Very Old Money

by Stanley Ellin

  Pathetic pride, Amy reflected, as she followed orders. It would have been so simple for her to fill out the check, after which Ma’am could attend to the signature. But pride—that fierce sense of independence—wouldn’t allow for it.

  Centering the ruler on the check below its imprint West Side National Bank followed by The Upshur Institute, Amy took that slender hand in hers and in the process of writing became aware that she was not merely guiding it, she was controlling it.

  “Payable to cash,” Ma’am instructed: “three thousand dollars.”

  She signed her name with little difficulty however, and on the reverse of the check signed again in endorsement. She carefully replaced the cap on the pen. “A nuisance,” she said, “but a self-imposed one. Do you think, Lloyd, that one has the right to complain about a self-imposed nuisance?”

  “I suppose not, ma’am.”

  “Quite right. I was rude to you a little while ago, wasn’t I?”

  Amy’s tongue clove to her palate. She finally managed to say, “Well, I should have understood that certain mail—”

  “I was rude, Lloyd. I am at times. A bad habit fostered by the insensitive people I deal with so often. Hegnauer, for example, has a rhinoceros hide. You are certainly not in that category. But she did, in line of duty, demonstrate a means of soothing away emotional soreness. Sit down, Lloyd.”

  Amy sat down and suddenly found their positions reversed. Ma’am now stood behind her, fingers moving from her upper arms to her shoulders. “I forget how tall you are, Lloyd. Now bear with me.”

  The fingers—surprisingly strong fingers—moved to the back of her neck digging in, probing, massaging. “Soothing?” Ma’am asked.

  “Oh, yes.” And, Amy thought, embarrassing. Mike sometimes provided this treatment, but it was different when he did it. This was more like mental portrait-painting time all over again, a repeat of that introductory session. And kind as its intentions were, it somehow had the same creepy effect as the first time. Especially when, with thumbs probing the back of the neck, the fingers came to rest a little too snugly against her throat.

  Mercifully, it didn’t go on very long. “There now,” said Ma’am, “that did have a beneficial effect, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Amy said. With the hope of getting back to comforting routine, she asked, “Shall I look through the art news now? I mean, for anything about the Jason Cook Gallery?”

  “No, don’t bother. I told Mrs. McEye I may want the car this morning. Has that been arranged?”

  “Yes, it has.” Actually, Amy thought, that schedule hadn’t indicated may want but did want, so it appeared that in Margaret Durie’s case final decisions could be made on whim. “It’ll be waiting at eleven o’clock.”

  “Plenty of time then. Come along.”

  Talk about emotional highs and lows, Amy thought, the woman was plainly in a state of exhilaration as, with the Upshur cards in hand, she led the way into the bedroom. At the dresser there she opened a drawer and drew out a pair of scissors with long narrow blades. With the same unerring hand she had demonstrated in wielding the letter opener, she sheared the braille messages into narrow strips which scattered on the dresser. Enjoying herself at it, Amy suspected. Happily venting the last of her temper this way on the irritating Mrs. Upshur’s irritating message.

  Ma’am returned the scissors to the drawer and fluttered her fingers at the mound of scraps. “Dispose of that, Lloyd. Then draw the windows. All of them.”

  Amy disposed of the scraps in the wastebasket and drew down the windows, avenue side and street side. Tall and wide as they were, they slid down effortlessly. With the last one closed, she became aware of how insistent the sound of the morning traffic had been. Now the silence was like a pressure against the ears, the only thing disturbing it a tentative chirping from the canary Philomela.

  Ma’am grimaced. “Do cover that birdcage, Lloyd.”

  Amy unwillingly did so. Another sample of that occasional and curious insensitivity in Margaret Durie. Poor Philomela, apparently with no songs left, was condemned to darkness for a few hopeful chirps. And never mind what Mike might remark about the Pathetic Fallacy. This was insensitivity, especially in someone who herself lived in blackness.

  Ma’am arranged herself on the chaise longue near the avenue window. It was satin, white as everything else in the room was white, and against its cushions the pale face became almost all sightless eyes and glaring red lipstick.

  “I want you to read something to me, Lloyd. You’ve had sufficient education to read a play aloud?”

  “Well, not education in dramatic arts, I’m afraid.”

  “Just as well.” Ma’am sounded amused. “I don’t require dramatic performance, just a reading. Those bookshelves there, beside that electronic device. The lowest shelf to the right.”

  Amy kneeled before the designated shelf. The tall, slender volumes arranged here were bound in limp leather, their titles in gold on their spines. Going by the titles, Amy saw, they all appeared to be plays. Actually, from the look of them, bound playscripts.

  “Which one should I read, ma’am?”

  “A fair question. What do you have to offer?”

  Oh, yes, Amy thought, when she’s in a rollicking mood it’s game-playing time for all. “Well, there’s Cynara, ma’am. And Reunion in Vienna. Private Lives. The Barretts of Wimpole Street—”

  “Yes, that one. Now bring a chair close to me and make yourself comfortable. And don’t emote, if that’s the word for it.”

  Amy seated herself and took a deep breath. Footlights on, she told herself as she started reading in what, to her ears at least, sounded like clear and well-modulated tones. She was immediately pulled up short by a directional forefinger aimed at her.

  “I asked you not to emote, Lloyd. And kindly do not read the name of the character preceding each speech. A brief pause and the least change of inflection will inform me that someone else is now speaking.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “In my time, Lloyd, I saw all these plays when they were first presented on the stage. All. Some of them several times. I’m not asking you to recreate those experiences for me. I will do that myself. You will simply provide the wherewithal. That’s not too difficult to understand, is it?”

  “Not at all, ma’am,” Amy said. And, she thought with feeling, it wasn’t the words that moved her, it was the appeal in that voice, the shade of wistfulness that was evidently always there right under the surface of this otherwise fiery creature.

  With that settled, the reading went well until the end of the first act when she found herself getting winded. But one act at a reading appeared sufficient for the audience.

  “Nicely done, Lloyd. Now tell me. Did you know about the romance between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Very good. So you realize marriage impends in this case. Would you approve the marriage of a shaggy-haired poet, however talented, to the well-bred daughter of a prosperous merchant, if you were that merchant?”

  “Well, ma’am, I don’t believe this involved class. Wasn’t it more a matter of an unhealthy relationship between father and daughter? An intense possessiveness on his part? I don’t think Mr. Barrett would have tolerated any man who came courting his daughter.”

  Ma’am smiled. “A wise child. You give me hope for your generation, Lloyd. Did you ever hear of Brian Aherne and Katherine Cornell?”

  “Katherine Cornell, I think, ma’am. An actress?”

  “The actress of her day. She was Elizabeth Barrett as Aherne was Browning. Magnificent. I suspect there’s no one like that performing today. But it’s going on eleven now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then get yourself a coat for street wear and join me here. You’re coming along on a little business trip. Mrs. Upshur’s business, dear incompetent that she is.”

  When they emerged from the building Mike was waiting beside the car, and, Amy surm
ised, after his first surprised view of her he had to be role-playing like mad. He ushered mistress and secretary into the car with frozen-faced gravity. “Where to, ma’am?”

  “The West Side National Bank, Lloyd, at Broadway and Eightieth Street. And you do drive carefully, don’t you? I dislike the unexpected start and stop.”

  “Very carefully, ma’am.”

  Luck of the draw, Amy thought. Once Ma’am was left to her banking, she’d have a chance to renew acquaintance with her husband. And, having turned it over in her mind, she felt she did owe him an apology for her handling of Nugent’s panicky phone call.

  But the apology was not to be delivered yet. Ma’am, given a hand out of the car at the bank, said, “Mrs. Lloyd and I won’t be long, Lloyd. You’ll wait here.”

  “I will, ma’am.”

  Regrettable, Amy thought, but nevertheless complimentary that she herself was to be part of Margaret Durie’s confidential business. But then, what were confidential secretaries for?

  Inside the bank she observed pityingly that Ma’am’s demeanor underwent a subtle change. The same brave front but shaded with uncertainty. The hand did not rest lightly on Amy’s wrist but gripped it hard in this foreign territory. The cane tapped on the floor and sometimes moved searchingly in little arcs.

  “I understand that the manager is a Mr. Fontaine,” Ma’am said. “Have someone inform him I’m here.”

  Amy passed this on to a sour-looking guard. He disappeared for a while, and when he reappeared he was all sweetness. With him was a deferential young man. “Miss Durie, I’m glad to finally meet you. I’m Mr. Fontaine.”

  “You do have an office?” Ma’am said.

  Fontaine seemed momentarily caught off balance by this direct approach. “Yes, of course. Of course.”

  He led the way to it and saw the ladies seated before his desk. “Coffee?” he inquired. “Or if—”

  “No,” Ma’am said. She withdrew the check from her purse. When she held it up Amy took it and placed it on the desk.

  Fontaine studied it. “Cash? In any particular form? I mean, denominations? Hundreds?”

  “Quite a bundle that way, isn’t it?” Ma’am said coldly. “You do have thousand-dollar bank notes?”

  Again Fontaine seemed caught off balance. “Yes. But there is—Well, that does mean some red tape. I mean, we register the serial number of each note of that denomination when we pay it out, and that might mean some bother for you. I mean—”

  Ma’am cut this short. “I know what you mean. And I’m not here to be engulfed by your red tape. If I ask for five-hundred-dollar notes—?”

  “No problem at all,” Fontaine said with relief. “None. If you ladies don’t mind waiting?”

  He took off, obviously glad to do so, and Amy found her emotions somewhat tangled. On the one hand, poor Mr. Fontaine. On the other hand, oh, what a pleasure to deal with stuffy institutions the way Margaret Durie could.

  Ma’am remarked, “Idiotic is the word for it, Lloyd, don’t you think? A woeful species of bank, this. But I don’t have much choice. Mrs. Upshur lives nearby. It’s convenient to her.”

  Poor Fontaine must have moved like a bandersnatch. He very soon rejoined them, money in hand. He sat down, a little breathless. “And here we are,” he said brightly. He held out the money midway between his client and her secretary. Amy took it and touched it to Ma’am’s fingertips. The fingertips rejected it.

  “All five-hundred-dollar notes, Lloyd?”

  The notes appeared to be freshly minted and were hard to separate from each other. Amy painstakingly went through each. “Yes, ma’am.”

  This time when she offered them they were not rejected, and Ma’am made a careful count. “An envelope,” she said.

  Fontaine hastily produced one from the desk and passed it along by way of Amy. Ma’am placed the notes in the envelope, folded it in half and tucked it into her pocketbook. Amy, watching this, felt a sudden discomfort. Being asked to confirm the denominations of the bills and now that careful counting of them by Ma’am. Was it possible—a mean thought, but was it remotely possible—that the reason the confidential secretary hadn’t been asked to make out that check herself, not including signature, of course, was that the secretary was not entirely trusted? Impossible. Then why this feeling that the hand she had guided through the writing process might have been there just to make sure of what she was writing? Especially the amount being entered.

  Really a horrid thought. Grossly unjust.

  Mike opened the car door. “Home, Miss Durie?”

  “No. Central Park, Lloyd. Inside the park. It’s possible to make a complete circuit of it that way, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then do so. Then to the Plaza Hotel. Mark the time. My lunch reservation at the Palm Court is for one o’clock.”

  Life’s surprising little rewards, thought Amy. First partners with her boss in her banking, then on to lunch with her at the Plaza.

  Wrong.

  This time, when Ma’am was guided to the sidewalk before the hotel entrance, the doorman spurning everyone else in sight to trot over and take her in hand, she said to secretary and chauffeur, “You’ll both wait here. Stay close by, Lloyd,” and that was that.

  Mike opened the front door of the car and Amy sulkily got in. He pulled the car up a few lengths to unblock the entrance and cut off the motor. He squeezed Amy’s shoulder sympathetically. “Poor baby. You thought you were going to lunch with her majesty, didn’t you?”

  “I did not think any such thing,” Amy said with acerbity.

  “Yes, you did. But never mind, you’ll get there. According to the view in this mirror, Margaret smiles on you very tenderly now and then. Meanwhile, explain something to me. What was she doing in that bank? With people in the family ready to handle such sordid details. Not to mention Mrs. Mac and the family accountant.”

  “Because this looked like highly personal banking. It was for that Mrs. Upshur, the Institute lady. Ma’am’s treasurer of the Institute, and for all I know the family doesn’t even suspect it. I think it could be her way of proving to herself she’s just as competent in business matters as Craig and Walter.”

  “If not on the same scale.”

  “Obviously,” said Amy. “But you know—”

  “Yes?”

  “The banking she did was strange. Cashed an Institute check for three thousand dollars, put the money in her purse, and that was it. I thought she was going to drive over and give the money to Mrs. Upshur, but she didn’t. No Mrs. Upshur, just Central Park and here.”

  “Meaning,” said Mike, “that she’s now gallivanting around with three thousand dollars in that purse. Could it be that she’s simply a very heavy tipper?”

  “Not that heavy. It’s all in five-hundred-dollar bills. That’s strange too, isn’t it? Hardly what you use for pocket money. I find it all somehow disturbing.”

  “Don’t,” Mike advised. “Just consider that Hemingway may have been wrong when he said that the rich were the same as everybody else except they had more money. They also seem full of surprises. Take the case I have under consideration. Camilla. Remember little Camilla, the living Barbie doll? Daddy Walter’s precious prize package?”

  There was a way men had, Amy thought, of confiding to you their low regard of that girl across the room they couldn’t keep their eyes off. “What about her?”

  “I’m to drive her out to Locust Valley at three o’clock. And if you’re going to remind me that I’ll never make it back in time to take Craig and Walter home from the office, I’ve already arranged for an extra driver with Sid Levine. The point is, why is Camilla going out to Locust Valley?”

  “All right, why?”

  “Not for fun. From what her father and uncle had to say when I drove them in this morning, she’s making a business call on a Miss or Mrs. Laura Sandoval. Laura, as she’s known to the Duries, turned over a huge portfolio of securities to them last year. They’ve been reorganizing it—win
nowing out the dogs, as Walter put it—and Laura doesn’t understand what they’re doing and might withdraw the portfolio. And who is delegated to explain everything to her and make sure she doesn’t withdraw the portfolio? Camilla.”

  Amy knew she was being unfair in seizing this opportunity, but she seized it. “If you’re surprised,” she said, “it’s because you still believe deep down that any pretty blonde can’t be more than a dumb and incapable sex object.”

  “You were surprised, too,” Mike said. “It showed on your face. How about an apology for that slur?”

  “Half an apology. No, wait, I do owe you one. For the way I had Nugent wake you up ahead of the alarm clock this morning. I should have phoned Sid Levine myself, not laid that on you.”

  “And subjected Nugent to such embarrassment as I have—”

  “Miss Durie’s car.” The doorman was looking in at the window. “Okay, you can back it up.”

  Mike hastily backed it up. “Twenty minutes?” he muttered during the process.

  “She’s there all right,” Amy said. “Perhaps she couldn’t get a table.”

  “Miss Margaret Durie? With a reservation?”

  But as Ma’am was guided into her seat there were no recriminations. In fact, Amy observed, she looked all aglow. “Now we’ll go home, Lloyd,” she said.

  On the way she reached out a hand and found Amy’s knee. Her fingers dug into it. “Describe our itinerary, Lloyd. Wisely.”

  Wisely? Amy thought. But of course. “We went for a long drive through the park, ma’am. Then we went home.”

  “And that was all?”

  “That was all, ma’am.”

  “So it was,” said Margaret Durie.

  Like her meditative cousin Gwen, Mike learned, Camilla Durie was not one to be ruled by the clock. Twenty minutes overdue, she finally emerged from the house followed by houseman Brooks carrying a weekend bag and an attaché case. Even done up in that conservative suit, Mike took note, she was as pretty and curvy as remembered. And as peremptory.