Diamonds at Dinner by Hilda Newman and Tim Tate Page A

children’s governess. Well, I’d already seen that Mr Latter was very much top of the tree and he plainly wasn’t going to be a friend I could confide in, much less one with whom I could really socialise. Don’t get me wrong, he was a good man and kind but, to rise to the position of butler, he had learned the hierarchy of service in the days when it was even more strict – he would have had to have spent at least a decade gradually rising through the ranks, from a start as the lowliest of footmen. Now he was the most senior servant in the house and his very position meant that he had to keep a good deal of distance between himself and the rest of us.
    Nor was the governess any more promising. Mrs Lovett was her name and, in truth, she kept even more to herself than Mr Latter. In many ways, I suppose, this was inevitable. Her domain was the children’s nursery and the schoolroom and she would often take her meals there with her charges, so I didn’t see terribly much of her.
    That left Winnie Sapsford, the housekeeper-cook. Herposition in itself was slightly unusual. Most great houses like Croome Court would have employed both a cook and a housekeeper – certainly the 9th Earl did and, since he and the late Countess were great ones for entertaining, the cook would have been kept pretty busy just keeping up with the demands made on the kitchen, let alone supervising all the household staff and managing the daily routine of cleaning, washing, ironing and the like. Although I didn’t quite realise it then, the fact that Winnie was doing both jobs was a sign that the Coventry finances were not in the healthiest of shapes.
    I think I liked Winnie from the off: certainly she never did me any harm, nor made my life anything but bearable. She made sure that I always had enough to eat and drink. But I’d sensed something about her on our first meeting: I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but I realised that whilst we would get on just fine, she was never going to be what I could call a friend. All in all, things on that front weren’t looking at all promising.
    Looking back, I can see why the servants’ structure – with its rigid demarcations and prohibitions on friendships – was the way it was. In some ways, working below stairs in a great house must be like being in the army: everyone has to know their orders and be prepared both to give or receive them without the possibility of them being questioned. Friendships between the giver of orders andthe person to whom they were issued make it less easy for obedience, I suppose. It’s that old idea of familiarity breeding contempt.
    ‘Hey ho,’ I thought to myself. ‘This is a funny sort of place you’ve come to, and no mistake. Hilda, my girl, you’ll just have to grin and bear it and make the best of everything.’ It’s funny to look back on the way things were then but, in some way, Croome Court was a microcosm of England itself between the two world wars. People grew up knowing their station in life (now there’s a phrase you don’t hear today) and were brought up not just to know their place but to accept it. There’s another phrase that you used to hear all the time in those days: ‘Mustn’t grumble.’ It was the standard answer to anyone – at least anyone of your own class; you’d never dream of saying anything so casual to your ‘betters’ – who might ask you how you were, or how your work day had been. ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ we said and we meant it: we were expected never to grumble about anything because that was all part of the English way. And, like the phrase itself, that’s a way that was blown away by the Second World War.
    As my first full day in service came to its somewhat gloomy end, if anyone had asked me how it had gone (of course no one did!), I’d most likely have answered, ‘Mustn’t grumble.’ But when I went to bed that night, I cried and cried until at last I fell asleep.
    I was woken the next day at 7am by