Mary's Choice

 Mary's Choice

Havering Libraries run an annual poetry competition, and for this latest competition, selected the theme “Choices” via the National Poetry Society. I've written poetry for many years - usually about railways and steam trains, but this subject got me thinking about my Grandma, who was born in 1893, and how she would often talk to me about the time she fell in love with a young man in Liverpool.

My Grandma’s first romance began in 1911, when at Church she met a young man called Ernest Henderson Lewis. She was 17, he was 18, and every Sunday, as they walked back to her house after the service, he would carry her prayer book and hymnal for her. 

One Saturday, about a year after they had met, they went to New Brighton for the day, but on the ferry going home to Liverpool, Ernie Lewis’s father was on the same boat, and he saw them sitting together. The next day, my Grandma knew immediately that something was amiss, especially as Ernie did not carry her books for her as he usually did on the way home. When they reached her gate, he said, “We can’t see each other any more. We’re too young. If you’ve got no-one else, I’ll come back for you when you’re 27."

My Grandma told me, “Twenty-seven! That was 9 years! Nine years!” In 1912, that must have felt like a life time, and I knew that in those days, if you weren’t married by the time you were 21, a girl was considered to have been “left on the shelf.” Looking back, my Grandma also remembered so many young men had been killed in the First World War, and lots of young women missed out on getting married, anyway. When Ernie Lewis said goodbye, my Grandma said she was so bitterly unhappy, she gave up on her studies - she had a fine academic brain, and had passed the Oxford prelim. exams - she got a job and got on with her life. Her father was horrified - and furious! His reaction - delivered in strident, patriarchal tones - was: "That boy ….  has ruined your life!"

She married my Grandfather in 1916, and I'm sure she loved him, too, but until the day she died, she talked about and never forgot her first love, Ernie Lewis. She saw him once more, after she had been widowed in 1943, and before she went out to East Africa in 1948 to see where else life would take her; it was clear he had not forgotten her, either, but it was too late for them to rekindle their old flame. I'll attach a photograph of my Grandma, taken when she was 21; I think she was really beautiful, and there is such a look of wistfulness in her eyes. She often wondered what path her life would have taken, if her romance with Ernie Lewis had been allowed to flourish, and she had been able to make different choices; and we can never know what dreams and hopes are cherished in people’s minds. 

 

 My Grandma, Alice Thompson - 1914

 

 

  MARY’S CHOICE

 

“You must meet Mary!” the Matron enthused,

Trundling her out, like a prize on display:

“Her room is single and spacious, with very fine views

“Of the gardens, and beyond them, the bay!”

 

Yes, indeed, thought Mary; she was mentally fine

And could count backwards from one hundred in sevens;

She knew what to say, and how to dispense

Sweet wisdom all laced with sound common sense.

 

“You must chat to Mary!” the Matron encouraged

“She’s led such an interesting life!

“An inspiration to all whom she meets; she enchants

“She knows how to turn away strife.”

 

Mary smiles and selects what they all want to hear

Whilst another lass lives in her head:

She aches to be young, to be foolish, in love,

In a life on a pathway untrod.

 

“We all love Mary!” the Matron exclaims

“With her smile and her sweet disposition –

“She’s our resident star! And no-one gainsays

“Her ‘senior resident’ position.”

 

But at night, Mary’s wakeful, as the choices she’s made

In her life file past her in turn;

Her eyes can still dance, if her feet have grown slow

And her passions continue to burn.

 

“She is so full of joy!” the Matron disclosed,

“She’s so charming, so patient – so kind!

“A shining example of how old age can be,

“For people of similar mind!”

 

But in a covert part still resided

In Mary’s mind, things that no-one could know:

And she hugs to herself in those long, darkling hours

Her lost choices of so long ago.

 

Alexandra WIlde

 

Presentation of my poetry prize, 18 May 2022