Diamonds at Dinner (10 page)

Luckily, Roland’s parents were sensible, down-to-earth sort of people with no airs or graces, and the Sunday lunch passed off easily and happily. In fact, when it was time to go back, I felt a pang of sadness at having to leave their cosy little cottage, which reminded me of my parents’ house in Stamford, to return to the cold grandness of Croome Court. I had then the sense once again of going
back to prison – a magnificent and (even for us servants) luxurious one to be sure, but a prison nonetheless. I remembered one of the songs that Dad had learned in his childhood and would occasionally sing when the Mulley family got together round the piano.

‘Well, amen to that,’ I said to myself that Sunday, as I clung to Roland’s leather coat and his little motorcycle chugged and tugged me back to the Court. But I climbed the stairs to my bedroom with a warm feeling inside nonetheless: Roland’s parents had insisted I go to lunch again the following week.

Just as my love life, with all its sweet scents of secrecy (don’t forget, the merest hint of a romance could have got both Roland and I the boot, no questions asked), was looking a little brighter, the dangers of another illicit and unsanctioned love affair were about to be starkly revealed. When they did, the whole of Britain – and, above all, the aristocracy – was to be thrown into chaos and consternation.

King Edward – for that’s what he was styled, even though there had as yet been no coronation – was a
bachelor but for the previous few years he had often been accompanied at private social events by Wallis Simpson, the American wife of rich British shipping executive Ernest Simpson. He was Wallis’s second husband; her first marriage had ended in divorce in 1927 and, in and of itself, it was quite shocking for Edward to be seen in the company of a divorced woman – doubly so when she was still the wife of another man. But Edward seemed able and willing to ignore all the social conventions that governed the lives of his subjects and, throughout 1936, Wallis Simpson attended more official functions as the King’s guest. These were announced in the Court Circular in
The Times
every morning and it was noticeable that, although her name appeared regularly, the name of her husband was conspicuously absent. Tongues began to wag in aristocratic circles and, inevitably, some of the gossip leaked down to their servants. I don’t think we at Croome ever learned of the growing scandal from the Earl or the Countess but servants from other great houses sometimes stayed at the Court when their masters and mistresses came to weekend parties – and, by the same token, we often stayed at other grand mansions belonging to the gentry.

In the summer of 1936 the King should have gone to spend the traditional royal retreat at Balmoral. But in a sudden and shocking breach of protocol, he refused and chose instead to holiday with Mrs Simpson in the eastern
Mediterranean on board the steam yacht
Nahlin
. The government – and especially the Prime Minister of the day, Stanley Baldwin – was appalled and tried to reason with Edward but he remained stubborn and resolute.

Now, if the King’s subjects had known all of this, I don’t doubt we would have been as dismayed as Mr Baldwin. For a start, there was a very great distrust of anything foreign – and especially of anything to do with what ordinary people still called ‘the Continong’. For our nation’s father to be cavorting on a yacht there was bad enough but to do so with a divorcee who was still married: well, it would have seemed like the rules by which we had to live just didn’t apply to the gentry.

But we didn’t know – not for a while at least. Do you remember I said that the newspapers didn’t always tell us the truth in those days? In truth, they were sometimes no more than the mouthpiece for the rich and powerful. It was easy enough for Mr Baldwin and his government to persuade them to keep any mention of the King’s indiscretions out of the papers.

The cruise was, however, widely covered in the American and continental European press, and expatriate Britons, who had access to the foreign reports, were scandalised by the reports. They sent letters home to families back in Britain and soon enough the country was talking about little else. By October it was rumoured in high society – and because
we served the gentry, we all got to know – that Edward intended to marry Mrs Simpson as soon as she was free to do so. At the end of that month the crisis came to a head: she filed for divorce and the American press openly announced that marriage between her and the King was imminent. On 13 November, the King’s private secretary, Alec Hardinge, wrote to him with a stark warning:

The following Monday, 16 November, the King summoned Stanley Baldwin to Buckingham Palace and informed him that he intended to marry Simpson. Baldwin told the King that such a marriage would not be acceptable to the people: ‘The Queen,’ he warned, ‘becomes the Queen of the country. Therefore, in the choice of a Queen, the voice of the people must be heard.’

Well, that might have been all fine and dandy if anyone had told us what was going on. But the newspapers remained quiet on the subject, until the Bishop of Bradford gave a speech on 1 December. In it, he alluded to the King’s need of divine grace, saying, ‘We hope that
he is aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his awareness.’ And at that point all hell broke loose. The press took the bishop’s speech as a deliberate public comment by an important figure on the crisis, and the King’s love life became front-page news the following day. It was even reported on the wireless, which told us – since the BBC was usually completely deferential – there was going to be big trouble.

Maybe it’s difficult in these more open – some would say more enlightened – days to understand how much this meant to us and how shocking people like me found the King’s behaviour. I suppose the nearest most of you have come to anything like it was the whole sorry saga of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. But in 1936 people felt the crisis much more deeply. The King was still seen as the father of the country – a wise and steady hand on the tiller of the ship of State. And there was, too, a sense that for him to live by different standards than was expected of his subjects was to undermine the whole structure of the nation. As for me – well, I had a very personal axe to grind about the whole affair. I was having to keep secret my growing love for Roland – who was a perfectly respectable bachelor with no skeletons in his closet – for fear of losing my position. ‘Sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander,’ I muttered to myself as news of the King’s dallying with the unquestionably ‘fast’ Mrs Simpson gripped Britain.

Day after day the crisis got worse. Acting on the advice of Edward’s staff, Mrs Simpson decided to escape from the intense press and public attention and left Britain for the south of France on 3 December. At a tearful farewell, the King told her, ‘I shall never give you up.’

A week later came the news the whole country had been dreading. Edward had decided to step down from the throne – to abdicate. Nothing like this had ever happened in the whole history of the British monarchy and, for ordinary people like us below stairs at Croome, the word ‘abdicate’ was completely unknown: we had to look it up in a dictionary. I can’t properly describe the feelings of shock and fear that gripped us. It was as if the whole,
well-ordered
world we had known was coming to an end.

On Friday, 11 December 1936 we clustered round the wireless set in the servants’ hall. The BBC had announced that the King was to make an address to his people. But as we sat in tense silence, the stern, Scottish voice of the BBC’s Director General introduced him not as our King but as His Royal Highness, Prince Edward. And then came the speech that marked the beginning of the end.

As Edward’s rich, plummy voice echoed round the servants’ hall, I looked across at Mr Latter. His face was a mask, showing no emotion – though I know, like all of us, he must have been churning inside. ‘Here,’ I thought, ‘is how we are meant to behave; here are the standards which we are expected to keep up.’ It wouldn’t do for poor Mr Latter to show any emotion: he was expected to keep a stiff upper lip and to keep all us servants calm and respectful. I looked round at the honest, fearful faces of ordinary people as Edward’s voice carried on.

Mr Latter stood up and switched off the wireless set. With a grim face he told us to stand up. ‘God save the King,’ he said quietly. ‘God save the King,’ we chorused – though which King each of us was thinking of was anyone’s guess.

I
don't know if it was the abdication, coming right at the end of a year in which we had already lost one King, but 1937 seemed to be a year blighted by accidents.

They began on the great stone steps leading from the servants' quarters to the top of the house: the very staircase I had already warned myself to beware of because of the shiny slipperiness of many of the steps. These stairs had already been the scene of a reprimand from Her Ladyship. She had called down for me one day – I don't know why she didn't just ring the bell with my name on it, installed on a board of similar bells at the foot of the stairs. As I hurried to heed my mistress's voice, I had called up, ‘Coming, Your Ladyship,' only to
be greeted with a sharp reprimand from the Countess when I reached her rooms

‘How many times must I tell you, Mulley? You address me as Milady – never, ever as Your Ladyship. Do you understand?'

Well, of course I understood. I'd been very careful always to mind my Ps and Qs and to be sure to use the correct form of address when speaking to the gentry. I had only rarely forgotten – once I referred to my mistress in front of another fine lady as Lady Coventry and suffered the mortifying indignity of being corrected publicly: ‘Mulley, I am the Countess of Coventry, not Lady Coventry. Do try to remember, please.' And there I was again getting ticked off for using the wrong term, in my rush to do her bidding. There was a small part of me that felt it shouldn't really matter – but the rest of me very sensibly shut that part up. ‘I'm very sorry, Milady. It won't happen again.' And I made sure it didn't.

With that history, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when the great staircase was the cause of a rather nasty accident. I had been about my duties, pressing my mistress's clothes or sewing on some buttons in my bedroom, when I was summoned to her presence. There was no question of finishing what I was doing – Her Ladyship insisted on being attended promptly – and so I quickly put down my work and ran to the stairs. As I
reached the banister at the very top, the heel of my shoe caught on something – I never knew what but probably it was the edge of the step – and I flew head over heels down flight after flight. I was going so fast that I ended up right at the very bottom of the house, in the servants' corridor, my legs tangled up behind me and my body twisted into goodness knows what position. It felt like every bone in my body had been snapped in two and then rudely shoved into places where they weren't meant to be. I howled with pain.

‘Mulley!' Through a fog of pain I heard Milady's voice calling to me down the stairs. ‘Mulley, what has happened? Why are you making that noise?' I really didn't have it in me to reply: even if all my bones weren't screaming beneath my skin, the fall had knocked the breath out of me. Luckily for me, Winnie Sapstead came running along the corridor from the kitchen and took charge.

‘Miss Mulley's had a fall, Milady. I think she's quite badly hurt!'

Mr Latter and some of the other servants rushed to where I was still whimpering with pain. As Winnie carefully ran her fingers over me, trying to discover whether I had actually broken anything, or at least anything serious, I saw the Countess's feet and legs appear on the stairs above me and very shortly my mistress was standing beside me.

‘What have you done, Mulley? How on earth did this happen?' I opened my mouth to try and explain but Mr Latter cut in quickly.

‘I believe Miss Mulley has fallen down the stairs, Milady. Quite possibly from the very top of the house. I think, perhaps, we should send for doctor.'

Sending for the doctor was a big thing. This was a long time before the National Health Service was even thought of, much less brought in, and doctor's charged a pretty penny to pay a visit to a patient's home. What's more, they made good and sure they got paid there and then. It crossed my mind as to how I was going to pay him: five bob a week didn't go a long way towards the price of a medical man.

Of course, I needn't have worried. One of the benefits – unspoken ones, for no one ever mentioned this to me when I got the job – of being in service was that the family you worked for paid for the doctor when illness or injury stopped you doing your job. As Mr Latter shooed the other staff away, Winnie whispered to me that it would be all right and that the servants' doctor was going to be telephoned right away. That was the other thing about being in service: those below stairs were never treated by the same doctor as the gentry themselves.

But then my mistress did something completely out of the ordinary. ‘Mr Latter,' she said calmly. ‘Please ensure
you telephone my personal doctor. I should like him to examine Miss Mulley, not your usual one.' Well, the look on Mr Latter's face would have been a picture, I'm sure. I wasn't in any condition to twist my head round to look but he must have been as astonished as I was. For a servant to be treated by Her Ladyship's personal physician was something completely unheard of. What on earth could it mean?

‘Very good, Milady,' I heard him say before he walked briskly to the telephone set on a table outside his room. It was one of the old-fashioned types, which you see in films, and I could hear him lift up the old black Bakelite
earpiece
and then turn the dial to telephone the doctor.

‘Thank you, Milady,' I managed to stammer. ‘And I'm truly sorry to have caused such a fuss. I'm sure I'll be right as ninepence in no time.'

If I was expecting the Countess to continue with the concern that she had showed by sending for her own doctor, I was brought up short.

‘Yes, well, Mulley,' she said abruptly, ‘how did this come to occur? What was it that caused you to fall down the stairs?'

‘I think I must have caught my heel on the top step, Milady. I felt it catch and really that's the last thing I remember about it until I found myself here at the bottom of the stairs.'

The Countess stepped around me and examined my shoes. She stood up and spoke quite sternly – there was no trace of sympathy now in her voice.

‘How many times have I told you not to wear shoes with such a high heel, Mulley? If I've said it once, I have said it a hundred times. Those heels are much too high and the shoes are completely unsuitable. Please ensure you do not wear them again.'

And with that, she turned and was back off up the stairs to her quarters. ‘Well,' I thought to myself, ‘that's you told good and proper, Hilda Mulley. So much for Lady Bountiful and the fancy doctor: when it comes down to it, you're going to be bossed about even when you've fallen down three flights of stairs and damn near broken your neck!'

But of one thing I was certain: whatever Milady said, I wasn't about to stop wearing those shoes because they had high heels for a very good reason. I was no more than 5 feet tall and my mistress a good 12 inches taller. If I didn't have some kind of heel on my shoes, I should spend all my days with my head at the level of her aristocratic bosom – and, whilst there were many things I was prepared to put up with, that was quite definitely not one of them.

As luck would have it, I hadn't broken any bones, although the doctor did insist on several days of rest with no duties. I felt a bit of a fraud sitting there in my bedroom
or in the steward's room and I felt a bit guilty that, on top of her other duties, poor Dorothy Clark was once again having to spend an hour every morning brushing Her Ladyship's hair as well as all the other tasks a ladies' maid was required to perform.

It wasn't too many weeks before the next accident dropped on us at the Court, and this time the roles were reversed from that day when I fell down the stairs. The Countess had gone off on one of her early-morning expeditions with the Croome Hunt. His Lordship had, once again, been too unwell to accompany her. I was preparing her clothes, ready for her return, when I heard a commotion down in the servants' quarters and the sound of Mr Latter once again using the telephone. Not thinking too much about it, I carried on with my task, until Dorothy came and found me, her face white with shock and worry

‘Her Ladyship has had an accident while riding to hounds,' she said in a shaky voice. ‘It looks to be rather a bad fall and she's to be brought here so that the doctor can examine her.'

Now, riding falls can be very dangerous and I knew from talk amongst the servants that Milady was an adventurous and daring rider. If there was a fox to be had, she was leading the charge at full gallop and, if there were hedges or stiles to be jumped, she barely slowed her horse
before leaping them and tearing back into the chase. With Mr Latter's permission, I went upstairs to the great entrance hall and stood beside him, ready for the moment when the Countess was brought in. As we waited, I noticed there were two deep indentations in the stone floor, exactly where his feet were set – grooves worn down by generations of butlers waiting for the gentry.

My mistress's face was drip-white when she was carried in through the door. Her clothes were torn and muddy and she was plainly in a great deal of pain. I expected her to call for her husband whilst she waited for the doctor to attend her. But instead, she said a quite extraordinary thing:

‘I want Mulley to look after me. No one else. You may all go about your duties. Mulley shall be my nurse and attendant.'

You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather! I wasn't even 21 – which made me legally still a child – and I'd never really got a sense from the Countess that I was any more than a servant to her. But here she was, in a great deal of pain and distress, and I was the only one she wanted near her. I must have made some kind of human impression for, when anyone is badly hurt, I guarantee that the person they want to look after them is a person they feel very close to.

Her Ladyship was laid up for some weeks after her fall. I brought her meals to her boudoir and did my best to
ensure that she had everything she could want. But the thing she really wanted was to be up in the saddle again and out chasing foxes across the Worcestershire countryside – and that was not about to happen quickly. In the end, I'm not sure if she did ride to hounds again that season – which is probably a good thing, since the greatest occasion for many a long year was approaching.

The new King – George VI – was to be crowned on the day originally planned for Edward's coronation: Wednesday, 12 May 1937. And the Earl and the Countess were among the gentry invited to be part of the ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

The servants' quarters at Croome Court were positively bustling with excitement. After the shocking events of the previous year and the national condemnation of Edward for his selfishness in putting his own feelings before that of the country (and let me tell you that no group of people understood the idea of sacrifice so much as those of us who were in service), the coronation seemed to be a much-needed shaft of sunlight. With the Coventrys to be away from Croome, there was, in truth, very little additional work for most of the staff to do. But I, at least, was to play a part in the great day: my mistress told me that she would need me to travel with her and His Lordship down to London and to help her get ready for the ceremony.

My first task was to find and see to the gorgeous deep red shoulder-to-floor robe that she – as the wife of one of England's most senior hereditary peers – had to wear. When I located it and went to lift it off its hanger, I let out a gasp of astonishment and nearly fell over: not because of its magnificence – though the velvet fabric was exquisite, the colour like nothing I had ever laid eyes on, and the trim of ermine softer to the touch than I would have thought possible. No, it was the sheer weight of the robe which was truly astounding. How could anyone possibly bear this on their backs for a few minutes, let alone the many hours I knew my mistress would have to wear it? Once again I was struck by just how strong Milady was.

Of course, the garment hadn't been used for many decades – I think, in fact, it was something handed down from one Countess to the next – and needed a few nips, tucks and tweaks here and there. I can tell you that, as I laid the fabulous robe on my bed, never have I taken more care and never was my needlework so neat and precise. It felt like an enormous honour simply to touch this magnificent velvet and the prospect of my young fingers doing some careless damage filled me with dread. But happily, my hand steadied and my needle stayed true and, when I brought it back to my mistress, she expressed herself pleased with my labours.

‘Now, Mulley, we shall travel to London the day before
the Coronation. We shall be staying at the house of my sister, Lady Suffield. His Lordship's mother is sending her man to drive us: London is a long way and Roland has never been there and so will not know the streets.'

Well, I was a bit disappointed in that. It would have been lovely for Roland to have driven us down – not just for me but because he would have seen the sights of half of London decked in ribbons and bunting. I was sad he would miss this but then Milady surprised me again.

‘The BBC is, it seems, planning to film the Coronation and to show it on the new television service. I am hopeful that all the staff who remain here at Croome will be able to find someone with a set and to watch the Coronation on it. His Lordship has given the servants the day off to mark the occasion.'

Now, here was a thing! We had all heard about the BBC's new television service but it was only available in very limited areas and, of course, no one that any of us knew could afford the enormous price of one of the television sets. I made a mental note to ask Mr Latter if there was some arrangement to be made. And then it dawned on me that, in attending the Countess on the great day, perhaps I might be captured on film and people across the country might see me. I wasn't sure how I felt about that idea but I decided to write to Mum and Dad to let them know.