They turned me down. Do I mind? No. It is the wrong time. We need to keep close, he and I, hunker down, take small steps. It would’ve been too much and I don’t have the strength. And I want to immerse myself in this research, this study, this reading, this writing. I shall finish my sewing projects. Be inward, inside and wait. I am so tired. I wrote a good application, gave all I could to it. Their comments are small-minded, petty, it’s the library thing, I think. It’s OK. It’s always nice to be offered success but failure is the real learning. I like that. I shall keep it close. It is sad to disappoint those who stood to gain financially. But other work will come for them. I am still trying to find my way after all this time. Funny isn’t it. Perhaps there is nothing to find. Perhaps I am here already.
It is a wrench to leave him, even for a week. My stomach carries the sorrow, tight in a ball. He slept all night. I am glad. He is recovering. I see it. Pink cheeks. Let it be. If it had been a yes there would’ve been so much to do with little economic reward, in fact none. So be it. Time to let all that go. Paper. Paper and pen. It is what I wished for. Let it be so.
He was standing by the taxi rank, lurking. I smiled as I passed by. He kept staring at me, unsmiling. Fucking, wow, he said. And then started to shout. I couldn’t make out his words. I just kept walking. Keep me safe, keep me safe. He was still shouting as I turned the corner into Bridge Street. Keep me safe. The wind was calmer. I walked the Prom.
My case is bursting. Let it survive the trip. I cannot travel light. So much comfort I want to take with me. So be it. Adieu.
I dread it. Going out in that wind, I do, I dread it. Don’t go, he says. But I must. I don’t feel right unless I move, unless I walk and get some fresh air. She says the same. Though we both struggle with the weather that winter inevitably brings. The wind is the hardest to deal with. The rain I can bear but it is the ferocity of the wind that beats me. I did walk. Though I spent most of my time clutching at walls, railings and downpipes, inching along pavements and calling out each time a gust threatened to floor me. Over fifty miles an hour. It wails and howls. I could hear dustbins clattering, rubbish and leaves being whirled and lifted from the ground. I didn’t go on the Prom, it is too wild, it would’ve been crazy. I am too fragile these days. I think I might snap. It isn’t personal I tell myself as I am shoved into yet another wall. The wind is marvellous, a true, primeval force. And the air smells so clean, so blown through. It is just doing what it is meant to do. If I felt stronger, safer, I would relish it. It is alive. As am I. My fear is testament to that.
I spent the morning transcribing my notebooks that I wrote on one of my visits to see her and after her death. They make hard reading. But the details, the conversations that I noted down are often a revelation. Did she say that? Did she do that? And I recall some of the incidents as I copy them down, such as the long length of ash from her cigarette finally breaking off, and unbeknownst to her, falling into the refrigerators’ ice box.
He has begun his new medication after spending a few hours weighing up whether to start or not. It is hard to make decisions, I understand that, but he is looking better. There is a pinkness to his skin now that had completely disappeared. He has lost a little weight but not as much as I’d feared. I’m beginning to feel more hopeful. An ultrasound today to determine whether his carotid artery is worth operating on and then we can breathe. At least for a little while.
Two bodies lay in a shop door way along Terrace Road. And in that wind. Bless them. You don’t know you’re born, she used to say. I try to. I do try.
I asked her about Christmas, remembering as I did that it had been her first since her Mum died. She is a buoyantly, resolutely cheerful person. I don’t know her well, only having met her twice, but I can tell this. Though the sadness lurks behind her eyes. It was OK, she said. She’d made a real effort, she told me, decorated the house. For my Mum, she said, Mum loved Christmas. And it was her birthday at the end of last month, she continued, spraying the back of my head with some water before snipping, so we all went out for a meal. To one of your Mother’s favourite restaurants? I asked. Yes, she said, grimacing, the Football Club, they have a carvery on a Sunday lunchtime. My parents loved to go. It’s only down the road and it’s cheap, £6.00 a head. What’s it like? I asked. Rather oldy-worldy, she said, wrinkling her nose, but the food is good, no it’s OK. Wayne said it was like eating in an old people’s home, she continued. Stop it, I said to him, Dad likes it. Her father has become a problem. Clearly a taciturn man, she is struggling to deal with him now her mother has gone. She obviously softened his sharpness, his silences. She chatted to everyone, she said. I loved going shopping with her. She is trying with him but it clearly hurts. She’d gone round to see him one afternoon and had been telling him, ‘as you do’, she said, about some of her customers and he’d just stood up and walked out. No explanation, she said. I waited and waited, thinking he’d come back, only to find he’d gone into the kitchen and was making his tea. You making your tea? I asked, she said, after she’d gone into the kitchen to find him, why didn’t you tell me? Apparently he just shrugged his shoulders. I’ve always been uncomfortable with him, she said. I suggested we go to Cardiff for a few days like we used to do when Mum was alive, she continued, helping me off with my gown, but he just said, what’s the point?
She talked about a rucksack, or was it me? Was it me that first raised it? Taking the rucksack as a metaphor, she asked, might you take it off and leave it on the floor, in the room? Yes, I might, I said. She always pronounced it ‘rook-sack’. We always say it, he and I, the way she did. It was same with the word Wimbledon. She’d say ‘Wimpleton’. Sweet really. The rough-sleeper on the Prom has a rucksack. A small one. He sleeps with it between him and the wooden wall of the shelter. It seems to be all he has, that and his sleeping bag and the clothes he stands up in. It isn’t full. Imagine, if that is all you have? I fantasise about living so lightly on this earth, want and do, to give things away. But to be so without. How is that? He looks so neat. There are no straying plastic bags, not bits of flotsam or rubbish around him. And his bag is locked up tight around him.
I feel a great lethargy when I walk and when I have to do things around the house. Everything requires effort. He says it’s because I am depressed. I don’t know. Maybe I’m anemic. I looked up the symptoms. Some fit but others don’t. Don’t self-medicate the sites insist. All right I won’t. I’ll just eat more and more spinach and nuts. What more can you do but wait? He is to see the specialist today – who shares the same name as him which is a little unnerving. He wobbles over all these things. So much feels out of control. Home doesn’t feel safe, I told her, there is chaos.
We talked of whiteness, of oblivion. She is good. She is kind. It is good to talk though I am stripped, flayed by it. Can you concentrate on the details? she asks. Her place is not to advise, merely to reflect back. Yes, I say, yes I think I can. And I will. If the big is too much stay with the little. It is enough. For now.
You won’t have to stress and strain, he told me, all those years ago in that upper floor flat somewhere in South London. And I don’t. I have a gentle life. It isn’t what I expected. I try to accept it’s quietness, it’s lack of moment, it’s subtle ebbing. Acceptance is the answer, I know this. All that hankering after something other, something imagined, something seemingly exciting, glamourous only causes pain. This is where I am. This is the work I have to do, the life I have to lead. So be it. He meant it kindly. He thought it to be gift. After all, who wants to stress and strain? And yet, it is what I believed I would do. I thought I would have to work hard. To strive. To reach for something. I always have. I’ve always worked hard, sometimes more than I had to. To prove myself. To feel worthy. People say it like that. I work hard, they say. The subtext being congratulate me, I have earned my place in heaven, I am a grafter, a worker. I shine with it. And here am I in this unnoticeable life where nothing much happens except care, a looking-out-for each other, a conversation, a watchfulness. We trundle along, he and I, like that train that chugs out of Aber into the wide world. Reluctant. It is a reluctant train, reluctant to leave this grey nothingness of potter-dom. And yet, and yet, inside my head there is vision. Not always, but sometimes a real insightfulness. Is that enough? I miss the idea of work. The escape of it. The seeming puritan-ethic-worthiness of it. And yet, I am so tired. Dog-tired. Carrying myself, carrying him. I want escape. Will it come? Can I have it? Truly?
Ah, the sun. It came yesterday and lit up my room. My room of my own. My precious studio. My room where I read, write and make. It makes the windows appear dirty, it shows up their murkiness. But I don’t mind. I love its warmth, its white light. I stand there in the halo of it, emptying myself into its heat.
I think of him before I go to sleep. The man in the red and black sleeping bag. I wish him warmth. I think of her with her breast cancer and wish her well. I think of her with her broken ankle and wish her strength and a repairing of bones. I think of her still grieving for her sister and a son who won’t talk and wish her peace. And I think of him, as always, and wish him sleep.
Almost 7 am and still pitch outside. My daffodil plant has one bud, a peek-a-boo of yellow. A something like joy even in this tunnel. I am nervous about speaking to her today. I don’t want to open it all up. Don’t then, he says. Cancel it. But I can’t, I know the benefit of it. Deep down. It all has to be lived through. Doesn’t it?
I often look at it as I pass along the Prom. It’s on the ground floor of Alexandra Hall, one of student halls, on the far end of North Beach. A large, spacious room, it has one yellow wall where the rest are white. There are chairs, a couple of tables and a monitor on the wall. The lights are almost always on but I have never seen anyone in there. I love the space of it but perhaps it is cold, too cavernous for the students to want to inhabit it. Or perhaps it is locked, preserved, kept pristine as a teaching or seminar room.
A wet morning, and windy. I walked without the comfort of painkillers. I don’t know why I resist taking them. I am an ascetic, a puritan. I try to manage without too many crutches but my back was rigid without them. Unbending and resistant. But I walked anyway. The man in the black and red sleeping bag was there again. My biscuits had gone. I hope he ate and enjoyed them.
I kept it simple yesterday, I sewed and listened to stories. You’ll have to ring me if I have any appointments, he said. Can’t I just show how to use your alarm on your phone? No, he said. I want to be free of responsibility for him just for a week. And say so. And immediately feel mean. I rely on you, he says. I know, I say, I know. I can’t just step out of it. I need to see this through. He wobbles in the afternoon these days. The details make him fretful. We will deal with them, I say, all too aware of what I am promising.
I think it’s the anticipation of our session on Tuesday, for I find myself examining my gloom intensely. I want to please her, to show that it has been useful, but for the meantime I am still tunnelled in.
Another funny man on the radio , not dead, but alive, though his immortality has been threatened. The beauty of his modesty, his wish to sit and stare was moving.
Lend me the grace to accept what is, and to be present in all life’s colours ever curious.
He was barely older than me. A couple of months, that’s all. We often establish a connection that way, sounds self-centred, but that is our way in. A similar age. How would it feel, to lose one’s life like that? We saw him once, though it was on the radio that I knew him first. I loved his voice, and, as is so often the case with radio, he looked nothing like he sounded. He was sharper live. More caustic, sardonic even. His wit was fast, intelligent, cutting. We almost didn’t like him on stage. He was derogatory about his home town. Perhaps it was nerves, or his way of getting the energy up to perform. So young. Fifty-seven years old. He kept working till the end. He must’ve been ravaged with it. Perhaps he wanted to do all he could to support his family before he left them, for good. Miles Jupp described him as kind. You heard the conscience, the morality, the right-thinkingness but you didn’t see the kindness. I am glad. That is enough of an epitaph. Don’t you think? He was kind. That would do me. Rest in peace, if you can.
There were two huge trawler ships in the Marina this morning, lit up like Christmas trees. Shining with white light, ghostly even. Their light illuminated the usually dark harbour. Will they go out in this cold? And it was cold. A hard, hard frost. Young kids poured out of Pier Pressure as I walked past. A group of girls stumbled out into the night air, their bare legs an array of tattoos from ankle to thigh. Earlier, coming past the station I’d seen two girls in a bus shelter seemingly passing something from one to the other. They looked up guiltily as strode past.
We bought two little pots of tete-a-tete daffodils the last time we were in Morrisons, which must have been what three weeks now. Neither of them have thrived. The first just grew and grew but the buds, so promising at the outset came to nought. The second appeared to be without buds entirely, till a couple of days ago. Now there is a wee bud. I take it as symptomatic of our life at the moment. Nothing is growing, just a stagnancy, which has to be lived through. I made some shortbread. He was pleased. And I took some down to the Prom this morning. Will he still be there? He was. His belongings were neatly arranged on the seat beside his sleeping form, including three fish and chips cartons built into a kind of low tower. Are they empty or is he saving cold chips and battered cod for his breakfast? I was bolder this morning creeping into his enclave and placing my little bag of biscuits on the set beside him. May he find warmth.
I heard the word ‘tractor’ amongst the rest of the incomprehensible (to me at least) Welsh. And when the chatter had subsided, I asked her. Did you come to work on a tractor? They all laughed. She did to, though she is usually rather stony-faced. A lovely girl, sumptuous, but not warm. Not initially. No, she said, but I was towed by one along our road. Luckily, we’ve got one.
She talked about trust. She’d had friends before but they’d let her down, told her stories to other people. She trusts him, however. Her handyman, for want of a better word. He rang to ask if she needed anything. He was going to the shops anyway. She said no, but he brought her a loaf of bread regardless. Gluten-free, like he knows we like, she said. She talks to him. He’s had problems in his relationship, she believes she helped. He stayed, anyway, she says. She tells me about the snow and some boys who wanted to go sledging in a farmer’s field with a steep hill. She was concerned for them. Wasn’t someone hurt like that last year? she asked. One of the boys is fearless. He’s not afraid of nothing, she said. I suspect that, like me, she was never like that. In the end the boys sent the sledge down first. It promptly smashed into a tree. It could’ve killed us, said the boy.
There was a hard frost this morning. And now it is light it looks stunning. The kids were still out in force. Some, no most, un-coated. A group of four of them walked towards me along the Prom, one, a lad with very pronounced eyebrows was talking loudly, peacocking to his mates. I know, he was saying putting a heavy emphasis on the ‘know’, it’s depressing the faggot can’t suck!
The cold unnerves me. My whole body fights the thought of going out in it. But once I’ve done it it’s marvellous and the air smells so good. The rough sleeper was there again. And the flapjacks had gone. I intend to bake biscuits today so I shall take him some of those. I thought about the application as I walked. Do I really want to offer myself for another position? I enjoyed thinking about it, planning what I would write. Such problem-solving always engages me. But really, why would I do it? I’m no activist. I work alone. I don’t feel comfortable in groups. I’m not a team-player. Never have been. Let it be so. I prefer tete-a-tete, one-to-one, the intimacy of the micro view. This is my default when I am unsure of what I am doing – try for something out there, something which may bring some sort of recognition, that will make me other than what I am. Accept the current stasis, it has a function. Wait. Just read, think and let the writing unfold. It needs time. Applying for the Council would become an annoying distraction, all that travelling and little remuneration. Be here in this discomforting gap of uncertainty and wait.
I shall persevere with his quilt this morning. A domestic day. Flat cleaned. Then baking. A grounding sort of day. He is eating a little more. And responding to things outside of his head. He still wobbles, but it is better. It is better.
My research takes me down unexpected avenues. Go with it, he says. And I do. Yesterday it was the diaries of Marie Bashkirtseff and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s biography. One died young, refusing marriage, domesticity for her art, the other married, had a child, got post-natal depression and left it all, eventually, for her work. A rest cure was suggested for her. ‘Live as a domestic a life as possible’, advised her surgeon, ‘never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live’. No wonder she scarpered.
I am in a tunnel. A dark tunnel. I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I do my chores, I keep our bodies together, but I am strangely apart from it. I thought of stepping out and going to Bath to see the exhibition but the thought of the journey, almost ten hours by train to spend two hours there, defeats me. I shall see it when it goes to Oldham in Autumn.
I took them some flapjacks. Maybe they won’t be there, I thought as I neared the shelter. There was one man only, cocooned in a red and black sleeping bag. I didn’t want to get too close and alarm him, or indeed wake him so I left them on the ground wrapped in kitchen paper and placed in a bag. I’d considered tying them up with a ribbon but who wants such fripperies when you are cold and hungry.
No snow, though it was promised. He slept a little. That is something. Isn’t it?
Words move around inside my head as walk. Sometimes they become like a mantra, particularly when I wish to remember them, to keep hold of them.
I dreaded going out this morning, and the fear of it dogged my first waking hour, dragging my feet. It was the thought of ice. They’d promised a temperature of -5. I went prepared, lots of layers and my big, impossibly expensive Norwegian-bought coat. At least if I slipped, I thought, I’d have something padded to land my bum on. There was ice on the footbridge leading from our flat to what we call ‘the courtyard’ but after that, just a smattering along St David’s Road. It glistened. The ice or frost, if you like, was glistening. It shimmered under the glare of my torch. Don’t walk there, avoid that path, that patch of ground. So I walked gingerly. Glistening and gingerly. I don’t like hesitating. It makes me feel frailer. I like to stride, to feel the source of power, of stamina in my legs. They are getting stronger. It’s all that walking to work. The Prom, however, was fine. And there were three people sleeping rough in the shelter. Bless them, I thought. It must be so cold. So wretched. I will bring them some flapjacks tomorrow.
The smell of fried chicken was overwhelming as I walked past Pier Pressure. The doors of the club were still open and a few burly men in high vis jackets hovered around the entrance. Railings had been stacked to one side. Of course, I thought, it was a Wednesday night, party night. The fried chicken smell was quickly subsumed by that of the starlings’ guano from under the pier. Such a stink. Salty, briny, cold, damp, my nose wrinkles up against it. I could hear their chattering. They will wake soon and start their sky dancing. Later, walking down Great Darkgate Street a man in an mohair coat and trilby crossed my path. It felt unnerving. He just crossed in front of me. I heard myself say, Sorry. As if I’d been in his way. He made no comment and headed for the railway station.
The sky was perfectly clear. All the stars were visible. The flat roof beneath us twinkles with ice, a replica, a carbon copy of the firmament above.
We talked of Amsterdam. She and her colleague are to go their for what they call their ‘Christmas do’. They are fun-loving girls, open, curious, bright. I like being in their company. And she is gentle with me. I could see it before me in all its exquisite nook-and-cranny gloriousness as we talked. I should have told her to read ‘Tulip Fever’ as a taste of what is to come. It has hardly changed. All that luxuriousness. How I love that city. What a time I had there. What a life I have led. I am profoundly grateful. Even in this dark, dark time I feel the blessings of my existence.
He slept last night. He looks less hollow. And my flapjacks please him. He takes a morsel. And I am pleased. It is something, eh?
Are you sleeping? the physio asked me last week. Yes, I said. That’s good, she said. I’ve rarely had a problem with sleep. I need so much. I just fall into it. And earlier and earlier these days. The only issue is when I am woken, usually by work calling or texting me, then sleep evades me. My mind begins its infernal planning and oblivion is lost to me. He isn’t sleeping, at least not at night. He looks worn through, blown through, thinner and thinner. How can I leave him? I feel the weight of him. He is trying to manage to not get angry or self-pitying, I can see that he is trying. But I can also see how hard it is. I try to encourage him to eat, making tiny morsels of delights to excite his palate. He never wants it initially, hovering around me by the stove, saying: not too much, not too much. I remember his mother being just the same. But for her it was the war-time residue of a fear of waste. Those countless women who still wrap left-overs in tin foil leaving them in fridges to fester and grow mouldy. He just can’t bear to be over-faced with a big plate of food. I am the same. He is also eschewing tastes he used to like. No more sugar on his cornflakes and HP sauce with his beans on toast. My tastes have changed too since the virus we both had. I don’t want salads anymore, or indeed raw food. I struggle to come up with things to eat. I am all at sea with his food and mine.
I’d had a call yesterday saying that I may need to go up to work at 4.30 am, thankfully, I didn’t. But I had to wait until I was texted to be assured. Yet I still have to go in about 40 minutes. Will that hill get easier the more I do it? He has gone back to bed to try and catch up, it is all topsy-turvy. I am hanging on by my finger nails. Yesterday was so gloomy. I had a massage with the Brute. It hurts but it does help. We talked of Scandinavian matters. I like her brusqueness. I asked if she was going to go home to Sweden soon. I’ve got puppies, she said, I will go in April when they are sold. What breed? I asked. Siberian Husky, she said.
Everyone is a flutter with the threat of snow. The Brute said she missed it. That it helped with the darkness. I might drive to go and find some, she said.
