Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (25 page)

We servants spent the day clearing and cleaning. We could have saved ourselves the trouble, as events turned out. Almost to the minute of the night before, the sirens sounded and, what seemed only seconds later, we were showered with incendiaries. Arthur Bushell, Florrie the housemaid and I rushed upstairs, making for the roof. As we were nearing the top landing there was a scream of bombs falling. Fortunately the landing windows had been left open to get rid of the smell of burning, because as we reached them we got the blast of bombs which knocked us against the wall. We were out of breath, but we must have found some from somewhere because the next thing I remember was being down in our basement shelter. There was just nothing we could do, the onslaught was too terrific. If the house was burning over our heads it would have to. If we went up there we were likely to be blown to bits anyway. It was the feeling of helplessness that got me down, not being able to do anything but just wait, hope and pray. But what a comfort prayer is at such a time. I don’t think it was just selfish prayer either. I found myself thinking of all sorts of people and of course I was desperately worried for my lady. It didn’t seem possible that people could live through what was going on outside. The raid continued for about three hours, then just as suddenly as it had started the noise ceased, but the comparative silence was punctuated by the crackle of the fires and the occasional burst of a time-bomb.

We went to look on the roof. The incendiaries there had burnt themselves out and by some miracle we had escaped once again from the high explosives, but as I looked over Plymouth it seemed as though nowhere else had. It was a horrifying yet magnificent sight, like a gigantic volcano crater, a city on the boil. All immediately around us had been destroyed. No. 1 Elliot Terrace had been hit, though much of it was still standing. A house at the back had been completely destroyed and the whole street seemed in ruins. There was nothing for me to do so I turned back and went to see what damage our house had sustained. I looked into my lady’s room and when I saw it with windows shattered, walls cracked, part of the ceiling down, glass splinters everywhere, I couldn’t help thinking about the useless work I’d done the day before. I got a broom, swept up a bit and got my lady’s bed sleepable in, but by now I was worried out of my wits thinking that something must have happened to her. I went down to join the others. Just as I got to the foot of the stairs her ladyship came rushing in; she looked frantic. ‘Rose,’ she screamed, ‘thank God you’re safe,’ and she flung her arms round me. ‘I’ll never leave you again,’ she sobbed. My tears started to flow too though I was astonished at her outburst. It later transpired that as she approached the house she saw the shells of the buildings at the back of us and thought that we had been hit too. It was an astonishing show of emotion, particularly from my lady, but they were emotional hours when we were all on the brink of eternity.

My lady was completely exhausted. She and Lord Astor had been on duty all day and had been out with the services during the raid. His lordship was little better, but having delivered Lady Astor into my hands, he set off walking the ruined streets. We tried to stop him. We told him it was foolishness, but he wouldn’t listen, or rather didn’t seem to hear. He was like an automaton, all feeling had drained from him. After I’d got her ladyship to bed fully clothed, since her room was freezing, I thought about sleep; there seemed to be nowhere for me except the basement, and I felt claustrophobic after the hours I’d spent there during the raids, so I made for the roof again and joined Arthur Bushell. We stood there watching the city burn, seeing the flames from one house moving to the next and demolishing that, and eventually the whole row. There was nothing we could say about it, we’d said everything and seen everything.

Arthur eventually decided to walk along the roofs of the terrace to check that all was right with the other houses. I just stayed and watched. Suddenly I saw a huge black mass rising from over the road. I don’t know whether I threw myself down or was blown down. A time-bomb had exploded in a nearby garage. I lay on my face deafened by the explosion, but not so much that I couldn’t hear the rubble falling around me. One or two bits hit me. Luckily I had two coats on so I got away with a few bruises. Arthur at the time was behind a chimneystack on the roof of No. 8 and escaped everything. He came running to me and picked me up. ‘I thought you were a goner, Rose,’ he said as we staggered together downstairs. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I’m a cat. I’ve got nine lives.’ Her ladyship was none the worse for the explosion, but claustrophobia or no claustrophobia, I spent the rest of the night in the basement with the others because though I’d boasted of having nine lives, I wasn’t sure how many I’d got left.

Though it hadn’t seemed possible, the next morning was worse than the one before. I went out at daybreak to see the devastation around us. Somehow it looked worse in the daylight: skeletons of houses, twisted girders, wrecks of cars, the rubble that was once a home and possessions strewn across the streets; pathetic things like children’s dolls, lying dirty and lonely. I saw a wounded spaniel dog with a little boy standing guarding it, and then eventually the R.S.P.C.A. men who came and lifted it tenderly away. People were standing around helplessly; exhausted, dirty and apathetic. I couldn’t watch, I felt I was intruding on their private grief.

I made my way back to the house and tried to rouse myself to start tidying and cleaning it up. My lady had left. There was no routine now, no ringing of bells, no ‘Where have you been, Rose?’ It was all for one and one for all. Only our French chef Monsieur Lamé kept to his place, the kitchen, and he was hard put to it because there was no gas now or electricity. He found an oil stove somewhere and worked a few miracles with that. ‘We must eat to beat the Hun,’ he said to everyone, as a sort of personal slogan. Then he would go into a string of expletives about the Germans as though they were his own particular enemies. I had to remind him that we British weren’t feeling too kindly disposed towards them either. I must say Lamé worked wonders in the kitchen throughout the war and was particularly good to me. ‘Eating keeps your strength up,’ he would say when I protested he was giving me too big a portion.

I felt a bit lackadaisical all that morning as I and the other servants got some order out of the chaos. We were beginning to see the results of our labours when at one o’clock her ladyship turned up with a party of air raid wardens. ‘We’ve all of us got to get out, Rose,’ she said. ‘There are six unexploded bombs surrounding the house.’ If ever I felt like swearing it was then. All that hard work and now we’d got to evacuate the place. I don’t think I was worried about the bombs even after my experience with the delayed action one the night before. I packed her ladyship’s things and my few bits and pieces, grumbling all the time. We were separating: Arthur Bushell and I went to a hotel in Ivybridge, a nearby town, and the Astors went to stay with some friends.

Once we’d arrived in Ivybridge I stopped moaning. It was wonderful to see a fresh clean bedroom again and think there was a possibility that I should sleep between sheets that night. Even so, I was keeping my fingers crossed. We weren’t far from Plymouth and the surrounding area had already suffered some damage. In the event we were lucky, but every day I was reminded of what the city had been through, since Arthur and I travelled to Plymouth to help the Astors in any way that they wanted. It was now that I saw the great work that my lady was doing. She was in her element: she was helping people. Arthur and I ran messages for her and distributed clothes where they were needed, many of which had been sent earlier from the States, having been collected by her ladyship’s friends and relations there. How wonderful America was in that way. There’s a story of how forty children arrived at school barefoot holding their shoes in their hands and saying, ‘Give these to the children of Plymouth, they need them more than we do.’ And of another school that raised £1,000 in a few days when they heard of the bombing. Lady Astor was proud to be able to speak of her country’s sympathy and help. Then we’d be running backwards and forwards from the various emergency centres reporting their requirements. We were always told to look for cases of individual hardship, for people who were too proud to ask for help, or who didn’t know what was available for them. Nor did his lordship or my lady leave this to other people: every evening when they weren’t directing or administrating they’d be on the streets to see for themselves.

I remember once her ladyship was going round a hospital chatting up the patients and seeing what they needed. She came to one bed where there was a young boy of about sixteen who looked very poorly. ‘He’s suffering from pneumonia and shock,’ said the nurse. ‘He’s very unhappy but we don’t know why. He’s French and no one in the ward can talk to him.’

In an instant my lady was rattling away at him in his own language. ‘He wants to get near his brother in Liverpool. Is he fit to travel?’

A doctor was called. ‘It’s a risk,’ he said, ‘he’d have to go in an oxygen tent. It would mean travelling first-class and he hasn’t any money.’

‘That’s no problem,’ replied my lady. ‘I have. Get him ready and I’ll be in touch with you.’

She rang Ellen Wilkinson, a local Member of Parliament, who arranged a hospital bed there and the boy was on the train within hours. It’s a small incident but typical of so many. His lordship, while he wasn’t so communicative, did things his own way. It was said at that time about the Astors that, ‘She found out what needed doing, and he saw that it was done.’

Another big job that she attended to was seeing that those who were away in the Services were kept informed about their parents’ welfare and whereabouts; a special bureau was set up to deal with phone calls and written inquiries. It wasn’t an easy job but she knew from personal experience how necessary it was. In between times she’d be popping backwards and forwards to London to attend to her Parliamentary duties, and what she’d seen that had gone wrong at Plymouth during the raids made her critical of the government. She became unpopular with the Churchill administration. She and the Prime Minister had never been exactly bosom pals anyway. However since she was as usual speaking the truth as she saw it, it worked, and things were either done or changed.

This then was the time when a lady became a heroine to her maid. Previously I had had a deep and growing affection for her despite – and sometimes even because of – her faults. Now in battle her qualities were shown. Her courage, not the ‘backs to the wall’ stoic kind of British courage, but the flashing tempestuous rousing roistering courage of the Virginian exemplified by the way she would turn cartwheels in air raid shelters to cause a diversion when things were at their worst. Not your sixty-one-year-old Nancy Astor, Lady of Cliveden, hostess to the aristocracy and Member of Parliament, but Nannie the wild-eyed girl who rode unbroken horses. And along with this went the softer, compassionate creature; the voice behind the sad Virginian songs, that would comfort a mother whose child had been killed while her own heart was grieving for the mother, yet hardening against the Whitehall officials who in their short-sightedness had not declared Plymouth an area for the evacuation of children. Then catching the night train to London and the next day telling Parliament what should have been done and being accused that by saying what she had, she’d given information and help to the enemy. Yet still not giving a tinker’s cuss. This was a woman I could idolize.

Still, at times her waywardness showed through. While the raids and the danger seemed to increase her strength, they took their toll of his lordship’s. Tramping around in all weathers he got a chill which, ignored, became a fever. It was obvious he had to rest, but he refused to return to Cliveden, because he wanted to be near Plymouth. It was decided that he should go and stay at a hotel near the little town of Rock in Cornwall, and that I should go there with him as a kind of nurse/valet. Her ladyship was to accompany us there and spend a day or two with him. The day we were leaving there was a lunch party at Elliot Terrace for some of the local dignitaries. The house had been repaired quickly for use as the mayoral offices. It happened that on that morning some chocolates and sweets had arrived from America for the people of Plymouth. After lunch my lady asked his lordship to get some of these for her. He explained that they were not intended for her, but for others whose need was greater. She straightaway went into a tantrum, was rude and spiteful to him in front of the guests, and told him she wouldn’t now go to Rock with him. His lordship left the room. I didn’t know about this at the time, I was told about it later by Florrie the housemaid who came with a message from her ladyship that I was to unpack her things as she wasn’t now going away. I started emptying her cases, then in came Arthur Bushell with a summons from his lordship. When I went to his office I could see at once that he was in a dreadful state: he had difficulty with his breathing and his face was high-coloured. I thought he must have had a stroke, and to this day I’m convinced I was right.

‘Rose,’ he said, ‘Lady Astor has upset me badly. She now refuses to go to Rock. She must go and I need your help to see that she does.’ I was moved by what he said and very worried at his condition.

‘Very well, my lord, I’lI see to it.’ I waited for the guests to leave, then went into the drawing room. ‘I hear from Florrie, my lady, that you’re not going to Rock.’

‘No, I’m not,’ she said, rushed out of the room and up the stairs. I was ready for her and caught her on the landing. I got hold of her by the shoulders and shook her.

‘Listen to me,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to his lordship, but he’s now very ill indeed. You’ll go with him to Rock and if you don’t I’ll write to all the boys and tell them that his condition is your fault because you were greedy and selfish over a few miserable sweets.’ Then I threw her away from me in anger and waited for the storm to burst over me. To my astonishment she looked at me meek and ashamed.