Chapter 8: Above Stairs

After breakfast on the second day, it was obvious from the feverishly snapped orders and the extra attention to detail from our tutors that a special social event was being planned upstairs. “I know you are only trainees,” Miss Carson said when Danielle said he was worried about making mistakes, “but you have to start somewhere and there is work to be done.”

It was going to be a cold day so I was set to laying fires in each of the rooms upstairs, on the ground floor. I’d never had to bother at home – we have central heating - so Miss Carson had to show me how to do it, first of all cleaning out the old ash, then placing screwed up paper and sticks of kindling to provide a base and finally a small pyramid of chunks of coal ready for lighting. On top of that I was up and down stairs several times, collecting coal in the large scuttle and using it to fill the smaller ones beside each of the fire places. I finally worked out that I had laid six fireplaces; one in the hall, two in the big reception room, one in the library another in the dining room, another in a small parlour just off the hall. I caught sight of myself in the mirror in the hall and saw a large streak of coal dust across my forehead over the stupid round spectacles I was being required to wear.