The smell of the lillies was sickly so close up.
I tried to see what was written on the card, without being
too obvious.
The woman saw me looking, but her expression was hard to
read.
I didn't know if she expected me to comment or not, or if
she wanted me to.
A tiny elderly woman, with a mighty hat, standing at the
bus stop holding a
large wreath.
I had to say something.
Lovely flowers, I said.
Funeral, she said.
Oh, I said, somebody close.
She nodded. Yes.
It happens.
When you get to our age, I said, there seems to be somebody
nearly every month.
Every week, she corrected me.
I'll be next. I've got this really bad chest. Can't you
hear it? Got that
from smoking.
Do you still smoke? I asked. More to make conversation than
anything else.
What is wrong with you? she responded caustically.
Of course not.
Not now.
But I smoked thirty or forty a day for years.
I didn't start till I came here.
I never used to smoke back home.
So when did you come here, I asked her.
Nineteen and fifty nine, the woman said.
Same as me.
When I first came here, she went on, I said to my husband
- what?
You leave your nice little wooden house for this place?
You take me from my mother's home for this place?
When I first came here he bought me a coat - a BIG coat
-
and I said - I'm not putting THAT on!
Well with me, I said, I was used to the cold and the rain.
But not the fog.
The real pea soupers.
I'd never seen anything like it.
It was so dark all the time.
I kept getting lost.
On the bus.
On the underground.
It took me a long time to get used to the underground.
I never got off at the right stop.
And it was no good asking directions.
Nobody understood a bloody word I said.
The place was so big.
So many people.
There was nothing familiar.
No mountain at the end of the street.
In the shops if I wanted anything, I just had to point.
I was so lonely.
So scared.
The woman looked down at the flowers, fingering the petals.
Yes, I know. I cried every day. Every day.
Remember the paraffin?
Oho!
The lorry used to come round the streets.
And the man would ring the bell.
And all the people would come pouring out of the houses
to fill up their cans.
Sweet Jesus, you've never seen so many kids! All creeds
and colours.
And the women! In their curlers and their slippers!
And their nighties!
That paraffin. It stink out everything in the room.
When you got on a bus and sat down, you could tell if the
person next to you had
paraffin - you could smell it off them.
When I arrive here I went straight to church - but I had
to stop going because
my clothes smelled so of paraffin! Even my big coat! Those
English people - they
looked at me so funny.
And it was real dangerous too.
Oh yes, people they used to put clothes around the heater
to dry, even on top of
it - the rooms were so freezing cold and damp - and the
clothes catch fire.
A lot of people got burned.
Babies and little children suffocated.
Burned to death or scarred for life.
That's right.
I remember that.
It happened a lot.
We used to have a bath in the kitchen.
Oho! Lucky you!
It had a wooden top you used to put on and use it for a
table.
In one place where we were, there was a sink just above
us, and all the water
used come down through the ceiling into our room.
And one morning the whole lot collapsed.
We looked up and - Lord God - there was this Irishman.
In his shirt tails and nothing else!
Waving his thing at us!
He must have had his socks on!
I would say so!
And the cooker on the landing for everyone in the house
to use.
And nobody had a fridge.
No, we used to put stuff on the window sill to stop it going
off.
Everything - milk bottles, baby bottles, bottles of booze.
Leftovers, frying pans and pots with food in.
Out on the window sill.
And if you lived on the ground floor or in the basement
It used to get nicked
Pot and all.
Or eaten by the damm cats.
And if you lived upstairs - and somebody banged the front
door
The whole dammed lot ended up in the dammed street!
Then if it rained
Oh yes, yes - the bread used to be like porridge.
My sons don't believe any of it.
No, they don't, do they.
Would you ever think of going back to live?
I don't know, maybe.
