Forever Read Free Page B

the middle-aged ones longed vainly, the elderly ones sighed sadly. Beau’s lovers came from New York. From Los Angeles. From London. From Paris: picked up and dropped with such rapidity that it was rumoured he never even remembered their names.
    This was the man Gussie was convinced would one day marry her. The one for whom she scorned all other dates, preferring to remain day after day in the grandeur of St Michel, her father’s magnificent home in the Garden District of New Orleans, with no other companion but a maid.
    Mae frowned as she regarded her friend sitting broodingly on the porch swing. She had failed to stop Gussie’s obsession, and Gussie’s behaviour had not gone unnoticed elsewhere. She had overheard her own mother saying tartly that Gussie was no different from her grandmother Gallière.
    Their grandmothers. Why was it that no one would ever talk about their grandmothers? Mae’s mother could not be coaxed, would change the subject the moment Mae entered the room. All that Mae knew about her own grandmother was that she lived the life of a recluse in a crumbling, tumble-down plantation deep in the bayous in Cajun country. Mae had heard it said that Leila Derbigny had been a beauty in her time and that Henry Jefferson had been fortunate in winning her for a bride. Mae still thought her grandmother beautiful in her grandmother’s own strange and eccentric way. But visits to her were discouraged – had always been discouraged. As for Augusta’s grandmother, she was never spoken of. Not even in the Lafayette household. All that Gussie herself knew was that, within a year of Chantel marrying Julius Lafayette and then giving birth to Charles Lafayette, Chantel had committed suicide, drowning herself in one of the deserted, desolate lakes that lay deep in the Louisiana forests.
    Had Chantel been mad? Unbalanced? A normal, healthy woman would never have chosen such a death, and Chantel Lafayette had been scarcely a woman. Only twenty whèn she had waded into the alligator-haunted water, deeper and deeper, her wheat-gold hair fanning around her as she embraced death.
    Mae shivered. Was Gussie unbalanced? Certainly her obsession with Beau Clay – nearly a year old now – had become alarming in its fixation.
    â€˜Austin Merriweather has asked me to the Carlton dance, I know Bradley wants to take you. Why don’t we make a foursome? It would be fun.’
    Gussie swung to and fro, fanning her face as the heat throbbed in the air, rising in waves over St Michel’s lushly tended lawns.
    â€˜If I go to the Carlton dance, I’ll go with Beau.’
    â€˜But Beau isn’t even aware of your existence!’ Mae cried exasperatedly. ‘You’re wasting your life, Gussie. Throwing it away on a dream.’
    Gussie’s eyes sparked fire. ‘I’m waiting for my life to begin, Mae! And it will. I’m seventeen now – nearly eighteen. I can go to the same places Beau goes. The same parties. The same clubs. Just another few months and I’ll be Mrs Beau Clay. I will. I will !’ Feverishly she pummelled the cushions on the swing.
    Mae stared at her and the nape of her neck prickled. The Gussie before her was not the Gussie she had grown up with. There was nothing more to say. She left awkwardly. She couldn’t confide in Austin. She certainly couldn’t confide in her mother. Her mother would say Gussie was mad: as Gussie’s grandmother had been. She couldn’t confide in Gussie’s father, Charles Lafayette. If he knew for one second that his daughter was obsessed with Beau Clay, he would send her to Europe and Mae would have lost her best friend.
    Miserably she drove her Mercury down St Michel’s long drive. She would go and see Eden Alexander. Eden had enough common sense to restore her spirit and put everything into perspective.
    Eden regarded Mae with amusement. ‘Gussie is no madder than you or me. Let’s take