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lodgings, the second-hand clothes shops, the people sleeping rough without so much as a blanket to keep them warm and dry – the world of East End
London in all its sordid detail – through Flora’s eyes, not my own, and I felt shame. Not for my kin, but for the fact that the entire locality is shockingly down-at-heel and smells so
foul you want to hold your breath. Squalid is the adjective that sprang to mind.
    I passed a man swaying on his haunches, trying to mend his shoes. Shoes that weren’t fit for the dustbin.
    A small grocery store, one of the few I spotted, had signs in the window stating the various prices of the goods on sale. I paused to look. Tea – 1d, Sugar – 1d, Bread – 3d and
Butter – 2d.
    Usually it had been me who was sent out to buy a small something or other, because I was less likely to be refused the paltry morsels needed to keep our hunger at bay until Father received his
next inadequate pay packet.
    “Give us tuppence worth of this or thruppence worth of the other,” I’d beg the storekeeper. “Mum says she’ll square it with you Friday when Dad brings home his
wages.”
    I remembered how two ounces of boiled ham for “tea”, our evening meal, was a sumptuous banquet, shared out between the seven of us. A penny tin of condensed milk was also a huge
treat.
    I walked on, passing by a narrow lane known as Milk Lane. Washing was hanging out to dry in the alleyways. There was not a flower or a plant in sight. The brick houses are built alongside one
another, packed tightly together. Unkempt children were playing in the passageways. These infants are not scruffy urchins because of neglect but because no one has enough resources or time to take
better care of them. They stared hard and mistrustfully at my passing silhouette or chased after me gazing in awe, holding out their filthy palms, eyes peering out of underfed faces, in the hope of
a coin.
    It was my clothes that gave me away as a “foreigner”. An outsider from the West End. There might as well be a wall between the two London towns.
    I passed a young woman with flushed cheeks whose hair was going grey even though she could not have been more than 30; she was stitching the seat of her son’s breeches right there in the
street. I bent to tighten my bootlaces, an excuse to observe her and to ask myself: Was that how my mother had looked to the Bonnington family that midsummer day in 1900 when she went knocking on
their door? She would also have been about 30 at that time.
    Finally I turned a corner and came face to face with our cottage. How small it seemed to me today! The door was ajar. I hung back and took a deep breath. My hands were clammy as I lifted my fist
to rap on the wood.
    “Who’zere?” was the response called from within. It was followed by an awful bout of coughing. Without a word I pushed the door and stepped inside, for I had recognized the
voice of my mother.
    Her face was pastry-pale, lined and aged almost beyond recognition. Before me stood a stooped old lady. She gazed at me in blank amazement.
    “Christ Almighty! Dollie? No, it can’t be you.”
    I noticed bottles of stout, both full and empty, littering the floor. How can she afford such indulgences? I was smiling nervously to encourage the situation. Is she spending whatever food money
comes her way on stout? She was painfully thin.
    “Yes, it is.” I heard the quaver in my speech.
    She scrutinized me hard. “Well, take a bloomin’ look at yerself. All dressed up.”
    “I hope you don’t mind… I know I promised not to return, but…”
    “Quite the lady you’ve become, eh?”
    I looked about me, lost for words. Her scullery-cum-parlour room – there is only the one living space – was hideously cramped and it smelt of old mushrooms. I felt a rush of shame.
Not for what I was witnessing but for the privileged existence I have been living. The private rooms with private toilet facilities that I have begun to take for granted. How