Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (19 page)

That was the problem, you see. Nowadays
young people don’t have the respect for their elders that we did. Got yourself
pregnant, lost your job, failed your exams, kicked off your college course? So what?
What’s your mother going to do about it? Kick you out? Not likely. Even if she
did, someone would have to take responsibility for you. The state, like as not. But back
when Flo and I were gadding about, there were no state handouts and we lived in fear,
and I really mean fear, of a dressing-down from our parents.

If they were to turn us out of our homes and
we had no husband to rely on or job to go to, what was our fate? No council flats or
queuing up for jobseeker’s allowance and unemployment benefit,
that’s for certain. It would have been the workhouse for us. That place was
horrific – like a real-life nightmare – and the fear of it was larger than life.

We were forever treading that fine line
between being typical teenagers, high on life and full of spirit, but mindful not to
overstep the line for fear of where it could lead us. So we kept our heads down and
worked like Trojans. We tried to behave, we really did, but teenage girls being what
they are, mischief was never far away …

By the following year, with my job still
intact and another London season under my belt, my mind was forever wandering back to
the eternal question:
when would I get a boyfriend?

It was simply inconceivable to me that I
would end up in service for the rest of my life. Along the way I’d heard about
women who’d married butlers in the same household and ended up staying in
employment together under the same roof for evermore, before retiring on to a cottage on
the estate. I couldn’t have thought of anything worse. Why would you want to
have to stare at your husband day in, day out? Or worse still, end up like Mrs Jones.
Too old to have a choice and stuck working for the same employer until you probably
keeled over mid-service.

‘What about Alan?’ said
Flo one night as we cleared down after dinner.

‘Good grief, no!’ I
gasped. ‘Mr Orchard would have a blue fit if he thought we were cavorting
below stairs. Can you ever imagine?’

‘He’s
good-looking,’ she added.

With his jet-black hair and chiselled
features, he was handsome all right.

‘No,’ I said.
‘He’s got a terrible temper on him. He goes up like smoke in a
bottle. Besides which, he can’t dance neither.’

‘George then?’ she
suggested.

George! A light bulb pinged on in my head.
I’d never thought of George before. I was usually too busy lusting over his
older brother to pay him much attention. But he was reasonable-looking all right.
I’d seen him out there working in the fields. His body looked like it had been
carved from marble and he was strong too – he tossed those hay
bales about like they were kittens.

Yes, I decided, I could do far worse than
George.

‘I’ll sort it for
you,’ said Flo confidently.

Sure enough, on her next half-day off, she
just happened to be passing the field George was working in.

‘If you ask Mollie to the local
pictures, she’ll go with you,’ she told him.

‘Really?’ he said,
looking up from his pitchfork in surprise. ‘Right then,’ he
spluttered. ‘I’ll do that then.’

‘All sorted,’ said Flo
when she came back to Woodhall. ‘The things I do for you,
Mollie.’

A few days later I was tackling a pile of
dirty dishes in the scullery when Flo sidled up next to me. ‘Visitor for
you,’ she said with a wink.

I came out, wiping my filthy hands on my
apron, and who should be standing by the kitchen door, cap in hand, but George.

‘H-hello, Mollie,’ he
stuttered, a red flush sneaking up his neck. ‘Happen I’d like to
take you to the pictures on your next half-day off. If you’d like to, that
is.’

I smiled broadly. ‘I’d
really like that, George,’ I said.

He twisted his cap nervously, opened his
mouth to say something then obviously thought better of it. We stood there in awkward
silence, until Alan stalked by.

‘Make sure he has a bath first,
Mollie,’ he snapped. ‘He’ll stink the picture house out
with the smell of cow dung.’

George’s face fell and I turned on
Alan.

‘Get away with ya, he’s
more of a gentleman than you’ll ever be.’

I turned back to George. He looked mortified
and stared at the floor. Poor fella. That Alan could be plain vicious at times.

‘
Frankenstein
’s
on at Downham,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we go and see that?
I’m off tomorrow afternoon. I’ll meet you out front on our
bikes.’

The next day he was waiting for me at the
end of the lane. His hair was combed down neatly and he was nervously clutching a bunch
of wildflowers he’d picked for me. He’d obviously shined his shoes
and was wearing his good pair of trousers. Judging by the way his face shone
he’d clearly scrubbed hard to remove all traces of the farm.

Bless him.

He was a gentle, sweet man, proper Norfolk
bred and born, as they say. But as I pushed my bike over to meet him, I noted with a
trace of disappointment that there was no nervous flip-flop of excitement in my tummy.
My heart simply didn’t turn over in the same way it did when I saw his
handsome older brother, Louis.

‘These are for you,
Mollie,’ he said, thrusting the bouquet at me and blushing furiously as he
stared at the ground. ‘I wanted to find some flowers that matched your eyes,
except yours are brown, so I couldn’t find none. Quite unusual to have a
redhead with brown eyes …’ he mumbled, trailing off.

‘That’s all
right,’ I beamed. ‘I’m unusual, right enough. My mum
reckons we must have been descended from Vikings.’

‘You’re certainly brave
enough to be a Viking warrior,’ he said with a shy smile.

I thought back to when Flo and I climbed out
of the
top-floor windows to escape to the dance and grinned.
‘Perhaps you’re right. Hope I don’t look like a warrior,
mind you.’

He looked mortified. ‘Of course
not, Mollie. I didn’t mean that. You’re pretty … very
pretty.’

‘It’s all
right,’ I said, giving him a playful tap on the arm. ‘Come on,
let’s get going or else we’ll miss the film.’

As we cycled there I was full of it.

‘I hear it’s a
talkie,’ I babbled. ‘I’ve never seen a talkie afore, have
you?’

George shook his head slowly. I realized he
was a man of few words. Not that it mattered as I kept up a constant stream of
chatter.

‘People speaking on
films,’ I laughed. ‘Whatever next?’

Up until the late 1920s the only films
we’d seen were silent films, but in 1932, the same picture house that
I’d watched all those Charlie Chaplin films in every Saturday afternoon as a
child was now starting to show talkies. Sadly, this meant old Mrs Long had to pack away
her piano and was out of a job. No more bashing away on the keys to provide a dramatic
backdrop.

‘That’s a sign of the
times, eh?’ I said to George as we settled into our seats to watch the film.
He nodded and pulled out an old brown paper bag of slightly furry pineapple chunks.
Dusting one down, he offered it to me with a broad grin.

As I nestled back into my seat, sucking on
my sweet, I realized how happy I was.
I was courting. I was actually courting a
fella.

The cinema was packed to the rafters. They
always was back then. I supposed it was because between the wars
life
was tough and at seven pence a pop (five pence on a Saturday afternoon) cinema provided
an affordable form of escapism. They didn’t call it the golden age of cinema
for nothing. They made some marvellous films back then. Charlie Chan, Laurel and Hardy
and the Marx Brothers had the cinemas packed out night after night. By 1930 there were
250 cinemas in London alone, double the number from 1911.

Humour was popular, but what everybody
seemed to be lapping up most was horror and thrillers. The monster horror film
Frankenstein
had been wowing cinemagoers in London for ages, but these
things always took a little while to reach the country. Now it was here in Norfolk and
expectations were high.

The lights dimmed and a ripple of excitement
ran through the darkened picture house. Just then, the screen flickered into life and
suddenly the lead character, Edward Van Sloan, stepped from behind a red velvet curtain
and spoke –
actually spoke
– in a low, sinister voice.

‘
We are about to unfold the
story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own
image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever
told.
’

‘It’s like
he’s right here in the room, ain’t it?’ I whispered.
George nodded, his eyes as wide as saucers, clearly struck dumb.

‘
It deals with the two great
mysteries of creation – life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock
you. It might even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to
subject your nerves to such a strain, now’s your chance to – uh, well, we
warned you.
’

George gulped hard. ‘W-would you
like to go, Mollie?’ he stuttered.

‘Course not,’ I said
gleefully. ‘I can’t wait, this is going to be
terrifying.’

‘Ah, of course,’ he
blustered. ‘I was just thinking of your nerves.’

Poor George. He hid it well in the gloom of
the cinema, but I could see he was scared by the way his feet were tapping up and down.
The film cut to Frankenstein, holed up in an abandoned watchtower, which he had equipped
as a laboratory. Folk must have been more naive back then as the whole audience was
gripped, frozen to our seats as we watched Frankenstein assemble his monster and attempt
to bring him back to life. Women screamed and men jumped out of their seats. None of us
had seen anything like it in our lives before. And when Frankenstein and his hunchback
assistant raised their dead creature on to the operating table, there was a collective
intake of breath. There was a terrific crash of thunder; Frankenstein’s
electric machines crackled into life and suddenly the monster’s hand began to
twitch.

‘
It’s
alive!’
yelled Frankenstein.

‘Cor, blarst me!’ yelled
George, jumping clean out of his seat and showering the floor with pineapple chunks.

Poor George. As we exited, blinking, into
the sunlight in Downham Market, he looked quite drained by the experience. Fortunately,
by the time we’d had a sticky bun and a cup of tea at a nearby teashop,
he’d recovered himself.

‘I had a really lovely afternoon,
Mollie,’ he said earnestly, placing a warm hand on mine.
‘I’m right keen on you.’

‘I don’t want anything
shameful happening between us, George,’ I warned.

He whipped his hand away like it had been
scalded.

‘My heart alive, I
didn’t mean that, Mollie,’ he spluttered. ‘I just meant I
likes you. I’d never try anything to offend you.’

I was so used to fending off lecherous
farmhands behind haystacks and frisky footmen that I hadn’t realized some men
could be decent. George was the perfect gentleman after that and when he’d
cycled me home and left me at the entrance to Woodhall, he paused only to place a soft
kiss on my cheek.

‘Fare ’ee well,
Mollie,’ he smiled gently.

I could just make out Flo and Alan peeking
through the kitchen window.

I’d give ’em summit to talk about.

‘Thanks, George,’ I
grinned, taking his cheeks in both hands and planting a quick smacker on his lips.
‘I had a lovely day.’

His face crumpled into a delighted smile and
he pedalled off back to the farm the colour of a tomato.

I floated into the kitchen.

‘Is he your new
boyfriend?’ Flo gushed. ‘Are ya courting?’

‘Maybe,’ I teased.

Alan glowered from over the pile of silver
he was polishing. ‘He’s a boy, all right,’ he snapped.

‘You’re so green with
envy you’re the same colour as that apron,’ I laughed, flicking his
baize apron.

‘OK, we’ve had our
fun,’ thundered Mrs Jones, throwing my apron at me. ‘Can we get back
to some work now?’

After that, George and I lived in each
other’s pockets and saw each other as much as our time off allowed, which
wasn’t much, admittedly, and true to his word he was the perfect
gentleman.

There was just one snag – his older brother,
Louis. Try as I might, when I was kissing George goodnight, it was Louis I was thinking
of.

I confided my fears to Flo in our
bedroom.

‘It sounds awful, but my heart
belongs to Louis,’ I wailed.

‘I know, Mollie, but
he’s promised to another,’ she said softly.
‘Don’t go breaking George’s heart. He’s keener
on you than you are on him. That’s plain for all to see.’

I hadn’t been seeing George long
when Christmas rolled round. Christmas in service is much like any other day, to be
honest. You work the same hours. Steps and floors still need scrubbing and the range
still needs blackleading. There was no well-filled stocking waiting for Flo or me when
we blearily opened our eyes at six thirty a.m., just the prospect of a mountain of
work.

‘There’s goosebumps on
my goosebumps,’ I joked as I cracked the ice that had formed on the top of the
jug of water we used to wash with. I splashed cold water under each armpit and doused my
feet and cheeks in the freezing water for as long as I could bear before running
shivering back to the bed to change into uniform.

I was just about to throw over the covers
when, to my surprise, I found a small brown package neatly tied with red ribbon.

I turned to Flo. ‘So Father
Christmas has been!’

‘It’s nothing
big,’ she blushed. ‘I … well, I just thought us girls have got to
look after each other, haven’t we?’

I ripped open the package to reveal a
beautifully knitted pair of emerald-green wool gloves. I slipped my hands into them and
they were as soft as kittens.