Chapter 7
Gemma first started collecting things when she was a child and lived on the south coast. She didn’t know it then, but the washed-out pieces of glass and sea-polished pebbles she took home from the beach meant that she was well on her way towards becoming a larker.
When she moved to London to study nursing, the only times she beachcombed was when she was visiting home or if she was on holiday.
It wasn’t until she and Adam moved near the Thames that she realised how much she missed being near water.
Regularly, she’d take herself down to the river to clear her mind and unwind from a tough week at work.
The first piece of history she discovered was entirely accidental.
She and Adam had had a row. Over what, she couldn’t remember.
But she’d left the house intending to walk off her exasperation and took to the exposed riverbed where the tide was at its lowest. There, a shoelace came undone and bending down to tie it up, she noticed a triangular shard of blue and white pottery popping with brightness among the grey and red rubble of the foreshore.
She picked it up, felt its smooth shiny surface and wondered what it had once been. She put it in her pocket to find out.
Gemma didn’t know then that to ferret around the riverbed and take away what you found required a permit, or that what she’d done even had a name.
Nor did she know that she should have washed the piece of pottery with warm water and a toothbrush, then dried it out slowly, keeping it away from heat so it didn’t get damaged.
Instead, she taped it to the pin board above the radiator next to her desk and began searching online for what object it may once have been a part of.
Her fragment featured the blue edge of a wing and a puff of cloud, a teasing snippet of a larger story that, Gemma discovered, turned out to be inspired by a Japanese fairy tale and the designs of revered Chinese porcelain.
‘Willow Pattern’ tableware became fashionable and ubiquitous during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and was the most common type of pottery found by mudlarkers.
Although the piece may not have been valuable, it became so to Gemma.
Who had eaten off it? Did it belong to a shipbuilder’s wife or a pub owner?
How had it ended up in the river? Had it broken and was considered rubbish?
And where were its siblings? Were they close by, or had they dispersed randomly and arrived at different parts of the river?
Would they ever be found? Gemma was amazed at how many questions had arisen from this single three-by-two-centimetre fragment.
When she’d got home, she was so excited she wanted to tell Adam.
But he didn’t seem to get it. He thought she was making a fuss over a dirty chunk of ceramic (his words) that was better off in the bin (his words again).
In fact, looking back, Adam had always been dismissive of her hobby.
So much so, that, deep down, it was as if he’d chipped off a tiny splinter of her that never got reattached. Why on earth had she put up with it?
Even so, it didn’t make her stop. In fact, it made her want to do it more, and Gemma quickly learnt that you had to keep abreast of the tides in order to regularly hit the foreshore.
Now, Gemma printed out the tide charts for the next three months.
She fixed them to the fridge door and planned her next outing.
She fancied going into the city, into the heart of old Londinium.
The next convenient low tide would be the second Sunday of May at one in the afternoon.
Bankside, on the south side of the Thames, was busy and noisy with tourists and buskers, trains and traffic.
Walking across Millenium Bridge, her rucksack on her back, a fellow pedestrian called out, ‘Hey, Dora, what are you exploring?’ Gemma laughed and waved.
She didn’t care if someone called her the name of a TV cartoon character.
She was in a good mood because she was about to spend several hours with ghosts of the past and had everything she could possibly need.
Kneepads, wellies, rubber gloves, Ziplock bags, a dry bag, a trowel, a foldable rain jacket, sunglasses, hand sanitiser, tissues, a Thermos of tea, a filled bread roll and a bottle of water.
As she reached the steps leading down to the beach, Gemma tuned out from everything around her.
The modern world receded. Even the clatter of the trains at Blackfriars Station faded.
The grey rubble beneath her feet became her focus.
The dirty sky hung low and the slowly receding tide sloshed and rippled, in parts creating small pools and in others, exposing freshly eroded blue mud.
That was where Gemma was drawn. To see what would reveal itself from beneath the erosion.
After fifteen minutes, Gemma found a nail bent into the shape of a ‘J’.
She wasn’t well-versed in nails so was unsure of its age.
She would keep it in order to find out. All she knew was that there was every kind of nail wedged in the riverbed relating to all the different trades and industries that had ever existed by the Thames.
Shipbuilding. Furniture making. Shoe cobbling.
She tucked the nail into a bag and was about to look down again when she was distracted by the sight of a man with a clipped strawberry-blond beard and tousled hair.
He was metal detecting, and his detector was beeping more loudly than she’d ever heard one before.
He was shouting at it as if it were a disobedient toddler, but, like a typical toddler, the detector was ignoring him.
For a moment, Gemma felt sorry for him. He’d yet to be calmed by the river.
When his continued disgust at the detector didn’t stop, she changed her mind.
He was disrupting the peace. She turned and headed in the opposite direction.
A woman, older than Gemma, was also mudlarking nearby.
They exchanged greetings but nothing more.
Neither wanted to encroach on the other.
When Gemma noticed something round and flat with a dull shine, she bent over to pick it up.
It was a button. Possibly pewter, with a rainbow-tinged patina.
She washed it in the water. Had this come from someone whose clothing got caught leaving one of the wherry boats which once crossed the river?
Or had it, sinisterly, come from someone who’d drowned?
Gemma gently wiped it dry on her jeans and put it in a bag.
Her next finds were not so exciting. A snippet of a clay pipe handle and a chunk of blue and white pottery.
Two things she already had. She left them in the silt for the tide to decide what next to do with them.
She wandered a bit more, until, feeling hungry, she found a spot near the mossy wall and sat down.
She got out her lunch and poured herself some tea.
The woman she’d passed earlier was edging closer.
She stopped and peeled something out of the mud.
Her face lit up at the sight of it. But it was so small, Gemma couldn’t tell what it was from where she was sitting.
The woman was now removing a glove and trying to take a photo of it.
Then she dropped her phone and Gemma could hear her curse.
‘Everything okay?’ Gemma called out.
‘I’ve cracked my phone screen,’ the woman replied. ‘But look.’ She held up her discovery.
Gemma squinted. The woman was too far away.
‘A thimble,’ the woman said. ‘It’s squished flat but it’s a thimble all right.’ The woman strode up the beach. ‘Here, see.’ As she approached, the foreshore turned from sepia to technicolour with her brightly patterned head scarf and chunky bangles.
‘That’s lovely,’ Gemma said.
‘Shame it’s so flattened I can’t put a finger in it. Wouldn’t it be fabulous to be the first person to wear it since it was lost in the river?’
For a moment, Gemma imagined her thumb inside a hundred-year-old thimble.
‘You wouldn’t mind taking a photo of me with it, would you? I’ve got a mudlarking Instagram account but it’s just I’m not very good at taking selfies, and I usually don’t bother. My phone camera should still work,’ she said, handing Gemma her mobile.
‘Sure.’ Gemma got up and took a few photos with the woman’s phone. ‘Nice earring, by the way.’ Gemma pointed to the gold filigree flower in the woman’s right ear.
‘Earrings,’ the woman corrected. ‘I’d never wear only one. How old do you think I am? Twenty?’ She flung her head back and laughed.
‘But you really do only have one,’ Gemma said.
‘What?’ The woman touched her ears. ‘Oh, you’re right.
The other one must have fallen off. I can’t have lost it!
They were my grandmother’s.’ She frantically scanned the ground immediately around her feet and continued talking.
‘Nana gave them to me when I was ten, just before she died and I’ve treasured them ever since.
Oh, no, I can’t see it. Please don’t let it be lost.’ The woman’s voice faltered.
She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes.
‘Okay, don’t panic,’ Gemma said, but the woman was now running down to the waterline.
Gemma packed up her lunch and followed her. ‘It’ll be here, I’m sure,’ she said, catching up to her.
‘But what if it’s not? I could have lost it anywhere. It’s the only thing I have of Nana’s.’ The poor woman was about to cry.
‘Why don’t we go back to where you started and retrace your steps?’ Gemma suggested.
‘Yes, okay,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘But you don’t have to come. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’
‘It’s all right, I don’t mind. It’ll be like we’re mudlarking, we might find more than just your earring.’
‘You’re being very kind.’
‘I’m Gemma, by the way.’
‘Phyllida with a Y.’
‘So where are we walking back to?’ Gemma asked.
Phyllida thought for a moment, then explained. ‘I started at the access steps by Tate Modern. I walked down them, and headed straight to the water, looking for a find line. Then I, more or less, followed it all the way here.’ She plotted her movements with a hand.
‘At least it’s not a tiny stud,’ Gemma said, trying to stay positive. ‘We should spot it easily if you lost it here.’
‘I hope so.’
They lowered their gazes and very slowly made their way along the beach, scouring the mud and pebbly rocks around their feet. If something caught their attention, they stopped to get their eye in.
‘I’m not even finding anything interesting, let alone my earring,’ Phyllida said in resignation.
‘I know,’ Gemma agreed. ‘But don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll find it,’ she added, with none of the doubt she actually felt. ‘Have you been mudlarking long?’ Perhaps a distraction might temporarily ease Phyllida’s worry.
‘Off and on for two years, but when I went on long-service leave, I started doing it more regularly. It’s so much better than metal detecting, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never done it.’
‘See that guy over there?’ Phyllida pointed to the man Gemma had seen earlier.
‘He’s doing it all wrong. He’s waving the thing like he’s vacuum cleaning.
He’ll do a shoulder in, if nothing else, and he’ll not find a thing.
’ Phyllida shook her head disapprovingly.
‘If you ask me, it’s the men who like to metal detect.
They’re desperate to find a stash of treasure, something of monetary value.
It’s that caveman, hunting thing. Now look at him.
He’s having conniptions with his contraption.
He’ll never experience the Zen-like nature of the pursuit if he keeps that up.
Oh, well. Some people.’ She flung her hands in the air as if the metal detectorist symbolised her despair for the world in general.
A Thames Clipper boat travelled past, heading east down the river. Its wake pushed the water into a continuous ripple until it energetically sloshed the shoreline, kicking stones and turning pebbles.
‘It never fails to amaze me how many secrets the river holds,’ Gemma said, again to liven the conversation.
‘Thousands of years of them,’ Phyllida agreed. ‘So, what’s yours?’
‘My secret?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so forward. It’s a failing of mine. You don’t have to answer.’
Gemma thought for a minute. ‘Put it this way, it’s nice to find things instead of losing them.’
‘You can say that again.’
Gemma paused to pick up something she spotted.
‘Oooh, what’s that?’ Phyllida said excitedly.
‘Just a button.’
‘Oh.’ Then, ‘It looks in very good condition. Eighteenth century, perhaps?’
Gemma examined it closely. It was a cute little button. She slipped it into her pocket. ‘Okay, let’s keep going.’
In the forty-five minutes it took for them to get to the pedestrian walkway at the top of the access steps, nothing that even resembled a speck of gold glinted back at them.
‘I guess that’s it then,’ Phyllida said.
‘What if you retrace your steps from the very beginning of your journey to here?’ Gemma suggested. ‘You never know …’
Phyllida nodded but she looked sad. ‘Thanks for helping.’
‘My pleasure. What’s your Instagram handle? I’ll follow you.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘No, I want to.’
‘Well, okay, then,’ Phyllida said. ‘It’s tide dash phylly. Yours?’
‘You don’t need to follow me. I barely post and when I do, it’s not that exciting. Are you going to do any more mudlarking?’
‘No, I might sit here for a minute and contemplate the point of finding other people’s lost possessions if we can’t even keep hold of our own.’
‘I’m really sorry we didn’t find it.’
‘Don’t worry about me, off you go.’ Phyllida gestured for Gemma to return to the foreshore, her bangles making one last clunk before her hands rested in her lap as she gazed out to the river.