Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (32 page)

Consequently, there was an enormous
outpouring of patriotism. Street parties were planned all over the country and bunting
and flags fluttered from every street lamp. Even the smart railings of Cadogan Square
were ablaze with red, white and blue. Babies dressed in Union Jacks were pushed along in
their Silver Cross coach prams and little children dressed in red, white and blue crêpe
paper dresses ran giggling through the streets. Stamps and medals were issued and even
new public parks opened in his honour.

By the time the day of the celebrations
dawned, 6 May 1935, me, Irene and Phyllis were a giggling, over-excited mess.

‘Here, girls,’ said Irene,
handing us all a flag on a stick. ‘I’ve got us these to wave as the
coach goes past.’

‘Thanks, Irene,’ I said.
‘Wonder if I wave it high enough he might notice me and give a wave
back.’

‘Unlikely,’ grumped Mrs
Jones unkindly. ‘He never noticed you when it was just you and him on the Lynn
Road.’

I poked my tongue out as soon as her back
was turned. Old grouch.

‘You not coming, Mrs
Jones?’ piped up Phyllis.

She whirled round, hands on hips, all ready
to play the martyr. ‘How can I?’ she blazed, glaring at us
accusingly. ‘I’ve a soup to finish, pastry to make, not to mention
savouries and puddings for tonight and I’ve got an empty kitchen. Now you make
sure you come straight back as soon as that coach has gone past, you hear
me?’

‘We will,’ we all
chorused.

But even Mrs Jones’s surly mood
did nothing to dull our spirits and we raced up the area steps and into a great tidal
wave of human life, all making their way along the smart streets to Hyde Park.

For the first time the streets around
Cadogan Square were heaving with gentry and their domestic servants all walking
together, shoulder to shoulder, in one mass of happy humanity. It was the first time
Cadogan Square had come anything close to resembling a community. Everyone was dressed
up, everyone excited about the spectacle ahead.

Many life-altering things happened in 1935.
The driving test became compulsory, Penguin Books published the first paperbacks in
Britain, steel was produced in Corby,
Stanley Baldwin took over as
prime minister and the Nobel Prize was given for the discovery of the neutron, but for
those that can remember, King George V’s Silver Jubilee stands out as the
happiest of times. Up and down the country, every single road, more or less, held a
street party with games, fancy dress, floats, bunting and afternoon tea, but here in
London we were actually watching history unfold.

By the time we reached the roundabout at
Hyde Park, the crowds were heaving and hundreds of people lined the streets. Little did
I know, but my old chum Flo was watching it by the Ritz, not half a mile away.

‘Here, girls,’ I said.
‘Follow me.’

With that, we pushed our way to the front of
the railings. It was a tight squeeze. All around us the atmosphere was jubilant. People
held up vast banners: ‘King George, Queen Mary, long may they reign. God bless
them.’ Everyone was dressed in their Sunday best and had bright smiles
plastered on their faces.

‘There’s an awful lot of
people, ain’t there?’ trembled Phyllis, still not fully recovered
from her experience at Speakers’ Corner.

‘Stick with me,’ I
grinned, squeezing her hand.

We knew the carriage would be coming soon,
en route from Buckingham Palace to St Paul’s Cathedral. Suddenly a huge round
of applause and deafening cheers broke out. My skin prickled with goosebumps as the
atmosphere in the crowd became electric.

‘It’s the
king!’ screamed Irene, waving her flag like mad. ‘Long live the
king!’

The crowd swept forward as one, a great tidal
wave of love and respect washing over us. Then I saw them, perched upright in their
magnificent carriage drawn by six horses. Queen Mary, dressed in a beautiful white coat
with a fur stole, her diamonds glittering in the spring sunshine, looked our way as we
hollered and cheered like crazy. She gave us a curt little nod.

‘She hasn’t changed
much,’ I chuckled to the girls.

Talk about pomp. Hundreds of guards on
horseback trotted past, resplendent in their scarlet jackets.

‘God save the king!’ I
yelled, along with hundreds of others.

There were no snidey comments, no sarcasm or
envy. No front-page examination the next day of what they were wearing or how they
behaved. Just total and utter deference. Every single person, man, woman and child,
cheered and clapped with total enthusiasm.

Today the royals have to earn our respect;
back then it was a given.

In response to the extraordinary adoration
of the cheering crowds, the king later said: ‘I cannot understand it, after
all I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow.’

As soon as they had gone and the crowds
started to disperse, Irene turned to us with a sigh. ‘Oh well,’ she
said. ‘Back to me chamber pots.’

We fell about laughing and, as I linked arms
with my friends from below stairs, I didn’t care that we didn’t have
a street party to go to and it was straight back to work. We’d seen the king
and queen up close and it was a total and utter joy.

‘Thanks for letting us watch the
procession, Mrs Jones,’ I said gratefully when we got back. ‘Oh, you
should have seen it, we was so close to the king and queen.’

‘I’m sure you
were,’ she said. ‘Now hop to it, them carrots won’t peel
themselves.’

Later, as we prepared Mr Stocks’s
evening meal, we were allowed, as it was a special occasion, to listen to the
king’s speech on the wireless:

‘At the close of this memorable
day I must speak to my people everywhere. How can I express what is in my heart as I
passed this morning through cheering multitudes, to and from St Paul’s
Cathedral, how could I fail to be most deeply moved. Words cannot express my thoughts
and feelings. I can only say to you, my very dear people, that the queen and I thank you
from the very depths of our hearts for all the loyalty and, may I say, the love with
which this day and always you have surrounded us.

‘I dedicate myself anew to your
service for the years that may still be given to me.

‘I look back on the past with
thankfulness to God. My people and I have come through great trials and difficulties
together. They are not over. In the midst of this day’s rejoicing I grieve to
think of the numbers of my people who are still without work. We owe it to them and not
least to those who are suffering from any form of disablement all the sympathy and help
we can give.’

My mind flickered to my poor old father,
shivering out in his hut, rasping for breath, and my mother still putting on her best
face, and a sudden sorrow settled over my heart. What did the future hold for him, for
my mother, in fact for
all the thousands of people disabled by the war
and fighting poverty and destitution? Goodness only knew …

I tuned back into the speech.

‘Other anxieties may be in store
but I am persuaded that with God’s help they may all be overcome if we meet
them with confidence, courage and unity. So I look forward to the future with faith and
hope.’

It was a stirring speech and, as the
national anthem struck up, we all went about our work with a renewed sense of hope for
the future.

A year later our beloved king was dead.

1936 was the year of the three kings. With
the sad passing of King George V came the accession and then abdication of his son,
Edward VIII. I should have known that gusty spring morning, when I’d seen the
couple in London and noted the look of utter love that shone in Edward’s eyes,
that he would always put love before duty. And so, as Edward was pressured to hand the
throne and control of the empire over to his brother, there was change in my life too,
albeit on a slightly smaller scale.

We were back in Woodhall in Norfolk in the
summer of 1936, four months before Edward’s famous abdication speech, when Mrs
Jones turned to me out of the blue one morning and remarked: ‘It’s
time for you to get a better job, Mollie. You’ve been here five years
now.’

I stopped rolling out pastry and stared at
her, flabbergasted. ‘Well,’ I admitted, ‘I have been
thinking about it.’

‘You’ve learnt all you
can learn here now,’ she went on. ‘You can easily get a job in a
bigger house. Pains me to say it but you’re not a bad little cook – when you
keep your
mind on the job and not on unsuitable boys, that
is.’

I might have imagined it, but she was
smiling, actually smiling at me, in a sort of encouraging way. Blimey. Wonders would
never cease.

‘Get yourself down to Collins
Agency in King’s Lynn on your next half-day off. I’ll write you a
reference. You’ll be able to get something easy.’

‘Thanks, Mrs Jones,’ I
mumbled. ‘I’ll do that.’

Me in the grounds of Woodhall,
in a rare moment off duty, aged about eighteen.

Sure enough, on my next half-day, I
dressed up smart and, clutching my reference, headed on the bus to King’s
Lynn.

A stern, bespectacled lady took one look at
my reference, looked me up and down long and hard and then referred to a heavy
leather-bound book on her desk.

‘Well, we do have a position that
you would be suitable for,’ she said. ‘Lord Islington needs a
kitchen maid. He has houses in Hyde Park and a country estate in Bury St Edmonds,
Rushbrook Hall.’

My heart sank a little. A lord was a step up,
but I’d been a kitchen maid for years, ferrying between London and a country
estate. It would just be more of the same. But I knew I had to be realistic. I was
nineteen, nearly twenty. The next logical step up was cook, but I was way too young and
inexperienced to make that position. So for now, it looked as if I was trapped as a
kitchen maid.

‘I’ll book you an
appointment to see Mrs Pickering, Lord Islington’s secretary,’ she
said, slamming shut her leather-bound book, indicating that the interview was now over.
‘Make sure you take your references.’

On my next half-day I took no end of buses
and trains to get from Norfolk to Bury St Edmonds in Suffolk. An old bus lurched and
bumped along a country road and by the time it spat me out at a stone gatehouse next to
some imposing gates, I was hot, dusty and tired.

Trooping up a long drive to a large moated
mansion set in acres of parkland, most people would have been impressed. But as I
trudged over the moat, I muttered to myself: ‘Why have the gentry always got
to have such long bloomin’ driveways?’

I was parched by the time the butler hustled
me round the servants’ entrance and into Mrs Pickering’s office. She
gave me a cursory inspection, looking me up and down through her half-moon glasses.
Honestly. It made you feel as if you were livestock at an auction, not a kitchen maid
being interviewed for a job.

‘Well,’ she said, after
a thorough read of Mrs Jones’s reference, ‘you have the necessary
experience. There could only be one possible problem.’ She frowned.
‘His Lordship has a castle in Spain which he intends to move
to imminently, so the post requires someone who desires foreign travel.’

My head snapped up like you see in a
cartoon. All traces of travel fatigue vanished. ‘Spain?’ I gasped.
The sun came out and choirs of celestial angels blew trumpets on fluffy clouds. I could
have shouted ‘Hallelujah’ and planted a kiss right on the end of
this stern woman’s nose.

‘I’ll take
it,’ I announced.

‘The salary is ten shillings a
week …’

‘I’ll take
it,’ I said again.

‘You will have a half-day off once
a week and every other Sunday and your duties include …’

I stopped listening. It didn’t
matter if I had to drag a sack of coal from London to Suffolk with my teeth, I was going
to take it. Because it meant that finally, finally, my dreams would be realized. I would
get to travel to Spain.

It’s worth keeping in mind that I
didn’t really know much about Spain. Few did back in 1936, but in my eyes it
was a hot, humid, exotic, fantastical place full of swarthy men and palm trees. Not
since I’d climbed to the very top of the tallest tree in the village as a
ten-year-old tomboy had the world seemed so big and so full of adventure and magic.

Now I was getting to live my dreams. I was
going to live in Spain. No one in my family, in fact no one I knew, had ever travelled
abroad. Alan, that possessive footman, had told me it was an impossibility. Well,
I’d show him, I’d show them all! Mollie Browne was going to Spain to
live in a real-life castle. Who knew what amazing adventures beckoned!

On the bus back to Woodhall, my heart was
bursting
with rapturous joy. Back in the kitchen I raced over to Mrs
Jones and planted a big wet kiss on her cheek.

‘Get away with ya,’ she
scolded, wiping her cheek angrily. ‘What’s come over you, big daft
dolly daydream?’