Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (36 page)

By the time I’d dressed myself in
a brown one and smoothed down my white apron, I felt the bee’s knees. I was
determined to do my best. I was cook now, after all.
Queen of the kitchen at
last!

Walking down the narrow back stairs, I found
myself whistling despite the ungodly hour. Mrs Beeton wrote (and I do agree with this):
‘It is a thousand times tested truth that without early rising and punctuality
good work is almost impossible. A cook who loses an hour in the
morning is likely to be toiling all day to overtake tasks that would otherwise have
been easy.’ She was right as always. Cooks have to steal a march on the day
and that always meant rising before the rest of the household stirred.

If you’re wondering why I was so
cheerful, despite living over a ghost and the prospect of a mountain of work, it was
because, quite simply, I was the boss now. No one can understand it, unless you have
been a skivvy that is, that enormous feeling of pride that comes with rising up through
the ranks and knowing you are no longer a dogsbody. Here the lady of the house spoke
more than just two words to me. Thanks to my rise from kitchen maid to cook, I actually
mattered here. No more scrubbing, plucking or being talked down to for me.

Walking into the kitchen, I looked around
and smiled. It was big and dominated by the usual vast scrubbed oak table; copper pans
hung from the stone walls and a beautiful cream and black Aga dominated one wall. And,
joy of joys, we had a fridge, an actual fridge. No more packing great chunks of ice in a
lead-lined box and nearly freezing your fingers off just to reach the milk. When I tell
you that even as late as the 1940s only 25 per cent of homes had fridges, you will see
what a rarity ours was in 1937. The price of such luxuries simply put it beyond the
means of most families, so food was kept cold on a marble slab at the back of the
larder, in iceboxes or outdoors.

A housemaid was on her hands and knees
scrubbing at the wood floor with a bar of carbolic soap, but when she spotted me she
jumped to her feet.

‘Can I get you another cup of
tea?’ she asked nervously. ‘Er … what shall we call
you?’

I laughed. ‘Well, Mollie, of
course.’

The kitchen boy, who could only have been
about fifteen, shot out of nowhere and presented a cup of tea to me.

‘Already done it,’ he
snapped at the young girl. ‘Here you go, Mollie.’

I could definitely get used to
this.
They were actually talking to me and looking at me with respect. I smiled
back warmly. I wasn’t going to have any of that snootiness that I had
experienced. As long as they pulled their weight I would talk to them like they were my
equals. What was the point of being horrid or sarcastic to them? I’d had
enough of that treatment to know it wasn’t nice to be on the receiving end of
a telling-off.

I’d like to be able to tell you
what that nervous girl’s name was and the butler, footman and other staff of
the house for that matter, but I can’t. The memory of them is expunged from my
brain because, quite simply, there was too much else going on in there at that time.
Because from that moment on, and for the next two years, I worked harder than I have
ever worked in my life. During the day my routine was like a more intense version of a
soldier in the army. Every minute and second was accounted for and it’s a
wonder my poor old brain didn’t burst.

A typical day went something like this:

It was a hectic schedule and there was no
time for dawdling. I was always to be found scurrying around the
kitchen, flushed as red as a tomato, pencil behind my ear, a half-drunk cup of tea
going cold on the kitchen table as I struggled to keep my eye on the ball.

But back to my first day.

I started on the staff breakfasts – easy, I
could do those with my eyes shut. I rustled up eggs, bacon, kedgeree, sausage, toast,
mushrooms and black pudding for nine people including the two nannies, followed by
breakfast for the ‘other side’ of the house – more cooked breakfast
for Mr and Mrs Luddington and boiled eggs and soldiers for the children.

Then I sat down and drew up the menus for
the rest of the day. Checking the larders, I noticed we were running worryingly low on
food supplies and some of the meat didn’t look all that bright neither. I made
a mental note to swap supplies from their current butcher to Harcourts, where my uncle
worked. Well, you’ve got to do right by your family, haven’t
you?

I drew up a tasty-sounding lunch menu of
mushroom soup, followed by roasted venison with all the trimmings. What was it Mrs
Luddington had said her husband had, a sweet tooth? I put down a trifle, fruit salad and
apple crumble for pudding. He had to fancy one of those. No man could resist
Mollie’s trifle. Then we’d have cheese and biscuits.

Dinner was more of the same except a bit
fancier. I’d make some of those nice savouries that Mr Stocks had when he was
entertaining, a consommé, a lovely bit of sea bass and roasted pheasant, and perhaps my
mother’s special recipe for steamed suet pudding with apples and cream.

How could they resist?

I duly presented my menu to Mrs Luddington
at our ten thirty a.m. meeting in her office.

‘This sounds lovely,
Mollie,’ she said with a smile.

This was easy.

I stood up, beaming, and was just about to
leave when she called me back.

‘In two days’ time my
husband has a shooting party coming down from London for the rest of the week. There
will be ten in all to cater for, as well as the beaters and the groundsmen, and meals
for the household, of course.’

I paled.

‘Is that OK?’ she asked,
tapping her notebook impatiently.

‘Course, Mrs
Luddington,’ I said. ‘As you wish.’

I walked back through the baize door, my
legs shaking, and saw the hallboy and kitchen maid look up nervously at me. Suddenly for
the first time I realized perhaps why Mrs Jones had always been flustered and grumpy.
This was an awful lot of responsibility, especially for one so young. I had nearly
twenty-five people to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for day after day for a week. I
couldn’t afford to get it wrong either. No wonder she could be a little sour
at times!

‘Right,’ I bellowed.
‘We’ve got a lot to do this week. Mr Luddington has a shooting party
coming. Let’s get to it.’

From that moment on I barely drew breath. At
just twenty I was in a position of huge responsibility, but I didn’t worry as
much about it as I would if I were, say, forty. I daresay if you were looking nowadays
to talk to a
cook in service in a big house in the 1930s, you
wouldn’t find any alive as most of them were in their forties and fifties.
There’s probably only Flo and me left who can recall this age. We both made
cook’s position in our twenties, which was rare.

I do feel, though, that youth served me well
back then. I just got on with it. I channelled my fizzing energy into conjuring up
feasts three times a day, seven days a week. By the end of that first week, mind you, I
was beat. Parts of my body throbbed that I hadn’t known existed. I had mashed,
scrambled, stirred, basted, sliced and diced, all the while keeping my eye on five
different bubbling pans and my mind focused on what needed doing next.

On the first day of the shoot I’d
sent out twenty portions of hare soup, piping hot Irish stew, apple pie and bread and
butter pudding for dessert followed by cheese and biscuits, baked potatoes and salt beef
sandwiches for the beaters and groundsmen, shepherd’s pie for the children,
then for dinner twenty servings of consommé, lemon sole, roast beef and all the
trimmings, followed by trifle, spotted dick and savouries. All totally home-made and all
made from scratch without the use of any kind of electronic equipment. I’m not
saying this to brag. I just want people to know how different cooking was back then
compared to now. We didn’t have blenders, microwaves, steamers, electric
kettles, electric whisks or food processors. Nothing could be made at the touch of a
button. Everything was whisked, stirred, grated, chopped, beaten and blended by hand. By
me! I grafted, and I mean properly grafted, to cook feasts and all from scratch. I do
think the food tasted better for it too.

Fortunately all the plates came back clean, no
one choked on a stray bone and Mrs Luddington even sent the butler down to tell me how
well the food was received.

At the end of the shooting party I was just
about to haul myself up the back staircase to bed when I realized that I
hadn’t even made a start on ordering food for the next month! Woe betide we
ran out. There were no supermarkets nearby we could just nip to, to top up supplies.
Everything had to be individually ordered from local stores and bread and meat from
local bakers and butchers. Fortunately the Luddingtons got all their creamy milk in
fresh from a local farm they owned and vegetables came from the magnificent kitchen
garden that backed on to the house. I stayed up until nearly midnight making sure I knew
exactly what supplies we had in and just what we needed. I remembered how Mrs Jones knew
to within an ounce how much sugar, butter and flour she had and seemed to instinctively
know when to get more supplies and by how much to keep her going.

My brain was so fuddled I got in a dreadful
muddle trying to make sense of it.

The next day I had a half-day off. After
lunch it was all I could do to drag my weary body back to my mother’s, but
even then I didn’t rest. I took my order book so I could run over my supplies
and make sure I had it just so. Once there, I let myself in, rested my head on the
kitchen table and within seconds felt myself drifting off.

‘Knock knock,’ came a
cheery Welsh voice from the back door.

‘Mrs Jones!’ I gasped.
‘What brings you here?’

‘Half-day off, Mollie. Thought
I’d come and see how
you’re getting on.’
Now she was no longer my boss she was certainly a lot more pleasant to me.

‘You haven’t changed a
scrap,’ I smiled.

‘Fancy you have,
Mollie,’ she smiled back. ‘When you started at Woodhall you
couldn’t cook water and now look at you. So, how you finding
it?’

‘It’s pretty hard
keeping on top of it all,’ I confessed. ‘I don’t know how
you’ve done it for so many years.’

She chuckled and patted my arm.
‘Think you can cope?’

‘I reckon,’ I said,
rubbing my eyes. ‘I’ll say this though. It’s a lot easier
having a boss than being a boss.’

Mrs Jones’s rotund body shook like
a jelly as she heaved with laughter. ‘I won’t say I told you so, but
don’t worry. You were trained by the best. Now come on, lass, move over and
let’s talk over your provisions and check you’ve got all you need so
as you don’t run short.’

The softening of Mrs Jones was a godsend and
I picked her brain on many an occasion after that. She and I even became friends,
regularly meeting at my mother’s for afternoon tea on our half-days off or
going to see films like
Gone With the Wind
at the Regal in Downham. For all the
lip I gave her, and all my antics, I like to think she was as fond of me as you would be
a cheeky niece.

That night, back at Wallington Hall, when my
head finally hit the pillow, it wasn’t ghosts and buried treasure chasing
through my dreams but sinking soufflés and burnt saucepans dancing before my eyes.

By the end of that first month I felt more
like a conductor in an orchestra than a cook in a big house. I lived and breathed food.
Every plate had to be turned out to
perfection and my brain was razor
sharp. I regularly found myself stirring consommé with one hand and basting meat with
the other. And before each service I would lay all my utensils out like a surgeon does
before he operates.

Mistakes just couldn’t happen.
They’re not easy to rectify when you haven’t got a microwave or
blender or any other labour-saving device to hand. The only time I did make a mistake
was when my meringues didn’t rise. Cooking food in an Aga where you
can’t control the temperature is very tricky, but I always managed somehow to
bluff it. Pavlova often became Eton Mess, crushed up and served with strawberries and
cream, to disguise a saggy meringue. I got away with it, mind, as at the end of the
month Mrs Luddington called me into her office.