Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (24 page)

‘I’m making you kitchen
maid, Mollie,’ announced Mrs Jones. ‘You’re up to it, but
you have to stop butting up against Mr Orchard and listen good to me, you hear me?

‘Oh yes, absolutely, Mrs
Jones,’ I said, nodding furiously. ‘You won’t regret
it.’

I could not believe my luck. Well, there was
a thing. Little Mollie promoted to kitchen maid, and at the young age of sixteen! How
proud my mother would be. I was to receive seven shillings a week, a pay rise of a whole
two extra shillings, but best of all, no more scrubbing the steps or blackleading the
range and I wouldn’t even have to empty my own chamber pot back in Woodhall.
Irene would have to do mine now.

That’s when I knew I’d
really made it!

To take my place I recommended a nice
fourteen-year-old girl I knew from back in Downham, by the name of Phyllis. Phyllis was
to join us when we travelled back to Woodhall to start the season there. Suddenly I
realized with a jolt of happiness that she would have to pluck and gut the pheasants!
Not only that, but I would never have to clean out the old coal fire ever again! It was
all I could do not to punch the air.

‘Nice one, Mollie,’ I
said to myself as I got stuck in to a load of washing-up.

‘What you looking so pleased
for?’ said Alan, interrupting my thoughts as he popped his head round the
scullery door.

‘Oh, nothing,’ I smiled,
plunging my hands deep into the foaming water.

‘Bet you’re missing your
partner in crime, eh?’ he said. ‘She’ll leave a big hole
in your life, won’t she?’

I turned on him and spat angrily,
‘OK, come on then, out with it, Alan, let’s have it – the ribald
comment, the double entendre …’

Alan looked blank.

‘You’re not even going
to slap my bum? Boast about your manhood?’

He looked utterly crestfallen and hung his
head, bruised and deflated. ‘My heart alive, Mollie, whatever must you think
of me? I was just trying to be nice.’

‘R-right, well,’ I
spluttered. ‘You’ve got a smart mouth on you, that’s all
I’m saying.’

‘I just know how you’ll
miss her, that’s all. You two were joined at the hip.’

Sighing, I suddenly felt very tired. It had
been a long day and I was roasting hot. I pulled my hands out of the water and pushed
back a curl off my head.

‘Come here,’ chuckled
Alan softly. ‘You’ve got a smudge of dirt here on your top lip. You
look like that Hitler chap everyone’s talking about.’

Taking his finger, he dipped it in the
foaming water and slowly and softly traced his finger over my top lip. His dark eyes
never lost contact with mine and suddenly I felt quite weak. Maybe it was the heat, the
fact that I’d been on my feet for near on twelve hours, or maybe it was the
closeness of his body next to mine in the gloom of the scullery, but my legs started to
wobble. Clawing at the neck of my uniform, I gasped and felt myself start to slither
down against the scullery wall.

Alan reached out and, cupping me round the
back and with one hand under my knees, he scooped me up and carried me into the kitchen.
Gently he placed me on a chair and fanned my face with his apron.

‘Cup of sweet tea over here
please, Mrs Jones,’ he said. He turned to me. ‘Breathe
deeply,’ he ordered.

As I sat gulping in air, he gently rubbed my
back. ‘That’s the ticket, girl. You’ll soon be
right.’

Fortified with one of Mrs Jones’s
strong teas and a slice of her Genoese sponge, I started to feel like myself again.

‘You had me worried there,
Mollie,’ smiled Alan, stroking my head tenderly. ‘Look after
yourself.’

I stared after him as he left the kitchen,
puzzled. That man had more layers than an onion. Funny, yet dark. Strong, yet weak.
Jealous, yet strangely light-hearted. He was a complicated one, all right, and yet
somehow when the two of us were together, the air seemed electric, highly charged. My
top lip still tingled from his touch.

Mrs Jones stared at Alan as he retreated
from the kitchen, then back to me, as she stirred her tea.

‘There’s trouble brewing
there, Mollie, I tells ya,’ she said, shaking her head slowly.
‘He’s a sandwich short of a picnic, that one.’

Trouble, it seemed, was brewing all over,
not just between kitchen maids and brooding footmen. At more or less the same time as I
was being appointed kitchen maid, the German president Paul von Hindenburg had no choice
but to appoint Hitler, the Nationalist Socialist leader, as chancellor. Hitler seized
the opportunity to cement his growing power. Instead of holding general elections,
Hitler and his cabinet passed a new law, which declared presidential powers would be
passed to the new head of state, the Führer. This gave Hitler huge power and, most
importantly, control of the military. He began to speak at mass meetings and political
rallies. These meetings became an everyday part of German life under the Nazis.
Throughout this time, Hitler’s opponents became
increasingly marginalized and gradually stripped of powerful or influential
positions.

I only knew all this because Mr Orchard
would read snippets out from Mr Stocks’s
Times
in the
servants’ hall.

‘This man’s
trouble,’ he said over lunch. ‘Mark my words. Rumour has it
there’s a Nazi group set up in London already, a hundred members strong with
new members joining up all the time. Says here the Home Office don’t know what
to do with them.’

‘They should throw them clean
out,’ spat Mrs Jones. ‘Send ’em packing off to
Germany.’ Mrs Jones, like my mother, still had strong memories of the first
war and the small Welsh village she hailed from had lost a whole generation of menfolk
like Norfolk had. ‘We don’t want their sort here,’ she
added.

‘Surely, Mrs Jones, it’s
better to have them here so our security services can monitor them,’ replied
Mr Orchard. ‘Keep your enemies close and all that.’

‘Well,’ she sniffed.
‘They’re rum sorts, the lot of them. I for one shall be pleased to
get back to the peace and quiet of Woodhall.’

‘There won’t be a war,
will there?’ said Irene, wide-eyed.

‘Of course not,’ snapped
Mabel. ‘It will never come to that. Our government won’t allow
it.’

I didn’t really understand at that
point the full gravity of these changes or the growing threat that Hitler presented,
just that it left an anxious atmosphere in the room.

Shortly before we returned to Woodhall, Mrs
Jones gathered us all in the servants’ hall and informed us that during
two weeks in August Mr Stocks would be taking a holiday and our
services would not be required. Best of all, we were to be paid for our new leisure
time. It was like having a Christmas and birthday all rolled into one. The hall was
alive with chatter as people discussed how they would spend their new time off.

Leisure time up until then had barely been
recognized, but now, thanks to the legions of people who had started working in offices
and factories and the regulation of workplaces, the concept of
‘workers’ rights’ and time off had finally started to sink
in. People all over the country were developing something they called a
‘hobby’. Working-class men were starting to go fishing, keep caged
birds and pigeons or go to gardening clubs and start up allotments. All over London, dog
tracks, skating rings, sports grounds and cinemas were popping up. Television
didn’t become available until 1936 but by 1933 half of all homes had a
wireless.

‘Two weeks,’ chattered
Irene. ‘Almost unimaginable, ain’t it? I’m going home to
see me mum and sister and take a trip to the seaside.’

‘Oh, me too,’ I said.
‘I can’t wait to see my family.’

Mabel smiled with a faraway look on her
face. She, no doubt, would have a liaison with her mystery man behind the woodshed.

Mr Orchard, paranoid about his privacy, said
nothing.

Suddenly, in and amongst the excited
chatter, I realized one person was staying strangely quiet. ‘What’s
wrong, Alan?’ I said. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

He sat at the table, staring at the linoleum
floor, his hands cupped round his mug, a look of deep sorrow
engrained
on his face. He waited until the room had emptied, then he fixed his gaze on me.

‘I’ve got nowhere to go,
Mollie,’ he said finally, in a voice barely above a whisper.

Suddenly I realized I didn’t
really know a thing about Alan. Where he came from, where his family were.

‘What about your
mum’s?’ I asked.

He stared at me and the look of hurt and
devastation in his deep dark eyes took my breath away. ‘My mother’s
dead, Mollie. She’s been dead a few years now. Consumption got the better of
her. I’m an orphan.’

I found myself speechless. Finally,
recovering from the shock, I took his hand in mine.

‘My aunt raised me, but she
didn’t have much money,’ he went on. ‘Soon as I turned
fourteen she sent me out to work as a hallboy and I haven’t seen her since.
So, you see, I haven’t really got a family – or anyone, for that
matter,’ he added sadly.

‘Oh, Alan,’ I sighed.
‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea …’ My voice trailed off to
nothing.

‘It’s all
right,’ he said, his mouth suddenly tightening. ‘I grew up fast; I
had to, no choice, see? But I won’t pretend it’s been easy not
having a mother, like. No one to tell you how clever you are, bring you tea in bed when
you’re poorly, give you cuddles when you get scared in the dark. I have a
vague memory of a woman. Pretty as a flower she was, holding me hand, and then
…’ He shook himself quickly as if to shake off the ghosts of his past.

My heart went out to him. What a crying
shame. Imagine having no mum. I thought of mine, bustling round a
cosy
kitchen, my father warming his feet by the fire as Mother filled the room with delicious
baking smells. Take a mother out of the equation and what you got? A sad and lonely
life, that’s what.

Talk about a light-bulb moment. This
explained so much. His brooding intensity, his need to be liked, loved. He’d
had a childhood of unfathomable loneliness, unlike me.

Suddenly the words tumbled from my lips
before I could stop myself.

‘Come and spend some time with me
and my family,’ I said. ‘No one should be alone when they
don’t have to be.’

His face changed in a heartbeat and he
gripped my hand tight. ‘Really? You mean that? Oh, Mollie, that’d be
smashing.’

He leapt up and lifted me clean off my feet
and swung me round the servants’ hall. ‘You’re a
diamond,’ he said, laughing. ‘We can go to dances, cycle, swim –
think of the fun we’ll have.’

‘Steady on,’ I giggled,
trying to hold my mop cap in place. ‘Mr Orchard will see.’

His eyes glittered and, as he put me down,
he pulled me so close I could feel his warm breath on my face.

‘You won’t regret this,
Mollie,’ he whispered.

Something told me I was already in way over
my head.

Everybody’s spirits on the return
to Norfolk were as high as kites. Summer was here, we were back to the beauty of the
countryside and we all had time off to enjoy. But there was just one snag for me:
George!

I hadn’t seen him since
we’d left for London three months previous and I knew our relationship was
dead
and buried. I’d tried kidding myself that I liked him
because he was such a nice chap and all, but liking someone is hardly the basis for a
future together. And now there was this … thing … with Alan. Ever since I’d
told him we could spend time together, the vulnerable man I’d glimpsed that
night in the servants’ hall had vanished to be replaced with the old cocky
Alan, all cheeky winks and wandering hands.

As Louis collected us from the station,
looking as gorgeous as ever, he waved from the car window. ‘Hello, my
lovely,’ he sang. ‘Someone’s been moping round like a dark
old cloud since you left. I daresay you’ll get a warm welcome
home.’

I groaned. How was it possible to feel this
wretched?

The beauty of the landscape was lost on me
as we whizzed down the country lanes, Louis chattering away ten to the dozen. I felt
sick to my very core. My life, what on earth would I say to that poor fella?

Sure enough, as we pulled up outside, who
was waiting, clutching a bunch of flowers and wearing a smart jacket despite the
sweltering heat, but dear sweet George.

‘Mollie!’ he cried, his
rosy cheeks lighting up when he spotted me. ‘I’ve missed you so
much. I came to give you …’ His voice trailed off as Alan strode up next to me
and placed an arm round my shoulders.

‘All right, George,’
Alan winked, sniffing the air. ‘Been spreading muck, have we?’

George’s face fell and I noticed a
little vein on his temple start to twitch. He looked from me to Alan. Then, without
saying a word, he smiled sadly, handed me the flowers and walked off, looking utterly
defeated.

I took no pride in breaking his heart, I
really didn’t. I could have swung for Alan, I could have. From that day on I
never knew George to court again. The tiniest things can alter the course of our lives
forever and I often wonder what sort of man he would have become if I hadn’t
turned him over. Holding hands at the pictures, a shared sticky bun and a kiss in the
snow – some people treasure these memories and make no room in their heart for any
more.