Before the War

by Fay Weldon

  At least the Prince of Wales had not been invited, as Robert sometimes threatened. Then the seating would become a nightmare, though Grace could be relied upon to know who would be welcome sitting next to the Prince, and who had best be kept at the further end of the table. And, after a great deal of fuss and bother, news might come in any case that he was unable to attend after all. In the same way as Rosina was so good at finding meetings that simply had to be attended or her very life would collapse, so the Prince would find his mother the Queen had summonsed him, or affairs of State had arisen that needed his attention. Or perhaps he would decide suddenly that his wife demanded him by her side. Not that this courteous and well-mannered woman caused her husband any trouble unless she felt his reputation was in danger.

  It was not the expense of royal dinners that worried Isobel – though the Prince was a hearty eater – but extra agency staff would have to be brought in, usually undertrained and prone to spill food and chip plates in return for outrageous wages. Robert worried about large sums of money but not the small, assuming that the normal workings of a large household came to him by right and were therefore free of charge. Isobel had been brought up by a mother from the North, who would say things like ‘many a mickle makes a muckle’ and ‘look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves’, and her daughter knew it to be true. ‘Come round to dinner,’ his Lordship was quite capable of saying to the Prince, but instead of the pleasure and pride that a normal dinner party would avail, the inclusion of royalty brought only anxiety and tension. She reflected that the way Robert dealt with problems was first to invite them and then deny them. When Grace called her she was already fully awake. After his Lordship’s earlier attention she felt languid and relaxed and her bed more comfortable than usual.

  Her ladyship protested when roused that she saw no reason why she should be summoned early to breakfast just because of Mr Baum’s presence. He was just a trumped-up tradesman who dealt in money, not even goods. He did not know how to behave. Coming to the door so early was not the mark of a gentleman, nor was asking himself to breakfast. She could not for the life of her think why his Lordship put up with Mr Baum and did not send him packing,

  ‘No, ma’am,’ said Grace, whose normal role was to agree, receive information but not comment on it. His Lordship put up with it, thought Grace, because the Prince had recommended Mr Baum, because his Lordship was in all probability quite heavily in debt to Mr Baum, and because the children’s affairs were – rashly, in Grace’s opinion – dealt with by Mr Baum, which was why their mother needed to be in attendance. But hers not to reason why, let alone offer an opinion, just to decide what her Ladyship was to wear that day.

  For Lady Isobel’s immediate morning wear Grace picked out one of her new health corsets, which did not grip the waist and force the bosom up, a mere four layers of petticoats, to be topped by a loose brown woollen dress that did not sweep the floor but approached the ankle, with a high collar in cream lace to frame the face. She twisted her Ladyship’s long, thick, fair hair into a simple top-knot. She needed no jewellery. It was merely a breakfast, after all. Only when her friend and rival the Countess d’Asti was in the offing, Grace knew, did her Ladyship worry greatly about her appearance. Then she had be firmly laced, encased in vast masses of expensive and heavy fabric, hair tonged and tortured into fashionable shapes, simply so as to keep up appearances with the Countess. Grace thought Lady Isobel looked even more lovely and youthful when simply dressed, as now. She might be the child of a coal mining family but there was nothing dwarfed or rickety about her, as there was, frankly, about the Countess, whose invitations were so eagerly sought after by all London society. The Countess was witty, mean, and, Grace always felt, slightly fraudulent. Why her Ladyship took the woman so seriously Grace could not imagine.

  Her Ladyship, once dressed, shook off whatever mood had been oppressing her and remarked that times were changing: these days the doctor came to the front door not the servants’ entrance, and no one showed surprise – though some felt it: and if the Queen’s son could make the banker Cassel his confidant, friend and apparent equal, and invite him to State dinners? She supposed she must move with the times.

  ‘At least Mr Baum is only coming to breakfast,’ remarked Grace, ‘not dinner.’

  Lady Isobel allowed the comment, and even smiled a little. Grace was a favourite. The poor tended to be misshapen and vengeful at worst, pimply and sullen at best – but Grace was tall, slim and fair and an excellent lady’s maid, quick, reliable, clean and willing. She seemed to have an instinctive eye for fashion. The Countess d’Asti had tried to poach her, but Grace had not been tempted away. As a result Isobel had raised her wages from twenty-four pounds to thirty the year: reproachful friends had told her this amounted to a betrayal. For one thing, if you paid more, other servants would feel entitled to more. For another, give them more, and they felt not that you were being generous but had underpaid them in the past. But Grace would use the money to buy card and water colours, and had decorated her room with really quite pretty little landscapes, and Rosina had claimed to have seen The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and The Collected Works of Tennyson in her room. Grace’s parentage was of course unknown. Rosina sometimes speculated that Grace’s father was a famous artist and her mother his model who had left her illegitimate baby on the doorstep of the Foundling Hospital in Coram Street. Lady Isobel said Rosina must be responsible and not put these silly melodramatic ideas into Grace’s head: it might make her feel sorry for herself when actually she ought to be extremely grateful. She had been promoted swiftly through the servant ranks from kitchen to parlour to lady’s maid, and now had a good place.

  It would be bad for Grace, and certainly bad for Lady Isobel, if the girl got ideas into her head, and decided to leave service and seek employment as a seamstress, a milliner or even a lady typewriter as had Rose, Fredericka the Countess d’Asti’s lady’s maid. Rose had simply left without giving notice, and had been seen working in a Bond Street milliner, leaving poor dear Freddie altogether in the lurch with a big ball in the offing and no one to do her hair. These days, staff showed alarmingly little loyalty.

  ‘Well,’ said Rosina, with the lack of pleasantry and tact which marked her, and was another reason, her mother supposed, that the girl was nearly thirty and not married, ‘I suppose if people are going to go on referring to you as “a beauty”, you’re going to need her services more and more. You are nearly fifty. You could try paying her more.’

  ‘I have done so,’ said Isobel, stiffly. ‘And it might be a good idea not to invite Grace in to your various meetings. God knows what ideas these peculiar speakers put into her head. Let her wait outside in the carriage.’

  ‘I daresay Mr Baum is going to be boring and scold Arthur about his tailor’s bills,’ said Lady Isobel to Grace now. ‘Poor Arthur must have something to cover his back. Tradesmen should know better than to try and sue for their money through the courts. Whoever is going to want their services if they make a nuisance of themselves?’

  Grace did not mention what was common, if possibly inaccurate, knowledge in the servants’ hall, that his Lordship’s debts were out of control and that his close acquaintance with the Prince of Wales did not bode well for his marriage. Mr Neville kept an eye on the newspapers: agricultural rentals had struck an all-time low and the price of land had plummeted; and had not many thousands of Dilberne acres been sold off at a bad time to help pay ‘debts of honour’? That is to say, his Lordship had been gambling and it was possible that what he was losing, the Prince was gaining. So much was known for sure, and a great deal more rumoured. Documents that Reginald had glimpsed on his Lordship’s desk suggested that much of Lady Isobel’s inheritance from Silas Batey, her coal mining father, now deceased, had already been mortgaged to pay the Dilberne debts.

  She feared Mr Baum’s attack upon the front door was likely to be of more importance than the clothes on Arthur’s back. A very handsome young back, Grace would be the
first to agree; the vision of his golden hairiness this very morning was hard to forget, and with it came a churning sense of the awful injustice of the ways of the world. Grace found herself humming as she left the room and went down to breakfast. A hymn was running through her head.

  The rich man in his castle

  The poor man at his gate,

  He made them high and lowly,

  He ordered their estate.

  Really? Did He? Why?

  When she got down to the staff dining room, everything was in disarray. The downstairs staff breakfast had been abandoned, cancelled. Upstairs must take precedence.

  Available now

  About Before the War

  Consider Vivien in November 1922. She is twenty-four, and a spinster. She wears fashionably droopy clothes, but she is plain and – almost worse in those times – intelligent. At nearly six foot tall, she is known unkindly by her family as ‘the giantess’.

  Fortunately, Vivien is rich, so she can travel to London and bribe a charismatic gentleman publisher to marry her. What he does not know is that Vivien is pregnant, and will die in childbirth in just a few months...

  Fay Weldon, with one eye on the present and one on the past, offers Vivien’s fate to the reader, along with that of London between the wars. This is a city fizzing with change, full of flat-chested flappers, shellshocked soldiers and aristocrats clinging onto the past.

  Inventive, warm, playful and full of Weldon’s trademark ironic edge, this is a spellbinding historical novel from one of the best novelists of our time.

  Reviews

  ‘Queen of words – she’s a tribal elder.’

  Caitlin Moran

  ‘To read Fay Weldon is like drinking champagne.’

  The Times

  ‘Fay Weldon is a national treasure.’

  Literary Review

  ‘One of the great lionesses of modern English literature.’

  Harper’s Bazaar

  ‘Readable, articulate and fascinating.’

  Scotsman

  ‘Witty and highly entertaining.’

  The Times

  ‘Wise, knowing, forthright.’

  Independent

  ‘Outrageously funny.’

  Daily Express

  About Fay Weldon

  FAY WELDON is one of the foremost chroniclers of our time, a novelist who spoke to an entire generation of women by daring to say the things that no one else would. Her work ranges over novels, short stories, children’s books, nonfiction, journalism, television, radio, and the stage. She was awarded a CBE in 2001. She has seven sons and stepsons and one stepdaughter, and lives on a hill in the west of England.

  To find out more about Fay Weldon, visit her website, www.fayweldon.co.uk, follow her on Twitter, @Fay_Weldon, or like her on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/fayweldon.writer.

  About The Love & Inheritance Trilogy

  The Love and Inheritance trilogy is a family saga set between 1899 and 1906. The aristocratic Dilberne family lurch from wild wealth, to bankruptcy, and back again, their fortunes dependent on the new steam-powered automobiles, Spiritualist gatherings and Christmases at Sandringham. But as the century turns, the rigid rules of society begin to soften...

  Following lives and loves upstairs and downstairs, and brimming with Fay Weldon’s trademark wit, wisdom and warmth, this is a trilogy to treasure.

  I – Habits of the House

  In the dying days of Victoria’s reign, the events of a single turbulent morning herald bankruptcy and ruin for the Earl of Dilberne. His wife, the Countess Isobel, believes the solution is to marry off their handsome, wilful son to a rich and pretty heiress from the Chicago stockyards. It’s a clash of cultures and principles that rocks the household from parlour to pantry.

  Gold mines fail, bankers plot, bad girls flourish, the London fog descends, Royalty intervenes and unlikely lovers triumph. Habits of the House, the first book in the Love & Inheritance trilogy, is a ravishing portrait of the fin de siècle from one of our best-loved British authors.

  Habits of the House is available here.

  Jump to a free preview here.

  II – Long Live the King

  With London Society in a frenzy of anticipation for the coronation of King Edward VII, the Earl and Countess of Dilberne are caught up in lavish preparations. Yet Lady Isobel still has ample time to fret, and no wonder with a much longed-for heir on the way, an elopement, family tragedy, a runaway niece and a gaggle of fraudulent spiritualists to contend with…

  Fay Weldon once again draws her readers into the lives and loves of the aristocratic Dilberne family, as they embrace not only a new century, but a new generation – a generation with somewhat radical views…

  Long Live the King is available here.

  III – The New Countess

  The King had foreign tastes; a French chef would have to be brought in and where could one find such a one at short notice? Existing staff would have to move up and share beds, which always made them sulky and resentful just when they should not be. Pathways must be constructed so the ladies would not get their feet muddy as they joined the men, and field kitchens erected so that dishes could be served hot and claret warmed. At least the King’s champagne – he had to have champagne when shooting, though frugal enough with alcohol otherwise – would be cold enough. Isobel found her heart beating hard and her breath coming short. Five months to prepare for one weekend – it was a monstrous task.

  The New Countess is available here.

  The whole trilogy is available in a single omnibus edition:

  The Love & Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus is available here.

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  All 17 of these titles are available in a single omnibus edition:

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  And in case you missed it…

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  An Invitation from the Publisher

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  The story starts here.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Fay Weldon, 2016

  The moral right of Fay Weldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (E) 9781784082055

  ISBN (HB) 9781784082062

  Jacket design: Leo Nickolls

  Author photograph
: DDP/ Sebastian Willnow

  Head of Zeus Ltd

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