Author: Ellen Bell

It woke me. I’d slept right through and my alarm was due to go off. It wasn’t a nightmare, as such. More something that unsettled me. I’m glad I woke from it. It wouldn’t have had a good ending. I’d travelled to Norway with him. He was going there on his own and I’d gone with him for company. It was only when we’d arrived at the airport (which looked more like a train station) that I’d realised that no one had asked to see my ticket or indeed my passport for I had neither with me. It’s funny I remember saying to him in the dream that I thought him intrepid for going alone and yet I’d gone with him. My intention was to return home straight away and headed towards the departures – which involved crossing an open square full of pigeons – and then down an iron staircase. I watched him walk away from me into the pigeons and as he did the birds and he just flew away. It was then that I realised that I had no ticket or documentation. I began to rifle through my bag. Perhaps I had my passport after all. But no, there were passports but they were hers and others, childrens’ mostly – for they’d drawn on and etched out the purple front covers. I also realised that I had no money. I just stood there rooted to the spot. What to do? I went through the inevitable, the questioning, the suspicions, the interrogations, the eventual deportation. Could I call on my friends for help? I felt the loss of him but the practicalities of my situation dominated. I felt so foolish. And yet, I was calm, sanguine even. I’d been carried away by wanting to make his journey smoother that I’d forgotten to put things in place to ensure my safe passage home. There had also been a scenario where he and I had looked at coats, he’d brought some coats from his past, one was a woman’s coat, a green suede with a nipped in waist. I didn’t recognise these clothes and far as I was concerned it was just more baggage for us to carry. And there was so much baggage as it was, nothing in suitcases, just loose clothes. I was weighed down by it.

I woke unsettled and I’ve been wobbly ever since. Walk done, breakfast done, and shopping done nevertheless and my admin and an hour of Norwegian. God, I find it hard learning a language, I feel so slow, so clumsy, so awkward with my mouth. I wish there were classes somewhere. She is a sweetie but won’t she get so dreadfully bored listening to me read? Ugh, it takes me back to Primary School days where I followed the words on the page with my finger, not knowing them, trying to decipher their meaning.

A huge lorry drove ahead of me down Llanbadarn Road. Then without warning it switched on an array of red lights that lit up the back of the engine – it had no trailer. I could just make out the signage on the back – In Health, it read, Medical Unit. Was it going to the hospital? The red lights in the pitch black was friendly somehow like the white bulbs in the lit arrow in the junk shop on Northgate Street that I saw on my way home. I stopped in front of the window, wanting it. Wanting the white light. Now.

The girl with the purple hair was at the till this morning. And lo and behold she is a fire eater in her real life. She and her husband. It makes sense that there is something larger to her. We talked about how you don’t swallow the paraffin and how sometimes your lips get burnt. Sometimes I’ve seen fire eaters practicing on the beach at night when I walk. It is a magnificent sight. Isn’t life rich?

When I woke I started to harangue myself. I haven’t done that for a while. You know, it was the usual thing – what am I doing with my life, I’ve lost all motivation, direction, ambition etc. – that sort of thing. But this time I didn’t drown myself in it. A sensible voice came through, straightening out the strands of panic, of self-doubt, of self-loathing. One thing at a time, it said. You are waiting to see what will come. You are biding our time. Waiting. Watching the wheels go round. Your writing continues. Some paid, some personal. And you’ve just had a break, that’s all, from the personal stuff because it got so heavy, so bleak. You will return to it soon. And the professional writing does satisfy you somewhat – it is good, it is good to write of others’ work when your own is not yet formed. It is done lovingly, it is movement, it is something, it is something to send out there from this waiting room. And then there is the sewing. You have much you wish to complete, to learn, to master. And the ones that you are doing for her. Well, that is worth something. It is you way of articulating what you feel. They are acts of love. Every stitch, each one. All of them. They say what you cannot. That is worthy work. Always. And the rest, like your writing will come, slowly, but it will come. Wait. Just wait. Bide your time. Watching.

He needs others to complete him. I do not. That is the difference. And therefore, I need to be mindful of this, to support him in his panic. When it rises once more. As it will until this unknowing is over. Other people’s families, his mother, me. We all closed the circle for him.

Some people were sending off fireworks from Constitution Hill as I walked this morning. I heard the noise, the banging, their voices and as I turned I saw a green flash, like a flare. Might they rain down sparks upon me as I kick the bar? A deflated red shiny helium balloon lay in a puddle outside Pier Pressure Nightclub. The parties are over for now. The sky is clearing after all that rain. He slept OK again last night. I am glad. Grateful, even. A gentle day today. Stories and sewing and coffee.

The sea smelt odd as I walked. I couldn’t at first put my finger on what the smell was. Then I got it. Bad eggs, sulphur, sulphurous. Was it coming from the water? Had something been churned up. We associate what we consider bad smells with something dangerous, something to be avoided, maybe even poisonous. But I am not so sure. It smelt like brimstone. Something agitated in a portentous way. The weather has turned. The wind was strong, carrying the stink further. The smell of baking bread softened my nose. How comforting that is. I think of the approach of Bonfire Night, his birthday and the repository of so many childhood memories – encapsulated in tastes and smells, at least for me. Oh, and the discomfort of standing in the rain, usually, the back of me wet and the front dry and hot from the bonfire. The tastes? Well, baked potatoes wrapped in tin foil and cooked in the base of the bonfire, Lancashire Hot Pot and beetroot, treacle toffee (which I thought so adult, so grown up as the treacle got in the back of my throat) and parkin. Gorgeous, gooey, malleable parkin. And then there were the sparklers, and the marks they left behind momentarily in the ether. And that smell of them too. Like sulphur too, like a spent match. Gunpowder, a smidgen. Wonderful. The fireworks I preferred watching from the warmth of home, behind glass. Will we see any this year?

More dressed-up ghouls and ghostesses in town. The last of the Halloween celebrations. They are growing tired of it now, I think. The pavements were shiny with rain. Phrases stay in my head from the music I listened to as I walked (a ploy to stop my mind dwelling on the discomfort of my toes) – Joni Mitchell and ‘a warm arrangement’ and then John Lennon ‘sitting here doing time’. All this admin stuff to do before I get down to the nub of the day – sewing. I’ve much to do. And much to listen to. He slept better. My poor love. Trust. All will be well.

The town was full of Halloween party goers making their way home. A girl in a red silk lined Dracula cape wandered along the Prom, alone and looking rather disconsolate with a long baguette in her hand. At the end of Terrace Road another girl in a sequin-dotted, mauve net tutu that revealed large black pants underneath, a black bra and black knee length socks had what looked like a unicorn’s horn on her head. A homeless man crouched in the doorway of Coffee# called out to her. Eh, what’s that you got on your ‘ed? She shouted back: wouldn’t you like to know, it might be a dildo. Is it? he called back. It might be, she replied. She was walking down the street with a lad. They parted at the corner and she made to cross the road, if a little unsteadily. Cross over, she shouted to him. Cross. He said something in return that I didn’t catch but ended his sentence with ‘you fucking slag’. Which she appeared to take in good part. As I made my way home, umbrella up against the rain, another girl with rabbit ears strapped to her head walked ahead of me, a boy joining her. My friends are all stuck up, she said to him.

My two big toes are still uncomfortable in my boots which is a bugger. I’ve tried all sorts, different socks, insoles and to no avail. It’s a mystery. It eases a little as I walk but it takes the edge off the pleasure. To be alive sometimes is to hurt, I think.

A milder morning that smelt of Autumn. He slept little last night, fretting about me. I try to gee him up, am I too brusque? I do understand. It’s in his nature to worry, as it is in mine. But I feel more detached than him. What will be will be. There is little we can do but wait. It may be something, it may be nothing.

It looks quite good, he said, as we entered the pickles aisle and saw a thin lad in a Pierrot-cum-ghoul costume on. His face had been white-d-out and a spider’s web had been drawn upon it. And he wore a top hat on his head. Does it itch? I heard one of his colleagues ask him as they filled the shelves. together. No, said the lad, surprisingly enough it doesn’t. One of the bosses had also got into the swing of it and had a large black spider on her head, worn at a jaunty angle like a fascinator and another spread across the palm of her hand, held on by a rubber band. On her shoulders was some cotton wool, stretched thin to look like cobwebs. We’d followed another woman up the travelator who was sporting a Halloween-inspired t-shirt with yellow pumpkin motifs and bats and heavily sequinned sleeves. (There had been a woman in the Harbourmaster with a jumper that scintillated with tiny specks of sequins that I long to go over to and say something. What is it about sequins – I don’t see myself as wearing them but I love to see them on others – is it some unacknowledged ‘girly’ part of me longing to come out?) She grinned at us, pleased as punch with it. Does it make the tedium of work lift a little to dress up like that? Is it a talking point? The boss-woman (lovely girl who is in constant pain with her legs) said that she hoped that the spiders would keep some members of staff at bay. They are all so good humoured. Though no stringy girl with the purple hair this morning.

A milky-grey sky. He has gone out for a walk. My last treatment today in Borth. I shall miss it. And her. Has it made me better? My legs are certainly improved. So I’d like to think so.

They were all out in their finery, though it was a little awry by the time I saw them. There was a bat girl and a superwoman standing outside the Tesco Express looking extremely unwell. Bless her. Her crown was all skewed. Not sure where the fancy dress party had been held, probably in one of the clubs though Halloween is still a day away. Students were everywhere, sitting on benches along the Prom and wandering home. Bits of their conversation filters through the air. One boy was sitting with two girls on a bench. I can’t believe it, he said, I’ve only one fag left. What a joke! You are a fag, said one of the girls, to which the other one snorted. Another lad was talking loudly to his mate as they walked past me. We could play poker, he was saying. Yes, at 12 we could do a bit of gambling and have a drink and then…. I passed the milkman delivering in St David’s Road as I walked out, way before 3 am. Two bottles, one silver top and one blue top, were sitting outside our neighbour’s front door when I returned. Milk bottles are blast from the past for me. That’s all there was. That noise of them clanging together. So nice.

Everywhere is like everywhere else, said the poet Gwyneth Lewis on a programme I’ve heard many times before about the island of Lundy. I think I know what she means.

She walks like an albatross someone said of Simone Weil. She was not of this world. Yes.

Must dash. Off to get the piece photographed. Cold today. Made chocolate for him and a coffee for me. He sits in his dressing gown. The flat is cold. No time to get cosy. Later.

He was an old man. An old man with a face like the moon. A face with texture and pallor of Edam cheese. He kissed me at the end. Delivering his broadcast had brought him near to tears. They came when he spoke to me afterwards. Jesus, he said, will come to your door as a beggar. He talked of Boris Johnson, of Donald Trump and how he was in hoc to Putin. I’ve been reading up about him, he said. Words spilled out, along with his tears. He’d been speaking about a poet, a pacifist, I presume from the First World War called Waldo. These Welsh mystics are strangers to me, I am behind glass from them. But he also talked of Simone Weil. I’ve heard of her. A French philosopher and visionary. She died, he told me, from starvation. She would only eat what her fellow Frenchmen could eat. She deprived herself out of solidarity. Read her, he begged. Read her book about family, he begged. Something to do with roots. He asked me my name twice, then took my hand and kissed my cheek. He quoted someone else. Was it James, Jesus’s brother? I didn’t know he had a brother. Preach, by all means, this man said, and use words if you must. It’s all about actions, the man with the moon face told me. It’s all about what we do. I was moved by him. Was that him? he asked when I got into the car. The old man with the John Lennon cap?

We talked. It needed to be said. It helped. It lanced the boil. I love him. I love him as he is. And I will do what I can to put everything in place for him. Meanwhile we just have to wait.

Heavy, complex dreams about a woman with whom I was sharing a bathroom. And yet it wasn’t a bathroom proper. The bath was an upholstered kind of day bed. The room was unfamiliar and old-fashioned and I had to work around her things. But I was sanguine about it, accepting. I watched her from a distance. Family arrived to see her and she got in a fluster not being prepared and hurried to put a scarf around her big weight of curly hair.

It’s hard to pin it down exactly. It’s a feeling, a sensation of warmth, of nostalgia, of cosiness and it comes upon me unawares. It’s associated with this time of the year, or at least memories of this time when everything contributes to a general sense of belonging, of safety, of cosiness. I love it when it comes and I am lifted. It makes me a little sad, however, that he is not feeling the same thing. He is lower today, I can always know it. He is quieter, a little withdrawn. He calls it struggling. And I know he is disappointed. He wanted a cure for it. To have it magicked away. It is lifting. He is getting lighter. He doesn’t see this. He forgets the better days when a not so light day is upon him. He is so like her. She was the same. Blithe as could be when all was forgotten but assailed when it wasn’t. I just have to be kind. Always.

I slept deeply, cocooned as I was in bed. I went to sleep thinking of those sleeping in the shelter on the Prom and how cold they must be. There was just one figure in a sleeping bag as I walked past this morning. Bless him. Is that the dapper me he told me of. What has happened that he is so without? He has a partner, apparently and they meet up during the day. May he find warmth and comfort.

I wrote but it needs work. I need to constantly adjust my expectations of what my paid writing work will bring me. It is work-a-day stuff, no great falutin’ expressions required, just a straight tell it like it is. It is enough. And I am grateful for the employment.

A gentle morning. A few streaks of clouds but non-moving, a blue-grey that stripes against pink. Careful on the Pergyl, I tell him, it might be slippy. Winter is coming. First outing for my impossibly expensive coat. Off to work soon. Two this morning. Then back to editing. Then rest. My finger is less virulent. Save the docs for another day.

Five minutes to seven and it is almost light. Not for long, he’d say, but try to enjoy it. So I shall. He is out. He’s gone for his walk and I’m glad. It’s been a few days now and he gets all mouldy when he goes back to bed. It has never solved his lowness, ever. And I? I walked as usual, in the dark but with a wind blowing. Dry and cold and with lots of people about. I am weary with this infection. We toyed with going to A&E last night to check it was OK. My arm and wrist are also red with it. Is it the poison finding my bloodstream? All these physical changes, it freaks me sometimes. What next? And liquid seeps from my the infection. It stinks. It is a watery stuff, that smells of rotting animal flesh. Is that coming from me? Is it still anger? At what and at whom? There is so much I cannot fathom. A putrid infection they used to call it. And that is what the smell is, putrefying flesh. My flesh. My poison. My anger. It will out, clearly.

He said he’d bumped into the man we’d seen all those years ago in Cambridge. You know, he said, the one who’s wife is in a home. Anyway he’d met him in Tesco’s. A gossip, apparently. And this time it was all bad news, he said. It was about the doctor who lives down the road. He with the neat and tidy bodger garden which he clearly adores. He’s got a brain tumour and they’ve given him 4 months. Poor love. His poor family. A small man. A lover of cars. he has how many 6 or 9 or more? All with his same initialled number plate. How does he get to drive them all? he asks. 4 months. And it won’t be nice. I remember how it was with my father. You lose them before. Way before. At least there is no pain, though plenty of discomfort, I remember he just couldn’t get comfortable. He just wanted to go in the end. I prayed that he could. Open the window and let him out. Us out. Me out.

I finished the piece. Writing today. I want to find my joy in it again. Begin at the beginning. She was entrancing, alive with it. Help me to do her justice.

There is always another way of looking at things. So, we’ve had a shock, though as the days have passed we have both become calmer and more sanguine about it. However, I thought about it as I walked through the rain this morning listening to the pittery-pat of the drops on my umbrella and in a way it is a good thing to know all this, at least it gives us, me, time to put things in order, and to make my goodbyes. It may all be nothing, the consultant may be wrong or I may not have such a virulent strain of it and I may yet die an old woman. Who knows? Who can ever know? The knowing, such knowing is not ours to have. And if it is, what a precious thing that is, to be able to prepare to put ones’ house in order, how I long to be able to do that. The mess she left behind was exhausting. I don’t want that for my loves to do. So we just have to wait and I will meanwhile begin to pay proper attention.

My finger seems to be getting a little better, or am I imagining it? My arm aches though, is the poison travelling up the vein? And my wrist is red. Is it all connected? It would be nice to feel well again. This infection makes me a little queasy and the ABs continue to be horrid.

I dreamt of a lover. The desire, though never properly expressed, was intense, as was his. He was beautiful, slim, dark, tousled-haired. I felt his bones, his skeleton, his skin and the heat of him. Rare dreams these days.

Work to do. Washing to hang out first, then coffee, then work. Next week he is 72 and we will have been married (on and off – but symbolically together) for 21 years. No mean feat. Ah but how I love him.