Invisible servants
Text 1: Three Days Below Stairs, by Sarah Dimmock
An original diary written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.
Monday. Up at five to black the grates and carry the coals to three floors before the family stirs. By the time Mrs Ventnor comes down to breakfast the house is warm and the boots are clean and the step is whitened, and she looks at none of it, for a warm house is only what a house is meant to be. She notices a thing only when it is wrong. Today there was a smear on the silver mustard pot no bigger than a fingernail, and she held it up to the window and said ‘Dimmock,’ and nothing else, and that was worse than a scolding.
Tuesday. The family had visitors to dine and I waited at table, which I am told is a step up. Eight people talked over my arm for two hours as if it were a piece of furniture that happened to hold the gravy. A gentleman spoke of the servant question, and said that girls nowadays were idle and impertinent, and helped himself to the potatoes I was holding while he said it. I kept my face as still as a plate. I have got very good at that.
Wednesday. Master Charles, who is six, came down to the kitchen in his nightshirt because he had a bad dream, and he would not go back up until I had told him the story of the three goats twice through. He asked me whether I had a mother. I said I had, in Norfolk, and he asked why I did not live with her, and I could not think what to tell him. He has asked me every night since whether I have had a letter. He is the only one in this house who knows I have a mother at all.
Text 2: The Night Shift, by Lucia Barros
An original contemporary article.
I clean offices in the city between ten at night and four in the morning. When I arrive, the building still holds the warmth of the people who have just left: chairs pushed back, half-drunk coffees going cold, a cardigan over a monitor. When they arrive the next morning, it is as if the night never happened. The bins are empty, the carpets are hoovered, the kitchen gleams. That is the job. If I do it perfectly, nobody knows I exist.
Sometimes a worker stays late, and then I learn exactly how invisible I am. People carry on phone calls while I lift their feet to vacuum under the desk. One man, a manager I think, talked for twenty minutes about his divorce to someone on speaker while I emptied his shredder, as though I were the shredder too. I do not take it personally. I suspect he would have said the same things in front of a lamp.
But there is a woman on the fourth floor who leaves me notes. It started with a sticky label on her monitor: ‘Thank you for finding my earring!’ Then a chocolate bar with ‘For the night shift’ written on the wrapper. Last month she left a postcard from her holiday in Lisbon, which is where I am from, though she cannot have known that. I keep it in my locker. I have never seen her face. She has never seen mine. And yet she is the only person in the building who has ever made me feel that the work was being done for someone, rather than for a building.
‘Both texts show that people who serve others are invisible to those they serve.’
How far do you agree with this statement?
In your answer you should:
Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.
40 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE English Language 2.3.9 Explore connections across texts. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.