Diamonds at Dinner (12 page)

In any event, the Earl and the Countess seemed to be doing much less in the way of entertaining that year. In part, I think this was down to a general and increasing shortage of money and, in part, because, as the fears of a coming war increased, the gentry seemed to retreat into itself a little and visits to one another's houses grew less frequent. But there was another reason too and it was the answer to the mystery of why the Earl so often missed riding to hounds or left the Countess to go out to dinner with his brother as chaperone. His Lordship, it appeared, had a little bit of a problem with drink.

Now, of course, nothing was ever said officially about this: it would have been literally unthinkable for it to be spoken of openly above stairs. Even in those moments when my mistress seemed closest to me and, as I brushed and rebrushed all that long lustrous hair, shared a few small
intimacies, she never once came close to confiding in me about the master's health. Instead, and as I look back and remember our conversations, she would refer to it obliquely.

‘His Lordship is unwell again today, Mulley.' Or, ‘His Lordship is suffering a little with his nerves and so I shall be riding alone in the morning.'

But in the servants' hall, when Mr Latter's back was turned or he wasn't around to hear, there would be whispers about the Earl's drinking and the effect this was having on his health. I had occasion to see for myself what those effects were when, one morning, Milady told me we were to go away for a few days.

‘We are to motor down to Wales tomorrow, Mulley. We shall be staying with friends and I want you to pack clothes suitable for hunting as well as my usual wardrobe.'

It seemed a long way to go just to chase a few different foxes across the countryside: after all, the Countess seemed to have little trouble in finding quarry here at home and did so several days every week in the season. Still, it wasn't my place to question and so I assured her that black jacket, jodhpurs and stock would be packed and ready.

‘Oh, Mulley, I shan't be riding to hounds.' She said this as if the idea was the most foolish thing she'd ever heard. ‘Otter hunting, Mulley: otters. That is what we shall be doing.'

I'd never heard of hunting otters (although my mistress seemed to think I should have done). But in the 1930s it
was a great favourite of the landed gentry and Britain supported 12 full hunts, each as important in their field as the Croome Hunt was in its. You'll know by now that I wasn't a great one for any sort of hunting and kept as far away from the whole business as possible. I certainly didn't intend being any part of what my mistress had planned in Wales. While writing this book I've had to look up just what an otter hunt involved. And I have to say that it hasn't changed my opinion one little bit.

The sport (if that's what you could call it) goes back to the days of King Henry II. He appointed a King's Otterhunter in 1170 and all the monarchs who came after him kept up royal packs of otterhounds until 1689. This possibly explains why there was so much pomp and sporting ceremony involved in the business: each hunt wore different ‘colours' and the gentry who belonged to them would travel hundreds of miles to be involved.

The day began at first light when the hunters, carrying long poles to feel their way across rivers and ditches, set off in search of their quarry. They would be accompanied by packs of specially bred hounds, trained to follow the otter even in the long periods when it submerged from sight and tried to get away under water. These hounds were taught to follow the scent of the otter as it rose to the surface of the water and then ‘swim' him for as long as six hours until they forced the exhausted creature to land. At
this point the hounds would move in for the kill and the master of the hunt would sound the death knell on his hunting horn. Then the master would cut trophies off the otter: first the rudder, or tail; then the mask, or head; and finally the four pads, or paws. These were distributed to followers of the hunt.

Now I don't know about you but, to me, that sounds barbaric and, even by the time I was in service to the Countess, there was strong feeling in the country that it should be stopped. Sadly, it wasn't and, by the time someone got round to making the poor otter a protected species in the 1970s, it had been hunted to near extinction.

This, then, was what Milady had planned for the trip to Wales. And, after explaining what breeches and oilskins would be needed, she gave me further unwelcome news: His Lordship was to drive us down.

It was the first time I had been in the car with the Earl at the wheel. Rumour had it below stairs that this was not an experience to be looked forward to – and that's exactly how it turned out. I had never felt so frightened as His Lordship drove – at speed and somewhat erratically – down the narrow country roads with their sharp bends. Perhaps because of the accident I'd had on Roland's motorbike, I imagined death waiting for us around every blind corner and wished we could slow down. You have to remember that roads then were far less well-constructed
than they are now and that, whilst a 30mph speed limit had been (rather reluctantly) introduced a few years before, most police forces had made very public promises that they wouldn't be enforcing it. I suppose that, since only the gentry could afford cars, the police were reluctant to stop those whom they regarded as their betters.

So we swerved and speeded all the way to Wales, stopping, I think, for a bite to eat and a drink (no laws against drink-driving, much less breathalysers, back then) somewhere en route. I sat in the back and wished fervently that it was my Roland at the wheel, not His Lordship. By the time we came back – otter hunts would often last as long as nine whole days – I was very glad indeed to see Croome Court. But no sooner was I feeling safe again than the world changed and we inched closer to war.

It is hard to explain to a generation – or rather at least two generations – which has grown up largely free of the fear of war just how terribly each and every one of us felt the crisis, each and every day. I was born during the last world war and my little brother was now approaching an age where he might be called up to fight. For the rest of the servants, all had lost relatives in the mechanised carnage of the Great War – losses that left deep and indelible mental scars. So we followed each new development with mounting alarm.

The crisis had begun a few months earlier when Hitler began provoking trouble in another country on Germany's
borders – Czechoslovakia. Now, I doubt that any of us in the servants' quarters could have told you where that was – don't forget our schooling had been pretty basic and geography tended to concentrate on the great expanse of the British Empire – but I think we all knew something dangerous was afoot. The British government certainly did and, as the crisis worsened, on 22 September the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, took the then unusual step of flying out for a conference with Hitler: his sole aim, he said, was to find a way to stop another war. I really don't think it is an exaggeration to say that almost every British citizen held his or her breath for the next eight days. Finally, Chamberlain flew back, arriving at Heston Aerodrome (this was long before the days when London had a proper airport). As his little plane landed, the waiting press pushed forward to discover whether we were to have peace – or war. Standing beside the tailplane, Chamberlain held aloft a little piece of paper.

Later the same day, the Prime Minister stood outside Number 10 Downing Street and repeated the very welcome reassurance. ‘My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.'

I cannot describe how wonderful that news felt. I think there was cheering in the servants' hall – although in the steward's room I think there was a more refined expression of relief. Chamberlain's most famous phrase, repeated on the wireless and in all the newspapers, was ‘peace for our time'. And goodness knows we were desperate for that peace.

The very next day, Hitler went back on the promises he had given. German troops marched into the northern part of Czechoslovakia called Sudetenland (another place we had to look up in an atlas). It seemed the little piece of paper on which we had placed such store meant absolutely nothing to the Fuhrer. This was followed by reports the next month of two nights of terror in which Nazi-led
mobs smashed, burned and looted Jewish shops and synagogues across Germany and Austria. We were now glued to the wireless each evening to hear the BBC's increasingly grave news bulletins. As Christmas approached, the prospects for the New Year looked, if that were possible, even bleaker than in 1938.

Still, we were determined that, whatever the storms slowly gathering, below stairs at Croome Coourt would see the Christmas in with our traditional party. Now, in all honesty, this was very little different to the servants' ball but the Christmas Party – held on the great day itself – was a time solely for the staff: the Earl and the Countess didn't grace us with their presence and for this we were all rather grateful. Now matter how modern our master and mistress might be, the fact is that having them downstairs felt like a bit of an intrusion. We wouldn't dream of being upstairs in their quarters unless there was work to do, so them coming down to our halls rather emphasised that this was work, not pleasure.

But, as I say, the Christmas party didn't involve the gentry and – despite Mr Latter's teasing of Winnie about her cooking – it was something we all looked forward to. We all of us mixed in and helped out: it wouldn't do to leave all the work to Winnie and even Mr Latter rolled up his sleeves and got stuck in.

The meal itself was the traditional Christmas fare – roast
turkey with the full trimmings. I have to tip my hat to the Earl and the Countess, they did us proud and Winnie and Mr Latter were told to spare no expense on provisions. In previous years we had sometimes been joined for the meal by the servants from Pirton Court – the home of His Lordship's mother a few miles away across the fields. And from what they let slip, our master and mistress were a good deal more generous when it came to Christmas lunch below stairs than they were used to. But both Mr Latter and Winnie had been around long enough to know what the score was: although there were a few more treats than we would have through the rest of the year, they never went over the top or pushed our luck.

There was – of course – no alcohol. That's another thing that always strikes me as completely wrong in the television dramas: they seem to be opening bottles of beer or sneaking a few sips of port at every possible opportunity. I can honestly say that below stairs at Croome Court was always strictly teetotal. Tea – the cup that cheers, as the old advert said – was the only drink we ever saw.

But there would be games – parlour games involving all the staff: pass the parcel or charades were the favourites. And it was during one of these games that Christmas 1938 lived up to the spirit of the year itself. Somehow – I still don't know how – Winnie fell down some steps while balancing a cup of tea in her hand. She was quite badly hurt and it
took us a long time to settle her down and make sure no bones were broken. ‘Here we go again,' I thought. ‘It's been a chapter of accidents and it doesn't look like stopping.'

In fact, the only good thing to come out of that whole day was that I discovered I didn't like smoking. Once we had got Winnie sat down, more or less comfortably, someone brought out a packet of Craven A cigarettes: these were one cut above Woodbines – well, it was Christmas – and had a little band of cork around the end you put in your mouth (in those days filters on cigarettes were unheard of), which made it look a little more posh than your average cigarette. It was also widely believed – and this was probably a legacy of the war in the trenches of France – that ‘having a gasper' was just the ticket if you'd had a nasty shock.

‘Go on, Miss Mulley,' one of the footmen called. ‘It'll do you good – and what with the time of year, you should live a bit!'

So I took my first pull on a cigarette – feeling very glad that Mum and Dad weren't here to see such ‘fast' behaviour by their eldest daughter – and I coughed and spluttered so much I thought Mr Latter would have to call for the doctor. Even when I recovered from that, I felt horribly sick for the rest of the day and I resolved never, ever to touch a cigarette again. Which is why, I think, I have lived a while: for 97 years, in fact.

The first month of January 1939 was indeed a blustery affair. It was as if the weather was taking its cue from the worsening international situation and was doing its level best to depress the whole country. After an unseasonal burst of mildness, by the end of the month the hills were blanketed in drifts of snow, some of them almost three feet deep. It put a dampener on all our spirits below stairs at Croome Court and for a time stopped even the Countess – normally the hardiest of souls – from venturing out in search of foxes.

When the weather did improve, Milady was back riding to hounds and on occasion she took her oldest children with her. I had seen little of Lady Anne and Lady Joan in my time at Croome because they were generally away at boarding school. I had got to know the two youngest children, Lady Maria and little Bill (as we always called him), and I think we had begun to build
quite a real friendship. Although they were mainly the responsibility of Mrs Lovett, the governess, when she had her day off, the little ones came to me. In 1939 Lady Maria was eight years old and a lovely, friendly little thing; Bill was five and a little less loving, but all the same they both liked to come and spend time with me in my big room on the top floor – sometimes when they should have been in the nursery or the schoolroom. I rather think that Mrs Lovett didn't always live up to her name and that the youngsters found me warmer and happier to be with.

The older two girls were by now what we would call teenagers (there was no such word). Lady Anne was 17 and Lady Joan 15, and everything that is difficult and wilful about girls of that age today was concentrated in the younger one – indeed, it was magnified by her privilege and status. I quickly came to realise that my earliest fears about Lady Joan were coming to fruition – and in spades: she was, frankly, a bit of a madam.

This manifested itself mainly in a cast-iron belief that she was allowed to do exactly as she fancied and that no one – certainly not below-stairs staff – could gainsay her. Even a head servant like me or Mr Latter was subject to her whims and her temper.

‘Mulley,' she said to me one day – all imperious and haughty – ‘Mulley, I want to do this today and you are not
to tell me otherwise.' I can't recall exactly what it was but I knew right enough that it was something she was not supposed to be up to and, if I allowed her to get away with it, my head would be on the block.

‘I'm sorry, Lady Joan,' said I. ‘You know that Her Ladyship would not permit that, so I am afraid I must say no to you.' I said it as politely as I could (although I didn't feel terribly much like being deferential to this rude little slip of a girl). Still, she was an aristocrat, the daughter of my employer, and a certain courtesy was required of me.

‘If you try and stop me, I shall tell Mama and then you will be in trouble,' the little minx pouted. ‘In fact, if you dare to get in my way, I shall have you sacked – so there!' Well, my hands were itching: here was a spoiled little madam who needed a fairly swift spanking for her rudeness – and that's exactly what she would have got had she tried anything of that sort with my Mum and Dad. Say what you like about corporal punishment but, when I was growing up, a child jolly well knew his or her place – and cheeking an adult, let alone threatening to have her dismissed from her position, would have been dealt with swiftly and finally with the back of a hairbrush. And I tell you what, people like us learned that lesson from an early age and it served us well in later life.

I must confess that it did cross my kind to give into her little Ladyship: after all, the Countess could be
abrupt enough when it came to dealing with her servants and I had no way of knowing if crossing her darling daughter wasn't going to finish up with me out on the big cold step, suitcase in hand and heading back to Stamford in disgrace.

But we Mulleys are made of sterner stuff than that. ‘Don't you think about that for one minute, Hilda Mary Mulley,' I told myself sharply. ‘Madam here is not going to stamp her pretty little foot and have you dancing to her tune. Even if it isn't a big thing that she wants to do today, give in this one time and she'll have you forever more. Stand your ground – and hope for the best.'

‘Well, Lady Joan,' I said, trying to sound more confident than I really felt. ‘If that's what you must do, I suggest you go straight to Her Ladyship and do it right away. That way we'll both know who was right, won't we?'

For a moment it looked like she might call my bluff, just as I was trying to call hers. It felt absurd – here was I, a grown woman with a good training in tailoring as well as in life, going toe to toe with a remarkably confident – no, arrogant – young lady of the gentry. I held my breath.

In the finish, she turned on her heel and stalked off in a good old-fashioned paddy. I didn't see her for the rest of the day – ‘Sulking,' I thought to myself ‘Sulking little a spoiled child.' – and I never heard a word about it from my mistress. I took it, therefore, that I had won and that Lady
Joan had thought better of running off to tell tales, let alone get me the sack.

But back in my room that night I did begin to worry. Oh, I was sure I'd been right to stand up to the little madam but there was something in her blazing eyes and unnatural self-importance that boded ill for the future. ‘You'll come to a bad end, my proud little Lady,' I thought. ‘A very bad end indeed, if you're not careful.'

As spring turned to summer, we all of us had much greater worries on our minds. The clouds of war were gathering and casting a sombre, fearful mood over the whole country. ‘If Hitler has his way, we'll be back in the trenches by Christmas,' was the gloomy view of the footmen in the servants' hall – an ironic echo of the optimistic phrase uttered by ordinary people as we prepared for the Great War: it'll all be over by Christmas.

Nowadays I don't think so many people know as much as we did about what was going on the world – even with all the television channels and the Internet and suchlike. I wonder sometimes if anyone knows much about the United Nations and who's doing what in it where, or even if they know what it's for. Well, the United Nations didn't exist yet – it would take another world war to bring it about – but after all the suffering and death of the Great War a League of Nations had been set up to try and ensure world peace. It was a pretty inefficient body, that's for sure,
yet people pinned their hopes on it and so we followed the news about its latest failures (and they were legion) with a sort of groaning, inward dread. So when Nazi Germany withdrew from the League, we knew that war was only a matter of time.

Within weeks of Hitler walking out of the League of Nations – ‘taking his bat home' was how it was seen below stairs – we had a pretty good idea what would be the spark to set all of Europe aflame again. The strutting little man with the stupid moustache told the world that Germany would no longer honour its promise not to attack Poland. Again, I'm struck by how closely ordinary people followed the news and understood its significance back then. Maybe it's because we didn't have all the sideshow nonsense of celebrity and glamour but everyone knew that Poland was going to be the sticking point. Czechoslovakia had been bad enough but the Prime Minister had managed to buy time, claiming that it was ‘a little country far away of which we know nothing'. Well, that was largely true – just as it was of Poland – but it didn't stop us caring and worrying and knowing that, if Britain didn't do something, Hitler was just going to march all over everywhere. Would people of my age today have had the same sort of understanding and reaction? I wonder: I really do.

Not that we had much chance of not knowing
something was coming our way. In April the government reinstated conscription for men ages 20 to 21. Not since the end of the Great War 21 years earlier had Britain set in train a mass mobilisation of the nation's young men: it was the first peacetime conscription in British history. The first stage was a requirement for them to register for six months of military training but we all knew that this was only a preliminary to the real business of building up a full-time army strong enough to take on Hitler and the Nazis.

Mum wrote to me in the summer to let me know that call-up papers had arrived for Jim. It felt terrible. Jim was my little brother and the person I'd been closest to growing up. How could he be going away to train as a soldier? But he was and I felt useless and powerless to give him any sort of comfort, stuck miles out in the country at Croome as I was.

As if to spite us, the weather turned very warm and blessed the country with a beautiful summer. As Roland and I walked out around the Croome estate, sitting peacefully by the river, lulled by its gentle noises and warmed by the sun on our backs, I looked around and thought, ‘What will happen to all this? Surely it won't all be swept away?' But I think I knew in my heart of hearts that the coming war would change England – the old, slow, traditional England with its quaint ways and its rigid class system – and change it forever.

The news on the wireless was our constant companion. I don't think there was a single bulletin that wasn't listened to in total silence. But just as the plummy tones of the announcer delivered bad news after bad news, the BBC came up with something inspired to keep our spirits up. It was called ITMA – and I think it was one of the most important weapons we had on the home front for the entire war. ITMA stood for ‘It's That Man Again'. This had originally been a wonderfully sarcastic headline about Hitler in the
Daily Express
as he strutted about Europe, shouting and posturing. I like to think that this determination to poke fun at the man who was turning all of Europe into a bloodbath was typical of the English spirit of pluck – ‘It's that man again. Doesn't he look ridiculous?' Anyway, the BBC took the headline and turned it into the title of a radio comedy series, starring Tommy Handley, then the nation's favourite funny man.

The programme was written as close as possible to transmission because the BBC wanted the scripts to lighten the effect of the latest news with a little gentle send-up. It featured dozens of characters with silly names – Mrs Mopp, the cleaner and Colonel Chinstrap, who was just what you imagine him to be. I read later that the pompous old soldier on whom the character was based was an avid listener to the programme but totally failed to connect the character with himself, and
commented, ‘Wonderful character. I knew silly buggers like that in India.'

These characters became a vital part of what we would today call the national consciousness. I don't think there was a person in the land who didn't know about Mona Lott, the depressed laundrywoman, or Ali Oop, the Middle Eastern salesman. And the show's catchphrases were adopted by the whole country – rich and poor. Everywhere you went you heard, ‘It's being so cheerful as keeps me going,' ‘I don't mind if I do,' and, ‘TTFN – Ta Ta For Now.' One of the most famous – ‘After you, Claude. No, after you, Cecil.' – was a natural for below-stairs staff, but would also be taken up by RAF pilots as they queued for attack on German planes during the Battle of Britain.

ITMA, then, was an antidote to all the dire news piling up on everyone's doorstep. And as August slid to a balmy end, we were going to need as much of that antidote as we could swallow, in the face of Germany's naked intention to invade Poland – we had all been shocked to read that August how Hitler had called a meeting of his military leadership at Obersalzberg and, in a chilling speech, given instructions to ‘kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language'. If any of us had harboured any doubts, this was the moment we knew we were up against a madman. At the end of the month our country and France signed an agreement to come to
Poland's aid in the event of an attack. When we heard the news on the wireless in the servants' hall, we all looked at one another: this was the last chance for peace. Faced with fighting another war with Britain, would Hitler back down or return the world to carnage?

On the morning of Sunday, 3 September 1939, the BBC advised the nation to wait by its sets to hear a broadcast by the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. We would normally have all trooped up to Croome church for the compulsory service – and done so willingly, since prayers to the Almighty seemed our best hope in this dark time. Instead, we clustered around the wireless. At 11.15am the Prime Minister spoke to the people, rich and poor, commoner and aristocrat, servant and master.