ellen bell

The dark has set in. Too fast. Sunrise is almost 7.30 these days. Scandinavia was worse, with their barely four hours of daylight. I stuggled then, though I didn’t have the words for it. I manage. I walk into it though I never want to. I light candles, put on the radio and keep busy. Time passes and the light comes. And sometimes the sun.

I cried because I had promised, promised that I would stay here for him. But I long to go. After all this. I have promised again, that if we go and he cannot manage to be away we will come back. I don’t want to, but he needs that clause. And I understand.

We watch them, or at least we are aware of them After all their house is in full view from our upstairs window. And they are always outside, chatting with neighbours or tending their garden. They are hugely visible. But they are also often away. And usually when the rain comes. Do they go to where the sun is? She is forever brown, always tanned. Perhaps they know of a micro-climate not far from here where the sun is on tap. Maybe, and if so, I hope it makes them happy.

We talk of leaving when I’ve done this research. He wants to stay and I don’t. How do you resolve that then?

My dreams invade my days these days. Last night’s was another barnstormer, with its main feature being a huge telephone box installed inside an ex-art school lecturer’s home.

So many of my dreams involve trying to catch hold of something, be it a number, a word or a name. I have them for a moment and then they slip from me, turning the rest of the dream into one of seeking to retrieve. Last night it was numbers. Someone in a bank had told me of my code and then it was gone. Sometimes I remembered it as words, though they too have now alluded me. Are they still there in the reaches of my brain?

It’s been a potent one, and my dreams are still under its spell. Last night it involved a choice between two men, one of whom had two young girls. They will scream someone told me. And the police had to give permission to adopt them. A hand on a car door and then lying on the floor, face-to-face with the man who wasn’t chosen, the older one, staring into his eyes. Such intimacy. Was all this stimulated by the Alice Munro story, that I read for half and hour in the sun yesterday?

The colours in Amelie scintillate.

I wanted to write about his speech, the marvel of it and its kindness, his kindness. But instead I need to acknowledge my grief. My dream made it visible, though in my fleeing through an apocalyptic landscape, it was more like a vision of fear than pain. I am brought low. And yet, what they said yesterday was nothing too bad. They judged and gave their opinions, one softly the other no so. Why did it floor me? And why, oh why, does it take me so long to recover? It was the last one, three, possibly four, more episodes of judgement then it is is over. Over.

He read out an article to me about a convent retreat in Whitby as I prepared supper yesterday. It sparked a longing in me that I spent part of my morning walk trying to decipher. I have always had to suppress a need to be saved, to be protected, wrapped up, and mothered. She couldn’t do it, well not when I became sentient and thought beyond her. It wasn’t her fault. Her mothering had been absent. And in turn I have been absent too. But hearing of those nuns, of that ritual of silence of routine and quietude got to the core of me. I’ll take you, he says, and stay somewhere nearby. That’s kind, I say. But it wouldn’t work. I need to be away from it all, and you, my love, would bring it all with you. One day. One day I will find it. That mothering.

It has set in. Is it my work? Or is it the menopause? He describes me as pessimistic. I don’t remember being so when I was young. For then, there was always something, even in the darkest of times, and there have been dark times, there was always something to reach out towards. A glint, of something. Now? I don’t know. I fulfil my tasks, go to my desk every day. But I am empty. That’s all. That’s all there is.

I was lying on the grass reading when the old school estate’s gardener arrived pushing his lawnmower along the road. Standing up, I offered to move. Oh, you’re alright my lovely, he said, I can do that bit next week. He looks rather like one of Santa’s elves, though man-size, obviously. A warm-hearted soul, I think. After hearing him huff and puff while lugging several bags of garden waste back to his van, I suggested that he shouldn’t work too hard. Oh, I never do, he said.