Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (33 page)

‘I’m off to Spain,
that’s what!’ I babbled excitedly. ‘Me, in Spain, what
about that?’

Mr Orchard looked up from a bottle of wine
he was decanting. ‘Has anyone warned the natives?’ he said
drily.

‘You’re just
jealous,’ I snapped back. Cheeky, yes, but he couldn’t sack me
now.

He raised one eyebrow a fraction.
‘I wish you the very best of luck, Mollie. Something tells me you will need
it. And, tell me, just who is the lucky man or woman who has the dubious honour of being
your new employer?’

‘Lord Islington,’ I said
proudly. I could tell even Mr Orchard was impressed.

‘Aah, Lord Islington,’
he said as if he took tea with him regularly. ‘Lord Islington, otherwise known
as First Baron Islington, educated at Harrow and Christ Church Oxford. Former Governor
of New Zealand, Privy Counsellor and most recently Under-Secretary of State for the
Colonies. Seventy years old now, I believe, but a most impressive
gentleman.’

‘You sound as if you’ve
swallowed a copy of
The Times
,’ I giggled.

‘Less of your sauce,
Mollie,’ snapped Mrs Jones.

It was September 1936 when I took my leave
of Woodhall.

In a way I was sad to go, but life moves on.
Besides, Phyllis was getting my job, so she was getting a leg-up too.

As I packed my small case and clambered down
the back staircase for the last time, I found Irene and Phyllis waiting at the bottom,
wearing solemn faces.

‘Who’s died
then?’ I laughed.

‘This place won’t be
half as much fun without you,’ sniffed Irene, getting a large hankie out of
her apron pocket and blowing her nose loudly.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Phyllis.
‘Who’s going to get me into trouble now?’

In the servants’ hall Mr Orchard
offered me a stiff handshake, but Mrs Jones surprised me the most when she threw her
arms round me and I found my face stuffed into her vast and fleshy bosom. It was like
being folded into a giant pile of dough. When I was finally allowed up for air, her
pudgy little face lit up with a rare smile that reached her eyes.

‘I’ll miss
you,’ she said, ‘but I’ll come and see you at your
mother’s for tea on your next half-day off.’ And then, as if
embarrassed by her unusual show of affection, ‘Don’t you be giving
that cook any cheek, you hear me, and don’t burn the béchamel
sauce.’ She pushed back a lock of red hair from my face and added softly,
‘And stay out of trouble, Mollie Browne.’

Untangling myself from her floury embrace, I
grinned.

‘Trouble – me?’ I said,
all wide-eyed innocence. Then I virtually skipped out of the servants’ door
and on to my new life.

Just outside I found dear, sweet, loyal
George waiting with a bunch of flowers. No matter that I’d broken his heart,
this loyal farmhand wasn’t going to let me go without saying goodbye.

‘May I write, Mollie?’ he
asked, pressing the flowers into my hand.

‘Course,’ I said.
‘Where’s Louis then? He not come out to wish me good
luck?’

At the mention of his handsome older
brother, George looked crestfallen. ‘He’s visiting his lady
friend,’ he mumbled.

Feeling a little tactless, I smiled and
stroked George’s ruddy cheek. It reddened even more at my touch.

‘No matter,’ I said,
kissing his warm cheek. ‘You’re here and that’s what
counts. You’re a real pal.’

Then I hopped on my bike and cycled past the
woods where I’d enjoyed many a secret tryst with Alan, past the woodshed where
I’d overheard racy Mabel and her secret lover, and round to the front of the
drive, where I disturbed a pheasant who shot into the air with an indignant croak.

‘Watch out!’ I chuckled.
‘Or you’ll end up in Mrs Jones’s soup.’

I took one final backward glance at the
grand old hall where I had spent the past five years in service. The sight of the
imposing antlers either side of the large front door brought a smile to my face as I
remembered me and Flo tiptoeing past them, scared witless, that night we’d
sneaked out to the dance.

I had laughed, cried, scrubbed, plucked,
filleted, diced, scoured, fried, roasted, betrayed and been betrayed, been bullied and
bossed, learnt to dance, kiss and cook at this grand and magical old house, deep in the
countryside.

All in all, Woodhall had been the very best
of times.

I may have started as a nervous
fourteen-year-old
scullery maid, but I was leaving a confident woman
on the verge of a new life in Spain. Other people, like Granny Esther, may have knocked
my profession down, told me I was nothing but a skivvy for the thankless upper classes,
but I knew domestic service was opening up new worlds for me.

I turned and pedalled down the long gravel
drive. With a warm, light breeze kissing my face and my red hair flying behind me, I had
soon reached the end. I was just about to cycle round the corner, out of sight forever,
when I heard Mrs Jones call after me, hands planted as ever on those beefy hips:

‘And don’t forget,
Mollie Browne – never stir a sauce with anything other than a wooden
spoon.’

I was due immediately at Lord
Islington’s London property near Hyde Park, but I managed to stop at
Mother’s for a quick cup of tea before I got the train. Granny Esther was
there when I arrived.

‘Don’t know why you want
to go all the way over to Spain,’ she grumbled. ‘Perfectly good jobs
to be had here in Norfolk.’

I shook my head in despair, making sure to
do it by her blind eye.

‘Don’t give me cheek,
Mollie,’ she snapped. ‘What do you want to go abroad for anyway?
It’ll be filthy dirty and them natives have some strange ways about them. They
eat funny food –’ she paused for effect – ‘with their
hands.’

I snorted, which just seemed to irritate her
more.

‘Heathens,’ she spat.
‘They don’t wash, you know. No hygiene about them.’

Granny seemed to have conveniently forgotten
her
habit of pouring paraffin before serving up butter when she used
to run her country shop.

All the same, I pondered her original
question. Just why was I so desperate to go abroad? I couldn’t put my finger
on the exact reason. Most girls my age I knew were desperate to marry and start having
babies. Not me. My mostly disastrous brushes with romance hadn’t exactly left
me panting for more. I just had this feeling, this strong primeval urge inside me to
travel, to see something of the world. I knew that made me different to my
contemporaries, but then I’d never felt the same as everyone else anyway.

Ever since I’d sat in that big old
tree as a ten-year-old and mapped out my future, a future far away from Norfolk, my
heart was always yearning for more. Now I’d conquered London and I was about
to set sail for Spain. Nothing was quite so thrilling as the unknown.

I was blissfully unaware that the Spanish
Civil War had just started and Franco’s fascist troops had mobilized, or that
there was widespread poverty, unrest and turbulence. I just wanted to gaze at this hot
and dusty country, watch dark-skinned men wrestling bulls under the balmy Mediterranean
skies. No more rainy Norfolk days, no more thick and stifling London fog, no more
breaking the ice on your jug of water so you could take a wash or shivering in an attic
under an old blanket. Just endless sunshine.

It was the lure of the strange and exotic
that acted like a gravitational pull to me. Besides, I had to take the chance.
Opportunities like this hardly ever came up for a girl like me. Foreign travel was
something you never even considered if you were from a working-class
background. The only person in my family who’d ever left Britain was my
grandmother’s sister Rose, who’d moved to Australia, and that had
taken her three months by boat! Not like nowadays, where people think nothing of hopping
on a plane.

I knew I’d be travelling by boat
with the rest of the staff. Just the thought of setting sail from Portsmouth made me
tingle with excitement.

When I finally reached Lord
Islington’s Hyde Park property, I was overawed by the size of it. But
it’s funny – looking back, I hardly remember anything about that house or the
people that worked in it. Just that it was very, very large, with endless dark rooms
cloaked in heavy velvet curtains that blocked out the light and no end of staff to cater
for one seventy-year-old lord.

The place was in total chaos. Packing boxes
were crammed into every available space in readiness for the move to Spain and Mrs
Pickering walked from room to room with a clipboard, organizing everyone.

The cook was French, which was very exotic
in my eyes, and was married to the butler. She was most impressed that I knew how to
make a decent Consommé Royale.

‘Zis is good zat an Engleesh girl
knows zis,’ she said, and not for the first time I found myself thanking good
old Flo.

I’d not been there long when a
familiar face poked round the door.

‘Here, Mollie, this is grand,
ain’t it?’ whispered a male voice.

‘Ernie Bratton as I live and
breathe,’ I cried, throwing my arms round him. ‘What you doing
here?’

‘Captain Eric’s in town
so we’re staying up at Cadogan Square. Mr Stocks and the rest of the staff are
all back at Woodhall, so it’s just the two of us.’

Ernie Bratton was Captain Eric’s
valet and a nicer bloke you’d be hard-pressed to find. He was handsome all
right, in his twenties with lovely thick curly dark hair and film-star looks. There was
no chemistry between us, more’s the pity, but he was a lovely chap and his
ready smile always cheered me up.

‘It’s great to see you,
Ernie, but you best not stay. You’ll get me in trouble with my new
boss.’

‘S’right,’ he
said, thrusting something into my hand. ‘I only came to give you
these.’

‘What is it?’ I asked,
baffled.

‘Tickets to the Chelsea Arts Ball
at the Albert Hall.’

‘How on earth did you get
these?’ I gasped. Servants never went to dos like this. I didn’t
know how much the tickets cost, but I knew the cost of them put them out of the reach of
girls like me.

‘Captain Eric gave them to me. His
lungs ain’t so good at the moment so he doesn’t feel well enough to
go. He said I could invite who I wanted, so I thought who better to have a laugh with
than you!’

‘Well, what about that?’
I gasped, hugging the precious tickets to my chest like they were made of solid gold.
‘He’s a gent and no mistake.’

Ever since I had listened to Uncle Arthur
tell fantastical tales about the goings-on at the society balls he worked at,
I had longed to see one for myself. Village halls were one thing, but
this was something else altogether!

What a glorious, glorious night that was.
For that one night only, I wasn’t a kitchen maid. I was almost one of
them.

In the black satin dress that Flo had made
me and with my red hair freshly washed and gleaming, I thought I was it. I
didn’t have a scrap of make-up on. Not that it mattered – I was so fresh-faced
I could carry it off. I completed my look with a green velvet bolero jacket, and by the
time I jumped off a red double-decker bus to meet Ernie outside, I had ants in my
pants.

‘Mollie,’ he gasped,
‘look at you! You scrub up well.’

‘Ta,’ I smiled.
‘You don’t look so bad yourself.’

Ernie was wearing a smart tuxedo, probably
one of Captain Eric’s, and as I linked my arm through his, I reckoned we
looked quite the couple.

‘’Ere,
Mollie,’ he whispered in my ear as we walked up to the Albert Hall.
‘They’ll never know we’re a kitchen maid and a
valet!’

The Chelsea Arts Ball was one of the most
important events in the London social calendar of the 1920s and 1930s. It was attended
by up to 7,000 socialites, artists and other Londoners in extravagant costumes. We knew
from reading Mr Stocks’s newspaper that it always caused a stir and attracted
a lot of media attention.

On the door, a private steward, hired to
keep the undesirables out, checked our tickets. I could hardly believe it when we were
ushered inside.

Once in, Ernie and I stared around
open-mouthed in
wonder. It was a glimpse inside another world. The
Albert Hall sparkled like a giant snow globe. Vast glitter balls hung from the ceiling
and lights of all different colours glinted from every corner.

‘I’ll go and get you a
lemonade,’ said Ernie.

A bar serving cocktails and champagne was
set up in the corner, but I didn’t care for alcohol. I just wanted to
dance.

‘Can’t believe
we’re here,’ I whispered when Ernie returned with our drinks.
‘It’s so lavish, ain’t it?’

I’ve heard tell that people
dressed in extravagant fancy dress, but I don’t recall seeing anyone like
that, though the women were done up to the nines in backless or slinky evening gowns and
all the men in the full fig.

‘Come on then,’ I said
to Ernie. ‘I haven’t come here to hang around like a coat stand all
night.’

‘You’re mad as a
hatter,’ he grinned. With that he set down his drink and held out his hand.
‘Would madam care to dance?’ he asked.

‘Yes, she would,’ I
replied.

What a night! Dance? We didn’t
stop. I didn’t care who I danced with – Ernie, any strange bloke, it
didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to be up there on the dance floor. I must
have foxtrotted, waltzed and two-stepped my way round the Albert Hall until the soles of
my shoes were nearly worn through. The band played ‘Red Sails in the
Sunset’, ‘Lullaby of Broadway’, ‘Chapel in the
Moonlight’ and ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, all marvellous
songs of that era. As Ernie swung me across the dance floor I felt like Ginger Rogers
being swept around the room by Fred Astaire in the film
Swing Time
.

By the time our eleven p.m. curfew drew near
and Ernie told me it was time to go, I was on cloud nine. No matter that the ball would
go on until three a.m. and we had to leave before the end. Or that the only thing that
passed my lips was lemonade and not the champagne cocktails other people were quaffing.
I didn’t care. When I’d first visited London all those years ago as
a knock-kneed twelve-year-old, I’d sworn that one day I’d attend a
big fancy society ball, and now finally I had. And the cherry on the top of my dazzling
night? When we got outside, rain was drumming on the pavement so Ernie paid for us to
get a taxi home. A taxi! This might not sound much to you, but servants never got taxis,
so this was a very big deal. In fact, it was the first time I’d ever been in
one.