Free Paradise Court by Jenny Oldfield Page A

praise from all around. ‘Frances should go and train as a teacher in college,’ her own teachers informed Duke. ‘She’s very able.’ But the family was poor, with different expectations. So she submitted to being sent into service much against her will. At seventeen, she wrote home to Hettie in her beautiful copperplate hand that the work for her Mayfair family was dreary and disgusting. She skivvied from dawn till dusk. But worse, the children of the house persistently bullied and cheeked her in front of their parents, much to everyone’s amusement. There’s an old dog called Bob in the house and he’s not too bad, I suppose. Otherwise I hate them all, every last one,’ she wrote with uncharacteristic bluntness.
    By nineteen her heart was set on moving on. She scoured the newspapers for job advertisements, wrote many letters of application, mostly to the biscuit, cardboard-box and glasswork factories in her home borough. But biscuit factories didn’t need women with perfect handwriting and scholarly punctuation. She suffered dozens of rejections. Finally, Boots the Chemist announced that it was extending its branches into many East End districts. They did need women clever enough to decipher the illegible scribbles made by doctors on their prescriptions, and fastidious enough to measure and mix small quantities of medicinal substances. Frances wrote off and secured a position.
    For the last eight years she’d worked hard to establish herself as an indispensable employee of the pharmacy. The work was repetitive and tiring, but it wasn’t demeaning. To have broken out of the degrading cycle imposed on most East End girls in servicewas a matter of pride to her. She even went on with her learning, through Workers’ Education classes in literature and politics. It set her further apart.
    At twenty-eight she had become this serious, subdued woman in grey, sitting beneath the gaudy advertisements in the underground train, staunch in her family loyalty, respected but not popular. Frances would nevertheless rescue Jess from the Holdens and keep the family together. She steeled herself to the task, left the train and emerged up the steps into the cold grey light.
    Getting Jess out of the house in Hackney proved straightforward enough. Frances arrived on the Holdens’ front doorstep and announced that she’d come to take her sister home.
    Mrs Holden, a whalebone-plated woman with a wistful and rather helpless air despite her ample proportions, looked puzzled. She’d just returned from church, and called to her husband for help with this strange request He came down the stairs past the gilt-framed pictures, across the Turkish rug. Mr Holden was prepared to stand no nonsense.
    Before he could say, ‘Now look here!’ between clenched teeth, Frances stepped in with, ‘Your son, Gilbert, has misbehaved towards my sister, Mr Holden, and we want her home to look after her.’ She looked him straight in the eye.
    The head of the household blustered, the wife looked shocked and faint. But it turned out, when Jess was summoned and the final confrontation took place in the housekeeper’s room, that Mr Holden was forced to admit that his wayward son was already a father twice over, in similar circumstances. That Jess was merely an unfortunate third couldn’t be denied. Still she had to surfer Mr Holden’s unreasonable indignation at her for ‘putting herself in Gilbert’s way, don’t you know!’ and tempting him once again off the straight and narrow.
    â€˜Hush,’ Frances warned Jess, who struggled through her tears to defend her bludgeoned reputation. ‘My sister will take her wages and we’ll leave without fuss, Mr Holden. We wouldn’t want to cause your family any distress just before Christmas, you see. Andyou can tell your wife that I’m very sorry indeed for her son’s behaviour. I trust she’ll soon