‘Housekeepers who are trained beauticians are at a premium. They do hair, make-up, waxing, everything, like a glam squad’
houses, but because of Covid they didn’t have enough space.’
So she worked nights, looking after the baby in ‘Daddy’s’ office which had a desk, sofa bed and a nappy changing table. But after five weeks they ended her contract. ‘They didn’t want me to be on public transport.’
SHEfound another job in July which has j ust ended, again nights only. She is lucky, she says, in that she is single and lives alone. Families prefer staff to be without children or partners, the very minimum of family ties ( and contagion risk), she explains.
‘When I signed the contract in July, part of the agreement was that I wouldn’t attend church, wouldn’t go out with friends, wouldn’t go to restaurants and gatherings.’ There is pressure for live- out staff not to mingle and socialise even on their days off.
Families also want staff to live within walking distance of their homes. ‘ But this is not always possible as families live in expensive areas.’ She was lucky. Her last job was a 40-minute walk away.
‘It’s really affecting me because I have a family and I can’t live in, says Louis Francis, 41, a private chef, who lives in Romford, East London, with his wife and their daughter, aged 12.
He used to work for several private clients in Holland Park and Kensington and now works as a breakfast chef in a restaurant in Victoria. ‘But even that is now in lockdown. Thank God, my wife is a GP. She’s the main breadwinner and we’re surviving,’ he says.
In some ways, life for the rich is unchanged as they have always walled themselves off from the outside world with private planes and l i mousines with t i nted windows. Not being allowed to go to the cinema or gym isn’t a problem when you have already installed both in the dug- out basement of your townhouse.
‘ One client even i nstalled a pick’n’mix for their cinema, an entire room with funnels of sweets, a popcorn maker and fizzy drinks, so they can have the full cinema experience,’ says Lucy.
‘But the big impact on everyone is travel,’ she says. ‘The majority of our clients travel extensively and, of course, that has stopped pretty much. Many clients feel frustrated that even if they have a private jet they still have to follow quarantine laws.’
Peter Lowell, 56, a house manager/butler, used to work for several foreign- based families when they visited their properties in London. But families aren’t travelling as they used to.
His clients are in Europe, Russia, China and the Middle East. Peter’s work has more than halved. ‘My income this year has dramatically decreased because of Covid.’ He used to collect clients from the airport, cook (grilled sea bass with beurre noisette for one client in particular), clean, serve — anything from tea and coffee, to cocktails — valet their clothes and schedule dinners.
One gentleman would always try to get to the Savoy Grill, even if he was on a short stay.
Now his work is mainly supervisory — to check on the skeleton staff still living in his clients’ empty homes. There always needs to be someone in the house, he explains, ‘because of the value of paintings and things inside’.
So even if the family are in lockdown elsewhere, their other homes need people in them. It’s cheaper to have a housekeeper than have your art stolen.
‘One gentleman has five amazing chandeliers,’ says Peter. ‘And I’ve been there when those chandeliers are cleaned. He doesn’t want anything to happen to them.’
To clean a chandelier, you have to take it apart, spray mild detergent on a damp cloth and gently polish each and every crystal droplet. Reassembly requires white gloves. The whole thing takes hours. ‘ They get cleaned every three months,’ he says.
He is also on stand-by for advice. ‘ The gentleman f rom China phoned and said: “Peter, how do I tell my housekeeper how to iron my shirt?” His housekeeper doesn’t have that much experience of ironing double-cuff shirts. So I did a Zoom video with her to show her how to do it.’
Zoran Ostojic, 51, a chauffeur used to work for a family of Middle Eastern royals when they visited their properties in London and Surrey. ‘ The family is huge — uncles, nephews, children and every household has a couple of cars,’ he says. ‘ Rolls- Royces, Range Rovers, Ferraris, Bugattis. I was lucky to be in the garage where they were all parked.’
He used to chauffeur the family on personal and state visits — to Buckingham Palace, Westminster, and so on. But his most memorable journeys were to a bakery in Notting Hill. ‘I used to go to The Hummingbird Bakery to pick up six muffins and take them from London to Newmarket. It’s the jet set who can afford this, but at the moment none of these things is happening.’ He thinks families are now getting Ocado deliveries like the rest of us.
For the past five years he has been chauffeur to one with homes in Park Lane, Hampstead and Delhi. ‘They have two cars, both S- Class Mercedes. The family went into complete lockdown in their Hampstead home. The only person they kept on is the housekeeper. My boss decided to drive himself. I’m on furlough,’ he says.
Claire Reddington suspects her former client, a businessman, is adapting well to lockdown.
(She was made redundant just before the pandemic struck. ‘They were spending less time in London, and more time in the U.S. and their country estate and did not need someone on my salary in a house that had no one in it.’)
‘He was one of the most understated human beings, says Claire. ‘ He l oved soup, flowers from Waitrose, and an occasional dinner at the Ritz. His wife, however, was more demanding.
‘When he was on his own we could have part-time housekeepers.’ But when the lady was in residence they needed a full staff on duty to cater for her needs.
‘She was always so active, always popping out seeing people. She’d change her clothes three times a day, from gym-wear to day-wear and then she always went out in the evening. So we’d have to rehang her clothes, turn her washing around within 24 hours, and wash her make-up brushes every time she used them.’
HE WAS happy to have his bed sheets changed every two days; she wanted them changed every day. ‘And they are the biggest beds known to man and the mattresses are so heavy. Even Mo Farah would break out in a sweat.’
But Covid has been a time of reassessment and reflection. One client in the Middle East, where he is currently based, has decided to renovate all his homes.
‘He is too scared to travel, even though he has a private jet and is spending millions and millions, basically, just redoing all his properties,’ says Lucy, ‘I think he has at least four in the UK, and then across Europe, Switzerland and in Riyadh and Jeddah.’
Polo & Tweed has also been catering for people moving out of London for a more wholesome life in the Home Counties.
‘There’s a sense of wanting to live off grid,’ she says. This doesn’t mean sowing a few seeds in the corner of the garden. There are no l i mits to what money and a gardener can make happen. ‘I was sent photos by a client and she had what l ooked l i ke a Kew Gardens greenhouse, as well as landscaped rows of vegetables, an orchard, and an ancient orchard next to that. I don’t even know what an ancient orchard is, but it looked incredible.’
It will keep them self-sufficient for years. While the rest of us are counting the days until a vaccine, the super-rich are looking at being able to pull down the hatches, making very sure they are never caught out having to switch on their own dishwasher or clean their own marble again.
The contract stipulated that I wouldn’t attend church, that I wouldn’t go out with friends