Very Old Money

by Stanley Ellin

  Mike turned and saw Nugent bearing what appeared to be a large filigreed silver basin sprouting flowers.

  “Ma’am, Walsh gave this to me. She said that you—”

  Mike observed that Nugent seemed to be transfixed by the sight of his baggy coveralls. He had a feeling that if Mrs. Lloyd wasn’t present, she might have openly snickered.

  She placed the centerpiece in position. “Here, ma’am?”

  “Yes. And store the other one in the pantry. Then phone Mrs. Jocelyn that the flowers have been attended to. Oh, and tell O’Dowd that Mrs. di Sgarlati’s maid needs fresh linens, will you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. If you don’t mind, would you be coming down to the staff hall soon? They’re ready to take out the dinner service.”

  Amy glanced at her watch. “Oh, Lord, yes.” She looked and sounded, Mike thought, the perfect administrator.

  In departing, she briefly dropped that role. “Wish me luck,” she whispered to him.

  “Break a leg,” said Mike, and that was the last he saw of her until ten-thirty when she walked into their sitting room where he was at the typewriter fitting together a patchwork of descriptions. From the look of her—dog-tired but blissful—he surmised that his reverse blessing had worked.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “The dinner went well.”

  “Beautifully. Divinely. Jocelyn just had me in to hand me the laurels personally. You know, frozen face and all, she can be very pleasant when she turns it on. And that empty place at the table was all right. No problem.”

  “Or,” said Mike, “a problem with only one solution. But now that you’ve had this triumph, what can you possibly do for an encore?”

  “Sleep,” Amy said. “Just look into the bedroom in two minutes and see.”

  Sunday noon, at Audrey’s behest, they picked up the Silverstones in the wagon and drove across town to the South Sea Seaport restoration, where they spent much of the afternoon eating their way through food stands and doing the tourist bit. After which, they took in the one movie uptown they could all agree on, and then it was back to Thompson Street for a rehash of the movie and the South Street restoration, followed by some dainties from Zabar’s that Audrey wanted to try out, and finally a couple of vicious games of Monopoly.

  Throughout all this, Amy took notice, Abe was positively angelic, which suggested that Audie must have really landed on him about his company manners. He received the weekly repayment check almost graciously, played the tourist with good humor—discounting one slip where he said, “Quaint. Does every goddam restoration have to be quaint?”—and obviously enjoyed the movie, though he did plenty of nitpicking about it afterward. Not a word about the Lloyds’ quaint station in life or about Mike’s book. Altogether, Amy decided, a really good day.

  “Except,” she confided to Mike when they were back home having coffee in the otherwise deserted staff hall, “I was yearning to tell the latest about Gwen and her husband and about the principessa. Audie loves that kind of thing, but I figured she’d rather not have the Duries brought up this time around, so I kept mum. Kind of frustrating really.”

  “You can lay it on her over the phone,” Mike suggested.

  “I’d rather not.”

  “You mean you’re getting as paranoid as Ma’am about the phones here being tapped?”

  “Hardly. There are just some things to tell where you want to see your audience while you’re at it. And now I’m depressed.”

  “Why?”

  “Realizing that Ma’am never sees anyone she talks to. Can’t ever watch them respond.”

  “And,” Mike acknowledged, “she is a great little talker. Always plausible, no matter the pitch.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking that even if she somehow gets to meet Kim Lowry, she won’t see her. And she probably wants to, very much.”

  “You mean,” Mike said, “more homage to the late Ross Taliaferro? Luring the girl from her grandma so she can play surrogate grandma? Baby, if she’s so intent on keeping the family in the dark about all this, how long could she get away with it under those conditions?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Amy said.

  But, as it turned out, he wasn’t. At eight in the morning when she wheeled in Ma’am’s breakfast, and Hegnauer had taken her departure, Ma’am made clear how wrong he had been.

  “Business matters to attend to today, Lloyd. Mrs. Upshur, the bank, and the payment to Miss Lowry.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” And, ma’am, thought Amy, dear pathetic wily ma’am, what if I told you I know more about Kim Lowry and Adela Taliaferro and the artist in your life than you could possibly imagine? And why, when you revealed so much, couldn’t you have revealed it all?

  “But there will be more to it than that,” Ma’am said. “I’ve become increasingly troubled about my situation vis-à-vis Miss Lowry. If I were in her shoes, Lloyd, I’d find it a distraction to have any unknown person playing a part in my life. For her sake then, I want you to arrange—and with utmost discretion, mind—a meeting between us. She should be amenable to that, don’t you think?”

  No total surprise, Amy thought. Because there was a long-range plan operating here. Every move neatly calculated, and here I’m being allowed to see one that was in the making long ago.

  She said, “Amenable, yes, ma’am. My concern is with the utmost discretion part of it. Once she knows who you are she might be tempted to publicize it. Certainly it could mean that kind of publicity that any artist—”

  “You gave me the impression,” Ma’am cut in, “that she seems quite intelligent in her way.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “Then I put my faith in that. You need concern yourself only with the arrangements for the meeting.”

  “Yes, ma’am. At the Plaza?”

  “No. Here.”

  “Here. In this apartment?”

  “Lloyd, what is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing, ma’am.” Certainly not with me, Amy thought.

  “Then you will invite Miss Lowry to be my guest at dinner here. Tomorrow evening. What would be a good time? Eight? Yes, eight. That should be convenient for her, whatever her daytime schedule.”

  It was getting to be a Durie habit, Amy thought, this one-day’s-notice thing. First, Jocelyn’s dinner for the now-departed principessa, then this. And even this was nothing compared to the real shocker—having the meeting right here. Sheer bravado? Venomously going one up on the family without their knowing it? Especially the detested Craig? Utmost discretion, hell.

  Amy desperately grasped at logic. “There’s one thing, ma’am. In case Kim Lowry has other plans for tomorrow evening—”

  “Then she must rearrange them. I leave that to your powers of persuasion. Understand that I expect her here for dinner tomorrow evening at eight. To insure that, I want you to accompany her here from wherever she designates. The gallery or her home or any other place. Use the car, of course.”

  Another mind like the McEye’s, Amy thought. Computerlike when it came to all the tiny little details.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “Of course, since I’ll then have to be off premises on a workday and using the car, and since Mrs. McEye is so methodical about staff schedules—”

  “I quite understand. Simply inform her that a young woman I’ve taken an interest in has been invited here by me. For any more than that, she must apply to me directly.”

  Fat chance of her doing that, Amy thought, and doesn’t Margaret Durie know it.

  But there were still more of those details. “Now, for the menu,” Ma’am said: “tournedos. Will Golightly be on duty tomorrow evening?”

  “Yes, he will.”

  “Then he must be informed that tournedos will be the entrée. Nothing else will do. As for the rest, whatever he feels suitable. That should please him. He does like to be given his head in designing menus, doesn’t he?”

  He does indeed, Amy thought. His hassles with the McEye over menus were regular entertainments for the st
aff hall. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “As for the aperitifs, Lloyd—which would you say Miss Lowry would favor, a dry sherry or the martini?”

  “I’m not sure,” Amy said, “but I have a feeling it would be the martini.”

  Something in the way she said it made Ma’am smile. “Martinis it shall be. I want a pitcher of them prepared and waiting here. Then with the entrée, a good claret. And for after dinner, a well-aged cognac. Do you have all that clearly in mind?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Amy. Also, she thought with some smugness, the information that tournedos were those lovely little round fillets of beef in sauce and that claret was Bordeaux red. Earn while you learn. Just as clearly in mind was the troublesome picture of hostess and guest eventually hitting the ceiling in an alcoholic high. Not so funny when you considered the news Kim Lowry might broadcast to the world out there if stoned enough. Somehow there should be assurance when she left the house that she was solidly in touch with the facts of life about sworn secrecy.

  “Meanwhile,” said Ma’am, “the car for us this morning at eleven. Now fill Mrs. McEye in on the dinner plans. A surprise for her, I imagine, but perhaps not an unpleasant one.”

  A shrewd estimate, because the McEye, after her first astonishment, was clearly delighted. “Such good news, Mrs. Lloyd. She’s never entertained company in all the years I’ve been here. The family will be so gratified too. They’ve been hoping for something like this. And the young lady”—the bulldog face took on a roguish expression—“she was one reason for all those little car rides, wasn’t she?”

  Oh, dear, Amy thought. “Well, yes, in a way she was.”

  “A chance meeting at the Plaza, which turned out so well. What a part luck does play in one’s life.” The pop-eyes surveyed the paper with the dinner instructions noted on it. “No problems here that I can foresee. She didn’t ask that you attend to the service at dinner, did she?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Well then, with Nugent available—”

  “I thought about that, Mrs. McEye. But I’m afraid Nugent’s rather awestruck of Miss Margaret. She might be jittery, waiting on her directly. I’d like to recommend Brooks.”

  “Oh? Well, I know your regard for him, but I don’t altogether share it. Too clever for his own good, if you know what I mean.”

  “Still, he does have great style. And considering the occasion—”

  “True. All right then, we’ll make it Brooks. And, Mrs. Lloyd, I must say I feel I’ve been remiss in one regard.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ve really made clear my appreciation for your services. I have a difficult job, the strain is sometimes almost too much, but you’ve made it much easier. And you are young. I envy you that. The resilience goes out of one with the years.”

  Amy found this honestly touching. “In that case, Mrs. McEye, why do I find myself always leaning on you?”

  It was, going by the McEye’s affectionate pat on the arm, the right thing to have said.

  Not until Ma’am was delivered to the care of the hotel’s doorman and the car on its way downtown to the gallery could Mike be given the news. Savoring the moment, Amy couldn’t resist approaching it roundabout.

  “Do you know what I’m supposed to do now?”

  “Yep. Payoff number two. Maybe another soothing visit to grandma Adela.”

  “All that’s the least part of it. At the boss’s request I’m inviting Kim Lowry to dine with her tomorrow evening. Right there in the apartment.”

  “No,” said Mike.

  “Yes.”

  “Son of a gun. So the curtain’s finally down and the houselights up. Let the family do its worst, we libbers will stand shoulder to shoulder against it.”

  Amy shook her head. “No way. It’s still as hush-hush as ever.”

  “Go on, she can’t possibly pull that off. Not with all those eyes and ears around.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Amy warned. “It’s Ma’am’s idea that the family—through the McEye—will know only as much as she chooses. Matter of fact, it’s working out so far. The McEye indicated that the family will be delighted to learn that Miss Margaret is actually having a guest to dinner after all those years.”

  “But what a guest.”

  “A nice young lady,” Amy said, “whose acquaintance Ma’am made during those Plaza lunches. And I didn’t even have to invent that one, thank God. The McEye arrived at it all by herself. Incidentally, you’ll meet Kim tomorrow. You and I are escorting her to the house. Also back home afterward, I suppose.”

  “Where,” said Mike, “unless she has inhuman self-control, she will immediately leak the identity of the fairy godmother.”

  Amy shrugged broadly. “Ma’am’s problem.”

  “Ours too, baby, as co-conspirators. You know, it’s not so bad, our pal Abe having those teaching jobs up his sleeve.”

  “She’d never let them fire us, Mike.”

  “Maybe not. But she couldn’t stop them from making life hell for us, with Mrs. Mac and Jocelyn keeping the coals extra hot. And Camilla’s got that mean streak to start with. She’d be the first to suggest that Mrs. Mac can do without you but the kitchen dishwasher can’t. See what I mean?”

  “Yes. Don’t count that twenty percent Christmas bonus until it’s hatched. Oh, dear.”

  “However,” Mike said, “if you could cleverly extract from Miss Lowry a refusal to meet her benefactor—”

  “And then report this back to Ma’am? Who has her mind made up that there will absolutely be no refusal? Surely you jest.”

  “What about her newfound tenderness for you?”

  “Even so, Michael dear, she is still the Red Queen from Alice sitting there on her little white throne.”

  For that matter, Amy learned, Kim Lowry had some Red Queen in her, too, as well as having, much more than frail little Ma’am, the imposing height to go along with it. All went well at the very start when, in the privacy of the gallery’s storeroom-kitchen, Kim received the bulky envelope with a careless “Thanks” and thrust it into her sweater pocket. But with the delivery of the invitation the atmosphere abruptly thickened.

  “Dinner?” Kim said. Her smile was somewhere between a smile and a curling of the lip. “A chauffeur? The red carpet? Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your boss is female? No surprise in store when I get there? If I get there?”

  That “if” chilled Amy. “I’ve already made plain my boss is female. Why would you doubt it?”

  “About a very mysterious female? A closet female? Why not? I’m not exactly unfamiliar with the Anaïs Nin shtick.”

  “What?”

  “Anais Nin. Is she new to you?”

  “No,” Amy said, “I’ve heard of her.” No point, she thought, in mentioning that she had flipped through a couple of the books and found then wholly uninviting. “And I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You didn’t know she paid the rent now and then by writing porno for hard-up private customers?”

  It took a couple of seconds for this to penetrate, but then it did. “Oh, hell,” Amy said, “do you seriously believe that all of this—buying those works, this invitation—was just to lure you into painting dirty pictures for my employer?”

  “Why not? As Adela put it, weird arrangements can mean weird clients. And porno art for private clients is nothing new in the history of art, in case you didn’t know. And dirty, Mrs. Lloyd, is in the eye of the beholder. Like your eyes, when you were looking at my work. You don’t like it at all, do you?”

  “My job,” Amy said, keeping the tone to the cool McEye telephone level, “was to describe your work. Obviously, I did it fairly. As evidence, those paintings were bought and paid for, weren’t they?”

  “So far, partly paid for. And these cash payments are another weird touch. And the fact that your boss could have walked in and met me like anybody else, not sent a flunky to do it for—definitely her?”<
br />
  “Definitely,” Amy said sweetly. The sustaining thought was of the scene when this tough specimen entered Margaret Durie presence and met one who could, when so moved, be just as tough. And blind at that, which would make the impact even more of a surprise. If ever there was an impending case of diamond cut diamond, this was it. “If you still doubt me,” Amy said even more sweetly, “why not just come see for yourself? You can leave whenever you want to. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Maybe. Eight o’clock?”

  “Yes. I’ll have the car here at seven-thirty.”

  “At the house,” Kim said, “and all you do is blow the horn a couple of times. I’ll be right down. No fancy dress though.”

  “None required,” Amy said.

  Walking around the corner to where Mike was parked she decided that, no, despite the urge she would not mention that flunky crack to him. It was just the kind of thing he liked to get down on the record—he had Camilla’s venom down, word for word—but in this case, coming from outside the family, it really did wound. And wonderfully well balanced as he was about his position, livery and all, he did have his limits.

  He could also be annoyingly perceptive. When she slid into the seat beside him he immediately said, “That smile is false. What went on?”

  Amy gave up on the smile. “She’ll be waiting at the house at seven-thirty.”

  “Sworn to secrecy?”

  “Ma’am’ll have to settle that. As it is, Miss Lowry has gone a little paranoid on this business. From the sound of it, that’s Adela’s influence. She’s got an idea that whoever I represent is most likely a dirty old man who wants her granddaughter as his private pornographer.”

  Mike cackled. “She’s in for a big surprise, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. Please just let’s get to the Plaza and not talk about it now.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Mike. “But meanwhile keep an eye on the bright side.”

  “Bright side?”

  “Well, according to that receipt tucked away in your dresser, you are now the owner of three original Kim Lowrys. On a rising market that could mean—”