by Anwyn Moyle
One day I was in Maesteg looking through notices in a shop window when I heard a voice behind me.
‘I recognise that hat.’
I turned round.
‘Mrs Reynolds.’
‘Where have you been, Anwyn Moyle?’
We went into the Caffi Ambr and had a pot of tea and a plate of cakes and I told her where I’d been. But now I was back home and couldn’t find a job because there was no work anywhere in Wales and I was running out of options very fast.
‘D’you wanna stay in service, Anwyn?’
‘If I can’t get anything else.’
She said she might be able to help me. There was a Christmas party being held at Llanyrafon Manor in Cwmbran and she’d been invited and could bring a guest. She said there’d be loads of landed gentry types there and she asked if I wanted to go with her.
‘Keep me company.’
‘What about Mr Reynolds?’
‘He’ll be in New York.’
So I said certainly!
On Saturday 19 December, we set off in Mrs Reynolds’s Wolseley Hornet car and drove the thirty miles or so to Cwmbran. It was about 6:00 p.m. when we arrived and there were already many fancy motor cars parked around the white exterior of the old historic manor. Mrs Reynolds was dressed in a sheer crimson evening dress with a mink stole wrapped round her shoulders to keep out the deep December cold and I wore a burgundy silk cocktail dress that Miranda gave me, under my overcoat. There were lots of perky people milling about inside, drinking champagne and cocktails and talking with beau monde accents, and I wondered where they got all their money from, with the rest of Wales steeped in petrifying poverty. Mrs Reynolds told me to mingle, so I did. I went from room to room and listened for a while to the five-piece combo playing a selection of Christmas jingles and tried to edge into conversations. But nobody knew me and nobody spoke to me. I found a little library and read a brochure about the history of the manor – how it had hugged the banks of the Afon Llwyd river for nearly four hundred years and how it belonged to the Griffiths family until the last one of them died in 1886.
The house had a colourful past of disputes and feuds between the Griffiths and the Morgans of Tredegar, with stories of love and hate that would have rivalled any historical novel. And I lost myself in the retrospective evocation and forgot about the party – until my reverie was rudely interrupted.
‘There you are, Anwyn.’
I turned away from the books and brochures as Mrs Reynolds came into the room with another woman in her mid-forties wearing a full-length mesh lace Chanel gown.
‘This is Gwendolyn Morgan.’
‘I see you’re reading about my ancestors.’
The woman was heavily made-up and tried in vain to look imperious through the layers of foundation and powder on her face. I bowed to her and offered my hand. She didn’t take it.
‘Pleased to meet you, Madam.’
‘You are a Welsh girl, aren’t you?’
‘From Llangynwyd, Madam.’
‘Cook prefers Welsh girls.’
She wasn’t looking for a lady’s maid and neither was anyone else at the party, but they had a vacancy for a kitchen maid at Tredegar House near Newport, which was no further from Llangynwyd than Cwmbran. It would be a backward step for me, but beggars couldn’t choose to turn down job offers in austere times like these.
‘It’s three shillings and sixpence a week, with every second Sunday off.’
She turned to Mrs Reynolds.
‘And you’ll vouch for her, Monica?’
‘Of course.’
Then back to me.
‘Can you start straight away? Cook needs someone for Christmas.’
‘I think so, Madam.’
‘You think so?’
‘I mean, yes . . . I can.’
‘Good.’
With that, she turned and left the room. Mrs Reynolds made an apologetic gesture towards me before following her. On the way home, Mrs Reynolds apologised again.
‘She just said she needed someone. I didn’t know the job was a kitchen maid, Anwyn.’
‘It’s fine. I’ve worked in a kitchen before.’
‘You don’t have to take it.’
‘I do.’
The following Monday, I packed my suitcase and took the train from Maesteg to Newport, where I was picked up by a silver Daimler driven by a chauffeur in full livery.
‘Anwyn Moyle?’
‘That’s me.’
He held the door open for me to climb in onto the back seat. It was warm in the big car, warmer than the cold wind blowing down the station platform, promising to make it a white Christmas.
Tredegar House was a seventeenth-century country mansion which was once described as ‘the grandest and most exuberant country house in Monmouthshire’. It was surrounded by a hundred acres of parkland and was the ancestral seat of the Morgans, who were descended from Cadifor the Great.16 The red-brick facade blended into its surroundings and four big windows flanked either side of the arched doorway. The first floor had a row of nine windows, equally as large as those on the ground floor and five smaller, attic windows looked in onto the top floor from the front of the house. Away to the east, a stable block was used for parking the cars, and other outhouses and cottages were dotted round the parkland. It stood well back in its own ambience – aloof and circumspect.
The chauffeur, whose name was David, drove me round to a side entrance and escorted me down a flight of steps to the kitchen and introduced me to the cook, whose name was Mrs Bowen. She was a big, imposing lump of a woman of about fifty, with coal-black hair and the hint of a moustache across her top lip. There were two other kitchen maids, Brenda and Sarah, who were probably about my age, and a young scullery maid called May. Once the introductions were made, David took me upstairs and handed me over to a footman called Cecil wearing the same livery as the chauffeur. Cecil was about twenty-two and looked pale and sickly, his hair was already thinning and he walked like he hadn’t long to live. There was another footman called Floyd, who was tall and handsome and about twenty, and the head butler was Mr Evans. He was in his fifties, like the cook, and looked like an undertaker, dressed all in black like Miss Mason used to be at Chester Square. The housekeeper was Miss Maddox and there were three parlourmaids – Nerys and Rhiain and Marged. There was a nanny called Miss Pritchard and a lady’s maid called Miss Yates.
All this I learned from Cecil while he took me up the back stairs to the top of the house and showed me to my room. It was small with two single beds and I’d be sharing with May the scullery maid. We shared a small bathroom with all the other female servants on the same floor. Once I deposited my case and my coat, I was taken back down to Mrs Bowen.
‘You have experience, I’m told.’
‘A year in London.’
‘As a kitchen maid?’
‘Yes.’
I lied. The kitchen was huge and ventilated by windows high up in the wall at ground level. Milk was delivered daily from a neighbouring farm, along with meat and vegetables, and everything was always fresh. Fruit from the earlier autumn crop was stored in lofts or made into jams and preserves of all sorts. There was a big range in the kitchen and a huge fireplace with hobs either side where a raging fire was burning. A boiler in the scullery heated water and it reminded me of my skivvying days in Hampstead. May, the scullery maid, was covered in ash and soot and I felt so sorry for her – she was only fourteen and fresh out of school and I resolved to help her whenever I could.
The floor was flagstoned all the way through and coal came down a chute and the dust drifted into the kitchen and mingled with the steam and the smells of cooking. And it seemed to me that I’d stepped back in time, away from the coming year of 1937 and into the bad old days of servility. Tredegar House was nothing like the modern and progressive Hampstead, nor the glamorous Chester Square, nor even like the harsh Bolde Hall. It was a rough, rural place where the present was being kept at bay by the past.
‘Y
ou’ll have to feed the dogs, Anwyn. May doesn’t have the time.’
That was my first job. The Morgans’ deerhounds were fed a diet of raw meat and cooked vegetables, mixed with broken biscuits and a few tablespoons of honey thrown in for glossy coats. They knew what was coming when I approached the kennels and they were barking and bounding all over the place. The kennelmen took the food from me and said it wouldn’t be safe for me to go in on my own – because I was such a tasty morsel the dogs might eat me. Then they laughed and I blushed and tripped my way awkwardly back to the kitchen with them watching me all the way.
Mrs Bowen was preparing beef casserole for lunch and, once it was ready, it was my job to clean up after her, while she and the other kitchen maids immediately started preparing the dinner for that evening. The starter course was hare soup and I had to skin and gut the hares, freshly caught that morning. It was a job I didn’t like doing, but my genteel days as a lady’s maid were over now, thanks to Henry Rivers, so it was back to the grindstone again. The hare meat was chopped into small pieces and left to simmer with Cook’s own concoction of vegetables and herbs. When the meat was tender, it was sieved out and pounded with a mortar until it was unrecognisable as meat, then it was returned to the pot and red wine was poured in after it. The hare soup was followed by a main course of roast pheasant and thinly sliced potatoes that were sautéed, and I was told that was the only way to serve potatoes with game, along with a watercress garnish.
From what I’d learned watching and listening to the Beadle of Hampstead and now Mrs Moustache of Tredegar, I could fit in well to the role of kitchen maid. I was a fast learner and knew how to improvise. I learned it all, filleting fish and marinating meat and garnishing goulashes and à la cartes and entrées and all kinds of entremets and plat du jours and pièces de résistance. And, before I knew it, Christmas was upon us. We had a small festive tree downstairs that was decorated with holly and mistletoe and ivy and belladonna, and the whole house had a joyous and jingly mood running through it for a few days now.
The Morgan family consisted of Mrs Morgan, or Gwendolyn, as Monica Reynolds called her, Mr Morgan who was an earl or a baron or something and was a tall, bald man of about fifty. He had a haughty look about him and rarely spoke to any of the servants. His nickname was Hoppy, because his gait was characterised by involuntary little skips at irregular intervals. They had twin daughters called Isobel and Angeline who were in their early twenties and who were tended to by the lady’s maid, Miss Yates, and a young ten-year-old son called Christopher who was the apple of his father’s eye. Isobel, the elder twin by fifteen minutes, was married with a baby boy called John and she lived at Tredegar House with her husband, Maurice Smyth, who was a solicitor. The twins were plain-looking women with mousy-coloured hair and they wore clothes that were last year’s fashions and didn’t have anything of any importance to say. Their brother was a lively young lad, always outside and up to something, like boys of that age should be. The whole family lived in the twilight of their time and seemed unable or unwilling to move into modernity.
Myself and May the scullery maid were the first two up on Christmas morning and I helped her light the fires and get the range and the boiler going.
‘You don’t have to do this, Anwyn.’
‘It’s no bother.’
‘Merry Christmas to you.’
‘Merry Christmas to you too, May.’
Mrs Bowen was in a grumpy mood, despite the occasion, knowing there’d be lots of work to do because the Morgans were having guests for Christmas dinner, which was one of the reasons I got the job in the first place. May made her a cup of tea, like I used to do for the Beadle, while I started on the vegetables. Brenda and Sarah arrived a few minutes later, with Cook shouting at them to shake a leg and saying why couldn’t they be more like Anwyn, lazy lumps – which didn’t endear me to them one little bit. When breakfast was over, we all had to line up in order of rank, with Mr Evans the head butler at the top and May, next to me, at the bottom. Then Mr Morgan came down and gave us all a present of money, along with a handshake and a merry Christmas wish. May and I got a shilling apiece, but I’m sure the others got more. The gifts were in little red bags tied with tinsel, so nobody knew who got what. A gift from the gentry . . . a condescending tradition that was still alive here in Tredegar House, despite the Great War and all the social and political upheaval that followed it. Still, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Just!
Lunch that day was light and consisted of savouries and sweet pastry and avocados and segmented salmon. It was as if everyone was just nibbling at bits and pieces and waiting for the Christmas dinner without ruining their appetites. In the meantime, I had to feed the dogs and run the gauntlet of the frisky kennelmen who were holding sprigs of mistletoe over their heads and puckering their lips like randy perch peeping out of a river. The guests began arriving in the afternoon, along with the snow. Cars and carriages pulled up and people came hand-blowing into the house, where they were greeted with hot toddies of whisky, boiling water and honey, cloves and cinnamon. Those of a teetotal persuasion were given tea or soup or ginger ale imported from Canada. Altogether, about forty guests arrived and it was our job to wine and dine them. There was goose and turkey on the menu, fresh from the farm. The turkey stuffing was dark and smoky, with shallots and chestnuts and mushrooms and garlic and raisins and parsley and rosemary and imported wild rice. The goose was stuffed with prunes in Armagnac and apples and cloves and mace and a good deal of seasoning. The birds were served with traditional roast potatoes and parsnips and sprouts and a variety of sauces and gravies. A selection of other seasonal vegetables was also served in case anybody fancied a change from convention. Christmas cake and lighted pudding and cream and segmented fruit followed, and it was all washed down with a selection of superior wines.
Later, those upstairs amused themselves with piano-playing and party games and smoking cigars and drinking brandy and, when they were merry enough, singing Christmas carols. Some left that night in their chauffeur-driven limousines, no doubt to be ready for their respective traditional Boxing Day foxhunts, but a few stayed over to join the Morgans in their own particular pursuit of the uneatable. I was glad I didn’t have to wait up for the ladies until the small hours, and May and I were tucked up safely in our own little yuletide beds before 11:00 p.m., oblivious to the falling snow outside our freezing window.
Next day was the local Hollybush Hunt and the whole Morgan family attended, including the baby. They were driven to covert and mounted their horses in the snow, while little John looked on from the arms of his nanny, Miss Pritchard. I didn’t see any of this, of course, because, unlike at Bolde Hall, as a lowly kitchen maid I wasn’t invited to follow the hunt and had to stay at Tredegar to help Cook with the Boxing Day fare. That consisted of crusted ham with mashed potato and fresh vegetables, kedgeree, turkey sandwiches with the crusts cut off, Stilton and walnut salad, fried duck eggs, English trifle, Christmas cherry soufflé and orange and cranberry pancakes.
And so time moved on. My education as a cook’s assistant continued into 1937, with partridge pies and rabbit quenelles and stuffed quail, and I learned how to cook all kinds of game and stews and sauces and stuff that most people of my class had never even heard of. But I longed for London. I missed the city and the life I’d had there. I missed Lucy and even Miranda Bouchard and it was no longer at arm’s length, but distant and blended into the larger background of my mistakes.
The snows of late December and January thawed in February, but it was still cold. Working in a country house was different to working in a city house. There were rural duties to perform as well as the household ones and, as the second lowest servant in the house, I was expected to do work outside as well as inside. Besides feeding the dogs on a daily basis, I had to bring in the milk that was left at the gate by the farmer. I had to load the churns onto a four-wheeled bogey and pull it over the gravel driveway, and the wheels sometimes sunk into the stones. I’d be lucky
if one of the groundsmen came and gave me a hand, but this didn’t always happen, and my hands would almost stick to the cold metal handle of the trolley. I had to run errands to the farm and, in winter, my boots would get covered in mud and cow dung and I’d have to clean them outside in the cold when I got back.
I also had to tend the winter herb garden, and once I was sent to top and tail swedes for fodder, and help May clear the snow from the vicinity of the kitchen steps so the trades and delivery men didn’t drag it all in on their boots. I was usually exhausted at the end of each long, hard-working day. So tired that I mostly slept on my second Sunday off and never went anywhere for any kind of fun.
But then, one of the young kennelmen asked me to go into Newport with him for a dance at a little local hall in the Graig area of the town. Although he was younger than me, I thought it’d do me good to get away from everything for a while. His name was Brynn. He wasn’t bad-looking and, if he thought he was going out with me, he might keep the others from pestering me every time I went to feed the dogs. So, on Sunday 23 February, we set off on his bicycle, with me on the crossbar, to ride the two miles to the dance. It was very cold after the sickly sun went down and, by the time we got there, I was frozen to the bone and sorry I’d ventured out at all. The room I shared with May wasn’t all that warm, but it was positively tropical compared to the crossbar of Brynn’s bicycle. I cheered up once we got inside, though, and Brynn bought me a port and brandy and that warmed me up on the inside, while he put his arms round me and tried to warm me up on the outside.
‘How old are you Brynn?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Really? You don’t look it.’
‘How old are you, Anwyn?’
‘Nineteen . . . nearly.’
‘Really? You look older.’
I didn’t know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment, but I let it go and we danced the night away till 10:00 p.m. and I had a good enough time.
Brynn was drinking strong ale and, on the way back, he was a bit unsteady on the bicycle. We were coming to a sharp bend in the narrow road when a car came round it out of nowhere and the headlights blinded him. He wobbled about trying to control the bike, then steered it through a hedge and into a ploughed field. The bicycle came to an abrupt halt in the deep drilled earth and I went flying over the handlebars and landed face down in the cold filthy mud. It was black as pitch. I couldn’t see a thing and my shoes were sinking into the softness of the ploughed earth after the rain of earlier in the day.
