Cassie's Story - Prologue

This is my first submission, have been working on this for a while, this is only the prologue which gives cassies background before events take over in the chapters to come. to understand her story i felt i needed to give some detail of life in the period she has been born to.

Any comments, thoughts or constructive criticism will be taken on board and consider very carefully.

Prologue

I open my story with a husband and wife who married in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and twenty six. They were to be my mother and father. They were your typical upper class couple.

My father is Andrew David Whitelaw and related to the Royal Family on the Queens side. Mind you it is so far removed that he or any descendant of his would never come to the throne, unless some freak accident killed about thirty members of the Royal Family. Even though he is that far back, he still holds the title of Lord Whitelaw.

My mother Olivia Elizabeth Richards had no title until she married my father but her parents had made their money in the city. My father not only holds a Royal title but also has a military rank of Colonel, having followed in his father's footsteps and served in the armed services for twenty-two years.

After being retired from the army with honours, he spent a year travelling the world with my mother on a cruise liner, before joining the stock market world by setting up his own brokerage firm.

My father was thirty-eight and my mother was twenty six when they married and came to live in their London residence along with the house servants. A big age gap you say, well for people of their stature it was very usual.

The male would have had to prove himself in the world of business to be able to keep a wife to-be. She would have had to attend some sort of finishing school, where she was taught how a wife acts when she is married.

She would be married at an earlier age then her husband so she did not have the time as a single woman to discover that she may have her own opinion on the world and voice it in public.

The London house that my parents moved into shortly after their marriage was a large four storey building opposite one of the few open recreational grounds in the city, this one being Hyde Park.

This house was the residence of my parents while father worked in the city, during the summer mother would travel down to live in their Oxford residence and he would spend most weekends with her.

The London house was a typical Victorian house with railings outside with a road between the house and one of the few entrances to the park. The rest of the house consisted of one drawing room, one dining room, and the hallway that was on the same level as the front door.

Downstairs was the kitchen, laundry, the butlers and valets sitting area when either of them had nothing to do. Upstairs was three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one being an en-suite bathroom to my mothers bedroom. Then above that was where all the staff lived except for Charles who had his own house.

Most of the time my parents either entertained or were being entertained on most evenings in their later years but as a young couple their lordships would go horse riding through the park or occasionally on an autumn night they might take a buggy ride.

The main reason for choosing this house when they had married was that it came with a garage, a very rare commodity in London albeit about half a mile down the road. As aristocrats they were not the ones who had to walk in the wind and the rain to get to it, which was the job of Charles their chauffeur. Of course if it was raining then it was James the butler's job to carry an umbrella over my parents' heads from the front door to the car door.

When my parents married, they had decided to have six full time servants who would live with them on a permanent basis whether in London or Oxford.

The oldest serving person is the butler James. It had taken him many years to reach the position of butler and now at the age of fifty-six he was finally content with his life, he had been a bachelor all his life and devoted himself to whichever family he served at the time. He was his last employer's valet when he came to serve under my parents but with the new job came the step up the ladder to the position of butler.

James is a tall man at six feet six, he has jet black hair cut into a short, back and sides, a clean shaven face but a full moustache and well built, he has full run of the house and servants, his duties include keeping a check on the household books.

He answers the front door at all times, collects the post each day and deals with all the visitors that call at the house, apart from the vegetable seller, the fish monger, the butchers boy and the old gypsy or door to door salesman that might turn up at the back door. The cook would always deal with these types.

Funnily enough the next and longest running servant in the house is the cook/housekeeper she is called Mrs Bloomsberry a widow who lost her husband at an early age in an industrial accident and found that she had to get a job to keep herself. Thankfully they had not been married very long and had had no children while they were married which made it easier for her to find a job.

She agonised for a long time over what sort of job she was going to do. She thought she would try an office job but had no office experience of any kind. Then she thought she would try factory work of some kind but with her stature she could not stand on her feet in one place for too long.

She then realised that she kept coming back to the one thing she could do very well and that was cooking, so that was what she decided to do on a long term basis, it also meant that when her feet got to sore she could at least sit down from time to time.

Mrs Bloomsberry had started to look for a housekeeper's job or a cook's job at around the time as my parents got married. My parents felt it would be a good idea to try someone who had no preconceptions on how a house was run and that they could all pull together and come to a happy compromise.

She is a very plump woman due to all the tasting of food and testing of cakes that she cooked. She has white hair which she says was caused within the first year of being in the house by all the stress that the kitchen maid had given her when she didn't do as she was told and made complete messes of things like pastry making and vegetable slicing or so she claims.

She is very forthright in her demeanour and calls a spade a spade, and on more then one occasion has told James that he should get married so she could cut down the amount of people she has to cook for, if the truth were known though she thoroughly enjoys cooking for everyone.

Her main job usually meant she had to cook three different meals, a simple but filling one for the staff, a more hardy meal for my father to see him though the riggers of the working day and a light dietary meal for mother so that she never had to worry about her clothes fitting her.

Cook's favourite things to make were sweet pastries, they were well known within my mothers' social circle. The pastry was made fresh every time, (no pre-made pastry from shops back then), and she always insisted on fresh fruit that had to be bought the same day that she was going to use it, she could also make different sorts of pastries including filo, short crust and flaky.

The other duties included responsibility for the household food ordering and budget, the choice of toiletries for upstairs as well as downstairs, cleaning items for the house and car and uniform clothing for all the servants, if these items could be mended then wherever possible it would be stitched, patched or darned. They were replaced when and only it was impossible to make a reasonable repair.

My fathers valet was only a year younger then Mrs Bloomsberry, his name being Richard. Richard is also a single man having the same view as James, that to be a good valet you could not have any interruptions or distractions like a family.

Having eaten a lot of Mrs Bloomsberrys' fantastic cooking he had become a bit on the plump side, but was a well kept man and very clean man in spite of his size.

One day Richard is hoping either to take over James' position or to move to another family so he can gain a position of equal standing to that of James. Should he find a butlers position with another family my parents wouldn't hesitate in letting him go, not because he is no good at his current job but because they are always pleased to help anyone up the job ladder.

They would give him an outstanding reference; he would probably find it very difficult to fail at an interview. As a Lords valet his only job would be to awaken him in the morning and to see to his every need.

A good valet would know in advance of his employer as to what was needed without the employer having to ask for it. On James' day off Richard would step into the butler's position but due to the few duties that Richard had he never took his days off.

His duties were nearly always finished by nine in the morning when my father would leave the house for the office and not resume until seven in the evening when Richard was needed to lay out my fathers' dinner clothes or a special suit should he be attending a social function.

Richard could do as he pleased between these hours and for that reason he had not taken any time off for the last three years except for Christmas day.

On Christmas day, each year my parents would insist that everyone take the day off, my mother would cook for the servants, and if she wanted anything, she would do it herself.

Cook never really liked the idea of the lady of the house in her kitchen because things were never really put back in the right place but who was she to argue with the Lord and Lady and if this was what she wanted then this was what she got. She just had to put things back in their right place the following day when she got her kitchen back.

It would usually cause major hassle for the rest of the servants because she would be uptight and shouting at everyone but it only happened once a year and cook would only be in a bad mood for one day. The last male servant in this household is Charles Dublin the chauffeur come handyman while resident in London.

While at the holiday residence weather it is a long weekend or a stay of a couple of weeks in the town of Oxford Charles would also take on the duties of a stableman alongside the other duties, otherwise it was left to an agency worker when both of my parents were not in Oxford.

Charles' main job in London was chauffeur to father primarily, then to mother if father did not require him. If neither of them needed the car then he could use it should cook need to go shopping or anyone else need a lift for some reason, this was a major privilege and no-one ever abused it in case it was taken away from them.

He would also be expected to fix anything that needed mending in the house. On the odd occasion he would also be called upon to cobble any of the servant's shoes should they need it, to save on money. Charles was also the only house servant that had a spouse.

Mr and Mrs Dublin also had seven children, Mandy the eldest then going down in age there was Mary, Sally, Thomas, Steven, Lucinda and last but not least the youngest was five year old Henry, all of which were attending full time school upon the insistence of their employers.

Mrs Dublin did the laundry on a part time basis taking the washing home to enhance her husbands wages, she didn't work on a full time basis as she had found it a fulltime job looking after her husband and the children.

There were not the modern conveniences that the twentieth century has afforded us, things like automatic washing machines, dishwashers, magi mixers and steam irons. The washing of dishes and clothes had to be done by hand in a tub and wrung on a mangle.

Eggs and butter and sugar had to be blended by hand with a wooden spoon. People at this time also had to sweep carpets with a brush due to the lower classes not being able to afford electrical goods. The worst job though as I see it was having to iron with a flat iron and having to wait for it to warm on the range.

The two youngest servants in the house are Milly the kitchen maid and Rosemary the upstairs maid. Milly is fifteen years old with no formal education or speech etiquette, so for her to climb the servants ladder is going to be very difficult and highly unlikely. She has long brown hair, which is worn under a hair net at all, times, she is rather spotty due to all the sweet foods that cook makes.

Her total attire consists of two pinafores for work, these were worn over a plain white blouse button up tight to the neck, she had one white dress with red and blue flowers on it, this dress was for church on Sundays of which all household workers were expected to attend at the express wishes of my parents.

Milly was lucky in the fact that she had two pairs of shoes, again one for work and one for church. She only had the one coat that she wore wherever she went and one hat and one pair of gloves, all women wore hats and gloves back then.

Milly still being very young has but few jobs in her daily routine. These included cleaning the kitchen and scullery, as well as washing the dishes, and washing clothes, drying and ironing the servant's clothes.

I know it sounds a small amount of chores to do but by the time she had also swept and scrub the kitchen floor on her hands and knees, black-leaded the log fire range, polished all the silver and brassware. Cleaned the two shoe scrapper's one outside the main door and the other by the servant's entrance you can start to understand why it would take most of the day to do.

Occasionally if the cook was rushed, she would ask Milly to prepare the vegetables for meals. Nevertheless, most of all she seemed to be cooks and James' personal gofer.

Last but not least was Rosemary the only upstairs maid. Not because my parents could not afford anymore but basically with there not being any children to make the usual mess, my mother didn't feel there was any need for more then one servant upstairs.

All the jobs were divided between Rosemary, James and Richard. Richard deals with organising my father's clothes, toiletries and setting the fire in his bedroom and bathroom.

James would set the fire in the living room and set the dinning table for meals, but Rosemary had the majority of the chores to do.

A typical working day for Rose would start with her waking up at six in the morning. Why so early, well before she could start her chores for the household she had her own chores to do, first she had to put her uniform she wore the day before in the scullery for Milly to wash out, make her bed, and open her window and curtains.

All this had to be done at this time of the morning in order for her to be able to wake mother up at the right time. Rosemary was a young girl for an upstairs maid; she had been lucky enough to be the daughter of Mrs Lee who already worked for my parents in a permanent position at Oxford as housekeeper during the periods that my parents did not stay at Oxford.

Rosemary was given the job straight from finishing school at the age of thirteen. Mother and father had insisted that Rosemary attend school to get an education and had even paid for her school fees as part of the mother's salary to make sure that she had the best education for someone of a working class.

The mother had had no formal education, which kept her below stairs in the house for a very long time, but was very much liked by the couple and a good hard worker.

Over the years, she had learnt to speak fairly well and so mother had decided to reward her with the position when her daughter was growing up in order for her to increase the maids salary without it looking like a handout, because no servant with any decency would admit to being poor or to ask for a raise in wages because it would reflect badly on the employers.

With the education her daughter would get, one day she would be trusted enough to work above stairs, but to get the job straight from school was a very high honour for her and she had achieved this as a graduation present for coming top in her year.

Rosemary had long brown hair that was kept neat and tidy in a ponytail or a plat, brown eyes to match and an almost anorexic framework. She was a very tall girl at five feet ten inches but that was a godsend in any servant especially when the houses back then had very tall rooms with a small decorative ledge high up that had to be dusted.

Every morning before waking her mistress Rosemary would have set jobs to do to make it a pleasant room to wake up in, first she would make sure that the fire in mothers room was lit that her bath was run, and that the curtains and windows were open to allow the room to feel light and airy.

Then she would wake her mistress and while her ladyship was bathing Rosemary would lay out the clothes that were to be worn on that day. The outfit that was to be worn would depend on the time of the year, the day of the week and if there were any social engagements that she had to attend during the day.

On some days Rose would have to lay out four different outfits, one for her to wear about the house, one for a social event that maybe run during the day, a third outfit for dinner with my father and then yet another outfit if after dinner my parents had another social event.

Having done these tasks her next job would be to ring the service bell, which would set the rest of the house in motion. The bell would ring from mothers' bedroom to the butlers' quarters to let the butler know that his Lordships valet could now go and wake the Lord of the house. After ringing the bell she would go and help mother out of the bath and help her dress so she would be in the dinning room before her husband for breakfast.

Rose would then follow my mother down to the dinning room and then carry on to the kitchen to pick up the cleaning tools for her jobs upstairs, these jobs would include making the beds, picking up any laundry, polishing the shelves, pictures and units, cleaning sinks, baths and loo's, cleaning windows and sweeping floors. I could go on forever with Rose's list of jobs but I don't want to bore you, so let's talk about someone else.

Once the butler had heard the bell ring he would pass on the information to the rest of the kitchen staff so breakfast could be taken up to the dinning room.

Then he would tell the Lords valet if he had not been in the kitchen when the bell rang and the valet would then go up to help father out of bed.

Each of his jobs would follow the same routine as Rosemary's to start with first he would light the fire, then run the bath, open the windows and the curtains, then wake father, set out his clothes while father was bathing and then help him dress for breakfast.

Charles would now go and get the car out of the garage which was at the end of the street, cook would start to do a fried breakfast for my father consisting of eggs, fried bread, sausage, bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes, when it came to mother Mrs Bloomsberry was always conscious of my mothers figure and breakfast for her would consist of a piece of fruit like grapefruit and then a bowl of cereal that generally had some sort of roughage in it.

James would set the breakfast table and by this time Rosemary would have finished all her jobs upstairs and come back downstairs to do chores in the living room before breakfast was finished. When my parents got married it was the done thing that mother would make sure she was seated at the table before her husband came in.