November 2011
My first encounter with Sheila was when I was about seven years old; she was being tormented by a group of children, some of whom I knew. They were calling her 'witch' and asking where her broomstick and black cat were. She ignored them completely; I did not join in, though I could see why they were calling her 'witch'. She had a deeply wrinkled face and wild grey hair that looked as though it had never been combed. She wore a blue jumper full of holes, and through the holes you could see a yellow jumper, and through the holes in that one that a grey one, and under it a black one. I gave up counting at that point! She wore a black ankle length skirt and unlaced boots; even I as a scruffy East End kid thought she looked unkempt. I had not joined in the teasing, I always sympathised with life's losers; at the time I thought she was a loser. She was not. After our first meeting I started to look out for her, somehow I felt drawn to her. I would see her walking down Petticoat Market picking up the vegetables and fruit after it had been discarded by the barrow boys; I was doing the same. I wanted to speak to her but did not know how to. One day I was walking down Lemond Street, I saw her and she stopped me and asked, 'Aren't you the little one who lived in Cable Street who always played truant?' She said, 'You should not play truant, you need your education so much to get you through life.' Her voice was not from the East End, she had what we called a posh voice.
I asked, 'Can I walk with you?' and she took my hand. That day our friendship began.
I told her I lived with my granddad in Cable Street most of the time, she replied, 'I have seen you with him, he is African, isn't he?
I told her, 'No, he is from Trinidad.'
She told me she had not long moved into rooms in Jamaica Street; she said, 'Ask your granddad if you can visit.' My granddad, after visiting Sheila, agreed. I often visited her and listened fascinated to the story of her life: she was the second daughter of a wealthy family and she proved a disappointment to them, she would play with the village children in preference to the children her parents preferred; she would rip her expensive clothes climbing trees. In despair her parents sent her to a boarding school, which she hated. She said they did not like her either. When she was sixteen her parents sent her to an aunt in France; her aunt was a pianist and she taught Sheila to play. She returned to England and joined the Suffragette Movement; she never married but would wink at me and say I had my chances. I never found a poem she could not recite; she would strut about the room as if on a stage and strike theatrical poses and I would fall about laughing; she would say, 'My child, you have no appreciation of the Arts!'
I was very muddled about religion – my granddad was an atheist; he told me, 'When we die that's it, no heaven or hell.' but I wanted to believe there was more.
I asked Sheila, 'Is there a heaven – do we live on? Are there ghosts?'
'I also don't believe in religion, but we do live on when we die – other people will live in these rooms but you will only see them as part of me; you will remember the times and love we shared your life with, will remember your granddad and many other people. Yes, there are ghosts, but not the chain rattling ones. But people you knew, who will be the ghosts in your mind, and through your memories we will live on.'
I encounter her ghost with affection and a smile.