“And, by the way, Miss Margaret just phoned me to report most favorably on you.”
“That’s very kind of her.”
“Yes.” The voice changed subtly, a coolness setting in. “She also explained about your attending to her mail. You’ll have one of the staff to help you with the sorting out. I’ll attend to the rest of the distribution.”
“Yes, Mrs. McEye.”
“And remember that tomorrow morning is pickup time for your laundry and cleaning. And Mrs. Lloyd”—the voice smoothly reverted to affable—“you do seem to have gotten off to a good start. That’s most gratifying.” Click went the phone.
Touchy about her prerogatives all right, Amy thought. And a mite wary of me now, but playing it down. Because, comes to bottom lines, it does look like whatever Ma’am wants, Ma’am gets.
The same also appeared to be true about Audrey when the time came. The loft she led Amy into was crowded with dress-manufacturing equipment and deafening with activity. Its shirt-sleeved, sweating proprietor, introduced as Maxie something-or-other, looked skeptical when Audrey said, “For the trade, Maxie. Wholesale.”
He motioned with his head at Amy. “This is the trade?”
“So to speak. She’s model-size anyhow. It’ll be just some hems for me to pin up and a little needlework for one of your ladies.”
“Even so, darling, not now. Look around. You can see not now.”
“In fifteen years at the big store, Maxie, I never once said to you not now, did I?”
Maxie threw up his hands. “All right, all right, there’s the line on those racks over there; go help yourself. But we do the hems only after you do all the fitting. The pins are free.”
Going by her own shopping technique—take the first thing that fits and try not to look too closely in the mirror at those damn bony clavicles—Amy had estimated that about an hour should do it. After two hours, however, most of it spent standing in bra and pantyhose in a beat-up little dressing room while Audrey, her mouth full of pins, scurried back and forth between racks and dressing room, there was still a long way to go. The trouble was, Amy saw, that Audrey was really enjoying this, every bit of it, even that getting down on her knees for the endless pinning while her client’s belly crawled with impatience.
But Audrey did have her limits. “Lunch break,” she finally announced. “There’s a great deli right next door. We can finish this later.”
In the deli she maneuvered them to a corner table, and after their orders were delivered she said, “Another thing is, this gives us a chance for some woman talk. You know how Abe monopolizes the table talk when we’re all together. And I have something on the mind.”
“What?”
“You and Mike yesterday. Granting you were dead tired and all, when he brought up that business of your helping him get material out of the Durie family for a book you came on way too cranky about it. There was something between you two I never saw before. What was that all about?”
“I was being stupid. It’s that old woman, Audie. I did have the feeling that Mike was somehow asking me to betray her.”
Audrey looked disbelieving. “Oh, come on.”
“I know. But she did have that affect on me. She’s extraordinary and overwhelming.”
“Overwhelming,” said Audrey. “She and Abe ought to get together. That should make a great match.”
“He’d come up against what I do. She’s blind. And for all she’s outspoken about it and brave about it, there it is. Perhaps it’s because I never dealt with anybody blind before, but it throws me. No matter how much she keeps putting me in my place I find myself pitying her terribly. I keep wanting to say something comforting or whatever. Which would really be the wildest kind of mistake.”
“Besides,” Audrey said, “she’s got a family for that.”
“Except there’s an alienation there. At least on her part.”
“But,” Audrey said, “there’s none between you and Mike, is there? Everything—allowing for him being the imperfect male—is the same as ever?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Good. Because in case you didn’t know it, doll, Abe and I have a stake in you two. Not financial. That part is just a token stake. Don’t ever let it cloud your day.”
“It doesn’t, now that we can make repayment. Including for these dresses and things. And while we’re on this, Audie, how much will this stuff cost? And no cheating in my favor. Really how much?”
“It’s all billed to the shop, doll, at full discount. You’ll get the bill when I do.”
“I’d like to be prepared for it. You know how I am.”
“Yes, a size-nine worrywart. Well, figuring dresses, skirts, waists, and all, minus discount, you can put down seven hundred bucks in that little black book.”
“Oh, Audie!”
“But consider, doll, you now live among the implausibly rich where seven hundred hardly pays for that little sweater in the window. And take it from me, the perfect dress—even if it’s just a simple little workaday number—is a great spine-stiffener in that company. So the subject is closed. The real subject is the emotional stake Abe and I have in you and Mike. By the way, that classical hairdo is very good. Whose inspiration was it, yours or Mike’s?”
“Both, I guess.”
“See? There you are. Both.”
“What about it?”
“Mostly,” said Audrey, “it’s about the way your marriage is working out. Not only bedmates but trusted best friends, right?”
“The same as you and Abe, Audie. Except you’ve been married a lot longer.”
“Twenty-eight years, doll. And spent too damn much of it watching a whole egomaniacal generation foul up their marriages rather than turn off any of that egomania. You know, when Mike first showed up in our building Abe and I went for him right off, he was so genuine and so minus egomania. The country boy in the big town but with a sense of humor. I mean, really refreshing when you consider everybody else around. He hasn’t lost that either, has he?”
“Nope,” Amy said firmly.
“Ah, the voice of authority. Still, as the years rolled on we started to worry about him. He’d come up with some really all right females now and then, but there was never a sign of commitment to any of them. Fact is, he seemed a lot more committed to that BMW he drove than to any woman. What is this, we wondered, another me-generation Peter Pan in the making? Another aging babe in toyland? Our Mike? So when you came along—our country boy had found his country girl—it was a happy day for us. Commitment was in the air. Real maturity was in the making.”
Amy simultaneously felt touched and a little miffed. “Boston is hardly the country,” she pointed out.
“You know what I mean. And what matters is that you and Mike—there aren’t many like you around—are still holding high the Silverstone banner. The working marriage forever. And nothing better happen to yours, or you’ll have to answer to us.”
“You’re both darlings,” said Amy.
“Well, we do have our moments. Now how about we attend to these sandwiches and get back to the fitting room? And don’t look like you’re being invited to stretch out on the rack. We’ll civilize you if it takes all day.”
In fact, it did take almost all day, and when the bulky boxes, contents all nicely hemmed and pressed, were handed to them Audrey announced that since there was no way of getting that load aboard a bus and no chance of getting a cab around Herald Square during rush hour she’d phone Abe to pick them up in the car. “He’ll be glad to,” she said in response to Amy’s halfhearted objections. “He’s dying to see which of those uptown palaces is yours.”
Abe amiably responded to this call to duty and eventually double-parked on the Madison Avenue side of the palace. They all got out to unload the boxes, and Amy was gratified to see that he was visibly impressed by the building.
“Talk about conspicuous consumption,” he said, “those were the days. Interesting family, too, in its way. I mean, with all this how inconspicuous they’ve managed
to be.”
“Decorous,” said Amy, hefting the boxes. She pointed upward with her chin. “That’s our sitting room. Top floor. That window where the curtain is blowing.”
“Naturally,” said Abe, “the Lloyds’ curtains have to provide the common touch. Well, Rapunzel, any time you want to let your hair out of that window Audie and I will be glad to climb up and look around. Meanwhile …”
At the door of the service entrance Amy had to set down the boxes to ring the bell. The man who opened the door was, to her surprise, unfamiliar, though she was sure that, allowing for the head chef, she had by now encountered all the staff. Certainly he appeared to be staff, dressed as he was in that waist-length tight little black jacket and white bowtie. On the other hand, he was young, handsome, lithe, and looked as if he put in a lot of time with a hair blower.
He smiled engagingly. “Well, hello there.”
“Hello,” Amy said. “I’m Mrs. Lloyd.”
“And I’m Harold. Let me help you with those boxes. It has been a day for shopping, hasn’t it?”
The kitchen, Amy saw when she followed him into it, was a sort of controlled chaos. Another Harold type was doing something to bowls of fruit on the drainboard of the sink; the junior maids, Walsh and Plunkett, along with Peters the houseman, were chopping and slicing away at edibles on the long worktable; a woman in apron and white, antiseptic-looking hairnet was busy at the ovens; and somehow dominating the scene was a very tall, skeletally thin, wondrously wrinkled old black man in chef’s hat dipping into pots on the stove. Regal, Amy thought. And mean-looking. From all descriptions, it had to be chef Golightly, the great man himself.
And of course these unknowns must be Domestique Plus. Emergency help. The ubiquitous Mrs. Bernius strikes again.
Harold helped tuck the boxes under her arms, and as she tried to get a tight grip on them Golightly took notice of her.
“Lady, there is no room for you here at this time.” The voice had the same Caribbean lilt as his stout and cheerful assistant Mabry’s, but unlike Mabry’s basso this was a high, thin, coldly challenging voice. “You will please remove yourself and those packages.”
“Yes, of course,” Amy said, and was tempted to throw a little weight around. “I’m Miss Margaret’s secretary.”
“And I am Mister Golightly.” He came down hard on the Mister. “Which makes neither here nor there. Now remove yourself and give my people room to work.” He aimed his stirring spoon at Harold. “Young man, the lady can attend to herself. You have work to do.”
“The old darling,” Harold said into Amy’s ear before leaving her to her own devices.
Using her hip, she awkwardly worked her way through the swinging doors into the staff hall and found that here was action too. The refectory table was now covered with a green baize cloth from end to end and more Harolds were stacking plates and arranging cutlery on it. A panel of the wall behind the coffee table gaped open, exposing a dumbwaiter. Mrs. McEye stood at the dumbwaiter, clipboard in hand, cigarette dangling from her lower lip. She squinted through its smoke at Amy.
“Ah, Mrs. Lloyd.” She frowned at the boxes. “Oh, dear. This is a dinner for eighteen. I don’t see how I can call on anyone now to—”
“No, it’s all right, Mrs. McEye. I can get these upstairs myself.”
“That would be best. Then tomorrow morning at eight. And, oh, yes, remind Lloyd that his schedule will be posted on the board too, will you?”
“Yes. What time is the board put up, by the way?”
“At ten every evening. You’ll attend to that on my days off. We must make time tomorrow for me to explain the procedure. That is essential. I’d suggest you somehow convey this to Miss Margaret.”
“Perhaps if you took care of that, Mrs. McEye,” Amy said.
“Well. Yes, perhaps I should. Good evening, Mrs. Lloyd.”
“Good evening,” said Amy and moved on her way to Xanadu. Close call, she thought, but sometimes, Mrs. Lloyd, you do think on your feet. Convey orders to the dangerous Miss Margaret indeed. If anyone were going to throw oil on those embers, let the McEye do it.
Mike was in their bedroom, and the sight of him gave Amy that familiar sense of gratification, of comfort, of this part of life being pretty much all right, no matter how troublesome other parts were.
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” she said.
“I just got in myself.” He helped unload the boxes onto the bed. “A day of achievement, baby. Got measured for work clothes, stood in line at Motor Vehicles for the change of address, handed in our new address at the post office. And what was your day like?”
“Not mine. Audie’s. She did everything. Including having Abe drive me back here.”
“That’s where I had the edge. Namely, the station wagon. I also found out what demilivery is.”
“Mike, this stuff cost seven hundred dollars. Do you know what that does to our repayment schedule?”
“Extends it a few weeks. Anyhow, demilivery is not full livery. Full livery is that tunic with rows of buttons and dog collar. Demilivery is just folksy double-breasted. It makes you look like the chauffeur for a terribly humble billionaire.”
“Seven hundred dollars,” Amy said mournfully. She observed that next to her boxes on the bed was another, this one imprinted with a heraldic coat of arms featuring winged lions. “That can’t be your whole order,” she said.
“Just one costume. The rest gets delivered tomorrow, and then I really spread my wings.”
“Sooner,” said Amy. “The McEye hinted that you’re scheduled for something heavy on that bulletin board downstairs. She posts the schedules at ten every evening. By the way, did you encounter Golightly on your way in?”
“No encounter. I just got a look at him.”
“You’re lucky,” Amy said. “Mine was an encounter. He put me down hard for merely setting foot in his precious kitchen during business hours. He made the McEye look charming by contrast.”
“Maybe,” said Mike, “he took you for another Hibernian. What struck me is that he’s practically antediluvian. I mean old, old. Talk about faithful retainers, what we have here appear to be faithful employers. Anybody who’d make do with three dinosaurs like Wilson and Golightly and Borglund—”
“Well,” Amy said, “both Craig and Walter do seem like people who’d be considerate to anyone who serves faithfully and well. Don’t you think so?”
“Sure. But something curious happened at the garage when I brought the car back. Wilson was taking his ease in the office and driving Sid Levine right up the wall.”
“Wilson? I thought he sort of walked off into the sunset.”
“Yesterday. This afternoon he walked right back to the old corral, along with a six-pack. Evidently decided to make the garage his home away from home. And Levine’s at a loss because if he tossed the old guy out he’s not sure how the family would take it. So he’s stuck. And when I brought the wagon in I got stuck.”
“The ancient mariner and the wedding guest,” said Amy.
“Just about. He nailed me for half an hour with curses against Mrs. Mac for tossing him on the junkpile. Blames that on her, along with the family. And pointed out that if the late McEye, the butler she wed in his dotage, was still around, she wouldn’t be so high and mighty. Butler McEye, it seems, had all the staff, including his wife, right under his thumb. A tough man. The only one in the house Wilson rated tougher was Big Daddy himself, Mr. James Hamilton Durie. Nobody, said Wilson, ever tried on Mr. James for size and lived to tell about it. And his butler was evidently cast in the same mold. Perfectly attuned to each other, master and man.”
“Then as I see it,” said Amy, “Wilson is an ingrate. I mean, the way these people kept him on after he proved incompetent. And this fantastically luxurious retirement they’ve provided him.”
“Right. I gently suggested this to him. His response was interesting.”
“Yes? You don’t have to milk it for effect. My legs are killing me, standing here like
this. I’d like to get into a bath. What response?”
“Well,” said Mike, “he looked downright contemptuous at my suggestion that the family had been exceptionally kind in their treatment of him. Then he put on a wise face and said to me, ‘Kind? Hell, there’s a lot more to it than that, sonny.’”
“More than just kindness?”
“Good question. Which I then put to him in those exact words, and he just clammed up tight. Curtain down. Exeunt omnes.”
“Making himself important,” Amy said. “And now I am exeunting into the bathtub.” She shed clothing along the way, Mike drifting after her. He watched appreciatively as she pulled a handful of pins from her hair and shook it free. The old-fashioned tub on claw feet was long enough when filled to float her full length. Mike leaned against the doorway, contemplating the delicious picture she made.
“How did it go with Ma’am this morning?” he asked.
“Swimmingly. Matter of fact, she even told Mrs. McEye what a nice young lady I am.”
“Oh? And how did you earn that accolade?”
“Read the obits in the Times to her. Hunted through the art page for mention of the Jason Cook Gallery. Ever hear of it?”
“Nope.”
“Well, Jason Cook seems to be highly supportive of painter-type woman’s libbers. For that matter, so is Margaret Durie. She made that pretty plain.”
“No,” Mike said admiringly. “Why, bless her radical old heart. Look, did she give you any hint as to how after fifty years of morbid solitude, she suddenly got back on the rails again?”
“Nope,” said Amy.
“Reassuring in a way,” Mike said, “but is there any chance she’s into pick-me-up pills? Something used to get her out of the morbid phase and that she’s now hooked on?”
“I’m almost sure not. But how would I know?”
“Because,” Mike said patiently, “you’re right close to her. Could Hegnauer be her Doctor Feelgood maybe? Her connection? She’s in perfect position to provide a connection.”
“Mike darling, you are going overboard with this drug thing.”
“Because I’m exercising foresight. That old lady hardly knows you, yet here she is clutching you to her bosom, involving you in a conspiracy against the family. Why?”
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