When I got a maid's job at the Branson place I was over the moon. I'd seen the place in passing and it was magnificent, three stories and spacious grounds, including a swimming pool. The job included room and board, and it was a single room, no sharing.
The pay wasn't that hot, but when you took in the room and board it was effectively quite a good wage. If you didn't have expensive tastes you could squirrel most of that away, getting a nice little nest egg together.
There were catches, of course. Yes, I could use the pool and the indoor gymnasium, but it was expected that I'd vacate these if the family wanted to use them. I was effectively on call twenty four hours a day, but I'd been given to understand that the family tended to only call on the staff that were currently on duty.
I would be working a five day week, but there was no guarantee that I'd have weekends off. The days we had off rotated amongst the staff and sometimes we'd get a two-day break and sometimes two single-day breaks. It was up to us to keep track of the hours we worked to ensure we got our full time off.
The worst aspect in some ways was the uniform. Mrs Branson had fixed ideas of what her staff should wear and for some reason she'd fixed on the idea of French-maid costumes for us. Not as extreme as they could be, but I always felt a right idiot floating around in that costume. (When I say not extreme, the skirts came halfway down out thighs and cleavage was at a minimum. We also had very lacy panties, and they were proper panties. No bikini briefs permitted.
Where the family were concerned there were only the two of them who actually impacted upon the staff. These were Mrs Branson and her son, known as Mr Branson. I nearly made the howling gaffe of assuming that Mr and Mrs Branson were husband and wife, but I wised up to that in good time.
Mrs Branson was, how to phrase this, not the brightest spark I have known. She wasn't stupid, but neither was she overly endowed with intelligence. Also, once she made up her mind about something she was reluctant to change it. (Hence the French maid uniforms.) On the plus side, she was nice. Firm about having things done her way, but not a bully.
Mr Branson was different. He was the dark prince, black hair, black eyes, black suits and a black car. He also had an intelligence that could cut like a knife. He was the driving force in the family and in the business. He also had the last say in hiring people. Mrs Branson would pick out a short list and then Mr Branson would look them over.
He interviewed me and some other women around my age for the maid's position. Two of the women didn't even get to be interviewed. One of them looked a little young in my opinion. Mr Branson's secretary came out and approached her first. He said that Mr Branson sent his apologies but the house staff had to be legally adults, and she wasn't, so her services would not be required. Then he added that Mr Branson's office was hiring junior staff and if she went to the office he would see she got an interview. Whether she went or not was up to her.
The second woman – wow. She was about my age and a vamp. She treated the rest of us as if we were nobodies, confident that she'd get the job. When she saw Mr Branson walk through she was licking her lips, looking as though she'd drop her panties at a snap of his fingers, almost throwing herself at him.
The secretary approached her next. She gave him a condescending look and deigned to follow him when he asked if she would come this way. He didn't take her to the office but to another door. When he opened it I saw it led outside. The secretary had the vamp ushered through it in no time flat, apologising, and saying Mr Branson said she wouldn't do. I could hear her expressing her opinion of Mr Branson through the closed door, and it wasn't pretty.
After that the four of us remaining were taken into the office one at a time and grilled. I was able to answer all his questions. Whether I answered them satisfactorily was another matter. The man really put us through the wringer. Or he did to me, anyway. I can only assume that he did the same to the others.
After I was chased out of the house I was waiting at the bus stop. While there, two of the other candidates rolled up. We all looked at each other, and I think we all agreed that we all looked as though we'd been grilled.
"Genghis Khan lives," I muttered, and the other girls giggled. It turned out that, like me, they were told they'd get a letter that week announcing his decision.
I was floating on air when I received the notice that I'd been successful. I turned up at the nominated day and time and was met by Mr Branson's secretary. He had all sorts of forms for me to fill in and then escorted me to my new room. There were two French maid uniforms already lying on the bed, waiting for me.
"I'll give you an hour to settle in," Ian said, "and then I'll take you around and introduce you to the other staff members. Especially to our housekeeper, Mrs Adams, as she will be your supervisor. Please her, and you'll get on fine. Annoy her, and you'll probably have to resign. Still, she's a reasonable soul, so you shouldn't have any problems with her.
You might like to try on one of the uniforms as well. They should be your size but if they're not, let Mrs Adams know and she'll arrange for them to be adjusted."
"OK," I said. "Ah, how do you know my size in clothes? It wasn't in any of the forms I filled in."
"Mr Branson saw you, remember? He provided your probable measurements."
Oh, he did, did he, I thought, feeling a little narked. He takes one look at me and knows the size of my panties?
The infuriating answer was, yes. The uniform fitted perfectly. What really incensed me was the fact that he had my bodice size right. I'd thought I'd been playing down my natural statistics for the interview but he'd got them right. Damn it, no man should be that knowing.
For the next few months everything went fine. I was intelligent and willing to work, learnt my work quickly and did it well. Mrs Branson never used the pool and Mr Branson seldom, so I could effectively go swimming whenever I liked. The Branson's did use the gym a bit more but it was easy for me to work out a schedule of when they used it and after that I had pretty much a free run there, as well.
I got on well with the rest of the staff, making sure I was polite and respectful to Mrs Adams. I didn't meet Mrs Branson often but when we did I was polite and she was just as polite back. Mr Branson I rarely saw, which shows that you can be lucky. The few times I did see him I found I had to force myself to be polite. I don't know why but that casual estimation of my clothing size had irritated me. It didn't help that he was deliberately provoking at times. I was absolutely positive it was deliberate. I think he was amused at the way I forced myself to be polite when I wanted to snap at him.
Then came the day of the accident. I actually blame Mr Branson for it. It was one of those days when he was at home for the day. I'd been trotting up the stairs when he appeared at the top for the journey down. Now I think I may have hinted that I was generously endowed in the mammary department. When I was trotting up the stairs there was a certain rhythmic motion to my movements and this resulted in a certain bouncing sway where my breasts were concerned.
Mr Branson stopped at the top of the stairs and watched me as I came up them. He may have thought he had a straight face but I could see the laugh he was hiding. He was mentally stripping off my uniform and imagining me climbing those stairs without it. And there was nothing I could do or say about it. I just gritted my teeth and gave him a polite smile as I passed him.
He on the other hand had something to say.
"You know," he said airily. "I don't believe anyone has ever fallen down these stairs."
I blinked at that. "Excuse me?" I said.
"Ah, I thought you might be wondering what would happen if someone fell down all those stairs," he said, gently smiling at me.
"Ah, no, sir," I mumbled. "The thought never crossed my mind."
Having someone picked up and thrown down the stairs was another matter.
He smiled and ran down the stairs while I went on towards Mrs Branson's suite to do some cleaning.
I was still cross from seeing Mr Branson and that made me just a little careless. A flick there with the feather duster when I should have made a gentle touch and a very nice bottle of perfume got flicked off the bathroom sink onto the bathroom floor. A nicely tiled floor that was a good deal harder than a crystal perfume bottle, especially when the bottle was nearly full.
There was a crash and crystal shattered all over the place and while a dab of perfume is very nice a whole bottle's worth dumped in one place is nauseating. And Mrs Branson walked in at that point.
To say Mrs Branson was displeased would be an understatement. She was livid.
"My perfume," she said, in a very soft voice. "That was my favourite. It was also my last bottle. They don't even make it any more."
By the time she'd finished speaking she wasn't speaking in that soft little voice. She was yelling.
"You clumsy fool," she yelled at me. "How could you do such a thing? Such carelessness is quite beyond the pale. You're through. I'm not having some vandal working for me. How could you do this?"
I was all servile and apologetic. And desperate. I liked this job. I was saving money and the work was relatively easy.
"I'm sorry," I wailed. "Really, I'm sorry. It was an accident. I'll replace it, I swear. You can't fire me for an accident. I need my job. I may not get another one for ages if I'm fired. I'm so sorry."
"You can't replace it," wailed Mrs Branson. "They don't make that perfume anymore. You're a wicked, wicked, girl."
I was pleading hard, desperate to change her mind before she became determined to fire me. Once she told someone else I was going to be fired, that would be it. She'd never back down.
I begged and grovelled and told her how hard I worked and how much I needed this job and what a wonderful employer she was and how much I liked working for her. She slowly calmed down but was still spitting chips.
"Really, it would be unfair to fire me for just one mistake," I cajoled, and you wouldn't want to be unfair, now would you?"
Yes, she would, said the mutinous look on her face, but she was trying to consider other options. She just couldn't think of any.
"I mean, surely you can come up with some other punishment that is more fitting for what was really just an accident," I appealed to her.
"What? What sort of punishment? I never have to deal with punishments. My son or Mrs Adams deals with that sort of thing. But this is personal. That was my perfume. What am I supposed to do? Treat you like a naughty girl and beat you?"
That'd work for me. I was young and fit. I couldn't really see her beating me too hard.
"That would work," I told her. "You could do just that. Treat me like a misbehaving little girl and beat me."
Mrs Branson seemed to perk up a little at the thought of giving me a good slap. I saw her cup her hand slightly and give it a gentle swing as though anticipating hitting me a good one. Then she slumped a little.
"That wouldn't work. I have fragile hands. I'd hurt them if I was to beat you."
"Um," I said, gulping as I suggested it, "you could always use a hairbrush to spank me."
"What paddle your backside? Not with one of my hairbrushes," she snapped, and then looked thoughtful. "Now that's an idea," she said. "You clean up that mess and wait here until I get back."
With that she turned and left the room. I promptly reached for the hose in the shower and turned it on the tiles. Thank god there was a good drain on the bathroom floor. I hastily hosed the remains of the perfume down the drain and then swept up the broken crystal. There was a window that I opened and a fan for steam which I switched on. In an hour or two the scent would be gone. I took a cautious sniff. OK. Maybe in five or six hours, but at least it was now bearable.
I stepped into the bedroom to wait for Mrs Branson. It didn't take her long to return. She'd been to the games room and had fetched back a table tennis bat. I was going to get a paddling. Damn, that thing might hurt. There again, Mrs Branson never did much in the way of exercise so she'd tire fast. I sighed and waited for my instructions.
"Right," said Mrs Branson, smiling happily. "Bend over the bed."
I bent over the bed and Mrs Branson tossed my skirt up.
"Oh, that will never do," she said reprovingly.
