Servants’ Hall (18 page)

Mrs Gwyneth Davies made us a ‘special’ welsh rarebit; she said the recipe had been given to her by her grandmother, who’d worked as a cook in Glamorgan.

‘Grandmother worked for a very wealthy ironmaster,’ said Gwyneth Davies, ‘and she was always telling me that being in service then was the natural thing, one wasn’t looked down on, not like now. Grandmother said that her employer, John Lewis, had made his money the hard way. He’d started in the iron-works when he was only ten years old, and sweated fourteen hours a day. Grandmother said that her employer, Mrs Lewis, would come into the kitchen and sit down – just as we are sitting here – and she’d say to Grandmother, “Come on, my gel, what are we eating today?”, just as though Grandma was one of them. Can you imagine Mrs Van Lievden doing that?’

Well, no, I couldn’t, thank goodness. Nothing would induce me to work for a lady who made herself at home in my kitchen and said ‘gel, what are we eating today?’

There was much eating going on, as Mr Van Lievden’s mother and two aunts from Schiedam were staying in the house. Madam had asked Mr Kite and me if we minded the guests inspecting the below stairs, as kitchens in Holland were very different from those in England. Our butler wasn’t very pleased, complaining to me that it was not the done thing for employers to poke their noses into our departments. In his usual prim manner, he said:

‘I have been in service many more years than you, Cook; and, believe me, I’ve always found it best to stick to correct procedures: they have their domain and we have ours. Would we ever ask them if we could show our relatives the upstairs because it was different from below? Of course we wouldn’t.’

‘Well, Mr Kite, it does happen to be their house. Presumably they are entitled to be in any part of it on occasions. What have we got to worry about? There’s nothing in my kitchen or scullery that I don’t want seen by them above stairs.’

‘That’s not it, Cook, it’s the principle of the thing.’

Muttering to myself about where he could stuff his principles, I made sure that Bessie had cleaned and polished everything. Though now that she was leaving, Bessie had suddenly become a quick and willing worker. Like all of us in service, she was thinking about her reference for the next place.

Mr Van Lievden’s mother and aunts, judging by their substantial girth, looked as though the consuming of large quantities of food was one of their chief occupations. And so it proved; for during the next two weeks I cooked vast quantities. For breakfast, dishes of porridge, sausages, bacon and eggs, kippers and kedgeree went upstairs full and came down empty. There were three-course lunches and six-course dinners. I marvelled that anybody – especially people who didn’t work – could consume such gargantuan meals. One evening we had a dinner party for eighteen people. A woman came in to help with the washing up, and a special iced-pudding was ordered from an outside caterer. I prepared a clear soup; salmon maître d’hôtel; roast quails – silly little birds I thought them, a few mouthfuls and they were eaten – and a main course of roast sirloin served with cauliflower au gratin, glazed carrots, petit pois and duchesse potatoes. The savoury was simple, just cheese straws. I remember that one of the guests was a vegetarian so I had the bother of cooking her a baked aubergine instead of the quails, and haricot bean croquettes instead of roast sirloin. I grumbled to Mr Kite that vegetarians should stay at home but, although he murmured a word of sympathy, I could tell he wasn’t interested. His interests lay elsewhere that evening; Mr Kite was in his element. A retired butler had been engaged to help wait at table, and Mr Kite was surprised and gratified to discover that this Mr Penny had been the butler while our Mr Kite was a first footman. Now the positions were reversed and Mr Kite was in charge. True, he hadn’t a footman under him, but he had Norma and an ex-butler – a staff of three in the butler’s pantry!

It was around eleven o’clock before we could sit down to our supper of cold ham, potatoes and salad, followed by blackcurrant tart with cream. Off duty, Mr Penny was very good company. He and Mr Kite were soon deep in reminiscences of Lord – who shall be nameless – with a handsome wife and five children who, not content with that, had another ‘lady’ and two more children in the same town. And there was the Honourable Charles, who’d seduced the housemaid and got his come-uppance when the girl’s father and brother set on him in the street and gave him a black eye and a bloody nose.

I had no such colourful tit-bits to contribute to the conversation, but I made them all laugh with an account of the time I’d gone into Mrs Bishop’s bathroom for the day’s orders and found a naked man standing in the bath; the sight was a terrible shock to me.

‘Dear dear, Cook,’ laughed Mr Penny, ‘it was probably only the loofah you saw; in the steamy atmosphere, outlines get blurred. You know, it reminds me of the time when I was young. After five years as second, then first footman, I’d taken my first place as a butler. You wouldn’t think, to see me now, that I used to be quite a good-looking chap.’

‘Oh, Mr Penny,’ we chorused, ‘you’re still a fine-looking man, do go on with your story.’

‘Well, by the time I’d been there three months, I could tell that the lady of the house had taken quite a shine to me. Big-head that I was, I felt flattered. Although Madam must have been ten years older than me, she was still a pretty woman. I’m telling you, it was Penny this and Penny that, with a sweet smile and a helpless look, from the time her husband left the house in the morning until he returned about six o’clock.’

‘What happened, Mr Penny?’

‘I’m coming to that. One afternoon, I was soaking myself in a lovely hot bath – our bathroom was in the basement. I hadn’t bothered to lock the door; there was no need, for Cook was having her afternoon nap, the housemaid upstairs was sorting out the linen cupboard and the tweeny was out. You’ll never believe the next bit, but it’s as true as I’m sitting here. There I am in the bath, rubbing my heels with pumice stone – a butler needs to take care of his feet – when suddenly, the bathroom door opens and Madam comes in. I was fit to die with shock, I can tell you; no female has ever seen me unclothed since the time I told my mother I was old enough to bath myself. “Oh, Penny”, she said, with such a look on her face that you’d have thought she was going to eat me – and she’d taken too much of the brandy after lunch – “do let me wash your back. Lovely Penny, you’re not a penny, you’re worth your weight in gold”. And she put her hands right in the water saying, “Let me find the soap”. It wasn’t the soap she was feeling for, that I did know. The shameless woman!’

Amid the general laughter, I asked what happened after that.

‘Well, Cook, I practically threw Madam out, got dressed and left the house. It wasn’t possible to stay as a butler for such a Jezebel. It’s true that her husband was an elderly man, probably Madam married him for his money. Well she’d got that, but it didn’t buy me.’

‘But, Mr Penny how did you manage about the reference for your next place?’

‘I forged one. Said that my employers had gone to America and left me this written reference. They were satisfied, took me on and I stayed with them for five years. And here I am, like Mr Kite, still a bachelor but fond of the ladies.’

‘We were all sorry when the taxi came to take Mr Penny home. I’d hoped that Mr Kite would invite him to call one afternoon and have tea with us, but I expect he was rather envious of the ex-butler, who had obviously led a more interesting life than Kite had.

It was indeed a pleasant surprise when our Dutch guests thanked us personally for all the extra work – and they tipped us well. As Elsie remarked, we were so lucky. We might have been servants in a house – and there were many such – where those above stairs, employers and guests alike, hardly recognised us as human beings.

Elsie had another pleasant surprise when her fiancé suddenly presented himself at the basement door. From Elsie’s description of Jack, and the fact that, like Jacob for his Rachel, he had been courting Elsie for seven years, I’d visualised him looking beefy, stolid and quite out of place in a city. Instead, there he was, six-feet tall, slim, brown eyes and curly hair, wearing as smart a suit as any city beau. I couldn’t imagine how Elsie had been content to see her Jack just once a month, apart from holidays, year after year. If he had been my boyfriend, I’d have been afraid of some other girl offering consolation during my absence. But perhaps down on the farm there weren’t many unattached girls around. Jack had come with the good news that he’d been made head stockman. The job paid higher wages and included a house, so there was no reason why he and Elsie should wait any longer to be married. Elsie agreed to give in her notice, but she wasn’t noticeably overwhelmed with excitement – as I would have been.

The next morning, I had the temerity to reproach Elsie for her lukewarm reception of Jack’s good fortune, and Elsie almost wept as she moaned. ‘I know, Cook, I know. But I don’t really want to be married. I like being in service, especially this place. I don’t want to lose my independence.’

‘Independence Elsie! What independence? What kind of independence have we got, even here? How can any woman be independent when she can’t earn enough money to provide a decent living and save for her old age. Sure, they’ve given us the vote – though even then they had to denigrate it by calling it “the flapper vote” – but what good does the vote do us, especially in service? Have we any more rights? It’s true that this is a good place to work in, but if we demanded to be called “Miss” instead of our surnames; if we insisted that we should be free after nine o’clock at night, how long do you think we’d be here? And how would we get another job? If we told a prospective employer that we were dismissed because we insisted that work, starting at seven o’clock in the morning, should end by nine o’clock at night, d’you think we’d be engaged as servants? Not on your life we wouldn’t. The very idea of servants wanting regular hours!’

Elsie was so bemused with this expatiation on independence and the thought of giving in her notice, that she was late with Madam’s tea-tray in the bedroom. She was reprimanded for this, and in turn reprimanded Ada the under-housemaid for not reminding her about the time. So, what with poor Ada weeping, Elsie peeved because she’d promised Jack that she’d give in her notice, and the butler looking aloof and disapproving, the morning was a disaster.

I, too, wanted to be independent; but with no money or social standing it would not be possible to achieve independence by eschewing men. As my mother told me, it was men who bitterly opposed giving women the vote; men who still jealously guarded all the male priviliges appertaining to work and social life. The very idea that a woman wanted a life free from dependence on a man, it would have infuriated the male ego to such an extent that they would have closed ranks against her. I was determined to marry and achieve an equal partnership. Although I would probably still have little money, I intended to have, in my marriage, as much freedom as the male had always had by inalienable right.

Lack of money, with the approach of old age and inability to work, was a constant anxiety to domestics. With no home of their own and parents gone, what would become of them? The government pension was barely enough to pay rent for a room, let alone provide food. A few servants, after years of faithful service, were rewarded with a small pension; but the majority could expect, and got, nothing.

Mrs Lawton, Rose’s mother, had for years corresponded with her old employer, Mrs Paine, But when Madam died, all she left to Mrs Lawton was two china spotted dogs. As an addition to the green plush over-mantel they may have been welcome, but they certainly did nothing to ease the financial situation. Rose told Mary and me that her father had been so incensed at the arrival of the canine pair – after his years of listening to Mrs Lawton’s ‘dear Madam this and dear Madam that’ – that he’d threatened to smash them and send back the pieces to dear madam’s son.

Rose’s father, despairing of getting back his job in the mill, was moving to London. Mary and I had found them a place in Kensington; and though only three rooms in a semi-basement, they would have their own entrance and not have to share the lavatory. Mary and I, with Rose, had spent all one afternoon and evening cleaning the place in preparation for her mother’s arrival. Her father would follow a week later.

24

Now that her parents were coming down from Manchester to live in London, Mary and I were seeing Rose more often. When part of the furniture arrived, we had been to the rooms to arrange it, and Mr Davies had laid the linoleum in the kitchen. Rose was very much changed from the parlourmaid we had known at Mrs Wardham’s. Not in looks, for she was still very attractive, but in disposition. As a domestic servant she had been a quiet girl; a bit dull perhaps, but always ready to smile and laugh at a joke. Now she had a permanently discontented look, and when Mary and I were with her Rose never ceased to complain about her husband’s lack of consideration.

Rose asked me to be with her when she met her mother at the station one Sunday evening. Mrs Lawton still looked as dour, stern and upright as when I’d met her in Manchester, determined neither to ask for sympathy nor receive it. Rose was apprehensive, wondering what her ma would say when she saw the semi-basement rooms and our arrangement of the furniture. Though laden with two heavy suitcases, her mother flatly refused to let us get a taxi – she was obviously determined to be a martyr – so we had to struggle onto a bus. The bus conductor, with typical cockney humour said, as he helped us with the cases:

‘Hello, girls, doing a moonlight flit, then?’ In the face of her mother’s sour and disapproving look, Rose didn’t dare to laugh, but I had no such inhibitions:

‘No, mate, I’m off to Gretna Green. My mum’s coming with me to make sure I get spliced.’

When we got to the house, Rose started trying to explain to her mother that Gerald would have willingly paid the rent for a proper flat; but her ma interrupted, saying fiercely, ‘Your pa won’t accept charity, not from your husband or anybody else. We’ve always paid our way, never owed anybody a penny and we never will, we’d sooner starve.’