Author: Ellen Bell

She told us that he’d called her a witch. She kept rubbing her eyes as she said it. Witch. We knew him a little. He was a dry man, clever, confident, I think. Sharp, but he could be kind. I liked him. It comforted me to think he was there, downstairs. But we’d heard the sharp tongue he’d used towards her. She seems unemotional, self-sufficient and strong. But perhaps not. A no-nonsense woman who is still grieving over the unkindness of her son. She says that his daughter was with him when he died and that he’d told her to give them all his love, especially his mother. She wants to take heart in this but says she cannot trust the daughter is telling the truth. She rubs her eyes again. Names become befuddled, daughters are mixed up with granddaughters, husbands with sons.

The more time I spend with her, drawing her, the more tenderly towards her I feel.

We tried something new, and went to a different café yesterday morning. We’d been there before but not to draw. It was a lovely thing to do. Apart from the initial nerves that I always get pre-drawing and in a new space, it flowed, that is, I watched people and made marks. My Instagram followers didn’t respond as favourably to them as I hoped they would but I did it, I made marks and that has to be enough. The expert on Russian politics came in with her husband and son. He clearly has learning difficulties. I didn’t know. When she’d talked about making waffles with her son I imagined a blue-eyed, bright, intelligent shiny specimen of boyhood. He looked happy. He smiled the whole time, engaging in his way with what was going on around him. She held his cup for him as he drank his coffee. He managed to feed himself and I drew his hands holding the knife and fork in jerky angles. Other peoples’ lives are never as I imagine them to be. I like her but I didn’t go over and say hello. She was with her family. It didn’t seem appropriate. It was a lovely morning. I was lifted. Will the sun be out today?

She was back in the home when we went to see her yesterday. I wanted to write ‘back home’ but she isn’t back home. Her home has gone, as her husband and all that she knew and loved and cherished. She is reduced down to one room that houses the remains of that fullness – the photographs, the baby drawings from grandchildren, her books and her multitude of teddies. She was confused after the trauma of hospital, a new hip and being buffeted about -“They only gave me half a hip. I asked them if they were cost-cutting.” Bemused, she said: “I’d couldn’t remember how to brush my teeth this morning.” They also forgotten to bring her handbag and laptop with her back from the hospital. She was particularly upset about her bag. “All my jewels are in there,” she said, and she showed me her now naked wrist usually delicately adorned with a couple of enamelled heart-shaped bracelets that her late husband had given her. She was lying on the bed, too tired and too sore to sit in the chair. She is tiny. Her skin is soft and cool to the touch. He loves her. I love her. We whisper encouragement. Keep going. The will is there. I know it and he knows it.

She will recover.

It’s a small thing. But small things are what I notice these days, and cherish. I don’t look forward to walking. My legs, knees and hips hurt from the bare bones grinding against each other. I walk stiffly and awkwardly. I am like the Little Mermaid given legs that cut like knives. But I can walk and I do. And for that I am grateful. I came back from one such walk yesterday and felt the coldness of the air on my cheek and it was marvellous.

She has become lost to us. He tries to call but gets no answer. One of her sons says that he has spoken to her but she is still groggy from the anaesthetic and the strong medication they are giving her. I miss overhearing their afternoon conversations as I make supper. He asking her if she’s ‘squedging’ and walking and her replying yes, and pointing toes. And then the talk of TV, who is escaping to the country and where. And then about what she’s reading. And she will relay where she is up to with Jane Austen or Mrs Gaskell. I miss hearing her laugh. She’d come on so well. And now there is this silence. We are to go and see her soon. I wish her the will to overcome this.

His wife died all of a sudden. Poor man. And he is such a good man. A decent man, I think. May she rest in peace.

We walked in the sun in the afternoon. Just lovely.

It was good to be back in the coffee shop again. I have missed drawing there and listening to the stories. I fall out of myself and the intensity inside my head for a wee while. It is nice (even if the drawing never seems to go well). Everyone seemed to have had a haircut. Is it the heralding of Spring coming? It was quite funny. All these newly shorn heads. And then there was the revelation of new relationships burgeoning. Dancing man has a lover. We are quaintly pleased, he and I. I hope it brings him some joy.

He read out the whole article to me over a period of two days as I prepared supper. Written for The Guardian by a Punjabi journalist and film-maker, it’s main premise was a plea for an end to public library closures. Growing up in poverty in Wolverhampton he wrote feelingly about the impact (he ended up studying English at Oxford) that access to library books had on his life. The self-same library that he used to walk the two miles to each Saturday with his father is now derelict. Though I did grow in the same need, I can concur with his love and celebration of public libraries. They fed my child too. Oh, the pleasure of being able to choose a book for myself. It was almost too much, like standing in a sweetshop and being told you can have anything you like, price or sweetness no object.

She’s had a fall and broken hip. She’s now in hospital and the operation was yesterday. We’ve heard nothing since. Poor poor love. She’d come so far with her walking. I wish her the will to start again. I hope she knows how much she is loved.

I listen to them talk on the phone as I make supper. He always has it on speaker phone. I prompt some of their conversation. Sometimes it is because I can sense he is running out of things to say to her, but other times it is because I am curious about her life. She has always been there but we’ve had little interaction of the years that I have known him. He asks about her first child, the one he never saw, the one who died of cystic fibrosis, I believe. The child’s remains are buried with his and her parents. And it was given the same name as his. Was that an act of fondness? She talked of going for walks with their father as a child. They walked to see another brother who was in a sanatorium with scarlet fever. I think my father had that as a child too. He was only two. She was four. Poor love. I had no idea. To be taken from your family at such a wee age. How did he make sense of it? And then he asked her how long her first born had lived. Six weeks, she said. They used to travel every other day to see him in hospital. They weren’t there when he died. We got a phone call, she said. It must’ve broken her heart. It still must.

I am curious about the way other people live their lives, particularly those who are close by. There’s nothing prurient in my interest, merely a wish to find a common ground, to notice and feel compassion. Take Smoker (2) for instance. As I have said before we can see his bedroom window from the front windows of our flat. We look down on him so to speak. I haven’t seen his two young children arrive for some time now. They used to come almost every weekend. I’d see them running up the steps after being dropped off by their mother while Smoker (2) would linger behind with her for a word. The kids would rush into the block, clearly knowing their way and seemingly happy to be there. He’s been alone each morning this week. I’ve seen him sprawled or sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, a hoodie on in this cold weather, reading his phone. I attribute a sadness to him but I could be wrong. He may be content in his solitude, who knows.

The snow was unexpected. I was rushing to an appointment. He’d offered me a lift. No, no, I’d said. I want to walk. I watched the snow turn to rain from my studio window and braced myself. The walkway from our hallway out to the steps into the car park was slushy and slippy. And the small flight of steps even worse. I heard him first. He was using some sort of mechanical strimmer on a bush on the edge of the car park. We know him. We’ve seen him loads of time and we nod, though we don’t know his name. He is a slow, lumbering sort of chap, not old. An employee of the super-fit, brown-skinned, ever-friendly, quasi-Australian (he’s really from Cardiff) director of the landscape gardening company that our agents contract the keeping of the estate to, he doesn’t emulate his boss’s saviour-faire. He saw me struggling with the steps while balancing my stick and umbrella and came over. Offering me his arm, and then taking my hand he walked me down the hill. I was so touched while at the same time thinking he must think of me as an old woman. A gentle being, clearly. The kindness of strangers…..