Rags to Riches by Maggie Ford

Author:Maggie Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Chapter Fifteen

Money was causing Amy some worry. If she and Tom were to be married next spring, now only five months off with time seemingly just whizzing by, it was crucial they must save more than she could see coming in.

‘I must find myself some work,’ she finally revealed to Tom as they felt their way back home from the London Shoreditch Theatre through a November peasouper that seemed to shut out all sounds except their own muffled voices and made them imagine themselves as the only two creatures alive in the whole world.

The buses had all but stopped and with what transport there was creeping along, it was quicker to walk, even from Shoreditch. It had saved paying the fare, added a little more to their pot. They shouldn’t really have gone out at all, but staying in week after week tended to lower the spirits so that even the prospects of marriage dulled. At least the cheapest theatre seats at the humble little London Shoreditch were cheap indeed, even if its orchestra was very often out of tune and its turns mere try-outs for first-time hopefuls. Some could be really good, destined to go far, and it was the place to see them and say later of a growing name, ‘I saw him when he was just starting,’ or, ‘I watched her long before she was well known.’ Others were quite awful, but it was almost as good entertainment to listen to the audience’s cat-calls and uproariously coarse remarks as watching the acts themselves. Amy was convinced the audience got as much enjoyment out of that as anything and came for the sole purpose of expressing their opinions as freely as they wished.

The question was though, she and Tom couldn’t go on spending even this small amount of money with only his wages. She’d have to think of some sort of employment to help out. But what? She had no training for anything, apart from what her eighteen months at a finishing school had taught – to be a debutante, a successful wife in society and a good hostess. Before that, private school had taught a little maths, some composition, but mostly history, geography, music, painting, poetry – stuff suitable for a young lady expected to be successfully married by twenty or twenty-one. She had good French, passable German, but nothing at all that one could classify as food for the normal career of an ordinary working girl – no office skill, no clue how to serve in a shop, and as for factory work, she might as well be no brighter than the most uneducated factory hand, and also the thought of factory work made her cringe. Yet in a sense, with her impractical schooling, it was all she was good for.

Holding her close as they felt their way through the layers of fog, Tom’s arm tightened on hers, the almost solid air deadening his voice. ‘What’s the point you going ter work now? You’ll be giving it up again as soon as we’re married.

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