Her Ladyship's Girl (20 page)

Later, those upstairs amused themselves with piano-playing and party games and smoking cigars and drinking brandy and, when they were merry enough, singing Christmas carols. Some left that night
in their chauffeur-driven limousines, no doubt to be ready for their respective traditional Boxing Day foxhunts, but a few stayed over to join the Morgans in their own particular pursuit of the
uneatable. I was glad I didn’t have to wait up for the ladies until the small hours, and May and I were tucked up safely in our own little yuletide beds before 11:00 p.m., oblivious to the
falling snow outside our freezing window.

Next day was the local Hollybush Hunt and the whole Morgan family attended, including the baby. They were driven to covert and mounted their horses in the snow, while little John looked on from
the arms of his nanny, Miss Pritchard. I didn’t see any of this, of course, because, unlike at Bolde Hall, as a lowly kitchen maid I wasn’t invited to follow the hunt and had to stay at
Tredegar to help Cook with the Boxing Day fare. That consisted of crusted ham with mashed potato and fresh vegetables, kedgeree, turkey sandwiches with the crusts cut off, Stilton and walnut salad,
fried duck eggs, English trifle, Christmas cherry soufflé and orange and cranberry pancakes.

And so time moved on. My education as a cook’s assistant continued into 1937, with partridge pies and rabbit quenelles and stuffed quail, and I learned how to cook all kinds of game and
stews and sauces and stuff that most people of my class had never even heard of. But I longed for London. I missed the city and the life I’d had there. I missed Lucy and even Miranda Bouchard
and it was no longer at arm’s length, but distant and blended into the larger background of my mistakes.

The snows of late December and January thawed in February, but it was still cold. Working in a country house was different to working in a city house. There were rural duties to perform as well
as the household ones and, as the second lowest servant in the house, I was expected to do work outside as well as inside. Besides feeding the dogs on a daily basis, I had to bring in the milk that
was left at the gate by the farmer. I had to load the churns onto a four-wheeled bogey and pull it over the gravel driveway, and the wheels sometimes sunk into the stones. I’d be lucky if one
of the groundsmen came and gave me a hand, but this didn’t always happen, and my hands would almost stick to the cold metal handle of the trolley. I had to run errands to the farm and, in
winter, my boots would get covered in mud and cow dung and I’d have to clean them outside in the cold when I got back.

I also had to tend the winter herb garden, and once I was sent to top and tail swedes for fodder, and help May clear the snow from the vicinity of the kitchen steps so the trades and delivery
men didn’t drag it all in on their boots. I was usually exhausted at the end of each long, hard-working day. So tired that I mostly slept on my second Sunday off and never went anywhere for
any kind of fun.

But then, one of the young kennelmen asked me to go into Newport with him for a dance at a little local hall in the Graig area of the town. Although he was younger than me, I thought it’d
do me good to get away from everything for a while. His name was Brynn. He wasn’t bad-looking and, if he thought he was going out with me, he might keep the others from pestering me every
time I went to feed the dogs. So, on Sunday 23 February, we set off on his bicycle, with me on the crossbar, to ride the two miles to the dance. It was very cold after the sickly sun went down and,
by the time we got there, I was frozen to the bone and sorry I’d ventured out at all. The room I shared with May wasn’t all that warm, but it was positively tropical compared to the
crossbar of Brynn’s bicycle. I cheered up once we got inside, though, and Brynn bought me a port and brandy and that warmed me up on the inside, while he put his arms round me and tried to
warm me up on the outside.

‘How old are you Brynn?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Really? You don’t look it.’

‘How old are you, Anwyn?’

‘Nineteen . . . nearly.’

‘Really? You look older.’

I didn’t know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment, but I let it go and we danced the night away till 10:00 p.m. and I had a good enough time.

Brynn was drinking strong ale and, on the way back, he was a bit unsteady on the bicycle. We were coming to a sharp bend in the narrow road when a car came round it out of nowhere and the
headlights blinded him. He wobbled about trying to control the bike, then steered it through a hedge and into a ploughed field. The bicycle came to an abrupt halt in the deep drilled earth and I
went flying over the handlebars and landed face down in the cold filthy mud. It was black as pitch. I couldn’t see a thing and my shoes were sinking into the softness of the ploughed earth
after the rain of earlier in the day.

‘Brynn! Where are you?’

He struck a match and I could see his stupid face grinning at me. I took a swing at him with my handbag and the light went out. He lit another match.

‘Help me with the bike, Anwyn. I think it’s broke.’

We got back out onto the road with a lot of difficulty and hair-snagging and skin-scratching through the hedge. The front wheel of the bicycle was buckled and the chain was broken. We had to
walk the final mile to Tredegar House.

By the time we got back it was getting on for midnight and I was cold and tired and, even though he apologised every step of the way and sniggered a bit when he looked at the state of me, I
never wanted to set eyes on Brynn again. He only went and told his friends about the incident and that made them worse than ever. They were unmerciful in their teasing when I went out with the dog
food, with comments like,‘Did you enjoy your flying lesson, Anwyn?’ and ‘Find any truffles when you were rooting in the dirt?’ and singing that song, ‘A Bicycle Built
for Two’. Brynn kept pestering me to go out with him again and I was reaching the very limit of my patience when the London season opened up again and I was glad to leave Tredegar House.

T
he Morgan family had a town house in Egerton Crescent, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which wasn’t far from Belgravia, and
I travelled down there with some of the other servants at the beginning of April, after Cheltenham. But I was sick of being in service and wanted to do something else with my life. So, one day when
I was sent out on an errand, I sneaked round to the tea shop to see how Lucy was. Hannah was behind the counter.

‘Lucy doesn’t work here no more, Anwyn.’

‘Oh no, what happened?’

‘Nothing. She got a job working in a pub, the pay was better and she needed it to help her family.’

The pub was called the Duke’s Head and it was located in Tooley Street, near London Bridge. It was close to Bermondsey where Lucy’s family lived and easier and cheaper for her to
travel to and fro. I had to get back to Egerton Crescent that day but, as soon as I got my first second Sunday off, I ventured down there.

The pub was a spit-and-sawdust establishment, full of rough-looking dockers on that Sunday lunchtime when I walked in in my best frock and faithful green hat. There wasn’t another woman in
the big circular bar and everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me. I couldn’t see Lucy anywhere, but there was a big-bosomed lady very busy behind the bar with her
peroxide-blonde hair falling into her eyes from rushing about like a redshank.

‘Lookin’ for someone, love?’

‘Yes . . . Lucy.’

‘Lucy’s on this evening. Seven o’clock.’

‘Oh, thank you.’

I was about to leave when she called after me.

‘Wait!’

I turned round.

‘You want to earn a couple of shillings, love?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Then get behind this bar with me.’

Her name was Pearl and she managed the pub for the Ind Coope Brewery. She was short-staffed that Sunday because her regular barmaid hadn’t turned up and, even though I knew nothing about
barwork, I was happy to try anything once. I collected and washed the glasses and tankards and jugs for her in a big steel sink, like I used to do when I had my first part-time job, and I saw to
the few ladies who were hidden away in the little snug bar. I carried beer over to tables and swept up spillages and broken glass and opened bottles and even pulled a pint or two. The Sunday
lunchtime shift was only from 12:00 noon till 2:30 p.m. and it was soon over. When Pearl called time and rang the bell, I helped her clear the pub by coaxing those who didn’t want to go
instead of being belligerent. It worked with the men and, once the doors were locked, we cleared up and washed and dried the glasses. Then we sat at a table together and had a couple of glasses of
sweet sherry.

I told her I was in service as a kitchen maid, but wanted to get out and be more independent.

‘A kitchen maid . . . can you cook?’

‘As good as anyone.’

Now, very few pubs in London sold hot food back in 1937. Most of them only did a few biscuits or a packet of Smith’s potato crisps with a pinch of salt in a twist of blue paper. Otherwise,
the cockle-and-mussel man came round with his wicker basket on Sundays and that was your lot. But there were places in the West End that were originally coaching inns and taverns and they still
served hot, gamey food to their customers. Trade was slow in the 1930s and Pearl wanted the Duke’s Head to imitate some of the posh places up West, to give her an edge over the competition.
But she didn’t want to serve game pie or loin of venison; she thought more working-class grub like mashed spuds and mutton casserole would go down better in Bermondsey.

‘What d’you think about that idea, Anwyn?’

‘Will people have the money to spend on food?’

‘We’d do it cheap, cheaper than they could do it themselves. And we get a lot of tourists round here, being so close to Tower Bridge. Might as well take a bit of their
money.’

‘We could advertise it outside . . . Traditional English Food.’

‘Good girl! You got the idea.’

She offered me a job as a kitchen/barmaid, which meant I’d have to cook the food at peak times and help out behind the bar if I wasn’t busy. The pay was six shillings a week, which
wasn’t as much as I had got as a lady’s maid, but it was better than the three shillings and sixpence I was getting in the kitchen.

‘I’d like to take the job, but I have nowhere to live.’

Pearl looked me up and down for a few moments, probably sizing me up to see if I’d be trouble or not.

‘We have rooms upstairs that we rent out. You can have one of them and I’ll take a shilling a week from your wages for it.’

That sounded fair to me. And Lucy worked here, so I’d have a friend to show me all the ropes and rituals and regulations.

‘When can you start, Anwyn?’

‘I’ll have to give a week’s notice.’

And so it was arranged that I’d leave my life in service and enter the new world of barwork. Mrs Bowen was sad to see me go because she said I was a good worker and I’d be hard to
replace. But on Monday 19 April 1937, I left Egerton Crescent with my suitcase and travelled east on the number 38 tram to London Bridge, then walked the rest of the way to the Duke’s Head in
Tooley Street.

Opening hours were 12:00 till 2:30 p.m. and then from 6:30 p.m. till 10:00 p.m. But I had to start preparing lunchtime food at 10:00 a.m. for it to be ready when the doors opened at noon. In the
evening, not many of the local workers could afford to eat in the pub and I only had to cook if something was especially requested – otherwise, I served behind the bar with Lucy. Pearl
preferred barmaids to barmen, because she said the mostly male customers were more amenable to them and they could calm a drunken argument without antagonising the antagonists. But she employed a
big Irish cellarman called Kevin who could lay into them with a cudgel if things got too far out of hand.

Lucy was delighted to see me again on that first Monday, and even more so when I told her I’d be working there and living upstairs.

‘We’ll have a right old time together, Anwyn.’

The best thing about working in a pub was that I didn’t start till mid-morning and I got to have a lie-in every day, which was a luxury I’d never known before in my time-regulated
life. The room upstairs was cosy enough and there was a small communal bathroom that was used by all the paying, staying guests, whether male or female, and I had to be careful and make sure the
door was locked when doing my ablutions in the morning, for fear some man might walk in and catch me in the nippy nude. The other drawback of a shared bathroom was getting in there after some heavy
drinker who’d had sixteen pints of Guinness the night before – you’d need to wear a gas mask after some of them and I was often convinced that something nasty had crawled up their
bums and died inside their stomachs.

Apart from that, it was a good enough life. The cooking side wasn’t much because none of the working-class patrons could afford pub-grub, as Pearl called it, and we sold mainly to tourists
who saw our sign and wandered in off the streets after visiting the Tower of London and thought Fagin and the Artful Dodger still frequented the cobbled streets south of the river. We sold
traditional fare that was quick to prepare and didn’t take much cooking. Things like scalloped oysters from the Thames estuary and five-minute cabbage and boiled bacon and mashed potatoes and
roast mutton and shepherd’s pie.

We also tried to compete with the pie’n’ mash shops, offering eel pie, with eels from the Thames baked in a pastry crust, or minced beef and cold water pastry pie. Both served with
cheap mashed potato spread round one side of the plate and eel liquor on the other, which was made from parsley and the water off the stewed eel. The parsley gave it its green colour and everybody
loved it – especially the way I made it, with a sprinkle of cornflour for thickness – one of the little tricks I picked up in the big houses. We sold pickled beets and Campbell’s
tinned soups and corned beef hash and sardines and sandwiches. For the ladies we had Macfarlane Lang rich tea biscuits and Granola digestives and the thinly sliced sautéed potato chips that
I’d learned to cook at Tredegar, a bowl of which were quite a hit with a glass of Dubonnet and a Walters Medium Navy Cut cigarette.