New York Day 2 Ch.3

"Sir was very clear on his insistence that the guests must have a memorable first night.  The weather appears permitting and so I would like the fire pit prepared to be cooked on and entertained around."  Claire addressed the four of us, arms crossed across her torso, an amused flicker behind her eyes when she saw my still wet hair and slight shivering.

The fire pit was a brief walk into the forests around the manor.  With the sun barely past its zenith, the green and golden air vibrated with humidity and even the insects appeared to have called a time-out on their usual antics.  There hadn't been a real rain storm in weeks and the ground crumbled loosely under our shoes, the usually vicious branches hung limply, placid, unable to gather the effort to spring sharply back into our faces.  Over gullies and around trunks, we eventually trudged our way into the clearing with the fire pit in the centre.  Eli turned and held out his hand again to draw pre-determined lots.  To his surprise, I was the first to take.

"Errands."  I said simply, keeping his eye contact and pleading in my head.

He barked, "Are you serious?  You think you can just ask to basically run around and do small jobs whilst we sweat it out in here?"

I gesticulated wildly, "You've already given me under-docks and I did it, right?  Come on, I'll do all the errands you ask for!"

"Boy, you have some nerve.  I'm about an inch away from giving you pit-maintenance.  Pick another straw."

I dropped to a knee, clasping my hands together in prayer, "Okay okay, you've got me.  I need to know more about the guests.  The other staff, their memories aren't as good as yours and I know that if I leave it too long that truths will become hazy and mixed with fantasy.  I have to get to them now."

I could sweat beading on my forehead that had nothing to do with the humidity.  Yet I didn't dare move to wipe them; facing off with Eli was a bit like staring into the eyes of a roaming bear and arguing that perhaps vegetarianism was worth a shot.

"I'll take any job you want to give me.  Yeah, any job you put my way over the next two…"

Eli's head dropped slightly whilst maintaining his sight, now somehow looking both down at me and up at me at the same time.

"Four…week!  A whole week!  Yes, I'll do it!"

Eli issued a pensive grumble.

"And I'll sweeten the deal, I'll feedback anything I learn to you first and I bet that I know some interesting things anyway that I could let you in on."

"What sort of 'interesting things'?"

"Clearly of the most interesting kind." I said, with a subtle head-tip towards the manor.  It wasn't great but it was the first hint that came to mind.

His back straightened and his arms opened up as he looked around.  Yes, come on, I've got you…

"Errands it is."

I shot off the ground, dusting my knee off whilst running.

"You don't even know what errands you're running!"  Eli called at me.

"I'll make myself useful!"  I shouted back, leaving Jeremiah and Edmund gaping and grumbling to Eli.

I ran into and through the allotment of gardeners before either of us had a chance to react.

"Bloody hell, watch yourself!"

I was about to apologise when I spotted Kris.

"Kris, Kris!   Hold up, tell me everything."

"I'm busy, and aren't you too?"

"I'm running errands.  Anyway-"

"Oy, what are you doing?" the head gardener called at us.

"I'm running errands and I need Kris' ear just for a minute!"  I shouted at him and then turned to Kris, "Tell me please!"

Kris looked between my pleading face and the head gardener's imposing figure.  Eventually the head sighed, "Two minutes" and walked off.

Kris knew there was no escape and for the second time today his resistance to my questions melted.

"I saw them arrive.  They got out of Sir's hired car, two girls, two guys-"

"Yes yes, I saw that too.  Tell me about them!  Did you get their names?  How did they act?"  I hurried, our 120 seconds ticking away before my eyes.

"I was too far away to hear their greetings but two of them are definitely into each other."

I grinned, "I knew it!  Blonde one and tall fellow, they'll be fun to hang around."

"What?  No, no, it's the tall guy and the other girl."  He looked at me with his head tilted to one side.

"Don't stop there, keep talking!"

"Well, as they went into the house the brown-haired girl went to pick up the picnic basket and the tall guy turned and lent over to grasp the handle too.  Except I saw that for a moment his hands went over hers and she gave him this really cute smile."

My mouth was agape.  Oh this was tasty, this was even more interesting than I had imagined.

"What happened then?  What next?  What about the shorter guy, what did he do?"

"I don’t know.  Oh don't give me that look, some of us are here to work and not become intimately concerned with the our guests."

"But it's our job to be as intimately concerned-",  my ears pricked when a voice shouted Kris' name from the direction of the fire pit.

"Speaking of work, I must be off back to it."

"Right right, enjoy."  I muttered, trying to think of who I should speak to next.  Who would have seen them just after they arrived?  House maids?  Room maids?  Perfect, I knew just who to go talk to.

I scampered towards the manor before realising the daft obvious answer that I had previously forgotten.  I changed direction and ran towards the leaving car.  I ran behind him, waving my hands up in the air like a loon and something must have worked because the car slowed and I caught up with it.  The driver, he'd be able to get me something good.

"Is something the problem?"

"No, no, I just wanted to ask you a question."

"And that would be?"

"What did you make about the four you just brought here?"

"Well, they're four young adults.  Not from around here, they've travelled in from some big city south of here.  Maybe Boston, maybe New York, maybe further.  I'm confused, what are you asking this for?"

"I mean, what were they like?  How did they talk to each other?"

"What exactly is your job right now?"

"Running errands."

He sighed a smile, "They're four friends in their early twenties going on a summer holiday together, use your imagination."  He called as he wound his window up and moved his car into gear and away.  I turned to avoid getting a lungful of dust and smoke.

"The problem is not that I'm not using my imagination, it's that it's working a bit too hard right now", I thought.

I turned and made back for the manor.  I went in through the main entrance and, seeing no-one but hearing sounds from upstairs, took the carpeted stairs that wound round the main entrance hall two at a time.  Not just in excitement but if Claire caught me using the grand stairs and not the staff ones the next food I ate would probably be through a straw and it would probably be some part of me she'd cut off and mashed.  I hit the top of the stairs and went towards the sounds of people talking; they're gossiping already, exactly where I want to be!

A dark uniform appeared in front of me and we clipped shoulders.  She spun round and I ungracefully tripped over my own feet on the way to the floor.

"Watch what are you doing, prat!" Marcie demanded, straightening her uniform.  Then seeing my dusty clothes, "And what exactly is it you're doing?"

"Running errands.   Anyway Marcie, I need to know, did you see the guests?"  I picked myself up and brushed my clothes absentmindedly, a layer of road dust settled in a patch across the newly-dirtied carpet.

"What kind of errands?  And watch what you're doing, you're dirty!"  And then she looked at the direction I had come from and her mouth dropped into an 'oh'.  As in an 'oh you're really dead'  kind of way.  "Did you just come up the main staircase with your dirty shoes and clothes?"

"Errands for Eli, a few for Kris, there's some people I need to speak to also something about the fire pit-"

"The grand stairs.  Did you or didn't you."  Marcie interrupted with a posture that could have given a gale force hurricane second thoughts.

"I…wasn't paying attention to where I was running, I can't remember what I was doing."

I had a brief look left and right.  Not to find ways to escape, just to ensure there wasn't anything heavy that Marcie was in range of right now.  It wouldn't be the first time that Marcie had been moved to physical violence towards me and I much preferred it to be with her fists and voice instead of a candlestick or fire poker.

"So….anyway…these guests…?"

"Are you serious?  You've given me an extra hour of work right now and you're telling me this is all just about the guests?"

"You know me, Marcie, please just give me a little something.  I'll make it up to you!"

Marcie closed her arms, "Right now the only thing you can do is bugger off and not cause any more damage."

It was as I heard a voice asked from behind me ask, "Is everything okay?", that the full meaning of Marcie's words thudded home.  The chattering I heard wasn't the house staff talking about the guests, it was the loud laughing and conversations of the guests themselves.

Marcie took a single second to go from anger, through shock and to her stiff, polite-attention posture that she always held when going about her job.  I turned and found myself locking eyes with one of the guest, the brown haired girl.  Her curly, springy hair in that ponytail.  Up close and in person she was about the same height as Marcie, so maybe a few inches shorter than me.  Not a lot of cosmetics so you could see that her skin was smooth and of a glamorous colour.  Her body shape indicated that she managed to spend a good deal of time enjoying herself in sport of some kind and yet her posture was open and concerned.

Arms loosely by her sides, relaxed legs and feet facing us, "I was just unpacking and heard something fall and just wanted to check everything was…well, fine."

"Nothing's the matter ma'am, do you require any further assistance with your baggage?", Marcie response was cool and professional, in no way indicating her near-overwhelming desire to put her shoe in my behind right now.

The girl might have heard Marcie but it probably didn't register since she had been staring at me the whole time, our eyes utterly locked.  I don't know what she was thinking but my mind had emptied and I fell into her green and brown-striped patterns.  If her eyes were a maze then I was gladly lost.

"Are you okay?"  She asked, shocking me out of my stance.

"Just a small trip, nothing to complain about.  Apologies for my asking, but what is your name?" the words tumbled out of my mouth before my brain could conjure up what would happen to me if I was caught mingling with the guests like this.

"Ma'am…", I felt Marcie tense even more as she walked forwards to turn the guest back.

"Kathryn.  A 'kay', not a 'cee'.",  she said as Marcie gently laid a hand on her shoulder and began to guide her away from me.

"Kathryn, I thank you kindly for your concern.  Enjoy the afternoon and I'm sure I'll see you later."  I said, bowing my head and watching Marcie guide Kathryn into her room.  Kathryn tried to be subtle about it but in the blindingly fleeting instance between exiting the hallway and entering the room her head shifted and her eyes fell back down the corridor.  Then she was inside.  Marcie bowed and slowly shut the door.  As the handle clicked into the frame Marcie's attitude clicked back to the venom-spitting cobra she felt like.

"See you later?!" She hissed, closing the gap between us until her face was all but inches from my ear and then shouted the whisper as loudly as she dared, "What the heck were you thinking?"

"Well it's not inaccurate, I will be helping out with the fire this evening and so we will almost certainly-"

"See.  You.  Later.  They're the guests.  They're our guests.  Your guests.  How could you ever dare to speak to one as like a friend."  She moved her mouth right next to my ear to deliver this and I found my shoulder shrugging up towards my ear, mouth already wincing, anticipating her fangs sinking into my neck.

"I…it just happened.  She was staring at me like that and her eyes were so friendly, did you see them?  It just came out."

Marcie pulled back just far enough so that we could lock gazes.  Light brown, pleasant but indistinguishable from a dozen others that I see around the manor.  Oh, and angry.  Can't forget the angry.

"And mine?"

"Right, I'll bugger off."

I made quick haste away, until Marcie's voice reached out to me, "And whatever you do, please don't get in the middle of the couple's business."

My neck did a half-turn so fast that my body was left trying to catch-up, "Which couple?  I've heard a few different ideas."

"Dustin and Amanda, the taller guy and not the girl you just met.  They're clearly together, all the house staff agree."

I felt like pumping my fist and whooping, "Do you think they're loud?"  I asked excitedly, belatedly realising that I had spoken that a bit too loudly myself.

Marcie, wide eyed, checked behind her that no-one unfortunate had heard my comment and turned to throttle me into another time-zone.  She wouldn't have her opportunity just yet though, my dirty shirt had already sprinted away towards the staff passages and my mind was already considering the next person I should speak to.  This group were no clear pond; having tested the waters with my toe I wanted only to dive right in and see just how deep I could swim.