Below Stairs (6 page)

When I saw all that I said to Mary, ‘She can’t use all those things.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you’ve not seen anything. By the time dinner starts in this house you will be running around wiping things because cook used them once and she wants them again. She uses some of these things two or three times in the course of preparing the meal.’ It turned out to be true.

11

T
HE AMOUNT
of food that came into that house seemed absolutely fabulous to me, the amount of food that was eaten and wasted too. They often had a whole saddle of mutton. You don’t see saddles very much now but they were gorgeous things. And sirloins. Sometimes with the sirloin they would only eat the undercut and the whole top was left over, so we used to have that for our dinner. Even so, we couldn’t eat everything and a lot got thrown away. When I used to think of my family at home where we seldom had enough to eat, it used to break my heart.

The milkman called three times a day – at half past four to five in the morning he would leave some milk, then he would come round again at ten o’clock with more milk and any other orders that you wanted. Naturally, he carried cream and eggs with him, but if you wanted butter or cakes which he sold, or anything like that, he came yet again at about two o’clock in the afternoon.

I’ve never seen such milk and cream and eggs. Pints of cream nearly every day was nothing in that household, even when they weren’t entertaining, when there was only Mr and Mrs Clydesdale and the young daughter and the governess. When I was first there the milk was served from a great big churn with a handle. Not the kind of churns they roll around on railway stations, or did do, but a churn he carried in his hand. But very soon after that it did change to bottles, which was very much cleaner, of course, because the cans used to smell.

Most of the shopping was ordered from a grand shop in Hove, like Fortnum and Mason’s, only you had to be a member to use it. I suppose in a way it was a rich man’s Co-op. I don’t know if you got a dividend.

They had departments for everything; greengrocery, butchery, cakes, and ordinary groceries.

Mrs Clydesdale would come down about ten o’clock and give cook her menus for the day, and if Mrs McIlroy wanted anything she hadn’t already in, she would just ring up and ask them to send it around. That’s all you had to do with tradesmen in those days. Just ring them up. In fact, the butcher and the greengrocer would come round for orders when they thought cook knew what she wanted for the day, and in less than half an hour they would be back with it.

Fish we never had from them. A man used to come up from the beach, bringing the fish in a bucket filled with sea water, still alive. I used to dread having to see to these fish because when I cut their heads off they jumped and squirmed.

One day he brought up a giant plaice, and when I laid it on the board to chop its head off it jumped right up in the air and its sharp fin made a wide scratch right down my nose. Mary looked at me and said, ‘Whatever have you done to your nose?’ I said, ‘A fish flapped up and scratched me.’ It was a long time before I heard the last of that. I never tried the same thing again. I used to get the heavy steel poker and hit them on the head with it. I never found out where the vulnerable part of the fish was, but my way worked all right.

The same fisherman used to bring lobsters up alive. I used to put them in a bowl in a larder. It was a huge larder, not just a place with shelves all round, it was like a room on its own, with a heavy slated floor and slated shelves which were stone cold even in the summer.

I used to put these lobsters in a bowl on the floor, but when I went in at night to get them for dinner they were never inside it; they had got out and were crawling around. I used to pick them up, often getting a nip for my pains. I never knew where the safest part was to get hold of them.

I hated dropping them into boiling water. Mrs McIlroy said they were killed the instant they touched the boiling water, but were they? I never used to believe they were because I am sure they used to give a terrible squeak as I dropped them in.

Mrs McIlroy had no ‘arrangement’ with the shops, but nevertheless when she paid the quarterly bills some little gift would often be given to her, and at the end of the year quite an appreciable discount, as they called it, was paid to her.

It was the cook who really chose the shops, so when she went in they laid the red carpet down for her. Because, although ours wasn’t such a large staff, the food was of a very high quality. So that, apart from her salary, any cook could count on a regular bonus from the shops at which she dealt.

But to get back to my daily round. I found that what I had thought was work for six was, in fact, work for one, and that one was me from now on.

Up I got at five-thirty, dragged myself downstairs, and presented myself to the kitchen range. I lit it, cleaned it, and lit the fire in the servants’ hall.

Then I’d tear upstairs to do the front door, which was all white paint and brass – a thankless task, particularly in the winter, for when I’d got it all bright and shiny the wind from the sea tarnished it again. So by the time Madam saw it, it was something to find fault with.

Then there were fourteen wide stone steps to be scrubbed. Back downstairs again, and there was Mary waiting with all the boots and shoes.

I remember the first morning. She said, ‘Carrie’ (that was the head housemaid) ‘says she hopes you know how to clean boots and shoes.’ ‘Well, of course I do,’ I said. After all, I’d done them at home. But I didn’t know how to do them the way they wanted them done.

The Reverend, he used to wear boots all day; black boots in the week and brown boots on Sundays. In the evenings he changed into black patent shoes. Madam wore black or brown, often both during the course of the day. Then there were the governess’s, and Leonora’s. These I did and I thought they looked very nice indeed. Well, the toes shone anyway.

When Mary came down for them she said, ‘Oh, they won’t do. They won’t do at all.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter with them? They look all right to me.’ ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll take them up if you like but Carrie will only sling them back at me.’

About two minutes afterwards down she came again and said, ‘It’s like I said, they won’t do. You haven’t done the insteps.’ ‘The insteps?’ I said. ‘I never knew you had to clean underneath the shoes.’ So I did that, gave them another polish, and Mary took them up again.

Seconds later back she came and said, ‘You haven’t done the bootlaces.’ I said, ‘Haven’t done the bootlaces!’ ‘Don’t you know?’ she said. ‘You have to iron all the bootlaces, take them all out and iron them.’ I thought she was joking. ‘Iron the bootlaces?’ I said. She said, ‘Yes.’ You see in those days they weren’t the narrow little bootlaces they are now, they were quite half an inch wide. In fact Mrs Clydesdale’s and Leonora’s were nearly an inch wide.

So I had to take the laces out of the shoes and iron them. Of course, there were no electric irons, just flat irons. They had to be heated in front of the fire and that took nearly a quarter of an hour. Never in all my life have I seen such a footling procedure.

After that I had to clean the knives because there were no stainless ones in those days. I did this with a large round knife-machine; it had three holes into which I shook the knife-powder, a sort of emery powder. Then I put a knife into each of these holes and turned the handle.

I felt like an organ-grinder. Indeed the whole business became a musical affair – I sang as I turned.

‘A young man stood within the court,

’Twas some poor girl he had made sport,

He heaved a bitter, bitter sigh

When she upon him cast her eye.’

(By then three knives were done, and I’d put another three in.)

‘She sued him for a thousand pounds

For breach of promise on these grounds.

But on the day they should have wed

He did a dive from church and fled.’

(Next three).

‘Not au revoir but goodbye, Lou,

I’ve got a better girl than you.

She loves me for myself you bet,

And we have bought a basinet.’

(Then the last three would go in for the last verse.)

‘The jury looked at him and grinned.

The Judge could see she’d got him pinned.

She won the day, but don’t forget

She hasn’t got the money yet.’

By now it was time to take Mrs McIlroy a cup of tea. Then I laid up breakfast in the servants’ hall, and at eight o’clock the staff had their meal.

After we’d had our breakfast it was time for Mrs McIlroy and me to cook for upstairs.

Like most of the meals this was very different from what we had. Mrs Clydesdale thought only about our nourishment, so we used to have things like herrings and cod and stews and milk puddings, but none of these nourishing foods ever found their way upstairs. So I was forced to the conclusion that even their internal organs differed from ours, inasmuch as what nourished us did them no good at all.

There were always economies which had to be made. During my years in domestic service I noticed that all economies began with the servants and always ended with them too.

The breakfasts they had upstairs were always huge, whether they had visitors or whether they didn’t; there were bacon and eggs, sausages, kidneys, either finnan haddock or kedgeree – not one or two of these things but every one.

I couldn’t help thinking of my poor father and mother at home. All they had was toast. And all this food going up to them, who never worked. I just couldn’t help thinking of the unfairness of life.

If I said so to Mrs McIlroy she couldn’t see it, she just accepted her lot. She thought there ought to be the people who had the money and the people who didn’t. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘if there weren’t the people who had the money, what would there be for people like us to do?’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘couldn’t it be equalled out more – more equitably – for them not to have so much, and for us to have a little bit more? Why do you and I have to work in this dungeon with the barest of comforts while they have everything upstairs? After all,’ I said, ‘don’t forget, Mrs McIlroy, our board and our lodging is part of our wages. The two pounds a month that I have in money is supposed to be supplemented by the board and lodging. If the lodging is of the kind that Mary and I have in that attic, and the food is meagre, and the outings are so small,’ I said, ‘how are we getting an equitable wage?’

Even at that early stage I used to think about these things. Maybe through my father, because the inequalities of life used to cause him a lot of heartache. Mother didn’t take the same notice. So long as she could just have a drink now and again and give us enough to eat, which she could in the summer, she didn’t seem to mind so much, but Dad felt these things more.

After breakfast had been washed up we started preparing lunch.

Lunch, according to Mrs McIlroy, was a very simple meal. Soup, fish, cutlets, or a grill, and a sweet. One of the things she taught me was how a dish should be sent up. For instance, when it was cutlets, she would mash the potatoes and roll them in egg and breadcrumbs, in little balls, slightly larger than walnuts, and then she would arrange them in a pyramid on a silver dish and the cutlets would stand on end all round with a little white frill on each bone and parsley at intervals around the dish. It really looked most attractive.

For us the main meal was the middle-day meal because at night we just had anything that was left over. Although it was our main meal I noticed we never got three courses, we only had meat and sweet; fairly substantial, but not cutlets or fillet steak or anything like that. When it was fish, it was herrings or cod. Still, there was always enough of it, and as I’d never been used to luxurious living, I always ate anything there was.

12

T
HE MAIN
meal was always at night, even when there were only Mr and Mrs Clydesdale, their little girl Leonora, and the governess. These last two had their meals in a separate place altogether except on Sundays, when Leonora was allowed to have her meals with her parents. It was always five, sometimes six courses.

It would start with soup of some kind. Mrs McIlroy was very good at making clear soup. We used to get lovely bones from the butcher which she’d stew in a saucepan on the side of the range all day long with herbs in a little muslin bag, and with a carrot, onion, swede, or turnip. Towards the end of the evening she would take all these out and put in eggshells, not the eggs themselves, just the shells, and vigorously whisk it. Every bit of scum used then to come to the top, and it was my job – and a jolly long job it was too – to skim everything off the top. When I’d got as much off as I could with a spoon, I had to get greaseproof paper and lay it gently on top of the liquid so that it kept on absorbing the fat.

Sometimes I had to lay over a dozen pieces. By then the soup was clear – a pale, faintly golden colour, but as clear as water.

Sometimes it was tomato soup; of course it wasn’t out of tins. No soup was out of tins. For tomato soup again there was the stock – we always had a stockpot going. When I got to be cook I did too. Every single bone that was left over from saddles of mutton, or legs of mutton, or sirloin, every bone or every bit of vegetable we didn’t use went into the stockpot. For tomato soup Mrs McIlroy used to melt butter (we never used margarine; everything was butter) over the side of the range, so that it just gently melted. She then thickened it with flour, added the stock, the tomatoes cut in half, and the whole lot was mixed until it thickened. Then I had to put it through a wire sieve. A long job it was too, getting all the pips and skins out of the way.

Mushroom soup was another speciality of Mrs McIlroy’s. Made rather similarly, except that the mushrooms had to be put through a hair sieve. She said that if you put them through a wire sieve you got tiny little pieces because they were so soft they went through too easily.