Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (17 page)

‘Oi!’ I yelled,
recovering myself. ‘Keep yer hands where I can see them.’

From behind Alan’s head Flo winked
and before long we were all in hysterics. Suddenly the door to the
housekeeper’s room flew open and Mr Orchard loomed in the servants’
hall doorway. He was so red of face he looked like he might suffocate with rage at any
moment.

‘Myself and Mrs Jones
can’t hear ourselves think and Mr Stocks will be wondering what on earth is
going on,’ he bellowed. ‘Now keep that infernal noise
down.’ He turned on his heel and stalked down the passage.

As soon as he was out of earshot I turned to
Flo. ‘So much for the butler hears nothing,’ I whispered. Her face
crumpled into a smile. ‘I bet he’s only jealous,’ I went
on.

But despite Mr Orchard’s
dressing-downs, we danced each night in the servants’ hall until our feet
ached. Alan lost interest and spent his whole time trying to grope me or pull off my mop
cap, rather than learn the steps, but to my delight I found I quickly picked up the
dance moves. I even learnt the Palais Glide to perfection, thanks to Flo.

The best nights were when we were joined by
Louis and George, who could both dance well. Flo and I showed off something rotten when
they were in the room. And when Louis took me in his arms to dance I felt I could have
melted like butter. Everything about him was so intoxicating, from the feel of his
strong thighs against mine to his handsome face and chocolate-brown eyes. When he
removed a stray hair from my cheek one night I swear my heart skipped a thousand
beats.

Some men just smell delicious, no matter how
little they bathe. Unlike the poor gardener with the smelly feet who Flo and I laughed
about constantly, Louis smelt of
fresh lemons and soap. His skin was
as warm as toast and he could dance too! Could you ask for more in a man? He had an easy
charm that brooding, intense Alan would never have. I had to keep reminding myself that
he was promised to a kitchen maid. Lucky cow.

Nothing seemed to exhaust us in them days
and Flo and I would whisper long into the night.

‘Here, Flo,’ I hissed in
the dark. ‘I’m going to kiss a boy soon.’

‘Me too,’ she whispered
back.

Long hours were spent plotting how we would
achieve our objective and what it would feel like.

‘Do you keep your eyes open, do
you reckon?’ she asked.

‘Only if he looks like
Louis,’ I sniggered. ‘Otherwise keep ’em shut and hope for
the best.’

‘And what about the
tongue?’

‘Depends on where he wants to put
it,’ I quipped.

We laughed so much, our shoulders shaking
with the force, that we had to stuff sheets in our mouths to stop anyone hearing.

When I look back now I know they were some
of the happiest times of my life. I had turned fifteen at Woodhall. I was on the brink
of becoming a woman and I was so alive it wasn’t true. Colours seemed
brighter, smells more pungent, jokes funnier and even the sun seemed to shine every day.
I suppose it was all those hormones racing round my body. I was stuffed full of them.
Flo and I just lived for new experiences and were fizzing over with energy. Every spare
chance we got we were out on our bikes and could cycle for miles, sometimes up to fifty
miles in a go. Even when thick fog rolled in off the sea and
enveloped the landscape in an eerie shroud, we’d still get on our bikes. Only
out there in the fens did we feel free.

‘Here, Flo,’
I’d laugh. ‘I can’t see a hand in front of
me.’

It’s a wonder we never ended up in
a heap of tangled metal, but the gods seemed to look down on us.

It didn’t matter how many times
Mrs Jones, Mr Orchard and Mabel chastised us, nothing knocked our confidence or appetite
for fun. Mind you, I had noticed since we started at Woodhall a certain softening from
Mrs Jones towards us. The more I learnt and the more I could show her I’d been
listening to her, the more she seemed to give me a grudging respect.

Even Mabel was having more fun in the
countryside.

Flo and I were just cleaning up after dinner
one night when I heard a soft giggling coming from outside. Tiptoeing to the door of the
kitchen, I hovered and listened.

‘Lend us a lug,’ I said,
beckoning to Flo.

‘What is it?’ she said,
coming over to join me by the door.

‘Sssh,’ I said,
silencing her with a finger on the lips.

Out of the velvety darkness came a gruff
man’s voice, followed by high-pitched laughter. It was coming from behind the
woodshed. We strained our ears to listen.

‘Oh, go on Mabel,
please,’ groaned the man.

‘It’s Mabel,’
I mouthed, my eyes as wide as saucers. Flo’s hand flew to her mouth in shock.
Then came Mabel’s funny little high-pitched voice.

‘Not tonight,
Frank.’

Flo and I snorted and ran back into the
kitchen, cackling.

Later that night in bed we were beside
ourselves.

‘Not tonight, Frank,’ I
mimicked.

Who’d have thought it? Buttoned-up
Mabel, the head housemaid, wasn’t an old maid after all. She may have been the
picture of reserve and respectability below stairs, but behind the woodshed she was a
different lady!

Who could blame her for letting off
steam?

But while racy Mabel was getting up to
wicked stuff, poor old Mr Orchard obviously wasn’t. He was still as sharp as a
rattlesnake and had a sting in the tail that was just as venomous.

After we’d been at Woodhall for a
few months, and after all our plotting and scheming, we finally got the chance to go to
a village dance. The local village dance only came along every three months and it was
Mrs Jones herself who told us about it. Apparently it all started with a whist drive to
which she would go and after that they would clear away all the tables and a local band
would play.

‘You can go, but only because
it’s the local dance and I can keep an eye on yer,’ she snapped.
‘And you’re to be home by eleven o'clock, latest.’

This was music to our ears. You may as well
have told us we were going to a ball at the Royal Albert Hall, not some draughty old
village hall, we were that excited.

On the night itself, we cleared away dinner
while Mrs Jones went to the whist drive. As I washed and stacked great piles of dirty
dishes, my heart was singing. Tonight was the night. I was going to get a kiss.

Flo had run us up a lovely couple of dresses
in a beautiful floral cotton. We didn’t have any make-up, not that at our
age we’d have been allowed it in any case, so we fluffed up
our hair and pinched our cheeks to add colour.

Alan, John and Irene the housemaid were
coming too and we cycled into the village in a babble of noise, the excited chatter of
teenage voices filling the air.

Inside the village hall the band was warming
up and Mrs Jones and all her mates from surrounding villages were just finishing up
their game.

‘Now remember,’ she
said, waggling a finger in my face. ‘Not a minute after eleven and no funny
business.’

Alan dug me in the ribs, but I managed to
keep a straight face.

It was nothing special in that room. Wooden
floors, a slightly raised stage for the band and trestle tables with a few sandwiches
and an urn of tea at the side. But to my young eyes it was the height of
sophistication.

The band fired into life with a lively
foxtrot and Flo and I sat by the side on wooden chairs and waited … and waited. I
drained my cup of tea, but still nothing happened.

‘What now?’ I
hissed.

‘You have to wait for someone to
ask you to dance,’ she replied.

There were dozens of local girls just like
us lining the room. On the other side of the room facing us were a dozen or so boys, all
local farming lads. We eyed each other warily, no one wanting to be the one to make the
first move. It was like a human cattle market. This was plain daft!

Finally there was a tap on my shoulder.

‘Would you like to dance?’
came a smooth voice.

I looked up and straight into the eyes of
Louis.

‘Yes please,’ I said.
Setting down my teacup, I suddenly felt very shy. My long legs wobbled as Louis led me
to the centre of the room, placed one warm hand in mine and the other round my
waist.

Didn’t I feel like the
bee’s knees as he whirled me round the hall in his arms? All those hours of
practice in the servants’ hall paid off as people gathered round us and
whistled and clapped as we foxtrotted our way round the room. Louis and I looked like a
golden couple. His feet were as light as Fred Astaire’s as he led me this way
and that. I was like putty in his hands and gazed up adoringly into his brown eyes.

It was utterly, utterly glorious.

Dance after dance we had. The foxtrot was
followed by the waltz and then the Palais Glide. My head was spinning by the end of it.
Resting my forehead on Louis’s shoulder while I got my breath, I suddenly
realized my heart was pounding like a tennis ball in my chest.

I tilted my chin up, closed my eyes and my
lips parted.

Please kiss me … please just kiss me.

I didn’t dare open my eyes for
fear it might somehow break the magic spell.

There was a long silence followed by …

‘Best go,’ he said
abruptly, stepping back so that I stumbled forward. ‘Promised the girl
I’m courting I’d write to her this evening.’

And just like that my dreams popped like a
bubble.

‘Thanks for that,
Mollie,’ he said with a smile and then he was gone.

I glanced over at Flo, who was wrestling with
a spotty village lad with two left feet, and shrugged my shoulders in misery.

She smiled sympathetically.

Suddenly the band did a Paul Jones number.
This was where all the men went round the middle and the women went in the opposite
direction. When the music stopped you had to dance with whoever was opposite you.

‘It’s a good chance to
put the moves on whoever you fancy,’ Flo had told me.

As the music burst into life, everyone
joined in, eagerly eyeing up the one they fancied and frantically hoping the music would
stop as they passed them by. I saw Alan gamely lolloping round. He hated dancing, but I
knew he’d give this one a go if it led to something. He smiled and winked as
he drew near to me but the music carried on. I just made out the scowl on his face as he
found himself planted in front of another girl.

I smirked to myself. Looking up, I found
myself opposite a nice-enough-looking lad.

‘Me name’s
Trevor,’ he told me as he took my hand. ‘I work on the farm near
Woodhall. I’ve seen you around.’

Trevor can only have been sixteen and, as I
quickly discovered, didn’t have much in the way of conversation. In fact, once
we’d got past the mating habits of his boss’s bullocks, there
wasn’t much else to say.

All too soon I realized Flo was frantically
gesturing at me.

‘Nearly eleven,’ she
mouthed. ‘We have to go.’

Trevor and I stumbled outside into the
darkness. I was perilously close to being late and God only knew
what
Mrs Jones would do if we missed our curfew. But it was now or never. Who knew when the
next dance would come around? Trevor was never going to set the world on fire and he was
no Louis, but he did have a pair of lips.

‘Can I kiss you?’ he
squeaked, his voice cracking a little.

‘All right then,’ I
replied.

He gulped hard, his Adam’s apple
shooting up his spotty neck. Then he tore on ahead into a neighbouring field like his
heels were on fire and quickly found a suitable haystack to lean against. The sound of
muffled laughter from the other side told us it was occupied.

Leading me further into the field, he paused
by a dyke, turned in the darkness and dived in for the kill.

They say a first kiss should be a magical
experience. Well, this one was wet and sloppy. I stifled a giggle as an image of one of
Mr Stocks’s Labradors popped into my mind. Trevor kissed me so furiously I
felt like I was going to get sucked into his mouth. Suddenly I felt his hand brush my
thigh.

Then it was creeping up and under my
dress.

‘Oh no you
don’t,’ I snapped, slapping his hand away. I knew that way only led
to trouble.

‘Just a feel, Mollie,
please,’ he groaned. ‘I know where to draw the line. I’m
not stupid.’

And nor was I. It wouldn’t be
Trevor turned out of his job and left with the bad reputation.

‘Bye, Trevor,’ I said,
turning on my heel and making a run for it.

Back at the village hall I grabbed Flo and
we headed for Woodhall, leaving Trevor scowling after me. Mrs Jones
was waiting to greet us at the back door in her nightie, wearing an expression that
could curdle milk.

‘In. Now,’ she stormed.
‘You’re late.’

‘Sorry, Mrs Jones,’ we
said meekly as we scurried up the back stairs in the dark.

Lying in our beds, Flo gave me the third
degree.

‘So, did he try it on?’
she asked.

‘Course,’ I laughed.
‘But I gave him a cut across the hand. What about that lad you were dancing
with?’

‘Just a peck,’ she said.
‘It was nothing to write home about. You going to see yours
again?’

‘Not if I can help
it!’

As we gossiped long into the night I
realized that talking about kissing was often better than actually doing it. Not that it
mattered. I had actually kissed a boy! He wasn’t a man like Louis, but
everyone has to start somewhere.

The next day we skittered about the place
like a couple of lambs.

‘Wipe the smiles off your faces,
will you, girls?’ said Mrs Jones over breakfast. ‘You’re
putting me off my sausages.’

With that, we collapsed into fits of
giggles.

In the passage after breakfast Alan collared
me and grabbed me by the elbow.

‘When you going to kiss me, Mollie
Browne?’ he said. ‘You can’t keep me waiting, you
know.’