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.

I picked up my coal scuttle and headed back to the doorway that led to the stairs back down to the servants quarters. As I reached it, I heard a voice call out, “Hang on!”

I turned around to see a woman in a mannish three piece tweed suit smiling at me.

“You must be one of the new girls. What’s your name?” The woman had slicked back blonde hair, thin lips and heavy eyebrows that gave her a rather sinister appearance.

“Meakin, Ma’am,” I responded.

“God, you’re plain though! And grubby!” She reached forward and pushed me back against the wall. Shocked, I dropped the coal scuttle with a clatter and tried to break away from her grip. “And these,” she reached for the padding that filled the bra cups of my corselette, “are very unconvincing.” Undeterred by my struggles, she leant in and locked her mouth on mine for a violent kiss. “God you even taste of coal!” she laughed, eventually letting go of me. “I’ll have to tell Mrs Danbury she’s working you too hard.” She stepped back. “Well, Meakin,” she said. “You’d better get on with your work. I haven’t got time to mess around all day. Fun though it might be!”

Another voice called out from the hall, “Gloria. Where are you?”

I crouched down to pick up the fallen coal scuttle.

“There you are, Gloria.” I looked up as a woman in a summery dress, came around the corner from the hall. She looked at me suspiciously as though I had found a way of avoiding doing anything useful. “We’re just going to play a hand of cards with the others in the lounge,” the newcomer announced, though I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking to me.

“Excellent,” my assailant, Gloria, responded. “I would like nothing better.” The two of them went off arm in arm.

“I don’t know why you waste your time with the below-stairs staff, though, Gloria.” I heard Gloria’s friend say as the left the room.

“Oh, Celia, they are just so delightfully...” was all I heard Gloria say in reply before the sound of her voice was cut off by the closing door.

I looked around to make sure there were no coal smuts on the carpet and then made my way back down stairs.