Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (5 page)

I was pretty good at school, according to my
teacher, but Mother had already set me straight on that score.
‘There’s no money to buy you books, Mollie,’
she’d warned. ‘You’ll have to work when you leave
school.’ They couldn’t afford to keep me or pay for me to go on to
higher education. There were no government grants in those days.

I was twelve years old, in that funny place
straddling childhood and adolescence. I couldn’t keep on running wild and
battling with the local bobby forever, could I?

Perhaps Mother wanted me out from under her
feet or maybe she was worried I might perish in the ditches or
sluices,
but not long after this it was decided that I would be allowed to stay with my
illegitimate aunt Kate and her husband up in London for a holiday.

‘Really?’ I said,
bursting with excitement when Mother told me. ‘I can go to London … on my
own?’

‘Well, the train
guard’ll keep an eye on you right enough and Kate’ll be there to
pick you up from Liverpool Street Station.’

I hopped from foot to foot. ‘Now,
now, can I go now?’

She shook her head and laughed as my brother
skulked behind her. ‘Get away with ya, Mollie Browne. Tomorrow.’

‘She’ll only stop
an’ mardle with strangers, Mum,’ he said. I silenced him with a
whack.

‘No talking to any rum sorts, you
hear,’ Mother warned.

The day dawned bright and clear and I leapt
out of bed like a spring lamb.

What a thing! Mollie Browne, off to London, on her own.

I clambered on to the steam train at Downham
and wrestled with the heavy door.

‘Best give it a good thack,
Mollie, it’s a bit stiff,’ said the elderly porter.

The doors clattered shut, the whistle let
out a deafening shriek and then we were off, puffing our way across the Norfolk fens
like a giant steam-blowing monster.

The gentle clattering of the train soon
lulled me into a deep sleep, but when I woke it was to a different world. The smoke
cleared and I witnessed scenes the like of which I’d never before seen.

‘Oh my,’ I gasped, my
eyes growing as wide and shiny
as gobstoppers. Pure exhilaration pumped
through my veins as I jumped down on to the platform.

Smartly dressed porters rushed about the
place like busy bees, hauling great leather trunks on to barrows. Steam trains slid
majestically into the station and great clouds of smoke swirled and hung dramatically
over the platforms.

Aunt Kate and her husband, Uncle Arthur,
picked me up and drove me through the crowded streets. The place was teeming with life
and noise, dirt and chaos. Everyone seemed to scurry about their business with meaning
and direction. No dawdling to chew the cud over a hedgerow here.

Excitement drummed in my chest. The biggest
town I’d ever been to was Downham or King’s Lynn and even they
didn’t have many cars on the road. Here, there was traffic belching out smoke
everywhere. A great greenish fog hung over the city and cars, trams and buses slid out
of the gloom from all directions.

Smart-suited city gents in pinstripes and
bowler hats strode purposefully alongside ladies in feminine tailored suits that
emphasized their figures. The ladies wore little hats at an angle, with feathers or fake
flowers that wiggled like calling cards when they walked.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover
had recently been published abroad and was causing shockwaves and everyone knew London
was the place for racy behaviour.

This was the place for me.

Uncle Arthur used to be a river policeman
and he and Aunt Kate lived in a terraced police house in Chapter Street in Victoria in
the City of Westminster. They were
reasonably well off, but now Uncle
Arthur was retired he worked as a doorman at the Victoria and Albert museum.

‘Would you like to go and have a
look tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Not half,’ I grinned.
I’d never been to a museum before.

In 1928 the V&A was one of the
world’s leading museums of style and art. Ever since art deco had come on the
scene, people had become obsessed with style and London’s rich and fashionable
elite flocked to the place. It was also the scene of many a big fancy-dress ball
attended by thousands of socialites.

‘You should see ’em,
Mollie,’ chuckled Uncle Arthur as he drove us there the next day.
‘Them aristos know how to have a party. Swing bands, champagne and cocktails
flowing, and the outfits …’ He grimaced. ‘Make your eyes water.
Ladies in them French fashions in next to nothing.’

‘I’d like to go to a
ball like that one day,’ I piped up. Big ambitions, seeing as I
hadn’t even made it to a village dance in Downham.

‘Can’t see your father
liking that, Mollie,’ he snorted. ‘Besides, I’m there to
keep the undesirables out. You have to have blue blood in your veins to get a ticket to
one of them balls.’

I closed my eyes as I imagined the ladies in
their silky bias-cut dresses, the dances, the handsome men. What a world.

When we pulled up at the V&A I
gasped. What an incredible building. The stone archway seemed to soar into the sky. It
was the most majestic place I’d ever been to.

Uncle Arthur showed me round and with each
exhibit room we walked into my jaw dropped further to the floor. The first floor of the
museum was groaning with room after room of exquisite artefacts. Watercolours and famous
cartoons by Raphael jostled for space with tapestries, glassware and statues. We climbed
a floor and there were more treasures: rare books, lace and tiles from Turkey and Egypt,
Ancient Greek and Roman bronzes and Oriental Chinese jade carvings. With each room I
walked through I grew dizzy from trying to take it all in. I had literally never set
eyes on such beautiful things. In the cottage where I grew up we had the most basic
furniture, no paintings on the walls, no splashes of colour, except outside in the
countryside. This was just unimagined beauty to my sheltered young mind.

‘Aladdin’s cave,
ain’t it?’ smiled Uncle Arthur when he saw my face.

I didn’t know who Aladdin was, but
I sure as hell would have loved to live in his cave. The rest of the trip was just as
mind-boggling. I stared into the windows of Harrods, gazed longingly at the pretty
ladies parading around in their dresses and even went to see a Charlie Chaplin flick at
the cinema. I was totally dazzled.

A fortnight later, as Aunt Kate put me back
on the train, I felt like a changed person.

‘I’m going to live here
one day, Aunt Kate,’ I chirruped. ‘It’s like the centre of
the whole universe.’

‘I’m sure you will,
Mollie,’ she said with a smile, slamming shut the train door and waving at me
through the steam.

My time spent in London left a huge impression
on me. Back in Norfolk, things felt flat and dull in comparison. Fortunately, I soon had
other, more pressing things, on my mind –

Boys!

Up until now boys had just been irritating
little brothers or potential playmates. But all at once a new interest stirred inside
me. And when the fair rolled into town for its annual Michaelmas visit there suddenly
seemed to be boys everywhere.

The heavy fair wagons had rumbled into the
marketplace during the first week of October. ‘The Statty’s
here!’ I’d cried when I’d spotted the choking grey smoke
billowing from the black oily monsters of the fairground chugging up the Lynn Road.

The Statty always brought the villagers out
in their droves. The mothers would stand chatting on one side, the fathers would
disappear into the nearby pubs and the kids would descend on the rides.

The fair was an excellent opportunity for
both the sexes to posture and preen in front of each other like a load of hormonal
peacocks. The clanging of the bells on the rides, the mirror mazes and the sight of the
helter-skelter, combined with the whiff of teenage testosterone and toffee apples, made
for a heady combination. Girls screamed with mock terror as they whizzed round the
merry-go-round and the boys pitted their muscle power against each other on the
punchball machines. I stared, intrigued at the way their tiny Adam’s apples
bobbed up and down, and I shrieked with laughter as they wrestled in play fights and
mock ribaldry.

‘Come on, Mollie Browne,’
shouted one local lad. ‘Let’s see ya on the catwalk.’

‘All right then,’ I said
with a grin, fluffing out my hair and putting my hand on my hips like I’d seen
them film stars do at the cinema in London. With that, I took to the oscillating
catwalk. It juddered up and down and your aim was to get to the end without falling
off.

Not two yards in I was helpless with
laughter. I wasn’t strutting now, just struggling to stay upright.

‘Look!’ I yelled to the
crowd of admiring boys. ‘No hands.’ I bumped and lurched along
before being spat off in a heap at the end.

‘What a spectacle,
Mollie,’ said my mother, waiting nearby. ‘When will you
learn?’

‘She’s just showing off
to the boys,’ deadpanned my little brother.

Poking my tongue out at him, I headed to the
rock stall. This stall, run by Mr King, was the one I loved more than anything. The rock
stall always drew an admiring crowd as we watched him make the rock by hand. He was a
giant of a man with hands like trowels and hairy arms shaped like legs of mutton.

‘Stick of rock for a penny,
please?’ I asked.

Fascinated, I watched as he tossed a band of
pink-and-white-coloured mixture over a hook in the wall, then stretched it out. When
satisfied it was the right texture and temperature he’d slap it down on the
table and snip it up with scissors. He sold it in lumps bagged up to buy by the quarter
or as an individual rock.

Sucking my rock, I wandered happily around
the rest
of the fair, taking in the sights, smells and sounds. Soon I
overheard some boys talking.

‘There’s a dance on next
week, who you got your eye on then?’

A dance. Now that sounded interesting. Our
usual entertainment round these parts was going to the cinema on a Saturday afternoon.
These were the days of silent black-and-white films, before colour films and talkies.
We’d queue up and pay tuppence ha’penny to watch Charlie Chaplin,
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. It was marvellous escapism and all the children
from the area would flock to the cinema. The soundtrack came from old Mrs Long from
Downham, who sat bolt upright and banged away on an ancient piano to provide a suitable
musical backdrop.

Laughable, ain’t it? You
can’t imagine it now with all this surround sound and 3D business.

But much as I loved the films, I was
thirteen now and I wanted to be at village dances, not frantically trying to eye some
fella up in the gloom of a cinema.

Surely I was old enough to make my own
decisions?

‘Out the question,’
snapped Mother when I brought the subject up back at home.

‘But, Mother,’ I
protested, ‘there’s only one every three months. Besides,
I’m not daft, you know I won’t get myself in trouble.
Please?’ I begged.

‘I forbid it,’ said my
father, his dark eyes flashing.

I looked at his double-barrel shotgun
sitting by the kitchen door and winced.

Could I sneak out?

‘You’ll feel the cut of my
hand across your backside if you so much as try and sneak out,’ he added.

‘Do I need to remind you about
Granny Esther?’ added Mother ominously.

I shook my head and for once found nothing
to say. It was absolutely unthinkable to get pregnant out of wedlock back in them days.
All girls were brought up with the fear of God drilled into them at the prospect of
having an illegitimate child. You would never dream of bringing such shame on your
house. Besides which, everyone knew everyone else’s business in the country so
if you put a foot wrong it would be round the Friday market before you could say
‘family way’.

There was a local girl who’d
managed to get herself pregnant. She was dismissed from her job and turned out of her
home. Where she went we never knew; the streets maybe, or the workhouse with the tramps
perhaps? More than likely she ended up at the workhouse, where she would have had her
hair shaved and been separated from her bastard child and forced into a life of
mind-numbing work, like picking the tar out of old ships’ rope.

Like I say, this place was frightening and
fascinating in equal measure. The tiny windows were so high off the ground you
couldn’t see in and it was sealed off in any case behind high black
wrought-iron gates.

Nowadays I see young girls round Bournemouth
where I live with prams full of kids and they’re so young and you know
they’ve got a nice warm council flat and food for the table. Well,
you’re virtually encouraging it, aren’t you? But, back then, the
fear of the workhouse meant you kept your drawers pulled up. A bit of slap and tickle
was fine,
as long as you knew where to draw the line. Not that I knew
much about any of that, aged thirteen.

‘You need to drag your head out
the clouds, my girl, added Mother. ‘And start thinking about what yer gonna do
when you leave school next year. When I was a young girl I worked on the Mayfair
telephone exchange all the hours and good work it was too. Hard work never killed
anyone,’ she added.

With that, my heart plummeted like a stone
in the Denver sluice. I didn’t need reminding that soon I would be turning
fourteen and it would be time to face up to my responsibilities.