Mother wasn’t dead then, and clap it between two bits of bread. But I liked his food best, because his parents were bakers. Did you know the bakers were often Germans then? Well, his parents could just read and write, but he was a real clever one, he was a scholar. He did well later, more fool me, I could have had my own house and a garden. But I didn’t marry him, I didn’t. I don’t know why. Of course, my father wouldn’t have liked a foreigner, but he didn’t like what I did marry, he could never say yes to any choice of ours, so what would have been the difference? No, I don’t want to think of that, I spent enough time when I was younger thinking, Oh what a fool – when I’d come to understand what men were. You see, I didn’t know then. Hans was so kind, he was a gentleman, he treated me like a queen. He’d lift me down from the stiles so gently and nice, and we spread a little white cloth and put out the lovely white rolls and the cakes from the bakery. I used to say, No, I must eat mine, and you eat yours, and mine always ended up being given to the birds.
‘I think of those days, those Sundays. And who would believe it now? Where we sit in these streets, running streams, and birds … What happened to the streams? you are thinking. I know, I know how to read your face now. Well, you might well wonder where all that water is. It is underneath the foundations of half the houses along here, that’s where. When they built this all up, and covered the fields, I used to come by myself and watch the builders. By myself. My German boy had gone off by then because I wouldn’t marry him. The builders scamped everything then, as they do now; some things never change. They were supposed to make the water run in proper conduits, away from the houses, but they didn’t trouble themselves. Sometimes, even now, when I walk along, I stop at a house and I think, yes, if your basements are damp, it’s because of the water from those old streams. There’s a house, number seventy-seven it is, it changes hands, it can’t keep an owner, it’s because it’s where two little streams met, and the builders put the bricks of the foundation straight into the mud and let the water find its way. They did make a real channel for the water lower down, it runs along the main road there, but the little baby streams we used to sit by and put our feet in, they were left to make their own way. And after those Sundays, when the dusk came, oh, how lovely it all was, he’d say, May I put my arm around your waist? And I’d say, No, I don’t like it – what a fool. And he’d say, Put your arm in mine then, at least. So we’d walk arm in arm through the fields to the bus, and come home in the dark. He’d never come in, because of Father. He’d kiss my hand, and he’d say, Maudie, you are a flower, a little flower.’
A Happiness.
Maudie was apprenticed to a milliner’s and worked for them off and on for years. The apprenticeship was very hard. Living with her aunt, who was so poor, and gave her breakfast and supper, but not much more, Maudie had to do without a midday meal or walk most of the way to work. The workshop was near Marylebone High Street. She would calculate whether shoe leather would cost more than her fare. She said she could beg cast-off shoes from her cousin, who never got all the wear out of them, or pick up second-hand boots from a market. But she had to be neatly dressed for her work, and that was her biggest trouble. Her aunt did not have money for Maudie’s clothes.
Her employer’s wife gave her a skirt and a blouse once. ‘She valued me, you see. We had to have a decent appearance because the buyers would come into the workrooms. Oh, don’t think it was from a good heart, she didn’t have one. She didn’t want to lose me. It was years before I could buy myself a nice brown cloth dress of my own, and my own shoes. And when I did, oh, I’ll not forget that day. I went without so much for that dress. And I wore it on the Sunday first so Laurie could see it. And who gave you that? he said, for that was what he was like, tugging at my arm and hurting it. Who was it, tell me? It wasn’t you, I said to him, and as I pulled my arm from him, it tore under the arm. Not much, but the dress was spoiled. Oh yes, a person has his stamp all through him. You know what I’m saying? But I didn’t know that then. It wasn’t long before I knew that in everything he did, it was the same: a new dress I’d saved and gone without for, but he tore it the first time I put it on. But it didn’t matter, I mended it, it didn’t show, and I went into the workroom and peacocked around, and the girls all clapped and sang “A Little Bit of What You Fancy Does You Good”.
‘That was just before I was promoted, and soon I got another dress, a blue foulard, but I never loved another dress as I loved that first one I paid for myself.
‘Oh what times we did have in that workroom. There were fifteen of us, apprentices and milliners. We sat all around a long table, with the boxes of trimmings on trestles behind us, and the hats and bonnets we were working on on their forms in front of us. We used to sing and lark about. Sometimes when I got a bit carried away, she used to come up and say, Who’s making all that noise? It’s Maudie! The rule is, silence when you work. But I had to sing, I was so enjoying myself, and soon we were all singing, but she didn’t want to lose me, you see.
‘Did I tell you how I learned to know that I was a value to her? If I did, I’ll tell you again, because I love to think of it. You see, he used to go off to Paris, and see the new season’s hats in the shops, and sometimes in the workrooms of the Paris milliners, for he knew people who could snatch him a glimpse. He knew how to remember a hat or a bonnet that would do for us. He used to keep it all in his mind, and nip out quick and draw it. He couldn’t draw really, but he’d have the main things, a shape or the set of a ribbon. And then he’d come back and say, You do this, see, it’s this shape and that colour, made of velvet or satin, you do what you can. Well, it was as if I could see the real hat behind the scribble on the paper, and I’d work away there, and finish it, and I’d say to him, Is that anywhere near it, Mr Rolovsky? And he’d take it up and stare and say, Well, it’s not too bad, Maudie. That pleased me. But then I saw how he’d come and stand behind me and watch while I worked, always me, not the others, and then the way he snatched up the hat when I’d done, for he was so greedy, you see, he couldn’t hide it. I saw then I’d come near what he’d seen in Paris. And the girls all knew too, and we’d give each other winks. She saw us at it, and she said, That’s enough, I don’t see what there is to wink at. For she was clever, the missus was, but she wasn’t clever at anything but her job, which was making the workroom pay. Have you noticed that at all? A person can be clever as can be, in one direction, and stupid in another. She thought we didn’t know what she was trying to cover up, and yet it was all plain to us. I had a gift, you see, I had it in my fingers and in my mind’s eye, and it was worth everything to them, because when the buyers came in, he always showed them my work first, and it was always my work that he charged the most for.
‘I’ve stood outside the showrooms, just off Bond Street they were, and looked at the hats in the window, only two or three of course, not crammed the way the windows for cheap hats were done, and the hats were always mine. And snapped up as soon as I could do them.
‘Yes, I can see from your face what you’re wanting to say, and you’re right. I never got paid extra for it. I got the top wages for the job, but that was never much, never enough to free my mind of worrying about the future. Yes, you are right again, don’t think I haven’t thought and thought about why I didn’t go somewhere else, or say, Give me what I am worth to you or I’ll leave. But for one thing, I loved that work so, I loved it all, the colours and the feel of the materials; and then the other girls, we had worked together so long by then, and we knew each other and all our troubles, and then … Well, of course there was more to it. For one thing, it was partly my fault. He wanted me to go to Paris. Oh no, if he had anything else in mind, he couldn’t let it be that. He said, The wife’ll come too, don’t you worry, it will all be fair and right. What he wanted was for me to come with him into the workrooms when he could sneak himself in, and look at the hats for myself. He was really getting carried away by it all, he imagined my coming back to London and copying all those hats and bonnets, hundreds of them, I daresay, not just the few he could keep in his mind. And he said he would pay me properly for it. Well, being him, being that pair, I knew better than to think it would be much, but it would be a lot for me. And yet I couldn’t
