Garrison Fields

Chapter 1 - A new beginning

The noise of the tram was all around her as it rattled along the iron tracks, banging and crackling over-head at each junction as the electric pick-up bounced against the overhead- wires. It was a sound that she had become well used to in the last few years. Yes, it was around the turn of the century when they had electrified the trams; what a mess they had made of the beautiful streets, with those big ugly poles for the electric. Well, at least now they were more reliable.

She cast her mind back to when she was a child and all they had known was the horse drawn trams. She and her own mother had been delayed several times when a horse had just dropped dead in its trappings. Nothing could run, until the knacker's yard turned up and dragged the poor unfortunate creature on to their cart. Yes, electric was more reliable things were really changing in this new age they were calling Edwardian. A voice roused her from her thoughts.

'Missus... Missus, this is your stop, unless you've moved house?' The tram shuddered to a halt, as the conductor alighted gracefully twirling at the same time, so that he was facing the passengers to aid any who wished too step down. It was true, these street stops with their cobbles were sometimes quite difficult to alight from, especially with a long dress and slim boots, you could easily catch it in the hem and make a fall quite likely.

The condition of the streets, with refuse and horse detritus didn't really aid in any shape or form either. So Jane, ensuring all the groceries she had purchased were in order, moved to the exit. The conductor held his arm aloft, so that she might use it as a continuation of the handrail. As she stepped to the street she nodded slightly to the conductor, in thanks for his assistance.

She had used this tram for several years and although they knew each other from these trips, there politeness to each other was one of strangers performing a function. He had, many years ago talked to her quite unreservedly. It must have been five years previously in 1901, on the occasion of the old Queens' death. She remembered it very well he was quite shocked, as were most that day.

As the tram pulled off, she crossed the road and proceeded into Kimberley Street, the home they had purchased some five years before. A new century and a new beginning, as her husband – Albert - had remarked, when they had seen it freshly completed by the builders. It meant they could leave the small old cottage that they had rented, when they were first married. They had many happy memories there, but also their share of worries. There was to be, no more damp, no more silver fish and definitely no more snails and slugs crawling through the downstairs floorboards. She had given birth to her first two children Matthew, the eldest then Luke, in that slum and it was only by the grace of God that she hadn't lost Luke to the damp.

Since moving to Kimberley Street she had given birth to two more children; Alice her only daughter and her husbands little girl and Ted her youngest. Everything, she had ever hoped for could be summed up by the contents of this house and its occupants. She felt an intense feeling of pleasure, as it came into view. It was silly to feel this way about a house but, it was more an extension of who she now was.

It was the end of summer and as she walked further up the street the sun hid behind the rooftops, she could feel the coolness of the salt air against her face, as the northerly breeze brushed past her. Stopping, she stooped to unlatch the black wrought iron gate and pushed it open. It was an ornate gate which yawned as it opened with the sound of the metal hinges rubbing. The garden was very small with a lawn the size of a postage stamp and a hydrangea bush planted under the bay window, a present she had been given shortly after they had moved in. Turning she closed and latched the gate behind her glancing quickly around, before walking the three steps to the porch. Checking her boots, for street detriment, she gave them a precautionary scrape on the boot scraper fixed in the lower wall of the porch, just in case.