5. The Washer Woman

JANIE COBWEB AGAIN Part 5

After attending Rosemary and Stephen’s wedding in the elevated position of Best Man Peter settled back down to his ordinary work and sleep and eat life. As yet he didn’t have a regular girlfriend, which was just as well bearing in mind what was about to happen.

The next day and then the next week passed, and he didn’t see anything of Janie Cobweb who he didn’t look on as his girlfriend as such, though he had fond memories of the one lengthy smooch with her that had excited him. It was as if the beautiful bridesmaid with magic in her heart had never entered his life, and slowly he began to forget her.

Then, one day, maybe a month later, his mother called him while he was getting ready for work at the canning factory where he earned his crust. She sounded that mixture of curious and interested that mothers often betray their emotions by using, and it made him wonder.

“Peter,” she called, “there’s a young lady at the door for you.”

“But I’m off to work in ten minutes!” he protested, tucking his shirt into his trouser waist.

“She’s really quite pretty,” added his mother, uncharacteristically. It wasn’t like her to pass any judgement on his friends, especially girls she knew nothing about, and then she went on, “hurry up! I’m watching the washer!”

What her unnecessarily watching a washing machine had to do with anything he could merely ponder, but he was intrigued by her description of his caller as being quite pretty.

So he hurried down from his bedroom and there, at the door and almost giggling, stood Janie Cobweb.

“Janie!” he gasped.

“I’ve something to show you, Peter,” she said as if her raison d’etre was conducting him through life.

“When?” he asked.

“It won’t take a moment, so now,” she said with the kind of smile that could make him do anything she wanted.

“I’ve got work to go to,” he said, “and we’re doing garden peas this week.”

“Fascinating,” she smiled, “but you won’t be late, I promise. The thing is, your lovely mother’s supervising her washing machine…”

“She doesn’t have to,” he explained, “it’s just that she likes to make sure everything’s going all right. She’ll have a cup of tea soon, won’t you mum?”

“That I will. Or two,” replied his smiling mother, “Peter, you get off and see what your lovely girlfriend wants to show you.” Then she turned briefly to the younger woman, “it’s Janie, isn’t it?” she asked of her.

“Mum! I didn’t know that you were on friendly terms with her!” exclaimed Peter.

“My lad, you don’t know who I know, so wrapped up in your own comings and goings! And anyway, I don’t really know her. I dreamed about her, that’s all, the other night. And I do know you’ll marry her one day! It was in the dream.”

Embarrassed, Peter turned to Janie, who was still smiling so broadly he wanted to kiss that mouth, “I’m sorry,” he said, “mum has some odd ideas sometimes.”

“Get on with you, Peter!” laughed his mum as he walked off, “and it’ll be salmon for tea,” she added, “from a tin.”

Peter walked off with Janie. “I get paid a pittance for putting them into tins and she pays a fortune buying them,” he explained, “look, Janie, I really haven’t got long though I wish I had ages to spend with you.”

“I want to take you to another woman who’s doing the family wash,” said Janie, “I think you’ll find it absorbing.”

“Mum does it every week, like clockwork,” Peter told her.

“Then come down here and I’ll show you someone else,” urged Janie, though Peter was already putty in her hands and she really didn’t have to urge him.

And before he could protest about not being late for work or he’d have his wages docked even though they were little enough to start with, he found himself treading on a pathway that had never been there in living memory. It was where the old Victorian church had always been, summoning the faithful via a cracked bell every Sunday, a misted path and shadow that led into the unknown.

“Where are we?” asked Peter, “I mean, you know these paths that I’ve never seen before, and I don’t know where they come from.”

She took his by oe hand and gently squeezed his fingers, “and you don’t need to know, lover boy,” she said, and she giggled.

“Lover boy?” he asked.

“Well, your mum says I’m going to marry you so you’d better be my lover boy until you’re my husband, and then you’ll be my lover man and we’ll live happily ever after. But that’s not what we’re here for, not today. Your mum’s got her washing machine running, hasn’t she?”

Peter nodded.

“And she’s a woman,” said Janie, meaningfully. “Once upon a time there weren’t washing machines or even tubs of hot water to clean a man’s undies in,” she added with a broad smile. “Come and see. I warn you, the people your going to see lived a long time before I was born the first time!”

“The first time? Then how many times have you been born?” asked Peter.

“Too many,” she replied obscurely. “come down here and, for fun, if you hear anyone speak it’ll be in a language that’s long been dead. It’s sad, really, how languages die, but they do. New words get added and useless old words get forgotten. Then people from another tribe or country or whatever move in and add words of their own, which slowly become part of the original language. People have to understand each other, after all.”

“I think I know that,” murmured Peter, and he paused as the Victorian church and its graveyard with clustered stones marking the names and dates of the long dead all faded away and were replaced by a rolling landscape with a stream running through it.

“Then for your benefit I’ll provide subtitles,” giggled Janie, “like they do on television when a foreign programme’s being translated so that you can understand it.”

“Where? What?” asked Peter.

“A long time ago, A very long time ago. Somewhere down south an army of men is building Stonehenge. In another village a craftsman is forging tools out of a mixture of tin and copper.”

“The bronze age?” asked Peter.

“Exactly,” Janie told him, “and look. That might be your mother. It isn’t, but the job she’s doing is the same, though nothing like a washing machine has ever been invented.”

And a woman appeared, dressed simply in a long dress which had a frayed and soiled hem where it scraped on the ground and carrying a bundle of similar items. She was humming gently to herself as she settled herself on a cracked stone slab and set about washing the clothes she had brought with her.

Afetr a while she started beating the wet fabric with a smooth stone that she appeared to have brought with her, using a great deal of energy as dirt and stains yielded to her efforts.

Then a man appeared, all whiskers, unkempt and possibly greasy hair and wearing a shorter cloak, his legs covered in what might have been ill-fitting trousers, though Peter didn’t take much notice because the man shouted at the woman loud and raucously. As Janie had said his words were unfamiliar and hence subsequently meaningless to Peter, but her promised subtitles appeared wavering in front of his eyes hypnotically.

Woman, have you not finished that yet! I am hungry and need to go into the fields with a full belly!

Then the woman looked up and Peter was sure there was something between fear and scorn in the tone of her voice. The words appeared in front of him:

The neighbours will think nothing of me if I send you out in filthy rags, and maybe you could have set out all the sooner rather than wait until now!

The man was clearly outraged by her words and went right up to her and struck her forcefully across her head.

Take that! And there’ll be more before sundown if you don’t make haste with your labours!

The woman continued banging her stone on the coarse cloth, but the scene, brutal in its content, faded as Janie led Peter back down the path and as they walked the graveyard and its crumbling stones reappeared out of the uncanny mist.

“He was a bully,” Peter told Janie, “and it’s best if his sort get wiped out of the human race! I hate that kind of treatment of women!

“It happens still,” Janie told him, “and in some cultures it’s even ritualised in the name of one religion or other. I will call for you again and take you with me if you like, so that you can see a pretty woman being stoned to death because a man she doesn’t know actually looked at her!”

“No thank you,” said Peter, as firmly as he dared, “I’m a wuss. You may have seen what I was like when we watched the queen’s head being lopped off. And if you want to teach me a lesson on how to treat the fair sex, I think I know.”

“I’m sure you do, Peter,” she murmured with an angelic smile, “but there are good things to see from the past too. We could go to see Cleopatra if you like… But come on, time for work. You’re not late. You never will be late when I’m around...”

© Peter Rogerson, 09.05.22

...