The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,269

or Deirdre knew more than a few words of any foreign language.

Our investigators observed on numerous occasions that the speech of the twentieth-century Mayfairs—Carlotta; her sister, Stella; Stella’s daughter, Antha; and Antha’s daughter, Deirdre—showed distinct Irish traits. Like many New Orleanians, they had no discernible French or southern American accent. But they tended to call people they knew by both their names, as in “Well, how are you now, Ellie Mayfair?” and to speak with a certain lilt and certain deliberate repetitions which struck the listeners as Irish. A typical example would be this fragment picked up at a Mayfair funeral in 1945: “Now don’t you tell me that story, now, Gloria Mayfair, you know I won’t believe such a thing and shame on you for telling it! And poor Nancy with all she has on her mind, why, she’s a living saint and you know she is, if ever there was one!”

With regard to appearance, the Mayfairs are such a salad of genes that any combination of coloring, build, or facial characteristics can appear at any time in any generation. There is no characteristic look. Yet some members of the Talamasca aver that a study of all the existing photographs, sketches, and reproductions of paintings in our files does reveal a series of recurring types.

For example, there is a group of tall blond Mayfairs (including Lionel Mayfair) who resemble Petyr van Abel, all of whom have green eyes and strong jaw lines.

Then there is a group of very pale, delicately built Mayfairs who are invariably blue-eyed and short, and this group includes not only the original Deborah but also Deirdre Mayfair, the present beneficiary and “witch” and the mother of Rowan.

A third group of dark-eyed, dark-haired Mayfairs with very large bones includes Mary Beth Mayfair, and her uncles Clay and Vincent, and also Angélique Mayfair of Saint-Domingue.

Another group of smaller black-eyed, black-haired Mayfairs looks distinctly French, and every one of this group has a small round head and rather prominent eyes and overly curly hair.

Lastly, there is a group of very pale, cold-looking Mayfairs, all blond, with grayish eyes and fairly delicate of build, though always tall, and this group includes Charlotte of Saint-Domingue (the daughter of Petyr van Abel); Marie Claudette, who brought the family to Louisiana; Stella’s daughter, Antha Mayfair; and her granddaughter—Dr. Rowan Mayfair.

Members of the order have also noted some very specific resemblances. For instance, Dr. Rowan Mayfair of Tiburon, California, strongly resembles her ancestor Julien Mayfair, much more than she does any blond members of the family.

And Carlotta Mayfair in her youth strongly resembled her ancestor Charlotte.

(This investigator feels obligated to note with regard to this entire subject of looks that he does not see all this in these pictures! There are similarities, but the differences far outweigh them! The family does not look distinctly Irish, French, Scottish, or anything else.)

In any discussion of Irish influence and Irish traits we should remind ourselves that the history of this family is such that one can never be certain who is the father of any child. And as the later “legends” repeated in the twentieth century by descendants will show, the incestuous entanglements of each generation were not really secret. Nevertheless an Irish cultural influence is definitely discernible.

We should also note—for what it’s worth—that the family in the late 1800s began to employ more and more Irish domestic servants, and these servants became for the Talamasca priceless sources of information. How much they contributed to our vision of the family as Irish is not easy to determine.

The hiring of these Irish workers had nothing to do with the family’s Irish identity, per se. It was the trend in the neighborhood of the period, and many of these Irish-Americans lived in the so-called Irish Channel or riverfront neighborhood lying between the Mississippi wharves and Magazine Street, the southernmost boundary of the Garden District. Some of them were live-in maids and stable boys; others came to work by the day, or only on certain occasions. And as a whole, they were not as loyal to the Mayfair family as the colored and black servants were; and they talked much more freely about what went on at First Street than servants of past decades.

But though the information they made available to the Talamasca is extremely valuable, it is information of a certain kind and must be evaluated carefully.

The Irish servants working in and around the house tended on the whole to believe in ghosts, in the supernatural, and in