What about us? (11 page)

I must have looked confused,
but clearly he wanted me to understand and he became quite animated as he
started to explain.

“Grace, imagine being somewhere
when something momentous is happening, yet not being able to understand exactly
how it came about or why.  One of the things that has always marked our
development as a species has been communication skills, or more specifically,
language.

“Think about it.  In your day,
there are texts in the museums from all over the ancient world.  Some are
written languages and it is thought that these texts can be translated using
the similarities between them and modern languages thousands of years later.  Scholars
also learn from the way a word is placed, or how often it’s used and in how
many different kinds of texts it is found.  But what of the subtleties, like how
the inflexion on one part of a word changes the meaning completely, or why one
word was chosen over another when they appear to mean the same thing? These
small details are vitally important to the meaning.

“Not all the information is in
words.  Some used pictures; Ancient Egyptian, for example.  How can we ever be
sure about the language that was spoken, just by looking at pictures? You see
Grace, if we are going to use information from the past to help us create the
future, we can’t afford to make assumptions or mistakes.  We have to have
certainties, or else why bother? It’s not enough to just witness what happened. 
I have to understand why it happened at that precise moment in time and not
another.  In order to do that, I have to understand exactly what is being said
all around me.  Only then will I truly know why people acted in the way they did.”

I thought about what he was
saying.  He was talking about words.  Words can be taken for granted, they can
hurt horribly, they can make you laugh or cause nothing but confusion, yet they
can all be the same words.  I thought about myself in 1888 as opposed to myself
in 2001.  In both times there were many words that I didn’t know, or I knew but
didn’t use, or didn’t know how to use properly and how often that made me feel
stupid.

I don’t think I said any of
this, but maybe I did, because he went on as though he knew what I was
thinking.

“There are always some people
who have power over others.  Sometimes it’s just because they know how to use
the right words in the right way and at the right time.  Often it’s nothing
more than that.  Sometimes terrible things happen because some words have been
misunderstood, or because some words have been used in exactly the right way to
bring that event about.  So the linguists had to go first.  Only then could the
historians follow and make sense of what they were seeing and hearing.”

It occurred to me then that
Jack’s natural language probably wasn’t English, something he confirmed when I
asked him.

“Language is as alive or as
dead as the people who speak it.  Even if the world hadn’t changed as much as
it has by my time and even if I came from London, you wouldn’t recognise much
of the English that I’d speak, much less the language that is my mother
tongue.”

“Jolly useful piece of kit
then, those implants.” I told him, tapping his head gently, while silently
thanking the unknown techie who’d enabled us to communicate so well.  Not that
we always needed words; we had other ways of expressing ourselves to each other
and those cold winter nights gave us plenty of opportunities to do just that.

We made Napier Street our home
for the whole winter.  It was a sweet little house; two up and two down, with a
small yard at the back and the front door opening straight onto the street.  The
kitchen and scullery were downstairs at the back and our living room was at the
front.  Upstairs we had a bedroom and we turned the smaller room into a study. 
Keeping house took up most of my time.  Mum had never been that fussed about
how the flat looked and left to her, it was always a tip; as it had become the
day after I’d moved out.  Nan though, had been the opposite and right from when
I was small, I loved to help her make it ‘spick and span’ as she used to say.

The problem was, I didn’t know how
or where to start.  There were none of the things I’d taken for granted and
grumbled about in my own life.  No Hoover, instead there was a broom.  No
washing machine.  No army of plastic squirty bottles claiming to work miracles
on grease and grime.  No microwave, there wasn’t even a cooker that I could
recognise.  It was called a range and had to be fed coal all the time and then
once I’d got it burning brightly, it either incinerated things or only made
them lukewarm and if you took your eyes off it, it went out.  The fireplaces
had to be cleaned out and relit every day or we froze.  And the toilet! Well,
what can I say about that?

Water didn’t come into the
house; it had to be collected from a standpipe in the street several times a
day, carried back and then boiled before we could use it for anything.  Although
Jack said by that time the water in London was the safest it had ever been,
thanks to the sewer system and the treatment plants, but we still weren’t
taking any chances.  At least the cold weather meant that the lack of a fridge
or a freezer wasn’t too much of a problem.  I wasn’t sure how we were going to
cope in the summer, but I decided to cross that bridge when we came to it and
not before.

Despite all of this I was not
going to be beaten and nor was I going to become the ‘slut’ Nan always called Mum. 
We were going to have a proper home, even if it killed me.  I was that
determined.

Winnie was my angel in those
first few weeks.  She took one look at my hands and laughed when I asked her to
help me choose the best products to clean my home.

“Always had servants then? So
how would you know pet and growing up in a strange place as well.” she said,
tutting and referring I hoped, to my American birthplace.

I just stood there amazed, as
she bustled about the shop putting a parcel together.  She cut different soaps
from blocks, telling me to grate this one for clothes, this one to rub straight
onto the surfaces or the floor, that one for the bath, another for the dishes,
except if they were really greasy, to use the same one as for the floor, only
to grate it first.  If only I could remember which one that had been.

Then there was polish for the
brass, blacking for the range and the fireplaces and some thick beeswax for the
wood.  The vinegar was for all sorts of things as far as I could tell and then
there was rose water, lavender water, a vile smelling bag of ‘salts’, another
bag of crystals for something else, some cloths and some scrubbing brushes; not
just one but four! Finally she put in a kneepad, telling me that I’d need to go
to Mr Jonstone’s shop for rat poison and powder to deal with the bed bugs!

I looked on in horror as the
pile grew.  It wasn’t the cost; I think the whole lot came to less than two
shillings, not even ten pence in my world.  I was frantically trying to
remember everything she’d said and after less than five minutes, most of it was
already gone.  Except the news about the bed bugs; that was firmly lodged,
never to be forgotten.  I think she must have seen the panic on my face,
because she patted my arm and made a suggestion.

“Listen pet.  Elsie Grundy’s
eldest at number twenty-eight has just had a little ‘un.  She lost her job up
at one of the big houses for her trouble and Elsie has enough on her plate
without another two mouths to feed and no extra money coming in.  For a square
meal and a shilling a day she’ll do all your heavy work, as long as you don’t
mind her bringing the baby with her.  You could do each other a favour.”

The relief I felt at her words
was incredible.  I could have hugged her and I’m not normally a tactile person. 
She told me not to bother trying to carry it all; she’d send her Henry round
with it later.

“You go along and see Elsie,
tell her I sent you.  Anything else you need to know or want, you come here
first Grace; you’re too trusting by far.”

With that she shooed me out and
I knew I’d made a friend.

Elsie’s eldest was called Sal. 
She was fourteen and already a mother.  The father was never mentioned by her,
although the neighbours had plenty to say on the matter.  Sal had a foul mouth
and the strength of an ox, with an appetite to match, despite the fact that she
was clearly malnourished.  But she worked hard for her shilling a day and I
didn’t begrudge her a mouthful of food.

As Winnie had said she would,
she did all my heavy work.  She went and got the water and she scrubbed every
surface and every visible bit of floor, including the doorstep and pavement
outside, making her poor hands red and sore in the process.  She swept, she
emptied all the cupboards, cleaned inside them and their contents.  She
polished the range, the wood and the brass as though her life depended on it
and my windows never had a smear on them.  You’d never know that my pots and
pans had ever been used, they sparkled so.

In return I made sure there was
milk for the child, as well as for her.  His name was Charlie and he was a
scrawny, sickly baby of about six months when they first arrived, but over the
winter he filled out and smiled more often and more naturally than his mother
ever did.  There would always be a good bit of breakfast waiting for her when
she arrived and when she’d finished her day’s work there’d be a hearty lunch
for her and we’d mash some of it up in the milk for the baby.  Every day she
took whatever leftovers there were back to the family.  Because Elsie had
another seven mouths to feed as well as Sal and Charlie, I always made more
than we needed and of course every week there was six shillings for her.

Even with all Sal’s hard graft
there was still so much to do.  My Nan would have been proud of me as I became
the housewife.  Even though it was bloody hard work, there was a great sense of
satisfaction to it and it gave my week a pattern that I liked.  It was normal
and that in itself was new for me.

The soot and dust went
everywhere, so I dusted most days.  The fires had to be cleared, then re-laid
and kept going.  The ‘potties’, for want of a better word, had to be emptied
and new soil spread over the sewage in the earth closet in the garden.  The
house wasn’t on the mains for anything except gas and that was just for the
lights.  However, everyone was talking about the men from the waterworks, who
were supposed to be coming soon to lay pipes in the street.  That caused a lot
of excitement.

The laundry was done at the
communal wash house a few streets away.  Winnie took me there the first time
and I went with her every week after that.  Her mother minded the shop and in
return Winnie did her washing.  She was too old to give things a ‘proper seeing
to’ according to Winnie and I think they both enjoyed the day away from home.  It
was hard work washing the bedding and the towels.  Not that I recognised them
as towels; they were more like thin blankets.  Then there were the soot and
dust filled lace curtains and the clothes, all of which had to be scrubbed by
hand.

The good thing was, that you
helped others and they helped you.  Then everything had to be wrung out before
being carted home to dry.  It was a social but tiring day out with the ‘girls’
and despite most people not having much more than a pot to piss in and the
clothes on their backs, there was always plenty to laugh about.

It was during one of our wash
house sessions that I asked Winnie if she wanted the vote.  I’d only voted once
in my life and I sort of understood how important it was that I could, but
these women couldn’t yet.  She looked at me in shock for a moment, then
considered the question seriously for a minute or two, while we rhythmically
slapped items of clothing against the wet tiles.

“Me? Personally yes.  It
wouldn’t flummox me and given a bit of time I’d work it out alright and wouldn’t
waste it.  But look around you.  Would you want to live in a land governed by
this lot? I ask you! Although to be fair, this lot’d probably do better than
their men-folk.  It’s a good thing most of them don’t have the vote.  My
Henry’s got it ’cos of the shop.  It’s ours and that shows responsibility; he’s
got summat to lose.  Most of the men in the street never had anything in the
first place and if they did, they probably lost it long ago to the bottle or
the pipe.  No, you can’t go giving the vote just like that.” she huffed.  “There’d
be consequences, bound to be.”

I looked around at the many
shapes and sizes of the women who were now familiar to me.  What I saw was a
lot of faces made old before their time through hard work and not enough of
most of the basic things in life and as it stood, not much hope of changing
things either.

“But if you could work it out
Winnie, why couldn’t they?” I asked.

“Oh Grace you are a one.” she
laughed.  “There’s a reason why them that are the ruling classes rule and why
we do the work.  For most of this lot to work it out, those that rule would
have to make it a lot simpler and why would they want to do that? Why would
they want to change anything? They’ve got too much to lose, that’s why!”

She turned to Betty, the big
Irish woman who always had a smile for me.

“What would you vote for Bet?”

Betty threw her head back and
gave a big belly laugh.  “Me? I’d vote for any bleeder who’d send me someone to
come and do this once a week, while I put me feet up.”