Diamonds at Dinner (13 page)

I looked around the servants' hall. Mr Latter, Winnie Sapstead, Mrs Lovett: all the head servants; the footmen, the housemaids – I saw a tear glistening Dorothy Clarke's eye – the kitchen and scullery maid, and my own dear Roland. No one said a word. Each was looking inward, thinking of family and loved ones, as I was of Jim, my little brother who would now, I knew, be called upon to fight and to kill and to face men – boys – just like him who would be trying to fight and kill him.

We were at war. And nothing would ever be the same again.

Nine years had passed since Mr Chamberlain’s sombre announcement of a new war with Germany. Nine years – not such a long time in the scheme of people’s lives – and no more than a fraction of the time I have been on this planet. But these were nine years in which everything changed: the whole world was in upheaval, lives were uprooted and – all too often – ended, and the social hierarchies of England, which had seemed so certain to continue when a few short years earlier the country had celebrated the coronation of its new King, were shattered and cast to the four winds.

And what of Hilda Mary Mulley, trained
dressmaker-tailor
turned lady’s maid to the mistress of one of the greatest aristocratic houses in the land? My life, too, would be turned upside down and then inside out. The change began a few mornings after the announcement of war. I was taking my mistress her morning cup of tea, preparing her bath and laying out her clothes when the axe fell.

‘War has come, Mulley,’ Her Ladyship said wistfully. ‘It will be a terrible business – perhaps worse than the Great
War. It will affect every one of us here at home as well as those poor boys who are sent overseas to fight.’ I wondered if she was talking about my brother: Jim was of fighting age to be sure. But then it dawned on me that she had concerns rather closer to home: her husband. The Earl of Coventry was not yet 40 and was sure to volunteer:
noblesse oblige
– the price you paid (for there is always a price for everything) for the privilege of being one of the gentry.

‘Everyone must do their bit, Mulley,’ my mistress continued and I nodded. ‘His poor Lordship,’ I thought. He was never the strongest amongst us – why, even the prospect of riding out to hounds with his wife and children would regularly send him scuttling back to his bed and pleading sickness. How would he possibly cope with the hell of warfare? But my concerns were misplaced, for the Countess had other sacrifices in mind.

‘I shall, of course, join the ATS. I would like you to volunteer also, Mulley. If we join together, you can be assigned as my batman and I shall not have to do without your services.’

So that was what Her Ladyship meant by sacrifice! She wanted me to join up and she wanted this, or so it seemed, not because I would in some way be serving the country in its darkest hour, but so that I could continue to wait on her hand and foot! Well, I’d heard some things – some cheek in my time – but this took the biscuit. ‘You’re in a
real pickle now, my girl,’ I thought as the Countess slipped off to enjoy her hot bath. ‘What on earth are you going to do about this little fix?’

So what was this outfit the Countess wanted us to join? The Auxiliary Territorial Service had been set up a year earlier as the government finally saw that war was coming. There had been a similar organisation set up during the Great War – the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) but that had been disbanded in 1921. The ATS was organised much on the same lines as an all-encompassing body for women in uniform. It was attached to the existing men’s Territorial Army and, that September of 1939 it, too, was made up of volunteers. That would change in December 1941 when all unmarried women between the ages of 20 and 30 were conscripted into service but, for now, there was – in theory – an element of choice about joining up.

I say an element of choice because the mood in the country was pretty much universally that of everyone wanting ‘to do their bit’ – that’s another phrase I haven’t heard for a long, long time: a reminder, perhaps, that in the darkest of hours the nation came together in a way I think we have lost in the decades since. And so there was great – if largely unspoken – pressure from society for girls like me to put King and country before ourselves. But, of course, I was not in the same position as other girls my age. I was
a servant to a great lady and, if societal pressure wasn’t enough, when the Countess said jump, the only real question was: how high? I sighed inwardly. Without a shadow of a doubt, I was going to have to swap my civilian ‘uniform’ (if the white pinny I had to wear for the hours spent brushing Milady’s hair could be called that) for the khaki dress and skirt of a volunteer woman soldier. Still, I consoled myself with the thought that I would at least still be with my mistress and that my duties were unlikely to be much different – war or no war.

I suppose I should have realised, even then, that my life was about to take a dramatic turn for the worse but I think that, with the terrible fear of war which clouded everyone’s mind, I didn’t think too deeply about what was to come – and after all, it wasn’t as if I had much of a choice. So I wrote home to Mum and Dad with the news that I was going to join up.

When the letter came back from Stamford, it was with the news that my brother Jim had also enlisted. The Military Training Act, which had been introduced in April 1939, had required all men of fighting age to register with the army for a six-month training stint. And when the war broke out, a lot of men – my brother was one of them – volunteered to join up full time. Britain could still only muster an army of 875,000 men and within a month of Chamberlain’s speech all men
between the ages of 20 and 23 were ordered to report for duty in one of the armed services. You could, in those early days, choose which one you went into – army, navy or air force. Jim plumped for the army and was assigned to the Royal Engineers, the same unit which I think Dad had served in during the First World War. It felt strange and terribly frightening to know that my little brother – and that’s how I still thought of him – was now to be a soldier and would before long be setting off to fight Hitler’s mighty Nazi military machine. All through the previous two years this had crashed its way into country after country, crushing any opposition in its path: now my Jim was setting off to try and keep it away from the shores of Britain.

Within a day or two of receiving my orders from the Countess, she had been true to her word and joined the ATS. Now it was my turn. I took the bus into Worcester and found the office where I was to sign my papers. I explained to an officious woman in uniform that I was personal maid to the Countess of Coventry, that she had enlisted and that she wanted me to join up too and be assigned as her batman. The woman gave me a look.

‘The army will decide where you are posted and who you are attached to, not your present employer – however mighty she might be. Sign here.’

Did I realise even then what I was doing by putting pen
to paper and carefully inscribing my signature? You know, I’m not sure that I did.

Within a week or so an official brown envelope arrived at Croome Court addressed to Pvt. H.M. Mulley: my
call-up
papers. I was ordered to report to Norton Barracks, on the outskirts of Worcester. Did you notice that title the army had assigned me? I was to be a Private – the lowliest rank in all the service. Hardly surprising, I suppose, but there it was nonetheless. I thought that maybe this was the rank assigned to all batmen, whose main job was to look after the officer assigned to them. And that should tell you something else: while I was to enter service as just another member of the rank and file, the Countess was to walk right in as an officer from day one. It was a very peculiar thing – and a sign of the times we lived in back then – that any member of the aristocracy was automatically assumed to be worthy of an officer’s rank, while the rest of us were gathered up in the somewhat dismissive
catch-all
of ‘other ranks’.

There was a report in the
Daily Mirror
(the paper of choice for families such as mine, although it would never be seen inside Croome Court!) that rather summed the whole thing up. Under the headline GIRLS IN CAMP, the journalist described a visit to an ATS weekend training camp Her Ladyship had attended.

I don’t think anyone would have reported on me as I prepared to do my bit, much less call me ‘one of the most interesting’ women in any camp. Yet there she was, my mistress and employer, being feted in the press and receiving other equally high-born ladies as ‘visitors’. Oh, and for good measure, she had been appointed to the rank of County Commandant.

‘Hey ho,’ I thought. ‘That’s just how the world is,’ and went to tell my mistress that I had done as she asked and that I had made clear to the ATS that the Countess of Coventry had requested I be assigned to her as a personal servant.

As it turned out, the officious officer at my signing on had been far more astute than either Milady or me. The army, in all its wisdom, had decided that the Countess was to be based at a quite different set of barracks, many miles away from Norton, at Warwick. Her great plan for us to see the war through together – with me still meeting her everyday clothing and bathing needs – was not to bear fruit. For the first time in five years we were to be separated.

Now, maybe that doesn’t seem like much to you but you have to remember that I was only 19 when I joined the staff at Croome and my adult life to date had been bound up completely with hers: every part of my day was tied to Milady’s needs and wishes. Whilst I could never say that she replaced my family, in a funny way I was terribly fond of her – as well as being completely dependant on her too. After all, my food, my warmth and the very roof over my head were all part of the job of being in service to a great lady.

That’s when it hit me. With my mistress away in one barracks and me serving at Norton, I was going to have to leave Croome. There would be no reason for me to stay on in the lovely big room at the top of the magnificent house because there would be no Countess living there to serve. I was going to lose my home and, with it, everything I had loved. Because I had grown to love the place. I treasured the times when I was free to wander over the vast estate – a place of wonder and peace and tranquility. My friends – such as I had – were other servants: I had barely seen my old school chums from Stamford in the five years I was in service. And then there was Roland, the man with whom I was in love and who had become so precious to me. What was to happen to our romance? And what would happen to him?

Roland, of course, volunteered. He was, by then, 35 and,
although men of his age were not yet being called up, he felt it was his duty. But the army had other ideas about that too. In those days you had to be assessed by a doctor and pass a fairly strict medical to enlist. Roland failed, marked down as medically unfit to serve. It was a terrible blow to him: men that he knew were already in uniform and being sent overseas to fight. Even His Lordship, with all his seeming illnesses, was accepted and given a commission.