It was 1881. Joyce worked in the laundry of an upper middle class mansion. There was the landlord, Thomas, and his wife, and their five spoilt little brats. It didn’t matter too much about the little brats; they were away at boarding schools.
Thomas used to pop down to the laundry occasionally, and talk to Joyce about making sure his cricket whites were spotless. No grass stains, please. He was rather fun, Joyce thought. She could joke with him (politely of course), even though she was just the laundry maid and he was the upper middle class landlord who played cricket.
When she was going to have his baby, she was shunted away to Liverpool to live with an aged aunt of hers. Dirty, dirty, unprincipled, lower class, immoral, devious laundry maid. Such trash’ll do any and everything to try to advance their station.