The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2542 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

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All experience is useful if you learn from it. I chuckled to myself. I seemed to have the ability to repeat my mistakes, especially when employing staff—or did I? David was a treasure and he seemed to be settled here for now, though I had to remember he might get restless and move on one day.

Jacquie, wasn’t staff, she was a needy young woman who’d been abandoned by her family and society, until we helped her fight back. Even then it nearly all went very wrong when that strange woman dominated her. It took her a while to get over that, but at last she’s trying to do something with her life, and I see her as a blossoming daughter.

I made a mistake with Judy Bell, though in all fairness it was Stella who engaged her initially, then Carolyn was a total mistake. At the same time I gave her a chance to transition as she said she was transsexual. Turned out that if she was, it was of a half hearted variety. I’m sure they exist, but most of the ones I’ve known were pretty well committed to it. Admittedly, Judy screwed things up for her, then being hit in a RTA didn’t do her any good, although she had already reverted and was coming to collect his things. He was quite surprised when he found out I’d paid for his flat to be retained, but not grateful. To my way of thinking, it isn’t the amount that matters that one gives, but the kindness to give in the first place. So, I could afford it; but what about all the other things I’d given or set up. I don’t want anything more than an acknowledgement of my giving and at most a thank you.

The other types who came for interviews but were not suitable or turned it down, don’t count in my list of mistakes, though that Russian or Lithuanian or whatever she was supposed to be caused us some inconvenience. We never did find her.

I wondered what this advert would attract, but before I employ anyone, I’ll get Jim to run some checks as well as the CRB. This time I want to get it right because my career is taking off, but as well, I want the children to prosper. If it all goes pear shaped, I’ll resign and stay at home and Simon can keep me, but I’ve a feeling life is wanting me to do something more with my life than be a wife and mother, nice though it’s been, I’m not reneging on it, I shall still be that, just helped a bit more about the house.

I was surprised Trish hadn’t challenged it, but perhaps she could see my tiredness, not that such details prevent her getting her own way if she can. I put them to bed that night, thought I better had. They all had questions.

“Who’s this person you’re going to employ?” asked Livvie.

“I don’t know yet, Liv, the advert only went out tonight. It might be weeks before we know.”

“Shouldn’t we help to choose her?” asked the brain.

“It could be a him, Trish, we can’t be specific about the gender of who we employ any more than we can about race or religion.”

Trish laughed at the prospect of another male housekeeper and I could almost hear the cogs turning.

“I don’t plan on employing any more transgender people. I feel I’ve done my bit there. I just want someone who can do what I ask, and do it well.”

“I don’ wanna man making my dinner,” wailed Meems which caused the other two to snort.

“What d’ya think David is, then—a polar bear?”

“That’s stupid, I wike David, he’s nice.” Meems was either very tired or had somehow missed the point.

“But he’s a man and cooks your dinner, stupid.”

“I’m not stupid, you stupid.” Meems started to cry and I stopped the conversation at that point.

“I get to choose who will work here because I’m mistress of this house. Whilst I will accept insights or advice from others, I employ them, so I have the final say. Now go to sleep.”

“What about a sto-wee?” complained Meems.

I quickly made up one about a dormouse saving a woodland from a developer who wanted to build a factory on the site.

I kissed them all goodnight and went downstairs where Simon was telling David about the mistakes in Down-grade Abbey. He was relating stuff Henry had told him that his parents had told him. I suspect it probably went back another generation or two for the right period, but servants were almost like slaves to the wealthy landowners or industrialists. Some of the serving girls were so ill-educated and naïve that they didn’t realise they’d been shagged by their lord and master, nor that they could get pregnant. Given that some were only twelve or thirteen, it was disgraceful how one group exerted control on the other.

I read the other day about two women who ran a supposed adoption agency for servant girls to supposedly have their illegitimate babies adopted. They were paid by the girls who never saw their babies again because the little ones were murdered and the bodies disposed of. The two women were eventually apprehended and hanged—the last double hanging of women in the UK. All round, it looked like tragedy.

I thought about my own children, especially the babies. How could anyone harm them, but they do.

Making tea, I took a cup into Simon who was watching the news on the telly. “They got those two.”

“What two?” I queried.

“In Paris, the shootings.”

“Oh have they? Alive?”

“Don’t be silly, they’re paramilitary police, and there was a hostage situation. The other siege is over too.”

“What other siege?”

“Geez, Cathy, where have you been? The bloke who shot the policewoman, he took hostages in a Jewish supermarket—they got him too.”

“Like Tesco?”

“What?”

“Well they’re Jewish, or were, and Sainsbury, I think.”

“No, one that sells kosher food.”

“Do they have kosher vegetables then?” I had an image of some rabbi saying some incantation before chopping a cabbage off its stalk with his ceremonial knife.

“No, but devout Jews eat restricted diets.”

“Kosher bacon and eggs, you mean?”

“Yeah—what?”

“Blackpudden?”

“Very funny, you know what I mean.”

“I don’t, I’ve never had Jewish food, that I knew about, or Muslim or any other religiously restricted food.”

“What, not even a vegetable curry?” gasped Si.

“I can’t eat curry.”

“Better not go to India then.”

“I have no intention of going there in the near future.”

“A boy I knew at uni married an Indian girl, said she was a bit of a Goa.”

I groaned, finished my tea and after pecking him on the cheek announced I was going to bed. I was asleep twenty minutes later. A short while after that I woke after a dream where some bloke with funny little skullcap was chasing vegetables around my garden, waving this huge knife and shouting at a cauliflower in what sounded like Yiddish. Instead of laughing at it, it upset me. I felt Simon’s body next to mine, knew I was safe and drifted off to sleep again.