Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (10 page)

Mrs Stocks, when she’d been alive,
had had a lady’s maid, and Captain Eric had a valet, Mr Bratton. Mr Orchard
acted as Mr Stocks’s valet. Then there was me and we were soon to be joined by
another kitchen maid.

In total there were fourteen staff to look
after two men. Fourteen!

I learnt the rules fast. A strict hierarchy
governed us all downstairs and was way more rigid and enforced than upstairs. Mabel, the
head housemaid, and Mr Orchard, the butler, were obsessed with class and were more
conservative and opposed to change than any of the gentry. They were the ones I came to
fear, not Mr Stocks. Just one look from them told you whether you were in line for a
roasting or not.

Everyone was obsessed with bettering
themselves and climbing to the top spot, either as butler, housemaid or cook, and, as is
often the way with life in cities, people looked after number one.

As the days passed I quickly realized that
Mabel, all buttoned up in black, was another old maid and lived for bossing us about,
and Mr Orchard was downright peculiar and a proper fussy old snob. Mrs Jones and Mr
Orchard ate breakfast and lunch with us, but when it came to dinner they always dined
together separately in the housekeeper’s drawing room with the door firmly
shut.

It was a couple of days before Mr Orchard
deigned to speak to someone of my level. ‘And how are we finding it,
Mollie?’ he asked one morning over breakfast, peering at me over the top of
his wire-rimmed specs. He used to drink his coffee just so, with one little finger
cocked out. His jet-black hair was always perfectly greased down either side of an
immaculate centre parting. The parting was so straight you could have used it as a
runway. He was tall and spindly and the waistline of his smart black trousers seemed to
creep higher and higher each day. He can only have been in his thirties, but his snooty
demeanour made him seem ancient to me.

‘Are we listening and learning all
we can?’ he continued.

Silly old picky knickers.

He really thought he was the gentry and not
their butler! Still, I suppose everyone likes someone to lord it over. I expect he
thought I should be thankful he was bestowing me with his attention, but I
didn’t need his company to feed my ego.

‘Oh yes, thanks,’ I
said, working my way through a plate of bacon, eggs and sausage. Thankfully the food
here was excellent and breakfast was always eggs and bacon, which was just as well as
come eight a.m. I would be ravenously hungry. It wasn’t a patch on what Mr
Stocks would be tucking into shortly. He had kedgeree, bacon, eggs, sausages, black
pudding and porridge. He didn’t even eat it all and sometimes the food came
down with just a couple of mouthfuls gone. More fool him. Total waste if you asked me.
Rest assured there wouldn’t even be a crumb left on my plate.

As I wolfed it down like a woman possessed,
Mr
Orchard narrowed his eyes like a cat and his pinched face took on a
supercilious air.

‘You know, Mollie,’ he
said, smiling imperiously and delicately placing his coffee cup back in the saucer,
‘we’re not common servants here. We don’t work for
middle-class doctors or bank managers.’ At the mere mention of the middle
classes he wrinkled his nose as if a dog had just come and defecated on the pavement of
Cadogan Square and he’d trodden in it. ‘Places such as that just
have a maid of all work. We are domestic servants to the gentry and you would do well to
remember that.’

‘What’s Mr Stocks
like?’ I asked, wiping my bread round the plate to get the last drips of egg
off. So far he was just a shadowy mystery figure and I’d yet to even catch a
glimpse of him.

Mr Orchard’s face suddenly lit
up.

‘Oh, Mr Stocks is a fine gentleman
through and through,’ he gushed. ‘He has breeding and class we can
never imagine. He is a most refined and educated man.’

‘But what’s he really
like?’ I urged. ‘What’s he talk about?’

Mr Orchard looked down at me through his
wire-rimmed spectacles. ‘The butler hears nothing,’ he said through
thin lips.

As he wittered on I realized that, to him,
Mr Stocks was a god and his role on earth was to serve him. He genuinely believed the
upper classes were morally and culturally superior. It was so different in them days.
Proper rules of behaviour were dictated by the upper class, who led society in
understanding the rules of manners, such as table manners, appropriate ways to dress,
the correct way to
speak, including the words to use and their
pronunciation. Even the rules of courtship and marriage came from the upper class. The
vast majority of people in powerful positions were privately educated members of the
upper classes. They saw themselves as rulers and keepers of British culture, and were
not to be challenged by those below them. This rigid social order was overwhelmingly
accepted and rarely questioned.

It certainly wasn’t here in the
basement of Number 24 Cadogan Square. Mabel and Mr Orchard had it engrained in them so
deep that if you cut them in two, Mr Stocks’s name would run through them.

I said nothing and, heeding my
mother’s advice, for once managed to ‘keep my trap
shut’.

Mr Stocks, as it later transpired, was
indeed a nice old boy, a real gentleman, but in any case he didn’t intimidate
me. Why should I have been intimidated? I wasn’t inferior to him. You may find
it hard to believe that a fourteen-year-old scullery maid from the sticks would really
not feel intimidated, but I genuinely didn’t. Maybe the blood that flowed in
my veins was the same as feisty Granny Esther’s, but to me, humans are all
just humans. Underneath the clothing, be it apron or double-breasted suit,
we’re all just two legs, two arms, a head and a heart.

As a scullery maid, I may have been at the
opposite end of the social class to Mr Stocks and even five rungs below Mr Orchard, but
we all still had the same bodily functions at the end of the day.

You have to wonder. The intricacies, the
work, the etiquette that surrounded this small, privileged enclave of London – it would
seem preposterous today. Fourteen
of us all there to serve two men, I
ask you! The butler, the footman and the hallboy didn’t have that much to do
in my opinion. They just hung about all day, cleaning silver and opening doors. In a
way, the servants made work for each other. The housemaids had to clean our bedrooms,
the staff ate most of the food that was cooked and we created most of the mess. In their
own right, Mr Stocks and Captain Eric didn’t require much looking after, but
what else did they have to do? They didn’t work, after all, and it was all
about social standing. Looking back, of course, it was unfair. They were only considered
bright because they had the money and time to further their education and make
themselves more refined. I daresay I could have formed a whole load more opinions had I
been given the opportunity to carry on at school or go to university, but by nature of
birth I was born into the working class and that was that.

My grandfather had owned the local village
shop; Mr Stocks’s grandfather had bought this house in Cadogan Square,
Woodhall in Norfolk and a number of other large country properties including Shibden
Head brewery and Shibden Hall in Halifax. The Stocks family had made their money from
coal-mining and, later, brewing. Mr Stocks, educated at Eton and then Cambridge, would
never, ever have to sleep in a hut like my father or scavenge the countryside for
pigeons for the pot.

But what good would it do moaning about it?
Besides, what could I, a fourteen-year-old scullery maid, do about it any case?
Relegated to the basement and hidden away behind a green baize door, I was just there to
make Mr Stocks’s and Captain Eric’s lives as comfortable as
possible. Thanks to a separate entrance and back stairs, they never
actually had to even see me. I could lead a totally parallel existence to them. Myself
and everyone else were there to anticipate his and Captain Eric’s every need.
Meals appeared on tables, fires were miraculously lit, beds warmed, covers turned and
front steps left gleaming. Not that I begrudged him. He was only living the life
expected of the gentry.

But times were changing outside on the
rarefied streets of Kensington and Chelsea. A seismic shift of a magnitude that few of
us could even imagine was on its way. Little did I, Mollie, sniffy Mr Orchard,
cantankerous Mrs Jones or blue-blooded Mr Stocks upstairs, delicately picking at his
kedgeree, know, but this little world of ours was about to be blown apart. Soon it
wouldn’t matter if the front doorstep was sparkling or what staircase you
used. Dark forces were brewing. Forces that were to irrevocably alter our way of life
forever.

British fascist supporters and the
anti-fascist opposition were clashing across the East End and in the centre of London.
Large numbers of Jews fleeing persecution elsewhere in Europe were arriving in the UK
and were settling in London. Hitler had taken control of the German Workers’
Party, which he renamed as the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party,
and bestowed on himself the title of Führer. His speeches, in which he condemned Jews,
Communists, democrats and capitalists, were arousing people’s injured national
pride. By 1931 he was gaining in power and popularity. Even here in London a local Nazi
group had been established and its membership was growing rapidly.

These powerful events in Germany were to shape
all our lives in ways none of us could have foreseen. But for now a new change, albeit
on a smaller scale, was coming my way.

My homesickness was cured in an instant
with the arrival to Cadogan Square of a lovely lass by the name of Flo Wadlow.
Friendships formed between women are some of the most magical on earth. They are
lasting, meaningful and can sustain us through the longest hours. We all need a woman in
our life, someone we can gossip long into the night with, spill out our hopes, dreams
and ambitions to. Someone to giggle over first kisses with and confide our darkest fears
in. And so it was with lovely Flo and myself.

We had no idea back then, when she nervously
pushed open the bedroom door, what a wonderful journey we would go on together. The
friendship we formed when I was just a lowly scullery maid at Cadogan Square and she a
kitchen maid has lasted eighty years. Who would have thought it? Eighty years! We still
chat regularly on the phone and Flo, now a hundred years old, is planning a visit from
Norfolk, where she still lives, to Bournemouth. I can’t wait. We still giggle
and laugh like we did back in the old days and we both still have all our marbles and
relatively healthy bodies. Not bad for a couple of old scullery maids, eh?

We’ve lived through so much that
I’d say we’re a part of history. We were both in the crowds in
London, cheering at the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary, we gawped at the
fascist MPs on their
soapboxes in Hyde Park, admired Wallis Simpson
when we saw her in London, waved off King George VI’s coffin and between us
cooked for royalty and politicians.

Back then we never dreamt we’d
live to ninety-six and one hundred years old. In 1931 we had rather different
preoccupations than we do today. We’re more likely to discuss Scrabble moves
than moves on cute errand boys, but the laughter and the friendship remains as strong as
it ever was. The blood, sweat and toil we shared in domestic service bonded us
forever.

Mrs Jones was right in one respect, though –
all we did care about was boys, dresses and dancing, and I recognized a kindred spirit
the minute she timidly opened the bedroom door one evening after dinner service. Flo had
a kind face, with intelligent blue eyes, framed by clouds of soft dark hair.

‘Hello,’ she said.
‘I’m the new kitchen maid. Looks like I’m sharing with you
then.’ Her soft Norfolk accent immediately gave her away.

‘You’re a sight for sore
eyes,’ I said with a grin. ‘I’m from Downham Market. Where
you from?’

‘Wells-on-Sea,’ she
said, grinning back. ‘But I moved up to London aged sixteen when I got a job
as a scullery maid not far from here.’

At nineteen, Flo was five years older than
me and more experienced. She’d done her dues scrubbing doorsteps and was now
trying her hardest to learn all she could so she could make cook.

‘What they like here
then?’ she asked as she unpacked her small case and sat down on the iron bed
opposite me.

‘Oh, they’re all right
really,’ I said, smiling. ‘Ones to
watch out for is
Mr Orchard, the butler, and bossy Mabel, the head housemaid. Watch your bum when Alan
the footman’s about too,’ I warned. ‘He’s got
more hands than an octopus.’

Her eyes shone with glee as she giggled.

‘And the cook’s a bit
temperamental too,’ I added. ‘You don’t want to get on the
wrong side of her.’

Flo opened her case.

‘Here,’ I said.
‘Let me help you.’

Together we finished her unpacking. She had
some beautiful dresses, even some silky evening ones like I’d seen the smart
ladies wear out on the streets of Knightsbridge.

‘You’ve got lovely
clothes,’ I sighed wistfully, thinking of my one good dress.

‘I make them,’ she said.
‘I bought a sewing machine from the Brompton Road. It’s easy, I can
run you up a couple if you like.’

My heart soared.
‘Really?’ I gasped. ‘You’d do that? Oh,
that’d be smashing.’

Our eyes met and a current of understanding
flowed between us.

‘Course, Mollie,’ she
smiled. ‘We’ve got to stick together, us Norfolk
girls.’

Seems Flo was used to odd sorts after her
four years in domestic service. ‘Do you know, in my first job I
wasn’t allowed to be called Florence, my full name, as they already had a
parlour maid called Florence, so I suggested they call me Georgina – my middle
name,’ she said as she tucked herself down under her eiderdown and flicked off
the light.