Author: Ellen Bell

It was so long ago and yet hearing her voice made it just yesterday. Just yesterday when I was living with them and all their children. I couldn’t remember all their names. It was good to hear her voice. I always loved her gentleness. I cannot recall her ever shouting or raising her voice. So steady. So balanced. She just got on with it. All those endless meals, one ending and another being laid ready. All that sewing, mending and cooking. A quiet voice. An understated voice. What did she make of my mother? I’d like to see her, to see them. He’d only been given two days to live, she said. Imagine that? What resilience, I said. What determination. What a determination to continue. Was it fear of losing her? Of death?

It’s going to be a sunny day, today, he said by way of consolation. I am all agitated. I cannot say why. My body is fighting, jarring, every edge, every corner jagged. So be it. Let it be. My hips are tight, no movement, no going forward. Let it be. Let it all be. Pain is a great teacher. I get to know my body. What am I fighting?

Life?

It’s black as pitch out there and it’s past 7.00am. A crow caws. All else is still. We’ve breakfasted and I’ve done my admin. He’s gone back to bed and I sit here in my studio warmed by the yellow light of my angle poise and listening to the aching groans of my little halogen fire as it grows cold. Why is it that the dark makes me feel so bleak? There is nothing to be frightened of today. Not today. I finished the two reviews yesterday and she was pleased with them. Great as ever, she said. It is enough. I am satisfied. Today I shall sew. I’ve much to do. And I can relax, breathe, letting my hands take over. I’ve to go to work in between naturally. But that’s OK the money has to come from somewhere.

I got a text. A possibility, like the found fiver. Not to be. Not available. And it is so far. Would it be worth it just for a showing off and dressing up? And he would have to sit and sit. He does so much of that, bless him.

I caught the tail end of piece of drama on the radio yesterday as I made lunch. John Mcgahern’s Parachutes. A lovely piece. And from what I understand it’s about a man who has broken up with his girlfriend and he tags along on a sort of pub crawl with two friends. His thoughts invade their chatter. At one point he begins to notice tiny bits of thistledown floating into the Dublin pub. He calls them parachutes. I love the focussing in on such a little thing. He can’t understand where they are coming from. A tip? Is there a tip nearby? he or one of his friends ask. Something like hope or at least serendipity is being carried in on those seeds. Won’t everything be alright, in the end?

I’ve much to listen to, much to catch up, not least The Archers. A gentle day. I send out a wish. Just let it be, eh?

I shouldn’t really eat it, though I love it. It doesn’t sit well in my stomach or my gut. So I buy body creams that smell of it instead. I follow it’s perfume. I love its texture. Those carts on the Balcon de Europa selling it in wedges, with the trickles of water keeping it fresh. I don’t mind its milk in cooking but the taste of it raw is rather strange. Why is it that some foods agree with us and others don’t? Is it all psychosomatic?

I found a fiver. It was there amongst some litter by the Bar at the end of the Prom. Was it real? Should I pick it up? Should I take it?

I am edgy today. It’s my writing and the fears that overwhelm me at times. And the edginess makes me indecisive. Should I give it to the three homeless bodies sleeping top and tail in the Prom shelter? Should I give it to him? Should I put in the bucket for the Indonesia tsunami victims? In the end I put two pounds in the tub. And he bought a packet of Quality Street for the food bank. One pound for me. In my purse. Some spending money. A gift. Something to hold. He is more generous than me. Money is a flow with him. It comes and it goes. My relationship with it is more tricky. There is no flow, much constriction. But I recognise and acknowledge the abundance when it comes in. And it does.

We talked of her church. It is a large building and very cold. She has taken to attending a smaller one, but she worries what her former community may think of her. How old is she? I am always adjusting her age in my head. It doesn’t matter. She feels the cold. As do I.

She reminded me of the beastly child in Rev. She had the same cute blondeness though her hair was pulled back rather messily by a headband. She didn’t respond to my questions. She is ‘independent’ was clearly a euphemism for what? Rude? Can a young child be rude? She is wilful, knows her own mind. It felt like disdain. She didn’t engage with me and so I didn’t with her. I babysat from a distance. She talked to herself, her little wooden horse and the bits and bobs he’d pulled out of her pink rucksack that looked like they’d come from a dolls house. I was offended because I’d been brought up to behave differently. She wasn’t me and vice versa. It’s OK. Quite restful actually. She was safe. That was the main thing.

Someone had printed out the sentencing tariff for the possession of child pornography. It was chilling. And not so long ago he was in there, in front of the camera. I still feel compassion for him. How can I not? Surely it is a compunction beyond his rational mind? There must be forgiveness.

He writes to complain about marriage.

I’m sorry I say. Mine is a joy. And it is.

I drank too much tea. It steadied me, filled me, made me warm. I wanted more of their abundance, the detail of their sweet loveliness. Have you a cosy? I asked, knowing, almost completely knowing that they would. Of course, she said. It was a patchwork one. I placed it with something like pleasure over the china pot. The café was getting busy, alive with the voices of women more than a little excited. He had a toasted tea cake. I buttered it for him, just to catch the smell of cinnamon and sultanas.

When we got home my clothes smelt of baking.

I am rushing. I want to get on with work and I need to have my ten minutes sitting first. I am so tense. I have a review to begin and there is always this tension, this fear of that white space. Will it come? Will I make a fool myself, tripping, knicker-less over the page.

There was an A-board outside OXFAM bookshop reading “Welcome Students’ and in the window a selection of paperback cookbooks with titles like Use Your Noodle and How to Boil an Egg.

The same cacophony as I walked. They have not ceased their merriment, though one sounded like a howling beast, or a woman ululating at a New Orleans funeral. I couldn’t work out where they were. The sound echoed around the streets. Eerie.

Our neighbour opened the window as I stepped out. My stomach always sinks. I don’t want to talk, not then. The light clicks on and I know he is there before I open the door. You’re early, he said, you usually go out at three. Does he too want silence, and waits for my leaving? It depends, I said, trying to be warm. But thank you for keeping tabs on me, I said, jocularly. He laughed. Cheers now, and have a nice walk, he said.

I love the detail of my dreams. They have so many layers. At one point I was looking in close at the floor in someone’s home, I like terracotta tiles, she said. Then I was waiting at an airport for a gift that someone had arranged for me. The receipt was in Spanish, and the gift? A tiny bottle of Cherry Brandy. I don’t like Cherry Brandy, he said in my dream. I don’t either, I wanted to say but didn’t, but the thought, the kindness, was lovely to me. It warmed me.

I thought of him through the night. I don’t condone his actions but my compassion for his situation, for his wife and his children overflows. It is a dark world sometimes. I wish him and myself light.

My name means sunshine, she said. But don’t call me sunshine.

I won’t, even if you are.

That’s a sign of the end of summer if there ever is one, I said to him at breakfast, the Lifeguards’ hut has been packed away. What? he asked, looking up from the paper. What is a sign of the end of summer?

He says I mumble. Maybe I do, but it isn’t just me. His hearing is getting worse. We laugh about it. Quarter to two, he says, mimicking an elderly lady he used to know. Deaf as a post, she’d offer up time checks as a way of filling in the gaps of non-hearing. He gets by, tries to make sense of what is being said. What? he says rather too sharply. I want to say, can’t you say pardon? It is ingrained in me, that outward showing of politeness and ‘what’ is so sharp.

The box for the hut is still there on the Prom. All neatly packed away. White and shiny.

They don’t half drink. A girl called out to me along North Road. She was walking, her arm draped in that of her boyfriend’s and wore just a vest top. Hellooooo, she said to me, her head lolling like a rag doll’s. Then stumbling off the pavement she lurched at me, You OK? she asked. Yes, I’m fine, thank you, I replied. I don’t want to talk when I walk. I don’t want to puncture my role as observer. On the Prom a huddle of tall lads were talking. One was shouting above the rest delivering his little speech in an Australian accent. Alright you fucking cunt, he said, you’re asking for it. No? Then his voice changed and his friends laughed. A girl in a thin shorts one-piece, twirled and swirled like a leaf caught in the wind. Her phone was lit and held fast against her ear. She was silent, concentrating, or so it seemed to me, on trying to move herself forward.

I looked for the moon. It was tiny.

Off to review an exhibition later today. We like the drive.

It was gone. The bag with the three jam and buttered scones was gone when I walked past this morning. Who had taken them? A mystery. I will never know. The man with the floral counterpane was there this morning, but sleeping on the side bench of the shelter. Perhaps it was more sheltered from the wind that side. I would’ve been sad if they had still been there. I hope someone enjoyed them. I shall do it again. I promise.

She sends out regular emails inviting us to various events. I won’t go again. I like the ideas, her ideas in principle but I struggle with the intimacy of them. She invades with kindness and solicitude. I feel a rage inside of me as a result. A lovely kind woman, I can see how effective she is but I am not comfortable. Don’t I need to be? Isn’t it important? This last one was about a gathering in France and Germany managed by what seemed to be some kind of guru. I want it, I want the truth, the cleansing, the enlightenment they appear to promise but I can’t do the unravelling, not in public, it is too excruciating. Fuck that, he says when I try to describe it to him over supper. You don’t want any of that. No, I don’t. But what do I want?

I woke to heavy rain outside my window. My heart and soul sink at the prospect of going out in it. But by the time I’d put on all my layers including his coat, the rain had stopped and it was glorious. There was a keen breeze but the air was fresh and alive. I smelt gloss paint along North Road, someone had painted their front door scarlet. Trying to be one step ahead of possible rain I went home the back way hoping that the bakery smells would be wafted, carried on the wind as far as the station. Not so. But there was a lovely, sweet perfume coming from a shrub on the top of the little hill that takes us to Llanbadarn Road. I couldn’t work out what it was.

I am sleepy. I need to move. Work this morning, then home to sketch out ideas for this new project. We shall see, one day up the next day down.

I made them. How ridiculous to get het up about doing it. Though I can understand why. I need to do things well. I am not good at failing and it had been a long time since I had baked. But I did it. At one point the dough seemed too wet, though I’d followed Delia to the letter. But it was OK. They were OK. I watched his face as he took a bite. Were they too dry, too moist, too sweet? No, he liked them. She’d advised a 1.5 – 2 cm cutter. They looked cute, mouth-wise, wee, bijou. They could be a bit bigger, he said. He had two, some went in the freezer and some in the fridge. I won’t have you giving them away to the homeless on the Prom, he said. But I did. I’d intended too and these days following my intentions seems, at times, the only thing I can do. I buttered and jam-ed them, put them in a sealed bag and popped them in the pocket of his coat and set off on my walk.

They weren’t there. The men weren’t there. Even the one who wrapped himself in a floral counterpane wasn’t there. The wind and rain had been wild. Perhaps they’d gone inside somewhere or left Aber for good. I was disappointed. I wanted them to wake up to them. Fresh scones for breakfast. A gift from the kitchen. My kitchen. Here you are boys. What should I do? I thought. Take them home or leave them. There was a half-full bottle of pop and a plastic bag with stuff in it (I didn’t pry) on the bench, so I placed my offering next to them. A gesture to the gods. My intention. I thought about what might happen to them as I walked away. Perhaps the street cleaner will chuck them. Will he look inside first? Or some students might find them (like that girl that smiled at me, sitting there on a bench, with her friend huddled up in a duvet – it’s funny how you can see smiles in the dark). Or the homeless men may return and eat them after all. Not bad, they might say, not bad at all.

It’s a drop in the ocean this giving. A can of something for the foodbank twice a week. I think about what they’d like. It was Campbell’s Potato and Leek soup today. Sometimes its coffee, hot chocolate, jam or one week it was peanut butter. A treat. Not in a patronising way. But I’ve been there, in that place of little or nothing, and you don’t lose the desire for pleasure, not then, not ever. The taste of sweetness or salt on the tongue. A tiny transcendence.

He was holding his wife’s hand when the wave took her. They found her wallet. The words of his grief are lost to us, a foreign tongue but the sounds, those we know. What can you say? I am so sorry. Truly.

A form of pentameter, he said, before adding, umm, yummy eggs.

We were having supper and doing The Times crossword and I got completely the wrong end of the stick. Is it some form of geometric shape? I asked. I felt so foolish. No, its poetry, he said. Iambic, I said straight away. How can I be so stupid? Is it mouth engaging before brain? I never truly believe that poetry is for me, even after the MA, until I hear it read, then it belongs to me and I belong to it. Absolutely. Without question.

It’s the rules that freak me out. I am awed by them. I am with all forms of creativity. You must do this, you must do that. I’m a Johnny-come-lately, a mountebank, a fraudster, a charlatan with all things creative – I take shortcuts, reinvent the wheel and all those other clichés. I cannot follow. Ever. I love poetry’s succinctness. Its condensing of emotion. Making breakfast, Rick Stein came on the radio guest-hosting a programme called With Great Pleasure where the guests chose a series of their favourite readings. He chose a Ted Hughes poem, I believe it was from Birthday Letters. It was from the period of time that Hughes and Plath lived together in Devon. It was just one line, so simple in its construction and syntax (is that the right word? – you see) – ‘people stare at you in wet shops’. Just exquisite. That use of the word ‘wet’. People sheltering in there out of the rain, the fetidness, the steam on the windows and this remarkable blonde-haired American, shining like a beacon, a candle to the moths. And I am to go to his house. To stay there. What a gift.

I’ve been cracking jokes all night, he said. He was a young man standing with a group of friends outside The Pier Pressure nightclub. He was tall, straight-backed and well-spoken. I’d noticed his red cloth baseball boots first – new and clean. His hands gesticulated as he spoke. I’ve been cracking jokes all night, he repeated, just to get my message across. What message? I don’t know. I’d walked by by then. Cracking jokes sounded such an old-fashioned turn of phrase.

I’ve been cracking eggs too. I did it with gusto, I said to him. Yummy, he said. They’re perfect.

The sun on the trees last night was stunning. A yellowy orange, like an egg yolk, a burning that lit up the bank outside my window. Come and see, he called from the hall, wanting me to see the flash of sun on the hill. But I’d already got into bed. Too late.

I walked up and over the Buarth on my way home. No bakeries open this morning. No smell of hot bread. A cat trotted towards me in the gloom.

I dreamt that I had four warts on my middle finger or was it my ring finger. A chemist did give me something for it. She was confident that they would go. But I had to wait before I could take it. Various internet interpretation sites offer different explanations. One said it was about the loss of personal honour, another said it heralded difficulties and another said it meant money was coming. Who knows? Isn’t it just fear?

I am racked with it today. Nameless, rootless fear. My back is rigid.

Now for the Big Sleep, said my sister in my dream handing me a small brown paper bag. Did I open it? I think it contained a bottle with a syringe. Prior to that she’d played me an audio of what she listened to to get to sleep.

Why is she such a challenge to me? Is it her confidence, her bright shiny newness? I am so full of uncertainty. Over everything, big and small. I am a wobbling jellyfish, formless, always shifting, changing with the tide and at times highly poisonous. Or so it feels. I want to be kind, to be good, but sometimes I just cannot do it. I seek certainty, completeness, endings and a sense of something solid. This is right, this is me, this is meant. All the while knowing that such things are illusory. Nothing stands still. Nothing. And yet, I long for it.

Bless those the wave has taken. I hope it was swift, no time to fear, to drown, just gone. Without pain now. Lifted. Spirited. Away.

Fergal Keane’s piece for Our Own Correspondent yesterday was beautiful. Ah, the radio. It is a joy to me.

Will I make them today?

Is he the one that I’ve seen sitting by the loos down by the harbour?

What is it about eccentric dress? It is often just teetering on madness.

He was coming towards me. His gait was stride-y, with long steps and a little over-jaunty. It was three am and he had on a big bobble hat, a tweed jacket, walking boots and matching plus fours. You don’t often see them, except on a shoot or sometimes on a golf course. He raised his hand in greeting as he walked by. Was he the one who offered me chips a few weeks ago? He said hello. He had a large bushy, grey-ish beard. I was glad that we spoke. He was coming back towards me ten minutes later. Where had he been? No greeting this time.

There was a police van outside the clock. I thought the police man was holding something like a water pistol. I couldn’t quite make it out as I walked past him. Then he called out to me, Water?, and offered me a bottle. No thanks, I said, touched and yet a little perturbed that he thought I might need some. The students milled around, drunk and loud. It’s sweet, and almost paternalistic, a nice gesture, looking after the freshers, dehydrating their drunkenness. Is this just an Aber thing?

Flat cleaned, emails done. Time for work. Did I tell you about the royalties? I am so pleased. It’s come from me. All of it. And it’s proof that people read it. My words, my thoughts. That has to be good. Doesn’t it?