ellen bell

I love the scent of them, even more than a standard, hybrid garden rose. There is a wild headiness to their perfume that their cultivated cousins do not have. There are several bushes of them in the Castle park and some smaller, white climbing ones near where he parks our car. I push my nose in close. The smell is stronger later in the day or first thing in the morning. It makes me thing of the jasmine I catch in the air in Spain. It is the small things, they are my solace as I age and all those dreams fall away.

I give myself daily tasks, it is a way of ordering my time, of giving myself a structure and an opportunity to weigh up my worth. An hour or so on his quilt. I’ve still much to do but I found that by pulling the table out there was more room to manage its unwieldiness. And I baked some bread using the yeast I’d frozen all those weeks ago. Will it respond? I asked myself, and it did wonderfully, prodigiously. It foamed and foamed. Gorgeous. What a thing. And the bread seems OK. It looked nice liberally sprinkled with sunflower seeds. When I cut into it the texture looked soft, almost cake-like. He is yet to try it. He wrinkles his nose a little over the seeds (they get in his teeth) but seems open to being guinea pig. Besides he likes to know that I’m upstairs doing it. It makes me feel cosy, he says. I know what he means. I like the idea too, even if the effort and the standing required is much. And it’s nice to make things. And bread, even though I no longer eat it, is such a staple. And I like to experiment, adapting the recipes so that I don’t have to follow them to the letter.

Few people were about this morning. A student came out of one of the Halls wearing a pair of shorts. I saw him later climbing Penglais Hill. The wind was too strong for the harbour. I’ve missed the Perygl. Tomorrow perhaps. I shall sew today. I’m stuck on a particularly tricky pattern and have had to unpick several times. Heigh ho, it is my discipline, it keeps me steady. I think of her as I sew. And her. And I finished my glorious Dickens. I am a little bereft. Was Drood murdered? Was Jasper the killer? Who is Datchery? Silence. Unfinished. What a glory. What next? A biography of Dorothy L Sayers that so far looks promising. Listening to Great Lives on Radio 4 prompted me to buy it. Yet I still long for my Crisparkle……

They promised 50 mile per hour winds. They didn’t feel that strong, possibly 20 or 25. I walked anyway, though the Prom was only really safe towards the Bar. As I made my way along Llanbadarn Road one of those transparent, plastic recycling bags inflated on the other pavement. It had clearly been tied up, loosely, and the wind had got inside blowing it up into a large, tight ball. First it lifted into the air and then fell down with a bounce onto the pavement before bobbing along at the same pace as me towards town. I thought of the young lad in American Beauty making a video of a plastic bag dancing in a breeze and then of the orange space hopper things we had a kids (well, we didn’t have one but friends did). There was something miraculous about it, beautiful in its way. It captivated me.

Weary again today, no doubt a result of the wind and the pattern of fitful sleeping I’ve got myself into. A gentle day today in which I will continue with his quilt (a cumbersome job pushing it through the machine) and baking some bread (the yeast I froze may have died but I’ll see). Keep well and safe.

I found this card written while they were on honeymoon I think. It contains his usual practical concerns, all about meeting them off the train in the Mini. He never did write of love. But he seemed happy enough. Were they? Ever? I cannot remember. I hope so. Did her death speed along his? Fanciful perhaps. Who knows and who cares, it is long ago now. Long ago.

The sky delivered what they promised and I got soaked. I’d been busy with domestic stuff so my walk was going to be a curtailed one anyway but nevertheless I was stymied in my attempts to at least take a look at the sea. The rain had ceased when I first set out but then it came. A heavy shower that was exacerbated by the wind coming down South Road from the sea and which blinded me. I couldn’t see, my eyes were seeped in rain and unable to blink. And it made me cold. And yet it was also quite marvellous. Such is the sensation of living, not always pleasant and cosy but vital, don’t you think? We are rarely physically inconvenienced. And it is good to be so, now and again. I squelched home bedraggled but blown through. To my Dickens. I am in love with his storytelling. I don’t want it to end. Do you feel that ever?

It rained a little as I walked, not heavy but enough for me to zip up the hood of my waterproof. I love the smell of rain on sun-dried pavements and gardens. The scents it throws up are many. It’s such a hopeful smell, a life-full smell. Earth, it is the smell of earth and things growing at such a rate it would astound us if we could but see it in the microcosm. Sometimes I think I can hear it.

There was a moth in my room when I woke. It flapped about bashing into light and then window before disappearing. I woke it again when I returned and switched the light back on, it flew up again landing on teddy, then bed post. I captured it lightly in a cloth and switching out the lights took it to the window and let it loose into the cool dark. We were told as children that the dust from their wings comes away if we pick them up and that they would cease to be able to fly. I hope that myth is but that, a myth. Fly away. Fly away Peter, fly away Paul. I dreamt of cars, of driving, of familiar roads becoming unfamiliar, of being chased but of feeling intrinsically safe and of solving things easily, no not easily but knowing deep down that they would be. Do you understand why sometimes I don’t want to wake? Work. Must work now. Onward.

I saw its lights before I saw it. Another huge Eddie Stobart lorry waiting. But this time it was outside the gates of Tesco’s and M&S’s shared loading bay, parked up alongside the flats on Mill Street. It was dark inside the cab so I couldn’t see the driver which was a little disconcerting. Could he see me? Was he watching? It had clearly not been there long, for as I walked past overawed by its size, the smell of warm rubber was still strong. A comforting smell. I’m not sure why. A childhood memory of a tyre strung up from a tree as a swing perhaps? Not sure. But warmth, any warmth is comforting to me, though the night air wasn’t cold.

We survived it. No one stopped us. A trip. A spin. Taking work to be photographed. I made coffee in a flask for him and lemon and ginger for me. We sat by the harbour while he did the work. An hour of watching, my face warmed by the sun. It was nice to get out, to get away. We conducted our consultation from outside. I placed the work on the step and he stayed at the front door. Only his dog broke the rules. Ben, he called, Ben. He looked a little older, perhaps it’s his hair grown longer. He had on his slippers. Carpet slippers. Tartan carpet slippers. Driving home the sweep of sea was magnificent. How blessed I am.

Is it the weather? I’ve felt enervated these last few days and it makes me a little cross. Poor love, he gets the brunt. But the crossness is really down to frustration, frustration with self for not….for not what? Being different? For not accepting what is? Who knows? I’ve done all I set out to do but resented some of it, particularly the domestic stuff. He says how important it is. And he is right. I need the order of it and so does he. It’s just I want to be doing other things too. I heard back from them. They never choose the images I would select. So be it. It pays the rent. It’s a job. I will do it the best I can. It isn’t great art. But I like to be paid for what I do. And what I do is create. An ideas person he called me. And they keep coming, though their sights are less, or at least more modest.

I’ve been reading Dickens, his last book. I’m entranced. It took a little time. His language is layered, heavy at times but so rich. I take it in small bites and savour it.

Is that what age promises, small joys, in small pieces but time (or perhaps the predilection) to really enjoy them?

It was an intermittent sound, not continual. I couldn’t work out where it was coming from. A laugh. A forced laugh. Was she in one of the flats to the left of us? It was certainly coming through an open window. A laughing woman. A high-pitched, uncomfortable sound. I was trying to sleep. Admittedly early for most and I would drift towards it only to be woken by her laugh again. It makes him cross. He is getting more deaf but noise still makes him cross. But it is a free country, isn’t it? And people should be able to laugh. He wrote about noise specifically and how we can still be peaceable amongst or amidst it. It tried it and it worked. I fell asleep.

The red poppies are out in that garden on Llanbadarn Road. Gorgeous blooms, and so fragile with petals like vermillion crepe paper. What a joy! Even in the half-dark. Joy.

I try to catch a sense of them before I am fully awake, before they disappear into the ether. The last one was centred around an ex of mine, an officer in the army, well he was then. He was young, as he was when we were together, a beautiful man but there was real knowing. Or perhaps I am being unfair, he was young and callow, I think, though his experiences in the forces had been hard. There was no real rapport between us other than desire. Anyway, we were travelling together, due to separate, I think I had to go for a job interview. The travelling was on foot, a road that we were being led down by an officious woman. However, the road, or the path was waterlogged and we had to veer off it into a boggy ditch. I had on my new walking shoes and hoped that they would hold out, my ex was less well shod and was growing distinctly irritated. The bog was marshy and fresh green grass grew up from its wetness. I wasn’t that perturbed, though I did ask ‘will we have to come this way on our return?’ Yes, said the officious woman.

I don’t know how to live, says the fictional Mary Ann Evans in a play I listened to on the radio about George Eliot and George Lewes. Nor do I. Not yet. I hanker. I hanker for peace, emptiness and simplicity. A cottage, a croft with white walls and a garden and wide open views. To write and sew and read and walk and to rid myself of this fear, this constant anxiety. Show me. Show me my home.

The sensor light comes on when he opens his window and I can see it when I’m locking our front door as I leave for my walk. Can I own that my heart always sinks when I know that he is awake and smoking through his window? Don’t get me wrong, I like him. He is a little wry, but always friendly, and he is a kind man, I am certain of it. It’s just that I don’t want to talk. I want to preserve my silence and walk out into that dark alone. It’s all that forcing of politeness. I am sure that he feels it too. It makes me awkward and I can hear myself saying silly things. What must he think of me? It is an unnatural situation. He is at his window because he wants a fag and I am leaving our flat because I wish to walk and it is our only exit. We are forced on each other at 3.30 am and we must be gracious, both of us. I had a card in my hand. Writing letters? he asked. I mumbled something about having to rifle through our card collection to find a decent one, our not being able to get one from the shops etc. I think Smiths is open, he said, looking bored as he said it. I replied saying that we were trying to avoid going into too many shops. We said goodbye then, neither of us lifted by the exchange and he wished me a pleasant walk. What do you talk about?

I am edgy – I set myself too much to do. A little of each perhaps is the best way forward. Finish work first. First things first, eh?

There’s no doubt it stirs things up, it is inevitable, but it is the wrong time of the day for me. I go to bed whirring with it all. And last night the story was so close, too close. Though I didn’t put her in a dustbin. They were so kind to her. Was that realistic? Wouldn’t the police at least have been a little more suspicious? Who knows? It is fiction after all. And all was well in the end, as it mostly is. Is it with me? And with her? I love her. I always have, though I haven’t always known her. I have loved the existence of her, the being of her in this world, breathing this selfsame air. Does she know this? That is all that remains important, her knowing that she is loved, held. I cannot do more. I cannot erase the past. No one asked me, that is what hurt. He sat on the edge of my bath. I would’ve, he said. I would’ve said, is this what you want? Perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to say in truth what I wanted, but at least he would’ve asked, would’ve cared to question me. She took care of it all. He thinks unkindly, I don’t. I owe her much. She gave her a family. Though even now I think she struggles to belong. Bless her. My love, what have I brought you? I hope some joy. Life, if not else. Is that enough?