Southern Ruby (7 page)

‘There are plenty of men who would love to have a pretty girl like you for a wife,' Uncle Rex said, not jovially as he usually would have but with a tone of desperation. ‘Don't restrict yourself to the Creole community, even if your mother tells you to. There are plenty of fine men out there — you just have to find the right one.'

He tipped his hat and hurried off. It was the strangest conversation I'd ever had with him.

I went straight home to give the medicine to Maman, then I sat on the gallery for a while, mulling over our money problems. Everyone was telling me that a man was my ticket out of genteel poverty, but if I married, I hoped it would be for love not money. For me, work was the obvious solution. Why then did things have to be so darn complicated? Taking control of one's destiny seemed like a fine characteristic to me, but in Creole society a woman working was akin to walking the slippery road to hell. I had to work but I had to hide it, and that made most of the jobs I could apply for out of the question.

Mae brought me a cup of tea, and I sipped it while watching people going about their business on Royal Street. A young woman holding a flag on a stick caught my eye. A group of tourists — smartly dressed in twin-sets, tweed suits and two-toned saddle shoes — was following her. Tour groups were a common sight in the French Quarter, but something about this guide caught my attention. Then I recognised her: she was the architecture student I'd spoken to outside Tulane University. Out of curiosity, I went downstairs and joined the group.

‘This is an excellent example of a Creole cottage, built in 1793,' she said, pointing to a building behind her. ‘Note the
steeply pitched roof and the dormer windows, and the tall shuttered doors designed to increase the airflow or keep out the heat.'

Next she led the group to look at the matching red-brick Pontalba Buildings on either side of Jackson Square, and explained that they'd been commissioned by Micaela Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba, an aristocrat and a real estate developer.

‘Baroness de Pontalba was known as a shrewd and vivacious woman with an excellent head for business,' the girl told us. ‘These two buildings were the most ambitious of their kind at that time in America, and the Paris-influenced cast-iron grillework came to define the aesthetic of the buildings in the French Quarter from then on, giving the area its uniquely feminine character.'

The story of Baroness de Pontalba was one of Maman's favourites to tell. A Spanish Creole born in the late 1700s, she was placed into an arranged marriage with her French cousin Célestin, who plotted with his father to get their hands on her fortune, which the Baroness's mother had been astute enough to protect when her daughter moved to Paris. Frustrated by their efforts to break her down, Célestin's father shot the Baroness four times before committing suicide. She survived, and obtained a legal separation from her husband so that she could return to New Orleans to develop property there. Although Maman was fascinated by the savvy Creole aristocrat, she didn't relate her independence to our lives at all. Maman would think that being described as a ‘shrewd and vivacious woman with an excellent head for business' was an insult. But I admired Baroness de Pontalba. She had verve — and that's what I needed too.

The girl finished her tour by thanking the group, then added, ‘In the 1930s, the city wanted to demolish the French Quarter and replace it with modern housing, but a small group of citizens saw the historic value of the area and fought that decision. I'm
proud to say that my mother was one of those preservationists and I'm delighted to have been able to show you around the area today.'

The tourists gave her a round of applause and slipped money into her hand before dispersing. It looked like she'd made more in tips alone than I had in a day at the ice cream parlour.

‘Do you do this every day?' I asked the girl, fascinated by what I'd seen.

‘No, only a couple of times a week to help with my college tuition,' she replied, putting the money into her purse.

‘It seems like a good job,' I said. ‘You're making good money for an hour's work.'

She smiled sheepishly. ‘I do all right, but my friend Sally, who does the ghost tours, makes more than me. The haunted tours draw bigger crowds.'

‘Really?' I replied, my mind ticking over. Perhaps I could be a guide? I didn't know much about architecture, but I did know a lot about the history of New Orleans, thanks to Maman.

‘She's doing one early this evening if you're interested,' the girl said. ‘It starts outside the Cabildo at six o'clock.'

I waited for Sally outside the museum on Jackson Square. In the fading light the place was eerie and I recalled Maman's stories about rebellious slaves being hanged in the square as a warning to others. What an atmospheric place for a ghost tour! I was surprised then when a mousy-looking girl in a V-neck sweater and cigarette pants arrived, sold tickets to the dozen or so people who had gathered for the tour, and led us directly to Saint Louis Cathedral without mentioning the square itself.

She showed us an alley that was supposed to be haunted by Père Antoine, once the pastor of the church. ‘But he's a very benign ghost,' she said in a high-pitched, strained voice. ‘He
came to the city in 1774 as part of the Spanish Inquisition, but never got into the spirit of things.'

She continued from building to building around the Quarter, telling us stories in a mediocre way.
This girl is awful
, I thought. If her Northern accent didn't give her away, you could tell by the flat way she told stories that she wasn't from New Orleans.

When she came to the intersection of Royal and St Ann streets, she rattled off the story of ‘Julie's Ghost' in the same monotone she'd used for all her other stories. Julie had been an exotic octoroon whose protector had given her a beautiful home with servants and fine jewellery, but it wasn't enough for her. After her protector's wife died and Julie was pregnant with his child, she pestered him to make her his legal wife. One freezing and damp December night, when her protector grew tired of her begging, he joked that if she stayed on the roof naked until the dawn, he would marry her. Knowing her love of comfort, her protector never expected Julie to take his dare seriously and he spent the evening playing cards and drinking with friends in the parlour. When he retired in the early hours of the morning, he couldn't find Julie anywhere. Terrified, he climbed to the roof and found her frozen and naked corpse. The protector was shattered and, driven to drink, died the following year.

It was a heartbreaking story, but instead of being moved the tourists glanced at their watches. Sally had missed an opportunity to milk the tale for all it was worth. Maman would have told the story with tears choking her voice. Any decent storyteller would have!

The tour came to an end and, despite looking less than satisfied, the tourists tipped Sally with notes not coins. Those people hadn't signed up for a ghost tour like that, I thought, as I walked home. If they were interested in facts, they would have taken a historical or architectural tour. Instead they'd wanted to hear about objects moving by themselves, lights turning on and off, mysterious footsteps, and transparent figures appearing
at the foot of a bed. They'd chosen a ghost tour because they wanted to be scared out of their wits. I knew I could run a better tour than Sally had.

The following day, I jotted down ideas for ghosts who would interest tourists. There was no use taking them around the French Quarter, where I would be recognised by people who knew me and Maman, so I settled on the Garden District, which had plenty of grand and spooky homes of its own. It was a hundred and fifty years since the French had sold New Orleans to the Americans, and yet we Creoles still maintained our superior attitude towards them. The Americans had been industrious people who worked around the clock and lived prudently in order to make money. We were people who valued leisure and frivolity above all other pursuits. These days, with a sick mother to think about and the de Villeray fortune a thing of the past, perhaps a bit of prudence wasn't a bad thing.

As I gathered material for my stories, I decided that I would need to dress the part of a ghost tour guide. My pale skin and dark hair would work well for an ‘otherworldly' style; all I had to do was wear dark red lipstick and a black velvet dress Maman kept in the back of her wardrobe and hadn't worn for years.

I had business cards printed up and left them at luxury hotels like the Roosevelt and the Monteleone:

Selene Moon

Specialist Ghost Tour Guide — The Garden District

Three o'clock, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons

Corner of St Charles Avenue and Washington Avenue

‘Oh!' said Mae, shaking her head when she learned what I was up to. ‘No good can come of this, Miss Ruby. No good at all! All those stories you're making up will catch you out one day. Besides, you don't even have a licence from the city.'

‘Don't be so pessimistic,' I told her. ‘Of course good will come of it. Wouldn't you like to see Maman better? Wouldn't you like a washing machine?'

To my delight, on my first day twenty tourists turned up at the intersection of St Charles and Washington avenues. As they stepped off the streetcar, I sized them up. The women's eyes sparkled with excitement, but the men stood with folded arms, aloof and superior.

I asked the tourists to say where they were from. A couple from New York seemed like hard nuts, while two sisters from Wisconsin shifted from foot to foot eagerly. The others — Texans, Washingtonians and Californians — were difficult to read. It was a varied group to deal with, and I knew that like in a game of vingt-et-un I had to get the upper hand quickly.

‘Ghosts are everywhere in this city,' I told them before we embarked on the tour. ‘We New Orleanians talk about them as naturally as you might speak about the weather or the price of oil. They are part of the fabric of the city.' I leaned forward and added in a whisper, ‘The wraiths of New Orleans will sit with you in a restaurant and all you'll feel is a chill on your arm; they'll stand behind you while you watch the parades and whisper in your ear; they'll ride with you on the streetcar and the only clue will be a breeze playing in your hair. Most of the time these spirits are harmless but there are evil ones too — those who have performed grim and ghastly deeds in their earthly life and want to take you back into hell with them. That is why you must stick with me at all times.' I touched the talisman of herbs I wore around my neck and affected a shiver.

The man from New York shot a glance over his shoulder. He didn't look so smug now. A woman from San Francisco giggled nervously, while the couple from Washington DC huddled closer to each other. I had them in my grasp.

I walked towards Coliseum Street and the tourists hurried along behind me, no-one wanting to be left behind lest one
of ‘the strange shapes that float around the walls of Lafayette Cemetery' tapped them on the shoulder and whispered to them, ‘as they are known to do'.

Although it was the first tour I'd ever run, I made up supernatural experiences that had occurred on my earlier tours. I told them that once when I was walking with a group down Coliseum Street, a little girl joined the tourists and took the hand of one of the women. She bent down to ask the girl where she'd come from, but when the girl opened her mouth to speak water poured out of it. Then she faded away.

‘Good Lord!' cried a woman from Texas, gripping onto her husband's arm.

‘That was the ghost of a little girl who drowned in a pond when the Garden District was part of the Livaudais plantation,' I told the group. ‘Some say she left the house and disappeared into the sugar cane, called by the spirits of slaves who'd been mistreated on the plantation and wanted their revenge.'

I stroked my talisman again and this time the woman from New York swallowed hard. I could see that the group was entranced — except for two young men from Los Angeles. No matter how many stories I told about dim shapes, apparitions of men in Civil War uniforms, eerie violin music or mysterious carriages that disappeared at dawn, they didn't look as fascinated as the others.
They're used to the dramatics of Hollywood
, I thought.