Read A Whisper to the Living for Free Online Page B

sure her doorstep and the two or three square feet of flags outside the front door were donkeystoned daily, she was fighting a losing battle.
    We were constantly overrun by vermin; in the night the kitchen and scullery floors would become blanketed in silverfish and cockroaches, while mice and even rats put in regular appearances around the meat safe and under the slopstone.
    It was a poorly built two up two downer, with a sloping scullery attached at the back and a brick air-raid shelter in the yard. The roof leaked with monotonous frequency and the bedroom walls were decorated with a variety of moulds, some wet and green, some white and furry.
    Facilities were, to say the least, primitive. At the bottom of the back yard was a tippler toilet consisting merely of a wide earthenware pipe which protruded from the flagged floor, the seat being a crude circle of badly splintered wood with a hole in the middle. There was no flushing mechanism. A suspended bucket in the pipe simply emptied itself into the open drain below once the contents became heavy enough to make it tilt.
    Next to the lavatory was a midden, a low wall over which debris and decaying food were thrown. Two or three times a month, the cart would rumble up the back street and men with rags wrapped around their mouths and noses would shovel the putrid contents of middens onto the open lorry, thereby disturbing the rats’ nests, causing the creatures to panic and move once more towards our homes in search of food.
    Yet there was a predictability about life in Ensign Street, a monotony that made us feel secure in spite of our unclean environment.
    Because most of the women worked on weekdays, washing was done on Saturdays. Each household had its own posstub and posser and the pounding of wood on metal, the swish of garments in water, the scrubbing of sheet against washboard, these sounds were our dawn chorus at the beginning of each weekend. Should it rain, then these activities must take place in the sculleries and tempers were always frayed on inclement Saturdays, for no-one, not even the most hardened of heathens, would dare face the contempt of her neighbours by washing on a Sunday, however bright the weather.
    Once the clothes had been rinsed and forced through the rollers of the wringer, they were hung across the back street to dry, row upon row, three or four lines to every house and woe betide any child found playing round the backs on washdays. Inside the kitchens were pulley lines where the wash was hung to air once brought in or, in the event of rain, clothes would be transferred straight from mangle to pulley, thus forcing the residents to live in a steam-filled atmosphere for the whole day.
    The rentman came on Saturdays too, when he knew that the women would all be about their washing and could not, therefore, hide from him. He had a small moustache like Hitler and a large black book to write in, but he was a pleasant enough man and always gave me a mint imperial or an Uncle Joe’s mintball.
    On Tuesday evenings, the clubman arrived, collecting our pennies for the Providence cheques with which we bought most of our clothing. He had bright red hair, a tooth missing at the front and he did bird imitations. At least, he used to, though once Eddie Higson moved in with us the Provvy man never stopped again, but just took his money and left quickly. I was pleased in a way. It made me realize that I was not the only one who disliked Higson.
    Wednesday night was insurance night. Like most poor people, we set aside a few coppers each week so that we would not be buried as paupers.
    Lamp Eel came on Friday evenings, the sad carthorse dragging its load up the back street while his master, who always wore a trilby hat with a flower stuck to the brim, called in a high voice, ‘Lamp eel, lamp eel, come on Missus, bring out your dead . . . lamp eel . . .’, and we would rush out of our houses to inspect whatever was on offer this week. Lamp Eel, whose original