Author: Ellen Bell

I have these recurring dreams. They usually involve walking up a hill. I am in a hot, foreign country. It is busy, the climbing street is flanked either side with stalls, cafes and restaurants. It is busy. I am generally in company and we are deciding where to eat. A seemingly prosaic dream. But the choosing is complicated. It is hard for us to make definite decisions. I am aware of white heat, of exotica, of food that I both know and do not know. The restaurants we go to are outside, without walls, open to the world. Last night I was aware of the waiters. They were mostly women in trousers, black and with white shirts, like the male waiters, but they were the Maître D’s not the men. I noticed one particular woman, large-breasted and officious.

But it was the dream I had the other night that stuck with me. I was talking to my sister. She told me that she kept seeing my face reflected in her window. She was living abroad. She asked me to come and see. I got there, I know not how, and looked at the face in the glass. It was dark and this image shone out. A woman’s face, framed with dark hair and with her lips a deep red, moving, animated. It doesn’t look like me, I said to her, but I recognise it.

Such things stay, stay in my mind. The meaning is deep. A gift.

She bounded into the studio, her face aflame with what looked like sunburn. In just a tee-shirt and cotton khaki trousers she looked the very picture of hearty good health. Tea? I asked. Oh, go on then, she replied. Milk? Just a drop. What does just a drop mean? I thought. Is that OK, I asked, sliding in through the door and putting the paper cup of tea under her nose for inspection. Oh, I’m not fussy, she said. Have you done radio before? I asked. Just the once, she said, and I was usurped by a terrapin and ended up with just two minutes. I had no idea what she meant but laughed anyway, saying, Let’s hope there’s no terrapins this time. Oh, I don’t mind, she said, terrapins are far more interesting. I listened in the office. She was good. Clear and engaging. Sometimes I really like this job.

She texted in the end, two messages and two texts later. Do I irritate her? I don’t know how to be, how to manage all this. My wants and her non-wants. Just breathe, she would say and accept what is. Accept the messiness of it. I can’t rid it of the mess. It has happened. This is what we are left with, can it not be enough? Is that what she would say? Isn’t this enough?

I think I will make as well as write my way through it. I can do it in secret, in private. Harness the energy, the ungiven love and time into things, into gestures, into making.

Oh, God, he said at breakfast. I laughed. Sometimes they do play some pretty obscure music on Radio 3 of a morning. What’s she singing about? he asks as another woman begins to wail. Big pants, I reply. At some point they were playing something called Airport Music by a composer called Julie Wolfe. I actually rather liked it.

Just let them get on with it, he said. He is right. I get myself all tied up in knots. It doesn’t have to be that way. Just let them get on with it.

The day unravelled. So be it. I read too much into people’s expressions, voices. It isn’t all about me. I am safe.

I will send it off. Off into the world and see what happens. Perhaps nothing. It doesn’t matter. It has been made. And that is enough.

I forgot to set my alarm. He opened the door and woke me. 48 minutes late. It doesn’t matter, he said, clearly anticipating my panic, there is nothing you have to do. No, there isn’t but it throws my day, I said. Throwing my day. Upending it. I tried to keep calm. Should I cut something out? Not go for my walk, have breakfast out? No, just keep steady. All will be well. You will catch up with yourself. And I did. But the tension has taken root. Hard, in my back, becoming cemented by the questions I am asking myself as a result of this oversight. That is the rub, all this questioning and with no real, absolute answers. There are none. Never, ever.

There is nothing you have to do. But there is much I want to do, need to do. Feel the need to do. My life is full. Full to the top with endeavour. With doing. I am a doer. She’s a doer. And I do, all the time. Whether you could say all was work, I don’t know. What is work? That is essentially my practice. What is it? What is work? And why is it that it is only by working that I feel worthy. Am I just what I do? Am I? Is that all I am? If so, what am I when I am not? What am I when I am sleeping? What am I when I become old, senile?

He forgot to wind the clock. A line from Laurence Stern’s Tristram Shandy. I heard it on the radio as I made breakfast. Neil Dudgeon was playing Tristram. I remember him from the Royal Exchange in Manchester. A modest actor, funny, brilliant at times in his ordinariness. Who forgot to wind the clock? Was it his father, or a servant? Either way it had some bearing on his birth, I believe. I listened with half an ear.

I walked anyway and was glad for it. A warm morning. Damp but warm. The air smelt good and the rain stayed off, even though I went out prepared in his coat. Drowned in it.

I ask much of myself. A juggling act. So much I want to do. So much I need to do. Nothing I have to do but breathe and feel the ground, my gravity.

Let’s see what happens in the nothing. In the none action. Maybe nothing will bring forth nothing. Who knows. I remain curious.

It’s always quiet when I walk early on Monday mornings. Everyone is abed. It was still this morning, cold but still. The firmament was wide open. No moon but thousands of stars. I stopped and paused a few times, just to feel my breath, smell the air and close my eyes. It is beautiful to be out there in the night-becoming-day though I never relish starting out. I want to stay in, my body wants to stay in in the warm and the light. But once I am out it is fine, I find my step, my frame adjusts and I move through space happy to be out.

The man who has been sleeping in the space under the castle (what is it a meeting place, a shelter? Either way it is open to the sea.) was up and walking about. His sleeping bag was still strewn across the bench and unzipped awaiting his return. Was he smoking or pissing? I cannot say. I felt a frisson of discomfort, could it have been fear, as seeing him restless. I am used to his sleeping form, a slumbering, seemingly benign presence. Awake what would he be like? What would he do? He did nothing. He clearly keeps himself to himself. I fantasised about bringing him food. How would he react? I want to offer comfort and yet am awkward about it. How far should I transgress into his privacy? What must it be like sleeping to the sound of the sea? Cold. But the air is clear, clean. I hope he is safe.

Her initial reply was cold. Well, I thought so. And then she wrote again with such warmth. I am touched.

And she? Nothing as yet. Be patient. Her life is full and for that I am pleased. The sky is a little blue with trailing wisps of white clouds. Accept it all as it is. That is my tenet today. Be at peace with what is. And wait. All will come about.

I struggle to get off to sleep now that it is light in the evenings. It is OK. I let myself drift and listen to the birds. I watched a squirrel, who I initially thought was a cat, as it bounded along a branch. They are so fleet, so nimble, so trusting. And last night I did some Reiki. I tried to send some healing to him for his nose. But he still complained of it this morning. It will heal. It will.

As I walked along the Prom this morning in that complete dark a white feather fell from the sky. A perfect light fluff of whiteness. I touched it before it fell slowly to the ground. Some people believe feathers are evidence of an angel nearby. A nice thought. I marvelled at it purity. White against black.

I finished it. Not before I had a hissy fit though. I wanted it to be too perfect. It has become a weighty symbol. Too much so. And it doesn’t matter, not really. Nothing does.

The news was horrible, horrific. My loves, foaming at the mouth. I do not understand. It is beyond my understanding. What can I say? What can I do? Bear witness? Is it enough? Is it ever enough?

But there were short glimpses of gentle nothingness, I heard myself saying. That is enough, she replied. That is enough.

I’d been so edgy about it. It’s funny, in my weekly email from the Blurt Foundation they wrote about the fear of doing nothing. All those lists, running to catch up with myself. If only I could get that sorted out, that ticked off the list, that cleaned, that thrown away I can be at peace, I can be still. All the while knowing that once one list gets ticked off another is started.

There is nothing to do. Six hours of nothing to do but follow the practice. Six hours of watching my breath. Six hours of feeling the ground. Six hours of not speaking. More, for I hadn’t spoken all morning. What a space it left. What will come in? I thought. My back was rigid all through it. Honour it, she said, it is holding you in place. Yes. My carapace, my armour, my corset. Holding me. Keeping me upright. Protecting me. From what?

I was the first there. I sat cross-legged watching everyone arrive. The smell of sage took some adjusting too. A dry, slightly sour smell of hay, dried mown grass and kitchen herb cupboards. I liked it after a while. A cleansing. I watched everyone arrive. Caught the smell of the rain every time someone opened the door. The imposed silence made us awkward. Do we nod, avert our eyes or smile? I went with the smiling option but not everyone responded. If people don’t want to make eye contact, honour that, she said. My sense of smell was heightened. I caught whiffs of perfumes, deodorants and when the last woman came in, a stink of TCP. Nine of us electing to be part of that silent day.

I was surprised by my inner resistance. It continued throughout the day. The rigidity of my back being its most resonant manifestation. Judgement was another. Judgement of myself and my fellow participants. A nit-picking kind of voice commenting on clothes, bodies, mannerisms – that droned on and on. Are they all doing it? Or am I the only non-gracious being here? By not speaking, by not sharing intimacy I couldn’t puncture it, find my way in. To love without knowledge. To love absolutely without being pleased aesthetically. That is the key. I watched them as they walked ahead of me, or as they lay doing yoga. All with different bodies, different skins, sexes, inclinations, desires, hopes, fears and prejudices. We’re all sharing the same air, she intoned. Yes. That is true. Is that not reason enough for intimacy, for knowing? To love without judgement. It’s a kind of separation process, this judging. Why? Why do I want to separate myself? From what?

Sometimes I was bored and my eyes would stray to the clock. I want to go home. I want to be in my routine, following the day to the letter in its carved out blocks of time. Held in place by my structured life. But then sometimes, just sometimes, I lost myself and became nothing. What is that? It is beyond my description. A no-thing. Beyond ego. We did nothing. And I was exhausted.

The day was wet then drizzly. I watched as she walked barefoot on the grass and knew the sensation, felt it under my feet too. We were encouraged to whisper before we spoke. And she came over to me, the lovely smiling girl who has been so ill. We sat not facing each other. Don’t ask your partner any questions, just listen and then talk, she intoned. I the smiling woman’s voice and the way she moves her head when she talks. You are lovely, I said to her afterwards and I meant it.

Only three from my course came. I was sorry for that. They weren’t ready, she said. I thought of them, as I knew they would be thinking of us. It has got under my skin. That nothingness is so frightening but so tantalizing. There is nothing to do. Think of that. Nothing to do. And the world so busy.

They’re are still working on Terrace Road. It’s all blocked-off and has been for weeks now. Where are we supposed to park? he moans. There was a man I saw this morning, he continues, he was delivering to one of the pubs and he had to roll his beer barrel along the road. He couldn’t get near with his lorry. He was fuming. Fucking shithouse, he was shouting. What at the workmen? I ask. Yeh.

He’s laughing now. You know the cleaner at Morrison’s, the one from Brum? Yeh. He says that when he has to carry all the garden stuff outside. Fucking shithouses’s. That’s what he says. Fucking shithouses’s.

It was breezy yesterday morning, especially down by the harbour. The wind blew something hard against my lip as I walked. A twig, a stone, a leaf? It stung and then I tasted salt.

A silent day today. We smile about it, he and I, and bow. We’ve taken to bowing at each other, nineteenth-century style. No radio, no singing, no talking. We sign at each other or write things down. It made me anxious on the Prom. What if someone tries to talk to me? And someone did. I tried to manage it best I could by nodding and making assenting noises. Does that count? I’d walked behind him initially, trying to work out whether I should cross the road or not to avoid an encounter. I’d seen him shining a strong torch along the beach. He turned to face me. It’s my daughter, he said, walking in step with me, a large man in a t-shirt. She got really pissed, he continued, and has lost her bag. Have you seen it? A plastic bag. It’s got her phone, her shoes, the lot. My head on one side, I try to emanate empathy and then move on. There is a swan in the water by the harbour. A lone white one. Earlier, coming down St David’s Road I heard a great fluttering in one of the trees. A large bird, though I couldn’t see it. An owl?

I cried yesterday. I think I’m going to be alright and then it comes. No one bats and eyelid, which I am pleased about. I don’t want the fuss. I described it as feeling like metal, my carapace, my armour, a rigid shell across my back. I know that it helps to share such things but it is nonetheless excruciating to me. I want to be in control, held, composed. The day imploded after that. But that is OK. Then I listened to a programme about the Arvon Foundation. Is it a good thing to do? All my fears about eating in public, a lack of privacy, having to share bathrooms, cook together, read together, work together come crowding in. And all that exposure. Can I weather it?

I wonder how many will come today. Ugh, strangers, just when I’d got used to the group. How will it be not to talk? Freeing? No expectation, just a polite kindness. But how will it work? I asked him last night over supper. That’s her problem not yours, he said.

Do you know the lazy daisy stitch? she asked. I was taken aback. I wasn’t expecting her interruption and it took me a while to work out what she meant. She draw the shape with her finger onto my aida. You know, like a daisy. Then she talked about doing applique. You know where you sew one material on top of another, she said. And then we put mirrors in it. We sew around the mirror shapes. Ah, yes, I said, I know, like you see in Indian-style clothes. Yes, she said, smiling, I am Indian.

What a smile. What vivacity. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, she said, but there is never time. I have to take the residents their pills. But she stayed. We talked more. We talked about residential care in India. She is from Delhi. She’s been working in the home for ten years and has almost completed her nurse training. I will leave in September, she said. If it was a nursing home I would stay. I work all the time. Studying and working. There are two students in our home. My daughter is studying Architecture in Bristol. I couldn’t get a grant, my husband earns too much. He is a radiographer at the hospital. I am lucky, my husband cooks. No, there is nothing like this in India. We care for our parents at home. One wife I know gave up everything to go and live in the hospital with her paralysed husband. We pay for it all ourselves. I go back every three or four years. My husband wants to return but I say we need to earn more money first. We don’t own our own house. We can’t get a mortgage yet, but when I am a nurse in the hospital, maybe.

She wanted to talk. She wanted to talk to me. She touched the cloth. The stitches are tiny, so small, she said. It’s nothing, I wanted to say. It is a prop, a means to be here, witnessing, observing, being amongst these strangers. But I didn’t. It was her way in. She responded to what I was doing, recognised it, knew it. It was enough.

And I thought nothing was going to happen. Just the man going in and out of the French windows. And the other man making noises. Bugger, bugger, boing, boing, tum-tee-tum. And another member of staff, a Pilipino girl, singing the chorus to she’ll be coming round the mountain – Aye, aye yippee, yippee aye – as she laid the tables for lunch. And the woman in the spectacles, drinking tea, filling in a diary and staring at the crossword folded up on her lap, her rucked-up pop-socks the only sign of something awry.

I’m muddled today, said the woman with the son with tattoos that we used to see in Morrison’s.

Keep it confidential, she said to us. Some people don’t want it to be known that they are not looking after their relatives. It’s the shame. She said it too.

He saw her at the entrance, she was bringing her mother in. I wanted to do it, she said, but it got too much. We just do the best we can, don’t we? And another, how is she? She talks of a dark  wood. It is hard being alone with the responsibility and so thankless too. What can you do? Just love. That’s all. That’s all there is.

Cut to the quick. I cut my nails to the quick. The quick and the dead. Quick, meaning alive. Quick in motion. Feeling, sentient beings. I cut my nails to the quick these days. I used to grow them long. I remember at boarding school, such talons. My pride and joy. Brittle, easy to break but they shone. I remember later a boss at the theatre. Hers were inches long. What can you do? Barbara Streisand grew them so she couldn’t type. It’s like not wearing heels so that I can run. My fingers need to work, to move across the keyboard, to sew, to make, to cook, to wash, to do, to be. Cut. Quick. To be quick. Be quick. I’m coming. Rushing. Rushing to fit everything in.

A beautiful morning, crisp and even. The cleaner from Birmingham telling him it’s fresh. They’re all talking about seeing the gritter in town. I saw him. Ahead of him was the sports car, whizzing about 40 miles an hour down Great Darkgate Street. So tired this morning, and waking with the name Sophie in my head. And my alarm going off in the middle of the night. The wind was a gale, so much so I had to shut the window. The hyacinth perfumes my room like night-scented stock. A quick one. Cut to the quick. Cut to the chase. I’m a little nervous. Will it be alright today?

There is a hum. There is no real silence. There is a hum by the Old College, I think it is a generator. There is a hum coming from the Samways truck that waits down by the harbour for the fishing boats to come in. From Port to Plate in 24 Hours it reads. There is a hum coming from the public toilets by the Castle where I stand for a moment stilling myself by the hydrangeas, that are coming into leaf once again. There is hum in our home from the boiler. There is a hum in my head that is my blood, a life force throbbing. Well, perhaps not a force. I am not a force. Perhaps I used to be once. I am happy to be less than that. Something more gentle, more acquiescent.

A day of children. Children on the radio. In the morning a little boy singing into the microphone and in the afternoon various youngsters reading out poems and religious pieces. Another boy came into the studio with his mother. He recited it by watching her lips mouth each word. Initially he spoke with his head down in his chest, barely audible. The producer must’ve said something for he began again, louder this time, his head held high. Then there was a pause. The mother folded up the paper and nodded to the boy who made to slip down off the seat. I took the headphones. Isn’t there more? asked the Producer. I look at the mother. He’s only learnt the first paragraph, she said, sorry. The earnestness of the child was enchanting.

The moon still shone out from behind the clouds as I walked, throwing a sheet of silver onto the sea.

He wrote to apologise. He’d been angered by something else. A fit of violence. He’d hit out at me, at everyone. Will I forgive him? Of course, there is nothing to forgive, for it is, was nothing. But I will keep a distance for a while. He doesn’t like me being abused, is unsettled by it.

The doctor called for him last night. I was deeply asleep, the ring of the phone jarred me, took me from that healing part of sleep and I couldn’t catch up.

Will she like it? I try to remember if my grandmother made us things. I suspect she knitted. My mother may not of accepted them. I think Nanny did, little jumpers and cardis perhaps. I will finish it by the weekend. I just need some notions. They call them notions, those odd bits, such as buttons, elastic and braiding. I have a notion. They won’t be in till Friday, he rings to tell me. It is fine. I can wait.

Enough. I am off to begin work. Then a phone to call from Spain.

And yet, all I really want to do is sleep. Long and drawn, a sleep of nothing. A sleep from the River Lethe.

Is there ever a right or wrong thing to do? As I grow older I become less and less certain of anything. What is right, what is wrong? He sends me an email, full of vitriol. Is he right in what he accuses me of? I don’t know. My memory of that time is different to his. He is hurting. I understand that. But what can I do? It is her decision and has been for many years now. She is grown. If he wants to find her then he can. I cannot influence or stop that happening. I don’t know how I feel about it. It is between her and him. I have my own fears to deal with, my own uncertainties. I cannot carry his for him. I can do so little.

This making that seems to have taken over my recent days, and in between work and domestic stuff, it’s all I can do. And even that I don’t do particularly well. It is years since I made something on a machine. I’ve had a few. An old Singer, a wonderful 1950’s Bernina that was a lead weight and now this one. A cheapo plastic thing but it does, so far, and it is simple to understand with numbers showing how to thread it. I am all ham-fisted. I want it to go well too much. Is it the right size? Will she like the colour? I want to hurtle towards the end of it, to be assured of its success. Yet, at the same time I want to take my time, doing each step with care, love. It is my gift. I could buy one. They are cheap. Throw away prices. But this way I have formed something, something I hope she will wear. It has potency that. I think of the tales. The cloaks, the invisible coats, the shoes – the gifts of magical garments intended to protect, guide and nurture.

The morning is coming up. I walked round the other way this morning in the hope of chancing upon bakery smells. None. Not even a hot cross bun. The man was still sleeping in the shelter. In the adjacent one there were three bags of bread, in a row, half opened. Were they sandwiches? Were they donations of food? There was no one else about. Just the University security men doing their usual drive-round. Rubbish bags have been put out along North Road and Llanbadarn Road, some neat others more slapdash.

The pitter of the rain on my umbrella was lovely. The guano from the starlings under the Pier reeked. I couldn’t see the lights of Aberdovey, it was too misty.

I have much to do. Two bookings today. I got a call yesterday just as we were washing up after lunch. Can you get up there in fifteen minutes? It’s a bit tight, I said, irritated at having to rush. When’s the guest coming? He’s already there? Didn’t you know that you were supposed to book an opener? He said he had but couldn’t remember their name. So messy. I said I’d do it only to have him call back two minutes later to cancel it. So shabby. A shabby way of treating people. What can I do? This sort of chaos is beyond my control.

He is hurting. He is lashing out. Let it be. Let it roll. Be steady. Just love. That’s all you can ever do. Just love.