Chapter 21
It turned out that Laila had made some finds. When The Mudlarkers’ Club re-grouped on the sandy part of the upper foreshore, Laila was already laying out her discoveries for everyone to see.
‘I don’t know if any of this is something interesting or if it’s all nothing,’ Laila said, her hands finding their way into her jeans’ pockets again.
‘It’s never nothing,’ Phyllida said, so emphatically that Laila would have been forgiven for thinking she’d offended her. ‘No, no, no,’ Phyllida reiterated and peered eagerly at the collection. ‘I spy some lovely bits of blue and white pottery and a buckle. That could be nineteenth century.’
‘Nineteenth century?’ Laila said in disbelief.
‘I’m guessing, but it looks similar to one I have. And those chunks of red that resemble stones? Bits of roof tile, some of which would be medieval. See how easy it is to go back in time? Great job picking up some rubbish, too.’ Phyllida pointed to the white plastic fork Laila had also found.
‘I added it to my finds because it made me wonder what people in the future will think when they find our plastic cutlery,’ Laila said.
‘Will they say, “Check out this piece of history. What had its owner been eating before it got thrown away?” Or are they going to tell us off for inventing plastic in the first place?’
For a moment, Laila looked proud and surprised at saying as much as she had. She lowered her head and chewed a lip, a turtle going back into its shell.
‘Probably both, Ley-ley,’ Timothy said.
‘But hopefully disposable plastic will be so rare that to find an unbroken fork will be like finding gold,’ Nick said. ‘Only less valuable, of course.’
‘Can I take a picture of the fork and put what you said on Instagram?’ Phyllida had her phone out before Laila could answer.
‘I guess,’ Laila said. ‘But don’t expect it to trend.’
‘I’ve never been trendy, so the bar’s low.’ Phyllida chuckled and snapped a few photos.
‘What did you find, Gemma?’ Laila asked.
‘A cluster of pins.’ Gemma showed them a bag of eleven tiny pins. ‘Some of them could have held together an Elizabethan ruff.’
‘That old?’ Nick said.
‘They could date from anywhere between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, because they look handmade and copper.’
‘No way!’
‘Doesn’t it just make you wonder who was wearing them and what for?
’ Phyllida re-joined the conversation after finishing her Instagram post. ‘Pins were used by everyone, no matter what social class. Although a woman of distinction would have had anywhere from two and a half thousand to five thousand pins on her.’
‘I believe Queen Elizabeth the First had a dress that needed ten thousand pins to hold it up,’ Timothy said.
‘Sounds dangerous.’ Nick laughed.
‘Why all the pins?’ Laila asked.
‘There was no other way to keep your clothes in place! They were used for attaching veils, baby swathes, hats, jewellery. Literally everything worn by anyone. Then, in the early nineteenth century, pin-making was mechanised, clothes became mass produced and fasteners and buttons took over from the pin.’
‘They’re so ordinary, and yet now, hundreds of years later, you’re all getting excited about them,’ Laila said.
‘It’s because they represent the history of everyday Londoners.’
‘Just like your plastic fork,’ Nick said, managing to get Laila to smile.
‘I found a Victorian glass syringe. It’s amazingly unbroken. Do you want to see?’ Phyllida said.
‘Cool,’ Nick said, confirming that he was of a similar age to Gemma.
‘Who knows how many times this was used and what for. It probably gave people disease as much as it was trying to help them.’
‘Yuck.’ Laila turned up her nose. ‘Will it still be …?’
‘Contaminated? No. I doubt any communicable disease could survive that long.’
‘It may have held mercury,’ said Timothy. ‘For centuries, mercury was given as a treatment and cure for all sorts of ailments, until someone twigged that the horrendous side effects it caused was from metal poisoning.’
‘Thank you, Timothy, you’ve just reminded me I need to book a blood test.’ Phyllida laughed. ‘To check my calcium levels – not mercury! No matter how much cheese I eat, they seem to be on a downward trajectory.’
‘My mother had that,’ Nick said. ‘Something to do with poor absorption. My dad, on the other hand, ended up with an excess of Vitamin K. He’s the only person to have ever been told to cut back on his greens.’
‘You’re making that up.’
‘True story. He got a form of anaemia. That’s what happens when you have lettuce for breakfast, lunch and dinner.’
‘Let that be a lesson to you, Laila.’
‘No chance of that.’ Timothy smiled. Laila pretended to be offended. ‘Can I show you what I found?’ Timothy held up a thimble. ‘The porcelain is so white that it stood out against the grey of the mud. And, can you see, there’s a tiny sailing boat painted on one side?’
‘I found a silver thimble the day Gemma and I met,’ said Phyllida. ‘They’re sweet, aren’t they?’
‘I don’t know how old it is, if it’s old at all. But I suppose it could date back to the late eighteen hundreds.’
‘Something to find out, perhaps?’ Gemma offered.
Timothy nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll have fun investigating.’
‘What about you, Nick?’
‘I seemed to find a lot of things but nothing I recognised.’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh.’ He held up a small terracotta-coloured stoneware container. ‘I think it’s an inkwell.’
‘Yes!’ Gemma said. ‘It’s a pork pie ink pot. They were mass produced in the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, often, unfortunately, using child labour.’
‘You could use it for your writing,’ Phyllida suggested.
‘Imagine what it would have been like to write an article by hand using an ink pen. I’ve always fancied writing romance novels.
’ Phyllida got a dreamy look in her eye as if she’d conjured a scene between Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester.
‘You’d have to do it with a quill pen, don’t you think?
With feathers. Yes, lots of feathers and a bit of lace. ’
‘I think I prefer the speed of touch-typing, even if I make mistakes,’ Nick answered. ‘I’ll happily put this on my desk, though.’
‘I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m famished,’ Phyllida said. ‘Anyone fancy a pub lunch?’
Timothy glanced at Laila to gauge her opinion. She moved a shoulder. It looked like a yes kind of a shrug.
Nick looked at Gemma, as if her decision mattered to him, but she didn’t see why it would.
Although, if he said yes, then she’d go too, because a group lunch would round off her Saturday quite nicely.
She had to concede that mudlarking with others was not only more pleasurable than she’d originally thought, but it was also gratifyingly informative and social. She gave a nod.
‘Why not?’ Nick said.
They gathered their finds, slung on their rucksacks and started walking to the stone steps. Phyllida strode ahead, starting up a conversation with Laila; Timothy lagged behind getting distracted by some last-minute searching; and Nick and Gemma walked in between.
‘That was really great today, Gem,’ Nick said. ‘Can I call you Gem?’
‘Sure.’
‘I feel like I’ve learnt so much, even though there’s still much more to know.’
‘I’ve been doing it for years and I’m still learning things,’ Gemma said.
‘Hey!’ Nick pointed a finger at Gemma as if just remembering. ‘You never said what that piece of pottery you found would have been? If not a chamber pot, then what? No lying this time, yeah?’ He laughed.
Gemma was about to tell him it would have formed part of an everyday pottery dish when an ear-curdling wail sounded behind them. They stopped and turned. Several metres away, Timothy lay face down on the pebbles. He wasn’t moving.