MANCHESTER MARK 1

Trigger warning: rape

The year is 1949.

My name is Melanie, I am 58 years old and I work as a cleaning lady at the University of Manchester. I have been a cleaning lady for 15 years now and before that I was a mother. I have arthritis and my ankles pain so much, that I sometimes feel that I cannot walk anymore. Which means that I have already walked to the end of my life and here I am, a nothing and a nobody.

I live in Ordsall, with Tom. We have 5 children. There’s Jamie, Johnie, Fred, Howard and Linda. Jamie, Johnie and Fred have married and moved out. Howard is in London and Linda has 2 children of her own in Dublin from where she barely ever visited before the war and only once now after. They do not know who I really am, and what I’ve done.

Tom has accepted everything I have told him about my life. When I first met him outside The Union at Renshaw I told him that I have no family, he believed that. I didn’t care, all I wanted was to eat. He took me inside and I ate the bacon and tomatoes like a lady even though I hadn’t eaten in 4 days. I told him that I had been a lady’s maid for years in London and that I hated London, and he accepted that as well. It made him accept some of what he called ‘airs and graces’. Airs and graces! That just means that I don’t sound coarse like the other women he’s known all his life, that I keep clean and wash the Manchester dust off my body when I get home and before I go to bed, that I take care of my thick long black hair that I have grown over the years from the boyish cut I used to have when I first met him, that I secretly buy a book once a year, and I read it and re read it and re read it and hide it in my closet till it falls apart, that I keep the cleanest house in Ordsall. When Edna comes by, she is always surprised at how the dust stays off my furniture, how Tom and I wash the dishes at night before we leave the kitchen. 

When Fred was about 2 years old and I had Jamie and Linda all sleeping cramped up in our little bed, I remember thinking, that Tom had never even asked me why I was so different from everyone that he had ever known his entire life? Who my parents were and how they died, or even where they were buried? Nothing. 

 After Howard was 6. Tom got me the job at the University of Manchester. When they asked me when I was born, I said I don’t remember.

I do. 16^th of April 1888.

When they asked me if I could read and write, and I said a bit. I lied. Of course, I can read and write. I am more educated then all these women and men put together.

There are about 16 of us, who work as cleaners at the University. Some of us walk down at 6 in the morning from Cavendish or Dorset street to the University. It takes an hour on the dark streets in the fog, soot and freezing cold to get there. Edna and I join a slow-moving procession of men and women who are all ageing too soon as they walk into the city and disappear into their dead-end lives and jobs.

When I started working here at the university, I realised something.

I had missed hearing educated people talk. I had missed hearing them discuss things. The topics didn’t seem important, just their optimism and their idealism, and their words. Their complete faith that they knew how the world functioned and what they were doing at the moment in that world. They never questioned their survival.

I missed Mother.

She must be dead by now. I guess she never tried to find me. When I disappeared that night, I never told her the truth. I didn’t even write a note. I didn’t have time. She had only heard their side of the story that evening. That was the last time I saw her. Standing behind the door, I was terrified, hearing what father and Raymond were telling her and wanting to rush in screaming it’s not true. But then I didn’t and later that night … I had to run away.

Father was an Electrical scientist. He worked in the ‘Laboratory’ which was a shed at the end of the garden, working with strange dangerous objects on big racks. From my window I would see sparks lighting up in the middle of the night. I was only allowed into the shed with Raymond, who for many years tried to teach me what father did. But I was a 17-year-old girl, and all the strange objects and bolts and machines were a man’s domain.

Father invented an arc light and built an electrical generator. He smelled of oil and metal and he was always lost in thought and Raymond was always with him.

Raymond.

The man who built my father. Rich, older, benevolent, uncle Raymond. His grants and his patronage. His rules and his direction responsible for father’s prospects as an inventor.

Raymond, who allowed me into the Laboratory, without father’s permission.

Raymond who told me what this thing called electricity was.

Raymond who showed me the racks of metal, and the fuses and the wires.

Raymond who showed me how to safely touch the racks of metal because they were dangerous.

Raymond who touched me behind the racks of metal.

Raymond who slapped me so hard when I murmured a protest, that I allowed him to kiss the same cheek after.

Raymond who began to call me to the shed, every evening when Father and Mother were having their tea in the front garden.

Raymond who jumped away from me that evening when father walked into the shed, and saw me lying on my back, on the table, my legs apart and my knickers on the floor.

Raymond who spoke to father while I ran to my room feeling so much terror and shame, my legs buckled at the bottom of the stairs and I hit my head so hard against the banister that I felt the world swim.

Raymond who I heard from the top of the staircase walking into the study and speak to father and mother. 

I stood outside the study and heard him tell them lies.

That night … later … I ran away and I’ve never been back to London.

Now it’s been 40 years and I am no longer …… I am Mel, a fat, old, arthritic cleaning lady who works at the University of Manchester. The war is over, Fred and Howie and back and they’re alive and it’s enough that we have a home, and food to eat, we don’t even have to stand in long queues for bread ration once a week at the shop in Devon street.

But I still wonder if I had gone back after that night and met mother and explained everything to her, would my life have been different?

My life isn’t bad. I clean and scrub the floors of about 30 class rooms, offices and studies daily. I empty the bins and scrub the big kitchen and sometime during the day I go and clean the “Laboratory”. It’s a simple room, high roof, metal racks all over the room. No air conditioning which makes it dusty all the time, and these boys leave the window open. The Laboratory is run by Frederic C Williams and Tom Kilburn.

There are others but it’s obvious that these two are in charge. Tom is a good-looking boy, who frowns, always, and Frederic is the one I find in the morning slumped on the floor and sometimes when I’m leaving at night, I see him walking back ready for another long night.

Everyone in the cleaning staff says they are building an Electronic brain, but it looks like my father’s laboratory. It’s bigger and cleaner and they don’t seem to be doing too much of soldering, or welding. These boys always seem clean and well dressed and working on papers.

One day I walked in and saw them all looking defeated.

Tom Kilburn at his desk, head down, spectacles off and papers all over the floor as if he had tossed them off the desk in a temper. Frederic was by the window smoking.

I began to pick up some of the papers. Tom said,” Can you please come back later?’ but Frederic waved his hand to let me in. I swept the floor and began to clean behind one of the big 6-foot-tall post office size racks.

Frederic said,” Please be careful. That’s dangerous.”

“I know laddie.” I said, “That’s because you keep it so disorganized.”

“Here use this.”

I took off 2 of my rubber bands knotted them together. I walked to the back of one of the racks and used the rubber band to collect and tie the wires together. Now you could see (at least on one of the shelves) which wire was connected to which switch.

“Careful!”, yelled Tom. “You could get an electric shock.”

“Well, then you should keep one hand in your lab coat pocket and never touch something with both hands, should you? “I said as I began to clean the room.

Raymond had taught me that.

The next time I came to clean the laboratory, I saw that all the wires had been tied with rubber bands.

The next year in April, just after my birthday, Frederic met me at the corridor as I swept the aisle, and asked me shyly if I could come to a party. They were having a big party later this week with the teaching staff to celebrate their invention. All the cleaning staff were invited and they asked if I would like to bring Tom as well.

I was surprised and pleased. Tom and I had never done anything fancy before.

That night I wore my church dress and tied my hair up in a bun and we actually took a cab instead of the hour long walk from Ordsall to the university. When we were all seated at the back Frederic came up to me asked me and Tom to come to the front seats. Only after we sat down did I realize that none of the cleaning staff were sitting with us. Tom and I were the only ones invited to sit up front.

The evening was boring. Tom Kilburn got up on stage and spoke about how they had successfully invented the world’s first computer. The Manchester Mark 1, the electric brain, a pioneer. 34 patents had resulted from this machine’s development. It was going to change the world, and that this was a revolution.

All I gathered was that they had made a machine that had run ‘error free’ for 9 hours, and that was what this whole celebration was about.

Tom and I looked at each other and began to laugh.

Then Frederic came to the stage and began thanking many people. At some point he looked at me.

“We are alive because of this humble wonderful woman, Mrs. Melanie Evans. Her rubber bands helped organise our wiring and we could actually figure out a soldering problem that had been bothering us for months. And how Mrs. Evans knew that putting one hand in your lab coat pocket and never touching anything electrical with both hands to avoid electrocution is something we had plainly forgotten. Mrs. Evans, you are not a mere cleaning lady. You are resourceful and intelligent and as much a part of this success as all of us. there’s so much more to you than meets the eye.”

I blushed and I stood up as Edna cheered loudly from the back. Tom was smiling as he stared at me. As I sat down, he kissed me on the cheek, put his arm around me. Then Tom said something that chilled me to the bone.

“Will you ever tell me the truth about who you are and what you did?”

I have never forgotten what happened that night after I heard Raymond tell lies to Mother in the Study.

I walked to the laboratory to pick up my knickers. They were lying on the floor behind the table, kicked to the side by Raymond’s foot. I heard footsteps and I ran and hid behind the rack. Father stumbled in. He was crying. I began to get up to go to him, to beg his forgiveness, to hold him, when Raymond walked in behind him. Father stopped and looked at him.

“Get out.”

Raymond looked pleading,” look I told you what happened, she enticed me today and I … I succumbed. We must talk to her to stop…”

Then Father Screamed like I had never heard him scream before.

“Don’t lie to me!”

All of us stood still.

Father and Raymond near the fuses and me behind the rack.

“I have known for a year.”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

I just stared at the table. The table on which a few minutes ago, Raymond had pushed me on my back and ripped off my underwear. And lying there on my back I had seen father enter the door.

Now I recognized the expression on father's face when he saw us.

Father wasn’t surprised about what was happening to me. He was surprised that he had walked in on us, having forgotten that this was Raymond’s time with me each evening.

He had simply forgotten to wait another 10 minutes.

I was numb and my ears were ringing with the shock of the truth.

Father and Raymond were at the fuses.

I flipped on the electric switch from behind the rack.

And I watched Father and Raymond roast to their death.

No Tom, I will never tell you who I am and what I did.