The Lady's Request

            The Lady of the House is not in at the moment. Yet the telephone is announcing a caller. It is my job. Crossing the hall from the grand dining room where Sir is holding a dinner party, I head for the telephone. Usually, I would take a message for the Lady of the House, as most calls are directed to her, but she is not in. I will take a message anyway. And, when the Lady returns, I will deliver it.

However, Sir does not like me taking messages for the Lady. The Lady of the House has only married once, to Sir. She now has children. He is jealous, in my opinion. I do think that he thinks, as he is the male, the dominant gender, the one who would usually run the house, he should be running the estate. The Lady’s view is that he is not from her bloodline, so he should not run the estate. I do not have an opinion on this and, if Sir asks me to deliver my ‘opinion’ I have to decline respectfully but forcefully, implying that, offering this opinion is not my place. I only serve, I do not participate in this ‘spat’ of sorts. I know my place; I am a mere servant; a meagre butler. I am employed to serve and take messages for the Lady of the House.

This does not mean that I am exempt from taking messages for Sir. Of course, if I need to take a message to him, I shall. Both the Lady of the House and Sir employed me, so I serve both of them. However, Sir is not often as absent as the Lady, so it is much easier for me to deliver his messages.

I do not just deliver messages.

I also deliver and clean and organise. There are many other servants but the Lady of the House will have no others touch her bed. Sir even sleeps separately from her. Only I am allowed to come into her room in the mornings to greet her and to bring her morning tea at six. After that, I strip the bed of its sheet, the duvet and pillow covers and hand-wash them. At eleven in the morning, I retrieve them from the drying rack and do up the bed with them again. The Lady of the House insists that I scatter fresh rose petals onto the end of her bed, so, at eleven-thirty, I make traverse the garden and choose only the reddest and most beautiful rose. Since the Lady’s sheets are white, the red petals look like hearts on a virgin’s loose shawl.

However, this can be misleading. There are two children in the House, an older daughter, and a six-year-old son. It is not my place to question the Lady’s choice of bed preference. I do what I am asked and that only. I do not show expression and keep myself to myself. Of course, the Lady of the House permits me to write a diary for half-an-hour at the end of the day, at ten. Then, after I have written, at half-ten in the evening, I bring Sir and the Lady evening beverages. If there is nothing else for me to do, I would usually turn in for the night, but, occasionally the Lady of the House summons me to her room.

The first time I was summoned, I said nothing at first. But when I found out what she wanted me for, I did ask her if she was sure what she was doing was what she wanted. She reminded me sternly that she did not employ me to talk out of place, but understood my concern. She was clear, though, that this was what she wanted. She gave me detailed instructions of what she wanted me to do that night, and I followed it.

Sometimes, when I pick the petals from the rose and look at the virgin-white bed-sheets, I think of all the times the Lady of the House has used me and resent sprinkling alluring silk onto the duvet. However, I am employed as a servant and whatever the Lady wants, I must deliver, even if it is something that she wants only from me, not from her own husband. Sir does not know; the Lady of the House told me not to say anything to him. She knows that I would do whatever she asked, so I obediently said I wouldn’t.

            I am employed as a servant and, if it means giving the Lady of the House sexual pleasure, if she requested it, I must deliver it. She is not as pure as she makes out. She has a black heart and a black soul. The red rose petals at the end of the bed are scattered to the floor as she uses me. I never say a word or make a sound. I never change my expression. It stays the same whatever she does to me.

            I am employed to be requested for, and, if these requests are sexual favours, I must deliver them.

I must.

            It is just like I must answer the telephone. If I pick it up and take a message for the Lady of the House, I will remember it for later when she returns. However, it is a message for Sir I will deliver it when he is free. He is much purer than the Lady of the House, even though he detests her. He does not know about my ‘requests’ I receive. The Lady of the House is good at covering things up; she has the influence and the money to do so.

            In my contract, I have an agreement to hide nothing from the Lady of the House. I told her everything before she hired me, so that I would have no secrets. I have been employed for thirty years and kept up to that agreement. However, in the contract, it does not say that I cannot have secrets that become apparent to me during my employment. Hence the fact that the Lady of the House still believes, and always will believe, that the children that are being raised were born of her and Sir’s body.

            Let me be clear; her body was involved in the making of those children both times, but Sir was not a part of the fertilisation. That was down to the Lady’s requests to me, both times.