Below Stairs (17 page)

Even if you’ve got a mistress who’s disagreeable, if the other servants are young and lively you can extract some humour from the place even if it’s only making a combined attack on her upstairs. We used to give them a sort of kitchen psycho-analysis, Freud wasn’t in it. Mind you I reckoned we knew more about their sex life than he’d ever have discovered.

But that subject would have been out even if my gaunt companions could have discussed it. It’s my confident opinion that the old dear could never have indulged; she hadn’t any children and a look at her husband would have confirmed my view. He was a trophy, if the truth was known, and he might just as well have hung on the wall with the other antlers for all the use he could have been.

But not only was there no congenial company in this house, there was nowhere to sit and relax. There wasn’t even a servants’ hall. You just sat in the kitchen surrounded by the ‘Ideal’ boiler, the gas stove, the kitchen table, and the dresser. So I took to going out of an evening.

I had a friend, she only lived about ten minutes’ walk away, who was also in service. I used to go out and see her about half past eight, but I was always in before ten o’clock. It didn’t hurt anyone at all. But it didn’t please those other two old servants. I know they were sour, but you wouldn’t have thought they would have moaned about it because after all it didn’t affect them. But the thing was
they
couldn’t get out, so why should I be able to?

So after I’d been out a few nights they informed Mrs Hunter-Jones. This information was a great shock to her. She had never heard of such a thing as a servant going out above the stipulated time for her outings, so I had to listen to a long lecture, and demands as to why I wanted to go out of an evening. She said, ‘You have every Sunday evening and one other evening free.’ ‘Yes, Madam,’ I replied, ‘but when I finish work there’s nowhere comfortable to sit.’ So she said, ‘Oh well, other cooks have sat in the kitchen, why cannot you? You’re certainly not free to go out whenever you feel like it.’

I thought about this and I thought about these two old spinsters. It didn’t really make me dislike them because I could see that their lives were unhappy.

Their names were Violet and Lily, names which probably suited them some forty years ago, but it certainly didn’t go at all well with their appearance or their dispositions now.

On one of the rare occasions when we all got chummy together they’d told me that they’d worked as a parlourmaid and a housemaid for twenty-five years in the same house for one lady, a childless widow. According to Lily and Violet, this lady had promised them that if they stayed with her until she died she’d leave them an annuity, enough money for them to leave domestic service and set up a flat together. Mind you, I thought they were muggins not to have seen the proof. Anyway, when the old lady did die it was found she hadn’t made a will at all, and all the money went to her next-of-kin, her nephew. He just sold the house, and all poor Violet and Lily got was three months’ wages, and then he thought he was being very generous to them, because nothing stipulated that he should give them anything.

So you can imagine after twenty-five years in one job, and what they thought was coming at the end of it, then to be dismissed with three months’ wages. You can’t wonder that they were grim, can you?

Mind you, it happened in a lot of cases. It was a way of keeping servants when you were getting old. But it’s hopeless to trust in people like that. I wouldn’t have believed a word.

The trouble was that they were convinced that their madam had really left them the money and that the nephew had done them out of it. I tried to explain to them about wills and solicitors and things, but they didn’t want to believe me. Well, nobody likes to think that they’ve been caught for a sucker, do they? But it made me understand why they were so sour and everything.

It was only too evident they would never get anything from Mrs Hunter-Jones. She underpaid them anyway because she knew that they’d have difficulty getting a job anywhere else.

Still I didn’t feel that by staying in the house I could alleviate their lot in any way. There’d just be three disgruntled people instead of two. So I gave Mrs Hunter-Jones a month’s notice. It was a very unpleasant business working out my notice in that house. A month is a long time when people are unpleasant to you, and the two old dears, although I didn’t make things any worse for them, resented that I could get out, that I’d got a future, and that they hadn’t. They’d only got the past and that hadn’t been too good.

My main worry was about my reference, because I sensed that Mrs Hunter-Jones wouldn’t give me a good one in spite of the fact that I came to her with a wonderful recommendation from Lady Downall. I tried to get a written one from her so that I could read her opinion of me, and then perhaps I could have done something about it. But she wouldn’t give me one, she said she never reckoned to do anything like that.

It was with some considerable trepidation that I gave the next prospective employer Mrs Hunter-Jones’ telephone number. I knew they wouldn’t meet each other because I had decided that I would work in Brighton for a while, so at least I knew that they wouldn’t get together and have a good natter over me.

The job I went after was in The Drive which at that time was a very palatial road indeed. I was interviewed by a Mrs Bishop. I took great pains to tell her I’d only been temporary at Mrs Hunter-Jones’, but she said that she would ring her up and would I call back the next day to see what the verdict was.

When I went she said, ‘What a peculiar person your last employer is. When I telephoned her for a reference she said, “Well, I think Margaret Langley could cook if she was ever in to cook, but as she expects to be out morning, afternoon, and evening, she never has the time.”’ That reference would have been damning in the ordinary way but it turned out that Mrs Bishop had an odd way of life which made it difficult for her to get and keep a staff.

So in spite of Mrs Hunter-Jones’ efforts she engaged me as a cook at a wage of fifty-two pounds a year. This was very good money indeed because this was not temporary, it was a permanent job.

You may think I’m going on about this reference business. But it was most frightfully important then. People were frightened that you might steal things or that you might be working ‘inside’ for a gang of thieves. They wanted to know all the ins and outs about you. Mind you, they never gave you a reference about themselves, which I used to think you had a right to; whether you had to work like a slave, whether they kept late hours, whether they were mean and selfish, whether they treated you like dirt; nothing like that, but they wanted to know all about you. And if you hadn’t got a good reference from your last place it was useless to explain that you’d been in domestic service since you were fifteen years old, that there were many other people to whom they could apply, and that the reason that this reference wasn’t a good one was because in your last place you dared to speak up about conditions of employment. Employers didn’t want to hear that kind of thing. That was bolshevism. ‘How dare one of the lower classes criticize the upper classes!’ Girls like me who they considered came from poverty-stricken homes should be glad to work in a large house with food and warmth. To them upstairs, any home was better than the one that you lived in with your parents. It was mutiny if you said in your last place you didn’t have this or that – it must have been better than what you’ve been used to. And as for domestic servants having aspirations to rise above the basement, such a thing was incredible to them.

Even Lady Downall was the same in some respects. I remember asking her if I could borrow a book from her library to read, and I can see now the surprised look on her face. She said, ‘Yes, of course, certainly you can, Margaret,’ adding, ‘but I didn’t know you read.’ They knew that you breathed and you slept and you worked, but they didn’t know that you
read
. Such a thing was beyond comprehension. They thought that in your spare time you sat and gazed into space, or looked at
Peg’s Paper
or the
Crimson Circle
. You could almost see them reporting you to their friends. ‘Margaret’s a good cook, but unfortunately she reads. Books, you know.’

24

T
HE
B
ISHOPS
’ house was a large, four-storeyed, detached building with the usual basement, and a back stairs for the servants.

Mrs Bishop was an absolute revelation to me. I had been used to solid superficial respectability, with ‘Them’ upstairs. But what a change she was. She was Italian by birth, nearly sixty years old, but made-up to look about thirty, and from the back view that’s the age she looked. She had her face enamelled, I don’t quite know what they did with it, but she never gave a hearty laugh, she just tittered so that it never cracked. She didn’t move the muscles of her face. Her hair was dyed, and hair-dyeing in those days hadn’t reached the perfection it has now, so that each subsequent dye was never the same colour as the last, and the head became patchy. I couldn’t take my eyes off her when we first met. She had a figure slim like a young girl’s. That was unusual in those days. People weren’t figure-conscious, nobody thought of dieting. They merrily consumed three-course lunches, and five- or six-course dinners every day, and ‘hang your figure’. She had an attractive husky voice. I thought she had a sore throat when she interviewed me. She was very proud of this voice, she said, ‘It’s just like Tallulah Bankhead’s, you know.’ Tallulah Bankhead was all the vogue at that time.

As well as the house they had a flat in London. They spent from Tuesday afternoon to Friday afternoon there. This meant that, although we had free time in the week, we never had a weekend to ourselves. This was the reason she had difficulty getting maids because they like their free days at weekends, especially if they happen to be courting. But it didn’t worry me, I hadn’t got a young man yet.

From Friday evening until Monday morning the house used to be packed with visitors, some were young business people, a lot were hangers-on of the film and theatre world, nobody of any class at all, always plenty of young men of a variety of nationalities. Mrs Bishop was very very fond of young men. None of us ever had half an hour we could call our own at weekends. I didn’t mind at all, at least there was some life, even if I was getting it second hand.

In this somewhat bizarre household I used to have to go and get my orders while Mrs Bishop was in the bath. I was horrified at first because I’d never seen a nude figure, not even a woman, before. It was amazing, after a couple of weeks I got quite used to it, and I’d sit on the edge of the bath, while she used to tell me what she wanted.

One morning at ten o’clock I went to the bathroom. I’d got so used to going there I just used to knock and walk in without waiting for an answer. On this particular morning, to my horror, instead of seeing a very flat, nude, white body lying there, there was a huge, black, hairy one, standing up in the bath. It was an Italian. Well, it was the first time I’d ever seen a full-scale appendage in my life. And after having had a look at it I could quite see why Adam rushed to get a fig leaf! I would have too if I’d discovered I had an object like that! The shock! It took me about a week to get over this thing. Mind you, he didn’t think anything of me seeing him at all. He told Madam afterwards that he’d like to come down and apologize to me. Thank heaven he didn’t. After seeing him in the nude I couldn’t possibly have seen him clothed. I should have been visualizing it all the time.

I remember the other maids, they wanted to know about it in detail, and everything. They said, ‘I bet you rushed out,’ ‘I bet you had a good look.’ Things like that had more importance in those days. Anyway, from then on I never went in without knocking and waiting to make sure it was Mrs Bishop who answered.

Young men were Mrs Bishop’s life. They say life begins at forty, well she must have had twenty years of hard living. Mind you, she wasn’t unattractive, her face was skilfully made up and we always had the blinds at half-mast. It gave her subdued light, and that helped.

She used to have some furious rows with these young men and I’d know that, when I saw her the next morning, I’d be in for a tearful session. She’d give me the same old routine over and over again, I must have heard it more than a dozen times. ‘Oh, you know, Margaret,’ she said, ‘I was married straight from the convent, when I was seventeen years old, and I never saw Mr Bishop until I stood before the altar with him. I never had a chance to live when I was young, I was married to a man ten years older than me and I saw nothing of the world at all, and now it’s too late.’ Well, naturally, I had to agree with her. She didn’t want my opinion, she just wanted my sympathy. I couldn’t see that she’d made such a bad bargain, she had a lovely house, servants, jewels, and a life of ease; I mean if that wasn’t living, it was a bloody good imitation. I’d have married Old Nick himself for the sort of life she had.

Mr Bishop was a different kettle of fish altogether. I think he was of German origin and had changed his name during the war. He had a very placid temperament. Of course, they lived entirely separate lives, she slept on one floor, the second floor, he was on the floor above and they had very little to do with each other. They went up to London together and they came back together, but they weren’t married in the true sense of the word when I knew them; that was finished.

I liked him. He certainly had a sense of humour. While they were up in London we used to take the run of the house; use their sitting-room, play all their records, and I used to bang out tunes on the piano. One day there I caught my hand in the car rack and nearly broke my thumb. I had to be taken to the doctor’s and have it bandaged. When I passed Mr Bishop the next day he said to me, ‘How’s your thumb getting along, cook?’ and I said, ‘Oh it’s all right, Sir. It’s a bit difficult to work with.’ He said, ‘Yes, and a bit difficult to play the piano, too, isn’t it?’ Someone must have told him what we did when they weren’t there, but he said it with a twinkle. He didn’t mind.