Author: Ellen Bell

It flew onto the bonnet of the car just as we’d arrived home. I couldn’t say what it was. I said it was a Red Admiral but he suggested it might have been a Painted Lady. Red Admirals are the ones I remember from my youth. Those long summers spent in the fields. It was a beauty whatever it was. And then Richard Attenborough began talking of them in his short radio programme, though mostly about Monarchs and Cabbage Whites. He talked of the rarity of butterflies and how he often dashes outside when he sees one. They give me a feeling of joy, they always have done. And while I was working on the commission they seemed to be everywhere, Cabbage Whites certainly.

Writers talking. I keep coming upon writers talking on the radio. This week it was Patrick Gale and then Anthony Minghella. Both were very articulate – each sentence they uttered was a gem for someone like me, a learner, a fledgling scribbler, a sponge. Both listen to music while they write. Gale says he only has to put a specific piece on and he is back in the plot. He also said that he begins with a truth, a true happening. I liked that. My story hums away inside my head. I am slow to write it. But it doesn’t matter, it needs to take its time and for me to become more confident in writing it. It is taking on flesh.

I can hear it in my right ear. It’s a kind of irregular pulsing. It must be my heart. It’s not a pounding or a thumping but a throbbing. It sounds like a moan, a dull complaining sort of noise, almost a wheeze. Why am I hearing it now and not before? I will have to get used to it. For maybe it is here to stay. Always these little changes to get used to. That’s the thing with getting older, with dying, which is what we are effectively all doing. Is this the sound we hear in the womb? Or are all heart beats different? Is this what a doctor hears through a stethoscope? It’s a sound of life, I suppose. A reminder of its force and fragility. But do I want it forever in my ear? Perhaps I have no choice. It will be heard it seems.

A long journey yesterday, over 300 miles there and back. It wasn’t unpleasant. We talked, I dozed, we stopped to rest, pee, do crosswords and drink coffee and tea out of flasks. We hardly stepped foot in Bath, though it looked magnificent in the sunshine. The work is delivered. And I took myself out into the world once more. She remembered me, she said. Sadly, it wasn’t mutual. It is hard to return to a place once known and loved, different.

He is out on his walk and it has begun to rain. Poor love I hope he isn’t too wet.

Sometimes it is enough, just that, to start. To make a start. To start out. It can be the most difficult thing to do. That white sheet of paper, though these days it is more likely to be a blank computer screen. I did it though. I began and watched my every word. It will ease, that watchfulness and the words will flow more easily.

We are to make a journey today. Just a small one compared to the one tomorrow.

The rain was relentless this morning, though the air was warm and the sea a gentle lapping.

The storm before this one was called by my name. I didn’t hear or see her. Nor I think will we see much of Francis. We sat out in the afternoon and one of our neighbours was cutting the grass with a strimmer. A noisy thing. He called out to apologise and said that he wouldn’t be long but that he wanted to get it done before the storm.

Another commission has come through. I am so grateful, more than I can say. To earn my way is so important to me. So important, especially when it can be made here in this studio and using my skills. Thank you. All of you.

It took me hours. I was in two minds whether to do it or not. I could’ve stayed with the errors and adapted the pattern accordingly. It would be a bind, I told myself, but it might be a good way of breaking out of the strictures of the prescribed format and imposing my own scheme. I thought about it all Saturday, in between thoughts of her. I’d sewn the initial part over a year ago. It had been my first one and flush with the energy of ignorance I’d purchased the harder one. And it was too hard. Fiddly and troublesome to count. At least it was then. A year later I am defter and more confident perhaps. So I’d picked it up where I’d left off foolishly not checking whether my first attempt was right. It wasn’t. It was way out. It frustrates me how easily I err. After all it’s only a question of counting. But it’s always been the same, I’m not good with following patterns, rules or colouring in between the lines. So I unpicked it. Stitch by stitch. I thought I could save the thread but it was impossible. The tension of my initial stumblings was too tight, the thread had to be cut. Denuded of thread the linen still holds a ghosting of what was there before, a hint colour and form. It is done. It is unpicked. Time to begin again.

I want to help her, to make it alright. But I cannot. The associations with her situation and mine all those years ago are acute. It cannot be the same and yet I feel as if it is. I wish her strength. I wish them both strength. Such deprivations take their toll on relationships. She just wants a home. And why shouldn’t she have it? They have done nothing wrong. Let is be so. Let it come for them.

He said that his occluded eye had improved, more than he could’ve hoped, apparently. Isn’t that an amazing thing? He seems rather sanguine about it. But to me it is a sign of a healthy constitution. It is still fuzzy but he says that he can make out more shapes.

We talked of her garden and the impact of the recent rain and wind. She seemed distracted having just come in from a wet walk. I could hear the dog barking outside. The storms have destroyed their runner beans and the courgettes that ‘were coming beautiful’ have begun to rot. I couldn’t lift her. I’m in a muddle today, she said. Sometimes I can’t make it right. I wish I could. I worry about sharing snippets of our conversations here on this page. I keep her anonymous and it is only a way of celebrating her. For I do. That soft lyricism of her voice and her concerns spoken so quietly, continue to move me. She has been nowhere since the lockdown was first imposed. Let this sharing be alright. I would never wish to wound.

A wild morning but he has gone out nevertheless. Has summer ended?

I’ve struggled to sleep these last few nights. The day before yesterday I tried reading a William Trevor short story thinking it might help to make me tired. It did the opposite, the beautiful succinctness of the writing stirred me up.

He bought the radio for me, did I tell you? It is now on my table all washed clean as I’d dreamt it would be. And it’s perfect. The tone is good and the dial was on my station, the one I listen to in the mornings. Thank you. It was unnecessary, I have umpteen radios but it is a pleasure nonetheless. It’s an objet d’art, he told the woman in the shop. Well, she said.

I saw two baby gulls as I walked. One was lying in the road, taking a nap, I think, all tucked up and neat. The other was on the Prom, its feathers ruffled, looking lost. They seem so bleak, so alone, so abandoned.

It’s raining outside so he won’t walk. In fact I can hear him snoring now. I, on the other hand have work to do. More anon.

He was on my bedroom wall, the greenness of him stark against the magnolia. How had he got there? I thought grasshopper jumped not flew. I know so little. I picked him up carefully with a piece of loo paper and put him out of the window. Five minutes later he was on the window. He paused for a bit and we both watched as he appeared to be cleaning himself. Then he began to climb. They’ve got suckers, he said. Within a couple of minutes he was gone. Had he gone onto the roof?

The morning are dark now. There was no moon. The wind had got up, and straggles of my hair caught in my mouth. It felt bleak. The woman with the bag was at the other end of the Prom. She must’ve seen me advancing for she turned into ‘the ship’ and waited till I’d passed. I understand. I often feel that way about other people too. I walked down Great Darkgate Street to get out of the wind and saw a Greggs’ lorry parked on the pavement. The driver was wheeling some crates from the lit shop. Good morning, he called to me as I passed. I felt a little lighter for it. It was 4.15 am and he sounded so cheerful. I replied in kind and walked with a more buoyant step. It’s all OK, I thought. It is.

The ground was still wet but I went to pick some anyway. There were loads of them, some still small but very juicy. They came away from the stalk like a dream. It became quite compulsive, though many of the best ones were too high for me to reach. The sun shone quite unexpectedly. The damp soil smelt strange. I can’t really describe it. I didn’t really like the smell. It smelt of clay with a hint of dog poo. It stuck to my shoes. My footwear wasn’t appropriate.

I had to bring the call to a swift conclusion. I felt bad about it. She’d been talking about meeting friends in her conservatory to do some painting. Her son was due to visit that evening. She is lonely. She is a gregarious, social being. It will be nice to have someone to say good morning to and good night to, she said. Yes. It is as simple as that sometimes. Poor love. She does well. That is, she manages. But I suspect she is lonely and sad sometimes. And she is too smiling a woman to be sad. I didn’t give as much of myself to her as I ought to have done. I am sorry. Next time I will be better. I promise.

I found a piece of blue and white in the soil. An old piece, I think. Not a transfer, certainly. A small treasure.

I dreamt about it. I had it. I don’t know how. But I was washing it under the tap, cleaning it of all previous owners. It was now my radio. Mine.

I see it every morning in the window of the second-hand shop. It’s nestled next to a large glittery head of buddha and surrounded by bits of china. The window display is not what you’d call minimal. There is a clarinet in a blue-velvet-lined case balanced on top of a train set with two miniature camper vans standing on each corner. A trumpet, a ukulele and a guitar hang from hooks on one of the side walls. The rest is mostly tat. I like it though. I pass it twice on my walk and sometimes linger a little on my way home letting my eye roam over the jumbled array.

Her other son must be visiting now. He isn’t due back from Ireland for a few days yet. I know this because we could hear his saxophone through the floor and walls. At first I thought it was a cello. Perhaps it was but it’s unlikely. It’s not so easy to take one of those on a plane. He practised and played for well over three hours. It irritated him but I quite liked it.

It was a hard listen. Beautifully acted by Ronald Pickup but a hard and bitter tale. At one point he told of his father telling him a story about Shackleton wandering in the snow in search of help with his two companions. He was convinced there were four of them as they trudged. There wasn’t. Just the three. He called it ‘Divine Providence’ – a helping hand, and accompanying. I like the idea. And sometimes I feel it too but it inside not out. His father told him the story to help the boy sleep.

The clouds have cleared a little. There is more blue than they promised. A good omen, eh?