Author: Ellen Bell

I haven’t seen either them for a while now. I used to see them both, not together but separately, most mornings. The bag lady I’d see walking either to the all-night garage on Mill Street or away from it. She had a very distinctive rolling walk and she’d always carry a supermarket plastic bag in her hand, whether full or empty I couldn’t tell. And, come rain or shine, she’d be wearing her pink or blue sweatshirt top. Her hair hung from her head, unkempt and greasy. And she never gave me any eye contact and often, if we crossed each other on the Prom she’d stop walking and turn to face the sea until I passed by. The Sikh was equally diffident, never replying when I said good morning, his white clothes a beacon in the dark. He strode rather than rolled, a thin, upright man of immense physical dignity. Sometimes he wore an anorak over his white. He walked for exercise, that was clear, swinging his arms as he did so. Where have they gone?

At first I couldn’t make out what it was – a cat maybe or a dog. The morning had not quite lifted and that gorgeous blue was still hovering on the horizon. (It had been too overcast for me to see the blood moon, or indeed the eclipse, at 4.20am, though I had remembered.) But then I saw the sharp, pointed ears, the brush tail. It was a fox. It was standing on the corner of Queen’s Road and staring at me. I stopped walking and spoke to it in soft tones. It didn’t run off but continued to stare for at least, well maybe ten seconds. It was a beauty (male or female, I couldn’t tell), small but alert, curious. It moved on then, not running but walking. And as I turned the corner and looked back I could see it still, sniffing around some litter by the old court rooms. It looked at me too, one more time. I felt blessed by the encounter. Truly.

She usually sits with either her friend the fire alarm fixer or her fiancé (who she told us yesterday she’s known since she was eighteen) but neither were there so she sat at the table next to ours. He talked (well listened) to her while I drew. For all her initial reticence when we usually first greet her, we found after spending more concentrated time in her company that she actually shares her opinions rather liberally such as about Putin (‘he’s like Hitler, someone should shoot him’), or Welsh Rugby, or the Town Council (‘I didn’t vote, the town’s in a shocking state’) or the people who’ve taken over P.D.’s Diner on the Prom (‘the burgers were just warm, who wants warm burgers, and the coffee’s shocking, the bikers aren’t going any more’). She cleans other peoples’ houses and holiday lets and says she loves it. She was off to do two that afternoon, ‘after I’ve done my bits’, she said. Before she left, she said, ‘I love to see her draw’. And there’s me thinking she hadn’t noticed.

The giant poppies are out in the front garden of the house along Llanbadarn Road. They are lush, vermillion petals like a Schiaparelli dress and that deep black centre. Another source of joy as I walk.

My mind gets clogged with the stuff. All those details that I try to get a hold of and manage so that I can create a semblance of order. And sometimes is just too much, or so it seems when there is the promise of a disruption, however welcome, and it is, to my routine. I am flustered.

I wasn’t really concentrating on my drawing yesterday afternoon in the café at M&S. We go there in the afternoons when I’ve spent the morning writing so as to keep my drawing practice alive. I’m usually tired, as I was yesterday and my head was full of the piece I’d just written for my writing course. He was reading it out and we were editing it together. The café was busy and full of the kind of faces and bodies that I like to draw – characterful faces, mostly elderly, and all taking their slow time over lunch. This man sat across from us with his wife on one side and his two friends opposite. I observed him from the corner of my eye as he ate a bag of crisps. The doing of this task absorbed all his attention. (His wife was eating one too and both ate with their heads raised in the air, munching.) After he’d emptied the packet (he checked several times, even pouring the dregs into his mouth) he smoothed it out on the table, rolled it flat and then twisted it into a bow. Beautiful.

We passed her as we walked in. I’ve seen her there a few times. She and her boyfriend (or maybe even her husband) sleep on the ground in front of the china shop on Terrace Road. They lie on a double mattress placed on top of sheets of cardboard. She was asleep when we walked past, her face and long black hair exposed. She was outside Smiths when we’d finished our tea and coffees in the coffee shop where I do my drawing practice. He asked if she wanted something to eat. Yes, she said, fruit and a bottle of coke. I tried to converse with her while he went into the SPAR to get them. She is a tiny thing, delicate, almost Indian in appearance and manner (she bowed when he gave her the food and drink). She said where she was from but couldn’t tell me how long they had been here. My English, she said, then faltered. That’s OK, I said and smiled and then let her be.

I suddenly looked at my ears in the mirror a few days ago and didn’t recognise them. Perhaps it is because I’ve been studying other peoples’ ears when I’ve been drawing and it made me re-examine mine. Either way they looked strange, unfamiliar. I suppose most things do when you stare at them enough.

I got a ‘well done’ yesterday. It felt nice. And I basked for a little in it. Then, in bed I started to work over the second piece I’d written seeing its holes and inconsistencies. There is always more work to be done. Always.

Her voice sounded better, stronger. I’m still in hospital, she said. I asked if she wanted or needed anything. A magazine, some sweets or some Rich Tea? She went for a magazine and some biscuits and I said we’d drop them off either that day or the next. I asked her what ward she was in. Straightforward enough. We took a detour and he went in with the Smiths bag of goodies – 3 Take a Break magazines and a pack of Rich Teas – but they couldn’t find her. She’s in the Covid ward, I told him down the phone. No, she isn’t. There’s no one with that name, at least not a woman. She’d told me previously that she answers to a different name there. Her real name. They still couldn’t find here. Where was she? In Tregaron, apparently, in a convalescent home. She’s been here for quite a while the receptionist told him over the phone. The biscuits and mags will have to wait. He wants to take them at some point. Perhaps she’s dementing, he said. Maybe. Or maybe she is just so disorientated, that all rooms she is taken to look the same, are the same. Maybe she is on the way out. But what will happen then? Its been over 6 months and she will be so institutionalised and her daughter has a young child to care for. What a time it has been for her, for both of them. My heart is full for her.

There’s a lot lost in translation between the surgeon and myself. He is kind, and clearly trying his best to be clear. I’m not interested in stiffness, he says, I want to know if you are in pain. That depends what you mean by pain, I want to say but don’t. Can you still do what you usually do? he continues, you know, like go shopping, see friends and have a nice time? We laugh about it outside, he eating his sandwich and me my apples. The surgeon’s vision of what women do all day is evidently based on what his Muslim culture has shown him. And he misunderstood my hesitation about the operation. We will teach you to climb the stairs, he says. Yeh, but, I should’ve said, what about all the things that I do, need to do, to keep my life and his life in order. But I didn’t. He was a powerful presence and I was over-awed, so much so that I seem to have agreed to further tests.

I walked along North Road this morning, pushing myself too fast to get the walk done and be home in time for breakfast. The Christmas tree is still there. It’s inside not out, in a ground floor room of one of the tall terrace houses as the top of not Loveden Road by the one parallel to it, the one that leads down to the little SPAR. There is one what looks like an aquarium in the window, all lit up. And in the corner there is a huge Christmas Tree. It still looks fresh as a daisy, even though it is now May. It is real or faux? And what’s more all the decorations are still up and the lights on. I get it. I do. It’s a child-like thing to wish to prolong the joy of it, that sparkly nonsense of it and to have it there to stare at from your bed (the room is clearly owned by a student, who I can also just about see working away on their computer). And why not? There is misery enough.

He knows him. As do I, but from more of a distance. He frequents the same coffee shop we do. And I draw him, often. He comes in with either his friend, a bloke with long, slightly curly hair, a hooked nose and glasses, or what we call his ‘carers’. There are two woman who do it and a large man who wears a heavy overcoat and has (if my memory serves me right) bicycle clips around his trouser bottoms. They talk to him and walk with him on the Prom. But they always seem to have a coffee together first. Yesterday he was with the younger of the two women. She is tall, wide girl with jet black locks and who seems to favour pink coats, jackets and sweat tops. She makes him laugh. They sat a table next to ours. She was asking him what he’d made for his supper the night before. Chickpeas, he said. What, just chickpeas? she asked. No, it was a kind of soup. Oh, like an Indian thing? she said. Yes. Anything else? Yes, I had some bread. What a couple of slices? No, he said, the whole loaf. You didn’t? Yes, he said. Any pudding? Yes, I had some cheesecake. Oh, what type? Those mini ones from Tesco’s. Oh. I had two last night. There was a pause, and then he continued. And I had the other two this morning.