The Wards lived in one of the yards off the Cragg. Greyish slab stones covered square. There were latrines in one corner, and a little shed that served as a shared scullery in another. There were many doors, some on the ground floor, others at the end of steps leading down to basements or up to first floor tenements, for the houses had been divided up into smaller tenements to house as many people as possible. The buildings in the back seemed built into the cliff and the people living there had to be either suicidal or just very poor. At the far end, a flight of stairs led up into the cliff, to further buildings, and ultimately to Cliff street above.

There was a foul smell in the air, that the inhabitants of the yard seemed to have forgotten about, but that would be quite perceptible to someone from a better neighbourhood - a mixture of latrines, old rotting rests of fish and shellfish, drying nets, tar, and - so pervasive in this part of town - the dirty chimney smoke of inferior coal and driftwood. And yet the women had hung their laundry out here to dry, and two toddlers with dirty faces and soiled dresses sat on a step, and once the school would out, flocks of children would hang around in the yard or play here, so as not to take up space inside. They had to be oblivious to the smell, surely. Or perhaps they simply had no choice.

Rose came out of one of the first floor doors, carrying a bucket. Her reddish-brown hair was tied up at the back of her head, her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows and she wore an old oilskin apron. "Joe!" she said, when she saw her old friend. She walked down the steps. "Have ye come to visit. Give us a hand the pump, will ye?" she said, and she held her bucket under the pump.