Very Old Money

by Stanley Ellin

  “Learn to say Titian red. And your eyes?”

  “Hazel, ma’am. My husband says sherry-colored.”

  “How poetic. Fair complexion, of course? With a tendency to freckle under sunlight?”

  “Some. Yes.”

  “So, Lloyd, I now see you clearly. Good strong features, a bit irregular. Fine large eyes. A slightly receding jaw that helps avoid unpleasant heaviness there. All in all, quite charming. Would you dispute any of this?”

  “Not really, ma’am. I never dispute any compliments that come my way.”

  “Indeed? That answer speaks well for you, too, Lloyd. Yes, we’re going to get on very well. Now I’ll reclaim my chair.”

  Amy leaped from the chair almost knocking over the cane leaning against its arm, and Margaret Durie seated herself. Suddenly she seemed drained of all energy. The cheeks became even paler against the patches of rouge, the nostrils flared, the mouth gaped. Amy found that her immediate reaction to this was a shameful one: Oh, God, I’m just settling into the job, and she’s going to drop dead on me! Shameful and calculating for that instant, but as the hoarse breathing became more labored she felt only an overwhelming concern for this suffering old woman. She kneeled down and took the flaccid hands in hers. They were icy cold.

  “Miss Durie?” she pleaded.

  The hands were abruptly snatched away. The face became fully alive. The voice was flint hard. “What do you think you’re doing, Lloyd?”

  “Ma’am,” Amy said helplessly, “I thought—”

  “Fatigue, Lloyd, that’s all. Stupid of you not to recognize it, wouldn’t you say?”

  Amy felt overwhelming concern become overwhelming outrage. “No, Miss Durie,” she heard herself say, “I was frightened for you. I wouldn’t call that stupidity.”

  But, she thought numbly, talking back like this sure was. Warned by Bernius of Domestique that servants show no feelings, enlightened by the McEye’s demonstrations of how not to show feelings, no matter the provocation, she had simply blown it all on the very first test. And with the luggage not even unpacked.

  Margaret Durie, lips compressed, was maintaining an alarming silence. Finally the lips parted. “Are you on your knees, Lloyd?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “A ridiculous position, isn’t it, for any confrontation with a fierce old dragon? Do stand up.”

  Amy got to her feet. “I’m standing, ma’am.”

  Margaret Durie sighed. “I’m aware of that, Lloyd. Now let’s have it. Do you find me a fierce old dragon?”

  “Not really. But when you misread good intentions—”

  “I don’t, Lloyd. I’m stifled by them. I’ve lived with them for more than half a century and sometimes they drain all the air out of my lungs. Therefore I sometimes respond to them ungraciously. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I do, ma’am.”

  “And you will not carry any of this—or anything I ever confide in you—past that door? That I would regard as unforgiveable.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then tomorrow morning you’ll familiarize yourself with your duties here. Eight o’clock promptly.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Amy.

  “Oh, dear?”

  “Mrs. McEye told me that tomorrow morning I’m to shop for the kind of wardrobe that’s required here.”

  “Ah, yes, those sumptuary laws. However, I’ll attend to Mrs. McEye, and you’ll present yourself here at eight. The kitchen first, so that you can bring my breakfast tray—cook will prepare it for you, coffee and brioche, ça suffit—and a copy of the Times. I’ll need your services for only a little while, and then you’ll attend to your shopping. Exactly what did Mrs. McEye find unsuitable about your present wardrobe?”

  “Well, she felt this dress was a little too colorful. Most of my dresses are like that.”

  “My turn for an apologetic ‘Oh, dear,’” said Margaret Durie. “And now you’re smiling, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am,” Amy said, a little surprised to find that she was.

  “And you’re wondering how I know you are. White magic, Lloyd. Close the door firmly when you leave.”

  Amy closed the door firmly. And, she thought, taking in the empty length of East Hall, what happens now is that a white rabbit comes into sight, apprehensively glancing at its watch and muttering, “Oh, my ears and whiskers.”

  “Oh, my ears and whiskers,” Amy whispered. With no McEye in the offing, no duties scheduled, the logical thing was to head back to the apartment and help Mike, poor hard-beset darling, unpack the luggage. But just how far did logic extend down this rabbit hole?

  Never mind all this mental nattering. The thing to rejoice over despite various confusions was that Miss Margaret—Super-ma’am—had given this Mrs. Lloyd at least a passing grade on first acquaintance.

  Sufficient unto the day …

  Mike pulled open the elevator gate and stepped out into a cool, damp world of whitewashed stone. Close by was a pit in which were installed a couple of mighty oil burners and a quartet of huge water tanks. The apparatus murmured contentedly, gauges clicked fitfully. The ceiling was solid with rows of pipes—red, green, black, white—which made an entertainingly jazzy sight extending down this spacious tunnel into what appeared to be infinity, and here and there along the way smaller-gauge stuff ascended through the ceiling from the main lines to areas above. Everything looked as if it had been freshly polished or painted first thing this morning.

  Xanadu, thought Mike. And here, folks, since you must have wondered what they look like, are those caverns measureless to man.

  A few steps along the way he found life in the caverns. Behind a wire mesh was a workshop that looked, from the display on its walls, like a prosperous hardware store. Added to all the gimickry, sheets of glass stood in a rack against the wall, and a tall, leathery-skinned oldster was bent over a pane of glass on a worktable, trimming it with a cutter. A much younger man in a rumpled dark suit was watching him, hands clasped behind his back. The outline of a holstered pistol showed plainly under the jacket. The man looked up as Mike stopped at the door of the fencing. “You in the right place, mister?” he asked doubtfully.

  “On my way to the kitchen,” Mike said. “Mike Lloyd. I’m the new chauffeur. Straight ahead does it?”

  “Straight ahead. Wait a second.” The man strolled out to take stock. “I’m Inship. Security. You don’t mind, I’d like to see some ID. House policy, you understand.”

  “Sure.” Mike handed over his chauffeur’s license and Inship, after close inspection, returned it.

  “Good enough,” he said. “But you’re live-in, ain’t you? You and your wife. She’s Miss Margaret’s secretary, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then better get the change of address on that license soon as you can.” Inship turned to the glass cutter. “Hey, Borglund, say hello to the new chauffeur. Wilson finally got his ticket out. See what happens when you get that old?” He winked at Mike. “Borglund’s even older’n Wilson. And been here even longer.”

  Borglund tapped a fringe of glass free of the pane and looked up. He said to Mike, “You know how to use your hands, mister?” The voice was a Scandinavian fluting. “Some plumbing, some wiring?”

  “I was a farm boy,” Mike said.

  “Yah? That could do it. I will let you know when.” He returned to the glass.

  “You mean,” Mike said to Inship, “I’m down for handyman, too?”

  “Only in the clutch. Mrs. Mac gets calls for too many rush jobs all together, and you’re just watching a ballgame on the tube, you’re a handyman.”

  “Live and learn,” said Mike. He pointed. “Straight ahead?”

  “To the end of the line. The double-doors there.”

  At wide intervals along the way to the end of the line were closed doors, some padlocked, and at the end of the tunnel Mike found himself confronted by a massive pair of doors, not padlocked. He pulled one open and was in a long room, glassdoored cabinets mounted o
n chests occupying much of the wall space, a well-worn rectory table in the middle of the floor, and some familiar company scattered around the table sharing a nosh. Among it were the testy and pretty O’Dowd and amiable, plain-featured Nugent of the housemaid department, and the muscular Hegnauer, the body builder or whatever. One diner was unfamiliar, a middle-aged, thickset man in soiled overalls who bore a vague resemblance to Borglund. This, Mike conjectured, had to be the hitherto unseen Swanson, the helping hand who had seen the Lloyds’ luggage up to their apartment so promptly. Kin to Borglund probably, and with a team like Borglund and Mrs. McEye on his tail, promptness would have to be his style.

  “Good-morning,” Mike said to the faces turned his way and got a nod from O’Dowd and Swanson, nothing from Hegnauer, and a cheery “Good-morning again to you, Lloyd” from Nugent.

  “And how does one sign on for breakfast?” Mike asked her.

  “Oh, there’s no signing up,” she said seriously. “Those swinging doors there are the kitchen doors, and cook’ll attend to you nicely.”

  Behind the swinging doors Mike found Mabry, the large, rotund black cook, trussing up some small fowl on a worktable. “A bite to eat, mon?” he said in response to the question. “That can be arranged. How big a bite?”

  “The minimum. I’m due at the garage, so I’ll have to settle for toast and coffee.”

  “Then leave the toast to me, and if you look closely around the staff hall you will find a sideboard with a coffee maker always ticking away on it.”

  “Thank you. And where is the staff hall?”

  “You have just walked through it, mon. It was the servants hall, but since these are democratic times it is now the staff hall.” Mabry wiped his hands on his apron. “That is where you dine. Then you bring your soiled dishes and cutlery here, hose them down at that sink to get the gumbo off, and deposit them in that dishwasher.”

  “And the dining comes when? Does staff have a schedule for that?”

  Mabry removed a couple of slices of bread from a bin and popped them into a toaster. “Breakfast is come when you can. For lunch and dinner, staff gets its turn after family. However, this jim-dandy kitchen is open to staff twenty-four hours a day, manned or unmanned. Hands off that small fridge there, which contains various specialties, but you are free to help yourself to whatever you want from that big one. If you do a bit of your own cookery, just make sure to leave the premises so blindingly clean that no one could guess you had even used them. Chef is a dear old chap, but with delicate nerves. If he detects one little crumb on his floor, he reaches for the carving knife. One crumb, one ear. That’s the way he scores it.”

  “Almost biblical,” Mike said. He watched with admiration as Mabry, in a series of balletic movements, flipped the perfectly browned toast onto a plate, slid the plate onto a tray, added knife, coffee spoon, and linen napkin, then handed over the load with a flourish.

  “Butter, jam, and necessaries are all next to the coffee maker. I gather Mrs. Lloyd is not yet at table?”

  “Eventually,” Mike said. “Mind if I ask a question outside the line of duty?”

  “If you don’t mind that toast getting cold,” said Mabry. Mike took note that he looked wary but interested.

  “It’s about Miss Margaret’s previous secretary. The one Mrs. Lloyd’s replacing. Was she retired or fired?”

  Mabry shook his head. “But there was no previous secretary, mon. Sometimes a female masseur like that Teutonic dreadnought inside, sometimes a maid to particularly fuss over her, sometimes a very highly qualified nurse to get her through the worst of the bad times”—again that shake of the head—“but never any secretary. Mrs. Lloyd is the first. Perhaps, if all goes well, the only.”

  “Perhaps,” Mike said. He felt stirrings of uneasiness. “But bad times? What kind of bad times?”

  “Ah, that. Have you been told about that accident on the stairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, after that came the bad times. Morbid times, mon. Like a hurt animal. Doesn’t take it out on you, you know, just crawls off into the corner. It was like that when I started here—oh, about four years ago now—and from what I heard it was that way all those years since the accident. Can’t blame the woman, can you? Fine-looking, spirited girl—Golightly and Borglund and Wilson knew her that way—and I’ve heard tales about the young society cockalorums flocking around her. And she had a real talent for being an artist—that’s the story—so that even her father went along with her plans for it, and that, mon, was not customary for old-line people like him. All of that, the whole world right in her pretty little hand, and then”—Mabry snapped sausage-thick fingers like a pistol shot—“blackout. Total blackout forever and a day. No man to warm your bed, no child to bring up, no fine pictures to paint. And that toast is cold now. Throw it in that can, I’ll make you some fresh.”

  “No, it’s all right,” Mike said. “But she didn’t seem like that when I saw her. Morbid, I mean. Matter of fact, she seemed in sort of a jokey mood. Not in what she said, just the way she said it. Nothing like morbid.”

  “You think I’m stretching the truth, mon? Not a bit. Because what you met is our new-model Miss Margaret. Like Lazarus, back from the grave. About a year ago. Reborn.”

  “Found religion?”

  “Not likely, mon.” Mabry shrugged broadly. “Those older ones here are not much for religion, especially the born-again style. Give generously, so I hear, to that Presbyterian church down Madison Avenue, but when you chauffeur them to church it will only be for weddings and funerals. If they happen to esteem the wed or dead. No, we all have ideas about why the lady came back to the land of the living, but they’re only ideas, mon. There are more things in heaven and earth—you know the line?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is one of those things. But whatever the cause, we are one and all grateful for the results. No more zombie under this roof. This is now a lady living the full life. That is why she found herself in need of a secretary.”

  “I see,” said Mike, then was moved to ask, “It doesn’t worry you that you are, by Mrs. McEye’s way of thinking, telling tales out of school? And to a comparative stranger?”

  “But harmless tales, mon. Even morally elevating.” Mabry grinned broadly. “Besides, I like your style. Refreshing, mon, after a bellyful of empty-headed Hibernian females, not to mention their empty-headed male counterparts. And that cold and clammy toast should not—”

  “It’ll do fine,” Mike said, backing away as Mabry reached for the tray. “Not enough time anyhow. And I thank you for your many courtesies.”

  “They come natural to me,” Mabry said, straight-faced.

  And jest or not, Mike thought as he pushed through the swinging doors, they probably did. A handy chap to get close to, cook Mabry, especially when it came to filling in bits and pieces about the Durie lifestyle. And when they were all filled in? Mike felt a tickling sensation in the midriff, sometimes the signal that literary inspiration was dawning. Dawning to what purpose, however, wasn’t clear.

  Only Hegnauer remained at the long table now, and she gave him a fishy eye as he filled a coffee cup, spooned marmalade on a piece of toast, covered it with the other, and, defying any local propriety, gulped down this second makeshift breakfast of the day standing there. While at it he took notice that each of those ceiling-high, glass-doored cabinets around the room displayed collections of china and glassware. Risking Hegnauer’s disapproval, he pulled open a chest drawer a few inches, and sure enough there was an array of cutlery nested in black velvet. So the staff hall was not just staff’s dining room but also family’s chinaware and cutlery department. For dinner service tonight, Jeeves, we’ll try catalogue number A-100.

  With hunger pangs falsely soothed, he brought his service—definitely not catalogue number A-100—back to the kitchen and was about to give it the requisite hosing down when Mabry nudged him aside.

  “You’re in a big rush, mon, I’ll take care of it. And when you eat so
fast, you can work up a hurtful stomach even on toast and coffee.”

  “I thank you, sir,” said Mike.

  Mabry gave him that grin. “Style,” he said. “You see how easily I am victimized by it?”

  The garage was a big one, combining a repair shop and a four-story parking setup. Mike found Levine, the kingpin himself, in the street-level office of the parking setup, and Levine, a hard-eyed man with his lips shaped into a permanent little smile of all-knowingness, introduced this newcomer to the almost legendary Wilson. Who, Mike took notice, was obviously not going to let the weight of his years get him down. A skinny little antique, conspicuously false teeth agleam, he was done up in expensive-looking tweeds and lizard shoes like something out of a geriatrics issue of Esquire.

  “Floyd?” he said to Mike on introduction.

  “Lloyd.”

  “Yeah?” Wilson sounded as if he doubted this. “Who’d you used to drive for?”

  “The public,” Mike said. “I drove a cab.”

  Wilson turned unbelieving eyes on Levine. “You hear that? The worst drivers on God’s green earth.”

  “There’s all kinds of cabbies,” Levine said equably. He shrugged at Mike. “Don’t mind him. After fifty-three years on the job he still can’t see why they put him out to grass. And too stupid to know how lucky he is. Fat pension, nice rent-free apartment—”

  “Three dinky rooms,” said Wilson.

  “Dummy,” said Levine, “those rooms on the East Side here would cost you fifteen hundred a month if you paid rent like other people. Now let’s go look at the cars and you tell this man the ground rules. Then you can retire for keeps and open your mouth to somebody else. Get yourself a wife and drive her crazy.”

  He led the way to the rear of the garage where a small disappointment awaited. There were some impressive items parked there—Caddie and Mercedes stretch limos—and a little apart from them were lined up three custom-built Buick sedans, Park Avenues, two black, one gray, and a station wagon, a black Chrysler Town-and-Country. Quality stuff, Mike thought, smooth-riding, high-powered, but nothing to turn heads as they went by.