Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (38 page)

‘Happen I can,’ I
boasted. ‘I’m brilliant with horses. I know all about them. I spent
my childhood riding them.’

‘You?’ spluttered Tom.
‘Don’t talk daft, Mollie. You’re just a slip of a girl.
You’ll never stay on him.’

The human condition really is a funny thing,
isn’t it? The strange processes that go round the old grey matter. As soon as
someone tells me I can’t or shouldn’t or won’t do
something, it quickly becomes nothing short of irresistible.

‘Just watch me,’ I said,
climbing the fence and swinging my leg over. ‘I’m not afraid of
anything or anyone, including this horse.’

‘This should be fun,’
Tom laughed, following me into the field.

Tiptoeing up to the creature, I placed one
hand gently on his quivering nose. ‘Steady boy,’ I soothed, stroking
his trembling neck.

Tom was right. He really was a beauty. His
chiselled neck and gleaming mane glistened with drops of rain and his high withers moved
with the grace of a dancer. No matter that I’d only ever ridden a carthorse
before. After dealing with a creature as frisky as Alan, my temperamental footman, I
could cope with this beast!

‘Give us a leg-up,’ I
whispered to Tom, who was hovering behind me.

Gently holding on to the horse’s
neck with my left hand and throwing my right arm over his back, I put my left foot into
Tom’s cupped hands and propelled my body up and over, on to the
thoroughbred’s magnificent back.

I’d made it. I was on!

Gulping, I realized the ground looked quite
far away from up here. I stroked the horse’s mane and straight away he started
to nervously dance about, skittering from side to side.

‘Hold on, Mollie,’ said
Tom. ‘He’s got that look about him. I think he’s going to
–’

Suddenly the horse reared up on his
hindquarters and, with an outraged snort, took off at full speed.

‘– bolt!’ cried Tom.

His words were lost on the wind as we
careered across the field. The bushes and trees became a blur of green as we thundered
along.

‘Whoa, boy,’ I
whimpered, clinging on to his mane for dear life. ‘Slow down.’

My heart was in my mouth. We were heading
straight towards the edge of the field and the ditch! Oh crumbs. This was going to end
badly.

Suddenly I had the strangest sensation of
flying.
Everything went into slow motion as the ditch rushed up to
meet me. Funny the things that pop into your mind when you know you’re about
to make a total fool of yourself. I only hoped Mrs Luddington was well on her way to the
coast and wasn’t around to see her cook hurtling through the air.

I landed face down in the mud with an
almighty splat.

‘Urghhh,’ I groaned as
every last bit of breath left my body. And there I stayed for a full minute, my body in
shock, as I registered the fact that I was face down in a watery ditch filled with
frogspawn and cow dung.

It stank down there!

When I finally peeled my face out of the
mud, winded and gasping for breath, I saw Tom standing over me. Tears of laughter were
streaming down his ruddy cheeks as he slapped his thigh. ‘I thought you said
you’d ridden afore, girl?’ he hooted.

‘Yeah, but only
carthorses,’ I confessed, picking a bit of congealed frogspawn from my hair.
Tom was bent double and clinging to a fence post for support, his whole body shaking
with laughter.

‘It’s not that
funny,’ I muttered crossly. ‘Now help me out of this
ditch.’

‘I’m sorry,
Mollie,’ he said, wiping his eyes with an old handkerchief and holding out his
hand. ‘But your face when he took orf with ya. Funniest thing I’ve
seen all year. Anything injured?’

‘Only my pride,’ I
groaned.

With that, he helped me to my feet and shook
his head. ‘Just as well you can cook better than you can ride a horse, lass,
or we’d all be in trouble.’

Fortunately Mrs Luddington never found out
about my encounter with the ditch and it was shortly after this that she gave me a
lovely surprise at one of our usual morning meetings.

I found her delicately pulling something
from a large white cardboard box. From beneath folds of soft white tissue paper she
lifted the most exquisite dress I’d ever seen.

‘Oh my,’ I breathed. The
black dress had a lacy bodice and a full skirt. Layers and layers of soft net sprang out
from the tiny waist, and beneath the net I glimpsed a daring flash of scarlet silk.

‘What a beautiful dress, Mrs
Luddington,’ I said. ‘Where will you wear that?’

‘It’s yours,’
she said kindly.

‘W-what?’ I
stuttered.

‘And this,’ she said,
reaching into the box and pulling out a soft wool fawn-coloured, tailored suit.

I was utterly gobsmacked. The couture dress
and the suit must have cost her hundreds of pounds, and she was giving them to me like
they were old buttons.

‘I haven’t worn them for
ages and they’re just sitting gathering dust. I rather thought you might like
them, Mollie. We’re about the same size.’

‘Like them?’ I gasped.
‘I’d love them!’

Never had I owned such beautiful clothes and
after dinner service that evening I locked myself away in my bedroom and tried them on.
They fitted beautifully. The dress had been made to perfection by a French seamstress.
Hours of work must have gone into the bodice and sewing on the layers and layers of fine
net. Twirling round
in front of the mirror, I laughed as the
underskirts lifted up to reveal its dazzling flash of crimson.

This wasn’t a dress. It was a
masterpiece.

Mrs Luddington was an absolute gem to give
something so beautiful away. That goes some way to showing what a lovely lady she was.
Most ladies of that era gave their cast-offs to their lady’s maid or to a head
housekeeper. The fact that she’d given the clothes to me made me feel so
special.

Best of all, it wasn’t long before
I got to show the dress off.

In January 1938 there was a dance at Marham
Aerodrome and nothing on earth would have kept me away. The RAF were stationed there and
rumour had it there were some good-looking chaps amongst their number. The perfect place
to give my new black dress an outing! No matter that it was six miles away or that
I’d have to bike there. I was going and, what’s more, I was going in
that
dress.

Goodness only knows what I looked like
speeding down the country lanes on an old bike in a fancy black dress. The black net and
scarlet underskirt billowed in the breeze and with my hair streaming behind me I felt I
might take off at any moment. Partridge and all manner of birds burst out of the
hedgerows as a more exotic bird sped past them.

Clambering off my bike at the aerodrome, I
became aware of someone watching me.

‘I simply must have the first
dance with you,’ announced a well-spoken man.

I looked up to find myself gazing directly
into the most
piercing blue eyes I’d ever seen. The owner of
the blue eyes stared at me, amused, as I smoothed down the netting on my dress and
pushed my windswept hair back into place.

‘We’ll just see about
that,’ I shot back as I walked into the hall. I gave him my customary cheek,
but inside I already knew I would dance with him because with that one look
I’d realized my life was about to change.

It’s funny. Sometimes you just
know. And from the moment I clapped eyes on Timothy Moran, a corporal in the RAF, I knew
he was the one for me. Perhaps it was the flash of my scarlet underskirt as I clambered
off my bike that hooked him in, but he seemed as taken with me as I was with him.

No matter that he couldn’t dance
for toffee and trod all over my feet, he was everything I could want in a man – funny,
clever, well spoken without being pompous and handsome to boot. The fact that he was in
the RAF had a certain appeal. Who knows if I’d have fallen for him as much if
he’d been a farmer, say, but having a fella in the RAF, well,
there’s a certain glamour and prestige attached to that. As he talked of all
the places he was likely to be posted to – Cyprus and the Far East, to name but two – my
eyes lit up.

My handsome young corporal had been well
educated at a Jesuit public school in Lincolnshire.

‘My mother had high hopes
I’d join the priesthood,’ he confessed halfway through our third
dance.

‘I’m glad you
didn’t,’ I replied cheekily.

By the fourth dance I’d learnt
that his mother had just died and he was desperate to marry and start a family.

By the sixth dance I knew I’d be his
wife and the mother of his children.

Timothy was well over six foot tall and his
broad shoulders seemed to fill the whole hall. Sighing, I rested my head against his
chest and allowed him to waltz me around the aerodrome. Nowhere felt more comfortable or
safe. Being with Timothy Moran was like taking a long slow sip of ice-cool water. I
could have stared into those startling blue eyes of his all night.

At midnight I happened to glance at the
clock and I froze.

‘The time!’ I gasped.
‘I’ve got to get back to Wallington. I’ve got to be up at
the crack of dawn!’

‘I’ll see you
home,’ he smiled.

Together we cycled home in the dark, my
heart racing as we sped round every bend. He planted a soft little kiss on my cheek,
promised to come and see me soon, then turned round and cycled the sixteen miles back to
his base, ten miles the other side of Marham.

Timothy must have weaved some kind of magic
over me that night, because from that moment on I was hooked. He came to see me every
opportunity he got. If there wasn’t much time, we’d grab a flask of
tea and some home-baked sausage rolls and sit in the fields near Wallington, or if there
was more time we’d head to the pictures. We never had more than a few hours
together, but the snatched moments we did have were so precious. His base was sixteen
miles away and he got about the same amount of time off as me, so being alone together
was rare, which made it all the more enjoyable.

Suddenly I started baking like crazy. I knew
from
years of working in kitchens that the way to a man’s
heart was through his stomach, so on one occasion I presented him with a steamed suet
pudding with apples and cream, sneaked out of the back door when no one was looking.

‘Heaven,’ he moaned when
he tasted it. ‘I’d bike to the ends of the earth for
this.’

The suet pudding was swiftly followed by a
steak and kidney pie, then bread and butter pudding and, his favourite, sausage rolls.
The kitchen was constantly full of the warm smell of baking and I skipped around the
place like a giddy sixteen-year-old, a faraway smile plastered on my face.

No matter that by the time he’d
biked over to me it was almost time to turn round and head back for base. He did it for
the same reason I started baking like a domestic goddess, because we were falling in
love, and love, as we all know, makes you do some very strange things!

He wasn’t controlling like Alan or
a bigot like my Blackshirt. I quickly learnt he had a bit of a temper all right, but he
was strong, confident and ambitious. Above all, he was a man happy in his own skin. I
was totally entranced by my handsome airman.

Tom the chauffeur noticed. ‘I
daresay someone’s had their head turned,’ he joked one morning as I
whistled away, lost in a daydream. Even Mrs Luddington smiled knowingly when we chatted
at our morning meeting.

My sausage-roll offensive worked. Hint: if
you ever want a man to fall in love with you, start baking!

One evening, four months after
we’d met, on a warm
spring evening in May, we were on a bike
ride when Timothy stopped straight ahead of me.

‘Sit next to me,’ he
said, dismounting and leaning against an old oak tree. ‘I think I may be
getting posted to a new station soon,’ he confessed. ‘I
can’t bear to think we’ll never see each other again.’

‘What’ll we
do?’ I cried.

He turned to look at me and tenderly
clutched my face in his hands.

‘There is a way,’ he
said breathlessly. ‘I know it’s soon but … will you marry me, Mollie
Browne?’

My heart started to thump in my chest. I
hesitated. If I said yes, I knew I’d have to leave my job. There was no other
way in them days. No married woman in her right mind worked if she didn’t have
to. I was twenty-one and, what’s more, I’d worked hard to make a
cook’s position so young.

All those hours spent toiling, for what?

But then I looked at those intense
cornflower-blue eyes. They seemed to burn right into my soul. A deep wave of contentment
spread through my chest. Being with Timothy felt right.

I started to laugh, caught up in the sheer
thrill of the moment.

‘Well, I’ll have to see
what my father thinks and it is very soon, but …’

Oh, what the hell
.

‘Yes!’ I shouted.
‘Yes, I will marry you.’

We laughed like maniacs as we got back on
our bikes and cycled down the country lanes back to Wallington Hall. A mad rush of
spontaneity gripped me and I took
my feet off the pedals like I used
to all those years before as a child and whooped into the wind.

‘I’m going to get
married!’

Back at Mother’s house two days
later, one look from my father was all it took to pop my bubble of joy.

‘It’s too soon,
Mollie,’ he croaked. ‘Why do you want to do that?’

Mother shifted uncomfortably beside him.
‘Hear her out, love,’ she said.

‘He’s in the
RAF,’ my father stormed. ‘War’s in the air, I tell you,
and when it breaks out, then what?’ On and on he went.
‘He’ll be all over the place. You’ll never see him.
He’s a fly-by-night.’

Indignant rage boiled up inside me. No one
told me what to do.

‘Well, I’m marrying
him,’ I snapped. ‘I’m twenty-one now. I can do what I
like.’

As I stormed out of the door,
Father’s words chased after me –