In view of the fact that my husband only earned three pounds five a week, of which I had three, you might wonder why I didn’t go out to work. Women simply didn’t then. Working-class husbands bitterly resented the very thought that their wives should have to work outside the home. It seemed to cast a slur on the husband and implied that he wasn’t capable of keeping you. If a man was unemployed, well that was a different thing. Then you had to.
Our first home was in Chelsea and there was a woman living in the basement next door to us who was married to a Russian, a Mrs Balkonsky, her name was; her husband was of course Boris. She had five children, and she got about the same money as I did. She was an extremely good milliner, an occupation that she could have followed in her own home, and supplemented the family income. Yet her husband was so against her doing any work or making any money apart from what he gave her, that she wasn’t allowed to.
Mind you, I didn’t want to go out to work. The time never hung on my hands at all, I was only too glad to have nothing to do for a while. Although I was a feminist and stuck up for the rights of women, it didn’t go that far. I asserted an independence as regards the running of the home, I wasn’t subservient in any way to my husband. I considered that he received good value for the money he gave me in every way; in the physical relationship, in the running of the home, in the social relationships too, and I considered that I wasn’t under any obligation to him at all.
In any case the only kind of work that I knew how to do well was cooking and to do that would have meant going out at night and doing dinners. Well, I don’t think that the wife going to work at night is a very good basis for a marriage relationship.
I wanted to make a success of marriage as I wanted to make a success of other things in life. And so much of my time had been spent thinking about getting out of service that it was a long while before I felt that home life wasn’t enough, and by then I had collected a family of three children, so that any aspirations I had had to go by the board for the time being. Looking after three children is a fulltime job to me at any rate, because I was a mother in the full sense of the word, I think.
As I’ve said, after we got married we lived in what we considered was the best part of London, Chelsea. We paid fifteen shillings a week for a bed-sitting-room, with a minute little kitchen. We had the first child there. But naturally as the family increased, one room and kitchen wasn’t enough so we had to move. We went in turn to Willesden, Harlesden, and Kilburn. They’re very dreary, dingy places with houses to match the kind of locality.
I had three children in the first five years of my marriage and by then – Albert was still a milkman – money was getting a bit tight.
When our eldest child was about five years old I happened to be out one day and 1 met one of the maids who I’d been in service with. She told me that the people she was working for were at their wits’ end because the cook was away and they’d got to give a dinner party. She said, ‘Why don’t you come in and cook the dinner for them?’ I said, ‘I couldn’t, I haven’t done that sort of cooking for years.’ ‘You’ll pick it up again straight away, you can’t forget that kind of thing. Why don’t you try?’ So I went home and spoke to Albert about it. I put it to him. It would mean at least ten shillings or a guinea for doing it, and the money would be very handy for the children. So he agreed and I did it.
I made quite a good job of it too, and after it was over the lady of the house came down and asked me if I would like her to recommend me to her friends. I said ‘Yes’. From time to time people that she knew would write to me and ask me if I could come and do a dinner; sometimes for six, sometimes as many as twelve, in which case they would have some dishes in from outside as well. When it was a small dinner I got half a guinea, but for an elaborate one I earned two guineas, and when you consider that my husband was only getting about four pounds a week even then, two guineas was a lot of money indeed. And I quite enjoyed these little expeditions. Apart from the money it gave me an insight into a different kind of life. People were so different, so friendly. They’d be in and out of the kitchen talking to you as though you were one of them. In domestic work things had certainly changed.
27
THIS WAY of life passed pleasantly enough until 1942 when my husband was called up. Albert was conscripted into the Royal Air Force, so I decided that I’d move back down to Hove.
I didn’t want to stay in London in wartime with three young boys, so I wrote to my parents to see if they could get me a house. It was quite easy to get houses in Hove at that time because a lot of people had left. They didn’t like the hit-and-run raids they were having there. They got me a six-roomed house for a pound a week. It was marvellous, the first house we’d had since we’d been married. The most we’d ever lived in before was three rooms and a share of lavatory.
I remember one place we had at Kilburn, we had to go downstairs and walk through someone’s kitchen to get to the lavatory. All through the summer the man used to sit right outside the lavatory door on a deckchair, and it was most embarrassing to ask him to move. I’m sure that’s where I first suffered with constipation!
Now everything would be my own, I thought. I was in clover. You can imagine what our stuff looked like in it, because we only had enough for three rooms. It had to be spread all around. I just had one bed in each bedroom, nothing on the floor, but I didn’t care.
All the boys got on well in Hove; they all went to the same elementary school at first, and then they passed the examinations to get to the grammar school. While this was a great joy, it was also a terrible worry. With three young boys to look after on my own I couldn’t go out to work, and the separation allowance that I got at that time was very poor indeed.
It wasn’t until I’d written goodness knows how many letters to the Education Authorities that I managed to get more money. But I found great difficulty in managing even so, and each time Albert got a promotion – he was eventually made up to corporal – we didn’t benefit, because out of his increased money the government docked my allowance. So there was no incentive for him to try to get further.
I couldn’t make the boys’ clothes now. If they’d been girls I could have, but boys have got to look the same as everybody else. You can’t send them to school in home-made suits.
I remember one terrible occasion, the only time in my life when I had to apply for charity. They only had one pair of shoes each and although when my husband was home he used to mend them, he had been posted overseas. I was at my wits’ end as to how to get them repaired. So I went down to the Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Airmen’s Association who sent me over to the Council. It was something too terrible for words. You need a hide like a rhinoceros, it seemed to me, to ask them for anything. Some people were used to getting all and sundry. They never turned a hair. But this was the first time I had ever asked for anything. I went in very nervous with a face as red as a beetroot. I felt like a pauper. ‘Why do you want shoes for them? Why haven’t they got shoes?’ I said, ‘They’ve only got one pair.’ ‘Why don’t you get them mended?’ they asked. ‘I can get them mended,’ I said, ‘but in the meantime they won’t be able to go to school. They’ve got no others.’ After this kind of talk they returned me to the Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Airmen’s place. I went back to them and I said, ‘They said it comes under your jurisdiction,’ and they said, ‘It doesn’t, not to supply shoes. You go back to the Council and start again.’ When I went back and through the whole process again, they grudgingly gave me some forms. They don’t give you money and they don’t give you shoes, they give you forms to take to a special shop in Hove.
They wouldn’t let you have shoes, you had to have boots, charity boots. My sons had never worn boots before. I never entered fully into how much they must have felt it. I was so obsessed with how I felt, I never investigated their feelings. Going to school wearing boots, and everyone knowing that they’re charity boots because they were a special kind.
When my boys went to this grammar
school, it was still a fee-paying school. So naturally the parents of the boys that were there were far better off financially than we were. A lot of them had been to preparatory schools. And they had money. Some of the boys had a pound a week for pocket money. A pound a week! I couldn’t give mine a shilling. I remember when I had a bit of trouble with one of them – he drew a moustache on the headmaster’s photo – the headmaster saying to me that it was all poppycock their feeling inferior because they hadn’t got money. ‘I came up the hard way,’ he said, ‘I only got to a grammar school on scholarship level, and I only had sixpence a week pocket money.’ But times had altered. People had more money then.
Another terrible thing was that if you had an income of under five pounds a week you were entitled to free dinners. Well, there was no one else in any of their classes that had free dinners, and each new term the master would say, ‘Stand up those who want tickets for dinners.’ Well, you just imagine how you would feel if you’re the only child in the class whose parents can’t afford to pay for your dinners. I didn’t fully understand it myself at the time. If I had realized the situation I wouldn’t have been ambitious to get them to a grammar school, I really wouldn’t. I used to write to the master in advance, I knew which one they would have, and say, ‘Will you please not say out loud, “Who is going to have a free school dinner?”.’ I admit they did take notice then, and they didn’t do it.
Another thing that I didn’t realize was sport. Cricket for instance. I couldn’t buy cricket flannels or cricket boots. I ran up football shorts for them, but I couldn’t afford the journeys for away matches. I thought, it doesn’t matter, they’re getting a good education, that’s what matters. But those other things did matter.
I think that one can be too ambitious. You educate them, you send them into a social community of which they can’t be one. People have the same herd instinct as animals. There’s only got to be one that’s different and they kick hell out of him.
28
WITH THIS struggle on I decided to go out to work. I decided to do housework again. I couldn’t take on cooking because there wasn’t a lot of work for cooks in wartime. It had to be housework. It was very poorly paid at that time. When I first started I got tenpence an hour. It seems fantastic now when you think about it. I suppose everyone must have been getting the same otherwise I’m sure I would have asked for more. I worked for a vicar, which was jolly hard work. You know what vicarages are; there’s the day for the boy scouts, the day for the girl guides, the day for the Women’s Institute, the Mothers’ Union, and of course these old vicarages are not labour-saving places. They were planned with a house full of servants in mind. Still I enjoyed it there. The money was bad, but there were perks; left-over food, and when there was a jumble sale the vicar’s wife always used to let me pick out anything I wanted first. She’d say, ‘Just give a few coppers and take your choice,’ and many a decent suit or jersey I got for the boys before the horde came in.
I stayed at the vicarage job for some time, and then one day I was chatting to a friend who was also doing domestic work and she told me she was getting is 1s 3d an hour; the rate had gone up fivepence an hour in a comparatively short time. Well, there’s only one reason for doing that kind of work, money, so I started to look round for another job.
The first thing that amazed me was the difference that I found after so many years. Large houses that were once opulently furnished and had had a large staff were now reduced to no staff at all; just someone coming in for a few hours daily. Much of their lovely stuff had gone; they had had to sell it to pay their income tax.
Most of these ladies were very elderly and they accepted this change in their status with fortitude. Some of them used to talk to me about their changed circumstances and their vanished possessions. I remember one house where I worked, I used to go there two mornings a week. All they had left of their silver was a large tray, one of those which a whole tea set is carried on, and one day when I was polishing this, Mrs Jackson, a very elderly lady, said to me, ‘Ah, Margaret, when the silver service stood on that tray, and when the butler carried it into the drawing-room, it used to look a picture of safety and security,’ she said. ‘We never thought that our way of life would change.’
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them, even though judged by my income they were still fairly well off. It’s much harder to be poor, isn’t it, when for years you’ve had money rolling in, than if you’ve never had money at all; and then to come down to doing such a lot of their own work at their age. It’s easy to turn to when you’re young, you’re resilient.
Mind you, the funny part was that even though now they could only afford dailies, some of them still retained their old autocratic ways. They used bitterly to complain about the sordidness of life, they were very fond of saying that, that everything was ‘sordid’. And their favourite was, ‘The working class are aping their betters’, the betters being them of course, and ‘The country is being run by a collection of nobodies and is going down the drain’.
One of the ladies I worked for was a Mrs Rutherford-Smith. One day she said to me, ‘Margaret, you’re a very good worker, and I like you, but you’ve got one failing and I hope you won’t be offended when I tell you what that failing is. You never call me “Madam”.’ And then she added, ‘You know, Margaret, if I was talking to the Queen I should say “Madam” to her.’ I wanted to reply, ‘Well, there’s only one Queen but there’s thousands of Mrs Smiths!’
Mrs Rutherford-Smith and those like her missed all those little attentions that used to be their prerogative, the hat-raising, the deference from tradesmen, and the being waited on by well-trained servants.
Many of the people for whom I was a daily were old and lonely, and I was the only person who provided them with contact with life outside. This seemed strange because many of them lived in flats, and you’d think that living in a block of flats you’d be in a sort of microcosm of life. But it just isn’t so. I’ve worked in half a dozen such blocks and I’ve never met a person either going in or coming out. Everyone seemed to be isolated in their own little cell. They needed to live in them as they were easy to run. But it was a very lonely life for them.
Some who had adopted a philosophical view talked to you as though you were one of themselves, but others felt that they were really doing a great kindness in sitting down with you and being on equal terms with you. They thought it was very odd that a daily should show any signs of intelligence.
There was a Mrs Swob that I worked for. I shouldn’t really call her name ‘Swob’ – it was spelt Schwab, and she pronounced it ‘Swayb’; that’s how she liked it pronounced, but much to her fury most people pronounced it Swob.
This Mrs Schwab’s house was filled with antiques, terrible old dust-collectors, especially some round mirrors that she had, with convoluted gilt frames, and she showed no signs of pleasure when I knocked one of the knobs off one of these frames. ‘You must treat things better, Margaret,’ she said. ‘Don’t you love good objects?’ ‘No, I don’t, Mrs Schwab,’ I said. ‘To me they’re just material things; I have an affinity with G. K. Chesterton who wrote about the malignity of inanimate objects,’ I said, ‘and I think they are malign because they take up so much of my time, dusting, polishing, and cleaning them. Look at that vase,’ I said, ‘that you say is worth a hundred pounds, if that was to drop on the floor and break it would just be three or four worthless bits of china.’ That set her back on her heels for a few seconds. ‘I didn’t know you read, Margaret,’ she said. ‘I read a lot of course.’ She was one of those, whatever you did, she did it, only ten times more.
I was talking about films once. ‘Oh yes, I could have been a film star,’ she said, ‘I wanted to be but at that time I was going out with the man who is now my husband. He wouldn’t let me. Everyone was most disappointed.’ You’d be amazed all the rubbish I had to listen to, they ladled it all out, and you had to look suitably impressed. You’re working for them and you want your money, and if it wasn’
t them it would be somebody else. They employ you to be a captive audience. Still, while you’re listening you’re not working.
This Mrs Schwab had one of the most infuriating habits; every time I went she used to say to me, ‘When you scrub the bathroom, Margaret, don’t forget the corners.’ This gained her less than nothing. From then on I never used the scrubbing-brush, I just threw the soap round the floor.
The last straw there was when I was sweeping the balcony. One morning she said to me, ‘Oh’ don’t sweep the dust that way, sweep it the other way.’ Well, did you ever hear such drivel? I collected my wages. I hadn’t got the nerve to tell her I wasn’t coming any more because instinctively I felt she would let loose a flood of invective, she looked that type to me. I wrote a very posh letter, I thought it was, anyway, to the effect that ‘it must be as irritating to her to feel that she had to keep telling me how to do things, as it was galling for me to have to listen to her’.
You didn’t have to worry about references on a daily job. You just said you’d never been out before, or that the people you last worked for had died. As a matter of fact the last people I worked for had all died. I don’t know whether there is any sinister connexion, but they have.
I can’t help thinking that people who were once wealthy and now have to live on a fixed income are worse off than ordinary working-class people, working-class people’s incomes do rise to meet the cost of living. They can ask for a rise, and go on strike if they don’t get it, or they get a cost-of-living bonus. But people who are living on fixed incomes like these old ladies have got to keep on trying to keep up some sort of show. A place like Hove is full of these decayed gentlewomen who are struggling to make ends meet. And in spite of the kind of idiosyncrasies I’ve mentioned, they do a marvellous job, because they’re trying to cope with a way of life that their upbringing gave them no preparation for at all. I’ve been amazed at the resilience and zest for life of some of these old ladies.
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