My Mrs. Brown

by William Norwich

  “Delphine Staunton, from Lambton’s auction house, in New York, this is Mrs. Brown from the Ashville Thrift Shop,” Rachel said, introducing the two women.

  “Hello,” Mrs. Brown said, her voice echoing in the large dining room.

  Ms. Staunton didn’t even bother to look. She twinkled her fingers, a kind of wave, in Mrs. Brown’s general direction.

  “People are going to think your little thrift shop is an outpost of Bergdorf Goodman,” Delphine said, placing green dots on the rococo porcelain chickens decorating the mantel on the dining room’s marble fireplace. “I’d wager never has such finery been sent your way, Mrs. Brown, never, ever.”

  Delphine was not looking at her when she said this, but was now bending over to inspect a brass bucket holding chopped wood.

  Mrs. Brown had encountered women like this in the beauty parlor. Whether their remarks were intended to hurt, and so often they did, Mrs. Brown knew the best thing to do was to not respond, take the high road, and let her silence get loud enough that the offender either desisted, apologized, or changed the subject.

  The doorbell rang, its echo deep—“very high church” is how the Episcopal bishop of Rhode Island had always described the sound of Mrs. Groton’s bell.

  Rachel excused herself.

  Mrs. Brown hoped it was Mrs. Wood from the thrift shop. She was left alone with Delphine, now on her knees inspecting the marble fireplace. Then, rising, she turned her shellacked black head and looked Mrs. Brown up and down.

  “Did you get your outfit at your thrift shop? Don’t you wonder who wore it before you? We auction wonderful vintage pieces, maintained and dry-cleaned by experts before they are sold, but I couldn’t wear secondhand clothes myself, you know? I would feel like I was wearing a ghost, let alone my phobia about catching bedbugs,” Delphine said.

  She squinted in Mrs. Brown’s direction. “Have you ever had bedbugs in Ashville? Les punaises de lit, en français, which sounds much better, non?”

  Delphine exited the dining room for the pantry. With a whoosh, the door closed behind her.

  Mrs. Brown did not respond, nor did she follow in some misguided need to be helpful. She took a breath; she exhaled. Through the French doors she could see the bones of Mrs. Groton’s garden outside. The garden must be so beautiful when it is in bloom, she thought.

  A few moments later, she heard Rachel and Delphine talking in the pantry. There was still no sign of Mrs. Wood, even though the doorbell had just rung.

  “I don’t like that woman,” Delphine said. “I had a visceral dislike. It was instant.”

  “To whom? Certainly not poor Mrs. Brown?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Brown,” Delphine answered.

  “But why? She’s so dear.”

  “She’s too plain. I never trust that,” Delphine said.

  “Be careful, Delphine, please,” Rachel said. “She might hear you.”

  Mrs. Brown had heard. Of course it hurt. But she wasn’t going to let it ruin the delight of being in the remarkable house of Millicent Groton. Besides, Mrs. Brown knew she was plain. She knew it would be pure folly ever to try to prove that she wasn’t, nor did she want to. And if it made this poorly behaved New York–dwelling Frenchwoman feel better to deprecate Mrs. Brown, so be it.

  She’d turn the other cheek, because, thank God, she could.

  “Oh, Emilia, I am so sorry not to have gotten here earlier,” Margaret Wood said, bustling and fluttering into the dining room.

  Margaret Wood was a short woman with a very large frame and full bosom hardly concealed under the cotton pink pullover sweater she was wearing with a midi-length black corduroy skirt. It drooped above her ankles and her white tennis shoes. Her hair was blond as a dandelion, and her face was lined with wrinkles and tan from the summer, and the many summers before.

  “Have you ever?”

  “Ever what?”

  “Ever seen a house as grand as this?” Margaret Wood asked, whispering, although they were alone.

  Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Wood shook their heads in disbelief. They most certainly had never seen a house like this before or could they ever expect to again.

  “THEN WHAT HAPPENED?” ALICE asked.

  Keeping to their nearly every-evening ritual, they sat at Mrs. Brown’s ancient, green and blue oilcloth-covered kitchen table discussing their day. Tonight they were trying a new tea called Hu-Kwa. Rachel had given Mrs. Brown an unopened tin of it.

  The tea, Mrs. Groton’s favorite—there were several more tins left in the pantry of the great house—had a stocky, smoky taste that took some getting used to. Alice was about to say, but managed not to before it slipped out of her mouth, that the tea smelt like old rubber.

  “It’s not only beautiful, the house is so peaceful and so clean and so orderly,” Mrs. Brown said. “I can’t explain it. What it meant to me to see things so . . . so perfectly arranged.”

  Mrs. Brown wasn’t going to mention Delphine Staunton’s nastiness. She never thought it wise for anyone to look too long at the negative things in her life. Where you look, there you go.

  From across the street came the sound of their neighbors, a young married couple arguing—again. They tried not to notice.

  Mrs. Brown moved a plate of her homemade oatmeal shortbread closer to Alice. This got the cat’s attention, and Santo leapt from his owner’s lap onto the table. He was removed to the floor immediately.

  “The dining room alone was as big as four of the houses on this street,” Mrs. Brown continued. “There were so many beautiful things. There was even a silver mustard pot, that’s what the lady from the auction house called it, a mustard pot, a tiny thing that she expected would be auctioned in New York City for . . . well, guess for how much?”

  Alice liked a quiz and could be quite competitive, hating to get anything wrong. She calculated before she wagered her guess. “Five hundred dollars,” she said.

  “Twelve to fifteen thousand dollars, can you believe it?” Mrs. Brown exclaimed, sitting back in her chair. Santo returned to her lap.

  “That must have been some very strong mustard in that pot,” Alice said.

  “There’s an entire room, another big room, they called the library, and I thought of your grandmother, how much Sarah would love this room. It is deep red wallpaper and curtains and towering bookcases and library steps and busts of—now let me see, because I promised I would try to remember for when I write your grandmother—of Shakespeare and I think they said Baron?”

  “Byron?”

  “That’s right. That’s what they said. Oh, good for you, Alice, and your grandmother always worries that you don’t read; Byron, and all men, you know, not one woman, not even your grandmother’s Jane.”

  Jane Austen being Mrs. Fox’s favorite author.

  “Go on, tell me more,” Alice said, pouring more tea. Funny smell or not, she was getting used to the heady taste.

  “There was this large wood desk. There were bound atlases, and soft chairs with reading lamps next to them, and a long table covered with piles of books, more busts, and photographs in silver frames. On the walls were framed paintings of horses and dogs . . . it was a remarkable room that you felt smarter just for walking into. They said it was Mr. Groton’s study.”

  In England, and in America, too, until World War II, if a gentleman didn’t have a decent study then he wasn’t considered a gentleman.

  “And a fireplace, a beautiful marble fireplace with a sofa in front of it,” Mrs. Brown said. “You could spend the rest of your life there, Alice, and be very happy, I think.”

  Alice smiled. Could she really be content living in what sounded like a museum? “Yes, it sounds like I’d be very happy there,” she said to be polite and supportive.

  “Who wouldn’t be?” Mrs. Brown said. Then she reconsidered. “I suppose an unhappy person wouldn’t be happy there . . .”

  “After the novelty wore off,” Alice said, finishing Mrs. Brown’s sentence. “For people who feel that something’s always missing wherever
they’re at, the void becomes an abyss in a bigger place.”

  “Does it?” Mrs. Brown asked.

  “Absolutely. In every fairy tale I’ve ever read,” Alice said, biting into a piece of shortbread, “and I’ve read them all. When I was a kid, I mean.”

  You’re still a kid, Mrs. Brown almost said, but didn’t. Leaving some things unsaid is an underestimated virtue. Doing so was a credo that Mrs. Brown survived by.

  “IF THAT NASTY PIECE of work says one more time, ‘This or that isn’t good enough for Lambton’s but it’ll be like a piece of Tiffany for your little thrift shop,’ I think I will scream,” Mrs. Wood was saying, her face pink with rage.

  She and Mrs. Brown met on Franklin Green the next morning so they could arrive together at Mrs. Groton’s.

  Rachel was dressed today in a beige pencil skirt to her knees, a white oxford shirt crisply folded below her elbows, brown alligator shoes with a sturdy four-inch heel. She welcomed the Ashville locals with coffee, tea, morning glory muffins, and donuts in the kitchen.

  Just as the women settled around Mrs. Groton’s kitchen table to sip and chat before pressing on with the inventory taking, Delphine Staunton, wearing a waist-length red-black kimono sort of bed jacket over black pants and shirt, entered complaining.

  “I’m so exhausted,” she said.

  Delphine readjusted the black cashmere sweater she’d tied over the waist of her black trousers.

  “That inn may be centuries-old charm, but the walls are so thin I heard everything from every room last night. I mean I could even hear one of those dreadful housewives’ shows on the television in the next room! Then I stayed awake worrying about les punaises de lit. Bloody hell!”

  Delphine stared at the baked goods on the kitchen table as if they were frosted with punaises.

  “Gluten?” she asked, looking Mrs. Wood up and down.

  “Oh, Delphine, how awful,” Rachel said. “Why don’t you stay here in the house tonight?”

  Delphine smiled coldly. “Thanks, but I think I can finish up today by seven or eight and then I will drive back to New York. Most everything in the upstairs rooms is better left in the upstairs rooms, lovely, charming, what you would expect in a weekend house like this, but not valuable enough for Lambton’s, so you can have all of it for the thrift shop. Or give it to the homeless. Have you many homeless here in Ashville?”

  Mrs. Wood bit as far as she could into a cheese Danish to keep herself quiet.

  “The drive back to town is more than four hours,” Rachel said. “If you are exhausted it might be too much, too dangerous.”

  “Oh, I will be fine once I get into my groove here this morning,” Ms. Staunton said, pouring herself a cup of black coffee. “By the way, I wonder what you think of this idea, Rachel. I was speaking on the phone last night with one of my colleagues, and the current thinking for the auction catalogue cover image is to use the photograph of Millicent”—Delphine was the only person calling Mrs. Groton by her first name—“chatting with the Queen taken at the wedding of Marie-Chantal Miller to Pavlos of Greece. It is a beautiful photograph, the old gals look divine—love those huge hats they’re wearing—but my colleagues are split on whether it is a good idea or not . . .”

  Delphine took a deep breath. She walked across the kitchen, looked dramatically toward the garden, rested her right hand on her right hip, turned back to Rachel, said:

  “I think the Queen is history.”

  “History, Delphine?”

  Delphine explained. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m French. We like monarchs, with or without their heads.”

  Delphine checked her phone for e-mails and texts, but continued talking. “Although personally, except for the furnishings, I think Versailles was overrated.”

  Delphine was highly caffeinated this morning. “But I appreciate that there is great value for British tourism in having a monarchy. It’s all about branding. America has baseball and Las Vegas to drive tourism and England has Buckingham Palace, all great show and ritual—genius branding.”

  She continued: “It’s just that in this difficult economy we have to really, really work to market the auction to as many high-end consumers as possible, and when it comes to the top one percent, the new money made in tech and digital—I daresay most of the new, big Wall Street money as well—my colleagues and I don’t think they will give a good goddamn about the Queen or any royalty. The only royalty they are interested in is rock-and-roll royalty, you know?”

  Rachel looked puzzled.

  Delphine shrugged. “We must avoid giving the appearance that Mrs. Groton’s antiques are old, if you see what I mean.”

  No one did.

  Delphine continued. “If we put a photo of Millicent, say, with Bill and Melinda Gates on the cover of the catalogue, and there is one we can get permission to use, taken at Warren Buffett’s birthday a few years ago, we can better make the point that anything you buy at Lambton’s, even when in the millions and millions of dollars, isn’t shopping for antiques, it is environmental, recycling at the highest level. And therefore all about doing something really, really important for the environment; they love this kind of crap thinking in Silicon Valley. C’est très Yahoo.”

  Delphine poured herself another cup of hot coffee. Apparently no longer averse to gluten, she pinched a bit of buttery crust off a cheese Danish and dropped it in her open mouth.

  As it happened, Mrs. Wood was devoted to the Queen of England. She was a veritable repository of historical information and popular trivia about Her Majesty.

  One of her favorite tidbits? The first time Princess Elizabeth fully realized she had ascended to the role of Queen was when milk bottles arrived from the royal dairy with the crest “EIIR” on them.

  Delphine’s dismissal of the Queen infuriated Mrs. Wood.

  Rachel had many thoughts and responses to what Delphine was saying. Sensing the anger brewing in Margaret Wood, she felt it important to proceed diplomatically.

  “The cover of the catalogue is very important, isn’t it?” Rachel asked.

  She knew it was but wanted to soothe Delphine. Poor thing hadn’t slept well.

  “Oh, yes, it’s huge,” Delphine said. “Huge! The cover of the catalogue is also the image used in all the advertising and the press materials—branding. And I don’t think the Queen is relevant.”

  “Perhaps we should consult with the executors of the estate,” Rachel said. “They are charged with the responsibility of making sure they attain as much profit as possible for all the charities that will benefit from the auction of Mrs. Groton’s things.”

  “Well, I for one think the Queen is passé. Queen out; Gateses in. Or Jay Z and Beyoncé! They’re really the new Mr. and Mrs. Astor in New York. Do you think any such photo exists?”

  Rachel saw the pained expressions on Mrs. Wood’s and Mrs. Brown’s faces.

  “I don’t know, Delphine,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “You know, when the sad day comes and the Queen dies? I wonder if the world is prepared. Do we have any idea, any clue at all, of what will go with her?”

  “A few corgis, and a case of gin?”

  Mrs. Wood wasn’t amused. “I think the Queen is better than Mother Teresa even!” Mrs. Wood said.

  Delphine Staunton shrugged.

  Rachel continued. “No, really, Delphine, think about everything she represents: decorum, civility, constraint, consistency, endurance, duty, service, faith, hope . . . and deriving satisfaction from living for these principles. Rather than a life trying to satisfy personal wants and entitlements, as the majority of us do, and are encouraged to do, all in the name of success.”

  Rachel was on a roll. “We do not have any enduring figures, any archetypes, who represent kindness and courtesy, the way England has the Queen. Whom do we have? Our presidents and other elected officials aren’t principled because they are political, always dancing around for votes. The only constants we have are tycoons and movie stars, and their positions are hardly fixed. Every culture needs i
ts constants. We’ve had to borrow the Queen. Americans probably need the Queen more than her own people do.”

  Delphine shrugged again, made a little pucker with her lips, indicating she dismissed the conversation. This only fueled Rachel to continue.

  “I can think of very few in public life today, except maybe Caroline Kennedy, who have survived disappointments and sadness—not to mention endless scrutiny—with so much grace. Here’s a woman who has lost a king and a queen, who also happened to be her parents; her sister; her uncle, who was blown up in a terrorist attack . . .” She paused.

  “I could go on, but I’ll stop.” Rachel sighed. “All I am trying to say is, about Queen Elizabeth, we live in a world where we only know what we’ve got when it’s gone. And that’s a damn shame.”

  “Sorry, Rachel, who knew you felt this way? Been dating an Englishman lately? Thanks to globalization, I hear they aren’t as bad in bed as they supposedly used to be.” Delphine laughed.

  Rachel was ice cold, a temperature swans excel in.

  “I think I’d better get to work here before you ladies deliver me to the Tower of London for my beheading,” Delphine said, and left the kitchen.

  MRS. BROWN WAS DISPATCHED to Mrs. Groton’s bedroom and dressing room upstairs.

  Here was yet another revelation to behold in this magical residence: a blue and white canopied king-size bed, a sitting room–office, and a large dressing room that was wall to wall, floor to ceiling, closets and shelves. In the center was a sitting area with two matching rose-pattern-chintz-covered chairs and a sofa.

  Mrs. Wood was downstairs taking inventory of the things Delphine deemed unworthy for high auction.

  “Ashville, Ashville, Ashville,” the auctioneer kept repeating as if she was counting odorous fish.