Author: Ellen Bell

The fire happened before I left. I asked him about it on my return. Had they found the missing person? No, he said, he’s still in there. A Lithuanian man. They took ages to find his family, he said. Why haven’t they got him out? I asked. It’s unsafe, structurally unsafe, he said, they can’t go in. And it’s true. It’s all cordoned off. Even the hotel next door is shut. Dark windows. A police van parked permanently outside within the tape. And this is their busy time. But that isn’t important. What about the missing man? Alone in there. From the outside it looks normal. The curtains hang in the window, apparently still white. And the smoke, I remember wasn’t black and ominous but a pale grey. It doesn’t seem real. Nothing does today.

There is always something, I thought as I walked. Three kids straight out off the Why Not? club hanging from the scaffolding surrounding the opticians. I pass the Greggs lorry just as the driver wheels the trolley back. It’s a different guy. There were fewer people about. The smell of baking bread from Slater’s was strong, delicious, comforting.

I think about her. She is so unwarm. She cannot soften. Must not soften. No, no, no. A grey sky. They promise rain. My back is tight again, fearful and closed-off. We began watching Amelie last night. A joyful, colourful distraction. I have a notebook full of ideas but I need to wade through this experience for now. A closure of sorts. But she was kind. We shall share your birthday, she said. That would be nice. That would be nice. There is always something. Always something warm in the coldness. Don’t you find?

Home but not quite. It’s beginning to feel familiar but my dreams are still of the US. I wake in the middle of the night all at sea. Where am I? I miss the space, the letting the day be what it is, the yielding to other’s whims. So restful. Home hits me with its demands. Or the demands I connect with it. All will be well. There is time to breathe now. Now I must just wait. And the other thing? Well it has to come. And with it all her antagonism. She is a fighter. She attacks, just like she used to do. No trust. No softness, no yielding. No, no, no, she said, her hand cutting the air like a cleaver. I think about her and her. Trying to understand, to feel safe with the both of them. They listened. I appreciated that. Nice things come. Requests to write, to use my images. I am touched by that. There are the failures too. You haven’t been successful this time. There were so many applicants, blah, blah. But that is OK. I must and will accept that what is to be mine will be. Now and always. Let it go. Let it go, he says. But I love her, too. I know this. I want her in my sight. It is better then, as it was with her. But then there is the other one. A lovely girl. She fills my heart. I miss them. I miss our conversations, I miss being in their world. What will they buy for dinner, will he cycle to work? Did she finish that novel? Did they buy corn?

Soon.

And then there is he. I am held by such love.

Still jet-lagged. Too much to do and too much to say and my head won’t work. Small steps, he says. Small goals. Keep them small. Sun replaced by rain. An email account full of news and things to do. Not yet. Breathe. Take stock. Breathe. Clean. Walk. Sleep and find your way back. To him. To me. All will be done. All will be managed. Enough for now. A bientot.

They have these running gags in The Archers, if gags is the right word. They are something silly and frivolous that is passed from character to character. They are obvious but they make me smile. This week it was Viennese whirls. Debbie was going to tea at Peggy’s with Jennifer, Lillian etc. and Peggy asked Jennifer to pick up some Viennese Whirls saying that she thought that they were Debbie’s favourite. I find them rather dry myself, said Peggy, but I want to get them for Debbie. Debbie tells Jennifer that she was only being kind the last time Peggy offered them to her and actually she couldn’t stand them. So Jennifer says that she will say she forgot them. Meanwhile, Peggy has asked Lillian to buy some. Get two packets, she said, just in case. You can see where it is going. Well, Debbie finally owns up over tea that she can’t bear them. They are so dry. Well, it must’ve been Lillian who liked them, said Peggy. And before Lillian could reply she’d handed her back the two packets. You take them, she said. Then ten minutes later we hear Jazzer saying how Lillian had given him two packets of biscuits out of the blue. Must be my lucky day, he said, though they are a bit dry. I wanted to cheer him up, so I related the same scenario in the car on the way to Manchester. It barely raised a smile. Poor love. And then on Monday. There they were a packet of Viennese Whirls on top of the fridge.

I’d decided to go for a shorter walk this morning as my foot was sore yesterday. Just to kick the bar and then round and then down Pier Street and home. I walked along North Road as usual, delighted that my foot, as yet, wasn’t too uncomfortable. I turned right along the Prom and went to kick the bar. Then turning round I was met with a surreal sight. Great waves of white smoke were drifting across the Prom by the bandstand and out to sea. Flickering blue lights could be seen through the smoky fog. What had happened? Was it a large beach bonfire gone awry? Dottings of students in pairs, mostly, sat on walls and benches observing at a distance. I walked nearer. There were six, maybe seven or even eight fire engines. Firemen were dragging hoses that had been plugged into fire hydrants on Terrace Road. Where was it coming from? I looked up. It was the hotel on the corner. Ty something it is called and owned by the man who owns The Four Seasons. I couldn’t see much for the smoke. The Prom had been taped off. Blankets had been laid on the ground. Blue lights from several police cars flashed. I turned down into Terrace Road feeling a little shaky. I heard steps behind me. What are you doing? A voice said. I stopped and turned round. It was a female police officer with what sounded like a Scandinavian accent. I’m going to the Spar and then going home. Is that OK? I asked. Yes, she said. Outside the Spar a couple of lads stood watching though seemingly unconcerned. I brought the tale to his bedside for when he woke thinking it might spark him. It’s his hometown after all. But he was groggy, lost in his misery. It passed though. It did pass. Where is the BBC when you need them? he said later.

I dip in and out of books at work. For now it is Richard Sennet’s The Craftsman. I love the detail of his fixations. He moves in close. ‘Craft routines relieve the stress by providing a steady rhythm of work’. I like that. And later he refers to it as the ‘calm industry’. What a beauty. You are doing one already, she said over lunch. You are doing a PhD already. I know. And in another life I would. A the RCA, in the embroidery department. But shouldn’t I break the pattern, this hopeless longing for approval? I’m doing it already. So should I just leave it be?

It was a joy to see her. So steady, so grounded. The calmness of her. Though I know that she isn’t, not really. It was good to cry. I grieve over my temporary loss of him. All will be well. It will return, our joy our contentment. Sometimes life has to be shaken up. It is necessary. Breathe and accept.

A bientot, my love.

Soon to be in transit. It always unsettles me. And yet, there is also a part of me that is excited. To let loose the routine that holds but ties me. It is such a journey and I don’t feel as strong as I did. And this constant need to plan to think of every thing from beginning to end. I got that from her. I remember how she was before we went on holiday. Sharp-edged and as tight as a coiled spring. I couldn’t understand it. Why wasn’t she excited like we were? Didn’t she want to go? I understand her now. All the responsibility was hers. She wanted it to work, to be smooth for her and for us. Food was bought beforehand. I recall one trip to Spain when we travelled with a whole cooked ham. She’d snap and bicker with him. All that packing to do. Why did she have such a big family? Why did she want it? To love and be loved? It’s the London bit that unnerves me, all that carrying and then on the plane. Will I have room to stretch out? I want to travel light but I also want to bring what I need. But I don’t know what I will need. How will it be with them? Will we get on? Will my foot be better? Will I walk? Will I eat? What will I eat? Let go. Let loose control and enjoy the peace of that. And I am leaving him to fend for himself. All will be well.

I walk in discomfort. It concentrates the mind. The air was warm, humid. Should I take my stick?

Work now. Not edifying stuff but it pays the rent and I am grateful.

A lovely dream. She was making something (something out of cloth with words that I couldn’t read on it) and he was planning his speech for her wedding. She was me and vice a versa. So you have a degree? said this woman looking rather like Cecilia Imrie. I shall look you up, she said. Then I was trying to climb these stairs. They were outside and affixed to the side of a building. White stone, painted white but there were children’s toys blocking them. I had to climb over them. Why have they been put here? I asked before I awoke.

He was better yesterday. Lighter. So was I.

Town was spattered with revellers again. The residue of students reluctant to go home for the summer, perhaps. Four lads are sitting on a bench on the Prom just along from Pier Pressure, their legs stretched out. They are eating fried chicken out of cartons. Blow job, one of them says as I walk past. Was that for my behalf? Who knows? I am sanguine.

I woke from a dream in which he’d been handing over some blood samples that he’d taken himself. He was passing them through a sort of hatch. And then he became me. It was I who was passing over those little plastic tubes.

I forgot to mention what I saw yesterday. A young man, black, tying a lobster creel with a long rope to a bench on the Prom, just opposite the Cardigan Bay B&B. He was fixed on his task. Round and round went the rope. Tighter and tighter. Had he found it in the sea? They usually belong in the harbour, piled up like mountains by the wharf edge. It wasn’t there today. I looked for it but it was gone.

The light mornings are passing. No blue sky as I walk home. We were rancorous yesterday. Neither having patience with the other. I was most at fault. My back was tight and I couldn’t take his long face any longer. I know it’s irritating, he said. No, no, I said. But it was. I was unkind.

Light played across the buildings on the other side of the harbour. I’ve never seen that before. The sea lapping and reflected on the white walls. Rather beautiful.

We just do our best. He isn’t brave. So be it.

I wanted to write about my sewing. It gives me such stress. My head rubbishes it and yet I want to do it, so much. It is a nothing and yet it is something. The flow of it. The forming of the letters, the words that become unrecognisable even after each stitch is placed. It is an experiment as it all is at the moment. But still I want some form of completion. To see it through. To see them all through. This one, the list of radio programmes I have listened to while sewing, pleases me from a distance. I like the black on white. The way the thread bleeds into the white. The knotty-ness of it. It reminds me of old typeset books, that same unevenness. That same bleeding. I had a series of old Latin bible pages just like that. What is the Japanese word for mistake, error in ceramic? It’s something like that, that handwork thing that both pleases and unsettles me. Do you want to do it? he asks. Yes. I say. Well that is good enough reason.

I’m listening to an audio of my walk as I write this. Fascinating. I want to write a soundscape. The swish of my waterproof trousers and something else a scraping sound, could be the machine against my thigh. The seagulls, the shout of drunken kids. It has potential, I like the rhythm of my walking.

Outside a magpie clackety-clacks.

I’ve got a bladder infection. You get them quite a lot, he said at breakfast. Yes, I do, don’t I? It’s an age thing I think. I read somewhere that this was the case, particularly with women. She is always getting them, though she is brought lower than I. She answered the phone yesterday. It’s been a couple of weeks since we spoke. Her voice is croaky. It’s not to bad, she said, running the ‘to’ and the ‘bad’ into one word – t’bad. It’s hay fever, she said, though I don’t get runny eyes or nose it’s my chest and throat. She appears better though, more cheery. I’ve got a cat, she said. A stray cat appeared at her house, she tells me and has taken to sleeping in the shed. She is delighted. And then there’s the neighbour’s dog. It’s a menagerie, she said, laughing, delighted.

I’m made low by it and so weary. I went swimming again yesterday but shan’t go again, at least not for a while. I find it dull, exercise for exercise sake. I want more than that. So walked again but wearing my boots this time. It was good to be out but I’m not relaxed. Too watchful of my foot. I walk through membranes. Membranes of noise and then silence. Is it ever silent? There is always something, if not the rush of the tide, there are screeching gulls and peeping oystercatchers. Coming up through the Castle grounds then up past The Angel, the clamour of young people shouting hits me. A wall of it, that hems me in on either side. Fragments of sentences fired out into the ether ricocheting of buildings assail me. What you fuckin’ lookin’ at? shouts one boy sitting with his friends on the steps of The Academy re-telling a story of an almost-fight. I said I’m sorry, says a girl, her hands on her hips, as she argues with her lover. And three boys striding up Great Darkgate Street, one of them saying, you know… they’ve got funny hair.

Town is full. Even some of the B&Bs are full. It’s been graduation week. You see them all those parents dressed in dresses and suits, a little out of place. All that hanging around. But proud. For some this is the first generation who’ve gone to University. So proud.

He was better yesterday though sleepy. He slept and slept. It has to be good that, doesn’t it? I long to do the same but I want to do things too. Some work. Some sewing. Get back into the flow of things. Enough. Time to work. Anon.

A damp day, muggy but wet. I must tell you this, he said when I got into the car. He’d been for a coffee and one of the girls behind the counter had chatted to him. It’s raining, he’d told her. Well, she replied, all I can say is I hope August isn’t going to be a damp squid.

Did you say anything? I asked. No, he said, I left it. Quite so.

I did it. I went swimming.

Isn’t it funny how new things can make one edgy? He picked up on it. He was to take me, drive me so that I would do less walking. I’m nervous, he said, and I’m not even going to be swimming. I understand. We are out of our routine, out of the framework that holds us steady. And he is allowing his mind to tell him all is not steady. All this from just a sense that going to the US would be too much. An unravelling. That is what it feels like. And now the slow re-winding. It takes time. It will take as long as he allows it to. It is all about confidence. I’m not resilient, not brave like you, he said as we sat on our seat opposite the bowling green watching a man play alone. I know this. But it will still pass. Everything does. And he will feel better. He will get his equilibrium back. I do what I can. I try to be as solid, as unwavering as I can. The days seem circumscribed by it but still I get things done. I try to manage my grief over not walking. I do more yoga, I stand on one leg when I can. It is familiar, I used to do it a lot particularly when preparing food in the kitchen. She found it particularly disconcerting, me with my leg up on the counter. Is it hygienic? she asked. Probably not.

I went swimming. And I survived it. I wasn’t prepared for the sense of exertion it gave me. I don’t usually use that part of my body. Ten laps. I did ten laps and then got out. I was getting cold. Tomorrow I will try twelve. Mostly elderly ladies, some who didn’t even enter the big pool preferring to stay paddling in the little one. It wasn’t busy, no screaming kids. Gentle. He watching from above, waving. I did it. We did it. And then I got that application done. It’s alright. And there is pleasure in between. Sitting in the sun, watching butterflies. The smell of elderflower. Crosswords. Watching him getting better, slowly by degrees.

I’ve agreed to rest it. My foot. My injured foot is not getting better. The swelling is less but the discomfort is not. I’m not good at resting. I like to move, to keep moving. And that hour of energetic, contemplative movement is important to me. I walk out into the dark and come back with the morning. But this morning I haven’t gone. I took his advice. And it made me cry. To let go of it is hard. You could swim instead, he said. Yes, I said, I could. So that is what I will do. Starting today. A week off. A week of not walking, of not putting weight on it. But what a struggle it is. To step out. To step out of my regime. So rigid. I follow the lines and without them I am a little lost. A new thing. A new thing to get used to. I called them. What do I do? She told me. Times, costs everything. He will have to take me. If I’m not to walk I will have to be taken. I haven’t swam for a while. I’m not a strong swimmer. l like to be in the water but I’m not confident. I will become so. I will build up my strength. We are resourceful, he said as he kissed me goodnight. Yes, I said, we are. There is always a way. What can I learn from resting? Do more yoga, take more time over each pose, feeling each pose. It is always about time. How to fit it all in. I breathe. So alert. So acutely aware of everything.

A little pampering. I’d booked it a while ago for the holiday. To have nice feet. It was lovely. I didn’t want her to stop. And how I love their chatter. Both of them. Inconsequential chatter about weddings, dresses for the flower girls, favours and then family holidays, cats, feral ones and fledgling seagulls. She fed them strawberries, she said of her colleague. I like them. They are restful to be around. Simple pleasures. And her boyfriend, soon to be husband, going up inside those wind turbines. How I’d love to do that. Shall I ask?

I am a little lost. It is all awry. But I will recover. Even now, I feel it healing. My foot. My precious foot.

I decided it last night. I was both excited about it and a little nervous. I put it out ready. Would there be enough battery power for the whole hour? I’d wait and see. It was only a trial run. I’ll carry it in my hand, I thought, as I walk. Did I still need my stick? No, I’d try without. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself or it. Just hide it a little with my sleeve. Yes, that would do. I wanted to capture all the sounds right from the beginning. Did I get the key in the lock? No, I don’t think so, next time. I did get the sound of my steps on the wooden stairs, and the door shutting behind me. Would it pick up peripheral sounds like the seagulls crying in the distance or just the swoosh of my waterproof trousers as I walked? It was fascinating how different my walk became as a result. I heard everything, acutely, as I wondered if the machine had picked it up. The sudden noise of the sea as I came down the little hill by Alexandra Hall, the chatter of voices on various benches along the Prom, the pounding of music from Pier Pressure, car tyres, the hum of the generator in the Old College and the wind. Not strong but it was there. I haven’t listened back yet. The memory of it is enough for now. We shall see. Would each day be different? What possibilities does it hold?

I listened to two of the Pursuit of Beauty recordings on the iPad, one on Virginia Woolf and the other on ephemeral art. Fascinating. The first for its poetry and association of place and the other for the integrity of the artists who make work that won’t last. The immediacy of it was like my experience this morning. Each step had merit, each breath, each roll of the tide. This is now. This is me here now.

We have reached a place of peace with it. He isn’t going. I shall go alone. It will be OK. It is OK.