Chapter 4 – Honestly, he has a butler?
I started by making my way into the living room. The previous night, in all my weariness, I had not noticed how messy his living room was. Now, in the fresh mind of a new day, I was shocked at how messy this room was. There was paper strewn all over the floor and clothes on all of the seats. Now I came to think of it, why were there so many seats – it wasn’t like there were many in the house to fill them, and I didn’t think my host really invited many people into the dark and almost sinister confines of his home. Call me stereotypical, but he didn’t really seem the working type.
I busied myself with sorting the various different papers into what I thought were appropriate piles. The papers were full of poems, stories, newspaper articles, some of which I was sure he must have written himself. One in particular stood out to me:
The One?
I met you once,
In a faraway land,
You said hello,
And I gave you my hand.
We danced through the night,
And till dawn the next day,
But when the sun rose,
You ran off and away.
That one time I met you,
Was also my last,
I thought you were the one,
So why did you slip past?
Dedicated to Sarah Jakubovic
My first thoughts after reading this went to Sarah Jakubovic – I wondered who this mysterious woman was – the mysterious woman that had obviously stolen this lonely soldiers heart. My second thoughts were an emotion dangerously close to jealousy. Not that I was actually jealous of course...I hadn’t known him long enough for that. I quickly moved onto the clothes – clothes that obviously hadn’t been worn for ages and should have gone in the washing machine at least a month ago. I made my way to the utility room, put all the light clothes in the washing machine, switched it on and went up the stairs.
I knew what two of the rooms were – one was my room and one was Eric’s. Out of sheer curiosity, I ventured for the first time into Eric's room. His room was fairly large with a double bed – God only knows why he needed that – and a just above average sized wardrobe. I went over to the wardrobe. People often say that what a person wears can tell you a lot about their personality so I gathered it was time to learn a little more about my slightly less than gracious host.
Inside the wardrobe – which was much bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside – there were heaps of suits in a wide range of colours including black, pink, red, baby blue, and bottle green. In fact it didn’t seem like Eric owned much other than suits. At the very end of the wardrobe though, was what had clearly been his army uniform once. It was made up of a khaki coloured pair of shorts, a white t-shirt, and a khaki coloured jacket.
“Excuse me Miss, but I’m not sure if you should be in there,” a voice from behind startled me out of my musings.
“Oh, I’m really sorry – I thought I was the only one in the house,” I stated nervously. “Umm...who are you exactly?”
“I’m the butler Miss.” Of course, he has a butler – I should have known. I thought it was usually wealthy businessmen with different girls round very night that had butlers...but I guess he could probably do with the company. I followed him from the room and back down the stairs. It seemed that my little morning escapades had created more questions rather than answering any of the ones I’d had this morning.
