Very Old Money

by Stanley Ellin

  “However,” said Mrs. McEye emphatically, making it two words, “I am Mrs. McEye to staff, and you are Mrs. Lloyd.”

  “Because there are two Lloyds,” Amy said.

  “Well, more to the point, Mrs. Lloyd, you’ll have certain administrative duties. And staff must recognize your status.”

  “Administrative? But Mrs. Bernius didn’t—”

  “Please.” Mrs. McEye tamped out the cigarette in an ashtray and immediately lit another. “Let me explain. My days off are Thursdays and Saturdays. Those days I must have someone in this chair to, so to speak, hold the fort. This also means that your days off are Wednesdays and Sundays. Lloyd’s too, as a convenience for you both.”

  “Thank you,” said Mike.

  “Well, couples-in-service do require certain considerations. Oh, yes, and there are no holidays off. But you get vacation the entire month of July.” Mrs. McEye glanced at her wristwatch. “Just enough time to clear up the other essentials. You’ll want to freshen up in your apartment before introductions. So”—she held up a clenched fist, thumb extended—“you are not to seat yourselves in the presence of the family. Good manners there.” She extended a forefinger. “Two. You will not pointlessly wander around family areas, that is, the two lower floors. You will be there only in the line of duty. The basement and third floor are the staff areas.” She extended a middle finger. “Three. Use service elevators only. There’s one at the northeast corner of the building right down this hallway, another at the kitchen end. Of course, this does not apply when you accompany family. Their instructions always come first.” She looked inquiringly at Amy. “Mrs. Bernius did inform you about Miss Margaret’s infirmity?”

  “Blindness?”

  “Yes. A tragic business. An accident not long after her presentation party. Her coming-out. From what I’ve been told, she was a beautiful and most talented young woman. Really tragic. We must be extremely sensitive to that, Mrs. Lloyd.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Extremely sensitive.” Mrs. McEye again glanced at her watch. “So all that’s needed now are your signatures on these insurance forms. Mrs. Bernius already sent me your other completed forms, so this takes care of the lot.” She was already out of her chair and ready to go as they signed. “Now let’s see your apartment. There’s not much time to spare before introductions.”

  “Just introductions,” Mike said. “No interviews and such.”

  “Correct. Again a matter of good manners and practicality. We all like to know who these strangers are in our home, don’t we?”

  A policy, Mike reflected, which would just about wipe out a large part of Village social life. Then he had another thought. “What about having family or friends in? On our own time?”

  Mrs. McEye shook her head vigorously. “Under no conditions. Staff does not invite any visitor into this house for any reason. Security is difficult enough as it is. That would make it impossible. We have two security men on premises at all times—they room on this floor—and on patrol at night. If you ask them, they’ll explain the problem to you.”

  “No need,” said Mike.

  “Good. Then let’s be on our way.” Mrs. McEye pointed at the door behind her. “That is my apartment. Yours is down the hall just beyond it.”

  She steered them out of the office and along the transverse corridor to a door that, previously shut, was now wide open and displayed a living room with the familiar luggage in it.

  Magic, Mike thought. You make one quick call to a Swanson and your wish is instantly granted.

  Mrs. McEye ushered them in. The room in furnishings and decoration, Mike took note, was good old Holiday Inn. He crossed over to the window and saw Madison Avenue below. Since it was Sunday morning there were no signs of life in that stretch of boutiques and galleries.

  “Please,” Mrs. McEye called sharply, and Mike found that she and his sycophantic wife were already in the next room, the bedroom. He walked in and saw more Holiday Inn. But visible behind yet another open door was a sight to gladden the eye.

  “A bathroom?” he said.

  Mrs. McEye looked surprised. “Of course.”

  “Sorry,” said Mike, “but when I saw those lavatories along that main hallway—”

  “The North Hall. Yes, for other staff. Especially convenient for the housemaids. Four of them. They each have a single room along there. That reminds me, Lloyd. These girls come highly recommended but they are young and impressionable. You won’t take offense, I trust, if I advise you never to get the least familiar with them, so to speak.”

  “No offense at all,” Mike said. He found himself bemused by the image of four Little Bo-Peeps playing Delilah.

  Amy tugged his sleeve. “Mrs. McEye asked me if this double bed was all right, or if we wanted twins. I told her this is what we’re used to.”

  “That we are.”

  Mrs. McEye nodded approval. “My feeling, too.” Her expression became wistful. “And my late husband’s. Gone three years now. He was butler here. A good man, a good marriage. And an excellent butler. The family hasn’t been able to replace him any more than I have.”

  “So there is no butler now?” Mike said.

  “None. Mrs. Bernius hasn’t had any luck there. She told me she doesn’t believe there are any of the old-fashioned butlers left, the ones with proper competence and style. The one man who did fill the position last year … well.”

  That Jack Benny well spoke volumes.

  “Yes?” said Mike.

  Mrs. McEye wrestled briefly with discretion and lost. “I’m sure you’ll hear about it anyhow,” she said, and though there didn’t appear to be another pair of ears within hearing distance she lowered her voice. “Staff here is a rumor mill as you’ll find out. However. Mr. Craig got word from friends in England that a certain well-regarded butler in a Great House there was ready to make the move to the States. So Mr. Craig arranged for his employment here. After only two months it came out—no need to say how—that this creature was having an obscene affair with a houseboy he took into our service. Had actually seduced him, and almost every night in this very apartment—well, I don’t imagine I have to describe it to you.”

  “Not really,” said Mike.

  “Of course,” said Mrs. McEye, “since Mr. Craig held himself responsible, he attended to the matter personally. And vigorously. That, keep in mind, is the actual story no matter what version of it you get from staff.” She made a gesture of dismissal. “But let’s get back to business. That white phone on the night table is the in-house phone. A direct line to all family rooms and the office—I really should say from all family rooms, because you never call family yourselves, you phone me to do that. The black phone provides an outside line. Local calls won’t be charged to you; long distance calls will be.

  “And”—she held up a hand in warning—“a word to the wise. Don’t let the maids use your outside line, no matter what excuse they concoct for it. They don’t have outside lines in their rooms, but there are a couple for their use—for staff use—in the staff hall downstairs. Do a favor for one, you’ll wind up doing it for all. Be wise in advance.”

  “As much as possible,” Mike said.

  “At least that. There’s also a folder of vital information in your desk drawer. Go through it carefully. Right now—this isn’t in the folder—I must clear up the matter of dress. Appropriate dress for you, Mrs. Lloyd; the livery for you, Lloyd.”

  Amy looked down at herself with approval. “Well, I think that the kind of dress I’m wearing—”

  “Yes, very nice. But the color and pattern, well, they are a bit emphatic, so to speak. On duty, pastels are in order, and no patterns. Separates are also acceptable. White or pastel waist, dark skirt. Hemlines always at knee-length even if styles raise them. Never excessively high heels; those casuals you’re wearing are perfect. Not that you indulge in high heels, I imagine, with your height.”

  “No, I don’t,” Amy acknowledged. “An overdose of Drink Me, I’m afraid.”
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  Mrs. McEye looked bewildered. “I beg your pardon?”

  “From Alice in Wonderland,” Mike said. “Sort of a family joke.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. McEye, who obviously didn’t. “Well, strictly between us, Mrs. Lloyd, your height is all to your advantage. One requisite for secretary that Miss Margaret laid down was height.”

  “She’s this tall herself?” Amy said.

  “No, no, quite the contrary. But the family feels—and I agree—that the more frail she becomes, the more she needs the assurance of being served by someone physically imposing.”

  Mike looked at his wife. Imposing? Willowy was the word.

  “However,” Mrs. McEye told the willowy one, “the point is that I have no duties for you tomorrow. Take what time you need to arrange for a wardrobe as specified. And Lloyd—”

  “Present,” said Mike, and knew as soon as it was out that it was a mistake.

  “Another family joke?” Mrs. McEye inquired drily.

  “No. Just high spirits, I guess.”

  “Are they? Well, bear in mind, Lloyd, that this family may not appreciate any such display of high spirits.”

  “I will bear that in mind, Mrs. McEye. Depend on it.”

  The repentance evidently struck the right note. Mrs. McEye now looked merely reproachful. “Not that I don’t have a sense of humor, Lloyd. But there is a time and place for everything, so to speak.”

  “I understand.”

  “That’s what I must depend on. Well, then. Your livery. Actually demilivery. Always to be worn on duty. As Mr. Craig put it, family does not want its chauffeur to advertise it. So instead of the standard livery, our jacket is simply a double-breasted business-style, hard-worsted in neutral gray, and with trousers to match. Black shoes and socks. White shirt, black tie. The cap is standard, gray with black peak. Two suits, caps, pairs of shoes and gloves. Half a dozen of each other item. Is that clear?”

  All too clear, Mike thought. He heard cash registers sounding off around him like fire alarms.

  “Yes,” he said, “but that kind of investment—”

  “Oh, no.” Mrs. McEye almost smiled. “All this is charged on the household. And tomorrow at nine you have an appointment with our clothiers downtown. Hale & Hale. On Broadway near Wall Street. They’ll see to everything. And have it ready the next day.”

  This was awesome indeed. “Twenty-four-hour service?” said Mike.

  Mrs. McEye’s smile broadened, revealing very small, even, and yellowed teeth. “Exactly.”

  One thing was plain, Mike thought. The little lady thoroughly enjoyed putting on her show for the bedazzled villagers.

  “Hale & Hale,” he said. “Nine, tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes. Now I’ll leave you two alone. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

  With that she departed. The new help looked at each other.

  “Well?” said Mike.

  “I have to go to the toilet,” Amy said. “I’ve had to go since we got here.”

  Mike followed along and stood in the open doorway. “Any thoughts on the all-seeing McEye, my dear?”

  “Yes. I think there won’t ever be any butler here again. Not if she can help it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Amy said, “don’t butlers outrank everyone else on staff? Isn’t that how it was in ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’? He was the one really in charge?”

  “I didn’t watch that show. I have to go by The Admirable Crichton. And all those Astaire and Rogers late-night shows with butlers. Eric Blore. Come to think of it, McEye does look a lot like Eric Blore in braids, doesn’t she? Pop-eyes and all.”

  “Maybe. But he wasn’t a butler, he was a valet. What is it butlers really do anyhow? And no,” Amy quickly added, “don’t tell me they go around sodomizing houseboys. I mean in the line of duty.”

  “Buttle, of course. Which is all kind of irrelevant, isn’t it, dear? Because I am not a four-star butler. I am a one-stripe chauffeur. In demilivery.”

  Amy flushed the toilet. “All right,” she said shortly, “it’s your turn,” and left him to his privacy. When he came out of the bathroom she was tensely waiting for him. “You know we’ve been waltzing all around the real subject, don’t you?”

  “Do I?”

  “No more evasion, Mike. After we meet the family we cannot walk out on that woman. If we do it, we do it now as soon as she’s back here.”

  “Why would we?”

  “Because you’re extremely troubled, now that you see what this is all about. This kind of life for us.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Amy shook her head. “No. But then I’m Mrs. Lloyd while you are Lloyd the chauffeur. You said we could handle this by role-playing, but now you know that role is not for you. And when you’re unhappy, I am. I won’t live that way.”

  “A purveyor of sweet and sour truths, aren’t you, baby? All right, let’s say we walk out. Where do we walk to?”

  “The farm. I’ve thought that out. Your folks would love us there with them, and we wouldn’t be any drag. I’d help out full time and you’d write full-time. You know how proud your father is about your writing. Get the book published, and his cup runneth over.”

  “Maybe. But writing full-time? While he’s out there trying to get his pot-smoking hired boys to help him turn the compost over? No, I’ve still got some conscience left. The farm is out. Better Lloyd the chauffeur than that.”

  Amy said in despair, “But if you’re going to—”

  “I am not going to. If you mean hanging on here and being bitter about it. Wait. You’ve made me do some hard thinking right now. At this time and place.”

  “About what?”

  “For instance,” Mike said, “why should I feel humiliated and resentful about this job when I didn’t while I was driving that cab? Or playing patsy for George Oliphant all those years. Only because of what Bernius warned us about. It’s the flunky factor. And this weird protocol crap with all its fine print. If some drunk looked like he was ready to heave up in my cab, I could tell him to kindly remove himself or get removed. If Mr. Craig or Mr. Walter or whoever else here heaves up all over my handsome livery, I take it and like it. Abject flunkyism. Everything on an intensely personal basis. See what I mean?”

  “Yes, and it’s what I meant, too. That’s why—”

  “Let me finish. At the same time, I just got a coldly objective look at this Lloyd the chauffeur. He hit bottom, he miraculously found a way out, and now he began to feel maybe it was just too much perfumed manure for him to handle, really, my deah, altogether impossible for such a sensitive fellow. Fact?”

  “No,” Amy said. “Not the way you’re putting it.”

  “Precisely the way I’m putting it. Remember my reaction when Bernius painted the picture for us? I said it was unreal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I was wrong. Our money troubles are real, this house is real, the people in it are real. This is the present reality. I wasn’t prepared as well as I thought to face it. Now I am. Without being bitter. In fact, by taking a healthy interest in it. That, and a healthy sense of humor—”

  “But not for public consumption,” Amy said. “Please?”

  “How wise is the elegant Mrs. Lloyd. No, the humor will be strictly for our private consumption.”

  “Then we are staying?”

  “That we are.”

  “I didn’t think we would,” Amy confessed. “I really do love you. You are a unique and excellent human being.”

  “Well, you’re kind of unique and excellent yourself. By the way, did you notice there’s a handy little refrigerator in the corner of the bathroom?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there is. With a card on its door saying ‘For non-alcoholic beverages and fresh fruit only!’ Exclamation point. How’s that for explicit?”

  Amy grimaced. “Mrs. McEye. Mike, do you think she has a key to this place and sneaks in to check on things like that?”

  “Want to bet?
” Mike said.

  When Mrs. McEye returned she produced a pair of keys to the apartment, one for secretary, one for chauffeur. Mike held his up. “Good for the outside door, too?” he asked. “The service entrance?”

  “No, no, no. Absolutely not. Except for our security men staff has no keys to any outside door. Just ring the service entrance bell and someone will let you in. One of the security men if it’s after hours. They make the rounds every hour on schedule, so you can time it and avoid having to wait outside. A bit of a nuisance but it does work. In all my twenty-two years here, we’ve never had a break-in.”

  “A record for the Big Apple,” Mike said.

  “It may be. And now—” Mrs. McEye reached up toward Amy’s head and when Amy involuntarily drew back she was addressed sharply: “We do want to look our best, don’t we, Mrs. Lloyd?” Mrs. McEye reached up again and tucked away a strand of hair that had escaped from the chignon. “There now.” She looked Mike over, and, he thought, probably itched for a close inspection of his ears and fingernails but didn’t have the nerve to carry through.

  She led them past the service elevator at the end of the hallway down the staircase there. “Much more convenient when it’s only one flight down,” she remarked. “Family apartments are on the second floor.”

  Since the stairway was sharply pitched, and each step—unyielding iron plate with a floral design etched into it—seemed steeper than the ordinary, this route, Mike thought, might be more convenient for Amy and him but hardly for the stumpy-legged good soldier ahead of them. It suggested that the lady, without making protocol of it, was indicating that for short trips between floors one depended on leg power to make proper speed, not on any mechanical devices that would take their own sweet time about it.

  The second-floor hallway they emerged on provided a different world from the one upstairs. The ceiling here, Mike saw, really soared. No mere windows on the courtyard side either, but vast expanses of glass from floor to ceiling, vertically framed at intervals by slender marble pillars, the whole arrangement diffusing daylight through the corridor as well as offering a full view of courtyard and garden below. And along the polished hardwood floor here was an array of oriental carpets, pale green and rose predominating in their varying patterns. The Janus effect, Mike thought. Outside, that view of the building around the courtyard was of forbidding gray stonework. Inside all was gracious invitation.