The Butler(18)

“I’m better trained for what I was doing in England, running two or three large homes at once. And I enjoy my mother’s company, but I think she’ll be ready for me to go back to England in a few months.” They both laughed, shook hands, and he left a few minutes later. From what she said, he doubted that they would find him anything, and he didn’t expect to hear from her again.

He went back to his mother’s apartment and watched a movie on TV while he polished all her silver. She had a few pieces she loved that she and Francois had bought at auctions they enjoyed going to. Normally, in his jobs, he had the maids or footmen do it, but it was relaxing, and it all gleamed when his mother came home that night and she smiled when she saw it.

“I take it I have a butler now,” she teased him. He bowed respectfully, and she laughed. He had made coq au vin for dinner. It had simmered on the stove while he polished the silver. He’d had a productive and relaxing afternoon. “I’m going to get awfully spoiled while you’re staying with me,” his mother said, “but I have to admit, I’m enjoying it, as long as you stay out of my closets and don’t touch my desk again!” He laughed at the warning.

    The coq au vin was delicious, and they finished it, while she told him all about the family she was searching for and the exquisite Monet waiting for them. It had been found in the basement of a chateau in Normandy that the Nazis had taken over during the war, and they had overlooked the Monet when they left, or it was too large for them to take easily. There were two other very important paintings found with it, which had belonged to another family. The retreating Nazis had abandoned the paintings in their haste when they left. It had happened in other places too. The Americans who had recently purchased the chateau in question had discovered them and very honorably contacted the Louvre to report them. They could have kept them and no one would have known, since the paintings had been missing for seventy years. The organization Liese worked for had been very grateful to receive the paintings so they could do their research on them, which as always had been fascinating. Joachim loved hearing her talk about it. It was always a detective story, and she took huge pleasure in it when it had a happy ending, which it didn’t always, but sometimes it did.

“How did you ever get into this, Mama?” he asked her, as he poured her a small café filtre, and she looked up at him. “Did Francois get you interested in it, or did you find it on your own?” He knew she had worked at the Louvre briefly when she first arrived from Argentina. But she had been doing her artistic detective work for twenty-five years now, and he had never asked her how it started or how she’d found the organization she worked for. It was well known and respected in the art world, but little known to the public.

    They worked in the utmost discretion, and worked with tragic family histories every day, mostly caused by the Germans in World War II, and involving the Jewish families they’d exterminated. Almost all of the French Jews had been deported. Their houses and apartments and their contents, vast fortunes, and incredible art and jewels had been taken and distributed among the German High Command, most of it never to be seen again. The stories about the deported children were even more terrible than those about the treasures that had disappeared. Non-Jewish French residents had turned in their neighbors in many instances, and trainloads filled with only children had been sent to the camps in Germany. It was the most ignoble time in French history, one that everyone wanted to forget. But Liese still lived with those stories every day. It was the stories about the children that pained her most. Pairing up living heirs with artwork was always a victory and a joy. The lost children could never be brought back, and few had survived.

Joachim had great respect for her for the work she did, but he had never asked her many questions about it.

Liese looked at him long and hard when he asked her the question he had never asked her before. A long time ago, when he was younger, she would have brushed him off, and responded in some way that the work was fascinating, or she loved working with lost art. There were many answers she could have given other than the true one. But he was older now, and it was different. She thought it was time to tell him the truth. She had always thought he should know one day. It was his history too.

    “I always wondered if you’d ask me. You never have before,” she said softly in her deep, smooth voice, like silk on a cheek.

“I guess I never wondered how you started. We get more interested in our parents as we get older, and they become real people to us, not just our parents.” She nodded, knowing that was true. She had been curious about her own father too, and the mother who had died when she was two, whom she never knew. “And we have more time now, since I’m here with you, we’re not in a hurry, and I’m not rushing back to England.” They were both enjoying that, and it seemed like the right time to her to seize the opportunity.

“It’s a long story,” she said thoughtfully, wondering how much to tell him. But he was old enough now to hear the whole truth. He was a man, not a boy, and he deserved to know who his family was. She had been hiding it for years.

“We have time. I’m not going anywhere,” Joachim said, and stretched out his long legs, as Liese looked at her son differently. And as he saw her eyes, he could see that something important was about to happen, and he sensed that neither of them might ever be the same again.