Author: Ellen Bell

I never set out on my early walk with pleasure these days. It’s a sad fact, but it is true. It’s the beginning that’s the hardest. The loss of cartilaginous cushioning in my hips makes my legs stiff, unyielding, unwieldy, I walk with a limp and a lean. It is graceless. I will myself to go faster but my body refuses. It does improve the further I get, and by then I am taken over by the gorgeous smell of the morning air, the sound of bird song, the lift of the wind and the array of floral aromas from the gardens I walk past, and as we approach June the blue of the sky as morning approaches in earnest. The steeling myself to go out is always worth it. As is the blood flow to my poor little hips. I am lucky. I am blessed. I am learning much from this pain, for which I am grateful. And I cannot call it chronic, not like Michael Palin’s poor wife who, if the papers are right, couldn’t find any relief from her agony. Poor, poor love. And poor him. To have been together for so long.

There was a hullaballoo outside The Spar this morning at 4.30 am. I could see a gathering of bodies by the sliding door and then the chanting started. Lads, singing something. It sounded aggressive, unkind and I turned down Portland Street to avoid encountering them. The noise of them echoed through the town, only quietening as I climbed up onto North Road. He thought it might be kids from some sports trials. He’d seen tents and marquees on the field by Morrisons. I thought of the people in the flats and houses nearby with their sleep disturbed. Has it always been the case with the young creating chaos?

He texted him to ask when we might visit. He replied with a list of possible dates. They are busy. She is dying and there are people to see, and, no doubt, they prefer to fill the spaces rather than leave them empty to fill up, as they inevitably will, with grief. He writes to tell him that he is working on his son’s garden and that they had a happy time at a garden centre yesterday. I am glad. It is a lovely thing to make a garden at such a time. They have been together so long. They are inseparable. What will he do when she is gone?

Smoker (2) was up when I walked past his kitchen window. The lights were flashing (he has a line of flashing lights in there) and I could see him sitting with his eyes trained on the TV. The lights were on in his childrens’ bedroom too. Where they awake too? I attach such sadness to him. And for all I know he may be quite happy with his lot of part-time father. Who knows? I don’t.

It was peaceful when I walked. The half-moon was covered in a mist. There were stars through the clouds. And now the day has come and the sea from my window is a calm blue.

It’s a blessed feeling. There is real grace in it. That putting aside of rancour of a scratchy kind of amour propre, of ego-driven hurt. Nothing matters but being open, kind and loving. She has such a delicate face, moon-like, with pale Pre-Raphaelite skin set off by her long rope of red hair. I like her. I cannot help it. She writes so beautifully and feels things too. I was glad to see her. Let it be well. She was probably spooked, like a nervous filly in an unfamiliar field. And then he came over and took my hand. Did I offer it him, or was I just putting my hand on his arm and he took it? I think he is as sensitive as she is, her mother, sitting in the corner sewing is steadier, their ballast, one and all, I suspect. The real grace, of course is what it gave me. I forgive her too. I always have and always will.

I continue to read Sally Magnusson book about her mother’s dementia. I read it in short bursts, at breakfast mainly, in between my frequent comings and goings, up and down the stairs making beds, sorting out the washing and other domestic tasks that I long to get done so that the day can stretch out uninterrupted. (It never does, by the way.) It’s a profoundly moving piece of writing. And the way she peppers her mother’s and her own story with scientific facts about what dementia does to the brain is chilling. How will it be to sit across from, to draw people with that condition? Can I ever truly understand what they are feeling? She writes of the fear, the disorientation, the torpor, the loss of self and all that was previously known and, indeed, loved. What are we without self, without direction, without knowing? How is it to care for someone who is lost to us, and themselves. I think of those I remember from the Home. The man who’d sit by the front door day in day out, coat and hat on longing to be taken out. Or the woman who was in the same place my father was at his end, the one I’d catch sight of on her bed, weeping softly and holding a teddy to her chest. It was truly pitiful. Where is grace to be found there? Is it all in the eye of the beholder?

Emerging from his room in the early hours needing a pee, he asked: “What’s the name of the butcher?” The day before he’d told me that he’d heard his number plate read out over the tannoy in Tescos, only to be told that some kind soul had noticed his car boot had been left open in the car park and informed Customer Services. He’s done it before. He says its because he presses the automatic key fob in his pocket by mistake and that opens it. Last time it was just forgetting. He’d walked off leaving it wide open. He is sanguine about it. And, in the whole scheme of things it is nothing, nothing. As is the drips of pee on the floor when he doesn’t quite make it to the loo in time. It is age, ageing and doddery-ness and I should be more forgiving and kinder. I try. After the event when I’ve been snappy and scratchy, I am. But I will try harder. I promise.

He went to the coffee shop without me. “I’ve sad news for you,” he said when he called to say where he was sitting and to tell me who he’d spoken to and who had made him his coffee. “The wedding is off,” he said, “Posh and Becks have split up, and apparently she’s going round telling everyone that he hit her.” I am sorry. They both deserve something like happiness. And it’s hard to be in a small town when something they’ve puffed up with hopes and dreams and all that fairytale detail is punctured. I am sorry for him mostly. But it doesn’t sound like anyone he spoke to was laughing. “It’s more likely that she hit him,” Jack Russell’s mum said.

They talked about the Queen’s Coronation in 1953. She was almost thirteen at the time, he was six. They had no TV, no one did back then, at least not here. So there were no moving pictures, no real focus, other than the ‘street-party’ that was held in someone’s garage. She remembered it being a dull day. Neither of them could remember what day of the week it was. Apparently someone gave her a coach and horses as a souvenir. She kept it for some time. They had jelly and sandwiches and the women of the street served them the food. He remembers the event through the photos he saw, and kept pouring over, in the magazines from the time. It seems that that was enough to cement it in his mind. And hers. I do like to hear them talk about such things. A life lived before me.

It was a gentle morning as I walked. No wind at all. I was tired and walked slowly, seeing things with more clarity, drinking it in. The lights around the marina, blue against the black, are a comfort in the still springtime morning dark. There were lights shining from a small fishing boat too. It was moored on the far side. I could see two men moving around and in and out of the boat. Perhaps they’d been fishing all night and were bringing in their catch. They worked in silence, companionable, knowing each other and the separate tasks they had to do, always did.

As I walked towards the station this morning I watched as a great juggernaut made its way towards me. It was like some kind of dragon, its lights appearing in the misty, grey dark to be of fire. It came slowly but steadily. A huge thing. It turned at the roundabout, crossing in front of me on its way to B&Q possibly or Lidl in the retail park. Brand-spanking new, its cab and wagon gleamed white. Emblazoned on its side was a patterning of what looked like pink flowers but when I peered closer I saw that they were pegasusi or winged horses. Pink winged horses. PRETTY LITTLE THING it read. Perhaps it was a lorry-load of ‘My Little Ponys’ – a job lot possibly. As a child she certainly would’ve been delighted. Oh, the pride she took in combing that plastic monstrosity’s mane. Over the arch of the cab it read – DELIVERING HAPPINESS.

I had one the other night. It was quite early on, though perhaps being an early to bed kind of being, for me it wasn’t. I had two of practically the same dream one after the other, or so it seemed to me. Something or someone was at the front door. (Thinking back to it now, and I can see the images of it very clearly, it must have been our front door here.) They were going to come in. I didn’t see them but I knew I was terrified of either them or what they represented and I was rushing, pawing, scrabbling up the stairs to escape them. And I was screaming or trying to. The stairs felt enclosed like the set of steps in our farm in Lancashire, or indeed the ones we have here, a narrow tunnel of a space. My screams came out as animal noises, begun in the throat as moans but unable to be fully articulated. I tried and tried again. I think it was the huge effort that this took that eventually woke me. It was only 9.15pm.

We talk as she does my feet. Our words are cast outwards from our mouths to the sound of the pick-picking of her scalpel blade against my sole. I watch her as she works and talks as my discarded skin falls onto her plastic apron. She does most of the talking. I feed her discourse with questions which she takes up happily. We do we talk of? Her heart, her children, the painting of the shop, her husband and how he wanted to be an auctioneer. That leads us to talk of auctions and how she went in search of a small Moorcroft piece. “The auction turned out to be held in someone’s back barn. It was freezing, everyone else had blankets. And there was no coffee.” The Moorcroft was going for £500, and way beyond her affording at the time, she said. What then? Yes, the Royal Welsh Show. She’s already booked their caravan in. She loves watching the cattle auctions. She doesn’t care for the shops. She’ll sit for hours looking at the cows, the bulls. She has a favourite spot. Then she told me of her daughter almost breaking her neck falling off the bull at the Builth arena. Apparently, everyone has to climb it. She had to spend the night in hospital. “She could move her toes so I knew she’d be alright,” she said. There is no real exchange of intimacy. She calls me ‘Bach’ but then most Welsh women do. It’s a performance for her, as it is for me, I suppose. A mutual exchange, a way of dealing with the fact that we are in that little room together for almost an hour. I don’t know whether she likes me. It doesn’t matter. I see her struggles to be something, to match her father, her brother. There is spikiness and pain, I think. She removes some of the discomfort from my feet, though not all. But she isn’t as loving as she is, she has less to give, I suspect. She isn’t warm, and yet the other, she’s a performer too.

I will mark her day. Shall I write the envelope in capitals so that she will at least open it?

Do you think less of me? he asked. No, I said. How could I? He is my love.