Julia Casterton
Wivenhoe Landlady
Your handshake with its sudden grip, your look of weighing-up
or challenge, are what I most remember, and the way you
furnished those two rooms with little money and a lot of
cunning grace. We pushed our rent through your built-on
matchwood dolls-house door, I never saw you out
and always wondered what you thought about.
You had a farm, you said, in Africa, a husband
and a son. But that was years ago, before your son
got mangled by some machine, before you buried him alone.
‘What’s happened to me mummy?’ cried the wind
so you explained. ‘A child that age can’t get hold
of death. I had to go part-way with him
to talk him through his dying. Then I came back
to this private, unrequiring life: I who was once
death’s help-mate, his mid-wife.
Page(s) 39
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