Home Is A Strange Country Chapter Two

 

TWO

Home. Bolton 1903

At home, there was much which was different than in other mill workers homes. Both her father and mother, whilst conforming to the norms of their cotton town and their class existence, also had a secret, one which they had passed on to their two sons and then Florence, and which they had already started to pass on to her three younger brothers. The house contained books, lots of books. Books of every sort from novels to instruction books. Books on history, geography, travel, novels and a Bible. For them there was nothing forbidden in the reading matter found in book cases and shelves around the house. She and her family took to reading with pleasure, something her friends often found strange and unusual. From an age when she first started to read at school, her mother would take her to the lending library in town, and allow her to select whatever book she wished to read from the children’s section. In this way over the years Florence gained more of an education than most of the others in her class, sometimes to the annoyance of her teacher, and often to the surprise of all those friends around her. Florence did not flaunt this knowledge. She realised at an early age that many of her young friends did not have the same encouragement which she and her brothers had, and this fact would often lead to taunting in the schoolyard at playtime. She kept quiet about her knowledge as it slowly accumulated over the years. Along with the knowledge grew a feeling that she would not follow in the footsteps of her mother or the other women who lived on Waterloo Street. She would get out, sometime, somehow. All that she needed to happen was for the opportunity to present itself.