Servants’ Hall (22 page)

It was a six-course dinner; for the entrée I made a salmi of duck and the main course was beef à la mode. During our supper, Mr Kite told me that he had heard the chief guest praising the entrée and the beef à la mode. ‘Now’s the time to ask Madam for a rise,’ Mr Kite said, but of course no one would have ever dared to. Only when one left and applied for another place did one ask for a higher wage.

I’d noticed that the oldest of the chauffeurs, a Mr McGregor, was reading
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
, so I sat him next to me at the supper table; it was not often I got the chance to talk about books. I told Mr McGregor that I’d picked up an 1874 edition of
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
, for two shillings in the Portobello Road. I omitted to mention that I found the book heavy going and tedious, and, if Dr Johnson had said only half the things attributed to him by Boswell, it would still have been too much.

‘Bought the book for two shillings, did you now,’ said Mr McGregor. ‘I borrowed my copy from the public library. Of course, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it’.’

‘That Sir, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.’

We couldn’t explain to the others what we were laughing about.

Our lady’s maid, Annette, had by now been with us long enough to learn some English and Mick, the Irish chauffeur, was making her laugh by airing his knowledge of the French language – picked up when he was in France during the 1914–18 war. He sang, ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières’ but, as his version of the line ‘Hasn’t been kissed in forty years’ was considerably different, reflecting as it did on Mademoiselle’s constipation, our butler looked very disapproving. As so often when two or more servants were gathered together, the conversation eventually came around to talking about one’s employers. On the assumption that derogatory remarks might have been heard upstairs, it was generally past employers who were discussed. I used to think that no other workers could find their employers such an absorbing topic of conversation as domestic servants found theirs. But then other workers could separate their work from their leisure; once they’d finished and were sitting in their own homes, it was a different life. Apart from one free day per month, one afternoon and evening and an alternate Sunday afternoon and evening, a servant’s whole life was spent in the employer’s home, it was therefore inevitable that the life of those upstairs should provide a diversion for us. So now John, the youngest, and the most handsome of the chauffeurs, was talking about his previous employer:

‘The old man wasn’t too bad, but the Madam was a holy terror, maids came and went like the wind in a colander. I was courting the parlourmaid, Gladys, and she told me that Madam was busy every morning making sure the maids had done their work properly. She’d rub her fingers along ledges, lift up the ornaments to see if they’d been dusted underneath, and she’d even deliberately drop money in obscure places not so much to make sure that the servants were honest, as to find out if they’d cleaned everywhere. All the servants were female – no man would have put up with her high and mighty manner. It didn’t affect me so much because I didn’t live in, I had a couple of rooms over the garage. The old man knew what she was like, and in an effort to keep servants he actually had a bathroom put in for them. Gladys said the way Madam carried on about providing this luxury for servants, you’d have thought she was giving them Buckingham Palace. The bathroom was on the floor below the attics where the servants slept and although there was a lavatory in it, Madam had forbidden the servants to use it during the night because she said the noise from the cistern woke her up. They had a cook at that time, old Mrs May, who was rather too fond of the gin bottle. One night, going down the stairs to the basement lavatory, carrying a lighted candle – every landing light was extinguished at night – Madam suddenly opened her bedroom door and called out, “Who’s that, who’s that?” Old Mrs May, half drunk, and irritable at having to go down to the basement, answered, “Well, it ain’t bloody Santa Claus taken short, lucky for him in this place”. Course, she got the sack next day but it was a laugh all right.’

We too laughed, and then Ada, the under-housemaid said, ‘Oh, Mr Penny, do tell us one of your funny stories.’

Mr Penny, endeavouring to appear reluctant to take the limelight, and deprecating the idea that anybody wanted to listen to him, then said, ‘You’d never believe this, though it’s true as I’m sitting here at this table.’

‘That’s what you said the last time Mr Penny; of course we believe you.’

‘Well, it happened when I was a young footman in a great house in Wiltshire. I went there in the beginning of December, I remember because the snow was thick on the ground. The old Master had just died at eighty years old, genuinely mourned by the servants. They all disliked his widow, thirty years younger and so mean that the butler said she’d have liked to have buried the coffin upright to save buying so much ground. She’d only married her husband for his money, and he was hardly cold in his grave, two months in fact, before she married an effeminate looking specimen of a man called Vivian – what a name for a man. When Christmas came, and they played at charades, he dressed up as a film vamp, makeup and all; and for sure looked the part.’

‘Come on, Mr Penny, get to the exciting part, we can’t sit here all night.’

‘Well, I noticed that on Madam’s bridge afternoons he always retired to his dressing-room and remained there for over two hours. One afternoon, being idle and full of curiosity, I peered through the keyhole – you’ll never guess what I saw.’

‘He had another woman there,’ said Mick.

‘He was drinking whisky’ said Mr McGregor.

‘No, nothing like that. There he was, dressed in the same women’s clothes he’d worn for the charades, painted, powdered, lip-sticked, a long golden wig on his head, sitting on a chair with one leg crossed over the other and’ – here Mr Penny lowered his voice – ‘I could see that he was wearing ladies’ pink silk knickers. What do you think of that?’

‘I think that it must have been an outsize keyhole for you to see all that,’ said Mr Kite, sceptically.

Facetiously, Mick answered, ‘Perhaps he was rehearsing for the next Christmas charades.’

‘What! in January, it’s not likely.’

We females were too taken aback to comment, or even to laugh. Bawdiness we could understand, but sexual aberration was outside our knowledge of life. In fact, we rather welcomed Connie commencing her usual paean of praise about her late employer, although we’d heard it many times. We all liked Connie, but she did get boring on the subject of her one and only domestic place. Because her Madam had no lady’s maid, and was old and rather frail, she had depended on Connie for personal help.

‘I used to go to church with her on Sundays and she’d often ask me to sit and read to her in the evening, or even just to be there for company. If any of her family came, I was just the same as them.’

That I didn’t believe; a denizen of below stairs could never move up, unless, like Rose, she married into the social caste. Even if a servant could dress like them and use the correct speech, they would know she was a servant. We didn’t have to be physically subservient, no curtseying or doffing of caps, but involuntarily there crept into one’s voice a kind of subservience when talking to them above stairs.

So now, as I listened to Connie extolling the virtues of her late employer, I thought that I much preferred Mrs Van Lievden, who made no pretence of an interest in us personally but made sure that we had physical comforts.

Still, it was Connie who told Mary and me of a small house for sale in Streatham which she thought Rose would like and which, in fact, Rose’s husband bought for her. Mary reckoned he was trying to sweeten Rose so that she would divorce him.

28

I’d never really believed that Rose would willingly give up her life at Greenlands. To leave all that wealth and comfort; a beautiful home, lovely gardens and servants to do the work, for a nondescript small house in Streatham; it seemed madness to me. But then I had never fully understood how much Rose hated the life, how alien she felt as the mistress of the establishment instead of the servant. Now that she was going to live in an ordinary house, Rose was a different person. She ceased to complain bitterly about her husband, his friends and way of life; although to Mary and me she attempted to justify her previous attitude.

‘You see, when we fell in love, I’d no idea of living in a big house with servants, because I knew that Gerald had no money, apart from what Mrs Wardham gave him; I thought he’d get an ordinary job and we’d live in a small house like my ma’s. After all,’ Rose went on, somewhat plaintively, ‘how could I know that he’d make a lot of money and want to live like a gentleman. When we married, he said that I was never to change, he loved me just as I was. And so he did, until he got rich and made all those society friends and those theatre people. Then I didn’t fit in, I’d got to get educated and become a lady.’

Rose’s idea that she and Victoria Helen would live harmoniously in a cosy little nest had a set-back as far as the child was concerned. She was a plain and unattractive child, already showing signs of her grandfather’s ungovernable temper. Now she continually whined because she missed her huge nursery full of toys, her garden swing and see-saw; she probably missed her father too, he’d always made a fuss of her.

About two weeks after Rose had settled down in Streatham, Mary and I went over to see her on our free Sunday afternoon and evening – or rather Mary’s free Sunday; as a cook I was free after lunch every Sunday. Mary looked resplendent in a new coat-frock of light brown gaberdine trimmed with dark brown braid. To be smartly and correctly dressed for the street, a costume or coat-frock was de rigueur at that time, the latter being cheapest to buy. No female ever went out hatless; Mary wore a brown cloche – or pudding basin hat – brown gloves and handbag. I’d saved my money to buy a bottle-green gaberdine costume with cloche to match, black patent shoes and black gloves. Gloves were another must, no matter how hot was the weather. We’d both used face powder, bought at Woolworths for sixpence a box. Perhaps ladies had their powder specially blended, but Woolworths had only three shades, white, pale pink and a kind of muddy-looking beige – we’d bought the pale pink. There was a subtle difference in using powder and lipstick; the former was acceptable but use of lipstick branded one as an ‘easy catch’, so we used white lip-salve – at least it made our lips shine. We generally used ‘ashes of violet’ perfume – also bought at Woolworths. Mary and I thought we looked like a couple of fashion-plates as we walked through Hyde Park; we certainly got a few wolf whistles. Mary was happy because for some time now she’d had a new boyfriend, a pal of the faithless Sid. I’d remonstrated, saying that after her experience with Sid, surely she could see there was no point in having a boyfriend who went on long voyages. Absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, it merely made it accustomed to absence.

‘It’s different this time, Margaret. I’ve been to his home, his parents were very nice to me. Conrad’s not going to stay an AB, he’s going to work his way up, his father was a chief engineer on a ship. Besides, Conrad does short trips, he’s away only three months. His dad’s quite an educated man, he’s got a whole shelf of books by authors like Melville and Joseph Conrad. He told me he reads them over and over again; that’s why he called his son Conrad. I think it’s a much nicer name than Sid.’

Well, Mary was right about the name. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have felt secure in the affections of a young man I saw only at three-monthly intervals.

On the journey to Streatham, I remarked to Mary that surely Rose would agree to a divorce for, even after it was granted, Gerald would still have to wait some time before he could marry again. Besides, what was the point of being legally tied to a man who no longer cared about you. He would support Rose until she married again, and she’d certainly have the opportunity for she was still very pretty.

‘I could take a bet with you, Margaret, that Rose will never agree to a divorce. I’ve known her longer than you have and, although she seems to be soft and non-argumentative, she can be as hard as nails if she thinks she’s right. Just think how she refused all Gerald’s attempts to make her an ‘above stairs’ person. Besides, although Rose would be the innocent party in a divorce, she’d still look on it as a disgrace. No, Rose will never give him a divorce, of that I’m sure. And I’m equally sure she’ll never want to marry again, if only because she dislikes the bed part.’

‘Perhaps we’ll be the same when we get married, Mary; not like the bed part, I mean. One never knows in advance, does one?’

‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t like it, Margaret. Aunt Ellie did and I reckon it helped to finish off old Mack. She was always complaining to me about what she called, his “weasel”, saying she had to spend a long time making it bark and even then its bite wasn’t very powerful. Have you ever seen one, Margaret?’

‘Well, I’ve seen what passed for one on statues and I had that glimpse when I went into Mrs Bishop’s bathroom. But if you mean, have I given the object a detailed study, the answer is No; time and circumstances not allowing.’

‘Oh, Margaret, you’re awful,’ and we laughed so loudly that the bus conductor came upstairs to share the joke. We told him that we were discussing anatomy. He knew what the word meant because he said he preferred to study astronomy, there were fewer complications.

The outside of the very ordinary semi-detached house in Streatham gave no indication of the almost opulent-furnished interior. Most of the furnishings had come from Greenlands, including as much of Rose’s elaborate bedroom suite as her smaller room could take. I was amused to see that her favourite love-story magazines were no longer in a neat pile on the bedside table, but scattered over the bed now that she was free of the necessity to conceal them. All of the six rooms were overcrowded with furniture and ornaments. It seemed as though Rose had claimed ownership to as much as possible, perhaps as an insurance against future hard times. She’d already got friendly with her neighbour and had invited her in to have a cup of tea with us. Mrs Richard was a bright, bird-like kind of person, and she twittered like one too. I could tell that she was astonished to see such obviously expensive furnishings, and her eyes were busy making an inventory of Rose’s possessions. We had tea in what Rose, with no pretensions at all, called the front room; Mrs Richard called it the drawing-room. Now that there were no servants to cut dainty, minute cucumber or egg sandwiches, or produce a plate of little fairy cakes, Rose had provided a far more substantial meal. There were corned-beef and tinned salmon sandwiches, doughnuts, lemon-cheese tarts and heavy plum cake. The cakes came from the bakers’ shop as Rose hadn’t yet learned much in the way of cooking. Mrs Richard kept up a non-stop flow of twittering: