Mrs.English

My Grandparents lived in a small terrace of houses in Terenure and as a child I used to visit them frequently after school . Myself and my brothers played with the children of our neighbours but as the people who lived in the terrace were mostly retired tramdrivers there were very few children of our age .
The elderly couple who lived next door to our grandparents had children of about our age , we were six or seven years old at the time . The couple were Mr. and Mrs. English , he a quiet gentle man but his wife was not so friendly ....in fact we were afraid of Mrs. English .
A very severe woman , with steel-rimmed glasses , brownish hair streaked with grey , tight-lipped , dark eyebrows and a mole on her cheek with hair growing from it .
On the occasions when we called to ask her son to come out to play she usually glowered at us and told us to go away . We were very much afraid of her .
One day on coming home from school , to visit our grandparents , as we approached the steps leading to the terrace , we saw a group of neighbours gathered around someone sitting on the steps . The person sitting there was Mrs. English . She was weeping inconsolably .Her hands were over her face , her hair was in disarray . We could not believe that this woman , of whom were so frightened , was capable of such grief .....
My sister explained to me sometime later , Mrs.English's son had just been taken from her . Mr and Mrs. English used to foster children , I recon from about toddler age to the age of say eight or nine . When the child reached the appropriate age the child was taken from his foster mother and returned to ...the orphanage of possible another foster home .
Mrs. English loved her foster children and her heart was broken when the time came to give him/her up....As far as I know she fostered a number of children and presumably suffered the same trauma when the child was subsequently taken back ...
We , as children , didn't notice that the children were too young to be the elderly couples children . The they were so loved and so well cared for by this wonderful lady and obviously when she saw us it just reminded her that some day she would have to hand over her little ones .
This was over sixty years ago and I still clearly remember that day when I learned that you can't judge a book by its cover....