Servants' Hall: A Real Life Upstairs, Downstairs Romance

by Margaret Powell

  ‘Yes, it wasn’t exactly a gargantuan feast, Mary. And you might as well have saved your breath instead of dropping all those hints about sherry and the boyfriend who brought you two glasses of the stuff in a pub. Not a whiff of the sherry bottle did we get.’

  ‘Did you notice how Rose kept watching the clock towards the end? I’m sure she was getting in a state in case that precious Gerald came back and we were still there. Wouldn’t that have ruined his day, to find two of his wife’s low-class friends sitting in his drawing-room. And d’you remember, Margaret, him saying there shouldn’t be white servants? And now he employs a housekeeper. What a hypocrite! I don’t envy Rose.’

  That was a lie if ever there was one. We both envied Rose and both felt that we’d make a better job of being Gerald’s wife than she would. But having by this time got over our rancour at the lukewarm reception, we went to Lyons Corner House for a good feed and the faint hope of picking-up two young men – or even one between us if two were not available. In the event, the only unattached males were the men in the band. I told Mary not to bother with them. Although it wasn’t the same band as when I was last there with Gladys, a friend of mine, they were probably no better. Gladys and I, by means of passing notes, had managed to make a date with two of the bandsmen; but we’d found that although they were real-looking men in uniform, when they were out of it and wearing flashy pin-striped suits, they were two of the weediest specimens of manhood one could imagine. And for a tenpenny seat in the pictures and a fourpenny ice-cream, the fellow I was with thought he was entitled to the works. Exasperated, I used ‘urgent need’ as my excuse, and I left him waiting for me outside a ladies lavatory and departed by a different door. Comparing our evening, Gladys and I agreed that men were pretty awful, but what could we do? We wanted to get married not just to get out of domestic service, but because to be a spinster was looked upon almost with contempt as indicating a woman who lacked what it takes.

  Mary and I arranged to meet on the following Sunday, her next free afternoon and evening. I, as a cook, was free every Sunday after the midday meal. I wondered if I would survive until the next Sunday as on Friday there was to be a dinner party. Only five people had been invited, making eight in all, so it wasn’t to be like the dinner parties at Redlands. But Mrs Buller had had Doris and me to help her, while I was cooking single-handed.

  Lady Gibbons had at last managed to get a housemaid, who had been ordered – not asked – to help Olive with the waiting at table. It wasn’t really a housemaid’s job to do this, but in domestic service there was no rigid demarcation line. In any case Amy, the housemaid, was in no position to refuse. At her age it wasn’t so easy to get work, and as she had no relatives it meant getting a furnished room every time she lost a job. Considering it was my first attempt at cooking a dinner for eight people, I reckon I did very well. Fortunately, I knew that I could use the gas stove with impunity; Lady Gibbons would never have had the nerve to call down on such an important occasion. There were four courses: clear soup – a fairly easy but tedious job; fried fillets of sole with tartare sauce; lamb cutlets served on a bed of mashed and creamed potatoes, with stuffed baked tomatoes and creamed spinach. I tried to get away with just chopping the spinach but I could see it didn’t look right so I had to rub the lot through a wire sieve. The last course was a cold lemon soufflé, which I managed to turn out of the mould without breaking the shape. Poor Amy then got flustered and broke the glass dish, but fortunately for me they’d eaten the soufflé by then. Olive was given a 6/- (about 30p now) tip which she generously shared out – it wasn’t to be sneezed at. I bought two pairs of artificial silk stockings with my share. That was all we did get, Lady Gibbons never even said thank you.

  When I met Mary on the Sunday, she said that we’d been invited to a party at her Aunt Ellie’s. This was the aunt who’d been a waitress and married a wealthy man – one of her regular customers. Mary and I were quite impressed with her aunt’s new house, though when we were introduced to her husband, we thought he looked considerably older than her aunt had made him out to be. Perhaps travelling abroad with Aunt Ellie had aged him. I was cottoned on to by a young man called Steve, one of the young waiters where Aunt Ellie had worked. When I asked him what he did in his spare time, he said his hobby was playing the ivories. I thought that meant he played the piano, but no; he meant he was a dominoes champion. What a game to be a champion of! I used to play dominoes with my children and wondered why the youngest was always getting the double six, until I discovered that he’d made a faint mark on the back of it. Steve’s dominoes were white with black spots, instead of the more usual black set with white spots. But it never works out to have anything to do with a man who has a hobby. When first he’s enamoured of you, you are his hobby; but after a few weeks, when the impact of your charms has faded, he thinks again of his first love – in Steve’s case, dominoes. I went out with him for a few weeks and he took me later on to have tea with his parents. His mother was very friendly – as she’d three other children, perhaps she was keen to get Steve off her hands. His father said, ‘How do’ and not much more; but I didn’t mind that, my father too was a quiet man. Steve’s grandmother lived with them, an ebullient and garrulous old dear, and the tea-time was enlivened by old gran giving a monologue on Bert her long departed husband.

  ‘I tell you, Maggie’ – ‘I’m called Margaret’, I murmured, but she took no notice – ‘our old panel doctor said he’d never in his life seen a case like my Bert’s. He was just eaten away, eaten away he was, like those ants in the desert ate the man those Arabs buried in the sand in that film we saw last week.’

  As an accompaniment to the buttered scones it wasn’t what I would have chosen, but all the others went on munching; I suppose they’d heard it many times. Gran hadn’t finished:

  ‘My Bert broke his leg, Maggie, and gangrene set in all because my Bert wouldn’t let them take his leg off. “No”, said my Bert, “I came into this world with two legs and I’m going to leave it the same way.” Suffered awful he did, and the gangrene crept higher and higher. But my Bert wouldn’t have his leg off.’

  Steve did make a half-hearted attempt to stop gran’s gory reminiscences, but obviously nobody else seemed to mind. Anyway, my romance with him soon finished for he started taking me into the pub where he used to play dominoes and, in no time at all, there he was playing them again. I very soon got bored sitting around sipping an occasional port, and no conversation. I could see that Steve would never be a permanent boyfriend. There is some prestige attached to being a grass widow for golf or cricket; but dominoes, never.

  Mary’s aunt had introduced her to ‘such a nice boy’; but the nice boy was out of work, having lost three jobs in as many months. For two weeks Mary paid when they went out, but when that Maurice showed no sign of getting a job Mary said goodbye. Her cousin had lent us the recently published Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and, as Mary said, one could see that a mother was no longer a girl’s best friend, it was diamonds. But sadly her hopes of getting any were so remote as to be practically non-existent.

  Mary, ever philosophical, said what did boyfriends matter when we’d got our health and strength, but I couldn’t agree with her. If we never managed to get a permanent male while we had our health and strength, it was for certain we wouldn’t when we were old and feeble, and then we wouldn’t be able to work either.

  I certainly needed to be healthy for when I had been in the basement four months, Lady Gibbons and Sir Walter decided to go to Yorkshire for two months while the son was abroad. She gave Amy notice, found a place for Olive – I’d never have gone to any place Lady Gibbons recommended – and put me on board wage, fifteen shillings a week. I went home for two weeks but for the other six I had to clean the house all on my own. I wasn’t a bit nervous then of being alone in a large house, though I would be now. Mary, Olive and Gladys came round when they were free, though they had to bring food; my fifteen shillings wasn’t enough to feed more than one and Lady Gibbons ha
d locked up all the stores.

  Mary and I had heard nothing from Rose since we’d seen her four months ago, but one morning I got a letter saying that she was longing to see us. Could we come on Wednesday, she asked, as Gerald would be away for the night. She simply must talk to somebody.

  12

  This time, when we arrived at ‘Melrose’, we braced ourselves in anticipation of facing the redoubtable housekeeper, Mrs Brookes, only to find, when the door opened a young maid about fifteen years old. Rose came rushing out of the drawing-room to greet us, saying that she was so pleased to see us and hoped we wouldn’t need to rush away.

  ‘What’s happened to your Mrs Brookes, then?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Oh, I had to get rid of her. The way that woman went on, you’d have thought she was mistress of this house. And she was always spying on me. I couldn’t stand it.’

  Why should Rose imagine that Mrs Brookes was spying on her? What was there to discover that could be detrimental? I felt sure that Rose was living a perfectly respectable life in her little Hampstead home. I did notice that she seemed to be in a rather nervous state, babbling away without pausing for breath. I couldn’t make out half of what she said but I understood her final words, would we like a drink. Mary had the gall to remark on our way back that if Rose had spoken in Hindustani, I’d have still grasped the words about having a drink. Anyway, by the time that we’d knocked back a couple of gin-and-its, Rose seemed more like the old Rose that we’d known below stairs. How different it was from our previous visit when she’d not said a word against Gerald, nor would listen to any adverse comment from us. Now her grievances poured out like a cataract. She hated living in this house, it was too big. She was lonely, there were no next-door neighbours like her mother had, in Hampstead – I should think not, I interrupted. She had nothing to do all day and Gerald never came home before six o’clock, and even then he was shut in his study working. And when she complained he said, very sarcastically, that although she was no longer a parlourmaid, there was a full-time job ready to hand in getting herself an education. She could make a start by reading some proper books instead of trashy romances and magazines; take herself off to museums and art galleries where she’d learn that life didn’t start in the slums of Manchester. And, she might usefully take some elocution lessons to eradicate the excruciating accent. Here Rose started to weep and Mary and I looked at each other in amazement. Love’s young dream had certainly faded. Through her tears, Rose said that the first two or three times they’d quarrelled Gerald had been so loving afterwards, saying he hadn’t meant it and he loved her so much and was there anything she would like. But now he was either silent or sarcastic, saying that the reason they had no social life was because every time she opened her mouth she let him down. Why couldn’t she try to be like Sheila, his partner’s wife. Look at the way she gave little dinner parties and always had plenty to say. People liked to be invited to Ronald and Sheila’s home, but none of his friends wanted to come to them, with Rose sitting like a blockhead at the table.

  After spilling all this out, Rose gradually became more cheerful and eventually suggested that we go into the kitchen and have something to eat and a bottle of wine; she’d told Alice to take the evening off. Rose may have sat like a blockhead with her husband’s friends, but she had plenty to say to Mary and me.

  ‘You know, it all started when Mrs Stone came.’

  ‘Who’s Mrs Stone, then?’

  ‘She’s the woman who comes three mornings a week to do the rough work. I found out that she used to live in Salford so it’s only natural that I liked to talk to her, me coming from so near to her home. When Gerald’s home on a Saturday, he don’t like me talking to her in what he says is a familiar manner. He says that I don’t belong to that kind of life any longer and that I’ll never learn to speak properly if I keep talking to Mrs Stone. But why should I be different? Just because Gerald’s been to a public school and can talk in that posh voice. He knew what I was when he fell in love and we got married. Why should he want me to change? He hasn’t got the right, has he?’

  Rose didn’t really want any reasoned answers from us, all she wanted was sympathy and the assurance that she was not to blame. But I felt Gerald had some justification for his complaints. He was providing Rose with a fairly luxurious home, lovely clothes and somebody to do the work. He was entitled to something in return. I wondered if she would accept any constructive criticism.

  ‘Why don’t you take elocution lessons, Rose? It might be quite fun, and at least it would give you something to do and get you out of the house.’

  ‘Margaret, how can I go home and start talking in a la-di-da voice. Ma and Pa wouldn’t like it. They’d say that I was showing them up in front of the neighbours. Down our street they stick together, they don’t like the bosses.’

  I wanted to say the obvious: she didn’t live in that street now and, if all she wanted was a life the same as her parents had, she’d have been better off if she’d married Len. But saying that wouldn’t have helped Rose. So I said, trying to make my voice sound light and casual, ‘I love going to museums and art galleries, Rose, but I never have anybody to go with. Why don’t you come with me? I’m free any afternoon while Lady Gibbons is away.’

  I half expected Rose to be as derisive about the proposition as Mary would have been. But instead of an emphatic negative, she wondered if she would be interested – and it would please Gerald – and yes she would come with me but not to look at paintings; she just couldn’t see why people wanted to gaze at dreary old pictures of horses and battles and kings and queens. Why, her aunt Gertie painted pictures of things like flowers and gardens and they were ever so pretty. Much as I liked Rose, I thought yet again how utterly inane was her conversation. I remembered young Fred’s remark that it was Gerald he felt sorry for, married to Rose.

  On the journey back from Hampstead, Mary asked why on earth I’d offered to take Rose to a museum.

  ‘Margaret, she’ll be even more bored than I was. Can you imagine her going into raptures over some old Roman relics, or exclaiming about the beauty of the statues. I bet you, by the time Rose has been in a museum for half-an-hour, she’ll suggest going for a cup of tea in Lyons. I know Rose better than you do, Margaret. She’ll not change. For all her fine house and clothes and a husband from upstairs, in the long run she’d be happier with that Len. Her heart’s with them at the mill, not in the mansion. You mark my words, that marriage won’t last.’

  Remembering Mary’s gloomy words about the impossibility of educating Rose, I felt like a martyr as I waited for her outside the British Museum, and she certainly had the look of one as we entered. I made straight for my favourite gallery to show Rose the ancient Greek sculptures. I loved them, and in spite of the DO NOT TOUCH notices I could never forbear to lightly feel the stone and marvel anew; that such beauty as this existed so many centuries ago!

  If I had any idea or hope that Rose would share my enthusiasm, I was quickly disillusioned. She gazed at the wonderful relics of an ancient civilisation with lack-lustre eyes and, after a few minutes, said in a plaintive voice, ‘But it’s all so dead, Margaret. Isn’t there anything that moves?’

  I answered, more sharply than I meant to, that the place was a museum, not a fairground. We removed ourselves to a gallery where were displayed the more modern artefacts – well, modern in comparison to Greek – beautiful vases, figurines and intricate ornaments. But all Rose could say was that they were ‘just things’. I suppose if one was incapable of visualising the lives of people who actually lived with, and used these lovely objects, then they were ‘just things’.

  So, as Mary had prophesied, I saw that it was a waste of time staying any longer in the British Museum and we went to Lyons for a cup of tea. While we were there Rose said that she’d love to have an evening out; couldn’t we go to the Hammersmith Palais, where she could dance with ordinary young men and not be expected to carry on a conversation at the same time. She could telephone Gerald’s of
fice to say that she was spending the evening with me; she could call him from my place, we’d have to go back there for me to change. I hastily told Rose that she couldn’t use Lady Gibbons’ telephone, I’d be in trouble if she was charged for a call while she was in Yorkshire. The telephone in the kitchen was only for calling tradesmen who were late with orders or had delivered the wrong thing.

  Rose telephoned her husband from a callbox, and when I asked if he’d minded her being out for the evening Rose said, rather sadly, ‘No, he didn’t mind at all. He said he’d be late home as he had to meet a client, and I was to have a nice evening. He’s probably glad to be without me.’

  When Rose saw below stairs at Lady Gibbons’, the dark basement, the cheerless servants’ hall, all so drab and dreary a contrast to our good quarters at Redlands, and then saw my equally spartan bedroom, she exclaimed, ‘However can you live here, Margaret? I think it’s all horrible, nothing nice for the servants at all. Whatever made you take this place?’

  I was tempted to reply, ‘Because I couldn’t find anybody eager to transport me to a life of ease and comfort in Hampstead’, but thought such an answer would not be very tactful. All the time I was changing Rose kept up a lamentation about her life; the loneliness, the inexperience of the present maid, the airs and graces of the departed Mrs Brookes and the unkindness of Gerald complaining that Rose wasn’t ‘social’.

  I became rather irritated listening to her complaints. After all, she’d chosen her life and, with a bit of determination and ambition, she could live and cope in Gerald’s world. Interrupting her monologue, I quoted from Longfellow:

  ‘Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

  Life is but an empty dream!

  For the soul is dead that slumbers,