“Welcome home my Lord, I trust your journey was pleasant.”
“Yes thank you Batters. Schultz this is Batters. Mr. Schultz. And of course Batters you know Mr. Sunning dale.”
“Mr. Schultz, sir. And Mr. Sunningdale, so good to have you back with us again.”
Schultz led to his room by a young footman in dark green livery. Toting Schultz’s bag between two brass cannons and across the stone paved floor of the enormous pillared hall. Up the Jacobean staircase. A mullioned window looking down on the moat and out over more parkland. Massive gilt framed portraits. Some folk in their ermine and scarlet robes staring dolefully down. Along an arched corridor to a doorway entrance which went through six feet of masonry from the hall. Inside the outside door an inner door covered in a soft green damask silk opening on this pine scented perfumed high ceilinged room.
“Thank you, here’s a half a crown buy yourself a drink.”
“I’m sorry sir but his Lordship does not permit the acceptance of gratuities.”
“Holy shit, kid, you should go on strike, that’s unjust. Don’t let his Lordship push you around.”
“Yes sir, thank you sir.”
Schultz standing at the tall window. Turning a handle and pushing it open. Staring out across the twilight parkland. Vast haunted lonely landscape shut away from the whole world. Towering oaks, elms and pines. His Lordship’s church steeple in the distance. Evening birds chirping and singing. A bat crisscrossing the air. A beast mooing. Fresh moist cool breeze blowing in the open window. The great grey granite still cold to the touch.
“Jesus christ, his Lordship while he goes around London with holes in his socks, has a whole fucking personal kingdom here.”
Schultz washing his face in the big bathroom. Full of scented soaps and glass trays of bath salts. Towels stacked warmly over a large chromium heating rail. Aiming his piss down on the flowers decorating the toilet bowl. Changing his corduroy suit to ivy league grey flannel trousers and popping on a yellow silk shirt, brown knit tie and a fawn tweed jacket to descend the wide carpeted oak stairs. Feet pounding below as his out of breath shirt sleeved Royal Grace raced upwards.
“Hey what’s the hurry your Lordship.”
“Schultz there is always a hurry concerning a dangerous disaster of some kind in this place. The chimney sweep is stuck up the chimney of the music room with his feet kicking down bucketfuls of soot. And I may have left my bath running.”
“So what’s so dangerous about that.”
“Well for a start some silly young fellow from the kitchens lit the fire under the sweep and then pulled off the dust sheets from the furniture in such a manner as to succeed in breaking considerable crockery.”
“Jesus your Lordship take it easy for Christ’s sake. Your jugular vein is standing right out from your throat. What’s a few dishes. Or a bit of overflowing water. You’re going to bust a blood vessel. This is a swell fucking place. Relax, enjoy it.”
“Ah Schultz you are inspiring. But I’d rather a few dishes did not happen to be irreplaceable Meissen. And that the chimney sweep’s socks weren’t scorched off him up the music room smoke hole. The staff in this place do compete in their efforts to make life easy for me but they only succeed in fucking up everything in sight.”
“Hey with all servants around you want to watch your language your Lordship. Where do I go, I’ll turn off your bath.”
“O god Schultz. I’d be grateful if you would. Just up to your left then left then right and it’s the last door on your right. And let me advise you, never take up residence in a large house.”
His Lordship jumping back down the stairs. Schultz not quite following directions, promptly geting lost plus hysterical as he opened doors, pounded on locked ones and ran back and forth in hallways and finally shouting blue murder. Until meeting two footmen with blackened faces who led him rushing to one last door. All three in feverish haste through the book lined study, bedroom and dressing room and bath. To happily confront a chambermaid, the same rosy cheeked buxom stunningly beautiful young girl Schultz had caught sight of in the local village.
“Thanks guys, I think I can handle this little problem for his Lordship now.”
“Very good sir.”
The footmen withdrawing. The chambermaid putting her finishing polishing touches on glass shelves and stacking towels. As Schultz nosed around his Lordship’s private apartments. Silk dressing gowns. Eight pairs of slippers. One gold embroidered with crossed shotguns. Dinner clothes neatly laid out in his dressing room. Piles of architect’s drawings on the massive desk in the study and a strange convoluted contraption that appeared to be a telephone. Paintings and statuary in the bedroom hall. A gilt coronet above the canopy of his Lordship’s bed. And awfully good looking well dressed people in silver framed photographs on a high dresser in his bedroom.
“These are nice little rooms his Lordship’s got.”
“Yes sir.”
“Is this your station.”
“Excuse me sir but I do not know what you mean sir.”
“I mean do you work here in his Lordship’s room.”
“Well it’s me who tidies out and does his Lordship’s bathroom sir.”
“What’s your name honey.”
“Roxana sir.”
“Are you satisfied with this kind of life here. A good looking girl like you.”
“I am sir.”
“Girl with your looks, you could be up in London.”
“Oooo I wouldn’t want to be living in an awful big city sir. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
“No problem. None. And tell you what honey, just in case you are ever up in town, here’s my phone number, you just give me a little tinkle. How about that.”
“Well sir that’s extremely kind of you but I don’t have cause to go up to London.”
“Give it time, honey. Just give it time. Domestic slavery is going out of fashion. And you just give me a tinkle. Be seeing you around.”
“Yes sir.”
Schultz went out in the evening light strolling around the cobbled courtyards and reconnoitering beyond the moat in the castle gardens. And even to the staff’s astonishment nosing about the basements. Later bathing and changing his once rather ripped tuxedo now miraculously repaired and freshly pressed and laid out on his bed.
“Shit. The god damn rich sure do get the pleasure. And Jesus the poor sure do get the pain.”
Schultz, following a session walking about admiring his erection in his various bedroom mirrors, presented himself at eight for sherry in the library. His Lordship in the large panelled room playing a madrigal on his gramophone as they sipped their fortified wine. Until Batters announced to these three gentlemen.
“My Lord, dinner is served.”
Schultz on his Lordship’s right sitting back expansively in the candlelight of the pillared dining room. Digesting his dinner of freshly caught salmon with Riesling and followed by slabs of tender rare roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, broccoli and fat dark burgundy ferried in by Batters and two footmen.
“Holy shit, your Lordship, what the fuck are you doing spending your time in London. This is paradise. The furnishing fabrics alone, they’re gorgeous and priceless. The gardens out there, the birds, the flowers. Flocks of deer grazing down the hillside. Being here like this makes me feel like two and a half million bucks.”
Over port and cigars, Schultz sucking back deeply both smoke and liquid. His silk cuffed wrist extended on the mahogany and his fingers twirling the deep purple glass of wine. Binky pushing a gold toothpick between lower teeth and blowing his smoke out over the decanter.