Diamonds at Dinner (4 page)

But one day all this changed. It wasn’t a day that I went swimming but we heard about it soon enough. Edith, a school friend of mine, just about the same age as me, had somehow got out of her depth or caught her foot in the reeds and drowned. There – in our safe, lovely old river. Well, that was enough for Dad: he put his foot down straight away and told all of us that we’d made our last trip to the Welland. Looking back, I can, of course, see his point – although it was rare for Dad to be so stern with us. Mum was the one who wore the trousers in our house and everything had to be done exactly as she wanted. Even to this day, when I have carers coming in to help me, I still remake the bed after they’ve gone because it wouldn’t live up to Mum’s exacting standards. Dad, though, was a softie – a gentle, kind man who rarely, if ever, raised his voice: perhaps that’s what made his instruction that the river was now out of bounds all the more forceful. But at the time I think I must have felt a confusing mixture of sorrow at my friend’s death, fear for what we had all escaped and sadness that we’d no longer be able to enjoy one of our few, cost-free pleasures. My sister Joan and I carried on swimming every day but we had to go to the freezing-cold outdoor Municipal Pool from that moment on.

By this time I was 14 and I knew that my schooldays
were coming to an end. In those days children – at least children from ordinary families – went to primary school until the age of 13, then on to what we could call a secondary school today for just 12 months. It wasn’t until 1936 – by which time I was 20 – that the school-leaving age was raised to 15.

I’d been at All Saints Elementary School, studying what we then called the Three Rs: reading, writing and arithmetic (I never understood why a word beginning with A was counted as an R!) until it was time to take exams. If you passed them, you went to the Grammar – or High – School; if you didn’t you went to one that was less academic and more attuned to teaching vocational skills like woodwork, cookery and suchlike. Well, I was lucky: I passed my exams – I’d always loved and had an aptitude for maths, and reading was a pleasure – so off I went to big school.

The first thing you – or your children – would notice if I could whisk you back in time would be how strict everything was at school. There was no chattering in the classroom and teachers had to be treated with respect. Honestly, I look at what I see on television these days and wonder if today’s children would last five minutes in the school I went to: not one of the teachers would take the sort of cheek that seems to happen every day in modern classes and, if anyone did dare to stray out of line … well,
the cane was there and was used in double-quick time. Spare the rod and spoil the child was the policy in those days – and there wasn’t much in the way of spoiling going on, I can tell you.

All the girls – it was, of course, a girls-only school; no one ever thought that boys and girls should mix in those days – had to wear a uniform. There was a gymslip – the sort you see in the
St. Trinians
films – over a white blouse. Both of these had to be kept ironed nice and crisp. And the school tie had to be knotted neatly beneath the collar: none of the slovenly half-mast arrangements kids get away with today (even if they actually have to wear a tie). No – the motto was smartness and that extended down to our knickers: rough green serge was the order of the day.

We also had to wear sensible shoes and, even if the school hadn’t insisted, Dad would have made sure that we were properly shod. It was one of his most important personal rules: always have good strong, sensible shoes, and I’m very thankful to him for it. At my age – and much younger – lots of people suffer with their feet and it’s because they were allowed to wear silly fashion shoes that pinched or distorted their feet. And, as luck would have it, when I did disregard Dad’s advice, it was shoes that got me into trouble – but we’re not at that point in our story yet.

School strictness also extended to timekeeping. Not one of us had a wristwatch – we’d never have thought of
anything
like that, even if we’d been able to afford it – but the school was very strict about arriving on time and not being late for classes. I often wonder where that has gone: people today – and I don’t just mean youngsters – seem to regard time as something completely flexible. And yet everyone today has a watch and a phone that tells them where they’re due and when: yet everyone is always late.

It’s an old saying that schooldays are the best days of your life: that’s another thing that has changed in this modern world – I can’t imagine today’s children thinking like that, not one bit. And I’m happy to say that I loved school – stern though the teachers were and
highly-disciplined
though the lessons were. I suppose, now I come to think of it, that in this way school was an extension of the way parents like mine brought up their children: work hard, respect your elders, speak when you’re spoken to and stick by the rules. The funny thing is that I would only learn later how these simple rules for life didn’t seem to apply to our so-called betters. But I’m getting ahead of myself again …

So there I was, Hilda Mary Mulley, aged 15: what was I going to do with my life? There were five of us in the little terraced cottage and it was obvious that with money so tight I’d have to start earning my keep. But what to do?

In a way, I suppose it was almost pre-ordained. My grandfather – Mum’s dad – had been a professional tailor
and, as a child, I would often stand and watch him as he cut the cloth and, as I grew older, I used to help him take all the tacks out of whatever he was making for his clients. And at school I’d always been good at needlework – enjoyed it too. So, with Mum and Dad’s help, I set about trying to find an apprenticeship as a dressmaker.

Stamford, like most towns in those days, had at least one tailoring business. People frequently had their clothes made for them – ordinary clothes for everyday wear, not fancy ones for big occasions. It wasn’t like today’s world where everyone seems to go shopping for off-the-peg jackets, trousers or dresses. And we wouldn’t have ever heard the word ‘designer’, much less look at a label to see if a garment had been made by some fashionable name.

Mrs Kent ran one of these little operations. She didn’t have a shop, with clothes in the window. Instead – much like my Dad, I suppose – she had a workshop but she employed about ten people, making ordinary clothes for ordinary people and, as luck would have it, she wanted an apprentice. Now, I know that apprenticeships have rather gone out of fashion (more’s the pity), so I’d better tell you how it worked back in 1931 when I started my adult life.

An apprenticeship was a long, drawn-out business: two years as a full apprentice, followed by two more as an indentured worker – that meant you weren’t allowed to leave, even if you got a better offer. The second thing,
which was very much an indicator of the terrible economic times we were living in, was that
apprenticeships
didn’t come for free. To get me taken on by Mrs Kent meant that Mum had to pay her a £25 registration fee: 25 whole pounds – at least £2,500 in today’s money – and more than 20 times what people got in their weekly unemployment benefit. Where, or how, she found the money I’ll never know: I don’t even know whether it was a deposit that she got back at the end of my four years – although I rather doubt it. But find it she did and at the age of 15 I was an apprentice dressmaker.

I wonder what people in my position would be paid today. There is, of course, the minimum wage now – something we could never have dreamed of in those dark days of the 1930s. Well, I can tell you what my weekly pay was: one shilling a week. Think about that for a moment and compare it to what your earned in your first job, or what your children earn today. One shilling – 12 old pennies. Not enough to buy a whole loaf of bread. And from this shilling I had to pay Mum for my bed and board at home: I was an adult now and I had to pay my way. I tell you what that did: it taught me to value money and, if I wasted it – on a trip to the cinema or a penny bun on the way back from the swimming pool – why, then I wasted it wisely!

I was the lowest of the low in the little workshop. As an
apprentice, I started out by picking up pins from the floor – pins the older and more experienced girls had dropped – and taking the tacks out of half-made clothes. That’s how I learned my trade – watching and picking up and unpicking. I certainly wasn’t allowed near a pair of scissors (much less a piece of valuable cloth) until at least a year had passed. But I loved the work: I loved the whole feeling of being around a process that created clothes for people to wear. And who knows but I might catch sight of the very garment I’d had a hand in, walking around Stamford. It made me proud.

Gradually, as I progressed in my apprenticeship, the other girls would allow me to take the dress or the trousers they’d been working on away and I’d be shown how to press open the seams they’d created with a big heavy steam iron. And from there to the day – the exciting, scary day – when I was given my first piece of material and my first pattern and told to cut the cloth for myself. Now that was a special day, I can tell you.

Until one day I was no longer an apprentice, no longer even an indentured employee. Somehow, four years had passed: I was 19 and a fully-trained tailor, and the world, if not at my feet, was very definitely laid out in front of me on the dress-making table. And then Mrs Kent upped and died. I was out of a job.

At that time, when you finished an apprenticeship, you
had to apply to be taken on again as a full employee. With Mrs Kent gone, there was no one to hire me, so I had to start looking elsewhere. But this was The Hungry Thirties: there were no jobs for a newly qualified tailor – in fact, there were precious few jobs at all. In the end, I was offered a position in the laundry room at the George Hotel – Stamford’s other residential inn. It was my job to dish out the sheets and keep everything ship-shape and tidy. And I hated it. I felt it was below me: mind-numbing work and tiring to boot. Nor was it very well paid and, even if I’d thought of it, there was no chance of supplementing my meagre wages with a little work behind the bar. Dad wouldn’t have stood for that: pulling pints and serving drinks wasn’t what we called respectable.

I must have been at the George for several months when one of the other girls who worked there asked why I didn’t think about going into service. I remember to this day her coming to me and saying, ‘I’m surprised you’re doing this job, what with all your training. Why don’t you apply for a job as a Lady’s maid?’ And in that moment my future was sealed.

T
he Honourable Nesta Donne Phillips was born into a life of privilege and luxury on 20 November 1903. She was the eldest of three daughters born to Owen Cosby Phillips, first and last Baron Kylsant, Member of Parliament, High Sheriff of Pembrokeshire and chairman of one of the country’s greatest steamship companies.

Mr Phillips, as he had once been, was the son of a parson who, at a young age, had been apprenticed to a shipping firm in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne – then the beating heart of the Empire’s all-powerful fleet. He worked his way up through the company and, by degrees, through other shipping businesses until, in 1902, he became managing director of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. Within 20 years this had bought out the famous White Star Line
– the company that owned and was responsible for the
ill-fated
Titanic
– for the tidy sum of £7 million (£700 million today) to become the largest shipping group in the world. He was invested as a Knight Grand Cross, Order of St Michael and St George (G.C.M.G.) and in 1923 was created 1st Baron Kylsant of Carmarthen and of Amroth, in the County of Pembroke. The family seat was Amroth Castle, a grand 18th-century house, built on the remains of Norman ruins, with expansive grounds stretching down to the beautiful Pembrokeshire coast.

His eldest daughter grew up surrounded by wealth and eligible young men, and the man she chose to be her husband was the Honourable George William Coventry, the grandson of the 9th Earl. By the time of the wedding, a lavish affair in Carmarthen in September 1921, the Earl of Coventry was 83 years old but still hale and hearty and in residence at Croome Court. Since his son was the next in line and, therefore, would inherit the title and all that went with it, George William can’t have had any expectation of coming into his own inheritance for decades to come. But within a decade a series of family catastrophes would change everything.

The troubles started in 1926 and it was the Great Depression that began them. Lord Kylsant was facing increasing difficulties in repaying government loans to his shipping empire: he had been expecting an improvement
in world trade following the First World War but, after a decade of peace, this had not materialised. Increased competition from foreign companies was making life very difficult for his businesses. Despite this, Kylsant bought two more companies, apparently taking an unrealistically rosy view of the future. As trade slumped, his economic woes mounted.

A year later the Coventry family was hit by what newspapers termed ‘The Curse of The Deerhursts’: the 9th Earl’s son and heir – George William Coventry’s father – died unexpectedly. It was the second time in living memory that the sitting Earl had outlived his son. George William and his young wife Nesta now knew that before long they would have to take on the title and, with it, the escalating costs of Croome Court.

It can’t have been easy: although gentry such as the Coventrys seemed to have much more wealth and many more resources to fall back on than ordinary folk, they also faced huge inheritance-tax bills on top of the constant haemorrhaging of money at Croome. And, for Nesta, financial troubles at home were looming ever larger.

In 1929 the Bank of England was so concerned about the solvency of Lord Kylsant’s combined shipping companies that it sent one of the most famous accountants in the country in to examine all the business records. Within two months he discovered that the
group had liabilities of more than £30 million – that’s £3 billion today.

As the crisis mounted throughout 1930 and 1931, speculation grew in the press about Lord Kylsant’s future. Despite this, he and Lady Kylsant left England at the start of February for a two-month holiday in South Africa. But almost as soon as they returned, Lord Kylsant was arrested and charged with criminal offences of fraud. The case was transferred to the Central Criminal Court – known to you and me as the Old Bailey – and after a 9-day trial Kylsant was convicted and sentenced to 12 months in prison. It must have been a nightmarish time for Nesta, not only to see her family fortunes evaporate but to watch as her father was led away to spend the next year as a common criminal in Wormwood Scrubs. There could be no greater disgrace.

But if things were bad for Nesta, her husband had also suffered a double tragedy. On 13 March 1930, following an illness that lasted 12 days, the 9th Earl of Coventry passed away, aged nearly 92. His death – which, as we saw, was reported in newspapers and in cinema newsreels – had a fatal effect on his wife. The couple had been married for 65 years and Lady Blanche told her grandson that she could not bear to be without the man she loved. The Countess of Coventry immediately took to her bed. Within three days she, too, was dead. A joint funeral was
arranged and tenants from Croome and the surrounding villages crammed into the family church on the estate and lined the way for the cortège.

And that is how George William became the 10th Earl of Coventry and his wife, Nesta Donne, became the Countess. Within a few short years I would become her closest and most intimate servant, and Croome Court would become my home.

At the time, of course, I was still living with Mum and Dad in our little house in Vine Street in Stamford and still – albeit unhappily – working in the linen room at the Crown Hotel. But the idea of becoming a lady’s maid had been planted in my mind by one of the other girls on the hotel staff.

The question was, though, how to go about it? How did an ordinary girl like me find out about possible openings with the gentry? I was sure I would be up to the job – if only I could find a way in! The first thing to do was to talk to my Aunt Beat: not only was she my godmother but she had once been in service herself. We were a close family and, particularly during the years that Dad had been away at the Western Front, my aunts had helped Mum greatly, so that she had come to trust their advice.

When I sat down with Aunt Beat, she was enthusiastic about my idea: she could see a whole different world opening up for me, a world away from little old Stamford
and, I think, a route into a settled and comfortable life, which would be less prone to the buffeting of the economic ill winds that were sweeping the country. But when we talked to Dad, he was vehemently against it: he was very far from convinced about service as a suitable life for his daughter and was very worried about the prospect of me leaving home. Maybe that sounds a little strange to modern ears. After all, I was 19 and today no one thinks twice about young people of that age setting out to forge their own future. But in 1935, not only was 19 two years under the legal age at which a child became an adult but I think we all grew up much more slowly: a 19-year-old girl like me was, back then, nowhere near as worldly wise as someone of a similar age today. Of course, we were much less exposed to the world then: there was no television, no Internet – no one we knew even had a telephone. The upside of this was that families were much, much closer: the downside is that – for girls in particular – parents were very much more protective.

I’d had first-hand experience of this. As the eldest, I was the first to start going out of an evening. In addition to trips to the cinema, I loved dancing. The Assembly Rooms in Stamford put on dances every week – proper dances with a proper orchestra of ten or more musicians. They would play all the popular dances of the 1920s and 1930s – the Charleston, the Foxtrot and, if it was a
particularly racy orchestra, daring crazes like the Tango and the Black Bottom.

My favourite was always the Waltz – a much more serene affair and suitably seemly for Dad’s daughter. I had started to go to the Assembly Rooms when I was 15, handing over a hard-won thruppeny bit for the entrance fee. There was, of course, no question of alcohol being served: it was squash or a cup of tea – not even so much as a hint of beer. At first, Mum or Aunt Beat would take me – both of them loved dancing – but when I turned 16, I was allowed to go on my own. Dad took a very close interest in what I got up to: he insisted on walking me there the first few times, just to see what this dance business was all about and, even when he let me go there unaccompanied, he would always be waiting up for me when it was home time. I used to walk back down the street and, whatever the time, would see a light on in Mum and Dad’s bedroom: I knew he would be waiting at the window, peering out to check up on who had walked me home.

That was a big thing back then: boys who liked the look of you would, after a couple of dances, be asking who was walking you home – it was quite unthinkable that a young lady should walk herself home alone! This was one of the first stages in courtship in those days and, if this developed, your friends and family would know you were ‘walking
out’ with so-and-so. How innocent this all seems in today’s liberated world: there was no question back then of any hanky panky – a kiss on the cheek might be considered very daring!

It’s not for me to say this but I had a decent figure and a nice little waist and I suppose I must have been pretty enough to attract the attention of some of the local boys: they certainly asked if they could walk me home! I like to think that at least some of it was down to my skill as a tailor, for I made my own dresses to go dancing and one in particular – a lovely pale-blue satin material, which Mum had bought for me at Stamford Market, and which (thanks to my apprenticeship with Mrs Kent) looked like something from a very fancy couturier – drew attention the moment I walked into the Assembly Rooms wearing it. The girls all flocked round me with little cries of, ‘Molly,’ (I was always known as Molly in those days), ‘Did you really make that? It’s so lovely!’ I think the boys noticed it too – I certainly saw them sneaking glances my way – but I already had a young man I was walking out with. Norman Aitkin was his name and he worked at Blackstone’s, the engineering company in the town, which had once employed Dad. I thought he was smashing. But Dad – oh, dear, Dad – he just didn’t approve at all. Whether he would have thought anyone good enough for his eldest daughter is debatable. Maybe it was because Dad couldn’t
get his old job back at Blackstone’s after the war, maybe it was the fact that he didn’t like Norman’s mother but, for whatever reason, in his eyes, Norman Aitkin was definitely not up to snuff.

Although I’d been allowed to go to dances on my own for some months by the time Norman and I started courting, once Dad knew we were walking out, there was nothing for it but that I had to have a chaperone. If Norman and I went anywhere together, my little brother Jim was sent out to find us and make sure Norman behaved himself on the way home.

So, all in all, Dad was never going to welcome the idea of his darling daughter leaving home and going into service miles away. Don’t forget that, once I’d gone, he knew there would be little or no chance of coming to see me: we didn’t have a car – no one from our class of people could even dream of running one, let alone paying the £175 even a basic one would cost. (If that sounds terribly little money for a car, don’t forget to multiply it by 100 to work out the modern equivalent: could you afford to splash out £17,500 if you were in our position today? Of course, car prices have come down in relative terms since then but in 1935 motoring was still very much in its infancy and the purchase price of even a little Austin or a Morris reflected that.) Nor were there any buses in Stamford: if you wanted to get anywhere locally, well, it was ‘Shanks’s pony’ as everyone
called walking. There was, though, the train station and I began to wonder whether one of the enormous puffing steam engines that pulled in amid a fearsome clanking of steel and vast clouds of smoke might one day take me away from the town in which I had lived all my life.

In the end it was the girl at work – the same one who had put the idea of my going into service in the first place – who helped me make a start. To this day I don’t know how she found out about the opportunities: maybe she had seen an advert from one of the agencies which then advertised positions in service for girls like me. But however she knew, I was at work in the laundry room one day when she came to me with the news that two fine ladies were looking for a maid. And she challenged me to write to them.

The first was Lady Blanche Cobbold, from Glemham Hall near Ipswich in Suffolk. Since this was close to where Dad had grown up before he made the journey to Stamford, perhaps he would look on the idea more favourably. Lady Cobbold was, in fact, the daughter of the ninth Duke of Cavendish, and one of the most illustrious women in the country. She had been born and raised at the family estate at Chatsworth; she was married to a brave and dashing soldier who had been wounded in the Great War and had two young daughters. It certainly seemed like a very promising opening.

The other was Nesta, Countess of Coventry. I knew nothing about her at the time and Worcestershire, where she lived at Croome Court, seemed an awful long way away. Nonetheless, I resolved to write to both the Countess and Lady Cobbold, enquiring about a position as their lady’s maid.

I don’t know what I would have done if both had replied – quite probably, I would have preferred to go to Suffolk, given Dad’s connection with the county. But as it happened it was Lady Coventry who sent me a handwritten note inviting me to come for an interview.

First, though, there was the little question of getting Dad’s permission. He was quite adamantly opposed to the whole scheme and, since it was so rare for Dad really to put his foot down, I knew that I would need allies. Fortunately, Mum and my aunts were both on my side: together we slowly won Dad over and I was granted his blessing to go for the interview.

The funny thing is that, however much I try, I can’t remember a thing about it. You might put that down to my age but I’m convinced it was nerves: I’d never been outside of Stamford and my interview was in Worcester – miles and miles away and, as far as I was concerned, a big city. I couldn’t tell you how I got there, nor what was said by the Countess – much less what I said to her. But somehow or other I must have done well enough, for a few days later a
letter arrived at Vine Street, addressed to me in a firm handwriting style: her Ladyship was pleased to accept me for the position of her lady’s maid.