Silvertown: An East End family memoir. Melanie McGrath

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       CHAPTER 3

      In the years before the first war, the Fulcher family concerns are the concerns of respectability – nits, bedbugs and the price of marg. They’re not on the rise, exactly, but they’re not on the fall either, and there is a pleasing steadiness to life. Frenchie is bringing home most of his carpenter’s wage and Sarah is able to top it up with the few shillings she makes from taking in the mending for James Looke’s laundry in Ullin Street. Not so far away, not so far at all, there are families whose children go about barefoot and shit in pits in the cellar; families whose lives are reduced to a matter of other people’s pockets and what might be in them; families who might go under altogether if it weren’t for Sally Army soup. Not the Fulchers. The Fulchers all have boots (with cardboard soles fitted periodically by Frenchie), and each is in possession of his or her own outer garment. The Fulcher children only have nits when they catch them from other children, and there is bread and marg at every mealtime. No Fulcher child has ever had to dip for a living, and not a drop of Sally Army soup has passed Fulcher lips.

      Not all the families in Ullin Street are so lucky. Among these are the Jorrocks who live at number twelve. Matty and Tom Jorrocks have to collect the horse shit off the roads to sell to the families with vegetable plots, and their mother Mary has been seen standing in the soup kitchen queue. Matty and Tom have boots, though they are taken from different pairs and Matty’s toes explode from his. Between them they share a ragged twill which they take it in turns to wear, Matty every morning on the way school and Tom on the way back. Their destinies are already set. At the age of fourteen they will leave school and if they are lucky they’ll find work in the docks, the factories or the sweatshops. Others will take their emptied places and so it will go on.

      All the children of school age living in Ullin Street are obliged to attend the same school, just a few roads away in Bright Street. The Bright Street School is a hulking, optimistic construction of red brick sandwiched between a terrace of houses and a forest of pubs, within whose damp walls the children of East Poplar are daily expected, by some mysterious means, to obtain an education.

      Mathematics: three times six is eighteen.

      Religion: the Seven Deadly Sins: greed, lust, gluttony, covetousness, etc.

      History: the Tudor monarchs: Haitch, He and Me. That’s Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward V, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

      Politics: the sun never sets on the British Empire.

      At eight o’clock every morning the doors of Ullin Street open and the children tumble out and make their way towards Bright Street. It is no more than a five-minute walk but for the Fulcher children it is the longest five minutes of their day because Matty and Tom Jorrocks have made it their young lives’ work to torment the Fulchers. The only Fulcher Tom and Matty never tease is Rosie and that is because Rosie is thirteen and pretty.

      Plain Jane. Plain Janey Foolshit, shout Matty and Tom at the gaggle of miserable Fulchers. Mouldy Maudie Foolshit, Johnny Pongy Bastard-Foolshit.

      Sometimes a stone will soar into the air and land thump on the back of one of the Fulcher children. Once, a dead rat comes at them. Another time a clump of horse shit. Banned by Sarah from talking to the Jorrocks, the Fulcher children have little choice but to carry on along Ullin Street, but nothing seems to discourage Tom and Matty.

      Foolshit. Plainey Janey.

      Mum, why do they call us names? asks Jane.

      Because they’re common.

      Why? says Jane.

      Her mother smiles at her girl and winks and shakes her head.

      Blimey, the questions you ask! C’m ’ere and drink your tea.

      Jane is an average student in every lesson with the exception of writing. Twice a day a single slate comes around the class and the children are expected to inscribe on to it whatever the teacher demands. However hard Jane toils over the slate, her right hand will not write. The left produces perfect scrolls, beautiful lines and slashes but the right is like a wayward child. Very often she can get nothing from it but squiggles and odd little polka dots.

      Only witches and imbeciles write with their left hands, Jane Fulcher, says Miss Whiting, the teacher. Which are you? Now, right hand, please. What are you waiting for?

      I can’t do it, Miss.

      A long sigh, eyes raising to the roof. How old are you, Jane?

      Ten, Miss.

      And you still can’t write your own name? What does that mean, Jane Fulcher?

      I don’t know, Miss.

      It means you are insubordinate and lazy, Jane Fulcher.

      Righty-ho, Miss.

      Miss Whiting sweeps from her desk clutching a ruler and, rushing forwards, brings it down on the knuckles of Jane Fulcher’s left hand. Sometimes she will use a buckled belt or a shoe. Every now and then Miss Whiting will add in the backs of Jane’s knees and elbows for good measure, reciting her indictments with each blow. Insubordinate. Whack. Lazy. Whack. At the age of ten, Jane’s left hand is a five-fingered callus, the right a ghost afraid of its own shadow. The right-handed children break into titters of relief and contempt. They fear the hand impairment is contagious. Whenever Jane goes near them they tend to peel away.

      When they arrive home of an evening Rosie will say, Never mind, Janey, I love yer, and Jane will feel better for a while, even though she knows that Rosie can afford to be nice because she is pretty.

      Janey got done in writing class again today, Rosie will tell their mother, fetching some salted water to bathe the stinging hand.

      I never needed no writing nor nothing and it never bothered me, Sarah will say, and giving her daughter’s hands a little kiss she will wrap them in a pair of old mittens so that Frenchie won’t be bothered by the sight of them.

      To avoid Matty and Tom, the Fulchers begin taking a different route to school, one that puts them in the way of the confectionery store of Mrs Selina Folkman on Zetland Street. To Jane, the store is a sugar palace. In the window are bricks of pink and white coconut ice sitting on a paving of cream fudge with cherry-spotted nougat arches.

      Get a move on, Janey, you can’t have none, says Rosie, each time Jane’s footfall slows as she reaches Selina Folkman’s store. But it’s no good. Within days, Jane can think of nothing else. Bit by bit the sugar palace consumes her. Rowntree’s Treacle Toffee, Fry’s Chocolate Crème, Mclntyre’s Toffee Tablet, Maynards Rum ’n’ Raisin. In her mind the names become exotic friends. Mr Treacle Toffee, stern and rather bitter; Miss Crème, delicate, soft and yielding; Mrs Rum ‘n’ Raisin, sweet and old and as drunk as Mrs Jorrocks. Her confectionery characters take up residence in Jane’s heart.

      On the first Friday of every month Frenchie comes home with a twist of brown paper bought from an Indian toffee seller who stands on a busy crossroads on Frenchie’s way home.

      Who’s after a bit of toffee? cries Frenchie.

      Me! Me!

      The children cram around.

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