Author: Ellen Bell

I was walking down the hill from the Arts Centre after visiting the Ceramics Festival and feeling a little unwell when I saw him. He looked like something from the Victorian times, a Dickens character from the streets of London. He was shuffling, no more like rolling, down the road ahead of me. I could only see his back. He was hunched over, his back like a hump and he wore a mid-length black coat and dirty khaki trousers that bunched around his ankles. There was a large circular urine stain down the legs of his trousers. When I did catch sight of his head which I could now see was almost covered in a black woolen hat, I saw his long grey beard and hair. He stopped sometimes to reach down to the ground to pick up something. Was this the man that he told he sees frequently picking up dog-ends from the ground? Where does he live? Who looks after him? How is it he has got to this state of degradation? Does he have a place to live? Does he have food to eat? Can it be that people still live this way in our so-called civilised society?

I’m English, said one of the so-named ISIS brides from the camp in Syria that the BBC correspondent was reporting from, and we don’t have enough food. The report was harrowing. They are trapped. No one wants them. Dressed in black from head to toe, their eyes are the only thing you see. They do not communicate. Except for this one girl.

I am twice moved.

We are both out of sorts. I have a bug and he is fearful. It comes and goes, it always will. It only takes a flicker of something like anxiety and he, like Chicken Licken, thinks the sky will fall in. It won’t. It will pass. But I must be kind. I must listen to him, not try to bully him into wellness.

I saw them ahead of me before I turned to walk up through the Buarth. They must have turned around for suddenly they were behind me, crawling with their blue light flashing. Bugger, I whispered, knowing I’d have to unhook my headphones and speak to them. Anything wrong? I asked after they’d wound down the passenger window. There were two of them, a man and woman, though it was too dark for me to see their faces. You OK? the driver, the man, asked. I’m fine, I said, just walking, is that OK? Sure, he said. We just wondered what you had in your hand. A torch? I said, holding up the tiny silver torch I had in my right hand. And in the other hand? he asked. I haven’t got anything in my other hand, I said, trying not to sound defensive. What can they mean? We thought we saw something long and thin, he said. Do you want to search me? I asked. No, that’s OK, he said winding up the window before driving off. I felt irritated, somehow a little violated by the encounter. He was non-plussed when I told him of it. It’s  night time and it is odd to be walking about. They are just doing their job, he said. Maybe he is right. It’s more the feeling it engenders, that of defensiveness, I suppose. And I am odd. So there we are.

I need to rest today. After the washing is done. Take it easy. Sunday morning. Coffee first. I shouldn’t really. I just want the smell. Glorious.

There was a radio documentary on while I made breakfast about the letters of Vincent van Gogh. He really saw the world, said the presenter, whose name I have forgotten. But, it seems, there was a price to pay. He lived so passionately. Felt everything. It is too much, I think. It was all about colour. The yellow house, the pink blossom, the yellow sunflowers, the green absinthe, the blue light of night café. He was only an artist for ten years, the presenter said. And all self-taught. His early sketches, the egg-heads say, were terrible, pedestrian. A lesson to us all. But. What a price, eh? They talk about him being bi-polar. Perhaps. Perhaps just passionate, with no real outlet for it but his work and no one bought them, saw them, celebrated them. He wrote to make sense of it all. He wrote those 900 or so letters to Theo to make sense of it for himself when the evenings were too dark for him to paint. Apparently he resorted to fixing a candle on his head to enable him to continue work. Madcap. Glorious. He really saw the world. Do we really see him in his work anymore? Did we ever? All that money. Pah!

A murky day after all that sun yesterday. Tea on the lawn in Aberdovey. It was sublime. Got too much sun. C’est la vie. Off soon to the Ceramics Festival. I’m nervous and consequently I dreamt of it all night. It’s the supposed expectations. Can I remain anonymous? I just want to wander and observe. No article, as such, to write but I may tweet.

I listened to the last instalment of A Provincial Lady Goes Further by A. M. Delafield read by Claire Skinner. It is very amusing particularly when she talks about all her procrastinating over writing an article for a newspaper about freedom in modern marriage. Excruciatingly familiar, especially coming up with pithy first line and how she plans to spend the money way before it has been written.

Off I go.

It looks like we shall finally have our day out. No bookings so far. The sun is out and it’s not yet seven. There are clouds but they are those lovely dappled ones with lots of blue in between. The mornings are taking a little longer to come and I am sad for it. The summer has reached its peak and it will soon begin to fall into autumn. I heard the cries of the oystercatchers again as I walked through the dark, way over the sea. There is a sweet smell that I always catch when I begin that small ascent onto North Road. It smells like confectionery, something sticky, like those red licorice shoelaces. Is it from the pizza take away shop?

He was a little wobbly yesterday. It can come and go. He gets unsettled.

We couldn’t sit on the cricket field yesterday afternoon as the primary school next door was having its sports day. We ambled towards the cemetery instead in search of peace and quiet and a bench. We found a bench but not the quiet that he would have desired. Well, really, he said, furious that two women chose to sit behind us on the circular bench. And people kept coming, using the path as a way into town via The Avenue. It didn’t discomfort me, I was happy to sit in the sun and dream. The graveyard was over grown and blooming, rather beautifully.

It will be good to be off. To drink tea in the sun out of a heavy metal pot and let the day slide into dreaminess. I’m tired. Too many dreams last night.

He liked it. I am buoyed up to continue.

It was her coat that first caught my eye. It was bright, a cherry red. I was looking down on the estate from our upstairs window and saw her returning home from town, a small string bag in her hand and her stick in the other. She turned to walk up the steps and was temporarily lost from my view. I stood at the window waiting to see her reappear but she didn’t. Is something wrong? Is she OK? There are only 5 or 6 steps surely she’d be up them by now. And then she appeared, slowly pulling herself up the final two. She’s over a hundred now and still walks into town everyday, even though she is virtually blind and very deaf. Her gait has a slight roll and she is slow but she still does it and with such style. What a coat. I don’t want to live to a hundred, I tell him. And I don’t. But I cannot help but admire her tenacity. She is a believer, one of the faithful, a regular churchgoer. And I suspect her quality of life both outer and inner is still rich. And she has her family who visit frequently and besides her son lives with her so she has company. I hear her radio in the morning and her TV at night, very loud. But that’s OK, it is comforting, regular. I like them living beneath us.

I had an early yesterday morning, a paper review. I wanted to let him enjoy his breakfast out so I suggested I walk home afterwards. It was a real pleasure, the sun was out and the birds in full song. I walk down past the National Library on the hill and see the town spreading out before me. I took my time, relishing the oncoming warmth and the promise of the day not yet spent.

We sat on the cricket field again in the afternoon and he watched a group of primary school children having a sports session. There were races and mini assault courses with blankets they had to crawl under. They all had sun hats on. I lay down and listened to him commenting on their progress. One of the groundsmen watered the wicket with a hose.

It was a crossword clue that sparked the memory. It was from years ago when I was not yet eighteen. I’d gone to Oslo with Mum to see her father who was dying in hospital. It was an image of chemist or Apotek in the city. We’d gone in side to get some medication perhaps for him or for Mum, I can’t remember. But what I do remember, at least I did last night was the shops layout, its counter and the old apothacery jars on a shelf behind. Many were blue, a lapis lazuli blue with the light from the window shining through them. It felt so antiquated and calm. It was a brief source of happiness for me. I’d never thought of it since till yesterday. Isn’t memory, the mind, the brain whatever is responsible for recall amazing?

I woke from a dream in which I was in a kind of town or city hall – a great ornate edifice of civic splendour. However, to get to its main room full of gold and light and magnificent paintings and mural one had to slide through a tiny slit of gap. I hated doing it, though I’d done it many times. It was almost to narrow for my head. I woke instructing a young woman how to reach it.

She wrote saying she’d send some soft fruit from her garden, gooseberries and blackcurrants. How lovely. I look forward to receiving them, still warm from the sun as they were last year, or so I liked to think.

He was shouting across the road to him. I heard it before I’d left the Castle grounds. Ethan, he was shouting. Eh, Ethan any problems, mate call me. Eh, Ethan. Ethan, a tall, scrawny lad with a baseball cap on his head and ill-fitting jeans, was just crossing from the town clock to begin walking down Great Darkgate Street. I’m OK, mate, he replied. Eh, Ethan, his friend kept calling, any time, any time. Such a display of amiability. Was it booze talking or something deeper? I’d like to think so. It was sweet. That endless repetition of affiliation.  

I knew it was coming but it threw me. And she didn’t want to get involved. And yet, when she does it comes with a warning. It feels heavy, uncomfortable – too complicated for a simple mind like mine. Will he need more? Probably. Just breathe and take one step after another.

A clear morning. No idea what to wear. I had to wear thick woollen socks for my walk and yet I long to pretend it is warm and wear sandals. We lay on the grass in front of the cricket field yesterday and he got all nostalgic. It is all there before us, his past. He was, is happy here. And that is good.

Another dead seagull. The white of them up close is startling. Such power.

I am cross. I woke up cross. I don’t know why. Is it something that happens in sleep, a residue from a dream? I try to fight it, to keep it in check, to contain it but it leaks out. Should I just let it be? Should I allow it room like other more pleasing emotions? Did you know that anger was one of the seven deadly sins? I didn’t, at least not until it came up as a crossword solution yesterday. These days anger is not seen as a purely negative force but a source of energy that can be tapped and put to good use. However, I’m not angry merely irritable, which isn’t attractive or useful. If I let it be will it dissipate sooner? Or should I spend time trying to find its reason?

He has gone out already. He says he will walk before his coffee.

I think I am cross about what is happening to my body. Pockets, pouches of water keep building in odd areas. Is it age? Is it the menopause? But I’m also cross about having to write today. You don’t have to, he says. And he’s right, I don’t but if I don’t I will be less at ease with myself then I am now. It has to be written, all of it. When I’m in it it is not so bad. I’m encompassed by it, lost in it. Trying to find a way of saying what I want to say. It is interesting reading another author’s work when one is writing, for one’s critical faculties are heightened. I finished one book and went straight onto another. And I’ve been so immersed in Ann Tyler’s writing after having read two in quick succession that to move onto another, so entirely different, was a challenge.

There was a dead seagull just off the pavement along Mill Road. It was lying on its back, its wings splayed out as if crucified and blood, a deep red, had oozed from its nether regions. What had killed it? The red against the white of its plumage was stark, almost beautiful.

I saw something move from the corner of my eye. It was still a little dark, the gloom of night had not yet risen to allow the blue of morning. It looked like a piece of clothing, a clump of fabric, something dark that seemed to roll of the edge of the kerb then stop. It was by the entrance to our estate just by one of the gateposts. I bent down. It was a hedgehog. A large hedgehog. Was it dead? It was perfectly still. I spoke to it. A soft voice. I’d never seen an adult one before. Are they nocturnal creatures? Then it seemed to raise itself. It snuffled and snorted, tiny pig like noises, then trundled off around the bottom of the post and down the road. Such encounters feel like gifts. Our paths have crossed. Like the female blackbird yesterday on the path up to work just hopping ahead of me, refusing to fly off. And the scattering of bunnies when I turned the corner. And the two elderly magpies (well they look elderly, a trifle ragged, seen better days) sitting in the sun outside my bedroom window. They make me feel part of something other, something that rolls on parallel to my petty concerns, all inward and dank. Their view of the world must be so different to mine.

A windy walk. The three bakeries in town did me proud. Utterly gorgeous bread smells. Ta.

I wanted to talk it out and he wanted to watch the cricket. But he acquiesced, he always does, perching his bottom on the edge of my bed. I just needed to hear myself talk it out. I didn’t want advice, just clarity. You might even end up making it untrue, he said. What like a piece of fiction? I asked. Yes, that might make sense. That might happen. I felt better for that possibility. I just know I have to keep writing. The process is almost as important as the content. I’m working myself out of the gloom. And yet, as I walked I thought about all the richness I wish to ‘speak’ about. It is enough. It is project enough, even if its destination in a drawer. It will be out, it will be formed, made sense of, articulated.

I can’t remember his exact words. We were getting ready for bed. For instance, with that journalist, the one who is in prison in Iran, he said, I saw that you wrote about her in your journal. You don’t have to feel for them so strongly, he said. But I do, I wanted to say. I want to stand by them, to sit with them, to be with them in their pain, their fear, their desperation. It is all I can do. You empathise too much, you give away your light, Steven Speed the medium-extraordinaire said to me, all those years ago (may he rest in peace). I don’t know how to temper it, I tell him. How does one live with the knowledge of so much inequity, so much darkness and yet be light? I have tried to empty myself each night. To make myself white, cleaned out. To be an empty vessel, open. I don’t want the darkness but nor do I want to forget. I listened to a radio documentary yesterday morning, its premise being that the brother of an abused and then murdered boy in 1945 was being taken (now a grown man) to see Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, a play that was based on his, their story. In the interval he told his story. He and his brother had been evacuated to a remote farm to be fostered by a farmer and his wife. They were beaten daily and practically starved. It was a harrowing account. His elder brother took the brunt of the abuse and died. The farmer was tried for manslaughter and the wife, neglect. They were both imprisoned. The story horrified the public and prompted huge changes in Child Protection Law.  I carry it with me. As I do with the fictional abuse of Jim ‘The Prof’ Lloyd in The Archers. It is a truth for some, for many. I weep for them. I have read their stories, such as Don’t by Ellie Danica. I want to understand from where the cruelty stems. Are we all not born with the potential to be kind?  

I dreamt I was pregnant. Pregnant at 56. Well what a thing, I thought. I may miscarry. He was sanguine. And I dreamt that an ex-lover was planning to tear out my vagina. He was sweet-talking me, but I knew his plans. What is to be made of that? I suspect the pregnancy refers to my writing. It may miscarry. I tightens my back. It is so clumsy, so awkward. Yes, I must just write it out. Keep going. No one need know. I can just do it for myself. Can’t I?

Has it made any difference? Her hunger strike, has it made any difference? Will they set her free? Now? She had some porridge and fruit, her husband said on the news. So prosaic. Did it taste good? We haven’t forgotten.

I heard it before I felt it. A pitter then a patter on the pavement behind me. I looked up. I thought it was a sudden rush of wind in the trees. It was still dark but the morning was coming up, bringing its blue and I could just make out the spots on the ground. Nothing on my face or head. Not yet. Summer rain brings gorgeous smells. The earth seems to open to it, porous and thirsty. It smells of longing, of promise, of visceral life, teeming. It didn’t make me wet. It was a kiss, a breath of freshness.

I tried to write. I tried to take that second-hand advice about how the artists should not be their own critic but just make. Just make. Just write. Just write. The right to write. I’m trying to find something through my writing and to get to it I must go through the murk of clumsiness, of awkwardness of excruciating lumpen-ness. There is no other way. I think. Least not for me. I want to take her guidance. I want to work like she does, with all that petite elegance but it is not my way. I’m trying to loosen up, to find my expression. Mine.

We went down to what he calls the ‘Coll Fields’. Groundsmen were marking out the white lines on the pristine grass for the school’s sports day. There were too many people coming and going. I wanted to lie on the grass and show my skin to the sun. He kept having to cover me up. Someone’s coming, he kept saying. I let him do it. It was nice to be so protected. How I loved him yesterday. The grass smelt divine. Summer days. A group of Muslim men, some in those long kaftan-style over dresses they wear hung back near the car park, talking. They must be cool in this heat, he said. Then two women drove up and left their car. Where are they off too? he said, cross and territorial. He talked about cricket and how his Dad taught his brother, and playing tennis on the grass courts. All his life is here. Cambridge is forgotten.  

House cleaned. Hot work. Spots of rain on the window. Lovely. Work now. I may keep the silence for a little longer.

It was all too much and I started to cry. Sitting on the floor of that train carriage, my head in my hands, weeping. It was that series of unkindness’s. Or what felt to me like unkindness. To them, the perpetrators, it was probably just a show of irritation. And it was the delays, the heat, the cramped carriages and the fear of never getting home that did it for me. And on top of the same chaos two days before. I don’t seem to be able to keep the flow back. And I didn’t care. It felt better to just let it out. She’d been pointed, spiky. She’d picked on me. And the others, the Virgin staff at Birmingham had been rude. Was it my fault? Had I given off negativity? Had I seemed unreasonable? Can someone help me? I’d asked. He’d barely turned his head. We’ve all had a long day, he’d said, dismissing me. The woman on the train had been equally unsympathetic. A young woman, blond with catches in her tights. We’d all like to sit down, she’d said. And I hadn’t taken a seat just lowered myself onto the ground. Later, the kind man with the red beard who’d put my case on the overhead shelf, had turned to me and smiled. Ignore her, he’d said. And then when he left he’d touched my arm. You al ‘right?

And I’d had such a lovely day the day before full of sunshine and peace. And he came. He drove all that way to rescue me from the train that was going nowhere. Someone on the bridge threatening suicide. What can you do? Wait? Then the duck in the carriageway. Almost laughable. Move little one, move. And then the final straw. A diversion. That’s going to add another 30 miles, he said. Don’t take it out on him, I said. It isn’t his fault. It never is anyone’s fault. Just systems. They treat us like cattle, I said to the man without a coat waiting to press into the train along with hundreds of others. And the woman who objected to the smell of my hand cream or was it my mouthwash? It took me aback, I thought she’d turned to me to pass the time of day. And then there was the blind woman. How else was she to get to the toilet? And she couldn’t find the flush button or the out button. And there was a tiny poo in the bowl. She smiled the whole journey, lost in her happy darkness, trusting. So trusting. Humming, singing under her breath and laughing after every sentence. A holiday to Cornwall. Her holiday. And why not?