Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (16 page)

Just then, an almighty explosion rang out
through the kitchen.

‘What on earth …?’
screeched Mrs Jones as a blur of feathers flashed past us, upending everything in its
path. Pandemonium broke out. Soup splattered the walls, glass
rained
down and in the middle of it a scullery maid and a kitchen maid screamed like a couple
of banshees.

In all the chaos it took me a couple of
seconds to register what had happened. A pheasant had come crashing right through the
closed kitchen window, showering the whole room in glass.

‘Well, don’t just stand
there!’ screamed Mrs Jones at us. ‘Catch it!’

I don’t know who looked more
terrified, the pheasant or me. The poor thing flapped and scrabbled its way round the
kitchen acting like a feathered wrecking ball. Flour canisters were upended, plates came
crashing off the table and cutlery went flying. Flo and I darted this way and that, but
pheasants are surprisingly fast runners. Soon we were joined by Alan and John and the
gardener, who’d overheard the commotion. But even with so many hands that damn
pheasant evaded capture, bursting high up into the air the minute anyone got near.

Suddenly, with the effort of an Olympic
athlete, Flo flung herself over the kitchen table and, with a grunt, grabbed the
bewildered pheasant by its tail. She hurled it out of the window and it vanished back
off into the undergrowth from where it had come with an indignant croaking sound.

We stood stock-still in the debris. No one
uttered a word. Then all of a sudden the hilarity of the situation hit us and one by one
we fell about laughing.

‘Why didn’t you wring
its neck, Flo lass?’ croaked the gardener, with tears streaming down his ruddy
cheeks.

‘I don’t
know,’ panted Flo. ‘I didn’t think about
that.’

A muffled sob came from somewhere near the
stove.

I whirled round and there stood Mrs Jones,
surrounded by feathers and glass, with a droplet of her precious hare soup about to drip
off the tip of her red nose.

‘My soup,’ she
whimpered.

Poor old Mrs Jones. All she wanted was a
quiet life. But between us giggly girls and a runaway pheasant she wasn’t
about to have it any time soon.

We spent the next hour cleaning up the mess
and straining what was left of the soup through hair sieves. Well, we hadn’t
time to start again, so we had to improvise. Fortunately none of the gentry seemed aware
how close they came to sipping on hare and glass soup.

In the afternoon Mrs Jones went to lie down
and calm her frazzled nerves and, as always after lunch, Flo and I were allowed two
hours off before we came back to start dinner. We tore upstairs like whirlwinds to
change out of uniforms and into our casuals.

Flo loved cycling as much as me and in no
time at all we were speeding down the quiet country lanes on our old bikes, with the
wind flowing in our hair. The bikes were only old rattly things. Granny Esther had
bought mine for me for two bob, not like the hundreds they cost now, but they got us
around all right.

After the heat of the kitchen it was the
most glorious feeling of freedom. Autumn was brewing and I could smell it in the air.
The golden light had cloaked the fields in a misty glow and the trees were shedding
their leaves, turning the landscape into a kaleidoscope of red and gold.
Even though I’d been on my feet since the crack of dawn, my
legs frantically pumped the pedals faster and faster until the hedgerows were just a
blur.

‘Did you see Mrs Jones’s
face when she saw that pheasant?’ shouted Flo behind me.

‘Not half,’ I cackled.
‘I thought she was going to burst a blood vessel.’

Hilgay was only a few miles from my
mother’s house and before long we were jumping off our bikes and parking them
up against the old stone cottage.

I sniffed the air.

‘Brilliant,’ I said,
grinning. ‘Baking day.’

I hadn’t seen Mother much since
I’d left for London five months ago the previous May. I couldn’t
wait to introduce her to my new friend and share all our adventures.

Mother fell on me like she hadn’t
seen me in years. Endless questions spilled out of her mouth:
‘You’re not working too hard, are you? You’re watching
your mouth, ain’t you? You’re learning all you can?’

‘Stop fussing,’ I
tutted, helping myself to a couple of jam tarts. ‘Make me and Flo a brew, will
you, we’ve had a busy morning.’

As she bustled round the room preparing the
tea and Flo and I settled ourselves by the crackling fire, a rush of love and
familiarity settled over me. Coming into this cosy farmhouse was like having a warm hug.
It felt good to be home. As I looked at my mother running around, for the first time in
fifteen years I realized how hard her life was. Her feet barely touched the ground.

I suppose that’s what hard work does
to a girl. It gives you a perspective you lack as a carefree child. Now that I was
working I suddenly truly appreciated what a remarkable woman she really was and how much
she did for her family. At least I was paid for my efforts.

My mother loved us unconditionally. She may
have come across as tough and had a right hook that could floor a six-foot sailor, but
underneath it all she was a warm-hearted soul. I crept up behind her and tucked a few
shillings in her apron pocket from my wages.

‘Get away with ya,
Mollie,’ she said, batting away my hand. ‘You keep it. I daresay
you’ve earned it.’

Flo and I had a lovely couple of hours
telling Mother about the pheasant in the soup and the bath overflowing. Her tired eyes
lit up like stars and before long she was belly-laughing. At last, standing up, she
dabbed at the corner of her eyes with her apron. ‘I haven’t laughed
like that since you fell off the catwalk at the funfair, Mollie,’ she
chuckled. ‘Now be away with you, you best be off or you’ll git it
orf that Mrs Jones when you get ’ome.’

At this, we shot up. We were only allowed
out for two hours after lunch and it’d be more than our life was worth to be
late. But just as we got to the door of the cottage, Mother called me back.

‘Mollie,’ she said,
‘I’d like you and Flo to borrow this.’ With that, she
handed us her old gramophone. ‘I daresay you’ll get more use out of
it than me and your father. Poor soul, his lungs ain’t so good nowadays and he
spends half his time out in that hut.’

‘Thanks, Mother,’ I
grinned, planting a kiss on her flour-dusted cheeks.

As we sped back to Woodhall, the gramophone
tucked tightly under my arm, I couldn’t believe my luck.

‘Now you can teach me to dance,
Flo!’ I yelled.

At the big house I left the gramophone in
the servants’ hall and it was back to the hustle and bustle of the kitchen.
Suitably recovered from the pheasant incident, Mrs Jones was getting her revenge by
slicing up one of his relatives with a large knife, ready to be roasted for the
boss’s dinner. It may have stunk to high heaven while it was hanging in the
game room, but once that pheasant was roasted it smelt delicious. Mrs Jones stuffed it
with beefsteak and covered the breast with lard and strips of bacon. Every so often
she’d take it out and baste it with butter. When it was nearly finished she
removed the bacon, lightly dredged it with flour and then basted it again before
returning it to the oven. This gave it a lovely glossy sheen. By, it looked
succulent.

Meanwhile, Flo was slicing the potatoes
I’d peeled so finely you could have used them as wallpaper. Next, she
carefully laid them out on a cloth and pressed another cloth over the top of them to dry
them out. Just before Mrs Jones sent the pheasant up, she would drop these sliced
potatoes into a saucepan of melted lard for just a few seconds until they were deep
fried and golden brown. She’d shake them with salt and arrange them around the
bird.

‘Now remember, girls,’
Mrs Jones said. ‘Fried potato crisps is the only thing you serve with game,
you hear me?
Never do potatoes in the usual way. It’s the
only way gentlemen like it with their game.’

Without really realizing it, just by being
around Mrs Jones and Flo and by keeping my ears open, I was learning a lot. When Flo had
her half-day off I would step into her shoes and for once heeded my mother’s
advice to listen and learn all I could. Mrs Jones was good like that, I suppose, in
letting me have a go at things.

Whatever she did, from rolling pastry to
filleting fish, marinating meat to garnishing the meals, she did it with such a light,
deft hand and eye for detail that everything just looked mouth-watering. She seemed to
know everything too. She could make three types of pastry with her eyes shut, from choux
to puff to short-crust. I reckoned I could have picked any recipe from her
Mrs
Beeton’s Book of Household Management
and she could have made it
there and then on the spot.

Her mind must have been constantly whirring,
planning ahead and working out lunch and dinner menus for the days ahead.

‘Here, Mollie,’ she said
to me now. ‘Flo’s doing some quenelle of rabbit. Give ’er
a hand.’

Together we pounded the rabbit meat using a
mortar and pestle. Watching Flo carefully and following what she did, I started to push
it through the sieve raw.

‘It’s what gives it a
lovely light texture,’ explained Flo. ‘You can only get the meat
nice and smooth by working it through.’

It took ages putting it through that sieve
and before long my arms were on fire.

‘Not smooth enough,’
commented Mrs Jones over
our shoulders. ‘Put it through
again. It has to look like pâté.’

After it was finally worked to her
standards, I watched as they mixed the raw meat with egg and sauce and then lightly
steamed it.

Come seven thirty p.m. everything was ready
and Mrs Jones stood back and surveyed it all, her beady little eyes flicking over every
aspect of the meal. The juicy pheasant was served with the feathered head on one end and
the tail feathers at the other, on the ever-present white doily and garnished with
watercress. The delicious-looking salty crisps were arranged around the edges. Mr
Orchard had decanted some of Mr Stocks’s finest claret to serve up with it. It
was a treat for the eyes.

‘Wait!’ yelled Mrs
Jones, tugging Alan back by his coat-tails. She arranged a sprig of watercress just so.
‘Now you can go.’

Shaking his head, he disappeared off with
the silver butler’s tray.

Looking back, the food Mr Stocks enjoyed on
a nightly basis was restaurant-standard food, always made to such a high quality.

‘Cooking’s not
hard,’ Mrs Jones said, time and again. ‘Just follow the recipe and
you can’t go wrong.’ But I knew the food she cooked was more than
that, it had a special touch.

Later, as we all tucked into rabbit pie in
the servants’ hall – staff always had rabbit or hare in shooting season, never
partridge or pheasant – we heard the sound of rich, garrulous laughter followed by the
faint odour of cigar smoke.

‘They’ll be cracking
open the port by now,’ remarked
Alan enviously. His eyes
flashed dangerously through dark lashes.

‘Jealous sort, ain’t
ya?’ I teased.

He shot me a look that turned my heart to
stone. Then, just as quickly, his face changed and a sly smile spread across it.
‘So, Flo, you going to teach us all to dance then?’ He nodded to my
mother’s gramophone.

‘Oh yes, Flo, do, go
on,’ I urged.

‘All right,’ she
laughed.

Wolfing down our rabbit pie, we pushed back
the servants’ hall table and I put a record on the gramophone. Soon a lively
waltz rang out round the room. Before I had a chance to object, Alan swept me into his
arms and Flo partnered John, the hallboy. We all watched as Flo led us through the steps
and soon the room was full of the sounds of crashes and bangs as feet were trodden on
and tables bashed into.

Fortunately, if Mr Stocks or any of his
cronies had happened to be passing at that moment, they would not have seen our efforts
as the servants’ hall floor was especially designed to be so low and the
windows so high that the gentry was spared the sight of their servants ‘at
leisure’. Just as well as right now we looked like a load of chimps at a tea
party.

‘I can’t get the hang of
this,’ grumbled Alan.

‘Let’s try this
instead,’ Flo suggested tactfully. ‘This is the Palais Glide.
It’s all the rage in America. Start on the left foot,’ she said,
linking her arm in John’s. ‘And we dance in a row left to right.
Point left heel diagonally, step left behind right, step right to side, cross left foot
in front of right.’

She started to sing, her beautiful soft
Norfolk voice filling the servants’ hall.

‘
Learn to do the Palais Glide,
all together side by side, it’s as easy as can be, all you’ve
got to do is take your step from me.
’

Grinning, I picked up the beat and started
dancing alongside her.

‘
So come and do the Palais
Glide, you’ll be happy when you’ve tried, once you start
you’ll want to go on forever, swaying in the Palais
Glide.
’

But Flo’s tuneful voice
didn’t help Alan’s two left feet. His limbs were all over the place
and in no time he got so muddled he tripped over himself, lurched forward and slammed
into the servants’ hall door with a crack.

‘Ha ha,’ I cackled.
‘You right splutterguttered into that, didn’t ya?’

Alan drew himself up to his full height, his
eyes narrowed to slits and his fists clenched in fury. ‘I oughta slosh you one
round the ear, Mollie Browne,’ he raged.

‘Calm down, Alan,’ John
gasped. ‘She’s only having a joke with you.’

This wasn’t the first time
I’d seen a flash of Alan’s explosive temper and it wasn’t
a pretty sight. Just as quickly he recovered himself.

‘I don’t like dancing,
that’s all,’ he shrugged. Suddenly, his dark eyes glinted and he
made a grab for me. ‘I’d far rather watch you,’ he
growled. With that, his hands slipped down from my waist and brushed against my
buttocks. A strange tingle shot up my spine as he pressed himself against me.