The Suitors - By Cecile David-Weill Page 0,22

for them to grasp: they recognized neither its standards nor its stereotypes. And they despaired over our refinement, which they saw as an appalling lack of comfort and luxury. Where were the massive flowerbeds, the statues, the fountains they considered the sine qua non for any self-respecting garden? What about our cars, our boats, our helicopters? And where was our staff? Had we no security personnel? No control rooms with plasma screens and intercoms, no loudspeakers on the grounds? What was behind this inadequate, ridiculous, pathetic setup? Were we broke, or just cheap? And so we seemed as vulgar to them as they seemed to us.

Friday, 3:00 p.m.

Someone named Gérard, bristling with references, was assuring me over the phone that he had always dreamed of working “in a bourgeois house” when the sound of a diesel engine out on the front drive informed me that a taxi had arrived. Just what I needed! I hired our new butler then and there, arranged for him to get here in time for dinner, and went downstairs.

“Talk about a warm welcome!” remarked my sister. “Did we miss Roland at the airport, or did you simply forget about us?”

“Sorry, we forgot about you, because it’s total chaos here. Poor Roberto has just broken his hip, and Roland went to the hospital with him. Which means he must have forgotten to alert the caretaker about your arrival, so no one came to pick you up.”

“Poor Roberto! A broken hip, that’s not good, is it.… I’m sure you remember Bernard and Laetitia Braissant?”

Although Bernard looked rumpled and sweaty, he seemed pleasant enough, but I took an instant dislike to Laetitia in spite of her glowing complexion and masses of dark hair. There was something vaguely superior about her attitude. She was wearing a tank top with a long peasant skirt in the Provençal style, and I would have sworn that the affected simplicity, the fake “local color” of this outfit had been intended simply to give a lesson in authenticity to us rich people, whom she was visiting only reluctantly.

“Where are you putting us?” asked Marie, looking exquisite in beige and white pants and a bush jacket.

“You’re in Ada’s Room; Bernard and Laetitia are in Sasha’s Room,” I told her, consulting the room assignments posted in the secretary’s office just off the entrance hall.

“And I suppose you’re in Flora’s Room, and Jean-Michel Destret has the Yellow Room?”

Marie had supposed correctly, and I smiled in reply, because this distribution of bedrooms observed an unspoken hierarchy we both recognized. By giving us the two smallest and least attractive rooms in the house, my mother was reminding us that we were merely her daughters, not honored guests, and that our friends would receive nothing more from her than a carefully calculated graciousness.

Had we been in a hotel, my parents’ room would have qualified as the presidential suite. A vast room with four windows and a fireplace, it had a linen closet, a dressing room paneled in cedar, and a spacious bathroom worthy of Hollywood. Half boudoir, half ballroom, this bathroom was where the family often got together to chat, far from our staff and guests. With its pearly pink light, the veined yellow marble sinks, the bronze faucets shaped like dolphins, and the 1930s furniture laminated in beveled mirror with valances of raw silk, the room seemed to await a visit from Lauren Bacall or Katharine Hepburn in satin slippers, trailing the fragrance of tuberose and rice powder.

Next in grandeur came the Peony and Lilac rooms, which had perfect proportions and a fantastic view of the lawn and the sea. Less sumptuous, the Turquoise Room looked out over a small terrace that seemed to relegate the sea to the background. Although they were huge and enjoyed an oblique view of the water, the Yellow and Chinese rooms were one notch below the Turquoise, since they overlooked the staff’s outside dining area, a nuisance that in a hotel would have justified a distinct reduction in their rates. Finally, dead last, came a trio of rooms at the entrance to the hall leading to the servants’ quarters, rooms that no amount of remodeling could change into bona fide guest rooms and now named after Flora, Ada, and Sasha, frequent guests in the house in my grandparents’ time.

L’Agapanthe had originally had so many more staff rooms than guest rooms that my parents had built what we called the annex, over by the entrance to the property. The annex so lacked the charm