Artist and writer currently living in Aberystwyth.
I find leaving home so hard. Even if, as in this case, the adventure is one that I have looked forward to. I have this sinking feeling, this fear of something unknown, unsaid – of perhaps liking being away too much. And this difficulty manifests itself in the fuss I make over packing, of readying the house for my departure. It is too much, I need to learn spontaneity. To travel light. I will travel light. Now. Today. See if I can.
We wanted to sit for a while in the sun. Just for ten or fifteen minutes. We have no garden, balcony or patio. We tried several spots. First we sat in what we call the ‘courtyard’, a kind of inner parking area that is enclosed by a fence but the wall we were sitting on was overhung with trees and a bramble was climbing its way along the brickwork. And besides it was still a little public. Anyone could come out of either the flats and houses and talk to us. And as he said, ‘We don’t want to talk to anyone.’ I wanted to sit along the lead flashing just up by the steps along the walkway that leads to our flat. But no, he thought it was too close to the other flats and would disturb people. He had something else in mind. Earlier he’d suggested we get some fold-up chairs for us to use on such an occasion, I been reluctant, for there is so little storage space. In the end we found some pavement slabs that did very nicely. It’s just by our car, he told me. He led me to the building site, one of many in this estate. Has it always been like this? I asked him, as we sat on the wasteland looking down on the College Fields and the backs of the houses along Llanbadarn Road. As far as he could remember it had been. The rocky path just below us used to be his route too and from school. He talked about the people who’d lived in the houses we looked down upon. One had an apple tree still in blossom and a line full of washing. Another had a dovecote. He talked about the tennis courts and the people he’d played with in his youth. I watched two ladybirds scaling a leaf as he talked, loving the sun and the sound of his voice made warm with nostalgia. It was nice. A gentle afternoon.
I saw his red pants first. They were sitting, his friends and he, on a bench just beyond the entrance to the Pier Pressure nightclub. I was walking and trying to capture, in my head, ways to describe the mingled stink of fast food that seemed to hang like a cloud over the pier. There’s a new fish and chips shop to the right of the club which must’ve accounted for the additional stink of vinegar, on top of fried chicken, pizza and beer. It wasn’t unpleasant. The sharply salty warmth, slightly fetid was actually comforting. It took the edge of my usually anxious thoughts that tend to reach a climax at that point of my walk. Excuse me, asked the boy with the red underwear showing under his jeans. Yes? I said, momentarily charmed by the fact that someone had spoken to me. Not invisible then? Would you like to come away on a Gap year with us? I’d been expecting a request for a match at most or the loan of some money, not that. I didn’t think. No thank you, I replied and walked on. Then kicked myself. I should’ve asked where, at least. They were taking the piss. They cannot know me, or even wished to do so. Was it a dare? I waited for the tittering. It didn’t come.
There were too many people. I didn’t get a chance to be alone with the work. He asked if I wanted to meet her, gave me too much of her story. I didn’t want it but I couldn’t say that, could I? She was delicate, self-effacing, a little mousy. Her power is in the work. What shall I write? It was too much. Just that? It was too much.
He isn’t a stoic. His eye is hurting him and he is scared. It is the same eye, the bad one. And we are supposed to go on a trip today, to see an exhibition that I am to review. I hold my breath. I don’t know what he wants to do. And, as yet, I haven’t asked him. And I have to go into work. It is one thing after another, or at least that is how it seems. They could be side-effects, but how can you tell for sure?
Tea and cake across the road was nice. I felt safe with them, or with her at least. He is slightly more tricky, I think. Unhappy, he seems unhappy with this new choice of home, of place. She is friendly, open, all smiles. A light room with lots of pink. It was pleasant to be invited in to someone else’s home for a while, though tea, so late, played havoc with my sleeping.
The students were out for their last spree before heading home. I tried to catch conversations as I walked past. It’s because I love you that I can tell you, a girl was saying to a boy, on a bench, as he ate pizza from a cardboard pizza box. Profanities were being shouted and then repeated from the shelter. You fuck me, you bitch. It wasn’t being exclaimed in anger, there was laughter, was it from a film?
They were talking about it on a podcast on Radio 4 Extra’s podcast hour. A ‘Shirley Card’ designed to help calibrate colour in photographs, a mid twentieth century phenomenon. Their concern, the talking heads in the cast, was that it was a calibration based upon white-skinned subjects, not black. As a result, photographs of black people left them featureless and indistinct. The card was of a woman in a white dress with primary-coloured cushions around her. They talked about the intermission images we always used to see on TV, you know the girl with the Alice band. When I was little I was convinced it was my elder sister.
Will he be OK? Am I to lose him?
We talked about going there last night. I fantasise about it. It isn’t a flash hotel. There are few facilities, and those that are there are a little tired, lost in a seventies time-warp. I don’t mind. We don’t mind. We go for the lounges, in particular the adult lounge. We go for the pots of tea in stainless steel pots, brought on trays with paper doilies. We go for the quiet (there is no piped muzak). We go for the clientele – almost all over seventy if they’re a day. We go for the warm rooms, the sun on the terrace, the view of the sea. And there is always a puzzle on the go. I love that. A group puzzle – residents amble past and get distracted and sit for a moment, a piece in their hand trying to find its home. We talk about getting a suite, mid-week just for a few days, to sleep when we feel like, to read, to stare, to do nothing.
Town was quiet this morning. Have all the students migrated home now? The sea is a steel blue. The rain comes in showers and it is cold. That book has taken me over, it is insidious, potent, unforgettable. Jack overwhelmed by his introduction to the ‘Outside’ and Ma (will we ever learn her name?) struggling to maintain a hold. Both so inured to life in the Room – how will they fare? I’ve almost done. Book endings are always an anti-climax, I am so in them that to come out is a wrench, a discomfort.
The row of pearly lights, like those around a theatre dressing room mirror, were still alight when I passed the Hot Dumplings Chinese Take Away. I’ve never seen it open. Wrong timings. Another life.
Flat cleaned. To work now.
It was his fortieth birthday, she told me, and he was clearly leading up to something. She was convinced he was going to propose. And then, over dinner, he’d said, I’ve been thinking. Yes? she’d said. I think we should get a dog, he’d answered. And that was ten years ago, she said, and I haven’t looked back. What kind? I asked. A chocolate lab, she said, grinning. He wanted a real dog’s name for him, you know, proper. So we called him Bruce.
It’s easier going in there. I feel no connection with it, with her, particularly. She is all smiles, all affability. A consummate professional. It is never busy in there, usually just one other woman under one of those old industrial-looking hair dryers, or having her roots done. She is always ready for me, even when I am early. I like her chat. I let it roll over me, around me. Its mostly about holidays, her late mother, her father, her family, her boyfriend, a builder who takes Bruce in the van with him. He loves it. I am happy to listen. I like it. It is easier than the one before. She gave off such troublesome sensations. This one is less complicated, I think. This weekend it is to be Aberdovey and the ‘bearded walk’ for them and Bruce, and for Easter it is Barmouth and an air B&B. She seemed a little put out when I said where I was going. Did she? Or am I imagining it? I can be too sensitive to these things. To like her is enough. A good woman, I think.
I must be off soon, a walk up the hill to work for an early paper review. I don’t anticipate it with pleasure but I try to reign that in. There is always something to relish. Isn’t there?
It comes in waves. No, that’s not strictly true. It is always there but sometimes less distinct. You could take something for it, he says. And I think about it for a moment. No, I don’t want to. It frustrates him a little I think, my refusal to seek medical help. It’s what he does after all. But we are different. I know this. I know its nuances, what it asks of me, what it feels like. Taking an anti-depressant would be an unknown for me. Besides, I can cope, I can manage, I can live with this, this bleakness. It is a grey screen, a cloud through which potential joy, a sense of safety, peace and calmness are seen through. Has it always been there? I remember this endless chorus of ‘lighten up’ or ‘don’t take life so seriously’ or just ‘smile’ playing out throughout my life. Have I always been a little melancholic? And yet, I know myself to be able to experience real joy in the smallest of things. I try to find reasons for it – the menopause, the darkness, not getting enough sleep, getting up in the dark, it could be all of these or none. It just has to be lived out – the tight back, the shortened breath and the endless fretting over timings – seen as something I have chosen rather than it being visited on me. Where is the wisdom in it? Can I seek that out? Work soon but coffee with him first. A treat. And then a reading day today.
They must be cold, sleeping out there on the Prom. They are sheltered from the rain – one in the Shelter, the other in that space under the castle – but not the wind. Can you ever get warm?
I don’t like this bickering, he said. I know, nor do I. It hurts. It hurts us both. It comes without anyone’s bidding. There is an unease. It could be a variety of things, though I suspect, we both suspect it is the new medication. It makes his skin thin, he is irritable, touchy with it. He doesn’t mean to be, he tries to reign it in. I can see, feel him doing it. But when he is tired it is harder. As it is with me and my resistance of it. We bicker over little things. Mostly because we are no longer understanding each other, no longer in tune. Something misses. It is the saddest thing, for in truth we know each other so well. Too well for comfort sometimes. It is a fractious time. For I too am thinned – wary, overly-aware of all things. I try to walk it through. I didn’t want to this morning as I awoke to the sound of heavy rain on the metal roof beneath my window. And this returned dark weighs on me. But I did go. I went out into the rain. It is never as bad as it seems from the inside looking out. I like the smell of the air both after and during rain, it is cooler, fresher, almost sweet. And I like to walk under my umbrella (there was no wind, so this could be done, it only blew inside out once) listening to the pitter of drops on its taut surface. I feel safe under its canopy. It was alright. I walked and thought of my feet meeting the pavement, trying to concentrate on the action of walking, feeling it in my hips, my thighs. There was no one about, another good reason to walk in the rain, except for the smoking woman with the carrier bag who walks and then shops in the 24 hour garage on Mill Street. I wonder why she is out at this time? If we pass each other on the Prom she either looks away, down or keeps her eyes looking straight ahead. There is no eye contact. Perhaps she has been told to exercise. She always wears the same sweatshirt top, pink and with a zip. And the same walking boots and leggings. Her gait is lumbering, she rolls as she projects herself forward. Determined and grim.
I look for beauty. For beauty that will transport. I’m not a romantic, you know, says Charlotte Lucas to Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC adaption of Pride and Prejudice (did she actually say that in Jane Austen’s book?). I am but I am trying to shed it, such notions are of no use to me. I want Charlotte’s practicality. All I want is a comfortable home, she says. I think about buying No. 1 but quickly talk myself out of it. It is too dark, dingy even. And the light we have here is marvellous. The morning is coming. A gentle morning today before I have to go into work. Will everything work after the refurbishment? Ah, this constant change. She writes, they both write, to say they will take care of things. It’s lovely. I feel cared for. So what of the beauty? What did I see this morning? The individual daffodils on the little sloping lawn in front of the Veterinary building on the Buarth, bright dots of light in the pitch black. And that bare, leafless tree sparkling with diamond-like rain drops.
Mind moved its premises a couple of years ago now. I don’t know where they have moved to. I pass their old building most days when I walk. The sign is still up though the downstairs rooms are empty. They used to hold drop in classes there – handicrafts and that sort of thing. When the team were there the place was cared for, neat and tidy. There were a row of window boxes along the front with flowers that were always watered and nurtured. As I say they’ve been gone ages. The place has been empty for well over two years. Walking past the other morning I saw that there were daffodils, tete-a-tetes, in the boxes. They had grown of their own volition, returning, or re-emerging, like birds homing, to where they had always been.
The Blue Dolphin is for sale. The Blue Dolphin is a fishing boat. A rounded tub of a boat, Captain Pugwash style. I don’t think it would cut through waves but bob on that fishing-boat-bobbing sea. There is a handwritten sign, drawn on wood, advertising the sale and the price. The seller wants three thousand pounds. Three thousand pounds for a chunky, lumpy means of escape whether literal or metaphorical. Will you buy?
The night felt odd. All the clocks of the town awry. Kids were still queuing up to get into the Pier Pressure night club, penned in by portable railings. I watched as a policeman touched a girl’s arm. She looked like she’d been crying. He touched her arm, the bare skin of her shoulder, and gestured for her to follow him. Nothing was said. She followed and they joined a group of people near the exit.
I must make a start on my piece this morning but I’m dog-tired. Five hundred words, that’s the goal today to just get something down. It will come. I thought about my fear of writing as I walked. I practised detaching myself, of trying to let my failings just be. Then I tried faith – belief that it will just occur. Then I tried just being in the fear, inhabiting, making it familiar. In the end it just has to be started. The rest feels like procrastination.
He didn’t show. The second time that has happened. My mother wouldn’t have believed it. Not of her countrymen. So be it. We had a nice time. He and I waiting and being silly. I’d like to draw in there. I watched a man with a thick white moustache eating. The moustache appeared to have a life of it’s own, dancing about as he chewed.
Things, sensations, my awareness are all heightened at this liminal time. There was a short story by Ray Bradbury on the radio about a man who walked in the early evenings. a futuristic story, he ends up being arrested for showing abnormal behaviour.
To work now before I fall asleep. Just five hundred words.
The lit church threw an arched shadow of light onto the road.