Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid (31 page)

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. The 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.