Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (7 page)

As we trudged along I thought of how the
king and queen used this same road to travel between London and Norfolk.
Now I was
following in their footsteps!

Last week Mother had taken me to
Tyler’s, the draper’s
shop in town, and got me
kitted out with my service uniform. In my bag was a green dress that, to my delight, sat
just above the knee. It makes me laugh, you know. Whenever people ask me about
Downton Abbey
and whether it’s true to life, I always say
it’s exactly the same, except that in reality the skirts were much
shorter.

Aside from that I also had a white apron, a
white mop cap, black wool stockings and black leather lace-up shoes. Talk about proud of
my new uniform. I’d got it out that many times, Mother had had to press it
with the flat iron again.

For the journey I was wearing a new cream
cotton dress that Mother had made, as she didn’t want me shaming myself by
turning up for service looking shabby. My leather shoes shone so much you could see my
freckled face reflected in them. Didn’t I feel superior!

Once at the station, Mother dissolved into
tears. ‘You can come home if you don’t like it,’ she
sobbed, enveloping me into her bosom. ‘You don’t have to
stay.’

It must have been an emotional time for her,
waving her young daughter off to work in the big smoke. Not that I gave two hoots for
emotion back then. Tears and hugs? Load of old tripe.

Father was less sentimental.
‘Don’t answer back and don’t get above your
station,’ he said gruffly.

In a flurry of tears and hugs I finally
managed to make my escape from Mother’s slightly soggy embrace.

‘Don’t fuss
so,’ I grinned, boarding the steam train.

I squeezed myself into a space on the train
carriage seat, next to a cage of chickens and a farmhand, and with that I bid farewell
to the Norfolk countryside.

It took some time to get to London and when I
eventually arrived at Liverpool Street Station I was tired and sticky from travelling.
But as soon as I disembarked, my senses were assaulted. The intense noise, the steam and
the babble of sophisticated voices hit my weary head like a shower of cold water.

I was a country girl at heart and apart from
my one brief trip to the city two years ago, this was my first real experience. I was
fourteen and all on my own. Did I feel fear or regret? Not one little bit. I felt more
alive than I had ever done in my whole life. Ready for whatever experience life had to
offer me. Excitement drummed through me. What an adventure.

‘Mollie Browne?’ asked a
voice.

The smoke cleared and standing in front of
me was a most peculiar-looking man. He was wearing dove-grey knee breeches, matching
grey jacket, boots so shiny they made mine look dull in comparison and white gloves,
with the whole ensemble topped off with a peaked cap. A fine sight he made.

‘Mr Thornton,’ he said.
‘I’m Mr Stocks’s London chauffeur come to collect
you.’

‘Ooh, ’ello,’
I gushed. ‘Pleased to meet you. Nice of you to come and collect me.’
And with that I stuck out my sticky hand.

Looking at me a little strangely, he ignored
my outstretched hand and took my bag instead. Next he ushered me to where a black shiny
Daimler was waiting.

‘Get in,’ he said,
opening the back door.

Didn’t I feel grand sliding into
the cool, black leather seats? No one had ever held a door open for me and nor
had I ever sat in such a grand motor car before. Cars were a rare
sight where I came from and here I was sitting in the grandest of the lot. I could get
used to this.

‘This beats sitting next to a
chicken,’ I chattered on.

He smiled coolly as he slid the Daimler out
into the road. They say the streets of London are paved with gold, but back in them days
they were filled with cars, trams, buses, errand boys, buskers, traders and a million
other forms of life and transport. It seemed even busier than when I’d visited
two years ago.

I gazed out of the window as London in all
its glory unfolded. Soon my head was spinning at the sights. In Downham Market there
weren’t that many cars on the road – lots of men on bikes or horses, and
lugging barrows and ladders about, but not much in the way of cars. Here in London they
were everywhere; not like you see today, of course, but to my eyes it was still a lot of
traffic. By 1931 elegant motor cars had replaced most horse-drawn carriages. It would be
another two years before the London Passenger Transport Board was established to bring
all of London’s transport providers together, but there were still many
different ways to get about London if you had the knowhow.

Red double-decker buses and trams whizzed
past, belching out clouds of smoke. The 20 mph speed limit had been abolished the
previous year and drivers were bombing about at speeds that made my eyes water. Amazing
when you think about it, isn’t it? Driving tests weren’t established
until 1934 so any old lunatic could get behind the wheel.

Soon we passed an underground station, which
I’d heard so much about.

‘Train every ninety
seconds,’ informed Mr Thornton.

Unimaginable.

We paused briefly at some large poles with
strange moving lights inside.

‘Why are we stopping?’ I
asked.

‘They’re traffic
lights,’ replied Mr Thornton. ‘Bloomin’ nuisance they are,
going up all over London.’

Traffic lights were just one of the many
changes sweeping 1930s London.

Organizations were popping up to deal with
the city’s existing problems and make it a cleaner, more efficient place.
There were slum clearances and council-house building programmes, and electric lighting
was being installed across the city. The telephone exchange in Mayfair where Mother had
worked when she was my age was now automated. To me, all this heralded an amazing new
era of sophistication.

Charlie Chaplin’s latest flick was
on at the pictures and, outside, street traders sold you pretty much anything you
wanted, from roast nuts for a penny a bag to chestnuts and baked potatoes. The streets
were teeming with people plying their trade from the back of horse-drawn carts to simple
barrows. Wounded old soldiers still wearing their medals and uniforms sold matches from
trays slung round their necks with string and elderly ladies selling lavender from
wicker baskets sat huddled under umbrellas. Rag-and-bone men clattered up the streets
past our car calling out for ‘any old iron’. Newspaper boys cried
out ‘Post!’ to compete with the noise of car horns and
‘muffin’ men
strode along ringing large bells and
carrying trays of hot buns and butter on their heads. The noise was deafening.

‘I can hardly hear myself think in
London,’ grumbled Mr Thornton.

The Depression may have destroyed large
parts of Britain, but London had largely escaped and, driving through it now, I saw no
sign of it. The new ‘sunrise’ industries, such as producing
electrical equipment and consumer goods, helped to offset unemployment in more
traditional industries. And there were many jobs created in engineering – manufacturing
of clothes and shoes, food and drink production, furniture and printing to name but a
few.

My mouth dropped open at this spectacle of
noise and colour. It was as far removed from Norfolk as it was possible to get. Craning
my neck up, I stared at the highest buildings I’d ever seen in my
life
,
thrilled to be in London again. Norfolk is flat in all directions,
but here in London, round every street corner, amazing red-brick buildings soared into
the skyline. This was pre-Blitz and the streets were a jumble of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century terraced buildings. And shops, so many, many shops! Girls in uniforms
and whistling errand boys on bikes zipped around like busy little worker ants laden down
with brown paper packages.

Sensing, perhaps, that I was a little
dazzled by my surroundings, Mr Thornton frowned. ‘Now, you are going to behave
yourself, aren’t you?’ he mumbled, staring at me hard in the rear
mirror.

‘Course, Mr Thornton,’ I
grinned as I gazed out of the window and waved at some boys hopping on to a tram.

Gradually the hustle and bustle gave way to
a different
and, even to my untrained eye, more well-to-do
neighbourhood. Crowded cobbled streets turned to wider pavements and smart leafy
squares. This was the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the 1930s, and a more
stylish place I’d never before seen. The air seemed cleaner and more refined
somehow. Elegant, stuccoed houses looked out on a slow-moving world. The traffic thinned
out and even the people looked more expensive. Smart gentlemen in wide-legged suits with
large turned-up hems and creases, thin moustaches and oiled-back hair, strolled arm in
arm with the most beautiful ladies imaginable. They all looked groomed, dapper and
suave. From the hems of the smartly tailored wool suits to their shoulder pads and
fox-fur stoles, these women oozed money, class and privilege. Their shiny hair had been
sculpted into perfect finger waves and many wore jaunty little hats at an angle. I
pushed back a lock of my thick red hair and nervously twisted the hemline of my loose
cotton skirt.

These women looked like they’d
been carved from marble. Even the children looked immaculate as they trotted alongside
their nannies in smart sailor suits or pretty smock dresses.

Suddenly I felt exactly what I was – a
knock-kneed fourteen-year-old up from the sticks. ‘Ooh, my stomach’s
like a bag of ferrets,’ I said nervously.

Mr Thornton said nothing. Instead, he pulled
the Daimler to a stop outside the biggest house I’d seen in my life.

I literally gasped.

Number 24 Cadogan Square looked like a giant
iced wedding cake and towered into the blue skies above. It was at least six storeys
high. Every other house in the
genteel square was just as impressive
and the centrepiece was the beautiful leafy green garden in the middle, surrounded by
black railings. Nannies and children sat on the grass playing in the sunshine and
instinct told me that wasn’t a place I’d be spending a lot of time
in climbing trees.

Number 24 Cadogan Square,
Knightsbridge, Mr Stocks’s London house. We’d come up here every
year for the London season.

I clambered out of the car and
started to ascend the six white steps that led up to the mansion.

‘Ahem,’ coughed Mr
Thornton. ‘This way.’ With that,
he gestured to the
‘area’ steps that led downstairs to the basement.
‘We’re downstairs.’

‘Of course,’ I
blustered. How could I have been so stupid?

If London’s Knightsbridge seemed
quiet and tranquil outside and upstairs, well, downstairs it was certainly a different
story. In a way the house was like a swan – all serene up above and effortlessly gliding
along, while down below there was frantic activity and constant motion to keep it
staying afloat.

A long hall ran the length of the basement
of the house with rooms opening off it. ‘Housekeeper’s sitting room,
servants’ halls, toilet and butler’s bedroom,’ said Mr
Thornton, gesturing to the rooms that ran off to the right. ‘This side is the
footman and hallboy’s bedroom. Out of bounds to you,’ he muttered.
‘Hallboys, footmen and butlers sleep downstairs and kitchen maids, cooks and
housemaids sleep upstairs.’

On the walls of the passage ran a long line
of brass bells with room names above them.

‘Service bells,’ he
explained. ‘You won’t need to bother much with them.
They’re for the butler, footman and housemaids.’

As we clattered up the echoey corridor and
into a vast kitchen at the end, Mr Thornton called out: ‘New girl’s
here, Mrs Jones!’

A short, dumpy woman was drying her pudgy
hands on her white apron. She had flour smeared on her forehead and a hot flush had
spread over her from her morning’s efforts. Her little dark eyes peered out
suspiciously from her red face as she sized me up.

‘You’ll do,’ she
said in a strong Welsh accent. ‘Right, I’ve just finished getting
the boss’s lunch ready. We sit down to ours now and when we’ve
finished I’ll talk you through the rules, all right?’

‘All right,’ I nodded
eagerly. I wanted this woman to like me.

In the servants’ hall everyone sat
down to eat. No one introduced me to anyone and I hadn’t the faintest clue who
anyone was and where I was in the pecking order, though I guessed as I was easily the
youngest person in the room, it would be me at the bottom. Trying to blend in, I took a
seat at the end of the long wooden table.

A young girl, a bit older than me, started
bringing in trays piled high with food. And what a feast. After my long journey my
stomach was grumbling. Sunday lunch in this household was obviously a big deal.

I waited for everyone else to finish
serving, then helped myself.

Dishes were piled high with piping hot
crispy roast potatoes, hunks of smooth brown Yorkshire puddings and steaming vats of
peas and carrots glistening in butter. The centrepiece was a giant sirloin of beef, cut
so thinly the rare pink beef looked like it might melt in your mouth. Mrs Jones had
quickly cast aside the paper doily and fancifully cut carrot and parsley it had been
garnished with for Mr Stocks’s benefit and the two eldest members of the
household had helped themselves first.