Very Old Money

by Stanley Ellin

  It was Rose who reported, however, that if there was anything to recharge George’s fangs with venom, it was that petition. And how right her judgment proved when slowly, inexorably, frighteningly, it dawned on Mike—his job applications turned down one after another—that George was responding to queries about this applicant by sinking the fangs all the way in.

  Score extra points for George, too. His victim hadn’t been fired, he had quit, so there was no unemployment insurance forthcoming. And Amy, steadily wilting under it, was getting a lot of George’s personal attention. Classroom auditing at odd times every other day, public analysis of her maverick syllabus at faculty meetings. On the final day of the term, Amy wearily said good-bye to all that and joined the party.

  No favorable response to job applications, no unemployment insurance there either. She signed up for temporary jobs—receptionist and painstakingly slow and accurate typing her specialties—and Mike set to work on the novel-in-progress, an expanded version of the short story really, the narrative of the farm boy finding himself in the big city. It went badly. The financial pressure still wasn’t all that acute—there were a couple of thousand in the bank at the start of that summer—but at the typewriter his concentration was faulty, blurred by the images of calendar leaves flipping over, clock ticking, bank balance wilting, credit accounts demanding.

  Panic time set in when he sat at his desk with the bank book before him, its perforations pronouncing Account Closed, and beside it the now inoperative credit cards. With no way of getting back into the private school system, with the public school system not hiring, it was change of vocation time.

  The Sunday Times employment section became his bible; sitting in waiting rooms became his routine where, always judged overqualified or underqualified, he found that he was a superfluity on the job market, one of a number of such white-collared superfluities. He grasped at odd jobs as an almost last straw—demonstrating kitchenware at Bloomie’s; door-to-door commission selling of a children’s magazine guaranteed to get anyone’s kid into Harvard; grinding out thesis papers for a thesis mill that was suddenly padlocked by the law—and then, as the genuine last straw, driving a cab. Last one in, night shift was his stint, ten to twelve hours a night, six nights a week, sometimes seven, enough to almost make a living at it when the take was added to what Amy brought in. A few months of it until Amy found out about the gun shoved into the nape of his neck, and that settled that.

  The BMW finally had to go, and since he got a fair price for it that money helped for a few months. Then, bit by bit, using the bulletin board in the lobby of the Thompson Street house where such notices indicated that the building’s middle class was now taking a beating all around, the less essential furnishings of the apartment went for what they could bring. No complaint from Amy about any of this, nor about the fact that with his nerves tight he had to take frequent refuge in what were now expensive six-packs.

  Nor even any complaint from her about the way that unemployment, like some kind of evil spell, seemed to make him incapable now and then of delivering the goods in bed.

  Nor about the way, with his pride bruised, Amy was stuck with the wheedling of the landlord and the local storekeepers into extending credit another inch. Or had to be the one at crisis times to apply for the charity that their good neighbors, guardian angels, tenants of the duplex upstairs, were always ready to bestow on them. Loans, so called. Charity, de facto.

  The angels were Abe Silverstone, professor of economics at NYU, a few blocks over on Washington Square, and wife, Audrey, proprietress of Custer’s First Stand, that West Eighth Street boutique that had become such a hot number. They had been Mike’s devoted friends pre-Amy. When she arrived on the scene they took to her with delight. When hard times arrived they became the generous providers at the drop of a hat.

  “What the hell,” Abe said, “it’s survival money for people who matter to us. Look. I lived through the big depression—the 1930s—figuring I’d never get steady work. The end of the world is here, prepare to meet thy doom. But of course it wasn’t the end. So the name of the game is survival. For one more week and one more after that. Because you never know what’ll turn up or when.”

  Exactly one week after that what turned up was a handsome Cadillac limousine in front of the playhouse on Sheridan Square, a somehow familiar figure in chauffeur’s livery polishing its already gleaming hood.

  Mike, on his way to the supermarket with grocery discount coupons tucked in his pocket, stopped short with the realization that the figure was definitely familiar. Charlie Philbin. Upper School social studies teacher at Scoville-Lang for a stretch until, a chronic rabble-rouser at faculty meetings, he had been eased out by George.

  Hung up with embarrassment, Mike saw that Charlie had recognized him. Charlie gave him the flip of the hand and a wry smile. “Hiya, teacher.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Call me comrade. One of the proletariat. Surprised?”

  Mike stood in uncertain balance for a moment, one foot headed down the block toward the market, the other aimed at Charlie. What the hell, he thought, it would be good to open up to another sad case. He walked over to Charlie and they shook hands. “No surprise at all,” Mike said, biting the bullet. “Matter of fact, I don’t even rate proletarian. Strictly unemployed. Maybe unemployable. George and I had a falling-out.”

  “You? I thought you had lifetime tenure. When did that happen?”

  “Almost two years ago. No school jobs open, so I did this and that, hacked a cab, am now open to any offer.”

  “Hard times, as Mr. Dickens put it. Well, one consolation is you weren’t the marrying kind, as I recall, so there’s no—”

  Mike shook his head. “Married three years ago. Very married. It doesn’t do much for the morale that she’s carrying the load right now.”

  “You don’t have to describe it to me, friend. I’ve been there. Wait a second. You drove a cab?”

  “Yep. Until a couple of armed robberies convinced me otherwise.”

  “A sound instinct for self-preservation, I call it. But what I’m getting at is, would you mind getting behind the wheel of a gaudy object like this, in a costume like this, in public?”

  “It depends. My wife doesn’t make much. Even add chauffeuring to it, Charlie, and it still—”

  “Hold it, friend. Think hard. What kills is not the pitiable income but the painful outgo. I’m a family chauffeur. Nice people out on the Island. I’m not paid any fortune, my dear wife is not paid a fortune for being cook and chief bottle-washer there. But we have three rooms over the garage that would cost a mint here in the Village, we dine royally on the house, we have practically every goddam expense you can think of covered. We are a choice live-in couple, and to those aristos of Oyster Bay who cosset us, we are worth our weight in platinum. Get the scenario?”

  “Just about,” said Mike.

  “Good enough. Now there’s this agency on Fifth Avenue uptown called Domestique. You pay no fee, the employer pays all. Let me tell you about it, Mike. And how to get in with them. After all, you never know.”

  And, as it turned out, you really don’t.

  They stood on the corner where the cab had let them out and surveyed the building. This luxurious stretch of Madison Avenue at quarter of eight on a September Sunday morning was almost deserted. There was nothing to distract from the survey.

  “Massive,” Mike finally decided. “What’s the first word comes to your mind?”

  “Grand Central Station.”

  “That’s classic imperial. This, it so happens, is a Gilded Age palazzo designed for a James Hamilton Durie in 1900 by the architectural firm of Trowbridge and Livingston. Observe that the tops of those ground-floor window frames are arched to soften the heavy effect of the stone-block outer walls. And that the windows of the floors above are trimmed with rococo stonework to make the entire façade more graceful.”

  “Oh? Where’d you pick that up?”

  “The library, Friday.
Out of one of those ‘Good Old New York’ picture books. Impressed?”

  “Not really. I’m still trying to comprehend that this is a house. Just a house. Where people live.”

  “And where we now live, darling. It is our little nest where we will eventually hatch a gigantic nest egg.”

  “Yes, we will,” said Amy.

  “In that case, how about getting this luggage inside by the stroke of eight? First impressions, you know.”

  There was quite a load piled up on the sidewalk. Six well-worn suitcases, one duffle bag with the heavy winter gear, one carton containing Mike’s old Underwood, another laden with typescripts and personal papers. The unsold remainder of the Thompson Street household—TV set, stereo components and tapes, a few cartons of books and bric-a-brac—were now stashed away among the detritus of a century in the attic of the farmhouse at Spruce Pond.

  As Mike hefted a couple of suitcases Amy said, “Remember what Mrs. Bernius told us. The service entrance. It must be that iron gate down the street there.”

  “Shouldn’t I leave one hand free to tug the forelock with, dear?”

  “The service entrance,” said Amy, pointing.

  In fact, on the iron gate was a small brass plaque inscribed Service Entrance and luckily, considering the weight of the suitcases, the concrete walk behind the gate was a steep downward slope to basement level where a massive door opened on to—from what Mike could make of it through glass curtains—a pantry. Still, even with that slope making the cartage easier, by the time he had all their belongings stacked outside the door he was well winded. He motioned Amy to ring the bell.

  A young man answered the bell. A large, enormously stout man, black and of cheerful mien—a veritable black Bacchus—he wore a full-length apron and a chef’s toque pressed flat on the crown of his head like a starched white beret. “Lloyd and Mrs. Lloyd?” he said. The voice had in it the lilt of the Caribbean isles.

  “Lloyd and Mrs. Lloyd,” said Mike.

  “Very good. You are expected. I am Mabry. No,” he said as Mike reached for a suitcase, “don’t bother about them, mon. They will be attended to.”

  He led the way inside, and Mike saw that what he had guessed to be a pantry was indeed a well-stocked pantry about the length and width of a railroad car. Beyond was another door opening into a kitchen that could have engulfed the entire Thompson Street apartment. Judging from its display of machinery, cookware, and cutlery, it was equipped to serve a battalion of gourmandizers. Also on display was a very youthful female, fresh-faced, blond, blue-eyed, ripe of figure, who, in willow-gray uniform and decorative little apron, looked as if she had just stepped out of a nursery rhyme. Little Bo-Peep herself. She studied these strangers narrow-eyed, her forefinger in her mouth.

  “This is O’Dowd,” Mabry said by way of introduction, and O’Dowd, without removing the finger, said something that sounded like “Mrf.”

  “She is waiting to take you to Mrs. McEye,” said Mabry. “And when she sees Mrs. McEye”—he cocked an eye at O’Dowd—“she will also tell her that these people have baggage down here so Swanson must deliver it to their rooms. The only question is, can O’Dowd remember all this?”

  O’Dowd removed the finger from her mouth. “Blow it,” she said to Mabry in level tones.

  “She will remember,” he assured Mike and Amy. “The service elevator is there, in that foyer. Trust O’Dowd to operate it most stylishly. She is an expert at it.”

  The service elevator could have transported a grand piano with room left for a few passengers; its walls were hung with protective mats; it was operated by buttons. O’Dowd pressed the top button—third floor—then stood with her back against the wall, her face blank.

  “That chef,” Mike remarked to her helpfully, “is quite a tease, isn’t he?”

  “Him?” O’Dowd said scornfully. “He’s not chef, he’s cook.” As Mabry’s voice had the flavor of the Caribbean, this one was redolent of old Erin. “All brass only when chef’s not around.”

  “I see,” said Mike. “One does not take liberties with chef.”

  “No,” said O’Dowd, “one does not.”

  The elevator door opened. A corridor stretched into the distance, one wall studded with doors, the opposite wall with windows. A shorter and narrower hallway—though not all that short and narrow—diverged to the right and appeared to be the route to a corridor paralleling the one O’Dowd was marching them along. So the building would be an immense quadrangle constructed around a courtyard. Mike drifted close to a window to get a look through it and saw that he had guessed right. Stone walls on all four sides made a ponderous enclosure for a cobblestoned courtyard below, where on display was a formal garden.

  No sign of any garage though, and that was a puzzle. Not puzzling, however, were two of the doors they passed midway down the corridor, one displaying a skirted figure in silhouette, the other a trousered figure. Public toilets. Evidently, la Bernius in describing a pleasant little apartment as one of the job’s perquisites had choosen not to mention it was minus a bathroom. Of course, la Bernius didn’t get where she was by always telling everything she knew.

  At the far end of the corridor was another service elevator and beyond it a stairway. Up to here the hardwood floor was uncarpeted, but here, as they made a right turn down the traverse narrower hallway, they trod on carpet. An unsubtle sign perhaps that they were now in upper-echelon territory.

  O’Dowd knocked on a door. The woman who opened it was stocky, with a flattish red face, thin-lipped, snub-nosed, slightly pop-eyed, her gray hair in a braid around her head. She wore a tweedy suit and what could only be called sensible shoes.

  “The new people, ma’am,” said O’Dowd. “And Mabry says will you call Swanson to bring their things up.”

  “Indeed? Try again, O’Dowd.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Will you please call.”

  Oh, boy, thought Mike. No private toilet. Five miles to the nearest exit whatever direction you turn. Will you please call, ma’am. We are off to a galloping start, we are.

  “That’s better,” the woman told O’Dowd. “And Mabry will be getting the trays ready now, won’t he?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said O’Dowd, and with what could only have been a defiant switch of these well-rounded hips she marched off.

  “I’m Mrs. McEye,” the woman informed the new help. “The housekeeper. In charge.” She motioned them into what was plainly an office. Desk with several phones and revolving index on it, filing cabinets, a duplicating machine, a typewriter on a stand, a tabletop computer. There was a businesslike swivel chair behind the desk, two straight-backed chairs already planted before it. Mrs. McEye pointed at the chairs and when Mike and Amy seated themselves she settled down in the swivel chair, which somewhat dwarfed her, and made her phone call to Swanson in the fewest possible words. She replaced the phone, then drew a pack of cigarettes from the desk drawer and lit one. She made a broad gesture with the cigarette that encompassed the room. “The nerve center here, so to speak. A difficult job.” The voice was thin and hard, the enunciation exaggeratedly refined. “Especially since we’re shorthanded. Eight in residence and a permanent staff of only sixteen. Including you two.”

  Only sixteen, Mike thought. My goodness, it’s like camping out.

  “So,” said Mrs. McEye, “I’m glad to have you with us. You’re new to all this, I know, but Mrs. Bernius believes you’ll take hold quickly.” She drew deeply on the cigarette and let the smoke filter out between her teeth. “One word in advance. Confidentiality. Staff will always respect and maintain the family’s privacy. It will always remember that the family’s domestic life is not the business of outsiders. Anyone forgetting that must be prepared for the consequences.

  “Such as?” Mike asked.

  “Notice on the spot, two week’s dismissal pay, no favorable reference. That’s it. So take notice, both of you. Newspaper and magazine people may try to get information from you about family. May even offer payment for it. Don’t b
e tempted.”

  “Under no conditions,” said Mike.

  “None,” Mrs. McEye said flatly. “Now for protocol. Members of the family are addressed by surname. Mr. Durie. Mrs. Durie. Miss Durie. However, ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ does quite as well. That applies also to a family member not in residence but who may visit, the Principessa di Sgarlati. Miss Margaret—that is Miss Margaret Durie, the senior of the family—does not want the principessa, her sister, addressed by title.”

  “Why not?” Mike asked. Miss Margaret, according to Domestique, would be Amy’s personal boss. She began to sound interesting.

  Mrs. McEye’s regard of him made clear that he had stepped out of bounds. “Just curious,” he said.

  “Don’t be. Do—not—be.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “We really are very new at this,” Amy pointed out.

  The pop-eyes softened a little. “I’m taking that into account, Mrs. Lloyd. What you must take into account is that I am always between the rock and the hard place. Neither of you will ever be reprimanded by family for whatever you do that displeases it. I will be reprimanded.”

  “Lesson number one for us,” Amy said gravely.

  “I would say so.” Teacher was almost mellow now. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Except for the principessa and Mr. Craig’s married daughter, all family members are surnamed Durie by either birth or marriage. So to avoid confusion you will refer to them by their given names. Miss Margaret. Mr. Craig. Mr. Walter. And so on. As for the staff, our protocol here is that they be addressed or referred to by given name only. Miss Margaret once remarked to me that good form always stems from practical need, and, of course, this is a case in point.”

  “Of course,” said Amy.

  Cooing like a dove, Mike thought. Charming this biddy right out of her sensible shoes. That new Amy hairdo didn’t hurt either. Hitherto those flaming tresses—the original turn-on, let’s not forget—had always been draped over her shoulders or piled up into a sort of hit-or-miss arrangement. Now, both of them having sweated over it before dawn, it was an awesomely sleek chignon. The perfect sycophantic hairdo.