Author: Ellen Bell

Though I dread the initiating of it, walking in the dark can be magical. Was it Monday when I walked along the Prom round from the harbour and saw them? They were fluttering and rushing forth in the wind, a huge wave of orange sparks. It caught my breath. It was a fire. Someone, a man in black was stoking an immense fire against one of the stone groynes. The smell, the cracking, the yellow, fiery flickers – it was like something from some kind of gorgeous hell. It was wondrous. And then there was the police van that I followed along South Road, only to see it parked ahead of me, and to see the policeman through the window standing in the lounge of one of the students’ houses. I know the house. I often look in, captivated by the idea of having a pool table, as they do, in the living room. The officer was standing, jacket off, bullet-proof vest left on, his arms crossed looking down on a student who was sprawled on the sofa, a large plaster stuck to his forehead. Had he called 999? It was his bodily insolence that struck me. Had someone shopped him? We will never know.

He calls her every day. They mostly talk what he calls “bollocks” about what she’s watching on TV, or reading, or whether she’s had a walk (up and down the Home’s corridors in this weather) or been ‘squedging’ (their words for a kind of buttock squeezing to strengthen her muscles) and doing ‘chair ballet’ – or as they call it ‘pointy toes’, to which he always adds “with no farting, I hope”. I’m usually making supper when he calls her and I generally listen or add a comment which he passes on, particularly when I can hear that he is struggling to think of things to say. It is difficult for her. She is a private person, self-contained and elegant. The effusive friendliness of such places is not her thing. But what choice does she have but to acquiesce. She keeps it at bay as much as she can. ‘They’ve put a plastic wreath on my door,’ she told us on Christmas Eve. And yesterday she talked about being “dragooned into going to meet Santa.” Poor love. What did you get? he asked. A box of crayons, she replied. And some time later she told him that she’d also been given a pair of trainers. Perhaps from the Home management? They’d clearly noticed her efforts to remain active and thought it would be an appropriate gift. She hates them. They’re Nike, she said, and black and pink. No, I can’t see her in trainers. Poor love. Anyway, we’ve agreed on our next visit to take them, and the crayons, away with us under cover of darkness. It is good to hear her laugh.

My laptop purrs. It’s a gentle hum, a woozy kind of fizzing sound. She’s on the way out, bless her. I’ve had her for an age and I don’t want to exchange. It’s not sentiment but a real, deep down fear of technology, especially new technology. I am used to her and her quirks, so I try to be patient, willing her to fire up each morning and do what I need her to do. One day she just won’t. I know this. Till then I hang on, trying to be patient with that interminable turning blue circle on the screen.

He got me the cat. She is called Patricia or more fondly (already, even though she is probably plastic, or fibreglass or a kind of cheap ceramic and she’s boss-eyed) Pat the Cat. Welcome to your home.

He’s from my long ago. Does he remember me? Does he know who I am or was the praise he gave me via Instagram for a drawing I’d posted, (again, from long ago) unconditional and an act of absolute spontaneity. The words he word were short but meaningful, for me. The other students used to call him God. I didn’t but I understood the reference. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the trouble and mostly for the pleasure it gave him.

I saw the turban-wearing Sikh this morning. He was striding towards me along Llanbadarn Road. He never gives me eye contact. I am always ready to give a nod of the head but he looks straight ahead, concentrating, no doubt on walking and punching the air with his hands as he did so.

And I saw a cat. Not a real one. It was in the shabby shop on Northgate Street. He says he will have a look. Was it wood, plastic or ceramic? I couldn’t tell. Might it come home to us and join our fast increasing family of things?

He’s been doing it for a while now, though up until now its usually been during breakfast. It’s my diabetes, he says, as his eyes start to become heavy, so heavy that soon he can no longer keep them open. I go back and forth up and down the stairs doing things and when I come back up he’s gone. Head bent forward, chin touching chest and shoulders rounded. He falls asleep watching things in bed, his iPad often slipping to the floor. Yesterday he started to go after supper. Why can’t I be more patient with him when he does this? It is after all, (like his chronic flatulence, yes, I know), beyond his control. But I am not. I get cross, irritated. I want him to be vital, awake and alive. And this, this snoozing at the table smacks of a dotage I don’t want to face – yet. It will come. Help me to be kinder when it does.

I kept hearing this noise. At first I thought it was the fridge, then the fan oven until I discovered it was coming from me. Was it my bones? No, it was my underwear, my body in fact a piece of black lacy lingerie (my one weakness, as Dorcas Lane, aka Julia Sawalha in Lark Rise would say). It isn’t boned like a corset but it sounds like it when I bend, emitting a kind of soft creaking like the creosoted hull of a boat. Funny.

I think about her often walking those corridors. Not unlike Ted Hughes’ caged jaguar, pacing the floor imagining the jungle, the open plains. Poor love.

And her, she crowds my thoughts too. So much bile. I still reel from reading it. What did King Lear say? Am I as misguided as he?

It’s been a week since I’ve walked out in the early hours. It’s been too cold and slippery. The air was strangely warm this morning. I had too many clothes on and I instantly regretted the two hats, the scarf two coats and the two gilets. But it was too late to strip it all away so I set off regardless. The Prom, and indeed, town was empty. A few stragglers as always – a student dragging a suitcase, off, no doubt to catch the first train out of here, and a man walking the other way from me along Llanbadarn Road, hat pulled down over his face, collar up. I walked to the harbour. The wind was strong and gusty, and the waves hurled spray onto the tarmac. The Perygyl was too wet to contemplate walking on. It was good to be out and the music in my ears helps to distract me from the stiffness in my legs. At least I can still walk. And I shall keep on doing it for as long as I am able.

She will be walking too, masked-up though sans apron, along those tinsel-strewn corridors of feigned jollity, aching for her own home now long gone. Do the teddies help?

It was raining but I need some air. I wanted to go somewhere wild, forsaken and emptied of people. He took me somewhere in the car and we rocked over craters and rocks. He parked and I walked. Not far, just a small circuit. There was no one there but a woman with three dogs who kept seeking out rabbit burrows and sticking their noses in. She’d put different coloured coats on each of them, pink, blue and yellow I think. I stumbled over the uneven path and felt the rain on my face. The ground was waterlogged and soggy. I walked back by the river and felt better for it.

We hadn’t seen her for a while. Not since they’d mysteriously put scaffolding up outside the shop, and ultimately putting off potential customers and leaving her with nothing to do but read her book. Did you find out why they erected the scaffolding? I asked her yesterday. Yes, she said, they painted it. They painted they outside. Mystery solved. That’s good. She was on good form. Does she mind that I pump her with questions? Does she know how much she delights me, us, with her laconic humour. We talked of all sorts of things from Christmas decorations (‘I’ve these little birds of paradise with feathers and sequins. I love my knick-knacks.’) to advent calendars (‘I’ve bought my daughter a chocolate one. We often reuse the old ones using blu-tack to stick down the doors.’) to sofa beds and Christmas trees (‘My brother is meant to come down with his car to help me. Or perhaps Morgans might deliver. I always have a real one.’) I reminded her of what she told me last time of how she hurls the spent tree over her balcony (I live on the fourth floor, its the only way. And I always make sure there is no one underneath.) We talk politics too, some serious some silly, such as Boris Johnson’s ‘cultured dishevelment’. I’ve an ironing board, she said, perhaps I should use it. How I like her. She lifted my sinking spirits yesterday and my drawing improved as a result. What a gift good people are.

She was crying when she answered the phone to me yesterday. It has been two weeks since we last spoke. It’s my sister’s funeral today, she said. She’d never mentioned her before, well not since she’d gone into hospital and told me of her in a home that she said was depressing. She has a brother too, she tells me. It seems the social work saw through her threat to not organise home care, for she has been relying on The Red Cross to help her dress and wash (alas, though not in this severe weather, the roads are too icy). She weeps from grief and frustration, for can do nothing for herself anymore. She will go to the funeral but remain in the car. It’s too cold for me, she says. I will stay with the little one. Her sister was younger than her but stronger, she says. I feel her sadness and ache for her. She’s to be buried at the foot of my parents grave, she said.