Who smashed the tiles off the wall beside the front door? Once there were tiles all the way up both sides of the front door and the pictures on the tiles were full of action: the wind blowing the sails on the sailing ships, waves lapping the hulls of the ships, and flying fish! There’s a mustard-coloured pennant at the top of the mast in the only bit of tiling that’s left. I wish the rest of the scene with its touches of colour had survived.
The row of houses with the pub at the end, down past the new fountains, is still standing. Perhaps the smashed-up tiling came from another row of houses nearby. Are the foundations still there, beneath Greenwich Millennium Village? Will there be anything for Time Team to discover if they decide to take a look? An old key perhaps?
The key to the teacaddy. Tea was expensive. The caddy was locked to keep the precious contents safe.
The key was lost. A woman lost the key. She wasn’t the mistress of the household, that was Mrs Sidney. This woman was a trusted servant, her name was Ellen Matthews. She was distraught that she had lost the key.
How had she lost the key? Ellen had carefully locked the teacaddy and was on her way to return the key to Mrs Sidney. Something gave Ellen such a shock that she dropped the key and couldn’t find it.
What was the thing that shocked Ellen so completely? Was it the arrival of somebody from her past that she had never expected to see again? Perhaps Ellen had always been told that her older sister had died before she was born and here was a woman claiming to be her sister, telling Ellen the story of the forty years of life since Ellen was born, none of which Ellen recognised because it was a separate life.
This really was Ellen’s sister, but a thing like that doesn’t resolve itself in an instant.
27.10.08
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