“Javier would never have come with us, even if you had tried to force him,” Joachim reminded her. “You forget how obstinate he was then. And I think he already had some bad plans by the time we left, which would have shocked us if we’d known about them. He started hanging around the wrong people as a teenager.” It was hard for either of them to imagine who he was now. He had strayed so far from anything familiar or acceptable to them that Joachim suspected they were better off not knowing. As sad as it was, especially for his mother, the silence was perhaps less upsetting than the truth. But he was hoping to hear some echoes about Javier anyway when he went to Buenos Aires. It was hard to let go of the fact that he had a twin brother somewhere in the world.
“What are you going to do when you get there?” Liese asked.
“See friends, enjoy the city. Visit my old favorite places. It’s sort of a pilgrimage. I haven’t had time for a trip like that. Now I do, before I take another job, and get caught up in service again.”
“When are you going to do that?”
“I’m in no hurry.” The marquess had left him some money, as had Francois. Joachim had been careful and invested what he had. He had enough to be comfortable for quite some time without a job. He didn’t want to make a mistake and take the wrong one. He had enjoyed his first job briefly, and his second one had been deeply rewarding. He wanted to take his time and find the right job and employer for the next round, although there were fewer and fewer great houses and grand estates anywhere anymore, even in England. Few people wanted a large formal staff, which was Joachim’s forte to run. His skills were outstanding. He had listed himself with the best agency for butlers in London and had told them he was in no rush. He could have his pick of the best jobs, with his experience. He doubted he would find a new one he liked as much that used all his skills.
Seeing his mother made him think that he should stay in Paris for a while, to spend time with her and make sure she was in good health. She was remarkably energetic for a woman her age, but she lived alone, and at eighty-one, he was concerned that she might fall ill, or injure herself. But she’d had no problems so far. It was nice staying in the apartment with her. He’d been so busy preparing the Cheshire homes to be sold that he hadn’t been to see her in three months and felt guilty about it. He was planning to spend a month with her after he got back from Buenos Aires. He had a flat in London, which he rarely had time to use, but it would give him a comfortable place to stay when he went back to look for a new position. He used it on his days off, sometimes to meet women, but he was always available to the family and staff, if needed. He was feared, and admired, by the employees he managed, and held in great respect by his employers. He was well liked but kept to himself. He saw his life as a butler more as a vocation than a career.
* * *
—
When he got to Buenos Aires, the city was as beautiful as Joachim remembered, and he still felt at home there, even after so long. He easily found the small, shabby apartment building where they had lived. He was shocked by how dreary it looked to him now. The neighborhood had gotten worse than he remembered. His mother had often pointed to the house she had grown up in. Other people had lived there for more than forty years now. It had been sold when her father died, right after the twins were born. It had changed hands several times with reversals in the lives of the owners, which had become run of the mill in Argentina. Many fortunes had been lost, and once very wealthy people had almost nothing now. Their exquisite homes had been sold, their French antiques filled the antique shops, and there were wonderful purchases to be had, which wealthy Americans and Europeans had known for a long time. Liese had only once pointed out the pretty house where she had lived with Joachim’s father before he died. She said it was too painful for her to talk about, so he knew very little of his father’s history, except that he had died in a riding accident, and his family had lost everything, and had all died shortly after he was born. Liese didn’t like to talk about the sad times in her life. She was private about them and was vague whenever he asked.
He walked all over Buenos Aires in the first few days he was there, soaking up the sounds and smells and familiar sights. Having lived in France for so long after he left, he realized now how French the architecture of Buenos Aires was. The wide boulevards, impressive buildings, small lovely parks, and famous plazas all looked similar to the landmarks of Paris he knew so well now. The Avenida de Mayo looked distinctly like Paris, and the Plaza de Mayo, with historic monuments. The Congreso de la Nación resembled the grandeur of the Paris opera house. He remembered the Plaza del Congreso from his youth, and the Casa Rosada, the pink palace of the presidential offices.
He sat in small parks, wandered through the barrios, and remembered his childhood on the streets where he and Javier had played. It was a trip back in time for him, full of sights he remembered, smells which jogged his memory, and familiar music. It was different now, seeing it as an adult, and a tourist. And everything he saw brought back tender memories.
Joachim contacted all the old friends he’d planned to in Buenos Aires. He hadn’t seen them since he’d left, and no one had heard from Javier in at least twenty years, or longer. Joachim and his twin had shared many of the same friends in their childhood, and it touched Joachim to see them again. But in his mid-teens, Javier had collected another group of friends, racier, tougher, from a different background. Joachim was told that his twin had gotten in trouble with them, once Joachim and their mother left. It was everyone’s opinion, among the people he spoke to, that Javier had disappeared into a dark underworld. Some of their old friends were outspoken, saying how dangerous his friends and connections were, and that many of them were suspected of being involved in the drug cartels of Colombia, once they were adults. They were a bad lot, and they suspected Javier had become one of them. Joachim believed that too and wondered if his twin might be dead by then. But he had a gut feeling that he wasn’t. Joachim knew no one in that world to contact.
An old friend of his who was high up in the police volunteered to do some investigating and told Joachim a few days later that a police contact he had called in Colombia said that they thought Javier was alive, and deeply embedded in a very dangerous network of drug dealers. It wasn’t reassuring to hear that, and the friend told Joachim to stay well away from his brother, that he might regret it if he finally reached him. In that world, family ties and loyalties by blood didn’t exist. Their only family was the group of highly dangerous men they worked with, and Joachim could be at risk, now that he was in Buenos Aires. Joachim had trouble believing that Javier would be a danger to him, but he had no way of reaching him anyway. The drug world was entirely removed from Joachim’s life, he had no access or connection to it, nor did his friends, who had grown up to be wholesome men.
He left Buenos Aires with regret after a week there. It was still a beautiful city and held a warm place in his heart and memory, but it wasn’t home anymore. He had ties to France because of his mother and had lived and worked in England for seventeen years. Buenos Aires was the home of his childhood, but he had left so long ago, he no longer had a strong bond there.
He had nothing concrete to tell his mother when he went back to Paris, except that somewhere, in a very dark underworld, Javier might still be alive, but he was no longer the same person, and lost to them forever, which they had suspected anyway. It didn’t come as a surprise.
He was heading back to Paris to stay with his mother and figure out the next steps in his life. He closed a door behind him in Buenos Aires, and in the world he’d left behind was the twin he had loved so much, who was a stranger to him now. Too much time had passed, and Javier had drifted too far on the tides that had carried him away. It was almost as if Javier had died. Joachim felt a strange sense of freedom when he left Buenos Aires. He was glad he’d gone to say a final goodbye.
Chapter 3
Olivia White stood looking around her
mother’s apartment, not sure where to start. Everything about it seemed sad and faded to Olivia now. It was all tidy and in order, but the familiar surroundings thinly masked an unlived life. Olivia was a beautiful, vibrant woman, with dark hair and green eyes. Forty-three years old, she had focused on her career, and shied away from marriage and long-term relationships all her life. Her mother, Margaret, had been beautiful once too, a tall willowy blonde. Margaret had grown up in Boston in a genteel family that had slowly lost their money over several generations. She had dreamed of going to New York to become a book editor, and had headed there after graduating from Boston College, as a literature major, and gotten a job as an editorial assistant with a major book publisher. Her parents thought it was respectable. She could barely eke out a living on what she made, and had found a small walk-up apartment in a tenement on the Lower East Side, but was determined to become a senior editor one day. She did freelance editing on the side to supplement her income. She worked in a tiny office at a major publishing house and took manuscripts home at night. Her parents couldn’t help her financially and were austere people who expected a great deal of their only child.
Two years into her fledgling career as a junior editor, she stepped off the elevator after lunch one day and collided with George Lawrence, the star bestselling author of the publishing house where she worked. He looked like he’d been hit by lightning when he saw her. She blushed and backed away. Margaret was twenty-four years old, and George was fifty, a handsome, dashing man with a powerful personality, a racy reputation, and an appetite for young women. His career was legendary, and his books at the top of the bestseller list every time he published a new one. He had a wife and four children, and his socialite wife was from an important New York family. They made a dazzling pair, and their image as a couple contributed to his charisma and success. They had a star quality about them and were often in the press.
It took George several days to track Margaret down. He showed up in her office one morning and filled the doorway of the tiny room with his presence. He took Margaret to lunch at the “21” Club that day, and she was as impressed as he’d hoped she would be. Startled by him, excited, flattered, she had no idea how to decline his invitation and didn’t want to. He pursued her relentlessly after that, roses, dinners, lunches, funny gifts that made her laugh, little essays and poems he wrote for her. She was breathless with his attentions, and then he showed up at her apartment one night. She was mortified when her doorbell on the fifth floor rang, she opened it and found him standing there. He must have followed someone else into the building.
“I couldn’t stay away from you,” he said with a tormented look. It took him less than a month to get her into bed, and after that they met at remote hotels, in houses or luxurious apartments he’d borrowed from friends. He hated her apartment, and said it pained him to see her living in such squalor. It was all she could afford. He didn’t want to meet her there.
Their affair took off in a white heat. He was honest with her and told her he could never get divorced. His father-in-law would destroy him, his wife would take everything he had. He would lose his children, and his public image would be tarnished forever. He said his marriage was something they would have to work around, and somehow Margaret got swept away on the tidal wave of his attentions. She was fearful and meek, in love with him, and enthralled by who he was. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the sheer power of a man like him. He made her laugh, and feel beautiful and special, and almost forget that he was married. Almost. But not quite. He wanted her to forget and she hoped he would get divorced one day, but she never asked him to. She did whatever he wanted. She was unable to resist him.
A year later, as the affair continued, he moved her into a much nicer apartment on the East Side. It was still a walk-up, but the building was clean and nice. It was in a family neighborhood and George Lawrence paid the rent. On her meager budget, she turned it into a love nest for them. He loved it. They rarely went out after that. They had no reason to. They spent most of their time in bed. He told her that she invigorated him. Tragedy had struck him before they met. He had lost an eighteen-year-old son in a boating accident, and hadn’t written a word since then. The first manuscript he had given Margaret to read had been written before his son died. And with her tender, gentle, loving ways, and nurturing, he began writing again, and claimed it was the best work he’d ever done. He insisted that they were soul mates and told her he couldn’t survive or write without her. Her boundless love made it possible for him to tolerate his loveless marriage. Margaret actually made it possible for him to stay married.
Two years after they met, she became George’s editor, at his insistence. She had talent, and helped him polish his books until they shone. There was a purity to them after she entered his life, and a strength that she didn’t have as a person but was able to wield with the written word. He only worked with her from then on. And by tacit agreement, she entered into a life where she only lived and breathed for him. She waited for him night and day, he appeared for rapid lunches they spent in bed, late-night dinners they never ate. They made love in her office. She spent every weekend waiting for him when he could get away, and holidays alone, while he went to Palm Beach, Aspen, and skiing in Europe with his wife and children. Margaret was always there when he returned, faithful, loving, never complaining. In her own mind, she didn’t exist except when she was with him. Her own personality faded into the mists, and she became a ghost for him, a mirror, a non-person, living in the shadows, always available to him. They managed to keep their affair secret for a while. Margaret demanded nothing of him, always impressed by who he was, thinking and acting as if he was some kind of god. She convinced herself that she was lucky to be with him and derive sustenance from the crumbs from his marital table. The center of his life was still at home.
She had been editing his books for a year and was twenty-seven years old when she realized she was pregnant. She was going to have an abortion, not knowing what else to do. George begged her not to. She was convinced that he loved her. And he wanted her to have his child, as a symbol of their love. He promised to support her and the baby, and she thought that with a baby of their own, he might get divorced and marry her after all. Somehow it all began to make sense, she thought George was her destiny, and went ahead with the pregnancy. When she was seven months pregnant, she told her parents. They accused her of gross immorality, told her she had disgraced them, nearly disowned her, and refused to see her and the baby until Olivia was five years old. She faced Olivia’s first five years alone, with visits from George. He paid for the babysitters she used, so she could continue working as his editor.
Olivia was born when George was in Tuscany with his wife and children for the summer, and Margaret gave birth alone. Olivia was two months old when her father first saw her. Margaret had gone back to work editing his books by then. He was bowled over by how beautiful Olivia was, and she became the cement between them as soon as she was born, and the excuse for Margaret to never have a life again. She spent her spare time, when she wasn’t working, waiting for him, when he could get away from his wife, for an hour here and there. Margaret and George agreed that it was too sensitive a subject to tell Olivia who her father was. They decided to tell her when she got older that her father had died in a car accident right before she was born. George was to be portrayed as a family friend who was loving and supportive and referred to as Uncle George.
He saw Olivia often, and gave her generous gifts. She truly believed he was just their friend, just as Margaret said. He improved their living situation as she got older with an apartment on York Avenue in the Seventies in a better building, close enough to where he lived to be convenient for him.
He set up a trust fund for Olivia, not comparable to those he was leaving his legitimate children, but it would be adequate to pay for her education and related expenses later on. He didn’t want to create a situation that his wife and child
ren would fight when he died and put Margaret in an untenable legal situation.
As Olivia got older, George was her champion. He helped her with math homework, gave her the gifts she wanted most, and wanted to get her a dog, which her mother wouldn’t allow. He was the bestower of all bounty, and paid for private school for her, although Olivia didn’t know he did. She often thought how lucky she was that they had an attentive, generous friend like him, when she had no father. They never told her the truth. Margaret continued to work for the publisher so she could edit his books at home, and wait for him in their apartment, long after his children were grown. He remained married to his wife, and they continued taking family vacations together. The subject of his marrying Margaret never came up anymore. She never mentioned it and accepted their situation as it was. She lived in suspended animation, waiting for George, and only came alive when he was with her, and faded away again when he left.
When Olivia turned twenty, her mother was forty-seven, and George was seventy-three. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was their last chance to tell Olivia the truth before he died, so she could have an honest conversation with her father. But they didn’t. They missed their chance. He felt ill and went home early one night. Within a short time, he was tended to by nurses and bed-bound at home. His wife had known about Margaret for years by then, and they had gone on pretending that it wasn’t happening and his love child didn’t exist. Margaret was forty-eight when George died at home, with his wife and children at his side. He hadn’t seen Margaret in two months, or even been able to call her in the final weeks to say goodbye. Margaret had spent half her life with him by then. Olivia was twenty-one, a junior in college at Columbia, when her father died, and her mother explained to her about the trust fund he had left her.
The Butler Page 4