Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (21 page)

I frowned.

‘We can even go to Lyons Corner
House at Marble Arch and treat ourselves to afternoon tea if we’re quick
enough. Sandwiches with the crusts off and tea from a fancy pot.
Maybe even a scone, if you like?’

I nodded. I did love having a good nosy
around London.

‘Perhaps stop in on Harrods on the
way back and have a look?’ she added. ‘They have the best window
displays, you know.’

My mouth twitched into a smile.
‘George who?’ I said.

Flo burst into laughter.
‘That’s the Mollie I know and love,’ she grinned.

Youngsters aren’t half fickle. If
you’d have asked me the week before back in Woodhall if there could be life
after George, I’d have sworn not, but back in London with the thought of a
scone on a bone-china plate and a chance to gawp at pretty, glittery Harrods and he was
but a distant memory.

The next day, no sooner was the last plate
dried up and put away on the rack than Flo and I were haring upstairs, tearing off our
uniforms and heading out on to the teeming streets of London. Flo had made herself a
lovely tailored wool coat. It was nipped in at the waist and then flowed out, giving her
a wonderful hourglass figure. The sleeves stopped just above her wrists and
she’d teamed it with a pair of white gloves, matching black and white court
shoes and a hat that she wore at an angle. Her soft brown hair was styled in elegant
finger waves and under her arm was tucked a little leather clutch bag. She looked the
picture of sophistication.

‘You look like one of
them,’ I nudged as we strode out together along Sloane Street.

‘Get away,’ she
giggled.

But she really did.

‘How did you get so good at
sewing?’ I asked.

‘In my first job as a scullery
maid in South Kensington, if I had any spare time I wasn’t allowed out.
I’d have to help the housemaids do the sewing and darning for the house. Trust
me,’ she sighed, ‘we’ve got it good with old Mr
Stocks.’

Kensington High Street was an
Aladdin’s cave of wonderful grand old stores. As the season was just starting,
the road was full of chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royces and inside the stores glamorous
ladies shopped for the perfect outfits for the multitude of balls and parties they had
to attend. In Pontings we had a wonderful time, giggling as we tried on elegant hats and
draping material round ourselves in the haberdashery department.

‘What about this,
Mollie?’ Flo asked, holding up a length of beautiful green fabric.

I wrinkled my nose. It was a bit too close
in colour to our uniform. ‘No, what I want is something dramatic,’ I
sighed. ‘Something elegant. I want to look like a real woman.’

Just then I spotted the most beautiful woman
I’d ever set eyes on. She was being fitted for a dress and a lady with a
mouthful of pins was bent double at the lady’s feet, measuring her up. She
stood as still as a statue, composed and glacially aloof. She looked like a movie star –
Greta Garbo or Jean Harlow. Her tailored day suit had been discarded and she was
obviously being fitted for something more glamorous for the evening.

If she noticed a sixteen-year-old scullery
maid was staring at her, she didn’t let on.

I gazed at her, trying to see what was
different about her, then realized what it was. She had a suntan! Her smooth long limbs
were kissed brown, which was more or less unheard of in them days, but this was an era
when suntans were coming into fashion and to have one was a vital indicator of wealth.
This woman obviously never had to work below stairs and away from sunlight.

She was being draped with a black metallic
lamé, which shimmered under the light. The dressmaker positioned it this way and that,
until finally the fabric hung and draped in sinuous folds over her tall slim body. The
dress was entirely backless, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of the curve of her spine.
The material skimmed her figure and the cowl neck at the front showed off her elegant
décolletage. She looked like a goddess.

‘I want to look like
her,’ I whispered in awe.

Flo gulped. ‘I’ll try me
best, Mollie,’ she said. ‘But I ain’t a
miracle-worker.’

In the end we plumped for something a little
less expensive than the fine material that the grand lady was being draped in. It was a
nice black silky-satin material that cost four-and-a-half pence a yard. There was even a
bit left over for some green material to line the dress.

As the cashier took my money and carefully
wrapped my package in brown paper, Flo linked arms with me. ‘See,’
she grinned. ‘You’re feeling better already. Next stop,
tea.’

As we strode arm in arm down Kensington High
Street
in the direction of Hyde Park, I was just dazzled once again by
the sights and sounds. London in 1933 was the most exciting place on earth. Big
department stores were all the rage and everyone went to stores like Harrods, Woollands,
Harvey Nichols, Selfridges and C&A to shop and Claridge’s and the Ritz
to socialize and dine. I suppose they do now, but back then you wouldn’t get
tourists traipsing round in jeans and backpacks. Everyone was impeccably dressed. Even
the servants like Flo and myself, not to mention the countless office girls who flocked
to London in their ever-increasing time off, looked put together and presentable in
suits or dresses.

During the fifty years up to 1930, working
hours had steadily reduced, meaning that most people had more spare time and
‘leisure time’ was becoming recognized as a concept. This was
particularly true in London where increasing regulation of workplaces, including offices
and factories, meant that working hours were limited. It wasn’t unusual to see
office girls doing just what Flo and I were doing now, window-shopping – and trying to
spot society girls – in their time off.

Society girls like the Mitford sisters were
the celebrities of their time, before soap stars, pop stars and – that very bottom of
the rung – reality ‘stars’ were words we even knew. Spotting a
Mitford sister or a member of royalty was the equivalent of spotting Victoria Beckham
leave a London store and jump into the back of a blacked-out Range Rover. Knightsbridge
and Mayfair were where the wealthy elite flocked to during the season and wherever the
gentry went, the servants would follow.

Nowhere else was considered quite as
‘with it’ as
Harrods, though. Opened originally in
1849, it was famous for its motto
Omnia Omnibus Ubique
, ‘All Things
for All People, Everywhere’. Harrods could get you anything at all, from the
rarest Chinese tea to a lion, if you so wanted. In 1917 they even sold an alligator,
bought as a present for Noël Coward. But in 1933, the cost of most of the items on sale
put them far beyond the reach of scullery maid Mollie and kitchen maid Flo, so we
carried on walking in the direction of Hyde Park.

After her years of working in London, Flo
knew her way about and nipped in and out of the crowds with me in hot pursuit, clutching
my brown paper package. She pointed out landmarks as we walked.

‘That’s the Hyde Park
Hotel, Number 66 Knightsbridge,’ she said knowingly, pointing at a beautiful
marbled entrance hall of an imposing red-brick hotel. ‘Famous for its style
and glamorous parties, it is. It used to have its official entrance on the other side
opening out on to the park, but the queen banned it. Only royals are allowed to use the
park entrance, everybody else has to use this side in Knightsbridge.’

I nodded. I doubted we’d ever get
to walk through either entrance. The huge walnut doors swung open and shut as society
folk streamed in and out, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of a plush marble hall and
frescoed ceiling. Stairs of white marble flanked with balustrades led to the upper
ground floor. Not since I’d first seen the V&A three years before had
I felt so small and dazzled by such an important building. Some buildings have the
effect of making you feel like a tiny mouse and all I could do was gaze in awe at its
splendour.

‘All the socialites go there for tea
dances in the palm court,’ Flo added.

‘Palm court?’ I said,
puzzled.

‘Yes, they have actual palm trees
in the room.’

‘Well I never,’ I
chuckled, shaking my head. ‘Trees inside? It’d never happen in
Norfolk.’ I wondered what George would make of that and made a mental note to
tell him when we got back to Woodhall.

We went on our way with me still laughing at
the thought, when I saw something that wiped the smile clean off my face. As we bustled
our way through Hyde Park towards Marble Arch we were assailed by a riot of noise and
commotion. About fifteen men were stood on small crates of wood, hollering at the top of
their lungs in front of a vast crowd of onlookers. Such noise you can’t
imagine. Everybody was competing with everyone else to see who could shout louder. A
strange mood of menace and provocation hung in the air. It seemed hard to credit that it
was just a stone’s throw from the rarefied streets of Knightsbridge where
society ladies danced amongst palm trees and sipped from china teacups.

‘Whatever is this
about?’ I gasped to Flo, stopping to stare at these speakers, who were clearly
oblivious to the jeers and shouts of hecklers as they ploughed on, spouting their
views.

‘Come on,’ Flo said, her
mouth tightening as she tugged at my sleeve. ‘We’ll get a tongue
lashing if Mrs Jones finds out we’ve been here listening to these motley
crowds. It’s not a place we should hang about.’ Her eyes grew wider.
‘I’m serious, Mollie. Trouble breaks out and the police get
called.’ But I wasn’t listening. This was just
too much of a fun spectacle to pass.

‘I am here to talk about our great
empire,’ yelled a small man with a puffed-up chest and a plum in his mouth.
‘An empire that is crumbling beneath us as I stand here and speak. I take
great pleasure in coming here to talk to you ignorant people.’

‘Oh, sit down and shut
up,’ bellowed a man in the crowd. The speaker didn’t even
flinch.

‘I am talking to you about our
great empire,’ he continued, holding his hands aloft for maximum impact,
‘that in years gone by was great and yet is no longer our own.’

The crowd surged forward. ‘Shut
up, fascist!’ one yelled. ‘You don’t speak for
us.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’
he went on pompously, ‘I take great pleasure in speaking to you ignorant
people. We need to put Mosley in power.’

The crowd bristled.

‘Go home,’ shouted a
lady with a voice like a foghorn. ‘We don’t want your sort
here.’

The speaker turned on her and his
upper-class accent slipped. ‘Listen, lady, you’re too young to
remember the empire when it was great.’

‘Do you take questions?’
shouted another.

‘No, I do not. I am here to warn
against the future polluting of our coun–’

‘Well you better take one from me,
cos I object to this.’

Suddenly, as one, the crowd started to slow
handclap him and sing, ‘
Get down, get down, get down.
’

A gentleman next to us looked at my stunned
face and
smiled. ‘Quite something, isn’t
it?’ he said. ‘You know, people have been speaking here since the
mid-nineteenth century. This plot of land is the most famous in London.’ With
that, he gestured with his hand over the swathe of land from the pavement of Marble Arch
to beyond some trees. ‘Speakers’ Corner,’ he announced,
leaning back and thrusting his hands into his pockets. ‘Starts at the site of
the old Tyburn gallows to the Reform Tree. People have been coming here to speak, meet,
preach, canvas, convert and argue over politics and religion for years. Started with the
Chartists holding mass protests about the suppression of rights of ordinary working
people.’ He snorted. ‘Police tried to stop it, of course, but in
1872 Parliament granted the Park Authorities the right to permit public meetings.
Milestone in the development of our democratic institutions, wouldn’t you
say?’

This man seemed so knowledgeable I simply
stood and nodded my head.

‘All the greats have been
here,’ he went on. ‘Lord Soper, George Orwell, William Morris, Karl
Marx.’

And now Mollie Browne.

He gestured to a man nearby.
‘Spiritualist and religious nutters mainly, but the fascists are making their
mark here now as you can see. Quite deplorable, most of them, but you have to respect
the freedom of speech, wouldn’t you say? It’s what makes the British
great.’

I nodded. ‘Oh,
absolutely.’

Suddenly another speaker started up next to
us with such force I jumped out of my skin.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’
he boomed in a thick cockney
accent. ‘I ain’t come
here to be larfed at, spat at, aimed at, charfed at or any other old at for that matter.
There are two sides to life. Spiritual and material. We’ve gotta get back to
the natural side of life we was created for. We’ve got to accept Christ as our
own personal saviour and obtain pardon, peace, patience and prosperity, for none but
Christ can satisfy.’

‘What about your old
woman?’ heckled a ribald onlooker. ‘I ’ear she can satisfy
all right.’ A wave of raucous laughter broke out as the speaker was pelted
with clods of earth and mud.

‘Come on, Mollie,’
hissed Flo nervously, dragging me away. ‘It’s turning nasty.
Let’s get out of here.’

But as we walked away in the direction of
Marble Arch, the jeers of the men still ringing in my ears, I knew I’d be
back. Something about this area, so thick with history, and the passion with which these
men spoke, stirred something inside me. I was treading on the very ground where
criminals had been taken by horse and cart to be hanged at the gallows in front of
crowds of bloodthirsty onlookers. Today, in 1933, it seemed the public still wanted to
watch blood spilt and enjoy a good old-fashioned spectacle. Unlike slightly more timid
Flo, I loved this theatre of noise and commotion.