The Flirt (6 page)

T
wo days after the advertisement appeared in the
Stage
, 111 Half Moon Street was inundated with responses and the postman had to ring the bell because all the thick envelopes wouldn’t fit through the letter box.

Valentine Charles couldn’t quite decide if he enjoyed this bit of the proceedings; it was time consuming and exhausting sifting through all the letters, but also thrilling when one happened upon that rare gem. This morning, the deluge had been particularly heavy and as he sat there, in his cashmere dressing gown, with his morning coffee, he looked upon the pile with satisfaction. In there, somewhere, was a budding new apprentice and an answer to the staff difficulties that had plagued him for the past months.

He considered diving straight in but then dismissed the idea. He was a creature of habit and married to the inflexible, set routine of his daily life. One of the pleasures of living by yourself is the privilege of being able to practice, day after day, in whatever order you wish, the rituals that define your tastes and aspirations without any threat of disruption. And at fifty-eight, Valentine was deeply grateful for his solitude.

He had loved, a few times briefly but only once seriously. The love wasn’t returned and so he made peace with all the aspects of single life that many people find so abhorrent. Now he valued them above all else. Over time he’d mutated from a lonely, watchful
person into a completely self-sufficient one, treating himself with the same affection a lover would. The older he was the more he realized that few people were given the time and means to be as completely indulged as he was. He hadn’t had to accommodate another human being on any matter of significance for years. He was entirely, unapologetically selfish and grateful for the opportunity to be so. Now, when he thought of the woman who broke his heart (which was rare), he viewed it as a narrow escape.

No, he’d finish his coffee, glance at the crossword, then have his bath. And while he was dressing, his assistant, Flick, would arrive.

Flick had been sent from an agency twelve years ago. She’d turned up, a rather dour middle-aged Irish woman in a beige Marks and Spencer twinset, shortly after her husband died. Her full name was Mary Margaret Flickering, but Valentine had christened her Flick early on. At first she was horrified. But gradually, Mary Margaret Flickering began to fade and Flick took hold. The beige twinset disappeared; her actions became sharper, her tone confident and Valentine learned the power of reframing someone. Flick was more daring and resilient than Mary Margaret Flickering had ever been. And she was funnier too. Now she was invaluable to him.

Half Moon Street wasn’t a traditional office. It was an old-fashioned bachelor pad. It had last been refurbished in the late fifties and still had some of the plumbing features from the thirties that are so popular now. There was a large reception room, a tiny office, a single bedroom and the kind of kitchen only a man would find adequate. It was furnished like a set from
Brideshead Revisited
; a look of luxurious, old moneyed antiques shoved into students’ quarters.

There had been a time when Valentine had toyed with the idea of having a separate office but in truth he enjoyed having Flick about. She provided just the right touch of domesticity to his life. He liked the fact that he could emerge from his bedroom to find her rifling through the post; more often than not she’d make some small
adjustment to his tie in the same casual way a wife would. It was all the intimacy he required without any of the emotional turmoil.

After she arrived, he took a brisk morning walk around St. James’s Park, then popped into Fortnum’s to pick up something for lunch (at the moment, they were both fond of
campagne
bread, foie gras and fresh figs). Then he returned, settling down to review all the applications that she’d opened and sorted, removing the most blatantly hideous.

There were only two that were of interest. One was a darkly sensual young man from Wales and the other, a blond public-school boy from North-West London. The Welshman’s romantic résumé was quite shockingly graphic; he obviously thought the position was for some sort of gigolo and wanted to show that he’d received adequate technical training. But the school boy’s was endearingly brief; he’d lost his virginity to a friend of his sister’s, dated a few girls, fell in love with the student in drama school who played Juliet to his Romeo only to discover that when the production was over, the feeling faded. And now he was involved with an older woman.

Valentine examined the photo carefully. For all his Merchant Ivory good looks, the boy had the feel of a blank sheet of paper; a kind of wide-eyed optimism emanated from him that was the hallmark of either an idiot or a saint. Next to him, the young Welshman seemed positively louche.

Valentine held the picture up triumphantly. “Flick, can you see it? Isn’t it amazing? I haven’t seen a specimen like it in years!”

She leaned back in her chair and narrowed her eyes. After a moment, she nodded. “Yes, I do! It’s remarkable! Like looking into a void!”

“A completely unformed character!” he agreed. “Perfect! Would you be so kind, Flick, as to give Mr. Hughie Armstrong Venables-Smythe a call? If he’s half as malleable in real life as he is on paper, then I do believe our search is over.”

R
ose stood awkwardly in front of a table massed with silverware. Her interview wasn’t going well. It began over an hour ago when Mr. Gaunt, the butler, interrogated her about her slender CV. Then he moved on to what he referred to as “the practical exercises.” They’d just established that she knew nothing about the proper care of silver and now were involved in a guessing game with various bits of cutlery. The suit she’d borrowed from her friend Sheri was too big in most places and too tight in others. And it itched. But she didn’t dare scratch in front of Mr. Gaunt.

Gaunt, in turn, had never recovered from the considerable impression that the television series
Upstairs, Downstairs
had made on him in the seventies. It was an era when he’d struggled with his identity and the result was a curious devotion to archaic class distinctions along with a violent obsession with Jean Marsh. Power plays that might have resolved themselves quite harmlessly in the more traditional sadomasochistic club circuit thus oozed out into his professional life with alarming regularity.

Poor Rose watched in dread as his gloved hand moved toward another exotic utensil.

“And this, Miss Moriarty?” He held up a narrow, curved piece with three long prongs.

It was agony.

She hesitated. “Another fork?”

He sighed, making a mark in his notebook next to all the other marks, before replacing it with the rest. “It is a lobster trident, Miss Moriarty. Extremely rare. At a push it may also be used to serve crab. But only at a push.”

“Oh.”

She’d tried being funny about her mistakes in the beginning but that was a long while ago now and there weren’t that many amusing things to say about cutlery.

“This is the last one,” he informed her, making his final selection.

She nearly laughed with relief. “A dessert spoon!” she cried triumphantly.

Gaunt’s silence was withering.

“It is a serving spoon,” he said at last. “And a particularly large one at that.”

Rose watched as he made a final, devastating mark, then closed the notebook.

“I’m afraid, Miss Moriarty, that your dinner-service knowledge leaves something to be desired.”

Her golden life-changing opportunity was slipping through her fingers.

“Yes, but I could learn about that. You know, get a book from the library or something.”

“The position of junior assistant to the acting assistant household manager is one of extreme delicacy and discretion. The circles in which the Bourgalt du Coudrays move are filled with aristocracy, politicians, famous actors and actresses, well-known figures from the art world, musicians…”

“Yes,” Rose cut in eagerly, “I know all about them! Ask me some questions!” An avid reader of
Hello!
magazine, here was one test she was bound to pass with flying colors.

“My point,” Gaunt went on, glaring at her, “is that these are people who are used to a certain level of service and with whom mistakes must simply not be made. Under any circumstance. In addition, Mr. Bourgalt du Coudray is a gentleman of very little patience. If he asks for a lobster trident, my girl, and you send him a dessert spoon, you’ll be in no small amount of trouble.”

“Oh,” said Rose again.

It was all proving a great deal more difficult than she had imagined.

He walked out into the front hallway and she followed him, giving her left thigh a quick scratch while she had the chance.

“Language is of the utmost importance.”

“I hardly ever swear!”

“I’m not referring merely to foul language, Miss Moriarty.” He flung open the double doors of one of the largest, most ornately furnished and beautiful rooms she’d ever seen in her life. “What would you call this room?”

It was the room closest to the door, she calculated. “The front room?”

“The drawing room,” he corrected her. “This is my point exactly. You need to use the proper language, not only because directions become confused but because language sets the tone, to guests as well as one’s employers. No one wants to work in a house where the tone is lax. ‘Madame, Mr. So and So is waiting in the drawing room.’ It reminds them of who they are and what they are about. When you’re gone they may roll around and grunt like pigs, for all you care. But it’s the tone of the household and the quality of the staff that make a situation civilized. To lower the tone is to degrade yourself, Miss Moriarty.”

He handed her a small stack of note cards and a pencil. “For
your last exercise I would like you to write down the proper name of everything you see in this room. I will be back in fifteen minutes to check your progress. And remember, good penman-ship is also a consideration.”

He closed the doors.

Rose looked round.

There was an awful lot of stuff.

She started with basics.

“Settee,” she wrote and placed the card carefully in the middle of the velvet Knowle sofa. “Pouff,” she labeled the matching ottoman. On either side stood a pair of large salon chairs with elaborate claw arms, painted with gold leaf. They reminded her of the ones Posh and Becks used at their wedding. “His and Hers Thrones,” she wrote neatly.

Now, there must be a television somewhere. No one had a settee without a television. She scanned the room. Wait a minute…it must be behind one of the wall panels! She smiled. Very clever! A lot of people were probably fooled by that one. “Television,” she wrote, being careful to use the full and correct name rather than just TV. Licking the back of the card, she stuck it to the wall.

The marble-topped Empire commode had bottles of liquor and glasses on it: “Home bar,” she inscribed. And these bookshelves were filled with fake books; she tried to pull one out but they were all glued together. Why would anyone bother to do that? They must have something to hide. It was probably a secret panel, the kind which when you pressed, led to another room. “Secret Panel!” she wrote boldly, adding an exclamation point to show that she too had been amused.

Six Holbein self-portraits fell under the heading of “A Few of the Apostles” (she wondered that they hadn’t bothered to buy the
rest) and the unfinished Degas sketch was labeled “Picture of a girl with no legs.” The chaise longue was cast as a “Broken Settee,” the Ming Dynasty vases as “Sweet Jars” and the elephant foot’s table as “a badly burned stump.” (There was no accounting for taste.)

Next she turned her attention to the priceless collection of Dresden china figurines massed on the mantelpiece. There were a couple of words one was meant to use for things like this. Rose had heard her father, who ran a junk shop, use them. And she dearly wanted to impress Mr. Gaunt with her expertise.

It wasn’t “bits and bobs,” but it was something like that…ah!

“Nick Naxs,” she wrote quickly.

And to the assortment of tiny seventeenth-century
cloisonné
snuffboxes, she gave the other specialist heading of “Brick a Brack.”

But then Rose wavered.

This was the trouble with getting clever, there was always something to catch you out.

Surely the chief differentiating feature between a knickknack and bric-a-brac was the size of the object.

But which was larger?

Her confidence faltered. There were only a few minutes left and still so many things to label.

Rose’s concentration began to fray.

“Faded old rug,” she jotted, dropping the card on the Aubusson. “Half a table” landed on the
demi-lune
console, and “Fun House Mirrer” on the large Georgian convex looking glass above the mantel.

But still the larger question wrangled: which was bigger? A knickknack or bric-a-brac?

Two minutes left. Rose began to panic. “Picture Book Bible” on the large edition of
Les Très Riches Heures de Jean Duc de Berry
. She frowned. “Dirty Pictures,” she scribbled disdainfully on the signed
Helmut Newton photography book. (You’d think he’d have the decency to at least hide them!)

Only one more minute!

Should she switch them?

Her throat constricted, heart raced. All her past failures and missed opportunities distilled into this single task. What was the use anyway? She’d failed the cutlery test. And the one about the silver. Her entire life was one big stupid mistake after another!

And, in the shadow of this sudden, crushing depression, Rose’s standards began to slip.

“Another fucking chair” on the Victorian reading chair, “Two ugly pillow biters” on the portraits of Arnaud’s great-great-grandfather and uncle, “A bunch of total strangers” on the cluster of silver-framed family photographs on the piano. And on top of the Steinway, in capital letters, “I’LL BET NO ONE EVEN PLAYS!”

And so on it went.

Until Mrs. Bourgalt du Coudray herself walked in, followed by Simon Gray.

Now, as is often the way in large households, a great many things were all going on at the same time. So, while Gaunt was busy vetting young hopefuls for the position of junior assistant to the acting assistant household manager, somewhere on a floor above him Simon Gray and Olivia were conducting their own fevered interviews for a replacement for Roddy Prowl. They had scoured the art schools of London for someone daring, original and preferably offensive to take Roddy’s place and were promised that several candidates would appear at 45 Chester Square before the day was out. Indeed, in bedsitting rooms all across London, young artists were gathering together portfolios, throwing on clothes,
and gulping down vast amounts of coffee in an attempt to sober up in time to make an impression on this powerful duo.

But they needn’t have bothered.

Because fate had another thing in mind.

Olivia flung open the drawing-room doors.

Her head throbbed from worry and nerves. Never had she imagined that agreeing to become chairman of the gallery would involve so much hands-on interaction. Now all of a sudden they were in crisis and Simon was looking to her, of all people, for help. Already they’d seen dozens of portfolios, none suitable. Hope waned. They would never be able to find a worthy replacement in time.

It was time to face facts.

“The thing is, Simon,” she explained, “we need an original statement, not just a worthy candidate but an exceptional one, with something daring to say. But the chances of us finding an artist of that caliber at such short notice…”

She stopped. Something above the mantelpiece caught her eye.

“Fun House Mirrer,” a small note card read, written in careful, childish writing. Lower down, by the china figurines, was another.

“Nick Naxs.”

And on top of the collection of snuffboxes, “Brick a Brack.”

She turned round.

Little cards were everywhere!

“Sette.”

“Pouff.”

“Half a table.”

“My God!” Simon gasped. “Your home has been vandalized! Shall I call the police?”

Olivia didn’t answer.

She was staring at the photographs in the silver frames.

“A bunch of total strangers,” it said.

A bunch of total strangers!

Who could’ve done such a thing?

What did it mean?

Still, she couldn’t escape the bizarre feeling that she was seeing her relations clearly for the first time.

“Another fucking chair…” she murmured, reading the cards out loud. “Secret Panel?” The breath caught in her chest. “His and Hers Thrones!”

How ghastly!

How intrusive!

How accurate!

Simon was right: it was vandalism. But it was also something more.

Here was the room, just as she’d left it except for the mysterious cards. Nothing had really changed. And yet suddenly her perspective was irrevocably altered. It was offensive, shocking; subtle.

Simon tried unsuccessfully to suppress a laugh. “Look at this one!” He pointed to the Helmut Newton. “That’s hysterical!”

“I’ve always hated that book.”

“Really?” He leafed through it surreptitiously. “I think it’s kind of sexy.”

Olivia gripped his arm. “This is extraordinary!”

“Yes. The spelling is atrocious and the handwriting!”

“You said Mona was sending someone?”

“Yes…”

“Do you think?”

His eyes widened. “No!”

“What else could it be?”

“An installation! My God! How remarkable! The absurdity—like Dadaism!”

“I’ve never encountered anything like it,” she agreed.

A small figure was slumped in a corner.

“My God, the artist,” Olivia pointed. “She’s so young!”

They approached.

“Hello!” Olivia smiled brightly.

The girl nodded.

“What do you call this piece?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The name of this piece,” Simon spoke slowly, clearly. “Does it have a name?”

A large tear rolled down the girl’s cheek. “I just don’t see…I mean, what’s the point in carrying on?”

Her words cut through Olivia like a blade.

“‘What’s the Point in Carrying On,’” she repeated.

Only a few times in her life had anything struck her so forcibly. A terrible feeling of transparency flooded her.

Here it all was; the world she struggled to create, her public face in all its desperate grandeur and ostentatiousness. How could this stranger, little more than a teenager, really, have guessed so accurately at the emptiness beneath the surface?

What was the point indeed?

Olivia crouched down next to the girl. “I can’t tell you how much I admire what you’ve done.”

The girl blinked.

“Look, Simon, at the detail! I mean, even the suit she’s wearing!”

“Yes, dreadful! What’s your name?”

“Rose.” She struggled to her feet. “Rose Moriarty.”

“Oh, dear. Do you have another one? Names in this business are important, you see.”

“Sometimes people call me Red.”

“That’s good!”

“But I don’t like it,” she added.

“Never mind. Red Moriarty!” He turned to Olivia. “How’s this? ‘Subversion has a new name: Red Moriarty’!”

“Brilliant!”

“Does this mean I’m hired?” the girl asked.

But Olivia didn’t hear. This remarkable young woman had taken the very lack of substance in her life and elevated it to the status of art.