol. Devious, on the other hand—well, he’s extremely determined, so there you could be right.”
“Fine. And his Oxford degree was in fashion, was it?”
“Come on, Lindsay. This is boring. Classics.”
“Okay. I’m impressed. He can read Latin and Greek in the original. The fact remains, he knows less about fashion than my cat. So who’s running the fashion department, Max? Me, or some Oxford pedant with a power complex?”
“Wrong on three counts.” Max gave her a smug look. “You shouldn’t associate him just with Oxford. He’s half Irish, a farmer’s son. He isn’t a pedant, he’s fun. He’s a very experienced and much-sought-after journalist whom I brought onto this paper to clean up the features department. Which he’s done, in under two months. And he doesn’t have a power complex. He just likes getting things done his way. As do you, of course.”
“Oh my God. I’m beginning to understand. How old is he?”
“Thirty-fiveish.”
“Your age, more or less. You’re contemporaries, in other words. Did you know him at Oxford, Max?”
“Yes,” Max said, still mildly. “I did, actually. We shared digs our second year. We shared a motorbike. We admired the same woman, only Rowland cut me out. We—”
“Give me strength.” Lindsay finished her whiskey in one gulp. She could see how much Max was enjoying this. She stood up.
“Right. I won’t mention old boy networks, Max…”
“Far too cheap.”
“I won’t even mention male bonding. I get the message.”
“I didn’t like those Markov pictures either. Or the model. She looked half-starved. I don’t like these waifs.”
“I was overruled, and I stay overruled, right? That devious bastard’s lobbied you. I’ve been screwed.”
“Just in these two instances. Let’s say I listened to McGuire’s arguments. He thinks we could improve our fashion coverage if we took a stronger, more journalistic stance. Lindsay, he’s very bright, you know. He’s also bloody good. His views prevailed. Next time…”
“Next time his views prevail, Max, I resign. It’s the collections this month. I won’t have McGuire interfering. I won’t work like this.”
Max beamed at this threat. “Nonsense,” he replied. “You’d never resign. You love this job. You love this newspaper. You love me—I’m a good friend, and an exceptionally good editor…”
“You were once.”
“And you’ll love Rowland McGuire, given time. Ask around, Lindsay. Everyone loves him. Except the people he’s fired, of course.”
Not me, Lindsay thought now as McGuire returned to his desk. Had she disliked him and distrusted him less, she might have been prepared to admit that Pixie’s description of him was apt. McGuire had the kind of looks that stopped traffic—and Lindsay had to admit that whatever other faults he had, vanity was not one of them; McGuire seemed genuinely unaware of his good looks. He certainly did nothing to enhance them. He had a lean, muscular build that even the aged and crumpled tweed suits he tended to wear could not entirely disguise. He had wild black hair, worn slightly long, and badly cut. He had green eyes, an amused, lazy, and faintly mocking expression: he was rumored to have the temper of a fiend, but Lindsay had never witnessed this.
Had she not known him as she now did, she might have imagined him striding across fields through Celtic mist. She could have seen him being capable in an outdoors sort of way, performing vaguely rural masculine acts such as ministering to a sick animal or chopping wood. She could see him being brave; she could imagine him being fearless on a mountainside; she could envisage him as a soldier or a poet or vet: what she could not see was a man who would function effectively in a modern newspaper office—yet clearly he did so, so this was her mistake.
Now she looked at him narrowly. The apparent kindness, the occasional gentleness of manner: they were deceptive, she thought, deliberately designed to disarm and charm: they merely ensured that McGuire, in the competitive world of newspapers, disabled his opponents and got to the finish line first.
“You’re going down to the country today, I hear?” McGuire now said. “You’re staying the weekend with Max?”
Lindsay jumped. Lost in contemplation of McGuire’s ruthlessness, possible and already proved, she was forgetting the grande dame gambit. She straightened, and gave him a polar look.
“Yes, I am.”
“Give my love to Mrs. Max. And all the mini-Maxes.” He smiled. “Four children. I used to think it was excessive. Now I think—it’s nice. I gather there’s a fifth on the way.”
“Yes. It’s due in two months.”
“Maybe it’ll be a girl this time. Max would like that.”
“No doubt,” Lindsay replied, ignoring the almost imperceptible Irish lilt that had crept into his voice. Both it and the smile were attractive—and McGuire knew it.
“Look, can we make a start?” She leaned forward. “I have a lot of work to do before I leave. I’m finalizing the arrangements for Paris. Did you see the outline I sent you?”
McGuire shifted papers on his desk. “You’re going down to Max’s with a friend, I think Max said…”
“Yes. Gini. Genevieve Hunter. You know her?”
“No. Before my time here…” He continued to sift papers in a distracted way. “I’m familiar with her work though. And her reports from Bosnia last year, of course. They were excellent. As good, in their way, as Pascal Lamartine’s photographs…They’d worked together before, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“They made a good team. I said so to Max. Where did I put that damn outline? It was here a second ago… Why didn’t she stay out there and continue working with him?”
“I really wouldn’t know.”
“Someone mentioned…She’s been ill, I gather?”
“Not really. No. She’s fine now anyway.”
“Oh, I must have misunderstood. Max said…” He did not complete the sentence. Lindsay ignored the prompt. McGuire was well informed; if he knew about Gini’s illness—and few people did—then Max had been gossiping. Clearly he and Max were far closer friends than she had realized.
It was then, when she was trying to figure out what in hell else Max might have told him, that McGuire sprang his surprise. He finally found the outline and tossed it back across his desk.
“Fine,” he said.
Lindsay stared at him. “Fine? You mean you’re happy with it?”
“You’re the fashion editor.” He shrugged. “If you have to use that damn Markov, use him. Feature the shows you select. If you could bring yourself to put the knife in just occasionally—that would be nice.”
“You have no suggestions? I’m surprised.”
“No. The collections are your domain. I wouldn’t dream of interfering. After all, I can’t tell a Lacroix from a Saint Laurent.”
Damn Max, Lindsay thought, catching the glint of amusement in McGuire’s green eyes. Her conversation had been reported back.
“I’m glad you’ve learned your limitations.” Lindsay pushed back her chair, intent on a fast exit.
“There is just one other thing,” McGuire said.
Lindsay turned back in surprise. McGuire had picked up that green file, she saw, a heavy green file, tied with tape.
“That suit you’re wearing—it’s a Cazarès, isn’t it?”
Lindsay gave him a venomous look. “Yes, as it happens. It is.”
“Have you met Cazarès ever? Interviewed her?”
Lindsay looked at him uncertainly. She was unsure if the question sprang from ignorance or guile.
“No,” she replied. “I haven’t. And as you probably know, no journalist has. Cazarès doesn’t appear in public, except at the close of her shows. And she doesn’t give interviews, ever, to anyone. She’s virtually a recluse.”
“A beautiful recluse, I gather.”
“She’s certainly that.”
“But Jean Lazare, on the other hand—he does talk to the press?”
“To safe journalists. Friends of his. People who won’t ask awkward questions about Cazarès, yes, he does. I wouldn’t describe the process as an interview, but he does give an audience occasionally.”
“Could you swing an audience with him?”
“If I wanted one, which I don’t. Probably. Yes.”
“Try. See if you can get to him while you’re in Paris.”
Lindsay gave McGuire a puzzled look.
“Why? It’s pointless. If he did see me, I wouldn’t get anything usable. Sure, I’d like to know if the rumors are true—wouldn’t we all? I’d like to know if Maria Cazarès really did start cracking up five years ago. I’d love to know how much of the collection she actually designs these days. Everyone would like the answers to those questions…”
“So ask them. Ask Lazare. Why not?”
“Several reasons,” Lindsay snapped. “In the first place, I wouldn’t dare—and if I did, my feet wouldn’t touch the floor, I’d be banned from all Cazarès shows so fast. Secondly, I told you—it’s pointless. Lazare has a set text for interviews: Maria Cazarès is a genius. His function is to protect her from the intrusions of the herd. That’s it.”
“And to run a multimillion-dollar company. Let’s not forget that.”
“Sure. Which he does with ruthless efficiency. He’d talk about that quite willingly. He’d discuss their ready-to-wear lines, their cosmetics, their perfumes. He’d talk statistics and turn on the charm. Waste of time. I already know the statistics. Cazarès has the best PR department of any Paris couture house. I’ve heard it all before, all right?”