Grace's Story

by Jennie Walters

  ‘Sit down,’ Florrie said, pulling out a chair. ‘Take a deep breath - there’s no rush.’

  At last Dora came out with it. ‘The C-Colonel’s g-g-going to F-F-F - you know where - !’ she said, all in a rush. ‘He’s j-j-joined up with his old r-r-regiment. He won’t be f-f-f-fighting, but he’ll be r-r-riding ab-b-bout with m-m-m-messages and r-reports and things.’

  So Colonel Vye probably had more important things on his mind. I let out my breath - and then it occurred to me that perhaps he might be able to ride about (as Dora put it) on Copenhagen, and that what I’d done might turn out to be not quite so foolish after all. ‘I wonder if they’ll let him take his own horse,’ I said, fishing for news.

  ‘Oh, Grace! You do come out with the strangest things,’ Florrie tutted. ‘What does it matter which horse he has? I’m sure they won’t expect him to go around on some old mule. It must be a dangerous job, though, and he’s not a young man. I hope he’ll be all right.’

  ‘At least he d-d-doesn’t have a f-f-f-family to w-worry about,’ Dora said.

  Not like Mr John Vye, with his wife expecting another baby at the end of the year. I knew all about Mr and Mrs John Vye because my sister Hannah works for them as a nurserymaid and loves every minute of it (they live in a big house the other side of Stone Martin village). Hannah’s the one in our family who really takes after Ma, although she’s shorter and plumpish. A round peg in a round hole, that’s Hannah.

  Florrie thought it was wonderful that Mr Vye should be fighting for his country. ‘He knows where his duty lies,’ she told me smartly. ‘The war’s not going to wait for his convenience. Think how he’d feel if he missed it!’

  I could imagine how Mrs Vye would feel - very relieved, most probably - but Florrie seemed to be in the mood for a lecture, so I kept quiet. When Dora had taken through the bread, cheese and chutney for the servants’ hall and the family were busy with their treacle tart (an extra large one, as it was Mr Vye’s favourite), as well as meringues, strawberries and cream and a blackcurrant ice from the still room, I took off my apron and slipped out of the back door. Mrs Jeakes would be in the housekeeper’s room for another half hour, I reckoned; it was time to make peace with my father. He’d be waiting to take the Dragon Lady back to her lair in the dower house after dinner.

  Walking into the half-empty stables was very sad. The ponies were still out in the field with the weather being so warm, so only a few of the stalls were occupied. It was quite dark by now, but I could make out Moonlight’s pale head over the iron bar (wondering what had happened to his friends, no doubt). And there was Copenhagen - safe and sound, nibbling from the hay rack. I went over to his stall, pleased to see him even though we’d ended up in such trouble.

  ‘Not planning another break-out, are you?’ My father’s voice made me jump. ‘I ought to ban you from these stables, by rights.’

  ‘Sorry, Da,’ I turned to face him. How angry was he? It was hard to tell in the gloom. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘Another of your tomfool ideas, that’s what came over you,’ he grumbled, going into Moonlight’s stall with a couple of brushes. ‘You’re going to end up in serious trouble one of these days, my girl.’

  ‘I won’t do anything like that again,’ I promised, watching him give the horse a quick going-over.

  ‘You’d better not.’ But his voice had softened a little. ‘Honestly, Grace, you could have been killed, taking off on a great creature like that without even a saddle or bridle! What were you thinking of? When I saw the Colonel riding him back to the stables I knew you must be lying somewhere with a broken neck. Don’t you ever put me through that again.’

  My poor father; I hadn’t thought how worried he’d be. ‘I’m sorry, Da,’ I said again. ‘Truly, I am.’

  ‘So you should be. His Lordship thinks I went against his word and he doesn’t like it. There’ll be consequences, you mark my words.’ He sighed. ‘Well, you can help me get this one ready for the gig. Might as well make yourself useful now you’re here.’

  I went to fetch Moonlight’s trappings from their pegs in the harness-room, where a dim light threw shadows on the wall. Everything was clean and tidy, as usual; Father always keeps the stables shipshape. ‘A place for everything and everything in its place,’ that’s what he likes to say.

  We tacked up Moonlight together. He’s such a calm, steady horse, and I was so thankful we’d been able to keep him, at least. I backed him between the shafts of the gig while my father watched, his face grave and thoughtful.

  When I’d finished, out came the lecture. ‘Grace, you and I are both servants in this house,’ he said. ‘If we’re ordered to do something, we have to do it right away and no argument - that’s what we’re paid for. We can’t start deciding what we think about the idea. If Her Ladyship orders beef for dinner, Mrs Jeakes won’t serve chicken instead because that’s her favourite, will she? You worry me, my girl, you really do. If you carry on this way, I don’t know what’s going to become of you.’

  He went off to fetch his hat while I held Moonlight steady and gazed up at the stars, tiny pinpricks of light in the black velvet sky. What was going to become of me? I didn’t know either. The future stretched ahead: a long procession of treacle tarts, caper sauce, mayonnaise and mutton. Was that it?

  Three

  You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience. Remember that the honour of the British Army depends on your individual conduct.

  From Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener’s address to the British troops, 1914

  I had meant to get up at dawn the next morning to say goodbye to Copenhagen, but after all the excitement of the day before, I slept like the dead until morning. Colonel Vye had gone by dinner time and I’d heard nothing from him, or Philip either, so it looked as though my little adventure would stay a secret between the three of us - and Father. I tried to put it out of my mind and concentrate on my work.

  At least things seemed to be going our way in the war. We servants took to meeting up in the hall together at four o’clock, where Mr Fenton would read us out reports from The Times (His Lordship usually having finished with it by then) over tea and seed cake. Everyone cheered when we heard that our troops had met the Germans at a place in Belgium called Mons, and given them quite a beating with not too many losses on our side.

  ‘There you are,’ Florrie whispered. ‘I told you Mr Vye had to hurry up or the war would have finished without him.’

  After that piece of good news, however, everything went rather flat, and then someone heard a rumour that British casualties had been worse than first thought. The next thing we knew, word came that our soldiers were retreating; the Germans were driving them back into France.

  ‘B-b-but why?’ Dora asked when we were back in the kitchen. ‘I th-thought we were w-w-winning!’

  ‘Because our boys are outnumbered and there’s no one to back them up,’ I told her. ‘It’s not that we’re losing, though, so cheer up! They’re just finding a better place to dig in and then they’ll give those Germans what for.’

  The trouble was, we didn’t have enough soldiers in our little army, not even alongside the French. The call for more volunteers went up in earnest now; even the picture card in Father’s pack of cigarettes was telling him he should be off to war. ‘There’s a place in the line for you!’ read the cheery caption, above a row of men in uniform with one empty space in the middle. I wondered what he thought about that, though I didn’t like to ask. He was too old to offer his services, and the head of a family besides, but maybe he still felt he should have been doing something. Everyone seemed to have a son, a brother, a friend or a sweetheart who’d signed up. Lord Vye gathered us all together in the hall one morning to announce that he would understand if any more of the menservants wanted to enlist; he’d give them their old jobs back at the Hall when the war was over.


  ‘These are testing times for everyone.’ He looked severely at each of us with his dark, deep-set eyes. ‘We shall all have to redouble our efforts, those who stay at home no less than those who travel abroad. “They also serve who only stand and wait,” as the poet Milton says. There may be times when you are called upon to perform some small extra task which has not fallen to you in the past. Let there be no complaining! This is a way for you to help your country, and you should be glad of the chance to do so. The humblest scullerymaid can play her part as well as the highest general.’ (Dora quivered beside me.) ‘Think of our brave soldiers who may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for you, and go about your work willingly on their behalf.’

  ‘He talks so nicely,’ Florrie sighed afterwards. ‘Do you think he writes it out first?’

  By that time - early in September - we were a smaller group already. Isaac and Jim, second coachman and groom, had been quick to leave: they’d signed up with a cavalry regiment the day after the horses were taken away. Our stable lad Bill had wanted to go as well, but apart from being only seventeen, he was too short into the bargain. You needed to be at least five foot three to join the army, and he was only five foot two. At least my father had somebody left to help him, though; there might have been only a few ponies and horses left by now, but they still needed looking after and exercising every day. The stables had to be kept tidy, too, with all the harness cleaned and oiled and the gig spotless, ready for the two Lady Vyes to be taken about.

  It’s confusing, there being two Lady Vyes. The younger one, His Lordship’s wife, is a completely different kettle of fish from her mother-in-law. For a start, she’s American and not half so starchy. She remembers all our names - even Dora’s - and she’ll smile and ask how you are in a way that makes you think she really wants to know. (Of course I always reply, ‘Very well, M’lady, thank you for asking,’ even if I could drop with tiredness and my feet are killing me.) Ma first met Lady Vye when she visited the Hall as plain Miss Brookfield and says she hasn’t changed a bit since then, even though it was twenty-five years ago.

  Anyway, young Lady Vye was always going off to Hardingbridge for some sort of committee work to do with the war. And twice a week, twenty or more ladies would arrive at the Hall to take up residence in the drawing room for the afternoon. Florrie and I used to wonder what they were up to: they certainly had a healthy appetite for cake and scones at five o’clock.

  ‘Knitting,’ one of the new parlourmaids told us, when she came to collect a plateful of cucumber sandwiches. (All three footmen had gone by then, so the fetching and carrying and waiting at table was done by Mr Fenton and a couple of maids in smart livery. Very hoity-toity they were, too.) ‘The ladies are making gloves and socks for our soldiers overseas. And balaclava helmets.’

  I don’t know why that should have been so funny, but Florrie caught my eye and we both collapsed in fits of giggles. The maid looked down her nose at us but I didn’t care; it was such a relief to laugh when everything was really so solemn and sad. That night I lay in bed, staring up at the cracks in our bedroom ceiling and thinking about the changes that had come upon us, seemingly out of the blue. All those young men, leaving the Hall … I could see a map of Britain in my mind’s eye, with black lines of soldiers like marching ants pouring out from every town and city, down to the coast and across the Channel. I wondered about Tom. We hadn’t heard from him, but surely he’d soon be volunteering if the country needed men so badly that they were even sailing over to help us from places like Canada and Australia. You could always count on Tom to do the right thing. Of course I thought then that the war would soon be over, like we all did, but the nights began to seem very long and bleak. I’d lie there while worries raced in circles round my head, listening to Florrie’s heavy breathing and Dora grinding her teeth as though a rusty spit were turning.

  At last I decided to try and work so hard that sleep came the minute I lay down, which wasn’t difficult in the current circumstances. We were finding ourselves ‘called upon to perform some small extra tasks’, as Lord Vye put it, every day - and they weren’t particularly small, either. Poor Mr McKinley, the head gardener, was the worst off. Alf had still not volunteered for the army (his mother having begged him on her knees to stay), but the other four garden lads had gone. You could hardly blame Mr McKinley and Alf if the rose beds had begun to look tatty and the raspberries were rotting on their canes with no one to pick them. It was becoming quite a problem, though, because we were running out of vegetables for the dinner parties that were still being held every weekend at the Hall. Lord Vye had gone up to Scotland as usual for the grouse season (as if there wasn’t enough shooting going on across the Channel) and come back with a sackful of birds that we had to pluck and serve roast for dinner with pommes de terre Lyonnais and a red-wine gravy. How could we manage that when there were scarcely enough potatoes for five guests, let alone fifteen?

  So Mrs Jeakes had a word with Mr McKinley, and the upshot was that Dora and I took to spending an hour or so each morning in the kitchen garden, digging up vegetables and picking fruit. (Mrs Jeakes didn’t want Florrie out there, wasting her time making sheep’s eyes at Alf.) I didn’t mind that at all - anything to be out in the fresh air and away from the cook’s eagle eye. The weather was still bright and sunny, but with a freshness about it that lets you know summer’s nearly over so you’d better make the most of it. My favourite time of year, probably, although spring is lovely too in its own way. Then one day I had the shock of my life. Who should I find, digging over one of the seed beds in a pair of Da’s old boots and her hair tied up with a red spotted handkerchief, but -

  ‘Ma? Whatever are you doing here?’

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing? Taking a bath?’ she replied tartly. ‘I’m working over this bed so you’ll have cabbages and onions for the table next spring.’

  Apparently the land agent who ran the estate and employed the outdoor workers, Mr Braithwaite, had put up a notice outside the village hall to ask for help in the Swallowcliffe gardens. Ma had gone to see him without telling any of us, and now she would be there five mornings a week, along with two other ladies from the village. It made sense when you came to think about it (our garden at home was a picture), although I’d never heard of married women coming back into service - that was something new. The money would certainly come in handy, though, and anyone could see Ma was delighted to be working at the Hall again.

  ‘Now I can keep more of an eye on you,’ she said to me when she came into the kitchen with the vegetable hamper a couple of hours later. ‘Time for a cup of tea and a chat, Mrs Jeakes?’ You can probably imagine how I felt about that.

  There was one bright spark on the horizon. Our Aunt Lizzie was coming to Hardingbridge, to sing at the Palace Theatre, and she had sent us tickets for five seats - in the gallery, no less. My other sister Ivy couldn’t get the evening off (she was a parlourmaid up in London), but Ma and Da, Hannah and I were going, and we’d probably take a neighbour with the spare ticket. There was no point asking Tom: apart from a couple of weeks in the summer, he only ever had the odd day off occasionally and it was too far to come from Suffolk just for one night. But Alf was treating Florrie too, so they’d be joining us. I couldn’t wait! We were going to see Aunt Lizzie backstage before the show, and then have supper at a proper restaurant when it was over.

  ‘Eliza Everett’, that’s my auntie’s stage name. You’d never have thought we could have someone so glamorous and exciting in our family; sometimes even I find it hard to believe she could possibly be my mother’s little sister. I’ve seen her perform three times now, and it’s always a treat. She’ll have the audience in the palm of her hand from the very first song - including Ma, who forgets how much she disapproves of Lizzie and ends up singing along to the old favourites like the rest of us. And when it’s time for a ballad, ‘Miss Everett can reduce a grown man to tears’, just like the billboards say.

  I’d been looking forward
to that afternoon for days; when at last it came, there was an extra surprise which made me so happy I could have burst. Da and I came home at dinner time to find our kitchen full of chat and laughter, and my brother Tom with his long legs stretched out under the table.

  ‘Look who arrived this morning, without so much as a word of notice!’ Ma said, although you could see from the way her eyes were shining that she didn’t mind. ‘I sent him to tell Mrs Howard she couldn’t have her trip to the Palace after all.’

  ‘How’s my favourite sister, then?’ Tom said, sweeping me up in the air (which is how he greets all three of us).

  ‘Oh, put her down,’ Hannah grumbled. ‘She’s going to bang her head on the ceiling in a minute.’

  ‘How have you got so tall and grown-up, Gracie?’ Tom asked. ‘They must be feeding you on something special at the Hall these days.’

  ‘Hard work and fresh air,’ I replied. ‘Hasn’t Ma told you? We’re gardeners now, on top of everything else.’ I hadn’t seen my brother since the beginning of the year (he’d gone over to Ireland in the summer to work at the horse fairs), so maybe I had changed a little - but he was just the same. Same wide grin crinkling up his eyes, and same hearty laugh that you can’t help but join in with. All the girls like Tom, and it’s not just because he’s turned out so handsome; he makes you feel as though you’re on the brink of an adventure, and that it’s going to be fun.

  We were off on an adventure that day, and in a very jolly mood as we left for the railway station. I’d had some problems deciding what to wear, but had settled in the end on my navy taffeta skirt (a little too full to be fashionable, but so much easier to walk in) with a pretty white voile blouse that Ivy had sent me from London. It had come from her mistress - who didn’t mind handing on her old clothes so long as she didn’t have to see the parlourmaid wearing them - and set off my white straw hat quite perfectly. Florrie had leant me her grey linen coat and I felt altogether pleased with myself, strolling along beside Hannah.