I do remember one briefly lovely time during my hospital stay in Gorseinon Cottage Hospital. There was a boy in the next bed to me for a while who had been in hospitals on and off all his life. His legs seemed to be twisted, rigid in plaster and were pulled right up by a pulley and wires. He must have had a lot of pain or at least discomfort, but he never complained. Looking back, I think he must have had congenital dislocated hips or possibly bone tuberculosis—TB was very common in Swansea.

We chatted for hours, a refuge for both of us. Did he even have parents? I don’t think he talked about them. He seemed at one and the same time very grown-up and yet very naive, as children often are when they have suffered much pain and spent time in hospitals.

We talked a lot about the Fairies and although he must have been all of seven years old to my six, he still believed totally in them. I already knew that Fairies were imaginary beings who didn’t ‘really’ exist and I was filled with great tenderness and sorrow for him. Not for anything would I have disillusioned him; it was a protective, almost maternal love.

I don’t think he was in the ward long, and as happens in hospital, he simply vanished. Did he go for another operation, or to another hospital? Did he die? Was he discharged? I will never know, but I still occasionally think of him. His name was Hugh, presumably spelled ‘Huw’, and I know he was my first true love.

Huw: Gorseinon Hospital 1943

Did you die,
Or did they just take you away
To another ward?
Boy in the next bed,
Plaster legs high on a gallows
Where your small body hung.

You smiled at me
With all your seven years,
And I, a year younger,
Fell in love with you, there and then and
Always and forever.
Huw, Huw, Huw: the cooing of a dove.

For hours we talked about the Fairy Folk
I knew they were a story,
You did not. Shy, hospital-bound child,
Older and younger than your years. Not for the world
Would I have disillusioned you.

I would have held your ears
In my child-small hands.
I would have given all I had
To save you from that truth.
Neither, for all the world
Would I have let you go.

Did the Fairy Folk take you?
Did you die?
Or did they just take you away
To another ward?