caring for his clothes, looking to his comfort, running errands if he asks it, even cooking for him in certain cases, and generally knowing the gentleman’s secrets – but never, ever breathing a word of those secrets to another soul. Can you do all that?”
Christopher looked a little stunned by this. I remembered how Christopher, so oddly, had not seemed to know why he was here, and I realised that this was my best chance ever of making sure I got this job. “I’d like doing that a lot,” I said.
“Me too,” Christopher said promptly. “Looking after clothes and keeping secrets are the two things I do best, Mr Amos.” I began to think I hated him.
“Good, good,” Mr Amos said. “I’m glad to see you both so ambitious. Because of course it will take some years of training before either of you are up to a position of such trust. But both of you seem quite promising material.” He rocked back and forth on his small shiny feet. “Let me explain,” he commanded. “In a few years I shall probably be retiring. When this happens, my son, Mr Hugo, will naturally take over my position in charge of Stallery, as I took over from my father here. This will leave untenanted Mr Hugo’s current post as valet to Count Robert. My aim is to train up more than one candidate for this position, so that, when the time comes, Count Robert will have a choice. With this in mind, I propose to appoint the pair of you to the position of Improvers, and I expect you to regard yourselves as rivals for the honour of becoming, in time, a proper valet. I shall naturally recommend to the Count whichever of you most meets with my approval.”
This was wonderful luck! I could feel my face spreading into a relieved grin. “Thank you!” I said, and then added, “Mr Amos, sir,” in order to start by being respectful.
Christopher seemed equally relieved, but also slightly bewildered. “Er, won’t you need to see any of my references, sir?” he asked. “One of them is quite glowing.”
“Keep them,” Mr Amos said, “for your own encouragement. The only reference I need is my own powers of observation, honed through many years of scrutinising young applicants. You no doubt saw the ease with which I distinguished who, among your companions, was likely to make a kitchen apprentice, who were potential maidservants and who could only become a gardener’s boy. I can do this in seconds and I am almost never wrong. Am I, Mr Hugo?”
“Very seldom,” Hugo agreed, from the other side of the room.
Neither of us had seen him come in. We both jumped.
“Take Christopher and Conrad to their quarters, Mr Hugo, show them the establishment and acquaint them with their hours,” Mr Amos said. “We have our two Improvers, I am glad to say.”
“Yes, sir. Where do they eat?” Hugo asked.
We could see this was an important question. Mr Amos looked gravely at us, looked at the ceiling, and rocked on his feet. “Quite,” he said. “The Middle Hall will be their station once it is in use, but since it is not…Not the Lower Hall, I fear. Young men are too prone to horseplay with the maidservants. I think we must reluctantly do as we temporarily did with the footmen and allow them to eat in the Upper Hall until the period of mourning for the late Count is past and we have Stallery full of guests again. Show them, will you. I want them present and properly dressed when I Serve Tea.”
Hugo held open the door beside him and said, in his pleasant way, “If you’d come with me, then.”
As I picked up my plastic bag and followed Christopher through that door, I was nervous all over again, in quite a new way. I felt as if I had accidentally entered the priesthood and wasn’t cut out for it. I expected Christopher to be feeling the same; but, as Hugo showed us into a slow brown lift – “Strictly for Staff,” he said. “Never show Family or their friends to a Staff lift” – and pressed button A for the attics, I could see Christopher was wholly delighted, bubbling over with delight, as if he had just won a game. He looked the way I felt whenever Uncle Alfred pleaded with me to go on doing the cooking.
Christopher seemed quite unable to contain his joy while the lift climbed sluggishly upwards. “Tell me,” he burst out at Hugo, “will Conrad and I learn your trick of entering a room through a crack in the floorboards? I once read a book where a manservant was always oozing in like some soundless liquid, but with you it was more like soundless gas! You were just there! Was it magic?”
Hugo grinned at this. Now I knew he was Mr Amos’s son, I could see the likeness. He had the big lips and the snubby nose, but in Hugo it was rather nice-looking. Otherwise, he was such a different size and shape, and seemed such a different sort of person, that it was hard to see him stepping into his father’s place when Mr Amos retired. “You’ll learn how to enter a room,” he said, leaning against the wall of the lift. “My father had me doing it for hours before he let me go into a room where the Family were. But the main thing you’ll learn – I’m warning you – is how to be on your feet for fourteen hours at a stretch. Staff never sit down. Any more questions?”
“Hundreds,” Christopher said. “So many I can’t think what to ask first.” This was evidently true. He had to stop and stare at the wall, trying to decide.
I seized the space to ask, “Should we call you Mr Hugo?”
“Only in front of my father,” Hugo said with another grin. “He’s very strict about it.”
“Because you’re the heir to the butlership?” Christopher asked irrepressibly.
“That’s right,” said Hugo.
“Rather you than me!” Christopher said.
“Quite,” Hugo answered, rather sadly.
Christopher looked at him shrewdly, but he said nothing else until the lift finally made it up to the attics. Then he said, “My God! A rat maze!”
Hugo and I both laughed, because it was like that up there. The roof was quite low, with skylights in it, so you could see narrow wooden corridors lined with doors running in all directions. It was warm and smelt of wood. I’m going to get lost up here, I thought.
“You’ll be sharing a room along here,” Hugo said, leading the way along a corridor that looked just like any of the rest. All the doors were painted the same dull red-brown. He opened a door like all the others. “You’ll have to be careful not to make too much noise up here,” he remarked. “You’ll be among quite senior Staff.”
Beyond the door was a fresh white room with a sloping ceiling and two narrow white beds. The little low window looked out at blue mountains and sun streamed in. It smelt of warm whitewash. There was a carpet, a chest of drawers and a curtained corner for hanging things in. It was rather nicer than my room at home. I looked at Christopher, expecting him to be used to much fancier bedrooms. But I’d forgotten he’d just spent a month in a gypsy caravan. He looked round with pleasure.
“Nice,” he said. “Companionable. Twice as big as a caravan. Er – bathroom?”
“The end of the corridor,” Hugo said. “The corner room on every passage is always a bathroom. Now come and get your uniforms. This way.”
I hurriedly dumped my plastic bag on a bed, wondering if I would ever find it again, and we followed Hugo back out into the corridor.
Here Christopher said, “Just a second.” He took off his narrow silk tie and wrapped it round the
