below stairs

           

           The house steward likes most

            to run the house like a business venture,

ordering buckskin gloves for the footmen, plate powder, ginger beer

for a cricket match.  He ranks his staff like copper pans on the huge dresser

Although he does not wear livery, his ambition is as clear

as a lantern slide:  to die in post               

                                                            below stairs

Mrs Fittleworth, the housekeeper, a single woman very staid,

enjoys playing bridge with upper servants in her own sitting room,

crocheting woollen waistcoats.  She carries a formidable bunch of keys,

but rarely risks a sniff of medicinal brandy in the still-room,

for standards must be maintained.  She will be remembered always

as mother to the maids

                                                            below stairs

With dignity the butler waits

in bow-tie, morning jacket and striped trousers,

waiting on hand in case his Lordship . . .

Whenever he doubts his superiority, he fingers the keys to the wine cellar.

At the heart of operations, he scours for footmen’s slips,

gives a polite cough and waits.  And waits.

                                                            below stairs

The twelfth housemaid, Eleanor,

serves her apprenticeship on the stairs,

upstairs down with warming pans, dustsheets, mattress stuffing,

lavender bags, pot-pourri, kneeling inflamed on mats in pairs,

brushing up sprinkled tea-leaves from carpets in dusty puffs,

a shadow running the back corridor

                                                            below stairs

A bit of a lad is Daniel, the third footman.

This former hall-boy is in love, he claims, with the second upholsterer,

treating her to an orange nicked from behind the chef’s back

and dreams of the hem of her stiff petticoat as he buffs the silver

and trims the lamps.  In ambition he nothing lacks

but to stay in service like his old man

                                                              below stairs

The between maid or tweenie, young Hope,

belongs to the head housemaid before and the chef after luncheon,

emptying slops or hemming sheets, a seamstress of dreams

to become a lady’s maid, even drinking a glass of punch

round the deal table where she moulds jellies, part of a team,

giving just a hint of carbolic

                                                            below stares

                                                                                    Michael Small