Her Ladyship's Girl Read online

  The private parties in London were the same – always late to bed, with Miranda consuming a lot of champagne. But she’d lie in late the next day and I wouldn’t be required until the afternoon. This gave me time to study up on etiquette and my French and do any jobs that were outstanding. I wanted to go back down to the tea shop in Sloane Square to see Lucy, but things were so busy in the beginning, with me trying to learn as much as I could about the job as quickly as I could, and the travelling about and late nights, I didn’t get a chance. I felt guilty and didn’t want Lucy to get the idea I thought I was too uppity for her now. She’d been good to me during the short time I knew her and she was my friend when I had no one else.

  The weather warmed and in May we attended a tea party at the Chelsea Flower Show on the 11th and Miranda met the King for the first time – while I waited for her in the tea tent. There was a military band that played the national anthem and a big buffet on long tables covered with snow-white tablecloths and enormous quantities of food that could never be eaten by the guests – not in a month of masked balls. I wondered what would be done with it at the end of the day. Would it be thrown away, or given to the poor, starving children of the slums? We left for an after-party at about 6:00 p.m. and I didn’t get to bed until two in the morning. After that came the May Ball with all the gowns and grandeur and the dancing and drinking. I observed it all from a balcony and kept an eye out to see if there was any one man paying particular attention to Miranda. But there wasn’t. Not that I would have reported it to Mr Peacock if there was, but I was curious to know for myself. I thought it strange that I hadn’t seen or heard anything of Mr Harding after that night at the Lex and the subsequent note sent via Bart. And I wondered if something had happened between him and Miranda.

  The debutant girls had already been presented at Buckingham Palace in March and the May Ball, or Queen Charlotte’s Ball as it was called, was the highlight of the season. It was called Queen Charlotte’s Ball because it was first inaugurated by King George III to celebrate his wife’s birthday on the 17th of May and it was an event for all the blue-blooded young girls to display themselves after ‘coming-of-age’. Grosvenor House in Mayfair used to be the London residence of the Dukes of Westminster, until it was turned into a posh hotel in 1929. It had a separate bathroom and entrance lobby for every bedroom and running iced water in every bathroom. It also had Turkish baths and squash courts and a swimming pool and gymnasium. It was a sickly sweet spectacle of garish ostentation, like a ridiculous courtesan in a baroque periwig.

  All the debutants arrived in limousines with their fur-wrapped mothers and top-hatted, moustachioed fathers. They came in pure white full-skirted silk dresses and in flowing lace and smothered in mother-of-pearl. There was a giant white cake in the centre of the ballroom and it seemed to me that the debutantes were curtseying to it, but they weren’t really, they were curtseying to the assembled high-ranking dignitaries who posed like Louis XIV table-legs. Miranda told me all the girls were trained to make this elaborate genuflection by Madame Vacani, a dancing teacher who held a royal warrant for it. The left knee needed to be locked behind the right, allowing a graceful descent with the head erect and hands down by the sides. A Vacani curtsey was part of the etiquette of the occasion.

  It was really a marriage market, where the girls were displayed to potential suitors who could eye up the young women newly released into society. It was a way of meeting the ‘right’ people, a system of exclusion, connecting like with like with the sovereign’s blessing – a way of centralising wealth and power and influence, and it had been going on for hundreds of years, but was now in decline, like the rest of the upper-class rituals. The white dresses were symbolic of virginity, which was the young debutante’s best selling point, apart from her name and the colour of her blood. Underlying it all was a belief in protocol and love and respect for king and country – as well as self-interest.

  On the Monday before Royal Ascot, we went to the Garter Service at Windsor and Miranda had lunch in the Waterloo Chamber, while I waited with the spectators. After lunch, the Knights made their way on foot to a service in St George’s Chapel, wearing blue velvet mantles and black velvet hats with white plumes. After the service, they all emerged through the Great West Door and returned in carriages and cars to the Upper Ward of Windsor Castle and, in the evening, numerous exclusive parties struck up around the town. And Mrs Bouchard took advantage of the occasion to drown the dark sorrow in her heart that sometimes seemed to stalk her. When we got back from Windsor, Miranda was tired the next day and decided to stay in bed, as she wanted to be fit for Ladies’ Day the following Thursday. I took this opportunity to finally get down to the Rose of Sussex Tea Rooms to see Lucy.

  She was a bit cool with me at first, because I was dressed in one of the outfits Mrs Bouchard had left in my wardrobe and she probably thought I was flaunting it. I looked like I was twenty-five, not eighteen. Lucy was sarcastic when I came into the tea room during one of their quiet times.

  ‘Yes, Madam, and what would you like today?’

  ‘Lucy, it’s me . . . Anwyn.’

  ‘I know it’s you, you silly mare.’

  She showed me to a corner table and Hannah and the other girls all came over and everybody was amazed at the way I looked – so sophisticated and chic.

  ‘You look like a real lady, Anwyn.’

  ‘Thanks, Hannah.’

  ‘You could easily fit in with the customers we get in here.’

  ‘Not that I’d want to.’

  ‘Oh, go on with you, I bet you love it.’

  And she was right. I did love it. It was a new world to me – a big wide world that I never knew existed and I was in a whirl and a spin at being part of it, even if I was only observing it from the sidelines and would never really be a part of it. Even if I was cynical and sarcastic about it and considered it to be a crime, when so many people were so poor, it was still something to see and, for a young woman of my impressionable age who’d been brought up in a coal-dusted Welsh mining village, a wonderment to behold. But, at the same time, I was glad it was a world that was in its death-throes and wouldn’t be seen again in the same guise, but would have to dress itself in the lie of democracy.

  ‘You want to come dancing down the Palais, Anwyn?’

  ‘I don’t know. When?’

  ‘Every weekend . . . any weekend. They get Jack Hylton and Joe Loss and even Billy Cotton. You must get a day off, surely?’

  And I thought, do I get a day off? It hadn’t occurred to me since I started with Mrs Bouchard that I was at her beck and call seven days a week. Not that I minded all that much, but meeting Lucy reminded me that I had a life of my own as well. I mentioned it to Miranda at lunch the next day.

  ‘Of course you can have a day off, Anwyn. But it’s the season and there’s so much going on . . . and if I don’t attend events, father’s spies will tell him they haven’t seen me and he’ll think I’ve run off somewhere with an Arab and he’ll come back from the land of the midnight sun or wherever he is and there’ll be a scene.’

  ‘I understand, don’t worry about it.’

  And she didn’t.

  Royal Ascot was one of the clearest manifestations of the English class system in the social calendar, and ladies’ maids were obliged to take a measuring tape to every aspect of their mistresses’ outfits, from headgear to hemline. I was spellbound by the outlandish hats and the extravagant dresses, and there was a ban on exposed midriffs and straps of less than an inch in thickness. Entrance to the Royal Enclosure was a privilege earned only by invitation from established members, and the event was all about selectiveness and exclusivity and nothing at all to do with the nouveaux riches. There were unbending strictures on elegance and I had to make sure Miranda was properly attired to meet the exacting standards of Ascot and I was hoping she didn’t drink too much and have herself politely expelled. That would certainly have brought further disgrace down upon her family. But Miranda’s drinking was no worse tha
n that of the other aristocratic ladies and I doubted if anyone would have even noticed her in their inebriated states.

  The one thing I still wondered about was her family. I knew her mother died when she was very young and she was brought up by governesses. But I hadn’t once seen either her father or her brother at any of the events or functions we attended throughout the season. I mentioned this to her one evening in the dining room at dinner.

  ‘They’re both travelling this summer, in Scandinavia.’

  ‘Scandinavia?’

  ‘Yes. My father has always been an outdoors type of man and not one for balls or parties, which he refers to as tart gatherings and hasn’t been to one since my mother died.’

  ‘And your brother?’

  ‘He follows the old man around, being his blue-eyed, white-haired boy, in case the old bugger changes his mind and leaves everything to me.’

  ‘Is he likely to do that?’

  ‘No.’

  We went together to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Many unconventional high-society women like Mrs Bouchard were supporting art movements – modernism and surrealism and other fashionable fads. I liked the old paintings best, where you knew what it was you were looking at, but I learned something about form and perspective and colour and context from being with Miranda and listening to her commentary. On this occasion, she had no other company except for myself and we had a lovely day together. It was as if we were friends and not mistress and maid. We did meet some people she knew at the exhibition and, while she said hello and chatted with them, I stood back and assumed the maid’s role again.

  The exhibition was held to raise funds to finance the training of young artists in the Royal Academy schools and, as one of its patrons, Miranda was expected to put in an appearance. She chatted to the President and the Keeper and I had time to look round at the paintings – some were strange and a bit sideways for my taste, by artists like Picasso and Dalí and Kandinsky and I noticed that there weren’t any by women. Afterwards, we went for tea at Fortnum & Mason and laughed and talked and were happy. It was the first time I’d seen Miranda so relaxed while sober.

  Through the summer of 1936 we went here and there and everywhere – to West End Theatres to see performances by women playwrights, like The Happy Hypocrite by Clemence Dane at His Majesty’s Theatre and Boy Meets Girl by Bella Spewack at the Shaftesbury and Bitter Harvest by Catherine Turvey at the Arts Theatre, and to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall for La Bohème, which Miranda loved. I hadn’t heard much classical music before and I must admit, it took me a while to find an ear for it. But I loved Mimi’s aria and I could see a tear in Miranda’s eye when the soprano was singing it. We also attended a soirée at the Guards’ Club in Piccadilly, where I saw Mr Harding again. I don’t think he saw me, but he certainly saw Miranda, because he spoke to her for quite a while before leaving. Mrs Harding wasn’t with him.

  In July, we stayed at Temple Island for the Henley Regatta, just as the Spanish Civil War got under way, and many young working-class men were volunteering for the International Brigades. Miranda’s brother was a member of the Leander Club and they used the Temple as a vantage point from which to watch the boats and the races. Because her brother wasn’t there, Miranda was invited in his place, which was considered a great privilege for a woman. The island was a fairy-tale place, situated downstream from Henley on a beautiful reach of the Thames, in the midst of rolling water meadows and surrounded by wooded hills. The Temple itself was a folly that was built as a fishing lodge for Fawley Court, the mansion designed by Christopher Wren, and was the first example of the Italian Etruscan style in England – or so Miranda told me. After the boat racing, there was a candlelit dinner and an al fresco party on the riverside lawns. We stayed the night on the island and journeyed back by boat the next day. It was a truly enchanting occasion and one I’ll never forget, despite its decadence and its seemingly uncaring attitude towards the tragedy that was tearing Europe apart.

  And that wasn’t the end of my water adventures. In August, we travelled down to Cowes on the Isle of Wight, where we stayed aboard a magnificent yacht, owned by some Duke or Duchess or other, I can’t remember which one. There were champagne parties on board every night and I had to share a berth with two other ladies’ maids, but we had a great time and watched the spectacular fireworks display at the end of the wonderful week. At the same time, the Olympics were taking place in Berlin, and all the talk was about a black man called Jesse Owens. Hitler was hoping the German athletes would win everything and show the world what a superior race the Nazis were – better than black people and Jews and Gypsies. But Jesse Owens won four gold medals and it was being said that Hitler was so annoyed he wouldn’t shake hands with him afterwards. But Owens was allowed to travel with white athletes and stay in the same hotels as them while he was in Germany, whereas in America he’d have been segregated. I read somewhere, many years later, that Hitler did send Owens a commemorative inscribed photograph, but Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of America, didn’t even send him a telegram.

  While Europe was starting to burn in a conflagration that would consume the whole world, the summer of 1936 was truly amazing and was one that will be part of my memory till the day I die. It was the most extraordinary time I’d ever had in my young life and it opened my eyes to many things and helped to make me the woman I was to become for the rest of my life. But it was coming to an end, as September arrived and the season ground gradually to a close.

  By Friday 25 September, all the arrangements had been made to move up to Warwickshire for the winter. The furniture was covered with dust sheets and the house keys handed over to the caretakers. All the other servants had already taken the train from Marylebone to Royal Leamington Spa, where they would be picked up by horse carriage and taken to Bolde Hall, situated south and west of Stratford-upon-Avon. I wondered why all the servants had to go, but Miranda explained that her father and brother didn’t need many servants of their own during the summer, because they were always away adventuring somewhere – and her people came up for the winter to help run the big house. Miranda and myself were the only two left now at Chester Square, apart from Tom the chauffeur, and we waited for him to bring the Bentley round.

  It had taken me most of the week to pack Miranda’s things properly. Some of the trunks had gone with the others, under the supervision of Mrs Hathaway and Miss Mason, and the rest were being loaded into the car by Tom.

  ‘Did you know that Mary Shelley once lived in this house?’

  Miranda offered me this piece of fascinating information as we sipped the last pot of tea for a while at Chester Square and she smoked a cigarette.

  ‘No, I didn’t. How amazing.’

  ‘Yes, it was in her later years, after Percy was drowned in the Bay of La Spezia. I thought you’d be interested, with all your book reading.’

  ‘How long did she live here for?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Not more than a year or so. Her only surviving son, Percy Florence, owned the house and she stayed with him and his wife when they weren’t travelling abroad.’

  ‘Which room did she sleep in?’

  ‘I don’t know, Anwyn, maybe yours. She died here from a brain tumour when she was fifty-three.’

  She smiled maliciously when she said that. And I was stunned to think I might have been sleeping in the same room as Mary Shelley. Maybe it was best I hadn’t known, the ghost of that unfortunate woman might be still haunting the house – keeping company with her Modern Prometheus.

  The journey up to Bolde Hall was long and tiresome. Miranda had drank some wine and napped in the car. I was sad to leave London and had considered leaving the job and looking for something else. I didn’t want to go to the country, but the girls in the tea shop said I’d be mad to leave and, anyway, there was nothing in the classifieds that interested me. Besides, I knew Miranda would have persuaded me to stay if I told her I was leaving. And how could I leave her surrounded by spies and snakes-in
-the-grass? I’d never met her father or her brother, but I already disliked both of them. They seemed like bullies to me and I didn’t like bullies after that dance in Cricklewood when Bart got pushed around. So, I stared out the car window as the country sailed past me – big towns and little towns and villages and hamlets and farms and fields. We drove up through Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire and on into Northamptonshire.

  We stopped for a while at a roadhouse called the Barley Mow, close to Bloxham in north Oxfordshire, and Tom stretched his legs while Miranda and I had tea and toasted crumpets. Eventually, we drove through the big gates and up the long gravel driveway to Bolde Hall. It was a huge place, bigger than anything I’d seen before, except in pictures. It was more like a castle to me than a house and certainly not at all like a hall. As we approached, it grew larger and larger, until it loomed over me like a great gothic mausoleum.

  And I knew I’d hate it here.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bolde Hall was the eighteenth-century residence of the Brandon family, set in five hundred acres of landscaped grounds that were now starting to look a bit overgrown. It had two synchronised wings projecting from either side of the main part of the house and the whole facade was decorated in the gothic style – I was getting to be a bit of a boffin on period architecture, having spent time in a few big houses. But I hadn’t seen anything like this before. It only had three storeys, but was spread out and sprawling. God only knew how many rooms were inside – hundreds, I thought, as I emerged from the car and looked up the eight wide stone steps to the front entrance. To me, it was a crime that a building as big as this was used to house two men, and then only occasionally.