Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (9 page)

At that point I hadn’t realized I
was allowed, on strictly those occasions only, to enter the house via the front door no
less, so as not to muddy the steps.

Suddenly I felt an almighty whack round my
rear end.

What on earth?

I whirled round to find myself face to face
with an errand boy. He had a teasing face made for mischief and his blue eyes twinkled
as they lingered on my legs.

‘Lovely view,’ he
winked, tugging the edge of his flat cap. ‘You’re better than the
last. She had a face like the back of a bus. And a redhead too. I love redheads. You
look like Clara Bow.’

With my hair plastered under a mop cap, my
hands thick with dirt and without a trace of make-up, I daresay I looked more like
orphan Annie than a big Hollywood film star, but I was willing to believe him.

‘Get away, you rascal,’
I cackled, secretly delighted at his attention.

‘Come and see me when you get some
time off,’ he said, hopping on to his bike. ‘I work at Harrods. Come
round the back entrance, Trevor Square, and ask for Billy.’

Errand boys, I quickly discovered, were the
worst flirts of the lot, and the Harrods boys were the most handsome. Nipping about
Knightsbridge on their natty little green bikes gave them a certain prestige amongst the
local domestics.

My cloud of hormonal oestrogen was popped as
I heard a familiar voice drift up the area steps. ‘Mollie!’ cried
out Mrs Jones. ‘I said MOLLIE!’ Oh blimey, I hadn’t even
got her tea or started sweeping the passage yet.

‘Got to go,’ I panted,
frantically gathering up my brushes and hearthstone.

‘See you around,
carrot,’ he winked. Then he was gone, whistling his way up towards Sloane
Square without a care in the world.

Down in the gloom of the kitchen Mrs Jones
was not, I discovered, a morning person and nor did she like being kept waiting for her
morning cup of tea. I also discovered that each morning she would come down in a
different mood. She had one for each day of the week from surly to grumpy to moderately
cheerful to downright foul. And on this particular morning her mood was as black as the
stove I’d been scrubbing.

It was like a dark cloud had drifted into
the kitchen. Her beefy hands were planted on her hips and she shot me a look so sour it
could have curdled milk from fifty paces.

‘I knew it,’ she spat.
‘Boys – is that all you young girls think about?’

I stared at her face and wondered how she got
to be so bitter. Looking back now, the poor woman had probably been plagued by a long
stream of giggly scullery maids, who she’d spend months training up to her
standards only to have them disappear when they got something better. But back then, in
my eyes she was just an old maid left on the shelf. We only called her
‘Mrs’ as a courtesy; there wasn’t so much as a whiff of a
man on the scene. I wasn’t going to end up like her, oh no. To a young girl
that was the worst fate in the world.

I decided to follow my mother’s
advice, ‘keep my trap shut’ and humour the surly old trout. The rest
of the day her mood didn’t improve and she worked me flat out. Every few
minutes her thick Welsh accent rang out:
That’s not up to my standards.
You better learn to scrub better than that or you won’t last long.
You missed a bit there. Scrub that table over again. I want to see my face in it.
These potatoes aren’t peeled proper. Young girls these days.
Don’t work like they did in my day.
On and on she tutted and puffed
like an old steam train.

People think they know about hygiene in
kitchens now but they don’t have a clue. Most people’s idea of
cleaning is a once-over with some cleaning spray and that’s it. That would
never do back then. Oh no. Nothing could ever be clean enough and what most people do
once a month, back then, we did daily.

This was an age of appearances and it
wouldn’t do to have dirty steps, an unpolished doorknob, dusty kitchen
drawers, floors or anything else for that matter. My life revolved around cleaning
everything and everywhere.

The heavy kitchen table had to be scrubbed
twice a day,
after lunch and dinner, and everywhere, even the legs, had
to have a good scrub down with soap and soda until it all gleamed.

Next I had to clean and scrub the dresser
and kitchen cupboards, inside and out.

Once a week the entire dinner service,
including plates, bowls, platters, sauce boats, vegetable dishes and soup tureens had to
be got down and washed, the shelves dusted and scrubbed, then the whole lot
replaced.

The range was the thing that made my fingers
ache the most. You had to light it each morning. There were no luxuries like gas and
electric back then. The range was itself a little like the cook – large, cumbersome,
temperamental and forever going off. There was a real art to getting the fire going
strong enough to cook a meal on it and keep the kettles that were constantly bubbling on
top of the stove hot enough to make tea with or fill up the giant saucepans.

Every morning I had to blacklead it with a
thick brush and then buff it until it gleamed like marble.

Next I had to polish the steel fender,
shovel, tongs and poker and steel range handles. ‘I want to see my face in
it,’ was Mrs Jones’s usual quip. ‘It needs to shine like
it’s been varnished.’

In front of the fire was a hearth and that
had to be scrubbed every day too with the hearthstone.

Once a week I had to turn out the
servants’ hall and housekeeper’s room. And I mean turn out. You
couldn’t just mop it. Oh no, every bit of furniture had to be moved out and
the rooms scrubbed from top to bottom.

I also had to scrub the passageway floors
and kitchen
floor every day. Most people assume these floors would have
been lovely old original flagstone tiles. Oh no. The floors were concrete and they had
to be polished once a week on a Friday after lunch with red cardinal floor polish. No
one uses that any more but it’s a little like shoe polish and I had to smother
the kitchen and pantry floors in it and then buff it up to a gleaming rich red shine.
God, it was a mess.

After the floor, once a week, I had to
polish all the vast copper pans that hung from the walls with a mixture of silver sand,
vinegar and lemon juice. You rubbed it on with a rag, washed and then buffed the pans
until they gleamed. And all this before I’d even started on steps, hallways,
the washing-up and day-to-day activities like prepping the veggies and washing the pots
and pans as Mrs Jones used them.

Before long I realized I would be spending
most of my time on my hands and knees in a hessian apron, scrubbing!

And everything had to be done in a
particular order too. You couldn’t just get to it when you fancied. Each hour
of each day was strictly accounted for and the routines of kitchens in the old days
wouldn’t be out of place in Her Majesty’s army. I certainly worked
like a soldier, that’s for sure. And if I was the soldier, Mrs Jones was the
culinary equivalent of a drill sergeant.

By the end of that first week reality had
come and slapped me round the face like a ten-day-old wet kipper. I was just fourteen
and had worked like a slave, up to my elbows in grease and muck, for fifteen hours a
day.

Nothing was ever good enough for Mrs Jones.
Either I
was too fast or too slow. Her tongue was so sharp she could
have cut herself and nothing escaped her critical eye. Too much sand in the pan mix and
you’d soon know about it.

‘Dull as dishwater,’
she’d snap.

Couldn’t see your face in the
stove? ‘Polish it again.’

At the end of my first week I was filthy,
not to mention so dizzy and exhausted, my head seemed to fall through the pillow. It was
Friday night. If I’d been at home I would have helped Mother shop in the
market, scoffed sweets and been licking my salty lips from the fresh kippers
we’d have eaten for tea. My brother would be splashing about in the tin bath
in front of the fire now.

I pictured Mother’s face, sitting
down for the first time all week in front of the crackling fire in our cosy cottage. I
missed it so much I could almost hear their laughter, taste the smoky warm kitchen.

I was just a young girl alone in a strange
new world.

Here in this big old house the warm London
smog was stifling. What I wouldn’t have done to be breathing in the fresh,
clean Norfolk air. I was so homesick it hurt. I even missed PC Risebrough. Not even the
prospect of a weekly bath the next morning to wash away the grime that seemed painted on
to my skin could raise a smile. My spirits sank lower than the mud at the bottom of the
sluice.

What did tomorrow bring? More scrubbing,
I’d be bound.

As my body throbbed with exhaustion I
started to sob.
Had I made a terrible, terrible mistake?

I couldn’t possibly go home now.
Mother had paid for my uniform and I’d get a reputation for being flaky if I
packed it in so soon. Besides, I was fourteen. My childhood was
officially over. I had to work, be it here or back in that depressing shop.

How was it possible to feel this
wretched?

Tips from a 1930s Kitchen
…
THE PERFECT ROAST BEEF

She may have had a temperament as sour as five-day-old milk pudding, but Mrs Jones couldn’t half cook. She never went in for any of this low-fat style cooking either. Like Mrs Beeton, whose recipes she loved, it was full-fat butter, milk and cream all the way. It was full-on flavour too. I’m not saying you should cook this way all the time like I used to, but once in a while can’t hurt.

Try this Mrs Beeton recipe for roast fillet of beef that Mrs Jones adapted and used. Tying it in a bag seals in the flavour and keeps the meat incredibly moist and tender.

Fillet of beef

⅓ pint (190 ml) beef gravy

For the marinade: 3 tablespoonfuls oil, 1 tablespoonful

lemon juice, 1 teaspoonful chopped onion and

1 teaspoonful chopped parsley, pinch of mixed herbs,

pepper and a pinch of ground cloves

Place the meat on a dish, pour over the marinade and let it remain for three hours, turning and basting frequently. Have ready a sheet of well-greased baking paper, drain away half the liquid of the marinade, fold the remainder of the marinade and the meat in the paper and fasten the ends securely. Roast or bake for 45 minutes, basting frequently with butter or dripping. Fifteen minutes before serving, remove the paper and when the meat is nicely
brown brush it over with butter and place it in a hot dish.

Serve the remaining liquid from the bag as gravy. Just heat it through with butter, red wine and seasoning. When cooled slightly, stir through with cream.

HOUSEHOLD TIP

Try this inexpensive treat for tired feet.

Place some glass marbles in the bottom of a large foot bowl, just enough to cover the base. Top up with warm water and Epsom salts. Plunge your feet in and gently slide your feet over the marbles. Foot soak and massage in one!

 

To get the full value of a joy you must
have

somebody to divide it with.

Mark Twain

My homesickness followed me round all week
like a dirty black cloud. I must have been living in cloud cuckoo land to think it would
all come easy. Worst of all, Mrs Jones weren’t even the strangest of the
staff. I quickly realized there were some funnier sorts than her in the house.

Besides Mrs Jones, the cook-housekeeper,
there was Mabel, the head housemaid. She oversaw all the female servants and took care
of catering, accounts, recruitment, linen and stores. Under her was a nice girl called
Irene, the housemaid, and another housemaid whose name escapes me. They cleaned, dusted,
tended fires, cleaned silver, laid and tended table and generally assisted other
staff.

Mr Orchard, the butler, was responsible for
waiting at table, food and drink, answering the door and overall supervision of all the
male servants in the house. Alan, the frisky footman, was under him and attended the
door
and carriages, helped at table, cleaned silver and valeted. John,
the hallboy, was their dogsbody. There was also Mr Thornton, the London chauffeur, and
his son Louis, the second chauffeur, and Mr and Mrs Brown, the caretakers, who lived in
the mews house behind the big house and looked after the property when it was
vacant.