Read Online Diamonds at Dinner by Hilda Newman and Tim Tate - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Hilda Newman and Tim Tate
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with so-and-so. How innocent this all seems in today’s liberated world: there was no question back then of any hanky panky – a kiss on the cheek might be considered very daring!
It’s not for me to say this but I had a decent figure and a nice little waist and I suppose I must have been pretty enough to attract the attention of some of the local boys: they certainly asked if they could walk me home! I like to think that at least some of it was down to my skill as a tailor, for I made my own dresses to go dancing and one in particular – a lovely pale-blue satin material, which Mum had bought for me at Stamford Market, and which (thanks to my apprenticeship with Mrs Kent) looked like something from a very fancy couturier – drew attention the moment I walked into the Assembly Rooms wearing it. The girls all flocked round me with little cries of, ‘Molly,’ (I was always known as Molly in those days), ‘Did you really make that? It’s so lovely!’ I think the boys noticed it too – I certainly saw them sneaking glances my way – but I already had a young man I was walking out with. Norman Aitkin was his name and he worked at Blackstone’s, the engineering company in the town, which had once employed Dad. I thought he was smashing. But Dad – oh, dear, Dad – he just didn’t approve at all. Whether he would have thought anyone good enough for his eldest daughter is debatable. Maybe it was because Dad couldn’tget his old job back at Blackstone’s after the war, maybe it was the fact that he didn’t like Norman’s mother but, for whatever reason, in his eyes, Norman Aitkin was definitely not up to snuff.
Although I’d been allowed to go to dances on my own for some months by the time Norman and I started courting, once Dad knew we were walking out, there was nothing for it but that I had to have a chaperone. If Norman and I went anywhere together, my little brother Jim was sent out to find us and make sure Norman behaved himself on the way home.
So, all in all, Dad was never going to welcome the idea of his darling daughter leaving home and going into service miles away. Don’t forget that, once I’d gone, he knew there would be little or no chance of coming to see me: we didn’t have a car – no one from our class of people could even dream of running one, let alone paying the £175 even a basic one would cost. (If that sounds terribly little money for a car, don’t forget to multiply it by 100 to work out the modern equivalent: could you afford to splash out £17,500 if you were in our position today? Of course, car prices have come down in relative terms since then but in 1935 motoring was still very much in its infancy and the purchase price of even a little Austin or a Morris reflected that.) Nor were there any buses in Stamford: if you wanted to get anywhere locally, well, it was ‘Shanks’s pony’ as everyonecalled walking. There was, though, the train station and I began to wonder whether one of the enormous puffing steam engines that pulled in amid a fearsome clanking of steel and vast clouds of smoke might one day take me away from the town in which I had lived all my life.
In the end it was the girl at work – the same one who had put the idea of my going into service in the first place – who helped me make a start. To this day I don’t know how she found out about the opportunities: maybe she had seen an advert from one of the agencies which then advertised positions in service for girls like me. But however she knew, I was at work in the laundry room one day when she came to me with the news that two fine ladies were looking for a maid. And she challenged me to write to them.
The first was Lady Blanche Cobbold, from Glemham Hall near Ipswich in Suffolk. Since this was close to where Dad had grown up before he made the journey to Stamford, perhaps he would look on the idea more favourably. Lady Cobbold was, in fact, the daughter of the ninth Duke of Cavendish, and one of the most
It’s not for me to say this but I had a decent figure and a nice little waist and I suppose I must have been pretty enough to attract the attention of some of the local boys: they certainly asked if they could walk me home! I like to think that at least some of it was down to my skill as a tailor, for I made my own dresses to go dancing and one in particular – a lovely pale-blue satin material, which Mum had bought for me at Stamford Market, and which (thanks to my apprenticeship with Mrs Kent) looked like something from a very fancy couturier – drew attention the moment I walked into the Assembly Rooms wearing it. The girls all flocked round me with little cries of, ‘Molly,’ (I was always known as Molly in those days), ‘Did you really make that? It’s so lovely!’ I think the boys noticed it too – I certainly saw them sneaking glances my way – but I already had a young man I was walking out with. Norman Aitkin was his name and he worked at Blackstone’s, the engineering company in the town, which had once employed Dad. I thought he was smashing. But Dad – oh, dear, Dad – he just didn’t approve at all. Whether he would have thought anyone good enough for his eldest daughter is debatable. Maybe it was because Dad couldn’tget his old job back at Blackstone’s after the war, maybe it was the fact that he didn’t like Norman’s mother but, for whatever reason, in his eyes, Norman Aitkin was definitely not up to snuff.
Although I’d been allowed to go to dances on my own for some months by the time Norman and I started courting, once Dad knew we were walking out, there was nothing for it but that I had to have a chaperone. If Norman and I went anywhere together, my little brother Jim was sent out to find us and make sure Norman behaved himself on the way home.
So, all in all, Dad was never going to welcome the idea of his darling daughter leaving home and going into service miles away. Don’t forget that, once I’d gone, he knew there would be little or no chance of coming to see me: we didn’t have a car – no one from our class of people could even dream of running one, let alone paying the £175 even a basic one would cost. (If that sounds terribly little money for a car, don’t forget to multiply it by 100 to work out the modern equivalent: could you afford to splash out £17,500 if you were in our position today? Of course, car prices have come down in relative terms since then but in 1935 motoring was still very much in its infancy and the purchase price of even a little Austin or a Morris reflected that.) Nor were there any buses in Stamford: if you wanted to get anywhere locally, well, it was ‘Shanks’s pony’ as everyonecalled walking. There was, though, the train station and I began to wonder whether one of the enormous puffing steam engines that pulled in amid a fearsome clanking of steel and vast clouds of smoke might one day take me away from the town in which I had lived all my life.
In the end it was the girl at work – the same one who had put the idea of my going into service in the first place – who helped me make a start. To this day I don’t know how she found out about the opportunities: maybe she had seen an advert from one of the agencies which then advertised positions in service for girls like me. But however she knew, I was at work in the laundry room one day when she came to me with the news that two fine ladies were looking for a maid. And she challenged me to write to them.
The first was Lady Blanche Cobbold, from Glemham Hall near Ipswich in Suffolk. Since this was close to where Dad had grown up before he made the journey to Stamford, perhaps he would look on the idea more favourably. Lady Cobbold was, in fact, the daughter of the ninth Duke of Cavendish, and one of the most
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