I knew it couldn't last. There had been no sighting of Franklin Morris by anyone, Indian or other, in two weeks. An envelope had been left overnight at the Toadlena's front door. It contained cash, in an amount far exceeding the prize money. Something or someone had made a serious impression on Mr. Franklin Morris.
Edward wanted to return the excess money. He was talked out of it. Grandmother put the money somewhere for Edward's future use. So things settled down.
I made three pottery seed pods each with a thumb drive inside. The thumb drives contained the video that had changed things so profoundly. Rose painted each one and I distributed them to the Toadlenas, the tribal lawyer and kept one at the Castle on a shelf in the great hall downstairs. Neither the lawyer or any of the Toadlenas had seen the contents. But the seed pods could be broken open anytime in the future, if Franklin Morris ever changed his mind and contacted the Toadlenas again.
And things got real quiet around the Castle. It was just pots and paint for several weeks. It wasn't to last.
It ended with a phone call this morning from the Westerfalls, Thor this time. He announced his intention to visit with his family in three weeks time, beginning the Sunday after school let out for the summer and ending on the Sunday following, and was that all right?
Of course, I said yes. Thor had visited before and I had made out with some local help. But unknown to Thor this timne he had picked the wrong time to visit. I was still in a playful mood over the prize goat affair being so successfully concluded. Why get local folks to help out? Why not put on a show instead? This place being a Castle needed a complete professional staff, even if just for a week.
Thor was just drowning in money, I knew that by now. Why not get real servants to staff the castle instead of untrained local help?
Then I got an even more radical, possibly sillier, idea. Could I get actors to play at being servants? Could I, for instance, get actors from a community theater somewhere to come out here and be servants for a week? Think of the fun that might be!
I called up one of the smaller theater groups in Las Vegas and found out I could, for a price, do it. I wasn't going to audition them. After some discussion with Rose, we decided on three actors. The first one we knew we had to have was a butler. The other servants float in and out of my imagination, but the butler is specific. In livery, or whatever you call it. Stern of countenance and formal of speech. We had to have a butler.
And we had to have a cook. A real cook. A thoroughly disagreeable person with a carefully concealed heart of gold who runs the kitchen with an iron hand with a wooden spoon in it. And it couldn't be just an actor. Somebody had to really cook three meals a day for a group of six to ten people for a week. That couldn't all be acting. There had to be meals. So the cook had to be real, both actor and cook.
Then we decided that with two children on the second floor there should be a third servant up there, the upstairs maid. At the same time it was decided that Rose would be the downstairs maid. She could also help out in the kitchen. The cook is the cook, but Rose knows where the grocery store is and what's in the pantry and the freezer. She could be sous-chef, or under chef or whatever it was. And maybe help the cook out with her acting, in case she wanted to be a real cook and not an actor.
I assigned myself to be the housekeeper. She is the head of the female staff, I learned, and equal in rank to the butler. That would leave me free to back up any of the actors that got into some situation or otherwise needed help.
Further thought led us to a conversation with the swimming pool attendant. Could he be talked into coming here every day for a week to act as outside guy, lifeguard, and maybe serve drinks as needed? The pool was far enough from the house to make it impossible for anyone inside the house to monitor the pool or serve drinks, and we were going to provide staff after all, weren't we?
The swimming pool attendant jumped at the chance. He had on at least one occasion seen Rose, all of Rose that is, and possibly all of me at one time or another. He was carefully informed that he would not be seeing all of anybody on this gig. I hoped he understood that.
He would drive out every day for the whole day and be paid by us rather than his employer of record for that week. He was on the university swim team and had qualified as a life guard, so he was an actual fit for the job. He could learn to make drinks. After the first drink it isn't too important anyway.
He would come in full uniform of tee shirt, swimming trunks, a whistle, sunglasses, and a baseball cap. What else could he need? We agreed that the whistle and the sunglasses would not be required to serve drinks and that the pool area could be watched from the drinks trolley. Yes, we found a drinks trolley in the garage. The Westerfalls had thought of drinking and enjoying poolside evenings when they built the castle and tried to live in it.
So we needed three actors who would pretend to be servants and we had three more servants who would pretend to be actors. Now where would all these people sleep? Oh, and there was one more person, the only servant the Westerfalls were bringing, their chauffeur. It seems he goes everywhere the car goes. If I had that car I might think the same way.
Our thoughts wandered eventually to the gatehouse. I had been in there, once. It had two bedrooms and two extra camp beds. We could cram four people in there temporarily, if the genders divided correctly. The butler and the chauffeur would bunk down in one of the bedrooms and the cook and the upstairs maid in the other.
I wanted to be in the Castle proper at night. Rose and I would share the bedroom, pardon me, stateroom, furtherest down the hall from the main staircase. That would leave three staterooms for two children, which should work. Of course the master suite downstairs, really an apartment in itself, would go to the masters.
The actors arrived together about noon on Friday before the fatal Sunday for orientation and training, and for two extra days pay. They were magnificent. They brought costumes. I hadn't thought of that. That's the benefit of hiring professionals, they think of things like that.
It turned out that the butler, who was to serve the guests at diner time, had worked in restaurants that weren't entirely drive through and knew something about serving a guest his or her diner. I hadn't thought of that either, and hadn't the slightest idea beyond what happens in a pizza place.
Rose had experience in the sweatier parts of a hotel, you will know, and the upstairs maid had cleaned houses between acting gigs. There was enough transfer from those occupations for the actors to do the jobs. We were also hoping that the Westerfalls, especially the younger ones, had no experience with house servants. They were rich, but newly rich, they hadn't grown up that way, we hoped.
The actors were all young college kids. The butler especially would have to overcome lack of age with careful speech and attitude. There was to be no English accent, they had enough trouble making up lines without trying foreign speech.
The Westerfalls arrived fashionably late at four PM on Sunday. The servants all lined up in front of the Castle to greet their masters, Butler on the left and Upstairs Maid on the right end. I introduced the Butler who then introduced each of the others in turn. The women curtsied. The men did a little bow. I choked back laughter. It was an amazing performance. The fact that Rose had been living in the Castle for months was not made known to The Westerfalls.
After introductions the servants disappeared and the Butler and the Chauffeur unloaded The Westerfalls' car and escorted the family to their respective quarters, the children each got a stateroom upstairs and Mr. and Mrs. Westerfall were installed with much formality into the master suite downstairs.
The butler, assisted by the chauffeur, then carried the children's bags and boxes to their staterooms on the second floor.
In under a minute two screaming children in swimming suits came thundering down the spiral staircase and out the front door in the direction of the swimming pool.
The swimming pool attendant was already there, having correctly guessed what the next order of business would be for the children.
A few minutes after the first splash, The Westerfalls were in attendance with me poolside at their request. I was invited to have a drink. I declined. Each of the Westerfalls accept one made by the swimming pool attendant. Mrs. W seems somewhat overwhelmed by the service. It could be she isn't used to being served or perhaps it was just admiration of the swimming pool attendant, who fawned over her rather over-dramatically, as they have been trained to do.
The rule was to stay just a little bit on this side of being ridiculous, so that if the guest really wants to he can believe it's all real. That's the first rule of acting and we locals picked it up quickly from the professionals.
Rose kept an eye on the situation discretely from a window in the great hall in case some support from the main house was required, and to keep an eye on the swimming pool attendant who is to signal her if needs be.
At seven PM mother W calls the children from the pool and once the required number of threats, inducements, and "just one more time!" are performed they leave the pool. Once out, they dry quickly and go to the main house to dress for dinner.
Dinner the first night is Chicken Spectacular, which is roast chicken with something suspiciously resembling barbecue sauce casually spread carefully over exactly half of each portion. It can't actually be barbecue sauce because there are tiny, unidentified green things sprinkled on top of the sauce.
This is accompanied by roasted potatoes and peas. The roast potatoes go over big, the peas less so with the younger generation. However, the promise of pie à la mode and threats of no more swimming have their way and some of the portion of peas was in time actually consumed by the younger set. They wouldn't mind the peas that much, they are actually kind of fun to chase around the plate, if only they weren't green. But they had just spent two hours in the pool without a snack and were appropriately hungry.
The Butler and the Downstairs Maid served, and did very well at it. It seems that quite incidently each had had experience serving in one of the less-foul restaurants in Las Vegas. That plus theater training and abundant aplomb carried the day. They must to be doing it right, they were so serious and confident about it.
I had some say in the seating. As I have described the dining room, it clearly isn't intended for humans, at least not any humans I am likely to meet, and half the crowd were children. So I ignored the thrones at each end of the table and the pairs of chairs next to each throne and sat everybody in the middle, child facing child and grown-up facing grown-up in the four middle chairs. The Butler pulled it off, everybody sat where he told them to and they were as comfortable as you can be in a stone canyon with everything oversized and dark. The overhead light was on and there were no candles. We'll do candles some other night when the whole room isn't so first time frightening.
The Butler pulled her chair back and seated Madame very neatly. I smiled from my vantage point in the shadow of the fireplace. The little girl got the same treatment. She hadn't caught on completely and had to be nudged slightly on the back of her legs by the chair to get the idea that she was to sit down. I don't think it quite works that way in the elementary school cafeteria.
So dinner passed, desert was eaten, and not a single fatality from starvation or malnutrition. A success by any standard.
After dinner, which isn't going to take anything like two hours with children present, the young ones made it quickly upstairs to the family room.
Mom and dad did the best they could with the great hall, next door to the dining room. They decided that they would not require the gas fireplace to be ignited. The air conditioning was still rumbling away and it was by no means cool enough in the room to require a fire.
The Butler escorting them into the great hall did nothing about the furniture. This was probably a mistake, but when do Butlers arrange impossible furniture for guests once they are already in the room? So The Westerfalls heaved two massive stuffed chairs to the front of the unlit fireplace and a lot closer together than they had been and tried to talk to each other. The Butler quietly left the room without being signaled to do so. The Westerfalls weren't aware that they were supposed to dismiss the Butler and he was quite right in dismissing himself. "Damn fine work!" I whispered to him as we walked across the reception area to see what we could do in the dining room and the kitchen.
I suppose the children went to bed, assisted by the upstairs maid, and that mother and daddy tucked the children in and then went back downstairs by themselves. We staff didn't hear any more from them. They were probably pretty tired of us by now.
The guests got tired of the Castle pretty quickly in the days to follow. No friends, no screening, nowhere to go that's any fun. Mother and dad maybe even quicker than the kids. Dad screens on his laptop in the office upstairs. He zooms his friends and business associates all over the world, pretty much the same way he would if he were back in his home office or at work, or anywhere else in the world for that matter.
Mother Westerfall reads a book, plays with the kids and does puzzles for a day or so. She tries out some of the books in the various bookshelves and bookcases upstairs and downstairs but doesn't stay in any one of them for very long. They are dusty tomes on dusty subjects, more like required reading in a graduate school literature program than what is found in supermarkets. The Upstairs Maid spends some time dusting the tops of the books. She relates later that she always wanted to be an archaeologist and that now she knows what that would be like.
The guests don't take to the heat and stay inside the Castle mostly when not in the pool area.
The swimming pool attendant is there all day every day, nine in the morning until ten at night. He has taken a week off from work and will be paid for that week indirectly by Thor and directly by me.
The children have two swim periods: ten until noon mornings and four to six afternoons. The swimming pool attendant is on duty as a life guard at those times. The bar is open in the afternoons. Sometimes Thor and Elaine do pool time from seven until ten pm and sometimes later. I am occasionally invited to join them at those times. I am asked how things are going, what's it like out here, do I have any friends? Am I happy? Who are the neighbors? What do I do all day?
I tell them I make pottery. I am absolutely silent about the Indians and the goat and Rose's adventures pursuing the criminal.
There is no real provision for servants in the Castle. It's a modern affair and actual servants living on the premises did not occur to either the architect or the owner. So after a short discussion, Claire decided that the servants would dine in the dining room, same meal as the guests, after the guests had left. This works well, nobody wants to be in the dining room any longer than absolutely necessary, so the staff is undisturbed by the Westerfalls while they eat.
The Butler insists on one of the end chairs. Therefore, perforce, I take the other end. It's the proper way to do it, he says. Besides, one or another of The Westerfalls might walk by the dining room while the servants are occupying it. They would have to stay in their role at least somewhat at meals.
Mostly out of boredom, Thor and the Chauffeur take a morning drive Tuesday morning after breakfast. They drive here and there, taking in the tiny village to the west of the Castle and as far as the Reservation to the east. They pass without notice the turn-off to the Toadlena's farm. They've seen all they want to see in an hour.
Finally out of sheer boredom, Thor and Elaine leave the children with Claire and the staff and go off to Las Vegas for an evening. They don't get back until two AM, having forgotten how long it takes to drive from Las Vegas to the Castle. They left the night club at midnight.
They leave on Sunday, with expressed reluctance disguising relief, insisting that they had a lovely time and that I am to pass that on to the remainder of the staff. I wonder if they think the staff is permanent and think of their castle far away as completely staffed at all times. I don't know if I hope they do or hope they don't.