The dinner was excellent, but Tracy was too nervous to eat. They discussed banking and politics and the distressing state of the world, and it was all very impersonal and polite. No one actually said aloud, ‘You trapped our son into marriage.’ In all fairness, Tracy thought, they have every right to be concerned about the woman their son marries. One day Charles will own the firm, and it’s important that he have the right wife. And Tracy promised herself, He will have.
Charles gently took her hand which had been twisting the napkin under the table and smiled and gave a small wink. Tracy’s heart soared.
‘Tracy and I prefer a small wedding,’ Charles said, ‘and afterwards –’
‘Nonsense,’ Mrs Stanhope interrupted. ‘Our family does not have small weddings, Charles. There will be dozens of friends who will want to see you married.’ She looked over at Tracy, evaluating her figure. ‘Perhaps we should see that the wedding invitations are sent at once.’ And as an afterthought, ‘That is, if that’s acceptable to you?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ There was going to be a wedding. Why did I even doubt it?
Mrs Stanhope said, ‘Some of the guests will be coming from abroad. I’ll make arrangements for them to stay here at the house.’
Mr Stanhope asked, ‘Have you decided where you’re going on your honeymoon?’
Charles smiled. ‘That’s privileged information, Father.’ He gave Tracy’s hand a squeeze.
‘How long a honeymoon are you planning?’ Mrs Stanhope enquired.
‘About fifty years,’ Charles replied. And Tracy adored him for it.
After dinner they moved into the library for brandy, and Tracy looked around at the lovely old oak-panelled room with its shelves of leather-bound volumes, the two Corots, a small Copley, and a Reynolds. It would not have mattered to her if Charles had no money at all, but she admitted to herself that this was going to be a very pleasant way to live.
It was almost midnight when Charles drove her back to her small flat off Fairmount Park.
‘I hope the evening wasn’t too difficult for you, Tracy. Mother and Father can be a bit stiff sometimes.’
‘Oh, no, they were lovely,’ Tracy lied.
She was exhausted from the tension of the evening, but when they reached the door of her flat, she asked, ‘Are you going to come in, Charles?’ She needed to have him hold her in his arms. She wanted him to say, ‘I love you, darling. No one in this world will ever keep us apart.’
He said, ‘Afraid not tonight. I’ve got a heavy morning.’
Tracy concealed her disappointment. ‘Of course. I understand, darling.’
‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’ He gave her a brief kiss, and she watched him disappear down the hallway.
The flat was ablaze and the insistent sound of loud fire bells crashed abruptly through the silence. Tracy jerked upright in her bed, groggy with sleep, sniffing for smoke in the darkened room The ringing continued, and she slowly became aware that it was the telephone. The bedside clock read 2:30 A.M. Her first panicky thought was that something had happened to Charles. She snatched up the phone. ‘Hello?’
A distant male voice asked, ‘Tracy Whitney?’
She hesitated. If this was an obscene phone call… ‘Who is this?’
‘This is Lieutenant Miller of the New Orleans Police Department. Is this Tracy Whitney?’
‘Yes.’ Her heart began to pound.
‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you.’
Her hand clenched around the phone.
‘It’s about your mother.’
‘Has – has Mother been in some kind of accident?’
‘She’s dead, Miss Whitney.’
‘No!’ It was a scream. This was an obscene phone call. Some crank trying to frighten her. There was nothing wrong with her mother. Her mother was alive. I love you very, very much, Tracy.
‘I hate to break it to you this way,’ the voice said.
It was real. It was a nightmare, but it was happening. She could not speak. Her mind and her tongue were frozen.
The lieutenant’s voice was saying, ‘Hello … ? Miss Whitney? Hello … ?’
‘I’ll be on the first plane.’
She sat in the tiny kitchen of her flat thinking about her mother. It was impossible that she was dead. She had always been so vibrant, so alive. They had had such a close and loving relationship. From the time Tracy was a small girl, she had been able to go to her mother with her problems, to discuss school and boys and, later, men. When Tracy’s father had died, many overtures had been made by people who wanted to buy the business. They had offered Doris Whitney enough money so that she could have lived well for the rest of her life, but she had stubbornly refused to sell. ‘Your father built up this business. I can’t throw away all his hard work.’ And she had kept the business flourishing.
Oh, Mother, Tracy thought. I love you so much. You’ll never meet Charles, and you’ll never see your grandchildren, and she began to weep.
She made a cup of coffee and let it grow cold while she sat in the dark. Tracy wanted desperately to call Charles and tell him what had happened, to have him at her side. She looked at the kitchen clock. It was 3:30 A.M. She did not want to awaken him; she would telephone him from New Orleans. She wondered whether this would affect their wedding plans, and instantly felt guilty at the thought. How could she even think of herself at a time like this? Lieutenant Miller had said, ‘When you get here, grab a taxi and come to police headquarters.’ Why police headquarters? Why? What had happened?
Standing in the crowded New Orleans airport waiting for her suitcase, surrounded by pushing, impatient travellers, Tracy felt suffocated. She tried to move close to the baggage carousel, but no one would let her through. She was becoming increasingly nervous, dreading what she would have to face in a little while. She kept trying to tell herself that it was all some kind of mistake, but the words kept reverberating in her head: I’m afraid I have bad news for you … She’s dead, Miss Whitney … I hate to break it to you this way …
When Tracy finally retrieved her suitcase, she got into a taxi and repeated the address the lieutenant had given her: ‘Seven fifteen South Broad Street, please.’
The driver grinned at her in the rearview mirror. ‘Fuzzville, huh?’
No conversation. Not now. Tracy’s mind was too filled with turmoil.
The taxi headed east towards the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway. The driver chattered on. ‘Come here for the big show, miss?’
She had no idea what he was talking about, but she thought, No. I came here for death. She was aware of the drone of the driver’s voice, but she did not hear the words. She sat stiffly in her seat, oblivious to the familiar surroundings that sped past. It was only as they approached the French Quarter that Tracy became conscious of the growing noise. It was the sound of a mob gone mad, rioters yelling some ancient berserk litany.
‘Far as I can take you,’ the driver informed her.
And then Tracy looked up and saw it. It was an incredible sight. There were hundreds of thousands of shouting people, wearing masks, disguised as dragons and giant alligators and pagan gods, filling the streets and pavements ahead with a wild cacophony of sound. It was an insane explosion of bodies and music and floats and dancing.
‘Better get out before they turn my cab over,’