I remember the day I found "Old Nell'. It was a day when I had taken my younger brothers and sisters to the playground which was whenever the weather was fine.

We always had a picnic lunch of sandwiches and cake and a bottle of cordial, with some fruit for mid afternoon when we got hungry again.

Nell lived a few streets away from us, and she used to be friends with my grandmother. If Nell saw us in the street, she would always say hello, and we, being bound by the demands of courtesy, would always answer her.

My mother didn't like Nell, probably because she seldom washed and had a palsied shaking affliction that caused her to sit with her toothless mouth open and squint at you with one eye while the other one looked somewhere else..
One day I saw Nell fall over in the street, and no-one went to help. They stood there and either grinned or looked shocked and disgusted. I heard someone say something about "drunk again" as they turned away leaving the poor shabby creature on the footpath with her shopping scattered around her.
So, I put the brake on the pram and ran to her side. She had struck her head and was dazed and almost tearful. With my young brother on one side and me on the other we helped her up and walked her home.
Nell invited us in and although we felt uneasy we went in with her just to make sure she was alright. She gave us a drink of water from the rainwater tank and an apple each from the tree in the back yard. She told us that our Grandma would be proud of us and we were very kind children.
When we arrived home from the errand we had been bound on, the news had reached our mother, who was absolutely ecstatic at some of her brood having done a good deed in public and thus brought lustre to our somewhat tarnished family reputation.
The following Saturday we made our trip to the playgroundand there was Nell sitting on her seat out in the park.

We went over and said Hello and offered her some of our sandwiches which she gladly accepted and ate with us.
After a while she wandered off in the direction of her street, as she usually did. I watched her shambling off with her hair like a mop under her battered old hat, her shoes too big for her and her coat flapping around her heels.
We told our mother we had shared some of our lunch with Nell, but were growled at because she "wasn't very clean" and I should have thought of the baby.

The following Saturday was wet and so we didn't go, but as it was school holidays we went after the weekend. We had been told not to speak to Nell again, but since my tell tale sister wasn't with me, I had decided that if she was there, it would do no harm to smile and wave.

Sure enough there she was, sitting on her usual bench, head bent over a newspaper. I walked over to her and said "Hello Nell, how are you today?" There was no answer. I looked at her more closely and realised that the palsied movement of her face was still. Her eyes were closed and her clothes were soaking wet from a sprinkler showering her every time it turned.

I took a long careful look at the face under the brim of the faded hat, realizing that I looked upon the face of Death. I was surprised and rather pleased to see that she was almost beautiful.
I wheeled the pram in to the caretaker's room and told her there was someone out in the park she ought to go and see. She heaved herself out of her chair and went to Nell's side. She came back at a speed she hadn't managed for many a long year and told me to wait while she went over to the bowling green to their telephone.

I was going to return home but she told me I'd have to make a statement as I had been the one who found her.
The police arrived and with them all the sticky beaks and busybodies, that haunt such occurrences.
The sergeant arranged for me to go home in the police van to escape all the questions, which I did, sitting in the front nursing the baby, with the pram in the back.

My mother was very concerned that I had actually seen the face of a dead person, in case it "played on my mind", but it didn't. My elder sisters were green with envy at me being singled out TWICE over a smelly old woman that nobody cared about, and it wasn't until a year later that we heard Old Nell had been identified.
She was the long lost errant daughter of a well known artist. My mother looked at the photo in the paper and remarked dismissively "It's nothing like her "
I looked at it over her shoulder and saw the same calm, serene face I had seen under the dripping hat brim. But that moment was sacred, I would share it with no-one. So when they looked at me inquisitively. I shrugged and said "No, not much like her at all."