Author: Ellen Bell

He always stops him to ask after her. The postman’s wife. She has cancer. She is undergoing chemotherapy. Of course, they are poisoning her, he said to me afterwards.

He called just before lunch, he was badly shaken. I’ve just had a shock, he said. It was clearly a scam. Someone, well two people really, telephoning him and purporting to be from the HMRC and accusing him of not paying enough tax. They threatened him with a possible prison sentence. I was in the loo, he told me, and didn’t take the call but called them back. Two foreign-sounding men, one was his supervisor, he said, and they were so aggressive. I told him to call our accountant. Who, when he did, just laughed, apparently. And I wasn’t much better. Come home, I said. And when he did all I could focus on was giving him tips as to how to deal with fake calls in the future. And yet all he wanted was to be hugged, to be given succour. I got it eventually. They make you feel such a mug. But it is understandable, they can come across as so credible.

No moon again this morning, I have missed it. I do miss it. A man up a cherry picker was fiddling with the top of what looked like a lamp post just outside the station at 3 am this morning. What can be so vital that it cannot wait until daylight? The headlights from his van had been trained on him to give him more light. Three police cars were parked outside the back of The Marine Hotel. One also has its headlights full on, lighting my path as I walked, in lieu of the moon.

He told me of his friend, a Californian potter who gave up making because of the pain and difficulty it caused him to get his work ‘out there’. It is always been my motivation, to be seen, to be recognised, to be acknowledged. Never have I done the work for its own sake. DM asks me to look at his new films. They are sublime – studies of the extraordinary amid the ordinary. Birdsong mingles with the chatter of tourists, nothing happens then a leaf drops – gentle pieces that make you watch intensely. And that, surely, is merit enough. Are we working in a futile vacuum if the work has no outside destination? I think about my sewing. I want to finish them. To see them through, to see the process through. For after all they were never about the end result. It was always about the sitting still, the being still, the extraneous sounds (radio, birdsong) and the reading. There are others who work, worked, for works sake – Emily Dickinson, Primmy Chorley, Proust – can I not do the same?

Walking in the wind and rain, I came to what we call the ‘prow’, a kind of corner of the Prom that looks like the front of an ocean-going liner. The wind had grown fierce by then and I saw, from a distance what looked like a man going round and round in circles. I got near and could see he was wearing a Mexican-style poncho and dark glasses. His car, which was parked just ahead of him, had the driver’s seat window open and Indian music was coming through it. On the dashboard was a plastic sunflower in a pot. He nodded his head in acknowledgement of me and continued to go round in a circle.

Two dreams in rapid succession though only the first stays with me. DH was a deejay and I kept wandering past his studio window and giving him bon mots and quips to share with his audience. I made him laugh, delighted him. Some other  woman in the studio, seeing what I was doing, suggested that I should be interviewed, Yes, I said and they could translate it into Welsh. I was delighted by the attention, happy to be useful, wanted, loved even.

Accepting is the key. The key to it all and a way of halting this gut-ache. So be it.

It was a quote from a trailer advertising a radio play that was due to be aired in the next few days. I think it was a play by Arnold Bennet. ‘It’s an act of faith to make anything’, one of the female characters said. An act of faith, the belief that it will happen, that you will make manifest an idea. Yes. My life has been an act of faith, all too often with a wobbly faith in myself. Drawing, writing and sewing, and not necessarily in that order – those are my main acts of faith, of making, of creating. They run into each other, are often indivisible. I think about drawing as often as I think about writing. I want to master both. To be the best I can. To make without self-consciousness. To write without self-consciousness. I woke from a dream in which I was at a party held in my honour. Everyone was there, family and friends. There were plates of food everywhere, lots of green food, some looked more like plants and shrubs than salad or vegetables. I was in  wheelchair. I knew I could walk and as I was trying to get myself about I was thinking to myself I could just walk. Sometimes I was slow, other times fast. I was hungry and went off in search of food, offering to get some for L. as well. I came to some cold chicken, thinking she might like some and almost took some to see what it was like. You don’t eat that, I said to myself as I tore the flesh from the carcass and went in search of olives instead. A seemingly prosaic dream but to me one that is weighty with import.

I pondered on the nature of work yesterday allowing myself to consider the notion of work –  learning, education –  for the sake of it. I want to learn the craft of writing, as I want to learn the craft of drawing. What if I just dedicated my time to that – regardless of whether it brings in money or not? I have my journalism and my BBC job to bring in cash, however intermittently. And they? Well it will come when it comes. My life is more than that. I want to be the best I can be. To be a craftsman in every sense of the word. To dedicate my time to honing, to bettering, to flying. It would be an inner, inside experience, nothing to do with outside recognition. It will be interesting to see what P. C. has now done with her work to introduce it so overtly into the exterior world.

No moon this morning. Or the usual array of lit windows that give me such pleasure, particularly when I walk down from the Buarth. The windows in the terraced houses there are very fine with curved, arched tops and stained glass.

He is so much better, even staying up with me for a protracted breakfast, reading the paper all the way through. And we are back with birthdays. It was good to write up my notes yesterday, I mulled them over and re-remembered the texts that I read, seemingly such a long time ago. It is in fact hardly a week. I have booked to return. I see that little house in my mind’s eye, waiting for me. Anticipating returning to that compactness, neatness and simple modesty warms my heart. And he talks of our trip to London with optimism. He wants to come. Hurrah.

I was lying on the floor or our kitchen-cum-dining-room-cum-living-room at the top of the flat, waiting for the oven to finish cooking the supper. He was reading the paper by the radio/TV ready to switch Classic FM to mute when the adverts came on. What are you thinking about? he asked. And I told him. About a man I saw at Boston airport last year. I’d seen him first behind the till at one of the newsagent. He was Hispanic. Then I saw him again when he sat across from me in one of the eating areas by the big windows that look onto the runways. He was clearly on his lunch break. He was eating white rice. Just white rice. No sauce or vegetables or meat. Just cold white rice from a Tupperware container. He ate fast, hunched over the table, shovelling the rice into his mouth. He called across to another man just behind me, also airport personnel. (I could tell from his uniform.) He was West Indian. Whatya eating? The Hispanic man called out. The other man, also eating out of a Tupperware lidded bowl, tilted it towards the other to reveal what looked like a cold pasta salad. Nice? questioned the Hispanic man. Yeh, said the other. Neither seemed fazed by the spartan nature of the Hispanic man’s fayre. Just rice. I think about food a lot. Not out of greed but out of a wish to plan, to control what and how much I eat and to simplify. Just rice, is, can be nice. I hope it was choice and not poverty in the Hispanic man’s case. Sometimes just one foodstuff at a time is a good thing. You taste it then, really taste it. Like on a fast.

Serendipity. A joining up of ideas. I first saw the crumpets on an advert in his morning paper yesterday. With a picture of a middle-aged man smiling and talking about eating healthily for less. (Not quite sure about that.) It reminded me how I used to love crumpets as a child. Their texture was so singular. Mum would grill or toast them and I’d spread butter then honey on the hot, holey surface. I loved the way the butter and honey seemingly disappeared, only to wait beneath to catch in my throat and drip down my face after that first bite. I thought them so sophisticated, such an adult taste. Then later in one of the Hancock’s Half Hour repeats on Radio 4 extra Sid James refused a crumpet moaning that the melted butter always dripped on his tie. Then this morning walking to the harbour I walked past an open bin bag, its contents spilling out, amongst which were three whole crumpets.

The bag lady was out again today. You know the one I see on the Prom with her bag for life swinging as she trundles along in her trainers, always wearing that same pink sweat top. She never looks at me, though we must have passed each other countless times. I smell the cigarette smoke on her. She normally shops in the 24 hour garage on Mill Street. And then she walks. Is it a health thing, has the Doctor advised it? She doesn’t look as though she enjoys it. But there again I probably don’t either. The moon, which is full today, I think, makes a difference. All that light – I feel lifted by it. No Perygyl today. Too wet.

He’s asked me to go with him. Of course. I want to help, to put him at ease if I can. It will be an adventure, I said, like going on one of our trips. She responds to my email to say that her job is on the line. Her skills, which are legion are no longer wanted. I thought of her all day. Poor love.

Samways. That’s the name on the fish truck. I sometimes see it down by the harbour when I walk in the early mornings. It’s parked up, it’s lights are off. No doubt it is waiting for the ‘fish to come in’, for the fishing boats and trawlers to bring in their catch. Have they been out all night? There is always a beautiful drawing of a fish on the side of the lorry. A blown up watercolour of a fish, its tail curving its body into a half moon.

The moon is almost full. Not quite but almost. I love to walk in its light. I feel lifted by it, even if it is a cold white light rather than the warm yellow of the sun. No one about this morning. Lovely, just lovely. The wind was churning up the sea, lots of froth and foam swirling as I looked down from the Perygyl.

I continue to think back over my journey on Friday. For all its stress and protracted-ness there was some memorable moments. Such as the guard on the platform at Manchester Piccadilly, just before he leant over and whispered that I’d have to find another way of getting to Shrewsbury as the train had been cancelled, calling out, are you eating fruit? I thought I could smell it, I love the smell of fruit. I had eaten an apple but at the moment I was gnawing my way through some raw carrot. Was it that that he was smelling? And the beautiful elderly woman on the seat next to me on the Leeds train (have I already mentioned her?) telling me that she had dementia. Such an open, intelligent face, with that oh so subtle Canadian accent. I’ve lived here twenty years, she said.  But you could still hear it. Are you scared? I asked her. Of course she was, but somehow I believe in the power of articulating it. She was unfazed by my familiarity. Yes, she said. She talked of some important research she wanted to do before it took hold. And there was the man on the Shrewsbury train trying to look up alternative trains for me on his mobile. And the other, pretty, man eating soup with a leather bracelet around his wrist with a little wooden bead on it inscribed with the name ‘Amy’, with his gentle enquiries. I watched his hands as he ate.

Anne Cleves was on DIS.  I’ve no time for people saying they’ve no time to write, she said, talking about how she snatched 10 minutes here and there while her children were small. It took her 20 years to gain the recognition she has now.

She’s said yes to two commissions. I am pleased. They are small things in the whole scheme of the world’s economy but I like the challenge of them and the chance it gives me to send something out there.

I backed flapjacks and shortbread at his insistence. I like the way the sweetness of the treacle permeates the house, masking that miasma that is always there when I’ve been away. Is it him? Or glue from under the floor or something more sinister? He doesn’t smell it. I burn sage and it masks it a bit. It is passing but perhaps that is just me getting used to it.

A day of writing up my notes from last week. A chance to rediscover my ideas and thoughts. Just peace, that is all. A peaceful acceptance of my self firstly and then what is, where I find myself. A slow, paying attention towards death. It is a good enough life.

I continue to rifle through my sketchbooks. It’s funny how I remember places far more through the drawings I make in them. Or perhaps not so funny. I have to concentrate and the people I draw in them somehow seem to incapsulate them. Like the girl in the coffee shop in Shrewsbury, that Friday morning while I whiled away time waiting to meet an old friend of my parents. She was in there with her mother, I presume. She looked surly – her peroxided curls held tight under a wooly hat that she never removed. Her mother, or maybe it was just a friend, had a couple of blonde curly-haired children in tow who she was trying to keep under control with bribes of porridge and honey. They weren’t having any of it.

The trawler I saw yesterday wasn’t there this morning. I missed it. Maybe trawler is a bit extreme. It was a fishing boat, almost ready to go. I saw one of the fishermen on deck, hatted and sou’wester-ed. It’s their lights that I love – bright white spot lights – a stark glare made comforting in that blackness. They light up the harbour. And it is also their heralding of adventure as they get ready to rock and jostle on the tide out to sea.

He is so much better. A different man. Letters keep coming through the post with appointments. The operation nears. How will it be? I want to be steady for him. I must be sanguine.

The moon was a glory this morning. Oh, I walk bathed in its light. It is always about light.

It is a simple task, really. Just accept it. Accept what is. Here it is. A quieter life. A hidden life. An inner life and nonetheless rich. Go with it. To fight it is to give oneself unnecessary pain. This is your life – see it, embrace it, it is no one else’s. There is much to love.

It always throws me returning home. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been away, a week or a night or a couple of days, it’s the leaving of one place and the returning to another that I have also left. I inhabit spaces so completely – not always a comfortable thing. He doesn’t. He is never as at home as when he is at home. I make home wherever I am which makes the wrench of leaving, whether it is my real home, or my temporary one, hard. It fitted me that little space. A glove, a coat, a cardigan – it fitted me and knew me. I liked it’s rhythms, it’s nooks and crannies, the way that the smallness was turned to an advantage. See how near everything is – it was the smallness of my childhood, a doll’s house kind of smallness. It asked so little of me. I needed that, though the grief still surfaced. Was that such a bad thing? Everyone seemed to welcome me, or perhaps it was just that I was happy to be there. In that simplicity. A simple life, modest. I lived on yoghurt, fruit, spinach and porridge. Simple. And I read and read. Almost all the six books I took with me, their maternal stories weaving into my dreams. And I wrote and wrote – longhand, trying not to think, trying not to compose but to write automatically to see what comes out. I am tired. Yet I have to clean, to make the house ready, neat. The journey was long and with yet another Friday debacle. A train on fire apparently that virtually brought the network to a standstill. The carriages took on  wartime spirit. Nice. And in the end they got us a taxi all the way from Shrewsbury. We chattered, mostly of Norway. Small world. She’s going to see if she can find someone to ‘talk’ to me. I’d like that but fret about when and how. It’s tiredness, as is our niggles with each other. He too wants changes. Small ones, tweaks as to how we manage our life together. The rest, the break from me has done him good. He looks positively rosy. So much to do and I want to do it all at once. And I can’t. Breathe. One thing at a time. Another prize. Such childlike delight. I feel looked after each time. Like finding a coin or a feather. I met such kind people on my journey yesterday. They opened me.

You look lovely, he said as he met me at the station. I feel like shite but thank you, thank you.

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?