PARAFFIN

The smell of the lillies were sickly in the heat.
I tried to see what was written on the label, 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; 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.
Going to a 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? That's 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 sixty, the woman said.

Same as me.

When I first came, 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 come here he bought me a coat - a BIG coat -
and I said - I'm not putting THAT on!

Well me, I was well used to the cold and the rain,
But the fog, the real pea soupers, I had never seen anything like it...
It was so dark all the time.
I kept getting lost -
On the buses -
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 for directions -
Nobody understood a word I said.
The place was so big -
So many people -
No place was 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 -
And 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 lorries 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.

Jesus, you've never seen so many kids -

And the women in their curlers and their slippers.

And 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 a paraffin heater - you could smell it off them.

When I arrive here I went to church - but I had to stop going because my clothes smelled so of paraffin. 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 the clothes used to catch fire. A lot of people got burned, babies and little children suffocated, burned to death or scarred for life.

That's right, I remeber 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.

And the cooker on the landing for everybody 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, 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 damn cats!

And if you lived upstairs - and somebody banged the front door -

The whole damned lot ended up in the damned street!

Then if it rained -

Oh Christ yeah - the bread used to be like porridge

My sons won't believe any of it.

No, they don't do they.