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Very Old Money
Stanley Ellin
The Durie Family of New York City
TO
OTTO PENZLER
WITH APPRECIATION AND ADMIRATION
PART ONE
Mrs. Lloyd and Lloyd
Seated on a straight-backed chair behind her small desk, Mrs. Bernius was the picture of elegance. The half-glasses perched midway down her nose made her seem even more elegant. And cool, Mike thought. She exuded Upper East Side New York City cool. The closer you’d get, the lower the mercury. Which was probably what you’d meet when after shuffling off this mortal coil you abruptly found yourself seated in a small, charmingly decorated office in limbo while an elegant keeper of the gates, exuding a terribly ladylike cool, examined the dossier on your misspent life in order to designate heaven or hell as your next stop.
Come to think of it, what were he and spouse Amy doing here, placing themselves at the mercy of this particular keeper of the gates? Two adult, well-educated, middle-class American citizens—a proud people these Americans—kowtowing to la Bernius. After already, a week ago, having sufficiently kowtowed to the British lassie in the front office who, in that pseudo upper-crust British accent, had instructed them to produce their bona fides and fill out a ream of forms and documents.
Enough already. The comedy is finished. Amy, my love, we are leaving here. What we now do is buy a cut-rate Conestoga wagon and join a party in search of new lands beyond the wide Missouri.
Mike shifted in his chair, striving for a position that would in terms of body language indicate relaxed dignity. Amy, seated an arm’s length away, gave him a quick little frown, and he stopped striving. Mrs. Bernius raised her eyes from the two folders open before her—the applications, the resumés, and Gawd help us, the test results—and looked from one to the other of them over the half-glasses, a falcon hovering up there thoughtfully taking notice of this pair of chickens that had wandered into its ken.
Mrs. Bernius said, “We will now be absolutely truthful with each other, you people. I’ll start by remarking that with the minimum of advertisement, Domestique is a most successful agency, depending as it does on giving satisfaction. Of course, we have a seller’s market these days. But it is known to the clientele that Domestique’s recommendation guarantees the real article. That we are not merely adding to a household staff a personable young couple for the pretty picture it makes, but are providing a well-motivated, competent personal secretary”—she graciously dipped her head at Amy—“and an equally desirable chauffeur to a family that urgently requires their services. And”—the lilting voice took on a subtle emphasis—“who want my assurance that this couple is ready to settle down to the long haul. And will not be spending its salaried time thumbing through the Help Wanted pages for, as one might put it, more prestigious jobs. Are you following this closely?”
“Yes,” Mike said. “Look, if you’re getting around to telling us we’re overqualified for these jobs—”
“Really, Michael.” Mrs. Bernius was all gently smiling protest. “Now if you were an unemployed brain surgeon instead of an unemployed schoolteacher, I’d certainly be telling you that. But you’re not, are you?”
Poisonous bitch, Mike thought, and Amy, who after three years of marriage could read his thought balloons in their ascent, gave him that warning little frown again. She said apologetically to Mrs. Bernius, “It’s just that when Mike—Michael—submitted his resumé to some agencies the overqualification thing did come up. So there’s—”
“Of course, dear,” said Mrs. Bernius. “But I did warn that the painful truth must be part of this interview. And things are tough out there for some of us, aren’t they? Unemployed schoolteachers all over the place. On the other hand, according to your applications it was an ex-schoolteacher friend of yours who recommended Domestique to you, wasn’t it? Because whatever else that friend might be overqualified for, he was certainly well qualified to be chauffeur for an appreciative family on Long Island where he appears to be doing very well for himself.”
“Yes,” Amy said.
“Yes. And believe me, dear, according to my files he wasn’t the first to change course in this direction. Painful truth to tell, we were all tilted just a bit off balance by those halcyon full-employment years, weren’t we? Now some of us must settle for a little less than professional glory. But”—Mrs. Bernius held up a flawlessly manicured forefinger—“but from Domestique’s point of view the world still provides a large number of the well-to-do who’ll pay a fair price for servants of quality. That might be a sticking point, you people. Servants. How does that word hit you?”
“Well,” Amy said, “it doesn’t really bother me.”
“We did talk it over,” Mike said, “at length and in depth.”
“Good,” said Mrs. Bernius. She glanced at the folders, then focused on Mike. “Your last employment was as cab driver. In response to my query, your company”—with distaste she held up a grimy sheet of paper by a corner—“attests that you were a valued employee. Why exactly did you resign from it?”
“Robbed once at knifepoint. I got over it. The second time it was at gunpoint. I didn’t get over it.”
“Life in the Big Apple,” said Mrs. Bernius. “I suppose it was a passenger each time?”
“Yes.”
“Which,” said Mrs. Bernius, “is something you won’t have to worry about if you get this job under discussion. Allowing for a fender-bender now and then, I imagine that chauffeuring a limousine for a genteel family is one of the safer vocations.”
“Happy thought,” Mike said.
“So it is.” Mrs. Bernius returned briefly to the folders. “And before this you were, for almost ten years, a teacher at the Scoville-Lang Preparatory School. Literature and composition. As well as serving for two years as Dean of Students. Now what exactly would be the duties of Dean of Students?”
“Of its Upper School,” Mike said. “I was supposed to have exceptional rapport with the teenagers there.”
“Females included?”
“With decorum,” Mike said.
At least, he thought, with his decorum. The fact was—no use shyly scuffing the toe into the ground about it—by luck of the genetic draw he had his father’s sandy-haired, firm-jawed, slightly squint-eyed good looks. And despite a detestation of all physical exercise except skiing, the same compact, flat-bellied, hard-muscled frame. Add it up, and what it had amounted to apparently was catnip to the more uninhibited female students in his ken.
“No hanky-panky in that department?” asked Mrs. Bernius.
“Never. What it came to was simply that some of the kids were getting into drugs, and this Dean of Students thing was created so that I’d have proper authority to deal with them.”
“How?”
“A warning for the first offense, suspension for the second. Anyhow, I finally nailed four kids who were turning the place into pushers’ paradise and gave them fair warning. A week later I caught them with the goods again, pill-peddling to some juniors. I suspended them for the rest of the term and wrote their parents to meet with me. I thought—”
“Ah, yes,” said Mrs. Bernius. “But the parents thought otherwise.”
“They raised hell. All that worried them was that the kids’ college admission w
ould be delayed. When I said sorry, but that’s the way it is, they went to the headmaster.”
“A George Oliphant.”
“A George Oliphant. Who told me sorry, but he was lifting the suspensions. When I said this meant I’d have to resign he told me good-bye, you can pick up your final paycheck on the way out.”
“Obviously very rich and influential parents,” said Mrs. Bernius with amusement. She regarded Mike over her glasses. “I had a long talk with your Mr. Oliphant. He gave me a positively poisonous report on you. Does that come as any surprise?”
Mike’s stomach turned over. “Yes,” he said shortly. He found he couldn’t let it go at that. “You must have told him I wasn’t looking for a teaching job, just to drive a car for somebody.”
“Oh, I did. And what he confided to me”—Mrs. Bernius peered at a folder—“was that as his employee you were insubordinate, emotional, couldn’t adjust to the needs of the school community. School community,” she mused. “He used the phrase repeatedly. Is that today’s jargon for what I used to know as a school?”
“Professional language.”
“I see. Well, it doesn’t charm me. Nor did Mr. Oliphant. Too mellifluous. Too warmly concerned about your welfare while at the same time—if you’ll forgive my language—giving you the vaselined finger.”
What do you know, Mike thought in glad surprise. He glanced at Amy. She was staring open-mouthed at this elegant phenomenon before them.
“You see,” the phenomenon said to Mike, “what I did extract from him along the way was that despite your vices you were punctual, abstemious—at least on-site—and did get along with your colleagues. Considering his vindictiveness, this amounted to a dazzling tribute.”
“So the job is mine?”
“Well, there’s still some ground to cover. Amy, however, does seem to meet all specifications. No point making a mystery of that.”
Amy looked troubled. She could read him like a book, Mike knew. He said, “But her job—secretary, companion, whatever—appears to be bigger than mine. Why the concentration on me?”
“Because a married couple-in-service has been requested here. Not only are accommodations available for it, but such couples have a reputation for providing very stable elements in household service. I sometimes wonder,” Mrs. Bernius said reflectively, “if this isn’t because whatever irritations the couple meets on the job can be confided to each other openly. Pillow talk, as the phrase goes. Get it out of the system that way.” She considered this.
Mike considered the wallpaper. Alternating vertical narrow black and silver stripes. This whole scene had a dreamlike quality bordering on nightmare, and that wallpaper, the pattern rippling when he concentrated on it, made a perfect setting for a dream verging on nightmare. Close the eyes tight, open them, and with any luck he’d find himself waking up in home sweet home, third floor back on Thompson Street. No, not really that sweet anymore, the way the apartment had been denuded of almost all those furnishings, sold for what they could bring. And now two months behind on the rent. That, as this elegant lady had put it, was the nasty reality.
He cleared the throat to rouse the lady from her reverie, and she measured him over her glasses. “Adaptability,” she said. “Amy measures up there. I’m not sure about you, Michael. And if you suddenly decide to walk out on the job, Amy will walk out with you. That would leave Domestique with two black marks on its books, do you see?”
“Suppose I guarantee I won’t walk out? After all, I didn’t walk out on the cabbie job. You could say I was persuaded out by a gun.”
“True. But while you won’t be facing any weaponry on this job you will have to deal with, oh, perhaps half a dozen people whose view of their hired help is authoritarian. In a genteel way, of course. But distinctly authoritarian. And each of them has a strongly defined temperament and in one case at least some marked eccentricities. And you’ll not only be serving them, you will be living there with them. Think it over. Living in their home but—and I choose the word with care—invisibly.”
“Invisibly?” Mike said.
Mrs. Bernius rose and went to the window behind her. She studied the vista of midtown Manhattan it offered, then turned and cocked her head at Mike. “Does the name Durie mean anything to you? Either of you?”
“No,” Amy said.
“Vaguely,” Mike lied.
“Vaguely at best,” said Mrs. Bernius. “The family would be pleased by that. Low key, these people. Great self-respect. With an acute dislike of public notice. The house—mansion really—is in the upper Sixties between Madison and Fifth. And now observe my emphasis, you people: the Durie family is very old money.”
“Goes back a long way,” Mike said.
“To colonial times. And prosperous even then.”
“And,” Mike said, “this has something to do with our being invisible?”
“Speaking from long experience,” said Mrs. Bernius, “yes. Hard to conceive perhaps, but to very old money even such as the Rockefellers are parvenus. Other kinds of moneyed people—Sun Belt, for instance—are not to be mentioned in polite company.”
“Patrician company,” said Mike.
“American style. But don’t think I’m describing snobbishness. Very old money is not snobbish. It is simply”—Mrs. Bernius held up a hand, forefinger and thumb making a loop, and used the loop in delicate little gestures to emphasize each word—“wonderfully, totally unselfconscious. No glitter, no glamor.”
It’s showtime, folks, Mike thought, and she is really laying it on. He observed that Amy was taking in the show with fascination. Amy, at twenty-five, was sometimes asked for her ID when they entered a bar. When she wore this rapt look even her birth certificate was suspect.
It turned out that Mrs. Bernius was not too bad at reading his thought balloons herself.
She said wickedly, “All right, allow ten percent for exaggeration. But if you’re as smart as you look, my friend, you’ll understand me. What it comes down to is this. New money is always uneasy about its servants. It hasn’t been brought up to deal with them so it deals with them uneasily. Too hard-boiled or too soft-boiled, it demonstrates insecurity one way or the other.
“None of this applies to very old money. Its servants aren’t people, you see. They are invisible forces who somehow make life comfortable. They do not, for example, display any private feelings to the family because this is simply not done. On the other hand, the family may expose its private feelings before the servants. May hold almost embarrassingly personal conversations before the chambermaid or chauffeur, not because the chambermaid and chauffeur are assumed to be as discreet as the three wise monkeys—although they had damn well better be—but because they are invisible. The old-fashioned servant not only lived with this comfortably, he preferred it. He moved back and forth between the household world and his private world easily. But today—well, can a generation that’s been so passionate about its personal freedom and its sensitivities and its enlarged ego do that? Can you, Michael? Be absolutely honest about it, so that a week after I’ve placed you in the job we’re not all three of us regretting it.”
“Absolutely honest?” Mike said. “All right, the picture you’re drawing seems to be of waxworks, not people. I’m not sure how valid it is.”
“Enough. And, oh yes, those are people. You and Amy may not be people during your working hours. They most definitely are at all times. So where does that leave us? I mentioned the long haul, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“That must be taken into account, too. Several years at least. It’s to your benefit to think in those terms. The good news is that the secretary-companion’s job pays twenty thousand a year to start. The chauffeur’s job pays fifteen thousand. A Christmas bonus, tax free, will add twenty percent to that. Not luxurious, but not bad at all. And most important, secretary and chauffeur make a live-in couple provided with a pleasant little apartment on the premises, complete medical benefits, and—do you own a car?”
; “Not recently,” said Mike.
“—and the use of one of the family cars when you’re on your own time. A handsome package really. Rent, food, insurance, and transportation, all on the house. Which means that unless the couple is wildly improvident, the largest part of its income can go right into savings. Add up a few years of those savings, you people, and you’ll find it comes to a surprising amount. Add up fifteen years of them”—Mrs. Bernius gracefully motioned at the wallpaper—“and you have this.”
“Domestique,” said Mike
“Domestique. My husband and I made it happen the hard way. He provided the inspiration, I managed the money. Unfortunately, he didn’t live very long after we made it happen.”
Amy said instantly and naturally, “Oh, I am sorry.”
“Thank you. But that’s how things turn out sometimes.” Mrs. Bernius took aim at Mike. “Now that you know what the job entails—considering your background and disposition—do you feel you can handle it emotionally? That is the question.”
“I’m more adaptable than I look,” Mike said. “Especially when well motivated. Right now I am terribly well motivated.”
Mrs. Bernius nodded acceptance of this. She turned to Amy. “How tall are you?”
Amy looked guilty. “Well—”
“Stand up, dear.”
Amy stood up, drooping. By subtle drooping she had learned to keep her soaring six feet close to Mike’s five-ten level.
“And don’t slouch,” said Mrs. Bernius crisply. “Straighten those shoulders. All the way, that’s right, dear. Nothing to be worried about. I’ve been given to understand that height would be a distinct asset here. The member of the family you’ll be secretary to is Miss Durie. Miss Margaret Durie. Age seventy, has her crotchets, and—you should be prepared for this—is unsighted.”
“Blind?” Amy said with trepidation.
“Totally. Since a youthful accident. It seems to me that when this matter of height was brought up, Miss Durie was indicating she’d feel most secure in the company of someone tall.”
Very Old Money Page 1