Diamonds at Dinner (5 page)

Well, what an excitement there was in our little house. Everything that I owned – not that there was much – needed to be packed up into a little cardboard suitcase. I would need suitable clothes (out came the sewing machine) and strong sensible shoes. Even though it was summertime, because I was going to a grand mansion, I would also need a hat – women and men always wore hats to go anywhere in those days – and gloves. I’d also needed the fare for my journey, which wasn’t to be sneezed at in our frugal household. Above all, I’d have to find out how to get there. And this journey I do remember clearly

I don’t know if you can imagine what it was like nearly 80 years ago for a young girl to set out on an adventure like this. These days, of course, it’s easy to find train times and everyone is used to travelling all over the place. But in those days very few people ever strayed more than a mile or so from their hometown and the transport system was cumbersome and rather daunting – at least to a girl like me. After a trip to the station to consult the big and complicated book of railway timetables, we worked out that I would have to take three separate trains. The first would take me from Stamford to Leicester. Here I would get off and have to locate the train bound for
Birmingham. Once I got there, I had to change again, this time onto the local service for Worcester. All in all, what with the slowness of the steam engines and waiting on the platforms at each stage, the journey was going to take all day: and this for a journey of just over a hundred miles.

Slowly, the day for my departure came around. My suitcase was packed and I laid out a nice new dress, the thick black stockings everyone wore in those days, hat, gloves and – of course – my shoes polished to within an inch of their lives. My heart was racing as I closed the door on the little bedroom I shared with Joan: this was it – I was off out into the big wide world and who could know when, or if ever, I’d see my home and my family again?

Dad was very upset: I knew how much he was worried and how much he didn’t want me to go. But, being Dad, he was strong and supportive and smiling: men didn’t show their emotions much in those days and I don’t think Dad would have ever dreamed of letting me, or even Mum, see the tears he must have been keeping in check. But as we walked through the town towards the station, I knew he was dreading the moment when I climbed aboard the train and he would watch as it pulled out, taking me away from my family.

At the small ticket window, the railway clerk took my money and punched out the little oblong piece of thick cardboard: my ticket to a new life. It was, of course, Third
Class: back then trains were divided into three, with the wealthy and well-to-do riding in First, the middle classes in Second, while working-class folk had the cheapest and hardest seats of all in the most basic of the carriages.

I clutched the ticket in my gloved hand and climbed on board. Just before the guard waved his green flag and blew his whistle, I felt Dad put his hand around mine and press something between my fingers. It was a crisp brown 10-shilling note. He didn’t say anything and neither did I: I knew this would be the last of his money for the week – possibly the month – and he had given it to me. There would be no Woodbines for him for a while and no half pints of mild. My eyes pricked with tears, for I knew the sacrifice he had made – not just in giving me the last of his money but in letting me leave our home and family. As the train puffed and wheezed its way out of the station, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Oh, Molly, what have you done?’

‘
M
iss Mulley, is it?’

The man in front of me was a few inches taller than me but his dark hair had been combed back from his forehead (into what looked very much like the sort of brush Mum had used to sweep up with), which made him seem taller. Hair or no hair, as I appraised him, I reckoned he was a few inches taller than me and about ten years older. He was wearing a smart dark suit, his shoes were nicely shined (always a good sign – Dad’s training again) and a peaked cap. It didn’t take a genius to work out that this must be the Coventry’s chauffeur. I’m not sure what I expected, but fancy that: a real chauffeur meeting little Hilda Mary Mulley off the train – how very posh indeed!

I didn’t have much time to take this in though: as the train pulled out, leaving clouds of smoke and steam rolling along the platform, the chauffeur was marching smartly off to the exit. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘Here goes. What’s to be afraid of anyway?’ I’m not sure if I answered my own question. If I had, I think I could have found plenty of reasons why my stomach was in knots and I felt a bit sick. I’d spent a day criss-crossing England, changing trains, drinking cups of tea poured from big silver urns in smoky station buffets, watching mile after mile of countryside sweep past the window – and now here I was, about to pledge the rest of my life (because that’s how I thought of it) to the service of a rich and powerful Countess I’d barely met. I hadn’t the first clue of where I was going and, if the chauffeur seemed perfectly at ease – and, therefore, I could presume he knew how we would get to our destination – why, I didn’t even know his name. Nervous? Well, wouldn’t you be?

Parked in the road outside the station was a very ordinary little blue van – the sort which butchers and similar tradesmen used back home in Stamford to make their rounds and deliveries. Surely this wasn’t how we were to travel? But yes: the chauffeur was striding towards it, my little cardboard case in hand. What was his name? I couldn’t really imagine driving to wherever we were going and calling him ‘Mr Chauffeur’. What was the
correct way of addressing him? These things would matter – that much I knew. I hurried to catch up.

The chauffeur held the door open for me and, as demurely as I could, I sat myself down in the old, worn seat. Instantly, I noticed a strange smell – what on earth could this be? Then with a bang and a slam the door was shut, the chauffeur swung himself into the driving seat and we were off.

‘I’m Roland,’ he said with a smile. ‘Roland Newman. I’m Lord Coventry’s driver. Amongst other things. Oh, please excuse the smell: this is the hound wagon.’

Hound wagon? Did the gentry’s dogs have their very own car? I’d grown up with dogs – instantly I remembered our dear old mongrel at home in Vine Street – but we’d never had a car for ourselves, much less a separate one for the dog. What on earth sort of life had I come to?

Roland didn’t seem to think anything of it though, so I sat quietly, pulling myself as tightly down into the seat as possible as the little van grumbled its way out of Worcester and on into the countryside. Miles and miles of it: fields ripe unto the harvest, as we used to sing at church back home. Corn, wheat and something else I didn’t recognise at all.

‘Those are hop fields,’ Roland informed me. ‘This part of Worcestershire is famous for its hops: we grow the best for the best beer in England.’

Since I’d never drunk beer – alcohol really wasn’t part of Mulley family life – I had no answer to this. I tucked it away in the back of my mind: a new piece of information for my new life. This was certainly going to be an education.

The journey seemed to take forever – although I suppose it can’t have been much more than an hour. We seemed to be going ever deeper into the countryside, with only the occasional small village giving any indication that people actually lived here. Just how remote was this place I was going to? And if it was so far away from any sort of civilisation – for that’s how I thought of towns like Stamford – how would I ever to get away from it? That’s what it began to feel like: that I would be a prisoner in some terribly isolated castle, with no hope of ever escaping. The further we went, the more nervous and uneasy I became.

Roland seemed unconcerned: if he noticed how worried I was becoming, he didn’t show it. Instead, he kept up a cheerful (and largely one-sided) chatter about this and that. I couldn’t tell you what he said, or whether he was trying to impart some knowledge that I would need in my new position: his words washed over my poor muddled head, filled with worries, until it blended in with the rattling of the little van’s engine and the rumble of its wheels on the rough country roads.

And then, suddenly, there was the big stone gateway in
front of us. The soft, buttery afternoon light caught one side of it as the van pulled up.

‘This is the London Arch,’ Roland informed me as we passed beneath its huge weathered face. London? Surely we hadn’t gone as far as that? London was a place I’d only ever read about in books and was as exotic and foreign sounding as Timbuktu. ‘No, don’t be silly,’ I told myself. ‘We can’t have driven all the way to London.’ Maybe this was one of the capital city’s famous monuments and Lord Coventry had brought it all the way to Worcestershire. If so, he must be very rich indeed.

As these thoughts whirled through my head, the little van was off again, rumbling down a windy and very well-kept driveway. Trees – they seemed like a whole big wood to me – passed on my side while, on the other, open parkland spread out like an enormous bowling green for as far as I could see. Then we were onto crunching gravel and the car was stopping and Croome Court – bigger than any building I had ever seen in my young life – was in front of us. It was imposing, it was magnificent, it was impossibly grand: and, as Roland opened the car door and I slid out, my heart sank even lower. However beautiful, this place was like some giant prison castle in a storybook and I was to be locked up here with no hope of anyone coming to rescue me and no prospect of escape. If I hadn’t been so terrified, I might have burst out crying there and then.

Roland picked up my case and walked me around the side of the house to the back. The rear of the house was just as impressive as the front: there was an enormous entrance with a pillared portico and huge stone steps leading up from the driveway. For a moment I wondered if I was going to have to march up those steps and in through the very grand doors. But Roland took me towards a little, almost hidden, entrance at the side.

‘Tradesmen’s entrance,’ he said with a warm smile. Had he guessed what I’d been thinking? As he opened the door, I caught a glimpse of long half-lit passageways: we seemed to be heading into some strange subterranean world that echoed with the sound of our footsteps. I shuddered as we left the warm summer sunlight behind us and the cold basement air enveloped me.

On and on we walked through an endless series of corridors that seemed to sprout off one another and head off in all directions. How on earth would I ever find my way around this maze of passages? And did I really want to? The further we ventured into the depths of the house, the more I felt like an explorer entering some bottomless series of tunnels – and the more I wished I’d never left my cosy little home, with all its simplicity and its warmth, back in Stamford. ‘Oh, you silly, silly girl,’ I thought. ‘What have you done?’

Eventually, we emerged from the latest of these passages
and into an enormous room. A huge cooking range ran down the side of one wall and people – other servants, I realised – bustled in and out. Occasionally, a bell would ring from somewhere in the maze of corridors and more bustling would happen. I had arrived at the beating heart of the house: the mighty kitchen of Croome Court.

Someone – I couldn’t have told you who – pressed a cup of tea into my hands and a stern-looking older man appeared beside me. Of Roland the chauffeur there was now no sign. The new man welcomed me solemnly and explained that, given the lateness of the hour, I wouldn’t be meeting my mistress tonight. Instead, I was to be shown to my bedroom, where I could make myself at home and prepare myself for work the next morning.

I had not the faintest idea what my duties would be, much less what time I would be expected to start performing them. But I was so tired, and felt so sorry for myself, that I simply followed a young woman in the uniform of what I assumed to be a maid out of the kitchen and back through the echoing passageways until we came to a great stone staircase, which seemed to rise and rise in front of my bewildered eyes. My guide tiptoed up the stairs to a little half-landing: this, she told me, was the floor where the Court’s great reception rooms were. Then it was up to the next floor – the master and mistress’s bedrooms, as well as those of the children, apparently – and up again
until we reached the very top of the house. I’d never been up so many stairs in my life.

Off the top of the staircase was a little ante-room. At first, I thought this must be my bedroom: it was bigger than the room I shared with Joan back home but there was no sign of a bed. But we left this behind and the girl opened another door and then I simply gasped: the room in front of me was absolutely vast – I thought you could have plonked the whole of our house in Vine Street into this one room and still have had space left over. The ceiling was at least 15 feet above my head and there was the grandest fireplace I’d ever set eyes on in the middle of one wall. A little bed (though still bigger than my own at home) stood out against another wall, absolutely dwarfed by the open space around it. An enormous mahogany wardrobe loomed large in the corner. Surely all this couldn’t be just for me?

But it was: if Croome Court was my prison, my ‘cell’ was, at least, incredibly spacious. I wandered over to the window – itself bigger than anything I’d ever been used to – and looked out: I saw lawns and a lazy river and, away in the distance, another remarkable building with huge glass windows on which the last of the day’s light was reflected. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The girl was telling me something as she closed the door. I heard the words ‘cup of tea’ and ‘bath’ but really
didn’t register them. After she had left, I sat down on the bed, my little suitcase with all my worldly possessions neatly folded inside, looked around at all the empty splendour of my new surroundings … and burst into tears.

I cried myself to sleep that night – as I would do for weeks to come – thinking about the home I’d left behind me and the life I’d so carelessly abandoned. We might not have had much and Vine Street might have been a humble little place but, amid all the magnificence of Croome Court and its surrounding estate, I would have given absolutely anything to return to it.

I was woken the next morning by the same girl. She had a cup of tea in her hand and told me that my bath was ready. The tea I could understand but what was this about a bath? And who could have got it ready? Surely this couldn’t be happening to me. Why would someone have run me a bath? And, anyway, where was it? I looked around, trying to see whether someone had deposited the sort of tin tub I was used to in one of the distant corners of the room. There was, of course, no sign of any such thing.

Instead, the girl – I still didn’t know who, or what, she was – led me along yet another corridor and through a doorway into a room almost as big as my bedroom. In it was a large enamelled bath, brimming with hot, steaming water. It was a very long way from the Mulley household’s
Friday ritual of a quick dip in the old tin tub in front of the fire. Was this a special occasion to mark my first day? Or was this to be a regular thing? No one had ever waited on me – surely that’s what I was here to do? Either way, this little bit of my new life was a very pleasant surprise and perhaps I could grow to like at least this part of it.

I wondered, too, about when I would meet my new mistress. I hadn’t seen her since that day in Worcester when I’d had my interview. I wanted to find out what my duties were and that would only happen when she told me. As it turned out, I didn’t see her for the rest of the day. I spent the ensuing hours trying to find my way round the house – or, at least, the bits of it where I was supposed to go. I avoided the first and second floors: they were reserved for the Coventrys and, as I discovered, the staff only went there when they were called, or as part of their work when the family wasn’t around.

First, I had to get to know about the other servants. I quickly found that there was a hierarchy below stairs: a very definite mini-social order, which I would be expected to understand and stick to. There were 15 of us in total who worked in the household, plus gardeners and a houndsman, who never ventured across the threshold. The lowliest of all was the scullery maid, a young girl just starting out in service who – whether because of her position or for family reasons – lived out in High Green,
one of the little hamlets that surrounded the estate. Her job was, perhaps, the hardest and least rewarding of all: she acted as assistant to the kitchen maid, who was one rung above her on the social ladder, and there was a definite chain of command when it came to her duties. She reported to the kitchen maid, who, in turn, reported to the cook. Her orders would be passed down to her through each of these other two servants and, likewise, she passed messages back up the line via them. The poor scullery maid’s duties included the most physical and demanding tasks in the kitchen, such as cleaning and scouring the old stone floor, which was so uneven that you swayed from foot to foot as you walked across it. She was also required to scrub the stove, the sinks, and all the pots and dishes. There was no washing-up liquid in those days: she had to scour all the crockery and cooking pans with soap crystals whisked up into a rough sort of lather.

On top of all this, she was expected to help with preparing the food for every meal – cleaning the vegetables, plucking fowl (which came in fresh with all their feathers, heads and claws on). If fish was on the menu, these would be delivered almost straight from the river and it was the scullery maid’s task to gut and de-scale every one before the cook got her hands on them. Her day also began before anyone else’s: while the rest of us still slumbered in our beds, the scullery maid started before
6am, getting the kitchen fire going and make sure the cooking range was lit ready for the day’s cooking. Since she lived out, she had to walk a couple of miles to the Court from her home: woe betide her if she wasn’t on time because all the other staff’s jobs depended on her having got the kitchen and the fires ready for them when they came down. All in all, hers was a hard and backbreaking job and I was distinctly relieved I didn’t have to do it.