As we cycled back to Woodhall I was brimming over with confidence at my plan. Like Cinderella, we would go to the ball – well, village dance.
After all, how hard could it possibly be to sneak out?
Tips from a 1930s Kitchen
…
OLD-FASHIONED IRISH STEW
Eat like a lord of the manor! This is the Mrs Beeton recipe for Irish stew that I used to cook for my boss and all his landed friends after a hard morning’s shooting. Enjoy yours with a great hunk of crusty bread and a glass of red wine, perfect for chilly days.
3 lb (1.35 kg) neck mutton
4 lb (1.8 kg) potatoes
1 large onion
12 button onions
1½ pints (845 ml) stock
Salt and pepper
Finely chopped parsley
Cut the meat into medium pieces and trim off some of the fat. Wash, peel and slice the potatoes and the large onion. Blanch the button onions and peel them. Put a layer of potatoes at the bottom of a stewpot, cover these with a layer of meat, add slices of onion and a few button onions, and season well with salt and pepper. Repeat until all ingredients are used up. Make sure the top layer is potatoes.
Add the stock and bring to the boil, skimming off the fat as it bubbles to the surface. Cover the stewpot and gently cook in the oven for one and a half hours, or until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked and the stew loses its watery appearance.
Pile in the centre of a hot dish and sprinkle on a little chopped parsley before serving.
HOUSEHOLD TIP
Got some leftover stock, gravy or wine? Simply pour it into ice-cube trays, freeze and then pop out to add to stews or soups as and when you need it. Waste not, want not.
6
Mop Caps and Mischief
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life;
for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson
Clinging to the fire escape three floors up with the icy Norfolk wind whipping at my hair and face, I gulped hard and tried not to look down.
‘R-remind me again why we’re doing this,’ whimpered Flo in the darkness. ‘It’s perishing up here and I don’t know how much longer I can hold on for.’ She clung to the ladder above me like a limpet, her knuckles as white as a ghost and her blue eyes bulging with fear.
It was a fair-enough question under the circumstances. Some girls will go to any lengths to get out, but this had to be our most hare-brained plan yet. Ever since Mrs Jones had banned us from going to the dance three villages along we’d silently seethed about it, until finally we’d decided we were going to sneak out and go anyway.
When I’d first put forward the idea, all swaggering bravado and cocksure confidence, it had seemed so easy. Now it seemed, well, plain daft really. But it was too late to back out now. Besides which, Flo’s foot was resting on my head, which made shinning back up the slippery fire escape really quite difficult.
‘Come on,’ I hissed. ‘We’re nearly there.’ With that, I loosened my grip and started to edge further down. Just then, my foot slipped off the ladder, knocking a clod of moss and mud from the stone wall. I watched it plummet to the ground beneath and land with a soft thud.
I heard someone stir inside.
‘Sshh,’ I hissed to Flo.
Suddenly my hands seemed to lose all strength and I whizzed down the slippery fire escape like I was on a helter-skelter. Past Mrs Jones’s room I slid, faster and faster. Down I plummeted, gathering speed, until I landed in an ungainly heap on the conservatory roof.
Oh crumbs. Please don’t break.
The Victorian conservatory at the back of the building, which housed Mr Stocks’s rare collection of palms and orchids, was his pride and joy. Goodness knows how old the sheets of glass in the roof were. But the most important question was: would they take the combined weight of a scullery and kitchen maid?
Flattening my body out, I slid myself over the roof, commando style, breathlessly inching myself nearer to the edge.
‘The scrapes you get us into, Mollie,’ muttered Flo behind me.
Hardly daring to breathe and half-expecting to find myself crashing through the glass roof at any moment, I made my way to the edge of the conservatory roof. So relieved was I when I reached it intact, I immediately swung one leg over the edge and slithered down the side, before landing in a heap on the ground.
The air rushed out of my body and for a minute I saw stars.
This is the back of Woodhall. Can you see the fireescape ladder Flo and I used to sneak out of the servants’ quarters to go to the dance?
A strange gasping noise sounded above and a second later Flo landed with a thump and a tangle of limbs next to me.
‘This dance better be worth it, Mollie Browne,’ she groaned, shaking her head and clambering to her feet.
Once we’d brushed the mud off our knees, we tiptoed to the stables and, quiet as church mice, pulled out our old bikes. As we silently crept past the front of the house the stag antlers loomed ominously from above the doorway, casting dark shadows on the driveway. Mrs Jones would string us up on them if she caught us! Shivering, I pulled my old wool coat more tightly round myself and went to say something to Flo, but suddenly found I was too cold to talk.
We were soon rattling down the dark country lanes. The wild weather swirled over the freezing Norfolk fields and thick fog rolled in off the coast. It seemed to seep through my coat and into my very bones. Still, at least it was clean fog, not like the mucky green fog that settled like a heavy blanket over London.
Suddenly I thought longingly of my bed.
‘Think how much fun we’ll have!’ I said in the most confident voice I could muster. ‘It’ll be worth it, right enough.’
Flo said nothing, just cycled stoically on with her teeth chattering.
Finally we made it to the dance. It was the usual do – a dusty village hall, a smattering of hormonal farmhands, tepid tea and foxtrots. But once inside, did Flo and I enjoy ourselves as much as we had last time? Not for a minute. The lads who’d invited us were nowhere to be seen and every time someone looked at us I convinced myself it was a friend of Mrs Jones. After one lacklustre foxtrot and a cup of tea, I was finished.
‘It’s no good,’ I whispered to Flo. ‘I’m frightened to death. I’m a bag of nerves.’
‘Me too,’ she said, nodding. ‘What if someone recognizes us and splits on us? We’ll get the sack. Why on earth did we dream this up?’
We cycled home in a state of abject terror. How we made it back into our bedroom, to this day I will never know, but I do know that incident showed us up for what we were. Timid girls. We could talk the talk, but really we lived in terror of our bosses.
We weren’t really rebellious, just high-spirited and desperate to get out and see and experience life. Working fifteen hours a day in the kitchens under the stern and exacting eye of an all-controlling butler and cook made life a bit claustrophobic at times. All we wanted was a little harmless fun. I doubted very much they’d see it that way, mind. We had deliberately defied Mrs Jones’s orders and in 1931 that was a crime punishable by instant dismissal.
For weeks after that we crept around and barely uttered a word. Even Mr Orchard noticed our new demure personalities.
‘Glad to see you girls applying yourselves and not giving Mrs Jones cheek,’ he smiled smarmily one morning. ‘One learns more when one uses one’s ears first and mouth second.’
I poked a tongue out at him as he retreated from the room. But still, each and every morning we convinced ourselves that today would be the day Mrs Jones would find out and we’d get the sack. And then what? Without a good reference we’d never get another job and it would be straight back to our villages and homes with our tails between our legs.
References were everything in them days. Half the time I don’t think people even got much of an interview. You wouldn’t get a job unless the cook or housekeeper said you were honest, straight, hard-working and from a goo
d family. Imagine what Mrs Jones would have said had she known we expressly disobeyed her orders. Not least risked our lives scaling the side of the house! She’d have sent us packing and I daresay my mother would have given me the birch, she’d have been that furious. I’d have been packed off to work in Granny Esther’s shop with a flea in my ear and no chance of escaping to London ever again.
That was the problem, you see. Nowadays young people don’t have the respect for their elders that we did. Got yourself pregnant, lost your job, failed your exams, kicked off your college course? So what? What’s your mother going to do about it? Kick you out? Not likely. Even if she did, someone would have to take responsibility for you. The state, like as not. But back when Flo and I were gadding about, there were no state handouts and we lived in fear, and I really mean fear, of a dressing-down from our parents.
If they were to turn us out of our homes and we had no husband to rely on or job to go to, what was our fate? No council flats or queuing up for jobseeker’s allowance and unemployment benefit, that’s for certain. It would have been the workhouse for us. That place was horrific – like a real-life nightmare – and the fear of it was larger than life.
We were forever treading that fine line between being typical teenagers, high on life and full of spirit, but mindful not to overstep the line for fear of where it could lead us. So we kept our heads down and worked like Trojans. We tried to behave, we really did, but teenage girls being what they are, mischief was never far away …
By the following year, with my job still intact and another London season under my belt, my mind was forever wandering back to the eternal question: when would I get a boyfriend?
It was simply inconceivable to me that I would end up in service for the rest of my life. Along the way I’d heard about women who’d married butlers in the same household and ended up staying in employment together under the same roof for evermore, before retiring on to a cottage on the estate. I couldn’t have thought of anything worse. Why would you want to have to stare at your husband day in, day out? Or worse still, end up like Mrs Jones. Too old to have a choice and stuck working for the same employer until you probably keeled over mid-service.
‘What about Alan?’ said Flo one night as we cleared down after dinner.
‘Good grief, no!’ I gasped. ‘Mr Orchard would have a blue fit if he thought we were cavorting below stairs. Can you ever imagine?’
‘He’s good-looking,’ she added.
With his jet-black hair and chiselled features, he was handsome all right.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s got a terrible temper on him. He goes up like smoke in a bottle. Besides which, he can’t dance neither.’
‘George then?’ she suggested.
George! A light bulb pinged on in my head. I’d never thought of George before. I was usually too busy lusting over his older brother to pay him much attention. But he was reasonable-looking all right. I’d seen him out there working in the fields. His body looked like it had been carved from marble and he was strong too – he tossed those hay bales about like they were kittens.
Yes, I decided, I could do far worse than George.
‘I’ll sort it for you,’ said Flo confidently.
Sure enough, on her next half-day off, she just happened to be passing the field George was working in.
‘If you ask Mollie to the local pictures, she’ll go with you,’ she told him.
‘Really?’ he said, looking up from his pitchfork in surprise. ‘Right then,’ he spluttered. ‘I’ll do that then.’
‘All sorted,’ said Flo when she came back to Woodhall. ‘The things I do for you, Mollie.’
A few days later I was tackling a pile of dirty dishes in the scullery when Flo sidled up next to me. ‘Visitor for you,’ she said with a wink.
I came out, wiping my filthy hands on my apron, and who should be standing by the kitchen door, cap in hand, but George.
‘H-hello, Mollie,’ he stuttered, a red flush sneaking up his neck. ‘Happen I’d like to take you to the pictures on your next half-day off. If you’d like to, that is.’
I smiled broadly. ‘I’d really like that, George,’ I said.
He twisted his cap nervously, opened his mouth to say something then obviously thought better of it. We stood there in awkward silence, until Alan stalked by.
‘Make sure he has a bath first, Mollie,’ he snapped. ‘He’ll stink the picture house out with the smell of cow dung.’
George’s face fell and I turned on Alan.
‘Get away with ya, he’s more of a gentleman than you’ll ever be.’
I turned back to George. He looked mortified and stared at the floor. Poor fella. That Alan could be plain vicious at times.
‘Frankenstein’s on at Downham,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we go and see that? I’m off tomorrow afternoon. I’ll meet you out front on our bikes.’
The next day he was waiting for me at the end of the lane. His hair was combed down neatly and he was nervously clutching a bunch of wildflowers he’d picked for me. He’d obviously shined his shoes and was wearing his good pair of trousers. Judging by the way his face shone he’d clearly scrubbed hard to remove all traces of the farm.
Bless him.
He was a gentle, sweet man, proper Norfolk bred and born, as they say. But as I pushed my bike over to meet him, I noted with a trace of disappointment that there was no nervous flip-flop of excitement in my tummy. My heart simply didn’t turn over in the same way it did when I saw his handsome older brother, Louis.
‘These are for you, Mollie,’ he said, thrusting the bouquet at me and blushing furiously as he stared at the ground. ‘I wanted to find some flowers that matched your eyes, except yours are brown, so I couldn’t find none. Quite unusual to have a redhead with brown eyes …’ he mumbled, trailing off.
‘That’s all right,’ I beamed. ‘I’m unusual, right enough. My mum reckons we must have been descended from Vikings.’
‘You’re certainly brave enough to be a Viking warrior,’ he said with a shy smile.
I thought back to when Flo and I climbed out of the top-floor windows to escape to the dance and grinned. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Hope I don’t look like a warrior, mind you.’
He looked mortified. ‘Of course not, Mollie. I didn’t mean that. You’re pretty … very pretty.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, giving him a playful tap on the arm. ‘Come on, let’s get going or else we’ll miss the film.’
As we cycled there I was full of it.
‘I hear it’s a talkie,’ I babbled. ‘I’ve never seen a talkie afore, have you?’
George shook his head slowly. I realized he was a man of few words. Not that it mattered as I kept up a constant stream of chatter.
‘People speaking on films,’ I laughed. ‘Whatever next?’
Up until the late 1920s the only films we’d seen were silent films, but in 1932, the same picture house that I’d watched all those Charlie Chaplin films in every Saturday afternoon as a child was now starting to show talkies. Sadly, this meant old Mrs Long had to pack away her piano and was out of a job. No more bashing away on the keys to provide a dramatic backdrop.
‘That’s a sign of the times, eh?’ I said to George as we settled into our seats to watch the film. He nodded and pulled out an old brown paper bag of slightly furry pineapple chunks. Dusting one down, he offered it to me with a broad grin.
As I nestled back into my seat, sucking on my sweet, I realized how happy I was. I was courting. I was actually courting a fella.
The cinema was packed to the rafters. They always was back then. I supposed it was because between the wars life was tough and at seven pence a pop (five pence on a Saturday afternoon) cinema provided an affordable form of escapism. They didn’t call it the golden age of cinema for nothing. They made some marvellous films back then. Charlie Chan, Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers had the cinemas packed out night after night. By 1930 there were 250 cinemas in London alone, double the number fro
m 1911.
Humour was popular, but what everybody seemed to be lapping up most was horror and thrillers. The monster horror film Frankenstein had been wowing cinemagoers in London for ages, but these things always took a little while to reach the country. Now it was here in Norfolk and expectations were high.
The lights dimmed and a ripple of excitement ran through the darkened picture house. Just then, the screen flickered into life and suddenly the lead character, Edward Van Sloan, stepped from behind a red velvet curtain and spoke – actually spoke – in a low, sinister voice.
‘We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told.’
‘It’s like he’s right here in the room, ain’t it?’ I whispered. George nodded, his eyes as wide as saucers, clearly struck dumb.
‘It deals with the two great mysteries of creation – life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now’s your chance to – uh, well, we warned you.’
George gulped hard. ‘W-would you like to go, Mollie?’ he stuttered.
‘Course not,’ I said gleefully. ‘I can’t wait, this is going to be terrifying.’
‘Ah, of course,’ he blustered. ‘I was just thinking of your nerves.’
Poor George. He hid it well in the gloom of the cinema, but I could see he was scared by the way his feet were tapping up and down. The film cut to Frankenstein, holed up in an abandoned watchtower, which he had equipped as a laboratory. Folk must have been more naive back then as the whole audience was gripped, frozen to our seats as we watched Frankenstein assemble his monster and attempt to bring him back to life. Women screamed and men jumped out of their seats. None of us had seen anything like it in our lives before. And when Frankenstein and his hunchback assistant raised their dead creature on to the operating table, there was a collective intake of breath. There was a terrific crash of thunder; Frankenstein’s electric machines crackled into life and suddenly the monster’s hand began to twitch.
Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid Page 13