Our near neighbours in the maisonette just across the shared balcony from us are back. We call them ‘The Americans’. Apparently they live somewhere on the West Coast. They are a gentle couple, white-haired, softly spoken, diminutive and round of body. I like them, though we have rarely engaged in conversation. We have been filling their bird feeders while they were away (something to do with visas expiring). We met her in the hallway over the weekend and welcomed her back. She informed us that they have returned on a tourist visa and are able to stay for 6 months. She’s studying for a PhD in Celtic Studies but her student visa ran out. It is so complicated. Obviously there have to be some kind of controls but can’t this border thing be a little more fluid? They are good people who love being here. I haven’t seen him yet and the bird feeders are yet to be re-filled (we, no I should say he, bought lots of fat balls that will no longer be necessary) perhaps he is recovering from the jet lag. Perhaps dormouse like he is still in semi-hibernation (he has a look of one certainly, and is rather somnolent in appearance, and dishevelled as if he has just left his bed). He is the one I have seen pottering amongst the array of pots they have on their balcony. I hope he comes out soon.
The carpet and the phone call are today.
I walked my usual walk yesterday and it took 10 minutes longer than usual. My hips feel like rusted metal.
Just one more disruption to our household to come (for now). The carpet man is due tomorrow. He comes with a new stair carpet to replace the grotty old one that was such a mess to remove and that I have always struggled to get clean. I have a thing about carpets and to be honest if it wasn’t for the huge gaps in the risers that let in all sorts of cold air and the fact that most of the steps are cobbled together MDF, I’d be quite happy to leave them as they are, denuded. Besides I have grown used the sound of his slippers on the bare boards. It will be weird to hear them muffled. But as they say you have to be careful what you ask for, don’t you? And I accept that he will be here tomorrow (we hope) bashing and crashing about until the brand new soft grey thing is installed. And I have cleaned and cleaned only to have to do it again. So be it, eh?
I didn’t tell you of the MRI scan I had last week, did I? It was sandwiched between so much chaos that I almost forgot. I was booked in for what is for me an ungodly hour, 6.30 pm. I hate to go out in the dark (and since I have ceased to walk in the early hours for the meantime the dark is even more of a big deal). But as the doctor had gone to so much trouble (at my instigation) to push it through I had to acquiesce if only to get it over with. The hospital was ghostly. No one was about except for a few cleaners who poked their heads out of various consulting rooms at our arrival. One very warm one took us to the new MRI room. It’s a brand spanking new one, she said, meaning the scanner not the room, I think. A green button was pressed and another nice woman let us in and told us to sit and wait. Then M. arrived all jokey and smiling and loud. He had to stay behind and I was whisked off to an ante room where M. fired off a series of questions without taking breath. No, no, no, I answered to them all. My coat was removed, my mask changed (I want you to wear this one) and then I was led into the scanning chamber. Boots off, please, said M. I wanted to ask why I seemed about to go into it whole when they were only meant to be looking at my pelvis but his brusque joviality seemed to brush off all my attempts at questioning though I did ask for a blanket. Anything else? he asked as he tucked me in. A teddy bear and a hot water bottle would be nice, I said. And he did laugh, though I suspect he was used to being in charge of the jokes. I think you are beginning to understand me, he said. I noticed that his wedding ring was bronze and his fingernails showed no white. This will take about an hour, he said as I lay down and the machine swallowed me in. There was nothing I could do but accept it. The panic did come as I knew it would. Can I breathe, will I scream, will I ever get out, is it too close to my face, will they forget me? where the questions that initially besieged me but I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing. I think I even slept in between the clanging and the knocking and the juddering and the banging that that unearthly machine made. The next thing I remember I was been wheeled out and helped off the rack by another medic. It usually takes 2 weeks before we let you know the results, he said but in your case it will be 2-3 days. Why? I wanted to ask but didn’t. Was the doctor’s letter so persuasive?
I don’t know what to do, I never have. I just try to do what feels right. I asked her and initially she was hesitant but then warmed up to the idea. Have I done the right thing? A regular income would be nice but can I do it, do I have the physical strength and how will still be able to do all the other stuff that he and I expect me to do? And then there is this resubmission. The project changes as he and I talk about it. I like the changes but will the galleries and indeed the ACW? I talk to the man in the sports jacket tomorrow. So we shall see. Shan’t we?
She’s drawing you, said his wife inclining her head at me. He turned to look at me and then turned away. Let her, he said.
There are no shoulds, he says to me, time and time again. And I know this, or at least I want to know this but the feeling that there is something I ought to be doing has such a power over me. I have learnt my lesson well.
The discomfort, that inner fighting has eased a little – a combination of literally getting my house in order and tea and beginning to detach myself from the problem a little and allowing other ideas to filter in. And with it comes less physical stress epitomised by waking with a headache and indigestion in the middle of the night. I didn’t last night for the first time in a week.
I am scared of him. I am not sure why. He represents power, he is one of those panel members who I see in my mind’s eye judging me, always judging me and finding me wanting. I have invented this jury and I carry them around with me. And he is now a firm member, he in his tweed sports jacket and brooch. I want to do this my way. Is that allowed? I want to be truthful, to keep it small, manageable, containable but brave too. And then there is the other fantasy of a small job that would pay my way and leave me free to allow myself to create the rest of the time. Could this be? Have I the energy to do it? It is a warm environment. I might be happy there. Oh, how to live. I have never known this.
Is my agitation about them real? Or am I remembering hers? It was virtually empty when we arrived. And the receptionist, though a trifle offhand allowed him to stay (regardless of all the notices saying that outpatients should be unaccompanied) with the proviso that if the radiologist said he had to leave he must. In the end he wasn’t able to come in with me. The radiographer was apologetic pointing at the sign saying that only 3 people were permitted. The number three was in red. He was a nice man with a tall, rangy body. Every patch of bare skin was tattooed, including his shaven head. But his kindness and compassion was evident in the way he treated the elderly lady they wheeled out prior to my going in. She looked so frail, though her body was not insubstantial. Her skin, though pale, was bruised. It is a place of pain, sickness and dying. I felt the heaviness of it. The room was clean and neat. I lay on the bed and revealed my stomach in readiness for the cold wetness of the gel, and stared up at the muted ceiling light. I instantly forgot the doctor’s name, though the radiographer introduced him to me. He was colder than the other man and gave little away other than to ask if I had arthritis in my hips or if I’d ever had an MRI to look at them. I wasn’t expecting that. Shit, I thought, is that the issue? No, I said, to both questions. Nice coat, said that radiographer as I got dressed. They cost about £800 in this country, he said. Yes, I said, I bought it in Norway and it was like taking out a second mortgage. Another pee and then we went home. We walked later and sat where I’d sat the day before and looked out at the sea.
She was waiting outside the coffee shop when we arrived. Another early bird, she said, what gets you up so early? She was of late middle-age, well dressed and well-coiffured and a stranger. We struck up a conversation while we waited for someone to open up. She’d be visiting the town and had stayed the night before in a B&B on the Prom. She’d not been impressed. The walls were thin, she said, and the mattress was lumpy and I could hear a couple in the next room arguing, coughing and then he began snoring. I think he was quite drunk. We talked of other places that she could stay. The Premier Inn was too expensive she thought and she really wanted to stay somewhere with a sea view. We asked what brought her here and she said that she’d been given respite. My husband is quite frail, she said. I thought about her as I drew her (she sat at the little table ahead of ours and read her phone). She was self-contained and elegant, of strong mind I think. That’s how it will be for you in a few years, he said. Perhaps, I said.
Another Monday and he is due soon. I’ve emptied my bedroom and bathroom the discombobulation of last week returns with a vengeance. It isn’t for long, he says. No, and there are so many more important things going on in the world for me to make such a meal of this minor inconvenience. For it is that, minor. So be it. I accept.
She seems to me to one of the happiest people I know. Though I recognise that I only see what he calls her ‘public face’. And I can see that things do make her anxious and she cares what her clients think of her. But when she talks about setting off in her camper van on a Friday afternoon (‘We call it Bessie,’ she said) with her beloved W and her dog she is happy. It makes me feel so free, she said. And I share that joy, for those ten minutes I sit with her as she trims my hair. Though as I say her clients do trouble her. ‘The teachers are the worst,’ she said. There was one who didn’t turn up for her appointment and so she called to see if she ‘hadn’t fallen off the bus’. The woman clearly was put out by the call and was unapologetic about missing the booking. ‘How about we rebook now, ‘she suggested, ‘and you can put it on you calendar?’ ‘No,’ said the woman, ‘I’m frying bacon and eggs.’
It doesn’t bring out the best in me. I like and need order. And he, for all his care, and for a decorator he is careful, brings disorder. It makes me tetchy, scratchy and emotional. And he responds in kind. It was ever thus. And we bicker. And he can hear. It is a grubby business. And I wake feeling blue. It will pass, he won’t be here for ever though his daughter’s illness has delayed things somewhat. Bless her. I hope that she isn’t too scared. And I know it’s only a mindset but it all seem like it’s unravelling – the rain lashes the window, my studio is cluttered with piles of books and extraneous matter from other rooms, my body hurts in numerous places and I don’t know what to do about the application. I don’t truly. Will it all become clearer?
He doesn’t seem to think that wood paint fumes are toxic and yet when we put the bar fire on or light the gas I get a strong sense that it is all going to go up into a huge conflagration. Oh, it isn’t for long, is it? And it will be worth it, won’t it? It’s just the chaos of it. I’m not good with it. And we’re only two days in. And my poor little lovely studio is a mass of books and bits. It muddles my thinking. And now there is the suggestion that I ought to resubmit. Ah, should I? It is so much work and I’m no longer sure it is what I want. If you don’t know what to do, do nothing. Who said that? I can’t remember. Is it good advice? All I can think of doing for the moment is trying to impose some order and cleanliness. I took it out on the doctor yesterday. Though he said I was fine. The ultrasound was inconclusive. More research is needed. He talks of a cyst. Is that was it is really?
We’d asked for it for ages. Haranguing the management company of our flat for permission from our landlord to get it decorated and to change the scabby stair carpet. And now, finally it is being done. We both struggle with the intrusiveness of it. It’s not only the mess, the having to move everything from room to room but its having a stranger here in our intimate space. It wobbles us. But he is a nice man. Young and fresh-faced, he doesn’t look old enough to have two kids. He bangs about a little but no less than the man who comes every year to check the gas fixtures, now he really crashes up and down the stairs, leaving the front door to bash behind him. I like him too, a bit of an Eeyore but still likeable. In fact, I am always struck by how blessed I am by the people I encounter here in this town. Even the carpet-man who pulled up the scabby one last Friday seemed to soften (once he was allowed to be mask-less and to leave his boots on) and become amiable (he had been positively stand-offish the week before). But there is so much to do, such as the book case I have to ‘unpack’ and all those books to shift. It will be worth it. Already it is looking fresher though the stink of paint is a challenge. Heigh ho. Be careful what you ask for eh?
Oh and the woman he/we thought was a red cross volunteer sitting with our neighbour downstairs, wasn’t. No. She’s her daughter.
