Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid

by Moran, Mollie

  ‘Why does he bother?’ I’d asked, when I found out he wore a dinner suit while he was eating alone. ‘He sits up there all dressed up in his Sunday best, with his menu in a silver frame, but what’s the point? I mean to say, there’s no one there even to see him except the servants and we don’t count.’

  Mr Orchard looked as if he’d been boiled alive.

  ‘How dare you be so impertinent?’ he fumed. ‘Don’t speak about things of which you know nothing.’ His proud face stiffened as he attempted to compose himself. ‘Mr Stocks is the last of a dying breed of gentlemen,’ he sniffed. He looked as if I’d offended him personally, which in a way I suppose I had. With that, he had delicately picked up the silver tray containing Mr Stocks’s usual afternoon tea – a pot of leaf tea, two sandwiches with the crusts off and two fairy cakes, lovingly arranged on a plate.

  He’d carried that tray to his master like it contained the Crown Jewels.

  That same night, all the food Mrs Jones had prepared came back down barely touched. The softest, lightest soufflé looked like it had been nibbled by a mouse, and the delicate lemon sole, a tiny portion anyway, had only a few bites missing.

  Something about those half-eaten dishes had tugged at my heartstrings and I’d suddenly regretted shooting off at the mouth. He’d lost his wife, outlived his son and heir, and his other remaining son was so ill from the war he spent half his time being treated for consumption in Switzerland. It must have been a lonely life. I wouldn’t have swapped places with him for anything.

  If he wanted to spend his whole time shooting furry things while dressed in knickerbockers, then who was I to judge? Poor old gent.

  I stared, transfixed, out of the window at him now as he prepared for the shoot.

  ‘Mollie,’ snapped Mrs Jones, slamming the window closed on my nose. ‘Don’t just stand there gawping, girl, we’ve their lunch to prepare.’

  The gentry would get a huge chicken or beef casserole or Irish stew for their luncheon. Mrs Jones would have it in the range straight after breakfast, so by lunchtime it would be lovely and tender and the meat would just fall off the bone. None of this for the beaters, mind you, they’d get a baked potato, salt beef sandwich and a bottle of beer.

  When the food was ready, Alan and John loaded it all in a box, then put it inside another box, then proceeded to pack in hay around the cavity.

  ‘Keeps it warm,’ explained Flo when she saw me watching.

  ‘Where are they going?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘Mr Stocks eats on a farmhouse at the far end of the estate,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘He don’t have time to come back to the house to eat.’

  He had a number of large, grand, double-fronted farmhouses dotted over his lands. The chauffeur, Mr Thornton, his wife and their sons, Louis and George, occupied one; the head gardener, Mr Dickson, and his wife lived in another. The rest sat empty.

  ‘Now come on,’ Mrs Jones chided, batting away Alan and taking over. ‘Pack all this hay in tighter, lad. I haven’t spent all morning slaving over this for it to arrive cold.’

  Next, they loaded it into the back of the country car and Louis bumped across the fields to deliver it. Talk about meals on wheels. Apparently, on fine days, Mr Stocks and his friends even dined on long tables in the fields waited on by Alan and Mr Orchard, and watched by a herd of curious cows in a neighbouring field.

  When the lads left, I chuckled to myself. What a sight they made, Alan and John clinging to the back of the car in full black livery, holding on to the haybox for dear life.

  With lunch out of the way, I started scrubbing down the table and Mrs Jones and Flo went back to the soup they were preparing for that night’s dinner. It was hare soup and all morning they’d been painstakingly preparing it. I’d managed to talk Flo into skinning the hare, and she’d gutted it, and Mrs Jones had made a soup from it. She’d been at it since breakfast, cooking that while simultaneously preparing the stew.

  I’d watched, fascinated, as she’d wiped the hare with a clean cloth. ‘Never wash game,’ she’d told Flo and me. ‘Washes away all the flavour.’

  Next she’d chopped it up and simmered it with butter, vegetables, herbs and stock. Ever so carefully she’d lifted the carcass from the pan and set about picking the meat from the bones. Once it had all been painstakingly shredded to remove the hare’s fine bones, she handed the meat to Flo who had then pounded it in a mortar and spent an age rubbing it through a fine sieve. What a job that looked and poor Flo’s face had gone bright red with the effort. It had been worth it, though. For when the meat was returned to the stock and stirred through with wine and cornflour, it didn’t half look lovely.

  ‘By, that tastes good,’ said Flo, sipping a spoonful.

  I looked on longingly as Mrs Jones proudly stirred it through. All morning she’d been tasting it, seasoning it and lovingly tending to it, like she was nurturing a baby. The sweet aroma filled the kitchen with a rich warmth that made my mouth water.

  ‘Perfect,’ Mrs Jones declared, a rare smile crossing her pudgy face. ‘Just how the boss likes it.’ She breathed in and let out a sigh of satisfaction that saw her full bosom frantically try to escape from the fabric of her apron. When she relaxed and smiled she looked almost pretty. Her face softened as she gazed at her soup and I suddenly wondered what circumstances had conspired to make her an old maid. Well, rest assured, there would be no such fate for me. I wasn’t ending up on the shelf, oh no. Watching her make that hare soup, I could easily imagine how years of preparing food and being a slave to the kitchen may well have robbed her of her chance at happiness.

  Course, things are never that black and white, but when you’re young, that’s how you see things, isn’t it? As far as I was concerned, if she’d channelled some of the energy that she used to make the boss’s dinner into finding a husband, she wouldn’t be sleeping alone night after night.

  Mind you, in this case it was worth it.

  It may have taken her four hours to make, but Mrs Jones had put her heart and soul into that soup. It was the soup of kings.

  Just then, an almighty explosion rang out through the kitchen.

  ‘What on earth …?’ screeched Mrs Jones as a blur of feathers flashed past us, upending everything in its path. Pandemonium broke out. Soup splattered the walls, glass rained down and in the middle of it a scullery maid and a kitchen maid screamed like a couple of banshees.

  In all the chaos it took me a couple of seconds to register what had happened. A pheasant had come crashing right through the closed kitchen window, showering the whole room in glass.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there!’ screamed Mrs Jones at us. ‘Catch it!’

  I don’t know who looked more terrified, the pheasant or me. The poor thing flapped and scrabbled its way round the kitchen acting like a feathered wrecking ball. Flour canisters were upended, plates came crashing off the table and cutlery went flying. Flo and I darted this way and that, but pheasants are surprisingly fast runners. Soon we were joined by Alan and John and the gardener, who’d overheard the commotion. But even with so many hands that damn pheasant evaded capture, bursting high up into the air the minute anyone got near.

  Suddenly, with the effort of an Olympic athlete, Flo flung herself over the kitchen table and, with a grunt, grabbed the bewildered pheasant by its tail. She hurled it out of the window and it vanished back off into the undergrowth from where it had come with an indignant croaking sound.

  We stood stock-still in the debris. No one uttered a word. Then all of a sudden the hilarity of the situation hit us and one by one we fell about laughing.

  ‘Why didn’t you wring its neck, Flo lass?’ croaked the gardener, with tears streaming down his ruddy cheeks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ panted Flo. ‘I didn’t think about that.’

  A muffled sob came from somewhere near the stove.

  I whirled round and there stood Mrs Jones, surrounded by feathers and glass, with a droplet of her precious hare soup about to drip off the tip of her red nos
e.

  ‘My soup,’ she whimpered.

  Poor old Mrs Jones. All she wanted was a quiet life. But between us giggly girls and a runaway pheasant she wasn’t about to have it any time soon.

  We spent the next hour cleaning up the mess and straining what was left of the soup through hair sieves. Well, we hadn’t time to start again, so we had to improvise. Fortunately none of the gentry seemed aware how close they came to sipping on hare and glass soup.

  In the afternoon Mrs Jones went to lie down and calm her frazzled nerves and, as always after lunch, Flo and I were allowed two hours off before we came back to start dinner. We tore upstairs like whirlwinds to change out of uniforms and into our casuals.

  Flo loved cycling as much as me and in no time at all we were speeding down the quiet country lanes on our old bikes, with the wind flowing in our hair. The bikes were only old rattly things. Granny Esther had bought mine for me for two bob, not like the hundreds they cost now, but they got us around all right.

  After the heat of the kitchen it was the most glorious feeling of freedom. Autumn was brewing and I could smell it in the air. The golden light had cloaked the fields in a misty glow and the trees were shedding their leaves, turning the landscape into a kaleidoscope of red and gold. Even though I’d been on my feet since the crack of dawn, my legs frantically pumped the pedals faster and faster until the hedgerows were just a blur.

  ‘Did you see Mrs Jones’s face when she saw that pheasant?’ shouted Flo behind me.

  ‘Not half,’ I cackled. ‘I thought she was going to burst a blood vessel.’

  Hilgay was only a few miles from my mother’s house and before long we were jumping off our bikes and parking them up against the old stone cottage.

  I sniffed the air.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said, grinning. ‘Baking day.’

  I hadn’t seen Mother much since I’d left for London five months ago the previous May. I couldn’t wait to introduce her to my new friend and share all our adventures.

  Mother fell on me like she hadn’t seen me in years. Endless questions spilled out of her mouth: ‘You’re not working too hard, are you? You’re watching your mouth, ain’t you? You’re learning all you can?’

  ‘Stop fussing,’ I tutted, helping myself to a couple of jam tarts. ‘Make me and Flo a brew, will you, we’ve had a busy morning.’

  As she bustled round the room preparing the tea and Flo and I settled ourselves by the crackling fire, a rush of love and familiarity settled over me. Coming into this cosy farmhouse was like having a warm hug. It felt good to be home. As I looked at my mother running around, for the first time in fifteen years I realized how hard her life was. Her feet barely touched the ground.

  I suppose that’s what hard work does to a girl. It gives you a perspective you lack as a carefree child. Now that I was working I suddenly truly appreciated what a remarkable woman she really was and how much she did for her family. At least I was paid for my efforts.

  My mother loved us unconditionally. She may have come across as tough and had a right hook that could floor a six-foot sailor, but underneath it all she was a warm-hearted soul. I crept up behind her and tucked a few shillings in her apron pocket from my wages.

  ‘Get away with ya, Mollie,’ she said, batting away my hand. ‘You keep it. I daresay you’ve earned it.’

  Flo and I had a lovely couple of hours telling Mother about the pheasant in the soup and the bath overflowing. Her tired eyes lit up like stars and before long she was belly-laughing. At last, standing up, she dabbed at the corner of her eyes with her apron. ‘I haven’t laughed like that since you fell off the catwalk at the funfair, Mollie,’ she chuckled. ‘Now be away with you, you best be off or you’ll git it orf that Mrs Jones when you get ’ome.’

  At this, we shot up. We were only allowed out for two hours after lunch and it’d be more than our life was worth to be late. But just as we got to the door of the cottage, Mother called me back.

  ‘Mollie,’ she said, ‘I’d like you and Flo to borrow this.’ With that, she handed us her old gramophone. ‘I daresay you’ll get more use out of it than me and your father. Poor soul, his lungs ain’t so good nowadays and he spends half his time out in that hut.’

  ‘Thanks, Mother,’ I grinned, planting a kiss on her flour-dusted cheeks.

  As we sped back to Woodhall, the gramophone tucked tightly under my arm, I couldn’t believe my luck.

  ‘Now you can teach me to dance, Flo!’ I yelled.

  At the big house I left the gramophone in the servants’ hall and it was back to the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. Suitably recovered from the pheasant incident, Mrs Jones was getting her revenge by slicing up one of his relatives with a large knife, ready to be roasted for the boss’s dinner. It may have stunk to high heaven while it was hanging in the game room, but once that pheasant was roasted it smelt delicious. Mrs Jones stuffed it with beefsteak and covered the breast with lard and strips of bacon. Every so often she’d take it out and baste it with butter. When it was nearly finished she removed the bacon, lightly dredged it with flour and then basted it again before returning it to the oven. This gave it a lovely glossy sheen. By, it looked succulent.

  Meanwhile, Flo was slicing the potatoes I’d peeled so finely you could have used them as wallpaper. Next, she carefully laid them out on a cloth and pressed another cloth over the top of them to dry them out. Just before Mrs Jones sent the pheasant up, she would drop these sliced potatoes into a saucepan of melted lard for just a few seconds until they were deep fried and golden brown. She’d shake them with salt and arrange them around the bird.

  ‘Now remember, girls,’ Mrs Jones said. ‘Fried potato crisps is the only thing you serve with game, you hear me? Never do potatoes in the usual way. It’s the only way gentlemen like it with their game.’

  Without really realizing it, just by being around Mrs Jones and Flo and by keeping my ears open, I was learning a lot. When Flo had her half-day off I would step into her shoes and for once heeded my mother’s advice to listen and learn all I could. Mrs Jones was good like that, I suppose, in letting me have a go at things.

  Whatever she did, from rolling pastry to filleting fish, marinating meat to garnishing the meals, she did it with such a light, deft hand and eye for detail that everything just looked mouth-watering. She seemed to know everything too. She could make three types of pastry with her eyes shut, from choux to puff to short-crust. I reckoned I could have picked any recipe from her Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and she could have made it there and then on the spot.

  Her mind must have been constantly whirring, planning ahead and working out lunch and dinner menus for the days ahead.

  ‘Here, Mollie,’ she said to me now. ‘Flo’s doing some quenelle of rabbit. Give ’er a hand.’

  Together we pounded the rabbit meat using a mortar and pestle. Watching Flo carefully and following what she did, I started to push it through the sieve raw.

  ‘It’s what gives it a lovely light texture,’ explained Flo. ‘You can only get the meat nice and smooth by working it through.’

  It took ages putting it through that sieve and before long my arms were on fire.

  ‘Not smooth enough,’ commented Mrs Jones over our shoulders. ‘Put it through again. It has to look like pâté.’

  After it was finally worked to her standards, I watched as they mixed the raw meat with egg and sauce and then lightly steamed it.

  Come seven thirty p.m. everything was ready and Mrs Jones stood back and surveyed it all, her beady little eyes flicking over every aspect of the meal. The juicy pheasant was served with the feathered head on one end and the tail feathers at the other, on the ever-present white doily and garnished with watercress. The delicious-looking salty crisps were arranged around the edges. Mr Orchard had decanted some of Mr Stocks’s finest claret to serve up with it. It was a treat for the eyes.

  ‘Wait!’ yelled Mrs Jones, tugging Alan back by his coat-tails. She arranged a sprig of watercress jus
t so. ‘Now you can go.’

  Shaking his head, he disappeared off with the silver butler’s tray.

  Looking back, the food Mr Stocks enjoyed on a nightly basis was restaurant-standard food, always made to such a high quality.

  ‘Cooking’s not hard,’ Mrs Jones said, time and again. ‘Just follow the recipe and you can’t go wrong.’ But I knew the food she cooked was more than that, it had a special touch.

  Later, as we all tucked into rabbit pie in the servants’ hall – staff always had rabbit or hare in shooting season, never partridge or pheasant – we heard the sound of rich, garrulous laughter followed by the faint odour of cigar smoke.

  ‘They’ll be cracking open the port by now,’ remarked Alan enviously. His eyes flashed dangerously through dark lashes.

  ‘Jealous sort, ain’t ya?’ I teased.

  He shot me a look that turned my heart to stone. Then, just as quickly, his face changed and a sly smile spread across it. ‘So, Flo, you going to teach us all to dance then?’ He nodded to my mother’s gramophone.

  ‘Oh yes, Flo, do, go on,’ I urged.

  ‘All right,’ she laughed.

  Wolfing down our rabbit pie, we pushed back the servants’ hall table and I put a record on the gramophone. Soon a lively waltz rang out round the room. Before I had a chance to object, Alan swept me into his arms and Flo partnered John, the hallboy. We all watched as Flo led us through the steps and soon the room was full of the sounds of crashes and bangs as feet were trodden on and tables bashed into.

  Fortunately, if Mr Stocks or any of his cronies had happened to be passing at that moment, they would not have seen our efforts as the servants’ hall floor was especially designed to be so low and the windows so high that the gentry was spared the sight of their servants ‘at leisure’. Just as well as right now we looked like a load of chimps at a tea party.

  ‘I can’t get the hang of this,’ grumbled Alan.

  ‘Let’s try this instead,’ Flo suggested tactfully. ‘This is the Palais Glide. It’s all the rage in America. Start on the left foot,’ she said, linking her arm in John’s. ‘And we dance in a row left to right. Point left heel diagonally, step left behind right, step right to side, cross left foot in front of right.’