Very Old Money Page 2

  “I’ve never dealt with anyone blind,” Amy said.

  “Few of us have,” said Mrs. Bernius. “And I wouldn’t let my imagination run away with me now, dear. I have a feeling you’ll get along well with the lady. And that you’ll find the family strongly supportive. And—I trust you’ll take this in the right spirit—you do make a most pleasant appearance when you’re not slouching in that awkward way. But that rather flamboyant red hair—”

  “Auburn,” said Amy. “And it’s natural.”

  “Obviously, going by your complexion. What I’m suggesting is that you capitalize on your height and figure and work out a less—well—casual hairdo. Before you meet the housekeeper there. She’s very much in charge and favors what might be called the sedate coiffure.”

  “Sedate?”

  “Less flyaway. Keep in mind that the signals you get from the housekeeper—Mrs. McEye—are the signals she gets from the family. And where I have the power to hire—with her approval—she has the power to fire.”

  “But we are hired? Both of us?”

  “Both of you.” Mrs. Bernius reseated herself behind the desk—it was a demonstration, Mike saw, of how to seat yourself weightlessly—and scanned a folder. “Two years as kindergarten teacher. Then a turn at various temporary office jobs. Receptionist and typist.”

  “Mostly receptionist,” Amy confessed. “My typing isn’t all that fast.”

  “But refreshingly accurate,” said Mrs. Bernius. “You’re the first one within memory, dear, who completed our tests without a single error. But—and this is only to satisfy my curiosity—did you give up that job at Scoville-Lang voluntarily or did your Mr. Oliphant—?”

  “Oh, that. Well, after Mike left, Mr. Oliphant sort of encouraged me to quit at the end of the term. I would have done it anyhow.”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Bernius looked almost fondly from one to the other of them. “Semper fidelis, isn’t it? Well, then”—she closed the folders with an air of finality—“today is Wednesday. You’ll start with introductions Sunday morning at eight. Sunday morning is when the family—or most of it—will be on hand. Your apartment is fully furnished, ready for occupancy. The one you’ll report to—remember to use the service entrance, not the main entrance—is Mrs. McEye, the housekeeper. She’ll give you your instructions in detail. Do not—I repeat, do not—try to improve on them.” Mrs. Bernius held her hands wide. “And that’s it, you people. The whole package.”

  “For the next five years,” Mike said as he got to his feet. He felt simultaneously lightheaded with relief, heavyhearted with dark forebodings.

  “At least the next five years,” Mrs. Bernius said. “Wait. One little thing more.” She regarded Amy over the glasses. “You’re not pregnant by any chance?”

  “No,” Amy said, and looked down at her flatness in bewilderment.

  “Oh, nothing shows,” said Mrs. Bernius. “It’s just that a little one on the way—well, it would be more than the family would care to cope with. Bear that in mind, won’t you?”

  “Both of us,” said Mike.

  Mike jabbed the elevator button. “Unreal,” he said.

  Amy thrust her arm through his. “Want to walk all the way home from here?”

  “Until reality sets in? Sure. By way of Sixth Avenue. The first bar we hit there is the bar for us.”

  “Your idea of reality,” Amy said. She clutched his arm tight against her and managed to fit into the same section of the revolving door that bumped them out into Fifth Avenue. In the middle of the crowded sidewalk she stopped short. “Mike, it’s just sinking in, that unreal part. Our money troubles are over. Completely. It makes me feel disoriented.”

  “Still,” Mike said, “figuring in this and that—like overdue rent and my father’s mite and the Silverstones’ large charity—we’re starting off at least a few thousand in the hole, baby.”

  “I know,” said Amy. Which, as Mike was aware, understated it. One corner of her brain, he learned soon after they set up housekeeping, was a computer when it come to dollars and cents. She now had that computer look in her eye. “After you rent the van tomorrow so we can get the rest of the stuff up to the farm for storage—anyhow the TV and stereo and books—we’ll owe just about thirty-three hundred. No sweat anymore, because we just arrange schedules of payment. So in two months—”

  “Two months?”

  “Mike darling, if we keep expenses down to basics, in two months we clear up everything we owe.”

  “Unreal,” Mike said.

  The first bar they hit on Sixth Avenue catered to a depressing lineup of threadbare geriatric cases. The warm blood still circulated however; every watery eye fixed on Amy with appreciation.

  There were a few small tables available, none occupied, but there was a waiter indifferently flicking a towel over one of them. Mike led Amy to a table. “Name your poison,” he said.

  “Frozen daiquiri,” she said predictably. She loathed all alcohol that wasn’t camouflaged by cloying syrups. “Strawberry.”

  “In a joint like this?”

  “It’s a bar, isn’t it?”

  The waiter drifted over, and when Amy said, “A frozen strawberry daiquiri, please,” he regarded her somberly. “You have to be kidding, lady.”

  Mike said, “The lady’ll have a screwdriver, heavy on the orange juice. For me, Jack Daniels. A double. No rocks. Right?”

  “Right,” said the waiter and made his way off.

  “Well?” Mike said to his wife.

  “So I am no expert on bars. Or maybe just enough to know that a double anything on an empty stomach is extremely potent, isn’t it?”

  “I need it, dear. Between you and me, I still feel I’m under anesthesia.”

  The waiter set down their glasses. He watched Mike down a large belt. “Happy days,” the waiter said approvingly as he departed.

  “So it appears,” Mike said. He said to Amy, “Man took me for an old gunslinger. He didn’t know he was eyeballing Jeeves. And Mrs. Danvers.”

  “Mrs. Danvers? Oh, yes, Rebecca. Mike, honest to God, is that how you see it?”

  “What I see, baby, is a stretch of role-playing for us. Something new in our lives. Two split personalities. Four altogether. Are we ready for that?”

  “We’d better be. Because simple arithmetic—”

  “No arithmetic is simple. If it was, I’d be a math or science teacher. I’d have school boards begging for my services. Hell, not even Bernius was begging for them. If she didn’t want you to sign on—”

  “She did want you,” Amy said sharply. “And let us stick to the subject, Michael dear. Simple arithmetic. Which says that if we bank all we can, we’ll wind up with about a hundred thousand dollars in the next five years.”

  “Come on. Not even fancy arithmetic—”

  “It’s true. If we keep personal expenses way down, that’s what will happen.”

  “Possibly. But do you think we can put in five years of servitude stashing away Das Rheingold and then go back to teaching just like that?” Mike downed the rest of his drink. “‘Well now, Mr. Lloyd, we’ve considered your application, but what with that blackball, and the best years of your life devoted to chauffeuring the idle rich—’”

  “No,” said Amy, “you won’t be putting in job applications anywhere. Your job’ll be writing, not teaching.”

  “Amy, darling, I’ve had one story published, and I have one novel on hand nobody wants to publish. And your drink is getting warm.”

  She distastefully took a sip of the drink and said stubbornly, “That novel is a good novel. And the one you’re writing now about the school is even better.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe. So what you’ll do while we’re on this job is go back to writing, the way you were doing before the cabbie job. At least a couple of pages a day. And when we’ve got that big money put away you’ll write full time. And without having to go beg for those grants nobody gets anyhow except people who don’t need them.”

&nb
sp; “I see,” said Mike. “Our planned future.”

  “Part of it. For the rest—Mike, do you know how hopeless you are about handling money?”

  During the past three years there had been vague hints that she might think this way, but it was the first time she had ever come out with it. Now that she had, he found, it didn’t hurt at all. Had a certain flattering quality, in fact. Mike Lloyd, easy spender, ready lender, generous host, a man for all seasons.

  He said lightly, “Hopelessness with money runs in my family, baby. You can’t blame me for it when it’s in the genes, can you?”

  “Yes, I can. So–”

  “So?”

  Amy took a deep breath. “I want to handle all our money. Paychecks, budget and all.”

  Mike contemplated this through a faint haze of bourbon.

  “Suppose,” he said craftily, “I told you this kind of arrangement could psychically demolish me?”

  “Fat chance.”

  “You know all the answers, don’t you, kid? All right”—he made a broad erasing gesture in the air with his fist—“the misspent past is wiped out. Now for the implausible future.”

  Not that the recent past itself, commencing with the entrance of this woman into his life, had been all that plausible.

  The entrance had been made on an Orientation Day, traditionally the day before the school year opened, when the faculty gathered in the auditorium for some positive thinking from headmaster George Oliphant, pilot of the good craft Scoville-Lang—like it or not, it did live on Dalton and Brearley rejects—and for sketchy introductions to the newly signed-on members of the crew.

  A stupefying occasion usually, but this time brightened for Mike by the view, a few empty rows ahead, of an unfamiliar crown of blazing red hair sunk to the level of the seat top and apparently unattached to any body, though second glance revealed that there was a pair of blue-jeaned knees also visible at seat-top level.

  When her name was called—Amy Belknap—and she awkwardly rose to her full surprising height and came to the platform to murmur that she was instructor of Kindergarten-B, it turned out that aside from those fiery tresses this was no big deal. The tresses had hinted at, if not a Miss America, at least a Miss New York State. The reality came off as an ordinary-looking kid, obviously fresh out of college and awed by this, her first honest-to-god paying job as sandbox supervisor. Rose DelVecchio, head of the Lower School, which included the kindergartens, had once confided to him in her cups that what she looked for in a kindergarten teacher were steely nerves and immunization against all childhood diseases. So much for Amy Belknap.

  Over the next month he occasionally saw her from a distance, but since he was an Upper School heavyweight—now Dean of Students, George Oliphant’s idea of a high-toned title for a combination English teacher and grade adviser—and since the Upper Middle, and Lower Schools lived academic lives apart from each other, there was no reason to pass the time of day with her. Besides, females who had the edge on him in height were a distinct turn-off.

  The first time he did talk to her was on his own turf, the closet-size office awarded him as Dean of Students. Corned beef sandwich in one hand, pen in the other, he was at his desk having lunch and grading essay papers when there was this barely audible knock on the office door. “Come in,” said he, and there she was. Triumphantly, he found her name leaping instantly to mind. “Miss Belknap. Amy Belknap.”

  She looked startled at this recognition. “Yes. I’m supposed to talk to you. About a problem.”

  “A kindergarten problem? I have a feeling that you’re at the wrong address.”

  “Oh, no. I mean, it’s rather a personal problem. I told Mrs. DelVecchio about it and she sent me to Mr. Oliphant.” She remained standing there in the doorway, and in those jeans and that Scoville-Lang T-shirt, Mike observed, she could have been one of his senior writing class. She cleared her throat. “Anyhow, when I talked to Mr. Oliphant he said you might know what to do about it.”

  “Did he?” said Mike. So George, the old smoothie, had set him not only to nursemaid troubled adolescents but also troubled faculty. This he’d have to settle with George. Meanwhile, let good manners prevail. “In that case,” said Mike, “come in, close the door, sit down.”

  She did, and where any visitor made for a tight fit here, this one’s lanky frame made it even tighter. When he pivoted his swivel chair toward her their knees almost touched. It struck him that her face seen this close—sherry-colored eyes, high cheekbones, short straight nose, wide mouth—was not an altogether uninteresting face.

  “And the problem?” he said.

  “Well, it’s one of your Upper School boys. Gerald Mortenson. He’s been making himself offensive to me.”

  “How?”

  “He aims remarks at me in public. Sexually oriented, not quite sotto voce. In front of his cronies.”

  “Cronies,” Mike said. An almost forgotten magic work in this context, right out of all those magic boys’ books read beneath the blanket by flashlight beam.

  “Yes,” said Amy Belknap. “‘Hey, Miss Belknap, you’re my kind of teacher.’ ‘Hey, Miss Belknap, want to share an experience?’ I find it offensive in the extreme. I’m not sure Mr. Oliphant does. I can only hope you do.”

  “But definitely,” Mike said. The Mortenson kid. Big, smart, going on eighteen. Parents divorced, father a wheel in TV production. And—this would explain George’s evasive style here—Mortenson senior was the school board member who handled Scoville-Lang’s fund raising for free. “Did you,” Mike asked the plaintiff, “try to straighten out Gerald?”

  She shook her head. “Hard to see how, considering his total arrogance. I know he wants me to engage him in a slanging match in front of his audience, so I won’t. The best I could do last time was give him a really scathing look.” She took in Mike’s expression. “Is that so surprising?”

  “No, no. It’s just the way you put it.” He couldn’t hold back a smile, and to his pleased surprise, instead of showing resentment she returned the smile. “By the way,” he said, “do I detect a touch of Boston in your voice?”

  “It’s my hometown. And I graduated from Boston U.”

  “What do you know,” Mike said, “so did I. But the hometown’s Spruce Pond up Middlesex way. I doubt if you’ve ever heard of it.”

  “Not really.”

  “Nice place,” Mike said. “Old New England. Or what’s left of it.” He suddenly realized he was openly reading her face, feature by feature, and that her cheeks were coloring. Blushing, for God’s sake. Here on Central Park West at the close of the twentieth century. He abruptly pulled himself together. “Anyhow,” he said briskly, “I’m glad you brought the problem to me. You can now forget about Gerald Mortenson. I’ll attend to him first thing.”

  He did so, restrainedly for openers, but when the kid responded with a man-to-man leer Mike cut loose with an anger he vaguely realized stemmed from the picture of Amy Belknap appealing to him, Sir Galahad, for help against this snotty, teenage dragon. Overreacting, of course, but he certainly did take all the fire out of the dragon.

  Simple.

  What wasn’t simple was the way he then seemed to have this Amy Belknap on his mind. Certainly, he assured himself, when you took into account that awkward height, the almost fey naivete, those ready blushes right out of crinoline times, he wasn’t being driven to pursue the fair maiden. So what it had to be was just curiosity about an entertaining and unusual specimen. In that case, Rose DelVecchio, Belknap’s immediate superior, was the one to pump for information. Rose was an old acquaintance, hard-bitten, straight-talking, and as a matter of fact, now going through a miserable divorce, hence always ready to share a drink with a sympathetic listener at Dicey’s Saloon over on Broadway.

  During the first round of drinks she brought him up to date on the divorce proceedings, still a mess. With the second round, when she said, “Enough of this. How about a cheerier subject like, say, the incidence of cholera in Third World countries?” Mik
e said “Sure,” and described his resolution of Amy Belknap’s problem.

  “Figures,” said Rose. “I should have sent her to you right off instead of George.”

  “No big deal,” Mike said. “But what got me was this Belknap kid herself. The kind of weird helplessness that she—”

  “Helplessness?” Rose’s eyebrows went up. “Mister, obviously you don’t know you’re talking about the second coming of Mary Poppins, toughest nanny of them all.”

  “Go on. That baby-faced flagpole?”

  Rose’s spirits had been bleak up to now. Now they appeared to brighten. “That flagpole came out of college into a one-year internship in a problem school in Boston. They sent me a one-line recommendation of her. Highly motivated, creative, well organized. And that’s what she turned out to be.”

  “Our Amy Belknap?”

  “None other. Shy, a little bit oddball, but a darling kid. Catches you off-balance sometimes. The first time I complimented her on the way she handled her class do you know what she said to me with an absolutely straight face? She said, ‘Well, isn’t it true that a stern but loving preceptor is the answer to most pedagogical problems?’ Just left me standing there with my mouth open, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know,” Mike said. “I’ve caught her act.”

  “No act. The genuine Belknap. The fact is she lights up my life.”

  “Obviously. And anybody else’s? One of our faculty studs smitten by the view of Pippa passing?”

  Rose shook her head. “I doubt it. She’s boarding cut-rate with some old couple in the neighborhood here. Grim team, from what she let drop. And from what our faculty eligibles let drop, well, I have a feeling that she may be just a shade too different from what they’re used to.” Rose finished her drink, then took her time lighting a cigarette. “Michael dear, are you between affairs of the heart right now? Is that what this little tête-à-tête is really all about?”

  Mike weighed this. “So it would seem, wouldn’t it? You’re a wise bird, Rosie.”