Lives less Ordinary

And then she suddenly the day when she had taken her young children to the hospital. But when they reached the ward the Sister asked them to wait, and when they got to James they found screens around his bed. She was told he had been put on a saline  drip. Only forty eight hours later he had died. She had sat through a long, endless day behind those screens. She held his hand as he struggled to stay alive but he could not stay with her and their little children.

   At first she was numb with shock and could not take it in, and then came the utter, hopeless grief. It was as if half her body had been amputated. She was to never again be the same woman. She was still their childrens mum' , and she loved them all pasionately, and she would live for them completely until they wer grown up, but the joy had been smashed from her life for ever. She was in this depressive state when she met Bill. So had begun her bondage. The chains that were holding her were hard and unbreakable, and the position was mad worse by the knowledge that she had put them there herself-quite voluntarily. Only death could separate her from because he was a Catholic.

   Most of the time she had been a buffer between the children and her husband, shielding them from his angry outbursts and taking the blame for herself. She did this out of a desperate desire to protect them. As for herself she  soon discovered that Bill was a hard, sadistic, cruel man, and she had to endure long tirrades of angry, virrulent speech. He tried almost to keep her a prisoner in the house. If she went out shopping then she would dread returning in the late afternoon. And so the years had slid away. But now Bill was dead and she was free. At last she would be able to go out and return when she felt like it. at last the never ending nagging had ceased, and the house was quiet.

    When she reached Easthapmton it was mid-day on the church clock in the marketplace. It was playing 'oranges and lemons' as she passed. She had loved that clock since being a little girl and, when she worked in an office in the town before her eloping to marry James. They were her magical times when she had felt completely fulfilled.