Elaine Randell
Mrs W comes into the office to see me, I've known her now for about four years. Three years ago she put her two children into care because she felt that she did not love them and could not tolerate their constant arguing. Mrs W visits the children every month, they are pleased to see her. "How are you Barbara" I ask, even though it's written across her face that she's as fed up as anything. "I'm fine, fine," she says "How are the children". I tell her that they've just joined the scouts as she bursts into tears. She doesn't stop crying. Barbara has one eye, the other being removed by her father's foot when he kicked her as a small child. Barbara is married to a man half her size who injures her too but she never leaves him for longer than a day or two. I ask her why she is crying - "It's my Mum, she called me a slut just because I went with that man two years ago". We talk again about the incident. A man had bought Barbara a cup of tea in a transport cafe the night she'd left her husband and had taken her home and assaulted her. "My mum says it was my fault, my fault". She gets up to go - the hem of her skirt has come undone in the front and as she walks out of the room fumbling in her bag for another cigarette the door catches the corner of her elbow giving it a hefty blow. Outside in the car park there's a man waiting for her - he stands huddled against the tree - the strong wind taking all the hair from his face, making him look quite pinched.
I go and visit Grace. "Sit down, sit down" she says. "I've just been thinking, I've just been thinking about all those terrible days when the baby died and now I see his ghost all the time you've got to make it go away." Grace has been discharged home from the local psychiatric hospital for just two days now and she sits sewing a grey piece of cloth that she tells me is to be her wedding dress. Grace's first marriage ended in divorce and he hasn't been seen in eight years. They used to live in a caravan with the children in a field at the back of a small Kent village. They were married for twenty years, they weren't gypsies or travellers but the talk of the town. Grace has told me her story many times before but I sit on the Moquette chair that is stuck with impacted grease and dirt of the years while her Alsatian dog sniffs in my coat pockets.
"He hadn't been ill but he was screaming so loud and Jim was shouting out and the two little ones were out shopping and Ben and Frances were working out the back chopping logs. So I picked him up and put him outside in the pram. He stopped screaming and I went back inside to peel the potatoes and start the tea. It was April but it didn't seem cold really. Anyway I called the boys in so they could have theirs before the others came back and then Jim and I had our tea. Anyway then the two little ones came back from shopping and ran into me shouting "Mum Mum the babies stiff and blue - look, look, look." I ran out and Jim ran out but we couldn't get no life back into him, he was dead. The doctor said he was killed off by the cold but I don't think so, he just stopped living."
Grace then sobs for a long time and paces the room with the huge dog following her every movement. "And now I see him all the time, I sleep downstairs here every night and he comes to me tugging at me nightdress saying "I'm cold, let me in I'm cold."
I go and visit Grace. "Sit down, sit down" she says. "I've just been thinking, I've just been thinking about all those terrible days when the baby died and now I see his ghost all the time you've got to make it go away." Grace has been discharged home from the local psychiatric hospital for just two days now and she sits sewing a grey piece of cloth that she tells me is to be her wedding dress. Grace's first marriage ended in divorce and he hasn't been seen in eight years. They used to live in a caravan with the children in a field at the back of a small Kent village. They were married for twenty years, they weren't gypsies or travellers but the talk of the town. Grace has told me her story many times before but I sit on the Moquette chair that is stuck with impacted grease and dirt of the years while her Alsatian dog sniffs in my coat pockets.
"He hadn't been ill but he was screaming so loud and Jim was shouting out and the two little ones were out shopping and Ben and Frances were working out the back chopping logs. So I picked him up and put him outside in the pram. He stopped screaming and I went back inside to peel the potatoes and start the tea. It was April but it didn't seem cold really. Anyway I called the boys in so they could have theirs before the others came back and then Jim and I had our tea. Anyway then the two little ones came back from shopping and ran into me shouting "Mum Mum the babies stiff and blue - look, look, look." I ran out and Jim ran out but we couldn't get no life back into him, he was dead. The doctor said he was killed off by the cold but I don't think so, he just stopped living."
Grace then sobs for a long time and paces the room with the huge dog following her every movement. "And now I see him all the time, I sleep downstairs here every night and he comes to me tugging at me nightdress saying "I'm cold, let me in I'm cold."
Copyright © Elaine Randell 1982
Elaine Randell started Amazing Grace poetry magazine in the 1960s and subsequently Secret Books, publishing Tom Raworth, Allen Fisher, Paul Matthews and Barry MacSweeney, to whom she was married from 1973-1979. Her first publication, Songs of Hesperus, appeared in 1972 (Curiously Strong); 13 other books have appeared since. Her Selected Poems (2006). Faulty Mothering (2011), inspired by her work over many years with adoptive children and their families, and The Meaning of Things (2017) were all published by Shearsman. She lives on Romney Marsh, where she keeps Soay sheep, chickens and English setter dogs, and continues to work as a child and family psychotherapist and social worker