Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (26 page)

I barely noticed that Alan had stopped
cycling and was glaring after me.

‘Whatever’s wrong with
you?’ I laughed, turning round.

‘I forbid it!’ he fumed,
throwing his bike down on the ground. ‘When we’re married
I’ll not have you go to Spain. You shall stay here and raise our babies, of
course.’ He pressed his face right up against mine and his dark eyes
narrowed.

I stood rooted to the spot, stunned. By his
reaction you’d have thought I’d said I was off to work in a
bordello!

‘Spain,’ he scowled.
‘Whoever heard of such a thing?’

A great sense of injustice settled in my
heart and I felt the red mist descend. ‘How dare you?’ I screamed.
‘Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t dream? I have enough
people telling me what to do at work without you trying to lord it over me. I warned you
before, Alan. You don’t own me.’

He moved as quick as a flash. Picking my
bike up, he threw it into a ditch and exploded in fury. Before I even had a chance to
speak, he marched up to me and gripped me so hard by my arms that I gasped. His eyes
bulged in fury and flecks of spittle flew from his mouth as he shouted. His fists were
bunched into tight balls round my wrists and twitched with rage.

‘Get off me now!’ I
yelled. I fought against him with savage fury, but he had my arms locked down against my
sides.

‘You’re flighty, Mollie
Browne, and I won’t have it,’ he roared. ‘I tell you, I
won’t have it.’

Just as quickly as the rage exploded, it
disappeared. He released my arms, sank back against a grass verge with his head in his
hands and started to sob.

It was like witnessing two men.

‘I’m sorry,
Mollie,’ he wept. ‘I don’t mean to get cross with you.
It’s just that I love you so. You do know how to get to me.’

Hesitantly I sat down next to him and, even
though my mind was spinning, I put my arm round him. He grabbed me and hugged me so
tight I could barely breathe.

Where had this come from? I was only talking
about oranges and now this!

‘I just need security, what with
my past and all. You will give me that, won’t you, Mollie? You
understand?’

I nodded miserably.

‘Good,’ he smiled.
‘You’ll marry me one day.’

I wasn’t sure if it was a question
or a statement so I said nothing.

The silence was loaded. I just got a hankie
out of my pocket and dried his eyes. Finally he got to his feet, sighed and pulled my
bike out of the ditch. Gently, he helped me on to it and then picked up my bag.

‘I’ll take
this,’ he said softly.

As we cycled to my mother’s in
silence, fear and doubt clawed at my heart. Alan was complicated – too complicated for
my liking. You never knew what you were going to get with him. How could someone laugh
and joke one minute, then be screaming blue murder the next? I thought longingly of
George. He may have been a simple soul, but at least I knew where I was with him.

I didn’t want to get married any
more than I had wanted to work alongside that stuffy seamstress. Why did people always
insist on owning you or putting you in your place? I was just sixteen, I wanted to
travel the world, not get knocked up and locked up in Norfolk.

He’d recovered himself by the time
we got to my mother’s and was charm itself to her. She’d baked, of
course, and my father and brother were sat round with their best clothes on. Mother had
gone all out to make our cottage look as lovely as possible and all its inhabitants look
respectable, and I loved her for it.

‘You have a lovely home here, Mrs
Browne,’ Alan schmoozed, helping himself to a scone.

‘Mollie tells me you’re
a footman,’ she said with a friendly smile. ‘How you finding
that?’

‘Fine,’ he said.
‘I’ll make butler one day. Got to be able to keep Mollie when
we’re married, haven’t I?’ He reached over and squeezed my
hand before cramming the well-buttered scone into his mouth.

Mother said nothing, but I could see the
surprise register on her face. Alan would never have noticed it – just a flicker of an
eyebrow and then it was gone. She and Father said nothing and were perfectly polite, but
I could tell by the subtle nuances on their faces that they weren’t taken with
him. Apart from anything else, my father was a traditionalist. It wasn’t done
to talk about marriage like that over the table and he expected any suitor of his
daughter to officially ask him for my hand in marriage.

Alan seemed oblivious to their subtle
disapproval, mind you. That and the shotgun by the fireplace.

It was an awkward tea and I noticed with
shock that my father had become more frail and tired, even in the three months that
I’d been gone in London. His face was drawn and his eyes seemed lost in the
grey pallor of his face. His chest rattled and halfway through tea he’d had to
go outside, he were coughing that much. We sat in silence, all of us eating our scones
and nervously drinking our tea as he coughed his guts up out there. The coughs seemed to
come in great waves that exploded in his chest. The awful noise turned my heart
over.

‘Gassed in Ypres,’
explained my mother to Alan apologetically.

By the time he staggered back in, he looked as
if he could keel over at any moment. Waving my mother away as she jumped to her feet, he
sank back into his chair, clutching his chest.

The rest of the tea passed with no more
drama, but I felt quite exhausted by the end. When I mentioned Father’s health
to Mother as we washed up together later, she looked just as weary.

‘Oh, let it be, Mollie,
won’t you? He’s fine, just his chest playing him up. Nothing to
worry about.’

‘You’re all right – for
money, I mean?’ I said. ‘Cos I can give you some of my
wages.’

Her face softened. ‘When did you
get so grown up?’ she said fondly. ‘Bless you, Mollie, but please
don’t worry about us. Your granny never sees us short. Besides,’ she
said, flicking her eyes in the direction of Alan, who was sat beside the fire with his
boots resting up against the fireguard, ‘you have your own worries
now.’

Alan glanced over at us, obviously trying to
listen to what we were saying, but somehow I couldn’t seem to muster even a
smile. For inside my stomach churned. Where was Flo when you needed her? I had made a
dreadful, dreadful mistake. However would I get myself out of this one?

What’s the saying? When the
cat’s away, the mice will play!

In Mr Stocks’s absence, the
youngsters of the house and grounds – myself, Alan, George, John the hallboy, Irene the
housemaid and Phyllis the new scullery maid – had got wind of a dance that was happening
in Downham. Somehow I’d managed to sweet-talk Louis into driving us
all there in the Daimler and now excitement was running at fever
pitch.

We all met outside Woodhall.

‘The boss must never find out
about this,’ said Louis as he turned the key on the Daimler and it purred into
life. ‘He’ll have my guts for garters.’

‘Oh, stop worrying,’
snapped Alan. ‘Who’ll tell him? Mr Orchard’s back in
London and Mrs Jones is out visiting. No one will ever know. Besides, he’s
back in a couple of days. We have to make the most of it.’

‘Come on then,’ sighed
Louis. ‘Jump in.’

I was wearing the gorgeous black dress Flo
had made me and as I slid on to the plush leather seats of the Daimler, didn’t
I feel the bee’s knees!

‘Wait till people see us pull up
outside in this,’ I grinned.

‘You look lovely,
Mollie,’ said George admiringly. ‘Just like a society
girl.’

Alan glared and put a hand on my knee.

This dance was bigger than the dusty old
village halls we usually went to. The dance at Downham, which I had longed to go to
since I was thirteen, was in the town hall and was thronged with young people.

When we pushed our way inside, the whole
room was doing the Palais Glide, all moving in time to the steps. It looked like a
riot.

‘My favourite,’ I
squealed. ‘Who’s coming to dance?’

‘You know I hate
dancing,’ grumbled Alan.

‘I’ll dance with
you,’ said Louis. ‘Shall we?’ He grinned, holding out an
arm.

‘Charmed, I’m
sure,’ I giggled, taking his hand. ‘You lead the way.’

Dances nowadays aren’t like dancing
back then. With the exception of Alan, most people loved to dance – lived for it, in
fact. With no television for entertainment, whiling away an evening at a dance hall was
all the rage. Dressing up and going out to dance was the only entertainment we had,
apart from the cinema. Everyone pushed the boat out and tried to look as smart as
possible and everyone knew the steps. Well, you had to if you wanted to keep up.

We may not have looked as glamorous as our
American cousins, who led the way with their big luxury dance halls and jazz bands, but
we could sure swing it with the best of them. With no constant flow of booze for people
to get bombed out of their heads on, people didn’t get so drunk they
couldn’t dance. It may have been becoming more acceptable for women to drink
in clubs in London, but here in Norfolk it was tea or fruit juice all the way.

Louis was just as light on his feet as he
was at that first dance we went to and, wrapped up in his arms, I felt safe and warm.
Somehow he managed to keep up a patter of chat while he danced and before long he had me
in fits of giggles.

Dancing with handsome Louis in my black
satin dress, I felt like a Hollywood movie star.

Why couldn’t Alan make me laugh
like this?

One dance turned to another, then another.
All the while I was aware of a growing cloud of dark disapproval from the sideline.
Every time I whizzed past him I just caught a glimpse of his face, frozen in anger.
Well, who needed him anyway? Old stick-in-the-mud. I could dance if I wanted to. He
wouldn’t stop my fun. Besides, it was all
harmless. Louis
was promised to another. We were only dancing.

Louis and I were just foxtrotting our way
round past the tea urn when a large hand clamped down on Louis’s shoulder.

‘I think that’s enough
now, don’t you?’ said Alan, his voice pitched dangerously low and
calm.

Louis, unfortunately, couldn’t see
the warning signs and batted his hand away. ‘Lighten up, Alan, we’re
only dancing. You should learn yourself and then you could keep Mollie
company.’

Big mistake.

I could see the switch flick behind
Alan’s eyes and the vein in his temple twitched angrily.

‘I said, take your hands off her
NOW!’ he boomed.

People around us stopped dancing and stared.
I felt all eyes swivel and turn to us. Louis looked stunned.

‘Alan,’ I said
nervously. ‘You’re making a scene.’

‘You’re making a fool of
me,’ he thundered. ‘I won’t stand for it.’

I felt humiliation burn inside and I just
wanted the ground to swallow me up. Why did he have to ruin everything?

‘Come on,’ he spat,
gripping my hand and leading me outside. ‘Show’s over,
folks.’

As I was hustled to the exit, I could just
make out Phyllis’s and Irene’s worried faces before the door slammed
shut behind us. And then we were stood outside in the cold dark air. Angry tears of
humiliation pricked my eyes. I’d looked forward to this night for ages.
I’d felt like a princess in my dress in the back of the Daimler and now I felt
like a silly fool.

‘Why, Alan?’ I cried.
‘We were only dancing. Why do you have to ruin everything?’

Rage flashed over his face and then he was
off. Thundering abuse and shouting with his face just inches from mine, his fingers
jabbing at the neckline of my black dress, he spewed forth venom.

I stopped listening. There was nothing worth
listening to anyway. I just watched his mouth flap open and shut. Funny how that face
that had looked so handsome just a few months before, looked so ugly now. He
didn’t hit me that night, but I knew he wanted to and suddenly in a rare
moment of clarity I knew just what Alan would become if I married him. I knew the life
mapped out for me would have been one of misery and pain.

My mother had raised me to have respect for
myself and others. I had to get away from him.

Back at Woodhall, with Mr Stocks home from
his holiday and normal service resumed, you could have cut the atmosphere in the kitchen
with a knife. Tension hung like steam in the air. It wasn’t long before Mr
Orchard pulled me to one side, his thin lips pursed in disapproval.

‘It’s come to my
attention that you are courting Alan,’ he said, looking down his nose.
‘Despite Mrs Jones’s express desire for you not to become involved
with your fellow members of staff. You leave me no choice but to swap your half-days so
you no longer have time off together. You must call a halt to this now.’

He’d obviously given the same
speech to Alan, who was walking around the place in a foul mood.

‘They can’t keep us
apart,’ he whispered in a quiet
moment. ‘What
doesn’t kill us will only make us stronger, Mollie. Needs be I’ll
get a job elsewhere and we can still be together.’

What did I feel? Mainly relief that I had an
excuse not to spend time with him. I’d got myself into a hole and now I had to
get myself out of it.

After lunch service that day I stepped
outside and gratefully gulped in the fresh air. A low mist hung eerily over the woods
and the sound of muffled gunshots rang out from a nearby shoot. I could make out
Alan’s face from the servants’ door, staring out into the gloom.

Shivering, I pulled my coat tight round me,
got on my bike and pedalled like the wind back to my mother’s. She took one
look at my face and folded me into her arms.

When she’d finished hugging me,
she went to put the kettle on.

‘Oh, Mollie,’ she
sighed. ‘I knew he was no good. You have to give him up.’

‘I can’t,
Mum,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘He’ll square me up, I know
he will. You don’t know what he’s like.’