Category: Writings

We do crosswords together at suppertime. Saturday it’s The Times, Sunday The Daily Telegraph now that The Independent is kaput and weekdays it’s The Guardian and The I. It is a gentle thing we do, companionable, a gentle stirring up of our brain cells. I always want to please him, to impress him to excite a ‘well done, Poppet’. Some nights I am too foggy. Other nights I’m on a roll. He often knows what I don’t and vice versa. Sometimes we come up with the same answer simultaneously. I’m better at anagrams. I do them in my head, not on paper, moving the letters around in space, in the ether. At breakfast I do Sudoku and lunchtime Codewords. It’s a switching-off thing. A non-thinking thing. Restful. I love our life together, it is peaceful, loving and kind.

We couldn’t remember his name. We remembered Cleggie and Foggy. The Last of the Summer Wine, the character played by Bill Owen, five letters ending P something. I can see him, I say. Me too, he replies. Is there an L? Does it end in Y? G loved that programme. A silliness really. Nora Batty and her wrinkled stockings. I went there once. We sat in the café. He remembered just before bed. Compo. It’s Compo. Of course, I say.

Sunday afternoon and we are driving along Queen’s Road. The young homeless man is sitting on the Library steps. The lower half of his body is cocooned in a aquamarine-blue sleeping bag. He looks like a merman. The upper half is naked. He is sunbathing. I think he is smiling. He has all he needs. For now. The sun is all he needs.

Today the sky is a milky grey. No sun today.

Sometimes, you just have to listen and a better way, a simpler solution just comes. Listen.

Walking down into the Harbour I can hear its generator. It is not yet 4.30 am. In the dark I can just make out the driver, out of his cab, his wellies galumphing along the tarmac, a bucket in his hand. From sea to table in 24 hours, promises the lorry’s strapline.

It was warm. Unseasonably so for the still early morning. A shape passes me in the Castle gardens. Hi, it says. Hi, I say and walk quickly on. There are courting couples on benches, coatless students, silent now. I feel cocooned by the warm dark, grateful for its dryness. Nearing home a car pulls up alongside me, its headlights flooding the pavement with yellow. My hackles prickle. A window rolls down. It’s a taxicab. I’m going to Llanbadarn, says the driver ducking-down low to speak to me, do you want a free lift? I thank him, explaining I’m nearly home. He grins and gives me a thumb-up. No hard feelings. He drives off. Nice. I am touched by the gesture.

This morning was colder. They promised it would be. And rain. My coat got saturated. The Pier was still open, a bouncer in a yellow high vis jacket stood outside smoking. Students lurched about in groups of three and four. Pizza Lush was open. Through the window I could see a large man leaning on the counter eating. Walking down Great Darkgate Street a young woman was walking ahead of me, shielding her head against the rain with a Pizza Lush box. From behind she looked like a painting by Botero, wide thighs tapering to impossibly tiny feet. She wore a short leather jacket and a lacy emerald-green mini-skirt. I followed her all the way down the hill. Occasionally she’d break into a run, her legs swaying from side-to-side. Then she’d slow down, returning the pizza box to above her head. As I turned into Llanbadarn Road, she was continuing up Penglais Hill.

I’ve finished it. It isn’t what I thought it would be. I have so far to go. So much to learn still. Is it worthy of publication? I wanted to share their stories, that they so generously shared with me. Have I done them justice? I feel tongue-tied, made awkward by the responsibility of it.

Wait and see, eh? Wait and see.

Sometimes it is still light when I go to bed. The other night the birds were singing. It was beautiful. I opened my window and the air, fresh and cool, entered the room bringing with it the sound of song. I don’t know enough of ornithology to distinguish whose call is whose. I can pick out blackbirds and I know there are rooks, magpies but there may also be chiff-chaffs and certainly blue tits. It wasn’t a cacophony, not like the dawn chorus can be, all of them vying for attention. No, that night it was gentle, a subtle calling from tree to tree. I fell into sleep to their sounds. Lulled. A babe in arms. Emptied of thought, of care.

She answered the phone. I am glad. It’s been two weeks. Her voice was strong. She trusts me, is glad of the call, I think. We talk of church, of her daughter’s job. She didn’t go to church at Easter. It’s too cold for me, she says. They’ve no heating. I’ll get a chill. I miss it. I ask about her garden. Oh, there’s nothing in yet, we’ve had too much frost. For some reason we get onto travelling. Oh, no, she says, I’ve never been abroad. My father, you see, had depression. So much goes unsaid. She is not an articulate woman. But her inner life, well who can say? Who can say?

Rain then sun. Such is April.

I am writing it for myself, I think. Is it reason enough?

My umbrella has been blown out of shape, raggedy like the rooks on the Prom, their feathers cast awry by the wind. I walk with it. It fits easily in my pocket. It offers some shelter from the rain. It is dying, losing its usefulness.

I am always a little lost when I’ve completed something. Cast adrift into nothingness. And I need to be a-doing. Always.

I still use a Filofax, you know. Old-fashioned, certainly, but I am a note-writer. A jotter of ideas. In different colours – quotes, books to read, radio to listen to, ideas. I like the scribbles. I am trying to contain but with style, with creativity. A chaotic kind of order, held together with paperclips.

I think in pictures. The scribbles are pictures.

Her potager garden. Chekhov was always planning gardens, he said.

We were a odd grouping. They talked of cricket, drinking clubs (The Spartans and the Stinkies), daughters, flying Business Class, coming upon a mother duck with thirteen ducklings. The waiter had his new teeth in. He smiled at us, nice to see you again. The rainbow trout were humungous. A bit of fish stuck to his lower lip. He talked of his cousin Peter and the rogue who was trying to swindle him. A little too trusting. Naïve, he said. I don’t mind if he gives it all to the boy upstairs, he said. It is easy to be with them these days. They ask little of me. A hug. And to listen. I can do that. I can do both those things. It is a pleasure. We live simply here. I like it. I am content with what is.

Next year I will travel. Next year. Next year.

It is no more. She is no more. He is no more. All is past. In an hour’s time she will be committed to the flames. Made dust. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. Old time elegance. An archaic gentility. You must speak properly. I am fast forgetting the sound of her voice. Halloo, halloo, her voice would carol on the answer machine. Halloo, are you still there? Sovnent stille  the death notice reads. Peaceful sleep. Be at peace. Rest in peace. Peace be with you. And with your spirit.

It was parked outside no 2 South Marine. A black van. Window-less. The words ‘Private Ambulance’ had been printed discreetly on its side. It was 4.30 am. I described it to him later, as we walked. What is it? I asked. It’s for transporting dead bodies, he said.

The warmer air brings the crane flies inside. Daddy longs legs. They unnerved me as a child. They would fly at you, a leggy-fluttering in your face. Don’t, don’t. Don’t Daddy. Can you get it? I ask him. He snaps at it with his hand. He misses, he misses again. Come here, you bugger. Don’t kill it, I implore. I won’t. There, got you. There is a small one in his bedroom. A tiny one. I try to catch it. Come here, little one. But my hands are clumsy. These hands that can do the tiniest of stitches. They are too clumsy. I hurt it. Oh, no. A leg is dismembered. It lies still. I pick it up tenderly by its wing and put it through the window. It is too late. It is gone. And I am sorry. So sorry.

She is passing, has passed. Past. Gone. She sang, she drew. She was a star. A light. Her face was etched with years of smiles. A child-like woman, ever flirtatious. She had style, grace. She was tenacious. And I loved her. She preferred the company of men. She deferred to them. Put them first. Always. And yet, she was a proud spinster. She made her own way. Giving up her singing at forty and forging an entirely new career for herself as a hospital administrator. I remember our lunches at the Grand. Lobster followed by hot chocolate. I’ve messed myself, she said to me afterwards, her face downcast as she came out of the cubicle. My love. Sagging elastic-waisted crimplene trousers under a mink coat. Her legs leaning inwards. A sickly child (I had my own cow, she’d say, to give me milk) she’d outlived all her siblings. She sang. A querulous voice at the end. The last time we spoke on the phone she didn’t know me. She was polite but cold. The time before we had exchanged our love. She knew, she knew I loved her. She met Munch, several times. My friend lived next door, she said, we used to steal apples from his garden. She had a passion for her 45 year old Spanish gym instructor. We’d speak English together, she’d say. She took him to the opera. She believed it was reciprocated. She was ninety then. She died yesterday at 5 am. Aase Thurn-Basberg 29.07.1921 – 31.03.2016. Rest in peace.

We see her daily. A cadaverous face under an anorak hood. She leans against a wall, her scrawny bottom perched on a window shelf. Still wearing her tartan slippers, she draws heavily upon a cigarette. The door to her flat, ajar. Her chin curves up, nearly meeting her nose. Under that hood, she is just chin and nose.

It was a mass of flapping white. On the greensward just by the Tattoo shop. A flurry of wings and airborne feathers. A grey-haired woman in the corner, hands dipping into a 10p COOP recycled bag and throwing bread. The seagulls diving, grabbing, fighting for every crumb. Do they come each day? Do they know the time she will come? Do they expect her? Word had obviously got around, there were hundreds of them. Does it make her feel good, needed?

I am sad. I am grieving. Let it be. Today is for her. My heart at a loss. Lost. The sky, a milky stasis, knows.

x

I want to be close to her. It is the same as before. Too far. Too far away. I think of her, semi-paralysed, out-cold, wanting oblivion. How can I know that? How can I know anything?

We talk about dying, he and I. His mother was a year younger than her, 93. She shrank to almost nothing. A frail tissue of thing, just skin and bone. And not much skin. She stopped eating weeks before. Just liquid. That perpetual cup of tea, brought on a trolley by some noisy but kind carer. What happens when you don’t eat, I ask, does the body still….? Yeh, he says, there was poo in her nappy when she died. The hospital told me that she isn’t on a drip. Isn’t eating, isn’t drinking. It’s the Liverpool pathway, he says. Is that what it’s called? Really. A preparation for dying. There is nothing more we can do for her, the nurse says over the phone, so she’s gone back to the home. Palliative care. Turning the virtually-comatose body, keeping it clean, changing its nappy.

She tells me she will give her a big hug on my behalf. It isn’t the same. I want to touch, to comfort, to say all that I want to say about how wonderful I think she is. Was. Is. Remarkable. They all were. Remarkable women. And her too. Even if she terrified me. I think of her daily.

She used to make my sister sit at the table when we’d all ‘got down’ in front of her gone-cold food. It was excruciating. A battle of wills. Years later she told me her parents used to do the same to her. The unkindness perpetuates.

She is the last. The last thread. The last intimacy. Will I ever return?

I struggle to write it. And yet, I know I must. Let it percolate, he says. Yes. It will come. It will come.

Stroke seems such a kind word.

His name badge reads Kyle. We are next in line and I listen to him conversing with the customers ahead of us. I had to call, he is saying, he was swerving all over the road. He was clearly drunk. Kyle’s large face is pink, excited to recount the experience. Saving the world. Doing his duty. They were on him straight away, says Kyle.Traffic cops. I saw the blue light. They’d nabbed him. He tells us the story too. He is delighted. It passes the time of day. Why not? They called me back, he says. Apparently, he was four times over the limit. Imagine that, I say. Imagine. I ask about Easter. No, he didn’t do anything special, went to see his new nephew. My partner’s not well, he tells me. Oh, I say. She lost a baby. I’m sorry, was she far gone? Seven weeks, he says. It must’ve been difficult for her to see the new nephew. Yes, he says, his face full of meaning, it was. It set her back, I think. Behind us in the queue is a man with no arms. A Thalidomide victim. He holds his cash with his fingers but they are hidden beneath miniature sleeves. I think about the Midwife. It began then in the early 60s. Well-meaning doctors prescribing drugs for morning sickness. It is all he has known. I’m sure he manages. There is no need for pity. It’s just different. That’s all. I wish him well.

From my window I look down onto the Quad. There is a man’s legs poking out from a ground floor flat. His French windows are open wide. He sits on a chair in the sun. On his feet are a pair of immaculate shiny black brogues.

Two young lads walking down Great Darkgate Street. Ahead is another with two girls in parkas. Oh, God, says one of the pair to the other, I’ve left my phone. He shrugs and keeps on walking before shouting out to the lad ahead. Enjoy your day, man, he shouts. Enjoy your day. The lad raises a hand in acknowledgment but doesn’t turn round. Enjoy your day.

And you my love, go well. Fall into unconsciousness with ease, with peace. You have been loved. x

It gave me a frisson of joy. I walked out into the unseasonably cold air and there they were, all lit up. It’s not Christmas, yet their white, sparkling light was such a fillip. The mornings are growing lighter, though at 4.00 am it makes little difference. The moon was full this morning and shimmered it silvery-ness on the water. It throws a white light into my studio too. A little eerie. A magic light. A fairy light.

I think of Easters long ago. Going to church with Dad and coming home with my cream egg hot in my pocket. And the laying of the table. Mum had a box of impossibly yellow chicks with orange plastic feet. Let me, I’d say, let me do the table. A centrepiece of chicks and tiny sugared eggs atop a nest of cotton wool. I was so proud. Don’t knock it. Smoothing out the crepe paper. What did we eat? Pork? I cannot remember. There was sweetcorn in the hostess trolley and peas and gravy in the white porcelain gravy boat. We used the best dinner service. And I think there was sherry. The TV was full of programmes about the Passion. I didn’t want to see his torture and looked away.

What a beautiful day. A perfect sky. Silence except for the cawing of crows.

My dreams were too vivid. Moon dreams. A woman murdered and cut in half. Bagged up neatly, severed at the waist. No blood. And an acting role I had to do at short notice. On the West End stage. I missed the matinee and then I didn’t. There were contracts to fill in. I didn’t know the script. I hadn’t seen it. But somehow I was all alright. It was alright.

My sewing gives me tension. It is slow work and I still do not know if it is working. Persevere. Something will come from it and if it doesn’t at least you have seen through your imaginings. Is it the same with everyone? I see it so clearly in my head that I have to make it. If only to manifest it into physical form. Then to cancel it. Discard. Perhaps not a sensible, time-effective way of working but this is an unearthing process. It is not linear, not sensible, but felt. It will come. I am sure of it. Aren’t you?

Happy Easter, by the way.

I remember Caramac eggs. Sickly cloying. I would save them. Never gorging. They looked so small once the packaging had been removed.

Adieu.

Some days I chase my tail. I cannot find the time to do it all. Such days are my list-days. That’s all I can do, write lists on odd scraps of paper and torn post-it notes: learn to play the piano, walk a marathon, read the instructions for my camera, paint the balustrade, re-listen to the programme about Charlotte Bronte’s letters and the new biography of her life, wash dressing gown, make soup, call bank.

I have to do the same here, on this page. Instructions. Write about: newspaper front pages, bearing witness to the pain of others, mass killings and the death of a lonely old man (not missed for two weeks until a neighbour pushed open the letter-box and smelt the decaying stink of him), the homeless boy sleeping outside Costa Coffee, Colin in Morrison’s, his long, gentle fingers pushing my apples into a bag I didn’t want, grumpiness towards my neighbour after a long journey, ‘do I look like a shopper?’, sharpness towards a waitress when she brings me food I don’t want and mendings, neat metal stitches.

Soon. A week of writing. Breathe. The air this morning smelt of fields. Later of newly-mown grass. Something like bliss. Can it be? Can there be bliss against such pain? There is, there must be. A silver-lining she calls it. The cancer, contained and removed. She is happy again. A daughter safe. Something like hope. Something like forgiveness.

Yes.