Before the War (31 page)
Authors: Fay Weldon
Her Ladyship, once dressed, shook off whatever mood had been oppressing her and remarked that times were changing: these days the doctor came to the front door not the servants’ entrance, and no one showed surprise – though some felt it: and if the Queen’s son could make the banker Cassel his confidant, friend and apparent equal, and invite him to State dinners? She supposed she must move with the times.
‘At least Mr Baum is only coming to breakfast,’ remarked Grace, ‘not dinner.’
Lady Isobel allowed the comment, and even smiled a little. Grace was a favourite. The poor tended to be misshapen and vengeful at worst, pimply and sullen at best – but Grace was tall, slim and fair and an excellent lady’s maid, quick, reliable, clean and willing. She seemed to have an instinctive eye for fashion. The Countess d’Asti had tried to poach her, but Grace had not been tempted away. As a result Isobel had raised her wages from twenty-four pounds to thirty the year: reproachful friends had told her this amounted to a betrayal. For one thing, if you paid more, other servants would feel entitled to more. For another, give them more, and they felt not that you were being generous but had underpaid them in the past. But Grace would use the money to buy card and water colours, and had decorated her room with really quite pretty little landscapes, and Rosina had claimed to have seen
The Rubáiyát
of Omar Khayyám
and
The Collected Works of Tennyso
n
in her room. Grace’s parentage was of course unknown. Rosina sometimes speculated that Grace’s father was a famous artist and her mother his model who had left her illegitimate baby on the doorstep of the Foundling Hospital in Coram Street. Lady Isobel said Rosina must be responsible and not put these silly melodramatic ideas into Grace’s head: it might make her feel sorry for herself when actually she ought to be extremely grateful. She had been promoted swiftly through the servant ranks from kitchen to parlour to lady’s maid, and now had a good place.
It would be bad for Grace, and certainly bad for Lady Isobel, if the girl got ideas into her head, and decided to leave service and seek employment as a seamstress, a milliner or even a lady typewriter as had Rose, Fredericka the Countess d’Asti’s lady’s maid. Rose had simply left without giving notice, and had been seen working in a Bond Street milliner, leaving poor dear Freddie altogether in the lurch with a big ball in the offing and no one to do her hair. These days, staff showed alarmingly little loyalty.
‘Well,’ said Rosina, with the lack of pleasantry and tact which marked her, and was another reason, her mother supposed, that the girl was nearly thirty and not married, ‘I suppose if people are going to go on referring to you as “a beauty”, you’re going to need her services more and more. You are nearly fifty. You could try paying her more.’
‘I have done so,’ said Isobel, stiffly. ‘And it might be a good idea not to invite Grace in to your various meetings. God knows what ideas these peculiar speakers put into her head. Let her wait outside in the carriage.’
‘I daresay Mr Baum is going to be boring and scold Arthur about his tailor’s bills,’ said Lady Isobel to Grace now. ‘Poor Arthur must have something to cover his back. Tradesmen should know better than to try and sue for their money through the courts. Whoever is going to want their services if they make a nuisance of themselves?’
Grace did not mention what was common, if possibly inaccurate, knowledge in the servants’ hall, that his Lordship’s debts were out of control and that his close acquaintance with the Prince of Wales did not bode well for his marriage. Mr Neville kept an eye on the newspapers: agricultural rentals had struck an all-time low and the price of land had plummeted; and had not many thousands of Dilberne acres been sold off at a bad time to help pay ‘debts of honour’? That is to say, his Lordship had been gambling and it was possible that what he was losing, the Prince was gaining. So much was known for sure, and a great deal more rumoured. Documents that Reginald had glimpsed on his Lordship’s desk suggested that much of Lady Isobel’s inheritance from Silas Batey, her coal mining father, now deceased, had already been mortgaged to pay the Dilberne debts.
She feared Mr Baum’s attack upon the front door was likely to be of more importance than the clothes on Arthur’s back. A very handsome young back, Grace would be the first to agree; the vision of his golden hairiness this very morning was hard to forget, and with it came a churning sense of the awful injustice of the ways of the world. Grace found herself humming as she left the room and went down to breakfast. A hymn was running through her head.
The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate,
He made them high and lowly,
He ordered their estate.
Really? Did He? Why?
When she got down to the staff dining room, everything was in disarray. The downstairs staff breakfast had been abandoned, cancelled. Upstairs must take precedence.
Before the War
Consider Vivien in November 1922. She is twenty-four, and a spinster. She wears fashionably droopy clothes, but she is plain and – almost worse in those times – intelligent. At nearly six foot tall, she is known unkindly by her family as ‘the giantess’.
Fortunately, Vivien is rich, so she can travel to London and bribe a charismatic gentleman publisher to marry her. What he does not know is that Vivien is pregnant, and will die in childbirth in just a few months...
Fay Weldon, with one eye on the present and one on the past, offers Vivien’s fate to the reader, along with that of London between the wars. This is a city fizzing with change, full of flat-chested flappers, shellshocked soldiers and aristocrats clinging onto the past.
Inventive, warm, playful and full of Weldon’s trademark ironic edge, this is a spellbinding historical novel from one of the best novelists of our time.
‘Queen of words – she’s a tribal elder.’
Caitlin Moran
‘To read Fay Weldon is like drinking champagne.’
The Times
‘Fay Weldon is a national treasure.’
Literary Review
‘One of the great lionesses of modern English literature.’
Harper’s Bazaar
‘Readable, articulate and fascinating.’
Scotsman
‘Witty and highly entertaining.’
The Times
‘Wise, knowing, forthright.’
Independent
‘Outrageously funny.’
Daily Express
F
AY
W
ELDON
is one of the foremost chroniclers of our time, a novelist who spoke to an entire generation of women by daring to say the things that no one else would. Her work ranges over novels, short stories, children’s books, nonfiction, journalism, television, radio, and the stage. She was awarded a CBE in 2001. She has seven sons and stepsons and one stepdaughter, and lives on a hill in the west of England.
To find out more about Fay Weldon, visit her website,
www.fayweldon.co.uk
, follow her on Twitter,
@Fay_Weldon
, or like her on Facebook,
https://www.facebook.com/fayweldon.writer
.
The
Love and Inheritance
trilogy is a family saga set between 1899 and 1906. The aristocratic Dilberne family lurch from wild wealth, to bankruptcy, and back again, their fortunes dependent on the new steam-powered automobiles, Spiritualist gatherings and Christmases at Sandringham. But as the century turns, the rigid rules of society begin to soften...
Following lives and loves upstairs and downstairs, and brimming with Fay Weldon’s trademark wit, wisdom and warmth, this is a trilogy to treasure.
In the dying days of Victoria’s reign, the events of a single turbulent morning herald bankruptcy and ruin for the Earl of Dilberne. His wife, the Countess Isobel, believes the solution is to marry off their handsome, wilful son to a rich and pretty heiress from the Chicago stockyards. It’s a clash of cultures and principles that rocks the household from parlour to pantry.
Gold mines fail, bankers plot, bad girls flourish, the London fog descends, Royalty intervenes and unlikely lovers triumph.
Habits of the House
, the first book in the Love & Inheritance trilogy, is a ravishing portrait of the
fin de siècle
from one of our best-loved British authors.
Habits of the House
is available
here
.
Jump to a free preview
here
.
With London Society in a frenzy of anticipation for the coronation of King Edward VII, the Earl and Countess of Dilberne are caught up in lavish preparations. Yet Lady Isobel still has ample time to fret, and no wonder with a much longed-for heir on the way, an elopement, family tragedy, a runaway niece and a gaggle of fraudulent spiritualists to contend with…
Fay Weldon once again draws her readers into the lives and loves of the aristocratic Dilberne family, as they embrace not only a new century, but a new generation – a generation with somewhat radical views…
