‘Only Mr Johnnie’s,’ she giggled. ‘I know they’re his as they’ve got a sort of grey lining.’
The staff were full of it.
‘Never!’ gasped another housemaid. ‘Dirty old scoundrel.’
Silly old Johnnie. You really couldn’t keep anything hidden from the servants! Whether Mrs Luddington ever found out about randy Johnnie and her friend Miss Verity I don’t know, but I daresay he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t keep it zipped up. Nevertheless, the wedding was a resounding success for Wallington Hall and the Luddington family and I was very proud to have played my part in it.
‘We’re all going out on Mr Luddington’s boat for the day,’ Mrs Luddington announced one morning, not long after the wedding. I knew Mr Luddington had a boat he liked to take out on the Norfolk coast, and he’d often return at dusk with some big old fish he’d slap down on the kitchen table for me to gut, fillet and serve up for dinner. Now it seemed the whole family was going to enjoy some time out. ‘Why don’t you take the day off?’ Mrs Luddington continued with a smile. ‘You deserve it.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Luddington,’ I replied. ‘Very generous.’
Finding myself in the rare position of having nothing to do, I strolled across the parkland to find Tom the chauffeur leaning over a fence and stroking the mane of one of Mr Luddington’s magnificent horses. Joining him, I stroked the horse’s velvety neck. Taking fright, he flared his nostrils, tossed his mane back and took off over the fields.
‘Thoroughbred,’ explained Tom. ‘He’s a booty all right, but a flighty one, make no mistake. Won’t let anyone ride him. Everyone’s tried, even Mr Luddington, but no one can stay on him for long,’ he chuckled. ‘They all end up face down in the dirt.’
Uh-oh. There was that feeling! The same feeling I always got when there was a challenge or dare being issued. The words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop myself.
‘Happen I can,’ I boasted. ‘I’m brilliant with horses. I know all about them. I spent my childhood riding them.’
‘You?’ spluttered Tom. ‘Don’t talk daft, Mollie. You’re just a slip of a girl. You’ll never stay on him.’
The human condition really is a funny thing, isn’t it? The strange processes that go round the old grey matter. As soon as someone tells me I can’t or shouldn’t or won’t do something, it quickly becomes nothing short of irresistible.
‘Just watch me,’ I said, climbing the fence and swinging my leg over. ‘I’m not afraid of anything or anyone, including this horse.’
‘This should be fun,’ Tom laughed, following me into the field.
Tiptoeing up to the creature, I placed one hand gently on his quivering nose. ‘Steady boy,’ I soothed, stroking his trembling neck.
Tom was right. He really was a beauty. His chiselled neck and gleaming mane glistened with drops of rain and his high withers moved with the grace of a dancer. No matter that I’d only ever ridden a carthorse before. After dealing with a creature as frisky as Alan, my temperamental footman, I could cope with this beast!
‘Give us a leg-up,’ I whispered to Tom, who was hovering behind me.
Gently holding on to the horse’s neck with my left hand and throwing my right arm over his back, I put my left foot into Tom’s cupped hands and propelled my body up and over, on to the thoroughbred’s magnificent back.
I’d made it. I was on!
Gulping, I realized the ground looked quite far away from up here. I stroked the horse’s mane and straight away he started to nervously dance about, skittering from side to side.
‘Hold on, Mollie,’ said Tom. ‘He’s got that look about him. I think he’s going to –’
Suddenly the horse reared up on his hindquarters and, with an outraged snort, took off at full speed.
‘– bolt!’ cried Tom.
His words were lost on the wind as we careered across the field. The bushes and trees became a blur of green as we thundered along.
‘Whoa, boy,’ I whimpered, clinging on to his mane for dear life. ‘Slow down.’
My heart was in my mouth. We were heading straight towards the edge of the field and the ditch! Oh crumbs. This was going to end badly.
Suddenly I had the strangest sensation of flying. Everything went into slow motion as the ditch rushed up to meet me. Funny the things that pop into your mind when you know you’re about to make a total fool of yourself. I only hoped Mrs Luddington was well on her way to the coast and wasn’t around to see her cook hurtling through the air.
I landed face down in the mud with an almighty splat.
‘Urghhh,’ I groaned as every last bit of breath left my body. And there I stayed for a full minute, my body in shock, as I registered the fact that I was face down in a watery ditch filled with frogspawn and cow dung.
It stank down there!
When I finally peeled my face out of the mud, winded and gasping for breath, I saw Tom standing over me. Tears of laughter were streaming down his ruddy cheeks as he slapped his thigh. ‘I thought you said you’d ridden afore, girl?’ he hooted.
‘Yeah, but only carthorses,’ I confessed, picking a bit of congealed frogspawn from my hair. Tom was bent double and clinging to a fence post for support, his whole body shaking with laughter.
‘It’s not that funny,’ I muttered crossly. ‘Now help me out of this ditch.’
‘I’m sorry, Mollie,’ he said, wiping his eyes with an old handkerchief and holding out his hand. ‘But your face when he took orf with ya. Funniest thing I’ve seen all year. Anything injured?’
‘Only my pride,’ I groaned.
With that, he helped me to my feet and shook his head. ‘Just as well you can cook better than you can ride a horse, lass, or we’d all be in trouble.’
Fortunately Mrs Luddington never found out about my encounter with the ditch and it was shortly after this that she gave me a lovely surprise at one of our usual morning meetings.
I found her delicately pulling something from a large white cardboard box. From beneath folds of soft white tissue paper she lifted the most exquisite dress I’d ever seen.
‘Oh my,’ I breathed. The black dress had a lacy bodice and a full skirt. Layers and layers of soft net sprang out from the tiny waist, and beneath the net I glimpsed a daring flash of scarlet silk.
‘What a beautiful dress, Mrs Luddington,’ I said. ‘Where will you wear that?’
‘It’s yours,’ she said kindly.
‘W-what?’ I stuttered.
‘And this,’ she said, reaching into the box and pulling out a soft wool fawn-coloured, tailored suit.
I was utterly gobsmacked. The couture dress and the suit must have cost her hundreds of pounds, and she was giving them to me like they were old buttons.
‘I haven’t worn them for ages and they’re just sitting gathering dust. I rather thought you might like them, Mollie. We’re about the same size.’
‘Like them?’ I gasped. ‘I’d love them!’
Never had I owned such beautiful clothes and after dinner service that evening I locked myself away in my bedroom and tried them on. They fitted beautifully. The dress had been made to perfection by a French seamstress. Hours of work must have gone into the bodice and sewing on the layers and layers of fine net. Twirling round in front of the mirror, I laughed as the underskirts lifted up to reveal its dazzling flash of crimson.
This wasn’t a dress. It was a masterpiece.
Mrs Luddington was an absolute gem to give something so beautiful away. That goes some way to showing what a lovely lady she was. Most ladies of that era gave their cast-offs to their lady’s maid or to a head housekeeper. The fact that she’d given the clothes to me made me feel so special.
Best of all, it wasn’t long before I got to show the dress off.
In January 1938 there was a dance at Marham Aerodrome and nothing on earth would have kept me away. The RAF were stationed there and rumour had it there were some good-looking chaps amongst their number. The perfect place to give my new b
lack dress an outing! No matter that it was six miles away or that I’d have to bike there. I was going and, what’s more, I was going in that dress.
Goodness only knows what I looked like speeding down the country lanes on an old bike in a fancy black dress. The black net and scarlet underskirt billowed in the breeze and with my hair streaming behind me I felt I might take off at any moment. Partridge and all manner of birds burst out of the hedgerows as a more exotic bird sped past them.
Clambering off my bike at the aerodrome, I became aware of someone watching me.
‘I simply must have the first dance with you,’ announced a well-spoken man.
I looked up to find myself gazing directly into the most piercing blue eyes I’d ever seen. The owner of the blue eyes stared at me, amused, as I smoothed down the netting on my dress and pushed my windswept hair back into place.
‘We’ll just see about that,’ I shot back as I walked into the hall. I gave him my customary cheek, but inside I already knew I would dance with him because with that one look I’d realized my life was about to change.
It’s funny. Sometimes you just know. And from the moment I clapped eyes on Timothy Moran, a corporal in the RAF, I knew he was the one for me. Perhaps it was the flash of my scarlet underskirt as I clambered off my bike that hooked him in, but he seemed as taken with me as I was with him.
No matter that he couldn’t dance for toffee and trod all over my feet, he was everything I could want in a man – funny, clever, well spoken without being pompous and handsome to boot. The fact that he was in the RAF had a certain appeal. Who knows if I’d have fallen for him as much if he’d been a farmer, say, but having a fella in the RAF, well, there’s a certain glamour and prestige attached to that. As he talked of all the places he was likely to be posted to – Cyprus and the Far East, to name but two – my eyes lit up.
My handsome young corporal had been well educated at a Jesuit public school in Lincolnshire.
‘My mother had high hopes I’d join the priesthood,’ he confessed halfway through our third dance.
‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ I replied cheekily.
By the fourth dance I’d learnt that his mother had just died and he was desperate to marry and start a family.
By the sixth dance I knew I’d be his wife and the mother of his children.
Timothy was well over six foot tall and his broad shoulders seemed to fill the whole hall. Sighing, I rested my head against his chest and allowed him to waltz me around the aerodrome. Nowhere felt more comfortable or safe. Being with Timothy Moran was like taking a long slow sip of ice-cool water. I could have stared into those startling blue eyes of his all night.
At midnight I happened to glance at the clock and I froze.
‘The time!’ I gasped. ‘I’ve got to get back to Wallington. I’ve got to be up at the crack of dawn!’
‘I’ll see you home,’ he smiled.
Together we cycled home in the dark, my heart racing as we sped round every bend. He planted a soft little kiss on my cheek, promised to come and see me soon, then turned round and cycled the sixteen miles back to his base, ten miles the other side of Marham.
Timothy must have weaved some kind of magic over me that night, because from that moment on I was hooked. He came to see me every opportunity he got. If there wasn’t much time, we’d grab a flask of tea and some home-baked sausage rolls and sit in the fields near Wallington, or if there was more time we’d head to the pictures. We never had more than a few hours together, but the snatched moments we did have were so precious. His base was sixteen miles away and he got about the same amount of time off as me, so being alone together was rare, which made it all the more enjoyable.
Suddenly I started baking like crazy. I knew from years of working in kitchens that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, so on one occasion I presented him with a steamed suet pudding with apples and cream, sneaked out of the back door when no one was looking.
‘Heaven,’ he moaned when he tasted it. ‘I’d bike to the ends of the earth for this.’
The suet pudding was swiftly followed by a steak and kidney pie, then bread and butter pudding and, his favourite, sausage rolls. The kitchen was constantly full of the warm smell of baking and I skipped around the place like a giddy sixteen-year-old, a faraway smile plastered on my face.
No matter that by the time he’d biked over to me it was almost time to turn round and head back for base. He did it for the same reason I started baking like a domestic goddess, because we were falling in love, and love, as we all know, makes you do some very strange things!
He wasn’t controlling like Alan or a bigot like my Blackshirt. I quickly learnt he had a bit of a temper all right, but he was strong, confident and ambitious. Above all, he was a man happy in his own skin. I was totally entranced by my handsome airman.
Tom the chauffeur noticed. ‘I daresay someone’s had their head turned,’ he joked one morning as I whistled away, lost in a daydream. Even Mrs Luddington smiled knowingly when we chatted at our morning meeting.
My sausage-roll offensive worked. Hint: if you ever want a man to fall in love with you, start baking!
One evening, four months after we’d met, on a warm spring evening in May, we were on a bike ride when Timothy stopped straight ahead of me.
‘Sit next to me,’ he said, dismounting and leaning against an old oak tree. ‘I think I may be getting posted to a new station soon,’ he confessed. ‘I can’t bear to think we’ll never see each other again.’
‘What’ll we do?’ I cried.
He turned to look at me and tenderly clutched my face in his hands.
‘There is a way,’ he said breathlessly. ‘I know it’s soon but … will you marry me, Mollie Browne?’
My heart started to thump in my chest. I hesitated. If I said yes, I knew I’d have to leave my job. There was no other way in them days. No married woman in her right mind worked if she didn’t have to. I was twenty-one and, what’s more, I’d worked hard to make a cook’s position so young.
All those hours spent toiling, for what?
But then I looked at those intense cornflower-blue eyes. They seemed to burn right into my soul. A deep wave of contentment spread through my chest. Being with Timothy felt right.
I started to laugh, caught up in the sheer thrill of the moment.
‘Well, I’ll have to see what my father thinks and it is very soon, but …’
Oh, what the hell.
‘Yes!’ I shouted. ‘Yes, I will marry you.’
We laughed like maniacs as we got back on our bikes and cycled down the country lanes back to Wallington Hall. A mad rush of spontaneity gripped me and I took my feet off the pedals like I used to all those years before as a child and whooped into the wind.
‘I’m going to get married!’
Back at Mother’s house two days later, one look from my father was all it took to pop my bubble of joy.
‘It’s too soon, Mollie,’ he croaked. ‘Why do you want to do that?’
Mother shifted uncomfortably beside him. ‘Hear her out, love,’ she said.
‘He’s in the RAF,’ my father stormed. ‘War’s in the air, I tell you, and when it breaks out, then what?’ On and on he went. ‘He’ll be all over the place. You’ll never see him. He’s a fly-by-night.’
Indignant rage boiled up inside me. No one told me what to do.
‘Well, I’m marrying him,’ I snapped. ‘I’m twenty-one now. I can do what I like.’
As I stormed out of the door, Father’s words chased after me –
‘You can’t build a marriage on dreams!’
I’d show him. I’d show them all. Timothy Moran was going places and he was going there with me right by his side. War or no war! So I ignored them all. I was master of my own destiny, nobody but me. I hadn’t let anyone push me into working in a dull seamstress shop aged fourteen and I wasn’t going to be told what to do now.
So the marriage date was set for six months’ time, Satur
day 5 November 1938. In the event, Timothy wasn’t posted away, but with war brewing we knew time was of the essence. Besides, I reasoned, why wait?
A Catholic church was booked in King’s Lynn and Granny Esther bought me a beautiful slinky silk wedding dress cut on the bias from Downham Market for twenty shillings. Ordinary folk didn’t have big receptions back then, so we planned to invite guests back to Mother’s for salmon sandwiches and cake. It wasn’t going to be anywhere near as grand as Anna Luddington’s wedding had been, but I didn’t give two hoots for marquees and champagne. At long last I was marrying a man I loved.
Mrs Luddington wasn’t best pleased to be losing her cook, but I think ever since Timothy and I had started courting she’d half-expected it and was ever so nice to me despite me handing in my notice.
As I cooked I found my mind wandering to how handsome my tall fiancé would look all done up in a smart suit, those piercing blue eyes on mine as I was pronounced Mrs Moran.
Cooking and dreaming, dreaming and cooking.
But as I dreamed and schemed, events elsewhere were moving at a rapid pace. Events that were to alter my own destiny and the fortunes of all around me, forever … For just as I was planning my wedding, Hitler began his ruthless plan of expansion.
He had pressured Austria into joining forces with Germany and after the Allies agreed in 1938 to allow him to annex Sudetenland, the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, German troops had taken the land by autumn of that year. Next, Nazi troops and supporters began destroying Jewish shops in German towns and cities. The Third Reich had openly begun its anti-Semitic operations. War wasn’t just brewing, it was imminent. One man who was determined to avoid war and keep the peace at all costs was the British Ambassador to Berlin, Nevile Henderson, one of the most maligned diplomats the UK has ever had.
During his posting to Berlin in the two-year run-up to war, he cabled the Foreign Office to tell them: ‘If we handle him [Hitler] right, my belief is that he will become gradually more pacific. But if we treat him as a pariah or mad dog, we shall turn him finally and irrevocably into one.’
Apparently Nevile Henderson was also very sick with cancer during this time and returned to Britain for treatment. It must have been on one such occasion that he was invited to Wallington Hall by Mr Luddington to partake in a shoot. As he headed down to the peace and beauty of Wallington, I was taking my leave of it.
Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid Page 27