Author: Ellen Bell

Its like knitting, she said looking over my shoulder at my drawing. She had suggested we drew with coloured crayons, two at once, strapped together like splints with masking tape. After that she had encouraged us to take another two, two in each hand. I was the only one who took up the challenge. Yes, she said, just like knitting.

He says it makes him feels cosy watching me knit. I do it every night when we watch our films. It reminds of the women who came before – his mother, Auntie Edna, Mrs Lloyd, they all did it, though I think he said Edna was best. Nanny did it, did it well. She taught me ages ago though I have forgotten much of it. I remember my hands would get hot. They don’t now. And the wool would be too tight. Not now.

Crayons. You have to work them hard, she said. Yes, I remember. They were always unforgiving. I coveted them nevertheless. That tin box of Caran D’ache coloured pencils. Beautifully laid out in perfect order. The smell of wood and a very distinctive mustiness of lead emanating whenever I opened the lid. The crayons you got in a pencil case (the zipped up kind with elastic hooks – I had a much-cherished one in the shape of a guitar) were never as good quality as Caran D’ache but they fitted, they belonged. And I needed that neat order of things. Sharpened ready for school.

He said he had to collect his prescription from the doctors. Would I wait? Of course. Sitting in the front seat I watched as a middle-aged woman, probably not much older than I, began emptying her car parked immediately in front of me. It was an estate car, a silver Audi. She looked bright, intelligent. Her greying hair was shoulder length and pulled away from her face by an Alice band. She had a round figure, though not fat. Her jeans were tucked in her boots. The colours of her clothes blended well together, soft greens and blues. Who was she doing this for? This wasn’t her life, I knew that. It was too truncated, too small. I imagined her kitchen with its shabby chic – a big table in the centre, a Labrador, an Aga, potted herbs in the window. No, a ground floor flat in that terraced house wasn’t for her. Her child perhaps? A daughter. And she was doing all the donkey work. Was the child at lectures? On a gap year? She seemed content enough, even when it began to rain. Back and forth. She’s used to it. Likes to be useful, involved in her children’s lives. I felt a longing as I always do when observing such mothering. It was never so, through no fault of hers, for she hadn’t had it either. Such mothers. Beautiful mothers. Involved, interested, creating a homeliness that is both all-embracing and stultifying. Of course I may have got it all wrong, I thought, as I watched her drive away, the narrative is mine not hers.

Walking along the promenade in the afternoon sunshine we passed a man photographing three crows who were perched perfectly equidistant from each other on the railing. What title will you give it? he asked the man. Yes, he said, titles are crucial. His accent was broad Welsh. Swansea? I asked him afterwards. No, he said. The crows were unconcerned by the attention. The breeze flapped at their feathers, one of them swayed. They are such big birds but singularly unaggressive, unlike the seagulls who worry away at the parked cars, touting for scraps, screeching out their frustration when none is forthcoming. The light was exquisite. Pure. Clean. A Blue blue and a red red. No greys.

We began watching The Madness of King George. A glorious production. Who is that then? We kept asking. Oh, its the one who played so and so in you know that film. Nigel Hawthorne was magnificent, one moment sane the next reeling. Such poignancy. The king crapping himself on the ground. Shades of King Lear. Power corrupts, yet without it what are you? Even Mrs King was prevented from seeing him. Is it harder to fall from such a height? Should we feel compassion for all in their falling? I think so. Yes. Always.

Voices on the radio. A woman holding the hand of her husband dying of Motor Neurone disease. She writes to say that they have both agreed to switch off the ventilator. He will die. She asks for strength. She asks us to pray for her. Yes. Always.

A good day yesterday. The drawing felt good. I even brought home my drawings. No mother now to tape them to the fridge. Did she ever do that? No, not then. They didn’t then. I remember buying her a mustard pot at Chester Zoo. I was so proud. Bought with my saved up pocket money. I thought it beautiful. Magical. She never used it. I never saw it again. I understand. I was buying it for another kind of mother. It wasn’t her fault. Her gifts to her mother would’ve no doubt been rejected too. It’s OK, you know. She kept my pictures. That’s nice. She valued them, more than I did. That’s good. A good thing. Yes.

When asked why he wasn’t in a hurry to leave, the character Conway, in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, answers, ‘Because I like being here’. Being here. Being happy to just be here. Anywhere. Just happy to be anywhere. It is a simple desire. If indeed, it is a desire (desire implies something energetically yearned for). It is more an acceptance. A spirited willingness to just be where one finds oneself – wholeheartedly and without resistance.

Can I say this about being here? Sometimes. More than I thought I could. One thing I do know however, is that when I can I am content.

The streetlight is working again. I am glad. Doris, the woman he speaks to in Aberaeron when he calls up with his weekly report says that it is something to do with the sensor. A branch from an overhanging tree apparently is meddling with sensor and they will have to get permission from the landowner before they can do anything about it. We’ll just have to get you up the ladder, won’t we, Doris? He says to her down the phone. She laughs, suddenly caught out, though she still calls him Mister.

A hearse drove past us carrying a wicker coffin. It looked so beautiful. A gentle bier. A flowery basket. It stopped me still.

I told the truth yesterday. I was nervous beforehand. Nauseous even. I took in a deep breath and just said it. I didn’t think about judgement. At least not then. Not till after really. It just had to be said. Articulated. I felt better. One always does. When I told him what I’d said I thought he’d be angry. But no. He said he would support me. So there. There we are. I have set it in motion. We shall see. We shall see. Won’t we?

There was an ambulance parked outside one of the houses on South Marine Terrace. It was still dark. Not yet day. About 5 am. There was no one inside the ambulance but the lights were on. Green.

Lots of serendipity. I forgot someone’s name, the name of singer, and then someone said it on the radio. And then this morning out walking listening to my favourite song. I listened to it twice only to hear it played on the radio on my return. Little things. Such little things make life seem circular, enfolded – everything is connected. Meant. Maybe.

We were sitting out of the rain. By the harbour on a rickety bench. A small man walked past. You called out a greeting to him. He stopped. Do I know you? he asked. I’ve got dementia, where do you live? You told him your name. He shook his head. His trousers were loose, hanging low over his shoes. They found two men in the harbour, he said. Drowned. Then he shuffled off, ignoring our goodbyes. He reminded me of another small man. I am reduced, he said.

The grey November gloom hangs heavy. We just have to sit it out, this waiting. I dreamt she came for us. A nice woman. Warm. He wanted to stay in the dark, hiding. She came for us nevertheless. Time to go. It was in Jersey. I’ve always wanted to go to Sark, I said. What is it like? I asked. Oh, you’d love it, she said as we walked out into the sunshine.

We stop. We stop what we are doing. Stop to think. To remember. There is a well of grief. A tremendous sensation of grief that isn’t mine yet it takes me over. The crying is forever. Forever. Lest we forget. Never forget.

They have moved her. Is it because she became too difficult? She sounded happy on the phone. The new home is by the park. In the Spring I will see all the colours, she tells me. Twice. She mixed me up with someone else. I didn’t know you were an artist, she said. When’s your operation? It doesn’t matter. She is discombobulated. Is he forgotten, her friend Laurence? She forgot Terje almost immediately. Out of sight out of mind. Are they just means to an end these men? Someone to talk to, to focus upon, to gain the attention of? Or is it just the brain growing old, tired of having to remember and reverting to a more childlike, omnipotent state of I. Me, myself, I. Perhaps she was always a little selfish. No, not selfish, self-centred. Loss had taught her to be so. I think.

The strategies I put in place at the drawing class worked. I think. I lowered my expectations and tried to just enjoy the process of making marks, of looking, of remembering. Drawing is just remembering, she said. Possibly. Or is it more than that? Listen to the sound of the charcoal on the page. Draw the sea. Yes. Simple. It was nice to not have to think. We were there early, the illustrator and me. I asked him about his work. A lived-in face and a disgruntled demeanour. Well, about the work. You wouldn’t believe what goes on, he said. No, probably not. He makes images for book covers. Not drawn any longer, photographed. I’m a weekend painter, he said. Sad. He draws well, with confidence. Back in the sixties we drew from plaster casts, he said. It shows, I thought.

A gust of wind caught up the leaves, animating them. Outside his bedroom window they are custard yellow. A beautiful dying, virulent and gorgeous.

Alice gave him up when he was just a year old. She is shy, awkward. There are no words for such grief. Such loss. Let there be silence. Let us stop for the silence. Lest we forget.

In the supermarket everyone is complaining about the cold. The frost will be getting at my wisteria, says a woman in the queue behind us.

I cried after the class last week. The grief of failure joining hands with other griefs, some known some not. Kitaj, he said to me as he stood staring at my drawing. You know Kitaj? he asked. I nodded. How many times have I come to this frozenness? Over and over. Time and time again. Meeting my averageness – pushing through the mass of not being able in the hope of finding that something, that spark. Of what? Wonder? Best in show, I had overhead two women say the week before, as they surveyed my initial sketches. Best in show. And yet, last week I was frozen. Again. Immobilised by fear. Tactics. That’s what I need. Some tactics to have in place so that I keep drawing, keep moving – keep the momentum going.

She can see me next week to discuss my proposal. What is it? What is my proposal? What is it I want to do? What do I have to offer? I need time to think about it. Radio off. In the silence.

Cornwall was good. Wet but good. Her lovely house. Cool, white and serene. We talked all night, Mary Margaret. Not enough sleep but good soul work. Good soul work. She has a studio. In the garden. Everything in place. Ready. She is ready.

Most of the galleries were shut. Tourists gone. Season finished. High tides. Lemon Street slippery with wet leaves. The promise of the Alba. Upstairs closed. A gift from the kitchen. Yes. I sent out a wish. It was granted. Shining, full of love in the Sloop. The stink of stale beer. I didn’t mind. It could have been anywhere. As skittish as a gazelle. Beautiful.

Thank you.

I have come across his name before, though I can’t remember the context. Was it to do with fairy tales? Perhaps. Michael Rosen made a programme about him and it was aired yesterday on Radio 4 Extra. He used to give broadcasts to children. He took his own life in the end fearing he would never escape the Gestapo. A woman tells Rosen that she has one of his quotes tattooed on her arm. Words on the skin. Embedded. Indelible. I think of Hetain Patel. Text like lace etched into his skin. What was the quote? I look him up on the internet. Was it ‘The work of memory collapses time?’ Possibly. I like it anyway. I will read his essays. This is how listening works – it takes you somewhere else into other encounters. A sad man, a scared man, a vulnerable man, certainly beautiful.

Walking down the stairs at 5.00am I pass a couple coming up. They are dressed for Halloween. He in a bowler hat and Charlie Chaplin-esque suit, she in a long black lace dress. Both their faces are painted white with kohl-drawn circles around their eyes, daisy-like. On the promenade students lolled, make-up now running.

There was another Emma, not just the fictional one in the song. A sister. Red hair and stunning blue eyes. We spoke only once. She talked of being disappointed. No, not exactly talked of but implied. She didn’t feel good enough. That much I sensed. And yet, what a beauty. What a vivid girl. Like Benjamin she also took her life. She wasn’t escaping from the Nazis but from herself. That not good enough self. The failing self. In his CD The Poetry of Self-Compassion David Whyte talks about how the soul doesn’t care whether we fail or succeed, that it only cares whether the failure is our failure, whether it is authentic, truly ours. If so, the soul is satisfied, he says. You do not have to be good, writes Mary Oliver. You did not have to be like your other sisters, Emma. You just had to be you in all your beauty and chaos. You did not have throw yourself in front of that train in Didcot. You did not. I still see your eyes, though only I met you once. Rest in peace.

Tomorrow I go to Cornwall. I exchange one tide for another. It will be good to return. Though the pull is strong. I give myself to the experience, the journey. May there be tea.

I remember a song from my late teenage years by Hot Chocolate, I think it was called Emmaline. It was a story song about a girl who longed to be an actress, to see her name in lights. She doesn’t succeed and one day her lover comes home to find her dead. ‘Emma, Emma, Emmaline’, wailed Errol Brown – it always gave me goosebumps. She couldn’t live with the disappointment, couldn’t adjust to the smaller view, the lesser ambition. I was much moved, though my dreams then were small, smaller than now.

As I walk I think of Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch, she too longed to do something big, to make a difference, make a mark. In the end she gives it up (the potential power for change that wealth had given her) for a smaller, simpler, interior life of marriage, of love, of service to one, one individual. She retreated to her hidden life, that authentic, un-historic life and was happy. Who knows? It is fiction but we romantics take solace where we can.

We’ve been watching Cranford again. She is clever that Mrs Gaskell. Amongst the silliness the minutiae is writ large. The nobleness of small acts (such as Miss Matty’s friends offering what little money they have to help her when the bank fails). What are those big lives? Are they necessarily better? Can we still shift the world along with our tiny gestures? Our little births, bursts of something like creation. Every day plays its part – even the grey ones. Mrs Gaskell wrote about Charlotte Bronte – hagiographic some say, so what – describing those grey Yorkshire days where nothing happened. Just rain. Rain and wind. Trapped in doors. Charlotte and her sisters. Small corseted bodies held in, vivid with life. The creation was still shifting, still moving, its momentum still surging within the grey.

Be patient. Life will happen. Still happens. Perhaps not as we envision it. So be it. Acquiesce. Learn peace. Peacefulness at what is. Be still for the magical. Even in the grey. Listening to a 1940’s recording of the Conan Doyle’s The Speckled Band on Radio 4 extra, then a discussion about The Secret Garden, making pancakes, solving a knitting problem and the nearer prospect of a work room.

A dead wasp lies on the window sill. I sneak out and wrap him in cling film. I shall draw him. A small thing. A small life. Un-historic. Part of the family of things. Remember. You do not have to be good. Just let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Thank you Mary Oliver. I shall. I shall.

We are looking for a new home. Somewhere with a little more room. One more room. A room in which I can work. A room of my own. We have begun looking, seeing our first last week. It wasn’t right. It was the smell of it. A home has to smell right. It smelt damp, unloved. A little mean. It is going to take some time, I think. Well, it has to be here. The world is no longer my oyster. Well, it could be but I choose to narrow my focus, at least externally. He needs to be here. At least for the meantime. So we work with what there is, what we’ve got. Should we write a list? All those pros and cons. What do we want, what do we need? Light. Warmth. Space. Quiet. Beauty. A tall order? Do we envision the same space, he and I?

Years ago I moved into his house. Years ago. Eighteen years. His house in Cambridge. I was escaping and he took me in. I brought colour, order and turned it upside down. We laugh about it now. Out went the dried flowers, the golf trophies, the curling photographs. He was tolerant. I made us a home. It was nice. Now I bend. I am willow.

That house was small with only a chink of sky. I like to be high up. Like now. I just don’t know. Can we find a new home in this town that meets our needs, wants and aspirations? I don’t know. So what can I do? Remain open? Try not to say NO too quickly, wait and see. Wait. See.

I have been lucky. Such wonderful spaces. Made into homes. Home. A place to daydream, Bachelard called it. A space for those dreams. May it come. When it is ready. We can wait. I can wait.

Waiting. I am waiting. And I have never been good at waiting. It is the space, you see, that emptiness, that room. That waiting room. Time without obvious purpose, a void into which anything might come, anything might happen. This is good. I know. Creatively, it is important. But it scares me. It is unknown. And yet I must wait. Wait for something new. Something unforeseen, unimagined.

There are all kinds of waiting. One can wait impatiently – drumming fingers, jogging legs or biting nails. Or one can wait expectantly – certain of a positive outcome. Or one can wait with grace – open to all or nothing. Happy with the nothing. And there may be nothing to wait for. I wrote before of the poet who said she was waiting to become herself. To become that self she always thought she could be. It may never happen. This may be all there is. Would it be so bad? I am smaller than I thought. At least on the outside. Inside, I cannot see the end of me. This is a good feeling. As my outer world shrinks my inner world increases. Does it matter that no one sees it but me? Does my inner, shining world seep out into my outer one? I’d like to think so.

Can I learn patience? Can I learn to sit quietly, peacefully with the nothing, the nothing-ness of my present creativity? I don’t know what I want, what I need, so therefore I should do nothing? Right? And yet life happens still. It does. See. What do I see?

I thought it was a cat. In the dark. Running ahead of me up the hill towards Constitution Hill. It wasn’t. It was a rabbit. On the road. Bounce. Bounce. It’s white bob of a tail flashing through the blackness. Later in the kitchen a moth flew onto the window – attracted by the light inside. I peered at it. A rare view. It stretched its legs. Stuck like glue to the glass. Held by impulse.

Waiting. I knit. I am re-learning. Nanny taught me years ago. I remember the sticky fingers. I think I told you. Already. Expecting. Expectant mothers used to knit. Did they all know how by instinct? Possibly. It is just what you did. Sit and wait but keep your fingers active. Sit and wait. Wait. Wait and see.

What can I give him? Give my heart. Are those the words? In a bleak mid-winter, the carol by Christina Rossetti with the two tunes. I prefer the old one, we both do. Giving. It isn’t straightforward. Do we always give to receive? Do we give to help another? Or is it just a passing on of something we no longer want, require or wish to have around us. Give. Give what? We talk about having a simple Christmas this year. I am intimated by stuff. I think I always have been. I am monkish. I would live even more simply than I do but cannot really impose it on another. It wouldn’t be fair. I am uncomfortable with clutter. Though there is a little girl-like being inside of me that leans towards the tiny, tiny things in boxes. I try to reason with her. The adult me prefers the pristine, the clean, the empty space – that waiting space, waiting for other possibilities. Yes, Christmas. No presents. Give but don’t receive. No thank you. I need to clear more space. Can that be my gift? Space. Empty space. Growing lighter, slipping it all off. Slipping off the weight of all the stuff.

My work is stuff. Matter. Yet again another contradiction. I need to make. To create. To form. To use my hands. Then the stuff must be framed, given authority, protection. Then what? They need homes, those thoughts of mine. They need to become part of another’s story. Mine melding with theirs. I give to share the stories. Will you hear mine if I listen to yours? Here. Have it. Do you want it? Have it. Please.

I give to become whole. I give things away to become lighter. I become lighter, I grow closer. Closer to home. Home is our things. We fill our homes with things. Gaston Bachelard writes that the ‘chief benefit of the house is to shelter daydreaming’ that ‘the house protects the daydreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace’. Yes. And the things we own, hoard, collect, muster, spark those daydreams, knit them in a cosy familiarity. This is us. These things. It can hurt to let them go. Go. Go. Go now. See how it feels.

She packs them up for me. She is sweet, a gentle woman, busy as a bee, with a purr for a voice. Off they go. Those thoughts of mine. Those things tiny in their conception winging their way to another’s home. I give them away. Do they want them? Are they wanted? I think so. And what of me? What do I want from such giving? It is complicated. The work comes alive. The work finds home. Do I? Is that what I search for? To belong in another’s life? And yet, the thought is an uncomfortable one. Either way it is an action. I need to act. It is a potent action. I need potency. I give what I have. I come alive amidst the shedding. Yes. That is enough I think.

Other thoughts? Yes. The man in the navy-blue sleeping bag still sleeping each morning in the promenade shelter. Bless you. Others? Yes, I keep thinking about Emily Dickenson and that man saying that he was glad that he didn’t live near her. She was too much. Too intense. Don’t be so intense. You are too intense, Ellen. Why so? I live intensely. I live a small life, whole-heartedly. What more can one do? Pursuing happiness. That’s what Jeanette Winterson calls it, the pursuit of happiness. Worthy of the attention of one’s whole heart, I think.

A woman talks on the phone to a radio presenter. She wants to wish her nine-year-old daughter happy birthday. How nice. They sound nice, her family. They’ve moved to Basel for her husband’s work. So brave. Two girls, nine and eleven. So brave. I would’ve liked to work abroad. To live properly abroad. (I have done so but in a borrowed way, in other people’s houses.) To set up my own home, abroad, one step removed from what I know. My own home. New. My own space for those daydreams. I have it now, but in a small way. Not wholly. Not yet. A waiting room, really. Waiting. Patiently. In love.