At the age of seventeen

At the age of seventeen, three years later than her sisters, my mother  was sent as an apprentice to work in this large draper's shop. At Daniels mother was put into the millinery and there father saw her. He saw her fair hair. She looked - he told me - like a goddess in her mutton-chop sleeves and so desireble with her tiny waist. ('Eighteen inches', she would put in). She was so quick with the costumers, he said, so clever with trimmings! She could put an ugly hat on a grumbling woman, give a twist, snatch a feather or a bunch of cherries and so dazzle the customer with chatter and her smiles.
 As for my father, Mother was astonished by him.
 'He was so clean, dear. You never saw anything so clean.' The poorly paid assistant fed in the basement, slept in the attics and went out to get drunk when the shop closed.
'Eight to eight, weekdays, eleven o'clock Saturday nights'
Mother would say. 'Old Daniels was a beast'
They worked in the cold draughts  and the poisonous headaching smell of the gaslight.
'So clean' my mother would go on 'and so particular about his clothes - you know your father. Always the silk hat and the spats. He might have got some bad girl if he hadn't had me.'
 She was in awe of him; he kept his nails perfect and there was a pleasant smell of Pear's soap about him and his teeth were white. He cleaned them - as his mother did- with soot or salt.
 At this period my father - who was eventually to become very fat indeed, going up to eighteen stone in his time - was a slender young man. He looked grave, his fine brown eyes seemed to burn, and he could change from the effusive to the canny hard look of the brisk young Yorkshireman out for the 'brass' there was sometimes a hollow-eyed and haunted look on his face. The fact is what he told me my dumbstruck mother when they talked together - he had had a wretched childhood. My grandfather, so benevolent to me , had been a harsh, indeed a savage, father.
Extract from the book “A cab in the door” by V.S. Pritchett