Kathleen Tessaro - The Flirt

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 learnt the power of re-framing 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 réesumé 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 leant 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’

Rose 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 sado-masochistic club circuit thus oozed out into his professional life with alarming regularity.

Poor Rose watched in dread as his gloved hand moved towards 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 colours.

‘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.’