They needed a scullery maid away over at the manor. I'd have bed and board, and could send my wages home. What did she think?

It was the priest asking my mother. I was twelve. It would be around about 1910. It was before the Great War, anyway. No thought of that yet.

Mother looked at me, eyes wrinkled, lips pursed. Dragging a bairn up to her hip, she pushed her hair back again, thinking, and then asked me, ' Well, what do you think?'

'I don't know Mam. What would I have to do?'

'Well, set the fires before they get up, and help around the kitchen. Nothing you can't manage.'

I was a handy child. I helped with the children, carried coal, set a fire fast with freezing hands in winter. 'Can I come home sometimes?'

'Sometimes,' the priest spoke, more softly, glancing at mother. 'You will work every day, but you can go to Mass on Sunday, the early Mass. I asked for that for you. You'll be the only servant allowed,' he smiled. 'And then you can come home from time to time, when it's arranged.'

'She'll have bed and board, and wages too?' Mother looked sharply at him, and shooed the little ones outside again.

He nodded.

'Will I go to live at the big house? Will I have a white apron? And a cap?' (I had seen girls in their uniform from afar, and liked it. This would be the spark that lit my flare for fashion and haberdashery.)

It was agreed, and the priest flowed out, saying I only needed to take my Sunday clothes, travelling in my school dress, and take a handkerchief, and two pairs of bloomers (one to wash and one to wear). And a rosary. It would be what I would cling to, at night, hearing the voices of the absent family in my head, hiding under the covers of my very own bed, as the words went round and round, drifting me comfortingly, so comfortably, into an exhausted child's sleep. A new life, with the old life line.

As soon as he was out of ear shot, I was dancing up and down, singing, bloomers, bloomers. My mother was speechless. How on earth are we going to get bloomers?

Neighbours sidled by to see why the priest had come, and a conference developed round the fire place. Why, my bairns never had bloomers. How are you going to manage that? Where could you get the material? If you get some, I'll sit and sew with you.

No, no, she's my lass, I'll do the sewing, Mam said, making it sound somehow shroudy, but it's the material... 

'Such a tall girl... you'll need yards,' Sadie moaned helpfully.

My face clouded. My bounce sank. I could feel a wave rise up inside me, ready to choke me off at the gorge.

'I'll not be able to go! I'll miss my chance! They won't have me!' I began to cry, wanting to stay anyway, here with my mother, and not live with strangers. And yet, I knew, it was my one chance. And they knew.

'Divna worry, bonny lass. We'll see til it. I've a cousin, on the docks, unloads the sugar boats. You know, those huge sugar sacks. Lovely cotton. Makes a terrible mess if they burst you know. But they do,' her head bobbed up and down like canary.

Well, I didn't know. I knew nothing back then. Later, in the kitchens when I was cook, I used to put in orders for sacks of flour, ah, so I never forgot. I learned to be ashamed, and then not to be. I learned to be proud of them, because they truly saved me. 

For now, I was sent to fetch water from the stand pipe. A lad was called to take a message to his uncle James. I think it was James. He wasn't from our village, the man from the docks, but well anyhow, it seems a message was got to him, this uncle James. He was a good man. People would help you in those days. People were good.

We said the family rosary that night, praying for a sack to break on his shift. Fervently praying, you know! Praying for a sin, really, because they didn't necessarily break by themselves, and I'm not sure, but I think I might have guessed that. But how could it be a sin, to save a child? A girl child at that? What else would have become of me, a child too poor for underwear?

Before many days had passed, my mother was sitting back by the fire, sewing a fine seam, straight up and down, and round the edges, on two pairs of great big pantaloons. I couldn't believe my luck! I threaded the draw string myself, just as she had taught me.

And that was it. I went smartly into service with Tate and Lyle stamped on my behind. 

She laughed, about ninety years later, when she told me about this. Really laughed. Her eyes unseeing sparkled, perhaps in disbelief. Later, remembering, it makes me want to cry. The most wonderful woman I have ever known.

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Tate and Lyle was and still is one of the biggest sugar companies.

Drawstring - in the waist band, as there wasn't elastic then. 

Bloomers, pantaloons - long trouser-style ladies' underwear promoted by Amelia Bloomer, 1849.