ellen bell

They do, they come and go. I often don’t know they’re gone for months. Like the two nurses opposite. I don’t know for sure that they were nurses, it was my guess based on the hours that they kept. Like me, really, they were up at all hours of the night. I can see their window, or what used to be their window, or should I say windows, from my studio. They looked like twins, both quite rounded, small and with rainbow-coloured hair. They had a two pugs. I think there were two. Mix and match. They may have been sisters or lovers perhaps or just close friends. I tried not to spy on them, and I’d discreetly turn away if I happened to catch a look and they were in their underwear. I’m just interested in the goings on of my neighbours, well a little. Like the man in the flat across from them. He with the long hair and beard. A smoker, like many of the inhabitants of these flats are. He is often out before 7 am sitting on the bench in the quad, in the sun if it’s shining, smoking and reading from a paperback, his glasses perched on his nose. I think a man, or young lad has taken over the tenancy of the ‘nurses’s place. I can see his arm through one of the windows and the other morning when I went into the studio for a match he was walking about in his kitchen bare-chested. It’s an intimacy I baulk from overseeing. It’s not for me. I turn away. I wonder where the ‘nurses’ have gone.

He sends me a video of him and his grandchild playing with a ball. Funny that desire to share such things. It is sweet but I have no connection with that part of his life. We are of the past not the present. I inadvertently deleted your message, he says. Yes. I can imagine you did. This is no two-way conversation. It never really was. I wish him well. He is still a handsome man.

I think about writing as I walk. Yesterday it was art. I am pulled this way and that. Betwixt and between. My back grows tight from the fear of doing, of failing in the doing and then in the not doing. How best to manage it? Try it? Perhaps. The sunrise was lovely, not magnificent but gentle, a trace of pink. There are more people about. A family of three walked from the beach as I went past, still in shorts and bare-foot. Bins spew out McDonalds detritus and there is a lingering smell of barbeque smoke. It’s the small things that comfort and sometimes delight me. As he does. Such kindness and care. Going off for his walk in his shorts, bag across his chest like a paper boy. I am blessed. Truly.

An ex-love sends a message via FB and it takes me back, what almost forty years ago. To that top-floor flat in West Kensington (just down the road from the ‘Scrubs’). My first home away from my family, shared with him. There was Esme the feral cat, the Irish ex-merchant seaman landlord who’d come up for ‘chats’ about the sea, and the little ‘balcony’ the cat and I would clamber through the window to perch in looking down onto the scrappy square below, the kitchen cabinets I painted red and the pervading reek of dirty litter tray. I loved it though, as I loved him, passionately, painfully.

A stunning morning and it was almost up when I walked. The washing was still out on a line in the back garden of one of the houses along South Marine Terrace. It had been propped up by a wooden prop and it swaying precariously but safely in the breeze. It made me happy somehow. Seeing washing drying often does. It’s the regularity of it, the domesticity.

The chinese woman in the flat around the corner, with her one son and husband (no doubt an academic at the University), tends a lovely little patio garden. Tomatoes, onions, potatoes and herbs grow marvellously from plastic washing up bowls all arranged in neat lines in the sun. Everything she buys is leant against the house wall, in the sun, vegetables (often very exotic, I thought I saw a mooli the other day), toys, children’s books, no doubt to ward off any contamination. The paving stones are often replete with chalked drawings by her son of smiling faces and spaceships. She takes such care. It warms my heart.

The hairdressers along Northgate Terrace looks like it has folded. All the window signage has been removed and a hoover is on the floor, plugged in in the middle of being used. I am sad. She tried so hard.

The Pelican Bakery seems to be holding up. It looks so welcoming as I walk past at 4.30 am. I see the blonde, ponytailed woman in there marking off orders, apron on, pencil in hand. And the smell. Long may it continue. The bread he bought from M&S still smells of yeast, what a joy.

Enough. I have work to do. Her letter was a joy. I want to get into the habit of writing more letters. Mrs Gs are a delight to share, rich with incident and detail. And our lives reflected back and shared are the better for it. Email and texts are nothing to them.

My mother and I were both involved. Both of us framed. Both victims of a frame-up. But separately. We’d eaten at a restaurant. We weren’t together. She’d gone and I’d gone on different occasions. And incriminating cash had been planted on us. Loads of it. All in notes. The money was evidence that we’d acted illegally. But we were innocent. I think it was to do with prostitution. If the money was found we would be branded as prostitutes. We knew the money was there in our things but we couldn’t get rid of it. And we needed to travel, to go somewhere and we’d be checked. The dream involved looking in cupboards, dark corners. It was about fear. Fear of the inevitable but held off, suspended. I woke before any resolution.

No rain again this morning. The sea was a gentle lapping. I thought about how else I might earn my living. I want to stop that job. The thought of returning sinks my stomach. I’ve eaten too much muesli, my gut is heavy with it. Let it be. I thought about making work to order. How would that feel? I thought about what I would like to illustrate – Lear or Peake, perhaps? Is making less anxious-making than writing? I’ve also got some ideas for a series of short stories about sewing. And I want to finish the tapestry. All these half-finished tasks. It’s unneat. She is rarely effusive when she gets the work. That’s OK. Isn’t it?

I walked past her house this morning and saw the shiny metallic strip stuck in her window announcing Happy Birthday. It was stuck there in front of her net curtains. I knew her from years ago when she used to waitress at The Belle Vue Hotel on the front, when we’d go in the three of us for a drink, and a meal sometimes, and to watch the sunset. She walked with a rolling gait, still does, and most of her teeth were missing. She has a lovely name that, like our next-door neighbour in Cambridge, was perhaps more fitting when she was young, vital and pretty. She’s warm. She remembers him, and his mother, more than me. I don’t think she even knows my name. There was a number 80, hand-coloured, fixed to her front door. I thought she was older. She’s always worked. Her husband must’ve died quite young. And yet her ankles get water-logged and her legs heavy. She keeps going, as so many women do. Is it more of a female thing than a male one? Perhaps. Happy Birthday (was it yesterday?) and may you have many more if you choose it to be so.

Almost finished. I am slow in writing. Is that OK?

Tired this morning. The rain unsettled me. I wanted to enjoy the sound, safe in my bed, but I thought of floods and fear and I lay there fretting. So be it.

Do you mind if I tell you of my dreams? It helps to write them out. They are prosaic mostly. Last night it was principally about my sister, my youngest sister. I was staying with her and moving through the house. At the far end by a winding staircase were lots of babies, at least five, babies, children whom I didn’t recognise. How could I not have known she was pregnant? I asked him later, when he eventually turned up. I’d tried calling him to say that I was no longer at work but either my phone wouldn’t work or I couldn’t make it work or he wasn’t answering. My sister was tidying up, taking things out of cupboards and rearranging. She was busy, distracted, unwilling to talk. I woke in the night with a sore on my leg, the wound was open and seeping through the cotton wool and bandage I’d wrapped around it. I heard voices in the landing. My sister was still sorting out even at that late hour and had handed my other sister, who was there suddenly, a present. I felt a pang of sibling jealousy about being left out. I told her of my wound. It’s better now, she said, looking at it. It had gone, my leg was healed. She asked if I too would like some perfume, for that is what she’d given my other sister. So you have bottles of perfume that you’ve never opened? I asked. Yes, she said, unphased by my suggestion at her profligacy. The cupboard in front of her was full of sealed up, unopened bottles of perfume. She handed me one. It was a Chanel No 5, I was delighted. And then I woke up. Is the symbolism worth investigating? I miss her. I miss them both. I long for a closeness and yet I run from it too.

It rained a little, as I predicted. The earth gave up its scent to the rain. A lone police car roamed the streets. Will they stop me? No. The EG book is stuck on Mary Barton. I will read it. Has much changed? No TV or film adaptations. Strange. The same with Ruth. Is she out of favour? North and South grips us of an evening. A classy adaptation. Tim Piggot Smith is glorious. Much work to do today. I will master it, and find the words. Onwards. Tea first, I think.

It was a phrase Uglow used in her Gaskell book and one that Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently used to described Unitarianism. It is apt to appropriate it here and now thinking as I am of the TED talks yesterday on death. And yet they were uplifting fare, such as the one about the woman who has devised what she calls her ‘mushroom soup’ to add to the ground above and around the grave of a ‘dearly departed’ so that their decaying remains become a ‘useful’ part of the future earth. Or there was the paramedic who started to tell the truth to those he attended during road accidents etc. when they asked if they were going to die. He then described the peace that came over (most of them) when they realised their end was near. Acceptance again. Accepting one’s lot but not in a defeatist way but in a beautiful resigned, yielding one. And then there was the doctor who lost both his legs in an accident, during the recovery of which a nurse placed a real snowball in his hands and his delight at that. He went on to found the Zen Hospice in San Francisco where the dead are led on a stretcher to the morgue via the garden where the other residents can pay their respects, sprinkle flowers etc. And where the kitchen is an ‘important place’ where appetites though small are delighted with ‘cookies’ and such like. Die from death he said but not from a lack of imagination. I was inspired and moved as I was when I spoke to C. but this morning I’m in the doldrums caused by fear. Fear of not being good enough to write this piece. You always do it, he says at breakfast, you always pull it off. And I do don’t I? Mostly not as well as I’d hoped but I can and will do it. Is this fear necessary? It assails me. But onward. Duties done. Time to listen and then begin. ‘Are you sitting comfortably children? Then I will begin.’ Daphne someone. He told me about her yesterday as he came in to say goodnight. Listen with Mother. Do you remember it?

He tells me to ignore them, those dreams that linger in my mind from the night before. My impulse is always to try to understand, to make sense of them. His is to leave them be. I was with my sister in a doctor’s consulting room. Her lover was there, a huge man. Was he also lying on the couch? She was being examined but they were also extracting fluid from her. Was it meant to be blood? It was coming out black. I was horrified. Is that from her kidneys? I asked. Yes, the doctor said, but also from her liver. She made no reply. Perhaps she was under sedation. I seemed to be in the position of carer. The huge man was angry with me, he appeared to hold me responsible for what was ailing her. And yet she is so fit, I said.

Still deep in Elisabeth Gaskell. What a huge life. So many visitors, and five children too. She took to the couch when her little son died of scarlet fever but still managed to write Mary Barton. I am constantly in awe of these prolific Victorians, even if they did have their ‘Hearns’ to see to all the domestic stuff for them. I’m always a little put-out on those servants’ behalfs that they must be known by the surname alone. So impersonal. They become like an adage, a chattel. I baulk at it.

An overcast day. It promises, well they promise, some sun. I miss it. I await my interview with her. There is always butterflies. I find encountering others harder and harder as I grow older. I’m glad that he doesn’t insist on an open house. This closed one of ours suits me. As it does him. We don’t entertain, I said to that neighbour who invited us over and didn’t repeat the gesture. I wasn’t rude merely honest. It felt refreshing to be so. After all, where would they sit? We only have two of everything.

Another hole in his one of his jumpers to mend. It is a juggling act with little fanfare – a muddling along life with only my thoughts that reach beyond and those little sparks of ideas like foetuses yet to be born, or even developed. In my head I have largesse like GS and a world of possibilities.

It wasn’t an unpleasant dream but it felt like it was when I woke. I was pregnant and gave birth to a series of spider’s eggs (I didn’t see them hatch). But what seemed important was the place in which I gave birth rather than the birth itself, and the fact that I would return to that place again. And yet, it wasn’t anything special – a rented room in a boarding house. Then I was sewing with someone, someone who was extremely gifted in it. I think it must’ve been embroidery as they kept showing me how they could transmit a pattern from an Ipad onto cloth. I believe it was a man, a huge corpulent man.

I cleaned out my studio and listened to Kirsty Young’s radio celebration of 75 years of Desert Island Discs. It was a repeat from 2017. Many were moving, some funny. And some poignant, like Wainwright (I forget his Christian name) who said that he didn’t much like music, preferring silence and that he’d had to stop walking due to failing eyesight, having gone out for the last time in some particularly foul weather and hadn’t been able to see his way. The mountains cried for me that day, he said. He refused to go to London for the recording, insisting they come to him in the Lake District (how I love that kind of determination to not yield, that not feeling one has to be ‘nice’ a responsibility that has dogged my life). He gave in somewhat and they made the programme in Manchester. The writing and researching of walking guides obsessed him impacting on his life. My wife went out with the dog one day, he said, and never returned.

This time she answered. I think I make her cry. She says she cries a little everyday, that she is not used to being alone. I married when I was 21, you know, she said. And that she takes sleeping tablets to help her to sleep. My heart aches for her, I want to be of comfort but can say nothing. What is there to say? She tells me to come out there. Yes, I will. I want to. And then my mind starts to race with ideas – who I want to see, where I want to go, what places to investigate and explore. Her grave and then hers, and find out where her was school and his shop. I both long to go and dread it. Leaving him is always a wrench, as is the leaving of my home and relative safety and my language. She doesn’t know me, not now, perhaps then, but she kept me steady, looked out for me, cared enough to get close. She doesn’t know me either, but I like her, feel tenderly towards her, as I do her. It is enough, isn’t it?

She was almost garrulous. I like to hear her like that. I’m being lazy today, she said, still in bed at beyond 9. We talked of her cat and the kittens just recently given away to good homes. And how the cat is frightened of the chickens and the dog of the cat and how the dog wants to befriend the rooster but the rooster, having grown cantankerous won’t have it. All is topsy-turvy. She laughs and I laugh. It enfolds her, that life. And soon her precious daughter must return to work fearful of what she will bring home with her.

The rain pours outside. The wind was fierce and continues strong. He is not going out. I am to clean my studio from top to bottom then bake scones and shortbread. Still a little tired. I thought of that little girl. I want to eclipse the darkness with light but cannot. Those poor parents. I stand beside you in your grief.

I think it was a crossword clue that made him think about it. Well, the answer, which was Peter the Great. Did I tell you that my brother had a horse called Peter the Dog? he asked, looking at me, daring me to sigh and say I’d heard it before. I had but I like the quirkiness so I didn’t mind being reminded of it. It wasn’t a real horse but a rocking horse. Nice though. Am I sometimes impatient with his reminiscences?

A quick one today. I’ve got to get back to the article before the fear of it paralyses me completely. Breathe.

It rained this morning. It was still warm but the air was fresher, cooler nevertheless and everything smelt wonderful. A new day feeling. I went the wrong way round the Prom being too distracted by thoughts about this writing I’ve to do and the renditions of the Bronte sisters we are currently watching each evening. The power of Emily and the contained force of Charlotte and the pure sweetness of Anne. I am bowled over once again. He is too.

I read the hand-written sign affixed to the glass door of Capricorn Gowns on on Terrace Road. It read something like ‘PARCEL POST. Please return to sender any parcels sent to Capricorn Gowns, thank you‘. Why? I wanted to ask. Don’t you even want to see what they are? It hasn’t closed down, or at least doesn’t appear to have done. There are still the stiff mannequins in the window sporting various floaty cake-like efforts favoured by women of a certain age. And that large papier mache dalmatian. What that is about God knows. Odd times, eh? And then, distracted as I was, I walked past the Pelican Bakery wanting my fix of the bread smell and I had a jolt for there was the baker standing in the doorway in his shorts and apron. Good morning, he said. I did a kind of dance, trying too late to observe a social distance. Odd times, indeed.