The Butler(62)

    The whole setup made him very uneasy. Sitting through the interviews was like speed dating, but it was one way to rule out the ineligible households quickly. He got a good view of the young American wife’s legs, seen from the rear, when they left the room, and he had to admit, she had fabulous legs and an incredible figure. The back of her leather miniskirt barely reached her thighs, and he felt panicked just watching her, as her husband patted her bottom on the way out. She gave Joachim a killer smile coyly over her shoulder before she left the room, which he did not return. He could just imagine the awkward situations that might arise if he worked for them, a headache he did not want or need. For an instant, he wished he could have described the interviews to Olivia. He knew she would have seen the humor in them, as he did. But he was straight-faced and candid when he expressed his concerns to the agency representative who checked in with him after each interview. He could understand Joachim’s concerns, but reminded him that in today’s employment scene, he would have to be flexible. And he thought the last two jobs they had set up interviews for would be more to his liking. The couples were more typically English and were offering more traditional butler’s jobs.

    For the third interview, a touchingly old, incredibly sweet couple walked in. Joachim had in the notes he’d been given that Lord Hallbrook was ninety-two, and Lady Hallbrook had just turned ninety. They appeared fragile, but seemed to be managing. They looked at each other lovingly throughout the interview. They said they seldom came to London anymore, and lived on their estate in Norfolk. They no longer lived in the main house, but in the dower house, and their son occupied the manor house and had his own staff. They had a cook and a maid, and their butler had recently passed away. They said they didn’t need much, and lived a quiet country life, and would be grateful if the butler would drive them as well. What Joachim could see was what the job with the Cheshires would have become if they had lived even longer and relinquished their properties to their children during their lifetimes. With the Hallbrooks, Joachim would have been one of a staff of three, in a tiny country house, for a very elderly couple who might not even live much longer, and he would be out of a job again, with nothing to do. It touched him to see them together, and they admitted that the dower house was quite small, the two women who worked for them were quite old as well, sisters who had worked for them for almost fifty years. It wasn’t likely to be a long-term job, given the age of the employers. They were lovely people, exquisitely well-mannered and very distinguished, but Joachim felt claustrophobic just thinking about it. The job with the Cheshires had been more interesting because he had a large staff and two big houses to run. Lord and Lady Hallbrook were adorable, but it was another strikeout for Joachim. He was beginning to lose hope that the fourth position would be any better.

    The man who marched into the room ten minutes later was like a gust of wind, full of energy. He was slightly younger than Joachim and full of good humor. Halsey Mount-Williams was almost a caricature of the British aristocracy. He commented that he’d had three wives already, one worse than the other, and all dreadfully greedy. One of them, a Russian girl, had stolen some of the silver. He made a joke of it. He divided his time between his club in London and his family estate in Sussex, having lost his London house to his first wife. He admitted that some of it was in quite bad shape, but they were managing to hold it together with spit and baling wire, and he and his sister had come up with a clever plan to offer paying tours of the Sussex house, so they kept that part of the house and grounds in quite good order. The rest really didn’t matter. He said they kept up the front gardens for the same reason, but the park and back gardens were sadly overgrown. He added that they made quite good money with the tours, and the house was listed in all the guidebooks of England. He said that he put all his money into the stables and the Thoroughbreds he bred. He had a fairly large staff in the stables, and some excellent horseflesh according to him, people to run the tours, and they kept two maids, a cook, and a butler. “Rather a poor man’s Downton Abbey,” he said jovially, which reminded Joachim of Olivia’s comments about Carson the butler. He couldn’t see himself in that role, but it sounded as though the job had potential. He could perhaps refurbish the house a little, and get things back in good order, and oversee the gardeners. He was familiar with the name of the estate, but had never seen it, Pembroke Manor.

    “I spend most of my time in the stables, with the horses,” the employer readily admitted. “The house would be your job, and making sure the tours go smoothly, that none of them wind up in my bedroom by mistake, and making sure that my current girlfriend, a very sweet Czech girl, doesn’t sell what’s left of the silver. Both of my parents are dead, thank God, so there’s none of that to worry about. And my sister hates the place. She lives in Italy, married to an Italian, and only shows up to make sure she gets her share of the money from the tours.” It sounded like chaos to Joachim, but a kind of chaos he understood, of British aristocrats who had run out of money, were trying to find resourceful ways to hang on to their estates and still run them, and keep the place looking decent. He knew of several homes that had turned into tourist attractions and managed to survive that way. He wasn’t opposed to it, and he thought it might be fun to be involved in it. And it was obvious that the only thing the owner cared about were his horses, and possibly his girlfriends. But Joachim thought that the many hats he was now able to wear, especially after working on the chateau, might be useful to this employer. It wasn’t a formal, elegant job like he’d had with the Cheshires, but more like working for one of their profligate sons, if they’d had one, which they didn’t. The Cheshire heirs were all quite nice and well behaved, even if they didn’t want to live as grandly as their parents. Joachim had the distinct impression that this man had run through whatever he’d inherited, or was working on it, and shoring up the estate wherever possible.