“Do you expect me to sympathise with all that?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“I don't expect anything,” she drawled, teasing fingers through her hair.
She gestured at his nether region and he quickly crossed his legs.
“That is not the point,” he insisted.
She raised her eyebrows, “No?”
She sucked her thumb and his face flushed. He coughed and adjusted his seating position.
“Very funny. Listen, Miss Lottie, or Charlotte, or whatever your name… you slotted that dream in for one reason alone!”
She fiddled with her nails indifferently.
“Anger. Not becoming of a man. I know your sort. Judgemental, passionless, viciously inquisitive. A slave to martyrdom. Happy to be beleaguered. Blindsided by cynicism. You obviously begrudge the fact that my tale arouses you.”
“I…” he trailed off, putting his hand to his mouth to stop himself. Words would betray him. This girl was clever for a chambermaid.
“You wanted to know the story. Yet, there is much more to tell. Perhaps if we are to continue, you should go to the bathroom and avail yourself of what is certainly now causing you agony.”
“Why do you talk like that? Like you are in some sort of novel? Why do you… have that air of superiority? That, I don't know, coolness.”
“Please Mister Heath, please ask yourself what it is you actually know about me? Please reconsider that question. For if you answer it truthfully, you know nothing. You really do not. And here I am, trying to enlighten you. You must suspend your disbelief if we are to continue.”
“But I have the right to my own opinion,” he insisted, with what she knew was definitely a rhetorical, self-conflicted utterance.
“Of course,” she insisted, a sweet smile painting her lips. “You will not be disappointed.”
She had displayed a flash of her true self, he knew. Now, that got him. His trousers were an evil constriction then.
“I will relieve myself and we shall continue,” he conceded.
“Wise that you do, it will become much worse for you otherwise. There is much yet.”
He stood up out of his chair, really not caring any longer whether she saw his raging, throbbing erection in his pants or not. He subconsciously wanted her to check out what was standing to attention in his nether region, at full pace, and rather prominent. However, she did not glance. Not even a little. She stared at the floor, arms and legs folded, not smiling or seeming to display any thought. He painfully exited the room and dashed down the corridor toward the bathroom he had spotted on his way in.
She could not help but overhear his grunts and growls and his hand slapping up and down his cock as he got rid of whatever pent-up frustration he had been harbouring for some time. She was tempted to creep out into the corridor and down the hall to catch sight of the scene, but something stopped her.
Returning a little while later, he re-seated himself in the studded leather armchair and failed to wipe away a sheepish grin. She lifted her lids to absorb his noticeably flush cheeks and smirked.
“Thanks, I actually really needed that. I didn't realise quite how much.”
A weight seemed to have been lifted, a demon expunged and his former anxiousness eradicated. He was not ashamed in the slightest. He needed it. She knew just as well.
“Do you want to continue reading?” she asked.
“Yes, but I do have more questions…”
“I know my storytelling is not conventional, but it's how the events remain seated in my mind, you know? All your questions will be sated by the end, I assure you.”
“I can see that. But, if you don't mind, might you tell me a little something about your upbringing?”
“Are these interruptions to continue, Heath, really?” she demanded, impatiently.
He grinned and couldn't help but find amusement in her irritation. It was as if by referring to him as Heath that she saw him as some sort of servant. He liked it, however, secretly, he did.
“Yes, I may yet be unable to keep my tongue. It is impossible for me to promise anything. I am a creature of straightforward contemplation, of facts and calculations, as you earlier pointed out. I may question further yet,” he told her.
“Well, Heath, Epworth… her hometown Epworth… Charlotte's life there…” She seemed to find it difficult to take herself back to that time and place.
“Don't you see yourself as she anymore?”
He had already decided he should have brought a psychologist along with him.
“One more interjection like that and I won't stay. I warn you. I really must insist you simply submit yourself from now on, okay?”
He nodded and thought, Am I already getting The Service or what? I feel like she's totally working me over here.
“Epworth, it is a small village-type place, with gastro pubs and rich, historical monuments, with good schools and the odd celebrity. With clean streets and unique character houses. Rough and ready farmers frequent the inns with rolls of notes to burn, while students pretend to be trendy by attempting to mingle in. For me it was a place of safety and quietude. It was my solace, but also my prison. I don't often like to consider the memories of my time there.”
He murmured something but checked himself, realising she was serious about his interference in the way this would play out.
“So, I need not have taken on this work for financial gain. My father is landed enough. No. That is not why I do this. And, anyway, my roots are of no consequence to the story I have to tell you now.”
She poured more whiskey, and looked down at her lap.
“There is more than one man in this tale. The first, you now know about. The second is… was… my best friend. We have a third and fourth, too…” she said wearily. “The reason I became Miss Lottie will also become clear. Surely, you must realise, something catastrophic must have happened for me to transform from that naive, virginal 25-year-old to this?”
Another rhetoric. He didn't have the energy to query. He recommenced reading her tale.
Chapter IV
A New Beginning
After I was released from hospital following that illness, I returned home and stayed locked away, refusing to emerge. I was in shock still. I'd lost the job I hated but was lost without it. I was unwilling to do anything about my situation. I should have fought for my position but I really did not have the energy to. I was lost at sea without a paddle, as the saying goes. My family were worried. One evening, I finally deigned to join them at the dinner table for the first time in weeks, having taken all my meals in my room up until then.
My brother was home from medical school, my dad had just returned from a business trip to London ‒ he was in sales, agricultural machinery or something, and travelled a lot ‒ and my younger sister owned a beauty parlour in our village. My father had helped her procure her business, of course.
My mother was a remarkably clever woman who had foregone a career in nursing to retrain as a speech therapist. She carried out her practice at the local church hall and seemed quite content with her life. She had been the one constant through all the treatments I'd undergone, while the rest of our family had tried to get on with their lives as normal. I felt that Mum resented me a little. It was as though her life had stopped when mine did. I sensed that because I had been saved by thousands of pounds worth of hospital treatment and aftercare, she thought I should be thankful, but instead I refused to take life by the balls and make the best of what I had left. I could see nothing worth fighting for.
The meal went a little something like this:
“Yeah, the meetings went well. Couldn't have gone any better really.”
My father. I often thought he wanted to articulate, even perhaps did do on occasion, but I could never be certain. I am sure most of the time he was on autopilot when it came to discussing his work at home. Solid, concise responses that were the same every time: “We did those competitors out of three years' work” or “We nailed their asses to
the wall”. Mum would always tut when he swore, appearing the modicum of maternal discretion, but I knew better. Many a night had I been forced to sleep in their room with them (so they could ensure I did not die) and many a night I had heard the bestial way at which they would go at it, expletives passing between them as freely as bodily fluids. That had stopped after my last bout of chemo, but had remained in my memory (a rather irksome window into sex).
Anyway, I honestly could not remember the last time my father and I had sat down for a proper chat. I had decided it was because he could not risk the burdens I carried becoming his. He did not need to know what his little girl suffered daily, though he quite possibly saw but did not say. If he did not draw attention to my failings or the disappointment I was to the family, well, that was better all round perhaps.
This day, I saw my mother whisper to him, touch his wrist, and initiate something that had obviously been previously discussed.
“Charlotte, darling,” he muttered, in his guttural 50-year-old Lincolnshire tones, “Are you done with hotel work for now? We have all been wondering. ”
I looked up slowly from my sausage, peas and mash, the regular meal we would have on a Tuesday night. I saw him staring at me with eyes that were trying to be kind. I turned my gaze back to the mash mountain, which I was decorating with peas and dribbles of gravy, as if to erect some sculpture that Damien Hirst might be proud of if it were his own. Three sausages lay in a triangle around it, a mock-moat perhaps, and though I had not eaten a bite, nobody else had really noticed. My other siblings ‒ resembling animals feeding at the zoo ‒ were almost done with their meals and would certainly try to steal my food once they were done. “Charlotte's smaller, she doesn't need the nutrition as much as us, Charlotte is wasteful.” This was petty for three grown-up siblings, but this is how it was still, though I was 25, my sister 23 and my brother 27. Our mother had rather cushioned us from life after my illness had turned our lives upside down. I never realised how detrimental this cushioning was until later on. So, to the matter…
My father, still expectant, added, “Charley, darling, you have not been out for a while, your mother says. You sleep all day. Do you need to go to the doctors?”
I could feel the anger bubbling up, boiling away, and all manner of protestations lingered on the tip of my tongue. Speaking out, though, was something I had never done nor would, it seemed. Disobeying or arguing against our all-seeing, all-knowledgeable hunter-gatherer daddy was possibly the worst crime you could commit in that house. He could really be the nicest man alive to everyone and anyone, unless you questioned him. I imagined all kinds of scenarios involving the family falling apart, the house going up for sale, Mum meeting another man ‒ if I spoke up and upset the status quo. (By now reader, you should have realised much that I imagined was exactly that.)
Those words: Your mother says. They irritated and goaded me. It meant my mother was worried but did not have the guts to speak to me herself. My father had chosen this juncture to ask questions of me, so he could bat away any uncomfortable silences with the others around to back him up.
James, my brother, piped up, “Yeah, sis, come on… what's it all about, eh? Just tell us.”
I really had to put up the barriers and zone out. If they continued, I knew I would not be able to prevent myself screaming. James, oh James, oh the brother with the high IQ and the girlfriends, the many, many girlfriends who had turned up on our doorstep after he had spent a couple of nights and ignored them ever since. The pride and joy of my father who knew he could probably commit murder and get away with it. If Alice waded in too, God help me. I just did not need their judgement, condescension or pity. It grated terribly and I imagined their heads, their grotesque judgemental heads on spikes, dancing around the room as they goaded me into finally telling them what I really thought.
“Look, Lottie,” my sister began, calling me by the name only she called me by, “you can tell us anything. We are your family.”
I had to say something. “It was a terrible job, I quit, end of. You all probably thought so anyway, so what is the big deal?”
“But how can it be that you have been so sad since?” my mother asked, gently. She was sat right beside me and wanted to touch my hand, I could tell. She added, “Something else must have happened?”
“You don't have to be ashamed poppet, we're here to help, remember?” my father added.
Help, I thought, help? I did not need to be reminded that for several years I had been requiring of round-the-clock help.
“Dad, listen,” I stammered, “I am just taking… some time. Need to figure out some things.”
I could see the looks on Alice and James's faces. They seemed to want more from me. I knew they did not believe what I was trying to say. It infuriated me.
My natural impulse was to run upstairs, slam the door, lock it and remain hidden for the rest of the week. I sank in my chair, their feeding utensils now placed down and their energies centred on me.
I muttered, “You don't need to worry. I am just taking some time to reassess. I am okay, or will be, stop fussing!” I told them, and wished the ground would swallow me up. I needed to escape.
“But Charlotte, this isn't healthy,” my brother added.
I scowled at him. I aligned my eyes with his as steadfastly and accurately as I could and tried to psychically burn red lasers through his pupils. I hated his tone. So authoritative. As if he cares, I thought, as if he really cares. He was just jumping on the bandwagon. I hated him for his interference in something he really knew nothing about. I needed to silence them all.
Just because I hide away, just because I don't speak, does not mean I'm going to top myself. Oh, because none of you could have that hanging over your consciences, could you?
Those are the words I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “I am going to find another job soon and then you can all stop worrying about me. I will return to civilisation, so you can stop fretting.”
My mother touched my wrist, like she had my father's, and softly told me, “Good girl, now eat up. Trifle for pudding.”
Inwardly, I wanted to scream. The routines and roles that everybody had and kept within that family unit made me want to yell and tell them all what a bunch of losers they were. I knew it was harsh and unkind of me to think so, but that is how I felt.
After two mouthfuls of sherry-laden cream, jelly and sponge, the like of which almost made me want to vomit (hospital food), I pretended to listen to all their chitchat, nodding and striking a semi-smile on occasion. I filled the dishwasher in record time and knew that once I had, that was my escape. I snuck out, raced upstairs, turned on my laptop, searched for hotel jobs and found a partially live-in position in a hotel in Nottingham.
Deputy Housekeeper. That was feasible.
I needed escape and I needed it quick smart. I felt sure if I went to Irene cap in hand, she would give me an excellent recommendation. She knew I was good. Everyone in that hotel I had formerly worked in knew how good I was. If Cody had not crossed my path, perhaps I might never have left that job, for it was one I had excelled in, made my own even, and it was one that for more than five years had offered safety, security and sanity amongst the madness of my own dark and dreary thoughts.
* * *
The rigmarole of applying for the job was inordinately lengthy. The application form was as long as my leg and I had to do several psychometric tests just for a deputy housekeeper's job! I was very determined, however. I had been snapped into action after that bout of pneumonia and during my hibernation, I'd read an article in a fashion magazine about doing at least one thing every day to challenge yourself. Well, one thing a year was mighty for me and I convinced myself this was it: procure new job and move to big city.
I gave up hope when I didn't get called for interview and began to wonder whether I should just go back to my old position. There wasn't much else going, even though I'd been searching for positions all over the UK. I really hit rock bottom and started staying in my
room all the time again. However, out of the blue, it came.
“Hello, is this Charlotte Taylor?” he asked, in a well-spoken accent with a slight Nottinghamshire twang.
“Yep, yep, it is!”
“This is Alex Grainger from the Hollis Hotel in Nottingham. We did our first round of interviews last week but found nobody suitable. We're doing a second round next week. Would you be interested?”
“Oh, yes, yes, I would! That's great. Oh…”
I knew I sounded so desperately pleased.
“I understand you worked… where was it… aah yes…”
“Oh, but believe me, I was wasted there, I really was,” I begged. I had never wanted anything as much before in my entire life. I was disgustingly pleading.
“I'll look forward to seeing you then. Do you have any preferences for days or times?”
“No, no, anytime.”
“I'll post a letter out to make it official then. Goodbye.”
I was meticulous in my preparation, even asking Mum to test me on interview questions. I wrote lots of possible answers on post-its and stuck them around my bedroom, studying them at length. That was not like me. I had three outfits picked out. One said I had a no-nonsense approach (a light-grey skirt and jacket combo with white blouse), the other a flowery dress I had never worn but might say I was less anal than I actually was, and another was a damson, office-type dress with cream chiffon sleeves that might say I was over-qualified for such a job. Running the choices through my mind, I wasn't really happy with any of them.
The wait was unbearable. When the day came, I was wracked with nerves. Outwardly, I overcompensated by pretending not to care. Mum drove me, insisting she was in need of a day of retail therapy. I knew in fact, she perhaps feared I may veer off the road with post-its plastering the windows and screen in front of me. On the journey there, I huffed and puffed every time she hit a dual carriageway but maintained a steady speed of 60mph. Ooh how I wanted her to hurry up in case a traffic jam presented itself up ahead. She had constantly questioned, “Don't you just want to re-train or something? Find something that uses your brain? I don't know, accounting? Your own business like Alice? Daddy would help.”
A Fine Profession (The Chambermaid's Tales Part One) Page 4
