But it’s a Paul Smith, he protests and doesn’t need to. I try to keep mum these days. It’s his joy, this buying and bidding on eBay. He says it’s harmless and doesn’t cost much as they are all second-hand. So I leave him be and patiently (mostly) pack up the parcels to return if they don’t suit. I hadn’t seen the coat before he sent it off to the drycleaners to be cleaned. I can’t remember the adjective they used when he called them to check it had arrived (a blousy, cheery woman comes to collect every Thursday). There’s swank, they should’ve said. For it is bright, even garish. Pink. Do you remember when we were going to buy me that pink velvet suit from Paul Smith in Covent Garden? Yes, I do. I remember the umming and ahing and the dithering. It wasn’t cheap. He is happy now. That is what matters. And I have my fetishes too. Sketchbooks for instance?
He wasn’t sure if it was in honour of his death or not, but the National Library of Wales on the hill above us was flying their flag at half mast. How nice, I said, not knowing if the man would’ve appreciated it or not. He went to his funeral yesterday. I was the only one in jeans, he said. He learnt things about him he didn’t know before. Though he didn’t know him very well. He was younger than him and was in school with his younger brother. But they did used to drink together. In his drinking days. I’m glad he went. He wavered. I couldn’t hear my brother’s eulogy, he said, he spoke so quietly, I think his voice cracked a little at the end. The played The Waterboys, twice. Nice.
I saw her again yesterday. I’ve seen her a few times now. We were out walking in the afternoon and went into Ridiculously Rich’s outdoor seating area for a coffee and so that I could draw. She came a little later on and sat at a table just beyond ours. I like to look at her. She isn’t beautiful but she has a strong body, a fresh face and intelligence and openness shines from her. She doesn’t know me, though I did go up and say hello that one time. I don’t mind. I like to preserve my relative anonymity here. I have all I need.
I haven’t seen either them for a while now. I used to see them both, not together but separately, most mornings. The bag lady I’d see walking either to the all-night garage on Mill Street or away from it. She had a very distinctive rolling walk and she’d always carry a supermarket plastic bag in her hand, whether full or empty I couldn’t tell. And, come rain or shine, she’d be wearing her pink or blue sweatshirt top. Her hair hung from her head, unkempt and greasy. And she never gave me any eye contact and often, if we crossed each other on the Prom she’d stop walking and turn to face the sea until I passed by. The Sikh was equally diffident, never replying when I said good morning, his white clothes a beacon in the dark. He strode rather than rolled, a thin, upright man of immense physical dignity. Sometimes he wore an anorak over his white. He walked for exercise, that was clear, swinging his arms as he did so. Where have they gone?
At first I couldn’t make out what it was – a cat maybe or a dog. The morning had not quite lifted and that gorgeous blue was still hovering on the horizon. (It had been too overcast for me to see the blood moon, or indeed the eclipse, at 4.20am, though I had remembered.) But then I saw the sharp, pointed ears, the brush tail. It was a fox. It was standing on the corner of Queen’s Road and staring at me. I stopped walking and spoke to it in soft tones. It didn’t run off but continued to stare for at least, well maybe ten seconds. It was a beauty (male or female, I couldn’t tell), small but alert, curious. It moved on then, not running but walking. And as I turned the corner and looked back I could see it still, sniffing around some litter by the old court rooms. It looked at me too, one more time. I felt blessed by the encounter. Truly.
She usually sits with either her friend the fire alarm fixer or her fiancé (who she told us yesterday she’s known since she was eighteen) but neither were there so she sat at the table next to ours. He talked (well listened) to her while I drew. For all her initial reticence when we usually first greet her, we found after spending more concentrated time in her company that she actually shares her opinions rather liberally such as about Putin (‘he’s like Hitler, someone should shoot him’), or Welsh Rugby, or the Town Council (‘I didn’t vote, the town’s in a shocking state’) or the people who’ve taken over P.D.’s Diner on the Prom (‘the burgers were just warm, who wants warm burgers, and the coffee’s shocking, the bikers aren’t going any more’). She cleans other peoples’ houses and holiday lets and says she loves it. She was off to do two that afternoon, ‘after I’ve done my bits’, she said. Before she left, she said, ‘I love to see her draw’. And there’s me thinking she hadn’t noticed.
The giant poppies are out in the front garden of the house along Llanbadarn Road. They are lush, vermillion petals like a Schiaparelli dress and that deep black centre. Another source of joy as I walk.
My mind gets clogged with the stuff. All those details that I try to get a hold of and manage so that I can create a semblance of order. And sometimes is just too much, or so it seems when there is the promise of a disruption, however welcome, and it is, to my routine. I am flustered.
I wasn’t really concentrating on my drawing yesterday afternoon in the café at M&S. We go there in the afternoons when I’ve spent the morning writing so as to keep my drawing practice alive. I’m usually tired, as I was yesterday and my head was full of the piece I’d just written for my writing course. He was reading it out and we were editing it together. The café was busy and full of the kind of faces and bodies that I like to draw – characterful faces, mostly elderly, and all taking their slow time over lunch. This man sat across from us with his wife on one side and his two friends opposite. I observed him from the corner of my eye as he ate a bag of crisps. The doing of this task absorbed all his attention. (His wife was eating one too and both ate with their heads raised in the air, munching.) After he’d emptied the packet (he checked several times, even pouring the dregs into his mouth) he smoothed it out on the table, rolled it flat and then twisted it into a bow. Beautiful.
We passed her as we walked in. I’ve seen her there a few times. She and her boyfriend (or maybe even her husband) sleep on the ground in front of the china shop on Terrace Road. They lie on a double mattress placed on top of sheets of cardboard. She was asleep when we walked past, her face and long black hair exposed. She was outside Smiths when we’d finished our tea and coffees in the coffee shop where I do my drawing practice. He asked if she wanted something to eat. Yes, she said, fruit and a bottle of coke. I tried to converse with her while he went into the SPAR to get them. She is a tiny thing, delicate, almost Indian in appearance and manner (she bowed when he gave her the food and drink). She said where she was from but couldn’t tell me how long they had been here. My English, she said, then faltered. That’s OK, I said and smiled and then let her be.
I suddenly looked at my ears in the mirror a few days ago and didn’t recognise them. Perhaps it is because I’ve been studying other peoples’ ears when I’ve been drawing and it made me re-examine mine. Either way they looked strange, unfamiliar. I suppose most things do when you stare at them enough.
I got a ‘well done’ yesterday. It felt nice. And I basked for a little in it. Then, in bed I started to work over the second piece I’d written seeing its holes and inconsistencies. There is always more work to be done. Always.
Her voice sounded better, stronger. I’m still in hospital, she said. I asked if she wanted or needed anything. A magazine, some sweets or some Rich Tea? She went for a magazine and some biscuits and I said we’d drop them off either that day or the next. I asked her what ward she was in. Straightforward enough. We took a detour and he went in with the Smiths bag of goodies – 3 Take a Break magazines and a pack of Rich Teas – but they couldn’t find her. She’s in the Covid ward, I told him down the phone. No, she isn’t. There’s no one with that name, at least not a woman. She’d told me previously that she answers to a different name there. Her real name. They still couldn’t find here. Where was she? In Tregaron, apparently, in a convalescent home. She’s been here for quite a while the receptionist told him over the phone. The biscuits and mags will have to wait. He wants to take them at some point. Perhaps she’s dementing, he said. Maybe. Or maybe she is just so disorientated, that all rooms she is taken to look the same, are the same. Maybe she is on the way out. But what will happen then? Its been over 6 months and she will be so institutionalised and her daughter has a young child to care for. What a time it has been for her, for both of them. My heart is full for her.
