EXTRACT FOR
National Domestic Service
(Miranda Birch)

They trooped off the train with their suitcases. The lady guard was there, grinning, as they disembarked. 



"How does it feel?" she asked Eric. Eric flushed, hung his head. She gave a cruel grin. And as Alan passed her she slid a hand behind him and gave his bottom a vicious pinch. 



"Over to the waiting room," she told them. 



No one gave the group of six young men in T-shirts and shorts as much as a glance as they marched along the platform. Here, male domestic service was now familiar and accepted as routine. They passed a girl of about their own age, fair-haired and pretty, who laughed lightly. 



"Why don't you come and work for me?" 



No one had the spirit to answer. They were all too tense and apprehensive now that the moment of truth was almost upon them. The girl was joking, of course: you had to be twenty-five and a female householder to have one of the young men doing his National Domestic Service. 



An older lady stood at the door of the waiting room, a pad in her hand. 



"Come along, hurry up. You're ten minutes late and keeping the ladies waiting." 



This was it, then. The fate of each of them for the coming twelve months was to be decided in the next few minutes. They were vaguely aware of a number of ladies sitting in the room as they were ushered through to an inner room. The door was closed behind them. 



"Right. Now listen to me, you young men. You will be inspected as a group and the ladies will come in one by one to make a choice. Strip down to your underpants and stand in a line. I have six ladies so you should all be selected. However, if one of you is not thought suitable, I shall have to get rid of him later. Now, be quick. I want to start in five minutes." 



She went out and closed the door. They looked at each other. It was like a cattle market. Or more accurately a slave auction. Silently they began removing their clothes. The six ladies waiting outside were typical of the Bareham property-owning classes. Once upon a time, such people would have had servants as part of their household. Now at last after all these years they could do so again. Only now of course there were those subtle differences. Now it was the lady of the house and not the man who was the official property owner and it was the lady who was in sole charge of the young (male) servant. 



The six women were mostly youngish, in their twenties and thirties; and two somewhat older, in their forties. For two young wives, both just twenty-five, this would be their first young man and they were understandably excited, though they preferred not to show this. Their order of inspecting would be determined by the order in which they had made application to the local domestic service department. Normally a young man stayed in one household for the whole year but if during that period his Mistress was dissatisfied or felt like a change she could exchange him. some ladies did like a fresh young man at more frequent intervals than a year. 



It was one of these in fact whose name was first on the list. Mrs Marjorie Haversham. She was one of the older ones, a full forty-three summers, but handsome and well preserved, a full-bodied brunette in a clinging summer dress. She had changed her last two houseboys after six month intervals. As she had informed the other waiting women she had been two weeks now without one and was really getting `somewhat desperate.' 



Desperate for what exactly? One or two of the others silently asked themselves. To get the household chores done... or to enjoy herself with a cane or strap? Or perhaps even something else? the lady from the domestic Services Department went in the inner room again, then came out.