![]() ![]() To make ends meet, the Wrays decide to take in lodgers, or "paying guests", and Leonard and Lilian Barber move in. There was no point dwelling on the scuffs." The vital thing was to make the most of the moments of brightness. The gloss would fade in about five minutes as the surface dried but everything faded. Frances battles against dust and grime, beating carpets and cushions, dusting furniture, sweeping the stairs and scrubbing the floor with vinegar: "There! How pleasing each glossy tile was. Waters is particularly good at building up the details of domesticity in an age when there were not yet the labour-saving devices to make it easier and less time-consuming. ![]() Frances's life is one of constant drudgery, punctuated by visits with her mother to the cinema every Wednesday, the weekly trip up to "Town", and the nightly cigarette sneaked in her bedroom. A young woman of her class is not meant to be boiling eggs, laying fires, emptying chamber pots, and she goes to great lengths to shield her frail mother and friends and neighbours from having to witness her perform such menial tasks. At a time when it is difficult for a middle-class woman to work, Frances has had to take on the housekeeping rather than employ a maid. Frances's father and two brothers, all of whom died during the Great War, have left behind debts. It is 1922, and Frances Wray and her mother live in genteel poverty in a south London house. ![]()
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