Diamonds at Dinner (9 page)

I have to say I'd never read such rubbish in my life. Three evenings off per week? Going riding in Rotten Row (which I'd never heard of but turned out to be a famous pathway in London's Hyde Park)? And owning a house? Good grief, if this was the life some servants were living, I can assure you it wasn't what we were used to at Croome. And as for ladies being ‘broken and shattered in health' – well, from what I'd just seen, my mistress was as healthy as a horse and probably a great deal less shattered than the one she'd just ridden for a full day. No, the newspaper was not to be relied on, I decided.

As it happened, I was closer to the truth than I knew. For that year trouble was brewing – trouble which would eventually turn the country on its head, despite the best efforts of newspapers to keep it all under wraps. It began in December with word that the King's health was declining. His Majesty had been seriously ill for many years, the result, largely, of his habit of chain smoking cigarettes. But 1935 was the silver jubilee of his accession to the throne and, in a way that I don't think people understand today, he was both a distant and severe father figure to the nation and, at the same time, genuinely loved.

So news of his latest illness was received with solemnity and sadness. In the servants' quarters at Croome it was discussed in hushed voices, as if our chatter could somehow disturb the King in his bed more than a hundred
miles away at Windsor. It cast a shadow over the growing excitement of the season.

Christmas was coming and what a sense of excitement began to take over the Court. Deliveries of food and drink began arriving almost daily, keeping Winnie busy in her pantry, while in his room Mr Latter set to, to write down all the fine wines, ports and brandies in the large ledger he kept as the necessary records of what was in the vast cellar full of alcoholic drinks. The Earl and the Countess were never great entertainers but, as the month wore on, so did the frequency of their dinner parties increase. These were grand affairs and Winnie would hardly know if she was coming or going, what with making all the courses – and there were several on each occasion – from scratch. I, of course, had little part in the proceedings but for the poor kitchen and scullery maid it was a time of constant scrubbing of vegetables and beating of eggs, while the ovens positively groaned with freshly baked bread and whatever fish, fowl or flesh was on the menu. But if I was, by dint of my position, somewhat apart from all that was going on, the Coventrys' dinner parties did bring me two very welcome benefits.

The first was that Winnie put aside the leftovers (and some which might not strictly ever have seen the tables upstairs!) and we head servants had first go at them. In truth, this was something of a double treat since, not only
were we dining on very fine fare indeed but, when it came to our normal below-stairs meals, Winnie was not what you could call the most careful of cooks. Many was the time in that year – and those which followed – when a row would break out in the kitchen over the vittals we were served up. It would typically start with a sigh from Mr Latter and a regretful expression as to the delights of our dinner. ‘Winnie, Winnie – what have you done to this?' would be his normal opening remark, to be followed by a generally good-natured – though undoubtedly pointed – ribbing over something that was overdone, or underdone or just plain not there at all. Now, Winnie Sapstead was, in many ways, quite highly strung and it wouldn't take long before her dander was up and she and Mr Latter would be going at it hammer and tongs – and (at least figuratively) soup ladles and saucepans as well. But give Winnie her due, the dinners she and her staff prepared for the gentry – well, they were a fine sight to see and a delight to taste. And so when we got to sup from their menus, it was very welcome indeed.

The other benefit which came my way walked into the servants' quarters on the first fancy dinner party that December. Roland Newman had put aside his chauffeuring and waterworks duties to come and help out as an assistant footman. He was quickly put to work by Mr Latter, whose job it was to make sure that the servants
waiting on the groaning tables upstairs did so almost without being noticed. But I noticed him, and he noticed me, and both of us were pleased to do so.

Christmas wasn't just about the increased pace of life upstairs: it meant a little something coming our way below them too – and also the highlight of the year for people in service: the Servants' Ball.

In those days every great house had a Servants' Ball – though not, for reasons you'll see, all at the same time of year. In the grandest of them all – places such as Welbeck Abbey, where the Duke of Portland employed more than 60 staff in the house, with a further 200 labouring away in the stables, gardens and home farm – the Ball would be an incredibly lavish affair, more grand even than many of those held by royalty today. For example, Welbeck's annual Servants' Ball was so huge and so posh that the Duke paid for an orchestra and 50 waiters to be brought in from London.

At Croome – and this was possibly another sign of the money worries that were bearing down on His Lordship – the Earl didn't go in for anything so expensive. The music was to be provided by a gramophone and, as for servants, well, we all mucked in to serve the food ourselves. But the food was good (although no alcohol was permitted) and there was to be dancing.

‘Her Ladyship will open the dancing by taking a turn
round the floor with me,' Mr Latter told me as the great day drew near. I looked at the floor of the servants' hall and wondered if its rough and uneven flagstones might not catch Milady's dainty slippers and the whole evening would come crashing down. But evidently nothing like this had ever happened and Mr Latter moved on to my role in the proceedings.

‘After that His Lordship will approach you and ask you for the second dance. You are, of course, to accept graciously.' Well, I don't know about being gracious but I certainly knew my place – and in any case, I couldn't resist a little thrill at the prospect: here I was, Hilda Mulley, just a slip of a girl from a very humble background and, within a few months of leaving Stamford, I would be dancing cheek to cheek with one of the oldest and most noble aristocrats in the land. That was something to write home about, to be sure.

But that thought also brought a little sadness to my mind. I would have to write and tell Mum and Dad that for the first time ever I wouldn't be with them at Christmas. One of the prices paid for being in service was that work didn't stop for the season: the Croome Court would still need to be kept running. For all of us below stairs, that meant that work didn't stop as it might if you were working in a factory or in an office. Christmas Day was the one day off we were given – and even then all of
the staff were required to attend the morning service in Croome church. The knowledge that I wouldn't see Mum and Dad, or Joan and Jim, at Christmas took a bit of the edge of my excitement.

When Christmas Eve came – the night of the Servants' Ball – what a hustle and bustle there was throughout the house. Our routine duties continued as normal: I brought the Countess her cup of tea, ran her bath and laid out her clothes just like any normal day and, for Winnie, the work was, if anything, even more demanding than usual. But I think I detected in my mistress's rich strong voice – which now I had come to know it, had a tinge of a lovely Welsh accent to it – a little less formality and a little more warmth.

For my part, I was anxious to get ready for the evening. I had made myself a new dress for the occasion – a lovely long gown in my favourite dark green and trimmed with white ‘fur' (of course, it wasn't real fur – I couldn't afford that on five bob a week) and I needed to make the final adjustments to it.

The evening was set to start at 6pm and by late afternoon I was freed from my duties in time to put the finishing touches to my dress. Winnie and Mr Latter knew I had been hard at work on it for several weeks and one or other of them produced a camera – a little old Box Brownie, which, if you've never seen one, was really no
more than a cardboard box and a tiny lens. To my absolute astonishment, they told me I was to go and put on my new gown and make my way up to the very top of the Court and then out onto the rooftop. There was a sort of a walkway up there between the roof tiles and the ornamental topping and I was to meet them up there.

I scurried along the basement corridor and flew up the great stone staircase – I made a mental note that, if I wasn't careful one day, I would come a cropper on the slippery steps – until I gained the sanctuary of my room. Here, with my fingers all a-fumble, I somehow managed to get into my gown and, after flapping and fussing with the trim, I climbed the steep staircase to the roof and stepped out onto what seemed to me like the battlements of some great castle.

Mr Latter and Winnie were waiting for me and for the first time in my adult life I was told to pose for the camera. Looking at the picture now, I can see a grin on my face that stretches from ear to ear. Fancy little old me having their portrait taken on the very roof of such a great house. By the time I clambered my way back down to the servants' quarters I must have looked like the Cheshire Cat!

At 6pm sharp my mistress swept into the big room where our ball was to be held. But of the Earl there was no sign.

‘His Lordship is indisposed and I am afraid he will not be able to join you all tonight,' the Countess announced. Hmm, there it was again, that slight sense of something not being quite right. The Earl was quite a young man in those days – just 35 years of age, which was younger than Mr Latter and, indeed, Winnie. Could he really be so poorly as not to be able to spend just a few minutes with his servants on Christmas Eve?

‘Well,' I thought to myself as the Countess took to the floor for the first dance with Mr Latter, ‘at least I shall be spared the embarrassment of having to step out with His Lordship this evening.' Much as I loved dancing, I had been quietly dreading the moment when I would have to join hands with an aristocrat and, for all I knew, one or other of us was quite likely to turn the whole business into a ridiculous spectacle. ‘It's an ill wind that doesn't blow some good, at least,' I thought.

My mistress didn't stay long with us that evening but before she left she handed out Christmas gifts to all the staff. I think for most of them she placed a small brown envelope with a few silver coins in their outstretched hands. But for me she had something special: it was a beautiful brooch, which sparkled and shone as if the stones in it were real diamonds. I wasn't so silly as to think that they would be real but, to me, it was the most precious thing I had ever owned and I pinned it on my new gown
with pride and with a promise that I should never, ever let it go.

I couldn't have known how, in a few short years, that promise would be betrayed and all the happiness and warmth that I felt that night would be snatched away from me.

O
n the evening of Monday, 20 January 1936, all of us in service at Croome Court were sitting quietly in the hall where the under servants took their meals. We were clustered around a big, old-fashioned wireless set, staring at its lacquered woodwork and glowing valves. We were waiting for an announcement from London.

From 9.30pm onwards the ordinary broadcasting programmes were stopped and all the stations of the BBC, including those conducting the shortwave service transmitted to Britain’s far-flung Empire, were linked together but kept utterly silent, save for the transmission of an official bulletin at 15-minute intervals. The subject of that bulletin was the rapidly deteriorating medical condition of His Majesty, King George V. At 10pm, as we
sat there in hushed respect, a short service of recollection and prayer for the King was broadcast, after which the silent watch between bulletins was resumed.

Finally, at a little after midnight, the tired, upper-class voice of a BBC announcer crackled across the airwaves: ‘This is London. The following bulletin was issued at nine-
twenty-five.
The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close.’

It is hard for me to put into words how deeply sad we ordinary people felt that night. In those long-ago days the King was as central to our lives as anything you can imagine. Our loyalty to him was something we imbibed with our mothers’ milk and was as taken for granted as the mugs of strong brown tea that sustained the nation.

Yet it is also true to say that we knew almost nothing of him and little of his family. Indeed, I don’t think I ever heard the phrase ‘the Royal Family’ in all of my time in service – that was a much later creation and one which arrived hand in hand with the demystifying of our monarchy through the medium of television. In that first month of 1936 I doubt you could have found anyone of our class who would know the names of any but the closest of the King’s family; but by the same token, I’m sure you would have to search long and hard to find any man, woman or child who would hear a word said against him. If he was a distant father figure, well, then he was still the nation’s father: that’s how we felt back then.

Although the idea of television had been invented by then (news of a proposal 12 months earlier to begin work on a broadcasting network had been given a cautious welcome by the
Worcester Evening Post
and had been much discussed below stairs at Croome), the wireless was our main source of contact with the outside world. In fact, for all of us there on that sad night, there was a strange sense of community with the rest of Britain and her still-mighty Empire. The BBC Home Service (as it was then called) was like a gigantic public-address system, with literally millions of listeners in all parts of the world all tuning in at the same time, hanging on every last word about the deteriorating health – and ultimate quiet passing – of their Sovereign.

‘We will stand for a minute of silence,’ instructed Mr Latter. And we all got to our feet, our heads bowed and deep in our own thoughts, as 60 seconds of silent respect were observed.

I suppose there must have been the same tableau played out in homes up and down the land – from terraced cottages like the one where my parents stood, heads bowed, to the greatest of houses occupied by the gentry and their staff. But in many of those – as in ours – the passing of the King had a significance that did not apply to the ordinary people of Britain. There would be a coronation, and our masters and mistresses must play their parts in its pomp and pageantry.

First, there was to be a funeral and the question of the succession. On Tuesday, 28 January the streets of London were lined with people as, under grey and rain-filled skies, at 9.45am the King’s coffin was placed upon a gun carriage to be escorted by an honour guard of his soldiers to its final resting place. In those pre-television days none of us could watch the procession – at least, not as it happened. But the cameras of Pathé Newsreel were present and within days a special ten-minute film was playing in cinemas the length and breadth of Britain. The grainy film and cloudy skies were made even more sombre by the near complete silence. The Queen was captured, clad from head to toe in black widow’s weeds, climbing into the State carriage. The narrator’s voice on the film solemnly announced that the world was watching.

The procession, led by the King’s son, included five kings of European countries: one of the last times – had we but known it – that there would be so many monarchs gathered together in one place. This, I felt, was more than the passing of our dear King: it was the end of an era – and
who could know what the next one would bring. There had already been one unpromising sign: during the procession, part of the Imperial State Crown had fallen from on top of the coffin and landed in the gutter as the cortège turned into New Palace Yard. The new King, Edward VIII, saw it fall and, so we were told, wondered whether it was a bad omen for his coming reign.

It’s one of the funny things about the aristocracy that they don’t seem to be in any hurry to get things done. And so Edward’s coronation was set to take place more than a full year after he technically ascended to the throne, in May 1937. From my point of view, though, this would be a good thing: Mr Latter had already told all of the Croome servants that the Earl and the Countess would be among the first names on the guest list – and that meant an enormous amount of extra work for the whole household.

In the meantime, though, 1936 had only just started and the year stretched out before us. Milady still went fox hunting (while His Lordship seemed to cry off as many times as possible); their children were growing and becoming quite a handful; and as February turned to March, one morning the Countess had new instructions for me.

‘We are to go away from Croome, Mulley. We are to spend a week or so at Amroth. Please see to it that all I will need is packed carefully and made ready.’

‘Of course, Milady. Will His Lordship be coming – and
the children too?’ I could have guessed the answer but I asked the question nonetheless.

‘No, Mulley. His Lordship will be staying here at Croome. As for the children, Lady Joan and Lady Maria will be away at school but the younger two will be coming with us.’

‘How shall we travel there, Milady? Isn’t Amroth a long way from here?’

‘Roland will drive us in the Standard,’ she said – and my heart skipped a little beat. ‘Steady, girl,’ I told myself. ‘Just you steady down now.’

Amroth – or to use its full title, Amroth Castle – was, indeed, a fair old haul. It was the family seat of Her Ladyship’s mother and father, Lord and Lady Kylsant, more than 160 miles away near Carmarthen on the South Wales coast. It was the first time that my mistress had returned home – at least in the time I’d been with her – since her father had been released from his 12-month jail sentence for fraud. I have to say that I was very glad my Mum and Dad didn’t know about the visit: I could just imagine Dad’s reaction – ‘My girl in the house of a jailbird!’ – and hear the sound of his foot being put down very firmly indeed.

As it was, I knew next to nothing about Lord and Lady Kylsant, nor about the kind of household and servant staff they kept after his fall into disgrace. But my mistress was about to fill in at least one gap in my knowledge and, with
it, dash any hopes I might have had of the possibility of seeing the dapper chauffeur about the castle.

‘Robert will be staying in an hotel in Carmarthen, Mulley. Lady Kylsant is very strict about propriety and it wouldn’t do for a male servant to be seen staying in the same house as one of our female staff.’

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘it’s perfectly all right for you to go and stay in the house of a man who has brought dishonour on your family name – and to drag me there with you – but when it comes to us servants, we must be seen to curtsey and bow in the face of what’s proper. Father or no father, I know what that smells like.’ But I kept this thought to myself. No good would come of upsetting the apple cart – even if I’d ever thought of speaking back to Milady. ‘Anyway,’ I told myself, ‘you just jolly well stop those silly girlish thoughts of romance. They’re a short cut to a very swift downfall and an aristocratic boot propelling you out the door.’ Still, the double standards – for that’s what they were – rankled with me and I wasn’t looking forward to the visit, not one bit.

I’d like to be able to tell you that I was proved wrong; that our stay in Amroth Castle was as pleasant an experience as it could be for a lady’s maid. But I can’t. The journey was very long – not only did cars travel a lot more slowly in those days but the roads themselves were nothing like as solid and reliable as they are today – and no one had even heard the word motorway. It took hours and hours to get
there and, once we arrived, I found Lord and Lady Kylsant’s staff to be stand-offish and not at all friendly. ‘Well, maybe there’s a reason for that,’ I told myself. After all, it’s the gentry that set the tone and the standards, and that didn’t exactly look promising when you thought about the recent past. All in all, I was glad to get back to Croome – and that’s something I hadn’t thought I’d hear myself thinking.

Back in the relative comfort of the servants’ quarters – and of my enormous bedroom, which, I’m slightly ashamed to say, I had begun to take for granted – I made two distinct resolutions. The first was to find out a little bit more about His Lordship and why he so rarely accompanied my mistress. The second was to allow myself the chance to consider a romance. Although Roland Newman had been forced to sleep in the dubious comfort of a Carmarthen hotel, I’d seen enough of him to realise that I was beginning to have feelings for him.

As I write this, I’m smiling at those words – ‘beginning to have feelings’: what a terribly old-fashioned and quaint way of putting it! These days I’m sure girls of my age – and remember, I was only just 20 – would say something like ‘I had begun to fancy him’ or ‘he was a bit of all right’. But none of those words would have ever entered my head. No, the 1930s were very much more genteel about matters of the heart, even for servants such as us.

In the end, the first resolution proved more difficult than
the second. Mr Latter was a tartar when it came to gossiping about the family. If he ever caught the lower servants doing it, he’d give them a right royal dressing-down.

‘The Earl and the Countess put their trust in us and we are grateful to them for doing so. We must never – ever – spread tittle-tattle or rumours about our family. They are our betters and our masters and, whatever may (or may not) happen in their lives, it is simply not our place to have an opinion about it, much less to discuss these worthless thoughts with anyone else.’

Well, that told all of us! And for all that we knew that Mr Latter was a good and kind man – in a way he was like a father figure to the younger staff like me – I don’t think any of us doubted that a first offence of gossiping would be bad, but a second would mean the sack.

So it proved very difficult to discover anything very much about the 10th Earl of Coventry. Other than Mr Latter, he very rarely saw any of the staff and it wasn’t just hunting that he avoided with his own class. I came to notice that, often as not, when Milady told me to prepare her evening wear and her best jewels for a dinner out at some other aristocrat’s house, His Lordship would be unwell and unable to go. On many of those occasions the Countess would be accompanied – because it wasn’t seemly for a titled Lady to arrive on her own for a dinner – by His Lordship’s brother, John.

Now, I don’t want you to get carried away. I know what this might look like to modern eyes but, as I keep trying to remind you, this was the 1930s and, as far as I knew, there was nothing more to this arrangement than the Earl’s brother acting as a chaperone. I was – and I remain – convinced that my mistress truly loved the Earl and, in any event, there had been quite enough scandal in the family without any of that sort of business.

My other resolution proved a little easier. It started with a message from Roland’s mother: would I like to come to lunch on my day off at their little cottage in Severn Stoke? Would I? I should think so! It was arranged that after I’d been to church the following Sunday I would spruce myself up – I wanted to make an impression, not just on Roland but on his parents. The invitation was couched in terms of simply being kind – a young girl, miles away from her family and stuck out in the vastness of Croome was bound to be a bit lonely and perhaps a bit at a loose end. But I knew that beneath that innocent cover there might well be the first hints of romance. I didn’t think that Roland had ever asked anyone else from the Court home to meet his parents – and in those days that sort of invitation was the very chaste first step on the way to asking a girl out.

But there was one little problem to be solved: how would I get to Severn Stoke? The village was a few miles away from Croome and it would take several hours to
walk there after church. Now, you might think that this wouldn’t be an issue: after all, Roland was a chauffeur and in charge of the Coventry’s cars. Surely he would be able to pick me up in the blue hound van, if nothing else. But this was where His Lordship’s generous treatment of his servants stopped: Roland was forbidden to use any of the vehicles except on official family business.

The solution, when it turned up that Sunday morning, was noisy and almost as smelly as the hound van. I looked out of my bedroom window to see a motorbike put-putting towards the Court and a figure almost swamped by an enormous leather coat sat on top of it. This was to be my transport to Severn Stoke and I don’t mind admitting that my heart sank a little. Not only because I’d never sat on a motorbike before but because it was almost guaranteed to ruin my efforts at looking my best to meet his parents. I sighed inwardly and resigned myself to landing there looking like I’d been out on one of my mistress’s
fox-hunting
jaunts. Which is just how it turned out to be.