The Butler

by Danielle Steel

  They chatted about the New York decorating scene for a little while. Half an hour later they left. Audrey was staying at the Ritz, paid for by her client, who had a jewel box of an apartment at the Palais-Royal that she wanted freshened up. She wanted to redo all her upholstery for a bright new look. Audrey had done it years before. The client was ninety and a famous socialite in New York. She still came to Paris twice a year for the couture shows, to order her clothes, and entertain her Parisian friends.

  Olivia promised to call Audrey as soon as she saw the chateau. Audrey said she’d email her all the access and alarm codes and warn the caretaker that they were coming. Olivia said she’d contact her as soon as possible and hoped to get out to see it the next day. And she thanked Audrey again for the opportunity. She was very flattered that Audrey even thought her capable of it. Maybe if it went well, decorating would be the right avenue for her in the future. She had considered it before and enjoyed it. Audrey said the chateau in question had an open budget, in other words she could spend, and charge, whatever she wanted. It was very tempting. Everyone knew that Russian clients paid well, even if their payment schedule was sometimes erratic and unpredictable, but they were very generous if the job went well.

  Olivia let them out herself, and then went to the kitchen to see Joachim and compliment him on the beautiful job he had done and tell him how impressed they were.

  “You made me look like a fairy princess or queen of the castle,” she said. “They were very envious of me. And I might have a new project as a result. A Russian who bought a chateau just outside Paris. She’s recommending me as the decorator. It sounds like a big job, but maybe it’s feasible. I have to look. I want to go tomorrow.” He nodded and saw no problem with that. They had no appointments for the next day. “Let’s go early,” she suggested, “so we have plenty of time to nose around. We can take lots of photographs,” she said, looking enthusiastic.

  “I’m happy for you,” he said, and genuinely meant it. He was curious about it now too. She had made decorating her apartment fun for him, but the chateau sounded like it was on a very grand scale, which would be exponentially more work to repair and decorate.

  He left on time that night, saw to it that Fatima put everything neatly back in its place, with the silver in felt covers as he showed her. And he took the big silver platter home to his mother. He was pleased with the way things had gone with their first entertaining in Olivia’s new apartment. It was gratifying to help her, she was so appreciative, and maybe now she’d even get a job from it. It made him feel useful, which was what he loved best about his job. He had been a butler again and had gotten high marks for it. He always did. And now Olivia had seen just a little taste of what he could do. He was happy she had. If she got a job out of it, all the better. She deserved it. He hoped he would be as lucky soon. He was beginning to miss his work, although she kept him busy and he liked working for her.

  Chapter 9

  Olivia and Joachim left the city at nine o’clock Monday morning as soon as he arrived for work. It took them just under an hour to get to Barbizon, even with Monday morning traffic. Joachim drove her in his car, an Audi station wagon. It was an easy drive, and the setting was pastoral enough to give one the feeling that one was in the country, much farther from Paris. It was a tiny village near Fontainebleau and the area had been known to be the home of many artists. There were several galleries still there on the main street in the town. The chateau was a few miles beyond it. Olivia had to remind herself that the new owner had never seen the place and bought it from photographs they had sent him and videos on the Internet. He had purchased it for many millions of dollars and was now planning to decorate it from a distance too. It was a strange way to do things, and Audrey had said he was going to give the person who decorated it carte blanche.

  When they arrived at the address, there were huge gates between two imposing stone posts, and a small forest of trees obscured any view of the chateau, so the owner’s privacy was ensured. They punched in the code and the gates swung open. There was a slightly eerie feeling as they followed the driveway. The trees were thick, and one somehow sensed that the property was uninhabited. There were stone outbuildings along the way, and more recently built stables, in contrast to the eighteenth-century chateau. The previous owner had owned racehorses. The property had been foreclosed on a year before and was sold by the bank.

  Joachim was observing the property closely with a practiced eye. “They need groundskeepers,” he commented. The place hadn’t been kept up, and she could see that he was right.

  The keys to the chateau and the stables had been delivered to Olivia by the realtor who had made the sale. When they got out of the car, and walked up the front steps, there was a keypad. They put in the code they’d been given, and then turned the big old-fashioned key, and the door creaked as it swung open. Olivia looked at Joachim.

  “I feel like we’re going to be attacked by ghosts,” she whispered, and he smiled.

  “Or something worse.” The chateau hadn’t been lived in or renovated in a long time, and they were glad they had come in daylight. There were no lamps or working light fixtures anywhere. The electricity had been turned off. They walked through a front hallway into a massive living room with high ceilings and a fireplace Joachim could stand up in. There were handsome ceiling beams, and carved wood paneling. You could see that the chateau had been beautiful but not for a long time. Olivia understood why Audrey hadn’t wanted to take on the project. It was going to be a lot of work for someone, and would have been nearly impossible to manage from New York. It would have been hard enough from Paris, let alone Moscow, where the new owner lived. One would need to be near at hand to make constant decisions and communicate with the contractor one chose, hopefully a reliable one.

  When they looked closely, they noticed the beautiful details. The main living room and several smaller ones beyond it had good proportions and many windows. The aristocrat who had built it originally must have been a very rich man, judging from the exquisite craftsmanship, carved moldings, wood paneling, and many windows. There was a wood-paneled dining room that looked like a banquet hall. She could imagine a long table running down the center of it, for fifty people or more.

  “I hope he has a large family, or many friends,” Joachim said. The kitchen was a huge room with nothing in it. They looked at each other and said at the same time, “Ikea!” And they both laughed. It was daunting, but not quite as overwhelming as it had looked from the outside. There were two floors of countless bedrooms, which led into one another, and seemed to turn into a maze. Many bathrooms, but probably not enough. They all needed to be modernized. The servants’ rooms were on the top floor, and there were utility rooms and a vast wine cellar in the basement. Audrey was right, Olivia realized. It was going to be a huge amount of work. But she loved the idea of turning something so ancient and unloved into a beautiful home for its owners to enjoy. She could imagine house parties there, and music and dancing, exuberant meals in the great hall, and ancestral portraits that the Russian didn’t own, but could buy. They went for very little at Drouot, particularly the enormous ones that would have been the right scale for a house that size. People sold their relatives for only a few hundred euros. They would add dignity to the entrance. Olivia could see many things she would do if she took the job. What the place needed was to have a lot of money thrown at it, and a good contractor. It wasn’t destroyed or badly damaged, it was just very old and hadn’t been lived in for a very long time.

  Joachim could sense her mind going at full speed as they walked around. She jotted down a few notes and made some sketches, which he glanced at over her shoulder. And he took photographs for her with his phone. They saw a dead bat on the floor, which made her shudder.

  “Oh God, I hope there are no live ones.”

  “They sleep in the daytime,” he said to reassure her.

  “That is not comforting.” Sh
e scowled at him.

  “You’d have to have the place cleaned up by a professional company before you start any work.” But it all looked feasible. The windows weren’t broken, the leaks didn’t look recent and had been repaired, the floors needed buffing but were in decent condition when one looked closely. She looked at the views from all the windows. There were lovely trees all around the property, and orchards in the distance. After a thorough walk through the house, which took them an hour, they locked up, set the alarm again, and went to explore the stables, which were relatively modern and had been expensively built.

  There was a good spot for a very large, modern pool and patio area closer to the chateau. There were guesthouses, and some cottages. It was practically a village of its own. Joachim could imagine seminars there, or a school, as many great houses in England had been transformed into for more practical use. Turning it into a vacation home for one man seemed excessive to him, and he wondered if he’d ever use it. Many of the Russians who bought property renovated it and never even came to use it. They just liked knowing they owned it and could arrive at any time. It seemed sad to Olivia to treat it that way, and if she did take the project on, she hoped he would spend time there and enjoy it. Otherwise, it seemed like a waste to her too.

  After they had seen the house and the stables, they walked around for a little while in the overgrown grass. She stumbled over a few hidden rocks.

  “The gardening alone will cost a fortune here,” Joachim said from experience. “They’ll need a dozen gardeners, or at least ten good ones. The Cheshire property in Sussex is about this size, which is why the children don’t want to keep it. It’s too much upkeep and expense for them. It would break my heart if a Russian winds up buying that too. The marquess kept it in such good order for his heirs. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that his children might sell it. I always thought they would. They never had the passion for the land that he did. His family had worked for generations to keep the estate intact. That will all change now. Only billionaires and foreigners want these properties now, and can afford them.” Some of the British families gave tours of their homes, and treated them as paying tourist attractions in order to be able to maintain them, but the French had allowed almost anyone to buy them, and often had no choice. Americans had bought them for a while. Then the buyers from Russia and the Middle East moved in, with unlimited money to spend, and more recently Chinese buyers.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked her, as they walked slowly back to the car.

  “That it’s a huge project. Audrey was smart not to take it on.”

  “And you?” He could see a gleam in her eye, and a distant look as she mulled it over, trying to remember everything they’d just seen, and he had taken dozens of photographs for her to study when she got home.

  “I don’t know,” she said, as she got into the car. “I’m tempted to do it. It’s such a challenge and I have nothing else to do here.”

  “It could take you two or three years, if the workers run into roadblocks or hidden problems.”

  “Money is no object to the owner, but he wants it done fast.”

  “I suppose if you pay enough, you can get people to work faster,” Joachim said cautiously, but that wasn’t always true. And the quality of the workmanship might suffer as a result. “It’s a huge commitment, of your time and his money.” She nodded agreement and they left the property in silence. She thought about it all the way back to Paris, and called Audrey when she got home.

  “So? What do you think?” Audrey asked her.

  “It’s not beautiful now, but it could be.”

  “I thought that too,” Audrey confirmed. “Most people can’t see it. He probably got it for a fairly decent price because of that. He wants an answer,” she told Olivia. “And just for the record, my feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t do it. I gave you the opportunity, but I have no investment in whether you do it or not.”

  “I love the challenge,” Olivia said in an under-voice, and before she could stop them, like unruly birds, the words flew out on their own. “I’ll do it,” she almost whispered, and then said it with more conviction. “I’ll do it. I’m probably crazy and I might regret it, but I would love to try to make it into something wonderful.”

  “I can understand that,” Audrey said. “You’re a lot younger than I am. It makes a difference. A project like that would probably kill me, especially with everything else I’m doing. My hat’s off to you, if you take it on. You could never have done it if you still had the magazine to run,” she reminded her, which made her freedom now seem like more of a gift than a defeat.

  “I know. And right now, I’m between jobs or careers or whatever I’m going to do. If I’m ever going to try my hand at something like this, now is the time.”

  “You could try your hand at something smaller,” Audrey reminded her. “Something more bite-size. That chateau is one hell of a big bite. But it could launch you on a new and very lucrative career.” She liked Olivia and wanted to help her.

  “That’s what makes it exciting,” Olivia said, and thanked her for the referral.

  “I’ll pass the word on to Moscow. He has a designer now. He’ll be very pleased.”

  “I am too,” Olivia said simply. She was still glowing when she went to the kitchen to find Joachim. He knew the moment he saw her. Her eyes were alight and looked like emeralds, and she was smiling.

  “I smell trouble coming,” he said, laughing. “In the form of a three-hundred-year-old chateau. Am I right?”

  She nodded with an impish, mischievous look that made him laugh harder. “I think I can really make it into something beautiful.”

  “You probably can,” he said. He had great faith in her, even after the little he’d seen. She had vision and talent, and energy, but he wondered if she had any idea how much work would be involved. She shocked him then with a question she hadn’t dared ask him so far.

  “If they hire me to do the project, will you help me?” He stood very still when she asked him. He wanted to turn her down flat, but he didn’t. He just stood there, looking shocked.

  He didn’t know what to say at first. There was the obvious answer, and the one she wanted to hear, that he would. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll help you until I get a real job as a butler and go back to England.”

  She mulled it over and then nodded. “That’s fair enough. Then I’ll just have to finish it before you find a job. Or keep you locked in the dungeon. There must be one.”

  “I didn’t see one,” he said, smiling. He still couldn’t believe she was going to do it. One woman, alone. She wasn’t a contracting company, or an architect, or a licensed designer. She was just going to do it and figure it out as she went along. “Well, we’ll have our work cut out for us now.” And he thought they were finished with her apartment.

  “First, I have to get an agreement from him, and negotiate what he’ll pay me.”

  “It should be a lot. Don’t settle for too little,” he advised her. “He can afford to pay you well, if he bought a place like that.”

  “I hope he remembers that.” She smiled at him, satisfied that Joachim would at least be there for a while. Hopefully a long while.

  The Russian owner called her as soon as he got the word. He had a deep, booming voice and a strong Russian accent, and told her that he was sure she was going to do a beautiful job for him. He said he felt it in his bones and in his veins. She promised him progress reports and ongoing photographs, and he repeated what Audrey had said in blunter terms.

  “You make beautiful, I pay more.” He quoted an amount for a monthly payment, which staggered her. It illustrated to her how foolish she would have been to turn it down. She still looked dazed when she saw Joachim in the kitchen.

  “It’s official. I’m a high-end prostitute now. What he offered to pay me is obscene.” She quoted Joachim a number that sh
e would pay him for as long as he worked on the project. She couldn’t expect him to help her with it for what she was paying him for the short-term job to set up her apartment.

  “Will that make me a prostitute too?” She didn’t answer, and he laughed. “So be it. Why not? It’s more lucrative than being a butler. We’re in it now,” he said, and chuckled on his way home. Life had certainly been interesting since he met Olivia White. He was a decorator’s assistant now.

  Chapter 10

  The first payment was made on time by Nikolai Petrov on the first of the month, and she gave Joachim his portion of it. He had been interviewing contractors for her, and had already hired groundskeepers to clear away the brush, and arborists to trim the trees. They went back to look at the house again, and she saw no major structural changes she wanted to make. It was mostly refurbishing wood paneling and boiseries. They’d polish up the floors in the end. She had to figure out what bedrooms to use, and what to turn into dressing rooms, guest rooms, and a fabulous modern gym, at the owner’s request. She had two notebooks filled by the time the first check came in. And they sent the contractors’ estimates to Moscow, to leave the choice to him. He picked the most expensive one, which didn’t surprise Joachim, who said that to a man like Petrov, the more money he spent, the better he thought it would be, which wasn’t always the case.

  They had just returned home from their third visit to the chateau when Olivia got a call from her realtor in New York. She had an offer on her mother’s apartment. It had been on the market for three months. It wasn’t a fabulous offer, but it was respectable, and Olivia wanted to sell it. She had a small apartment of her own, and living in her mother’s would have depressed her. She had already emptied it, sold what she didn’t want, and put the rest in storage, so she didn’t have to deal with that now. There were a few pieces of furniture in storage that she was thinking of bringing to Paris, and after thinking about it that night, she made a suggestion to Joachim the next morning.