Old lady in hospital

Her bones are cold
And tinder-thin.
Arteries and veins show through
Transparent skin.

As carers lift her,
Thin breasts swing,
Legs open showing
Her crinkled private skin.

Juices once flowed here
And she’d swell
Like a budding rose,
At the pull and thrust of passion.
Now there is no lust.

She’s disrobed,
Exposed,
By those, she’s forced to trust.

Frances Beaumont

18/02/2022

Waiting for the bus

I am waiting for a bus with Ellie, my eight-year-old daughter. We’re in the south of England on a grey afternoon and the bus is running late. It doesn’t take much to bring traffic to a standstill in the narrow streets of the ancient market town we have been visiting. Ellie is cold and hopping from one foot to another. I want to take her to my warmer country, but she’s heard scary stories about Africa which have put her off. Anyway she thinks of herself as more Irish like her dad, my husband, and I think she will reject the idea of going to Nigeria outright, so I’ve been afraid to suggest it.

I put my arm around her to keep warm and ask, “Shall I tell you a story?”

She likes my stories. Some I make up, and some are true. She has heard me talk about my special brother before and knows I love him, but I have not told her the whole story, so I begin at the beginning.

“When I was six years old and living in Nigeria,” I say. “I was waiting for my Granny under a great tree where the bus stops, a mile from our village. It was my job that day to meet Granny off the bus and walk back with her, carrying the sack of mangoes that she had grown herself. We loved these mangoes more than anything else.

“Our name for a bus is ‘molue,’ but molue is more of an experience and a community than an English bus and many things can make it arrive late. First, the driver waits for it to be full before leaving, then the engine could break down; it might get a flat tyre, or slide into a pothole and break an axle, and an accident on the road with a child or a cow on causes endless delays. When the molue arrives it is bursting at the seams with women and babies in colourful wraps. There will be crates of squawking chickens and maybe a live goat inside, and more boxes and sacks will be lashed down on the roof.”

“Molues might be covered in paintings of bright flowers and elephants and words like ‘God is Great’ are written on the cab for divine protection.”

I see Ellie’s eyes light up as she imagines a molue, so different to the plain green bus we are waiting for.

“My Granny,” I continue, “came to see us once a year. She was skinny and wrinkled and took no-nonsense. She brought us sweet Cotonou mangoes that she grew herself. Those mangoes, Ellie, are like nothing we get here. They have a wonderful scent and when you eat them the juice runs down your hand and over your chin!”

“In the evening Granny would tell us stories and remind us every year to respect and honour the living spirit in trees, rocks, and water, as well as birds, animals and people. She told us tales about clever animals that outwitted people, how the world began, and our long history as a nation with kings before white men came to Africa.”

“As I waited for Granny I listened for the sound of the molue grinding through its gears as it climbed a distant hill. There was little traffic on the red road except for a man on a bicycle and a few cows wandering along. It was hot, so I sat in the shade and plaited a fly whisk out of grasses. I must have fallen asleep because suddenly I was being shaken. ‘No molue!’ this woman shouted, ‘Bad accident at the bridge!’“

“She was running, and I followed. She raised the alarm as we ran and soon others joined us, all running towards the bridge. As we came up over the hill, we could see the accident below. The bridge seemed to have collapsed and the molue had fallen off, tipping on its side, and scattering boxes and bodies everywhere. The cab was lying on the bank with its front wheels nearly in the river.”

This scene is still so shocking and vivid as I recall it, that I stop breathing.

I glance up the road hoping the bus is coming. The drizzle is cold on my face.

“Go on Mum”, Ellie urges, “What happened to your Granny?”

I breathe in again and say,

“We could not see her. We were too far away but, in my head, I was calling to her saying ‘I’m coming Granny don’t die… I’m coming! I’m coming!’”

“When we got near we saw some people were hurt and lying down, but I could not find my Granny anywhere. I called and called. Where was she? Maybe trapped underneath the molue? Then I saw her. She was sitting away, away, in the shade, resting her back on a tree trunk.”

Ellie is sensible, and because I’m a nurse and so is her father, she is used to us talking about life and death in a matter-of-fact way at home, so I tell her the truth.

“Granny held my hands with her bony ones and smiled her toothless grin. She was so happy to see me, and I was crying with relief at finding her, but I was also surprised because do you know what Ellie ? She had a baby in her lap.”

“She lifted the baby to show me and said, ’His name is Jacob’. “

“Granny pointed towards the bridge, ’His mother is late. She is over there.”

“I saw a woman’s body lying by the molue. She was still and her legs were at an odd angle. Her wrap covered her face.”

“Granny carried on talking in her strong quiet voice, ‘Thanks be to the spirits we were saved. I was sitting next to his mother and took Jacob for a while to give her a rest. We were going over the bridge then CRASH! it collapsed and the moule tipped over. Jacob’s mother fell out and broke her neck. It was so quick – no pain. They found that termites had eaten the bridge supports and it just broke.’

“Granny smiled at the baby and said, ‘Jacob was spared!’”

I look at Ellie. Her eyes are round, as she listens.

“Well, “I continue, “I loved this baby. He was so calm and sturdy, with shining eyes, and I pleaded, ’Please, please Granny, can we keep him?’

“’ Well,’ she said, ‘Only if his family don’t want him, or cannot look after him. Then we ask your mother. It is another one for her to look after and feed. You will have help.’”

“I will”, I promised. “I will.”

“Ellie, I can tell you, that was a truly special day! I came home not just with my granny and the mangoes, but a new baby brother!

Someone found Jacob’s father. He came from the North to work and now his wife had died he had no family there to help him care for a baby. He was glad we wanted him. I became Jacob’s ‘little mother’. I carried him and fed him and taught him to read. He became my special brother.”

“The next rainy season Granny became late, so she never knew what a fine young man Shakespeare became.”

Ellie says, “Shakespeare? I thought his name was Jacob?”

“At first we called him Jacob-who-was -spared,” I reply, “but this soon became ‘Jake-Spare’. At school, he was good with words, so they called him ’Shakespeare’. That is the name he likes. He teaches English in Lagos now.

He must have been about twelve years old when I won my Nursing scholarship and came to England. That was a bitter day when I left home.”

Ellie squeezes my hand and says, “How old is your special brother now?”

I think for a moment, trying to work it out, “He must be twenty-five or six… “

Ellie interrupts “Look, mum! The bus is coming.”

The bus is lit up inside against the early evening greyness and we climb aboard, thankful to be out of the drizzle.

“Sorry we’re late,” the bus driver says as I show him our tickets. “It’s them blasted roadworks clogging everything up. Then we got stuck behind a furniture van. Can you believe it, they were unloading on a double yellow line!”

I smile at him, really grateful it was only a fifteen-minute delay, but I don’t expect him to understand how glad I was that he wasn’t hours late.

Ellie ran up to the empty back seats, and, as we settle down, homesickness hits me like a kick in the stomach. I remember the banter and the colours and smells of the marketplace at home, and the music that makes you dance. Peering through the raindrops running down the window I see only dark shapes outside and I crave the light. I need to feel the sun on my dark skin and the warm red earth under my bare feet, eat mangoes and laugh again.

I have not spoken about this need to Ellie, fearing her reaction, possibly even her outright rejection of the idea, but, having told her this story, and remembering everything again so clearly, I summon the courage to say,

“Ellie, next summer holiday, instead of going to see Nana and Pops in Ireland would you like to go to Africa?”

Ellie says “Oh Mum, it’s awfully hot there, isn’t it? And there are creepy crawlies, mosquitoes and cockroaches. And look what those termites did to the bridge!”

I cannot deny it.

She is silent and thinking. I hold my breath, waiting. Then she says, “If we went, would we ever come back? Some girls at school throw their banana skins at me at lunch-time and say ‘Gorillas should go back to Africa, and stay there!’”

I hoped because she was paler than me and half Irish, this would protect her from the racism I experienced in this country. I didn’t know she had been suffering in silence at school all this time. I hug her and say, “I promise you, my precious daughter, we will come back at the end of the school holidays.”

“Will there be juicy mangoes?”

“Yes, there will be lots of mangoes in July !”

“Will we see your special brother?”

“Of course, you will. He is longing to meet you.”

She brightens up, and says with a smile,

“Wow! I can tell my friends, ‘I’m going to Africa to meet Shakespeare!’”

And next summer we go, and Shakespeare loves her. And she loves him.

But that’s another story.

Frances Beaumont

Haymaking

Hay, green and warmer

Than the sun-warm growing grass;

Layer on layer of stems and showering seeds.

Crumpled leaves, releasing scents

And memories . . .

Children screaming in delight

At slow-worms desperate headlong flight

Before the falling chaos of their world.

Mountain of hay

Slipping up! Pitchforks sway

Then high on the lurching stack

To home, with blue arcing all the farm.

And now the pleasure’s keener

For years missed in between.

Years of bricks and dusty skies

Hard and narrow as the roads,

While underfoot the eunuched Corporation Green

Is cut so mean

That walking on the grass, treading it down,

Becomes a crime.

Today I laze

Drowsy in a pot-pourri

And seem to hear from years away

Children laughing, larking in the hay.

Frances Beaumont

Blog On The Subject Of Writing

If someone asked me six years ago how to write a book and get it published, I’d have said what I had been told, “Find a quiet spot and just start. You learn to write by writing.”

Now, six years later, I might add a little to that advice.

I had written diaries, short stories, and poems all my life. I often wrote sitting up in bed at night. It was a private pleasure, and I had never thought of publishing my work.

The spur to writing a ‘proper book’ came when my dearest friend John Oliver, died in 2014. John, or Joliver as I knew him, was born in 1925 without hands and with one club foot. Surprisingly, with his normal foot and his short arms, he led a full, exciting and entirely independent life. After training at Art School to become an artist and teacher, he learnt to sail, became a chef and worked as a tug captain on the River Medway. Water-men knew him as ‘Johnny no hands’, not in a derogatory way, but to distinguish him from the other Johns working on the river. I met him when I was 24. For me, it was love at first sight and our lives wove in and out together for the next 40 years. He agreed to me writing his Biography on the condition that I was not to take notes and must not publish anything while he was alive. He then began telling me stories about his early life and left me all his papers, photos and his houseboat which was in urgent need of repair.

After he died it took me a year before I started researching and interviewing his many friends. The first draft of 18 chapters (about 54,000 words) took three years to write.

I joined a writers’ group called Faversham Inklings which was helpful. We meet every fortnight to read our work and receive feedback. One piece of advice I was given was, “Don’t wait until you are published, but start the publicity early.”

I gave interviews to the Medway Messenger which became double-page spreads and began giving slide shows and talks about John Oliver’s life.

He was well known around the Medway and Swale rivers as a character and tug captain on Hobbit, and my talks were popular – I even had to turn people away on one occasion. The Creek Trust in Faversham kindly provided a venue for talks, as did ‘LV21’ an Arts Venue in Gravesend, and Rochester library.

In 2021 I will be giving talks during the Estuary Art Exhibition in Faversham, Chatham, Gravesend and Leigh-on-sea Essex. If you’d like to subscribe to my E-Newsletter send your name and Email address to:

francesbeaumont@gmail.com

To get the first draft finished, I went away for 3 weeks to the isle of Iona to work undisturbed. On my return, in May 2018 I sent my book to Marnie Summerfield Smith for her opinion and waited anxiously to hear back from her.

I first met Marnie at an afternoon workshop on Memoir Writing as part of the Faversham Literary Festival. I was impressed with her experience, and her gentle but penetrating insights. I felt she was a safe pair of hands.

A few weeks later Marnie emailed me:

“So, what you have at the moment is more of a biography than a memoir. It is very much Joliver’s story, about him from an outside perspective. So that will be your biggest decision, to continue along those lines and tidy this into an excellent biography or write it as your memoir with Joliver as a central character – with the two of you sharing centre stage…the deeply emotional parts were where you come into the story. I cried at the end. You have written about the time the two of you spent together so delicately. It’s just wonderful and the writing is of a very good quality especially in these parts…I see why people have said to you that there’s not enough of you in it. I think it’s because you have told people you are writing a memoir about Joliver, so people are expecting it to be in your voice, with your thoughts and feelings…the parts where you have written about you and Joliver are the most poignant and in terms of memoir writing, most satisfying in revealing the characters of you both and the love that you shared. You write well and on top of that, clearly, you have the potential and bravery to write something deeply personal. I would love to see more of that…the potential for a remarkable, sweet uplifting memoir is there.”

I could see I had a choice to write a Biography of John or completely change tack and rewrite a Memoir of my life which included Joliver’s story. The challenge was daunting because I would be exposing things I had never written about before and my deepest feelings. I felt John was the main theme and feared that people would not be very interested in me, or my life.

My writing group had been saying the same thing to me for some time, and now I was hearing clearly from Marnie that my half of the story was equally as important as Joliver’s.

I want to write the best book I can, so I started again. However, all the work on the first draft was not wasted. It was a necessary learning tool in the craft of writing.

The provisional title of the book changed from “Johnny No Hands” to “Johnny No Hands and Me” and I asked Marnie to become my editor. She suggested I begin the book with a chapter showing me in a challenging situation. I chose the one about John Oliver’s last few days of life, in the local Hospital.

In Will Storr’s book, ’The Science of Storytelling’ he explains how the brain loves and needs stories and how you can feed into this natural process. I found this book very helpful and recommend it, whatever genre you are writing in because all writing is ultimately storytelling.

Virginia Wolfe said: “A woman writer needs money and a room of her own.” And I’ve found this to be true.

I have a tiny office in what used to be a coat cupboard, but lack of money has been a problem. I’m retired and was struggling to meet the extra costs of the book which included computer, website, and professional help, including editing. In 2020 I arranged Equity Release on my house which has given me cash in hand for the book and essential house repairs, so things are much easier now. I have employed a part-time assistant to type out interviews, do some research and manage my Spreadsheet accounts, which I find difficult to see on the screen.

As an unknown author publishing my first book, I don’t expect to make money from it – I’d be happy to break even – but there is a possibility our love story could be turned into a film, which would be a very different scenario. I will know more when I send the book to Publishers.

I would not have missed this experience of writing for anything. I have met so many interesting people, some of whom have become friends. I have learnt a surprising amount about John and myself. It’s been hard, but cathartic, to write honestly about times when things went spectacularly wrong in my life.

The writing group are in favour of this new voice I have found, and I get feed-back varying from, ‘It’s brilliant! Don’t change a word!’ to suggestions that a chapter is a bit too long. I take note of comments because the group represent a section of my future readers, but ultimately, I am the author.

I love working with Marnie as an Editor. She understands the difficulty of Memoir writing and is very encouraging. As an editor, she does not cross out paragraphs with a red pen as I had imagined she might, but asks questions and wants me to write more, and dig deeper!

If you asked me today, ’How can I write a book?’ I would encourage you to find a quiet place and start. Set money aside to support you and be prepared for a long roller-coaster ride to an unknown destination. You won’t regret it!

Frances Rowley Beaumont December 2020.

Email: francesbeaumont@gmail.com

Frances Beaumont

09/12/2020