Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (15 page)

Instead of the concrete floors of London,
Woodhall’s kitchen had a lovely old wooden floor, which I had to scrub once a
week with a brush and some carbolic soap until it gleamed and shone like a new pin.

Two months after we arrived, the shooting
season went into full swing with the arrival of partridges in September and pheasant in
October. Mr Stocks had vanished for most of August, off up to Scotland for the grouse
season, but in September he returned and, thanks to the open outlook of the kitchens, I
got to have a good look at him properly for the first time.

As scullery maid, it was my job to get his
dogs’ meals ready. You’ve got to laugh at the gentry. Even their
beloved black Labradors had to have specially prepared meals. They had three ounces of
chopped raw shin of beef and two tablespoonfuls of cooked cabbage.

After his return from Scotland, Mr Stocks
clumped down the passage one morning to collect his dogs’ biscuits and
water.

‘Go on then,’ blustered
Mrs Jones, pushing me forwards. ‘Boss wants his dogs’ food. Just
give him the biscuits, mind, dogs don’t eat their proper meal until after the
shoot at four p.m. Don’t be shooting off at the mouth.’

I looked up and in strode a most
peculiar-looking fella. He was an elderly gent and was wearing spacious knickerbockers,
spats, leather boots, light-brown single-breasted
Harris tweed jacket,
plaid shirt and a flat cap in matching check tweed. The jacket had a chamois gun pad on
the right shoulder to protect the material from the gun recoil. He had a kindly, if
slightly aloof face. Never mind the dogs’ breakfast, he looked like a
dog’s dinner.

At the sight of her master ‘below
stairs’, Mabel fell about in raptures.

‘Morning, sir,’ she
said, virtually bowing. ‘How may I help you?’

‘Just come for the dogs’
water,’ he said.

Smiling, I handed him the enamel water bowl.
‘Here you go, sir,’ I said.

‘You new here?’ he
asked, surveying me closely from under his cap.

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.
‘I’m the scullery maid.’

He paused. Then said, ‘Good good,
what.’ And with that he stomped off back down the passage.

That was the extent of my dealings with Mr
Stocks. More’s the pity. I’d far rather have answered to him than
Mrs Jones or Mr Orchard.

Unlike some of the gentry who charged for
people to join their shooting parties, Mr Stocks kept his a strictly cronies-only
affair. After the dogs had lapped up their water and the gentry had feasted on kedgeree,
kippers, sausage, bacon, egg and porridge, they all assembled outside on the front
lawns. What a sight!

Eight or so men all dressed identically,
with flat-coated Labradors yapping at their heels. As well as the
‘guns’ as they were known, there were three beaters, whose job it
was to go on ahead with large sticks to beat the undergrowth and scare out the game
birds, making them an easier shot.
The dogs also used to forage
through the undergrowth and help drive out the birds into the path of the guns.

I don’t think Mr Stocks ever felt
truly more comfortable than when he was stalking his own lands, gun in hand, blasting
furry and feathered creatures. In fact, this poem, ‘The Old Squire’
by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (died 1922), could have been written about Mr Stocks and his
cronies.

Shooting was everything to these men and I
mean everything. It was virtually imprinted in their DNA. Mr Stocks and Captain Eric,
when he felt well enough, were shooting men through and through. His father shot, his
father’s father shot. The idea of not doing so was simply inconceivable. Their
lives and pastimes were dictated by the seasons. Summer season was May through to July
in London, where he would, when his wife was alive, attend a good many balls, including
the Chelsea Arts Ball, various operas, Henley Royal Regatta and Royal Ascot Week. From
September through the winter was strictly set aside for shooting. So, you see, I
don’t expect they had time to do much actual work.

I thought fleetingly of my father, shivering
out in his hut, willing to risk prosecution for a poached pheasant, and here was Mr
Stocks with more food and lands than he knew what to do with. The divide between the
classes never felt so vast.

Did Flo and myself think the shooting wrong?
Not in the least, it’s just the way of the countryside, ain’t it?
It’s just what they did and who were we to question it?

The fashions that went with shooting were
terribly strict. Bespoke tweed suits, flannels, breeches, knickerbockers and plus fours,
all from Savile Row, for the day and the full fig for evenings. I never once knew Mr
Stocks to wear anything other than full evening dress when he dined at night. Even if he
was dining alone at home he would be immaculately turned out in a black dinner suit,
white starched shirt and a black bow tie. Mr Orchard would prepare it all and help him
to dress every evening. Seemed an awful lot of fuss and bother to go to just to sit by
yourself in a big old empty dining room, but such was the etiquette of the day I
suppose.

That dining room must have echoed with the
ghosts of its illustrious past. Mr Stocks seated at the head of the table, the butler
behind him, his wife to his right, with the footman behind her, and his eldest son
seated opposite at the other end of the table. The family silver must have sparkled like
jewels under the glittering chandelier and the room would have hummed with genteel
chatter and life.

Now, of course, an elderly gentleman dined
alone with only a silver-framed menu for company, his wife and eldest son long gone, and
his only surviving son wasting away in a sanatorium. Mr Orchard still faithfully sounded
the silver gong every evening at precisely seven thirty p.m. to
signal the start of dinner, and he and Alan waited on Mr Stocks as he dined.

Mr Stocks, my boss and the owner
of Woodhall. A finer gentleman you’d be hard-pressed to find. Unlike some of
the gentry, he was kind and generous and a real old-fashioned gent. We didn’t
have much to do with him, mind you, but whenever I did see him he would be striding
about the place in his plus fours, flat cap on his head and a Labrador trotting by his
side.

The war had destroyed the lives of so
many, including my father and Mr Stocks. Why, I wondered, did the boss cling to these
vanishing traditions? I remember the first time I dared voice that opinion back in
London.

‘Why does he bother?’
I’d asked, when I found out he wore a dinner suit while he was eating alone.
‘He sits up there all dressed up in his Sunday best, with his menu in a
silver frame, but what’s the point? I mean to say,
there’s no one there even to see him except the servants and we
don’t count.’

Mr Orchard looked as if he’d been
boiled alive.

‘How dare you be so
impertinent?’ he fumed. ‘Don’t speak about things of which
you know nothing.’ His proud face stiffened as he attempted to compose
himself. ‘Mr Stocks is the last of a dying breed of gentlemen,’ he
sniffed. He looked as if I’d offended him personally, which in a way I suppose
I had. With that, he had delicately picked up the silver tray containing Mr
Stocks’s usual afternoon tea – a pot of leaf tea, two sandwiches with the
crusts off and two fairy cakes, lovingly arranged on a plate.

He’d carried that tray to his
master like it contained the Crown Jewels.

That same night, all the food Mrs Jones had
prepared came back down barely touched. The softest, lightest soufflé looked like it had
been nibbled by a mouse, and the delicate lemon sole, a tiny portion anyway, had only a
few bites missing.

Something about those half-eaten dishes had
tugged at my heartstrings and I’d suddenly regretted shooting off at the
mouth. He’d lost his wife, outlived his son and heir, and his other remaining
son was so ill from the war he spent half his time being treated for consumption in
Switzerland. It must have been a lonely life. I wouldn’t have swapped places
with him for anything.

If he wanted to spend his whole time
shooting furry things while dressed in knickerbockers, then who was I to judge? Poor old
gent.

I stared, transfixed, out of the window at him
now as he prepared for the shoot.

‘Mollie,’ snapped Mrs
Jones, slamming the window closed on my nose. ‘Don’t just stand
there gawping, girl, we’ve their lunch to prepare.’

The gentry would get a huge chicken or beef
casserole or Irish stew for their luncheon. Mrs Jones would have it in the range
straight after breakfast, so by lunchtime it would be lovely and tender and the meat
would just fall off the bone. None of this for the beaters, mind you, they’d
get a baked potato, salt beef sandwich and a bottle of beer.

When the food was ready, Alan and John
loaded it all in a box, then put it inside another box, then proceeded to pack in hay
around the cavity.

‘Keeps it warm,’
explained Flo when she saw me watching.

‘Where are they going?’
I asked, puzzled.

‘Mr Stocks eats on a farmhouse at
the far end of the estate,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘He don’t have
time to come back to the house to eat.’

He had a number of large, grand,
double-fronted farmhouses dotted over his lands. The chauffeur, Mr Thornton, his wife
and their sons, Louis and George, occupied one; the head gardener, Mr Dickson, and his
wife lived in another. The rest sat empty.

‘Now come on,’ Mrs Jones
chided, batting away Alan and taking over. ‘Pack all this hay in tighter, lad.
I haven’t spent all morning slaving over this for it to arrive
cold.’

Next, they loaded it into the back of the
country car and Louis bumped across the fields to deliver it. Talk about meals on
wheels. Apparently, on fine days, Mr
Stocks and his friends even dined
on long tables in the fields waited on by Alan and Mr Orchard, and watched by a herd of
curious cows in a neighbouring field.

When the lads left, I chuckled to myself.
What a sight they made, Alan and John clinging to the back of the car in full black
livery, holding on to the haybox for dear life.

With lunch out of the way, I started
scrubbing down the table and Mrs Jones and Flo went back to the soup they were preparing
for that night’s dinner. It was hare soup and all morning they’d
been painstakingly preparing it. I’d managed to talk Flo into skinning the
hare, and she’d gutted it, and Mrs Jones had made a soup from it.
She’d been at it since breakfast, cooking that while simultaneously preparing
the stew.

I’d watched, fascinated, as
she’d wiped the hare with a clean cloth. ‘Never wash
game,’ she’d told Flo and me. ‘Washes away all the
flavour.’

Next she’d chopped it up and
simmered it with butter, vegetables, herbs and stock. Ever so carefully she’d
lifted the carcass from the pan and set about picking the meat from the bones. Once it
had all been painstakingly shredded to remove the hare’s fine bones, she
handed the meat to Flo who had then pounded it in a mortar and spent an age rubbing it
through a fine sieve. What a job that looked and poor Flo’s face had gone
bright red with the effort. It had been worth it, though. For when the meat was returned
to the stock and stirred through with wine and cornflour, it didn’t half look
lovely.

‘By, that tastes good,’
said Flo, sipping a spoonful.

I looked on longingly as Mrs Jones proudly
stirred it through. All morning she’d been tasting it, seasoning it and
lovingly tending to it, like she was nurturing a baby. The sweet
aroma filled the kitchen with a rich warmth that made my mouth water.

‘Perfect,’ Mrs Jones
declared, a rare smile crossing her pudgy face. ‘Just how the boss likes
it.’ She breathed in and let out a sigh of satisfaction that saw her full
bosom frantically try to escape from the fabric of her apron. When she relaxed and
smiled she looked almost pretty. Her face softened as she gazed at her soup and I
suddenly wondered what circumstances had conspired to make her an old maid. Well, rest
assured, there would be no such fate for me. I wasn’t ending up on the shelf,
oh no. Watching her make that hare soup, I could easily imagine how years of preparing
food and being a slave to the kitchen may well have robbed her of her chance at
happiness.

Course, things are never that black and
white, but when you’re young, that’s how you see things,
isn’t it? As far as I was concerned, if she’d channelled some of the
energy that she used to make the boss’s dinner into finding a husband, she
wouldn’t be sleeping alone night after night.

Mind you, in this case it was worth it.

It may have taken her four hours to make,
but Mrs Jones had put her heart and soul into that soup. It was the soup of kings.