CHAINS TO FREEDOM.✔

Chapter Nine

"Well, Louis I'll have to make this worth my while, after all the trouble she's caused me. You can have her for three pound." Pead's eyes lit up with greed.

Alice did begin work at the manor the year she turned twelve. Cook was hard on her, making her start work well before the sun had risen and way past its departure. Alice cried herself to sleep each night dreaming of a better life. One as an actress.

On her day off she visited Lara and told her, her woes. Each visit Lara invited Alice to come and work with her. Alice sadly shook her head. How disappointed and ashamed her mother would be if she left the manor.

"Don't make me choke on my brandy, Pead. She's not a slave." Louis was astounded Pead had asked for money.

On one of her days off, after returning from visiting Lara, Alice found her father tending the small portion of garden he rented from the landlord to grow vegetables. She sat on an empty barrel with a heavy sigh.

He stood and looked at his daughter. She seemed smaller somehow. "What's up love?" he asked.

Alice turned her face to look at him, tears rolled down her cheeks. "Oh, Da. I hate my life!"

"But child you've a good life. A job. A place to come home to. Food in your belly."

"Da you don't understand. I'm not happy. My dream is to be an actress. It always has been. I hate cook. She's a cruel old witch who beats me if I spill a drop of water. Ma stands and watches. She hates me."

"Ah that's not true love. She wants the best for you, Alice."

"If that were true, Da she'd let me chase my dream and not make me work in that horrid place." Alice covered her face with her hands.

He thought for a while and for the first time in Alice's life spoke at length and with deliberation.

"Alice your Ma wasn't always as she is." He paused. "She had dreams of her own. Life is hard. When you get solid work you hold on to it with all your might. She hated the fact that Nan was the one to raise you. She would have liked to do that but it wasn't to be. I as her husband am ashamed and saddened that I couldn't support my family." He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Be assured girl, we both love you. She doesn't like to see you beaten, but if she stood by you, it's more like than not cook would have you both dismissed." He took a large lungful of air. "Alice I'll say this, follow your dream if you can. Make her proud, but don't come crying for sympathy if you fail!"

"No, she's not a slave, but she should by rights be taken back to the factory and put in confinement on bread and water for her offences against Grayson. I'm doing you a favour, Louis. I will have to present this assignment to the Magistrate for his approval." Pead paused. "Being you, I'm sure there won't be a problem. For my efforts I feel I am entitled to charge a fee."

Alice sat stunned for a while, she'd never thought of her mother as ever having dreams. It saddened her that those dreams had never been realised. For the next week Alice thought about what her father had said. She looked at her mother differently and wondered what her dreams might have been. Alice saw how sad and unhappy her mother was, doing the same things every day, cleaning and dusting objects which were already clean. Such a waste of life. By the end of the week she had made up her mind. She would follow her dreams. If she failed, she had some experience to get another job.

Louis continued the debate. "She has no trade. You said yourself what trouble she's given you and that the factory is already overcrowded. I'd think you'd be grateful to get rid of her?"

On her next day off, Alice told Lara her plans to come and work for her. Lara was delighted and told Alice she could come and live with her if she needed. The next step was to tell her parents what she had decided. Her father said nothing. The news was not a surprise to him.