At this point a lot of Americans were coming in from America and
'doing' Europe and 'doing' England as tourists, and it was at this
point that the boon in the shops had taken place. England wanted
dollars, we could sell maybe four and five sweaters which were
cashmere to the Americans, they had a very large allocation of what
they could buy abroad. First Class alone, they had five
shops. We sold antiques from Garrard's, we sold
cashmere...and we really sold everything from a genuine antique
teapot from Garrard's right down to a packet of matches. But
there were approximately five shops there.
The Queen Mary was a legend in her lifetime. Well you had
to be charming to the customers. If there was one complaint
to the Captain about you as a person, or you as a personality, then
you would not go to sea at all … again. And this was done
because there was a phrase 'not suited to sea life', and it was a
vague phrase but it just meant that you did not get a ship
again. Well, when … when you think that film directors,
nobility, and people generally with a lot of money had chosen to
travel First Class Queen Mary then they would expect you to be
charming. They would expect you to be courteous.
But Cunard demanded a lot because you also had to work in all
kinds of horrific sea conditions. You didn't have good living
conditions. You worked enormously long hours. We worked
until 7 o'clock when we had then closed the shop and had dinner,
then after approximately half past eight at night on the Queen Mary
we had to check every item of stock and we had to do our
bookkeeping. First of all we had to convert Canadian and
American dollars down to Sterling and then the books had to be
balanced in Sterling and this had to be done through the
night. So we had already done a day's work.
But the one beautiful thing I found that I could do on the Queen
Mary being an outdoor type, I used to escape up onto the First
Class deck, which we were allowed to do, and we had a very very
small section during our lunchtime and this was immediately under
the funnels which was very sooty, but we were allowed to go up
there. In the summertime I would go out on deck in the
sunshine. But also in the evening we would walk so many times
round the deck and it wasn't very many times you had to go round
the deck until you had done a mile, and it was wonderful to be up
there, absolutely wonderful, and she was a very very beautiful
ship. She was a lovely ship. She had a magic about her
and I am just so very very sorry we didn't keep her here.
