Past Perfect

by Danielle Steel

  “Twenty thousand square feet, on an acre of land in Pacific Heights, the best residential neighborhood in the city. There’s a park across the street, with a playground for Charlie. Sybil, the place is gorgeous. Trust me, it’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.”

  “Since when do you fall in love with houses? You didn’t even want to see this apartment when I found it. And you practically slipped into a coma every time I told you what I wanted to do to it, after we bought it. How old is this house? Does it just look old or is it really?” But she had already guessed the answer from the picture he had shown her, and knew more about historical architecture than he did.

  “It was built in 1902,” he said humbly, “but look at it this way, it survived the 1906 earthquake without damage, so you don’t need to worry about earthquakes.” He tried to think of every selling point he could to win her over. And so far, it wasn’t working.

  “You won’t need an earthquake with a house that old. The place is probably ready to fall down around our ears without one.”

  “It’s beautifully built, and exquisite inside, with lovely old moldings, marble fireplaces, high ceilings, a wood-paneled library, a ballroom, and spectacular views.” He showed her the rest of the pictures then, and she looked grim as she flipped through them.

  “Blake, have you lost your mind? Are you having some kind of crisis, or psychotic break? First the job in San Francisco and moving us all out there, and now this. What are we going to do, living in a twenty-thousand-square-foot hundred-and-fifteen-year-old mansion? How are we even going to clean it? Or live there? It’s a crazy idea.”

  “Some crazy ideas are good ones,” he said with a boyishly guilty look, and she understood now why he hadn’t told her before he bought it. She would never have let him bid on it, and he knew it. “Sometimes you just have to throw all your preconceived notions out the window and go for it,” he said fervently, wanting to sweep her along on the wave that had carried him since he’d taken the job in San Francisco.

  “Maybe, but not with a wife and three kids, a life in New York, an apartment we love here, and my work. Blake, we’re not kids.”

  “Don’t you want to do something different and exciting?” he asked her, and she thought about it. The honest answer was that she didn’t. He seemed to have lost his mind. She hadn’t.

  “Moving to San Francisco is already different enough for me.” Too different, but she had gone along with it anyway. And asking her to live in a mansion, take care of it, and “throw a coat of paint on it” was asking a lot of her. “Did you get inspections on it?”

  “Of course. They’ve all checked out so far, and they’ll be finished next week. The plumbing and electricity aren’t new, but they’re in decent shape, and the structure is sound, I promise you. It’s a magnificent home, Sybil.”

  “Yes, for the sultan of Brunei maybe. What do we need with twenty thousand square feet?”

  “We can keep the maids’ rooms closed or use them for storage, and even the guest floor if you want to. We can just use the reception rooms on the main floor, and the one with the family bedrooms, and the kitchen.” He had figured it all out, and in spite of herself, Sybil smiled and shook her head.

  “I’m not sure I can trust you alone in San Francisco. God knows what you’re going to do next, without telling me first.” It upset her that he seemed to be making all the decisions on his own these days, knowing that they were not choices she wanted or would approve of, and he did it anyway.

  “I couldn’t help myself. I knew the minute I saw the house that it was special, and we should buy it. I know it’s not what we wanted, but I think you’ll fall in love with it too when you see it.” And if she didn’t? she wanted to ask him. What choice did she have now? She could make a huge stink and insist he renege on the purchase, or she could go along with it. Her role now seemed to be supporting him in dubious decisions that ran counter to reason, her desires, and their plans. And just how far was he going to push her, if she continued to give in to him? That worried her too.

  “I want you to promise me, Blake Gregory, that you are not going to make one more single important move or decision without consulting me. You can’t just buy a house without talking to me about it first. I don’t care how cheap it is. Is that a deal?” He nodded in full agreement with her.

  “I promise. And I did discuss the job in San Francisco with you, but this house just threw itself at me.”

  “As long as it’s not a woman,” she growled at him, and looked at the photographs on his phone again. There was no question, it was a beautiful home, or had been, but it looked enormous, impossible to maintain, and in need of a lot of loving touches and a mountain of furniture to make it livable. It was of a bygone era that no longer even existed or made sense in the modern world. She wouldn’t dream of living at the Frick either, although she loved it. “Do you really think it will work for us and the kids?” She couldn’t see how or imagine what it would cost them to furnish, and she commented on that too.

  “Charlie can roller-skate in the ballroom. He’ll love it, and think of the parties the kids can give. And the bank told me that there is a storage unit with a lot of the original furniture that one of the previous owners didn’t use, but kept in case it ever became a museum, and out of respect for the original owners. I don’t know what the stuff looks like, but we can go through it and see if we want to use it.”

  “I need to come out and see it,” Sybil said, looking distracted. She had to see what he had gotten them into. She was trying to be a good sport about it.

  “I want you to,” Blake encouraged her, relieved that he had come to talk to her in person and now she knew. “You have to see it.” He looked excited and proud as he said it, and she wasn’t sure whether to kill him or kiss him.

  “I’ll go back with you. I’ll write my article on the plane.” She didn’t want to wait a minute longer, and if she needed to have painting done on the rooms they’d live in, she needed to do it right away. They were moving to San Francisco in three weeks, and she had to get organized. This was going to take a lot more than rented furniture or staging to get it up and running, which was precisely what she hadn’t wanted. But now he’d gotten them into this, and she wanted to see if they could make the best of it, or if he was totally insane. The latter seemed more likely.

  “Are you furious with me for buying the house, Syb?” he asked her, looking worried, and she laughed at him.

  “I’ll let you know after I see it. Until then, you’re on probation.” It sounded fair to him. He knew he had really pushed her, with the job, the move, and now the Butterfield Mansion. “You’d better behave yourself in the meantime.”

  “I promise,” he said, smiling at her, grateful that she was an extraordinary woman. He knew he was a lucky man, and she had always felt lucky too, although she had no idea what they were going to do with a century-old mansion, no matter how beautiful he said it was.

  They spent the weekend together, doing things around the house, talking, and in and out of bed when they could get away with it, when the kids were out. She got their housekeeper to come in on Sunday to stay with the children so she could go to San Francisco with Blake. They boarded a 6 P.M. flight, which was due to arrive at 9:15 P.M. local time, midnight in New York. She had scheduled an appointment the next morning to see the house with the realtor. Blake had meetings and didn’t have time to go with her, but he felt confident that she would fall in love with the house too. She had asked him a million questions during the weekend, and they had told the children about their new home. Charlie liked the idea of roller-skating in the ballroom, Andy said it looked like a Federal Reserve Bank, and Caroline wanted to see a picture of her bedroom and thought the house was cool. They weren’t totally sold on it, but Sybil could tell they would get there, if she and Blake pushed them a little to convince them, and believed in the house themselves as the right home for them, which she didn’t yet, but Blake did.

  “Are there ghosts?” Charlie h
ad asked, looking panicked when he saw the photographs, and Sybil smiled at him.

  “Of course not, silly. There are no such things. Don’t get started on that.” Caroline had made ghostly noises to tease him, and Sybil had reprimanded her immediately, so she stopped, but at six he was easy to tease. “If there are ghosts, I hope they know how to use a mop and a vacuum cleaner,” she said and Charlie laughed.

  Sybil studied the photographs again once they were on the flight to San Francisco, after she wrote her article on her computer. She had brought all her notes and research with her and finished it while Blake watched a movie. She was still wondering how Blake had gotten her into yet another challenging adventure, but he was relieved that she wasn’t mad at him, although she was still skeptical and uneasy about his buying the Butterfield Mansion, no matter how good an investment he said it was. She’d put the last touches on her article for The New York Times by the time they landed, and Blake was sound asleep. She looked over at him and smiled, thinking that it was lucky they loved each other. If they didn’t, she might have strangled him for buying a twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion. But what the hell, life with him was evolving, she just wasn’t sure into what.

  When Sybil got to the Butterfield Mansion by cab the next morning she stood at the gate and stared at it for a long moment, trying to absorb the fact that this was now her home. She couldn’t relate to it, or even understand it, as the realtor opened the gate and she walked into the courtyard, looking up at the elegant windows and the dignified architecture. She had to admit, it was one of the most beautiful houses she’d ever seen. Walking through it took her breath away. There was room after room of century-old grandeur, remarkable workmanship, exquisite moldings and carvings, lovely floors that had withstood the test of time, the wood-paneled library, the graceful splendor of the ballroom—although she had no idea what they’d do with it, other than letting the children play there or give parties for their new friends, or set up a basketball hoop and use it as a gym, which seemed like a sacrilege. But she couldn’t imagine living in a house that size.

  And in defiance of all reason, the house had begun to feel like theirs by the time she had gone floor to floor, opened every closet and explored every nook and cranny, and figured out which rooms to put the children in. They were going to sleep on the same floor with their children, which she liked. And she earmarked a room on the floor above, with a sweeping view, as her office. She began making lists of what they needed, electronics, Wi-Fi, Internet connections for all of them. She noticed that most of the antique curtains were still in surprisingly good condition, since the windows were boarded up and sunlight hadn’t touched them, and she decided to continue using them. Surprisingly, other than the practical basics, and all the usual kitchen equipment they could get at IKEA, the house didn’t need any work, just paint and a lot of furniture.

  The following afternoon, she and Blake went to the storage company the bank referred them to, to see the furniture and art objects past owners had acquired with the house and preserved but never used. There was some very handsome furniture of the period, much of which they liked, and some art.

  An executive of the bank who seemed fascinated by the house’s history had told them that a woman named Lili Saint Martin in Paris was the last member of the family to own the house. She had inherited it from her mother, Bettina Butterfield de Lambertin, and sold it immediately upon her mother’s death in 1980.

  The couple who had originally built the house in 1902 for themselves and their four children were Bertrand and Gwyneth Butterfield, and Gwyneth had sold it in 1930 after her husband’s death during the Depression. Their oldest daughter, Bettina, had bought it back in 1950 and lived there for thirty years, until she died at eighty-four and left it to her daughter, Lili, who sold it. Lili Saint Martin had grown up in France, after leaving the house as a baby with her mother. She had been married in France and had a son, but she had no particular sentiment for the house. Since then, it had gone through a number of hands. No one had kept the house for long, and it had been unoccupied now for a dozen years, and looked it, abandoned and unloved, though not damaged. It sounded to Sybil, when she heard it, as though the history of the house had originally been a happy one, and the house and the families who owned it had subsequently fallen on hard times.

  Bettina Butterfield had lived in it the longest, and she had apparently been very attached to the house. The woman at the bank mentioned that Bettina had written a history of the house and family, just for private purposes, and a copy of her book and many family photographs were in a box at the bank and would be turned over to Blake and Sybil. The female banker confirmed that there were no Butterfields left in the area, no one who cared about the house anymore, and the once-important family had moved away or died out. It made Sybil sad to hear about, and made her love the house more. It deserved a happier fate than to stand empty, forgotten, and unloved. She was suddenly glad Blake had bought it. She felt inexplicably protective of the house and the family that had lived there.

  It was Lili who had left all the furnishings in the home, to be sold with the property, and subsequent owners had put it in storage and left it there, as a legacy no one seemed to want, although the furnishings had been both purchased and made for the house originally. But Sybil thought the new owners must have thought them too old-fashioned, perhaps couldn’t sell them, or felt guilty selling them or throwing them away, so they all went to storage and stayed there.

  It was dusty work when Blake and Sybil pulled everything out and examined it all. It hadn’t been touched in nearly forty years, and Blake discovered that all the chandeliers were there, and he and Sybil agreed to have them reinstalled. Everything had been carefully packed, and nothing had been damaged since Lili Saint Martin had abandoned it. There were handsome pieces, and some antiquated ones, and many Sybil thought they could use. She planned to re-cover some of the upholstered pieces with new fabrics. There was a beautiful antique dining table that looked English, with twenty-four matching chairs. There were several very large-scale Victorian couches, which Sybil planned to re-cover in better colors. There were side tables, credenzas, and a great many pieces they both thought would work well in the house and be useful, and they could always replace them later if they found things they liked better. But for now, what had been stored would spare them the need to rush out and buy furniture, and some of it was really elegant, and just right for the mansion. The original owners had exceptional taste. There was a lovely bedroom set for Blake and Sybil’s bedroom, all done in pale pink satin, and despite her usual preference for all things modern in her home, Sybil loved it.

  And even the pieces that seemed old-fashioned were perfectly chosen. Blake and Sybil were very pleased with their exploration at the storage facility, and decided to use most of it. It would suit the house better than IKEA. Sybil scheduled an electrician to hang the chandeliers and sconces. She located a good upholsterer, and had the pieces delivered to them to keep until she found fabrics for them. They went to IKEA after Blake finished at the office to get what they needed for the kitchen. And Blake got the name of a painter from someone he worked with, and hired them to paint the two main floors before the family arrived on New Year’s Day, and paint the third-floor rooms, where Sybil would have her office. Blake thought he might set up a home office too, if he needed to work on weekends.

  They had decided to turn the servants’ dining hall in the basement into a playroom for the children with a pool table, comfortable couches, and a large flat-screen TV to watch movies.

  By Wednesday night, Sybil and Blake had made enormous headway, organizing their new home. The inspections were complete by then, and were all satisfactory. The house would officially be theirs in a week, and the bank was allowing them to start painting before that so they could finish before they moved in. And as they had promised, the bank had turned over a large box to them, with the original plans and blueprints of the house, a leather-bound book which was Bettina Butterfield de Lambertin’s f
amily history, a family tree, and a wealth of photographs of events at the house and members of the family. Sybil noticed that there were dates marked on the back of most of them, and occasionally the names of who was in the photograph, and she carefully put the book about the family into her bag to read on the plane home to New York. She was hungry to know more about them, and she left everything in the box, except the book, in her new office, to go through after they moved in. Family histories always fascinated her, and she wanted to read about the family that had built the mansion and lived there. It made living in the house, and owning it, more meaningful.

  By the time Sybil left San Francisco on Thursday, things seemed to be in good order. She had hired a gardener to clean up the grounds and trim the hedges. And she had forgiven Blake for his insanity, buying the enormous mansion. Now that she had seen it herself, she understood what had happened. There was something magical and deeply moving about the mansion. You could see how greatly loved it had once been, and how carefully thought out the building of it must have been, a hundred and fifteen years before. And some of it still made sense today. Sybil had fallen in love with the house too, and was excited to show it to the children. She took more photographs, particularly of the children’s sunny, spacious bedrooms, since they wanted to see them. And she had described to them the playroom they were going to set up in the basement. She had broken the bad news to Charlie on the phone that he’d have to roller-skate outside, because the ballroom was too pretty to skate in, and she didn’t want him wrecking the antique floors. She and Blake both felt proprietary about the house. And now that she had seen it, it was bringing them closer together, rather than tearing them apart, as Blake had feared at first.

  She answered all their children’s questions when she got back to New York, and went to look for the right fabrics for the upholstered pieces, and she found many she liked that she thought would be perfect in the house. She had to laugh at herself—after a whole career focused on modern design, she was now steeped in all things Victorian, but it was fun to do the research. She was so busy, she hadn’t time to read Bettina Butterfield’s book yet, but she was going to as soon as she could. She had wrapped it in plastic to protect the century-old leather cover in her bag.