The Butler(37)
“There will be three of us. She’s bringing another decorator. Another very famous one, from here.”
“We will impress them to death,” he promised her. “It will be pure Downton Abbey,” he said, and she laughed. She had confessed to him how much she liked the show and wondered before she met him if he would be like the butler on the show. “I will do my Carson act,” he said with a grin, and had a sample menu for her half an hour later. She approved it, and she saw him polishing the tea service that afternoon. He enlisted Fatima’s help, the new Portuguese girl. She was proving to be immaculate, scrupulously honest, and a hard worker. Joachim had chosen well, a lot better than she had with the ill-fated Alphonsine she had hired.
* * *
—
The apartment looked beautiful. Everything was in order, the wood surfaces shone. The curtains looked splendid, Olivia had arranged white flowers in a silver bowl, and bought an orchid plant for the entry hall. All her new furniture, art, and decorating touches added to the charm of the apartment, and Joachim had everything in control in the kitchen. He had brought his mother’s tray, and his black formal butler’s suit, which he was wearing with a perfectly tailored white shirt, a black Hermès tie, and impeccably shined John Lobb shoes. He looked strikingly handsome and like a butler in a movie when Olivia saw him.
“Carson never looked that good,” she said to him, and he laughed. His tall, blond, Teutonic looks served him well, and were an asset along with his training and skills.
Audrey Wellington and Jean Beaulieu arrived five minutes later. She was visibly impressed when Joachim opened the door. She was wearing a navy-blue Chanel suit, with her still-trim figure and perfectly groomed blond French twist. She’d had two very well done facelifts over the years, and maintained them with Botox shots. She looked younger than her years, was energetic and very chic, as she sat in Olivia’s new Paris living room, while Joachim served an exquisite high tea. Jean Beaulieu admired her tea service and her utterly perfect butler, as Audrey smiled at her, holding one of the Limoges cups Olivia had bought with Joachim at an auction at the H?tel Drouot. She had gotten a service for eighteen, with only two butter plates missing.
“I was feeling very sorry for you, my dear, when I heard about the magazine. You did such a good job with it. I really enjoyed it. But now that I see you in your divine new Paris apartment, prettier than ever, with a most impressive butler,” she added, “I don’t feel sorry for you at all. In fact, I’m quite envious of you! Are you moving here?”
“I don’t know yet,” Olivia said. “I haven’t decided. I have the apartment for a year. Everything happened at once, the magazine folded. We had to do it, we held on as long as we could. My mother died at the same time, I emptied her apartment, and now I’m here. I haven’t figured out the next step yet. I’m keeping an open mind and seeing what happens.”
“Well, you’re certainly doing that in ideal surroundings, and well-staffed,” she said, eyeing Joachim, who had been the most dignified and professional Olivia had ever seen him. He really did look like a butler in a movie, and his formal service had been flawless. Then he discreetly disappeared to the kitchen. She didn’t tell Audrey that she only had her “staff” for six months, and after that, like Cinderella at midnight, the coach would turn into a pumpkin and the coachmen to white mice. Joachim would become a real butler in England again, for someone else. But he had definitely impressed her guests. Jean Beaulieu was a huge snob, and they had snowed him too. He was a little younger than Audrey, and a big deal in Europe. “I might have a project for you if you’re interested. Jean and I looked at it this morning, and I can’t take it on. I can’t run back and forth to Europe and do justice to my clients in the States. I do something in Europe every year or two, but this one’s not for me. And Jean can’t do it either.”
He chimed in immediately. “I’m finishing two boats in Holland, one in Italy, and another one in Turkey, and a huge house in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. I absolutely cannot take on a massive chateau on top of that. It would kill me. And all of the boats will launch before the summer.”
“I know you’re not a decorator,” Audrey continued to Olivia, “but you have a great eye, wonderful taste, and this isn’t a traditional job anyway. It’s for a Russian. He lives in Moscow and bought an enormous chateau less than an hour outside Paris. He’s never even seen it. He wants it to look like Versailles. That’s asking a lot. It needs a little reconstructive work, but it’s not in terrible shape. But it needs everything, decorating-wise. The floors need to be buffed up and restored in a few places, there are marble fireplaces all over the place. You need a good curtain man. And you need more furniture than for the Ritz. But if you want to, I think you could do a terrific job with it, if it amuses you. Most decorators won’t have the time. The Russians pay well, but it probably won’t ever make the cover of Architectural Digest. They’re fun to work with, but they go off in funny directions sometimes, and love flash.”
“And they either pay you three times what you ask, or not at all,” Jean Beaulieu added. “They never show up when you want them to. Or they don’t come to see it for three years after you finish it, or sell it to a friend. They call you at four a.m. to see how it’s going. I can’t deal with Russian clients,” Jean said, looking exasperated.