‘It’s pootrud, yer knows,’ he added, wrinkling his nose. ‘There’s cowshit and everything in that bit, so there is.’
What did I care? The dare had been issued. I could no more back out now than I could walk to the moon. ‘So what?’ I said, boldly ripping off my dress and stripping down to my knickers and vest.
Here goes nothing. Taking a deep breath, I launched myself into the unknown. ‘Woohooo!’ I hollered. A rush of sheer adrenalin filled my body. I was flying! I was actually flying!
You could have heard the smacking noise of my belly hitting the water five villages along.
Struggling to breathe, I floundered about until I managed to grab on to a soggy clod of mud by the bank. Cow poo and mud was plastered over my knickers and face as I hauled myself, sopping wet and gasping for air, on to the bank. Shaking myself like a wet dog, I scrabbled back up the slippery bank. At the top I paused to wipe my snotty nose on my dripping vest.
‘Now your tur …’ I said, my voice trailing off to nothing.
For who should be ready to greet me? Not the impressed audience I was hoping for, but PC Risebrough!
His beefy hand reached down to grab my sopping wet vest.
Uh-oh.
‘Mollie Browne!’ he yelled, his face growing as red as a tomato as I legged it to my bike and frantically started to peddle. ‘You want your arse leathering.’
By the time I reached home I’d decided not to say a word to Mother.
‘Mollie,’ she gasped. ‘You’re soaked through.’
‘I fell off my bike,’ I lied. ‘Right into a ditch.’
‘Best sit by the fire and warm up,’ she said, pressing a mug of steaming hot tea into my hand.
Sniffing the air, I realized it was Friday, the best day of the week, for it was Mother’s baking day. The kitchen was filled with the smell of warm, rich baking. On the side lay rack upon rack of jam tarts, flaky sausage rolls, cottage pies, bread and butter puddings, boiled suet pudding with apples or jam, all piled up and cooling on the countertop.
‘I might feel better if I have something to eat,’ I said, shivering for dramatic effect.
‘Get away with you,’ she chuckled. ‘Put this in your trap.’ With that, she slipped me a baking-hot sausage roll.
‘Fanks,’ I mumbled through mouthfuls of buttery, light pastry. I closed my eyes and munched. Pure heaven. Food never tastes as good to anyone as to a hungry child.
That’s me on the far right, aged ten, being awarded first prize at school sports day in 1926. I was the fastest runner and the highest jumper in the whole area – I always thought I was better than anyone else back then!
I sniggered to myself as I pictured PC Risebrough’s flaming red face as he’d puffed after me. Daresay he’d love one of Mum’s home-cooked sausage rolls after his energetic morning.
Once I’d dried off we headed into Downham, for Friday afternoons were market day, another highlight of the week.
Men would stand around chatting outside pubs while women shopped, haggled and nattered with neighbours and friends. It was the social highlight of the week and gave women a break from the endless drudgery of keeping house. Gossip was a currency to be exchanged just as much as shillings and pence. Not that it mattered, mind, as everyone pretty much knew everyone else’s business. It was a close-knit community and a stranger’s face always stuck out.
I used to love trawling the market with Mother. Everywhere you looked there were stallholders shouting their wares.
‘Thirteen herrings for a shilling,’ drawled the coster to a crowd of housewives. ‘Pound a prawns, fished straight out the sea this morning while you were still abed. Nice and fresh and lovely.’
Before the war this had been the site of a famous horse market where many thousands of horses were shipped off to France. Now it was full of housewives battling to get their pick of the best fish. My mother could get in there with the best of ’em and we always had fish for tea on a Friday. Carts were piled high with glistening kippers and Yarmouth bloaters and her eyes darted this way and that as she sized up the best of the lot to serve up to my father that evening.
‘Let’s be having you,’ shouted the fishmonger, his mutton-chop whiskers quivering. ‘What about this ’ere plaice?’ he said to Mother, holding up a fish as big as my head. ‘Come on then. Hoooge it is, a proper booty.’
‘It’s a great ole fish yew’ve got there, bor,’ she laughed. ‘But I’ll settle for some herring.’
‘All right,’ he said, chucking the fish down with a slap. ‘Get yer hand off yer ha’penny.’
While he wrapped up the fish in brown paper Mother slipped me a penny for some sweets. Hours I could spend drooling through the sweet-shop window in the market, carefully working out what to spend my money on. Every temptation you can imagine danced in front of my eyes: pineapple chunks, lollipops, liquorice bootlaces, gobstoppers, peanut brittle, toffees, walnut whips, cherry lips, coconut mushrooms and Uncle Joe’s mint balls. I settled for a gobstopper and sucked it happily all the way back to the cottage as Mother strode beside me, swinging her bag of fish and humming to herself.
Friday had to be the best day of the week, easy. Home baking, the market, sweets and freshly cooked fish for tea. But it was also time for our weekly bath. After tea, Mother would drag an old tin bath in from outside and place it in front of the roaring fire. It’d take an age to fill up with pails of water from the copper. Finally, when it was ready, my brother and I would jump in. Helpless laughter filled the smoky kitchen as we flicked soapy suds in the flickering firelight and Mother tried to stop the cats and dogs from leaping in with us.
Father would sit by the fireside watching us, a gentle smile playing on his weary face. I often wonder if he envied us our carefree lives after everything he’d witnessed. Our heads were filled with nothing but the pursuit of fun in them days, while who knows what demons chased through his mind.
Soon the water would be thick with dirt.
‘Reckon you’ve brought half the countryside in with yer, Mollie,’ exclaimed Mother.
Poor Mother and Father. They had to bathe in that water after us, not that you ever heard a mutter of complaint pass their lips, mind you.
While I was enjoying a glorious childhood full of mud-spattered adventures, just ten miles away from my house a little girl was visiting a slightly more impressive house than our own rundown cottage.
The royal residence of Sandringham was not far from Downham and had been home to royalty since 1862. In 1928, as I was dragging myself out of sluices and falling out of trees, Princess Elizabeth, just two years old, was paying a visit there to her grandparents, King George V and Queen Mary, for a no doubt rather different childhood experience.
The sight of the royal family travelling to Sandringham was always a remarkable one. Remarkable in how many people seemed to know when it would happen and also in how little security they had. The Lynn Road in Downham Market would buzz with news that the royals were on their way. Even as young as five or six I remember clutching Mother’s hand and watching as a big stately car slid by, carrying a funny-looking elderly lady gazing imperiously ahead. ‘That’s Queen Alexandra,’ Mother whispered reverently. ‘On her way to Sandringham. Calls it the big house, she does.’ At such a young age I didn’t understand who she was, but I picked up on the ripple of excitement that passed through the small crowd.
After her death in 1925, King George V and Queen Mary continued to live in the much smaller York Cottage on the estate whenever they visited. You can’t keep much from Norfolk folk and thanks to the bush telegraph we were always there waiting with a friendly smile and a wave to greet them home to Norfolk.
I remember one day in particular, can’t have been long after the sluice incident, when someone rapped on the door.
‘King and queen’s on their way,’ rang out a voice.
‘Hop to it, Mollie,’ said Mother and soon we had joined the assembled crowd on the grass verge.
Presently their black car came into view.
Straining my neck, I could just make out King George V’s bushy moustache and, sitting next to him, ramrod straight with a funny little hat perched on her head, was his wife, Queen Mary. I was so close I could have reached out and touched their car window. There were no security outreach riders like they have nowadays. I waved furiously and smiled. I was desperate for the king to glance sideways and reward me with just a little smile or even a nod. Not so much as a flicker passed his poker-straight steely face. The queen didn’t acknowledge our greetings either; they both just stared straight ahead. It was a little ironic that at a time when the king had been adopting a more democratic stance, attempting to bring himself closer to the working-class public, he and the queen could not spare a glance for any of us in the watching crowd.
Oh well. It didn’t dent our affection for them and they were held in high esteem. The king had done himself no end of good by visiting the front line, factories and hospitals during the war, and people felt genuine loyalty to him.
‘There,’ declared Mother, uncrossing her arms. ‘That was a little thrill. Back to work now.’ With that, she went off to scrub the kitchen floor and the crowd dispersed.
As I watched their car vanish off up the Lynn Road, I found myself gripped with a funny little excited feeling that I’d not felt since that time I’d clung to the top of the tallest oak tree in the village. I could only imagine what world they inhabited, the lives they led in comparison to ours.
More emotions bubbled to the surface. Jealousy? No. Intrigue and excitement? Perhaps. But it was a defining moment. Seeing our king and queen up close and personal like that made me realize there was more to life than Downham Market. More to life than Norfolk. But the big question was – what? I could virtually taste the freedom I so much wanted to have. But options to girls my age were limited: shop work, apprenticeship or marriage. None of these were particularly appealing to my young mind.
I was pretty good at school, according to my teacher, but Mother had already set me straight on that score. ‘There’s no money to buy you books, Mollie,’ she’d warned. ‘You’ll have to work when you leave school.’ They couldn’t afford to keep me or pay for me to go on to higher education. There were no government grants in those days.
I was twelve years old, in that funny place straddling childhood and adolescence. I couldn’t keep on running wild and battling with the local bobby forever, could I?
Perhaps Mother wanted me out from under her feet or maybe she was worried I might perish in the ditches or sluices, but not long after this it was decided that I would be allowed to stay with my illegitimate aunt Kate and her husband up in London for a holiday.
‘Really?’ I said, bursting with excitement when Mother told me. ‘I can go to London … on my own?’
‘Well, the train guard’ll keep an eye on you right enough and Kate’ll be there to pick you up from Liverpool Street Station.’
I hopped from foot to foot. ‘Now, now, can I go now?’
She shook her head and laughed as my brother skulked behind her. ‘Get away with ya, Mollie Browne. Tomorrow.’
‘She’ll only stop an’ mardle with strangers, Mum,’ he said. I silenced him with a whack.
‘No talking to any rum sorts, you hear,’ Mother warned.
The day dawned bright and clear and I leapt out of bed like a spring lamb.
What a thing! Mollie Browne, off to London, on her own.
I clambered on to the steam train at Downham and wrestled with the heavy door.
‘Best give it a good thack, Mollie, it’s a bit stiff,’ said the elderly porter.
The doors clattered shut, the whistle let out a deafening shriek and then we were off, puffing our way across the Norfolk fens like a giant steam-blowing monster.
The gentle clattering of the train soon lulled me into a deep sleep, but when I woke it was to a different world. The smoke cleared and I witnessed scenes the like of which I’d never before seen.
‘Oh my,’ I gasped, my eyes growing as wide and shiny as gobstoppers. Pure exhilaration pumped through my veins as I jumped down on to the platform.
Smartly dressed porters rushed about the place like busy bees, hauling great leather trunks on to barrows. Steam trains slid majestically into the station and great clouds of smoke swirled and hung dramatically over the platforms.
Aunt Kate and her husband, Uncle Arthur, picked me up and drove me through the crowded streets. The place was teeming with life and noise, dirt and chaos. Everyone seemed to scurry about their business with meaning and direction. No dawdling to chew the cud over a hedgerow here.
Excitement drummed in my chest. The biggest town I’d ever been to was Downham or King’s Lynn and even they didn’t have many cars on the road. Here, there was traffic belching out smoke everywhere. A great greenish fog hung over the city and cars, trams and buses slid out of the gloom from all directions.
Smart-suited city gents in pinstripes and bowler hats strode purposefully alongside ladies in feminine tailored suits that emphasized their figures. The ladies wore little hats at an angle, with feathers or fake flowers that wiggled like calling cards when they walked.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover had recently been published abroad and was causing shockwaves and everyone knew London was the place for racy behaviour.
This was the place for me.
Uncle Arthur used to be a river policeman and he and Aunt Kate lived in a terraced police house in Chapter Street in Victoria in the City of Westminster. They were reasonably well off, but now Uncle Arthur was retired he worked as a doorman at the Victoria and Albert museum.
‘Would you like to go and have a look tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘Not half,’ I grinned. I’d never been to a museum before.
In 1928 the V&A was one of the world’s leading museums of style and art. Ever since art deco had come on the scene, people had become obsessed with style and London’s rich and fashionable elite flocked to the place. It was also the scene of many a big fancy-dress ball attended by thousands of socialites.
‘You should see ’em, Mollie,’ chuckled Uncle Arthur as he drove us there the next day. ‘Them aristos know how to have a party. Swing bands, champagne and cocktails flowing, and the outfits …’ He grimaced. ‘Make your eyes water. Ladies in them French fashions in next to nothing.’
‘I’d like to go to a ball like that one day,’ I piped up. Big ambitions, seeing as I hadn’t even made it to a village dance in Downham.
‘Can’t see your father liking that, Mollie,’ he snorted. ‘Besides, I’m there to keep the undesirables out. You have to have blue blood in your veins to get a ticket to one of them balls.’
I closed my eyes as I imagined the ladies in their silky bias-cut dresses, the dances, the handsome men. What a world.
When we pulled up at the V&A I gasped. What an incredible building. The stone archway seemed to soar into the sky. It was the most majestic place I’d ever been to.
Uncle Arthur showed me round and with each exhibit room we walked into my jaw dropped further to the floor. The first floor of the museum was groaning with room after room of exquisite artefacts. Watercolours and famous cartoons by Raphael jostled for space with tapestries, glassware and statues. We climbed a floor and there were more treasures: rare books, lace and tiles from Turkey and Egypt, Ancient Greek and Roman bronzes and Oriental Chinese jade carvings. With each room I walked through I grew dizzy from trying to take it all in. I had literally never set eyes on such beautiful things. In the cottage where I grew up we had the most basic furniture, no paintings on the walls, no splashes of colour, except outside in the countryside. This was just unimagined beauty to my sheltered young mind.
‘Aladdin’s cave, ain’t it?’ smiled Uncle Arthur when he saw my face.
I didn’t know who Aladdin was, but I sure as hell would have loved to live in his cave. The rest of the trip was just as mind-boggling. I stared into the windows of Harrods, gazed longingly at the pretty ladies parading around in their dresses and eve
n went to see a Charlie Chaplin flick at the cinema. I was totally dazzled.
A fortnight later, as Aunt Kate put me back on the train, I felt like a changed person.
‘I’m going to live here one day, Aunt Kate,’ I chirruped. ‘It’s like the centre of the whole universe.’
‘I’m sure you will, Mollie,’ she said with a smile, slamming shut the train door and waving at me through the steam.
My time spent in London left a huge impression on me. Back in Norfolk, things felt flat and dull in comparison. Fortunately, I soon had other, more pressing things, on my mind –
Boys!
Up until now boys had just been irritating little brothers or potential playmates. But all at once a new interest stirred inside me. And when the fair rolled into town for its annual Michaelmas visit there suddenly seemed to be boys everywhere.
The heavy fair wagons had rumbled into the marketplace during the first week of October. ‘The Statty’s here!’ I’d cried when I’d spotted the choking grey smoke billowing from the black oily monsters of the fairground chugging up the Lynn Road.
The Statty always brought the villagers out in their droves. The mothers would stand chatting on one side, the fathers would disappear into the nearby pubs and the kids would descend on the rides.
The fair was an excellent opportunity for both the sexes to posture and preen in front of each other like a load of hormonal peacocks. The clanging of the bells on the rides, the mirror mazes and the sight of the helter-skelter, combined with the whiff of teenage testosterone and toffee apples, made for a heady combination. Girls screamed with mock terror as they whizzed round the merry-go-round and the boys pitted their muscle power against each other on the punchball machines. I stared, intrigued at the way their tiny Adam’s apples bobbed up and down, and I shrieked with laughter as they wrestled in play fights and mock ribaldry.
‘Come on, Mollie Browne,’ shouted one local lad. ‘Let’s see ya on the catwalk.’
Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid Page 3