The Verminous Hazards of Research

I’ve always enjoyed ‘doing research’ especially when my old darling was alive and we travelled together.

Revisiting a favourite town or discovering a new one, reading contemporary newspapers, following leads not knowing where they would take us was a happy occupation.

I liked the uncertainty of it. The surprises.

I’ve been down a coal mine, all over the Tower of London, sailed the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, following Nelson’s trail, and once, when I wasn’t expecting it, I explored one of the old 19^th century Wentworth Buildings in the East End.

The book I was writing was about a love affair between a Jewish boy and an Irish Catholic girl and was set in Whitechapel at the turn of the century. I’d known Club Row and Petticoat Lane since I was a child but I went back to explore the whole place thoroughly, from the sweatshops in Fashion Street to the slums in Wilson Street, wondering what it must have been like to live in one of the new tenements that had been built for the deserving poor.

Then I turned another grubby corner and there it was, huge, solid, strongly built and still clearly labelled Wentworth Buildings. I couldn’t believe my luck.

I thought they’d all been pulled down long since. It was boarded up, ready for demolition and there were signs pasted on the boards telling the world to ‘Keep Out’ and warning that it was ‘Dangerous’ in large red letters.

But I wasn’t going let a little thing like that deter me.

One of the boards had lost several nails. It didn’t take me long to pull it to one side and I was in.

It was a fascinating place, stinkingly dirty and with daunting stone stairs. The original draconian signs instructing the tenants that children were not allowed to play in the inner courtyard and that washing could only be hung out on Mondays were still in faded place on the walls, and the flats were an eye-opener. The front door opened to reveal a WC – what a luxury that would have been after chamber pots – and all the other rooms led out of one another so that no space was wasted on corridors. The living room had a sizeable fireplace and the bedrooms had smaller ones, so providing they could afford the coal the tenants could keep warm. And the kitchen, which was next to the WC, had a copper for the washing, a sink and a cooking range. I drew plans and made notes to my heart’s content. It was a wonderful find.

It was growing dark by the time I emerged and my old darling thought we ought to be getting home so off we went to Victoria.  I was so high and happy I didn’t notice how much I was scratching myself until we pulled out of East Croydon and then I looked down and saw that my legs were covered in small red lumps. I’d been bitten.

‘You’ve caught a flea,’ my old darling said.

‘I’ll bet. Don’t worry. We’ll sort it out the minute we get in.’

Which we did, he running a bath while I stripped off my clothes. I was scratching like a lunatic, leaving red marks all over my arms and legs. It was a wonderful relief to sink into the water, at least the heat soothed the itch.

While my old darling gathered up my clothes and sped off to put them in the washing machine, I ducked my head and held it underwater for as long as I could. If I had caught a flea I was going to drown the horrid thing. When I finally lifted my head I looked at the water around me to see if I could see any sign of it.

It wasn’t a flea. I was sharing my bath with scores of the things, some floating, some swimming, but as far as I could see all horribly alive.

When I’d been wrapped in a towel and the corpses had all been flushed away, my old darling checked me all over from the hair on my head to soles of my feet and pronounced me flea-free.

‘That’ll larn yer to go trespassing,” he said, laughing at me.

It didn’t, of course. But that’s another story.

 

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Beryl has been writing for 75 years (she started when she was seven) and has 23 or 24 books published.  Her sales passed the million mark after book 12. She married her darling when she was nineteen and they were together for 53 years, eleven months and six days and were only parted by his death. She has three children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren with a fourth on the way.  She enjoys writing and doesn’t count words.

Follow her on twitter @berylkingston or find out more about her on her website www.berylkingston.co.uk.

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