Author: Ellen Bell

It’s not really the right word – a word and indeed a phrase that I always misunderstood as a child thinking that the son being described as prodigal referred to his return not the wildness of his life when he left. Anyway, he has returned. He left the ‘hell hole’, as he described it, after what? six years or was it more, to work for a famous dairy on an industrial site. He kept coming in to the coffee shop aka HH on his days off, saying that ‘he was getting there’ with his new job. And now he is back. My heart went out to him. He has lost weight and the skin condition that ails him has flared up. His face was positively afire. How do we handle it? we asked each other. In the end I raised it, giving him a way out, a chance to save face. I think it helped. It broke something and he drooped a little less as a consequence. He isn’t an easy man, he can be a little arsy, no brusque – I call him an ‘Eeyore’ like the donkey toy in Winnie-the-pooh. I hope he feels safer now that he is back in the fold.

I walked to the Perygyl from over the Buarth, marvelling at the host of seagulls making in circles in the sky, flashing white from the reflection of the street lights below, magical quite magical. And then, joy of joys there was a fishing boat preparing to set sail. I love that warming thrum of the engine and the stark yellow lights in the still darkness. And I am determined to get strong. These hips are mine and I want to keep them, decrepit or no.

Most we only know to say hello to but that doesn’t stop us spinning stories about them. Not unkind ones but just a means of piecing together the bits of information we get from their habits to form a picture of who they really are. There’s ‘the smoker’ across the way who is up at all hours loitering outside his flat smoking and reading his phone. During lockdown he appeared to be holding seminars in the car park so we have him down as a lecturer or possibly a PhD student with teaching duties. There’s the young father whose kids visit at the weekends, he also smokes and sits on the railings, also reading his phone. There was Alfie the dog’s owner (we discovered later that he was a she but the name stuck) – I don’t think we worked out what he did, and he has since gone taking Alfie with him. I miss her barking and sheer thrill whenever he returned home from who knows where. There was the ‘Scottish Guy’ who has also gone, he who never wore a coat, always that same black t-shirt come snow, rain or shine, and whom he would see drinking during the day in The White Horse, just wine, and always on his own. He since found out that he is actually married and that his wife still lives in Scotland and that he lecturers at the University (we thought, Politics or IT or Literature but no he works in the IBERS department something to do with seeds, I think). But the girl who lives in a flat around the corner was a surprise. She lives with her boyfriend or could be her husband and they can be seen (like us) walking the Prom in the early morning (he always strides way ahead of her). She came once to say that the washing machine was waking them and looked so uncomfortable doing so, bless her. Anyway we met her the other day as she got out of her car (they park next to us) and she revealed that she actually works in a café near Borth. I’d have thought she’d have an office job or was a researcher perhaps. So shy, and so reticent, she blushes at a moment’s notice and there she is doing a job that is all about interacting with others. I like her. She blushed when I said that I liked her new hair cut. A gentle being, I think.

But it’s a Paul Smith, he protests and doesn’t need to. I try to keep mum these days. It’s his joy, this buying and bidding on eBay. He says it’s harmless and doesn’t cost much as they are all second-hand. So I leave him be and patiently (mostly) pack up the parcels to return if they don’t suit. I hadn’t seen the coat before he sent it off to the drycleaners to be cleaned. I can’t remember the adjective they used when he called them to check it had arrived (a blousy, cheery woman comes to collect every Thursday). There’s swank, they should’ve said. For it is bright, even garish. Pink. Do you remember when we were going to buy me that pink velvet suit from Paul Smith in Covent Garden? Yes, I do. I remember the umming and ahing and the dithering. It wasn’t cheap. He is happy now. That is what matters. And I have my fetishes too. Sketchbooks for instance?

He wasn’t sure if it was in honour of his death or not, but the National Library of Wales on the hill above us was flying their flag at half mast. How nice, I said, not knowing if the man would’ve appreciated it or not. He went to his funeral yesterday. I was the only one in jeans, he said. He learnt things about him he didn’t know before. Though he didn’t know him very well. He was younger than him and was in school with his younger brother. But they did used to drink together. In his drinking days. I’m glad he went. He wavered. I couldn’t hear my brother’s eulogy, he said, he spoke so quietly, I think his voice cracked a little at the end. The played The Waterboys, twice. Nice.

I saw her again yesterday. I’ve seen her a few times now. We were out walking in the afternoon and went into Ridiculously Rich’s outdoor seating area for a coffee and so that I could draw. She came a little later on and sat at a table just beyond ours. I like to look at her. She isn’t beautiful but she has a strong body, a fresh face and intelligence and openness shines from her. She doesn’t know me, though I did go up and say hello that one time. I don’t mind. I like to preserve my relative anonymity here. I have all I need.

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.