…
PROPER FISH AND CHIPS
In my day, fish and chips were always wrapped in newspaper (sometimes even the News of the World – I often wonder if anyone had the pleasure of seeing me in my swimmies smiling back at them while they ate their cod and chips). We used to pay 3d for a portion of fish and chips. If you saved up your old newspapers and took them in with you when you bought your fish and chips they’d pay ha’penny for twelve papers so it was worth doing! Fish and chips served in newspaper always tasted better. It’s such a shame the health and safety brigade got on to it and banned it. Course, at Cadogan Square, we could never have served up fish and chips to Mr Stocks wrapped in a paper. Mr Orchard would have had a blue fit! This is the way we did them and they tasted delicious.
Peel and slice potatoes into chips. Heat enough lard in a pan to cover chips and wait until lard is hot, put chips in pan and cook until soft. Take out of pan. Reheat fat until very hot and place chips back in for two minutes or until they’re really crisp. Drain on kitchen paper. Save lard for next time.
Cut fish into required sizes and dry with kitchen paper. Flour well and dip into beaten egg. Cover well with white breadcrumbs and shake off surplus. Heat lard, put in fish and cook until golden brown, then drain and serve with anchovy sauce.
For the anchovy sauce, melt 2 oz (50 g) butter, add 2 level tablespoons flour and mix well over a low heat. Add milk until the sauce reaches required thickness. Add anchovy essence, salt and pepper, and simmer for one minute.
HOUSEHOLD TIP
A cotton bud dipped in mouthwash is the perfect thing to clean those hard-to-reach places on ornaments, etc. – also good on computer keyboards and mobile phones, so I’m told.
9
Castles in Spain
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I’ll never forget seeing Wallis Simpson coming out of a hotel on Park Lane in London, in early 1935. I close my eyes and I can still see her hard face and whippet-thin body descending a staircase, with Edward scurrying after her like a lapdog.
Some people just have ‘It’ – a sort of star quality that makes people stop in their tracks and stare. Today, there are no end of programmes devoted to finding people with that extraordinary quality that makes them stand out, just as there are many celebrity couples who fill column inches. Well, back then we didn’t have Posh and Becks, Angelina and Brad or Beyoncé and Jay-Z. We had Wallis and Edward, and the whole of the country was buzzing about their scandalous relationship. Edward was causing shockwaves with his obsession with this American divorcee and I must admit that I, like everyone else, was happy to take my part in the vilification of Wallis Simpson.
It was a whole year since my own illicit flirtation with one of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts had got me into trouble below stairs and since then I had kept my head down and worked hard. I suppose you could say I knew a fair bit about being involved in a relationship that was destined to fail and there is no doubt that the blossoming love between Wallis and Edward was just as looked down upon as my own with Henry the Blackshirt.
London – indeed, the whole country – disapproved of this twice-divorced, domineering American whose steely ambition glinted as brashly as the rocks on her fingers. How could he court a woman who had cheated on her husband and expect us to accept her? Preposterous. Folk from high society upstairs to kitchen maids downstairs and the working classes all frowned upon it. Looking back, the country’s condemnation of their love affair was probably over the top, but in those innocent yet judgemental times their relationship seemed scandalous and out of step.
She was up to no good and we knew it. Servants’ halls and drawing rooms the length and breadth of the country were alive with gossip about it. We didn’t have the Internet back then and British newspapers didn’t report on their relationship, yet somehow we all knew.
Never underestimate the ability of servants to spread gossip! I’d spent the last year hearing titbits about their blossoming relationship conducted at parties and on yachts in the Mediterranean and now here, in the early spring of 1935, I was actually seeing her in the flesh! The jostling crowd and the ripple of electric excitement that ran through it had been enough to alert me to the possibility of something scandalous. If there was so much as a whiff of something good going on, I wanted to be a part of it! I’d only popped out because Mrs Jones was running short on sugar – still, two minutes wouldn’t hurt.
Pushing my way to the front of the crowd, I gasped when I realized who I was looking at. Happen I was right to barge my way through, after all.
‘Is that who I think it is?’ I breathlessly asked a young lady to my left, probably a secretary on her lunch break.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, hardly able to contain her excitement at the story she’d have to tell when she got back to the office. ‘It’s Edward and that new lady of his, Wallis. They’ve just got back from some holiday in Europe apparently.’
‘Fancy,’ I gasped.
The secretary turned to look at me and her eyes flashed angrily. ‘Hard-faced bitch, ain’t she? Look at ’er. Who does she fink she is?’
I stared at Wallis in her immaculately cut navy wool suit and the first thing that struck me was the determined set of her jaw. She had a reputation as a ruthless social climber with a voracious sexual appetite and, by the way she conducted herself, she clearly wasn’t doing herself any favours.
She was as brassy as Mr Stocks’s front-door knocker.
A policeman was holding back the crowds so she could walk down the steps and into a waiting motor car. Wallis stopped and glared frostily at us all in the crowd. Edward, still walking down the steps, received the same icy glare when he reached the car, and by the way she took his arm and hustled him in, you could tell who wore the trousers in that relationship. He, meanwhile, gave her a look of utter devotion and adoration. He looked like a lovesick puppy, silly sap.
An impressive emerald and diamond bracelet, probably a gift from Edward, glinted on her tiny bird-like wrist as she gripped the car door and lowered herself in. With one final malevolent stare, she disappeared into the back of the big flashy car and their chauffeur drove them off up London’s Park Lane.
‘Did. You. See. Her!’ spat the secretary through pursed lips. ‘Apparently she’s juggling Edward and her husband.’ A scowl settled on her face as she crossed her arms firmly across her chest. ‘Floozy.’
‘It won’t last,’ I said. ‘She’s up to all sorts and he’s a playboy bachelor.’
The secretary looked left, then right, then lowered her voice and leaned in. ‘Apparently she seduced him into bed with some saucy tips she picked up,’ she said in a wicked whisper.
My eyes widened. ‘Can you imagine?’ I murmured, thoroughly enjoying this juicy bit of gossip. I’d only popped out to get a packet of sugar – this was an unexpected bonus!
‘And,’ she went on, ‘she stays so skinny by having Earl Grey tea, grapefruit juice and nothing else. Imagine!’
I shook my head in wonder. ‘Imagine,’ I agreed.
I wouldn’t get a day’s work done below stairs if that was all I ate. In nearly four years of service there had barely been a day when I hadn’t started with a plate of bacon and eggs and ended with a lovely roast dinner. I wasn’t overweight – Alan had told me I had a lovely figure – but I had decent curves all right. Judging by the size of Wallis, I doubted whether she’d ever let a plate of Mrs Jones’s beef and Yorkshire pudding past those brittle lips. She went straight up and down, like a piece of paper. Still, I suppose when all you do all day is drape yourself over a yacht, you don’t need that much sustenance. Wallis Simpson would no more scrub steps or rake down a coal fire than she would fly to the moon.
That was the problem with her and some of these other society folk. Their lives were too rarefied, too indulged. They didn’t know what it was to live in the real world. Their days were just a whirlwind of yachts, parties and champagne. The life of bloomin’ Riley! Ridiculous. Th
e woman wouldn’t know a decent day’s work if it came up and hit her between the eyes. Imagine her cutting it a day below stairs under Mrs Jones’s stern eye.
The secretary threw one final furious scowl in the direction of their car before stomping back off to work.
All my life I’d had to listen to endless lectures about the evils of shameful behaviour and, more recently, Mr Orchard’s sniffy reproaches about bringing shame on the house with my conduct, yet some hussy like Wallis could flaunt it about all over Europe and do whatever she pleased. Double standards, if you asked me. Still, I sniffed as I marched back to Cadogan Square on foot, I was better than that old trollop!
As I walked, I pondered my situation. I had been in Cadogan Square for four years. Flo had long gone, seeking her fortune elsewhere; Alan had vanished in a furious blaze of anger; even Phyllis, the new girl, was well settled in and gaining in confidence daily. I, meanwhile, was stuck stock-still, every day rolling out the same with a kind of dull inevitability. From peeling spuds to laying out cook’s table and making pastry, I could do it all with my eyes shut now.
I’d been just fourteen, a girl, when I started. Now I was nearly nineteen and still unmarried. Was I in danger of becoming an old relic like Mr Orchard and Mrs Jones, destined to spend my life as their whipping boy? On the other hand, could I leave my nice cushy number? I may have started work at six thirty a.m. and rarely finished until nine thirty or ten p.m., but in that respect I was no different to any other domestic servant and the work was all the same. Once you’ve scrubbed one lot of steps, you’ve scrubbed them all. I daresay some other member of the gentry would still demand a five-course dinner each and every night. But at least Mr Stocks was a gentleman. Two weeks’ paid holiday a year was unheard of below stairs, as was getting two hours off after lunch every afternoon, not having to do the annual spring clean and getting a cash present instead of the usual old scratchy stockings at Christmas. Not to mention the delicious leftovers that made their way below stairs every day. I didn’t know many kitchen maids in the 1930s who got paid holiday and got to eat sirloin steak every Sunday! Nor could I ignore the fact that, as an elderly gentleman, he wasn’t downstairs pestering us young girls. I knew from overhearing local gossip at dances that some of the prettier young servants were forever being pestered to sleep with their young male bosses. It started with a patted bottom and a sly wink and ended God knows where! Tiptoeing along creaky corridors after hours as frisky male gentry ended up the wrong side of the baize door!
In Granny Esther’s day, most of the local gentry saw it as a perk of their social position to bed the best-looking girls, like it was their feudal right to sleep with their kitchen maids. Can you ever imagine? Like Granny Esther, it would be the young girls who were left to deal with the consequences and God forbid you had an unwanted pregnancy. So in some respects I was very lucky. An elderly gentleman who cared for his staff and left us alone was definitely a plum position to have found myself in.
Then a terrifying image of me aged fifty flashed into my mind, red-faced and sour and still grating horseradish and making fairy cakes for Captain Eric at Cadogan Square. I shuddered at the very thought. No, I had to get out. I’d go as stale as month-old bread otherwise. There were domestic staff agencies everywhere. I would write to one and register my interest. Someone would take me on, surely? I may have been a handful, but I could graft all right, and there was little I didn’t know about cooking now, thanks to Mrs Jones and Flo.
During the last year Mr Orchard and I had reached an uneasy truce. He’d never brought it up, but I sensed I’d never be forgiven for appearing in the News of the World in my swimming costume or for cavorting with fascist Blackshirts or for my relationship with the footman. I’d broken virtually every rule in the house. Thank God I’d never got myself in the family way. Mind you, I’d never be that daft!
My thoughts evaporated as I arrived back at Cadogan Square. I was bursting to pass on my news.
‘Guess who I saw?’ I crowed, dumping the bag of sugar on the kitchen table. No one looked up from their duties. ‘Only Wallis Simpson, coming out of a hotel,’ I went on, undeterred.
Mrs Jones finally looked up and her red jowls wobbled in annoyance. ‘Hussy,’ she sniffed, returning her attentions to a large trout she was filleting.
‘Fancy that, Mollie,’ said Irene, the housemaid, when she heard. ‘Was she as skinny in real life?’
‘I should say,’ I laughed. ‘Like a paper doll.’
‘Anyway, never mind that, I’ve got better news,’ Irene replied.
‘Better than seeing Wallis Simpson?’ I scoffed.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Boss has said we can have time off to watch the Silver Jubilee. Got to be better than clearing out your chamber pot, Mollie Browne,’ she teased, patting me affectionately on the arm.
Now that was good news. Time off, any time off, was a good thing. My spine tingled in excitement. Not since I’d seen King George V travelling along the Lynn Road in Norfolk and Princess Elizabeth playing in her back garden in London had I felt so excited. The prospect of seeing our beloved royals was always something to look forward to and, unlike seeing Wallis, was cause for celebration, not derision.
As the big day of King George V’s Silver Jubilee drew nearer, the feeling of anticipation and excitement was mounting. Not just below stairs at Number 24 Cadogan Square, but in homes all over Britain. I suppose, in many ways, it was a little like the wedding day of Prince William and Kate Middleton and, just as for their royal wedding, and indeed the queen’s Diamond Jubilee, so too did plans reach fever pitch for the king’s Silver Jubilee. There may be seventy-six years between these events, but the deep sense of national pride was just as strong, if not stronger, back then.
We adored our royalty. We felt nothing but pride for our king and were ready to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of his coronation. He was popular, loved and respected by the masses for his common sense. Course, many now see him as an aloof and stern figure, making his stuttering son’s life hell in the film The King’s Speech, but King George V was very popular and held in high esteem, especially after his leadership during the First World War when he’d visited factories, front lines and hospitals. He had set an example of confidence, courage and sacrifice and a recent recovery from a serious illness only cemented that affection. He was devoted to his wife, Queen Mary, and to the empire.
Consequently, there was an enormous outpouring of patriotism. Street parties were planned all over the country and bunting and flags fluttered from every street lamp. Even the smart railings of Cadogan Square were ablaze with red, white and blue. Babies dressed in Union Jacks were pushed along in their Silver Cross coach prams and little children dressed in red, white and blue crêpe paper dresses ran giggling through the streets. Stamps and medals were issued and even new public parks opened in his honour.
By the time the day of the celebrations dawned, 6 May 1935, me, Irene and Phyllis were a giggling, over-excited mess.
‘Here, girls,’ said Irene, handing us all a flag on a stick. ‘I’ve got us these to wave as the coach goes past.’
‘Thanks, Irene,’ I said. ‘Wonder if I wave it high enough he might notice me and give a wave back.’
‘Unlikely,’ grumped Mrs Jones unkindly. ‘He never noticed you when it was just you and him on the Lynn Road.’
I poked my tongue out as soon as her back was turned. Old grouch.
‘You not coming, Mrs Jones?’ piped up Phyllis.
She whirled round, hands on hips, all ready to play the martyr. ‘How can I?’ she blazed, glaring at us accusingly. ‘I’ve a soup to finish, pastry to make, not to mention savouries and puddings for tonight and I’ve got an empty kitchen. Now you make sure you come straight back as soon as that coach has gone past, you hear me?’
‘We will,’ we all chorused.
But even Mrs Jones’s surly mood did nothing to dull our spirits and we raced up the area steps and into a great tidal wave of human life, all making their way along
the smart streets to Hyde Park.
For the first time the streets around Cadogan Square were heaving with gentry and their domestic servants all walking together, shoulder to shoulder, in one mass of happy humanity. It was the first time Cadogan Square had come anything close to resembling a community. Everyone was dressed up, everyone excited about the spectacle ahead.
Many life-altering things happened in 1935. The driving test became compulsory, Penguin Books published the first paperbacks in Britain, steel was produced in Corby, Stanley Baldwin took over as prime minister and the Nobel Prize was given for the discovery of the neutron, but for those that can remember, King George V’s Silver Jubilee stands out as the happiest of times. Up and down the country, every single road, more or less, held a street party with games, fancy dress, floats, bunting and afternoon tea, but here in London we were actually watching history unfold.
By the time we reached the roundabout at Hyde Park, the crowds were heaving and hundreds of people lined the streets. Little did I know, but my old chum Flo was watching it by the Ritz, not half a mile away.
‘Here, girls,’ I said. ‘Follow me.’
With that, we pushed our way to the front of the railings. It was a tight squeeze. All around us the atmosphere was jubilant. People held up vast banners: ‘King George, Queen Mary, long may they reign. God bless them.’ Everyone was dressed in their Sunday best and had bright smiles plastered on their faces.
‘There’s an awful lot of people, ain’t there?’ trembled Phyllis, still not fully recovered from her experience at Speakers’ Corner.
‘Stick with me,’ I grinned, squeezing her hand.
We knew the carriage would be coming soon, en route from Buckingham Palace to St Paul’s Cathedral. Suddenly a huge round of applause and deafening cheers broke out. My skin prickled with goosebumps as the atmosphere in the crowd became electric.
‘It’s the king!’ screamed Irene, waving her flag like mad. ‘Long live the king!’
Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid Page 22