Author: Ellen Bell

Life, I’ve come to realise is mostly a cobbled-together affair. There is nothing clean, neat or orderly about it. Ah, we make grand plans when we are younger, imagining that everything will be seamless and smooth and oh, so beautiful. It is not, and can never be so. We are messy beings, internally and externally and we encounter others who are equally so. It makes me sad. I cannot make it all better. I cannot solve things. I cannot make peace with her, or with her or her, or indeed, him. I don’t have any answers just this day to day trying, of picking up dust and fluff and trying to make it all pristine. He is the only thing that makes sense, that sometimes can be pure beauty to me. The rest makes me want to weep. I don’t understand why there has to be so much pain, so much despair, so much conflict. Do we all carry the germs of it all inside and the outer world is just a reflection of that inner fighting? I don’t know. I know less and less. We do what we can, fail and then fail better.

Forgive us for we know not what we do.

It was a word she used to describe the clearing up of a mystery. He said it was the wrong word. I think it might be the right word to describe what seems to be happening to Smoker (2). Or so it seems to me as I catch glimpses of him through his venetian blinds. I try not to snoop. I look for his light to come on, in his bedroom first and then his kitchen downstairs. It’s usually about 6.30am. I see him stretched across, or on the edge, of his unmade bed (usually black sheets) reading his phone. He doesn’t seem to smoke out of the window anymore. Perhaps he has given up and my appellation for him is no longer apposite. Anyway, his room, and indeed his clothes and hair are becoming distinctly disorderly. There are dirty clothes left on the floor, the clothes rack is still up and still heavy with those perpetually drying clothes. Is it all a sign of unhappiness? Is he missing his children, or is he just lost? Or is it all none of my business? I feel an affinity with him, though I don’t know him at all. And the narrative I spin for him is all mine. I hope I am wrong. Truly.

He is an elusive character. Is it real, or a bluff? I find him intriguing. It’s a kind of seesawing. Not unlike trying to coax a fox or even a rabbit out of its lair. He gives something, a little teasing thing and then silence. And then something more comes, out of the ether. Is he interested, will he respond…. I am tired. Tired of tricksy people and trying to walk on tippy toes. I just want to do my work and move on, and back to my drawing….. And yet, I want to be kind and support and celebrate my fellow artists, always. Oh, can it be simpler, please?

The astrology guru had warned that there might be something coming on the tail end of the full moon. And she wasn’t wrong. Oh, how it throws me. And she was all sweetness when we met that day. Or maybe that was just my take on it. I cannot understand what she is so upset about. I had tried so hard to be sensitive to her, her work, her mother’s practice and their shared grief. My head spins with reasons. I cannot know. Just like I cannot know how my own one thinks. And she is certainly lost to me, if she was ever mine. The editor is being kind but for how long she will be so I don’t know. But I must just pick myself up and carry on. I have four pieces to write and still so much to do. Onward.

She is beginning to sound more like her old self. Her voice is still relatively quiet but she is starting to respond to the usual banter that she and he usually engage in, even going so far as to ask: “What’s the goss from the coffee shop?”. And she is reading again. “I started Ruth but the introduction got a bit hard going, so I’m back with Lucy Worsley.” It’s something. “Did you walk at all?” he asked. “Yes,” she said, “with the Sarah Steady.” Apparently the frame is called Sarah because the designer made it for his wife, or was it his sister. I love it. God bless her. Let her find her will again. For it is tremendous.

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.