“Because she must sense I can be trusted to help her move toward independence from the family without giving the game away. Besides, all of this theorizing is no help to my handling some real worries about the job.”
“How real?”
“Enough,” said Amy. “Look, there’s the McEye—and clipboard—at the dumbwaiter in the staff hall ordering up the proper chinaware and crystal for a fancy dinner party for eighteen. And cutlery. Did you notice there’s about half a dozen different sets of china in those cabinets?”
“No.”
“Because it wouldn’t matter to you. But it does, to me. Anyhow, I know Spode from this morning and Wedgwood because everybody knows Wedgwood. But beyond that? And cutlery? And someday when the McEye is off duty I will be stuck with that damn clipboard and that kind of dinner party. Then what?”
“Well, if I know Mrs. Mac, there’s an instruction book ready for you. If not, you could just faint away and be carted off to your bed, a pitiful and appealing figure.”
“Great,” said Amy. “Then get ready for a lot of fainting. Ma’am’s already been at me about feminist art, which I know nothing about, and Greek mythology where by sheer luck I came up with a passing grade. But who knows what comes next and when? That’s what’s on my mind, not any sinister drug ring operating on the second floor.”
Mike regarded her kindly. That look, Amy thought, always roused in her the same mixed feelings. The urge to sling something handy at him—the scrubbing brush she was holding would do nicely in this case—and at the same time that pleasant, though probably degrading, sense of being cradled in paternal protectiveness.
“Darling,” he said, “listen to wisdom. Miss Margaret wants you bright but not summa cum laude. If she wanted that, she’d go out and buy it. This way whenever you’re at a loss you just say, ‘Sorry, ma’am, I’m at a loss,’ in a properly apologetic tone. Then relax.”
“Good. I’ll start relaxing as soon as you depart and close the door behind you.”
“First, one final question.”
“What?” Amy said warily.
“I’m starved. Aren’t you?”
“Well, now that you mention it—”
“Right. But what do we do about it? I can’t see exercising kitchen privileges right now, the way things are down there.”
“No. But we’ve still got fruit left and soda water.”
“A veritable Garden of Eden.”
“Then,” said Amy, “after the McEye posts those schedules, you go down and pick up ours along with an aftertheater snack.”
“If need be. On the other hand, there’s a delivery-type pizza joint near the garage. Suppose—just suppose—I phoned them for a pie, one of those cartwheels with everything on it.”
“You’re daft,” said Amy. “Anyone who walks in with that pie will have it shoved right in his face by Golightly.”
“I was just supposing. But now you take somebody here like that sultry Dorothy—”
“Oh?” said Amy. “And what makes her sultry? Dark glasses and a hangover?”
“Whatever. At the same time she seems human enough to crave a pizza now and then. Do you mean even she couldn’t get one up to the second floor while Golightly’s on duty?”
“Possibly not.”
“Pathetic,” Mike said. “Talk about a bird in a gilded cage.”
It was meant to be funny, Amy thought, and while it was, it wasn’t. Sultry? Yes, to be honest Dorothy Durie rated sultry. And that curvy, poisonous little Camilla spelled temptation. For that matter, so did the overblown, mean-tempered housemaid O’Dowd, who looked as if she’d be more at home horizontal than vertical. And those two junior maids, Walsh and Plunkett, fairly bursting out of those cute outfits. A whole houseful of temptation with more bedrooms than you could count. Ridiculous? Not quite.
“Hey, lady,” Mike said, “are you by any chance mentally sucking a particularly juicy lemon?”
“No. Now go away. If you want to make yourself useful, you can unpack those dresses and put them on hangers.”
“Not me. When I put dresses on hangers they slither right off. What I will do is remove the bowl of fruit from this refrigerator—thus—and take it along with me to the typewriter. Want an apple? Or the rest of these grapes?”
“The grapes. What’ll you do, work on the book?”
“Sort of. Notes, descriptions, questions, pensées. Emotion recollected in tranquility.”
And that’s the way it goes, thought Amy. He stirs up everything, then goes off to be tranquil. Writers. On the other hand, this book and all those others to follow were what it was all about, wasn’t it? She said, “You put away the pages of the other book somewhere, didn’t you?”
“Bottom of my dresser drawer, under my shorts. I doubt Mrs. Mac’ll invade our privacy that much.”
When Amy finally got out of the tub she could tell from the clacking of the typewriter in the sitting room—Mike was a fast, inaccurate, two-fingered typist—that he was hard at it, very good news because he hadn’t been at it like this for a long time. And when she was finished using the hairdryer and with the hanging up of Audrey’s bounty he was still at it.
And going by her gut feeling whenever she read pages he handed her, and by Abe’s coldblooded judgment, he was a hell of a writer.
And going by logic, he would, as staff, be invisible to the Durie females. After all, invisibility was the name of the game, wasn’t it?
And since Mrs. Lloyd was administration, these housemaids wouldn’t dare make advances to her husband, would they?
And …
She woke up to find the bedroom lights bright in her eyes and Mike standing there in the doorway. “Room service, lady.” He looked her over, and she realized she hadn’t bothered to put anything on when she stretched out on the coverlet. “And you can come as you are. You look delectable.”
He was a darling.
She slipped into a nightgown and squinted at the clock. Ten-thirty. So much for what was intended to be a couple of minutes of shut-eye. Which reminded her to set the alarm for the morning, allowing time for the private mail service the conspiratorial Miss Margaret demanded.
In the sitting room a laden cart was pulled up beside the table, and Mike was setting places from it. “Observe,” he said. “This is tableware, not silverware. And this is crockery, not Spode. However”—he drew covered platters from the oven of the cart—“here we have some potted shrimp, poached fillet of sole Mornay, roast Aylesbury duck, and trimmings. This jug is coffee. How will that do for an aftertheater snack?”
“It’ll do for an aftertheater banquet. You mean you just walked into the kitchen and loaded up?”
“By Mrs. Mac’s invitation. They’re all down there in the staff hall, including her. And that slew of temporaries. It seems that when invited guests upstairs have gorged sufficiently, the help downstairs gets the leavings.”
“They’re not leavings. They’re perquisites.”
“When you raid the refrigerator, that’s perquisites. When you eat the remains of a family dinner party—”
“Of course,” said Amy. “And when you’ve finished analyzing that one, you can work out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.” She seated herself and started filling her plate. “While I find out what Mornay means. And Aylesbury.”
Mike stood looking down at her. “Did I ever mention that you were overqualified to be my wife?”
“Just now.” She could see that he was in one of those edgy states where the mood could turn either way, dark or bright, and the job was, as ever, to gently shoulder him toward bright. “Sit down and eat, please. It’s lonely this way. And what was it like downstairs among the varlets? Sort of a roistering spirit?”
“No roistering,” he said. “Not with Mrs. Mac present. Decorum prevailed. Except—and she can be a pain in the butt—when she needled those two kids—that Walsh and Plunkett—about their table manners. ‘Elbow off the table, Walsh.’ ‘Not such huge mouthfuls, Plunkett.’ With everybody
else, including that outside help, carefully not taking notice, of course.”
“Be fair,” Amy said. “They’re training, and she’s supposed to polish up their manners, isn’t she?”
“Not in front of people. When you had those kindergarten classes, did you correct the kids that way?”
“Yep.”
“I should have known,” Mike said, but the mood was definitely bright now.
“Well,” Amy said, “if I’d waited to get them alone after class, they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. The average kindergarten child has a memory that goes back as far as two minutes. By the way, those temporaries are Domestique Plus, wouldn’t you say? Bernius people?”
“Bernius people? Oh, you mean those beautiful young men. Have to be. And between theater jobs, of course. By the way, McEye also gave me some instructions. First one of us down tomorrow wheels this thing to the kitchen and puts the dishes and cutlery into the washer. So, according to the schedules I have here—” He held up two slips of paper.
“The schedules,” Amy said. “I forgot all about them.”
“I didn’t. According to them, you’re first one down. Mrs. Lloyd to Miss Margaret D. at eight A.M. However, to even it up, I already took down our laundry and dry cleaning. Basement room next to the staff hall.”
“What did you take down?” Amy asked in alarm.
“Trust me. None of your new things. Everything else with the least wrinkle. You think those jeans’ll come back starched?”
“No. What does your schedule say?”
Mike focused on the longer strip of paper. “We open at nine-thirty A.M. Mr. Craig and Mr. Walter from R to O.” He looked up. “R means residence, O means office.”
“How do you know that?”
“By asking Mrs. Mac. Whereupon she said—not unkindly—that I had obviously not studied my information folder and I really should. So I just did. Also G means garage and W—What do you think W means?”
Amy considered this briefly. “Wait.”
“I love you,” Mike said. “Especially when I think what life might be with a short, fat, slow-witted wife.” He turned to the paper again. “Then after delivery I come back and W at G. At eleven-thirty, Mrs. Jocelyn from R to Bonwit Teller and W for return. At four, Mr. Craig and Mr. Walter from O back to R. At five—Are you listening closely?”
“I am.”
“At five, Mrs. Langfeld and L—luggage—from R to British Airways, Kennedy Airport. Interesting?”
“Assuming the flight’s to London,” said Amy. “In that event, Gwen’s going to join her separated husband.”
“Where,” said Mike, “a reunion may be impending. You know, it’s stuff like this that fevers up gossip columnists.”
“Well, resist the temptation to fever ’em up. And there’s something else. Maybe this means Gwen is being exiled for that meditation gathering yesterday. At least for inviting a houseman to be part of it. Don’t you think the McEye reported that to mama and papa?”
“I don’t doubt it,” Mike said, “but somehow papa Craig strikes me as the typical father who’d be at a loss in dealing with a freaked-out daughter. On the other hand, I must admit that mama Jocelyn definitely shapes up as hellfire and brimstone.”
“She does, doesn’t she. Still, this is all conjecture.”
“But fun.”
“Sleazy,” Amy said, “but undeniably fun.”
“That brave kid, flying alone across the Atlantic to exile.”
“Or to rejoin her yearning husband.”
“Which reminds me,” said Mike, “it’s been a while since we’ve made passionate love. Do you think that tonight—”
“Any time,” said Amy. “Any place.”
Two firm raps on the door. Open sesame. Open, Hegnauer. And here was Ma’am in the sitting room, upright in that low-backed armchair—really inspiring square-shouldered posture there—the chair drawn up to a small, round table, the black cane with mother-of-pearl knob resting against an arm of the chair.
“Good-morning, Miss Durie.”
“Good-morning, Lloyd. Off you go, Hegnauer,” and Hegnauer tarried not.
Ma’am wore a dress that was sweet, expensive simplicity itself. She was fully made up, with those roundish patches of rouge high on each cheek and that gooey scarlet lipstick slightly askew at one corner of the mouth. Evidence, so it would seem, that she applied her own makeup.
“Well, Lloyd, don’t stand there like a ninny.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Amy wheeled the cart beside the table. Nice to have mastered the tray, but the cart was obviously the sensible conveyance. On top of it were the breakfast service and silver coffeepot, the Times, and the packet of mail. In the heating unit, two brioches. Her decision. If there was going to be that abstracted breakfasting where brioche number one grew cold, number two would be waiting.
“My mail, Lloyd?”
“Yes. Right here.”
“Any difficulties with it?”
“No, ma’am.”
True, Amy thought. Though there might be difficulties in the offing. Depending, of course, on O’Dowd’s good sense.
O’Dowd had been the one appointed to help her with the mail sorting. Had, in sullen mood, led her to the outside pantry, showed how the sack was to be emptied on a broad shelf, the contents spread out and gone through and then—excluding whatever was addressed to Margaret Durie—replaced in the sack. Nothing was said as they worked side by side at this. Amy couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t come off as a transparent effort to cozy up to this blank-faced creature, and O’Dowd did not seem disposed to break the ice. Until, taking Amy by surprise, she held up an envelope. “Mrs. Lloyd, ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“This one is for me. Could I please have it now?”
Strange she should even ask, Amy thought. “If it’s for you,” she said, “why shouldn’t you have it now?”
“Well, ma’am, Mrs. McEye don’t—doesn’t let staff take letters out of turn when she tends to the mail. I was wondering if you’d feel a bit different about it.”
Look before you leap, Amy warned herself. “Out of turn?” she said. “What does that mean?”
O’Dowd looked surprised. And, Amy saw, she really was a very pretty girl when she forgot to be sullen. “Because then we’d be getting our letters before family gets theirs.”
I don’t believe it, Amy thought heatedly, believing it. Protocol again. And where it could make some sense—keep that machinery oiled—here it was at its most idiotically mean-spirited.
“You keep that letter, O’Dowd,” she heard herself say with heat, and then in response to the warning bell sounding off in her head, “but you won’t mention this to anybody. I’m in no position to change rules here, so it’s strictly between us. Understand?”
“To be sure, ma’am. It’s very good of you.”
“Reasonable is the word.”
“Ah, yes, ma’am.” That wicked grin, Amy thought, suggested a certain cleverness behind the dolly look. “Reasonable, too,” said O’Dowd.
So, Amy thought while setting Margaret Durie’s table in what she hoped was the same pattern as yesterday’s tray, telling Ma’am there had been no difficulties about the mail was wisdom. A feminist the lady might be, but not likely one now ready to raise the red flag for a housemaid. Not yet at least.
And it proved to be wisdom. Ma’am leaned forward, nostrils flaring. “You don’t use a scent, do you, Lloyd?”
Hell and damnation, Amy thought in panic, was it possible that even after this morning’s shower—“Just soap and water, ma’am.”
“Well, your skin has a most pleasant odor. Now and then a maid here will attempt to conceal a vile body odor under bottled scent. I won’t tolerate that near me. If you encounter it, warn the offender at once. Show her how to use soap and water, if necessary. Tell me, Lloyd, when those girls drench themselves with cheap scent do you think it’s a matter of laziness? Or could it be, however nauseous, a misgu
ided effort to be sexually enticing?”
Here we go again, thought Amy. Question-and-answer time. Not to mention physical intimacy time. She said, “I really wouldn’t know, ma’am.”
“I suppose not, since both the laziness and the sexuality are equally natural to certain alien types. But as for yourself, Lloyd—now listen closely—never use soap on the face. Never. Use only a cosmetic cream. I’ve never used anything else.” Disconcertingly, she tilted her face upward. “Do you see the results?”
Amy dutifully looked close. The fine wrinkling of the pale skin was made conspicuous this way, but wrinkling of this sort, she thought, was far better detected by the eye than the fingertips, so Margaret Durie could not really have a picture of herself in her aging. The more luck to her in that. The unseeing eyes touched a raw nerve however. And that smear of lipstick at the corner of the mouth painting a grimace there …
“If you don’t mind, Miss Durie—”
“Mind what?”
“The lipstick is smudged. At the corner. Just a bit.”
“Then repair it. Stupid of Hegnauer not to have taken notice. There are tissues on that desk behind me.”
Amy carefully made repairs on the face trustfully offered her. Trustfully, she thought, had to be one of the more heartbreaking words in the book, poor darling.
“There now,” she said.
“Good. I was a watercolorist, Lloyd. Competent at oils, but much more than that at watercolors. A challenging medium. You can repair a misjudgment in oils the way you can a smudged lipstick. You can’t do that with watercolors. Fortunately maquillage is only a form of oil painting, isn’t it? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you have today’s newspaper?”
Maquillage to today’s Times. “Right here, ma’am.”
“Then draw up that chair”—the stick pointed unerringly at the twin of Ma’am’s small armchair—“and let’s attend to business. The obituary index.”
Amy leafed through the paper and then was caught up by the sight of those slender fingers fluttering over the table service, taking inventory there. Yesterday, it had been unnerving to watch the pouring of that steaming coffee into the cup—first, the precise positioning of the spout over the cup, then the pouring to the exactly right level—but now it was mesmerizing.
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